Many food and product photographers begin their journey in a small space with limited light and equipment. Food photographer Rachel Korinek had a great setup to recreate large window light in a small space.
What really stood out for me with Korinek’s setup was the way she used her windows to create a large yet subdued window light using strobe lights and diffusers. I usually use a white wall to reflect my light before passing it through a large diffuser to recreate that soft window light effect. The flash is located between the wall and the diffuser material. When shooting on-site, I’ll bring a small V-shaped card or a triptych projection foam to create the same effect. This video is the first time I’ve seen a window with a modifier used to pop the light.
What I really like about this method is that the angle of the sun can be easily duplicated if you want to recreate a specific shadow length. I also love the space-saving setup. This is a great setup for not only families but also restaurant shoots, where you may want to recreate the atmosphere of your window seating and you don’t have a lot of space to work. When shooting in restaurants, you are usually limited to a small area so as not to interfere with service.
The window Korinek uses is quite large. Not everyone has access to such a large window. But I can see a use case where you attach diffusers or modifiers to the wall. In fact, I tested bouncing the light-diffusing material directly onto the wall, directly off the wall without diffusing, and my usual method of recreating the window light, except I use wall instead of V-flat.
As you can see in the close-up of the shadow, the first two methods produce nearly identical results. If you don’t have white walls in your space, you can use a white reflector against the wall and turn on a flash to create a hard-to-see sunlight. And if you want softer, more diffused shadows, which is my preference, then you need that extra two feet of space to create enough space between the flash diffuser on the wall for softer shadows.
