Hot sheet!

1 Tuck in your sheets

Fasten your bedsheet over a window or doorway. If there’s something to clip your sheet on to, then use some DIY clips to hold it in place, otherwise use your gaffer tape. Even with clips, you might find that you need to stick it down with the gaffer tape to stop it blowing away.

2 Bring the light

Put your flash on a stand the other side of the sheet from your subject, and set it to full power. Stand it about a metre away, aimed at the middle of the sheet. Set the flash to manual mode if you have TTL capabilities, and if it has a zoom function, set it to the widest setting.

3 Prep work

To maximise the brightness of the light and the ‘wrapping’ effect it has, place your model close to the sheet. The further away from the light source they are, the darker the scene will be. This will force you to ramp up your ISO, which can introduce noise.

4 Carving the settings

Set your Nikon to manual mode for full control. Choose either automatic or flash white balance and shoot in RAW – this way you can change the white balance later if you need to. Set the widest aperture possible (f/2.8 in our case), and a shutter speed of 1/200 sec with ISO100.

5 Chisel the features

If your images are coming out overexposed, but you don’t want to change your settings, you can use a neutral density filter to block some of the light entering the lens. A variable ND filter will enable you to tweak the darkness until you get well-balanced exposures every time.

6 Scoop out the detail

Shoot using a zoom lens like a Nikon 70-200mm. Take it to 70mm to get the whole model in and then push further in to 200mm to get details of the hands if your model is posing with intricate pieces. Here Tim was working closely on a capital for a column.