#DIFFUSION SCREEN LIGHTS BEHIND FULL#

Thankfully I knew this effect would be in the background of the shot so I didn’t actually need to test these diffusion gels with a model. After all, I wasn’t strictly using the diffusion gel for its intended purpose. Here is where I had to test out my idea to find out which diffusion gel would do what I wanted. Softboxes actually have a very heavy amount of diffusion on them though, whereas the diffusion gels come in a vast number of densities so I should be able to find the perfect diffused background, but which diffusion gel is the best one for what I was after? These are sheets of gels that are doing a similar thing to the diffusion cover on the front of your softbox and they will very effectively scatter the light that passes through them. Thankfully in our photographer toolbox, we have other ways of creating this heavily diffused light look and one of them is via diffusion gels. The light appears far larger and is scattered among the atmosphere, and mist/haze/smoke is doing the same thing on set.īut if I wanted to create this softer mist-like look behind my subject, I’d have to explore other alternatives beyond bringing a cloud indoors. If we look at the properties of mist from a photography standpoint, it simply diffuses the light as it passes through it. Instead, I ordered a big fake plant as this had a lot of depth to it already thanks to the leaves coming out at all angles. The Diffusion Gel Test: The Plant My test was for a background so I didn’t need a human subject to test the diffusion gels on.

This would allow for my subject to remain crisp and unaffected by any supplemental artificial atmosphere and my backgrounds would have a visual depth to them that would draw the viewer in. What if I could imitate the look of dense mist behind my subject, and then place simple objects behind that so they appear to drop off into this artificial mist extremely quickly?

#DIFFUSION SCREEN LIGHTS BEHIND FULL#

So how do we create a sense of depth with our background in a small space and without pumping the room full of smoke so that our subject is obscured? It’s with this problem in mind that I came up with a possible solution. This doesn’t look out of place, but it’s not always a desired effect on the subject or styling.

Look at the shot above again and you’ll see that the subject is actually shrouded in grey. As a result, our subject will lack a lot of contrast. We can’t simply add mist to the background and not the foreground in a small space like a studio, it will most likely float into the foreground and around our subject as well. Mist and haze are great tricks to use, but they do have a certain downside and that’s that they’re very hard to control. On set, this technique is often referred to as ‘voluminous lighting’ too.

Again, our eyes are tricked into wanting to know more about what’s going in the hazy areas, and this, in turn, draws us into the scene or shot. If you’re shooting in tight spaces where there is little depth, or even in big open spaces where there is actually no elements to be seen in the background, mist can be added to trick the eye into thinking there is more going on in the scene than there really is. This sense of intrigue simply wouldn’t happen if everything was in focus. We do this instinctively now, but it’s a visual trick that the viewer engages with as they are being asked to consider what the blurry elements behind the subject are. For example, we set the subject up in the foreground and ensure there are elements behind them that we can throw out of focus with our aperture choice.

One way we ordinarily do this is with depth of field on location. I didn’t want my shot to just be two visual layers of model and background, I wanted to somehow make my backgrounds feel like they went beyond what we can initially see. Recently I wanted to find a way to add a sense of depth to my studio backgrounds. But what happens when you’re finally bored of all that? Time to get a little more creative with your studio backgrounds. Sure, you could get some colored paper setup, you could even buy a fancy canvas sheet with paint splashes on it, and for the really adventurous, you could even use some colored lights behind your subject.

Diffusion screen lights behind