How to Take Great Photos in Any Environment

There is a wonderful technique to get Studio Quality Lighting with a Black Background, using nothing but a speedlight, and a flash bender, or snoot. Such a technique can be used for several styles from portrait photography to fine art. In demonstrating this technique, I wanted to create 2 fine art photos, and one portrait.

The Process

To create a studio quality image with a black background in any environment, you must adjust your shutter speed to sync up with a speedlight. Anywhere from 1/60-1/250 should do the trick. To darken the background, you should close your aperture to the point where the background is black. These photos were taken at f/11. ISO should be set to 100.

When planning this teddy bear photo, I was inspired by photos of arctic foxes using a similar darkened background. Because I live in Rexburg, Idaho and not Iceland, I wanted to duplicate the effect using a stuffed animal. I love how this teddy bear gives the photo a Wes Anderson stop motion animation feel.

To capture this photo, we filled an antique teapot with water and poured it into a trash can. I got on the floor and held the flash in my hand so I could manipulate it to get unique angles of light. I love how the light encircles the teapot and the water coming out of it.

Here is the setup for my portrait shot. As you can see, the environment is very well lit, but by using the right camera settings and auxiliary lighting, you can make a killer photos with studio quality lighting using a black background.

To achieve this effect, you can get a flashbender here.

For more photography, go here!