Backlighting in Translucent Photography

Another fun lesson in Macro is to utilize back light. And so we're gonna do a fun little experiment here today where we're gonna play with the concept of translucence. I've got some orange and some lemon slices cut very thin so we can see through them. That's kind of key in this shot. I've got a bottle of tonic water that's gonna put some fizzy bubbles all over our lemon slices.

Got a glass vase. A clothes pin to hold our lemon slice in. And a couple of different backgrounds. The yellow wall is gonna serve as a great background light, but then we can take this and put this in. It becomes a white background.

Or I could just take this blue wrapping paper and put that behind and I get a blue background. So it all changes. The real key here, is of course, is our back light. When you've got back light coming through and we've got glass, this is an idea of a glass a lot of us might have around the house. This glass isn't gonna work very well because the glass is very thick and it's curved.

And so if we're trying to get something sharp in Macro, when you're coming in tight, anytime you've got a curved surface or a thick surface of glass, it's gonna be tough to get a good focus. So we found this very thin vase that has glass in the front that's very straight and it's thin. So we'll be able to focus on our lemon and orange slices and still get a good crisp, sharp image. Look at it like looking through an airplane. You look through an airplane window and it's clear but it's not sharp.

We want something that's gonna be sharp here so we can feel that translucence in the bubbles that are getting on it. So I got my Macro lens on. I've got this back light, and see I've just used any item that I found here in the building. We've got a table and a step ladder and I've been able to position things so I'm getting a good back light bouncing off. We can get right to shooting.

So, we're gonna take some shots. This is really fun. I've got a lemon slice here. It's slice really, really thin. And the reason you want it really thin is because it allows a greater sense of translucence coming through from our back light here.

And we really wanna have that in this shot. And so before I waste my fizzy, I'm actually gonna come in now and with the orange and lemon slices that you're using, you wanna have your camera angle, your lens, pretty much parallel with, again, with your lemon slice. 'Cause if it's off like this, again, I'm gonna have issues with focus. I'm gonna try to keep my lens in the same plane as my lemon slice. And now this is where you kind of have to monkey around a little bit, in order to get it just right.

But, the other thing is, I'm not showing the whole lemon slice. I'm coming in and just showing parts of it. So I'm basically at the mid-range down then letting my background kind of, the translucence happen with my background. And then once I've got this all squared up so I don't waste my fizzies, I come in and now that I'm all good, now I'm gonna go ahead and open my fizzies. Be careful when you open up your fizz bottle because I've done this before where it sprays all over the floor.

So be aware of that. So, let's go ahead and pour this in. Let the effervescent qualities of tonic do its magic. I'm gonna bring it right up to just above my halfway point. And you can see the fuzzy bubbles will start to congregate.

There they are, look at that. Oh. Then I'll just start shootin' away. Check that exposure, that looks fabulous. Now that's one shot.

Now I'm bouncing off the wall. I've got a yellow wall here. It's kind of a neat wall, it kinda works well with the lemon. But, if I really wanna give it a really clean, clean, kind of a mountain stream kind of a look, I've got a basic old white piece of paper. And I can just put that white piece of paper behind it.

Wow, look at that translucence now. Everything's just gone super, super white. Take a look at that. And sometimes this might be where you wanna, nope, that looks perfect. And, if I wanna change my background even a little bit more, just grab some wrapping paper.

And I like this, I'm not worried about it being completely flat. In fact, the fact that it's got a couple of ridges and what have you in it, actually lends itself to creating a slightly different background. So it's not perfectly even. And I can look through the camera and see where that takes place. There it is right there.

I like that dark blue right where the highlights are. Now I've got a nice blue backdrop. So, in the same spot. I haven't moved. White piece of paper, blue piece of paper, my yellow wall.

Three distinctly different shots. Let's try something different. Let's go to an orange. It's a little bit different color. It's not tremendously different but it is different.

So let's give that a shot here. Let's see what we can't get with Mr. Citrus here, orange. So we're gonna drop that in. And that'll change things up a little bit too.

Rather than having it straight at us, we're gonna turn it sideways. And we're gonna try to get these bubbles to show up. Ah, look at that. In a little bit different fashion. There we go, the light's much different.

I'm gonna add a little bit more effervescence. We like effervescence. Oh yeah, look at that. Oh the bubbles are so much different now. And the rind is what's giving us..

that little different color. Make sure everything, ah, that looks fabulous. Love that. Oranges and lemons, oh my. The translucent quality of using these lemons and oranges with that back light is a fun way to shoot.

And you can vary your shots by very simple things. By coming closer, moving further back. Showing part of the orange, a curve of the orange or the lemon. Or you can even come in and see the center of the lemon or the orange and use that as a focal point for composition. For the most part, the shot's pretty simple.

It's the effervescence of the bubbling water over the back lit color of the lemon or orange in your backdrop. So just varying that little bit, you can come up with, you know, five or six different shots and really get something that's quite unique and very simple to do. Well, a new scenario. The fizz is all out of our scenario now because we've got a different way to back light this. We've got some other slices of our oranges and our lemon slices and we've got a light now that's underneath.

And so I've got a piece of glass that the slices are sitting on. Couple of horses, so it's sitting on a couple of places where we can get a light source underneath. And then underneath the glass, 'cause if you just put the glass on and you throw the fruit slices on top of the glass, you're gonna get all kinds of weird glare. You're gonna have see through, which we don't want. So there's a couple things you can do.

I've just got an old garbage bag here that's white and I've got it stretched out under my glass. Pulled taught to keep wrinkles and what have you out of it. And that's gonna serve as kind of a soft box for my light source. You can use a paper towel, anything like that that you wanted to put underneath that. As long as you've got a way that you can keep the light glowing and distributed evenly from that back source.

So, light underneath, couple of saw horses. I'm looking down, nice back light. The great thing about this kind of design is that the rinds are not translucent. Only the fruit is translucent. If you vary the thickness of the slices, you're varying the translucence of the light coming through them.

So if you keep your slices, just like a chef, if you keep your slices all the same size, you're gonna have equal translucence in this. The rinds stay dark, so there's your contrast. Light and dark. Now the key in this is just trying to find a way to create a nice design. So, just like with the effervescent bubbles on the lemon slices, I pulled back, I came in closer and I came in closer.

And I just found ways to make this work. And when you make it work, it's really quite magical. And then, at times, it goes someplace else where it doesn't even look like slices anymore. It looks like the universe. So it's a lot of fun.