Gobos, what are they and what can you do with them?

Saturday 8 December 2018, 13:31 by Liesbeth van Asselt | 10,835 views | 4 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

I, Tygo Fennema, am currently doing an internship with Liesbeth van Asselt of Stapfoto. When she asked me to write a blog about Gobos, I thought: what is she talking about. After she explained it, I understood what she meant, but I also had a quick look on Wikipedia:

A Gobo is a metal or glass slide that is projected into space. Gobos are used in theatre and film lighting. Gobos are placed in the housing of a theatre spotlight to distort (cut off) the beam of light so that an image is projected.

I think Wikipedia makes the term Gobo sound like complete nonsense. Having worked with one, I would say: a Gobo is a piece of glass, cardboard, plastic, metal, wood, and so on, that distorts the light.

For example, think of a number of rectangles and triangles cut out of a piece of cardboard. By placing a lamp (or flash) behind this piece of cardboard, you will see rectangles and triangles appear on the background.

Making your own Gobos

Making Gobos is very simple. All you need is a piece of cardboard (I used the bottom of an empty pizza box), a marker, a craft knife and a surface you can cut on.

Start by drawing the shapes on the cardboard. Think of stars, squares, circles or triangles, for example. If you are doing this for the first time (like me), I would start with an easy shape. I started with a square shape.

Once you have drawn the shapes on the cardboard, you can cut them out. After that, all you have to do is place a lamp (or flash) behind the piece of cardboard and point it at the portrait background. Your photo will instantly be much less boring!

Make sure you choose a lamp that does not get very hot. Otherwise, you cannot place the lamp close to the Gobo because the Gobo could catch fire. A metal Gobo can warp from the heat.

Besides homemade Gobos, you can also place everyday objects in front of the lamp. Think of simple things such as blinds, a plant or even toys.

Liesbeth took this photo during a workshop she gave. Here, a plant acts as a gobo.

I ran into the problem that when I placed the subject (my little sister) too close to the background, the lamp with the Gobo aimed at the background also cast light on the subject. This creates shadows on the face.

You can see this clearly in the photo below. There is a shadow of the hair on the cheek. This is caused by the lamp behind her, aimed at the background.

Tygo's little sister for Photofacts blog 1

In the photo below, I had my little sister sit further away from the background and aimed the flash (even) more towards the background. This meant that the flash no longer shone on the subject. That solved the problem of unwanted shadows.

Tygo's little sister for Photofacts blog 2

It is also possible to use a Gobo with the flash aimed only at the subject. By aiming a strip of light at your model's eyes, they really stand out.

For this, I simply used a small chair that is in Liesbeth's studio.

Conclusion: I am very pleased that Liesbeth gave me this assignment. Rather than simply accepting boring backgrounds, I can now make the background much more lively in a very simple and inexpensive way! I would never have thought of this myself.

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About the author

Liesbeth fotografeert met haar bedrijf stapfoto.nl voor websites van bedrijven. Daarnaast verzorgt ze al sinds 2004 (vooral creatieve) workshops zoals lightpainting, flitsen in de natuur, fine art, frozen flowers, paintsplash, infrarood, icm en multi exposure. Daarnaast is er een Stapfoto vakgroep voor de meer gevorderde fotografen.

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4 comments

Huub Keulers wrote on Saturday 8 December 2018 at 15:13 | reply
Nice and honest article Tygo. I still have a number of them lying around myself but never really used them. You’ve got me thinking 😉
Translated from Dutch.

Johan Pronk wrote on Tuesday 11 December 2018 at 10:28 | reply
Nice article.
I regularly use gobos, it gives the photo just a little more liveliness.
Translated from Dutch.

Chris wrote on Tuesday 11 December 2018 at 11:01 | reply
I should try this sometime too. This seems like fun!
Translated from Dutch.

Vbruggeman wrote on Tuesday 8 January 2019 at 12:45 | reply
Interesting! Worth trying out. Clear explanation with accompanying photos make you understand it right away .
Translated from Dutch.

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