Red Background Lighting

I got a bit bored with the plain black and white backgrounds and wanted to try something different.  A common technique for high speed water droplet photography is to have a flash with colour gels and a large diffuser behind the subject.  Having a large diffuser creates a large even light source and with water would normally reflect and show the colour of the gels on the water.  I am hoping to see if I can achieve a similar effect with a wet membrane.

Flash behind a large piece of heavy tracing paper, another flash back right to create shadow on the front left of the subject and two flashes on front right for front fill light and left fill light off the white reflector on the left side of the subject.

Before the two right front flashes and reflector

With fill light.
Shadow on the left is a little too strong.

Added red cellophane over the back ground flash.

The background wasn't red or bright enough so I added an extra flash to the background.

Some of the photos with the background:

I wanted a bit more contrast and a gradient in the background so I got another flash and wrapped a blue plastic bag over it.

 The red came out really well and was emphasized by the blue.  The gradient from red to blue/white turned out great.

In this photo the flash with the blue gel didn't fire for some reason, probably hadn't recycled fully.  I had been wanting to see what would happen if I added other objects into the paint, so I put some 100's and 1000's on top of the paint.  Looks okay, might be able to get some nice photos with the 100's and 1000's, just need to shoot more.







I have been wanting to get some tight crops of some thin high formations where the membrane is not visible.  This is a crop from a larger photo that I liked.

I was enjoying trying new things so I got a mirror and put it behind the speaker, ran out of time to take some actual photos with paint in them and couldn't get a nice setup with out lots of blinding reflection from the flashes in the mirror which would have ruined any photos in a dark room.