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"Sandwich Lighting" Technique

okay, How to light anything. And this is what I call I've kind of developed this term. The sandwich technique. Okay, a systematic approach to lighting. I'll explain a little bit about what that means. OK, So my philosophical approach to create light that has impact and wow sandwich the subject with light so depth and a lit or interesting background. And what do I mean by sandwich? Right. Well, we all know what a sandwiches is, so you have subject and you are just sandwiching them with light. You know, there's different ways to do it. There's clamshell front, back room to sidelights. Whatever you just sound. Instead of getting into all this technical mumble jumble about it, will the rim like kicker lied main whatever, right? Just didn't forget all those terms. And just think of sandwiching your subject with light, okay and sandwich them together. And with that, um, what you try to do is show some depth in your photo. And what depth does it gives the viewer? Ah, place or a setting. And i...

t tells a little bit more of the story. For example, if I were to, uh let's say this was just a completely white background and you're gonna take a picture of me against this white background. Damn you! Take it. All right, you see me? But it doesn't really, really tell a story of where I'm at of what I'm doing now, for example, let's say you take a picture of me here cameras over here and taking a picture of me and you guys in the background, you smile that now has depth. Were allowing Mawr elements into the photo. And it's creating a setting. A story. Ah, your environment of where that photo is. So that's what I mean by death. And then if you actually ah, that that part that is behind the subject of background, I actually like that lit where I says lit or interesting back on. The reason is this is because I like to create highlights and shadow on my subject. So if my background has highlights and shadows on it, it's the light is gonna look believable is gonna look interesting. Eso I like to continue that theme across the entire photo, so that's why I like it lit. If it's not, let try to find an interesting background like it could be the elevator, right? Um, just depends. And so if you kind of look at this photo, it kind of has all those elements to it. Right where I am using this son to light her up on the back. I'm filling it in with flash here, and, uh, it's it's basically my same pose again, but it's on the ground, right? I don't do anything different. Ah, and I've got that shadow here and highlight shadow and highlight on her dress because I'm using off camera flash. And I'm overpowering the sun here because typically, if you were to take this picture without the flash, she would be incomplete shade and it would look entirely flat. But what I'm doing is I'm creating the highlights and shadow on her my kind of my signature look. But then you look at the background and you look at the clouds. Don't they have highlights and shadow in it also, And so it matches. So it makes it believable, defined, subject and separates the sandwich lighting. And it gives a sense of location and place. When you have the depth and the lit background, you match highlights and creates believability. Interesting background also gives you that wow factor. And that's why a lot of times you go to exotic locations because it has that while factor to it. Here's another situation downtown Los Angeles, and I'm kind of doing the same thing here. Do I give the settings on that? No. Okay, that's the same examples where I put one umbrella on them. I put a flash behind them to give me some edge lighting. And then what do I do with the background? I make sure, ah, that the background is there now. I think I held this shutter speed for about a second or so because I wanted that background lights in there. So I set my background first. Is that remembers? That's how we do that. So I established my background first and I go, Well, let's see to get those lights whom I've got to go down and drop my shutter down a lot. And I don't care if it's blurry back there. At least my subjects will be sharp because they were in darkness. You get it. And so when the flash fired on them, it tightened them up just like that. Ah, and then. But I was still able to capture the background with my shutter speed. Same thing here, but this uses a doorway. Okay. Ah. Sandwiching my subject with light, but making that background interesting because I put a colored gel on it. And that's what we're part of your final exam. A little bit later, we're going to be doing that. Somebody's gonna have to take their shirt off meal. Robert, You guys been working out? Rust volunteered to. So he said that any time Scott, any time say the word. Same thing we talked about this this particular photo. It's my reception lighting sandwich thing. Interesting background here. We So some depth. The place of what? Their sense of where you're at on you've got, you know, light coming in from behind have light on her this way. Shooting it landscape so you can allow more of the environment into the photo. We looked at this photo before. What gives this photo the depth? The rain, right. Makes it interesting texture with that. Okay. So, Woody, how do you start with these? Like, I mean, I actually kind of went overboard on you because I'm like, teaching you how to do seven lights that once all the time. But really that I mean, if you would have learned photography, Uh, that's really not the right approach. And I think the first thing is toe learn, available light and learn how to find it. Where is the best available light and learn how to find it? And that is one light source. That's the very first step to use this one available, and maybe you add a second, okay? And this is really where I live during wedding day, because available light is the fastest and, ah, and a lot of times it's great quality light because it's coming through a window or whatever, and it looks great. And then I just add a little kicker just at a little flash or at a little video light just to get that edge light in there and separate my work a little bit. And I use this a lot during wedding day, and that's what I call the sandwich. Salvaging the light, learn how to create after that. Then you gotta learn how to create both sources. This is the hardest step, but I made you guys do that the first day, so don't feel overwhelmed with that. Ah, but you guys did a great job with it, and you're gonna prove it to me when we go over there and take your exam. Uh, you're gonna do awesome. So that's actually the last step. And people are really fearful of this because that seems very daunting to them being able to create their light. But hopefully by the end of this week. Ah, you won't be so scared of doing that. And then the fourth thing is adding the depth and a lit, lit or interesting background. That's kind of like the special sauce. That's the topping on the cake. Right? Okay, those are the four, uh, kind of steps that a person needs to take. Okay, well, let's talk. Let's go back. How do we maximize one light source? Okay, that's all we want to do is find one light source. Okay? How to find available light. Look for catch lights, OK? When you're walking around target or the airport, wherever you're walking, look for people and see if they have catch lights in their eyes. And if they do figure out where that light is coming from, you will learn so much that way. You must be a student of light at all times. I was a fanatic about it. Everywhere I was goes looking for available light. Uh, you know, Wow, she's got catch lights. Where's that come? Oh, I didn't realize that That's reflecting off the floor right there. And then I get clues of where this light is, and then I start to understand light, and then you start to become a master at it, and you can find it in little nooks and crannies. And it's just there. It's like hidden nuggets of gold is like a like they're like they're and you start really feeling good about yourself because you feel like if I go into any situation, I'm going to find a good place. And that's what cash lights are. Those little highlight areas in the eyes, and they also reveal where the source light is. So if you look at fashion magazines and you want to kind of study, what was the lighting? You could actually look at those catch lights if they haven't been altered in photo shop and then go Oh, wow. That light was actually above ER and I didn't know they had a reflected light under her cause I see to catch lights in her eyes so you can start to study lighting by looking at catch lights. And then you can figure out where that light sources and I used to do that a lot too. Method one, Okay. Directed or channeled light passing from a large source to a narrow space that will cook, create, directed, diffused or filtered. Like, for example, light from a window Archway tunnel hallway between two wells, etcetera. Right. Okay, So this is the situation I'm talking about. This is creating beautiful light because they sunlight is being narrowed down into these windows, and it's creating a huge soft box and giving her beautiful natural life. So that's great natural light. Well, how did that I get that edge on her arm and all that kind of stuff? What do you think I did? I had another flash that way. OK, but anyways, we're just talking about one light right now. Uh, and that's how I did that then. So let's see a dad ground. So look at this photo. See the beautiful catch lights in her eyes. This is natural light. What was the situation here. Well, the sun was coming. A large source being narrowed down into a little walkway and creating this directed light which gives you beautiful Ah, light on your subject. And then you can place your subject by distance to get the nice quality of light that you want and and you just move it to that sweet spot where you like that light. You understand that funneled from a larger to narrow, we can show some more examples. Here's another photo of ah, a shot that we took and this was also in that mansion. And with a situation with this Waas the light was coming in from this outside area was reflecting on this wall and then coming back at them. It was very, very, very dark in there. But the quality of light was great because I could see catch lights in her eyes. So this was basically taken with and what I always have in my bag, I always have a low light lens. In this particular case, I had one of those cheap $100. millimeter, 1.8 lenses. I just have it in my bag just in case I'm in a little light situation like this, I put it, pull it out, put it at 1.8. Turn your eyes so up, and then you're able to do this shot. And so I always wanted to do this kind of dark key kind of photo. And ah, So actually, there's a two students, So I asked them, Hey, would you guys post for me? And so I had them do this and I created this photo, and what I did was used them as natural light and then that little flashlight in their added that sandwich aspect to it. But the main light was from available light, but it was very dark is very, very dark. But I saw the catch lights in the eyes, so I knew the quality of light was very good. It's not the quantity but the quality. Look at this situation here, um, in this particular case that the hat kind of access separation light. But what I did was this. It was like in a conference room and the the light was coming from outside. But I wanted to create a strip box. So what I did was I close the curtains down so I could get a narrow strip of light to come out of that curtain and then do some split lighting on her. I do that a lot in weddings because when the brightest getting ready in her hotel room, they usually have that sliding door. And a lot of times all just delight by pulling the curtain or opening it to get what I want or or this way. And sometimes I could create a little strip light by just pulling that like together. And that's my soft box because it's a large light source coming down into a narrow source, and it's giving you nice directed soft light. And you can use that. This is the sandwich lighting technique, okay? And we kind of went over. This is where you're finding actually to allay little light sources to create the sandwich, and you can always do that in the limo, in weddings or in the car. Now, sometimes when you're shooting a bride and it's bright sun and you don't know where to go and maybe you don't even have your flashes, you could always get them inside a car because it's gonna create to sidelights for you. immediately. All the time. Okay? And so what did I do here? We're driving along. Where are their nose pointing towards? So this this And then I wanted to focus Herb. Or so I just moved her up a little bit closer. He was in behind. It posed itself because I was just going by my lighting principle. Here's another situation here where I had two light sources. I didn't create this. There was a beam light, a little can light coming down. And there was a lamp here, but this lamp was red, but I just need light. So what I did was I turned my camera to black and white to see what it would look like. So I shot in black and right. I used this red light to come over, worsen nose pointing towards the light and had this down. I took the photo Now people walking by it looked like she was a demon possessed or something, because he had just red light. But on my camera, it was just like light is just like so sometimes you turn it to black and white. That's fine. It's colored light. Here's another case where light was coming back through the window. It was hitting a mere and coming back at her. So I positioned her blight by the window and the mere so I could get a sandwich lighting using two available lights. Here's another case where I've got to available lights where this was in a barn or it used to be a barn. And so this light from the opening was coming this way. There was actually a window here, but I photoshopped it out. As you can see, my photo shop is not right back. Good, because you can see this area's kind of screwed up. I still want award out of it. I think I got I think I got 85 out of it yourself. That's like a black river. Let's go. But anyway, uh, there's that edge light there, see? Because that's coming from the window that's there. But I just covered up. It actually looked like that. Okay, so there was a window light I'm using to available sources the noses towards the light. It's the archway that's open. You can see the light was reflecting off the ground and coming up at her and then that other window coming this way. Giving now. I had to move that bench in the right place, but I could see those two lights coming into play. And I didn't need to set up anything. I just used what was available to me, and I got two shots out of it. See, she's doing this. I said, Oh, yeah. Pretend like you're putting your shoes on or something. And then I go, Okay, Now look towards the light. Look over there. I came in close. I took it. She's not. She hasn't moved one inch. She just turned her head down. Two shots. Okay. Same thing to available. Light sources one this way. In the archway. This way. In the back. I love the outline of this guy and partner, so I just had him stand there so I could get a silhouette of it. But that's just to available light sources. This here is a light source from above, but I used Herb okay as a reflector to give me light on her face. MacGyver, the MacGyver. What do I got? I got one life from up there, and I go got a bouquet of flowers. Oh, okay. But the light behind. Use a bouquet of flowers to reflect Bam there it ISS be on your toes. Think of your available situation and you can make it happen with anything around.