Make Light Real

Neil September 13th, 2007

So over on the Strobist blog he came up with an assignment called the ‘umbrella specular portrait’ detailing how to use an umbrella and the reflection it can create on the background to bring it as a design element in the photo. I don’t usually do ‘assignments’ as the paid kind are my favorite, but I was supposed to change the oil in my car and it was raining….so….when ideas flash….you gotta roll with it. (and avoid auto maintenance chores)

So this is what I came up for my final entry.

Although I think this one^ is actually my favorite, and closer to what I was hoping for although it turned out that i couldn’t get my umbrella close enough to my head to get a large enough reflection to encircle my head.

With one of my favorite sayings being ‘mind like water‘ I can’t help but adore the concept of this self-portrait. Of course the mind like water saying stems from the martial art’s notion that any action should act and react like water - with the perfect amount of response to absorb without distraction. This is a state I try to achieve when shooting, and it’s fun to try an illustrate it. The fun part is that this feels like it illustrates the artist side of the equation - that you achieve the balance of water - you are filled with the electric energy of the whole spectrum of color and potential - to respond to your subjects.

My basic idea was to use the specular reflection of the reflector on water and transform it using the interference rainbow of the oil. To do so I had to follow the standard rule to get a specular reflection which is angle of incidence = angle of reflection. However, as light is a wave, if you cause the waves to stop lining up with each other, you can get the ‘up’ part of one wave aligning with the ‘down’ part of another wave, and these can cancel out. This is called interference, and it causes a pattern of colours according to how much interference is occurring. Oil films of different thicknesses cause different amounts of interference, so you get a rainbow effect. The rainbow effect is in line with my gaudy propensity to color and contrast, and so I thought it was just right for a self portrait. Besides, since Liesl wasn’t about to lie down in a puddle of oil - who else was going to do it.

Now for the setup!

Liesl shot this one of my making the oil slick. You can see the whole batch of setups on Flickr.

A shot of the ambient light with my Photoflex 60″ umbrella, on a tripod with the Alien Bee 800 on top and the 1dsM2 on the bottom of the tripod post. The tripod with the light over and the camera under allowed me to shoot this with a 24mm Sigma 1.8 lens.

Exposure was 1/50th of a second at f/22 with an iso of 400. I believe I was underexposing ambient by 2 stops but that may have actually been 4 as I was pointing my camera at blacktop. If you look closely, concentrate, let the day’s concerns blow out of your mind with the wind - you can separate the difference between the interference and the reflection - just use your imagination and feel smart anyway!

Now my ambitious sense of design led me to believe that I could stick my head down there and I would have an oil slick halo - but as this is a 24mm lens the difference 7 inch between my eyes and the pavement disallowed me from getting that perspective (cause my head become a balloon). BUT - if I had a piece of plexi that big I could have done the shot so that the plane of rainbow oil was nearly the same as my eyes, it would be a killer halo! Look for it in the future - copy me and I’ll kill ya.

Inside the contraption on top.

Camera mount on the bottom - camera is in my hands - sorry.

There it is with the camera mounted, I must have gone inside for the other body.

• Color Theory , How To: , Mind Like Water , Photographic Flash , Photography Lighting , Self Assignment