Lessons
Class Introduction
05:10 2What Defines a Dramatic Portrait?
06:07 3Camera Settings
09:24 4Lighting Equipment & Styles
24:24 5Lighting For Dramatic Shots
09:04 6Shoot: With Light On-Axis
14:53 7Shoot: With Butterfly Lighting
06:20 8Shoot: With Beauty Dish
17:31Lesson Info
Class Introduction
Thank you, welcome everybody. Welcome to How to Create Dramatic Images, that's what we're all about today. Wanna show you how to use one flash, to produce really dramatic and kind of a dark and heavy look to your imagery. You'll notice a lot of things that we do as photographers, we're always trying to create bright and airy looks, or smiley, happy people. Well there's another world of photography that I wanna open your eyes to today, and that's the serious look, the dramatic look. Today, we're all about teaching you how to use that one flash that you have in your camera bag. I wanna show how you can do a lot of work with just a single light source, and then using reflectors, and distance from the background and different colored backdrops to produce this overall look that we're after. What I'm gonna do, is clear my throat, and then after I clear my throat, I'm gonna show you some pictures, and talk about what we're gonna cover in the class. Look at this photo, it's just a great lookin...
g image, very serious, I don't wanna say sinister, but serious. Dark background, dark clothing, a dark individual, and beyond that, the look that I wanted to create, I produce that by thinking through the flash setup, by thinking through the position of the flash, by thinking through, what do I wanna do with my reflectors? The type of modifier, that I wanna use an umbrella or a softbox, or any of the other tools that I'm gonna show you today. And one of the keys is, is understanding where you want to go, what do you want that photo to look like, and then creating your lighting to produce that final image. Here's three other images that I've shot, I've shot all these within the last few weeks. The image on the left is a dancer, it's a very expressive man, and very passionate as well, and I wanted to capture that on film, and so for that image you can see, I've got light coming from the top, kind of looking up into the sky or up into the clouds and a very passionate, dramatic pose. The photo in the middle, Molly, she has beautiful tattoos and she's very proud of her tattoos. I wanted to show those off, and so there we did a full length shot, still a dramatic shot, full length. The photo on the right, this young man, he had the coolest dreadlocks in the world, and he had these little gold bands on those dreadlocks, and so that was one of the neat looks that we got to do, is I asked him if he had a shawl or a hoodie, so we kinda created this assassin type of a feel to the photo. Again, all about lighting position, all about distance from the background, all about working with the model and their expression, and their, mindset. So that's what we're gonna do today, we're gonna produce some images that look like these. Fun stuff, I'm looking forward to it. What's the plan? The plan for today, we're gonna start out with gear and definitions. I'm gonna talk about what exactly is a dramatic photo, then we're gonna talk about the gear that it's gonna take to get to that dramatic photo. And even though on set here, I've got lots of stuff behind me, the only reason I have all this stuff is to show you that you, too, can use it. So at home, I'm not expecting you all to have all of this lighting equipment. You probably only have one, you probably have an umbrella and a reflector. Great, I'm gonna show you how to use those two things to produce those types of images. Or maybe you have a softbox, great, I'm gonna you how to produce a similar look with a softbox. So it isn't always about owning all of this stuff. More importantly, it's about knowing how to use it and when to use it. So we'll talk about the gear, we're gonna talk about the flashes themselves, 'cause that's what really today is all about, using your flash to produce the effect that you want. So I'm not gonna be talking a lot about posing today, I'm not gonna be talking a lot about, interacting with the model today, CreativeLive does a really good job with those courses. Today is really more on the technical side of things. We're gonna get to the lighting styles themselves, so what do we wanna produce, so I'm gonna show how to do a clamshell light, I'm gonna show you how to do a butterfly light, and I'm gonna show you how to do profile lighting and backlighting, all of these things will make a lot of sense as we build these photographs throughout the day. Then we'll do live shoots, so we've got, I think, six or seven different specific scenarios that I wanna photograph. I'll take you guys all along for the ride. And then, finally, post-processing. I know this is a flash class, but because we're only using one flash, you need to do a little bit more work in post-processing. So I'm gonna use Lightroom today just because most people in the photo world kind of revolve around the Lightroom software package. So I'm gonna show you how to do work on the background, I'm gonna show you how to work on the face a little bit because we're gonna have to fine-tune what we do in the studio since we're limiting ourselves to one flash.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
user-182390
Another great course learned a lot about flash and the different modifiers. Very informative and easy to understand looking forward to the next one.
a Creativelive Student
Student Work
Related Classes
Lighting