LightningPaul

This weeks challenge on Shutterday is Parks. Sounds easy but I think it is not. This time I wanted to create my own park so while the kids where at school studying I borrowed their toys. Luckily they had lots of trees, fences a few hills and a big orange flower.

UPDATE: I got together with Lucas the most votes on Shutterday Parks challenge. Many many thanks!


TECH-INFO: A dark green floor would be great but unfortunately I didn't had one, so I used a back sheet of paper. To hide this sheet I lowered my camera vantage point just below the "ground" level. The background is a blue paper sheet. I used a telephoto lens to narrow down my view. No need to record my living room, only a few trees and a fence. Between the trees I had some blue holes which I removed by placing green toy blocks behind the most far trees you see. They create some deep shadows in the park.

The scene is lit by two speedlight flashes. The first one, used for fill light, is set behind the blue paper sheet and pointed to the ceiling. It makes the shadows less dark and it also provides the light which would normally come from the moon! If you look good you'll see the top of trees glowing with white light (the moon reflects sun light).
The second flash is put on a light stand at the left side two meters away of the scene. I covered it with a full CTO gel for simulating the warm evening sun. To bundle the light even more I snooted the flash. It lits the scene and blue background.

For post processing I used a JPG file because the lighting was already very good. First DxO for lens corrections and some cropping, afterwards Photoshop to finish it. The main enhancements were contrast and tweaking the colors even more. Especially the blue background didn't look good (not blue enough) because the light of the second flash was too warm. Finally I recycled the moon from one of my earlier posts and some vignetting.