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Shoot: Male Fitness

next thing is gender considerations for skin just wanted to address this before we jump into specialties and by the way we have moved past now are ten most challenging skin types and skin conditions we did ten today so hopefully that'll be really helpful and I've got the slide at the very ends to kind of recap that you could take a look it's a gender considerations men generally maur shape in more texture is desired so we're photographing are very pale light skinned gentleman upstairs because the light was bouncing around everywhere it was really flat on his face and it didn't sculpt at all and that's not really ideal for photographing men typically more texture is ok and more shadow helped carve out the face that's just in general usually you don't want extremely low contrast light so I tend to opt for a slightly harsher modifiers with photographing a man than with a woman is not every situation I'm just saying in general so in a situation where maybe with a woman I'd use a beauty dis...

h ah guy maybe I'd use one of the silver reflectors just a little harsher with more shape for women I usually go softer but of course it depends on the photographic mood so just know that not everything is going to be the same of I'm very over simplifying but in general for women you're going for very smooth skin reduced wrinkles and blemishes like I said before we talked about how direction of light effects wrinkles on the face sometimes for guys I want that you know I want those crow's feet to stand out it gives you kind of that distinguished look I don't know any situations where I do that with a woman that I want to amplify the wrinkles just not usually what is requested so for woman we're usually trying to keep in mind okay when we're lighting we want smoother skin reduced wrinkles and blemishes wallace skin is usually usually preferred over shape you someone a nice shape what you want kind of flawless skin which is also why I was referring back to how sue prices is a lot of bounce light it's not really shaping the face that much she's not really using ah lot of like to shape and contour but this can always looks great very very soft very diffused and bounced so that's what we're considering with men were generally avoiding flat and low contrast like I mean if someone has really bad skin you'll go in the more low contrast direction but not like totally diffused in a cereal right usually you're avoiding that because you still want a jaw line he still want a little bit of texture more skin texture is okay more wrinkles or accepted and these are just like standard I'm not saying it's right or wrong I'm just saying like this is how it goes um okay so I would liketo have which which model do they want me to photograph first okay all right awesome okay sorry I'm moving forward to this one okay so the first subject that we are going to photograph is going to be a special skin consideration which would be photographing a man we could also rules also apply to photographing a woman but we're emphasizing fitness or bodybuilder or form teo subject okay so here's some of the things that are a little bit different is with fitness I'm gonna call it fitness photography in general dimension is key over texture most of the time because the whole point is you want to show all that definition in the muscles but in order to show definition in dimensionality you've gotta raise your light up or you've got to take your light to the side and what happens when you raise your light up or you take it to the side you add more texture that's that's how it works because you're raking from above we're breaking from the side but if you have flat light there will be no shadows to shape the muscles so it tends to be more acceptable if the skin was a little bit rougher and of course you're just gonna have to retouch more if you want perfect skin but you don't really have a choice to go with flat light it's not going to be achieving your goals so shadows are key to showing form flat light does not work the lake would be raking from above with the sign to create dimension so wherever your light is a lot more shape pull it further off to the side in either way and consider rim lights from behind the car about form to give more shape so a couple different ways we might use this um some tools for photographing through kind of doing the fitness look first would be grids grid's really help focus the light and there's a lot of contrast so I could go ahead and use a gritted light for more contrast but also light specific parts of the body so use grids a lot for fitness photography medium to harsher light sources you can use a soft box but it would have to be really far from the side perhaps to do that you can use a soft box definitely but usually kind of the medium to harsher works better often you want boom arms or some kind of arm because you might be raising that light really really high up and you want to be ableto kind of boom it out over your scene or may be far from the side so you usually want that a nice strong stand instead of used the usual stands we have so we're going to be using c stands and also waits the balance the stand and then you would be using some sort of room lights helped carve out the features I to carve out the profile of the subject I usually use barn doors if I don't have barn doors I used something called cinna foil and sent a foil is basically black super thick tinfoil and what's great about it is it doesn't melt and it doesn't get hot but it's it's kind of firm and you khun bend it to different shapes so if I don't have the barn doors to close down to give me that really crisp highlights I can take two pieces of senna foil use gaffer's tape to tape it to the light and then I have my makeshift barn doors you can also use it to make a fake snoot you can wrap it around and give yourself a spotlight so it's nice because it's really first talyn that way and you can't keep using the pieces over and over again so that's something you might look at but for being tinfoil it's not it's kind of expensive but it's really versatile and it's also more portable than taking rim light since newts and all this stuff if you have a shoot maybe on location okay so I am going teo bring out our model and we're going to start shaping with light okay so hi how are you I'm gonna have you stand right around there that's perfect and okay so I'm gonna be a huge pain I would like to try the soft boxes so I could show how you could use one a little bit of a pain and uh I know you're going to have questions you better saying okay perfect and I don't even know look at that the camera's right there thank you so let's say that you do mostly portrait and you don't have any other light sources I want to show you that you can still use a soft box but how you want to use it in order to use it for fitness thank you don't and to mind can we lower the house lights is that gonna be a huge pain in the behind they see them smiling which is usually okay whatever you say will do anything for you lindsay whatever you want okay so I'm gonna actually start with the front to show bad okay so I want to say your mark is roughly stand around here ish I know there's no mark it's an invisible mark ok alright perfect so if you watch really flat light like this from the front gives you middle minimal definition he has a lot of definition built in so that's convenient so okay and greet and what am I at roughly in the back of six okay um and I have a twenty four one oh five somewhere okay can I use that since I'm going to be shooting a little wider so I'm using the sigmund twenty four one oh five because it gives me more flexibility and so for a lens but I'm not going to be shooting wider than a four oh so doesn't matter I'll give this a test oh and my white balance is all crazy all right okay so I told you he already has definition built in so that's relatively convenient for me but if I want to go ahead and I really want to emphasize form or there are two ways to do so bringing the light to the side and bringing the light up above so bring it to the side a little bit and what you'll see is the light starts raking across his body perfect that's cool and what have you turned towards the light just a tiny bit right there so if you flip between the two before and after you're goingto have a lot more definition because you were using sat shadows so it's I mean already extremely a lot better okay so that's one way to do it you could also use short light so I'm going to move the light even further from behind have you turn towards your right just a little bit right there so actually lit him from behind which means the shadow side is towards me and I'm gonna have him turn his head country and profile right there and so I'm breaking even more so even more definition with fitness I tend to use harsher light sources right now we're using a soft box but what I would do and see see the definition get even more pronounced for each image what I would do is I don't want the side of his body on the right hand side to go to complete shadow I really mind if the skin does but at least need to see some form so I would add hi and this as a back room like please and the barn doors will be fine and this would be fine for a really crisp light source because we're going for really crisp correct you ever use continuous lighting one of your trying to shape the fitness or an athlete I personally don't use continuous lighting for photographing athletes usually one of the reasons that I continue to slay is great if you're if you're comfortable with it that's great but one of the reasons I like shooting with strobes because I have more very ability in my power outplay so if I want really really right chris pilots carving out the body and then I want one subtle overhead raking light and then another one kicking to the face for a little bit of highlight once she's here to achieve that with strobes than trying to manipulate constantly but you can get really great shot constantly it just kind of learning your your equipment okay cool so we're gonna do is we're going to add a highlight on the right side of his body so everything isn't blended in because the whole point is it's fitness so you need to see outline yeah ok and can we can you lower it a little bit thank you and with my power at ish what okay thank you would you like a female the same way that this person great questions so generally if I were doing fitness for a woman I probably wouldn't use as much shadow and I would go more towards a little bit softer light sources so instead of it letting fall totally two black on this side I would have of the flat over here to add a little definition or another fill light I mean you listen it really really but like a really tough woman and that's the look she wants sure that's sort of fun on dh yeah and they can't pull it off to the side a little bit I will definitely get len's slur and in england okay great so take a look and head to the right just a little bit for me so now I can see his biceps and I can see him separated from the background I also like that I could get a little bit of his jawline and maybe you raised the light up a little bit more till his head left to right like right there perfect I can see his jawline lip a little bit and that helps to add to that kind of masculine form that you're looking for jawline is definitely desirable for that look okay but I could also do a variation can have you turned that might perfect so I could also do a variation of raking light with harsher light so I turn to the side this is a much more contrast the light and it's going to give me a ton of definition okay so that's that's good but now it's going to be a little bit too soft on this side so I could go ahead and switch it I could switch it to a beauty dish spirited and go that direction and I could ad film from that side or you could just bring the light to the front a little bit which is what I'm going to do that's all this like kind of maybe from here and I'm gonna raise it up just a little little more definition kept cool and then can you look back at me good a little bit stronger their head towards me right there great I'm open just a tiny bit perfect so when I do that it's definitely definitely definitely emphasizing form for sake of keeping this a little bit more simple I will tell you that I would also maybe add a rim light on the other side to carve him out depends on the look you're going for so I was able to do a lot with the soft box going to do one more thing with the soft box before we move on um hold here okay let's just raise it up a little see how high this goes I'm going to try to keep this not ridiculously difficult okay however high up it goes that title goes maybe okay it should be all right and just you know not real quick for me I'm going to bring you this way and let's put it right over head okay so I can also lake from above to carve out a subject as well okay that's good it was definitely going to be brighter on the top of his body but it might give a nice fall off so I could do this and get some definition that way and that's you know another way that you could like if you only had a soft box but let's go for it a little bit more crisp a little bit more dynamic like could you change this to a beauty dish for me so questions on that so far yes I know I know I told you it's like it's like the backside toe defined more on the back side and so one of the reasons that I do that a lot is because it's that three point lighting set up that is the look now it's having to chris brim lights on either sign because it clearly defined their outline shows all the muscles on donu khun set the mood of the frame with your main light in the front but it's just like christmas it has a lot of pop was that was the only barn door we had right maybe later and I'm while I do this do you mind maybe trying to set that up okay yeah another one because I know that we don't have it out here so I just wanted to kind of flow off his question would you not maybe use a reflector back there just cause that's too soft and too morley the fashion or you want that hard edge for the I usually go with the really hard edge for fitness typically I mean some magazines some fitness magazines are much brighter and they have kind of that glowing look right now what I'm considering for fitness I'm going for like as much definition as humanly possible and he also we oil them up a little bit but this kind of comes back to the makeup thing I'd be constantly oiling up my subject because what that does is it makes the highlights brighter the shadows will look darker but what that does is emphasizes definition because the highlights brighter makes it look like they stick out more like biceps for example will stick out more of the highlights look brighter in the shadows look darker more definition okay so what I would do next is I'm going to use a beauty dish on it would be a pain can I put that grayden is it stupid yeah I know okay well this will be teamwork okay see that wasn't so bad okay we mastered it okay so the reason that I'm taking the beauty dish with the grid is because I want more contrast the light sources I'm going for like even harsher more dramatic before we were using a soft box you could use the white beauty dish but one of the few times that would use silver would be for fitness because a silver beauty dish will give you more crisp edges which gives you more definition I don't actually own a silver beauty dish but this is one of the few times where I've used one is for fitness so take a look here turn up that okay great so same thing I could go ahead come around to the side for definition raised the light up can I have um a little darker there thank you okay and so having the light up high to the side high up breaks down from the side breaks across and give myself a little bit of a rembrandt light there looks good I have no idea what the power setting was oh not too bad ok good so we're gonna see a lot of definition carves everything out but what I like is when I had a highlight you don't want to add the highlight to the highlight side meaning if I were adding a back room light to him it wouldn't be the same side as my main light because then I'm layering highlights is not it interesting and the shadow has no definition so if you're going to add separation and add definition the rim light goes on the shadow side of the subject so what I can do that can turn this on okay I might have you might have you assistant okay so don't turn your body a little bit towards them so what I'm looking for they want light raking across this summit from the back light turn back towards me a little sort of watching for they still want shape practice a little bit that way a little bit more okay so what I was looking for is I wanted both of his pecs to have light on them and also for to rake across his abs I've got this light nice and dramatic and I'm gonna have you look straight towards me great so this is going to be similar to what we did before just a little bit harsher light a little bit more contrast okay so okay so we're gonna add in that third light and I've been a pain to him so so we're going to do is we're gonna add one more light here it looks good but I want that three point light set up one of the instructors here on creative live before you'll grimes who he believes come back you know I think he is he's awesome awesome and his specialty his main focus his main light set up his three point lighting what three point lighting is is it means you have a main light on your subject and that kind of sets the mood so here the mood I've setting is drama in the way that I said dramas that had light high up to the side and greeted so that carves out his form I'm going to use the back to light to give him definition but I'm also using that one to give another dimension like to his abs into his form so this is what you would see for pretty much any movie poster is using three po white light and pretty much any professional athlete they're using three point light to light them very consistent so we're going to do that all right and let's see just what's my settings on that other one question I get asked all the time is about my ratios so how I decide how much brighter to have the back lights in comparison to the power of the main light it depends on the look you're going for the brighter those back lights the more like poppin the more commercial it looks the more subtle kind of more big production if you make them really really subtle it's not as dramatic so what I usually do is I have my back lights about to stops brighter for fitness significantly where two two and a half stops and I typically match them so that looks great same thing looks straight to me you pop up your back arm towards the left arm yeah it's probably on the wrong chan oh you could put on our optical ok so I didn't fire we're gonna fix that great thank you good so carved out and given a lot of definitions so that's like the usual three point light set up lots of drama have carved out the line on his face okay so I'm just going to do one more set up for fitness and then take questions so you can finish up with beauty and some wrap up all right so I am going can we boom this like way above him like I can put on this one okay great so what I'm going to dio is I'm goingto put a light literally above him and if you pay attention to a lot of in a lot of fitness photography like really dramatic sometimes the highlights are on top of the body like the light source is above because if you want as much definition as possible that's one way to get it is to have the light directly from above the downside to that the problem that you'll have is that now there's no light on the face so what you got to dio is you've got to do what we did before with glaring light you have that main light above that really carves out the features then you have a spotlight on the face to make sure the faces lou made if you care you know maybe maybe you're going up for a dramatic look and you just shoot a silhouette so that's what we're gonna do here how you doing good hard job easy jones okay I think it's too bad great alright and I can can I help okay so I can't be the only minor really helpful is there a question while I move stuff there absolutely is let's have laura metzger from hawaii is wondering whether you would oil and athlete with really bad skin on when you're doing it a shoot like this where it is a lot more harsh contrast he light what do you do when they do have that's gonna re types I mean it's not really I will have them do makeup in the body so I think even you got a little bit of makeup on your body right a little bit they will definitely do that and try to even things out smooth things out a lot of fitness models have stretch marks because they've stretched their skin by making their muscles huge eso sometimes that's also something we'll do is we'll apply makeup just try to smooth that out what about capturing motion like so you have your location lighting kit and you're still shaping the athlete but while trying to capture emotion how would you do that yes so if you're trying to capture motion what you need to do is you need to pick your own locate okay you need to pick a location lighting option that gives you something called very fast flash duration and very fast recycle times so when you're looking for your solution what fast flash duration means is lower end lighting sources when the flash goes on it goes on for a really long time in order to kick out that light which means if they're moving it actually will blur so what you're looking for something that gives you a lot of light power but really fast so look for fast last rations something like brown color the brown color move kit is a really fast one with really fast recycle times ideally something would like one twenty thousands of a second for a frustration look for something like that the pro photo were pro for b profiled a pro for being here were good the prophet a pro for b also has incredibly fast flash duration and really fast recycle time so you could fire off a lot of frames all at once okay cool so I wanted literally over his head do you need another sam bangu one over here okay cool all right we're gonna put this literally over his head and went off for me for a second I'm going to build this in what I usually do with a build in the lights and I turn off my back light so I can see what I'm doing I got to really see what the light on the face looks like and the light on the skin perfect and way way up yeah great okay so here's that that should be good should we get all right so let me take a quick test of this great really open up a tiny bit so this is giving me a ton of definition and a lot of raking light from above very dramatic not the best light on his face if it's meant to be like a fitness portrait I don't have you do is when have you turn your head to your right and look up a little bit so you could do that and it actually posing him so the light on his face looks better so that looks pretty cool but of course you know the sides of his body have kind of blended in so I can add a rim light but can I bring that laid up front let's say that I want him looking straight at me what I can do is I can add a gritted light so we have a bunch of grids and grab them okay so have a bunch of grids and I know I'll stand under the light so the cameras can see me okay so we've got a bunch of grids and you put them on your lights to focus the lights so they'll be for example just lighting his face not everything else and so you have different degree grids we have forty okay so we have five ten thirty and forty here it depends on what company that you have for lights will be different great amounts but the smaller the number and the smaller the holes the more focused the light will be also the really small holes and a lot of focus light also is going to cut down your exposure a lot so you have to pump your light up but let's take for example let's do we've got a twenty degree here and he's gonna be focused we'll try we'll try because I don't think I have I probably would have gone with a ten here but there is no ten so maybe we'll uh oh no this is a ten what we'll try it we'll give it a try thiss looks like a five to me so okay so what I can do all right so I think that's going to be too broad so what I see is it's hitting more of his body than I intended so I'm going to put on the hen instead and so is going to focus the light even more okay good great so I'm getting a lot of just on his face and I can and he's been great he's moving the barn doors in so I'm making sure the light doesn't spill where I don't want it to be and another way to focus the light is to bring it in the bucket example bring the bucket closer it won't spread out as much and I can just like his face cool and maybe turn we a little bit further down I'm shooting at oh yeah I'm certain way down okay so you can go down here let's just kick that light on the straights let's see how that looks oh no oh we did this for me take a look at that and tell me you know uh uh uh okay thank you oh it did I see it in a catch like no way it's cool tried their e thought aside for sure yeah that's using my like that give away all right I trust you guys all right I'll do test you let me know yep alright let's get this try yeah so my original there you go my original guest was probably more accurate great okay so what you'll see is a one not this one ah ton of definition to his body within kind of weld it on his face and I don't have to have it frontally lit I can still give him rembrandt light and still go really dramatic but just have that light on his face and I can still have it at a higher angle let's do something around maybe right there the closer I bring the light the more focus it is so that should be great and then will you turn on that back let me pop up well more through great and to anybody just a tiny bit keep going a little bit more right literally not head back towards me great so I've got late breaking from above I've got definition so something like that so my brain is going like can't be frontal it can't be flat it needs to be higher up or further off to the side and I want room lights for definition if I am going to light the face and it needs to be a little flatter maybe somebody has really bad skin on their face and you do need the light to be a little bit flatter on their face make sure it's just focus for the face and not the whole body so you can have it flatter more to the front so you can give a little bit better texture but not get rid of all the definition all right so I'm cool for questions for that and then we'll move on to our very last thing for today okay I think we've got one question we want to ask about this donna darling is wondering what settings and equipment would you recommend for water sport photograph since there's like a lot more shyness due to the water being all over them how would you change it up for that the biggest thing and we could bring the house lights back up a few guys like the biggest thing is going back to that flash duration anytime you're photographing water or particles you need a fast flash duration in order to freeze those particles so you might have to invest in a system with a faster flash duration the other thing is any time you're photographing particles water anything like that you're back light the two room lights become even more important because you have to back illuminate particles and water in order for them to show up front light you don't see it it just kind of blends into the background has to be backlit so maybe instead of using barn doors you might have a little bit broader of backlight especially if the water is kind of flying everywhere and you're trying to catch more of those particles