Halloween cookies 2014

After the super-colorful lighting scheme for last year's Halloween shots, I tried a little trick for spicing up the background in the limited (garage) space we had to shoot these - a cookie.

To quote my favorite photo website:

Cookie, in this case, is short for "kookaloris," which is genuine photo jargon. It is generally a piece of black cardboard with a pattern of holes in it that you shoot a light through to get a cool pattern on a background.

In our case the "cookie" was a small wicker basket more commonly used to hold plastic flatware for a picnic - or as it turns out, a Halloween party! (I only got in a little trouble for stealing said basket.) The effect is more obvious in some shots than others, but I like the effect and it is certainly worth trying again.

As always, click on a photo to see it big.

Strobist info: This set was lit with 2 speedlights and shot way above the ambient exposure (i.e. it is all flash). The background light is an LP-180 with a Honl "steel green" gel sitting inside a small wicker basket (for picnic forks and knives, which I got in trouble for stealing). It was zoomed to 180mm and fired at 1/8th power through the basket at the background to make that funky pattern of shadows. The key light is an SB-800 above and in front of the subjects (on a C-stand) in a homemade beauty dish with a grid, zoomed to 24mm and fired at 1/4 power.