Lighting How To

It’s nice when you can make something yourself, save a bit of cash, and end up with more creative photos as a result. That’s exactly what’s going on in the five-minute video below, demonstrating seven DIY light modifiers for creative portraiture.

Bill Lawson is a professional photographer and amateur tinkerer who enjoys sharing his fun photo techniques, some of which involve accessories he makes himself. In this five-minute tutorial, Lawson demonstrates a variety of DIY  “gobos” for creating interesting shadows when shooting with off-camera flash.

If you’re unfamiliar with the terminology, a gobo (short for "go between") is simply a template or stencil that’s placed in front of a light source to manipulate how the illumination falls on an object. While these light modifiers can be used for a variety of purposes, in this video Lawson employs them to cast artistic shadows on a portrait subject.

Lawson’s DIY gobos include everything from lace fabric, a kitchen colander, and a cheap dish drainer, to one of those plastic scoops designed for cleaning a cat’s litter box. In other words, most of these “photo accessories” are things you already have at home.

These quick tips are not only a lot of fun, but will set you on the path toward more creative portrait photos. You can find other tips and tricks on Lawson’s YouTube channel. And be sure to look at the earlier video we shared, explaining how to make a tabletop “photo studio” for macro and product photography.