Golden outlines

While I await a response from the two photographers leading photography tours to Donna Nook (see my previous post), I thought I would pass the time by explaining a new technique I have been experimenting with.

There are many ways to reduce a scene to its most simplistic elements. Silhouetting the subject is one, throwing the foreground or background out of focus is another. A subtler way is to use the low light of sunrise or sunset to outline the subject. This is not easy. The subject has to be against a dark background, the photographer must be at exactly the correct angle, and they must markedly underexpose the image depending upon the scene. Even if all of this is done correctly, the resulting images often require a huge amount of post-processing before they look as clean as the image above.

I have been working on a technique to artificially reproduce this affect using off-camera flash. I am sure I am not the first to try this and my experiments with the technique are still in their infancy, but I have already produced a few natural-looking images.

The basic technique is as follows:

1. Find a subject with strong composition. No matter of good light will make a poor composition shine.
2. Meter the scene to produce an almost-black image.
3. Place an off-camera flashgun just out of shot pointing at both the camera and the subject.
4. Cover the flash with a yellow filter. I use an filter designed for black and white photography but any yellow, transparent material should do (I have heard great things about Roses chocolate wrappers!)
5. Increase the flash power to taste. Every scene requires a different amount of flash. Experiment with different powers to produce the desired affect.
6. The more you point the flash at the camera, the more glare you will get. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it can still look quite natural.

This can produce very natural-looking images and has many advantages over using natural light: flash is much more predictable than sunlight and this technique can be done at any time of day, to name but two. The one problem I am having so far is that my images look a little too yellow. I have to correct this in photoshop by adding a little red, producing a more-orange image. This is still much less post-processing than usually required when using natural light. The question to ask is this:

Do you prefer your images to look almost right in-camera but use artificial light or do you prefer them to use natural light but need substantial editing?

If you prefer the latter, ignore this post; if you prefer the former, give it a go. Let me know how it goes!