Snowboard Helmet

Snowboard Helmet
Originally uploaded by Anthony L. Solis.

Now that I have an umbrella, I wanted to try some studio-type shots. I had one flash, one piece of white mattboard and nothing to bounce off of (I couldn't find a blank wall to use). My snowboard helmet seemed like a good thing for my tests.

The Canon 580ex strobe is placed just to camera left, about a foot above the subject and about 3 feet in front. The flash was at 1/4 power and pointed into the umbrella.

I used curves in Photoshop to clean up the white backdrop and darken parts of the helmet. Then I placed a gradient map over the plastic of the helmet to remove any color imperfections.

I tried to digitally add a light to the back of the helmet, but it never looked passable. Also, the goggles are a tad overexposed on the left, but it didn't bother me enough for me to fix it.