Nick West Photography: Less is Better

I like to experiment every now and again and in this case I wanted to have a single concentrated source of light that I could direct onto the subject. I chose to use a model helicopter but your imagination is the only limit. The object I chose has lots of shape and therefore places for shadows to fall and light to strike. Also it was small and easy to move around or to move around it. The light source was a single flash unit with a snoot fitted, the snoot effectively channels a cone of directable light and it can be set to an strength appropriate to the shoot. Because you can select a fairly high F-stop, you don't really require any background as it fades into darkness.

The settings I used varied depending upon how I felt, sometimes I would use the metered setting and sometimes I would underexpose. It is a matter of taste. I wanted to give the impression that the helicopter was looming out of the darkness, so not all of it was visible or in the frame. The settings used in each photo are in the captions below. Because both the light and the subject were being moved and I did not really have a fixed idea of the setting I wanted I just adjusted my settings once I viewed the image. It was a bit of trial and error.

I maybe should have dusted the thing first!