Portrait Shadows

[kbreit]

Last night I setup our old slide projector screen as a backdrop for some portrait photography. When I'd take shots, I'd find that there was always a shadow cast behind the person (the person was me as it turns out). I do not know why. I am using a 430EX with ABetterDiffuser or whatever it's called. I pointed it at the ceiling and used the diffuser to throw the light forward as well as up against my ceiling. Can someone give me advice on how to reduce the shadows?

[SkipD]

Post a sample shot or two so that we can see what you did and then make comments....

[kbreit]

It's not a very good picture, but did a fair job of showing the shadows. Different shots gave different shadows. But this is an example.

http://kbreit.dyndns.org:8080/uploads/IMG_5813_1.jpg

[SkipD]

What I assumed at first seems to be fact. Your subject is much too close to the background. If there were about six feet or so between the subject and the background, the shadows that you see here would probably fall down behind the subject.

By paying attention to the shadows and things like positioning of the lights, spacing of subject, lights, background, etc., it isn't hard to eliminate this type of problem.

[kbreit]

Thanks for your help. I thought that could be it, but wasn't sure. The problem is that I am working in my room which has all the regular things a bedroom will have, thusly, not a lot of room for photography. I will try to set the screen up again today and see if I can fix the space issues.

[PacAce]

Get rid of the diffuser and point the flash head upwards (greater than 45 degrees) so that there is no direct light from the flash falling on the subject. The only time you would get a shadow behind the subject on the background like what you got is when you have the light from the flash lighting up the subject directly or when you use a device (diffuser) that directs part of the light forward towards the subject.

[hard12find]

agreed on both counts.....Jim

[SuzyView]

Always about 6-7 feet from the background. I shot about 50 Santa pictures last week and put the chair about 6 feet from the wall and used my 580. It worked perfect, very little shadow and no PP. :)

[kbreit]

I was able to solve this issue by turning the flash backwards and bouncing the light off the corner of my room. Check out the results below. I think it's much better, if not ideal considering my very poor conditions. It's large, so please forgive.

http://kbreit.dyndns.org:8080/uploads/IMG_5832_clean.jpg

[SuzyView]

Much better. :)

[kbreit]

The joke is that the shot I posted is just a demo shot for me to test focus. Turns out it was the only one that got really good focus. I couldn't reproduce it.