Hayley by Moonlight Grid Cloth

My thanks to everyone who attended the free taster sessions at Park Cameras on Saturday 2nd April 2011. I for certainly enjoyed the day as did a great many of the participants from the positive comments I received.

Wide shot showing BTS (Behind The Scenes) of Hayley by Moonlight Grid Cloth.

I'd like to share with you one image I created during the Off-camera Flash & Strobist Style Lighting Workshop taster session - "Hayley by Moonlight Grid Cloth". This image is lit with two Canon Speedlites and a 3 inch Rosco circular Litepad.

Lighting Design for Hayley by Moonlight Grid Cloth:

1. Studio wall, painted an off-white kind of shade.
2. Canon 550 EX Speedlite, Gel Clip, Rosco #3403 N.6 (2 stop ND) from Strobist Collection, Rosco #3152 Urban Vapor cut from 20" x 24" sheet, Rosco PhotoFoil for light shaping. 1/64th power.
3. Roll Rosco #3090 Moonlight Grid Cloth hanging from roll supported from arm on lighting stand. 
4. Canon 550 EX zoomed to 105 mm, 1/32nd power, roughly 3 feet/1 metre from Hayley.
5. Hayley in hood top.
6. Practical light, Rosco Litepad 3" circular with power cable run down Hayley's sleeve to 8 x AA cell power pack tucked into waistband. 2 x cuts Rosco #3202 CTB to light chest area of hood.
7. Me, about 20 feet away slightly lower than Hayley's eye level.

Camera settings for this shot:

1. ISO 320, f5.6, 1/60th sec, WB daylight.
2. Canon 50D, 100- 400mm f4.5/5.6 L IS

The whole idea behind this shot was to demonstrate that you can create mood by previsualisng an idea and working through the lighting systematically. I wanted to create a low key style moonlight effect indoors using the minimum amount of kit.

I started with the main moonlight by shooting a Speedlite through a single layer of Rosco #3090 Moonlight Grid Cloth with the flash on a low power setting so that it didn't dominate the scene. It took couple of tries with the power setting until this looked right on the camera LCD screen. I didn't bother with the histogram as I knew it would be way over to the right, or dark end of the histogram with little or nothing on the right or highlight side of the display.

I then moved onto the street light effect in the background. As placed the Speedlite pretty close to the wall I knew that I would not have to worry about too much power output. I layered a Rosco #3403 N.6 (2 stop ND) gel with piece of Rosco #3152 Urban Vapor, gel used in the film TV & theatre businesses to create the colour of sodium vapour street lights. The get the shape of the streetlight I cut a piece of PhotoFoil to modify the beam from the Speedlite. Even though the Speedlite was set 1/64th power, by the time you factor in the light loss from the gels the effective output was around 1/512th power!

The final touch was the Rosco Litepad used to simulate Hayley holding an iPhone and the light illuminating her face. The Litepads are 6000K or daylight which was far too white for the scene. I needed to blue this light so I cut up a sheet of Rosco #3202 CTB (Color Temperature Blue) and ended up using two layer to get the look I previsualused. The Litepad was fitted with an inline dimmer set to 'F' - Full power.

Hayley by Moonlight Grid Cloth - the final frame.

The wall in the background was thrown out of focus by the use of the long lens and wide(ish) f-stop. The image above has not been retouched and only minor corrections in ACR before making the JPEG file from the RAW camera original.