lantern-026-Edit This was a shot that evolved in my head way before I clicked the shutter button. My wife has these Morrocan lanterns for decoration and I had the idea of using them to cast some pattern shadows onto a background. Then that idea evolved into using the lantern as a prop and putting a flash inside to cast the shadows onto a model's face. As I developed the idea I decided to make it a dark and mysterious shot - adding blue light for a night feel. The image then starts to mature as a cloaked figure (I could use the black velvet cloth I often use as a backdrop). That gave it kind of a medieval vibe, so I decided to shoot in front of the stone wall in my house. Now that the vision is complete, it's time to execute.

I used two Nikon flashes for the shot. Inside the lamp, I placed an SB700 with a CTO (orange) gel. This would be the lamp light and the light on the subject's face.  I also added the diffuser to spread the light in all directions within the lamp.

The ambient light was from an SB800 with a blue gel. I placed that into a Lastolite Joe McNally EZ-Box. This would provide soft blue light for the shadows.

Now it's just a matter of putting it all together and going through some trial and error to get the shot you wanted. For example, as it turned out the flash in the lamp was not lighting the face of my subject (my son in this case) enough. Nor was it really casting well-defined patterns of shadow on his face. So, I decided to just open the lamp door and stick the flash out a bit so it would light his face well. I wanted the lamp slightly out of focus but not so much that you couldn't make out the patterns. I shot with a Sigma 24-70 at f5.6. I had to shoot at 70mm to limit the field of view and get the slightly out of focus lamp.

The final image required minimal post-processing. Just some Lightroom adjustments to contrast and saturation and a slight tonal contrast adjustment using the NIK Color Efex Pro plug-in as well as some light retouching in Photoshop.

I hope this was interesting and informative. If you are a photographer starting your journey through off-camera lighting I hope this inspires you to try something new and learn from it just as I did.

Take care!