Backlighting photography with a detachable hotshoe speedlight flash is easy if you have the right camera and flash combination. This product collection required a white translucent storage bin from Walmart, a white translucent plexiglass panel large enough to cover the storage bin, and a camera capable of triggering a speedlight flash with the built-in popup flash from the camera. Canon calls that feature “live flash”, and it’s included in the 60D that shot this image. That model is almost an antique now, but I’m sure the feature must still out there somewhere.

Shooting Notes

Here the flash is laying on its back under the plexiglass and pointing straight up. The camera is positioned on a tripod above the subject shooting down. The fluorescent ceiling fixtures might have lit the scene, or I might have used an umbrella with a speedlight triggered live by the same popup flash as the one in the box. The shot was taken years ago, but I remember the equipment I had with me that day. Really, the hardest part about getting this shot was aligning the pieces so they all looked evenly spaced and parallel with each other. Shooting at a slight angle from 90 degrees looking straight down was surprisingly tedious to get right.