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Shoot: Direct Sunlight with Shade

Lesson 17 from: Conquering Crappy Light

Lindsay Adler, Erik Valind

Shoot: Direct Sunlight with Shade

Lesson 17 from: Conquering Crappy Light

Lindsay Adler, Erik Valind

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Lesson Info

17. Shoot: Direct Sunlight with Shade

Lesson Info

Shoot: Direct Sunlight with Shade

Let's dio everything switch over to cover do you mind? I'll jump in here and do high speed sync with the flash before we get cover over it would be a pain for him to switch his tether should we just shoot out with, like, the over under? Okay, don't do that because then we're going next in to go in the sandwich and stuff, right? Yeah, I'm gonna put her in the shade and bounce light in. Okay, let's do that were on the teller. Ok, we'll run the southern. We'll switch that over. Okay, it's inside, I'll you know me to shoot, right? Okay, so actually, if my lovely attendees will move out of that nice shaded area, okay, so normally I would skip all this mess of shooting and direct sunlight because it's a huge pain and it's really hot, and it makes people sweaty and moody. Um, although that's just, um what I'm going to dio is I'm actually going to do what I would do first and put the person in the shade or the group or whoever. So we're going to put her over here in the shade of this tree and ...

we're gonna move her this way, all right, and you take a seat there, right there looks perfect, you're pretty like that good and so what you want to make sure is if you're shooting through say this is a tree you're shooting um through a bush or something like that make sure you don't have dappled light and we're going to demo that or look at it, which means you don't want to have mixed highlights and shadows right now where she's sitting if I photographed her and include this in my composition, I'm going to have a really, really bright highlight and she's actually okay, depending on where I set her kindness shade of, uh slide over here don't sit right in that little highlight right there and that doesn't look to ban lean back just a little bit, you know, just making sure you don't have highlights on her face, so just watch out for that, okay? You're good and I'm going to photograph and right now because of the nice natural reflectors, it looks pretty good, so I'm gonna take two shots and I want youto take a look at the difference here, so let me take a look, all right? So I'm gonna direct this, I will shoot it. What if from the point I'm going to make and they're real too, seeing the second is it's really important when you put someone in the shade well out of direct sunlight and normally as well to watch your backgrounds because if I shoot from here like I like this because I've got these nice leaves in the foreground I can focus on her and have that soft but I have bright green leaves directly and sunlight behind her and it will be a gigantic distracting element in the background uh something you want to remember is that your eyes go to a variety of places in the picture your eye always goes to the place of that's brightest so in this instance it would be those leaves it goes to the area of most contrast in this instance it would be the shadow and highlight of those leaves and it goes the area of most saturation which in this instance would be those leaves so everything would be pulling you to those leaves so what I would do is instead of shooting here I just changed my angle move a bit to the side try to get something a little darker in the background so probably right here would be a lot better for me. Oh, good. Okay I just looking out of focus picture but that's okay it worked hey, you be nice to me, okay? So I'm gonna take a picture here with his background really bright so you all see the backgrounds really bright really distracting so I'm just gonna move just a little bit to the side it's not gonna be perfect it's gonna be a lot better and she'll have highlights in the bottom left so I might just a little bit and try to shoot down low perfect take a look at that yeah that's perfect makes a huge difference since they're having bright green contrast e uh leaves in the background got down at a low angle, psyched to have the shade underneath the tree if it's somebody who's a little bit heavier, you don't want to get down to close underneath, you might back up a little bit and shoot from a lower angle so you have the background that you're looking for behind her. All right, so right now we do have nice phil um this is an instance I've seen a lot where people actually should use negative phil underneath the chin it's a lot of times will be sitting down and I'll just get a ton of phil from the sidewalk right underneath so instead I might block it off something like this a little lower eric and that you don't lo perfect good or you can actually overpower that and give a direction of light. So would you use some silver or white filled for me time for a little bit and see how he's he's actually filling from beneath notice he's not catching any direct light he's just good at giving me like the most subtle of catch lights ever because if he backs of here from underneath I mean there's, you never wanna have you reflected that low. You do me one more favor. Can you stand over here and catch some light at a downward angle? And so if you would have somebody standing and the only shade you have is like a really thick tree. It's there's, no light getting in there's, no direction of lights flat and honestly, that's. Probably how I shot my first three years of business. Yeah, I won favorite part by one favorite park. I try to put them underneath the tree. Um and it was just so dark there's a directional light. So then if you have a reflector to kick back in, you can give a little bit direction a light. Is that the silver? Don't try the white for me so I would ask him to switch to the the wait because the silver, which is a little bit too much of perfect, right there's great move in for close portrait. Perfect, that looks great that's ideal.

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Ratings and Reviews

Victor van Dijk
 

Besides all the more or less 'technical, theoretical stuff', the greatest thing I'm taking away with this outstanding course is the plain joy and FUN of trying all sorts of (crappy) lighting solutions!! Speaking for myself, and I suppose also many others, as an 'advanced beginner', I strongly tend to end up to my eyeballs in all technical nitty-gritty, gear 'n' stuff, that I totally mis out on all the sheer FUN of trying out, and often 'muddling through' all kinds of lighting setups! Such a joy to see the fun exchange between Lindsay and Erik! Really catchy. There should be more classes and courses like this, redirecting students to what it's actually all about: sheer creativity and fun! Having said that, Lindsay and Erik demonstrate that there is hardly any crappy light situation that can't be overcome by creative thinking. And more often than not, it doesn't have to be high-tech or difficult! They really showed an exhaustive list of crappy light situations AND their solutions. And I highly commend Lindsay and Erik for their fun energy, and even more important, pragmatism and frankness. I recommend this course to ANY photographer AND videographer, no matter 'beginner' or 'highly advanced'! Lighting is the basis of it all, and most of the time, it isn't perfect...! I highly re

Julie Addison
 

I thought I understood about light before I took this course. How wrong could I be? I have re-watched this course over and over and I just love it. Quality of light, direction of light - so many crappy light situations. Learning how to actually set a white balance instead of purely relying on the camera presets and learning colour correction by the color checker was also invaluable to me. This course is so affordable. I would recommend it to anyone from beginner to advanced as you will get more out of it than you think. I love the way Lindsay and Erik work together. No right or wrong way - just showing the differences in their styles to accomplish the same end result. Well done guys. Now to have more courses by Erik would be great. Again, can't' thank creative live enough and Erik and Lindsay for this course. Love, Love, Love It!!!!

a Creativelive Student
 

I hope I can tune in tomorrow. Erik and Lindsay, you guys were awesome today. Some of the things I needed some refreshing on but you definitely had a way of educating. I thought the demos were great and really validating. Light is a difficult thing to keep on your good side, especially with me, someone who primarily uses ambient and available lighting scenarios. This course is great and I'm planning to tune in tomorrow because I really want to see what you have in store for outside. Best of luck guys!! -Sim

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