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Principals of Light - Part 3

Get to it okay unless you score for simplicity we're not going to freak anybody out in this then we're gonna just simplify we're gonna produce and we're gonna feel comfortable we're gonna be in control okay all right this is the part where I really kick it out britt so you guys need to stand up for something before I start you guys good you want water or something we're going to kick it out I took this picture to that three days ago my wedding in palm springs like crazy think before I start talking about speed like this is an example of where a speed like what's not needed this option for option for is in front of the scene and I'm thinking so I want flash and the answer is absolutely not I do not want I do not need it I do not want to enhance anything and I do not want to change anything I want the sun that's coming from the right to do the job that son was already there so then I turned the couple's faces stores it okay on I changed their bodies and look at the way the light was illu...

minating the wind the wind turbines in the bank and all these different stuff so take a moment oh read the scenery and they make a decision which option do you want you have need you have enhance you have change or don't use it at all okay oh my gosh oh my gosh look at these nerdy ass stuff going on okay? I mean nerdy stuff going on nerdy stuff going not not not ninety buttocks just dirty stuff happening here I'm going to go ahead and explain this and I thought long and hard and should I even go through this and the answer is yes I will because this stuff help me get a much better a grasp of flight okay on without this knowledge you just you just another person walking around a photographer means painting with light painting with light this photography means that means that two words out of what we do one word of those two words has to do with light and yet we have very shallow, very small understanding of what light really is. You know, this is our tool this is what we use light is nothing but little bundles it travels in bundles like this and it travels at crazy speeds and those little bundles are called photons oops! No photos photons this little bundles of dodos are bundles of joy is like torture this little bundle of joy are called photons very important thing to remember about what I'm going to say about those photons photons travel in a vacuum and they can also travel through matter that's a different story for example here can you guys see my camera for his water bottle? Can you see the black no not a lot of changes color yeah that's that's light traveling through matter ok the light hitting you in the face is like travelling through a vacuum and it's going to hit you out at the speed of light okay my eyes do not see you they only see the light is reflected out of your face my brain grabs that reflected light on each any manipulates it like a computer into what you look like including your eye color on your shoes in your pants in your hair and everything about you is nothing but light hating you my eyes darting see anything it crashes against you it explodes in all kinds of electromagnetic radiation is hitting you part of you absorb some of the select some of that electromagnetic radiation and then he spits it right back into my eye my eye grabs it take six of my brain my brain manipulation and there you are sarah beautiful photons weigh nothing okay so if you put a semi truck and you fill it up with photons will weigh nothing but he has energy this energy comes in two forms like trick on dh mag man tick so here's a photo on put a smiley face on that float on and he has two things going on one of them is elektronik electric one is magnetic radiation okay when this when this thing's air traveling through through space this radiation looks kind of like this whereas a magnet just kind of looked like this that's why this is a positive charges and negative charges the positive charges and negative charges the positive the negative charge so that equal is zero so if you put light next to a meadow doesn't attract it because it just keeps balancing each other out he cancels each other at zero okay? Because it goes from the top to the tooth top positive charge and then it goes right down to the negative charge anywhere it goes right back up to the positive church and right down to the negative charge on in the magnetic radiation actually kind of does the opposite it kind of goes like this so it kind of follows this way whenever the electric is down, the magnetic is up and they're like to send the magnetic is up and he just keeps doing that okay, while this is travelling through space guys, this little things this theta waves com a different speeds oops, sorry. This is where you get to this is where it gets interesting. Okay? These are the different frequencies that are happening on as the photon is traveling through the air. They all have these little things three of these happening one of them is red frequency, so the one is blue frequented is green frequency and they keep they keep happening and become a different levels and they're traveling when they hit you again when they hit you some of these frequencies the fact that they're different our eyes our brains change this and they equated well two color right? So you're a purple shirt it's just nothing but a bunch of photons hearing your shirt returning to me on your shirt absorbed some of the red channel some of the green channel some of the blue channel at different percentages and then he shoots it back at me and I create you have a purple shirt you have a blue shirt so you have sort of more of the red and green and the blue came back at me make sense which is really interesting and I'll explain why. So you understand what I'm saying here a fluctuation in the frequencies equals color. Okay, roberto yeah, I know yourself professed geek, but you got a little bit with the waves of light. I'm just I just kind of want you to give me a big picture as to why? Why that's important, please. It's not important. Just hey, it's important because our cameras behave have their own little brain and the way your camera sees those frequencies is different in your eye. You need to know what that camera looks like what the cameras thinking so you can make changes to the camera and be able to understand what was happening with color okay, this is the electromagnetic spectrum, right? All of the visible rays all of these little crazy invisible stuff going on with the frequencies and always stuff which is happening with your flashlight as well? Actually, all has all happens in this little tiny spectrum off color that your eye can see is a human being. Of course, if you're a machine, you can see x rays, and if you're you can see ultraviolet rays and if you're an insect, you can see actually, if you're in and you can see ultraviolet rays and so forth pure human, you can only see this little this little piece right here, it's the only visible range you have, if you would think a picture ofthe landscape and the landscape starts to turn kind of a weird color and you don't understand you don't see it it's a crush of cameras more sensitive to other spectrums so your camera can see more of a bio ultraviolet which I cannot so your eyes you'll see is the regular light the camera can see I was photographing the northern lights in iceland I might come round was seeing so much more than I could, you know, I was like, oh my gosh, look at that crazy thing take a picture of my god, where is it? I mean, it was like that, okay? Those photons the speed of the photons and all of that stuff when I start talking about flash you will see why they stuff starts to welcome together when you say why the heck do I need to know this stuff or you'll start seeing why the flash behaves the way thus sorry and I'm excited about that roberto I'm sure you are susan I'm sure that's the exciting part okay I love the science you know what people don't know we don't normally take five minutes to understand that ok and when you need to understand a little bit about how light behaves okay because we're dealing with like four photographers thank you bobbi there's three things about light that unit that we need to know that the main three there's a lot more than that but the main three that you want to keep a track off remember I'm trying to simplify the things here is the brightness of the light the color of the light on the contrast of the light whenever you look around in the park in the streets in a castle you're going to look for seventy five things now you're going to computer brain you're going for three main things what is the color of the light? What is the brightness level off the light and what is a contrast of light the light what is it doing on do you like it because you can change it all pretty much almost okay brightness of the light yeah, this doesn't necessarily mean intensity but let's just simplify it okay when you have to to generalize it brighter is better true brighter is usually better of course this is photography nothing's like something everything can be up to write but when you're taking a picture we don't normally go darn it I have to make I have too much light we usually say, darling, we don't have enough light so usually brightness is better intensity is how much of those again photons are hearing you in the face and extracting a force in your in your face if you're the subject okay, if you have a very few amount hearing in the face is gonna look weak and is going to look dead photons the more you have the moral life your picture will become but the photons hitting you in the face directly coming from like the sun or something like that could be too harsh. So you think about what level of brightness so you're talking about? What is the intensity that you're talking about? Um let's say you have the sun here the sun is shooting photons off light towards this here you have a person here and this guy is getting the full force of the photons on those under face and then there's like a red wall here and this is what this is red and the sum of the light hits this read and then you have red light hitting you in the face and this is actually really interesting here you have the sky right? This is again why this understanding ofthe light is important photons can attract cancan can change can pick up different frequencies that they touch see this is why we need to know because if you have the sun here and the sun is sorry where's, my racing I know I haven't any time, but I have a condition. You have the sun here raise off the photos that are hearing this person here are going to be more orange because of that the color of the light that comes out of sun. But as the photons start traveling through all of this sky, the sky is what color blue. So if you have a person farther away from the sun from this person, this person is gonna have a bit of a blue cast to them just because of the blue it's reflecting its like a blue wall it's reflecting the blue back into you. So if you're photographing someone in there close to the sun like you're you know nearby, you're going to get an orange, you automatically know fortunes were going to grab that is gonna change, the frequency is going to be read and you're gonna do a color balance if your person is far away from the sun, the sun is here and you're pretty far away from that son. You're going to have a more of a blue cast, which means you can grab your flash and put an orange light on this section to kind of match the orange night from this section. See what I'm saying. Did you know that the sky casts blue light on your subject as well? It's. Pretty nuts, right. Thank you. Thank you. If you shouldn't film and you have a lot of light, you have to. You have options or you should indigent. You have options. You can make your aperture smaller. You can increase your shutter speed. You can change your s o either way, the photo improves. So either way, the following proofs so brightness equals intensity equals good. Okay, one of the best exercises I ever did for myself and my career, wes, I was going to take a picture. Every picture I take for this exercise outside inside living room, kitchen park had to be taken at I s o one hundred. Which means what? There's? A lot of light. Okay, so what? My exercise was this no matter what, I'm not changing my eyes. I am taking this picture that I have so one hundred if the flash if the sun was good then I guess the one hundred was no problem but when I went into my kitchen I needed I have so sixteen hundred to make to make it look teo expose it properly but I didn't do that I pulled out my flashes on I created an environment that look like sunlight that gave me I s o one hundred does that make sense what I'm so when I went to the bathroom to take a photo there I had to create the lighting source I s o one hundred when I went to the window if it was cloudy I had to do reflect her I had to bounce the light on a reflector and then bounce him back on the subject so my camera would read a good exposure at s o one hundred and you keep challenging your brain to make the light that you need you wantto control the intensity in the brightness to your favor it's like cheating see what I mean the next one I already talked about so I'll go faster is the color of the light okay what color do you want what colors are you discussing now in in terms of color this is very confusing so I'm gonna try to explain it real quick I'll explain it on the next flight just remember the color of the light everybody knows when you wake up in the morning it's warmer, I said they goes by changes. It starts to change from fifty eight to sixty two to fit to, like, fifty two to forty eight and it starts to change to change to a lower and lower and lower. And then he was seen toe orange and any changes colors is you go when you hit a wall, it casts back color. How do you counter that color? Do you guys know what the worst color for photography is? The cameras just can't handle it. It's red cameras can handle red, so you have to put a blue jail and you have to compensate for that and it just it gets pretty complicated, right? When I'm in color of the light guys, I want you to try to go outside or whatever and see if you can read the color of the light. Do you look like you're half night warm light? Or is the light cool? What is the color? Take a second to read it, it's a mental exercise that can only help you. Okay, the contrast of the light, the last one, and they don't stop it there for now, in the chat rooms, well, you're probably wondering, why the hell does this have anything to do with speed life? On it us and I thought about the chat room people when I started preparing this the speed has come with a certain color temperature build in and you can attach different jails and different filters to compensate for the color that's there but how do you know what colors there if you never take the time to understand color in the first place? So if you're in the chat rooms wondering can you please get back to speed lights? The answer is I've been talking about billa's entire time, but you have to take a moment to understand what you're talking about it's not all shortcuts if there's a little knowledge a little know how ok flashers are daily balanced that means using to be ableto counter that balance with whatever the line situation is around you and if you do not know how to read the light around you, then you're kind of in trouble you're kind of a catch twenty two year kind of but at the first level again you're back a ground zero did I guess the chat rooms okay, so contrast of the light again chat room people and everybody here conscious of the life is incredibly important because this little speed lights are very small light source, which means they produced contrasting light okay conscious of the lightest is the light harsh or is the light soft on? Amy explained that one more time if you have an apple on dh and you have a light source on the light hit this apple on ly for four race out of a lot of race actually hit the apple, so we have four rays hit the apple for raising it in the apple from that exact angle going to create a very strong shadow off that apple the flash when he shoots it has a very small head and relative to most savages that we photograph so it's going to cast a pretty strong shadow coming around if this flash becomes bigger relatively speaking, then you haven't solved the shadow because what happens is if you're photographing on insect smiley face in that insect and then you put one of these delights on it it's going to hit the insect in many, many directions so the cheddar that he casts its now soft that's why when you have a cloud or whatever roberto matt says I'm photographing a family of insects tomorrow this is really good family except for this family offense six man we're getting hired by all kinds of things going on is like when the sun hits the clouds, the sun is going to the clouds are going to basically throw the light rays all over the place yes, I am talking about speed lights I'm going to bring it all back if you're in the chat room just be patient you'll see all this stuff comes out and then the person gets hit by light in all these directions it goes with the cloud does not make sense I know you have a very soft shadows going on so the conscious of life is very important on dh the size of the light it doesn't matter is the relative size off the light to our subjects that matter that you know that famous example of the sun being huge this is why people get confused sometimes the sun is a huge light source and how come a cast such a small light source type of light because it's far away so relatively is farther away you know this is this is like common stuff, right? The sun is so many millions of miles away that relatively to you you're like this size there's some things like this little thing so of course is going to cast an awful shot on you because you're being illuminated by a super bright source but he's super small compared to you okay on this all has to do with this when you point this dog's face those faces about one, two, three, four, five, six times bigger than this head that's going to cost a pretty nasty shot on him on his face we need to understand that is the relative size with light that matters not the size itself, okay do we have any questions that people have or are they just like what's going on question from k y f or katie? What do you mean by distance from the sun when speaking of the color of sunlight? Do you mean how lower high the sun is? Oh, yeah, no talking about the tray of distance. If you're being illuminated by a lot of blue sky, this is blue sky and the sun is over here because of the time of day you're going to catch this person's gonna have a bit of a blue shadow cast that is going to be the color off. The person and the color of the shadows here are gonna have a bluer cast, then somebody who standing closer to the light source. You see what I mean? Because he's warmer. Okay, let me go through one more slide. Perfect. We have about five minutes. Still ok, let me actually see something real quick. You got a lot of science there. Yeah, I know. I'm trying to figure out like when people are going to freak out or what? Um, this is very important because it's very confusing. When you're dealing with people. When you learn about flash and speed lights, you see all these books on instructors talking to you about that the light is a fifty five k but outdoors a sixty five k you won a balance the lives you put a tungsten jail on it because the tongues right and you keep discussing and people are like you lost me at hello man okay you lost me at hello because there's two things going on light is way have to be able to discuss light like we talk in a language of light in the language of flight is in we boarded from scientists from physicists on we boarded the kelvin scale the kelvin scale measures megahertz or hurts but because there's so many of them we just call them megahertz because there's millions of hurts who's lost okay, so the way we can discuss like if I want to talk to dog about light I talked to a dog about a certain calvin temperature of the light dog can say I understand that if I say hey dog would check out this light that ten thousand kelvin he'll be like, oh my god ten thousand kelvin that's freaking awesome is that red or blue who knows breath is that red or blue ten thousand serious blue extremely blue extremely extremely blue you see where I'm getting see where it gets confusing because cameras or the opposite right? So if you have like ten thousand kelvin this is like at at the bloom this is extremely blue on the frequency remember we're talking about frequencies before the frequency for this is like super super super super super tight wavelengths that are going on so many wavelengths that they are a ten thousand megahertz it's very small one so blue light has a lot of energy like like when somebody's calling welding you see that blue comes out out of the source and it's super hot and then it gets cooler and cooler it turns red julie you look like you're lost yeah that's ok that's ok let's put it this way if people get lost you have a fire here right you have a fire you started fire the hardest part of the fire is at the root of the fire what color is that flame julie what color or somebody is the hardest part off that fire it's the blue light or the way the blue light carries the most energy it's the hardest this is important you're dealing with speed lights or any kind of talk because when people start talking numbers about calvin temperatures you have two things going on that could be very confusing and it took a while for people to understand that somehow some genius and photography decided to reverse the colors for photography you reversed them why did you do that? Why did you not keep blew a thing at ten thousand kelvin because the cameras have this thing called white balance you're balancing the light so when you see ten thousand calvin which is extremely blue you try to balance it with the opposite number on the camera to create a balance when you shoot something blue um let me see here how can I explain that? Let me explain this okay this part here is blue as he gets cooler it's red on the frequency for red is a lot slower than frequency for blue it's a lot faster blue carries more energy red carries a lot less energy in it okay um photographers basically reversed it okay, I know this is this is not my fault okay don't kill the messenger I was inside why'd you do that but for talking for us basically say that anything that has blew a lot of blue they call it cool don't ask me why susan do you know why I don't know why somebody smart out there said let's reverse it for fun so if he has a lot of it has a lot of energy and he has a lot of blue because blue looks cold right I mean if you think of icebergs or or icer dead dead people probably julie's they're probably right blue means brill looks cold and red looks warm warm but the energy but the at visually it looks one way but I'm fine and that energy all backwards the end of the actual energy actually that that's carried by rose is the opposite correct and roberto I just want to let you know that you're speaking to a former astronomer so I worked in astronomy really? Okay that's pretty cool thanks. I think that's correct sarah that's right? Right visually were photographers so we went through the guys that change this that were visually which is going to visually communicate we're not gonna communicate through science on energy we're going visually communicate so when you see blue light let's call a cool when you see red light let's call that worm or hot okay, so when you have a light that's very red like a tungsten light go this will clear this up julie okay, this will clear this up you have a light that's a tungsten light right way having our house we call this we call these warm because there's an orange light because it's orange we call that warm okay the camera then has to go to the opposite side off the kelvin temperature to balance it so you tell the camera so the color of this it's warm in photography is warm warming's higher calvin temperature in photography. All right, so let's say this colored temperature is a thousand kelvin because he's one of the higher the number the warmer that more orange already becomes okay, what do you have to do to your camera to balance for eight thousand calvin temperature yes, you abou correct? So you tell the camera. Look, we have a very warm light in front of you. Let's. Call it eight thousand. Calvin because it's very orange. I need you to go into your little brain on add twenty, two hundred calve into it. So the twenty two hundred is going to be here on the actual light is a thousand calvin on dh? If you divide that by if you aren't divided by two, you get an average and you start to balance the light. So because, yes, I'm sorry. I said orange would be three thousand eight thousand still up in the blue room. That's, right open looking about the balance of the camera. The balance of the cover. If you have a thousand calvin light, you put your camera at two thousand four hundred or two thousand six hundred two balances. Okay, you want your brain to see us? Not as asked white light, not as orange light, so you need to balance it. Okay. White light is fifty, five hundred k fifty five hundred k means you have pretty close percentages off red, blue and green channels. So if you have red, blue and green channels, your brain sees that as white light if you have orange, if you have a very orange light like this you tell the camera you're goingto go, the other puts the opposite direction. You're gonna make it. This is going to balance into a closer value to fifty five k. Does that make sense? Your flashes are our daylight balanced. This is fifty five, fifty six whatever. Okay, so once you add this to the formula, when you are speed likes to anything, you're adding fifty five km whatever's hitting it, and this is gonna hopefully, when was the shooting. This will clear up a lot of issues with light. Why do we talk about calvin temperatures that way when it's so when you're talking scientifically is reversed, but when you're talking photographically red light means warm means high number and calvin temperature blue light means cold means lower calvin temperatures on this is kind of in the middle. This is fifty five k. Take a look at this wall here when I hit it. It's actually, just the color of their light is fifty five.