Drawing Attention via Light Shaping
SLR Lounge, Pye Jirsa
Lessons
Chapter 1 Introduction
06:59 2Welcome to Lighting 201!
03:16 3OCF = Anytime/Anyplace
06:49 4Chapter 2 Introduction
05:11 5Wired, Infrared or Radio?
15:03 6“Pocket, Medium, Full Strobe?”
13:23 7Our 3 Favorite Flashes “Pocket Strobes”
09:26 84 More Flashes “Pocket Strobes” Worth Looking At
14:33Our 2 Favorite Medium Strobes
12:55 10Understanding Radios Part I: Channels & Groups
11:04 11Our 2 Favorite Radio Triggers
07:59 125 Simple Steps to Trouble Shooting Radios/OCFs
15:10 13Fantastic ND Filters at Any Price Range
09:03 14Our Favorite “Sticks”
11:01 15Our Favorite Ultra-Portable OCF Light Modifiers
19:38 1612 Mounting and Must-Have Lighting Accessories
12:28 17Gear Setup - Setting Up a Light Stand or “Stick”
08:14 18Gear Setup - Setting Up a Monopod Light or “Boom Stick”
09:30 19Gear Setup - Setting Up a “Medium Boom Stick”
12:15 20Gear Setup - Setting Up a Manual Flash “Big Boom Stick”
13:30 21Gear Setup - Setting Up a Full Feature Flash “Big Boom Stick”
09:40 22Chapter 3 Introduction
04:12 238 Steps to Perfecting Each Scene & Image When Using OCF
12:30 24Over Powering the Sun - Part I
16:42 25Over Powering the Sun - Part II
12:42 26Slow Down! Watch the Details
08:32 27More Power Without The Power
11:03 28Adding to Existing Light - Part I
10:52 29Bare Bulbing with Large Groups
14:36 30Back Lighting to Create Interest
13:33 31Getting Crazy with the “Whip Pan”
17:27 32Chapter 4 Introduction
03:44 33The Flash Modifier You Already Own
12:05 34The Oh-So Powerful Umbrella
11:13 35Large Group Shots with an Umbrella
11:21 36Exposure Balancing via Lightroom
04:20 37Portable Softboxes - Westcott Apollo
10:22 38More Light Control, Just Grid It!
12:53 39Dusk + Modified Pocket Strobes
13:51 40More Power? Medium Strobes FTW!
12:37 41Perfect It In-Camera. Then Photoshop
05:23 42Adding to Existing Light - Part II
12:00 43Adding or Enhancing Light Direction
11:17 44Our Ideal Group Lighting Technique
12:58 45Incorporating Flares with Flash
10:39 46Cutting Light, Grids and GOBOs
10:29 47Chapter 5 Introduction
03:34 48Fog + Flash + Grid = Dramatic Change
08:56 49BYOL! The 3-Light Setup That Only Requires One Light!
12:07 50What About the Fill Light?
12:15 51Backlight + GOBO + Fog = Magic
08:36 52Drawing Attention via Light Shaping
08:29 53Visualizing Lights & Color Shifts
09:17 54Mixing Ambient + Gobo w/ Flash
11:37 55Better Light Can Change Everything!
09:47 56Chapter 6 Introduction
01:57 57Subtle Refinement = Massive Difference
11:31 58Great Light Changes Everything! Part II
11:50 59Manually Triggered RCS + Shutter Drag
11:29 60The Right Power for Each Scene
14:24 61Dodging and Burning via Light In-Camera
07:23 62Subtle Light for Natural Portraits
09:14 63Light Modification & Simple Compositing
10:16 64Expanding Your Photographic Vision
11:37Lesson Info
Drawing Attention via Light Shaping
Drawing attention in a scene via light shaping now this technique and we're going to talk about here is very similar I mean basically we're doing the same thing that we were before with adding two existing light right we talked about something similar to this but I want to talk about the process and kind of the steps as to why I made decision toe light this shot this way so let's go ahead and just talk through overall what the heck was I thinking climbing a tree all right so our couple actually had a photo on their mood board that was a top down shot and we saw this little spot where there's the tree and I thought hey it's really cool to get up in this tree and the shoot down you guys like that shot you had on your mood board and kind of get you guys maybe like almost in a position where you're dancing or just hugging in embrace just all about you two but shot from a unique angle so yes I made this precarious climb up this tree once I was up there I had my assistant tossing my camera i...
t was it was very something I probably would not recommend to you but we photographers do these kind of things we pose funny when we're taking photos we have very strange habits of climbing things and that's just photographers in general I'm not going to try and explain it all right, so for composition and attributes well, compositionally wanna shoot top down angle? Uh, actually it's wise, I wanted to shoot this wide open, so I grabbed my thirty five millimeter sigma. This guy, my signal art and I wanted to shoot on this lens particular because it gave me a semi wide kind of look at the scene while I could shoot a f one for get attack. Sharp images have a beautiful looking a photo from it, so I had my signal on there I have my foe ticks odin mounted and I was using odin off camera, but I hadn't decided yet whether I wanted them in the shot. Now the point that I decided was basically when I got up there and I took this first shot, I took it at one one hundredth of a second f one point four, one hundred and again I always like to start warm generally s o I'm about close to seven thousand kelvin in camera this is annual I only their kind of pose so that the amulet is coming directly into them. So we're shooting with the amulet direction as faras the way they're posed already and expose this for skin tones. Now I love natural light I love the way naturally look that's fantastic it's great it's brilliant, but sometimes in a scene like this had the entire background been filled with this grass, you know, and green leaves over here and grass, like all over the background, I would have just left the shop as is, and it would have looked fantastic and impeccable with just natural light, but the background is these rocks and dirt and dead leaves and so forth and there's no way that we're going to clean that up and guess what? Her dress kind of match is that color of the rocks and the dirt and everything like that, so they both end up blending into that a little bit too much. If the background were different, then I might not have chosen to light the image the way I did, but since it was that way, I thought, you know what? We need to give them a little bit of a kick of light just because I wanted to brighten up so that the ground and everything else becomes less of a distraction, you know, if your background and your scene isn't working for you, then it comes down to a light shaping to make it work for you. So what do we do? Well, I know that I'm not going to be okay with sink because I'm already at with this shot, and I saw one hundred I'm at one hundred second and so on. You know, one, two hundred second we end up with one hundred seconds, one, four and fifty, so I know that have two stops of leeway basically between my s o and between my shutter speed and that's most likely enough, I really only need anywhere between one and two stops to get the effect that I'm looking for. I don't want to go any further than that because then it gets too dark and it looks like a halloween shop, which I don't want, okay, so I'm okay on the sink speed now ambien exposure, you know, in the in this kind of busy scene and brighter background, we're basically bringing attention the subject with a to stop reduction to dark and everything down but, you know, one stop production would do similarly as well, and it at least be better than this guy right here. Okay, so this one actually talk about that in just a second, so anywhere between one to two stops is totally up to you, I say beyond that might be a little bit too much for a happy wedding shot and even that two stops it looks a little bit on the dark side, but I'm still cool with that, but that comes back down to that ambient versus light balance and me versus flash balance, right want mohr natural? Look, we kind of bring the flash down, bring the ambient back up want more dramatically bring the annual down the flashback up okay anywhere between there's totally fine I'll let you guys decide on your preference now light direction in quality we have are three flashes we placed three photos metros placed inside of always placed three by the way, just even though I don't need three and a lot of scenes like this I just place them just so I have the power there so I have them on my speed bracket and they're placed inside of a apollo orb and with that orb we basically used our upside we placed inside the paula strip and we're using the diffusion and the grid with that strip um we have ah, you know, usual I'll just defer to the apollo or if I just need a small amount of light and I'm dealing with like a couple of not a large subject that I think will be lighting the light direction the qualities so we already know that the quality is gritted, its diffuse so it's gonna be a nice soft light source and I placed it just out of camera right here why? Because I want to follow the existing light I wanted to just bring them up a little bit from that background so I matched the existing light faras the direction of that existing light and again because we're leaving ambient light phil we're leaving all that stuff in there we're also making sure we're matching the color temperature just by leaving at daylight right? Because our regular color temperature is just daylight over here ok, so we take our test shot this was actually the test shot and on the first headshot I found that I had too much power and there's also light spilling on to the background so you can see like the grass getting lit up over here we had the trees over here was being lit up right there that's the perfect situation for not only number one a lower flash power because I think we're at like what we have I don't think I wrote down the actual flash car there but we can put the grid and the diffuser on there which is going to cut down power and the grid is going to control the light so it doesn't spill on the other areas like the tree and all the you know grass over that you want the light to be on them so it's a fantastic control device to really put the light exactly where we need it. So with that test I got a little bit better of a balance over here we have nice light on them um again, if I had this to do again, I would have taken one shot at one stop under and once shot at two stops under which was this one and they decided in post which one I like better but I still like the shot. I think it could be a little bit brighter and we can always just brighten that in post to the detail is still there it's just been burned down a little bit. All right, so this looks great. We have three foot meet roses with the westcott apollo strip with diffusion plus the grid. We're at around one eighth toe one quarter power with the three of these flashes firing it again. It's gonna depend on how many flashes you're using if you're using just one most likely to get me one quarter power of using three army at one eighth toe one sixteenth and so forth again distance the subject and everything. But if we compare these shots again, you know the whole purpose of this chapter is to visualize what a singh is going to look like when we darkened things down when we add our own light. So when standing up there I know that the shadow areas of the trees are going to become mostly dark, I know that the green is going to become kind of a deeper green and more lush green by pulling it down, I know that the ground is going to become a different color now then her dress, which is what I want, because, that's, the whole purpose of doing this was to make her dress and to make him and her their faces stand out from something that was a little bit distracting overall. So, again, just learned to interpret these kind of things and to visualize what's gonna happen if I do this in camera, if I pull things down, if I add light and if I add lightness, getting in the area that I don't want again, we have our grids. We have our control devices that we can use to control and shape the light into the quality, the direction into the basically size of the subject of the size of that area that we want to fill. All right, so that's it for this tutorial was head on to the next one. Now.
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Lê Tiến Đạt
I'd like to say thank you to SLR Lougne, Creativelive and especially Pye for creating this wonderful Lighting series. Pye has a great sense of humor and he is also a great teacher. He expains everything in tiny details. I love his creativity, all the tips and dedication. Recommended!
Colin
Pye is a god. His teaching style is really engaging, breaking down everything you could want to know about each example in a fun yet detailed manner. The course is absolutely jam-packed full of great information and fantastic inspiration. This course, as well as Lighting 101, give not only a perfect foundation for anybody learning about flash from scratch, but also have more than enough tips and advanced techniques in them to help experienced flash users seriously up their game. Cannot recommend it enough.
Karen Ruet
I'm watching this live and am seriously considering buying this course. I really like the examples and all the information. Pye is super generous and easy to listen to. I also appreciate the talk about gear and am happy that Pye is giving us options for different price ranges. Thank you, Creative Live.