Shoot: Quality of Light
Lesson 7 from: FAST CLASS: Skin 101: Lighting, Retouching, and Understanding SkinLindsay Adler
Shoot: Quality of Light
Lesson 7 from: FAST CLASS: Skin 101: Lighting, Retouching, and Understanding SkinLindsay Adler
Lessons
Skin Essentials: White Balance
16:02 2Skin Essentials: Mixed Lighting, Color Contamination
15:42 3Camera Settings: Files
04:53 4Camera Settings: Color Spaces
15:10 5Color Management
11:03 6Exposure
06:21 7Shoot: Quality of Light
08:43 8Direction of Light
02:14Lesson Info
Shoot: Quality of Light
you can definitely ruin skin if you have a bad quality of light and you can definitely ruin skin if you have a bad direction of light. So, these would be the essentials to understand. And if you kind of got a grasp on them, then you should be able to problem solve pretty easily when it comes to getting as best as you can in camera. So, quality of light lighting principles when I am lighting a scene, There are three things I'm thinking about. The very first thing is the quality of light, the next is direction and the final is intensity. So, what this means, first thing is quality. Do I want soft light or hard light? Do I want it to be soft and glowing or do I want it to be crisp, nice, strong, harsh shadows. So it's kind of quality. What is that like that? Lights like direction? Is the light going to be flat. Kind of even with the camera flat onto the subject? Not a lot of shape, not a lot of shadows or very directional. Really, really carving out the cheekbones, a lot of shape, lot of ...
three dimensionality. And then the last one is intensity of light. So, basically how much light or the ratios between them. So, we're gonna start with the quality of light. So I already said, is it soft light? Is it hard? Like, as I dive into these two topics, here's which you're not going to like, there's not a right light for everybody. It depends on what you're going for and it depends on what the person looks like. but I can give you an idea of what lighting does to skin. That's what I kind of hoped to equip you with so soft or hard. Like, So, like I said, none of these images are retouched. We're gonna talk about this girl tomorrow. Um She I was casting for shooting for this class and she was one who signed up for having Rosetta. She had very red uh red coloration in her cheekbones. Anyway, so soft light, very diffused shadows, very flat, very even it's less saturated. Very hard. Light gives me crisp. Look at the shadow line, chris shadows, brighter highlights, darker shadows. So, what does this mean for skin? When you choose a harsher light source? Thank you. When you choose a harsher light source highlights will get brighter. Shadows will get darker. When you choose a softer light source, it's the opposite highlights will be pulled in not as bright, and shadows won't be as dark or as crisp. So, a more contrast. The light modifier will do this to the skin. It is very similar to what would happen in Photoshop if you drag the contrast slider. So, if you're in Photoshop and you have a photo and you open it up and you drag the contrast slider highlights get brighter and shadows get darker. So I did a little test to take a look at this. So, when these two photos, this is the exact same photo, all I did is pumped up the contrast in Photoshop just drag the contrast a little bit. So what you see is brighter highlights and darker shadows. Okay, well in the next photo, what I did is I switched my light source. I switched my light source from here. I lose. You will go back from here. I have a soft box and in this image I picked a silver dish reflector So I fundamentally increased contrast by switching my modifiers. Let's talk about modifiers that are considered hard versus soft and there's everything in between and you can modify all these to cross over. This is my generic. Okay, so hard modifiers equal more contrast. So in that photo, the dragon, the contrast lighter, brighter highlights, darker shadows. So a zoom reflector is a contrasting modifier. A tele zoom reflector. Take a deep reflector dish that's called a magnum. Like any of these, those little grids that fit on the front of some of the heads. These are all small and silver. These are all silver and their contrast. E So they'll increase the contrast on the skin. Okay, on the far opposite side, you have soft boxes. Either Octa boxes or soft boxes. And the bigger the light source. And the closer it is to your subject, the softer it becomes. So we're looking at that we've got really, really hard and contrast very, very soft with less contrast. And then you kind of have in the middle the medium, which would be a white beauty dish or they also have these things called parabolic umbrellas. Um So here's what I want you to pay attention to. For contrast and texture, more contrast, silver dish, direct flash or any adapters to your flash that are silver, silver beauty dish, silver umbrella along through a tele zoom and gritted lights. These are all more in the harsher realm. Harsher light modifiers, increase saturation and increase texture. Make highlights brighter shadows, darker, you notice texture more same thing with blemishes, right? If you have brighter highlights and darker shadows, you're gonna see the blemishes more. Okay then over here, less contrasts. Soft box octave box white beauty dish, white umbrella shoot through umbrella and scrims also for your speed lights, any modifiers that you can bounce into that are white, were large and diffused or soft box adapters. So all of this applies whether you're using studio strobes or for the concepts of taking speed lights outside these all stay the same. So I'm just taking a look. There's not this is with a darker skin tone. Um I also did the same test with a lighter skin tone. I tried tons of different light modifiers um Just really generically I really like. So it doesn't even make sense. But I looked at all the different modifiers on someone's skin tone. Every single thing I had in my studio, I tested I tested it on a light subject and on a darker subject. And I tried to pay attention to what did I like best on the skin and it totally depends on the subject. But for me, I really like dr boxes, um beauty dishes and parabolic umbrellas. Those were my favorites. Usually the most flattering on the skin. It's really subjective depending on what you're going for. So these just look at a couple different modifiers. That's the silver dish, a beauty dish, white, a small soft box in a medium Octa box. So you can kind of see what it's doing to the skin. But we we have to even look closer to see what's really happening. And so I invited um a gentleman, He's an actor into my studio to photograph him. Um and he's got a lot more texture on his face. You can see a little bit more what changing the modifiers going to do. So the first image, we've got a silver dish, the second of beauty dish and the last one a soft box. So if I really zoom in and this is okay, I'm just warning you. It's like because you've been really close since like what is this? Okay, forehead? Um If you look when you're using either a silver dish or a beauty dish, you have a little bit more definition in the wrinkles and it softens up. There's not as much dark difference between darkness and highlights when you have a soft box and also the edges of the shadow areas don't have as much gradient there CRISPR. So a more contrasting modifier is going to show wrinkles more, Going to show blemishes more and it's going to have more crisp shadow areas as you get softer, it goes the opposite direction. Um The next part of this is using reflectors and talk about in the studio, first of all, so when you're filling in underneath underneath someone's face right, you're trying to fill in some shadows. There is a difference between using a silver reflector and a white reflector. A silver reflector fills in light more. So if you really want to fill in, say you're trying to really fill in um some light underneath wrinkles or really give a pop to the eye and make them glow silver. Does that more? It has more glow. Wait is more subtle. White usually is more flattering to the skin because it has less contrast.
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