Lessons

Lesson Info

Use the Right Light for the Right Occasion

So let's jump into the presentation we have been working with all that lighting you're going to see a bunch more tomorrow actually in action for the most part in most situations this is what I'm working worth I'm working with the reflector amusing with work with the diffuser scram I'm working with portable strobes a speed light continuous lighting, a video light and more often than not now the ice light so I'll show you exactly why I used different ones in different scenarios I don't have six styles of letting that I'm turning to to make things more complicated I have them so that I can I have a lot more simplicity when it comes to reflectors I probably use a reflector on every single shoot ideo they're the cheapest, easiest, most portable way to light something and for the most part it's considered fill light but often it can act as your main light based on this especially you doing backlighting or whatever the situation is but the reflectors or what twenty bucks if you're not working...

with the reflector already, I think it can really up your game in terms of being able to show more expressiveness and really up photography but I'm usually using with the white side sometimes they'll use the silver of the lights pretty dim and the gold if I want a warm things up because I've been out in a nice warm day and the temperature's changing this, uh this is a pretty simple example. You've been seeing me do it a lot. This is from my workshop in london. My last workshop of the year, by the way, is in september in san francisco. Forget but that's with the just a simple there in that kind of darker shade. This a brighter shot, but they're a little bit in the darker shade, so using the silver to bounce it up, you've been seeing you do this all day. Um, this is a perfect example of where reflector was wonderful. A shoot in puerto rico. This was a couple miles down walking down a rain forest working with commercial client and we used to big reflectors the two, forty two inches and that's it. We brought no additional light because we had so many other things going on. We had a nice bright day. We knew that be okay and we were able to get the catch light we want were but wait little flag use the dark part of the reflector to flag from the light hitting the brighter parts of the shirt on dwi. Overdo the entire marketing siri's with just two reflectors as our full lighting kit because we had such beautiful natural light and that's all we needed, if I didn't have those reflectors, I would have missed half the shots because when the lights started dropping we're going into water I definitely need to bounce light around and the reflector help me do that quite a lot um these were also same thing shot with the reflector a couple things I want to point out about these locations and the catch light this is in front of a large waterfall we've got a lot of whites going on but we will manage the brightness of all that and I love the way the catch laid out here this is an extreme close up shot with shallow depth of field and I would probably burn down the catch light a little bit in those eyes to bring back some of the natural looking eyes and not have it be all reflector so those are reflectors that those were pretty straightforward right? Do you guys have any questions about this? Okay um next is the diffuser scream you saw us out today using the diffuser there are quite a lot of variety of diffusers out there they come bubbled in the reflector. The main reason for a diffuser is to be able to soften the harshness of the light similar to on the constant lights you so I had the diffuser panel on the outside that diffuser panel used with a reflector underneath when in bright harsh light can give you a whole setup that you can use and you can layer onto it you have a super light one or you can have a little bit of additional diffuser on top of it to kind of calm. How much light that you want to calm down, eh? So you can have them set up in c stands. You can have people holding them. You could have just the the light part inside of reflector that's. A nice, simple thing to bring with you. Uh, this is a shoot I did without a rama right down in a street festival show how we popped up having the clam that allows you to adjust the tilt is massive. We I don't think we were able to pull the tilt section on the clamp today the c stands so we had to pull it off on hold with their arms and that's really hard to do for a long time, but being able to just tilt it up and down lets you really manage the sun a lot more powerfully. And then so you can have this was our model. We just put it underneath needs, had a big pop up background and then had a little bit reflector underneath. And even though in this crazy bright sun, we're going to set it up as if we were in a studio or something. Portable strobes okay, so we've been working with those a lot today, those worthy we work with the pro photo btu's I've been I'm shooting with us for quite a while like I mentioned. I do love those having the ability tio literally do we have? Did they come with the backpack, by the way that I could show or do they come in a box? Okay, so the backpack is about this big I'm sure weaken. Share a photo that later it's about that large it's literally grows right in the back if you actually go teo pro photo dot com and just search for mine and you will see the video we did when we went out to like a rickety bridge on dh showed exactly how you could just throw it on and go into the woods and have an entire portable lighting setup just on your back, you'll be able to see that video at pro photo, but I have really found that this has changed the way I like things. I used to do nearly all of it with reflectors, and I just find it so convenient that tt l technology through the lens, being able to just point it at what I want and have the exposure exposure already managed for me is huge again, my idea that lighting is, how do I keep it crazy? Simple I don't want to sit there and figure out one hundred ratios and do all that I want to be really with my subjects and I can't do that when I'm really heavily focused on lighting some people will hire people just to manage lighting so they could stay with their subjects that's another option as well but for me I want to keep the lighting really simple adjusted as I need but keep my connection going the whole time with my subjects with the portable strobes. The other thing to consider is you can use it with the high speed sync which means you can have subjects racing towards you or across the frame and be ableto really get your shutter speed upto one one thousand won fifteen hundred that's not always the case with strokes but the's have the high speed sync which is nice and the other beautiful outside of that is you can shoot with this super crazy shallot up the field like a one four and keep the blues in the sky because you can crank up the shutter speed to compensate does that make sense? They come with a good number of oh yeah this is a shoot I did with night cons new d seventy two hundred and we want to be in the trampoline jumping up and down if I hadn't tried to use a speed light on this I would have broken my nose you know, I couldn't use a reflector for this constant lights it's too far out in the yard, there's nowhere to plug them in. I don't have necessary portable pack to plug in constant lights, there's a lot of reasons why the strobes were perfect for a situation like this and give you a lot more of a playful look. This is that video I told you about that you confined, showing on this crazy, rickety bridge, you take two steps and everything shaking is really panicky to bring a kid out there, but everybody signed a liability waiver so well, but you can see exactly how that backpack works and how easy that is, but it come with a quite variety of these light shapers, so allowing you to use soft light, hard, light, directional light, any any sort of thing you want? We shot today with the octo and the soft box, but I also shoot quite a lot with the umbrella because the umbrella is the pinnacle of ease you literally opening up like you're going out for a walk in the rain, click it in and you're done it's super easy, whereas the soft boxy it is a little bit more effort to get in there, but again not that much the the umbrella, but lebron or the grids similar to how you would have in studio uh, when I talk about, I want to show example this when I talk about the ability to shoot at a really shallow depth of field and boost up your shutter speed, this is what I mean, you can shoot at you can manage the look in the sky and shoot at a two, eight, zero one four, and normally you can't really do that if you're capped out at one to fifty for shutter speed. So that's, really lovely. All right, feed light any of the question of the portable? I know there are a lot of questions on that today can I should stop on that for a second? Because I kind of blew through that real quick, but in terms of being able to use the portable lights either in the studio or location, our client's home were there any questions with that it's good, our studio audience, if you have any, I know we're speeding through sort of some of the different options that you use, but also its I know we're also not going through detail by detail on we're talking more about how you you see things than particularly how to use them, all right, right, okay, so you guys ready for your big knob, ling tio, so, yes, that's all right. Um, okay. So then speed light obviously being able to use flash, you could have incredible amount of versatility with this. You can put it on your camera, put it on a stick. She stands what, like like throwing out words? You can put it on your lighting stands and this is a great example of a situation where I find the flash to be so helpful. A lot of overcast, rainy sort of days. You can actually create your own umbrella situation, and I show you being out in the belting reign with our little model just using her actually little kid umbrella with a speed light on bouncing the light for the speed light directly into the umbrella back at her what you khun d'oh e and then just bouncing it back, you end up being able to get images like this uh, where you are cheese off the ground she's lit. We've got catch light it's pelting rain it's not the sort of day, you know, we want to go out and doing a shoot in, but with the ability to reflect back like that, you can get expression, you can get fun, it's not something you're supposed to do, which wakes kids up mohr and gets the more interested I mean to me, I love that and you can do with that you can also dio simply with the flash bender which I'll show you in a second where you can actually direct the light even if there's no place to bounce it um and uh uh you would actually grab that real quick to grab this light in the flash bender ah and then there is the uh oh my gosh just reminds me by the way I do want to show this real quick so I mentioned earlier I did the puppies we photographed a bunch of puppies in baltimore we did this whole kind of photographers challenge with nations photo lab and thank you where we went into this woman's house who breeds boston terriers I think we had fourteen boston terriers facing us at one time and I simply just pointed the light to the ceiling in the client's home which is what I did uh we stacked all the puppies up and we get the shot oh my god are they uh that is the full extent of the lighting you know we were able to get the cash light and all those eyes I love how the boston terrier faces like the pug faces the catch lice for help over the flutes this's by the way this signs we saw over this woman's house it was awesome but this being able to pop that up and while we're at it because I'm just in love with these puppies, right? Just I'm getting these kind of shots but I'm trying to work through these guys were really tight tight close environment and they're all in front of us liggett as the babies I'm only showing because I just am in love I'm going to get a boston terrier puppy that's gonna go into dog I'm eleven to and the golden retrievers were also just stunning this is nothing to do with lighting it's just beautiful golden puppies it doesn't do light because we delight all these shots but because we had the ability to do this by the way we decided that we were going teo get outfits for them and we actually went there we did this and when she showed the pigs and like I know we can't resort to dressing and well maybe we can um is a good idea I love it thank you allie for that so we made our own bride then the bride started doing other things that were like that's not the normal bridal shot you'd have I also by the way I was able to bring my kids along with me on the shoot but you'll meet tomorrow and they hated it hated being surrounded by puppies um okay so next uh is the video light for the ice lake um oh no continuous lighting let's throw that out there continues fighting which is the constant lights constant like continuous light those air sometimes people call them the creative light there's a lot of in terms for it. I usually hear continue sliding or constant lighting. It's just the idea that staying up there and you saw us lighting our subjects over there. But this is exactly I'm gonna show you a shot of exactly how I would like a subject in my studio. I've got a couple different setups that I moved between just again to keep it really easy on dh. This is what I would do. This is shot in my studio. Well, yeah, that's just to show you that you could do a lot of motion with him too. Okay, here we go. Can you hear that way decided we wanted to change the lighting a little bit on hand all the way over here. What a monster under that. Take a compliment that I look like a monster, which is what? Today, okay? And then it's, like actually getting over here. I like that it's like your pain in the light. Do you feel like you're taking a laid back that's? What? That is exactly what is happening. You're getting a fax of lights right there and it's not spinning on their shoulders that is nice and safe. Did I fall in you like that? Which is really fun. I mentioned I shoot with four lights in my studio and that way, you just have ah, whole bunch of possibilities in terms of how you can shape them and move them the scene we did earlier today with them jumping the couch, the four lights would've controlled a lot of the situation, but I I love it because you have a lot of you khun gotta just set it up as you go, I like the ability to be able tio model the light around them to be ableto have that hair light, just pop and have a lot of expressiveness because you don't don't worry about resetting like thought. And then lastly, the video light for some. For the longest time I was shooting with the lowell id video light appreciates what's called just a steady source of light that had to go to a really heavy battery pack would carry around at weddings or for clients, homes and try toe match the color of the light, but the ice light. I love those air designed by my friend jerry bonus, and they are really simple to use. Uh, this was, you know, in a pre convoluted crazy set up at a nikon booth where there's tons of things going on and just holding them up, tilting them down and getting the shot we want.