Day 83 of 365

This is pretty much the extent of my light equipment. Homemade lightbox made from white foam board and cheap work lights from Home Depot. My flash is a Vivitar 151, which is somewhere between 30 to 40 years old. A couple of years ago my parents were moving from the house I grew up in to a new place and were getting rid of some stuff and Dad asked if I wanted his old camera gear. If I did film I'd have a pretty nice Minolta camera and nice lenses to use, all bought in the early 70's. The flash was his and when I was wishing I had an off camera flash I remembered Dad's equipment and found that this old flash still works and is compatible with my Canon 30D. Go figure...

A few of you were wondering how I lit the bronze leaf. I didn't have a way to hang the leaf inside the lightbox so hung it from a screwdriver (high tech huh?) just outside the box. My years in the Army taught me how to adapt and improvise so those skills have come in handy on occasion lately. I took the black fabric out of the box and tried bouncing light from the flash at different angles. Before I forget...I built a cardboard snoot to direct the light better. The angle I found gave me the best result was the flash in the middle of the box pointing straight up. The light from the flash bounced nicely from the ceiling creating a good overall whiteness. Most of the other angles created shadows or off white coloring. I guess really it just comes down to experimenting until you get it the way you want it. I think some of my better photos have been mostly created by accident but I'll take them anyway I can get them.