I've finally had some time to edit the behind the scenes video from a shoot I did a while back, It was a bit of an off the cuff shoot as we had some time between travels while up in Northamptonshire. Having driven past a red telephone box a few times that still looked fairly original (many of them now have big fluorescent defibrillators in them in the villages), a plan started forming in my mind of an image that could like quite cool there.
Having not brought a lot of my lighting gear, I had to think about how I'd light it so that everything was visible while still looking like nighttime. With only the one speedlight with me I had the option of waiting till night time and shooting all the different elements separately and merging them in post, or I could shoot in the daytime and make it look like night. I opted to shoot in the day time as the weather looked likely to turn and it was cold!
How to do it - I set up the flash inside the box, and used my pop-up flash as the trigger, for those that shoot Nikon as I used too, this is a really easy and effective way of triggering off camera flash as I can control the power from my camera. The downside is it needs to be in line of sight so it can see my pop-up flash fire.
In order for the daylight to look like nighttime, I need to change two things, the exposure and the white balance.
The flash is set up and within the box and due to the light bouncing around in there it gives off quite a warm light. I could have put a warming CTO gel on the there too if needs be. I then dial down the white balance using the K (Kelvin) option in WB settings to cool the image down until the light inside the box looks correct, this leaves all the light outside the box looking very blue.
The exposure is then set, I shoot first without the flash and bring the exposure down to the point that it looks dark enough, at least dark enough, and then I bring in the flash and set the power to balance with the ambient exposure.
I was lucky that it was overcast, this does require more flash power if it's a bright day, and as it was raining etc the car approaching had its headlights on which really was a stroke of luck and helps sell the illusion!
Let me know what you think in the comments and show show me if you've used this technique yourself!