Lessons

Lesson Info

Live Demos and Q&A

I have a lot of problems when I used to rub outside with getting that halo on the ground of light in a shadow area or whatever is there any way that you khun minimize that okay so sometimes when you're shooting with with strong leadership like late in the day or like at night we'll just get like a globe of light around which looks really unnatural a couple things that you can dio is one of them is you have to change your angle so what you do is you back up and if you get down lower you're not getting that top down view where you clearly see that circular shape if you're getting further back and down a little lower your kind of skimming over the surface so you don't actually see that pool of light that's one thing but of course that requires you to change your angle I do like shooting low when photographing women full length because it makes him look taller and more in command of the scene the other thing you khun d'oh is at that point your lights probably high and pointed down so it cr...

eates a little bit of pool of light you'd have to feather it's slightly upward so that it won't create a defined pool of light because once feathered upward the light kind of trailed off further instead of making a circle so just feathering it up a little bit instead ambient light was almost nil and you painted teo so you and then you just painted it on the water and so you don't get any ghosting whatsoever right there's ghosting on the water but on her because it's just the short flush exactly and I think if you look closely right around her hair you can see it's a tiny bit of ghosting but that's just because when we painted she moved to that place what didn't have any light on it and then she moved that kind of thing but yeah she is completely frozen in place in the front by the studio strobe so you could possibly get a little blur in her hair but it wouldn't be anything on her face yes is that an led flashlights then are you saying how power I mean is it like anneli okay yeah it okay so it wasn't my flashlight I borrowed it from somebody it's a three hundred dollar flashlight I didn't know they made those but it is the strongest flashlight I have ever seen and it's intended for spelunkers like people that go down in caves because it lasts for like five hours at full power and it's awesome and I have never seen a stronger flashlight ever it was awesome yes we're current sinker front curtain know this and I did from current and sink the the reason I did front curtains think with her is because then I could be sure I capture the pose that I want if it did a rear kurt and we'd have to kind of guess okay it's almost the end of the exposure get your post so I can actually click it'll take that flash as soon as I trigger my camera so it'll freeze the pose in place and then I'm not worried about if she moves or something so if it's not exactly what I want uh related teo talk about moving the lights back and things like that for their low power is there anything like an andy filter toe like gel onto a light limit some of that yeah there so there's two things that exist one of them actually is a jail that is just great and I think it's meant for one like the one that usually sell is meant for one stop of light that it cuts out so you can let a couple of those you do want to be carefully don't melt things because it's it's holding light in so things can get kind of hot but if you're already on low power it shouldn't be a problem so they definitely sell those um not only to some that camera stories but also theater supplies as well um and then the other thing they also make um it almost looks like wax paper it's like diffusion paper that you can put in front of your light so it softens it but it also cuts out a lot of light and that's actually what you see is in college because I didn't know howto decrease the power of the light so I would just layer on top of these things but yeah if you can't get it dim enough that's what you would use something like that from debbie be and this is kind of an overarching thing for the whole workshop says lindsay is an amazing photographer and a great teacher however most of us are one person operation and aren't shooting high fashion models and scenes so lindsay does any of this technique actually apply to real people in the park their families yeah absolutely on and that's and that's the question is do you need to change anything from what you've demonstrated no and the only building thing that I change if I go to a high fashion shoot is sometimes it's a bigger production so I make it fancier and do crazy stuff with like the long drag shutter I wouldn't shoot that for the average person but every single thing else is exactly the same most of time all I had was one light and a soft box not too big of a production and its great report because it guarantees that no matter the weather no matter the location you can have nice quality flattering light on your subjects face so yeah they're pretty which is exactly the same um I do like having one assistant with me but as I said before it doesn't mean they have to be an assistant or an intern it khun b the subject's mom or brother or your friend and there are tons of people that want to learn about photography I guarantee this in your area that would want to just tag along and see someone else work as they're trying to learn and so I've had people my entire career even before I knew what I was doing tagging along being around with me because they enjoy being around photography so you know is unless you're really introverted person you could definitely get someone who just wants to be there you know to absorb what's going on in the scene if required yeah you can have a stand put a sandbag on it just you all by yourself no problem unless it's really windy great question from skyler if they light nearly the same what makes you choose a large para umbrella with diffusion versus a large soft box okay so depends on the shape of the para if it's flat like that one when it opens up it it wasn't it's kind of a flat umbrella which means that I'm lighting a group it kicks light out and spreads it more evenly where as a soft box because it's a little bit deeper it'll kick you laid out a little bit more directional so basically it's a broader wrapping light for photographing groups wonderful out of my mind photo with using multiple strokes do you have just one individually while others air off and then go on to the next until you have your exposure what you have them all turn on and then it just each one and take a new photo personally I actually do them one at a time because I want to like really focus on what's happening like does that main light look good on her face okay great I'm going teo and I actually build so I don't do them each separately I build it I start with my main light and then sometimes I'll turn off my main light and check my back hair light because what I have found is I mess up sometimes and with that back hair light depending on how they suppose that hair light will now late there knows or the side of their face and if I have a mainline on sometimes I don't notice it so if it's just two lights I will actually do them separately and then put them together and adjust the power but usually it's a build main light hair light what's the whatever the other one is see and then one other that was kind of a something that actually we probably should have talked about the very beginning of the day from money money said a lot of times I see flash output being written as f stops case in point one of the images you wrote the flash as f sixteen what does that mean can you explain that why flash output is measured in f stops okay totally so in an instance where you're just going ahead and your turned your flash on and you trying to say what power is it at you're not going to really measure in amount of votes tons who are watts because it depends on the other elements in your scene it's depending on you're s o and your shutter speed if you're going for the whole scene but that depends on what your eyes so when your aperture is right so let's say I put in my little in my light meter and I say I s o one hundred what when I click my light meter what s stop what I have to have my camera at in order for this light to appear correctly exposed so that's what it's saying if I say my lights of f sixteen that means at whatever I s so I'm at I would have to be shooting at f sixteen for that light to be correctly exposed so it's just a reference based on your current s oh how strong that light is s so then if I switch a different esso and I move it back it's going to give me a different number so it's it's just giving you some kind of criteria because otherwise it's just amount of light and that it's not relevant to exposure there's a lot of different things that are actually involved in exposure like your I s o all right well I think maybe let's demo one or two things and then call it a day okay so I'll head over there and see what and see if you have any questions and I would rather answer questions and demo for the sake of it but I can also do that as well absolutely well some of these you might be able to answer just by talking uh sarah d g eighty seven is there a way to replicate natural lighting indoors if there really isn't any I'm going to be shooting in a client's home for a newborn session and I'm worried that they don't have natural lighting yes so there's two things that look good like kind of look like natural light something like a big soft box like this you can fake like a window you can treat it pretty much exactly like window light the thing you're watching out for us if it casts funny shadows in the background that's kind of a giveaway that it wasn't really really really natural light but viana that big umbrella that I had it's so broad and it's so soft if you have that lighting has seen as long as you you have it so it's appearing soft snot castings tar shadows in the side it looks like natural light it's it's more about how you haven't interacting of the scene if it is like straight down from above and there's all these weird shadows it doesn't look natural but it looks like to the side like it was a window you can definitely do that um another person who's been on creative live large aid she her aesthetic is natural light most of time not not all the time but it's usually kind of a natural light look and so when she's she'll create natural light look in the studio and she uses parabolic umbrellas do it apparent parabolic umbrella is an umbrella but it's it's deep eso wrong color has like the para eighty eight the para one twenty pro photo has some westcott has the westcott zeppelins and they're just they're deep and broad and she uses that with a diffusion material and she fakes daylight in the studio and it's totally believable like you really can almost not tell what it is uh let's see uh one that nico williams and a few other people wanted to see or hear about how would you like a family with these where you've got a big group and can you do it with one light or do you need to use multiple to get rid of shadows from other people yeah okay so we're going to I'm going to see if I can get the setup and I'm allowed to photograph them grab the student can I leave them there okay good okay can you guys come over here and can you put that up you just have to slide it in the zipper all right so here's your you're yet they're all they're all sitting there like fixing their shirt since it not stray it's really really cute thank you okay so here's your checklist of what you want to do if you are photographing a group of people um the first thing that you want to do is you want to make sure you have a bigger broader light source so I grabbed the biggest one that we have here you could even grab two if it's a huge group this group we should be able to manage just with the people here uh so we grabbed this large soft box the next thing that you want to do is you wanna have that light more centered because if the lightest far off to the sign you are going to be half the distance of lorenzo he's going to be more than twice as far away which means he's going to be more than quarter the power which means he's going to stop darker or more so you're trying to bring it a little bit flattered to the group so usually with group shots so you don't usually see really dramatic modeled light right it's generally flat it's just so everybody can be nice and evenly lit so that would be kind of my checklist and then also I would not shoot for example at two point eight I would shoot at four point six three I am going to need a different lens with running this way real quick I had my fifty millimeter one point four I am going to switch to a twenty four to one o five to give me a little bit more flexibility perfect all right got that so we're going to go ahead and I can figure out what I want my ambient light to be I'm not sure who's manning the tether but let me know if you need me to do anything different so I can look in here and I can go ahead and meet her you guys I'm making sure I'm on manual good and what I can see in my camera and we'll take this off so you don't think I'm using it yet we hold this real quick great perfect okay so what I can see in my cameras I can actually see what the correct exposure should be by moving my dials so I'm going to start off I s uh I s o four hundred looks good one two hundredth of a second because I'll tweak that to get the appropriate ambient light let's give this a quick test here let's go area let's go too one eighty eights of a second for o s o sixteen hundred because you guys are actually in a lot of shadow I like that can you see it okay I like that because I have this background about like stop and a half under exposed when I look at this it's about a stop and a half underwear correctly exposed would be if I just shot that look bright okay so we got that now I'm going to do is we're going to turn this to face them perfect all right good and um so if you could reach up in there they can actually kind of angle it to face a little bit if that's too complicated for the moment you give to reach up the the bottom there and angling towards you guys and right now I'm gonna go in my head and say ok so I don't want to bring the light close because then you have that late fall of thing so I need to bring it back even a little bit further maybe that there something like that looks perfect okay so it's going to be pretty flat let the fact that my head is in the way doesn't actually make a difference because this is such a broad light it's just going to wrap around anyway all right so can you grab my meter and we got it perfect so let's test this and say let's see what to flash mode one eighty three the second doesn't make a difference because its shutter speed affects ambience so that doesn't matter I s o sixteen hundred okay and then I'm gonna have you you're going to go stand over there in the center and his this button and I'm gonna hit the test button and turn this on and you stand back ray put it right between those two okay so let's give it a test which one's the test button on this area you think I think your finger was in the way there we go so it's nine point all right now I'm at four point oh so I knew need to turn that down because right now and it's okay because I think I can turn it down from here you could just dial it down a little bit all right so sick so some like that doesn't mean anything like that doesn't mean f six or anything so if I'm at nine o he turned down to like four and stay right there and close your eyes because I'm going to test it let's give it a test now okay four five not bad with blood to see if I like it there because I can adjust a few things that'll be perfect let's take a shot of you lovely people oh trigger would be useful right yeah I'm thinking that would be super super useful that's why it's helpful to have assistance yeah well it's funny because I would lose everything without them ok so it's gonna pop up take a step aside so see how I didn't need teo didn't need to chimp I don't need to look like the numbers make sense the one thing is maybe in the front they look a tiny bit brighter because he was made a ring from them and it's a little bit of light falls but shouldn't be much you guys were pretty similar and my light output with four five even though I'm shooting at four o if I wanted to go ahead and match it I could close down to four five and then if I look at this shot and I'm like okay but you know what I want that background to be a little bit darker I want them to stand out no problem instead of shooting and if eightieth of a second I'm going to go to one two hundredth of a second until the backgrounds going to get darker and you guys will stay the same exposure but you'll pop out a little bit more so something like this if you don't like the late this flat if I were lighting a huge group I would actually do two lights I would take one light here and one light inside yes because I'm almost disappearing in the background yeah okay so let's uh let's uh due for a group like this but I can d'oh it's just move it over inside a little bit because what happens is since it is centered you are double but you're probably a quarter further from the light than they are in the center so a quarter that means you're going to squish stop darker so what I want to do is make it easier on my on on the scene can you take this one and set it up over there so now by the way my skin wanna one class one of the tips I give is you put the darker skinned person closer to the light so so that's not just a lighting thing like that's that's part of what you d'oh because of the light fall off thing all right so we're gonna put that on as well and so if you really wanted to fix that as well the further back I bring it everybody it's going to be similar desk distance but let's try that a little higher and uh let's put this at so what I would need to do then is tested but let's say that I don't want to test it I wantto let's let's say we're not meeting okay so take a look okay so uh yeah he's having a showing up uh yeah so so what you have to watch for are things like cross light and paying attention to where the shadows are so what I would do is I would shoot if I'm seeing a shadow I don't like I shoot each one individually let's see if that one's casting the shadow maybe I need to bring it just a little bit more toward the front but make sure I'm feathered enough to see you and if you have a big group you don't want a heavily feather the light in because then you're getting no light at all you're completely disappeared on the edges so it's just kind of being aware of where the light is going you guys look cute ok that's amazing love it very much and just a note like they are all spread out there's a good two feet between each person here and so if you've got them all bunched in together you don't even need a cz much late yeah and definitely and also for example he's a little bit in shade ah little bit in shadow there you wouldn't usually have a group separated that much unless you're stacking multiple steps but then they're going to be raised up so it kind of changes because then you have the light higher and it hits them more evenly so there's all you just kind of paying attention to how far people are compared to one another from the light source is that's like the thing you're looking for great and a clarification for our garafola who might not have been able to tell from the feed they ask is she pointing both lights towards the centre or where and yes approximately towards the centre is it's not specific it's not exact but just getting in that area is exactly what she's doing andi jonesy had a question that kind of leads into a little bit of a preview tomorrow but says I know speed lights or tomorrow but with this group set up with large soft box work with a speed light or multiple ones also yes so this this modifier right here is actually made so that it can work with a speed light but the problem is it's so big I don't think a single speed light would be enough so instead what you would uses you would use the westcott triple threat which allows you to put three speed lights on so you get that much more output onda also john mcnally has a try bracket that would work as well my only thing there is is then you're taking three speed lights and three speed lights and it kind of depends I can still light them but probably not as easily as I'd want to when I just have strokes and uh when I shot weddings I use speed waits for everything but the group shots in a church in the big wide shots great maybe okay so our final thing that we would love to have you demo before and for the day jerry reyes was asking if you could demo a low key photo a low key photo sure that's easy to say okay so I'm gonna kind of talk through what I have to think about it I'm going to turn this one off okay and can you just move that off to the side for me you can even just take it up there okay so here's the thing we have a white wall here let's say I wanted a loki photo on a white wall what low key means for those of you who don't know it means it's more shadow it's dark on dark high key is white on white mostly I'm going to be in the brighter part of your history graham where's loki is mostly going to be in the darker part of history and so I'm going to actually show you bad like not low key and then we'll work through it yeah just hold that in perfect okay great so all right sydney you could be my loki model when have you stand in front of this white background nice and close and our brave you bring this around to the front good any come off a little bit more all right so I'm gonna go ahead and went just for the sake of you guys knowing I'm not using this okay so let's see what I need to get the correct exposure on her for ambient okay so I took the crate exposure for ambiance the thing is I don't need invent at all because we're going to create our own loki shot when I would need it is if I turned on these lamps and I'm balancing ambient right now it's just a wall like it it doesn't matter all right so let's just pick I'm ignoring the ambience so I can treat this like the studio if I want when she went off a second ok so I'm going to pop this on all right great can you uh hold that over there the uh um light meter and put it at I s o one hundred one two hundredth of a second and popping our dome out and pointing it towards the light source was it at twenty minutes and there's there's a setting like I turned it on earlier and said twenty minute exposure I had to click the buttons all the way down I'm sure there's a faster way okay let's give it up a test okay one point eight is going to be no that's gonna be way too dark alright cassidy and okay four five's fine all right so I can put my aperture at four five and it should be more or less correctly exposed that was a good the really good face I like that okay that's really good so if our if our goal here is to have low key we have a bunch of problems so what I conduce that the background isn't lit if I'm trying to get her separated is that stephen I don't wanna I don't wanna hurt this tether so you might have to can you just get there alright great so what I'm going to dio is I'm gonna actually back this way way up from the wall however now I'm going to bring her way way close that is a technical term okay here we go so really really close keep coming keep coming like right there alright perfect so she totally moved though her distance someone have to meet her again coming here to get a test if eight sir now taking a quick shot of her ok so watch how much darker the background got now so now the background is much much darker so it's still not quite low key if you want everything to be really dark so what I can do at that point is the promise some light is still hitting that background so I am going to bring it off to the side here and the light is not going to be hitting the background anymore I can kind of feather it off and I don't want it to be split light on her face so I'm gonna turn you to your side good and then just your eyes back at me great and I'm going to meet her one more time steven give it a test all right perfect it was f eight great so even though we're in a room that's well lit with white walls I'm able to get to a low key portrait and the further that I bring that light around behind her theme or shadows I see the darker that it gets so if I want even lower key I'm gonna bring it over here and if I keep the distance off this light the same from her I shouldn't have to meet her again because it's the distance I didn't change the power didn't change the distance it should be the exact same output right there good and let your head just a little bit this direction is right there good all right so something like this will be a very dramatic loki porcher even though we're in a really bright room when we do one little twist on this stephen can you turn all those lamps on and I think that would be a good heart and that was that no we're gonna we're gonna see what it takes to bring in some of these ambient light all right let's say we want loki but with the whole point this is this is on location like yeah this is what you do in a white room when you want a little key shot but let's go a little bit more than that okay so we're going to go ahead and include some of these lamps in the background all right great so let me change my angle slightly to include them in the shot okay perfect so I know when I take this shot sorry totally in the way those lights are on but they don't show up because I'm shooting a f a I s o one hundred it's way it's like way too dim for them so what I could dio is let's lower my shutter speed toe where I think I could still hand hold it and this isn't an optically stabilized lens so I feel a little bit more flexible let's go to for example it's got a fortieth of the second ok so I start to see some of those lights in the background all right but it's still not as bright as I would want so let's go through and say okay well what else can I do well right now this light is pretty high powered and so since it's so strong that's why I have to close down so right now I'm at half ten so if I just lower the light it's going to force me to open up my aperture which will also affect what I see in the background so let me turn this way down and stephen can I have the meter real quick and uh can you put it um I saw one hundred still okay perfect pointed towards the doesn't matter it's cool and you think that's what's the shutter speed it doesn't matter because I'm just getting the flash exposure so it's totally irrelevant okay so it's a five hour so I'm gonna go from f tend of five o all right and let's see now that I've done that and now I start to see a little bit more light in the background okay and then so if I want it even more if I didn't want to go ahead and uh change this power I could go ahead and bump up my eyes so to maybe four hundred which gives me the problem of it bumped up my eye so that'll make that brighter but it's also going to make the strobe brighter so stephen at four hundred and I was at half ten this's a little bit okay it's a little more all right so that's looking close to how I would want it so you just kind of that like bounce around