The reason this is titled homage is that it is a homage to AJHopp.
She is the queen of still lifes, and does truly incredible work.
I saw her picture of pears on a chair on 1x.com, and thought it was spectacular, and I wanted to use it to learn lighting.
If I get an idea from somewhere, I really try to change it up and come up with my own twist. I didn't on this one, because I wanted to study the light.
It was a fascinating experience!!
I used a single 430 exII flash with a honeycomb grid (that I got for Christmas and really don't quite know how to use :) off to the right (as looking at the picture), controlled by the 580 EXII on the camera. Boy did I learn a lot!
1. Even though I turned the 580 off in the menu so that it wasn't contributing to the light -- it did. It added a small amount of light to the front of the scene.
2. So I adjusted the head so that it was pointing away from the scene, but that the other flash still saw it. This time the extra light bounced off the wall and added light to the scene.
3. Then I adjusted the head so that it pointed at the floor, and put a black blanket on the floor so that it wouldn't reflect. That worked!
(do I need radio triggers to be able to really use just one light source?)
4. There still was too much light on the left side (as looking at the picture), so I held up a black blanket when taking the shot. Sure enough, the flash has been reflecting off the wall and adding more light on the left. Black blanket fixed it.
5. Even with the grid, there was still too much light hitting the background, so I held up a piece of cardboard behind the flash, that made a difference, as well.
Notes: I was too close to the pears -- it would have been much better to have a wider scene.
I think I learned more on this challenge than I have for a long time. What a great opportunity to study light from a master! (Although, if I remember correctly, she uses natural lighting. But what an extraordinary talent!)
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After reading your comments (and thank you for those) I was surprised to see that wasn't natural light... to me it has the feel of evening light kissing a window near by.. GREAT JOB and congrats on the Top 10!!
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