The Harry Potter Light Show

So I’ve been sick. We’re in the middle of something like the worst flu season in the history of man. Well I’m just happy to be a part of history.

With that, I’ve had a lot of downtime at home. I haven’t had a gig in a while either, so my creative systems are running low. Luckily, during the holiday’s I read up on how to utilize my 430 ex ii flash, off-camera. It isn’t the most professional of systems though because in order for it to work, the pop-up flash on my T3i has to be up. Of course, the best way to overcome the pop-up is to use a telephoto lens and zoom in on the subject. As an aside to that, I’ve been thinking a lot about macro photography. I don’t have a macro lens, but considering the potentials of the off-camera nature of the 430, and my sick days, I determined it was time for some experimenting…

I grabbed some Harry Potter Lego’s we had laying around (old gag gift) and a few sheets of paper to set up a staging area. I used my reflector to block any light that was seeping through a close window and turned off both computer monitors. Because I had the staging area on my desk, and the tripod was holding up the flash (no umbrella, I don’t own one yet), I had to hold the camera – not a huge issue for this experiment as I was using fast shutter speeds.

At first my thought was to just take pictures of the Lego characters themselves, but after I saw what the shadows were doing, I took it a step further. I had to shift the 430 further away to get a more dramatic lighting behind the characters. The end result was sharper than what I was getting at first, but still not 100% sharp. I’ll need to work on that more. The other end result was a short fight scene. Took me back to my younger days when playing with Lego’s was all in a day’s work.

Leave me some thoughts on this project. I plan on renting a macro lens in a couple of months, so I hope to do this again, hopefully with some better lighting.

.fotobird.