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Light Modification & Simple Compositing

Light modification and simple compositing we're combining techniques here, folks, which is appropriate because this is the second to last tutorial in this entire course which is kind of a bittersweet thing I'll be honest, I'm sure most of your like nope it's pretty much just a sweet thing but for me it's actually a pretty sweet whatever so what we're doing here is we are adding to existing light right were amping up the existing like to make our subject pop we're also modifying the quality of that existing light were also doing simple compositing because we need to put our light in a place where it's actually in our frame so let's go ahead and get started this image now we're shooting out in the desert we're shooting on the sigma one twenty to three hundred on my five mark three and that is an f two eight lens folks do it that means that means that that lens is absolutely freaking joy enormous and you'll also notice that I'm at one one hundredth of a second well, do you remember the re...

ciprocal rule from one for the hungry? Wanna one? Hopefully yes, you know when I was holding pipes and stuff? Yes, no, whatever basically reciprocal rule is states that I need to make sure as a rule of thumb no as a general rule, you don't see rule of thumb as a general rule that my shutter speed is the reciprocal of my focal length when I'm hand holding the camera. This is just a general rule, of course, which means that if I'm at three hundred millimeters, I should be at one, three hundred a second, I'm not, so I put the camera on to at least a mono pod and just another general rule when you're using freaking joy, enormous lenses like the one twenty, three hundred to eight, which I absolutely love it's heavy folks, if your arm is going to be dying within two minutes of holding that lens up so you need at least a mon upon to put that thing on. Don't try and just buff it out that's my version of tough it out for people that have lots of muscles buffet out don't try and do that, I don't even have a lots of muscles. I work out modestly, and I can't hold that line from one two minutes, okay? So just keep that in mind now. Further shot, we're gonna be doing simple composite, which means that if we want to make our lives easier in photo shop, we need to achieve the same shot twice. And to do that we could do with a a mono pod but then we're gonna have to do layering and we're going to like trying a line and match things up because we're not going to get it perfect so to get much closer we're gonna put our camera onto a tripod one little note whenever you put a telephoto lens onto a tripod you do not mount the tripod plate here that would be silly that's what this guy's for this is a tripod mounting ring it comes with every single telephoto you purchased you put the play there and you mounted there because now your camera is much better waited if you hold it right here it's just going to droop in sag and you're going to end up breaking your tripods early because you're putting too much weight on the tribe not to mention you're putting a lot of weight just on this little ring right here which can't be good for your camera either so just a little tip there for y'all from me to you okay, so let's keep going we have our camera on the tripod we have army photo globetrotter right there with our sigma one twenty three hundred mounted up we're shooting at f four one one hundred second so two hundred so we don't really have to worry about sink right as faras my composition what I mainly want here is just to zoom in all the way so I can compress the background and bring it up forward or at least give the illusion that the background is closer to my subject and we get that we get these beautiful waves and so forth we achieved a really nice ambient flash or an ambient exposure balance at this setting of one hundred a second f four, two hundred and fifty eight hundred degrees kelvin that's beautiful it's great. But guess what? Our subject is a little bit on the dark side, is she not now? Not like star wars. Dark side, not like jet I darth vader. Darkseid, even though she is wearing black kind of looked like a sexy darth vader on the middle of a desert if there were such things, but she's dark in the sense that she blends too much into the background, the sky is brighter than she is. Everything is brighter than she is, and she just kind of blending into the sand. So what do we do? Well, I've got my good buddy trevor daley out there in case you missed the previous videos with trevor he's, an incredible photographer. You guys should check him out. He's one of the best waiting for divers in the world. Absolutely awesome, fantastic guy we'll be seeing him in like, a couple days, which is gonna be rad too, because when hang out, have a good time he was good enough to come out of the chute he's holding our big boom stick so with a boom stick we have the bolt b b twenty two we've set up with the westcott rapid box and finally I can show you what I was talking about you know how saying that basically this the head doesn't quite fit in to the west con rabbit box you can see that right here and you can see it bleeding out right there and actually that bleeds out into the lens and it causes a soft very subtle kind of blue blur over in the blue flare over in that left corner so it's something to watch out for if your flashes are not completely seated correctly you well in the modifier either you've put them in their core incorrectly or you have a modified that doesn't fit them well either way you need to make sure that you don't have this issue that's why I went to the s m d v one because it actually fit the bowl a little bit better than the westcott but the west coast designed for pocket strobes not for medium strobes again for medium strobes ideally used the pro photo horrify the three foot octa okay so we're using that and we're just kind of dealing with the flare I'm going I know I'm gonna be compositing anyway so as long that flare is not over our subject I'm okay all right, so we shoot and we basically are lighting her with about one quarter toe one eighth power coming through that little octa with diffusion. So what have we done? Well, we've taken the sun which is our primary light source in the first shot we have not only amplified the existing light strength this is by the way, just right around dusk so we have a very soft quality for the light because the main light source in this shot is actually the sky in the sand and everything so it's a large life source but by bringing that octa close to her not only have we amplify the existing light we've also modified the quality is a little bit we have a little bit better shadow definition we have a little bit more fall off it just looks it looks great. It looks really nice. The only problem now is that we need to get trevor out of there. So what we do is we pop the shot with the light and then I say trevor duck and then he jumps down and he hides behind the sand dune and he hides thie at least most of the head the head was poking out, but I'm like no worries you covered it up enough that's good enough and then we once again do a simple composite in voter shop layer these two images and where trevor is I just mask the background if I have a flair I just pull in the background and that's it we end up with this final shot and all I did in this final shot when photo shop is just basically removed some of sand in the background it has a couple of basic lighter in pre sets from the lighter in prison system applied to this but that's it now why did we shoot this overall composition and pose and everything will for the pose you'll notice that I have a kind of standing again with the leg coming in and I have a need jutting out of the slit in the dress the reason for that is I want to show off the design of the dress if we don't have the legs sticking out of that slit then we have not utilized the slit folks and if I were a dress designer and I designed a slit I want to see the slip my photograph right if I were a girl wearing a dress with a slit I don't want that to be present in the photographs it's part of what she's wearing is part of the fashion of this particular outfit we have a beautiful little uh like you know what that's called bracelet way have beautiful race that's on there so I have her arm going across and kind of holding on that side a great necklace but you know the shots really maura about the environment were pulled back so far that you can't really see a lot of the details but I do want to make sure that I maintain in the shot is just the shape and the form of her body I want to see the form I want to see shape I want to see all that and we can in this photo and if you want to exaggerate and photoshopped then by all means go ahead this is a beauty type shot this is a fine art type shot to me you can exaggerate those much do you want this is your artistic vision it's not about being were morally correct in photo shop is that even a thing I mean I know it's a thing but should that be a thing I don't think it should be a thing okay so that's how we can get to a fantastic image and image where our subject pops off the background very simply very quickly with simple compositing along with adding in those previous steps so when you aren't able to get the modifier out of the frame don't worry just do what we've taught you here get the camera on a tripod shoot the shot with the light then shoot one quickly afterwards without the light or just hide a light till this hasn't come out the frame and so forth remember that for this scene I had everybody walk behind the dune and then come up so we don't track, you know, tracks in there that I had two photo show about later make your lives a little simple think through a shot before you actually go and do so. Key tips four simple composites like this make your life easy get a tripod put the camera on the tripod that's tip number one tip number to make your life easy, take the shot with the light and your plate shot without the light within, you know a few seconds of each other so that the light stays consistent between shots, otherwise you have to exposure balance between them. Number three just ensure that there was not much, if any movement between the two frames otherwise, once again, when you layer, you're gonna have to balance them out. You have to move and manipulate and kind of shaped things, and you're masking becomes a little more difficult. So to make this a two to five minute process versus a thirty minute process, it comes down to practice and just making sure you refined the process and getting the right two images in camera. So that way, it's more simple in post that's it for this video let's, move onto our last and final editorial.