I’ve been on a one-light kick lately and really loving working with low-key, limited light shots, especially on black backgrounds. The challenge for me, of course, is that I don’t actually have a black background at my displosal. I typically shoot in front of either the red wall in the studio (a.k.a. second bedroom) or the white wall in the dining room or in open spaces at parks, so my only option is to kill the ambient light with proper exposure and then introduce light sources as needed.
Getting a pure black background is pretty easy to do and really more of a logistical exercise than anything else. I need to make sure I have enough separation between the subject and the wall so that my main light source does not contaminate the background. Open spaces are easier, obviously, since there isn’t a back wall at all. Working inside my apartment is a bit more challenging, but I can do it.
One of the best things about shooting for a black background is that it is very easy to rearrange the composition of the image as needed. As long as I don’t get too much light spill on the background and I don’t have any major highlights overlapping onto the main subject (all of which can be removed in Photoshop), I can fill my source photo with my subject and then play with the negative space as needed.
Take the image at the top of this post for example. It’s pretty clear that I shot it with a single soft light source (Nikon SB-600 at 1/8 power in a 43″ white shoot-through umbrella) up high and to the right of the frame. Knocking out the background is also pretty straightforward by shooting at f/11 and 1/250 sec at ISO 200. What isn’t readily obvious is all that black space on the left half of the image was added in Photoshop.
Here’s what the original framing of the photo looks like:
On the left is the image straight out of camera. That’s the general look I was aiming for. There’s a bit of highlight on my hair to give it some form (at least, it’s visible on my calibrated display) and really no visible light contamination on the background.
On the right is the same image with some Lightroom tweaks (Exposure +2.0, Blacks 0, Brightness +100) to show the background. As you can see, I was shooting near my red wall and not even carefully composing for the background. I knew I was going to kill all ambient, so all I was concerned with was my distance from the wall. As long as I was far enough away from it, I would get no light spillage from my umbrella’d speedlight. Shooting at f/11 and 1/8 power in a shoot-through gave me really quick light fall-off.
For the final shot, I did some exposure and color adjustments in Lightroom, then I went into Photoshop to do a few more fine-tuned tweaks and then expanded the canvas to create more black space. The main reason for redoing the composition in Photoshop is I don’t have a gigantic studio to shoot at the composition I want. Plus, it’s easier to just focus on the main subject (my mug) and then deal with the rest of the image later (I used this same process with my “in a dark place” shot from last week).
Turns out that Zach Arias does the same thing, although he does explain more of the technical reasons for it, and his images are way cooler than mine. I’m not smart enough to think things through that much. I just felt my images could use more negative space, but I was too lazy to reshoot the good frames with the proper composition. Easier to fix it in post. :)
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