I may have mentioned before how lucky I am to live on the edge of Sherwood Forest and Clumber Park in the UK, however Saturday night my friend @fastchrisuk took us to a location he'd found behind a warehouse, but where there were uniform corridors of trees to shoot in. But more imprtant it was local to us both! I tried to rack my brains to think of something to shoot before we got there, camera rotation, double exposure with an ipad image, but the shot I came back to in my head was a silhouette with a second exposure inside it (All in one exposure).
One of my favourite effects too, largely because its colourful and eye catching is the flames behind the silhouette. I won't give the secret away, but suffice to say that Chris is the world champion of net curtain wafting! If ya know, ya know!
This is that image below, I'm adding this first so that I can get an eyecatching thumbnail for this article ;)
I'm not sure if the colours on this go but it is the effect I was going for.
The backlighting in the smaller image was created using the now famous Fabric Conditioner bottles (Pink/Purple and Blue), and the tripod was conveniently placed so that it didn't need to move or the focus be adjusted, it was a simple case of take the first shot, leave black inside my silhouette, then walk backwards in the shot an expose for the second silhouette.
Going back to the start now, we started out by doing some "standard" backlit images using 2 Godox lights and a 1000 lumen torch that gave a creepy effect just to gauge the lighting and pretty much nailed it first go.
Below is the test shot which just needs some smoke adding and I'm back in Halloween shoot territory ;)
Below is a test shot for colours for the double exposure image at the start of this article..
Once happy we then added two orange gels to the flashes and with a torch to backlight my silhouette we were ready to go. We were shooting on a hill too which certainly helped me get my steps in ;). When posting the following image online (Facebook, Instagram) I mentioned how I don't usually like seeing myself in photos unless they're silhouettes, they remind my I look less like Brad Pitt everyday lol, but this one works for me, lighting, colours and my BadA$$ Lumberjack stance (I'm a big softie in real life, I promise ;) )..
Next we did some shots of myself pointing the LED Lenser X21r torch to the skies. I've done this before, its not new, but I do like the colours here. I started with a 24-85mm full frame lens, which did perfectly good shots, but then I went low and added my 8mm fisheye lens which does help to give perspective..
Finally the same setup but with the torch pointing off to the side. This is the point where you need to head to @fastchrisuk 's post where he has a fine sharp line coming from the torch. I am NOT giving away how this was done, but suffice to say the image looked amazing and worth a look.
As a photographer I try to mix what I do in my shots, I've done still life, some macro work, lightpainting and I enjoy a good model shoot. If you'd like to check out any of my other work I'm on Facebook, or you can find me on Instagram under neilru75
Thanks very much for looking
Kind Regards, Neil
Cool, the one where you are holding the torch looks good as does the low down angle shots.
Thank you, it was definitely a successful outing 😊