Tip of the Day: Get Snooty

Bored with the basic flash look? Try a snoot, a long extension to your flash that directs the flash more to a central area instead of spreading out across the picture.  You can buy various shapes and sizes of course, but it’s much more economical to save your cash for the flash itself and make your own. Strobist offered this great DIY option: homemade snoot from a cereal box. For a basic snoot, you will need a cereal box, a ruler and marker, some tape or glue and a flash. 

Take the cereal box and cut of the top and bottom and down one side making a large rectangular piece of cardboard. Next, mark it on the inside as you fold it around the light end of your flash. You can be very scientific here but I just marked where it needed to be folded and used the ruler as a straight edge to make the fold crisper, making a rectangular opening that just fits the flash head.  Tape or glue the open side along the length of the snoot and you have a fancy lighting device.   

Now you have a new trick in your lighting technique.  By keeping the light more restricted you can determine exactly where your light goes. You can see from these two examples how making only a change in where the light goes can give an image a different feel and look, give it a try.

For more inspiration, check out Dave Black’s images from the Kentucky Derby (he used a LumiQuest snoot)

—Melissa Macatee
Contributing Blogger

Comments

[Shirley McBride]

THis was a very neat trick and well described