Using an Umbrella to Fake Window Light

I caught about five minutes of Diane Cu (from White on Rice) on Creative Live the other day. She was explaining the direction of lighting in terms of a clockface. The light source was either at 12, 3, 6, or 9 while the subject was in the center of the clock. She showed several photos of the same subject with the different lighting and asked the audience which they liked better — the audience responded, almost unanimously, 6 o’clock. She was surprised, “but I always shoot at 3 or 9!”

I agree with Diane! Side lighting is what gives shape to our flat pictures. My problem is that I have a very dark house until late afternoon at which point I get full head-on sun. That strong light can make for some lovely silhouettes but it isn’t so great for creating soft, dimensional pictures.

I finally got fed up with my shoots being at the mercy of the light in our home. That is when I decided to take the plunge into off-camera flash. I wanted to be able to call the shots in terms of lighting. If I couldn’t take pictures at 2pm that day because I had to do carpool pickup, then I wanted to be able to take the same kind of shot later at night — which would be impossible with out flash.

So, for the sunflowers, I set up my giant umbrella (and I do mean GIANT!) to mimic a window. This gave me a lot of nice soft light coming in from the left. See all that light in the room? That is all from the umbrella. On the right side of the arrangement, I set up a large black tri-fold board, like those used for science fairs. This kept the light from bouncing around and gave me some nice shadows in the top and right side of the frame.

My “studio” is a bit cramped, but here is another behind the scene shot from the other side.