*For more information visit AdoramaTV YT page, and of course you can keep up with Gavin on Instagram. 

Want to achieve that dramatic spotlight look but don’t know how to set it up? Photographer Gavin Hoey with AdoramaTV is here to help! In today’s episode we will be learning how to make real light rays with the flash. 

Gavin shares: “I’m using the Xplor600  with a long focal reflector. You could do something similar  with a standard reflector  and a grid  but what you’re trying to simulate  is the look of the Sun.  Now the Sun is 93 million miles away.  Now sadly I can’t get my Flash  more than a few meters away,  so there will be a bit more divergence  in my ray of light  compared to the Sun  but the further back you get it,  the better it looks.”

“Now the first thing you need  for rays of light  is of course light  but the next most important thing  is something for the light to bounce off,  so you can’t just see rays of light  in an environment like this,  you need to add some atmosphere.  It could be something natural  like mist or it could be something  that you’ve added to the scene  for example a smoke grenade  would work really well,  however today we’re at the Gatwick Aviation Museum  in a building that’s about to be demolished  but it still has electricity  so I can use my trusty smoke machine.  You can also use powder or dust  but if you are doing this in an urban environment  don’t kick up the dust in the room  because you never know what’s going to be in there.”

“There’s two other things you need to make this work  and the first thing is known as a cookie.  It could be something that you’ve made  but it’s going to block light  and let some pass through.  In my case I’m just going to use these windows  which should work really well.  It could be branches of trees  that kind of thing.  The next thing is a dark background.  Think about it,  if you make light beams,  you need a dark background.  Light beams, light background,  cancels itself out.”

“So first thing I need to do  is actually set the lights up,  so let’s get a model in,  let’s get some lights set,  let’s get shooting.  So to help me out today  it’s great to have Beth back with us.  Beth is going to be the model for this shoot  and the first picture I’m actually going to take  is no flash whatsoever.”

“I get not a completely black picture  but a very dark background.  That’s exactly what I want,  so now I’ve turned the light on  that’s outside the other side of this wall  and I’m just going to take a picture of Beth.  I’ve got it on about 1/8th power  middle-of-the-road,  let’s just see how this changes the picture.” 

“Now straight away I can see that,  that works really nicely  but it doesn’t have that beam of light,  for that I need the smoke machines,  so let’s get that warmed up.” 

“Now we have the beam of light covering  the entire scene.  I can adjust the intensity  of that beam by adjusting the Flash power.  So at the moment it was on 1/8  let’s take it up to 1/2 power,  that should make that beam  a lot brighter.” 

“That works really well  but as you can see  there’s not really much light  on Beth and that makes sense  because the only light in this scene  that we’re really seeing  is coming through the windows  so let’s add a second light  that only lights Beth.”

“This is an Xplor400.  It is in a small softbox  with a grid  just to put a little bit of directional light onto Beth,  remember I’m shooting f/2.8  so I can quickly meter this  just to see what we’re getting on Beth. Let’s add a bit more smoke into the scene,  see how this looks.” 

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Watch the full episode with Gavin Hoey and Adorama TV: