Tuesday Tutorial #2: Catch Lights and Flash

Photography friends are the best!

Last week my friend Kaytee came for a meal and a time of photography play. I particularly wanted to experiment with catch lighting (the sparkly spots in eyes) so I set up a home studio for this purpose.

Who says photography is all cameras?! Me using the multitool to cut a hole in peg board.
Photo: Kaytee Ray Riek.

For the setup I thought to created a circle of light using string lights mounted on pegboard. It was a brilliant idea that failed in practice. While many of the lights held still, an annoying amount self-ejected, losing light.

In the picture above I'm cutting a hole in the center of the peg board for the camera to peek through, with the goal that the catch light would be centered on the eyes. Again, the concept didn't make it through to practice. The catch light in this configuration was a wobbly, dim trail of light points in an odd-looking oblong shape. Not pleasing to my eyes!

Kaytee and I also had two flash units linked up to a radio transmitter and played around with those. We quickly discovered that the flash units overpowered the string lights but they did create bright spots in the eyes - catch lights!

Close up view. The two flash catch lights are clearly visible in my left eye. Photo: Kaytee Ray Riek.

Kaytee then hit on the idea to spread the string lights into a random mass of light points. While this had the effect of dimming each point of light, it did create a dreamy "galaxy" effect. If we positioned the subject and light source close enough the lights filled the eyes.