Turn off the Lights!!
Bit of a random post today. As it’s Earth Hour coming up, I thought I’d try a mandatory light bulb shot….
Plain old light bulbs seem to get photographed all the time, so I hunted down a ‘different’ bulb with a view to shooting it on white. Needless to say the original idea soon morphed into something completely different!
This ‘Victorian’ style bulb (so says the packaging) seemed reasonably interesting – with the cone on top – which reminds me of the pieces of a board game I used to play… but can’t remember which one. It also had the multiple filament parts in a horizontal helter-skelter.
After boring myself with some truly awful shots of the bulb, I decided I needed a ‘background’ so pulled in the world map. Luckily I’m a bit of a world map addict, so happen to have a 6 foot by 4 foot one handy. Figured it either needed to be really large (to get the reflection wrapping round on the top of the bulb) or really close to the bulb.
After taking the whole setup down, I realised it would have been great to have a setup shot.
But the main components were the bulb on the kitchen table standing upright. A cardboard box with a black sheet over it made the ‘back’ ‘left’ and ‘right’ walls surrounding the bulb. Then the massive map was propped up between the wall and two light stands so that the map was effectively suspended above the bulb, facing down – to get the reflection.
Two Canon 580 EXIIs were then pointing at the map front and baffles were placed between the bulb and the flashes so that no direct light fell on the bulb itself. The camera (with 70-200 Canon lens and the Canon Extension tube 12 EF25 II) was then slotted through a small gap between the table and the bottom of the suspended map to get the photo.
For anyone who doesn’t know what Earth Hour is – it’s this Saturday (28th March) – and at 8.30pm local time, places around the world will switch off the lights for an hour. Like the Coca-Cola sign in Times Square or the Empire State building or the Sydney Opera House or the Eiffel Tower or the Burj Al Arab… but anyone and everyone is encouraged to switch off their lights. Check out the Earth Hour Website for more info…
Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/800 sec at f/8.0
ISO 640
78mm
Strobist info: 2 x 580 EXIIs at 1/2 power pointing at the map from about 3 feet away.
