A tale of two lights

A tale of two lights

Well, actually, a tale of one light, with another to come tomorrow for Silly Sunday. Both courtesy of Dave (mistere), of course.

This one puts me in mind of a massive light shaper that Thomas Holm uses, aptly called a Zeppelin – there may be something to come about Mr Holm’s online tutorials at some point. A Zeppelin is around two metres diameter, and it’s a deep, silvered parabolic reflector. It has a slit in one side, to allow a separate lighting stand to support the flash unit at varying positions within the reflector. For softer light, there’s a diffuser that fits across the mouth of the unit.

Dave’s under-£20 Godox is smaller, and less deeply curved, but works precisely the same way. I had the chance to use it the same day that Dave spent a couple of hours taking pictures of Aimee_is_Weirdd, and my limited Saturday shadows picture was shot with the Godox.

Thomas Holm used a very large parabolic reflector to give something of the same look as a ringflash – this requires the camera to be directly in front of the umbrella, and while it doesn’t matter with a bigger brolly, it is an issue as the light source gets smaller, and a head takes up a significant part of its frontal area.

My gallery shot today (a nude converted to monochrome with Nik Efex) has the camera to one side of the umbrella, giving strong shadow on one side of the body: the two images with this blog used a central(-ish) camera for a more-or-less shadowless look.

Yes, Dave. It works. Spectacularly!