So here we go. This was actually just a test shoot. We wanted to know how fluorescent lamps exploded when you smashed it into something (or someone) so get a bunch of lamps and wait for the night. I wanted to shoot at the night because when it´s dark in the surroundings I don´t need to worry about any ambient light and can focus on the speedlights and how they light up the subject. And a pitch black background is cool!
I knew that when you are trying to light smoke/explosions and so on the best way to do it (in my opinion) is to try to light it from the back. But since we only got two speedlights this time I needed to combine both the back light to the smash and some fill light to the two persons in the picture. So the first flash was placed to the left of the subjects, just a little bit behind them. If I had the opportunity, I would’ve use one more flash, so I could use two of the flashes to light the subjects and the third one right behind them to create a really cool explosion effect. But that was not the case so let´s move on.
The second flash was used to light up the subjects from the right side, in front of them. Since I wanted a hard light I didn’t use any softboxes or umbrellas. But the flashes was zoomed in a bit, maybe 50 or 85mm to create a more concentrated beam, just to create a harder light. Both flashes fired at 1/8 power and were triggered by a cheap Cactus transmitter/reciever. Actually, the cactus works great if you want a wireless solution to fire your flashes and cant afford buying Pocket Wizards for an example.
This is the configuration I shot the image with:
Camera: Nikon D80
Lens: Nikkor 35mm f1.8
Shutter speed: 1/200
Aperture: f4,0
ISO: 200
Kind of cool picture done with a really easy setup. If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment!
Life isnt about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. -George Bernard Shaw