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Over Powering the Sun - Part II

Over powering the sun parte do that's how you say two in french is and not think so my wife watched this she probably laughing because she speaks or used to speak used to speak french. All right, we're also going to teach you a little technique you're called the lean now what is the lean all about it's about? Basically how often we get into situations where we don't have a good background, but we do have what we call a good up ground another ground essentially is a background that is above you that is fantastic and you want to shoot and you want to get your couple on your subjects? Do you want to shoot up but it's hard because if you don't do it correctly, you get this weird perspective distortion on the couple and so forth. So we have a little technique that we used to shoot up grounds I would just imagine the best place that I could imagine to shoot this technique would be in the sistine chapel looking up at that ceiling that absolutely fantastic, although I'm sure they don't allow f...

lash photography or do they laugh last whatever, okay, so that is beside the point. Either way the lien is achieved by essentially to get up ground, the photographer has to get down low, right? So we have to be shooting let's just say this little guy right here is gonna be my couple and this is my camera I'm gonna hold this to you guys just like this you can see it so to be able to shoot the background that is above and behind the subject the camera has to get low, but the problem is when we get low like that, then the subject's feet end up being larger and in their heads and being smaller. Why? Because they're extending away from the camera essentially from this angle. So what we do is we have the subject lean in from the hip so let's say that this is the subject's hip and let's say they're standing this way okay, so what we do is we have them lean in and essentially if you look from the camera's angle while it looks weird when you're standing up in years looking at it but when you look from the camera's angle, it actually corrects the professor perspective distortion that the camera's getting by shooting this way so essentially we're just evening out the subject and making them perpendicular to the camera that is essentially the lean in a nutshell now there are just keep in mind the lien does require quite a bit of course strength your abdominal strength, so don't ask your subjects toe hold it for like ten minutes long is there going to be in pain which brings me to the pictures over here because what you see here is jacquie and ryan, and this was in the bahamas for f stoppers, bahamas, for the workshops that we were doing out there is absolutely fantastic. We had a completely full class in both classes that we did there, so we have all these great students that were teaching, and what we realised very quickly was that ryan and jackie got extremely tired, very fast, holding this pose for fifteen different students to take this shot. So that's, why we say, let your couple relax after every time you do this, but basically they're facing each other. They're holding hands, and then they're gonna lean from the hip into the camera to correct that perspective distortion. Now, here's the trick here. Obviously, you don't want to do this when you haven't gotten the lights and everything set up, and you haven't set the scene for the shop, so let's walk through what we did to get the scene set up. Now we were using two to three vivid tar to eighty five h v s in our example here, and, uh, I don't know, I just wanted list out what we actually used and then tell you not to use those because they frustrate me. But anyway let's start from the top with process with our president tips with composition and attributes well with this type of a shot when I want to get up ground obviously what matters to me is being able to captured that background and showing that so typically we're running the aperture up we're closing down the after to get a good depth of field and when I do that I know from experience that when I get to around f eleven thirteen fourteen of eighteen when I get to those numbers and granted there is such a thing called the fraction we talked about that and everyone one where as you go up the higher and higher you go the less sharp the image gets when you get beyond a certain point usually that's right around eight to eleven but I know that around f eleven to say f fourteen at that point even when I'm shooting in mid day sun my shutter speed can get low enough that I no longer require a neutral density filter or high speed sync okay so that's just something that's kind of in the back my mind but what I want with these scenes as I want depth of field and so what we're doing here is I feel like an italian when I do that which is great because we're talking about the sistine chapel but yeah I want that is that the right way to do that? Okay no way I think that's like a bad thing in italian it is a bad thing in italian I thought that meant delicious not delicious I meant delicious I want something delicious not not bad delicious okay, so compositional ashby's were shooting between eleven two f eighteen we're shooting for depth of field and for that starburst pattern in the sun if we do get any sun in the shop sync we know that at eleven two f eighteen allows us the sink with the low enough shutter speed that we do not need a neutral density filter or high speed sync so sink is a okay alright ambien exposure shutter speeds of one one sixth of a second to one, two hundred second and one is a one hundred is basically used for that mohr dramatic sky effect so what we're trying to do here we're using you know the shutter speed to kind of control ami light if we need to we can also drop in tow lois oh, on a five day mark three a lot of cameras do offer lower iso settings which you can use keep in mind that they can reduce a little dynamic range but when we're adding flash we're doing this kind of stuff sometimes it's worth doing and we don't really lose much dynamic range anyway so we can use shutter speed in conjunction with eyes so to kind of control that background brightness but what we want we want dramatic and so were darkening things down a little more alright light direction quality once again our subject here we're placing them the jackie are female subject over on the left side ryan's on the right side so we're lighting from right to left to fill into jackie's face and we're going top down again always be going top down so look at the shadows you can see the shadows being cast down against the body as opposed to being cast up or being cast to the side want to create shadows in a natural way now one quick notes the light direction in quality okay, so lighting from the right in a few most other space was bearable for flash power we stack multiple flashes and why? Because we're using this guy where is he? Where is a this tank? This monster uh you are my nemesis the vivid tar to eighty five hb whenever I use this guy I would stack like three to four of them. Why? Because this had an atrocious seven to eight second full power recycled time so I would stack like four of them so that way I could run it at like one quarter power and then not have to recycle now have to deal with that eight seconds between shots basically now as I told all my students the initial release of this was fantastic the the re release of this, the initial release was back in, like nineteen, seventy the re release of not so fantastic. I had great hopes, it just didn't pan out to those but here's the problem, I thought I was going to be fantastic when they're released, I bought sixteen of them, I bought them for all the partners, and then they said they hate them and so they gave them all to me, so I had, like sixteen of them and I still do and up to this point, like I finally got sick of him and now I do not use them anymore. But here's, what I recommend is if you're shooting manual get luna prose if you're shooting full feature, which is really my favorite way to shoot it's with the photo mitre so if you are doing this exact same shot and you can pull it off with two of these guys at half to one quarter power, okay, so you don't need a ton of these, just two of them and a half to a quarter pounder, you'll have a great recycled time you'll have enough power and so forth, uh, with both of those okay, if you have just one, you can use this one, too, and just deal with a little bit longer of a recycled time totally fine now one thing to note here I want to show you what it looks like in the last figure more I said when we stack flashes want to be careful of shadows this is what it looks like when you're flashes are placed even just a little bit apart I think the separation here was just because they were on different light stands basically okay, but they were still like within inches of each other and you can see when we zoom in right there with the arm you can see a replication of that shadow now it's not a big deal because we're shooting an environmental portrait in this shot but just imagine if we zoomed up close or if you're getting in tighter or if we were just you know, if we needed to see up close in this for whatever reason that would actually become a distracting element in the image now this is when they're placed on ly an inch or two apart imagine if their place six inches or eight inches apart and you're using three of them that's going to be even mohr exaggerated so just remember when you stack get them as close as possible to each other it's one of those things that kind of keep mind when you're also using like the west con triple threat or the cheetah three ring speed bracket is that they can create that effect too because essentially you're putting the heads about all of them are about six inches from each other, but if you set up with a triangle set up with all three, usually it becomes not so pronounced the kind of even sells out. If you only do two, then it might actually be noticeable, but with a third one in place, it kind of creates a circular effect almost and so it even the self out, for the most part, but that's, just something to keep in mind if you see duplication of shadows because the distance from flash to flash that are stacked is too great. Okay with our test shot, we're looking for unwanted shadows, particularly on the girl's face, because the shadow come from the male's face and shoulder, right? So we're looking for any unwanted shadows in both the shots were good, at least at this point. Okay, zoom in close. Look at it, that's, when you're gonna analyze those shadows and so forth. All right, we're set up with our test shot. We go, okay? The light quality and the color looks fantastic at, you know, whatever we're at, we're at five point five k here, here. I love this warmth that we get six k, so we're almost at six k there, and it just has this. Great warm look to it with his beautiful tone the sunset looks absolutely amazing so we leave it there there's no need to gel or do anything else we posed the frame we shoot we're taking a low angle again having a couple of lean from the hip into the camera to correct that perspective distortion again when you're standing and you're looking at him it looks really weird, but once you get down low once you see it from this angle, look at this shot right here. You can't tell that they're leaning into the camera it's completely corrected and generally like I don't know why it is this way but the legs when they're leading from like just the hip over like this, it kind of has this nice effect. I don't know why, but it almost like a long gave the legs and then makes the torso appear the regular, uh, length basically so it has almost a flattering effect where the girl's legs actually look longer than they actually are. Okay analysed watch the shadows and highlights closely, particularly when you're having any movement and lighting setups. Any change in, you know major changes in light set up the couples pose or the camera position, so remember those three things that's it for this overall set up and for the lean, so remember that when you do I don't have a great background. And by the way, one quick tip that I wanted to give us two before I forget in the last slide. So if I just go back to last light, you'll notice something. And I think I might have talked about this, too. In the previous yeah, we talked about with jill to and lighting one on one notice that the subjects are placed in both these frames in this frame is well over the brightest part of the sky. Same thing here with ryan and jackie and both the shots. I always placed them over the brightest part of sky. Generally where the sun is, we put the sun directly behind them. Why? Because compositionally, we want everything to naturally vignette. So basically, what happens is you get this natural venue where everything gets darker going away from the center of the image, and that brightness just pulls you right into the subject. And you have that highlight right behind which not only creates a cool halo. It also adds that visual weight of drawing the viewer's attention right into the centre where your subject and your competition is based on. Okay, just remember that when you're composing these types of shot it's kind of give weight to whatever looks better in the scene. If the water and the sky look amazing, shoot that. If the ground looks amazing, go a little bit top down and you don't need to do lean in that case kind of go, always based upon what your strongest features are in the scene. In this case, it's the sky. So we're doing the lead. I feel like that right there, that right? I don't know. Either way, we're done with this video. Lets go ahead, move the next one.