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Point Lighting - Step 5

Next minimum three point lighting okay let's start with the obvious light is magic yes um we all know that light is magic you could bring the most dole setting tau life with a vibrant light can you not? It can really make a significant difference it can change the look the feel, the power of a shoot what you do with light and how you harness what you get and how you adjust in shift things um this sort of image imagine this exact same shot but it was front lit and it was just white behind her do you have the same field? Does it have the same energy? The same girl abby task I just want to say that go ahead, say it. Yes, you have to do it like a little sexy. Oh, wow rest just brought it ugo all day long I do thatjob uh so you look back here in the background, right? I love this kind of feel this mossi kind of look, I look for it a lot. When we were down in new zealand for a few weeks I found that everywhere that kind of lord of the rings tree look oh, I love it I love it so much when I co...

nfined things like that, I feel it brings this sense of wind z and wonder to a shoot and work so well with children um what are we talking about when we talk about a minimum three point lighting? We're talking about a mane of philippi that's pretty easy, right? A main light of fill light and a key light if I were in a studio that's what I would start with I want amane light I'm talk through these in a second I want to fill and I want a key everywhere else I go I do the same thing I just don't have physical lights for all those pieces so a main light is basically the brightest of all your lights that's your main like that's the big light you're using tell it like the scene in the studio it's a soft back x on location is the sun in a client's home or as some sort of indoor interior it's often a window or open doorway on dh if need be and this is my last resort it's on camera flash um you can utilize a wide range of direction als and sizes and a variety of what they are but overall what I'm thinking about minimum three point lining my first consideration is what's my main light yes second is if that's my daughter by the way that's my annalisa your um so phil next is my feel like the feel light of course is what you used to stop in the shadows created by your main light your feel light is to go and you've got your main light and now let's kind of control some of these shadows um once again there are multiple options you can use for your fill you can use my studio I often used to four by eight phone boards were going to show those later art boards taped together as ah, the flat situation um, you can also use a reflector on a c stand just clamping a reflector to a stand in a studio. Um as as seen right here, you're gonna have obviously a soft boxes a feel like a second soft box uh, again, I'm listing some you can have one hundred fill lights, your t shirt close to them could be a feel like sheet that you holed up in a home could be a feel like there's a lot of options for feel like on beech. I do a lot of destination shoots, I do a lot of beach shoots, I could do a whole program on beach shoots I want I'm going to just do this but on the beach because it really is a whole different set of considerations, but on the beach you have the great thing about kids is either low to the ground and sand is highly reflective light sand is highly reflective, I never bring reflect on the beach one because it will blow away too, because I have sand and so I've like bouncing all over the place all the time in fact, I've got a dim the light often um the other thing and probably the thing I use most often everywhere agos reflector if you've ever seen me shoot, I'm reflector I can't imagine a shoot without a reflector there's times I don't need to use it on my shots, but I always want it near because it makes such an impact in terms of modelling and and rounding out the subject and filling in shadows and catch catch lights popping so a situation like this is a za pretty um simple way to show that uh thank you, judy that's subject of your that was a bar harbor work shot her adorable little son and then, um and then of course, flash flash could be great for just filling in shadows. I will use that often for that usually when I'm using a flash for a fill, I will bounce it um and if I'm outside in a park I will bounce it up into the sky because I just want a soft amount of light just coming in to fill what this allows me to do is not sit there and manually adjust my my flash to be able to shoot the distance I am to my subject because by the time I get that done, my subjects over there in china, you know how my god I just got my manual flesh that where did you go, eh? So what I'll do is I'll just pop the light up to the sky, and if anybody sees me shooting, they think what an idiot she's bouncing it on the sky it's going nowhere, but what I'm doing is I'm just letting some of light softly fall off just just what I need to fill the scene without having to manually fumble not that I would fumble, fumble um and in the hair or the rim light in the studio, you would use that in the back one of considerations with a soft light, you have a strip of light often orjust a softer soft box. Um is that you don't want you wanna basically separate your hair or your head for the background? You don't want it to just go into the background and just have this face sticking out. One of the considerations also is that you don't like spill over. If light spills over from the background into your lens, you can have kind of problems again with that milky look or lens flare or, you know, once it's going over the shoulder, it ends up being technically incorrect all you really want to do was just create some sort of separation from your subject. And the background that's the point of the hair light on obviously son I backlit shoot outside all the time where I put my subjects right directly with the sun behind them and then asia reflector to bounce light up um obviously the reflector you can use that as a hair light in a situation where you put haven't off camera flash on the stand and then you just trigger it onto a reflector that bounce back and create a look a soft box kind of look you could do that again to separate your subject in the background you can see right here in this sort of situation we're using a pocket wizard were flashing this flash it's going up into its bounced up to the ceiling and it's creating this nice billowy look of light behind the subject to help model her better and separate her from the background. So lots of options of how you can do this separation process separated or subject in the background but it's it's a critical part often when you see a snapshot that's clearly looks unprofessional it's because the subject's jammed epic it's their background and their head goes into the bush like you just give me something separate them give me a little bit of a three d equality I want some modeling I want some separation of charge in state church being the subject of um uh other leading considerations, of course when you're out and about those your three points that you really want to consider but you you know, if you want to sit there and think about thie other big big thing is catch lights uh talk about a second that of course is um the lights that appear in the eye you want to think about ambient lighting and you want to think about mixed color lighting um so catch lights that very specifically is cash lights are the reflection of the light source that are reflected off the surface of the eye like technically what it is it's the light source reflected off the surface of the eye that's what you're seeing it's the highlight of the light source of the reflection off the eye that's a catch like um what you find with catch light is they add a lot of life and dimension to a portrait they help the ice I mean, that whole thing the eyes are the windows to the soul you're not kidding you really want to see them, especially with kids? A lot of people have rules about catch lights like they should be at ten and two and they should only be this big or this small that's one of those rules that I don't you hear about it all with children, my thoughts are just what the catch lights to make sense and what I mean by that is sometimes you'll get a catch light that's a bright and vibrant and beautiful in this I but you didn't turn the chin enough and this one's dull and quiet and low in that eye and what that does is not only does it not make sense, it makes the subject look off confused like one eye's bigger than the other or the eyes turn in or out in a way that's not actually true so you want to think about that if it's not uncommon to have one eyelid and when I not so shift your subject of shifter light so that they're both lit in a similar amount so here we have like a pretty normal set of catch lights in a dark room all we have is on camera flash bounce from a ceiling very dark eyes and we've got these nice little bright pops of light nothing big nothing massive these nice little bright pops of light without that, by the way oh but and by the way notice to the way that the subject's turn and where the light's coming from you see how it's more shaded on the side that's towards the lens and less shaded that way that gets into broad and short lighting the idea of being more flattering to a female without catch lights if you just kind of take them away or dial them down to see the difference it's not that huge of a catch light, but it makes a difference. It makes a difference to not have them. So we call reflection the light in the eyes I think of it is reflection of life in the eyes. Yes, you did. There. I turned light into the life. Um, so even on dark eyes in a dark room with just a little bit of like, it makes the difference, obviously, with light, her eyes, not even the brightest, lightest eyes. Um, this is you can actually see the whole scene underneath her. This is the reflector being held up here. This is where the light's coming from. That's the windows behind her. I mean, you can see everything in her eyes, which sounds like I'm singing your song. Um, so catch lights going look very different based on the size of the eyes where the lights force is reflected in the eyes, the equal nature of the catch lights in the eyes, the color of the eyes, the lightness versus the darkness of the eyes in terms of reflecting and bright or absorbing and pulling light in that catch it's gonna look really different. I could have done a whole montage and just different catch lights, but then I probably have beaten catch lights, death other leading considerations is okay ambience, lighting obvious plating is just if you're in a situation where your home and you've got a daylight balance flashed, you're not a fifty five fifty five five thousand five hundred kelvin fifty five hundred keep want to save five thousand that's not true that's weird fifty, five hundred kelvin, but you've got tungsten or incandescent lighting coming in. Now you've got an issue with your ambient lighting s so you want to think about things and that that ties into mix color lighting as well? You have to think about the fact that any time you're shooting there's other light coming in if you're in an indoor if you're like in a hospital it's green fluorescent light if you're on location and there's like a it's evening and some has got a porch light on, but you're outside and you're trying for a different light, you just gotta think about those things because have you ever taken a shot and looked down and said, why is that blue and green or why it is that why's it? And if you've shot inside of a hospital like a newborn or something like that, you'll see a lot of three shots in a row one is green and one is like blue and one is green that's, the flickering of the fluorescent in the mix color lighting