Holy butts. Sometimes the fact that I'm an artist and I'm allowed to get weird slips my mind. I don't have a boss, I'm allowed to create what I want, I'm allowed to try new things for the sake of playing, and I'm even allowed to start a blog post by saying "Holy butts." That rocks.
You may have noticed during our studies of umbrellas and technique that we have been lighting everything in a very direct manner, illustrating some very basic techniques for you to test out with your own photos.
Those techniques will serve you well, and can be used to create beautiful photos. But it’s time to try something a bit advanced, something that will give you the ability to better control your umbrella light and impart your own style into the photo.
We’ve studied how direction and angle can drastically change the quality of light produced from your umbrella. We have also seen examples about how distance can change the umbrella light falling on your subject.
Now it’s time to look at the big picture. Let’s take a peek at how our umbrella is actually producing light across the whole image, not just the subject that you chose. In Umbrellas 103, we’re going to study fall off, and compare the type of light produced by four different shoot thru and reflective umbrellas.
If you’ve ever wondered why you might use a giant umbrella instead of a small, collapsible model, this article is for you!
Last week, we talked about how to understand the difference between your bare flash unit and a flash fired through an umbrella. We learned that adding the umbrella would drastically change the light, creating a much softer glow to aim toward your photo subject. We also learned that we could use a white umbrella in a shoot thru position or a reflective position. But there is so much more to learn.
