Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: Window Light, Reflector, Softbox, and Flashligh

so we're looking at starting our lighting simply looking for natural light so we walked in here uh we saw this brick wall love the wall on this chair that look great with the red of the wall and thinking this is already a great spot we've got some natural light coming in through the window already and assume if you turn your face towards that way if you look at the natural light on her face like it's it's a great profile light already why mess with that right but maybe I need with a little kick part of what I think it makes lighting is that there's a little something extra so if we took a silver and the least you could do that and put it behind her yeah but they're now we light up her hair and there's an edge light here so if we're doing a head and shoulders kind of portrait like that now we have a little kick to it so it's natural light with a little bit of extra twist okay what we're going to expose for um because we have fairly bright lights on the roof honey this on there and I wan...

t to shoot this probably close to wide open I generally shoot from the two eight two is close to this is a eighty five millimeter one point four I want to shoot this from one four two eight somewhere in there generally and it's that's little iffy if you're not really used to focusing and being real steady because you're focused distances so narrow that you could move and be out of focus but if you're careful about nailing the focus on the eyes than shooting at one eight I think is beautiful but that's not for you to play with but I think to wait at least unless you really need everything and focus then I think the look is just has a another nice little depth to it but we don't have much going on way in the back so that it's not gonna look too different to eighteen for whatever so let's let's just start off with this so sydney what you relax your arm a little bit now we're not going to do you know what I got idea posing this's not opposing workshop because I've got my own posing cards that's right pose theme cards from japan thank you tracey indy in japan you need oppose you pull these suckers out look at that the rain has stopped that's the pose we're going to do next if that one doesn't work no pull another one you put your model here oh look at that be elegant throw these guards come into line oh here we go be passionate like that one huh if you had a loss for a pose you don't need no posing guides just pull out one of my cards right here hand come on ok what you're gonna do well this is the best do gymnastics sweetly there's your pose for the day I'm just getting you want to learn how to pose uh come watch doug gordon's workshop or sue prices workshop awesome posers that way they they are masters at creating beautiful natural poses so I'm not a master at the posing part but I I do appreciate good poses and started work people into natural post all right sidney backpedal a little out there okay so let's just talk let's just look at the light on her face well getting kind of tight and you can kind of turn your short your face towards me just a wee little bit with this deal with the room light put into the room light and good look right towards the window and pull your knees up a little closer kind of like to squeeze your needs are wrap your arms around your knees like that two hands full mold up there so now we just look at the light on her face and the eyes right now I'm going to shoot at one point eight focusing on her eyes I'm getting a fairly tight in there so we could just kind of see what that light looks like I also dropped my exposure down uh about two thirds of a stop to kind of dark and everything else down a little bit we got a lot of dark areas here and I'd like to gently go little more saturated so I may shoot it minus one third minus two thirds um here you can see the shut the information right there on the camera so while I'm looking for right now is what is that natural light look light is that gonna be enough or do we want to add something else we do have this nice little kick right here maybe let's do without just we could see the difference so same direction there sydney without the kicker light on her hair okay her hair just looks kind of bland there without it so let's go to the other previous one okay so it's little kicker right here you see the highlights all along here makes your hair shiny and all that that adds quite a bit so it's actually worth having some sort of a kicker light for hair light backlight in there all right so now I'm gonna change my angle come right over here and say what you kind of look right of these guys and just they look so goofy so you'd give them a little laugh and smile they're nice and they're right over here with me for ok and then look right back out that window there like that kind of look in her eyes right there is really really nice little got a quirky smile think happy with your eyes that makes sense yeah looking at a super cute guy not me to keep you guys there okay and what you kind of put your hands ah squeeze till I'm kind of head and shoulders really tight right now some kind of strap your arms on your shoulders looking right towards that way we don't just profile her facebook here and a little bit a smile on this you can come in a little bit close with that on her hair and angle it more on this side here lease okay they can have with your eyes you get a little bit of hair right here in front your eyeballs don't mind me you might be poking on your face too you ok ok we'll go shallow here thank you thank you hasn't highs okay there we go okay so great for a headshot we used the natural light as much as possible we've got a great catch light in her eyes right there I'm focused on this one I with one eight this eye soft that's exactly what I want some people against you yet both eyes and focus maybe so if you like both eyes and focus now both eyes and focus personally I think it just has more depth more interest when there's like one point there so go for the eyes okay nice little head shot got a little edge a little light on her hair that's great but now we want to say natural lights not quite interesting enough let's add some more so let's do this octo so this one here because a battery powered led a video light I got this one from scott robert and I like it because it's a fairly powerful see that they're stepping in front you all fairly powerful you can also power with these typical um camcorder batteries so it's uh last a long time or double a batteries and I just strapped it via little bungee cord to the back of the speed ring to illuminate my light box and then we could put it on a light standard on a stick and then you've got your portable easy to do is move move it anywhere okay we'll bring this in here and we're gonna go a member from here to here and lower that just a little bit nelson you could turn your chin this way and what you're gonna put your elbow out there and kind of lean out that all right here we go she's looking right here at me that's beautiful there you could smile too if you want get good and um latest weather so now we've got a nice even illumination before we only had light from the window but now we've balanced it out and by turning the power of this up or down what you see is what you get so open that up so people can see behind us way turn it down leash faces are used to that kind of power down okay so now this is that primary illumination dial it up slowly the power and now this becomes the primary and that becomes phil right we talked about earlier so now we're using the existing as our fill light instead of the existing being the main light this being our main light now and the existing are filled like it makes sense you see how we change that the lighting from being all from this side but not much there so you could dial this stuff just a little bit frightened there and now we still have main light but this is now fill into shots are main direction is that was so turn your chin that way just bid there good you kind of look right here just your eyes but keep your chin kind of faced up that way in your eyes right there yeah like the smile's nice to pretend you like me they like me they really d'oh so now we just opened up the shadows on that side of her face right so still we have main light what kind of lightings is shorter abroad and we talked about that earlier shorter broad light when the main lights coming into the smaller side of her face it's short like the shadow side of her face is the wide side helps a slimmer down right so see that most of the shadows is right here this is this is a pretty low life racial like two and a half to one maybe so it's pretty subtle but the main light still is here which tends to make this side of her face look slimmer so it's a short lighting her face questions make sense kevin there is one question from um at america photo on twitter that they're in florida how do you adjust your white balance settings when you're mixing these different light sources like yeah this one is all daylight because I was still using the daylight from the window and the led light and there is daylight balanced so I'm set for daylight and that's a really good question because my camera right now I'm on automatic white balance which generally is where I shoot unless I really know and we're going to get to these situations where we have one strong tungsten and one strong daylight and I need to pick one to make it right um when I'm in a situation where it's pretty obvious to the camera what is the I'll leave it on automatic the main reason I do that is that when I go into a light room and we start tweaking on images I'm always changing I'm enhancing I'm probably customizing it making it warmer anyway and so dead on white balance is not what I'm always looking for and I'm gonna tweak it anyway so I don't need to spend a whole lot of time flying tuning it here when I know I'm gonna change it with one of my presets in my enhancements or something I'm gonna do to our leader and that's just a personal choice of mine that I'm gonna enhance and tweak the images to something that's totally not normal or slightly not normal anyway it sounds great another chef custom I think my personal thought was a skin tones want always do custom white balance with great card totally yeah if you have time to do that custom white balance uh tool that I use for doing custom white balance is in one of my baggies right here how do you work with that with some of the jails always with custom I bound to be for the face right and just the general's heir for if I wanna throw something on the back which I'm thinking we might do in a minute here is to put a color jill turn down that light colored jail like a little spotlight beam on the wall that's all for effect I don't care about the white balance the main thing is gonna be the skin tone which even for me is slightly um slightly irrelevant because I'm gonna go and probably go in effect that's going to change that to make it warmer richer whatever cross process something like that anyway but it never hurts to get a great white balance right at the start so this color check her passport is a great little tool some of you may have seen this it's a portable great card you can throw that in your scene um you could do a preset white balance with your camera right off of that uh which is great um if you wanted to we could do that or what generally would do is put this in the scene and shoot it and then I drop her it in light room rather than going and sitting custom lights camera and then forgetting I've got it set there so it's just easy to put this in the in the scene I drop it later so let's just do that put it repair face she's like vanna white hi look at my card do you want the light on that's just for the natural light so let's see what the natural it's gonna look like with dogs you bring that in light room and take your white bouncer custom white balance tool and if you just click right on that gray no it's perfectly white valets based on that spot just clicked on so we've got nice skin tones colors should be relatively accurate I'm not sure there's modern hundred accurate but you guys see what we just did there bring in tow light room w shortcut for white balance custom white balance that'll grab your little eyedropper right here is this little doo dad okay and then take that eye dropper and just tap right on that great card boom that sets it as long as that lights in the same light or faces and now you've got a perfect custom white to me it's faster than I can continue to shoot a hole siri's select all those images of light room one click but it's nailed rather than putting doodads over my lens or trying to do a preset white balance and get it dialed which is all fine this is just easier so I'm gonna be in light room anyway okay all right so now let's say we've got this turn that crank that all the way up and I'm gonna wanna move in here and we try something different so actually switch out kendra wants come on kendra that's going to do what I'm gonna do is I'm going to use this window light now and shoot into that light making that into a back light hair light blow it out kind of overexposed the background I'm thinking maybe from this angle here and then we'll have something coming from here to totally light her face okay so now we're using the existing as more an ambiance and then we'll create our own light from this side so kid you're what I'm thinking is you're facing this away your weight you've got shorts on okay it's good schools got to know you're going kind of facing this way whether it's hanging over the chair like this like that if you got any other ideas that are more fancy than what I've got going on right here we could do that we're going to be looking that away okay it's always the poses where you feel the most uncomfortable that you look the best right you know that okay so you're leaning in toward me this way yeah I mean let's see need me mohr off the edge of that chair and even kicking a foot upto twisted up behind you there ok good lean for even more off the edge that's cool and we shall bring our light over towards the side of the case closed and now I'm going to overexpose quite a bit come towards me more towards base from here to here there we go way and beautiful and kind of look up towards this light go off you have to say all but also on all right so now we're kind of flaring it out over exposing it and I know there were you know what I want to do with this is to create more of like a bright sunny day but my main light boom creates his gorgeous soft shaping this becomes fill the side of her face we've got this nice little glow so that if you want that overexposed kind of look you know like it's not perfect as faras the exposure thing on the flare and I liked the flare so but we do have a great light on the side of her face great little catch lights um this color balance matches that because it's a daylight balanced um box are led in there uh we could play out this little more so I'm gonna actually change lenses up and let's throw on something a little bit wider this is a fifty millimeter f one point four and I want to get a little maura for the rest of her outfit and the chair and there and um that right left foot kind of needs to hang off just a wee little bit there you go yeah leaning off that edge again was great like that just like that okay now we're going over expose that wee little bit again and kind of look up towards that light again and give it a big laugh like ah yeah all right we got cute love the red in there now okay so now we're going for something a little more the lifestyle e great light on her face for a box blow that out love those shapes in there the fifty millimeter gives me a lot more going on in this red now ties everything together like that fifty million years shot more so what we're playing with is just kind of get some funny expressions um keep the light kind of following her and what we might do is now goto a stick so once we've kind of got something is like I really like this I'm gonna work this scene a little bit more then we might go mobile so that we can have her able to kind of switch and play with her post about changing things up to too much right we're out of one sixty eighth of a second gotta stick for that could we show how you are actually attaching that too yeah they'll be great one sixtieth f one point eight all right my exposure pop the stick in there okay you can take over you see that and there's a there's a little a bendy attachment here this bracket which is the angle bracket that allows you to flex that head up for him back little bit if you needed to that's the only way to go little you've been that you can just point the light wherever you want it that way kill all right so let's just work this pose this this position a little bit mohr and beautiful love that smile like I'm not even there when you pretend I'm not here just works great alright facing out of there kind of right up that looks great just like that beautiful look over to your right shoulder just a little bit more and we should follow her nose up to the left and a little closer your face no more to the front of her face there we go there we go okay good you're looking right up to death that's great beautiful big kind of koi laughing smile all perfect love that right they're beautiful form or nice okay now just lean forward honourable spend too little tiger one you're gonna look right on me this time I like your hands cross like that at least you come two aside for just like that night took your head that way just a little bit yeah you know just a touch right there okay great so we've got beautiful light on her face she's got the kind of face where you could light it just about anyway and she'd look good so we're kind of like a but uh but meaning that she's not her face isn't particularly broad it's not particularly narrow it's got nice angles we could actually use broad lighting on it and to be fine we could use short lighting and she'd look find it it's pretty nice so but the main thing is that we have a controlled main light the ambient light is my filled the window here creates this edge light in the hair light which is really important for dimensions to your shots uh great catch light in the eye and we've got some texture all around and good color okay so let's say we want to go something little more dramatic um that's kind of cool right there to move we turn those uh video lights down for that one and I'm gonna turn this this slide overhere office well in the background you see it looks like just that okay so turn that off for a second so if you guys look at her um look at her face at least turn that light off this one yeah just for a moment so what we've got coming in there it's a pretty cool light but it's splitting her face pretty well I mean that she could hold that but it's not gonna be that flattering so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna kick on that light is my main using that window light that was there now becomes my feel like you follow me so now I have more control over it we're going to bring that light down where you gonna put the pole on the ground and retracted please retract put it down on the floor she's facing me looking like that raise it up one foot me or her friend okay so what I'm going with this light is to have it at for above her eye level the center of my light box at or above eye level is where you kind of want the center of your box okay so that's what we adjusted it up a little bit so that it's ever so slightly casting down and across her face rather than up lighting like vampire lighting all right so we'll keep that lady across her face we're gonna angle this towards camera on cone of my lenses just like this and now I've got something looks pretty nice you got until the top your head that way just a slight bit awesome and I never checked my exposure and we know where we're at here I'm trying to hot reshoot that are a little too hot nice all right we're just about there ok this one we're not going to actually smile just going to kind of look sassy there but think happy thoughts with your eyes yeah you couldn't resist any much even look right up towards that light like right into that light they're just something gorgeous going on there and you're gonna start to coyly smile now just a little bit of curl the lips up there beautiful one more you know what I forgot to tell you guys his auto eso is on in my camera fred turn it off for demonstration makes more sense otto I so gentle when I'm shooting after priority natural light outside of auto so on so I have to think about the sow in situation like this would have turned off so I didn't turn on that's why they all didn't seem to exposure didn't change too much you know I changed it quite a bit in my auto I saw was compensating because I have no flash attached so that's a cute little coy smile that's I'm looking for there koi koi koi alright work nice that was good look more all right so now that's what I'm looking for have got a lot of information to work with great little shaping light coming across her that way nice jawline shadow from the light following her nose and the next thing we'd want to do is to something more dramatic so do wantto grab a snapple that real quick so we're going to move on to now say what we do something a little more dramatic let's take their flashlights out move on yeah um could we get the make and model of the the led light that's in there and the and the box itself the boxes a photo flex octa dome small all small octa dome uh says the octo dome in x t small size the video light this is scott robert and if you go to scott robert something limb from them but I think his website is scott robert something else uh photography whatever but scott google scott robert lim um this is this is this video it's only video like the cells and it's you know obviously pretty nice light fantastic thank you okay so let's say now we want to go with something dramatic we want to play dramatic so what I'm actually going to do is to take one of our panels and block some of that so we have our homemade panel want to take down that window light just a little bit to give myself a little more leeway as faras to play with and let's do some flash lighting here's one what are you gonna play with the flashlight with me all right so we're gonna d'oh you want to go yeah let's go funky shoes and we'll do a couple here and then we're gonna switch models out again let other people play so if you look at the existing light here this is like you know average ambient but look how much light we get with this flashlight we could go from spotlight wide too just a little zoomer on her face with some pretty dramatic stuff with just just this so what if we start with a little spot on her face I want to throw like something kind of warm on the wall in the back and maybe something on her hair all right so first of all let's see if we could have blocked that this is not gonna totally blocked all the light but it just takes it down a little bit if you want a fully block it we can just flag it and uh how about this so if you sit on the edge of the chair not two knees together lean forward sassy like there you go so it kind of it was something like that uh I want something kind of warm in here I'm gonna warm this light up a little bit so I'm gonna put on it that the super warm of the lightning super folks I'm gonna go with the lighter then I've got to go cooking up cooking up pam I put a little light warming gel just to kind of make it a little bit warmer than it was on and we're gonna spot what I got is that your warm thing on that yet no not yet do you want the same or that we're even the really really warm in power not that way want to kind of put that right behind her head to kind of glow right there yeah does that look good yeah uh maybe we could do something else as a hair light to flash this's torch lights from doug gordon isn't bright enough to try that just hold it behind her okay gorka you're my main light girl pass the struggle scott pick moods okay and we're gonna zoom it right about there directly following her nose okay so you're gonna look right into this little flashlight when you look up and alicia you need to move further back because you're casting a little bit on that he's got right there and I'm gonna go with the longer lands for the back way we'll let you know that we completely destroyed scott site uh loaded so for people online don't worry back later you'll be your time to go get these all right so let's check could see we get our white balance at we're gonna need to cork of that light needs to come more focused on her face there you play with that little bit if you had it for a second there move it over to the shadow cyber face anymore they walk up a little closer gorka and england to the left a little bit there you go you got it okay now you're looking in their life and kind of lean forward on your knees and think sassy thoughts in that light there gorgeous hold on your movement it you got a gorgon there is he always added there we go all right I'm gonna shoot it eight hundred eyes so because my shut up it was just a little too low there not quite there gorka they're up yeah there it is there it is beautiful let's see some teeth in there what if you pulled that gel off your galaxy looks like who cuts a lot uh and zoom it out just a little bit like pushing the head closer in a little ah go cool all right looking right that light and kind of thinking like uh mean for a little more kind of on the edge of your seat something dramatic is about to happen I don't know what it is but it was like amazing awesome warming your huh okay cool so now we got a nice little more of a dreamy spot on her um probably dropped my exposure just little more but if you look at our history graham here we've got plenty of actually room in the house lights to play with so even though it looks bright on her face my history grab it shows me my highlights are actually just fine because you're I'm pointing at right over here on this side um this screen is a little different a little brighter than what's actually back here but I have plenty of highlight information to play with and really it's just a matter of opening up these shadows a little bit okay so what I'm doing in light room no I'm just grabbing this left side of the history graham he grabbed the shadow side click and holding drag on shift right and much my shadows open up to match all right so just revealing a little bit of detail by describing that shadow side there if I wanted to bring down the highlights I could grab the highlight side here and drag it down that was the bright whites or the highlights here your face now fine tune the detail in the highlight areas okay so just point and click on the on the history grammas pretty quick way could also grab the sliders down here but I find that this is fairly intuitive because you can already see what area what I want to work on this bulk of information here or maybe the information appear and screwed it one way or the other this light coming down you can see on our curtains over here it was kind of an interesting little spotlight and we saw these curtains and so I think it would be kind of cool if she came out to the spot like this you know kind of dramatic thing but the back is so dark what we need to throw some sort of a light behind it so this is where again it's kind of a safety lighting where we're going to use the existing light play with that but throw in another light with a speed light in the back and if that speed light doesn't go off it's not going to ruin the shot because we're really going to using the main light on her face over here so all right I'm gonna switch out lenses and uh put on my lens baby eighty this's are like our moulin rouge shot here with move on rouge and I see that movie villain rouge my favorites oh I guess they were trying to trying to get me to dance and do my things and my charades yes moulin rouge is a cool cool visual on the ground illuminating uh towards her facing her yet and we want a blue gel on that so I'm gonna put on here uh lens baby edge eighty one of my favorite fun lenses go two lenses when I'm looking for something especially like here I'm kind of imagining was shooting this thing would be kind of cool some light coming on her face we're gonna put a blue light in the background I'm thinking maybe two lights one flaring right into the back for looks kind of like spotlight she's coming off stage and one might need to light up the back wall with blue so we may eventually at a second speed light blue jail and we could actually do that alicia with I have a darker blue gel for the one that shoots the wall with the rogue gels but the edge eighty when I'm looking at this I'm thinking we'll always have his curtain there's not a whole lot of interesting stuff going on so if I take my edge eighty than I can throw my plane of focus by just tilting her shifting the lens let's say not shifting tilting or swinging the lens my plane of focus now changes just like a view camera where I can have a slice of focus across her eyes even though I'm straight onto her but then the legs and anything else down here goes told the out of focus you know tilt my plane of focus this way instead of flat cynthia jd all right so I'm gonna shoot this at two eight maybe just just see how that's position and clara will adjust it uh hooked up to a trigger to five regular motor adjustable sea wind see truancy to hear that clear so what we're doing with the flag on the back is I'm putting it on the pocket wizard on a standard channel which means you know what sorry leave it there you wanna switch I'll just switch these something easier you see one don't see one all right so this is the tt one this is the get the set their actual giving away pocket wizard tt one and this is the a c three this is a comptroller that allows me to adjust the power from remote position so I'm going to set this kind of medium power to start with and uh test fire does work so the nice thing about this little system as I can while the flash isn't back there in the back I can adjust it here to control the power so you gonna come out hello world I'm ready for my close up and you're gonna kind of look up towards that lamp move up to the front of the stage is that way a little bit more crisscross they're gonna pull the curtains caught a little bit closer to you but always we're going to be looking right up towards the light letting it fall he knows about your hands be out on the side of the curtain so put him up a little bit chin off that way two sous mitch and okay we're going to a little test out to sea for exposures anywhere on here and I'm gonna try to play with my focus a little bit I don't know yet we'll say pretty groovy okay so you could see what the lens baby we took a flat which normally has always been in focus and was able to trip this all out which we caught that perfect you'll flare behind her that interacted with that out of focus made it even more interesting sparkly kind of stuff over here but the main light on her face which is nice is really just coming from that lamp sri up above the lamplight coming right down on her face so it feels more like this theater like I've appeared have arrived so let's try one more I'm gonna darken down my background like the light on her face it's perfect that'll take down my power in the back one stop just to see how that is going to look so adjusted via this same same thing said that looks great and play with my focus here now you're looking at that like hello world you're happy to be out here facing the crow see what you got cool uh I want more of that flare though so actually gonna scoot back where it was you guys notice when I want to completely cover the flash I lost that sparkly of the flair of the flash into the lens which is what we're talking about earlier that actually works have that flair someone screwed just a little more over that's great small smile sydney beautiful way are ready with the background light if you want it you probably needed actually it's starting to look pretty groovy yeah I like the flare much better slam or a different um turn your chin just a little bit more to that way sydney and step half a step over this way okay they're good like the criss crossing of the legs that looks great looking up towards that light you're smiling like that's your that's your audience up there hello we're I waited hide it did so the pipes back there screwed over so we have like casting a little more this direction still keep our little snazzy flare light