Kens Photography Blog

Here’s a cool trick to know if you can’t afford to buy 3-4 flashes to create elaborate lighting setups. It only works for scenes with no movement, like backgrounds.

It’s so obvious you will smack yourself, ready?…

Shoot long exposures, 10-30 seconds
Dial your flash f/stop way down, like 1/32 1/64

Now just walk around and fire your flash at the angles you need. Carry your umbrella, flags and gobos with you are just plan the shot and leave the flash modifiers at the proper places so you can quickly pick them up and put them in front of the flash.

Want to do a setup that needs 5-10 flashes? You got it

All you need to do is plan the scene and lighting setup first, then it’s just some experimentation and seeing how many times you need to fire your flash to get the exposure up to where everything is lit properly. Using this technique also allows you to fill any area so that everything in a scene is lit, allowing you to compress a scene to where every shadow has detail.