I'm Chris Knight, I'm a portrait photographer, primarily based in New York. And today, I am here to talk to you about one of my favorite loves, which is creating images that look very cinematic. I love movies, it's always been something that I've been passionate about, pretty much my whole life. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a film director. And so this kinda scratches the itch for me as a photographer. And I've spent a lot of time trying to hone and work on these kinds of sets, with this kind of lighting. And I wanna kind of lift the veil up, so to speak, and show you a little bit about what that production looks like. And so, we've got a few different, few different things that we're gonna talk about over the course of this entire program. We are gonna talk a bit about what cinematic lighting is, what that looks like, kind of how it's evolved and changed a little bit over time. We're gonna break down a little bit more of what that classic cinematic look is, that we kind...

of associate to the cinematic-looking photographs. And then I'm gonna take you on two different productions, and it's entirely location-based. We're gonna do a shoot in this beautiful old theater, here in Seattle. And I'm gonna show you what that production looked like and how involved that production was. And then on the second shoot, we are going to be taking a look at this really, this really cool shoot that we did, where we got to shoot at the historic flight here, here outside of Seattle. We got to shoot a bunch of vintage airplanes and we, we created something that was themed around some old World War II imagery. And so it's very, very exciting, we have a lot to show you and a lot to break down. Now over the course of today, I'm gonna show you a little bit about what we're gonna be talking about, so specifically, what cinematic lighting is, breaking down that process and giving you some nuggets that you can take away, what, where the inspiration can come from, in a lot of these different situations and kinds of shoots. I'm gonna take you through the entire pre-production process, for me, what that looks like, the elements that are involved. This whole thing, more or less, is created way beforehand. And so, this kind of shooting, at least for me, is rarely something you show up on the day with and spend an hour putting together and expect to get these kinds of results. We spent a whole lot of pre-production time on both of these shoots. And I wanna take you through what that process looks like, so you can kinda see how the planning comes around. And then, because I think it's something that photographers don't get enough love for, I'm gonna spend a bit of time talking about the tools that we use to create these sets and work with on these sets, specifically the gear and the grip. I think grip is probably an underutilized bit of knowledge by a lot of photographers, and so I wanna spend some time talking about that, not just the tools that we as photographers use, but also the tools that filmmakers use, that you might not be as familiar with. So we're gonna take a look at these concepts. We're gonna talk about the things that are involved in this pre-production process. I'm gonna go through things like mood boards, what those look like, so you can share them with your team, the actors or the models that you use, different considerations that we would make for wardrobe, hair and makeup, et cetera. Think of yourself when you're doing this kind of stuff as, you're like an actor, producer, sometimes you often give input on styling and hair and makeup. And so it's important to have a little bit of understanding about what's happening across each of those spectrums that you can contribute your decisions to the overall image. I'm a big believer that concept is king, and so what that basically means is, all of these little creative decisions that go into the image should all serve the greater purpose of what that shot is trying to say. And when your little ingredients fight the bigger picture, the image is a little bit less successful. And so if you can keep making these decisions that go along with what the image needs to look like, it's gonna set yourself up for success down the road.

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Chris Knight - Cinematic Lighting for Portraiture Grip Quick Reference Guide

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Chris Knight

Chris Knight was born in Wiesbaden, Germany and grew up in Florida. He combines his unconditional love of art history with his love of technology, topping it off with a flare for the cinematic and an uncompromising eye for light and detail

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topics covered in this class

Lighting Portrait Photography Digital Photography

Ratings and Reviews

Bruce Walker

This course is simply terrific, and I highly recommend it. Firstly it arrived at the perfect time for me as I am soon to do a studio shoot very much in keeping with a cinematic or theatrical aesthetic. Secondly it's taught by Chris Knight who I swear is like a long-lost twin brother. :-) There are so many parallels in the way he thinks and works to my own style. So I avidly watched this as soon as it was available for anytime streaming. This is the first time I have made extensive use of the CL iPhone app, btw, and I love how it pretty much enabled me to seamlessly switch back and forth from desktop viewing to my iPad that I carry around the house during the day. I was able to make coffee and still carry on taking in the course, uninterrupted. The content is fantastic, delivered succinctly yet entertainingly. Some material and ideas are already in my repertoire and were reinforced and validated by Chris' demonstrations. But he also introduced a lot of ideas and methods new to me and very welcome. I was particularly glad to see how practical it is to stitch a series of tripod shots into a wide pano. I have been afraid to try that but I will now be using that in my next shoot, for sure. As alway, his post production practices revealed all kinds of tips about Lightroom and Photoshop I didn't know. Negatives. The volume level mastering is iffy. It started out at a decent level then midway through one of the early lessons dropped so much I had to turn up my sound system to compensate. And as I write this one lesson (34) is missing and in its place was a duplicate of the next lesson (35). I expect CL will have that fixed shortly though (I sent support a note).

Jeph DeLorme

One of the best classes I have viewed at Creative Live. Definitely worth the investment of time and money. The pace of the class allows you to learn extra tips and tricks throughout the process. Great instructor, highly recommend this class to anyone looking to step up their creative game.

a Creativelive Student

excellent class in all regards. outstanding instructor with experience in complicated cinematic shoots but who also is willing to thoroughly cover the basic nuts and bolts. i wish all creative live classes were of this quality.

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