Lessons

Lesson Info

Q&A and Lighting for Men

Can you bring in one of our male audience members and show the scruff and show the scribe do it I'm getting a big no josh you want to do it okay all right so sarah come by on a feeling okay we'll see we get a lead I would like to have a little more space than we have now but it's okay because I need some separation so we're just gonna use this this light over here josh you didn't know this was gonna happen to you it's ok so I make sure this has turned on and then what I'll do is I will put it at an angle twist it we do this all right? Fenical missile looks straightforward mr josh okay all right so I'm sort of uh eyeballing this right now what I'm trying to you having turnout was trying to skim this I'm gonna have to add some light over here just buggy when I'm doing this so I'm just trying to get a highlight right here now the other thing that I would normally do uh when I'm shooting really hard light like this is di saturate or convert to black and white so I you know hard light loves...

black and white but let's just see what we get I have to be careful with this though because if I am overdue this is going to throw light right into my lens just like it did before with the background so what I'm going to do here is see if I can get in close enough so kelsey let's get the seventy two, two hundred I think we're going to need that to avoid the light coming into the lens and if you look straight forward I'm going to get just a test to see how much light we have and it's a lot it's a lot take that down okay I want to change my lens out really fast you got it. Thanks. All right, thank you. This is also a good reason for using the limited awesome um for things like this okay, so by using a longer lens I get more compression aiken get farther for my subject I can do more good. Okay, so I'm going to do now is I'm going to meet her my light and for this I'm doing something differently. I'm not going to meet her to the camera when a meter to the light itself make sure that's actually triggering it is and that is nine a little bit too much light for me someone take that down a little bit but I mean it's one more time so look straight ahead that's five we'll start with five five all right now this is really difficult to see where the light is falling in a flash my there we go make sure my batteries air charging up fast enough still no okay I might have it oh yeah this battery pack is not on there goes my battery pack timed out as well so batteries battery angst we talked about it yesterday here we go all right we're getting some now we're getting that hard kind of look ok we have to add in that's the that's the tall side of the face okay so josh when I have you look this way yeah so look back at me there you go good good good okay so either this battery pakistan or just bring me some new batteries police battery angst they're not magic many new batteries that's what we need to get some batteries yeah so kelsey's gonna replace those for us we were shooting ninjas at lunch so that might have been the thing that killed the batteries they mentioned challenges here feel ninjas killed battery oh yeah the old images till the battery joke you know how that goes mark ever makeup put on a little makeup on your male subjects uh yes I don't but our makeup artists yes um so if you don't what you could have is you can have some uneven a natural highlights on the skin and so most guys don't like having makeup on them but most of them need it so yes I do that I have makeup on right now I'd make upon right now. Thanks, lindsay okay let's take a shot now we have some batteries and also noticed how much brighter this like iss so it needed at five now look who I am battery angst right battery angst now have to start over because their batteries our wacky oh what happened is no it was in yeah it reset so let me take it back take it back so we had battery total battery failed so let me uh yeah there you go you're blind now so I need to get back to where we were which was five the battery banks this is pretty awesome so look straightforward there we go so it's six point three will take that we'll take six point three just to get this done today. All right yeah. Now look at me and then yeah good, good. And now we have that side of his face that's looking very rugged we have that we need to add some stuff to the broad side so kelsey is going to come out and she's going toe hold the reflector okay, so josh look right back at me. Ignore that kelsey get as close as you can keep going closer keep going closer keep on ok come back just a little bit with this hand we'll see how much light weaken bounce from right knee to use an umbrella and a second flash for this but we'll see what we can get yeah, we're definitely gonna have to add a second flash to this also the other thing that we normally are doing a shooting this vertically. And when I'm shooting vertically, I could get much closer with that. Um, that second light. So this is becoming our kicker light and this is now going to be our phil. Ok, we'll do that. All right. Have you replaced batteries in this one? Yes. Okay, yeah. If one of your batteries fails one of your flashes, then you pretty much know the other ones are going to fail to. And so you might as well just get it going right off the bat. So okay, we're gonna put this banded about thirty two, and calcium needs you to come help me. Meter this, please. So this is now just gonna be a soft phil like there go ahead meter that okay, too. So let's, add that. Whatever. What is it right now? One thirty second. Okay, so put it up. Tio sixteenth and josh, just look straight at me were to start their kelsey. So all we're doing is we're trying to add a little fill. So a little phil from this, you can see we're getting a about a little bit more than we're getting from our, uh, from our bounce card and now what we can do is we can start playing with this we can take this light we can move it out so normally I would move it out a little bit more over here we're starting to get out of space let's just try and look straight forward also normally you don't have a big screen here that model to keep looking at so I don't recommend that ok, we'll see if we can get that and then also let's add just a touch of light here hey touch more light there we'll get that highlight and I wanna hear say I'm gonna chop wood yeah jumping would care to something like this on dh we're getting to the point where I like this shot because now we could see both of his eyes so before we could only see one nine now we can see two eyes the other thing I would probably do it this shot next is add just a little bit of pop from the front to add some speculate highlights right now he's looking a little bit more like a bad guy also this would normally be shot in black and white so let me see if I can just do this really quickly look right at me all right? This is awesome because you're smiling but don't smile this time, so look at me in the area no smiling there yeah, so we're able to start now adding and way bringing the darks and stuff so yeah, so I would ideally like to have about another seven or eight feet this way and some different lenses and stuff so I'm working in small spaces is always a blast but you can you can start getting some stuff. Okay, I think we have time for one more question before break there have been a couple questions about tall lighting and someone had asked are tall and short lighting the same and then people had asked about tall versus broad for comparison can you talk about tall lighting? We just shot it that was it we shot so the tall and the short and the tall and short is essentially the same thing. So it's broad light is when you have the broad side of the face toward the subject in yeah, so that's that's so tall and short or the same same thing I feel sort of gonna sit down thanks for clarifying that just wanted to make sure yeah so that's that's so the tall and short because this is this's the broad side of the face this is the short side but this is also a tall, broad tall or short there's also many different lighting styles but again we would run into all over umbrella issues and it takes ten or fifteen minutes between each set up gets to be sort of boring. Washington go. Okay, so, yeah. And albert, twenty eight and a couple other folks wanted to know about the gels that you, you that you were using earlier. The cto joe? Yes. They wanted a little bit more information about what you were using. Ok, they are right here. This is rogue pack and it's. Uh, it's. Just a robe, lighting filters back and inside. Here, take this whole thing out. Hopefully I don't drop all this on the floor. What this has is this is a complete system of gels, and so it has different filters for more blue, for more greens and reds. And what I was doing is using the correction filters at the very back. So there's all kinds of creative filters in the front to add reds, yellows, blues or greens. Something like that. If you wanted tio, maybe splash some color on the wall now, the back right here. Well, they have our different gels, and these are believe our roscoe jails. I'm not sure where they get those, but there are different brands of gelsor industry standards. And I don't think there's gonna show up on camera. But what this says it has how much? Of a conversion this is so this will convert from sixty, five hundred degrees kelvin to thirty, eight hundred degrees calvin and you'll lose one half stop of light and so each of these filters has that kind of information on there and so if you know that you need to convert by a very specific amount you can look in here and see exactly what you need so this is from sixty, five hundred degrees calvin down to forty, six hundred degrees kelvin and so I mean, that works great if you know about color temperature, which we don't have time to go through all the different colored temperature conversions and that kind of stuff we did cover it in my other creative life workshop the anatomy of a photo shoot we did go into a great deal about color and color temperature and what that is but that's what I'm using its the rogue lighting filters pack and it's pretty cool on and a lot of flashes have filters that air that come with the flashes and those are the basic the ones you're going to use most so if you're shooting with incandescent lights, you just pop on it orange looking filter and that'll balance that out if you're shooting and neon you can you alice bring those out there these guys right here so they just come with it so if I'm shooting and inside with incandescent light they pop this on from shooting with like old school fluorescent lights I might need this green on dso those those are what you would normally use most question for me is there any sort of macgyver asked tool that you still use to this day not purchase of something that you built yourself and I can't go back? Um gaff tape you have tape works for everything got first if in fact we have some right now right here on this umbrella it's holding it together so it's way call a gaffe it's gaffer's tape it's used it doesn't leave sticky residue on your stuff we use it a lot the other montgomery thing that I use um there's a thing in theater that is usually it's called a gobo and so you can take a shape and you can put it in front of a light and you can cast shadows in the certain patterns. So if you've been to the theater and you see like, uh like a shape on the wall in a big you know, like a window or a door flour or something like that because they're made with these little things called go bows and so I make those out of it's ah it's not aluminum foil but it's black foil that's called sin if oil that you can get at any lighting store meaning camera store and I like to just poke holes in that and make random shapes and then shoot through those to make some really interesting backgrounds. And so if I'm in a situation where I have a wall like this and it's not very interesting, and I want to try this spruce up a portrait I usually brings him sent if oil poke a bunch of holes in it, put in front of the light, and then what I found is if you put a grid in front of that, the grid will change the way the light comes through that, and you get a much more interesting effect on that light. In fact, the first time I did it, I created this lighting set up that I thought was really amazing on I forgot I used a grid to go before it went through the foil, and then I was trying to help my friend because he wanted to do the same thing, and we couldn't reproduce my own picture is that happens sometimes, like, I don't know how I did it. And then I realized it was the grid that made that different. So it's it's, uh, sina foil poke holes in it, use a grid like we showed you earlier, and then you hear someone here. Says this stuff thiss stuff right here is get a piece of it pope holds an exit visa leatherman pokes holes in that he's a grid um and of course that's one of my videos on youtube thing is on the pro photo site I there's a video of me doing that master master merck wants to know I'm jimmy books that you could recommend on speed lights he would where you do well the speed light stuff the line on the way I learned my speed lights was by doing um assisting other photographers and so I can't really easily say yeah you need to go assist these guys because that's not gonna work out but there are definitely two people that I would recommend that a friends of mine that are very knowledgeable and know their stuff um actually three so david tejada has a book and all kinds of stuff I think it's called small flash big results set right yeah it's I think called small flash be results dot com that's a great resource kevin koo botha has some information on his site he's an awesome guy friend of mine um lives in bend oregon right yeah. Mountain biker cool dude he's got some information there is their resource is from joe mcnally I think everybody knows joe mcnally david hobby has strobe ist dot com an excellent resource on speed lights so there's just a lot of information out there on speed lights the problem is, unless you get out there and start using those speed lights and take pictures with them and put it into practice, it just it's just a lot of words, and so the thing that I think is essential to remember is to exposures that you can control separately as long as you know that you can start dialling things and you'll find that it's not as complicated as it seems. You just dial that in and and go so but those guys david tejada, kevin cambodia, joe mcnally, um, and mr david hobby they'll got they have great stuff and I'm sure for getting a million other people, but off the top of my head those guys, I have a comment from harsh india partial who says thank you so very much mark for taking time and explaining things. The best part is that I strongly believe that people are able to connect to what you explain and that's the most important thing. So thank you so much again from india you're welcome, very cool. Well, I have a question that I told someone I would ask and I didn't, so can we go back to the grid for a second? Ana topa from missoula rich from missoula, montana? What? Missoula, montana really, yet that is right over the hill from where I grew up missoula, montana hamilton montana there's low, low yeah that's like my stomping grounds so whatever he wants, I'm ready to and well he knew he no, he knows that, actually and he was like, make sure you tell mark oh yeah you look you look great place he had asked about the degrees on the grid if you could talk a little bit about what's the difference on the degrees so let's get a few of those different degree grids and I'll show you but it's uh it allows you to to spread the like either whiter or narrower that's it that's what it does so we have three little discs here. Two small is about forty five okay, so what they do is this one right here is a twenty five degree grid, and the best way to do is just to come really close to a camera. So this really restricts the light twenty five degrees. This right here is a forty five degree angle and so it's just it does exactly what it says. Twenty five degree angle is going to take the light and make it come out of the flash of twenty five degrees of forty five degree angle is going to let it come out of forty five degrees and so if you want to, you know, when we put a splash of light behind the head of our models there so we used I think was a twenty five degree grid if we wanted mohr of that we would use a forty five degree grid maybe if we wanted to isolate somebody's face we can use a grid and just illuminate there's face with the twenty five degree grade fuel in their face and top of their body we might use a forty five degree grid and we conserve do some of that type of stuff so it's just how much light you want to have come out of your flash andi use a different grid for each one of those grids there I love using grids because you can really control how light looks sometimes you get into a situation where you have all kinds of crazy stuff going on in the background you don't want to show that you can use a grid to really isolate what's happening in fact, susan, if you're up for a crazy experiment, I want to show how a grid can really be cool. So kelsey any demory this is off the record like we're not planning to do this but we're gonna do it, so come on out we're going to try something here using grids okay, so I want to show you how how fun a grid is so we have two people hanging out so you're like what it's gonna be awesome we're going to do here is can I get my twenty four to seventy as well I am going to have a flash on a grid so kelsey let's just put this flash on your shoulder there we go and we're going to do this in e t l mode ok going to set this teo teo so I'm putting this mood back tio I'm setting this on slave so it's on slave there we go we need to make sure that I can see that you're blocking the camera here um so way we're going to use what is in there right now do you know ok we're going to use is a very restrained def um and this one right here is twenty five and put them together we'll just use twenty five just using twenty five going to stick this in our little holder here and these airlines they have to line up so I should have taken it out our job is calling for classes in missoula please I would love to my mom is calling for the same thing when are you gonna come see me she's in hamilton my sisters in hamilton so maybe we'll do it ok, so kelsey is going to go over here so I'll see what I want you to do is to um oh I also need to transmit here just I got it I want you to point that at susan but not jim to go over here playing it susan not jim okay, but yeah, over to the side and maybe get that up we'll hire I'm going to show you how these grids can help you isolate everything and so we have everything on dtl mode our ratio is off. Make sure that this is going to fire that firing. Yeah, okay, so I think you're missing her just a little bit to go to the right a little bit there we go and now what? We're gonna dio take a shot and check out this shot so we missed just a hair but you're going to see how these grids khun really really control the light listing one more where you go a little bit more there we go good see, we get one more so you're pointing at her? Yeah, a little bit there yeah, there we go to see how much we can really control the light here. So if you wanna carve light out you can you can just say here and not here. So that's what grids do so and that was it. I think of forty five to be grid right? Yes twenty five twenty five to three grid so we could have even restricted that mme or one of the things I love to do is in a lighting setup like we had with josh we needed more likeness on his face we could have used a grid and just eliminated his face and nothing else and so you can see how you can do some very interesting things with greens I love love grids it's cool yeah so that's what those do they allow youto car of light out now put this back to color no ok. All right well more question and they will do great fraud photo from toronto would like to know is it ok to use a one light set up when you're photographing couples sure you can use the one line set up for anything just you have to make sure that that light is flattering and it is something that they want so if you have a one light set up for two people at uh you know you're balancing ambient light I'd use an umbrella so we have my soft light um yeah you can use the one light set up what I suggest is start with one light if you can get the light that you want with one light then don't make it more complicated than it has to be just use one light and so I find myself more and more using just a single light for almost everything yeah, you can use one light for a couple or a group if you could get away with it yeah fact didn't we do one light with the group we did so yeah, you can absolutely do that