Night Sky Portrait
While enjoying of a bonfire with friends on Thanks Giving weekend at a remote farm in Deep Creek Lake suburbs it occurred to me we were in the perfect place explore with night portrait. We were in the middle of nowhere, there were countless stars the moon was bright and it had snowed the day before.
I suggested my friend Gilbert that he should pose for my experiment (he agreed). Missing light stands I setup two strobes left & right of camera on top of a table and a chair. I set one strobe at just a bit less than 1/4 of power and another one at 1/8. The strobes both had about 1/4 CTO gels. Unfortunately the lights were way lower than the subject’s face so I didn’t get the best results but I had to work with what I had. Everyone else was well into the guitar, singing and the burned marshmallows so I didn’t think about using to human light stands.
At the end I liked the results, although I know it could be done better with some planning. The image has not been retouched except for the copyright addition. Your feedback and tips are appreciated.
This is the end result:
(FYI: The picture is being resized to fit in the browser, to see it properly you may have to click on it to open it separately)
Strobist style night portrait
<Update: 12-04-2009>
Below is a portrait of Felipe. We got the effect by accident as he wasn’t aware he was supposed to stay still after the flash went off on first curtain sync. I like this ghost effect as it gives the sensation of action in the picture as if it was alive. The flash and camera settings were the same as the one used for the portrait above.
Strobist style night portrait of Felipe
