On 3B Fridays we’re going to post tips and tricks to teach and inspire you to develop in photography.

It was difficult to know where to start with our first post, so thought what would we have liked to learn on such a site.  What we all agreed we love seeing breakdowns of how images were created.  So we’ve decided to kick-off with a ‘3B//Friday – Breakdowns‘ post, describing how we created one of the images on this site, starting with this image Phil shot of Stef in a fridge:

This shot was taken at an old derelict mill called ‘Temple Works‘ in Leeds. We been invited to the mill various times before and had shot a short film there (on the 3B//Video page here), so we asked to pop back with some of our favourite models and a makeup artist for what we’ve called on our ‘Flash Days’ (also see the flash day video on the 3B//Video page here).

Basically – the best way to get exciting flash photography is to get it ‘ off-camera’.

These stills are grabs from the video our pal Cris Matthews shot of us in action.

The fridge image began when Stef found the fridge and climbed in, as one does.  Phil used 2 remotely triggered speedlight flashguns as follows:

For ultimate control & reliability, both speedlights were set manually and triggered wirelessly, in this case with Phil’s Pocket Wizards.  Shooting with sync chord cables (like this) could have been an option, but restricts movement, and would have shown trailing into the fridge.  Shooting with a Canon ST-E2 wireless Remote Trigger could also be an option to fire both flashes, and add in the flexibility of ETTL flash metering.  But the ST-E2 requires an infra-red line-of-sight to ‘Sauron’s-eye’ on the front of the flashgun – and Stef was stood in front of one flash and the other gun is behind Phil.  Radio triggers are guaranteed (loosely speaking) to fire the flash via radio waves within a certain distance.  A cheaper option would be Elinchrom’s Skyports, as used by Barns & Rob, which can also control Elinchrom’s ranger flash-heads.

Speedlight 1: The main light source came from speedlight 1, set to bounce into a brollie on a weighted flash stand (using a sandbag) to camera left.  Bouncing flash into a silver brolly diffuses light into a soft widespread light source.  Positioning it to camera left and having Stef point herself towards it evenly lights her face.  Tip: asking your subject to turn themselves towards the main light-source is generally a good place to kick off, be that the sun, a window or a flash.

Speedlight 2: Another flash was added into the mix to add drama and a little rim-light to lift stef from the background.  Placed behind Stef in the fridge, this flash bounced up & off the reflective metal, made more interesting by taping a blue gel (a coloured filter strip, light the ones put over stage lights) to further add to the quality of light.  Both speedlights were set to fire at 1/32 their full power, because with manual flash (as opposed to ETTL metered flash) the flash output will remain constant.

Camera Settings: Phil’s dialed his camera to ISO200 (to retain a nearly noiseless image quality) and set his shutter to the maximum flash sync speed (1/200), so as to allow very little ambient light.  A photo without flash at this stage would have been near black. Phil evidently wanted the only light sources in this image to come from his flashguns.  If he’d shot the image at a shutter speed of 1/20th of a second, the natural light in the room would have shown in the image.

Method: With his shutter set, Phil then experimented with his aperture to control how bright the flash showed in his image.  He may have started at f4 and a test exposure found the flash overly bright, so dialed his f-stop up to f8.  Still too bright, he could have physically turned down the flashguns and left the camera at f8, or dialed it up to f10 to allow the flash to show less brightly. Shooting this way allows you to manually control every element of the image.  Once flashes and shutter speeds have been manually set, the camera aperture (and ISO) controls how brightly the flash registers in the image.  It’s worth thinking of the image as two exposures, an ambient and a flash exposure. Try to remember it this way:

Shutter speed controls ambient exposure • Aperture & ISO control Flash exposure

Furthermore, Phil shot the image from a low angle, which not only gave an interesting viewpoint of Stef, but also revealed a great reflective strip of flash bouncing into the metal doors.

Tip: Show your model/subject an image when you get a winner on the LCD as it empowers all parties!

Here are a various other shots Phil shot with the same setup.

Light modification: there are many options when it comes to modifying light, but the most definitive are shooting flash directly at the subject, through a softbox or bouncing into an umbrella modifier.  Direct flash casts a very harsh contrasty light, which can be dynamically used but creates harsh shadows. Softboxes and umbrellas create an adaptable flattering ’soft’ light, with the option of shooting into or through various kinds of umbrella material.  Check out Zac Arias’ excellent blog on Softboxes vs. Brollies here.

Next Friday: In 3B//Friday – Breakdowns > Fridge Flash [Part 2] we will take you through the post production of this image.  Getting the RAW image is only the first step, and generally an image is brought to life in post production.  So we’ll hopefully see you back next Friday for more!

Finally – with each Breakdown post, we’re going to supply free downloadable PDFs for you to cut out and keep!  Click the button below to download it Fridge Flash [Part 1]!

Download Breakdowns – Fridge Flash 1 PDF

If you’ve any questions about this flash set-up, please leave a comment below and we’ll answer it!