Simple Back Lighting To Set The Mood

Today’s post will be short and sweet. I want to talk about back lighting to set the mood of your photograph. I was commissioned to do a maternity shoot for a local woman named Annie. She wanted to show the beauty of her pregnant body, however she had reservations. I explained to her I could use shadow to conceal her identity but still show enough detail that her friends and family would know who she was. I was hoping to use back lighting to help set a mood.

The setup was very simple, a 430exII inside of a 50″ Westcott Apollo, positioned behind a backdrop of sheer material. I asked the subject to pose in such a way that I could get a good profile of the belly and have her put her face in shadow by turning away from the light source. We used the same fabric as the backdrop to create a wrap for her waist. We chose an area in the house with hardwood floors because I knew they would create a specular highlight reflection.

I positioned the subject close to the backdrop knowing that the light would wrap around the subjects body. I also knew this wrapping light would be helping to create dimension and depth in the image as well as set the mood. In final editing, I placed a texture overlay on the image to add a little more detail. The texture came from an image I made of an old cloth bound book. All in all I think the final image looks nice and the subject seemed very happy with the result.

Note on exposure, I used a Canon 7D’s built in transmitter to fire a 430exII in manual mode. I made several shots using the cameras histogram & lcd to evaluate exposure. I knew the image would be a black and white so I was not concerned with skin tone so chimping would be OK for this series of images. Normally I would use a light meter and tether to see what is actually happening.

The Final Image