Reply To: April 2026 challenge topic is Using Backlighting for Subject Separation

[Maryline]

Hi Elena, Nico and all the TUC fam! Great initiative!

Here is my backlight (and seahorse, as it seems to be the theme too ;-)…

Backlight is actually my favourite set up, with strobe or continuous lights, with snoot or without.

For this image, the intention was to isolate the subject and make it glow from within to create a ‘spirit’ / dreamy effect with vibrant colour. It was backlighted and snooted + gentle panning with slow shutter speed for the background to mimick the rythm of the sea (and hide the volcanic dark seabed of this muck diving place – Dauin / Philippines).

My biggest challenge was to manage a proper backlight without backscatter (even more visible in the backlight beam) and very challenging to change the strobe positioning in backlight to avoid the backscatter as we used to do with front lighting… (This image is edited, removing the backscatter).