Evil in the Fridge

June 22, 2008 | Filed Under photo 

When my wife goes out of town I often find myself bored out of my mind. Sleeping in only as long as my cats allow me the luxury, I watched the clock strike noon thinking “What should I shoot?”

Considering how empty my fridge is there was more than enough room to stick a red gelled and diffused SB600 inside. An empty fridge means lots of white surface for the flash to reflect off of. If the fridge was full(er) than I probably wouldn’t have gotten such clean reds coming out of it. Helps push the look of something big and evil being inside of it, instead of having a bunch of shadows cast by the food inside of it. I think I had the flash set to half power.

Behind me but out of frame was a no-name flash left ungelled on a window sill pointed directly at my back. I had it stopped down a step and a half with neutral density filters. Even though there’s no colour gels on it, the light ends up being blue because I had my white balance set to tungsten. This allows not only the flash to appear blue in the shot, but also everything outside the visible window as well. Speeding up the shutter will then cut the light out from outside while not affecting the flash at all, ideally giving the illusion of it being all cold and unwelcoming out there.

The last flash was a 1/1 tungsten gelled no-name flash in an umbrella on camera right or left (depending on the shot. I switched their places in each). I really didn’t want its effects to be readily apparent as this was supposed to be a night-ish shot. Some minor post in Adobe Camera RAW and
its lasting effect is that my hand is visible in the blackness while still being really dark.

is visible, however, in a spatula. Easily shopped out, but I figured I’d leave it in there this time to serve as a reminder for myself next time.

Comments