The initial setup shot:
My poorly construction DIY ring flash. Actually I take that back, it has served me very well, I built it about 3 years ago and its still going.
The first real step is determining your ambient light. Setting the exposure for the scene. What we are doing in very simple terms is building elements of a simple photograph. Start with the ambient and move to the flash. I like the light fall of I'm getting at all four edges.
The next step is to determine the location of my overhead or highlight.
Too far forward (focus wasn't critical at this step):
Just right. Not too much on the nose, but the light just hits the top of my head and shoulder.
On to setting up the flash. I said before that I was modifying my flash with a DIY ring flash, typically you shoot through a ring flash, however I didn't like the result at all. Its not the moody light that I was after.
So I slid the flash to camera right.
I think the result is significantly better. The mood is stronger and I love all the light fall off. Given I'm not the best model and I think the image could have benefited from a wider f-stop. That would have given me less depth of field, hopefully blurring out the creases in the background. So here's the technical information:
Camera: Nikon d700
Camera Mode: Manual (always)
ISO: 400
Aperture: F8
Shutter Speed: 1/15
White Balance: Flash
Off Camera Flash: Nikon SB-80DX
Flash Mode: Manual
Flash Power: 1/8
Light Modifier: DIY Ring Flash
Flash Triggers: Alien Bees
Here's the final set up:
Notice I also used a stocking to block the lower part of the ring flash so the light would fall off even more across the bottom of the frame. And with a little Photoshop work you can come up with an image like this.
Pretty simple set up...pretty cool result. I hope you guys enjoyed this, I hope it wasn't overly or underly technical too. I've been getting a good amount of questions on shooting and editing so I'm going to be getting to those in the coming days. Thanks for checking back.
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