Lessons

Lesson Info

Making a Backlight Wall

We've been through all kinds of things so far and kind of one of the one of the reasons I'm going through so many different things here is to give you guys a taste of what you could do with maybe spark some ideas, you know, give you a variety of tools, and one of things I think is really important as a photographer is to to have a way to solve almost any lighting problem, right? The worst thing is, when you're you go to an event where you go to shoot and the light's, not what you kind of hoped it would be, and then you've got to change your plan at the last minute, you know, that's, stressful, it's hard, and but that's, the sign of a great photographer is you can walk into any situation without even knowing what's there and within minutes, you know what? You're going to do, what you can do, right? Either you have the tools, or you can see something I could bounce off a here, I can put this up here, I can flag that off their whatever, or you've got a few things in your bag to create lig...

ht there's absolutely nothing to work with, and I think so the mohr tools that you have more ideas, them or experience with different things basically, these your job is going to be in the more fun you're gonna have so that's kind of kind of why we're covering so many different variety kind of want to give you this sampler pack of lighting, a plethora of lighting stuff going on here so what we're going to do now? We made these scrims earlier door sized screams, and we've been using those for various set ups and one other set up that we haven't used yet, which is also very common use for something like this is too actually put it behind somebody is an light it so you're basically glowing behind them you can do this with bed sheets or scrims of course like this, um, but to set it up and put it now, if you guys have watched lindsay and her she's a great fashion photographer, she's done some programs here is just a really, really nice creative live programs if you guys hadn't watched any of hers that she she's going to popularize this style of backlighting with the elimination from behind a screen machine or something like that. So my lovely assistant when she's done eating well, come on out ah, you can still you have to be done, you can so eat on the set, that's fine, we'll set this up over here hold that so the idea with this is very simple take the diffusion, this cream, whatever it is, and I'm just going to clamp it to my light stand so she doesn't have to hold it forever, and then we're going to illuminate it from the back and experiment with how much illumination if you put if you blast it, then you're going to have some of the kind of spill and defuse that just kind of cool to get this soft edged, diffuse thing if it's less than is going to be just a just a solid white with less bill and again it's something is just playing to see what you look like better there's no, really wrong or right answer on that. So then we'll set up for a main light. If we need a main light, we'll see what it looks like with just the backlight. Some people are asking on the breaking. And what is that thingamajig that you're you're playing with? This is ah luna grip. This is the prototype and reminding people at home we didn't see this yesterday. This is it was a d I y project come toe life actually, in westcott is a big supporter of d I y and making them into riel professional tools, and they're on board with this. But basically you take your disk that you everybody has one of the diffusion discs. This is about a forty inch this which the perfect size and you place these special little with the arms around one third of the disc, okay? And into that quickly we put into the grip itself and now we have some placed, so hold our speed light and use the disk as a beautiful soft box. All right, so this is a fantastic tool I'm really excited about it and very versatile as well, so we'll use this for a main light boom on our model here once we get her out of here and will illuminate the background so come on out lovely model and we could put this behind, so we're going to just place this behind and what'll pride to his turn it horizontally illuminates my dis completely on channel, eh? All right, so I'm looking for fairly even illumination. I don't know how much power we're on that we'll find out that in a minute camera it's on channel a set to twenty eight millimeters gives a pretty full spread and what we're going to do that we're going to get you right up against it here depending on where you put your model or she's right up against it or she's further away uh, changes the amount of rap of the light around her so we'll shoot it at two point eight to start with and your aperture has a little bit effect on the amount of flair a cz well, so my experiment with your aperture to see what's going on, they're not firing was gonna check my settings or right, you know what a put on oh, I changed that gentle oh, hello. There we go. What do you double check in there? I was on the wrong channel there you so there's channels and abc and one, two three on these settings. And somehow in the break, we were messing with things changer to be instead of a and that we should be good. Okay, so about one eighth power to start with twenty eight millimeter on the zoom two point eight two fiftieth of a second eso currently is at my go back down to one hundred. We're getting just as much of just the flash and not any of the studio lights and we're not really going to get a front light yet because just the backlight and we're just basically trying to see how much light we have and adjust from there. Okay, so not too much light on the back when you adjust it I'm gonna go up three good on much, try that and even see the flashes we get seen flash okay all right, so we're gonna go up another something's not right. That should be a lot brighter than that to make sure again, I had the right channels, right? Setting? I don't know. All right. So making sure my flashes on t t l so that I actually can control it from my controller. All right? So that was at half power, and we can kind of see how much of the the glow is coming around her and let's, take it down. One full stop just to see what differences between, um, half power in a quarter power and then we can go another stop, even more flair, but I don't think we want to much more flair than that. Really. So there we took it down, so notice that less spill coming around, but also less flair on the edges. Um, and it kind of just depends on the look you're going for. I'm thinking we want a little mohr, but not too much. I'm going to go just two thirds up and then we can add in our pain like it's on the main light. I'll pop another flash on here, but this on channel c one b teo teo all right, caitlin, if I could have you come on in so this being on the beach anall gonna set my zoom to wider so that I have full coverage on the back of here create a soft light and I'm at one thirty two in the power we'll see how that is for starters all right so you're gonna hold this kind of up and they're ok just like that careful put your hand in front of flash yeah like kind of leaning forward how you were just a little bit mention towards me slightly let's see what the two combined with one needs to go up or down the way ok pretty close there um the the spill like creates a beautiful hair light it also wraps around and create some phil so again it's almost like a one light one main lights set up with spill creates a nice high key soft background works pretty beautifully together just like that so now I'm gonna just try tio focus my life just a little bit I'm going actually zoom the head this time on the b light which is this one here all way up to two hundred and celia so because I zoomed it in we're going a little more power someone actually changed the power sitting down tio a couple of clicks there okay and then were retained this here so the positioning of this light if you guys remember for we're talking for over the ear to hear things still pretty much the same kind of starting the back edge of this pretty much equal with her ear coming here meaning me I'm here it you know so coming right towards me so when I'm looking through here I should kind of just see a slice of my light source whether it's a disk or a light box or whatever that's kind of what I'm looking for all right? This is not the on ly way to use this I could if I had it like this it would still work just wouldn't be this quite the same but had even more turned the other way it would still work but this this is a nice directional just kind of seems to work light direction good they're out there ever slightly so you know the slight difference when I zoomed ahead in I got less light on her lower part of her her arms and buddy here's before see how it's ah broader light head shoulders, knees and toes all that kind of thing and when I zoomed ahead now I've got a nice basically a nice little soft circle right here in the middle with a gradual fall off and all I did was change the zoom from twenty eight millimeters to be full and wide to two hundred millimeters to zoom it in tight and that's kind of nice because that's that's what I was looking for something that creates fall off that's natural and soft and gradual with really by primary light being boom right there on her face that works pretty well in the balance here is nice you don't have too much flair there's enough that kind of softens the edges but it's not defusing the image so much but the light from that it's just really really nice I like it so we'll play a couple more on that good just just experiment with whatever kind of sassy as you want to do like that beautiful they're cute all that good looking up as you're doing that one there you know cute like that more that's good and this this right here is a special technique of including the scream in your shot this is my signature style right here so you get a little bit of scream in the shot don't try and copy that technique it's mine be like hitchcock. You know, you have to have a little cameo of something where I get a little oh, I know we need to have in the shot dude where's my severed hand okay, no it's just going to sit on your shoulder so you pose sexy we're going to the signature shot right now, all right? Our zombie love story photos here okay, so any questions on this set up right here, we've got going down or move on something else, so get into it they had to do it um a lot of fun stuff you can do with this if you had a bigger use, your bigger screaming to a full length would be really cool, but one of the problems I used to have when I was lighting in my studio is to have a white seamless to try to get all white background and you have to get your lights evenly and then you have to have enough space because otherwise the lights hit the model and the kids it's a different light and all that. So this is one way to just if you just wanted pretty tight, clean white shot works works really well for that you have to worry about all the space of a big white seamless. So I've used this even doing like a realtor head shot sometimes so you study realtor head shots years and years ago and so I go to their office and set something up and it's like, you know, little cubicle size space you could set it up boom knock out some nice clean headshots and you're good to go. Yeah, this is great because a question had come in from kristen and course everybody can vote on questions and this one had several votes, which was could you use that scream as a background to make it high key? Would it glow like a window I know exactly sorry. Just acknowledging that that's what people wanted? Yes, yes. On dh making a glow mohr to again the more you overexpose that you saw, the more flair you get, the more it looks like the bright, sunny windows if you really want it to be like a window goods just blasting the sun lights crank up that flash in the back a couple more stops but try in there and also you could you could crank it up, but also bring her forward a little bit and then you wouldn't have so much of the flare affecting your image in the front. But it's still give you really, like, blown out look, but the way it is there it just about right? Because it wraps around her nicely and lights her hair and it kind of works a second light. Okay. Groovy. Ok anymore questions? Why he moved to the next. The next tip of the day. I hand this to you. Thank you, civic to exactly what we just built but wondering if some of these lighting projects might be modified for video. Is it a simple as replacing the speed lights with flashlights? Or have you done heavy, done any exploration deal, wife for video? Absolutely, uh, scrims have actually probably started in the video movie like way back in hollywood days that's kind of our screams started, and I think they were adopted to photography from that. So initially, video people would set up a giant wall silks like that and put big tungsten lights where behind him to defuse the harsh chunks of life, which now we can use leads or cfl lights. And yeah, I've done that when we were doing little tutorial videos in my office. You know, we just set up a couple of big scrims. I've got a bunch of led video lights, put them behind there. Boom. And you got this great interview kind of light. It's really nice firing. So, yes, all these techniques, even the bucks putting things in a light box. Even on this, if you use a constant light sources really, lighting is lighting, you know, whether you're doing video or still the only thing is if you have to move with the person in the video, we need to be conscious of how your lights gonna move. But it's like interview thing or still shots you just set up, then? Yeah, all this tech is working for video or stills. Really?