Diffused Window Lighting

Today I wanted to play around with window lighting. I really love this effect since it creates a nice soft diffused light over the subject you want to take a picture of. I went to Yardage Town after work today and bought some sheer white material. Which came out to be around $5 or $6, not bad... When I got home I hung up my sheer material on my living room window. After that I needed a subject. Since no one was home I had to improvise... I used my shoes-Which served as a dual purpose. I have been meaning to practice taking pictures of shoes to get a more creative mind when shooting them. Usually this is something brides like to have a picture of when they get married. So in order to do this I pulled out my T.V. Tray stand so I could put my shoes on it. After hanging the sheer material on my window, I used the left overs to drape over the stand. Once I did this I noticed that wood shows through sheer material! Duh! I had to get creative... So I grabbed my white fleece robe and draped it over my T.V. tray stand. If you can picture all of this, it really looked quite ghetto! But hey, if it works who cares right? So after creating my "ghetto studio" I arranged my shoes in different positions while shooting in different modes and using different settings. It is funny how one little setting can change a picture. Here are my end results:













In all these shots I am only using the natural light from my window, along with material to diffuse it. To get this shot, I had to play with the exposure a little bit. If your exposure is too low, you will get a very dark subject with a bright background. Now if you are trying to get a silhouette shot, than this would be good. If not, bump up the exposure until you get what you want. In my "3 Mistakes Photographers Can Make" post I covered a little bit on this subject, but I wanted to go into more detail about it with this post. Hope it helps!