It’s been a few months since my last post, and since then I’ve upgraded my trusty D7000 to a D7500. I’ve also acquired a Godox TT350, a small speedlight unit with TTL functionality. Though I didn’t buy it for figure photos, the extra light source does broaden out my options a bit, which brings me to this shot.
This winter has been especially lousy in Toronto. As I write this, the city is enjoying 25 centimetres of snow over the course of the weekend. I haven’t shot any figure photos these past few months, but being stranded indoors as I was, nostalgia was a welcome house guest.
The setup is typical — key light coming from camera left, fill from camera right (reflected off of a piece of foam board), and rim light coming from camera right behind the subject. On top of that, I pointed the new third speedlight (with a blue gel mounted on it) at the curtains behind the figure from an angle, producing the blue cast on the background. For a while I could not get the flash to fire with my Yongnuo RF603-II radio triggers (even though I have got this setup to work in the past), but eventually I just gave up and opted to use the built-in optical trigger on the TT350, which worked just as well.
I must say that I really like how the blue background turned out! The blue-lit curtains evoke the cool feel of water, which is not only appropriate for the subject, but provides a bit of colour contrast against the warm colours of the skin tones. Needless to say, a significant improvement from the version without the blue background.