365/12 - Day 5

This is definitely one of my favourites from the project. I just had this image in my mind of sitting reading a book in the garden as if it was just as cosy as the living room. So I took my coffee table and leather chair into the garden and set up this shot. As with many of the photos this was a night shoot, which always makes my neighbours a bit twitchy. The quote was found on the internet after taking the photo.

The setup was pretty straightforward but this was the first photo where I started to get a bit inventive and started exploiting the laws of physics by bouncing light around the place.

As you can see (right) I remembered to do a setup shot. The key light was as usual the bounced umbrella, just off frame left coming down at around 45 degrees or so. As I was near the house I rolled out my very old mains powered Studio Light as it had the benefit of a built in modelling light, a blessing at night. In this shot you can see that I also had a foot stool which I decided not to use, on top of that is the "Photography Monthly" magazine I'm reading in the final image - you can just make out the sheets of white paper stuck to the middle page, this bounced the key light back up under my chin as if trying to tan!
The other light in the shot is the snooted flash mounted on a gorilla pod on the right of the frame it was positioned at an angle to light the right side of my face, the table edge and the rim of the glass.
The white reflector (just a piece of white card resting on an upturned box) bounced yet more of the key light back solely to light the bottom edge of the the big photo book and the table leg.