Achieving This

[Randall55]

I have attempted to do this type of capture a few times and nothing ever comes out this good, what am I doing wrong?

"Family" by Basia McAuley | RedBubble

[Nicole]

It would be useful if we knew a little bit more about what you're doing in your photos. Even an example with a little bit about how you took it.

[Randall55]

Nicole

Taken on tripod black background and drop cloth.

Trying to achieve evenness around the legs/feet
Camera Settings as follows

Not sure if I need to have a lower f stop as you can see my 5 stop was at 5 which is the lowest I can go on this lens. What I am trying to get is so that I don't require a background. I guess what I am looking for is a shallow depth of field. Would I get this with a higher f stop?


Device: Nikon D200
Lens:
Focal Length: 35mm
Focus Mode:
AF-Area Mode:
VR Control:
AF Fine Tune:
Exposure
Aperture: F/5
Shutter Speed: 1/8s
Exposure Mode: Manual
Exposure Comp.: +0.3EV
Exposure Tuning:
Metering Mode: Spot

[SumPics]

My guess is that you need to use an off camera flash with a snoot (something to 'spotlight' the feet only) along with at least one other flash and lower aperture (bigger number).

I've been doing a lot of reading about off camera flash and don't have a strong grasp of it yet, but if you look at shadows in the picture you liked you can see that they are being cast from two directions (probably camera left and right about 45 degrees).

Like I said I'm learning about this type of lighting myself, so probably didn't do a great job of deconstructing your example image.

[RLucas]

Looks like one light almost straight on, slightly above, tilted down a little. The way the shadows are falling in the creases of the feet kind of gives me that impression. IMO.
Actually, you want more dof, not less. You will just need more light directed at where you want it to achieve this. The starting image really needs more contrast.

[SumPics]

The one shadow that made me think of a camera right flash is the one from Mommy's big toe falling on the foot of the baby. The shadow on the inside curve of Mommy's foot camera left made me guess at multiple lights. As I said, I'm just getting into reading about lighting, so I thought I would give the reasons for my guess at multiple lights.

Judging by your 'Blind Faith' photo on 500px you have more experience than me with off camera lighting

[sk66]

You weren't that far off. Lighting direction was a little more direct than your attempt, but the biggest issue is you didn't have enough lighting. More light on the feet would have meant less exposure time making the BG darker...and also giving proper exposure of the feet (your example the feet are a bit underexposed)

I did a quick edit of your example to fix levels etc. Still didn't come out great as I was working from a greyscale image. (you need to convert your images to sRGB)

[SteveGarner]

+1 to off camera speedlite with snoot to confine the light to the feet.
Go the the highest shutter speed that your flash will synch to ( usually 1/200 or 1/250 sec ).
Adjust aperture for proper exposure.
In post processing - use the burn tool in photoshop ( or similar ) to darken out the rest of the photo.
Same technique - different image:

[PShah]

Hi,

Its an excellent photo, however, is there any way by which this can be achieved without any external flash ?

Regards
PShah

[BigFuzzy]

Originally Posted by PShah

Hi,

Its an excellent photo, however, is there any way by which this can be achieved without any external flash ?

Regards
PShah

Do you mean the original photo or the one posted by SteveGarner?

Answer: Original - yes, but you still need good light (ie indoor lights from a lamp not going to cut it really)
SteveGarner - maybe since there are no moving subjects (ie the shoes could have been shot with a long esposure and the smoke is photoshopped in (though you may need flash to properly light the smoke).

However, do do either of the shots as best possible, you need some sort of controllable light (likely flash) to really nail it in my opinion.