Lessons

Lesson Info

Soccer Shoot Background Overview

this is our background for today so I'm really really excited about this let's just go ahead and full screen this and there we go that's what we want okay so this is our background for today and like I said I made this last night I'm goingto walk over here so we could kind of talk about this and there we go talk about what's going on in this image and how we're going to use this image to our advantage today and what we're going to do is forest matching our lighting this is basically I've seen these type of this of images before and I'm sure you guys have to with like you know an athlete that I've got all the rim lights behind them and they're like skin is glowing and they're doing something super athletic and it just looks amazing and that was kind of the idea it's like create a background create an environment that's going to make our athletes look amazing and a lot of time especially with you know sports I portrait that's done with like rim lights and run lights for those guys who I ...

don't know what that is real it's basically just any light that comes from behind a subject and that's going to create with the reason why it's called room light it's just creates like a rim of light like right around your subject so you'll almost like seeing a glowing light all the way around your subject and if you're going to produce that look which is this is again we talked yesterday is so much about pre production and how important preproduction wass and I want that look like I want the style of rim light on my subject and so I'm looking at a bunch of images online looking at stock images reference image is going to some of my favorite photographer's work tim tatter is a big inspiration for me he's an awesome guy and an awesome photographer really good sports photographer and he does a great job with these type of portrait so I was looking through his portfolio and saying like okay how does he do this how does he get his lighting right and saying okay I need a lot of room light in the background so I built that into the background in just a second I'm going to take this image and completely tear it apart so you can see if you know I don't know this may look like a photograph it made not at all like the photograph to you guys but this is it's a complete composite made up about ten or fifteen different photos so it's this is none of this is real at all and it's all completely changeable which were probably going to wind up doing on day three as well so knowing that I wanted that rim light effect I wanted that cool effect where I've got that like nice glow right around our subject so in order to get that on our image I have to actually create those lights in my background and I think this is something that a lot of people miss like I can't tell you how many times I've seen an image with the lens flare have you guys seen these two would like there's a lens flare stuck in the middle of like a photo in like a random place and it makes no sense at all right it's like where is that coming from from someone's chest is a lens flare I see all the time and we'll stick it like you know coming from somewhere right here in the darkness just a quick tte it if you guys have a lens flare in your image make sure it's coming from a light right like make the source a light source and it's going to make sense not only that but I see things like this were like the lighting on the subject doesn't match at all the lighting on the background so if you are if you know you want that look that nice like riml it look which we're going to shoot today so if anyone's like I don't know you know what he's talking about don't worry we'll show you that in just a minute but if you want that look make sure you build those light sources into your background so these light banks here that are placed in the image those are all stock images those air all just placed in there because I wanted this style and look in the final image and again just like with the image yesterday that's so important build the lighting in the background to reflect what you actually want your subject to look like and it might sound like total common sense but you'd be surprised how many times we've all seen it like where they don't they don't match at all and building those lights in it really helps to make if your subject matches the light in your background you believe it it seems riel and that's why lighting is such a huge part of creating a composite image all right so I'm gonna go ahead and break this image down and again this was created before the photo shoot which is it's a really really important step but don't think that we have to use exactly this like the lighting effects aiken anything in here can be moved around changed so I'm gonna go back in the photo shop and we're just going to break this down I'm gonna show you guys the different layers that kind of make up this image wei go all right so we're gonna start off basically all the way down to our sky so again just like with yesterday we've got our skies in the very very background and we're going to be using this as a as the background if I wanted to add lightning to this again I could I could do that actually we should totally put birds in this way should definitely put the same birds that we did in the dave one all right don't let me forget on day three we're going six more birds in here all right the next thing we have is our lights and these again let me just kind of like a break break this down into you know these air basically just stock images here so this light pole here for instance I'm gonna shift click on the later mask here and I'm going to change this layer from the multiply layer back to a normal layer so you can see this was just a stock image of light and this is lighting effects that I added I created a custom brush last night to actually add these lighting effects and we're going to show you guys how to do that in day three a really cool effect then you could just with a custom brush so this was just this is a simple photograph of a light and you know on a stock image website typing something like stadium light or go out and take one yourself but just doing a quick you know layer mask on there changing our layer blend mode from normal done the multiply its going dark it up and then adding some light back on top and that's what we've got and it's basically the same light pole that's duplicated over and over and over again so these were all added individually there we go and then we've got our lighting effects on there so these lights are really important part of our composite because that's what we're going to be replicating here in this day in the studio today all right and then we've got our stadium and I started out with a baseball stadium because I really like how it looks did a little color correction my girlfriend this morning was like that does not look like a soccer stadium at all so we're going to see if we can pull off this effect if not I'm totally okay changing out the stadium for a different stadium on day three I don't know I think I can make it look cool but that'll be up to you guys to tell me if you like no that doesn't look at all like a soccer stadium all right so then we have this little area I added basically is just a copy of the stadium toe add like some more detail right here so when I put the when I put the grass and it's going to look a little bit more realize actually that a second I had in this area here just to kind of like frame the image a little bit oftentimes I'm looking for and you know what I'm just going to show you something really cool if I wanted to add some distance I love adding you know like framing and adding depth and images when I'm creating these composites I'm always thinking about my foreground and my mid ground and my background and foreground is basically anything that's like right right in front of our subjects so you'll see a lot of food in photography where there will be like you know like a window frame in the very front your image or like some bushes on the side or something like that and it helps frame the image it helps to look like there's something right next to camera and then your mid ground is usually where your subject is so that's that's the plane where the subject is in the background is back back farther than them so this top stadium right here this was basically an attempt at adding a little bit more of a foreground so something that's you know like right in front of you and these things can help add some depth if you want to add a little bit more death I'm just going to grab a color that's here in my my background I'm going change my my blend mode to lighten and basically just paint in a little bit of this and check that out so that like adding that little like fog or environmental hes right there that helps this to look like you know I could pop a quick lay a mask on here and just make sure I clean this later mask up all right let's paint with black I didn't plan on doing this I'm just doing right now to kind of show you guys but adding that little like a little bit of fog or hes something like that that can it can totally like it pushes that stadium back you kind of see well how about that effect works right it pushes the city and back in place and it makes it look like okay that's farther way this is closer and again that's just like atmospheric says something goes farther away from the camera you're going to get a little bit of fog and a little bit of haze from the atmosphere all right so then we have our little bit of life that are kind of popping over top of this these you know we've got her stadium and then the lights popping over top and that helps because these lighting effects tend to that's going to be from the camera anytime you have lighting effects like this that's what the camera level that's not actually happening on the lights that's an effect of what's happening in the camera so that actually gets it gets to go on top of things like this all right then we have some more lighting effects which at this point these air completely obnoxious they're just way way too much but I was just putting them in there to kind of get an idea of what we've got all right and then we've got our grass in here and even like the line that's we paste it in here I just made that in photo shop and then I've got some really cool tricks with making it look like it's actually painted on the grass using things like blend if but if I wanted teo let's just say we duplicate that line let's hit command tea to transform it around all right let's say I wanted to but just make another one you know like right here whatever it is so I can kind of design this you know design this soccer field how however I want we could bring this down or whatever it is all right let's just go ahead and delete that so this is kind of the idea is like you could design this however however you'd like and then here's basically uh the extent of my drawing skills which makes sense why I became a photographer because second drawing but here's the idea what we were kind of beginning going for with our image today so this's basically the idea we want this image of the background is there support what's going on in our subject and we do have a lot of cool details in our background but our subject is going to be nice up front and like really kind of like in your face today and that's the most important part of the image so we do want the riblet I you know had a pretty good idea of where I wanted our actual subject to be and so now we can you know we're going to get him ready to the photo shoot and we're going to start a photo shoot in section too but we have a really good idea of what are what our backgrounds going to look like right so we're not going into this photo shoot completely blind I know about how he's going to fit into this image if I if I decide later that like you know I don't want this there that's not a big deal I can totally move that if I've got my my lights right here and my light effects if I want to move those up check that out I could move these up I could move them down I couldn't just turn him off for on e couldn't do whatever I want I can move them over here it really these things don't matter because they're all created in layers in photo shop so it's all changeable at the time you know I actually kind of like those a little higher up especially you know like if they were in getting in the way of the subjects like all right cool now there another higher no big deal so all these things we've got to keep in mind are totally changeable as well and at this point even the perspective is a little bit changeable not not in a huge way but we've got our grass that's basically going off you know to our horizon point right there but you know if I wanted to stretch my grass and bring it down like this let's just hit enter there and then I bring my stadium down as well all right there we go and then I bring my lower stadium down as well check that out I just changed my perspective of my image instead of like you know looking down with the horizon being like a little higher up now we're looking the camera would be a little bit higher now looking straight on so these things and totally changed so I wanted I want a rough idea of all this stuff before my photo shoot because I'm gonna be replicating that here in the studio I know I want to be shooting from a relatively low angle and I know I have to match those lights so we've already got our cameras set up on a low angle and we've got our lights set up and I'm gonna talk about this in just a second but if I do need to change these things like a little bit of tweaking after I've done the photo shoot to make sure that it really does fit what's going on in the background that's totally doable it's just didn't do but I thought that was pretty cool that you can just change your perspective like doesn't it's not really that difficult to do and again we're going to show you how to do everything all of the background and everything that has to do with this image on day three when we go through the psd esso before we get into the next section take some questions because I'm I'm sure there's some questions out there on the internet and here in worldview audience were always getting questions so I'm gonna run with this one let's see you mentioned the three essential successful composites is lighting perspective and composition for perspective is it safe to assume that you always need to shoot on a tripod that's a great question I wouldn't say that you need to shoot on a tripod when I'm doing composite work you really want to leave as many variables you know like I call these like chance variables you want to eliminate as many of those as possible so shooting on a tripod is for the most part just gonna mean that like you know generally I'm shooting we talked about yesterday shooting it like anywhere from f a f sixteen a lot of the time a lot of the time we'll even put my camera in manual focus so once I nailed my focus I know that's that's my focal plane and like in a in the next section we're gonna have james jumping his crash pad he's going to be in about the same place so camera on a tripod itjust eliminates I don't have to think about this anymore I could just think about what's going on with james because I actually really love shooting in the moment to a lot of my favorite images that I've done or not composites a lot of my favorite images I'll go out with a model and some really fun lights and just get some amazing shots but those tend to be composing your image on the spot right like okay this looks better than than this or whatever it is but in the composite world it's totally different you're not composing on with your camera your composing in photo shop so you have to kind of change the way you think a little bit so where I'm photographing you know james in this place the cameras going to stay still but I can move him in frame and I could move all my images in the background as well so I'm doing my composition in photo shop rather than in the camera so most of the time it doesn't matter that the camera is on a tripod it's just kind of a way to make sure I've got consistency from one shot to the other and we're shooting on a green screen we want to make sure our subject is completely enveloped by the green screen it doesn't you know if if the green screen only covers half of his body and like half his arms sticking out it doesn't make sense to use green screen because then we'd still have to cut it out manually good question great another question from nathan fine I really struggle with getting the proper focal length and aperture when trying to match scaled subjects to my background images do you have any tips on choosing the proper focal ink and aperture for matching your perspective on the background image I have a tough time with this too it is tough it is really tough okay my big suggestion with focal length is if you did shoot any of the background images like let's say I didn't photograph any of it any of this this is all stock images but if you did photograph your background images make sure like write down what folk alike in fact if you let's say you're planning a composite from the beginning and you're going to shoot everything you're going to shoot your background plates you're going to shoot the birds you're going to you know shoot whatever elements you have you're going to shoot your subject if you write down everything along the way so they do this when they're actually making when they're making movies and you know there's a lot of compositing going on in movies there's someone's job and all they do is like they measure the camera like they measure how much that like the camera is you know from the ground to the focal plane of the camera the distance from the camera to the subject the angle of the camera like where the sun is in the sky like there's someone's job all they do is measure all this stuff for each of the different shops along the way and so when they go to shoot someone in the studio they can replicate that sort of thing so that's a really great suggestion if you are actually shooting all the pieces so let's say your cameras at twenty four millimeters out on location you're gonna want to shoot it twenty four millimeters in the studio now if you're doing something like this where you don't have that option my biggest suggestion is to kind of like you can imagine I just kind of look at the image and think about like you know using your history of having taken a lot of photos about what focal length is this you know so I'm looking at this image and this does not look like one hundred millimeter or two hundred millimeter image right like this was taken I don't know I would believe that was taken it like anywhere from twenty to thirty five millimeters somewhere around there it looks like you know it's not crazy wide angle it's not a sixteen millimeter shot but it's not super I'm super telephoto either so you know anywhere from probably twenty to thirty five millimeters is that's about what that image looks like and so that's what I'm gonna replicate here on my camera I'm not going to shoot at one hundred millimeters because it it doesn't make sense you get a different amount of compression at one hundred millimeters than you do with sixteen millimeters does everyone know about compression and yeah should I talk about that a little bit more I think maybe a little bit more because compression can be a tricky subject it is tricky okay so compression is is one of those things were like I don't know if you guys ever shot with a wide angle lens and you know someone's here and like their food is here and they're head is gonna look tiny and that foot is going to look huge right or like you know whatever is closer to the camera is going to look like way bigger or you know you've got your taking pictures with your friends when your iphone and like the person closest the camera there head is this big and then the person like you know two feet away their head is like that big right so it's basically makes certain parts of the image look a lot larger than others so let's say here in the studio you know if if james is going to be you know have his foot out you know if we don't want his foot toe look like giant we don't want his foot to be like you know this big and his head to be that big in the frame and that's basically what compression is so the wider angle lens you use the less compression you're going tohave the more telephoto angle you used like a two hundred millimeter people we're going to look pretty much true to their proportions right like if you're shooting from fifteen feet back and shooting at one hundred millimeters or whatever like they're there certain body parts they're not gonna look look stretched you're extremely large there everything is going to look like it's on the same focal plane and that's basically the idea behind compression like things were going to look like one focal plane so with this image and a lot of times with sports image you don't want too much compression too much compression conf lesson things out quite a bit so like you know two hundred millimeters three hundred millimeters you've seen pictures on like you know football stadiums of a like a football player walking across the field and he's in focus and backgrounds completely out of focus and it just it looks very like flat right it looks like you took all the information the image and stuck it all together and that's because those images were taken it three hundred millimeters or whatever and then we've all seen this wide angle lens where it looks like someone's like coming right out towards the camera and that's that's what a wide angle lens does so anywhere in like twenty millimeter to thirty millimeter you get enough of that perspective toe where it looks like things are dynamic but it's not so crazy to interfere with your shop and with sports types of images I find especially like this stuff you want a little bit of that you want a little bit of like people looking like they're kind of reaching out towards your camera because it could make those images look a little bit more dynamic so yeah that's matching as far as focal length goes and some suggests focal lengths and kind of like interpreting focal length from an image like this and then as faras aperture goes basically for these things I'm just I want everything to be in focus because my background is in focus right these lights here and focus my skies and focus the crowd in the background is in focus so if I'm shooting it you know two point oh or two point eight in the studio and my subjects faces and focus but his feet behind him or not in focus and then all of sudden the stadium the background isn't focus again it's never going to look real right like it's off things just don't work that way so if all of my background is in focus all of my subject needs to be in focus as well so with that just you know a good way to make sure you can do that in a studio is shoot with a couple strobes and that's going to really boost up the amount of light that's possible so you can shoot with a relatively short shutter speed we're going to be shooting at about one over one sixty one over two hundred that the second state and probably anywhere from like f f ate two f sixteen I was just wondering if you had a specific way that you organize your own files that you're trying to use as uh stock for yourself basically ok obviously you can go get it from the stock but I have all of these old images that I need to go through and like organizing catalogue so that I have those references for leader do you have like a specific sir system for that yeah I do actually I use light room catalogues so different people use light room catalogs in different ways and I'll see if I can pull up light room in just a little bit show but I have a light room catalogue that I use for my photo shoots from my studio photo shoots and so like for instance the shoot today would go in what I just call like you know the flirt like room catalog that's that's just like my actual photo shoots and then oftentimes on vacation or when I'm just kind of like playing around I'll go out with the camera and I'll take pictures of like a sky or some birds or whatever it is and that sort of thing I create a different light room catalog called textures and stock so I put all of those images into my light room catalogue and then if I'm feeling I've had my caffeine I'll go through it all tagged the thing I'll tag them as well and you can set up tags and keywords like or if I have like an extra day where I'm not really I'm not really doing anything and I'm kind of I go through this like every seems like every six months I spent like four days on file organization I go back and fix what I've messed up over the last six months of like how could I have done this poorly I'll go back and a little tag everything I'll be super anal for four days don't get it out of my system so that's what I tend to do and so keeping all that stuff in the same catalog I'll go through and you know if I've taken one hundred pictures of a guy I'll put those in a folder or call it sky that goes in my textures and stock light room catalogue and then I'll keyword that sky in light room so the next time I want to find a sky prime man for my images I just click on that key word and it pulls up all of my sky images that's great question