A day at home
I am enjoying this book “America at Home” by Rick Smolan - I love the simple images of people inside their homes… some are done with ambient light, but many use flash so skillfully that it’s hard to tell it’s flash.
As I have shared in other postings, my photographic goals for 2010 are (1) improve my ability to tell stories, (2) use multiple planes in my photos to help with the story telling, and (3) continue to experiment and gain skills in using strobes on location. For every photo I create for fun I try to advance these goals above.
I decided to photograph my wife in the bathroom while she was doing some makeup stuff, and my daughter was on our bed reading a book. It looked like a perfect moment to capture with a candid snapshot. The problem was that the light coming from the windows in the bedroom and the tungsten light in the bathroom were different colors — and it wasn’t enough for it. I could keep one or the other, and then replace the other one with gelled flash. Or I could simply use flash and kill ambient - but the flash had to preserve the feel of the ambient light I could see.
I bounced an SB800 off an umbrella to the right of the bed and used that to fill the bedroom with light. I bounced another SB800 off the bathroom ceiling - I diffused it first with a small softbox and then bounced it. Just softer light. One complication was that bathroom is lined with mirrors and I didn’t want to see myself/camera and the softbox in the photo. I had to play with camera and flash placement.
Let me say that I am posting this not because it’s my best image, or is a perfect image. I am sharing it because I am inspired by other photographers that share their ideas and experimentation approaches, and I want to do the same. The hope is that some of you may pick up your camera and flashes and make some portraits at home inspired by this posting. I may also get lucky and get some insightful suggestions about how to tell the story better, or how to better achieve my goals above.
Here is the image, and a photo of the setup below it.
Day at home
Lighting setup
Category: Family