This was something I never did before, and most likely we’ll need to use Photoshop to get desired look. However, I was determent to do as much as I could with the lights and the camera.

Now lets see what we’ve got – The Final Shot:

Pretty cool, isn’t it?
Honestly speaking, this is very close to what I had in mind.

This is the Initial Lighting Setup I Started From:

Studio lighting setup for self assignment: the initial set

The idea was simple; light from the top will create a bright edge on the top of the subject. Diffuse was added just to make it smoother. The reflector from the bottom was used to see where I would need to have the second light. Like I said, this was an initial setup. The very fist image showed what was wrong:

Einstein creative shot first sample

Not sure if this is exactly one with the reflector on the bottom/ front side of the unit (do not see the reflection here) , but the diffuser was too large for this shot: soft, diffused highlights on the subject were not exactly what I had in mind. Why did I put diffuser there at the first place? Good question for me:-))

Anyway, after this first shot I knew what exactly needed to be done:

Studio lighting setup for self assignment, the final set

Two stripboxes, from the top and the bottom. The angle was sharp enough to create highlights only on the edges of the monolight.

As-is image I’ve got from this setup:

This was much closer to the idea for the shot. Nice how the oval around “Einstein” was shaped out. The only thing it was missing is the edge on the back side of the strobe. So, the image below should explain how I got it there:

Einstein creative shot back reflector added

I did not like the spills on the front plate of the strobe, and wanted to get even more contrast lighting. So, I isolated the light by adding a black screen on the bottom half of the stripbox surface and covered the one the same way, making a small square-box from both stripboxes: only the area on the top and bottom of the subject was not covered (I do not have image for this, hope you’ll be able to understand what I am talking about:-)).

This is the result:

As you can see, several thing got lost (no reflector behind, for example). However, this image could be used for a future Photoshop play. I always work keeping in mind a possibility to use a composite image instead of a pure “single-shot” photograph.

This time was no exception: From the beginning, I was planing to shoot the monolight body and the flash bulb/reflector in separate sots. The plan was to use a light brush technique to simulate a flash discharge: it will give me much more control of what and how much to expose there. Also, I suspect that even at lowest power settings (~3Ws) direct shot of the flash bulb will me problematic (it appears that I was right).

So, I got my DIY light brush (tactical LED flashlight with variable power mounted on a one end of feet-long tube and enlargement lens on another) and started to paint the frosted glass cup of the Einstein. Playing with the different angles, I was trying to get less exposure to the reflector itself, so only the flash tube will be bright. The end result was this:

Using Light Brush to Mimic a Strobe Light

light brush instead of a flash shot

This was exactly how I was imagining to get the flash light. About a 10 sec exposure at f14 (F14 was constant through all the prior shots)

Curious, I’ve performed the same shot with the real flash head firing, and everything was overexposed at F14. The closest to the light-brushed image I got was the one below, done at ISO 50 F32 and minimum possible flash power:

The Real Flash Fired at Minimal Power

Very close, right? I could fix the brightness issue by using a neutral density filters, but I liked the image from the light brush, plus this one was missing the circular reflection from the outer edge of the reflector: flashgun did a great job creating this tiny circle on a previous photo.

Later we combined the images in one. The bright halo was added in the last attempt, that was the 100% artificial part of the image, done by Photoshop.

Hope this was interesting!