1. Starting with Window Light as a Light SourceSetting the stage| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:09 | So we have got Ramona coming into the
studio today, and we're going to do some
| | 00:13 | sort of headshots and three-quarter
shots, and maybe full body shots of her,
| | 00:17 | which are going to be used for her portfolio.
| | 00:20 | Normally, I don't shoot models and
Ramona is sort of a part-time model, a
| | 00:23 | part-time professional. So I'm
approaching this almost from more of an editorial
| | 00:27 | portrait perspective, and she is
approaching it more from a, what can I have from
| | 00:32 | my portfolio perspective, so we'll try
to mesh those two together and teach you
| | 00:35 | little bit at the same time.
| | 00:37 | Important things for dealing with her--and
she is not here yet so we can talk about her.
| | 00:41 | I am really going to be trying to do
everything I can to her keep at ease and
| | 00:44 | no matter what she is doing, everything
looks great. And I'll steer if I need to steer.
| | 00:49 | We've got Amy here, who is going to be her
makeup person, and that is as much for
| | 00:54 | Ramona psychologically as it is for
makeup. We're going very light touch.
| | 00:59 | Anything that you can do to make them
feel more comfortable when they are being
| | 01:01 | shot, you just do it.
| | 01:03 | Anything you can do to bring in
and build rapport is really helpful.
| | 01:07 | It's going to be little bit clumsy
today compared to normal because we're
| | 01:10 | shooting Ramona on one level, but
we're also teaching on one level.
| | 01:14 | So I'm going to be backing away from
her conversationally more often than I
| | 01:18 | would like to be doing. Vut that's just a
little bit of wrinkle thrown in for this.
| | 01:22 | The important thing to do is not just
to shot and then bail out and then look
| | 01:26 | at the back of your camera every time,
because then you're not maintaining the
| | 01:29 | continuity with the person that you're shooting.
| | 01:31 | It's all about setting up a nice
rapport and creating moments and then
| | 01:35 | catching those moments, or creating
scenarios where people will give you a look
| | 01:39 | that you're looking for.
| | 01:40 | That's almost a little bit of a
minefield to walk through sometimes, but you
| | 01:46 | kind of have to play it as you go.
| | 01:48 | It's more of an interpersonal thing
than a photography thing, if there is a one
| | 01:51 | way I can put it, and that's the hard part.
| | 01:53 | The lighting part is easy. It's the,
how do I get to that expression that I'm
| | 01:56 | looking for or how do I
loosen this person up, et cetera.
| | 01:59 | That's the tougher thing that you have
to solve when you are shooting somebody.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shooting using available window light| 00:00 | Okay, so we have some white seamless
set up and we have a window set up.
| | 00:05 | The neat thing about this room is that
it's just surrounded with windows, which means
| | 00:10 | that on most given days, you are going to have
shade light coming in, which is what we have
| | 00:13 | from this direction, and on the opposite side you
have some form of sunlight, if it's coming through.
| | 00:17 | It's a pretty overcast day today, so our
light is going to be pretty consistent.
| | 00:20 | So I have just set up some white seamless,
and what I have effectively done is to take
| | 00:24 | this window and make it into a soft box.
| | 00:26 | So rather than just saying, well, the
exposure is 1/125th of a second at 2 8 and 400 in here,
| | 00:31 | which is about what it is,
| | 00:32 | I'm specifically already starting to look at
the soft box as--or this window, see I slipped
| | 00:37 | Freudian--this window as a soft box, because
I want not only to have the quantity of ambient
| | 00:43 | light that I want, but I want to
have the quality and the direction.
| | 00:46 | So this is going to be very cool light because
it shades, so I am going to white balance for that.
| | 00:51 | Since I have got a nice big white sheet of
paper behind Ramona, I can just put it on automatic
| | 00:56 | white balance and it's going to be fine.
| | 00:58 | I am not going to get into trouble with my
white balance until I start adding it with flash,
| | 01:01 | and then we are going to have to
rationalize the fact that the flash is normal and this
| | 01:05 | light is cooler. So that's not a problem I
have yet, so I am not going to worry about it.
| | 01:09 | So this is a really nice--it's like a
giant ring soft box, if you think about it.
| | 01:14 | It's a little high, and we are going to make it
higher in a minute, but this is a clean, can't-
| | 01:18 | go-wrong, kind of a very smooth glamour light,
and I am going to shoot a few frames of Ramona.
| | 01:23 | If you could step like maybe 6 inches
away, so I am getting whatever shadows that
| | 01:27 | you have, and turn your shoulders a little that
way, now if you turn towards me. There you go.
| | 01:32 | So we are just going to pop these off really
quickly. Okay, you don't have to move every
| | 01:38 | time I hit the button--you've got the model
thing going. No wind machines today.
| | 01:43 | Now, just straight, and straight and right here.
| | 01:45 | There you go. And actually straight on,
let me just have you look, just turn, your chin
| | 01:49 | in, and what I will do is I will look at you
and I will take my hand and rotate it this
| | 01:53 | way or that way and just mimic
that with your head occasionally.
| | 01:58 | Straight up. Hey Amy, can I pull
you in for just--lips together for a second.
| | 02:06 | That was very good, lips
right here. There you go.
| | 02:09 | Okay, relax for just a second.
| | 02:11 | I see a little bit on her
nose, on that right side. Amy: A little shine.
| | 02:17 | David: I want to grab that. It may just be the way
the light's hitting her. So this is really simple.
| | 02:23 | But you can see it's still, it's just like really
clean straight. It's like what passport light should be.
| | 02:28 | Ramona: Passport lights
are always going to be bad.
| | 02:32 | David: Yes, well they are competing
with the driver's license people.
| | 02:36 | So they are going to rock it. They've
got to rock the bad light. Okay, cool!
| | 02:39 | Thank you, very much.
| | 02:41 | Oh, you did the hair thing for me.
Let's grab a couple more like this.
| | 02:44 | So I am just shooting straight
on, and this light is behind me.
| | 02:48 | If you've got a shady window and you can drop
some white near it, that's a really nice way
| | 02:52 | to get fast easy light.
| | 02:55 | So this white is a background. Well, lots of
backgrounds are going to have the white walls.
| | 02:58 | We have some cool wallpaper covered things over
there. We have got some seamless to work with.
| | 03:02 | But the neat thing about this
background is I can move this wherever I want.
| | 03:06 | So I can make this light straight on or I
can move this background at a 45-degree angle,
| | 03:11 | and I effectively move this light source.
| | 03:13 | So that's how I am trying to capitalize
whatever ambient light I have, because I want to do
| | 03:17 | that before I start adding flash.
| | 03:19 | So let's grab a couple of more just like this,
and then we are going to take this window
| | 03:22 | and we are going to move it up higher.
| | 03:23 | Okay, straight on, that's good!
| | 03:28 | Okay, so what we have done, we haven't
moved anything, as far as the light source goes,
| | 03:32 | but we have moved the background. So rather
than a white backdrop directly opposite the
| | 03:36 | light source, I have taken a gray backdrop
and put it at a 45-degree angle. So if I shoot
| | 03:42 | on a 45-degree angle, I have effectively moved
this light to where the light is now hitting
| | 03:47 | her to 45-degree angle.
| | 03:48 | So rather than coming from right behind me,
it's coming from between us, which makes it
| | 03:51 | more of a typical portrait light.
| | 03:53 | I also wanted to get it up higher, so I
took Ramona and moved her down lower, so now we
| | 03:58 | are both sitting down.
| | 03:59 | So now I have taken the light that's
right behind me and moved it around to the side
| | 04:02 | and moved it up, so it's kind of
a classic portrait soft box now.
| | 04:06 | Okay, I am going clank here. I am hitting
the background stance, and go ahead and face
| | 04:12 | this window a little bit and
come around towards me just a tad.
| | 04:15 | Chin down just a little bit. I have got
a 250th of a second I think was my light. A little
| | 04:22 | dark at 250th. Let's go to 1/60th.
| | 04:25 | Very good, thank you, okay, lips together.
| | 04:29 | It's a nice clean, very different
light than what we were looking at before.
| | 04:36 | Now, I did something really stupid, and I
am going to own up to this every time I can:
| | 04:40 | I left my auto balance or
my white balance on auto.
| | 04:43 | I've taken all the white out of the scene,
so now it was reading this and it didn't see
| | 04:48 | anything but her flesh tone. That was the
brightest tone. It was coming back as warmer
| | 04:52 | than light, it was trying to make it neutral, so
naturally my picture became too cool. It's too blue.
| | 04:56 | So I want to take my white balance and set
it to cloudy, probably it's going to be the
| | 05:01 | closest that I have, and I
should get my flesh tones back.
| | 05:09 | There they are, that looks great!
| | 05:10 | Okay, chin right to me, that's good.
| | 05:13 | Okay, deep breath. Haaaa, good, good, good, good.
| | 05:16 | I lost her now. She has got the
giggles, so she is gone for the day.
| | 05:26 | But let me show you this, the difference in
that light we were just doing. Big difference.
| | 05:31 | Just by moving around it, it
completely changes the shape of your face.
| | 05:34 | So I am going to play with that.
| | 05:35 | So we haven't really even added any artificial
light yet. We are still just playing with the window.
| | 05:40 | Window light, you are first class, right.
| | 05:42 | It's not just about knocking down--I am
looking around and it's not just about knocking down
| | 05:46 | the ambient light.
| | 05:48 | It's not just about knocking down the
ambient light; it's about using the ambient light
| | 05:51 | as your first light source, and if you learn
to do that, you are going to have one more
| | 05:54 | light source in your bag all the
time than you have number of flashes.
| | 05:57 | So if you've got two flashes, you've got a
three-light studio with you, just ready to go.
| | 06:01 | You are fine, you are fine. Keep going. Whatever
you need to do, you are good. Okay, don't move.
| | 06:10 | Come in nice and tight and
let your hair frame your face.
| | 06:14 | All right, and back the way you
were, this window, that's good.
| | 06:19 | A couple of horizontals. I like that, that
little half look that you just gave me.
| | 06:28 | It's kind of I own you, kind of
thing, that was really cool!
| | 06:31 | David:I think I just killed it.
Ramona: Sorry.
| | 06:36 | David: No, no, that was it right there.
| | 06:40 | It's either--I am married, so I get that's the,
you-are-in-trouble look or the I-know-something-
| | 06:44 | you-don't-know look. I am not quite sure.
| | 06:47 | Okay, very good, right here.
| | 06:52 | Deep breath and just like totally
chill. That's good, good, good.
| | 06:54 | Okay, I am going to come right in. Dn't
pull the hair over your eye. Normally I will
| | 07:01 | be focusing on the close eye, but when the
hair covers that close eye, I am going to
| | 07:04 | focus on the back eye. Okay, don't move,
chin down just a little bit, good, good.
| | 07:11 | Now make me in trouble again. That's it.
| | 07:16 | All right, so let's relax for a second.
| | 07:22 | So this background is doing some cool things.
It's barely separating her hair from black,
| | 07:27 | which I like, so it's not
calling attention to itself.
| | 07:29 | This light source is up and high on a 45-degree
angle now, and really the folks of Love Life have
| | 07:36 | chosen a neat space for their
studio, because--am I right?
| | 07:39 | You guys can get away with doing a
lot of here without ever adding a flash?
| | 07:43 | Yeah, so it's like--have you ever seen a
tennis player run around their backhand for
| | 07:46 | a long time, and I am not dogging you guys at all.
This is you can totally work in here for years
| | 07:51 | and never use a flash.
| | 07:53 | But in the same token, you can take these
light sources and start to co-opt them into
| | 07:58 | very cool foundations for adding flash, which
is what we will be doing pretty shortly now.
| | 08:02 | But don't discount the quality of your
ambient light, not just the quantity, the quality.
| | 08:06 | Make it the light source that you want to
make it before you start adding other stuff.
| | 08:09 | All right, let's just switch
this up just a little bit now.
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| Lighting notebook: Window light photo shoot| 00:00 | All right, let's take a second and go to our
lighting diagrams and talk through this first shoot.
| | 00:06 | I know it's very simple, but there are a couple
things that are really important to remember
| | 00:10 | from this, and the first is to always, always
consider your ambient light as a light source.
| | 00:17 | It's the first light in your bag, and that means to
think about it in terms of quantity and of quality.
| | 00:23 | In this little section we're really more
concerned with the quality than quantity, because we're
| | 00:27 | not going add any flash to it.
| | 00:29 | So here we are. We've got a photographer and
a subject in a room, and what I have done is
| | 00:33 | take the light source as it
exists and drop it right behind me.
| | 00:37 | There is that open shade window. It's going
to be nice, gorgeous soft light, and I'm using
| | 00:41 | it sort of as an on-axis big soft box.
| | 00:44 | It really doesn't matter what's behind
Ramona in this instance, because I'm going to take
| | 00:47 | a moveable backdrop--in this case white--and
we're going to drop it right in behind her,
| | 00:52 | so that negates whatever backdrop exists in
the room already and allows us to put that
| | 00:56 | light where we want to put
it, which is right on axis.
| | 01:00 | So that's going to give us nice
flattering full light on her face.
| | 01:03 | So let's take a look at one
of the pictures from there.
| | 01:05 | So here we are with the color picture.
| | 01:08 | This is basically a driver's license
picture that has a little quality edge to it.
| | 01:12 | It's a can't-miss light source, and in many
instances it's going to be available to you
| | 01:16 | if you're shooting in daylight.
| | 01:18 | So if you only have one flash with you,
you can always grab this as your only light source
| | 01:23 | obviously, or as a light
source that you can add flash to.
| | 01:26 | This light is really flattering. It's
going to fit well with a lot of people.
| | 01:30 | It reaches under wrinkles if Ramona
had them, but she doesn't obviously.
| | 01:34 | This also looks good in black and white.
| | 01:35 | This has a neat little glamorous edge to it,
and it's an easy light source that you can
| | 01:39 | pretty much co-opt anytime
you are shooting indoors.
| | 01:44 | So let's go back to our diagram. We're going
to take that same open shade window now and
| | 01:48 | we're going to rotate our shooting position
45 degrees, so now the window coming in at
| | 01:53 | a typical 45 degrees up, 45 degrees
over, kind of a portrait light source.
| | 01:57 | So as we look at that, we'll drop in a
background behind Ramona again, and in this case it's
| | 02:02 | a gray backdrop. And this will give us the
ability to put the light source wherever we
| | 02:07 | want, because we don't have to worry about what
exists behind her as we change our shooting angle.
| | 02:12 | Now if we take a look at this picture,
you can see that the light is different, and it
| | 02:16 | looks very different than when the light
is coming from directly behind the camera.
| | 02:21 | This has much more of directional look.
It's still very soft, but this gives different
| | 02:25 | shape to her face, and what we're really doing
here is considering our ambient light as our
| | 02:30 | first light source and really considering the
quality of it and not just the quantity of it.
| | 02:35 | So going back to the diagram, the last
thing I would leave you with here is to remember
| | 02:40 | that your ambient light, number one is your
first light source in the bag, and before you
| | 02:44 | even think about the quantity of the ambient
light--you know grabbing any exposure or whatever--
| | 02:49 | look at the quality of the ambient light.
See how you can co-opt it either as an individual
| | 02:53 | light source, which may be all you need, or
something that you can add flash to extend the number
| | 02:58 | of lights you have in your bag by adding
this one virtual light which already exists.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Adding a FlashAdding a flash umbrella| 00:07 | All right, so what I have done is I have
kept that same light on the 45s for Ramona and
| | 00:13 | I have set up a flash and an umbrella.
| | 00:15 | This is the first typical portrait light that
you might think about using. It's very inexpensive.
| | 00:20 | It makes your light really nice and soft.
You can bring it in close. And I am going to meter
| | 00:25 | her, and I am going to set this flash up to
where it sort of overpowers this daylight,
| | 00:28 | to where the flash is sort of the only light
that we have, which is to say I am not going
| | 00:32 | to take into account this layer
that we have been working with.
| | 00:35 | I am going to grab your hair just a
second, just trying to walk up that way.
| | 00:39 | Amy's like "No, no. Don't touch the makeup!"
| | 00:43 | So maybe a little ironic: up to this point
we haven't used the flash. But think of the
| | 00:48 | ambient light as it exists as a
light source that you can manipulate.
| | 00:53 | You don't have to have a knee-jerk reaction
to always pull out flash, whereas if you are
| | 00:57 | going to think of that ambient light as a
light source that you can manipulate, you will
| | 00:59 | also think of it as your first light
source when you are lighting. So everything that
| | 01:03 | you can do to better understand ambient light,
or available light, it's going to help you
| | 01:07 | when you start to add that
as a layer to flash lighting.
| | 01:10 | So I am going to make this flash
fairly powerful. Seem what's it at now?
| | 01:14 | It says 1/16th power, I am just going
to take it up to roughly a quarter power.
| | 01:21 | So it's not quite powerful enough to cause
permanent eye damage or anything on Ramona,
| | 01:26 | but it's reasonable amount of power. And I
am just going to check my light and see how
| | 01:30 | much of it there is.
| | 01:31 | I have got a little flash that's going to be
on camera that is dialed down so far it's
| | 01:34 | not going to affect anything, and in fact
I am sending it back into the ceiling.
| | 01:38 | All I am doing is setting off my
other SP 800 with a built-in slave.
| | 01:42 | So, let's see how that's going to work.
| | 01:44 | See that's going to work. Here we go.
Let's see how bright you are.
| | 01:52 | That's giving me F9 and
that's plenty, plenty of aperture.
| | 01:56 | In fact, I am going to go down three, so it's just
below. I am going to just above 56, going to F71.
| | 02:04 | So it's telling me F9 at ISO 400. I am
going to go down to 200 and make that F7.1.
| | 02:12 | So at a 250th of a second--another
thing to think about. Oh no, 6.3 sorry.
| | 02:16 | So one step above of 56.
| | 02:17 | I am shooting at a 250th of a second because I
want to take the ambient light out for a minute.
| | 02:22 | I want to just use flash, and then we
will start adding those two things together.
| | 02:25 | I should be fairly close on my exposure.
| | 02:28 | I don't know if this is the right light
position for Ramona. It's just kind of a relatively
| | 02:32 | safe light position.
| | 02:32 | I will move this around just a little bit.
| | 02:34 | I am probably blocking you guys back there. But all
right, if you could look right here, that's good.
| | 02:39 | That's a very clean, very nice exposure.
| | 02:43 | I can absolutely work with that.
| | 02:45 | What I am getting now is all my light is
coming from here. There's some light hitting the
| | 02:48 | backdrop. There is a probably a little fill
bouncing off this white wall, but I can live with that.
| | 02:52 | I'm getting nice soft light on her face,
but I am also getting a nice highlight off of her
| | 02:56 | hair coming right back at me.
| | 02:58 | Let's see, pull this up.
| | 02:59 | Just grab a couple more.
| | 03:01 | Okay, right here looks good.
| | 03:04 | Turn your chin a little more towards this light or
let me walk the light around. There we go.
| | 03:11 | Good, good. Right down here
just a tad if you would, good.
| | 03:15 | I want to take a second to talk about umbrellas,
because I have got a love-hate relationship with them.
| | 03:20 | What I love about them is that they're safe
and they are easy to use, and when I say safe
| | 03:24 | I don't mean I am going to poke myself in
the eye; I mean they are safe in terms of the
| | 03:26 | way they light people.
| | 03:27 | They are cheap, they are easy to carry
around, and I spend a lot of time lighting people
| | 03:32 | with umbrellas, and you probably will too
if you're just starting out doing this.
| | 03:35 | The downside is they are safe because they
start to make people look a lot the same.
| | 03:40 | If you are just always throwing an umbrella
up at 45 degrees up and 45 degrees over, your picture
| | 03:44 | is going to look very similar
to each other a lot of the time.
| | 03:47 | So that's not necessarily a good thing.
| | 03:49 | So as quickly as you can start to master
an umbrella and move past it as a main light
| | 03:55 | source from a typical position, start thinking
about it in different places and we will explore
| | 03:58 | that a little bit. We will have the
umbrella right behind the camera to use it sort of
| | 04:02 | as a giant ring light. We will float it
right over Ramona's head at some point to give it
| | 04:06 | kind of a cool dramatic top light.
| | 04:08 | The umbrella can do lots of cool things other than
just being used the way it's being used right now.
| | 04:13 | So what I want to do now that we have
taken just a couple of shots with this umbrella
| | 04:17 | giving all of the light and all of the power is
I am going to walk the shutter speed up, and
| | 04:21 | what you are going to see is the fill light,
which is coming from this window right behind
| | 04:25 | me, is going to start become more and
more of an influence on the picture.
| | 04:28 | I may need to go to a tripod here, maybe not.
| | 04:31 | Let me take this down one stop.
| | 04:34 | I don't want to be getting into one-second
shutter speed land or anything like that.
| | 04:40 | So there, go back up a stop on my
ISO, and I should be close.
| | 04:45 | I am so close. Oh, that's a nice expression.
| | 04:48 | Didn't know I was going to shoot from the hip.
| | 04:49 | Ramona: No, I didn't know.
| | 04:51 | David: Grr, I am not ready. All right, let's, we are
at a 250th of a second, and at 6.3, this flash
| | 04:56 | is on about 1/8th power.
This is all middle-of-the-road stuff.
| | 05:00 | So let me shoot a few, and then we
are going to walk the shutter speed up.
| | 05:03 | See how far am I going to have to get before
this starts to--oh no, this is going to work well.
| | 05:07 | Okay, so at a 250th of a second, I am just
going to shoot and then take a break and shoot.
| | 05:11 | I am going to take a sequence of
pictures, so you don't need to do anything.
| | 05:14 | This is just, let's look at
the light sort of a thing.
| | 05:17 | I like the way you are looking right now too,
so let's go ahead and put a shot of the flash in
| | 05:21 | there so Dave can find that later.
| | 05:23 | Okay, so here we are, at a 250th of
a second, and that is all flash.
| | 05:29 | I am going to open up to 56, because
she is a little dark at a 250th of a second.
| | 05:34 | Okay, now I have got a good frame. So just give me
a nice natural straight expression just like that.
| | 05:40 | That's good. Now don't move.
| | 05:44 | Okay, 200th, 160th, 125th, and now what you
are going to start to see is that ambient
| | 05:51 | light coming in, 100th, 80th, 60th. And I am
not even seeing the back of the ship. Hopefully
| | 06:00 | we are seeing an ambient fill happening, 40th,
30th, 25th, and now the ambient light is just
| | 06:09 | completely blowing her out. But if I come
back and look at this, I can see that fill
| | 06:13 | just magically start to happen.
| | 06:15 | The first thing that it does is start to
fill the shadows in on her face, but then
| | 06:18 | it starts to come in and overpower the background too,
and that's telling me my ratio has gotten up too high.
| | 06:23 | But I am using one light, but I have actually
got two lights working together, and by altering
| | 06:27 | the shutter speed, I am controlling just
this ambient light as a function of the fill.
| | 06:31 | Ann is nodding in the back,
like yeah, yeah, I get it.
| | 06:34 | So what we have is the ability to easily make
different lighting ratios just by how we open
| | 06:40 | the shutter speed to collect that ambient light.
| | 06:42 | Remember, the flash happens instantaneously,
so all it cares is about the aperture.
| | 06:47 | The shutter speed cares about how long the
shutter is open, or the light, the ambient light,
| | 06:50 | cares about how long the shutter is open.
| | 06:51 | So a one-second exposure with that flash
is going to look different than a 250th-of-a-
| | 06:55 | second exposure with that flash.
| | 06:57 | Let me see where you started to look best here.
| | 07:03 | That's pretty clean. So at a 200th of a second,
she actually starts looking fairly even at
| | 07:09 | about a 125th of a second, which is to say
that the light coming from the flash is about as
| | 07:14 | bright as the light coming from
the window in the complete exposure.
| | 07:17 | And you have to remember, every time you are
pushing the button you are making two separate exposures.
| | 07:20 | One is happening instantaneously and the
other one's happening as the ambient light builds up.
| | 07:25 | So by controlling the shutter speed you
control the balance between those two exposures.
| | 07:29 | So what I've got now is classic key light coming
from the left and fill light coming from her right.
| | 07:35 | I don't necessarily like that, because when
they start balancing out, they don't balance
| | 07:40 | out in a great way, which is to say the lights
are coming at each other from opposing directions,
| | 07:44 | you can get cross shadows, so let's take just
what we are doing now and move the fill light
| | 07:48 | right around behind us. So we are going to
go right back to shooting on this axis.
| | 07:51 | We are going to put the umbrella on the side
of Ramona, and then we are going to let the
| | 07:54 | fill light build in from
right behind the camera.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing the position of the key light| 00:00 | All right! So we have switched up now. We have got the
keylight coming in from the classic position,
| | 00:04 | up and off to the side. The fill
light is now coming from right behind me.
| | 00:08 | Remember, this keylight is daylight-colored, and this
fill light is a little bluish because it's in the shade.
| | 00:12 | It's a little bit of something we'll have to
deal with, but I am okay with that for a second.
| | 00:16 | The exposure for her, for the
flash on her face, is, what are we at?
| | 00:20 | F6.3 at ISO 400. I got that.
| | 00:24 | I am using a flash meter today, which is not
a normal thing for me, but I want to be able
| | 00:27 | to quantify, later, the differences in the
light ratios between lights that we are talking
| | 00:32 | about, so it's something that you will
be able to set up and repeat if you like.
| | 00:35 | What I typically do is to build my fill
light first, dial it down to where my fill light
| | 00:40 | looks exactly the way I want it to look, and
then add my keylight, and I do it all by eyeball,
| | 00:44 | because you've got the little,
the digital image on the back.
| | 00:47 | You can't really trust your picture for tonal
densities. You are mostly looking at the relationships
| | 00:52 | between the lights that you are adding.
You want to look at your histogram to make sure
| | 00:55 | you are not falling off the bottom or the top, as
far as your files being pushed too low or too high.
| | 01:01 | Don't trust your eyes for absolute numbers.
Trust a histogram for absolute numbers.
| | 01:05 | Trust your eye for the
relationships between the tones.
| | 01:07 | So this is going to be an all-flash picture
at first. And I like that look, I like that
| | 01:10 | little head tilt thing you just did.
| | 01:13 | When I turn around and don't talk to you,
you found all these like really cool poses,
| | 01:16 | so I am trying to grab those when I can.
| | 01:18 | So here we are, at a 250th 6.3, so I am
completely taking this window out because I am shooting
| | 01:23 | so far, I am working so far above that lighting
exposure that it's really not going to become an issue.
| | 01:31 | Okay, here we are.
| | 01:33 | So this is all flash, and this light is
really wrapping around in a cool way.
| | 01:37 | Now, in fact, I am going to bring that in a
little bit closer, even. You are fine. Don't
| | 01:42 | back way. It's okay, it won't hurt you.
| | 01:45 | I made it a little brighter,
but I think that's good anyway.
| | 01:49 | Look right here, if you would.
| | 01:53 | Even a smallish umbrella like this, if you
bring it in very close, it's going to be seen
| | 01:56 | as a very big light source by someone's face.
| | 01:59 | Even so, I am going to be
getting a nice wrap from this,
| | 02:01 | The shadow side of Ramona's face is almost
completely, black because she has got nothing
| | 02:05 | contributing to that part of the exposure.
| | 02:07 | So when we start to walk up the shutter
speed, going from a 250th of a second to a 200th,
| | 02:11 | 160th, maybe a 125th, a 60th of a second,
| | 02:13 | this window, this fill light that's coming from the
front will become more of an influence on the exposure.
| | 02:18 | So let's walk this up
the same way we did before.
| | 02:19 | I'm going to shoot a picture of the flash,
just so we have it as a reference. Don't move;
| | 02:24 | stay just like that.
| | 02:26 | So here we are, a a 250th,
200th. I've got a blank node.
| | 02:32 | I didn't--160th, 125th, and just now the window
is just starting to creep in, 100th, 80th, and
| | 02:42 | now I am filling in that shadow on a 60th of a
second, and the shadows are really starting to come alive.
| | 02:49 | 50th, 40th, and 30th, if I can hold it still.
There we go, little more. Try that again.
| | 02:59 | Okay so I grabbed 3 at a 30th.
| | 03:00 | Now what you see is that fill comes in but
it doesn't have its own direction because
| | 03:04 | it's coming in on the same
axis that I am shooting on.
| | 03:07 | This is something that took me 20 years to
figure out how useful this is, because you can add
| | 03:11 | in fill without altering the
apparent direction of the light source.
| | 03:14 | If I add my fill in from over here and I
start bringing it up, that fill is going to create
| | 03:18 | a secondary shadow going in an opposite direction from
the keylight, which just looks like unnatural to people.
| | 03:26 | It looks like lit in a
bad 1970s kind of a way too.
| | 03:31 | So my thinking is, if I can build fill that
comes from straight on the camera and reveals
| | 03:35 | content without adding its own directional
light source, then that allows me to be
| | 03:40 | very picky and even very edgy
with the light source that I do add.
| | 03:44 | So if I've got a fill that doesn't really
add a flavor to my picture, I can add all
| | 03:48 | my flavor with the key light
without taking too many chances.
| | 03:52 | I can be edgy with my light without
knowing that they are going to look bad.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Learning to previsualize your lighting| 00:00 | So let's learn how to pre-visualize
this light source just a little bit.
| | 00:03 | I am at a 100th of a second, at 6.3, which is
to say that my light source mainly is coming
| | 00:09 | from this camera left side.
| | 00:11 | It's up high, it's in the classic position,
and I am letting in just enough of this light
| | 00:16 | to work as fill. Let's scratch that.
Let me kill this light as fill.
| | 00:20 | because what we are going to look at right
now is pre-visualizing the way that your light
| | 00:24 | is going to look, both from a
directional sense and from a wrap sense.
| | 00:27 | So not like rap as in you are going
to see me burst into rhyming and stuff.
| | 00:31 | They are just going to wrap as in how the
light wraps around someone's face and where
| | 00:34 | it starts to leave them.
| | 00:35 | So I want to have Ramona, I want to have you stand
exactly--like find a spot and keep it.
| | 00:40 | I want to have you look straight at me and
chin just like straight up, and I am going
| | 00:44 | to set this light, and I am going to shoot a
picture of you, and I want you to look straight
| | 00:47 | at me with your chin,
okay--like face right on me.
| | 00:51 | Let's take a quick picture. Close. All right,
so now what I've got is nothing but umbrella
| | 00:57 | light on her. The background is even very
dark. The hair is very dark, the clothes, it's just like
| | 01:01 | a face floating in there.
| | 01:03 | So we are going to swap that, and I think it might
actually make sense to do this in reverse order.
| | 01:09 | What we have got is, I am shooting her from
this position, but the umbrella is really seeing
| | 01:12 | her from someplace else.
| | 01:13 | I am going to pull this umbrella out.
| | 01:15 | Dave, I want you to line up on the shaft of
the umbrella before I move it, and Ramona, I
| | 01:18 | want you to look right at me.
| | 01:20 | All right, are you ready?
| | 01:22 | Okay so let's pull this out of the frame.
| | 01:24 | Sorry, a little unwieldy here.
| | 01:28 | Now, Romano, if you look right at me, Dave is
seeing you from the position of the umbrella.
| | 01:33 | So that's what the light is going to see.
| | 01:35 | If I ever want to know what my light is
going to light, but what it's going to illuminate
| | 01:38 | from you and I don't have a modeling light,
I can look at it from that position, and that's
| | 01:41 | going to--and we can actually take that in and
interlace that with the actual picture that we just shot.
| | 01:46 | Okay, now I am going to put the
umbrella back in for a moment.
| | 01:50 | Now, you can actually come
down on this, Dave, if you want.
| | 01:54 | I am going to rotate it around. Now what I
want you to do is to look at her from both
| | 01:58 | sides of that umbrella, right from the edge.
| | 02:01 | So this is why this close-end
soft light really is going to wrap.
| | 02:04 | It's very close to her, and it's very big.
| | 02:06 | So Dave now is on the camera, the far
back camera left side of the umbrella.
| | 02:10 | If you look at the far side of
Ramona's face--oh that was nice.
| | 02:14 | So Dave is on the far back
camera left side of the umbrella.
| | 02:17 | If you look at Ramona's face, there's going
to be a place at which you can no longer see
| | 02:20 | her face on the other side. My hand is going
to disappear around. That's where the slide
| | 02:24 | is going to begin to fall off.
| | 02:27 | Now, if he comes around and looks at her from
this other side of the umbrella, you are going
| | 02:30 | to see where the light is going to end
falling off, and you can see, that's a big wrap.
| | 02:36 | So the light almost wraps
completely around her before it stops.
| | 02:39 | And that's a function of how close that
light is to her and how big that light is.
| | 02:42 | If I were to back it up, that wrap wouldn't be
as soft. What you are seeing is the difference
| | 02:45 | between what one side of the light can see
and what the other side of the light I can see.
| | 02:49 | And this is a bare flash. You can just take
your camera in one place and see exactly what
| | 02:52 | it's going to see, but with a big light
source, you need to look at it from both sides,
| | 02:56 | and you are going to know exactly how that
wrap is going to start and how it's going to stop.
| | 03:01 | All right, a little bit, just, okay.
| | 03:04 | I am trying not to lose you here, because I'm
going to throw terms out at you and I just want
| | 03:08 | you to just riff on them a little bit, okay.
| | 03:11 | All right, bring your face back
up to--okay, good, good, good.
| | 03:15 | All right, a little bit mysterious, like you
are hiding something from me, you are little
| | 03:20 | deeper than that.
There you go, good, I like that.
| | 03:23 | Okay, don't move, all right,
a little more serious. Okay, good, good.
| | 03:35 | A little harsher. Not so much with the eyes,
but with your face. There you go, there you go.
| | 03:42 | A little mischievous, just like you are up
to something. I like that; that's good.
| | 03:47 | All right, chin up just a tad.
Not so much, not so much. That's good.
| | 03:56 | A couple of verticals. Sll right,
so let me think for a minute.
| | 04:00 | I am working. You don't
get to see this right now.
| | 04:04 | It's a very classic work for you, and I am
barely separating the black on your shoulders
| | 04:09 | from the black background.
| | 04:10 | Another function of how close we've got the
light to her is that it has to travel almost
| | 04:14 | twice as far to get to the background as it
does to get to her face, so by the time it
| | 04:17 | gets back there, it's lost
almost two stops of the light.
| | 04:20 | It affected the power.
| | 04:22 | So if I were to move this light back
further, I would ironically bring that background up
| | 04:25 | a little brighter than her.
| | 04:27 | Okay, don't move, don't move, don't move.
| | 04:37 | Okay, a little bit of smile. There you go, there you
go. Great, I like that. This is really nice light on you.
| | 04:44 | All right, just take a breather for just a
second, if we could. You know what, no, don't move, don't move.
| | 04:49 | I want to take this light and put it up straight
above my camera. You have got to really--like
| | 04:54 | a nice like slender angular face, and I
want to accentuate that just a little bit.
| | 04:59 | This is not something you do for someone with
a wide face. So I am going to put this light
| | 05:03 | right above me. This is called butterfly lighting
because typically it's going to make a butterfly-
| | 05:08 | shaped shadow under someone's nose.
| | 05:11 | I think we are going to have to open up just
a tad, because the light's a little further
| | 05:15 | away. So I am going to F5. All right,
chin up just a little bit, good!
| | 05:23 | And this is all flash. There is no
ambient component in here at all.
| | 05:27 | All right, turn and look straight towards me.
| | 05:31 | Good. No, no I like your hair
when it's staring to fall that way.
| | 05:35 | Face like that, rotate, there you go, split
the difference, back and chin up just a little bit, that's right.
| | 05:48 | You are too young to
remember Austin Powers, aren't you?
| | 05:50 | You never saw--oh, you saw, okay, yeah.
| | 05:52 | I have got the clothes if it comes down to
that too, so--no, I am kidding, I am kidding.
| | 06:01 | Ramona: Oh, I was like--
David: I am out of here.
| | 06:05 | All right, right here. Okay, more serious,
deep, and deep breath. All right, now a little
| | 06:14 | mysterious, hide something from me a
little bit. Good, I like that, good!
| | 06:18 | Lips together and same thing but lips together.
| | 06:22 | Right, mad at me, a little mad.
| | 06:27 | She went to full-blown like
this, just being mad, okay good.
| | 06:35 | Okay, good, good, good, great.
| | 06:42 | Relax for a moment.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lighting notebook: Single strobe with window light| 00:00 | Okay, we are back at our lighting diagram.
| | 00:04 | We have a camera and a subject, two very good
things to have if you are shooting pictures
| | 00:07 | of people. And we are going to stick her
right in front of that window, even though we are
| | 00:10 | not going to be using that window as a key light.
| | 00:13 | But we still really care about the window
because that's going to be our fill light,
| | 00:16 | so we want to take both the quality and the
quantity of that light into consideration.
| | 00:21 | Because the window is dictating where we're placing
the subject, we can drop a little gray backdrop
| | 00:25 | behind her, and that negates any
positioning problems that the window may have created
| | 00:29 | for us as far as the room environment.
| | 00:30 | So now we are going to bring in a speed
light, just on medium power, like 1/8th of power
| | 00:36 | if I am not mistaken, medium distance, and
combined with a medium ISO and medium aperture,
| | 00:41 | you are going to be pretty
close right from the very beginning.
| | 00:44 | Good thing to remember and then you
make your adjustments as you need to.
| | 00:47 | This is not going to be a cookie-cutter
lighting setup recipe tutorial, because that would
| | 00:53 | only teach you how to do
those exact same things.
| | 00:55 | We want to start to learn to think
in theory and be able to improvise.
| | 01:00 | So here we are, with our key light source
at 45 degrees up and over on the camera left
| | 01:04 | side, and let's see what
that looks like on Ramona.
| | 01:08 | At a 250th of second the window
light really is not coming into play.
| | 01:12 | So everything you are seeing here is flash.
| | 01:13 | You are seeing a little bit of detail on the
other the side of her face, but that is coming
| | 01:17 | from the flash bouncing around in the room,
the wall behind me, whatever and kicking back
| | 01:21 | a little bit of a fill in there, which is
why she is not going to be pitch black.
| | 01:24 | But this is all flash, and it's all
coming from the left, originally.
| | 01:29 | As we come back and start thinking about the
window again, at a 250th of a second, the window
| | 01:32 | does not come into play.
| | 01:34 | Well, let's come over to a series of two
pictures here. The one on the left was shot at a 250th
| | 01:39 | of a second, the one on the right was shot
a 60th or a 40th of a second. And at the point
| | 01:44 | the window really is coming into the play
because we are leaving our shutter open and
| | 01:48 | allowing that light to build up that ambient
light after the flash pop has completely finished.
| | 01:53 | So here we are. We are using a window
clearly as a second light source, and we are taking
| | 01:57 | into account the quality, based on how
we are positioning our subject near it, and
| | 02:01 | the quantity, and we are doing that based
on our shutter speed that we are altering to
| | 02:05 | allow that window to come in
as much or as little as we want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Adding a Second Strobe and Small SoftboxSetting the stage| 00:00 | (MUSIC)
| | 00:08 | All right, so we've moved out into a room a
little bit now, and you can start to see how
| | 00:11 | these cool windows are giving us lots of
lighting options. Those are all ambient light options,
| | 00:16 | and I want to use those to build a picture
using strobe, just a couple of small flashes.
| | 00:22 | This is a straight--let me turn this off
so it doesn't fire off into Dave's face.
| | 00:25 | This is a straight bare strobe, and
it has about 2 square inches of light.
| | 00:29 | This is that same strobe and a small softbox.
This is made by LumiQest, and it's a LumiQuest
| | 00:35 | Softbox III, one of my absolute favorite
little lighting mounts. I use it all the
| | 00:39 | time, and here's what I like about it. It's not a
soft light source, and it's not a hard light source.
| | 00:45 | So if I bring it really, really close to
someone's face, it starts to become a wrapping light
| | 00:49 | source. It's a good for a head shot.
| | 00:50 | I mean literally like this distance away,
lighting, putting it right up close to someone's face,
| | 00:54 | and maybe we'll play with that in just a minute.
| | 00:56 | But if I back it up to 5-6-7 feet,
it becomes a firm light source, sort of a harder light
| | 01:02 | source, but not like
screaming hard like a bare flash.
| | 01:05 | So you've got a little of an edge to it, a
little bit of a give to it, and the further
| | 01:09 | back you move it the harder it gets.
| | 01:11 | So this is a very useful flash, because it
takes a strobe and turns it into something
| | 01:15 | that has roughly the equivalent of
a mono block in a normal reflector.
| | 01:20 | So this can be a really interesting key because
it really defines shape, and it starts to accentuate
| | 01:24 | people's faces rather than just
erasing all the differences that we all have.
| | 01:28 | Ramona has got a very, like a slim angular
face, and this is going to accentuate that
| | 01:32 | some, but I can turn around and I can create
that same on-axis fill that we have with the window.
| | 01:37 | If you look up here, there is an umbrella,
and I'm going to keep that umbrella roughly
| | 01:41 | behind my camera when I'm shooting. So I'm
using two flashes. I'm using this one on the
| | 01:45 | camera just to set the other's off; it's not
contributing to the exposure at all.
| | 01:49 | It's just keeping me cordless and moving around.
| | 01:51 | But I'm building the frame on the ambient
exposure first. The available light is
| | 01:55 | pouring into these back windows.
| | 01:57 | I'm going to get that the way I want it, and they're
going to look great, but Ramona is going to be dark.
| | 02:02 | So the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going
to add in some light on her, both in the from
| | 02:05 | of a key light, which is going to shape her,
and then with the fill light, which is going
| | 02:09 | to fill in any of the shadows that I've
created with this light coming from the back and this
| | 02:13 | hard light coming from the side. I can dial
in exactly the amount of legibility in those
| | 02:19 | shadows that I want.
| | 02:20 | So first, let's grab an ambient exposure, and
our ambient is going to move around here.
| | 02:24 | This is actually kind of important. So rather
than doing what I would normally do with bright
| | 02:28 | outdoor light, where I might be starting at
a 250th of a second, which is my hard high-
| | 02:33 | sync speed--and I do that because that's
going to give me the most wide-open aperture that
| | 02:38 | I can possibly have, which is to say if my
exposure is 56 at a 250th in here, at 60th it
| | 02:44 | would be F11. And I want it be able to have
the flashes hitting an easier aperture, faster
| | 02:49 | recycles. It takes fours times the power for
flash to light something at F11 as it does for
| | 02:54 | the same flash same distance light at 5-6.
| | 02:57 | So when I've got plenty of light, I'm starting
out at a high shutter speed, getting my ambient
| | 03:01 | exposure, getting a reasonable aperture, and then
letting the flash hit that reasonable aperture.
| | 03:06 | You'll hear that term repeatedly,
reasonable aperture, with me.
| | 03:09 | If you're using flashes at roughly these distances,
if you're using them in middle power like 8 power,
| | 03:14 | quarter power, they're going to be hitting
roughly F-5.6, F8, and that's a nice middle-
| | 03:19 | of-the-road aperture where things, you've got
decent depth of field, but the background
| | 03:23 | is not tack sharp. More important, all of
your lenses are sharper at 5.6 than they are
| | 03:27 | at F2.8 for instance.
| | 03:28 | I would like hanging out in that middle of
the range for my flash power, fast recycle
| | 03:33 | for my lenses, shaper for my pictures,
normal kind of natural depth of field.
| | 03:38 | If I need to go to stop down and dial up my
power on the flashes, I'm happy to do that.
| | 03:42 | Likewise, I'm happy to dial them down and go
wide open if I want to blow the background.
| | 03:46 | But I like that middle-of-the-road set of
settings, and you'll be surprised how often
| | 03:50 | that a flash set on medium power at a medium,
distance at a medium aperture is very close
| | 03:55 | to the right exposure, because
that's what they were designed to do.
| | 03:58 | So first, let's build this picture without any
flash and just grab a couple of just straight
| | 04:02 | ambient light shots of Ramona just having,
a seat in a leopard print. I normally wear
| | 04:08 | leopard print when I shoot, but I didn't want
to wear the same thing she was going to wear,
| | 04:10 | so we're just going to
let her wear that this time.
| | 04:12 | Okay, so just look towards me. And I
don't know how high I'm going to be.
| | 04:18 | This is over, but let's just see just, I'm
really just concerned with those lights behind.
| | 04:24 | Now I'm going to get two lights coming
hard in from behind. She's going to be a black
| | 04:27 | silhouette at this point, or very close to
it. But I'm also going to get those lights
| | 04:30 | bouncing off the ground, so that
may make something kind of cool too.
| | 04:33 | Let me lie down on the ground
and see what this looks like.
| | 04:36 | So let's begin to add this fill. So I think
I'm going to--I think this is going to be
| | 04:40 | kind of a square picture with her right in
the middle, a forced, kind of anal-retentive
| | 04:44 | composition, because she's got the wow dress on,
she's draped over the chair, and everything
| | 04:48 | kind of looks a little --
I don't know, almost clubby.
| | 04:51 | I want to go the other way with my composition.
| | 04:55 | Okay, so just looking. All right, don't forget
that. That's nice, I like the way you're--maybe
| | 05:02 | we should get a full arm up on the
chair, let's see. Good, good, good!
| | 05:07 | Now, I'm not really even making pictures of
her yet. I'm just looking her shape inside
| | 05:10 | this graphic that I'm
creating with the windows.
| | 05:14 | Oh! That's nice, so let's add some light.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding the lights| 00:00 | So the first thing I am going to do is add
my fill light. Because I have built this light
| | 00:04 | from the back so far, we have got only
ambient, so I want to kill this for right now.
| | 00:13 | We are going to see how much fill light it's going
to take just to bring up detail everywhere on Ramona.
| | 00:17 | So let's see, bring it down pretty close to
the lens, tilt it up a little bit, quarter
| | 00:27 | power is just to guess.
| | 00:28 | Let's see how close we are.
| | 00:32 | Okay, I have got a little bit of detail
there, but I want to a little more, so I am going
| | 00:37 | to go up to--actually it's a quarter power
-2/3rds of a stop, so now add a quarter power
| | 00:43 | 1/3rd, I have added one stop, and
that's very close to what I want.
| | 00:49 | So I can see everything in Ramona right now.
I don't have any kind of a key light on her
| | 00:53 | yet, but wherever that key light misses I
am going to be able to barely see it, which
| | 00:57 | is kind of the ratio that I want.
| | 00:59 | So now let's go in and add what
would be our key light on her.
| | 01:04 | So I want you to look at me just the same
way you would, and I am going to set this
| | 01:07 | key light based on what I can see.
Let's turn it on, because they always work better.
| | 01:13 | I really don't know how bright this needs
to be yet, but right now I am starting with
| | 01:17 | it on 1/8th power, and I will call it
a quarter power and see what happens.
| | 01:24 | So we are building up
this light right from zero.
| | 01:32 | Not bad, it's pretty close.
I am going to take it down a tad.
| | 01:35 | Remember what I talked about, about not
really needing to look at your flash when you are
| | 01:39 | adjusting it? That comes from
using the same flash a lot.
| | 01:43 | Let's do this, keeping this kind up close
to me if I can. You will see me focusing and
| | 01:52 | recomposing. I am just locking down my focus
after focusing on her face. That's really
| | 01:58 | nice, by the way, Ramona.
| | 02:05 | Nice fast recycles. I am going to
blow this up and look at it for a moment.
| | 02:09 | So what I have got now is hard light, but
where that light falls off, I can see into the
| | 02:13 | shadows, because this is giving me that shadows.
| | 02:15 | So this is giving me the shape and then this is
giving me the detail, and that's a common theme with me.
| | 02:20 | One light for shape and one light for detail.
| | 02:22 | Let's check my Histogram very
quickly. Looks great. All right!
| | 02:27 | Don't move, that's good.
| | 02:32 | I am trying to keep my windows pretty straight.
I can fix them in Photoshop later, but I want to be close.
| | 02:39 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating an edgier look with the key light| 00:00 | All right, so I want to make this light a little
edgier, and I want to make this light a little safer.
| | 00:09 | All right, so drape like you are going to drape.
| | 00:10 | I want to really try and aim
this one to you in a cool way.
| | 00:21 | So this light is kind of hardish key light.
I can make this a gridded light, and we may
| | 00:26 | do that in just a minute. In fact,
I definitely want to do that.
| | 00:28 | I want to come right up to the
edge of where my frame is going to be.
| | 00:34 | All right, are you comfy? So get there.
| | 00:36 | All right, the chair, spring
grabbing you in the back of the chair?
| | 00:40 | Ramona: Yeah.
David: They do that to keep you awake.
| | 00:42 | All right, so look towards me like you are
going to look towards me, and I'm going to
| | 00:45 | walk this light around.
| | 00:47 | So I'm giving you a
little more angle on your face.
| | 00:49 | I like that; don't change that.
| | 00:53 | Now, I'm hitting her face, but this light
is also lighting her legs as they come down.
| | 00:57 | I can take the light off of her legs and
keep it on her face, as long as I don't move her from
| | 01:01 | this position, by aiming it up and/or moving
it over, because the position of the light
| | 01:08 | that's hitting her face hasn't really changed,
| | 01:09 | but how much spill is going
down her legs is changing.
| | 01:12 | But let's go ahead and put that kind of light
on her face there for a second. Don't move Ramona.
| | 01:17 | Oh, I shoot myself on the foot, 25, am I close?
| | 01:27 | All right, that's good.
Let's makes some frames here. This is nice.
| | 01:33 | But bring your chin. Yes, you can keep it
up just a little bit. Good, good, good.
| | 01:38 | Now, if I start to see something I really like,
my flashes are set on I think one quarter
| | 01:43 | and one eight power, so I can blow
that whole battery in four shots.
| | 01:48 | I didn't really have to wait for those at
all, and now they are charging up, but I've
| | 01:52 | got four quick, quick, quick pictures.
| | 01:54 | I don't need to wait two
seconds every time I shoot.
| | 01:57 | Pull the outside leg you've got in, maybe.
You had one over the top earlier and that
| | 02:01 | looked really cool. That's good,
that's good, that's good.
| | 02:04 | Okay, don't move.
Oh, perfect, perfect, perfect. There you go.
| | 02:09 | Now work on your expression, just
bring a little more heat in. Good.
| | 02:16 | Chin up just a tad.
| | 02:20 | Now a little more intense
with your eyes, if you would.
| | 02:25 | All right, deep breath, and just kind of pull
all your body in just a little bit, like, don't
| | 02:29 | be quite so stretched out, just
wrap it around the chair a little more.
| | 02:32 | There you go. That's good; that's really nice.
| | 02:36 | Good, good, I like that.
| | 02:41 | Now, you are almost like embracing it
a little bit. That's really neat.
| | 02:45 | Now the thing to remember is everything in
this room is under control exactly the way
| | 02:50 | we want it. The ambient exposure is
taking care of all that background.
| | 02:53 | The flash right here in the umbrella is
giving me all this shadow detail that I want, and
| | 02:57 | then that little tiny key light is hitting her.
| | 02:59 | I'm going to bring this down just
a bit, get it closer to the camera.
| | 03:06 | This is pretty close to being
a ring light. Oh, that's good, that's good.
| | 03:08 | All right, chin up just a little bit,
so I can see you up under there. Good, good.
| | 03:16 | Is Will making faces back there at you,
because if he is, we can kick him out. I mean his
| | 03:20 | phone already went off once,
right> He has got two strikes.
| | 03:26 | Oh, I totally missed that.
| | 03:33 | All right, deep breath for a second. And I'm
going to bring this light in a little closer
| | 03:38 | I think, and take it off of your legs just a tad.
| | 03:41 | Now before I do, I want to think. I want to
look at these pictures and see if she would
| | 03:44 | benefit from a backlight coming across.
| | 03:49 | I can do it either way. I like what
the room lights are doing in the back.
| | 03:52 | So this light is giving me an edgy key, but
everything that a key doesn't hit, this light
| | 03:58 | is sort of taking care of for me, and I like
that ability to control every single facet
| | 04:02 | of the picture: background, shadow area,
and then dimension and depth of the key.
| | 04:09 | So what happens if I come
in a little closer with this?
| | 04:11 | Now remember, as I come in, right now I am on--I
can't see--a quarter power minus one third.
| | 04:18 | So I'm between a quarter and an eighth power.
| | 04:22 | If I come in nice and tight right here, I'm going
to have to bleed some power away from this flash.
| | 04:28 | I just took a stop and a third away from it,
just out of curiosity, and let's see what that gives me.
| | 04:34 | Now, obviously it's going to come into the
frame, so I can't shoot that wide shot anymore.
| | 04:45 | When you almost looked right into the light
and just put that on you, hang on, don't move.
| | 04:49 | I am right at the edge of this composition.
| | 04:57 | So I like what this hard light is doing, and if
this light wasn't here, it would be completely
| | 05:02 | horrible; in fact, I want to take
that light away for just a second.
| | 05:05 | Okay, let's see. Is that
still going to fire? Yeah.
| | 05:11 | Big, big, big difference.
| | 05:14 | Now, some people might look at this and really
like--in fact, that's a completely different-
| | 05:19 | looking picture. It looks so different from
this fill light coming in, I don't mind that.
| | 05:24 | In fact, I like it more than I thought I
would, and the point is, I can either not have it
| | 05:28 | or have it. I'm completely controlling
these shadows, and I can control these shadows in
| | 05:31 | one-third F-stop increments by dialing this
flash up or down. So I can go anymore from
| | 05:35 | legibility to just pure start.
| | 05:38 | I'm going to back this light up and shoot
a couple of these darker kind of pictures
| | 05:42 | without this light, the way we had it.
| | 05:44 | Okay, so what I've got now is only this flash
is going off, and I'm going to shoot a frame--
| | 05:49 | in fact, I'm going to shoot you, Dave,
so you get a reference on this, okay?
| | 05:52 | It's very nice. No problem.
| | 05:55 | So now all we've got is that hard light just
kicking into Ramona, and that is a completely
| | 05:59 | different look, and I don't mind that at all.
| | 06:02 | I'm sliding over a little bit. I'm including
my stand, and the reason I'm including that
| | 06:07 | is mostly to keep my window straight.
| | 06:08 | I can just crop that out later. I am
using myself as a little view camera.
| | 06:13 | Just back the way you were. I like that. Just a
little bit aloof and bored with me, which I did a lot.
| | 06:17 | All right, right here.
| | 06:21 | Okay, so that's with this flash at a 128th
power. It's not contributing to the frame
| | 06:25 | at all; it's just setting off the other flash.
| | 06:27 | But I can take this flash and crank it up
to, say, one half power, go off the ceiling,
| | 06:32 | off those walls, and those walls
and ceiling becomes my fill light.
| | 06:35 | So without changing anything other than the
power level on this flash, I can completely
| | 06:41 | alter the look of that picture.
| | 06:42 | And what you're going to see
is a little more shadow detail.
| | 06:47 | I can add in a little bounce fill, like this.
| | 06:50 | I'm seeing lots more shadow detail now.
| | 06:53 | So just by doing little things--we've got
two hard lights, but we are really completely
| | 06:56 | controlling the shape of this light in the
room, because we are using the room itself
| | 07:00 | as a light modifier.
| | 07:00 | So I'm going to go back to this
light as a little bit on an-axis fill.
| | 07:05 | So this is a lot like a ring light.
Sorry about that, Dave. So let's look.
| | 07:16 | So I'm going to pop it
right up in there. That's good, that's good, that's good.
| | 07:20 | Don't move. At the watch--I don't want the
pictures to get too good, because I'm a married guy
| | 07:27 | and you can get in trouble if the pictures
looked just like--wait a minute, and I get
| | 07:33 | beaten up, so that's cool.
| | 07:35 | Don't move. A little more of a sterner face--
not stern, but a little mysterious, a little like,
| | 07:43 | I don't really know you at this point.
| | 07:47 | Eyes right here. Let's take a look at this.
| | 07:54 | Really clean glamorous light. Don't move.
I'm going to come in tight and just half frame
| | 07:58 | you with those windows. All right.
| | 08:03 | Okay, take just a second for a break.
Don't you move. I'm going to come in and shoot closer
| | 08:08 | with a long range lens in just a moment.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lighting notebook: Two strobes| 00:03 | Okay, back to the lighting diagrams.
| | 00:05 | We have a camera subject, and now we've got
our windows behind the subject, because the
| | 00:10 | windows themselves and the light coming through
them are going to be subject matter in the picture.
| | 00:15 | So what we're going to do now is, our initial
exposure, we're going to build this in three
| | 00:19 | layers, and we're starting to be a little more
complex with balancing ambient and flash.
| | 00:23 | In fact, we're using two different flashes
and two different layers of flash quantity here.
| | 00:29 | So the first thing I want to do is to take this and
make it is as little of a complication as possible.
| | 00:36 | So my first exposure is going to be based
on the light coming through the windows and
| | 00:40 | how they look reflecting off the floor,
which is a nice dark old shiny wood floor.
| | 00:45 | So I'm going to dial in my ambient exposure
until the windows to look the way that I want
| | 00:49 | and the floor looks the way that I want
too. And this is an ambient-only exposure.
| | 00:55 | This gives me the base for my picture, and
it also is going to give me the confidence
| | 00:58 | to build that picture up in any way that I want.
| | 01:01 | So now that we've got our base working
ambient exposure, I'm going to bring in some fill
| | 01:06 | light, and that's going to be with an umbrella right
near the camera. So it is effectively soft on-axis fill.
| | 01:13 | And as far as power level, that power
level is going to be anything I need it to be to
| | 01:16 | dial up the shadows to where I have
legibility in what will be my shadows when I'm done
| | 01:21 | making this picture.
| | 01:22 | So let's look at this photo with just the
ambient exposure and just the fill flash exposure.
| | 01:29 | Now, what you can start to see is the walls
have picked up some exposure in the back, and
| | 01:33 | that's also coming from my flash.
| | 01:35 | Ramona has legibility just about everywhere.
The chair's a little dark right at the bottom,
| | 01:40 | but I'm not really concerned with that at all.
| | 01:42 | But everywhere that's going to be in shadow,
when we start to add that key light in next,
| | 01:46 | there's legibility there, so that's going
to give me the confidence to do whatever I
| | 01:49 | want to with that key light, because
wherever the key light doesn't hit is going to look
| | 01:53 | like this, which is to say it's going to
be--it's going to be readable. I can see
| | 01:57 | what's in the shadows.
| | 01:58 | Setting that shadow level is a really
important thing, and it's a real confidence booster when
| | 02:03 | you are going to start using more edgy
light maybe on your key, and getting away
| | 02:07 | from just that typical
umbrella at 45 degrees up and over.
| | 02:11 | So here we are. We've got our umbrella
popping in is fill, exposure is built on the key,
| | 02:17 | everything is ready to go,
| | 02:18 | and now we are going to add in a key light.
And my key light is another SP800 inside of
| | 02:24 | a LumiQuest SoftBox III. At this distance,
which is six, eight feet away, it's hardish;
| | 02:32 | it's not hard, it's not soft, it's got a
little bit of an edge to it, but it also isn't just
| | 02:37 | this like brutal hard.
| | 02:37 | But frankly, it could be brutal hard,
because I've already taken care of my shadows.
| | 02:41 | So when we bring in that key light, you can
see that there's legibility everywhere, so I can
| | 02:47 | sculpt her face with a little bit of the
glamorous light. I don't have to play it safe with her
| | 02:50 | anymore, and that umbrella that's right by me is
filling in everything that that key light misses.
| | 02:57 | So let's take umbrella, that fill umbrella,
away for a minute. And this is just a grab
| | 03:01 | frame; this isn't a final frame that we're
bringing up here. This is what just the key
| | 03:05 | light and the correct ambient exposure--not
correct, maybe the wrong word--the ambient
| | 03:09 | exposure that I chose for this picture.
| | 03:11 | This is what it looks like without the fill.
| | 03:15 | Now, I'm going to go back to this fill for a
second, and you can see that's a huge difference.
| | 03:18 | We still keep the quality of the light,
that little edge quality, and that little sharp
| | 03:22 | shadow as it walks around her cheek bone,
but the on-axis fill which we built first
| | 03:28 | and which we were confident of, because we
saw it working by itself, erases all those
| | 03:32 | problems that's going to be left by the hard light
as it's coming in from upper camera right.
| | 03:37 | So we've got two flashes and an ambient.
| | 03:39 | We've really have three light sources going on
in this picture, and the important thing, the
| | 03:42 | key here is to build them up one at a time.
| | 03:45 | You'll eventually get to where you can see
them one at a time, but it gives you a lot
| | 03:49 | of confidence to start with that ambient
exposure, put it where you want, see if you need to
| | 03:52 | fix any dark areas with your fill, and then
come in and do what you want to do with your key.
| | 03:57 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Attitude with Overhead Umbrella and Ring FlashLayers and a cone of light| 00:00 | Okay, we kind of called a little bit of an
audible. This is not something I planned to
| | 00:04 | do, but at LubLight they had these
really cool like distressed wallpaper covered, I
| | 00:10 | want to say doors, or are they?
| | 00:12 | Or just like cloud panels.
| | 00:14 | Really neat idea, and you can throw
them around on lots a different ways.
| | 00:17 | So Dave, if you can follow me back
here. Just, you can throw a long lens.
| | 00:22 | We'd built them up in a couple of layers.
| | 00:28 | Just standing two of them against the wall,
letting that light stand tuck back in there
| | 00:32 | and leaning the third one right in front.
| | 00:36 | All the sand bags are still in the car, so if
it starts to slide down, everyone just like run.
| | 00:43 | So what that does is give us a backdrop
that is not two-dimensional anymore. It has this
| | 00:48 | layered neat look of a backdrop in front of a
backdrop, and the front one covers up the scene behind.
| | 00:54 | So Eric is sort of working as a voice-activated
boom, and he's going to hang an umbrella, which
| | 00:59 | has got a flash which was, what was it? 8th power, quarter power,
right around there somewhere. It's a quarter?
| | 01:03 | So a modest amount of power coming down, hang
it right over her. This is really different
| | 01:09 | direction than we came in with before, like
the typical 45 up and 45 over. He's literally
| | 01:14 | dropping this thing down right in front of
her and up top, and that's going to give this
| | 01:18 | cone of light that spreads out down her face.
It's not going to look like its straight over
| | 01:22 | her head, because this umbrella goes out
like 4, 5, 6 feet in front of her, so her chin
| | 01:27 | can see that far edge of the umbrella.
| | 01:28 | So it's going to sculpt
her face as it goes down.
| | 01:31 | The other thing I'm hoping to get with it
is a little a little more light here than
| | 01:35 | we're getting back here and a little bit
of a shadow wrap on the sides. So I'm hoping
| | 01:40 | that'll make a neat sort
of a three-dimensional stack.
| | 01:42 | Now she's really going to have to bring
some attitude to this one to pull it off.
| | 01:45 | So we'll get our light fixed, and then
we'll bring her in, and then after we do that I
| | 01:49 | want to take a ring flash and start pushing some
fill in from that ring flash and working the ratios.
| | 01:55 | This, as it happens, is completely flash.
This is all this is all light coming from the front.
| | 02:02 | We've got windows behind her, which if I
start to open up my shutter speed, I may start to
| | 02:06 | put a little bit of rim right around her
shoulder, so that's something we can play with too.
| | 02:09 | But right now let's just see what we've got.
| | 02:12 | So Eric, you want to really have that light
almost pointing straight down, fly it out
| | 02:16 | in front of her, and tilt it back to her just a
little bit. And I'm just going to look for a second,
| | 02:20 | so you don't have to be to--okay, so wrap
it away from her a little bit, good.
| | 02:31 | That's great. I want to move the over tiniest bit--
split the difference like half of that, go back.
| | 02:38 | There you go, now take a deep breath
and just fall into it a little bit.
| | 02:43 | Good, chin up just a little
bit not so much. There you go.
| | 02:51 | The smile is one thing that's not going to work here.
This has to be like 100% attitude, so bring it.
| | 02:56 | I'm going to back up just a little bit and
come in. Let's see if I can see all the way down.
| | 03:05 | So turn your body where your feet aren't
facing right towards me, so you have to rotate around
| | 03:11 | a little bit to see me. You can turn it either
direction, because our light is right over your face.
| | 03:15 | So whatever direction you're comfortable
turning back and looking at me, I want you to rotate
| | 03:19 | you're body in that opposite direction, so you
come back and move over this way just a little bit.
| | 03:23 | Could those heels be any
taller, right now. No, I'm sorry.
| | 03:28 | I wear heels a lot too.
| | 03:30 | I'm not really this tall.
Okay, how is that looking? Very nice.
| | 03:33 | All right chin up just a
little bit. There you go.
| | 03:36 | Now just jump the gun.
| | 03:38 | Now I've got this on quarter power, so if I
need to at anytime, I can go and use up all
| | 03:44 | of my, I used up my entire flash power by
doing that, but I didn't have to wait between
| | 03:47 | frames, and that's the beauty of
working on a lower than full power.
| | 03:55 | So here we go all right. So every now
and then just take a break and fall back into
| | 03:58 | it, and we'll work for a series of 4-5 different poses.
You don't have to move every time I push the button, okay?
| | 04:04 | So just fall into things that are comfortable
for you, and I'm going to try to keep up with
| | 04:07 | you. But rather then just click
move, click move, click move,
| | 04:10 | it starts to be like, who's dictating the
pace, and do I shoot now or do you need to
| | 04:14 | move now, just like
relax and just feel a little more.
| | 04:17 | I'm going to work and get one--I really want
to a have a lot of attitude in this picture.
| | 04:22 | We're in a studio now, but this could have
been taken in a nightclub or any place that
| | 04:27 | just had a cool backdrop, there's really no
sense of place to this at all, other than the
| | 04:32 | backdrop that we've got behind you.
| | 04:33 | So let me look and see what looks good on
your face, and then we'll go from there.
| | 04:37 | But this looks--this just has a really cool lool.
Okay, don't move. Bend forward just a little bit like that.
| | 04:45 | All right, work your face
a little bit. There you go.
| | 04:49 | Okay, fly it out in front of her a little
more, Eric. When she looks down bring it out
| | 04:55 | a little bit in front of her so that
light can discover her face a little more.
| | 04:58 | If she's looking up, you can bring
in a little tighter towards her, okay?
| | 05:04 | I want to make sure I've got my variables down.
| | 05:07 | All right, here we go.
| | 05:11 | Deep breath and yeah. You are basically
becoming someone else here for a few minutes. That's
| | 05:14 | what's going on. Good, good.
| | 05:17 | All right, okay, relax.
| | 05:21 | I just got not bifocals, but trifocal
progressives because I'm old now officially, and I'm still
| | 05:28 | getting used to photographing through that. Oh!
| | 05:30 | I like what you just did there when you
pulled your hand on your shoulder like that.
| | 05:33 | Yeah, yeah, yeah go through that
motion again. There you go, there you go.
| | 05:40 | All right, now you should think superior to me
when you are looking at me now. Just be condescending.
| | 05:46 | There you go, that's good. Would not give
me the time of day. This is a real stretch
| | 05:53 | for you I know. I'm kidding. There we go.
| | 06:00 | Okay, move over this way just a little bit.
You want to stay right on axis with me in
| | 06:03 | that front panel that's right behind you.
| | 06:05 | So if you feel yourself starting
to drift a little bit towards Eric--
| | 06:08 | I think we've all been
there--just good, good, good.
| | 06:14 | All right turn away from me a little more, so
you have to turn back towards me when you're
| | 06:18 | --good, good, good. Don't move, don't move.
That's great. Don't move, don't move, don't move.
| | 06:29 | Okay, from that body position, just work around that a
little bit, okay? That expression is really good too.
| | 06:39 | Really now superior, just
completely superior to me, that little look.
| | 06:43 | If you fall, I'm totally superior to you
because I'm wearing tennis shoes right now, and I'm
| | 06:46 | not going to fall. Great, great.
| | 06:51 | All right, more serious. That's nice
right there. I want you to see this.
| | 06:57 | So this light is really
pulling off that attitude real quick.
| | 07:05 | See how these doors just kind of
wrap around behind you like that.
| | 07:12 | So given what I'm shooting, see yourself in that in
a different way and just push it a little bit okay.
| | 07:23 | All right, 2 7 59, okay deep breath and
just straight, and we'll just progressively
| | 07:28 | push it a little further as you're going.
| | 07:29 | Eric, you're doing perfect on the light.
| | 07:33 | You know, let me try one thing. Let me take
the--let me bring up the ambient exposure
| | 07:38 | and see if that shoulder rim
light's worth having. Nope.
| | 07:43 | The whole thing came up before her shoulder
started coming up, so I want to stick straight
| | 07:46 | with this one flash and then we'll
push in a little fill in a minute.
| | 07:51 | All right, deep breath and push it a little bit.
| | 07:56 | Now, really condescending. Just be its
condescending to me as you can be, almost, like completely
| | 08:01 | inaccessible to anyone, except
Will. Sorry, anyone? Anyone?
| | 08:10 | Hello, I'm right here in the room.
| | 08:13 | All right, here we go. All right push it a little
further. There you go. I like the hair too. Good.
| | 08:24 | All right, relax for just a second. That next
to the last one was really nice. You wouldn't
| | 08:30 | even give me eye contact there, and that's
really--that's just stretching yourself further
| | 08:34 | and further away from the
camera, and it's very cool.
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| Using a ring flash for fill| 00:00 | So let's take this and add another layer to
it, and what I am going to do is I am going
| | 00:03 | to set up a ring flash that is just going
to dialed in to fill in those dark shadows that.
| | 00:08 | We're making just exactly as much as we want.
We're going to have to play with it and I dial it in.
| | 00:11 | So I am going to take just a moment and set up a
stand with another SP800 and a ring flash on it.
| | 00:17 | So what we've done now, we've added some fill,
and this does a couple of things. It helps
| | 00:22 | us control the contrast range in the shadows,
number one. It takes a little pressure off
| | 00:25 | of the location of the key light, because
if we just have the key light, the key light
| | 00:29 | has got to do everything.
| | 00:30 | It's got to be high enough over her to give
the drama but far enough out from her to catch
| | 00:34 | her chin and a little under her
chin and have that wrap coming down.
| | 00:38 | We can do whatever we want with the key light
and then fill the shadows with this ring light.
| | 00:43 | This might be the first time we are seeing
this here, so this is an Orbis ringflash adaptor.
| | 00:47 | It is one of my favorite little light modifiers.
| | 00:50 | This is one of the two things that I
always have with me when I am shooting people.
| | 00:53 | It takes a flash, little hot shoe flash,
and turns it into a ring light where the light
| | 00:58 | comes from all around the ring, like that.
| | 01:00 | So it's a very useful approximation of what
we were doing with the window from the back,
| | 01:05 | has its own very specific look. We are going to use
this as a key in a few minutes, but right now
| | 01:09 | I just want to play with it as a fill
because that's the way I normally use it.
| | 01:12 | So we're creating dramatic light from the top.
The shadows are just going to go to hell, because
| | 01:16 | the light is going to be up really high, and
then we're going to a fill in those shadows
| | 01:21 | as much or as little as we want with this ring.
| | 01:23 | This flash, again, is just firing off the
wall on a very low power just to set off the
| | 01:28 | other flashes; it's not
contributing to the exposure at all.
| | 01:31 | Our ambient exposure just is giving a little
bit of wrap. If you can swing around and see
| | 01:35 | how the windows are coming from around Ramona,
you can see that we almost have two soft boxes
| | 01:41 | in the back there, just wrapping around her.
We're making use of those like rim lights.
| | 01:44 | And you can see on her shoulders that
light that it's creating. It's wrapping around her
| | 01:48 | shoulders. We're giving her just a
little bit of that in this frame.
| | 01:51 | Okay, so let's see if this is going to work.
| | 01:55 | Okay, just chill for a
second. Let me catch your light.
| | 02:00 | Much more nuanced than the
others. It's a lot less contrasty.
| | 02:05 | I want you to put that right over her head,
and let's drop a half stop, or two-thirds
| | 02:09 | of a stop out of that, because we're
going to come right down over her head.
| | 02:13 | So hit it once to activate it and then take
two-thirds of a stop out of it. Okay, good.
| | 02:17 | There we go. Oh, I like that playing-with-the-
hair thing, it's that "you bore me." That's perfect.
| | 02:23 | Perfect, there we go.
| | 02:27 | A little bit more on front of her, Eric.
Look off to the side like that. You just looked
| | 02:31 | off that way, the other way. There you go.
| | 02:37 | Don't move. Good, good.
| | 02:40 | I am going to back up and include those windows
so we can see the effect that they are giving,
| | 02:47 | just very quickly. Good, I
liked the face at that time.
| | 02:51 | Total incongruity when I include the
windows in that picture, because they really shouldn't
| | 02:54 | --oh I like the smile, give me
that again. There you go, perfect!
| | 02:59 | Chin up just a little bit, and don't even
look at me, just don't give the time of day,
| | 03:05 | as far as eye contact, good.
| | 03:08 | All right, now right here, there you go.
| | 03:13 | Okay, I am going to dial this fill up just a
little bit, 1, test it, perfect. Okay, same thing.
| | 03:24 | Now, you can look away from that light,
because I can still see you when you look down and
| | 03:27 | such. Now, eyes right here,
good; good, there we go.
| | 03:34 | Okay, one moment. I am going to check my
focus. I don't trust my eyes sometimes.
| | 03:41 | Now, looking at this, I'm trying to see the
difference between having the fill and not
| | 03:44 | having the fill, and what I like is a tiny
bit of fill in her, like you almost can't
| | 03:49 | see it until you take it away.
| | 03:52 | So let's actually do that. Let's take, I am
going to mark you, Dave, so you see me for later.
| | 03:58 | Okay, so let's fly that
light out just like you were.
| | 04:01 | I am going to shoot one with the fill.
I want you to do everything exactly the same, so
| | 04:05 | bring it down just a little bit. That's good.
And look right at me, Ramona. I don't want
| | 04:10 | you to change after I take this picture,
okay, because I am going to take another one.
| | 04:14 | Okay, so here's minimal fill, and
I am going to take the fill away.
| | 04:21 | Okay, I see the difference, definitely.
| | 04:25 | It's a big difference. You can't see this
fill until you take the fill away, so it's
| | 04:30 | not even really doing anything, but when you
take it away, you see what it really was doing.
| | 04:35 | So let's turn this back on and shoot a few more.
| | 04:38 | Good, I like that!
| | 04:40 |
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| Lighting notebook: Overhead umbrella with ring fill| 00:00 | All right, let's go to the
diagram for this shot we just did.
| | 00:04 | The important thing here--a couple of things.
Grabbing those backdrops and instead of using
| | 00:09 | them two dimensionally stacking them in
front of each other, one in front of two, gives
| | 00:13 | a nice three-dimensional look to that
backdrop and gives kind of another layer of texture to be
| | 00:18 | going on back there.
| | 00:19 | And the second thing I thought about it in
this picture was bringing that umbrella in and
| | 00:23 | hanging it right over the top of Ramona,
as opposed to using it in the way we've been
| | 00:28 | using an umbrella a few minutes
ago, 45 degrees up, 45 degrees over.
| | 00:32 | I think it makes a more interesting light.
| | 00:34 | It's this down wash of
light that you can work against.
| | 00:37 | And in particular, we've got Eric Kous,
my friend holding this lightstand out as
| | 00:41 | if it were a boom, but it's a boom that is
voice-activated and that I can tell him to
| | 00:46 | do whatever I want it to be done.
| | 00:49 | And he can pull that out further, he can
rotate it around, he can make less of the light fall
| | 00:52 | on her, more of the light fall on her, he
can bring it in closer if the light is not
| | 00:56 | bright enough--any number of different things.
| | 00:58 | And in fact, if she's moving around, he can
move that light around with her and keep that
| | 01:02 | same style of light on her if she
were to move to her left or right.
| | 01:06 | In the movies this is called hollywooding
the light, when you actually follow someone
| | 01:10 | around with the light.
| | 01:10 | It's a really useful technique if you are
working with another photographer or an assistant
| | 01:15 | on the scene. It makes your lighting a lot
more versatile, and I highly recommend it.
| | 01:19 | So we've got this light falling right over
the top of Ramona, and it's splashing straight
| | 01:24 | down, and she is sort of
working in the edge of that beam.
| | 01:28 | So the exposure here is based almost
completely on flash. There's a little bit of ambient
| | 01:34 | light coming in, and you can see that--
let's bring up the picture actually.
| | 01:38 | You can see that splashing on the tops of
her shoulders and around the back, especially
| | 01:42 | for camera right arm.
| | 01:44 | Now we can modulate that exposure again the
same way we could over at the other window,
| | 01:48 | by opening up the shutter speed and just
letting more of that light come in. And in this instance
| | 01:54 | we got pretty high shutter speed, and
there's not a lot of that light coming in.
| | 01:57 | But those two lights are
behind her in a kind of a cool way.
| | 02:00 | They are sort of like two rim lights soft boxes
back there flying, and we could open that shutter
| | 02:05 | speed up to, say, a 60th or 40th and really
get a lot more out of them if we wanted to.
| | 02:10 | Another thing we played with at the end
was bringing in a ring flash for fill.
| | 02:14 | And so let's bring up two examples of that.
Here are two pictures straight out of the
| | 02:18 | camera, no toning done to them really; this is
just pretty much as they came out of the black box.
| | 02:25 | On the left we're using a ring light, probably
two stops down ,as fill, and you can see legibility
| | 02:31 | in the shadows under her chin, and an overall
reduced contrast in the picture. And you really
| | 02:37 | don't notice it that much until you go to the
picture on the right and that's where we take it away.
| | 02:41 | This is the way I'm most likely to use a
ring flash, not so much as a key light, but
| | 02:46 | as fill light to go in and alter the contrast
range of whatever lighting that I've designed
| | 02:51 | for key. It's a really, really
useful light source in that way.
| | 02:54 | And the ring flash has its own signature,
and we'll do that again in a minute and use a
| | 02:59 | ring flash as a key.
| | 03:01 | But for right now, this ring
is doing well as a fill light.
| | 03:04 | In the end--and going back to the other
straight picture for a second--I think I kind of like
| | 03:09 | the more contrasty picture. I like it
without the ring light in the end, and especially I
| | 03:13 | like the fact that there's more contrast
on the backdrop. That ring light, in addition
| | 03:18 | to erasing the shadows under Ramona's chin,
is also going to erase the shadows against
| | 03:22 | those two edges of that front backdrop that's being
created by that light we're flying over the top her.
| | 03:27 |
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|
|
5. Classic Ring Light GlamourThe ring as key light| 00:00 | All right, so what we have done is we've
switched over just a little bit while Ramona was still
| | 00:04 | in sort of a glam mode, and we're still using
this, but now we're using it as a key light
| | 00:09 | and as the only light.
| | 00:11 | So this is classic ring light.
| | 00:14 | It's just a very classic, defined, you'd know
it from a thousand yards away look and this
| | 00:18 | is what this Orbis is designed to do.
| | 00:21 | This is some way I rarely use it, but given
that we had a little context and a little bright
| | 00:24 | red background, we tried to match her lips up
to the background a bit, it's worth taking
| | 00:28 | a couple of minutes and making that
ring light glam kind of a picture.
| | 00:32 | So, we're going to do that real quick, and
we're going to add a couple of lights and
| | 00:35 | take about using a ring light in context with a
couple of the other light to have that look,
| | 00:38 | but also have some three-dimensionality and
shape to whatever it is that you're shooting.
| | 00:43 | I'm not sure that my power level is where
I want it to be, but I am just going to do a
| | 00:46 | quick test and then go back it, it it's
too hot or cold. That's pretty close actually.
| | 00:55 | So I am going to come in a little tighter.
It's a little bright, so I am just going to
| | 01:00 | dial down my aperture rather than
changing the flash. Okay, here we go.
| | 01:09 | I like the little twist of an
eyebrow you gave there. That's good.
| | 01:13 | Yeah, are starting to get into the like putting
yourself in other positions more, I think now. This very neat.
| | 01:19 | So, I had too much ambient light coming out. I was at a
50th of a second, and I had to get rid of some that.
| | 01:25 | So, I went to at 200, just to knock it
down some. Let's see where we're at now.
| | 01:30 | Now you don't have to look fantastic yet.
| | 01:32 | I am just looking for a moment.
| | 01:34 | So, a 200th of second at
5, 6 looks pretty close.
| | 01:39 | Yes, all right, so let's do a few of these.
| | 01:44 | All right, deep breath and just chill. I like
the way you had your arm, bring your arm back
| | 01:48 | around. Yeah, you have nice S doing.
| | 01:55 | I like where your eyes tightened up just a
little bit there. I want to show you this
| | 02:00 | in just a minute so you can see how these look.
| | 02:02 | But very clubby. No, you're fine. Lips
together a little bit and pull in your arm over here.
| | 02:11 | You're starting to spread out a lot.
| | 02:13 | Maybe just fall into something you like,
just like undo it and put it back together.
| | 02:17 | Find some--oh I like that. That's good.
| | 02:24 | Okay, and just move around.
| | 02:25 | I am going to shoot as you move, okay?
| | 02:27 | You can move your arms anything. Just try
not to be too spread, yeah too lateral. Exactly.
| | 02:34 | You can see my hand get tired
a lot here. Okay, here we go.
| | 02:38 | In fact, let me just drop your hands for a
second, give me just a straight, turn your
| | 02:43 | body that way towards Dave and face around
towards me, and bring your face right at me, good.
| | 02:50 | Oh, why is it not firing? There we go.
| | 02:57 | Give me one moment. I am going to look this
and see if my exposure is where I want it to be.
| | 03:03 | This is what you are
looking like right here, by the way.
| | 03:08 | It really pops off the back.
| | 03:11 | Now I'm trying to hit the
background and your lips as closely as I can.
| | 03:15 | If I have to, I can select them in post
afterwards and adjust one of them, if I want to try to
| | 03:19 | make them exact. That could be
kind of a neat trick, but we'll see.
| | 03:23 | I know we're close enough. Oh, my knees.
I am an old man.
| | 03:28 | Okay good, don't move.
| | 03:33 | As I come closer, I have to remember, maybe I
need to bleed a little power from my flash,
| | 03:37 | because I'm getting in very close. It gets
too strong. Good, good. Turn your away from
| | 03:44 | me a little bit and turn your face, there
you go, just like you just did, right here.
| | 03:50 | Turn around towards me a
little bit with your face.
| | 03:52 | Good, all right. I am the one that's going
to need to take a breath every now and then,
| | 03:57 | because I am like holding this
up in a weird, no leverage way.
| | 04:04 | As I'm moving closer to Ramona, the background
gets darker, and for me that's a problem right
| | 04:09 | now, because I'm trying to
match the background to her lips.
| | 04:12 | So, I need to remember to stay back, maybe
use a little bit of a longer lens and allow
| | 04:16 | this flash to reach past her back to the
background. It's get to be a ratio thing.
| | 04:20 | So, that's a thing--that's a reason I keep
looking at my pictures and wondering why my
| | 04:24 | background kept changing.
| | 04:25 | Maybe I should study up on this
stuff a little more. Let me think.
| | 04:32 | So, if I go back a little bit,
I'll need to pick up a longer lens.
| | 04:35 | Okay, I am backing up so I am going to
need to increase the power on this flash.
| | 04:39 | Just going to do a quick little test, and that's
very close. In fact, let's shoot a couple like this.
| | 04:52 | Okay, don't move.
| | 04:54 | I kind of like the leaving the--I'm going
past the backdrop and leaving the tape and
| | 04:58 | everything in there. It just gives a little bit of a
behind-the-scenes look to the picture. Good, good.
| | 05:08 | There you go, not so spread out.
| | 05:09 | So pull in a little bit, especially this
hand. There we go. Perfect, perfect, don't move.
| | 05:16 | Okay, so relax just a moment. The lips are
definitely matching, and you can see, even from
| | 05:27 | a distance, they're just picking from
that background really well. That's awesome.
| | 05:32 | Okay, so let's work on this distance just
a little bit, and then we're going to mix
| | 05:37 | it up and add in some accent lights, okay?
| | 05:41 | Same thing you were doing. Just don't get too
spread out, because I don't think I want to
| | 05:46 | include the white wall a lot.
| | 05:48 | It was a little gimmicky, but okay, all right.
| | 05:52 | Let me pull you back up on the
chair just like you were earlier. There you go.
| | 05:59 | Yeah, just find a way that works for you.
| | 06:02 | If have to move it to either side, anything
is okay, but just find a way where you feel
| | 06:05 | comfortable on the chair and you can get to me.
| | 06:08 | Maybe, I think you need to rotate it
around to where the back of the chair is
| | 06:12 | Let's see, there you go.
| | 06:17 | Okay, so you get comfortable and then I am
going to move my light to fit you. Perfect, perfect.
| | 06:25 | That last drape was really nice, where you
draped your arm right over the chair like that, yes.
| | 06:35 | Nice look. Don't move, don't move.
| | 06:41 | Actually, move. Slide your chair about 6 inches
that way. You're creeping off that--okay perfect.
| | 06:47 | Now, I don't have to go across around to see you. Good.
| | 06:53 | If I come in closer, which I'm about to do
to compose better, I have to worry that my
| | 06:59 | background is going to get a little darker.
| | 07:01 | Even though the light's actually closer,
the distance between the light to Ramona and
| | 07:06 | the light to the
background becomes a bigger ratio.
| | 07:08 | For instance, if I were 10 feet away from Ramona,
I'd be 10 feet to her and 13 feet to the background.
| | 07:13 | If I were half a foot, it would be 6 inches
to her and 3 1/2 feet to the background, big
| | 07:18 | difference in those two distances, and that's
what gives you that relative brightness level
| | 07:22 | between her and the backdrop.
| | 07:24 | Okay, good, don't move. Cool.
| | 07:31 | All right, relax for second. I'm going to start
to tweak this a little bit with a couple of
| | 07:35 | lights, so you can just chill and you
don't have to worry about anything for a moment.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The ring as fill, with a new key light| 00:00 | The question is where I want these to come from.
| | 00:06 | Any suggestions, anything, anyone?
| | 00:10 | So, I'm going to play with you in
profile just a little bit, okay?
| | 00:16 | So instead of looking at me, you're sort
of looking off just a tad, and I want to come
| | 00:20 | in and pop a little bit of
light on to you just like this.
| | 00:25 | I am rotating this around so my other flash
can see this slave better. Here's my window,
| | 00:31 | so I want to see. Oh, don't move, don't
move, just like you were doing, just like that.
| | 00:36 | I don't know how this is going to look like
from the other side, but it might look cool.
| | 00:44 | Okay, I need less out of this.
| | 00:54 | Notice I'm not metering. I'm just--this
needs a little less salt, this needs a little
| | 00:57 | more salt. It's like the way you cook, better.
| | 01:04 | Yes, yes, yes, where I can see your face
better, but look more toward Dave if you would.
| | 01:18 | So now that the ring has become a fill and
that flash behind her--don't--you had it. You looked
| | 01:25 | a little more towards Eric over there.
| | 01:28 | Oh, what are you doing, Eric? Watch out
for him, he is a firefighter.
| | 01:34 | Okay, deep breath and just, there you go.
| | 01:37 | Just off into space little bit. And oh,
to Eric, they are similar. All right, here
| | 01:46 | you go. Don't move.
| | 01:50 | So now the ring is becoming a fill light, and
we can dial that down even more, and the key
| | 01:56 | is on your face. So okay, don't move.
What you're just doing, don't move. I'm going to
| | 02:00 | move this, slide around to suit you, yeah.
And this starts to look really--a little edgy, but
| | 02:18 | don't change anything. I like your hands,
I like everything about this. Okay, take a
| | 02:23 | deep breath, bring your lips together, and
work a little bit of a look into that. Just,
| | 02:28 | yeah, just a little--a little high end really.
Just out of my league, right here just
| | 02:36 | like--Oh, seriously, you can't be
serious right here. Good, more disdainful.
| | 02:47 | Now, she's losing it. Eric is
making faces, isn't he? Yeah.
| | 02:51 | I can't be disdainful,
I'm a nice person. No, you're not.
| | 02:56 | Yes, you are, I am kidding.
| | 03:01 | It's the kind of thing I would do to a CEO
if he is giving me too much serious look, or
| | 03:04 | she was giving me smile number 723 for the
fifth time. All right, straight, lips together.
| | 03:11 | Good, good. Now just move
around a little bit.
| | 03:19 | Okay, relax. Okay, I want to push this light up a little
higher and dial it down a little bit. You're
| | 03:30 | not shiny, I am. That's fine.
| | 03:31 | I am the first one to get shiny.
| | 03:37 | So I wanted to put it for higher position,
and I also want to take some power off of
| | 03:42 | it but moving it up further away from her,
do both of these things at one time. So by
| | 03:46 | moving it up I also made it a little dimmer,
so I didn't have to do the little power switch.
| | 03:51 | Okay, so let's see which
way you're going to look.
| | 03:53 | I want to have--yeah, face just like that,
but looking right at me. Perfect, so don't move.
| | 03:58 | I am going to walk around visualize her face
from--okay, maybe we take a little bit off
| | 04:05 | of that. And I'm rotating this light around
a little bit too, because I don't want so
| | 04:11 | much light on her shoulder back there.
| | 04:21 | That's nice, more ring. That's better.
| | 04:25 | Okay, don't move. Eyes right here. All right,
relax. How do we look. You look good. I look like me.
| | 04:40 | All right, take a deep breath for a
second and just relax and get comfortable.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The ring as key with light on the background| 00:00 | I want to find a way to just really emphasize the
color in your lips coming back. So, here's my problem.
| | 00:08 | I can light her with this ring flash, and I
can have the light falling off as it gets
| | 00:13 | back to her, but she's got the shadow. And I
want to make that shadow go away by putting
| | 00:18 | a light behind her, so I'm going to
pull you out just a little bit if I could.
| | 00:25 | There we go, thank you. Drop this in.
All right, have a seat. I'm going to get this down.
| | 00:42 | So instead of using this light to accent her,
I'm now using it to erase the shadow that
| | 00:48 | the ring is making.
| | 00:51 | I don't know if it's bright enough. I don't
know anything yet. Let's just try it. Very
| | 01:00 | different-looking. Okay, do not move, perfect!
| | 01:08 | Okay, chin up just a little bit. Good, good. I like
the way you pulled your shoulder in like that too.
| | 01:15 | Good. Okay, the light's a little too hot in the
back, and we'll take that down just a tad.
| | 01:23 | Is that right? Better. Okay, don't move.
| | 01:32 | Okay, not so much around with your shoulder;
you had it back just there. There you go. Good.
| | 01:37 | Now sit up straight and just pull your shoulder
back a little bit. Let me think. You had something
| | 01:43 | earlier where you had your shoulder back
just a little bit, but yeah, yeah, yeah, up and
| | 01:47 | back, like your arm was up a little higher.
There you go, there you go, that's it.
| | 01:51 | Okay, now rotate your head back just a bit.
There you go. Perfect, perfect, perfect.
| | 01:57 | Now look away like you just did. That's good.
All right, right here. Don't move. You're
| | 02:02 | perfect, my flash is visible.
| | 02:04 | How can I make that smaller? I can't.
| | 02:10 | Yes I can. There, there,
there. Hopefully that will do it.
| | 02:26 | We're getting into height differences and
issues and such. Now I think we got it,
| | 02:33 | you held that so perfectly.
Now did I blow it or not? There we go.
| | 02:39 | All right, chin up just a little bit.
| | 02:45 | Now I can back up and I don't have to
worry about that background getting too dark.
| | 02:52 | Okay, chin right at me, rotate your head
straight on, that's straight. Okay good, good, good.
| | 02:58 | Chin up just a little bit. Good, good!
| | 03:03 | I like the lips just like that; it's good.
| | 03:06 | So these lips come back with--that highlight that
wraps right around the lips, so it's very cool.
| | 03:12 | I'm going to go with a longer
lens for just a moment--hang on.
| | 03:16 | I'm giving myself as I backup just instinctively,
I'm giving myself a little more power, because
| | 03:20 | I know this flash is getting weaker as I
back up. Don't move. There we go. Good, good.
| | 03:28 | I like that little bit, no, the little
intensity in the eye. That was really neat.
| | 03:31 | Tighten them up just a little bit.
| | 03:33 | I mean tighten up your eyes, chin was up a
little bit, there you go. Chin up just a tad.
| | 03:42 | All right, relax. Look at this. It's so
completely different than when we've been doing before.
| | 03:54 |
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| Lighting notebook: Ring light as key or fill| 00:00 | All right, we're back, and now we are going
to be using the ring light that we used as a
| | 00:06 | fill earlier as a key light.
| | 00:10 | So the first thing we did was to take some
red felt and just tape it to the white
| | 00:15 | wall that we had for our backdrop.
| | 00:17 | We stretched it out to get the wrinkles out
of it, taped it up nice and firmly, and then
| | 00:20 | hid it with some gapers type, with the
sticky side out, to get rid of any lint.
| | 00:26 | This is a nice pure-red
reusable and very inexpensive backdrop.
| | 00:30 | I got this at a fabric store for
I think 5 bucks. It was remnant.
| | 00:34 | So we are going to take our orbus ring
flash adaptor and we are going to use that as a
| | 00:41 | key light. This is the only light in the
frame here at first. It's a very signature look
| | 00:47 | and exactly what you are going to expect
out of a ring light if you've got a background
| | 00:50 | right behind your subject.
| | 00:52 | And here it is. What you are going to see
is that tell-tale shadow that wraps around
| | 00:56 | the subject onto the background and
just says, we shot with a ring light.
| | 01:00 | Now that's one look of the ring. The other
thing--and I'm not real big on that shadow;
| | 01:04 | in fact, we'll get rid of it in a minute.
| | 01:06 | But the thing I really like about the ring
light here is what it's doing to her hair.
| | 01:10 | This is a specular highlightm and there's
another one coming off her lips that is happening
| | 01:15 | because the light is coming right out from
right by the lens, it's bouncing off those
| | 01:18 | two items, and coming right back into the lens.
| | 01:21 | So this is a really good way to give a cool texture
to someone who has particularly dark hair for instance.
| | 01:26 | You are going to get back strong speculars
anytime you use a ring just because of
| | 01:29 | the geometry of the light involved.
| | 01:31 | Now let's go to the shadow for a second.
Back to the diagram, if we decide to add a flash
| | 01:38 | between the subject and the backdrop, we can
dial that flash up or down as much as we want.
| | 01:44 | We can dial the power up on that flash just
enough to erase that ring shadow or we can
| | 01:49 | keep going, as in this picture which I've made
a black-and-white conversion out of, and go ahead
| | 01:54 | and raise the level of the
background up even further.
| | 01:57 | When I raised this red up, it started becoming
more of a hot pink and was a little distracting,
| | 02:01 | so I thought this picture was better with the color
taken out of it and converted into black and white.
| | 02:07 | Now, after we added this light to backdrop
and sort of manipulated the level of that
| | 02:11 | shadow behind her, we took another light in and
we brought in from high camera left and now
| | 02:18 | what's happened is the ring light has become
our fill light. It's working in a secondary way.
| | 02:22 | That light is still behind Ramona erasing
that ring shadow, but just at a lower level
| | 02:27 | and leaving that tone where we want it to be
on the backdrop, and this is all serving as
| | 02:31 | a foundation in a picture that's
completely lit by flash, and the key light
| | 02:35 | is coming in from upper camera
left in a LumiQuest SoftBox III.
| | 02:40 | Now we can use that hard key light because
we've already raised our shadows to the level
| | 02:43 | that we want them to be with the ring fill,
so that gives us the ability to use a fairly
| | 02:47 | hard, what would be a harsh light source,
and not to have those shadows falling too far
| | 02:53 | off the edge of the table.
| | 02:55 | And the fill level is really
important when you are using hard lights.
| | 02:58 | The more you manage your fill, the more you can
get away with those hard angular light sources.
| | 03:03 | So I'm a big fan of ring flash as fill
light because it gives me the ability to do more
| | 03:07 | interesting things with my key light.
| | 03:10 | And frankly, I'm more of a fan of ring flash as
fill light than I am of ring flash as a key light.
| | 03:15 |
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|
|
6. A Four-Light ShootSetting up a behind-the-scenes shot| 00:00 | All right, it's the end of the day, we're
all getting a little bit loopy--and by all
| | 00:03 | I mean mostly me--and we've gone through
some really standard stuff, straight light,
| | 00:09 | adding a light with ambient, kind of working
against the whole room, and then getting a little
| | 00:14 | crazy over in front of the red. I wanted to
either bring this back to center or just keep
| | 00:20 | pushing it a little bit. And I think it is a very
good idea to be willing to push your failure
| | 00:26 | zone. That is to say if you're not
falling down, you're not skiing fast enough.
| | 00:31 | Every photographer I know who is
consistently creating neat work is willing to fail, and
| | 00:35 | there's one named Bill Allard, William
Albert Allard, who says an interesting failure is
| | 00:41 | far better than a boring success.
| | 00:43 | So I feel pretty good because I've had a lot of
interesting failures and some of them happened
| | 00:47 | today. And what we wanted to do is to have
sort of a meta-picture, and by that I mean
| | 00:51 | a lighting photographer's
picture in this outlet.
| | 00:54 | So what I've done is to light Ramona with
typical kind of a triangle hard light. We've
| | 01:00 | got an SB3, a Softbox III, pushing from the
front--don't change that pose; I like that--
| | 01:05 | and a couple of RIM lights
hitting her from the back.
| | 01:07 | The RIM lights have tungsten gels on to throw some warmth into it.
This has my standard one quarter CTO gel that I
| | 01:13 | use on every time I put a key light on someone.
I put it a little bit warmed up. This flash
| | 01:18 | literally has that gel taped to it all the time.
| | 01:22 | Our daylight is very cool coming in, and I
wanted to push something against that warmth,
| | 01:25 | so down on the ground, there's actually a,
there's another SB 800 that has a CTB filter,
| | 01:30 | which is the opposite of these tungsten gels.
So I'm going to push into that window, and
| | 01:35 | I'm going to include the lights into the picture,
and I'm going to make a picture that's a little
| | 01:40 | bit of--it's kind of weird, because we're
shooting, but we're also shooting the fact
| | 01:44 | that we're shooting. So I'm going to add
one layer meta to it, we're shooting the fact,
| | 01:48 | that we're shooting the fact, we're shooting
a picture of shooting, sort of. See what I'm
| | 01:52 | shooting for, so let's see what happens.
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| The photo shoot| 00:00 | Okay, so lighting-wise I've got
everything in the frame. I want you
| | 00:03 | just like that; that's fantastic. And I am
going to go ahead and include every light in the
| | 00:08 | frame to see--and what I really like about
this and the surprise that kind of hit me
| | 00:12 | at the end, all that hard hot light
is coming down and it's warmed up.
| | 00:15 | So, pushing this cool light in to
fill the shadows makes this picture.
| | 00:19 | So yeah, look right up at the main
light there for second. That's good.
| | 00:25 | Okay, so this, this picture was really fast on
it's way to failing, and it's become my favorite
| | 00:32 | picture of the day,
seeing these first early ones.
| | 00:34 | So, let's play with this bit. Do I want--?
| | 00:36 | I'm going to tweak this just a little bit
and bring it down to where it hits you better.
| | 00:40 | So you don't move, you're great. You are
doing fine. I am having trouble problems. There.
| | 00:44 | I want to rim light those
shoulder a little better.
| | 00:50 | I cannot emphasize the importance of
experimentation and being willing to fail.
| | 00:57 | We had another shot that we were trying to
do, and it's not that it was impossible to do.
| | 01:02 | When we started looking at it, I
realized where I had seen the idea.
| | 01:04 | It was from a picture I'd seen maybe six
months ago, and the last thing I want to do
| | 01:07 | is to be derivative.
| | 01:08 | So, I'm trying to take that
and spin it in a new way. Let's see.
| | 01:12 | I got to check my histogram, because this
is a very strange picture, and I want to make
| | 01:18 | sure everything is where I
need it to be. Yeah, we're good.
| | 01:24 | Okay, so just really like you were doing,
not so quite coquettish. Just realize where
| | 01:30 | the light, that's on your face that's coming
from up there. Okay, there you go. That's good. Good.
| | 01:41 | It's hard to see what this looks like. I am
going to grab a couple more--and I like that, good.
| | 01:45 | I'm going to grab a couple more, and then I am
going to show you what this is looking like.
| | 01:49 | It probably looks a little different than you
expect it to look--it's sort off--in a
| | 02:00 | behind-the-scenes way.
| | 02:01 | Ramona: There is a shadow behind you.
| | 02:02 | David: Yes, yes, yes. So this light is throwing that
shadow up high on a wall. I am going to bring
| | 02:07 | these in a little tighter, and you stay where
you are. They're going to become a little
| | 02:13 | brighter. Make sure they are out to 24,
see how bright you are. Did that to myself.
| | 02:23 | Ramona: Do want me to lean forward or anything?
David: Maybe. That's kind of neat.
| | 02:31 | I like the way that blue light is pushing
up into the hard light, because where they
| | 02:34 | mix it just looks so cool.
Okay, good. Excellent, excellent.
| | 02:48 | What happened? Oh yeah, you know I really wish
your stomach wouldn't get in the way so much,
| | 02:52 | Ramona, because its really bothering me. Seriously
| | 02:54 | All right, here we go.
| | 02:58 | So, give yourself a little more of a body
turned towards Dave. Maybe that's too much.
| | 03:03 | I just want to make sure your face can see
that main light. Yeah, that's better, but physically
| | 03:11 | move that way just a tad. That's perfect.
| | 03:15 | Okay, so take a deep breath. Let me make sure I
have got my lights right, and then we will less blend.
| | 03:23 | Okay, not so far back with your head,
because you'll cover up that back light. There you go.
| | 03:31 | All right, now bring some attitude.
| | 03:38 | You know, I feel like we have stretched you
a little bit today. It makes me feel
| | 03:41 | very happy actually.
I know we've stretched me.
| | 03:45 | All right, there you go, keep with that.
| | 03:49 | Okay, move that away just a tad, so I
don't push you too far into those lights.
| | 03:56 | Okay and chin up and throw your head back
towards this light. Actually, you moved a little
| | 04:00 | too far when you came that way,
so go back just--perfect.
| | 04:09 | Now, I'm going to have to
remember this next time, okay.
| | 04:18 | Oh, that's what--I thought you were talking
about your stomach is in the way or something.
| | 04:22 | So I am going to leave these lights. I like
what the lights are doing, but I'm going to
| | 04:26 | shoot just like a straight picture and take
the lights out of the picture but leave the
| | 04:29 | effects of a light in, because I don't know.
There is something about this picture. I like
| | 04:33 | the way it looks, and I want to able to repeat
this next time I'm needing to do an off-center
| | 04:37 | kind of a portrait.
| | 04:38 | So I want you to keep the way you are. I am
just going to back everything out and make it
| | 04:42 | a little more powerful okay.
| | 04:43 | I am at one eighth power. I'm going to go to
one half. Ah, I'll go to one fourth, give myself
| | 04:55 | a little more time to work.
| | 05:00 | So as I back these lights up, I need to
make them stronger to make up for the fact that
| | 05:09 | I'm moving them further away.
| | 05:13 | Okay, there we go. I need to get this just over,
just a little bit like that, just quick test.
| | 05:24 | Okay, don't move. Now, what I am doing is
raising this window up a little bit. I can see I am
| | 05:35 | using the window in the composition.
| | 05:37 | You fine, moving that out
of the way just a little bit.
| | 05:43 | These flashes are pretty weak because I
have got them taped up to a tiny hole from our
| | 05:47 | other little experiment.
| | 05:51 | How are we doing back there?
| | 05:56 | I missed you now. I've done all the
other stuff and now I'm missing you.
| | 06:04 | Okay, this looks cool.
| | 06:09 | I don't always get what I'm expecting when I do
one of these, but I usually like the surprise.
| | 06:16 | Ramona: You said, you wanted everything
to be up here not to move up and down.
| | 06:23 | David: Right, in fact I am--yeah I like--bring
in your hand up like that, that's cool.
| | 06:26 | Let's see what we've got.
| | 06:30 | This is white room, but we're controlling this in
kind of a cool funky way. There is so many lights.
| | 06:34 | Remember that where you let your hair hang out. I am
just dropping this light back just a little bit more.
| | 06:38 | David Oh, what's the tattoo say? Oh, French. Got it.
Ramona: It says amore. It says amore.
| | 06:44 | Okay, is that pointing up at you? Are we good? yeah.
| | 06:56 | Can I bum an assistant for just a second?
| | 06:57 | I want to have somebody gobo that light.
You can gobo it even with your hand; just hold
| | 07:02 | your hand out in a way so to
keep that light from coming in.
| | 07:04 | So, let the light hit Ramona, but
block the light from hitting my lens.
| | 07:10 | So, you are going to hold your hand out in front of
the light like--think of being on your side
| | 07:18 | of the light, hold your hand up like that.
| | 07:20 | Okay, now bring it forth, there you go.
| | 07:22 | So, you should be kind shading.
| | 07:25 | Okay, pull it forward towards me just a
little bit. Okay, good. There you go.
| | 07:32 | I'm still getting a little bit of flair back
there, but this picture is so funky I am just
| | 07:35 | going to live with it.
| | 07:37 | All right, back out just a second.
I'm actually going to leave the light and the lens back
| | 07:40 | there in the frame. Thank you.
| | 07:47 | All right, don't move, you're good.
| | 07:55 | Okay, why is it so bright back there now?
| | 08:00 | I have lost the little cool edginess I had.
| | 08:04 | This picture is so unpredictable. There are so many
light sources going on in there, but it looks cool.
| | 08:11 | Ramona: Why are the lighting look weird, it
looks like its outside at night. David: It does.
| | 08:15 | David: Well, you are use to seeing
that mix of warm and cool light.
| | 08:17 | So, I want to push this just a little more,
get this light closer to your face and drop
| | 08:21 | it, down and hopefully not have that light
hit the wall so much in the back. And I am
| | 08:27 | going to let this light come back
into the picture. I'll try that.
| | 08:31 | I'll tell you who's going to like this
| | 08:33 | is the guy that made this little light,
because this is an atypical use for this.
| | 08:37 | Okay, here we are. Okay, let's give it a try.
| | 08:43 | Is that close? Okay, don't move.
| | 08:55 | I'm back to having the lights and I just like them.
| | 08:57 | Okay, throw your face up towards that
light in front of you, there you go.
| | 09:02 | Last frames, have some fun. There you go.
| | 09:07 | Oh, she's embarrassed now. We got her.
| | 09:12 | Now this is cool, this is fun.
| | 09:13 | All right, deep breath and just to be
mysterious. Last few frames, and we want to grab a shot
| | 09:20 | of both of you guys before you go.
| | 09:23 | Okay, serious and like nobody
really knows you. There you go.
| | 09:29 | Good, drop your hands; you
have great lines when you do.
| | 09:36 | Yeah, that's it. A little
more on this and we're done.
| | 09:48 | Good, good, and up again,
like you were at that light, good.
| | 09:56 | You are out of here.
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| Lighting notebook: Four-light meta shoot| 00:00 | Okay, not much sense on doing a lighting
diagram here, because nearly every light source is
| | 00:04 | in the picture. It's a little bit of a stretch,
we were talking about on the last jump out for
| | 00:09 | the diagrams, pushing and trying different
things. And we had a beautiful subject, a neat
| | 00:14 | room, and bunch of flashes sitting around, so
that's exactly what I tried to do with this setup.
| | 00:20 | We've got a couple of things to consider here.
The ambient exposure is going to be keyed
| | 00:25 | off the available light
coming through the window.
| | 00:29 | I want a to tone in there, and that gives
me a complete silhouette in this room before
| | 00:33 | we start adding flash, other than that window, which
obviously is going to be backlit by the ambient light.
| | 00:39 | So let's work this from the back. We've got
two RIM lights and those RIM lights have CTO--
| | 00:44 | or Color, Temperature, Orange--filters, and
those are the common conversion filters that
| | 00:48 | change flashlight into tungsten color.
And that gives a nice color to the wrap light
| | 00:53 | in the back, the RIM coming in from the sides.
| | 00:55 | In retrospect, I could have had those up a
little higher and gone ahead and carried that RIM
| | 00:59 | around the top of her head, but that's a subjective
choice I guess, and I'm okay with this as it exists.
| | 01:05 | The key light has--it's a Nikon SB 800
with a LumiQuest SB III Softbox. We've got a one
| | 01:13 | quarter CTO gel there, which is one quarter
of the way to tungsten, and it's a common gel
| | 01:18 | for me to use for my key light.
| | 01:19 | I use it a lot. It gives a nice healthy warm
glow to flesh tones, and that's coming in from
| | 01:24 | very high so that's obviously going to
leave you some pretty hard edgy shadows.
| | 01:27 | We are going to push against those shadows
with a fourth flash, which is the only flash you
| | 01:31 | can't see in this picture, and that's on
the ground, and that's got a CTB, which is the
| | 01:36 | opposite of the tungsten flashes on the
background lights, or the RIM lights rather.
| | 01:40 | This CTB changes tungsten to daylight, but it
will take a daylight flash and push it into blue.
| | 01:46 | This is a calibrated blue, and that's why I
like it. So it exactly offsets those tungsten
| | 01:51 | lights in the back, and it sets up a
complementary color scheme that automatically works together.
| | 01:57 | I especially like where this works, when you look at
the zones that are being lit with all three lights.
| | 02:02 | For instance, her left arm, which is
your camera right arm as you're looking at
| | 02:07 | it, several zones of intensity
and color coming across that.
| | 02:10 | Number one, at top we've got the skim or the
RIM lights coming across, and then we've got
| | 02:14 | the diffused highlight of the RIM lights
which is a pure tungsten stripe. And then we get
| | 02:19 | into sort of a mixing bowl of light as it's
primarily one quarter CTO light wrapping around
| | 02:25 | the top and as you get around to the bottom,
it's blue light coming in, because that light
| | 02:29 | is all being handled from the
fill light coming from the bottom.
| | 02:32 | This was just a straight let's mess
around and try something, doing it in front of the
| | 02:37 | cameras, so hopefully you can see that process a
little bit, something I'm trying to do as much as possible.
| | 02:42 | Most of the time these are going to fail.
I happen to like the way that this one turned
| | 02:46 | out, and I'll definitely be using that
opposite color and opposing direction key light and
| | 02:52 | fill light in the future.
| | 02:55 | This is a first time for me, but
it's certainly not going to be a last time.
| | 02:58 | Key things to remember here, the exposure
is built on the ambient outside the window.
| | 03:01 | So everything that you're seeing in here is
lit by flash inside the room. And we're taking
| | 03:06 | a white room in the middle of the day and
giving in a little bit of film noir look,
| | 03:09 | which I think is kind of cool.
| | 03:11 | The other thing to think about is you don't
necessarily have to have those light sources in the frame.
| | 03:16 | We could back all of those light sources up,
pull her away from that window a little bit,
| | 03:19 | and have this working
pretty much in any way we want.
| | 03:23 | Frankly, we could do this outside at night
and our ambient light could be keyed off an
| | 03:27 | existing sodium vapor or a hotel flashing
light, hotel, hotel at the back, some kind
| | 03:33 | of neon light or something, anything.
| | 03:35 | The point is you need to build your
initial exposure on the ambient and then you come
| | 03:38 | in and fix the areas
that need fixing with flash.
| | 03:41 | You've really got two completely
different exposures going on here:
| | 03:43 | the ambient on the outside and then a
four-flash lit picture on the inside, and it's going
| | 03:48 | to be the shutter speed that
determines the balance between those two.
| | 03:50 | As far as the exposure, this one may
look a little complicated, but it's not.
| | 03:55 | Start with a window exposure, then we are
going to add our RIMS in from the bottom and
| | 03:58 | dial them up until they look good. And then
we are going to add in our key light, dial
| | 04:02 | that around until it looks good.
| | 04:04 | And we are just talking
about adding salt to soup, right?
| | 04:07 | And then last, we are going to take our
fill light and dial that around until it looks
| | 04:10 | the way that we want to look.
| | 04:11 | The intensity of the fill light is probably
most important on her legs, because that's
| | 04:15 | the only light hitting her legs, and that's
where that picture goes from a warm
| | 04:19 | to cool as you go all the way down from the
top to the bottom to the subject. And then,
| | 04:23 | obvious having that cool background up top, literally
and figuratively, gives it something to pop against.
| | 04:28 | So it's a quick little experiment on the fly.
| | 04:30 | But as far as I'm concerned, it was
successful enough to allow me to want to go down this
| | 04:34 | route a little further in future portraits.
That extermination is important, and I want
| | 04:39 | to make sure that we show that.
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|
|
ConclusionNext steps| 00:00 | Okay, so that did not turn out the way I
planned, which is just kind of cool thing
| | 00:03 | because we're at the end of the day, we've
had a lot of different little neat shoots
| | 00:09 | in what is basically a white room
with a bunch of windows around it.
| | 00:13 | I came in with a set sheet, I want to do this,
I want to do this, I want to do this, I want
| | 00:16 | to do this, and pretty quickly we saw how
willing Ramona was to go with the flow, and
| | 00:21 | it seemed like a waste to photograph her
in just really staid preconceived looks.
| | 00:26 | So, we tried to push the glam just a little
but further each time and ended up with something
| | 00:30 | that looked almost film noir at
the end, which is kind of neat
| | 00:34 | because this is a white room with daylight
streaming in and we were able to completely control that.
| | 00:38 | And I also thought that was a little meta, meta,
with the photographers, teaching photographers
| | 00:43 | being shot by other photographers,
shooting people and including the lights in.
| | 00:47 | So, it's a little bit of a visual play on
words, and I always enjoy doing that kind of thing.
| | 00:52 | I failed on a couple of things. I saw some ideas
that weren't working very well, and I was able
| | 00:55 | to jump off of them.
| | 00:57 | The shot that we had setting up right before the end,
it looked too derivative when I started to see it,
| | 01:01 | even though it looked kind of the way we were
expecting it to look, so that's when we jumped
| | 01:05 | it with the other way.
| | 01:06 | What I hope you get out of this is the
idea that starting from the simple backlit, the
| | 01:12 | window right behind the photographer
simple light, and moving that around, adding a flash
| | 01:16 | to it, balancing that is, exactly the same
thing as everything else we were doing in
| | 01:20 | here today. We were either totally taking
into account the ambient, and putting it exactly
| | 01:24 | where we wanted it or decided we wanted to
stuck the ambient into a box and shoot at
| | 01:29 | 250th like F8 or F11 and take it out of the
frame completely and build completely with flash.
| | 01:35 | Here at the end, the only ambient that was
poking in was the actual light that was coming
| | 01:39 | through that window. You could actually see
out the window and that was put exactly
| | 01:42 | what we wanted by just dialing
the shutter speed up and down.
| | 01:45 | If the window area is too bright, you
are going to close the shutter down.
| | 01:48 | If the window area is too dark you are
going to open a shutter up. It's pretty simple.
| | 01:51 | None of this stuff need be complex, and
I hope that the fact that you saw it done
| | 01:55 | kind of rids the idea of
any complexity involved.
| | 01:58 | Just get the first progression, get that
mix of flash and ambient, get the mix of flash
| | 02:02 | and flash, and there's really nothing you can't do.
| | 02:05 | And what I see a lot, when I see beginners
shooting is they'll slave so much over
| | 02:09 | the light and they'll get the light finally the
way they want and they go click. Okay, we're done.
| | 02:14 | Now that's the time when you should be
beginning, and that's the time when you can put the light
| | 02:18 | away and not be thinking about the
technicals and really be thinking about the interaction
| | 02:22 | between yourself and your subject.
| | 02:24 | So the professional will push them right
up to the end, push him a tiny bit further,
| | 02:29 | but know one they are not going to
get anything else from the subject.
| | 02:32 | You shouldn't be the limitation;
the subject should be the limitation.
| | 02:35 | I watched my friend Joe McNally shoot, and
one of his favorite things he says when he
| | 02:39 | has really got someone going and the light
is right, and the gesture is right, and the
| | 02:42 | expression is right, and the flow is light,
| | 02:44 | he is like stay with me, stay with me,
stay with me, and they stay with him.
| | 02:48 | And he takes that little tiny bit of
window we would have when everything was perfect
| | 02:51 | and just stretches it until he has that
version nine ways to Sunday, and that's a big lesson
| | 02:55 | that I learned from him: just don't quit.
| | 02:58 | Just the way when you get everything the
way you want, don't quit. That's when you push
| | 03:00 | it. That's when you make twenty different
versions of that picture that you like, and ideally
| | 03:05 | you're going to have a tough time
deciding which one is your final edit.
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