Invisible background

This was the final image from my quick photo shoot with my photogenic son Ben last week. It was shot in my lounge at home using one flash as the light source.

There are two tricks needed to get this shot. The first is the light has to be directed or modified so that it doesn’t spread to surrounding areas and the camera is set to quite a small aperture of f13 which restricts the amount of light hitting the sensor. Both of these “tricks” mean that the camera can only see what the focused light hits and as no light from the flash is hitting the background it is too dark for the camera to see and thus becomes invisible - great when you have a messy lounge!

The light modifier I used was a simple hexagonal mesh that clips to the front of the flash

This focuses the light into a tight beam which you can direct to a specific area, and you can start to get creative.

Even with these settings you will still need to do some editing. The following image from the same shoot is straight out of the camera and needs some work done to finish it off.

You can still make out some of the background and the white shirt is a bit distracting so we need to sort those two areas out.

This is the final image after editing and below that a quick video showing how the photo changes with each step of the editing process.

Let me know what you think in the comments below