Lessons

Lesson Info

Using One Light on Location

so today what we're going to be going over I feel like I'm talking to my kindergarten class here sitting on the floor everyone bring their show intel item I see you have a nikon there today what we're going to be going over is a sort of kind of like I'm doing a shoot in this location right so this would typically happen if I was given a commercial assignment I would be given or have to find a space kind of like today and use it in a way to get ah a lot of different setups in one location right so we're in a chase is old space today you can see it's like really photogenic we have this amazing wall toe work with looking over here we have these windows and this brick but let's first think about what our assignment is for today so I have three different girls coming in that I have to photograph so I'm going to pretend my assignment today would be similar to a commercial shoot where I would have to do individual portrait ce of all of them and then at the end do a more complex group shot rig...

ht so what I would be thinking about is if I had that assignment given to me on dh supposing it was completely open to interpretation the first thing that always comes back to his location right so I've been in here yesterday to kind of scope it out but it's still pretty new to me we have a lot of different like props to work with and chairs and interesting things so the first thing that came to my mind was obviously using this wall in an interesting way because we have so much texture here andi just by itself looks good because in a portrait like the thing that really ruins it for me is cluttering up with too much stuff we're too much lights or too much like I don't know just worrying about details and all this stuff too much when it distracts from the actual face of somebody so what I think is we can keep it simple perhaps the first set up and just do something like okay if you want to grab these these are the facts out of the way I'm thinking for the first set up uh her name's lydia whenever she's ready let's just do something like straight up very very easy like her leaning against the wall like this right and then we can always like oh there she is okay well the model's ready now so let's at least have our own set how's it going good um this is lydia everyone you can say hello to the world I don't know if you're mike or not all right she's saying high for those who we can mine it all right I'll be a translator so looking at like what she's wearing kind of like a pre determined like it looks good with this wall right there's a little bit of like earth tone and there I think it'll work together really well what I would be thinking about for this wall is just till I get the most out of it right so I want to start the first set of with like one light just keep it really simple and again how we shape that light how we move it and tweak it and adjust it is going to change everything so the first kind of go to a tool that I have here is the ellen chrome rhoda lux octa bank this's the same modifier that I'm taking with me on all my trips it's kind of like my go to thing we're talking about it a lot yesterday because it's like a nice deep source remember like the sound effect is like and it looks very contrast it because the ball is deep set in the actual bank so what happens is you get this like nice shaped light if we're just using that since I'm used to working with it I foresee as having to do other things teo help this light like perhaps add some phil and like bounce it back but we don't know that yet right so additive lighting process we'll just start with one light not confuse ourselves and we'll see where it goes from there okay so thinking about like lydia and posing and what we're going to do here um yesterday we're working with terra and essentially I just want you to stay in here just so we could get the lighting right and then after that's done I'll act julie give you like some directions so you look good yet by all the test shots and look into the world so with that said again I want to remind you normally if I was doing a shoot like this I would use a test subject to stand in because if I were doing a celebrity shoot or something shoot maybe the schedules are in a line maybe there do something else on another set and then come to me or even in personal work when I'm traveling it'll make someone uncomfortable just to stand there when I'm like doing all these tests so normally I get caleb to stand in there right and I have like all these test shots of caleb in a similar set up like I have everyone else but because liddy I think she's pretty patient she's going to be standing in for us today for like the whole time so we can actually see what the different lights doing in our um monitoring it for her look write the first potential problem that I see with this specific set up is like this door is kind of reflective right so that can help us a lot because when we flashlight on it we're going to see the reflection of this bank right but it could work as long as we keep it nice and even because we might have like a sort of like a glow around her I'm not against reflection in that regard as long as it's not distracting distracting for me would maybe be seeing it like from one side and not the other it was like what exactly is going on here so I think it's just a matter of position in this in a in a way that works so let's do a quick test shot and let's at least we know where lydia is going to stand we have that figured out so now we can start with the main light right so let's get that up caleb again remember I like to use modifiers pretty close so we get like that nice range and that nice tonal range that nice rap I think looking at this it's probably tilted a little bit too far down when even an out yeah that's good yeah then his little wd forty um dropped the actually for her height she's pretty tall I think that's good so in terms of position of the light were like a little higher than I level right so the middle of the bank's kind of here were a little bit higher I think that's a good starting place let me come look at it from here I mean let's see let's see what happens do we have the light meter now yesterday were working a lot with constant light and can you grab me the uh the uh the wizard okay so yesterday were working a lot with with constant light and we didn't need a light meter because the white was constant and it was always there right so when we're using flash it's hard to judge so what we can do is use something like this old school light meter here and get a reading from our flash that would be like the correct way to do it so I'm going to show you how to do it with this and then after I'm going to show you how to how to do it without because like these air getting more and more archaic as digital you know it gets a little better and weaken tethered to a computer because this will measure the power of light but it will not measure the quality of light so this has so many uses to like get us to a good place and then we can tweak from there so I'll show you the right way to do it and then I'll show you the way that I usually do it all right so uh so lydia's in place what we can do is this is on a pocket wizard okay is it firing this guy so what should be we're on received not transmit there is seems delayed weird okay so this is going to go in my camera right it's a pocket way that was it it's going to trigger this light which has a built in receiver on it um so what I can do with this light meter is using this like white globe like surface here I can like put it where lydia's faces because that's the most important thing that I want to get an exposure and I can say like with this light of this power I contest is giving me like a f sixteen right so that means like I could shoot this setup at f sixteen and if this is correct this will be in like good exposure right so let's see if this is correct let's just do like a really quick test at f sixteen now something like f sixteen is a very small aperture it's going to get everything in focus it's not really a portrait sort of aperture because I think a portrait is really nice when we have depth of field but I'm also thinking about this setup and like like just looking with my eyes it's like something we could go wide something we could go like like medium like this and to me honestly with this wall we don't have a lot of different focal plans right we have like her face on the wall so you're not really going to see a huge difference between f sixteen and f a the other thing that I see in this room is we have a lot of daylight right we have a lot of windows and other light influencing on flooding our set so what I'll start with is like an f sixteen just to kill everything else so we're only worried about the main light if I decide that I want to have a little bit of phil right and I want incorporate some of this leaden I could make that decision later so let me do that test shot to see if this old old guy is working all right do you have the camera all tether jesse cool so okay so we have this pocket visit on my two I'm gonna give you this for a minute so again just a reminder from yesterday uh is this gonna give us problems this this splitter okay so just a reminder from yesterday I'm shooting with the cannon five d mark three I have a fifty millimeter lens on it it's kind of like my go to lens even for something like this the kind of first idea some people might have isa shoot wide but the problem is if we do like wide angle things we're going to be a little worf on the sides right so to me I prefer using longer lenses like a fifty so I can just like go a little farther back and at least everything looks even and our focal length is like nice and painterly or like like the human right the other thing that I'm going to mention before a million people ask it on the internet is about this thing because it makes her camera looking extremely cool but it's also has a purpose as well so first of all it's a leaf filters universal lens hood that's what it's called it's kind of hard to find I get a question of this in my in box like everyday like what is this filth there let me tell you why it's helpful and why it's a little better than using a normal lens hood is because a I can slide filters inside of it toe hold it so if I wantto nd this set or is that later on it can hold a square filter or if I'm having a lot of flair from a certain light source like turned out toward me if like I'm shooting this way okay and I have a light this like facing the camera what I could do with it it's sort of like ben this bellows and just like block out the flare with it right so it's a really nice tool especially for the stuff that I'm doing on location because remember I'm working with a lot of the sun as a back light I can't really control it so I can actually conceive control like how much flares coming into my camera because sometimes it can look good little bit of flair a little bit of like milky depth of field that I could be like oh there it is there is and you can see it with your eye so that's kind of my go to tool before million people ask about it all right so that's my kind of camera set up for for today again we're tethered into capture one here jesse has captured one open any picture that I take should go through let's see make sure we're all good to go here and there is exposure sucks but there is jesse somewhere in there so back to the whole thing with the light meter I'm gonna I saw one hundred let's see if f sixteen is going to register correctly so again don't worry about posing too much we're just do some testing and then I'll give you some actual direction okay so again what I'm going to do to make sure that the light's good as I'm gonna light for wide right because that means that anything anywhere on the photo is going to be good so as long as I first light for the wide shot it means the close up is also going to look good okay so I'm going to start around here let's see hopes that was trigger happiness one second you know that shot there it is all right let's see what this looks like coming in on the computer from just one light source okay not a bad start to begin can everybody see that cool okay so what I'm kind of doing now is like I'm looking at the light and I'll just tell you the thoughts that are coming into my mind because I've never tested this said it before so first let's talk about how our light looks on our subject because that's the most important thing it seems to me a little bit harsh right for this kind of set up and be nice to have something like high key thanks jessie but it's probably still a little bit like harsh the other thing is jesse can you zoom into lydia's eyes please okay so it looks like we have a catch light there so it looks like the heights good it looks like the light's probably a little bit high because see how we're just riding the catch light very excuse me eh so let's take it down like just like a few inches that's good that'll get that catch like bigger that's the first thing zoom out again jesse okay so looking at this set up it appears like the background looks good but we're getting a little bit of reflection on the right side more so than the left side it's not bothering me too much but I think if we even out the light on lydia's face we could kind of get that a little more cohesive also the shadows on the left side of her face appear a little bit too deep a little bit too dark so this might be something that we add in a little bit of fill with right but as a starting point I don't think this is bad zumanity and jesse so that is the good thing oh and also there's this cord running along the ground killed can you tuck that cord in just underneath the door somewhere I think it's a camera cord for one of the cameras okay so we'll fix that up but the first thing is let's pretend that we didn't have the light meter right and we're doing just doing this like off the fly and like testing we have digital cameras were tethering into a computer um so killed can you purposely just like screw up that pack I'm going to show you a little trick that I use when I'm tethering just to find tune and tweak the expos so let's just screw that up don't tell me what it is here it is so I'm going to keep all my camera settings the same oh shit hold on you know this thing's trigger happy okay and that was him push ups okay hola okay let's see that s here okay so it looks like philip snuck it up a little bit but I'm gonna show you a trick of how to test that that's not the last shot I took and capture one crashed it's okay all right so capture one crash let's reset it um and then we'll come back to this so let's take some questions than joey while uh while we're sorting out the crap that sound I just also want to throw out that it's very common that capture one crash is correct I used to be sponsored by phase one and I'm not anymore so what I can say on creative live is a software is great uh gets the tonal range of skin better than any other rock conversion software but it's buggy like crazy on dh it's not reliable so capture one fix your program so I can keep using it better so does that happen only help you help me you does that actually happen to you often during a riel commercial shoot yeah it's uh it's normal on set you notice jessie's not two faced by he's like and it's a crash everyone's like not mad just like right there from coffee um so we just like reset the program turned the camera on turn it off if you were to call the phase one wrap the capture one red they'd be like here's my advice I want you to turn the camera off and then turn it back on very technical that's it so we just have to reset the program while we're talking about capture one fashion tv in singapore has a question about that and wondering if you have any preferred setup preferences before you start shooting I'm going to get into that uh next is my tweak so what I try to do first uh when I start lighting thanks dressed he looks like we're back ready teo and I think you want to just give the camera little test so what I try to do first it is with my lighting eyes to shoot something where the history graham is very balanced right so I try to shoot something that's coming in on we have a good exposure and then what we'll do afterward is then start tweaking the colors and do those like what we call custom settings but that's going to be the next so just one quick question from several folks in here why do you use caption one versus light room and can people who just have light room utilize this in the same manner absolutely so you can tether in the light room uh believing in tether and aperture and all these other programs as well for me the reason why he's captured one is because remember that I'm also I have a candid camera but sometimes I'm using a medium format phase one digital back and in order to tether with that you need to use their software capture one write the other thing that will say is if you were to get the same raw file and process it through all the different programs you would find them all not built the same you would find skin tones being registered differently you would see shadows in highlights and also the sharpness engine are all different so not all rah conversion programs are the same in my own experience and a lot of people working in the industry the reason why capture one is still the industry standard although it's really buggy is because it reads skin tones better than any other rock conversion software so that's why I use it especially for when I'm retouching what we'll do tomorrow is it's my basis start from because we got a really nice like clean file to begin with so hey hey love relationship sounds good when we're ready to keep going all right yeah so it doesn't take long to get back online but here we go so again back what I was saying let's pretend that we didn't have this light meter and let's pretend like we wanted to do a little trick just with the tethering system to see how far we are over so it looks like caleb has increased uh the exposure on the light but let's just take another test hold on let me get back here good okay so just ah look here for me lydia into the light okay cool so let's pretend that we didn't have the light meter and like this is the first exposure that came in right so what I could do in capture one is like looking at my eye I know that's overexposed but let's say this screen wasn't correct the first thing I'd want to do is look at the history graham jesse can you like rub your mouth over the history grams for people to follow along there it isthe so looking at that it looks like we have a lot of graph peaks in the highlights jesse can you show where the highlights are on the graph on the right side so see how there's like peking going on there if I wasn't in a room with a calibrated monitor aiken no like that's like way too high and we're losing information and the exposure so again since we're tethered what I could actually do is dropped the exposure in capture one and get a kind of idea of how many stops we have to adjust the pack right so jesse do me a favor and in capture one since we're shooting raw drop it down like one stop okay so it looks almost there but looking at the history graham it's still is it peaking a little bit take it down a little more take it down like two stops okay that's almost too far maybe like all but the skins maybe do like one point five so it looks like tell me from wrong killed it looks like you took the pack up two stops okay good so what this khun do with capture one is it could give us kind of like a preview we're obviously not going to use this file this is like a test to throw away but what I can do is give me an indication of like oh we're over two stops right so killed turned down two stops jesse can clear those settings right because we're obviously not going to shoot to recover that but now since the back is down two stops I'll keep all my same settings and now we should be in exposure right so let's see ok cool so now it's it's like there's this okay jesse could you do me a favor and the image that we took before drop it down to stops again and then pull them both up next to each other no the one that we took before drop that two stops and then pull up that won in the last shot that we just took okay so the bad thing about it is we're still recovering detail so the image on the left was kind of like our indicator we can see like in the highlights their little chunky but at least we know the exposure and how I can like tell caleb okay that needs to be dropped two stops and the image on the right is what we fixed okay and it's like coming in equal exposure so that's what I would do if I didn't have a light meter if I was tethered into a computer if I wasn't tethered into a computer I would just actually look at the history graham and I know just through experience like if it's peaking really high how many stops more or less the power has to come down and that's just from experience of working like with the hvac modifier in this exact pack because if I didn't have like if I had something else on it that two stops of exposure would be completely different because it's not going through this sort of diffusion so if this was a beaut dish I know to read a little different has to be adjusted lower okay all right so let's look at what else we can do this image we have to tweak the main light slightly so we get this spill on the right side a little bit on the left side to me it's a little bit too much so I'm also fighting it in the corner of the frame so killed first of all let's back it up slightly okay good and let's walk it a little this way okay so we're doing like really like miniature moves here but it's going to make all the difference in the world the other thing is as I see like the bulk of the light is being thrown toward her face like making it harsh so we can actually do is like pana a little this way right stop so now the brightest part of the bulb is like right here and it's kind of like being thrown away right maybe it'll hit here giving this with this reflection and now like the nice soft feathered edge here right off the bank might hit our subject and might be a little more flattering so that was just a matter of again just movement stand like this and we'll see what the difference is k just from there so let me see here I'm still fighting a little bit in the corner man lives this is back it up slightly that's good that's good and make sure it's always the same feather okay let's see what we can get here okay jesse could you compare that shot we just took with the last one so the image on the right is the new one and the image on the left is the old one so let's look at what matters first is her face and how it looks I think the shape eyes a lot more appealing it's not more flattering for our subject right see I was kind of like shaved her face as well as we've really lessened the hot spot on the wall now it's kind of like spread out we see a little bit of it on the left side I think we could even pan the light and move it over a little more to enhance that but the quality in her face looks good so all that stuff looks in great it seems to me like the shadows on the left side or face are a little deep could you pull into the face catch lights still good perfect all right so what we can do is we can fill a little bit now since we have the main light kind of like more or less where it should be is we can fill in this side with either another light or like something some kind of reflective surface like either silver or white so do we have this view flat could hear us so what I can do is put it on the opposite side I'm blocking your view now that way we can put it on the opposite side of our main light killed you want to give him hand maybe clear this junk out of the corner there um so now we could either use another light to fill it in like we're doing yesterday with terra or we can use like a large surface to bounce it off right so the strength will come from how far we walk this surface to and from her urine all right what's for that in there you imagine is completely uh put that lamp okay that's going to close it needs to be like right there the problem is is this surfaces too close is gonna bounce and throw the light like way too hard and look way through flat so let's do a test and let's see what this could look like okay if it's too cramped the other thing that we can do is we can walk everything a little bit to the right okay so what I'll do is when this flat when this v flat is in place I'll take a test shot and we can compare the two and if we have to adjust the strength of the film we'll just walk closer or farther away the other thing that we can do is we can turn this away right so weaken right now she's kind of getting like the full strength like the bulk of it so if it turns out to be too bright it's not like we can dial this honor off like it's a light but what we can do is kind of like angle it toward me so it's not quite hitting her as much so you're kind of in the same spot as before right perfect okay so let's see what this looks like and then we can compare it okay okay okay just if you could do me a favor and then compare those two last ones and let's see what exactly is going on here okay if you could dio if you could zoom in just a little bit on the face of each one so we could see what's happening with that phil probably it's a little too close go back so I can see the clothing too okay and go down if you could match the one on the left with that composition okay so we can see on the left side of the face the shadows are being filled in right there not as dramatic as before because we have that white surface bouncing back it's also filling in her hair uh and her arm but let's see what happens killed just for the sake of this demonstration let's bring that white like really close I'm gonna tell you when it's on the edge of the frame uh hold on a second I can see it back it up just a little bit okay ah little more and just turn your face straight onto me lydia um you could bring it in a little closer to fargo back there is okay all right let's see what happens if we walk that even closer jesse can you compare that with not the last one but the one before yeah let's see how much that's filling in so that's almost like too much we're getting rid of like that nice a shadow that was on her nose so let's bring it back to where we had it but at least we know now that we kind of like it's almost like turning the light on or off right how far we bring it from her so it seems to me like that would be a pretty good place to start photographing um the other thing that I might do is remember yesterday were I was sitting on that stool it might be a good prop for this side if someone wants to run and grab one of those stools it might be a good like second option before we go on to the next step before actually start photographing does anyone have any questions about the lighting and how we got here to this place and also does anyone know where my coffee is heard us there is maybe we can start with our audience class any any questions yes sir I can tell this just this screen or not that or you mean like from my angle which is three inches from it although this screen the contrast is a mess yes you want to come look at this monitor actually I can kind of pointed out to you so seeing this example the phil is like here and it's like completely crushed and black here but this this martyr is a complete mess secretly right off are you concerned about like her pants blending into the background at all or not at all because on that monitor you can see them but the other thing is why will mention like with the pants being lost is say I wanted to fix that up I could do a few things right I could use a larger light source right so this rap is sort of like over everything and see what it's doing here this is a reflection of the actual light right kind of like what I was talking about yesterday with highlights so if I used a larger stores we would get the same pattern but like down here so if it was ah you know something from a client who was like oh but this is a clothing thing we want to see the pants I would change the size of the modifier make it larger but for me the reason why I chose like the smaller one is because it gives us more of a like like atmosphere kind of moody feel because for me it's not about the pants for the specific shot and then you can kind of see like what the phil even on here on this uh that bad motor you can kind of see what's going on there all right so I'm diana mania in new york says do you do all the test shots before the client shows up and if not how do you keep them patient while you prep uh very good question because you know uh nowadays we're shooting digital pretty much all the time on set it's very rare that someone uses film so with that it comes the ability for anyone to like watch what you're doing right so these kind of testing that I'm doing now you know most clients I work with understand this they go to a million photoshoots they know it's not going to start perfect um but let's say I was shooting I would probably do this the day before the shoot or hours leading up to the shoot depending on how much time that I had and if someone was like oh but that's not respect we're testing and what I would show them is a shot later on during the day but most people understand that um this is just a starting place and it's not gonna be perfect like first shot right a question from camp twenty seven is when you say catch light looks good what is good and what's bad what what are you looking forward to make that determination jessie do you want to zoom into the eye on the last image that we took so when I say something looks good it's a good it's a good question because what is it and what is bad yeah what am I looking for aiken say from my own experience what I think looks good is something like this you know go quite so close there just take it out of it because it has to do with the faces well there it is so to me a good catch light is the reflection of the main light in the eye right so what this does is it's giving he's giving the portrait little bit of life because if we lost this sparkle what would happen is their eyes have become dead right normal people in a daylight setting have a reflection in their eyes and as a bit of like sparkle a little bit of life to it so to me a good catch light is something like this where it's just floating at the top of the eye if we were to change the lighting around a little bit like that fifty cent example dated yesterday we could add a catch light from below so as long as it's giving life to the eyes so you notice I I walked the octo bank down a little bit is because I could just see it just in like the corner it wasn't quite as full as well as one more thing is I'll comment on is this shape I'm just gonna ask you that yeah so that's why lately on lee recently my work I've been preferring using circular modifiers right so I rather use an octave lengthen a soft box and I'd rather use a beauty dish than like a hard box is because it's a circular shape so it feels natural right that's something about circles re occur in nature so I'd rather use that then like a square so that's why all my modifiers had been circular thank you so much very regal speaking of quality daniel eighty eight on quite a few others are curious about using a medium format and why you use that and specifically what do you find in quality and performance between using a dslr and a medium format camera that's okay uh what do you find in quality and performance between using a dslr and medium format cameras and when do you choose the medium format over the dsr yeah so I use both systems right I'll use a dslr um use medium format the main differences resolution and also latitude so if I'm requiring something that has a really thick tonal range meaning a lot of data in the shadows ah lot of data and the highlights it is better to use medium format right but in terms of the camera itself the system is very slow and very crappy so there's like three focus points in my medium format camera where they're like I don't know how many of the candidates like thirty or something crazy like that so the cannon system is a lot easier to use but what we sacrifices resolution so it's kind of like I have both cameras and there the go to tool based on what the setup is the other thing is is the medium format is slower because the file sizes are larger when tethering so for this example now obviously we're broadcasting on creative lives so get the examples loading straight into the computer were using the five d it doesn't mean later and another setup I might switch the medium format camera to get the thing tonal range but for now for this set up the best choice for me is the cannon five d you were talking about having a client on set while you're tethering to ever have a client say an art director somebody trying to maybe you feel like they're trying to micromanage you or you know do something toe you've got an idea and they're trained toe you know you feel like they're going to ruin it how do you handle that well remember that all photoshoots are collaborations right they're hiring you to bring something to the table but you're working for them to bring a vision toe life that they have right so you're you're working for them so you kind of have to be collaborative you have to sort of balance it out so you mean you made example if someone is sort of like maybe like this one in this back seat driver what I would try to do is like meet them in the middle right so I would first thing is kind of almost what chase was saying yesterday I would start and get their vision first and make sure I'm adding something to it so if we start like an ad and there's a diagram I want to be really careful to at least get what they want and also I'm making the quality that I can give them and then after we get that what I'll do is I'll tweak and I start showing them maybe if we did it like this because I'm coming from a photographic perspective that we did this would be slightly better and we go from there so the first thing get this shot right away and then move on and get more creative because it's not just us on set they have a whole hierarchy of clients behind them where they have a job to deliver this deliver this deliver this I'm like one element in the food chain so for that kind of thing you just gotta like solely work with people and get their great well joey we've got the set up shot ready to go so let's keep our next step yes okay this is a good subway actually because we're thinking about what you asked me about people looking at the work right one of the things that I like to do on set if I'm tethering into a computer is with capture one I like to actually do adjustment as to the raw file as they come in I like to do something very subtle but this is just to make the images look a little bit more polished right so as a photographer I know what I could do to this later in photo shop I know what contrast does to an image right we all know like what raw images look like completely flat but we know how to push it but somebody who is not no knowledgeable about photography most times they don't know right so since I'm shooting raw tebbit and capture one what I can actually do is a few bass settings on this file so when they come in people on set get a little bit more excited so this example will work because it looks to me my own personal taste like we could dispatch aerated a little bit maybe add a little bit of contrast or even a color curve to this and we can make it look a little bit different and reflect how I seem myself post processing this later so in the most ideal world one day what I would love to do is to be always to tether into photo shop right and just be able to put adjustment layers on things so I don't have to change it later but for now I'm kind of at the mercy of technology and what I will do is put a custom setting in capture one and then jessie will save that look and as I shoot that look will just be constantly applied uh so what I'm photographing okay so bear with me here let me get over here to jesse let's see let's have a look at this file so I'm kind of following my intuition here I'm not really you know there's no rule of thumb toe like what looks good or not I just know how my old work are how my work looks so looking at this image it seems like in capture one I could dispatch rate it like slightly so let me just play with this saturation slider I don't know maybe something like this to get the tones like a little bit more muted a little bit more toward a black and white like in unison so it's like negative twenty sometimes it's like not such around it all polish number again there's no rule of thumb the image is kind of like contrast you to begin with but maybe something like I don't know six contrast lighter like helps that look and feel a little bit more polished right uh the other thing that I could do with this is I could go into the color curves right now something interesting about color curves is that this is an rgb file right so we have the red green and blue channel toe work with so what that means is is if we pull this curve line and we just the entire like all the different color channels at once it changed the exposure right so that's the exposure so we could make contrast on this line but what I actually want to do to give us a custom color setting is going to the red green and blue individually right so what I can do is kind of make a custom color cast using curves so in capture one this is something that I might do later and have more control over in photo shop but just for the sake of the look let's do it in capture one so again there's no rule of thumb suppose I go into this curve box here and I'm going to the blue channel and I kind of like slide around we can see as we move the line up it becomes more blue as we move the line down it becomes like yellow uh in the green weaken like add green or we could go down and get this sort of like magenta if usual look and red if we add more read it like becomes there it is more red no surprise there and going down it's like this sort of like greenies blue cyan look right so knowing that what I could do with these different color curves is sort of like mix and match so I can push one one way and push one another way and kind of get any color combination possible so let's suppose that I wanted to like make this a little bit more blue and a little bit more cold right if I wanted to do that kind of look if that's what I desired in the curves I could make a point on the line just drag that sucker up like that and I'm just looking at it fyi there's no like rule of thumb of how high you can bring it but it's kind of like let's say something like this to make it colder and then in red I could like crush that down right and that would be like a really kind of like cold blue look right so let's compare it without the adjustments on it's like that's kind of the difference right there so that's like one of many looks that I could do but if that was something that I desired on set people toe watch in preview at least you could say they could see the image on the right coming into the monitor and it might reflect how I do things later in post right so let's pretend that we didn't want those blue colors to me that looks like a little whack attack let's say instead we wanted to like make it uh we wanted to make it warmer right you just be a matter of doing the the curve the other way so let's get the red let's pull it up let's get the blue channel and like pull it down okay now we're like the opposite end of the spectrum kind of I will compare the two files there it is so like now we've made a little bit warmer right everyone follow me so far okay so you'll notice on the curve line I'm just sort of like picking a point in the mid tone right and I'm kind of like dragging around however what we can do with a curved line which is an interesting color grading technique is we can actually make two different points and target to different areas of the tonal range so on the curve line this area kind of represents the highlights right so if I just that on the red sea how like just her skin tones mostly being affected where the shadow stayed the same and adversely this area down here on the curve line represents the shadows so the more I pull that we see like more red going into the shadows so let's suppose um I wanted to make her skin warmer but the shadows colder we could actually do that with one curve line so in the blue curve line I could like adjust that down okay we get like a little bit of yellow green in there and with the other point we could actually make another point on the line and go like an opposite way I'm going to do like an extreme example just so you guys can see the difference that would be like an extreme ex that's like totally whack attack but you can see like what areas are being targeted okay so with that knowledge what I could do is make something like a little bit more polished and I could kind of say like I want her skin like lively like warm but let's bounce away the highlights and very very subtle adjustments here it's going to the red let's do something very similar make her skin like warm like that but then crushed the blues you see something like that okay you'll start to see this is looking a little bit like the killing lincoln shoot right this is what we're doing we're tethering in doing this kind of like custom color curve and those I haven't touched the green yet so we could do something similar let's see maybe something now I won't touch the green maybe something like that so it's like super subtle but to me that's like a very interesting color curve because these are tones that you you couldn't get unless you like really jelled all these lights in a very constructive way right so this is something like tethering into the computer jesse if you want to apply this setting while I'm photographing those kind of color tones well come in I'm going to go a little bit little bit more crunchy with the blues let's get a little more current she would say something like that okay this this little arrow up here there's a mike nice yeah take it away just got it all right so there's this little our right up over here so if you hover over it says copy the adjustment so what I do is that and I'm pretty much what I do is I'll go ahead at it select all an old playwright here finishing the down arrow yep pushing the down our here and what it does is every single time he's shooting it's already all automatic applying all the adjustments so let me just see that real quick jessie so let's see if I'm shooting let's do a little test here and let's see if this the color settings come on to that exposure thanks lydia okay let's see so there it is I just took that shot and the color settings are automatically applying right so again this is a great tool to use when you're photographing because to me that looks like a step above what we're just photographing like with the normal color and if you had to impress someone on set or you had to like win their trust to me doing these like really settle things can make a big difference so now that I'm now that with this do we have any questions from you guys about tethering into capture one with custom color settings the digital tech is are you are you going to be telling the digital tech what precepts that you want coming into the tether ah and then just leave it for the day or do you leave discretion your digital tech or how do you how do you play that typically I'm in control of the color settings when I'm shooting uh you'll see even even when I walked over here is like that get out of the way get it getting into the curves just this is something that jesse understands and could do himself if the photographer didn't want to for example jessie works with another photographer and sometimes he's like wouldn't it be cool if we did this oh great so he can look kind of like throw that into the bag but for me I'm like I would I'm very particular about things and I would rather do it myself um and I forget the second part of your question already what was it that answers your question okay cool uh any other questions from the audience I have a question yes all right that question comes from ms mr vincent law ferree oh who happens to be watching yeah that's a good friend of vince's wondering well first of all to tell you hi and he wants you to explain your haircut to him but seriously um he wants to know about about the bellows the shade that you're using on your camera and wise as I know youse andy felt there's a lot of your shots but have always wondered and tell him great job and I just want to say that while I know you talked about that earlier a lot of people were joining in and asking about it again so maybe you could do vince a favour as well as other folks hair cut hair cuts by my friend elliott okay okay um it's ah it's a strategic haircut in case the lights flaring in my face I can actually get my hair and like pull in front and block this son for my eyes it's very like photographer haircut just the same as the lens hood does right so vincent's question about the lens hood if you weren't tuning in earlier I love this tool because first of all it makes the camera like really badass that's a given but also what you can do with it is different from a lens hood it suppose there was a light flaring into the lens I could actually like curve it and block it like custom and I could control the amount of flare coming into my camera because for a lot of my work that I do actually like a little bit of flair coming in but just not too much so let's say I was photographing and I had a light light coming in from this way I can actually see a preview in the camera and I could control how much is going to hit the lens also this filter air sorry that's this mat boxes nice because it's a filter holder so if I did want to put in an d filters I could slide them like right in there and it's like dual purpose there's more in depth chunkier matt boxes for film cameras as I'm sure vincent is aware but this is nice because it's lightweight for still cameras so I don't need the amount of filters that a film camera would use like multiple andy's polarizer all this different stuff so I would rather go like lightweight and just be ableto adjust it with my hands awesome uh next question up is from melanie who noticed that you didn't use a great card in this shoot and is wondering what your white balance is set out and so they're paid attention that yesterday yeah so they're on their on it they notice that yesterday you shot with a great card today you didn't and why was that well we should have done a great card is jessie's fault it's my fault too um yeah we should have done a great card melanie thanks on what was the second part of the question it was just that yeah actually what is your white bowne set up and what do you normally do for white balance okay so right now again the camera's in auto white balance and anyone watching the phase one software would be able to call me out on that but again no don't care shooting raw that's typically what I use because it does give an accurate reading now an important part is let's remember let's remember that um these studio lights are all daylight balanced and we're shooting at an f sixteen right now so we're kind of like knocking out any of the actual light us here and mostly we're just seeing this studio light so that means that if this is daylight balance that's around like five thousand four hundred five thousand five hundred that's the color temperature of this light um so if I wanted teo set a white balance on the camera to match this perfectly without a great card just set it to daylight right thank you have a question from terra v photo was in san diego do you custom color and captured one capture one for each shoot or do you have pre sets that you normally I try to do it for each set up because each set up is gonna open a different can of worms each set up is going to be kind of different with lighting a cz wells we could get a little bit of variation right so if I finish the set up and move on to go somewhere else you'll see me later all I get in there and tweak and make it different for the set up the other thing that we can do is yesterday spoke a lot about variation and being out with rick two one set up and get a lot of different things out of it so even if it was the same wall and we like change the outfit or something like that we could do like warmer colors and all the sudden it looks like we have two photos and two different setups in the same thing so again let's suppose like I was done photographing lydia and we had to like another model come on set um and she had a different outfit that might match more warmer colors like not this in green shirt I could get an entirely different look just by changing the color curves so I like to give my client a lot of different variation you could do that with the curves okay great uh next question is from tom who is on the roof he says joe telling on the roof is his official name okay my mother was writing from above why did e t just come down of thes one re joey do not mind the reflection in the background and how would you get rid of it would you grid the light or maybe feather it you could grid the light and that would certainly stop the reflection the other thing that we could do is change the position right um so he mentioned feather that's a good example if we turn this light away from her right and we feather off we could lose the reflection okay the other thing is we could put some powder on this metallic surface and kind of like doll it down in the same way that like you put powder on a face for a make up artist many things that you can do for me it doesn't bother me in this image because what it does is give motivation right so we look at it and we see in your face that the lights coming from the right side so to have a little bit of reflection there is fine but if we wanted to take it out or properly balance it all we'd have to do is adjust the light so for me even if I wanted to change it so is equal on both sides we could adjust the position so that reflection is on both sides of the image and it would kind of feel like more like a glow we could do that to write all with the position of one life great maybe one more question before we keep going and that is aren't capture one how useful is the focus mask tool and do you always turn that on focus mass tool is something that I am not very familiar with when I am shooting these air the different precepts that I do different photographers have different tricks I never mess with that when I'm photographing but I know that in capture one you can master in areas so for example if you wanted to mask the exposure and you wanted to kind of like paint around the edges in capture one just like you could do in photo job um is you could mask around the edges is and tell it like with a with a brush where to mask the lightness and darkness and I know that you can also do that with the focus I never play with it keep going yeah let's let's keep going so let's have a look at this image and let's let me find out where it is that I left off let's see can you zoom in just zoom out so I can see that that full picture okay interesting so what we could do is we could try to get rid of that reflection since the guy on the chat ask to get rid of that let's balance it out a little bit on both sides before we begin um caleb do you want to just walk this a little bit more frontal to us just just no it's that way and let's give her a little bit of the feather this way so maybe we could get like more of a balance with the reflection let's see would that really subtle movement of the light did what oh sure we do a great card we'll do it on the next set up I don't want to mess up the color settings that that we did but I forget her name but she was right about the great card or the j k card where is it god cal it right back up a little bit killed was fighting you so hopefully with that movement we haven't adjust or change the exposure by much let's see here okay thanks okay let's see if we even now ok there it is all right let's feather her even more so let's get a little bit on that side also I think we need to come up a little bit okay cool let's see that balances out whoops nor that well his cameras a little different from the phase one units great so looking at that we have ah little bit of equal balance now with the shadow but go back to the other picture jesse I feel like the quality on her face has changed too much so I feel like when we move the light here we change the quality on her face because now it's like looking a little flat in that last example so let's actually go back to where we had it because and and then in because I would actually prefer tohave her looking good and worry about like a reflection on the wall if we wanted to flag it we could flag it if we wanted to put a grid and could put a grin in and get rid of it but for the purpose of this I'm going to leave it the way I had it because it was better so knowing that lets forget about lighting and let's talk about our model now and what we can actually do with her in this setup so she's not just staying there for a light test so we kind of like having a full body here I think we should get rid of this marking on the floor because it's going to be in the shots was long she stands more or less around there um we can lean against this door let's see what happens just when you like leaning against the door okay so it's safe that's good so yeah so in this kind of circumstance what I would do is sort of like flash and give my model a little bit time to do a slight variation right so yesterday with hair were kind of locked down because we were testing like quality now I know like the whole sets ready to rip it looks good right so I can kind of like be in the same pace as my model I can flash give her a little time to like which looks flash go again just like variations right so if her chin was down I might flash and then she'll do like this flash so when we're shooting we get like a whole bunch of different options that are slightly different from one another we don't have to take like a thousand pictures to get everything as long as we give equal space so to me in the editing process later to get rid of like teach it's a mess you might as well just beyond sing with her and get like a few good ones versus a thousand mediocre things right also when I'm directing her I will give her ah little bit of direction I'll say like oh it be nice like instead of like the hands straight down everything on the same plane like what if one was slightly higher than the other what if we shifted the way on your feet so it's like a little more natural all these kind of things I'll be watching her for this wide shot okay so uh let's do one more test here and let's make sure since we moved the light let's make sure everything's looking good before we get started here okay one second so we had adjusted like I just wanna make sure everything's good jesse can you zoom into the face slightly for me let's make sure the catch lights is good on the eyes go in a little closer okay looks good go out this that's too close let me see that suggesting everything let me see the whole pit hole photo good okay so that's a good starting place now totally forget about light don't care about it I know jesse has another set of eyes back there he'll tell me if something's not working or something's like firing when it shouldn't be and I could just actually like finally talk to lydia right okay so let me get this framed up and lydia I think all the poses that work the best arwen like your back is against the wall so as long as you keep that in mind we can get a bunch of variations what I'll do is kind of like give you this much time like but I'll be watching you and directing you also okay so that's that's a little extreme I think let's start let's let's start like really subtle yeah I think for this let me give you a little bit of motivation I think like for this let's just be like really cool really calm just hanging out on a cool background like you're just here and then I walked by and then there was a knock to bank set up and it was like everything was lit perfectly that we'll do like something like that like how you're standing right now when I'm talking to you is a lot more natural I think see how you kind of did that naturally like slide your hand that's that's nicer let's get your face square onto the camera for so it's like straight onto me and like that to me looks nice and we can switch it up slightly I think if you have like a serious expression on your face that's going to match the lighting better and it was hard like take me seriously when I might compose like this sometimes but okay prove it and let's let's stand up a little taller as well and I like how on your feet they're not the same you have like the shifted weight that's probably a little a little bit too much again point them back to me exactly let's cross the arms maybe to go with like the whole badass kind of lighting that's going on here in the background perfect what happens if you like cross your arms a little bit well say just like normal exactly yeah and because of sliding so contrast it for me what's working best is like when your chins up and like kind of like straight on because if you turn your face too far that way it's like lost in shadow okay perfect yeah one second is capturing crashing in its this its this cord yet so what we found sometimes what happens in capture one is if we're used an extension like this and it's super long it's gonna not be able to take the images and it's kind of like lost in outer space just sort of like here's the picture didn't didn't didn't didn't end in o and then like gets lost so let's just let's just put on the shorter cable on that seems to work especially I noticed like when things are going through a splitter or say you're doing like a thunderbolt to firewire something in that transaction happens to lose the photos so I think switching to the longer cable is what is causing all the problems here from my experience so let's get this tethered up again while we're waiting do you have a question yeah yeah some really great questions coming in from the internet there noticing that well with the model today you're kind of directing her throat the posing and for on every shoot do you normally direct people do you ever just let them sit in front of the camera and let them be themselves yeah definitely so I'm giving a lot of direction just to start out unfortunately like capturing crashed before I could actually like get into the groove but what I'll do is like just give her a direction to start out so she knows like give it almost like a little lighting lesson right so I saw things in the beginning just in the first few few few shots where she was like being free which is great because we get realistic expressions but for the lighting it's not gonna work so I know like I'm not going to use those kind of shots anyway so I'd rather just not take them and give her a little direction in the starting and then I'll become more of like a button pusher and I'll just like oh she's been doing her thing and I'll get a lot of variation that way but just to begin I'd like to give a lot of direction um and then later on I'll be like I'll shut my mouth a little bit more uh in the studio and I was just curious but those of us who haven't we tethering before those photos that were lost are they literally lost her do you have a heart is mourning in there somewhere I think I held one like they're just way ever see it again you'll never see it again it's it's data that's just lost literally just do a little quick test to make sure we're getting here again what's that there's no memory card in the camera now just lost in outer space looks like we're good yeah yeah looks like we're going to go okay so again I kind of gave lady a lot of direction now she kind of knows what I look best this is a nice pose now shut my big yap and just let her do her thing exactly I think it's better when your back is like more against the wall that's very nice so see I'm kind of like looking how she's posing and waiting for her to stop slightly and then getting a bunch of different stuff I think for these like the poses are a little extreme just backto like being a little more like calm and cool yeah just because like to me it's like out of context it's like standing against the wall like it would work like in a shower or something thank you yeah see this this was working a lot better for me and that's good you took your eyes off the cameras get a few like that okay perfect let's throw on that stool and let's get a little bit of variation so yesterday I was sitting on this stool you might have noticed like halfway through I was like oh where's that stool so I think if we as long as we place that let's get us close to the background as possible now we can kind of work with her a little bit and give her something else to pose with so it's sit on the stool and I think yeah look at that so it kind of like gave a nice natural formation to the legs now remember since she has gone down a little bit we're gonna have to adjust the light right because we like to keep it a little bit over eye level so essentially come down caleb is going to adjust that light to how far she moved down that might be a little extreme great put bringing up a little bit and lenny when you first hop on that stool looks kind of interesting had one foot out exactly um wouldn't change a thing there it iss okay let me do a quick test just for lighting just to make sure that this is gonna look good with the height adjustments on the light going to the face jesse let's see the the catch line I think we can pan the light I think you moved it pan the white little this way so it's more feathered there it is okay let me see here one second okay so just testing the light not gonna give lydia too much direction I mean that one ok that's much better uh zoom out a little bit so I can see the full image okay perfect perfect so we can't really see this stool is much but it doesn't matter it's like changing her posture and giving us like something different to play with let's just see what lydia can do with the stool now if I would do another round of photos yeah all this stuff is great perfect let's see what happens let's um let's put one foot on the ground the way it was again but let's actually turn your legs toward the light so like your knees are pointing that way exactly and then like your upper body toward me and then bring that leg a little closer to you okay something like that and what if your hands were like down somewhere on your legs like let me see whatever feels natural get comfortable for a minute because aiken I give you direction but whatever feels good maybe more like hanging out like if you're like like one of these like exactly um turn your needs more away for me exactly and just fix your hair off your face yeah ok let's get something like this different and just chin up a little bit just because the lights so so contrast e and feel free to switch up your hands as well oh that's nice perfect do that again what you just did but raise your chin like a little higher and relax the fingers that are on your leg cool oh bring your hand back up to your neck you kind of does something where you like just resting your hand wasn't on your chin but is like here and then your head was like toward me something like around there but you khun switch it up uh slightly bring her eyes back to the camera okay cool all right so let's give ourselves a little break here and let's review these real quick um so yes so when her head's turned away from the light doesn't look a cz good flip flip those backwards jesse okay keep going through look she looks like a little bit too far down okay that's nice thinking pose that's nice there let's go backto okay hold on zoom into the face on that one let me just make sure they catch lights good okay we can see it looks like the light's a little high for these with the reason why we can know that is because the catch light in the eyes like not as around and not as large so caleb if you want to drop that slightly something even like that subtle I would be a good adjustment to fix that and let's keep let's keep flip flipping through here zoom out and let's go back to her standing up one more time oh it go back ok back that's that's interesting that's pretty good ok and go back a little more see go all the way to where she was standing up so what I would do here is kind of just like look at the monitor and see like give yourself a little break like see what's working what's not working so that that could be like the basis of the direction that I'm giving her it's like don't look too far that way too far that way and then I could like shut my mouth and just actually let her do everything but a lot of times they're working with people who aren't so experience with modeling so I might have to give them like a little more direction people who know what they're doing little less but at the starting I'm at least starting out so they know the parameter is giving them a little lighting lesson almost right free workshop so essentially when I started here I knew with this wall we have an interesting texture okay I want to keep the set up extremely simple one light we set up the road a lux off the bank we did a few test for exposures one where we used light meter one where we kind of use capture one to gauge how much the exposure was off once our main light was set were very careful to determine the quality of light on the face right that's the most important thing to me is the quality of light so once we got that we noticed that it was a little dark in the shadows so we added this like white phil card and that gave us a little bit of fill in the shadows um and then from there we just sort of worked with our model and uh did the best set up for this scenario and that is essentially the recap of what I just did as well as remember capture one we were putting on custom color setting so I could go to either spectrum cold warm whatever on dh then eventually we moved on from there and photographed again that's the recap more or less of this very simple set up which will grow in complexity and the next well people are just absolutely thrilled and learning so much from this is it okay if we do take a couple more questions okay cool uh let's see people were uh let's see quite a few people are using light room so they were thanking you for explained the difference between capture one and light room what really helped a lot of great piece of software it works great for like bulk um um it works great for like color tagging things and working in bulk and doing a bunch of different things but capture one is better for for me for registering skin tone just like flip through those as we do the q and a dress just like the same ones not on the on the screen salvador from norway and quite a few others throughout this us last segment we're wondering if you are calibrating your monitors and what your favorite tool for doing so is absolutely so all the monitors that we are working with are all calibrated we like the eye one calibrate er okay there's a lot of them there's uh the pantone huey which is a disaster it's a piece of crap uh the eye one works really well with it you can also monitor the ambient light with it so we can say like we're working in a very like bright environments so we can say like oh the screen is a little bit too much glare right so we can monitor versus where were we could monitor where we're looking at the monitor and the colors on that itself the eye one is really nice