Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: Hollywood Glamour

Now we're going for more contrast so I'm gonna flip these reflectors around to the black side we're just gonna tender in and I'm gonna lower this this uh knows light reflectors so we're actually by moving further away from our subject uh it's gonna make the shadows a little darker so they won't be filled quite as much just a quick question from before could you remind folks what lends you were using oh yes well I didn't even talk about that this is I'm using a cannon one thirty five two sort of a go to lens for portrait ce uh and normally I would not be shooting this horizontal I'd be a little closer and shooting vertical with it um usually kind of between one hundred and two hundred is sort of the sweet spot for the focal length of the lens for a portrait you don't wantto really be shooting wider than about a one hundred because it tends to get a little perspective distortion that you have to move in closer it also shows you more of the background when you move into the subject um and...

in this case we have the one thirty five is just like right in the perfect sweet spot it's not too telephoto although I've used a two hundred millimeter before quite effect effectively um the one thirty five f two is just great lens and now to this small let's go to the small silver just a reminder if you could just show your settings as much as possible during the process too so people know they love to know what the settings are would be great thank you okay our settings it's not so much what the settings because like I don't have a favorite at stop okay um in this case I was shooting at about f eleven uh and uh we have power to support that I was actually my correct exposure was eleven and two thirds so I opened up two thirds to get to get to my bright exposure and this is his bright as I could expose that skin before it would get to light um and my exposure on the background was that was actually would have been at twenty two on that background lights so I'm really bad at blasting the seamless to get it to go absolutely clipped toe white which is look I was going for so now I'm gonna actually turn that that soft box around and uh now I've gone to ah ah small silver reflector and I'm kind of pushing the light well into the umbrella here this small silver reflectors kind of emulating a beauty dish uh most people probably don't have access to a beauty dish or the lights that would take the beauty dish so we're kind of simulating it with a small silver umbrella and if you notice on our lighting on our subject the lighting is harsher you've got a little more contrast, more shadow and actually a little more sparkle on the lips because of the smaller light source and so we're aiming for a little more of kind of hollywood glamour which is going to require our hair light so right now john harris is turning the soft box aim back at her it's hitting them and we're going to try and get it in position for you lowered or just a little bit you're kind of on the edge there and I can I can get it in more okay, you go up just a little bit because I'm close to the frame and you're okay that's good right now I'm gonna need a kind of flag here simply add another piece of foam core so this time instead of trying to fill it all with with light I'm using these dark the dark side of the these v flats here to subtract light so I get a amore contrast e look out of the lighting and just looking at the light on the subject down it's looking good uh now I have to take my meter readings way have another c stand that way okay okay all right so let's you could power down a little bit yeah let's let's power down okay about stop two stops we need um about yeah two stops ok and now let's see what my what it looks like on the background okay, so are a white background now is going to look much darker uh, so which is interesting? You can you can really use light to control the tones in the in the image quite effectively. So this white seamless backdrop is going to be a kind of a dark gray and let's ok, so we're going to a little bit more shooting here, and I have right now the next thing that I need since I've turned this this hair light around it's facing into the camera um, I have to worry about getting flare into the lens, so whenever we've got a light source it's aiming into the lens, we have toe make sure that we hide it with what's called a flag, so john here is setting up a c stand and we're going to clip some cardboard onto it and that's going to shade the lens from that backlight. So actually, when I'm going to do see if I if I shoot and I get part of it a light in my image I should, uh you get this kind of flare effect nine I'm over exaggerating it here by pointing up at the light, but you can kind of there's a sort of smoky flare e look it's it reduces the contrast, and since I'm going for contrast, I need to uh use this cardboard to flag the backlight so I'm not seeing it in the lens yeah so and that's a pretty good spot maybe just lower it would just even out like that yeah yeah that's good that's that's just about right ok now there's one other thing I need to do because I checked the light on the face and the background now I actually kind of need to adjust the ratio of the light for the hair light you can bring it out uh so once we get that clamped good good ready and yeah go ahead ah yes so this is this is really hot so let's bring that way down two stops that's perfectly because people were asking about ratios yeah so now trying what what I'm aiming for here is uh I'm actually balancing balancing the backlight to the front light let me just let's do one more penny yeah okay um so in this situation I want the ratio of the lighting from the front to the from the front to the back of hair light to be equal I'm expecting to see a little kind of halo you can kind of see it in our test shot here uh it's sort of blown out that's because it was set too high so her hair highlights are going toe white they don't need to goto white but they will appear lighter from this hair light because of the angle of incidents so angle of incidence is light, tens traveling straits lines, and it will bounce off of things so it the hair light is going to come down and bounce off of her head and into the lands because the the angle of incidence I'm sort of, you know, it's bouncing towards the lands off her head, it'll appear brighter even if the ratio's air totally balanced. So balancing that front light with the backlight, I will still see a little brighter hair light because of this, this feature of the angle of incidence. Uh, but I may have to adjust the ratio a little bit we'll see, so we're going to take a test shot. Now, I've got all my elements in place, but my meter down, make sure my settings are right where I want hm? And from my from my position, I make sure that I'm not seeing that the hair light by tilting up, and if I just see this cardboard, I'm good if I see a little sliver of light than I'm bad, so ok, and we're going to see what this looks like. All right? So you can see, um, we have kind of a shadow on the background, uh, and it may actually may be coming from the video lights I'm not really sure I'm not going to worry about that so much but we can see the way the hair lights work and you see it's it's light but I'm not letting it clipped a white I want to get that soft highlight the soft box spreads the highlight out makes it appear softer and it puts a little kind of a little bit of a halo on her shoulders as well um we notice you know darker shadows under the chin and the nose this is you know a little more dramatic kind of light uh and I'm going toe shoot a lot of you straight straight into camera um on duh okay let's let's try it good okay lori chin and give me a little more kind of ah, you know sort of seductive come hither sort of smile ok let's let's get some hands in there so bring your bring your hand up that's good something like that you know I'll back up just a little bit do something along along your your cheek yeah yeah, something like that turn away from me and look glance back at me with your eyes but janet your shoulder again marvelous. Ok, uh all right. So let's review here let's see what we got going on all right, ok, well, I think I've got uh uh, enough shots to work with because a lot of what I'm we're looking at here today is I want to get examples to do retouching and post production things. I'm looking for certain things, and now I think we can invite one of our students up. You have some questions for yeah, and maybe just now that we've gone through all that, if you could just kind of review tava lighting is set up and with the settings ok, always want to know yeah, this settings okay, so are the ratios. Yeah, so my my I met eleven and a third uh, I'm looking for sharp, crisp everywhere, so I don't wantto shoot uh, more opens, then say f eleven were, you know, eight to eight and a third or something like that. Once I get down to eight, five, six, then I start worrying about whether I'm going to carry depth of field from the tip of her nose back to the her hair, which is a certain approach, a certain look I could do that intentionally if I want to throw, throw the back of her head out and just have her eyes and focus I could use f two or something like that would be wide open in this case, I want everything to be sharp, so that's my consideration for what half stop um, the ratio here again the exposure's matching so when I read the light I'm reading eleven and a third when I read the backlight eleven in the third so it matches perfectly ok the background is falling off about two stops so it doesn't read white if if the background light matched if it was reading eleven in a third he would look white so I wanted the background to go gray so I'm letting it fall actually reading is is much lower ok, so one more question one more follow up could you say how far that light is from from the model not something that's simple game but just in general for people who can't tell from from home right? Well uh I think we're about approximately I would say for five, four and a half feet great um we're at just the right distance from the subject part of the the idea of places I could move the light in closer but if I'm moving in closer it's going to appear like a bigger light source and will reduce my contrast so I'll get softer looking shadows yeah if I move it farther way, it'll get crisper so then you also have to consider if you're moving farther away you're reducing exposure, getting less light so it's kind of a ah dance between those two um so uh you know, those are all the considerations for how far away the light should be how close it should be it's all exposure and the sort of the feeling of softness is that relative size of the light source. So we think about the sun sun is a huge light source, but it's so far away that it looks it's relative sizes like tiny, it looks like a dime size lights or so we get really chris hard shadows out of it. Um, this is somewhere in between. I mean, we have a small, smaller reflector, so I'm getting a little more contrast, but I'm not getting hard edges around the shadows because it's not that small. Ok, don't take one more before you move on. One more question thrill it's a simple one. This is from nurse salton. You'll yack, obey. Are you level with the model's face? Or do you usually shoot from above or below? In this case, I'm shooting pretty much level, um in in some situations e might want to shoot down, uh, very rarely have I ever wanted to shoot up at, you know, get under her nose? Uh, usually it's, not a very flattering angle.