IntroductionSetting the stage: Flash macro shoot| 00:04 |
So we're here today at the Howard County
Conservancy, which is a very cool
| | 00:07 |
historic preservation site in Howard
County, Maryland.
| | 00:11 |
And today, we're going to be shooting
Sticky, who we think is a male.
| | 00:16 |
we're sure he's a great, great tree frog.
We think he's a male.
| | 00:20 |
And this is actually kind of a neat
little macro shoot.
| | 00:22 |
Because we're going to progress through
some of the problems that you might
| | 00:25 |
encounter doing something like this.
Go through available light, and then add
| | 00:29 |
some flash, and then make the flash
better.
| | 00:31 |
And then progress this into a full blown
little mini studio right around Sticky
| | 00:34 |
who we're really kind of hoping is not
going to move through this whole process.
| | 00:39 |
But, he's pretty chill.
He's got his Jabba the Hut on today, and,
| | 00:42 |
let's see if we can get him to cooperate.
| | 00:45 |
| | 59:59 |
(MUSIC).
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1. A Macro of "Sticky" the FrogFixing the background and adding on-camera flash| 00:01 |
Alright Sticky, what you got for me here?
so, I'm definitely going to shoot through
| | 00:05 |
the glass, because I don't want to stick
this camera inside with them.
| | 00:09 |
There's really not enough room.
So I'm going to just balance on
| | 00:12 |
automatic, and shoot on aperture
priority, and see what happens.
| | 00:21 |
Aperture priority, I'll set it at F4.
And I'm going to crank my ISO up to 800,
| | 00:26 |
just to give me a little bit of shutter
speed.
| | 00:28 |
(SOUND) You can hear I'm at about a 20th
of a second, so.
| | 00:38 |
These actually aren't bad.
They're not terrible.
| | 00:41 |
I don't like the idea that Sticky's not
the brightest thing in the frame.
| | 00:45 |
(SOUND) We got a microwave and a
refrigerator back there and such.
| | 00:47 |
So, the first thing I'm going to do is to
fix my backdrop, and begin the, the
| | 00:51 |
process of turning this little aquarium
or terrarium I guess into a little studio.
| | 00:58 |
Don't move, Sticky.
So that's a really easy solution to get
| | 01:10 |
rid of that, that distraction on the
other side.
| | 01:24 |
Now let's see what I have when I go in
there.
| | 01:27 |
See, my, my exposure changed.
Seeing all that black in its trunk, oops;
| | 01:33 |
sorry, bud.
It's trying to give me more exposure, So
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I'm going to under expose this just a
little bit.
| | 01:37 |
Even at (SOUND), even at a 20th of a
second at F4, I'm, my biggest problem is
| | 01:42 |
I don't have a lot of depth of field
because of the macro lens.
| | 01:49 |
You need more aperture to give yourself
the depth of field, so I'm definitely
| | 01:55 |
going to want to light this.
So lets start out with just throwing some
| | 02:00 |
light off the top and see what happens.
This is on camera flash, but we're
| | 02:04 |
going to create a nice big light source
up there off the ceiling.
| | 02:09 |
And even though this might be an easy
thing to do TTL, I want to work in manual
| | 02:13 |
just to give myself some repeatability
and control.
| | 02:17 |
So let's go up to quarter power and see
what that gets us.
| | 02:20 |
I'm going to go to 250th of a second to
get rid of the ambient light and just
| | 02:24 |
guess at five, six.
My ISO, now, I'm taking back down to 400
| | 02:28 |
because I don't need, I don't need the
speed.
| | 02:32 |
That's actually not bad.
And I can live with that, as far as just
| | 02:42 |
a straight light source.
But I think I do want a little more control.
| | 02:45 |
Eventually.
but let me shoot a couple more with this.
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(SOUND) Putting the black in there makes
a big difference, but unfortunately I'm
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not holding the bottom the stick that
Sticky is sitting on.
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So that I don't have any three
dimensional feeling there, there's no depth.
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So I'm definitely going to want to get
some light coming back up on that stick.
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So let's start working on this now and
tweak it a little more.
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| Lighting the shot with a small softbox and some foil| 00:00 |
So rather than taking this light and
going up all the way off the ceiling, I'm
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going to put a big softbox.
Well, not big for us, but really big
| | 00:09 |
compared to Sticky, right over him.
And this is a LumiQuest Softbox LTp for
| | 00:15 |
laptop pro, because it's designed to be
as big as your 15-inch MacBook and ride
| | 00:20 |
right alongside it in the, in your case
and take up no extra space.
| | 00:26 |
So let's see where we're at, power-wise.
So this is on 1 128th power.
| | 00:36 |
I've got it dialed down as far as I can
go for a couple reasons.
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I don't need a ton of power this close,
and I also don't want to subject the frog
| | 00:41 |
to any more trauma than necessary.
So see what we got here.
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And I'm going to close down to f8 just on
a guess.
| | 00:52 |
So I'm going to give myself a little more
power, because I do want to have depth of
| | 00:57 |
field to start to carry these other
sticks and such, because I think that's,
| | 01:03 |
that's interesting to have there.
So I'm going to crank it up to, let's
| | 01:11 |
call it 132nd power.
Sticky is gotta really be wondering
| | 01:14 |
what's going on here.
So you're probably seeing a lot of dirt
| | 01:19 |
on this glass.
What you probably can't see from that
| | 01:21 |
angle is, we cleaned out a little window
to go through because we're going through
| | 01:24 |
the full thickness of glass plus layers
of dirt on each side.
| | 01:29 |
What really helps is the light level
inside the glass is a lot higher than the
| | 01:31 |
light level outside the glass.
Which means that the dirt will not be as
| | 01:35 |
big of a deal, number one.
And number two, my reflection's not
| | 01:38 |
going to be happening.
So I'm up to a 32nd power.
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(SOUND) That's starting to look more
interesting.
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Now, that black in the background is
getting picked up now.
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I can see some texture on it.
So, I might actually slide this light a
| | 01:57 |
little further this way.
See if that helps
| | 02:05 |
(SOUND).
| | 02:11 |
That's better.
So, what we've got now is a really kind
| | 02:17 |
of an eerie Jabba the Hutt overlight
looking there, that really defines his shape.
| | 02:21 |
But he's completely lost against the
against the, the bottom of the stick that
| | 02:24 |
he's sitting on, and he, he really goes
into deep shadow underneath that light
| | 02:28 |
into shadow.
So I'm going to start to try to bring
| | 02:31 |
that shadow up by making the ground more
reflective.
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I've got some aluminum foil, which is a
macro photographer's best friend, or
| | 02:40 |
maybe next-to best friend.
And then I'm going to go in and what I'm
| | 02:46 |
going to do is crumple this up some, and
then uncrumple it to give it a randomness
| | 02:51 |
to the way it throws back light.
And it'll, I, It will make it more even
| | 02:58 |
is the long story short.
Maybe I should have done this in the
| | 03:03 |
single thickness mode (SOUND).
So, let's see if we can convince Sticky
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not to move while we go in and, and give
him his fill light.
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Don't want that to fall on him.
Okay, so, Sticky, what's the best way to
| | 03:30 |
invade your space, bud?
Go like this.
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If he jumps, you're going to see me jump.
| | 03:45 |
(SOUND)
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Here we go.
So, you might want to see this.
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So, what we've got now is a nice, random,
very efficient reflector tucked up
| | 04:14 |
underneath him.
Right, so let's put our light back.
| | 04:39 |
(SOUND).
Oh, yeah.
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Totally.
So now I'm picking up all kinds of nice
| | 04:43 |
highlights around the bottom.
In fact, there's a neat little glow
| | 04:49 |
that's seeing, and I'm seeing, up under
his body.
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(SOUND)
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| Refining the exposure| 00:01 |
Okay, so I've just added two more stops
of light and we're at 1 16th power, which
| | 00:04 |
is still very low, but that's giving me
the ability to shoot f22.
| | 00:07 |
I'm getting more depth of field around
the frog, but my worry will be that any
| | 00:11 |
dirt on the glass might start to come
into focus, so that's what I'm balancing.
| | 00:16 |
I want as much depth of field to carry
the frog, but I don't want to be seeing
| | 00:19 |
the, the schmutz on the glass in front of
me.
| | 00:22 |
another thing, if you remember we went to
two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second when
| | 00:25 |
we first started shooting the flash
pictures, that was to kill the ambient light.
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So, the ambient exposure, in here, was a
20th of a second at F4, at ISO 800, if
| | 00:33 |
I'm remembering correctly now.
Right now, we're working at
| | 00:38 |
two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second.
Which is adding, okay, let's, let's call
| | 00:42 |
it a 30th of a second just for ease, a
60th, 125th, 250th.
| | 00:47 |
That's killing three stops of ambient
light right there, and then we're adding
| | 00:50 |
more light with flash.
So we're probably five, six, seven stops
| | 00:54 |
above the ambient exposure, which means
that none of this ambient matters anymore.
| | 00:58 |
We've got fluorescents over, it doesn't
matter.
| | 01:01 |
We have window light coming in from the
back, it doesn't matter.
| | 01:03 |
We're so far over that exposure, that the
only the ambient is being used for is,
| | 01:06 |
really, eh, enough light to be able to
focus.
| | 01:10 |
So, let's grab our, last pictures of
Sticky here, who's been a champ
| | 01:17 |
(SOUND).
| | 01:20 |
Okay, plenty of texture, I've actually
got a little texture on that, on that
| | 01:24 |
black paper, in the back, which I really
could try to get rid of, I think, by
| | 01:28 |
coming this way, maybe, with the light.
Or, you know what, let me try something
| | 01:33 |
like this.
I'm going to take this, I'm going to
| | 01:35 |
feather this light a little bit away from
this black by just tucking something up,
| | 01:39 |
right there.
So, I'm moving the light off of the black
| | 01:42 |
background and keeping it on the frog,
see if that helps.
| | 01:52 |
(SOUND) Yes, it does.
So, let's include this other stick in there.
| | 01:56 |
(SOUND) That's better a little, a little
more interesting compositionally, so I'll
| | 02:02 |
play with that.
So little depth (SOUND) of field to work
| | 02:06 |
with here.
| | 02:07 |
(SOUND)
| | 02:12 |
Let's take a look.
Sticky looks fantastic.
| | 02:32 |
I've got a little bit of detail in that
black background, but I can easily take
| | 02:34 |
that out in Photoshop so I'm not going to
worry about that.
| | 02:53 |
(SOUND) I can see my foil popping in, in
the bottom.
| | 02:55 |
It doesn't bother me.
I'll crop that out.
| | 02:59 |
So, let's click in an exposure real
quick.
| | 03:00 |
Everything looks fine.
Last couples of frames, up close.
| | 03:03 |
(SOUND)
| | 03:06 |
Just like with a person, I'm focusing on
the near eye.
| | 03:30 |
If I've got that near eye in focus,
really the other stuff doesn't matter
| | 03:32 |
nearly so much.
If that near eye is out of focus, he's
| | 03:35 |
going to look out of focus no matter
what.
| | 03:37 |
(SOUND) Alright Sticky, I think you're
good.
| | 03:49 |
One more.
(SOUND) There we go.
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| Lighting notebook: Flash macro| 00:01 |
Alright, here we are in the diagram, with
sticky the frog.
| | 00:04 |
A very simple picture, obviously, but
certainly one that, that bears walking
| | 00:07 |
through really quickly, anyway, because
it's got a, a little series of
| | 00:10 |
light-control tricks done with it.
first thing we're going to do is, is
| | 00:14 |
looking at a very ugly background, I'm
going to drop a piece of black poster
| | 00:17 |
board in to clean that up a little bit.
Even though we're still shooting in pure
| | 00:22 |
ambient mode, which means wide open here.
And the light is an ugly mixture of
| | 00:26 |
florescent and tungsten and daylight.
shooting wide open so we don't carry any,
| | 00:31 |
any depth of field.
And the shutter speed isn't even really
| | 00:34 |
fast enough to hand-hold very steadily.
So, we're going to take that ambient
| | 00:38 |
completely out of the picture.
Go to a 250th, close your aperture way
| | 00:42 |
down and work well about the ambient.
And replace that ambient light, the bad
| | 00:47 |
ambient light, with a good strobe light
SB800, a Nikon Speedlight, and a
| | 00:51 |
LumiQuest LapTop Pro.
Or LTP for short is our key, and this
| | 00:56 |
relative size here is actually pretty
close.
| | 01:00 |
and LTP is a small, soft box when it
comes to people, but when it comes to
| | 01:03 |
macro objects, like a frog, it's, it's
relatively humongous.
| | 01:08 |
So, it's going to wrap around sticky in a
very cool way.
| | 01:11 |
And it's going to give him that kind of
ominous cool looking top light.
| | 01:14 |
And this is our first, our first Flash
version of the picture.
| | 01:17 |
And already, he's looking way better.
He's got kind of a, a Jabba the Hutt
| | 01:21 |
thing going on there.
And I really cool highlight in his eyes.
| | 01:24 |
And we're carrying sharpness all the way
through the frog.
| | 01:26 |
And, and everything's well defined.
Our only problem now is we can't see the
| | 01:29 |
bottom of the stick, we can't see the
bottom of the frog, it all just kind of
| | 01:32 |
fades into black.
Which may be what you want.
| | 01:35 |
But but I'm going for something a little
more detailed here, but still crisp.
| | 01:39 |
So, what we're going to do is to bring
our crumpled aluminum foil in and make a
| | 01:43 |
little reflector under sticky to throw
that flash back up under him.
| | 01:48 |
Huge difference when you, when you put
something like the equivalent of the
| | 01:51 |
second light source in really.
Because we got a very, very specular very
| | 01:55 |
efficient piece of metal under him.
And that's going to push that light back
| | 01:59 |
in as you can see, and throw a lot of
light under him.
| | 02:02 |
even though this picture's not as
contrasty as our final picture.
| | 02:05 |
All the information is here.
Very easy to make it to make it more
| | 02:08 |
contrasty in the final print, which is
exactly what we did.
| | 02:13 |
But if you look at it straight out of the
camera shot, the the black background,
| | 02:15 |
there's still some detail in there.
There's detail everywhere even, even
| | 02:19 |
right under the frog, in that almost dark
area of the shadow of the stick.
| | 02:24 |
There's detail everywhere.
And that's coming from the fact that our
| | 02:26 |
light is coming from two opposed
directions and the light's reasonably
| | 02:29 |
soft,given what we're shooting.
you've got nice light under the stick,
| | 02:33 |
you've got nice night, nice light under
the frog, and everything's well defined.
| | 02:38 |
And when we take that into Photoshop we
can, we can add as much contrast as we
| | 02:41 |
want, and that's exactly what we're going
to do here.
| | 02:45 |
And make that background just drop out to
a nice pure black and, and make sticky
| | 02:48 |
pop it's amazing to me that this was shot
through a piece of dirty glass, but, the Christmas.
| | 02:55 |
Crispness of that light really makes
sticky (INAUDIBLE) look nice and sharp.
| | 02:59 |
And our closed down aperture carries that
focus all the way through the frog.
| | 03:03 |
And even makes this stick in the
foreground acceptably sharp.
| | 03:05 |
So.
They're sticky.
| | 03:06 |
Quick and dirty macro shot.
a five minute job with one flash.
| | 03:11 |
But still, we're taking advantage of the
our knowledge of the ratio between
| | 03:15 |
ambient light and flash.
And doing pretty much the same process
| | 03:18 |
we're doing on any other Flash picture,
just on a quicker scale and a smaller scale.
| | 03:23 |
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2. A Blacksmith in His ShopSetting the stage: The blacksmith shop| 00:00 |
So we're back at the Howard County
Conservancy, where we're going to be
| | 00:03 |
shooting at this time a blacksmith named
Albin Drzynowsky who is hammering away in
| | 00:07 |
there now.
And, we're outside the blacksmith shop
| | 00:10 |
behind me, which is nice and bright right
now but inside it's very dark.
| | 00:15 |
the dark part does not worry me.
What worries me is the darkest part is in
| | 00:18 |
the very back of the building behind
Alvin, behind the fire.
| | 00:22 |
And we got no place to put a light in
there.
| | 00:24 |
So we need to find someway to build the
light forward from the back without
| | 00:26 |
including any lights in the actual frame.
Because we're not going to have any
| | 00:31 |
separation if we don't do that.
the other thing is the rooms going to be
| | 00:34 |
very dark.
And that's not a problem because we want
| | 00:36 |
the room as dark as possible because that
way the glowing fire.
| | 00:39 |
And the glowing steel that he's going to
be working on, we can leave the shutter
| | 00:42 |
open long enough to build those things us
and you can ac, you can see them very well.
| | 00:47 |
So darkness, not a problem, relative
darkness front to back of the room big problem.
| | 00:51 |
That's the problem we've gotta solve.
but I think we can do it.
| | 00:54 |
We've been scouting a little bit and I
think we've got it worked out.
| | 00:56 |
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| Exploring the shop and lighting setup| 00:00 |
Okay, so we're inside the blacksmith's
shop.
| | 00:02 |
It's very dark.
We've actually made it a little brighter
| | 00:05 |
just so we can get video in here and I
don't know if you can see these but these
| | 00:08 |
little squares of light are LED light
sources.
| | 00:11 |
And Rosco was very cool about letting us
use them.
| | 00:14 |
They're, they're Rosco light pad axioms
and they literally will run on double a batteries.
| | 00:19 |
We got them plugged into the wall, but,
but you can run these things on just
| | 00:21 |
about anything.
They're wonderful.
| | 00:23 |
But we're going to need to influence the
light in here just enough to be able to film.
| | 00:27 |
and maybe too much actually, because
we're going to be competing with that
| | 00:29 |
fire, as far as a continuous light
source.
| | 00:32 |
So we may need to kill these lights at
some point to make the final pictures.
| | 00:35 |
So if everything just goes almost black,
you'll know what happened.
| | 00:38 |
so this room is dark to begin with, but
we've made it even darker by closing the
| | 00:41 |
doors and we boarded up the windows, and
put we put a big flex fill outside of the
| | 00:45 |
window over there.
We want to make it as dark as possible,
| | 00:49 |
because we want that fire to be the main
ambient light source in the room, and the
| | 00:52 |
steel that Albun is going to be working
with.
| | 00:55 |
So, now our problem is with the lights in
the back.
| | 00:57 |
We've got no room back there, it's dark,
and there's a lit fire right next to the
| | 01:00 |
wall, so it's not a great place to be
putting up light stands even the before
| | 01:02 |
the fact that they'd be in the frame.
So, what we've done is to put a couple of
| | 01:07 |
light stands up in the up in the rafters.
And these lights are pointed up, and
| | 01:11 |
they're literally going to bounce off the
ceiling which is going to do a couple of things.
| | 01:16 |
We can put some light in the back of the
room and get those tools in the back.
| | 01:19 |
It's going to it's going to separate
Albun nicely, by putting lights over his shoulders.
| | 01:23 |
And the other thing it's going to do, and
this is kind of a bonus, is it's going to
| | 01:26 |
pick up a lot of warm color and bring out
the warmth in the room because that wood
| | 01:29 |
is going to be the reflective light
source.
| | 01:33 |
The bad news is it's going to take a lot
of light to do that because that wood's
| | 01:35 |
going to eat up a lot of light before it
send it back.
| | 01:38 |
So those flashes are going to be at one
half power and I'm only gona get about F4
| | 01:41 |
out of them that ISO400 in our final
scene.
| | 01:45 |
So, the flash that's going to be our
front fill, is going to be an umbrella
| | 01:48 |
tucked into the back of the room.
And if you've known me long enough you
| | 01:51 |
know that I'm like a, I'm like a button
that automatically pops up and says ring
| | 01:54 |
flash, fill in the shadows.
This is one of those times where you
| | 01:57 |
can't really use it.
Because the ring flash is going to be too
| | 02:00 |
close to the subject, and too far away
from the background.
| | 02:03 |
So the further we move the fill light
back, the more evenly it's going to push
| | 02:06 |
all the way to the back of the room.
So that's going to fix any really deep
| | 02:10 |
shadows, and we'll be able to control
just those shadows left by the back light
| | 02:13 |
as much or as little as we want by
adjusting this fill light.
| | 02:18 |
And then finally, we have the key light,
which is going to be another strobe in an
| | 02:21 |
umbrella right by Albun while he'll be
working at the blacksmith's anvil?
| | 02:25 |
Is that the right word, anvil?
And that will be able to be adjusted
| | 02:28 |
completely independently both from the
fill light and the background lights.
| | 02:33 |
So we can build the relationships between
those levels in any way that we want.
| | 02:37 |
And just so I can move around very easily
and since we're in a very dark room, I'm
| | 02:40 |
going to have a flash on my camera
pointed straight up, dialed down so low
| | 02:42 |
it will not be contributing to the image.
But all it has to do is set off any of
| | 02:47 |
these other slaved flashes and then we'll
set up a little chain reaction where
| | 02:50 |
every flash sees at least some other
flash.
| | 02:53 |
So, you almost can't miss working
optically in a dark room like this.
| | 02:57 |
So, let's see what happens.
| | 02:58 |
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| Taking the initial shots| 00:00 |
David: Okay, I think, I think we're ready
to to see if our, our lights are, are
| | 00:03 |
going to work, and.
We're, I'm just going to have you work
| | 00:06 |
and do what you want to do.
I would think I would think more turned
| | 00:09 |
towards this light, maybe split, split
the difference.
| | 00:12 |
I think you're good right there.
and then I'm going to shoot some pictures
| | 00:15 |
and tweak a little bit.
And I'll let you know when we're final.
| | 00:17 |
Albin: Okay.
David: And then at that point we'll shoot
| | 00:19 |
the pictures that we're really, really
going to end up using, so.
| | 00:22 |
Albin: Alright.
once we get the lights right, i really
| | 00:24 |
want to defer to you about not having you
do anything that is inappropriate from a
| | 00:27 |
blacksmith's sense because they pictures
will be used by the conservancy.
| | 00:32 |
And by you and the last thing in the
world we want to have you do is like
| | 00:34 |
licking the metal bar or something like
that.
| | 00:37 |
Albin: That's fine.
David: Ok.
| | 00:43 |
(NOISE) And I'll know.
I, I'm going to see if I get in a fire,
| | 00:45 |
basically, is what it comes down to.
So first I'm going to get everything
| | 00:48 |
nailed down at a two fiftieth of a
second, and then I'll worry about the fire.
| | 00:51 |
(NOISE)
| | 00:56 |
Eh, there we are.
| | 01:10 |
(NOISE)
| | 01:13 |
Okay.
(NOISE) Alright, so I can already see a
| | 01:20 |
big difference between shooting at a two
fiftieth and shooting at a thirtieth.
| | 01:33 |
(NOISE) Okay.
(NOISE) Everything looks pretty good from
| | 01:36 |
the front, except for this key light.
(NOISE) I'm going to walk this around a
| | 01:41 |
little bit to the side.
What are you making Alben?
| | 02:02 |
Albin: Hook.
David: Okay.
| | 02:06 |
When you can rotate around.
Albin: Oh.
| | 02:09 |
David: No, no, that's good.
I want to see your face, man.
| | 02:15 |
(SOUND).
Okay, that's looking much better.
| | 02:18 |
A little bright on the top of your head.
I think I'm going to fix this.
| | 02:23 |
(SOUND).
Ellis, that's like a chalk box.
| | 02:24 |
Albin: Exactly.
(SOUND).
| | 02:25 |
David: So I'm cheating this umbrella a
little over to the left.
| | 02:32 |
And trying to, oh, I like the way that
fire glows when you get it lit up.
| | 02:37 |
We're going to go dark in here in a few
minutes because I'm going to.
| | 02:40 |
Albin: That's okay.
David: (SOUND) Okay.
| | 02:57 |
(NOISE) Now, increase my fill a little
bit.
| | 03:04 |
I just jumped my, my sink on the flashes
up in the rafters.
| | 03:10 |
I gotta remember to put a couple seconds
in between them.
| | 03:14 |
That's better.
>> (SOUND).
| | 03:17 |
Alright.
So, I'm going to, I think I'm going to
| | 03:27 |
need to kill.
Why don't I kill, why don't I kill both
| | 03:37 |
back lights?
Male Speaker 3: Yeah.
| | 03:38 |
David: Is that doable?
Male Speaker 3: Yep.
| | 03:39 |
Unplug it from the, yeah, there you go.
No, not that one.
| | 03:42 |
Let's see if we can get away with leaving
this one.
| | 03:45 |
David: That fire totally lights your
face.
| | 03:47 |
I'm, I, I want to, I want to incorporate
that when you're, when you're, when
| | 03:50 |
you're moving in there.
We're getting a lot from the doors, honestly.
| | 03:54 |
Albin: Yeah.
David: But that is what it is.
| | 03:59 |
(NOISE).
| | 04:02 |
Alright, Alvin this is looking a lot
better.
| | 04:21 |
I'm going to have, just try to remember
to, no it's okay, it's okay.
| | 04:25 |
Two days ago I was giving a dancer
dancing lessons and now I'm talking to a
| | 04:28 |
blacksmith and telling him how to
position himself.
| | 04:33 |
With a hammer, who has a large hammer.
Albin: No, no.
| | 04:35 |
I was just trying to think.
David: (LAUGH) Okay.
| | 04:39 |
It's too hot now.
And check them right back here.
| | 04:56 |
(SOUND) There we go.
(SOUND) Okay.
| | 05:01 |
In a moment we're going to, we're
going to drop the lights, especially when
| | 05:04 |
he's doing this kind of stuff because
that's really cool back there with a low light.
| | 05:09 |
I see cool it down a little like that.
Albin: The tip because I'm hammering it.
| | 05:36 |
David: Ahhh.
(NOISE) This looks really good Alvin.
| | 05:48 |
>> Okay
| | 05:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Refining the shot| 00:00 |
David: you, when you lean in closer to
the fire, I c, I can really, yeah, there
| | 00:02 |
we go.
There we go.
| | 00:04 |
I think, I'm really catching' some glow
out of that fire now.
| | 00:10 |
All right.
Back out.
| | 00:11 |
Thank you very much.
Okay.
| | 00:13 |
So we killed the, all of the ambient
light in the room except for the cracks
| | 00:15 |
coming through the door and such.
And, we're really tryin' to make this work.
| | 00:24 |
(SOUND) Yeah, but we've got that glowing
stick thing solved really well at this
| | 00:35 |
point, so that's a (SOUND) I'm backing up
a tad.
| | 00:45 |
None of my lights are moving with me, so
no matter where I shoot, the lighting
| | 00:48 |
ratios are always the same.
The only thing that's moving is my
| | 00:51 |
trigger light really at this point.
| | 00:52 |
(SOUND).
| | 00:57 |
I'm going to come in kind of close to you
for a few, Albin, okay?
| | 01:34 |
Albin: All right.
| | 01:36 |
(SOUND).
| | 01:42 |
David: Okay.
Now firing up top, I've gotta remember,
| | 02:00 |
constantly remember to check my 1001,
1002.
| | 02:05 |
I'm slowing down up there.
I've gotta slow down for my top light,
| | 02:08 |
since you're so, set on such high power.
This looks really nice I (SOUND) let's
| | 02:13 |
see, there we go.
Albin, you want to take a quick look at
| | 02:21 |
this and see that you're looking nice
and, nice and rich and warm there?
| | 02:38 |
Albin: Oh wow!
Cool.
| | 02:40 |
David: It's very Currier and Ives.
Albin: Alright.
| | 02:42 |
David: Or, or what's the name, the
Saturday Evening Post guy?
| | 02:45 |
Albin: Norman Rockwell.
David: That's it, that's the guy.
| | 02:47 |
Albin: Excellent.
David: Now I'm looking for little problems.
| | 02:53 |
Everything that I see right now I like.
the stick is glowing the way I want it to
| | 02:57 |
glow, the fires glowing the way I want it
to glow.
| | 03:00 |
I think, I think I'm really close now.
I'm just, I'm trying to get pictures.
| | 03:05 |
Now I'm going to, I'm going to flip this
over to you.
| | 03:08 |
Is, is there something, is there
something that I should know from a
| | 03:10 |
blacksmith's perspective, I mean
Albin: Just what you've seen.
| | 03:13 |
David: Okay, okay, great, great.
The, the last thing I want to do is get
| | 03:16 |
all the technical stuff right and then
have one of those, other than that, Mrs.
| | 03:19 |
Lincoln, how was the play moments?
Albin: So far, I haven't done anything
| | 03:23 |
that I wouldn't normally do.
David: Excellent, great, great.
| | 03:26 |
Albin: Other than working (INAUDIBLE).
David: (LAUGH) Yeah.
| | 03:32 |
Well, you look marvelous.
(NOISE) Hey Alvin?
| | 03:40 |
Albin: Yes?
David: I'm going to rotate you a little
| | 03:43 |
more around towards the light, just, just
a tad.
| | 03:48 |
Not much, if you can.
Albin: To my left?
| | 03:50 |
David: Yeah, yeah, so you rotate
counter-clockwise.
| | 03:54 |
To your, there you go, there you go.
Yeah.
| | 04:01 |
And Dave, can I have you move a little
bit away from that chimney?
| | 04:03 |
I'm trying to grab that bellows in there.
They spent so much time working, building
| | 04:06 |
that bellows, I don't want to, I don't
want to give 'em up.
| | 04:09 |
Totally, yeah.
'Kay, how much can I get over there?
| | 04:14 |
Yeah.
Ooh, Alison's going to like this.
| | 04:19 |
(SOUND)
| | 04:24 |
One, two, three, okay.
| | 04:38 |
(NOISE)
| | 04:45 |
Here we go.
'Kay I'm going to fake you a little
| | 04:59 |
towards that light when you're working
with your face.
| | 05:07 |
Look up a little bit so I can see it
because every little thing is perfect now.
| | 05:10 |
Albin: Okay.
Look up?
| | 05:11 |
David: Yeah, yeah just, just instead of
the hunch over a little bit.
| | 05:13 |
Yeah, yeah because every, everything's
looking really nice right now I'm getting picky.
| | 05:25 |
Like, I didn't even see you hiding back
there before, Dave, so I've got you in
| | 05:28 |
some of my frames.
Mr guy who wears black, okay.
| | 05:35 |
What'd you get?
Albin: Don, I'm trying to think to look up.
| | 05:37 |
David: Oh, well, yeah, just, there you
go.
| | 05:41 |
Now, I mean, no, not the, don't feel like
you have to force it.
| | 05:43 |
Just make sure you don't hunch down
completely over there.
| | 05:45 |
There you go.
That's nice.
| | 05:52 |
Let's take a look.
This looks incredibly rich and layered.
| | 06:07 |
That, that all the warmth in here is
really coming back.
| | 06:09 |
(NOISE).
Okay, remembering to look up on those
| | 06:12 |
early luntz where the, where the glow is
nice.
| | 06:19 |
Now, I'm getting, I'm getting super picky
in trying to make sure everything lines
| | 06:21 |
up at once.
(NOISE).
| | 06:21 |
There we go.
(NOISE).
| | 06:30 |
(SOUND)
| | 06:32 |
One more series like that and I think we
got it.
| | 06:49 |
Albin: Okay.
David: And we'll swap up to the portrait.
| | 06:52 |
'Kay.
You're good, you're good.
| | 07:14 |
We're good.
We're good.
| | 07:37 |
If you want to finish what you're doing,
if you want to finish up your project, I
| | 07:40 |
mean, you put some work into this.
So we're, we're at your disposal.
| | 07:45 |
Albin: No, I'm at your disposal.
David: No, I'm at your disposal.
| | 07:48 |
(LAUGH) This looks really, this looks
really good, Alvin.
| | 07:52 |
Albin: Excellent.
David: This dark room has really yielded
| | 07:54 |
to us, I think at this point, so.
| | 07:56 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shoot once, use many times| 00:00 |
So this is one of my very favorite kinds
of shoots, for several reason.
| | 00:03 |
Number one, it's technically challenging.
I mean, this was one of the more
| | 00:06 |
technically challenging rooms I've been
in in a little while.
| | 00:10 |
number two, this is a picture that has a
lot of uses for me and for other people.
| | 00:14 |
So in addition to it being used
educationally, which is the way you're
| | 00:17 |
looking at it right now.
it will be a post, a post on my local
| | 00:20 |
blog, Hoco360.
That's hoco360.com, if you're interested.
| | 00:24 |
but it also will be usable for the
conservancy, and their efforts to, to
| | 00:28 |
build their endowment fund to help put
this place into not only historical
| | 00:31 |
preservation, but financial preservation
as well.
| | 00:35 |
And last but not least Albun Dresnosky,
who is our blacksmith will be able to use
| | 00:39 |
this for his education marketing
purposes.
| | 00:42 |
So, so, what I'm looking for a lot of the
time is a picture that you going to take
| | 00:45 |
one time, and that's going to have many
uses for many people.
| | 00:49 |
And that's a really neat value
multiplier, so that's one of my main
| | 00:51 |
criteria when I'm deciding what I'm
going to shoot.
| | 00:54 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lighting notebook: Blacksmith shop| 00:01 |
So this was, this was a deceptively
complicated picture for me.
| | 00:05 |
Normally I'm really not worried when I
walk into a dark room in fact I'd rather
| | 00:09 |
walk into a dark room than, than a light
room.
| | 00:12 |
But this room was exceedingly dark.
And, and that's not a bad thing.
| | 00:16 |
The worst thing it was, it was even
darker In the back, and we had no place
| | 00:19 |
to hide a light.
but let's take a look just at our main
| | 00:22 |
subject matter from the top.
You have Alvin our blacksmith.
| | 00:26 |
So, expertly rendered by yours truly at
his anvil.
| | 00:30 |
And that's sort of the angle he's working
at.
| | 00:32 |
And then right behind him you've got the
forge which is very, very hot back there,
| | 00:36 |
and really precludes our being able to
stick a light behind it.
| | 00:40 |
It's its, you know, you're going to be
sweating if you're working right next to
| | 00:42 |
that, its not the place you're going to
be sticking a plastic flash.
| | 00:46 |
So, here's a straight environmental
picture with Sebastian one of the people
| | 00:49 |
working with us that day.
And this really illustrates our problem
| | 00:53 |
in that what little light exist is coming
from the front and it's actually decent
| | 00:56 |
quality light, but there's no light
reaching the back.
| | 01:01 |
This room has very, very, very tiny
windows in it and, in fact those windows
| | 01:04 |
were something we wanted to get rid of.
Because we want the darkest possible room
| | 01:09 |
so we can key our exposure on the tiny
little glow coming from the stick.
| | 01:13 |
And the light coming from the forge
itself once we get the fire going.
| | 01:16 |
But that's not our problem now.
Our problem is fixing that dark background.
| | 01:21 |
And, to do that, we're going to take a
couple of limo pro lp 160 flashes, put
| | 01:25 |
them on half power, and point them from
the rafters, up into the ceiling.
| | 01:30 |
Now, the good news is, that light is
going to do some neat things for us.
| | 01:35 |
In fact, let's take a look at that now.
Here's Sebastian again with pretty much
| | 01:38 |
the same exposure, but this light hitting
hitting the back of the room.
| | 01:43 |
So, we currently got the separation we
need, we can see into the back of the frame.
| | 01:47 |
there's, there's some good things
happening in that this light is picking
| | 01:49 |
up the color of the wood.
As it comes down and reflects and warms
| | 01:52 |
that whole frame up in a really neat way.
The bad news is, that wood is not exactly
| | 01:57 |
shiny aluminum foil.
It's dark wood up there.
| | 02:00 |
So, it's going to be absorbing most of
that light.
| | 02:02 |
Which is why we got these flashes both
set on half power.
| | 02:05 |
And we're still getting just a modest
amount of light returned back from that
| | 02:07 |
very dark ceiling.
So, now we've got our separation light
| | 02:11 |
working because those, those flashes are
not only giving us a background.
| | 02:15 |
But they're also giving us the separation
light on what will be Alvin's shoulders.
| | 02:19 |
These are still Sebastian's shoulders at
this point.
| | 02:21 |
So, let's take our fill and bring that in
and our fill light is going to be instead
| | 02:24 |
of a ring flash I want to push that light
further back behind me and make it bigger.
| | 02:29 |
So, it will ironically reach further back
into that room.
| | 02:32 |
It's another SB-800 a (INAUDIBLE) and a
Lumiquest shoot through 43-inch umbrella.
| | 02:38 |
And these lights are just all slaved and
I'm going to set them all off with a
| | 02:41 |
flash just on the camera pointed up, not
really affecting the exposure at all.
| | 02:47 |
So, now what we've got is our, is our
background lights throwing, light up and
| | 02:50 |
differentiating the background.
And throwing the separation light on the
| | 02:54 |
blacksmith's shoulders, and our front
light is going to go in there and just
| | 02:57 |
fill in everything that does not need to
be lit by the key.
| | 03:02 |
So, when we bring our key light in and
light Alvin's face, it's really the only
| | 03:04 |
thing we're concerned about.
The rest of the picture looks exactly the
| | 03:08 |
way we want it to look, and we can just
concentrate on using that key light to
| | 03:11 |
polish off our subject.
So, that key light is going to come in
| | 03:15 |
nice and close, just out of that frame.
And all, the only thing it has to do is
| | 03:19 |
define that stuff in the foreground and
Alvin's face.
| | 03:23 |
And we cheated him a little bit to get
him looking the right directions for the light.
| | 03:26 |
We had to turn the anvil a little bit
those are little things that are important.
| | 03:29 |
And, and it's much better to, to go and
do those finishing touches than to have
| | 03:32 |
your subject.
be looking in a way where the light can't
| | 03:35 |
see him, or you can't see his face, or he
can't see you or whatever.
| | 03:39 |
So, let's look at a wide shot of the
light as we have it set up and you can
| | 03:42 |
see how close the umbrella is to Alvin.
We want it just out of the frame so when
| | 03:47 |
we zoom in, it'll look like just a window
or a door.
| | 03:50 |
and you start to see the, the forge
coming up now too.
| | 03:53 |
That forge, the fire, right there at the
bottom of the chimney, and the glowing
| | 03:57 |
glowing metal that he's working with.
To get that glow, we've gotta have a
| | 04:02 |
really dark room.
So, that's why we wanted this ambient
| | 04:05 |
light in the room to be as dark as
possible.
| | 04:07 |
And if you take just an ambient picture,
you can see that the that the fire in the
| | 04:10 |
forge is actually bright enough to be a
light source.
| | 04:13 |
And we're going to, we're going to need
that light source because we want this
| | 04:16 |
forge to come alive and we want that
metal to glow.
| | 04:19 |
And so what we basically have here are a,
are two exposures.
| | 04:23 |
We have a flash exposure that's happening
instantaneously.
| | 04:26 |
And then we have a very dark room in
which the only things that are glowing
| | 04:30 |
are, are the steel, that, that Alvin is
working on and the fire in the forge
| | 04:34 |
behind him.
And using the shutter speed to balance
| | 04:38 |
that, that complex set of lights and
flashes putting out and the simple
| | 04:41 |
glowing lights that are happening in the
very dark room.
| | 04:46 |
In reality, we can dial those lights in
as much or as little as we want, and
| | 04:49 |
it's, it's really, it's a bit of a
complex picture, but every step in it is
| | 04:52 |
very simple.
You've just got a few variables.
| | 04:57 |
You have to decide when you're going to,
when you're going to hit the button on
| | 04:59 |
that, that hammer coming down.
And you can't even really see it you're
| | 05:02 |
mostly just going by sound.
Otherwise, everything is pretty straight
| | 05:06 |
forward and well, what we end up with is
a very rich, very warm, almost a Currier
| | 05:09 |
and Ives kind of a look.
From a room that was very dark and, and
| | 05:14 |
what little, what little light there was
all coming from the front.
| | 05:18 |
So, we sort of flipped it on the back,
built the light from the back, and and
| | 05:21 |
then let it go dark and allow for that
flame to build up.
| | 05:25 |
I was really happy with this picture
especially given, given the tight
| | 05:28 |
environment that we worked with, and of
course, Alvin was, was fantastic.
| | 05:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Portrait of the BlacksmithThe initial lighting setup and exposure goals| 00:00 |
David: All right.
So, we're going to be shooting Alban
| | 00:02 |
using this doorway as a backdrop for a
portrait.
| | 00:05 |
It's got a lot of really nice texture to
it, both in the door itself, but also,
| | 00:08 |
there's some depth inside.
And I want to see if you can see this but
| | 00:12 |
but I've taken a Stoffen and put it on an
SB-800, which I've got slaved.
| | 00:17 |
And I blacked out the front of the
Stoffen, so, so, if I've got this set up
| | 00:20 |
right, oh no, I've gotta reset it.
One moment please, there we go.
| | 00:26 |
And mode, manual.
So, what I'm going to do is light up this
| | 00:31 |
doorway, and I'm killing a lot of the
light that will be going straight on the
| | 00:34 |
doorway itself.
And leaving more of it to go around the edges.
| | 00:38 |
So, it made it like, it sort of comes out
like this, like a, like a saucer, and not
| | 00:41 |
so much forward.
If I had this off, you see how much
| | 00:44 |
brighter the door would be right there.
And even if I took this tape off of this
| | 00:49 |
Stoffen, it's, it's not technically a
Stoffen, it's a little diffuser that
| | 00:53 |
comes with the camera.
You could also see that it's going to be
| | 00:58 |
way hotter right there, so I'm trying to
modulate the different densities of that door.
| | 01:04 |
It's pretty high tech, this is something
they call Gaffer's tape (SOUND), it's
| | 01:11 |
just way cleaner.
Can you see that going through the camera?
| | 01:17 |
Not everyone will sync, it's going to
auto, going to happen between frames.
| | 01:20 |
So, I'm going to start from the back, and
I'm going to light this, and I'm going to
| | 01:23 |
get my exposure.
And I'm going to go for something that I
| | 01:26 |
know I can hit with the other flashes.
So, I'm looking for, like I am very many
| | 01:30 |
times, I'm looking for F56 to F8 for a
lot of reasons.
| | 01:33 |
Number one that's what these flashes were
designed to do.
| | 01:36 |
To work in fairly close, and to light
people to f 5, 6, or f8, f11.
| | 01:40 |
number two is I'm going to be able to
carry depth.
| | 01:43 |
So, this door might not be tack sharp but
it's going to be fairly sharp.
| | 01:46 |
And I know that I'm going to have full
sharpness through Alvin's face.
| | 01:49 |
number three my lenses are their sharpest
at five, six, and eight, just like yours are.
| | 01:53 |
Even if you've got a $3,000 Canon
superpass prime or if you've got a kit
| | 01:57 |
zoom lens that cost $50 or maybe came
with your camera for free.
| | 02:01 |
They are not at their sharpest when
they're wide-open.
| | 02:04 |
They're not even their sharpest when
they're closed all the way down.
| | 02:06 |
It's the middle of the range that they
get.
| | 02:09 |
They just get really nice and crisp, so
every lens is, is beautiful at F5,6 or F8
| | 02:13 |
so that's a good reason to zone in there.
Unless you have a reason depth of field
| | 02:18 |
wise or, I don't have enough light wise
or I want to get every little thing in focus.
| | 02:24 |
And you're going to find that things just
work, a lot of times.
| | 02:27 |
So, this is the key light and this a
LumiQuest Softbox 3, which, it's.
| | 02:33 |
I would never go anywhere without,
shooting people.
| | 02:35 |
It's a nice key light, because it's not
really hard and not really soft at a
| | 02:38 |
normal working distance.
Has an interesting quality to it that's
| | 02:41 |
going to be when I'm going to hit Alvin
with from camera right.
| | 02:45 |
I'm going to cut that light and keep it
from wrapping around the right hand, or
| | 02:48 |
his left hand side of his face, with this
gobo/g.
| | 02:51 |
Which is just a piece of black
coroplast/g.
| | 02:53 |
And I'm going to fill everything with
some ring from the front.
| | 02:55 |
So that's going to give me three easily
controllable zones.
| | 02:58 |
I've got the zone on the door, which will
be relatively controllable between the
| | 03:01 |
door and the frame of the door, because
of that tape.
| | 03:05 |
I've got the key light zone, the
highlight zone on Alvin's face.
| | 03:08 |
And I've got the shadows zone.
So, all three of those zones are going to
| | 03:10 |
be things that I can control
independently.
| | 03:13 |
And that's going to give me the the
ratios, the internal contrast ratios.
| | 03:17 |
And the choice of those ratios that I
want within the frame itself.
| | 03:21 |
Now I could also alter the color at any
of those light sources.
| | 03:24 |
And in fact I do have a one quarter CTO
gel, which is a slight warming gel.
| | 03:28 |
Which is going to give you a couple of
weeks on the Rivera as far as your skin tone.
| | 03:31 |
Just right there.
No one ever complains about that.
| | 03:33 |
no one ever says, yeah, it's nice, but I
look a little more cadaverous in real life.
| | 03:36 |
So, I'm going to go with that but, this
is my key light that always keeps a,
| | 03:40 |
quarter CTO on it.
These other two lights are going to be
| | 03:44 |
straight white.
But if I were going effect, I could cool
| | 03:47 |
them both down a little bit and have that
whole environment look very cool.
| | 03:51 |
The fill shadows would look cool, the
doors would look cool.
| | 03:54 |
And I'm talking about cool as in color
not cool as in hey dude, you know this
| | 03:57 |
that's cool.
But so I can keep everything cool in the
| | 04:00 |
frame except for just that little shaft
of light is going to be revealing out its
| | 04:03 |
face and create a little color contrast
in there too.
| | 04:07 |
But I'm just going to go warm versus
neutral.
| | 04:09 |
And I think, I think that's going to be a
neat look.
| | 04:11 |
I've seen that before and it's subtle,
but, but really, it helps define
| | 04:13 |
someone's face better, when they're the
only thing in the warm light.
| | 04:17 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Refining the lighting and exposure| 00:01 |
David: if you'll notice, we've got
fluorescents and we've got L, LED lights
| | 00:04 |
on and such.
We had a problem with that when we were
| | 00:07 |
using the fire as a light source, but now
that we are shooting just with pure flash
| | 00:10 |
power, it's no problem at all.
Because I'm going to be shooting at a
| | 00:15 |
250th of a second, probably at f56 or f8.
That is so far above these lights sources
| | 00:19 |
that for me, they don't even exist.
Hm, going to have to swap that.
| | 00:35 |
(SOUND).
| | 00:35 |
(INAUDIBLE)
| | 00:38 |
So, I'm using my off camera cord to
trigger this one light.
| | 00:57 |
And then the other lights will be
triggered optically using the slaves
| | 01:05 |
built in to the SB800s.
(SOUND) Very sensitive down there.
| | 01:13 |
Okay.
So, let's just get some white levels here.
| | 01:19 |
Going to 2 50th of a second.
I'm going to drop down to ISO200 which is
| | 01:23 |
my, best made of ISO.
(SOUND) See how the door looks.
| | 01:27 |
Way dark.
So I'm going to need more power out of that.
| | 01:32 |
Maybe 2 more stops, 3 more stops.
I'm going from a 64th to a 1 16th power,
| | 01:38 |
still a really low level (SOUND).
Now, the door's looking better.
| | 01:48 |
I've got a weird pattern coming from that
tape, I'm going to have to make the tape smaller.
| | 01:54 |
Set that down.
(SOUND) (INAUDIBLE).
| | 02:10 |
I think I'm just going to let enough
light to make a little tiny bit of a
| | 02:15 |
glow, which also served to erase that
rain shadow in the back.
| | 02:27 |
That's better.
Little hot, so I gotta drop it back down
| | 02:29 |
to stop.
It get, it became more powerful because I
| | 02:31 |
took some tape off of it.
(SOUND) That's better.
| | 02:47 |
Now a couple things I'm seeing, the door
is really catching just, I'm, I'm just
| | 02:50 |
filling in the door, which I think's
going to look a little unnatural.
| | 02:55 |
So I'm going to back that light up a
little bit, put a little more space
| | 02:57 |
between Alvin and that door.
And allow this light to hit and throw a
| | 03:01 |
little light around the rope and the
edges of the doors and such.
| | 03:07 |
So, I'm going to come out to about here,
make it straight on, give myself a little
| | 03:12 |
more power, and, move Alvin's mark up to,
maybe right there.
| | 03:18 |
That's much more interesting.
Okay, so now this is basically solved.
| | 03:29 |
I'm at f8 and everything looks good.
I'm at 200 200 ISO, again, incredible
| | 03:33 |
amount of dust starting to work on my
camera here.
| | 03:36 |
(NOISE) That over there.
So I'm going to start cranking up my
| | 03:40 |
ring, until that looks right.
(NOISE) What ring?
| | 03:44 |
So I'm at half power on my, on my ring
light.
| | 03:56 |
(NOISE) That's looking better.
I don't want to go to full power on the
| | 03:59 |
ring because that's going to give me a
long recycle time.
| | 04:02 |
In fact I'm going to drop down to quarter
power and see where I need to go to make
| | 04:06 |
my ring look right at a quarter power,
and then I'll adjust this flash accordingly.
| | 04:13 |
Maybe I need to give myself some ISO.
I'll do that, I'll go to 400, and we'll
| | 04:16 |
go to 56 and see what this looks like.
That's way better.
| | 04:22 |
The door's too hot, so I'm going to bring
the door down to compensate.
| | 04:25 |
And then we'll be at the last light.
And my pants are going to fall down.
| | 04:39 |
So this light is at 1 64th power.
Very little light.
| | 04:43 |
This light is at one quarter power.
Which is relatively a lot, but it's
| | 04:46 |
further away and it's also going through
the ring splash which also takes, eats a
| | 04:49 |
lot of light up.
I'm going to go to JPEGs here to save
| | 04:53 |
some card.
I'll go back before we shoot finals.
| | 05:05 |
Little less on the light, on the, on the
backlight, and I think we're there.
| | 05:09 |
See if I can do this without droppin'
anything.
| | 05:17 |
At 11 28th power.
(NOISE) That's not bad.
| | 05:23 |
(SOUND) Alright, so Alvin, I'm going to
bring you in on your spot, if you could,
| | 05:37 |
thank you very much.
And I've already got a problem.
| | 05:48 |
Your height is going to be a problem.
I'm going to have to compress everything
| | 05:50 |
back just a little bit.
Me not think this through very well.
| | 05:56 |
So there.
So let me bring you back 2 feet or so.
| | 06:04 |
And I'm going to, I'm going to give you
more room with this light stand.
| | 06:07 |
There we go.
So you'll be tucked right up against the
| | 06:09 |
light stand.
Albin: Alright.
| | 06:10 |
David: And your body's turned, maybe you
want to be thinking towards that, what is
| | 06:12 |
this thing right here?
Albin: That is a portable forge.
| | 06:15 |
David: Oh, wow.
Albin: That's a hand crank blower.
| | 06:20 |
So, what I do there.
Albin So, we may need to kill that LED
| | 06:23 |
right there.
David: It's going to be right in my frame.
| | 06:26 |
Albin: Yep.
David: Okay, and we, and in fact we'll,
| | 06:29 |
we'll have to pull that off in a moment.
Go to half power and just look.
| | 06:35 |
>> (SOUND).
Oh, okay.
| | 06:40 |
So let's go ahead and kill the LE, the
LED.
| | 06:43 |
(SOUND).
I think I'm going to kill the ring, and
| | 06:45 |
put an umbrella back here.
And use an umbrella as a quasi ring.
| | 06:51 |
Albin: (INAUDIBLE).
David: Oh, yeah, yeah.
| | 06:54 |
Hey, take, yeah, yeah.
All Eric knows I do is put em out.
| | 07:03 |
This probably is going to be a little
more efficient too.
| | 07:07 |
I'm getting a lot a light on that door,
but not a lot a, not a lot a light on the
| | 07:12 |
wood so, I'm seeing if giving myself a
softer light source will help out a
| | 07:17 |
little bit there.
We'll see oh, that's not good.
| | 07:26 |
Had a camera.
Oh, here it is.
| | 07:30 |
And I'm going to shoot from right in
front of this.
| | 07:39 |
That's better.
(SOUND) All right.
| | 07:43 |
All right.
So you basically, yeah, you got a foot on
| | 07:48 |
there, that's good.
And (SOUND) see how my lights going to look.
| | 07:55 |
Honey bright, it's going to be very rich.
Is what you've mystically say in that
| | 08:02 |
dark corner.
So I'm going to underexpose this a little more.
| | 08:05 |
And actually look centering toward this
umbrella here.
| | 08:08 |
I'm going to raise this up.
So, this umbrella now is kind of a ring light.
| | 08:15 |
Albin: Which way's do you want me to
look.
| | 08:18 |
David: let's see, right, right here if
you would.
| | 08:21 |
You know, I'm going to have to stand
right in front of this guy, too, aren't I?
| | 08:24 |
That's good.
I've given myself another problem in that
| | 08:29 |
I've got a bigger light source, so I
don't want you to look right at me with
| | 08:32 |
your, with your.
Albin: Up or down?
| | 08:35 |
David: Over, over towards the tobacky,
the tobacco over there in the window.
| | 08:38 |
And let's see.
How's that do?
| | 08:42 |
That's funny.
I see huge highlights from the window in
| | 08:45 |
your eyes.
But by the time we shoot with a flash,
| | 08:48 |
we're so above that exposure it's not a
big deal.
| | 08:50 |
Okay.
We're almost here.
| | 08:55 |
I've got a problem in that I'm not
going to get that wood with, with, with
| | 09:05 |
this fill light.
it's just going to be too dark, so let me
| | 09:13 |
think about that for a minute.
This, I want this up as high as I can get it.
| | 09:18 |
Oh.
Hey, it already is.
| | 09:19 |
Heh.
Oh, boy.
| | 09:24 |
because I'm going to be on a stool to
keep you there.
| | 09:28 |
This the light that's going over in a few
minutes.
| | 09:33 |
Mark my words.
Lisa: You want some bags?
| | 09:36 |
David: yes.
Thank you Lisa.
| | 09:37 |
Now.
Let's see if I can grow just a little bit.
| | 09:41 |
I'm going to go ahead and put this key on
you too.
| | 09:46 |
(SOUND) 1 16th get this up nice and high.
So this should give them picture some shape.
| | 09:55 |
(SOUND)
| | 09:57 |
(BLANK_AUDIO)
| | 10:01 |
Let's see what happens.
This may be way too bright.
| | 10:11 |
I just made a guess at 1 16th of 1 16th
power.
| | 10:17 |
(SOUND)
| | 10:19 |
No, that's getting there.
(SOUND) Alright, so now I've got a, I've
| | 10:29 |
got a nice overall light.
We're getting pretty close to the
| | 10:31 |
Albin: Okay.
David: If you want to if, if, so in a
| | 10:33 |
minute I'll have you well, we use you
with a stand in.
| | 10:36 |
Albin: What?
David: Well, I'm going to have you get
| | 10:37 |
just with a stand in piece of metal, get
it all nailed down.
| | 10:40 |
Albin: Oh yeah.
David: And then, right, right.
| | 10:42 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Final lighting refinements before the shoot| 00:00 |
David: Dave, I want to actually have you
stand here and look at this.
| | 00:02 |
If, if you look at this, you can see, you
can see that I'm, I'm partially cutting
| | 00:06 |
off that light from the position where
he's going to be.
| | 00:09 |
And, in fact, you should be able to see
about half of that, if you're in his, his position.
| | 00:14 |
I want to make a tiny little sliber,
sliver of light that's sort of
| | 00:17 |
discovering his face a little bit.
So, just, come in, come in with your
| | 00:20 |
stuff and we'll see how close we are.
Now, you should be able to see about half
| | 00:27 |
that light source that's tucked into the
beam up past the.
| | 00:30 |
Can you see that?
Albin: Okay, I, I'm seeing a quarter to a third.
| | 00:33 |
David: Okay.
Alright?
| | 00:36 |
That, I can adjust.
Albin: 'Kay, that's close.
| | 00:40 |
Yeah, (INAUDIBLE).
David: So, so basically his face can see
| | 00:41 |
some of the light source.
And then the further away you wrap around
| | 00:44 |
his face on our camera right side, the
less of that light source you can see.
| | 00:49 |
And you're, you're going completely
deer-in-headlights on us here, but by the
| | 00:52 |
time we're actually making pictures I'm
going to, I'm going to be working on that.
| | 00:56 |
(SOUND) I think too much fill.
let's see.
| | 01:03 |
Do you know how to change an SB8?
You know, actually, I can do this way, I
| | 01:07 |
can do this way, feel/g.
Just took a stop off of it.
| | 01:12 |
Okay, I'll see this'll hold all the way
down.
| | 01:20 |
Camera springs back up.
Okay.
| | 01:23 |
I'm going to give myself a little more
power here because I've cut away some of
| | 01:26 |
this light, so I need to make up for it
by making it more intense.
| | 01:30 |
So think about it.
If I cut half of this light off from
| | 01:35 |
seeing his face, I've taken a stop out of
this light.
| | 01:42 |
So I just added that stop back in.
I'm actually going to rotate that around
| | 01:47 |
a little bit.
Is that beam blocking the light for you
| | 01:50 |
or can you see it?
Albin: the corner.
| | 01:53 |
David: Ish.
Yeah.
| | 01:54 |
That's okay.
I, well, the one thing I don't want to do
| | 01:56 |
is throw a weird shadow in on you there.
Albin: Okay, now that.
| | 01:59 |
David: That better?
Albin: That, that covered more of it.
| | 02:02 |
I'm seeing the bottom quarter of the
thing.
| | 02:06 |
David: Oh, oh, of the light?
Oh, oh I see.
| | 02:08 |
I see.
Tell me up, down, left or right.
| | 02:11 |
Albin: a little down.
A little smidge more.
| | 02:15 |
Okay now it's basically half of the.
David: Got it.
| | 02:18 |
Got it.
I could just come in really tight on you
| | 02:21 |
right there.
Drop it down from, out of, from just out
| | 02:25 |
of frame.
Let's see what happens here.
| | 02:26 |
I'm just going to forget that you're a
human being for a couple minutes and
| | 02:29 |
treat you as a mannequin, I think, is the
only way to.
| | 02:33 |
Albin: That's fine.
David: But you're, well, you know, you've
| | 02:36 |
done a lot of modeling I'm sure at this
point.
| | 02:39 |
So, most, I, I, I really don't like
shooting models, I gotta say.
| | 02:43 |
We're going to be, we're going to be
shooting a model later.
| | 02:45 |
They're just, I don't know, combination
of intimidating and not, it just doesn't
| | 02:50 |
seem real, sometimes.
You should be able to see most of that light.
| | 02:54 |
Can you?
Albin: everything except the very corner.
| | 02:57 |
David: Perfect.
So now I'm going to come in and cut it.
| | 02:59 |
Albin: But now I can see a whole corner.
David: Okay.
| | 03:02 |
So let's bring this up a little bit.
Albin: I see three quarters.
| | 03:06 |
David: Okay, about that.
Albin: Still not quite half.
| | 03:10 |
I mean.
David: A little more than half right.
| | 03:15 |
That should do it, right about there.
Albin: That's still more than half.
| | 03:17 |
David: Okay, but should be keeping that
from a.
| | 03:20 |
Albin: Okay.
David: Falling on you.
| | 03:22 |
I really want to cut it from hitting your
ear on this side.
| | 03:24 |
That's my, that's my main goal.
And (SOUND).
| | 03:26 |
That's getting interesting.
'Kay, so this light is a little hot.
| | 03:37 |
But other than that, I think I'm good.
There, well see, you can see more than
| | 03:44 |
half of it, so I'm, I'm giving myself
one, two, three.
| | 03:47 |
If I have to, I'll adjust.
Okay, if you could just, at me for a
| | 03:53 |
minute, turn, not your face towards me
but chin down a little bit and eyes straight.
| | 04:04 |
(SOUND) OK.
Now I''m solving my reflections.
| | 04:10 |
Albin: OK.
David: Where is that coming from?
| | 04:12 |
(LAUGH) I think I got a window over there
maybe?
| | 04:15 |
Let's see if it's ambient light or
regular light.
| | 04:20 |
Er, flash.
(SOUND) It's flash.
| | 04:23 |
Well, this is going to be interesting.
It, it looks square.
| | 04:27 |
Male Speaker 3: (INAUDIBLE) the LED.
David: You think?
| | 04:29 |
Yes it is, yes it is, I bet.
Can we lose that LED light over there, especially?
| | 04:33 |
Male Speaker 3: Yeah.
Female Speaker 1: Yeah.
| | 04:35 |
David: Okay.
You can just turn it into the corner and
| | 04:36 |
it should be fine too.
Maybe, maybe, maybe I'm wrong.
| | 04:39 |
Let's see.
Just rotate the stand or, or.
| | 04:43 |
Male Speaker 3: Just pull the plug on the
(INAUDIBLE).
| | 04:48 |
David: Yeah.
Male Speaker 3: Try again.
| | 04:50 |
David: You know what I'm thinking?
I, I think, I think I just talked myself
| | 04:55 |
into a profile here too, because I like,
I like the beard, the glasses that
| | 04:58 |
completely work.
The light is looking really nice here and
| | 05:02 |
I'm not getting, it was the LED light.
(SOUND).
| | 05:07 |
Well shot some both ways.
We'll shoot some straight and then shoot
| | 05:08 |
some in profile.
'Cuz it's going to be a completely
| | 05:10 |
different picture.
Okay.
| | 05:12 |
So let me remember to go back to raw.
And we'll make some pictures.
| | 05:17 |
Quality.
So I'm going to go up and, and test one
| | 05:20 |
very quickly.
And then we'll get you,
| | 05:25 |
We'll get you into your hot steel face.
Alright so, eyes, eyes on me.
| | 05:30 |
not face but split the difference and
chin down a little bit.
| | 05:34 |
Now eyes right here.
There you go (SOUND).
| | 05:35 |
We're just going to look.
We're close, I'm still getting the light
| | 05:42 |
from some place else.
I think it's this.
| | 05:44 |
Albin: (SOUND) Okay.
David: I think I'm almost positive it's that.
| | 05:47 |
Albin: Alright.
| | 05:48 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Taking the final shots| 00:00 |
David: And this is, ok, so.
From here on out we're going to be making
| | 00:03 |
real pictures, so, I want you to, and I
know you're not used to posing for
| | 00:06 |
pictures and such.
But I really want you to just relax and
| | 00:09 |
be yourself.
what happens if you let the instrument
| | 00:11 |
strap, let me see how much room I've got.
It's going to be hard for me to get him.
| | 00:16 |
What happens if I do a vertical like
that?
| | 00:19 |
Now, we want them up but, just think
about, don't think about present them.
| | 00:22 |
Just, just, just not here is hammer, here
is gold metal.
| | 00:26 |
I am natural now.
but, but, just, just just kind of drop
| | 00:29 |
back and, and forget about the fact that
you're having your picture made a little bit.
| | 00:34 |
And, I know that's really easier said
than done.
| | 00:37 |
And I get that and this is a root canal
in a lot of ways but, but that's a
| | 00:40 |
pretty, that's a pretty natural position
for you.
| | 00:44 |
Albin: I have a question.
David: Yes sir.
| | 00:46 |
Albin: Where should my eyes be looking?
David: You know what, I may have you end
| | 00:50 |
at the, if, so pretend that steel is
glowing for a second there.
| | 00:54 |
Pull it up and look at it.
Alas, poor York, I knew him well, but
| | 00:57 |
cheat it in a little closer.
There you go, like, like you're lookin'
| | 01:02 |
at it about to strike it.
I'm not going to pretend you're at a
| | 01:04 |
table, but there's stil a relationship
between you and that piece of steel and
| | 01:07 |
the hammer in your other hand.
So, so that's what's valid about you
| | 01:10 |
standing there holding those things.
Let me look at that.
| | 01:13 |
I think that looks pretty good.
(NOISE) Oh, and your hammer just totally
| | 01:18 |
picked up the key light too, so.
All right, let's try that.
| | 01:21 |
Let's try that.
So, remember where you are.
| | 01:24 |
You've got a foot right there on the on
the light stand, right?
| | 01:28 |
Albin: (CROSSTALK).
David: 'Cuz we're going to have to be
| | 01:29 |
pretty quick.
You going to, are you going to heat that
| | 01:30 |
up a little in the fire for a minute?
Albin: I may have to.
| | 01:32 |
David: Okay, all right.
All right.
| | 01:33 |
We're going to shoot with the live ammo
here for a second.
| | 01:41 |
Yeah, there may be people that you travel
to to see doing the blacksmithing.
| | 01:47 |
But, but when they see your picture on
your website, I want them, I want them to
| | 01:52 |
be like, dude, man, that's, that's epic.
All right, we cooking?
| | 02:05 |
Okay, so make sure he has a path, Dave.
So you're looking at the glowing steel
| | 02:10 |
and thinking' about how you're going to
how, how you're going to hit it.
| | 02:19 |
So that, that brings the steel and the
hammer in a little closer when you do
| | 02:22 |
that, okay?
Albin: Okay (NOISE).
| | 02:25 |
David: Wow.
Like a jet engine.
| | 02:29 |
(NOISE) Okay, I'm ready when you are.
Okay.
| | 02:43 |
Tuck around.
That's good.
| | 02:44 |
I want to get your body right.
Here we go.
| | 02:48 |
All right.
So move it around a little.
| | 02:49 |
Pull it in just a tad.
There you -- oh, this looks sweet.
| | 02:53 |
Look at me, chin down a little bit good,
good, good.
| | 02:57 |
Now back at the, -- back at that -- move
it around a lit- -- inspect it.
| | 02:59 |
Move, there you go.
Good, good, good.
| | 03:04 |
Tighten it a little bit.
Look at it close before the light goes away.
| | 03:07 |
Oh, I like that tilt, I like that tilt.
That's good.
| | 03:11 |
Without moving eyes towards me.
Good, back at the stick, back at the stick.
| | 03:16 |
Okay relax for a second lets let it
finish and glow out.
| | 03:21 |
Albin: Heat it up again?
David: Yeah, Yeah.
| | 03:25 |
Oh that's sweet.
Cut back a little bit, make it where you
| | 03:31 |
can see that light a little less okay?
So, back up just a tad and with your
| | 03:35 |
face, there you go.
Okay, push the, I like it when you rotate
| | 03:43 |
it like that.
There you go.
| | 03:48 |
Don't make me break into my Austin Powers
voice, because I will.
| | 03:51 |
Could you push it away just a little bit
and look at it?
| | 03:53 |
The main thing, just really, really
regard it.
| | 03:57 |
Good.
(SOUND).
| | 03:59 |
Back your face up to get out of that
light just a little bit.
| | 04:01 |
Maybe not quite so much.
That's good, there you go.
| | 04:04 |
Now, lean in.
Bring it all close before it goes away.
| | 04:07 |
Good.
Alright, relax.
| | 04:11 |
And one more series like that, and we are
out of here.
| | 04:13 |
(SOUND).
Albin: Okay, I'm ready.
| | 04:20 |
David: Alright, bring it on.
Watch out for the guy with the fuzzy mic.
| | 04:26 |
Actually, you watch out for him Dave.
Dave: Mhmm.
| | 04:29 |
Yeah, he has the upper hand.
David: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
| | 04:31 |
That's better than a poke in the eye with
a hot stick, right?
| | 04:33 |
Okay.
There you go.
| | 04:36 |
Push it out away from you a little bit.
Yeah just like almost like your, like me,
| | 04:40 |
like your eye's are glowing.
(LAUGH) Okay move it around and look at it.
| | 04:45 |
Seriously think about it.
What would you do with that.
| | 04:48 |
There you go.
Okay back twist it like you just had it
| | 04:50 |
before, I like that.
Twist it up a little bit, there you go.
| | 04:54 |
Almost glossed it.
There we are you're out of here.
| | 04:56 |
That's awesome.
It really starts going away fast.
| | 04:57 |
So like, I can see with my eye.
Albin: Oh yeah.
| | 04:58 |
because it, it didn't 1,900 degrees and
it's dropping down.
| | 05:00 |
David: Can you get me one more?
Albin: I can give you a lot.
| | 05:10 |
David: Okay.
You know what I've let's get it, because
| | 05:12 |
I need to be so, quickly, when you get
there, push it away from you a little bit
| | 05:15 |
and twist around and look at it and
stuff.
| | 05:19 |
Albin: Okay.
David: because having it against that
| | 05:20 |
dark background like the magic, that's
the magic touch.
| | 05:22 |
Yep.
Bring 'er in.
| | 05:30 |
Alright, there we go.
There it is, perfect.
| | 05:33 |
Okay, yeah, move your head around, that's
good.
| | 05:35 |
Bring it in a little closer and right at
me.
| | 05:40 |
Right here, look at me.
There you go.
| | 05:45 |
Cool.
Cool.
| | 05:46 |
Alright, I think we're good.
Yeah.
| | 05:52 |
If you've got, if you've got something
other than me to concentrate on, that
| | 05:54 |
makes you a much more natural subject.
Albin: Okay.
| | 05:57 |
Makes sense.
David: I think we're good.
| | 05:59 |
I like these.
Albin: Oh, yeah.
| | 06:03 |
David: So between that and that working
shot.
| | 06:05 |
Albin: Mm-hm.
David: I think that will give you a
| | 06:06 |
little bit of a one-two punch to
Albin: Very good.
| | 06:08 |
David: To work with.
Alright so do what you gotta do with the fire.
| | 06:12 |
let me I want to get, I've got your name
spelled correctly in the email so I'm
| | 06:18 |
Albin: That's for you.
David: Oh sweet!
| | 06:20 |
Oh that's awesome!
Look at that!
| | 06:21 |
Now this has gotta have a place of honor
in my house.
| | 06:26 |
I gotta think about this.
Thank you very much.
| | 06:30 |
Is that sweet?
(SOUND) .A (INAUDIBLE)
| | 06:35 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lighting notebook: Blacksmith portrait| 00:01 |
Alright we wanted to give a second look
at Alvin who had done so well for us as a
| | 00:05 |
subject for environmental picture in the
blacksmith shop.
| | 00:10 |
And to do that we we decided to do a nice
portrait of him using this this doorway.
| | 00:15 |
So we placed him in front of the doorway
and we're going to build we're going to
| | 00:18 |
build our light from the back.
So, in the ambient exposure here, our
| | 00:22 |
room is very, very dark.
And we want it dark.
| | 00:24 |
Because we want that, the light from that
glowing piece of metal he's going to be
| | 00:28 |
holding, to have the ability to build up
as we leave our shutter open.
| | 00:33 |
Without the rest of the room just going
all crazy exposure wise.
| | 00:36 |
So, we going to start with a dark room.
And we're going to stick a, a flash with
| | 00:40 |
a, a little stoffen type dome.
It's, it's the Nikon dome that comes with
| | 00:45 |
the flash, actually.
And we're going to put a piece of tape on
| | 00:47 |
the front of that to keep that hotspot
from really getting too bright in that doorway.
| | 00:52 |
So it's going to be, put a nice glow on
the doorway behind Alvin and it's
| | 00:55 |
going to look just like this.
as far as the power level of the flash or
| | 00:59 |
the or all, you know, the, all the
little, the technicals always, that
| | 01:02 |
people want to know, what I say is, you
ask me what this flash is set at.
| | 01:07 |
And I'll answer with the, the definition
of ignorance and apathy, and that is I
| | 01:11 |
don't know and I don't care.
What's important to me is that this flash
| | 01:15 |
is giving me the amount of light that we
want, and we typically do that just by eye.
| | 01:19 |
I can't really use a flash meter here,
unless I know exactly how many stops I
| | 01:22 |
want to underexpose that door.
I just know that I, that I want to bring
| | 01:26 |
up detail, but I don't want it to to
really be singing in the back of the picture.
| | 01:31 |
So this is my first step.
After, after overpowering the ambient in
| | 01:34 |
the room and knowing that I can open my
shutter up to a quarter of a second.
| | 01:38 |
Or a fifth of a second.
Whatever and pick up that glowing stick later.
| | 01:44 |
So now we need to build the fill light
that's going to, that's going to fall on
| | 01:47 |
album and light every place that key
light doesn't hit in a few minutes.
| | 01:51 |
So this is going to be another one of
those situations where we want to
| | 01:54 |
underexpose him.
And there is no, there is no magic bullet
| | 01:57 |
as far as the power setting that this
flash is on.
| | 02:01 |
It's a Nikon SB 800.
It's in a 43 inch shoot-through Westcott umbrella.
| | 02:06 |
And it's job is going to be to light the
safety net part of Alvin.
| | 02:10 |
It's going to light everything that the
camera can see.
| | 02:12 |
And we want to light that.
And let's go ahead and pull that just
| | 02:15 |
that fill picture up of Alvin.
You can see what the look is here.
| | 02:18 |
It, it's a picture.
That is completely lit, but it's not
| | 02:22 |
completely exposed.
You can see everything, but everything's
| | 02:25 |
a little underexposed.
And that's the safety net where the
| | 02:28 |
shadows from our, our key light will fall
in just a moment.
| | 02:32 |
And that gives us the confidence to use a
nice sharp key light on Alvin.
| | 02:35 |
And know that we're going to have a
legibility, even in the areas where that
| | 02:37 |
key light doesn't hit.
So speaking of the key light we, we have
| | 02:43 |
a Nikon SP 800 and a Lumaquest soft box
30.
| | 02:46 |
A little 8 by 9 inch soft box that is a
very, very much a favorite key light of mine.
| | 02:51 |
folds down nice and flat, so I always
have it with me, and I tend to use it a lot.
| | 02:56 |
So, again that light's going to come from
camera right, and it's going to rake
| | 02:59 |
across Alvin.
And we're going to keep that light from
| | 03:02 |
hitting all of Alvin by putting in a
cutter or a go row /g, or a flag, or
| | 03:05 |
whatever you want to call it.
It's going to be a piece of opaque black
| | 03:09 |
plastic and that's going to stop that
light from being able to reach everywhere
| | 03:12 |
around on the camera right side of Alvin.
And the angle of the light obviously
| | 03:17 |
going to stop it from reaching around on
the camera left side.
| | 03:20 |
So remember we've got our fill light
that's going to catch everything that
| | 03:23 |
that key light doesn't catch.
So when you rack that light across him
| | 03:27 |
you going to have a little nice almost
like he's that the light discovering him
| | 03:31 |
in a cool way but were the lights not
hitting we still have legibility.
| | 03:36 |
So, it gives a nice combination of
crispness and legibility in the frame
| | 03:40 |
that I've grown to be very fond of in my
lighting.
| | 03:43 |
the the glowing stick is courtesy of the
long shutter speed, and the fact we're in
| | 03:47 |
a dark room.
So, after that flash pops, we can leave
| | 03:50 |
that shutter open for a half a second or
a quarter second.
| | 03:53 |
And we know that we're going to pick up
the glow on that shutter or excuse me, on
| | 03:57 |
the on the steel beam that, that that
Alvin is holding, as long as he's not
| | 04:00 |
moving it around.
If he moves that around, that lights
| | 04:04 |
going to track.
So we want him to hold that fairly still,
| | 04:07 |
and we leave our shutter open until it it
glows the way we want it to glow, and
| | 04:10 |
shoot very quickly.
because that glow's going to go away in,
| | 04:14 |
in just a matter of 5, 6, 7 seconds.
We didn't have a lot of time to make
| | 04:18 |
these pictures before they the rod cooled
off from being the 1700 degrees, 1700
| | 04:23 |
degrees it needed to glow like that.
So that, that's pretty neat.
| | 04:28 |
And then the final look is just more of a
straight on portrait.
| | 04:31 |
Again, the exact same kind of light.
we're not capturing the glow, the stick
| | 04:34 |
has already cooled down a little bit.
But I wanted something where he was
| | 04:37 |
camera conscious.
Now he is he's got a fairly big pair of
| | 04:40 |
glasses here.
And that would be a problem if we weren't
| | 04:43 |
account for them.
he is looking with his face, his face is
| | 04:47 |
directed into an area where there are no
light sources.
| | 04:51 |
There's a light source directly behind
me, and it's nice and big.
| | 04:54 |
But he shouldn't see his face is turned a
little bit to camera left, and that means
| | 04:57 |
the reflection of that light source in
his glasses will follow over to my left side.
| | 05:02 |
The key light is coming from camera
right, so the reflection is going to be
| | 05:05 |
visible only to people standing on the
far camera left side of Alvin.
| | 05:10 |
And obviously, obviously, the light
behind him is not going to give us any
| | 05:12 |
kind of a reflection issue.
So, if you have people wearing glasses,
| | 05:15 |
just understand that, you can't light
them from the side into which they're looking.
| | 05:19 |
You gotta do that, the oblique kind of a
light and, and, and skip it across their
| | 05:22 |
face a little bit.
Or you know, do what some people do and
| | 05:25 |
just take the lenses out of the glasses.
But I couldn't really do that in Alvin's
| | 05:30 |
case because he's pretty near sighted and
his eyes look significantly smaller
| | 05:34 |
because of the correctional lenses in his
glasses.
| | 05:38 |
So if i took those lenses out, he
wouldn't look like Alvin.
| | 05:42 |
So I'd solve my problem but i wouldn't be
really be taking a picture of the person
| | 05:44 |
I'm taking a picture of.
Little things, easy to solve.
| | 05:48 |
And again, this is a mixture of uh,3
flashes, a very dark room and a glowing
| | 05:52 |
light source.
But as long as you hit those things one
| | 05:56 |
at a time, each individual problem is a
very easy problem to solve.
| | 06:00 |
So the time that you get to the end of
this light that you're building.
| | 06:02 |
You can build a pretty complex little
lighting set up, just with a minimal
| | 06:05 |
amount of gear, and a minimal amount of
worrying and thinking.
| | 06:09 |
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|
4. Bonus Chapter: A Photo Meetup with a PurposeCreating a body of work in one day| 00:00 |
David: So, one of the things that has
come from (INAUDIBLE) over the last few
| | 00:03 |
years is the idea of a social meetup
wrapped around photography.
| | 00:07 |
And these things are really cool in
theory.
| | 00:09 |
But in practice, they start to get into
repetition and what do we shoot next.
| | 00:14 |
And hey, I know a cool warehouse and
let's find a model from model (MUSIC)
| | 00:17 |
Mayhem or whatever.
And that's really neat the first two or
| | 00:20 |
three times you do it maybe, but it
starts to get to be completely hollow
| | 00:23 |
after that, we're you're just left with
the same pictures and maybe the beer.
| | 00:28 |
So, what we're starting to do and at
least in Howard County, anyway, and, and
| | 00:32 |
Maryland, is to organize people around a
significant event.
| | 00:37 |
Something (MUSIC) that you can produce
pictures that will be of value to an organization.
| | 00:42 |
And that's what led us here to the Howard
County Conservancy.
| | 00:44 |
Allison: The Howard County Conservancy is
a land trust started in 1990, it has
| | 00:48 |
expanded to also be an environmental
education center.
| | 00:53 |
And we host field trips for school
groups, we have various history programs here.
| | 00:59 |
we have a property with 232 acres, that
is under conservation easement, was
| | 01:03 |
donated from the Brown family who lived
on this property for eight generations.
| | 01:09 |
David: In this case, we got together
fifteen photographers on pretty short notice.
| | 01:13 |
there was pizza involved for lunch, but
other than that, everyone's volunteering
| | 01:16 |
their time.
And what we did was to work together,
| | 01:20 |
work on our assignment list with the help
of Alison, and create in one day a really
| | 01:24 |
impressive body of work.
I got here before sunrise and there were
| | 01:29 |
already seven cars in the parking log.
So, that speaks to the enthusiasm who
| | 01:32 |
actually may be working today, but got
here before their work when the light was
| | 01:36 |
gorgeous to get out and make pictures.
In 30-degree weather.
| | 01:40 |
So Alison was our liaison with the site.
She produced a list, in order, a
| | 01:44 |
prioritized list, which is important,
because you don't want to be scatter-shot
| | 01:48 |
of their picture needs.
And those were physical subjects, and
| | 01:52 |
they were semantic needs.
And she also took the same to write down
| | 01:56 |
the, (MUSIC) the motto and the feeling
that, what it is that this place does.
| | 02:02 |
So we all understood that going in.
We took the, we took the list, and from
| | 02:06 |
that list, we created a fairly even
balance of assignments.
| | 02:09 |
And then throughout the day, when people
would come back with their specific
| | 02:12 |
pictures, we would plug those into the
spots, see where we were weak, see where
| | 02:15 |
we needed to go back.
By midway through the afternoon, we had
| | 02:19 |
everything covered that we wanted to have
covered.
| | 02:22 |
And people were just out looking to make
pictures that were of interest to them,
| | 02:25 |
and were pictures you might not expect.
Just send out a photographer for the
| | 02:29 |
wide-angle lens and see what comes back.
So I shot from before sunrise til after
| | 02:32 |
sunrise, but as soon as the group started
shooting, my role shifted to picture editor.
| | 02:37 |
And what I'm primarily concerned with is
is getting coverage everywhere and then
| | 02:40 |
going out and try to make that coverage
better.
| | 02:43 |
Which is to say filling in the weak links
and then aiming for the fences.
| | 02:48 |
Non threatening is a big part and we
certainly had a wide range of experience
| | 02:51 |
levels and skills here.
What you would see.
| | 02:54 |
You would see people loaning each other
equipment.
| | 02:55 |
You would see people explaining new
techniques to other photographers.
| | 02:59 |
And I don't think there was any one
photographer, myself included, that came
| | 03:02 |
in knowing everything that they were
going to know by the time they left here today.
| | 03:07 |
Which is to say, everyone is learning new
techniques.
| | 03:09 |
Everyone is seeing the way other people
shoot.
| | 03:11 |
I'm seeing the same subject matter coming
in through 15 different photographer's
| | 03:15 |
lenses in such radically different ways.
And some of them I would have expected to
| | 03:20 |
be able to shoot myself, some of them I
never would have thought of just really
| | 03:23 |
neat ideas, different perspectives, and
that's what makes it special.
| | 03:28 |
(MUSIC) It's, it's better than any one
person could do on this job.
| | 03:31 |
Allison: Having these photographers come
means we're going to get to do fun
| | 03:34 |
things, like probably add some great
photos to our Facebook site.
| | 03:38 |
And get people who've never been to the
conservancy to realize this is an amazing
| | 03:42 |
property to just come walk around.
This is a great property to bring a
| | 03:46 |
picnic, to, you know, learn more about
gardening, to come out and hike.
| | 03:49 |
(MUSIC) To learn about the history in
Howard County, learning about farming,
| | 03:53 |
agriculture and what life was like in the
1700s in Howard County.
| | 03:57 |
David: There are people here who are
complete amateurs, which is to say they
| | 04:00 |
don't have photography as any part of
their profession.
| | 04:03 |
we have people here who spend their days
working in cubicles and would love to be
| | 04:06 |
out doing this every day.
(MUSIC) For them, it is many things.
| | 04:10 |
It is, it's a chance to hang out and
socialize with other photographers.
| | 04:14 |
It's a chance to try themselves at
shooting specific assignments rather than
| | 04:17 |
just wandering around aimlessly.
And it's a chance to be part of something
| | 04:20 |
that is producing a product of extreme
value.
| | 04:23 |
even for professional photographers,
there's a lot of draw, because we don't
| | 04:27 |
always get to shoot exactly what we want
to shoot.
| | 04:30 |
And this allows us to get outside of our
assigned zones.
| | 04:33 |
(MUSIC) there are people who see that if
you can take the initiative and do what I
| | 04:37 |
would consider personal work.
I consider this to be personal work with
| | 04:41 |
a benefit.
It will allow you to explore other
| | 04:43 |
avenues and hopefully expand your
portfolios in ways that will give you
| | 04:46 |
access to those other assignments.
Allison: We are beginning a, a
| | 04:51 |
fundraising campaign around our historic
buildings.
| | 04:54 |
And so absolutely one of the priorities
today was to get photographs of all of
| | 04:58 |
our out buildings, so that we can put
together sort of a visual story of our buildings.
| | 05:04 |
What you know, they date back to, what's
the history of each building, and that
| | 05:07 |
sort of thing.
And we're going to be sharing those with
| | 05:09 |
potential donors to try to get them to
say.
| | 05:11 |
(MUSIC) Yes, this is a valuable resource
that I want to help preserve.
| | 05:15 |
Help restore, help keep open and
available to the public so many, many,
| | 05:19 |
many more generations can come here and
enjoy the property.
| | 05:23 |
David: So, they went from having a
happenstance collection of pictures, some
| | 05:28 |
professional, some amateur, to a
categorized, well-done, toned, edited,
| | 05:32 |
captioned series of, of, say, 3 to 500
high-quality images for a stock library.
| | 05:40 |
And the cool thing about this is we don't
have the ability to write a $500,000
| | 05:45 |
check to fund their endowment.
Which is something they're particularly
| | 05:51 |
trying to do at the, at the conservancy,
but we can produce the pictures that will
| | 05:56 |
allow them want to more easily raise that
money.
| | 06:02 |
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