how to copy the feel of moonlight with strobes...

howdy I am doing some creative wedding pictures soon and want to replicate the feel of moonlight.

I plan on using one strobe high up with a cooling gel maybe light blue. Moonlight is quite hard light so

maybe with no softening I'm just looking for other ideas just incase this does not give me the feel I

am looking for so any ideas would be great

Moonlight is directly reflected sunlight, but not the same color.<p>

 

It sounds like an interesting problem. I'd guess 1, 2, or 3 strobes coming<br> from the same direction, low power, filtered with some color filter to<br>take out red and yellow.<p>

 

I'm going to play with this.

In the scheme of things, the moon is a VERY small source of light. More than one strobe will fall falsely on the eye, I think.

Matt, you may be right. But I'm thinking that a single light will need to be a ways away to fool the eye. Sunlight and moonlight look like parallel rays due to distance, whereas a close source spreads from a discernible point.

Use a grid or a honeycomb, perhaps? And remember, sometimes it's as much about the desaturation and appearance of a nocturnal environment that tells your eye how to process the scene.

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Some time ago, I played with this, using just a single off-camera speedlight, providing a harsh overhead light on a canine subject. <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/5401972"><b>In this test effort</b></a>, the moon itself was composited in from a shot I took on a cloudy night - but you'll get the idea. Other clues in the scene will have as much to do with the willing suspension of disbelief as the specific angle of the shadows. But <i>more than one</i> shadow will scream at your subconscious truth-detector more quickly, I think.

see attached... 25secs @f4 iso 800, full moon only....looks just like sunlight

I would think it would have to do more with exposure than the strobe itself. The old Hollywood trick of using a blue filter and unerexposing would probably work. If you've ever shot an outdoor image with flash and used a really high shutter speed by mistake, you know how that works.