Lessons

Lesson Info

Office Shoot: Senior Portrait in Long Blue Dress

tell us a little bit about what we're going to see in this video I know a lot of people have confined spaces tell us about what we're going to see what we're going to see we're going to see me in a very small space thiss this is a home office and it's a it's a extra bedroom that's been made into an office that this home that we were at earlier it's about ten feet by ten feet eh so there's not a lot of space but as I mentioned uh there's room in there in the center of the room I can back up so I can there's some room for me to work and so I can I can get my height I can hide my lighting equipment around the corners and I can just leave the room and shoot right through the doorway and that's what we're talking about doing uh I know a lot of people that do this you extend your studio by having a doorway that you can back out of when you can do this in your small home studios um and if from that we're gonna go right into some window light ambien situations where we just beautiful window li...

ght with our girl evan and uh and then we'll finish it off with some table top window light and flash both fantastic all right well let's roll the video so we're back in the house now from from our wonderful garage chute and we've got evan back with us again she's put on this wonderful dress we think's gonna photograph really really nicely now we're in that small office that we were talking about earlier on our walk through this office is not very big it is twelve feet by twelve feet and we're kind of wedged in here but here's what I've done if you'll notice the background I'm using just a very very small strip of the background fabric I've got a large octa bank right here and it's hidden in this little look around the corner from the door on the opposite side over there I've got this wonderful five dollars reflector from home depot that's a piece of insulation it weighs nothing and you can stick him anywhere so I'm gonna use that just to pick up a little bit of a highlight on the shadow side of her face but to be able to pull this off I'm going to have to be down the hallway over here so come this way and let's go down the hall and we'll see if we can't make a picture out of this thing so we're down the hall out we're going into the guest bedroom now so sometimes this kind of thing does happen and you've got to find a way to make it work and in this situation I think we could get a beautiful studio portrait of her in the studio in this small small space but it just means that I've got back up and bailed back up I've gotta have a doorway that's in the middle of a room and that works great I don't seem silly but that's one of a few things that I look for when I go on location I'm trying to figure out where is the doorway relative to the walls if it's in the middle I know I can hide things on the left on the right so this might work pretty well for a picture so are you ready my dear let's turn you a little bit that way right there and I'll bring your head back toward the light sources and bring your shoulders this way too much right there turn your head a little bit more chin down a tiny bit right there and just your eyes bring your eyes right up here to me let's take a shot of that one right there good good good hang on one second look my flash didn't go here we go oh come on john I'm gonna come forward is a little bit must try this one more time great perfect beautiful beautiful let's do a couple more real quick nice a little bit of a smile in this one just a little good good good good good one more of those there we go bring bring this left hand up a little bit higher appear on your shoulder like yeah like that and bring your head over a little bit more right there don't move perfect perfect great one more of those little sparkle in your eyes again great I'm gonna get about I'm gonna come about half the distance here become right up in here kind of like this and I'm going to the same thing again just a little get a little bit different perspective here that's great really good right there bring your shoulders this way just a bit and let the other hand grabbed the dress right there just kind of pull yeah you did it just I want your hand to pull it out a little bit that's great that's really nice kiddo beauty turn your head that way a little bit more let's do that one right there real quick good now turn your head back this way some more right there and chin down a little bit real pretty little smile on this one good good good let your hand come down this time your left hand oh let me see that one again that last one here we go good great and just bring your head toward me a little bit right there uh it's pretty good right there let's bring your hands together get in front so like we did earlier yeah and I just rotate to me a tiny bit of the way actually you know what go back where you were and just but I but I need to push your your right elbow and on your hands were probably about that's good yeah now twist this way just a tiny bit a tiny bit more this is not your right elbow go out a little bit away from you know good side that's it right there right there right there right there beauty you do one more a little closer beautiful beautiful beautiful one thing it's a good idea for folks to know is that when you're shooting like this double check and make sure that your lenses turned off of amy stabilization if you're on v r r I s turn it off because I got my tripod to take care of all that let's just bring your head around again and a little bit further and your chin down this time right there perfect great one more of those good relax just a second right there hey john why you're in there go ahead and grab that mirror and let's try to replace that piece of insulation with that mirror that we stole off the wall mary the good thing about mary gives you one hundred percent return so it's it works pretty great as a as a very speculator perfectly married reflective sir surface so there you go there you go and this wiggle it toward her tiny bit can you can you move forward a half step to make it right there that's perfect now john there you go let's try that we see what it looks like now bring your head back around huh just a little bit yeah right like that great let me take that john that looks great I've got a wonderful separation there as a direct result of that wonderful mirror guys this is really great and I know you're this is not a trick I'm trying to pull off this is actually the way I work I will find these little nooks and crannies and here I am you know ten feet down a hallway not even in the same room and I'm getting this wonderful portrait feel and this great look so let me do one more and I think we got this covered zahn back your hand up one inch that's it right there good good good great great great and just let me do one more with your arms down and just let your elbows come out just a tiny bit and turn toward me a little bit no actually you know what that looked pretty good do that again john you're in a little bit close right that's better right there just relax your arms down that looks better yeah now turn your head this way right there great one more of those and I think we're good here just let me do give me a little bit of space good you do one more and one more good you're in wanting to close down that's it right there good got it huh oh sorry mister this one more I just missed my crop a little bit there we go great you know one of the things that we talked about earlier during the walk there was just this office has a small white c it's a small room with low ceilings and the ceilings white um with more time in the in the home with someone for this kind of a portrait back where john is where the silver reflector is and the mirror's being placed in the very back corner uh I would probably choose to have a light on a stand back there from behind evan that's aimed up at the ceiling that can then come down and give me a hair light and also separate her shoulders off of the background uh that is one of the great great benefits of the small low white ceiling and so it works pretty well in that case we would we would do that make sure that the exposure of that light would be about one stop below whatever I'm shooting at with my main light but in this case we've got really nice really nice balance here of the main light and that accent is coming on really nicely and it just works it all works really well this far off the last shot right there when you had a tiny bit that's it catch you you're gonna love it let's do one more just because I can't stop that's okay that's okay good and one last smile ten down a tiny bit right there great got you okay relax for just a second okay let's go uh we got one more idea we would do with a little window action little window light so I think we're good for this place thanks you know if this is your studio you're setting up your home studio one of the things that you might consider what we were just talking about the very end there uh instead of putting a light on the stand and raising it up and aim it up at the ceiling if it's in your home studio and you're setting up your place you might consider a couple of different lights that you go up and actually mount from the ceiling dropping down maybe on a pipe or on a on a mono pod that's a fixed through a ceiling time maybe into the into the ceiling area that just can drop straight down that they can then came back up and then maybe you've got the switches down below so you could turn off and on one that will to be able to see if you want to both turned on or just one of them on or whatever and maybe even changed power down below if you have that ability with the strobes that you have but I do think it's a good idea tto have that light coming to separate your subject and again it's just it's it's one more small little silver silver it's a sliver of quality that you can bump a little bit and I think that's why that's part of it is it really looks like you've got a pretty great thing going when you really work hard and you get the accent life you've got background lines of separation great quality all the way through and that gives you the ability to pull that off so if you can't if you can't do what you need to do in the small space that you have and you can't make it any bigger you have to artificially make it bigger and in this case I just backed up straight down the hall and when we walked into the house that was one of the things that we talked about was oh look we could shoot right down that hall now that might not work and then the more we started thinking about it's like wait a minute that might work that that just might work and it worked beautifully so I couldn't quite get a full length I could have got a full length but I would have had to crop in the doorway and then I would have had to come back in later and fill and her clone or drag some width of my background but it didn't matter I got I got my point across in a small ten by ten space we would just some beautiful three quarter length portrait so anybody have any questions about that you want to ask sure yeah I'm just thinking about what we talked about in terms of percentage is on your flash light meter would you treat that as a main light as a fill light and if so what the percentage would be one hundred percent that's a hundred percent main light there's no ambulance no ambient influence whatsoever that is that I'm in the studio basically so there's no way I'm on location there's no uh there's no influence amendments whatsoever so it worked out pretty well do you know tony approximately how far away you then were down the hallway from the senior I was about I was probably fifteen eighteen maybe maybe close to twenty feet at first and then I came a little bit closer so that by the time I finished up I was at least fifteen feet away from her in fact I was probably actually more than that I was probably eighteen feet when you say john yeah I started about eighteen to twenty probably so I was a long way but it but it really worked out well I just didn't want to use a narrow wider lens to see the whole room that was the point backing up and zoom in in brought that lends perspective perspective theory back in the play for me and it made me look like I know what I was doing well it looked like I was being a goober I got the picture so that's what that's for me that's the goal it's like yeah but did you get the picture we got the picture okay then great then forget the rest of it you know sometimes it takes a lot of gaffer's tape to get the picture but you still get the picture