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Shoot: Using 7 Foot Silver Umbrella

I want to do one more thing with her and then we're gonna let her go for now and that is I want to put this big guy up we can pull that that umbrella down and put this one up there this is my beast and let me get this actress you see what this is? This is a I don't even know how to describe this but it's but it's scary thiss baby is seven feet it's from westcott and it's called the seven foot parabolic ninety nine dollars I don't know how they can sell this for nine nine dollars and they make three of them they make one that's silver which this one is they make one that's white and then it make one that's shoot through translucent well, I've got all three of their all awesome so that you think that's a seattle umbrella that is a seattle there you get your family under this one you know our mary poppins ok, so we're gonna put this guy up and you might want to let that rod come on through quite a few inches to just for the strength on this guy there you go perfect that's going to get rig...

ht about there great, I'll get right here, okay? So now I'm just going to spend this guy around and again we're just gonna bounce intothe parabolic part of this thing running they're kind of like that and all of a sudden, her face just sort of came toe life there. So let me get a reading on that. So I'm getting eight and a half as a reading. I think I want that to be just a little bit harder than that, someone of power that up just a little bit. So I'm going to go up to there and see if I can't get eleven out of that. Okay, well, I got eight point nine that's close enough. I got one more time. No harmful. Ok, I'll take it. I'll take it f eleven. Okay, so let's, take a look and see what's going to happen here and then again like we did on the last we're gonna swiller around and take a look. Okay? So turn your shoulders just a little when lean forward just a little bring your head around just a little and your eyes up in your eyes right at me chin up a little bit more right there, right there I said, eleven dimly way dio nobody moves and nobody gets hurt oh, that was good. Don't feel that one that looked good. Now then we're gonna like this one let's move that zoom in illness and check out these eyes, yeah. That's pretty fun, but here's the thing you guys here's what here's what's got to be discussed and this is the part that I hope I hope new photographers they're getting this part we've got we've got this sort of truncated, dynamic range of contrast so what I have to do my job is to make sure that that hissed a gram has detail. So my highlight, my brightest highlight. I've got some detail there looks like and my darkest shadow I've got some detail in there looks like that's what I have to do in order to make a print with full range detail isn't that what we're paid to do? Don't we have to have that kind of do we have to make sure I mean, if you want to lose the shadow side of life and let that go dark that's that's one thing, but you really can't lose the highlight side of life. So so the thing here is how many times would we be shooting all the stuff, trying to guess work to get this nailed to nail this? If we did have a meter, I don't know how we can not have a major can use them back on that for just one second and again let's just take a look I love the look of this silver umbrella look how close I'm working this thing now let's do this let's don't change anything except right now I'm kind of you can see this is aimed a little bit past her over here so now I'm going to do the exact same thing to the other side so I'm a spin it this way and go a little bit past her over here right? What you think's gonna happen? Where is the change gonna be background right? Okay let's take a look at her face again here we go good and tall and really no you haven't during your design here you go good, good, good, good good nobody moves in one second there we go right there. Great. I don't know what's right? You guys I really don't know which one you like in which one you don't like. What I do know is that everybody has different tastes and subject ms subjectivity to how this all sort of fits. You know any questions about that? You guys have any questions and then we talk about, uh this is just really cool. I love it. I love it. How bout in studio do we have any questions here in the room, ladies? Anything beautiful? Let's check. Just gonna make sure we're popping and while he's checking on which I will let you know that you know we're cheney about like rested lee no he's like you have to buy one of these umbrellas today way actually found it on sale for fifty dollars somebody just posted a link it's on sale for fifty dollars so from the way we do have so beverly would like to know about the shadows around the nose is that what they call loop lighting and is there such a thing as bad lou plating yeah yes oh so it is looped lighting but in this case depending on where the faces turned it can be more or less pronounced so can I walk over and point out something on the screen and be fine with that? I can travel over here so if you think about it the eye the headline in the eyes in the right spot I kind of miss that I am will fix that so you know photography to tony zero but the loop a loop light and its truest form is more often done with a smaller source with a little bit of a harder shadow and that loop would come down like this and I would just make a little bit of a loop down from her nostril. Okay? So that's more of a traditional loop and then where the rim brand basically comes in that shadow from the nose goes over to that shadow and it closes all that off so there's the triangle of light right there and I'll do that right now say how that works so that those were those were the two patterns that really are most often used in portrait photography especially and that's the things that we were all taught early on what's funny to me is if you talk to the traditional portrait photographers they'll have always lived and died by those four life patterns which are the rembrandt the loop split light where the face is split and then that paramount or butterfly light from above which is like shot number one in the middle over there so those are the four traditional life patterns that most people have always sort of lived by if you talk to fashion and editorial and commercial photographers of photograph people's faces for a living they've never heard of those four patterns they don't even know what they are it's just the traditional portrait guys that that's been passed along from the from the dutch masters from you know, the rembrandt days from the michelangelo davinci, rafael caravaggio all of those artists that used these patterns on the face and it had had a lot to do with the directionality of their life and their studios. You know, david, it was a divisional rembrandt had an interesting thing he was one of the few painters that with when when painting and they always painted exactly what they saw, they didn't try to fix it in post right that is sort of painted what they saw so most of the painters, when they were paying with window light is their source, of course, if if if here's my window and you're painting me here and they had a guy sitting like this lean toward the window like this, his hand is closer to the window and most of their paintings, that hand would be brighter than the face, because it's, closer rim brand had a way of doing this where that hand wasn't brighter than the face and the way he did it was the way he placed his subject in his studio. He had he had little strips of columns in his windows, and he had any had fabrics that he could bring up from the floor and clip so that they could knock off light on the lower third or the lower half of his subjects. He vignette id his like qualities, none with his brush but from the light source itself, and so he would have this person move forward until this hand was basically covered by this post, and all of a sudden they'd come forward like right there don't move so another faces so get in line with their hands behind the post, so the handles darker, these guys were giants, huge giants they knew so much about light and contrast and feeling and emotion in the my gosh, we're hacks you know we're just hacks compared to those guys and we get it done that fast how long did it take him to do that work oh do we have the patience for me if I wanted to see a pretty quick I'm kind of done with it you know makes sense let me real quick do let me close this up and look at a rembrandt here so let's do this um let me just bring your head back around this way a little bit more right about there and can just put that hair back on your left side mostly just one building to your left eye really good good good good night just bring you around right there and I'm just going to move this around it's kind of a challenge to see because of all the studio lights and tony when you move the umbrella do you re meter oh I wouldn't meet her all the time measure twice cut once for her yeah yeah I have to you know I mean you can't get into a rhythm of knowing exactly where you are and kind of get away with it I'm in eight in the third by the way you can kind of get away from it but you know when you're in the studio you know you know how much you moved it it's like I think I moved it a third and just something that we haven't necessarily talked about much I have been easily missed what power setting is the delight itself on right now it's on three power which is out of a possible five power so I'm down if it's five hundred watts seconds one stop down would make it a two fifty one seconds one stop down would make it a one twenty five summit one twenty five what seconds? Which is not a lot of like and I'm still shooting up there pretty good so we're doing okay what? And you haven't bangs issues okay, here we go lean forward and bringing head around again right left there let me just take a look it's really hard to see this light patterns him down a tiny bit forming down, down, down, down, down right there in your eyes right about here yeah that's it right there don't move so look at this now you'll see this triangle of light now it's hard to see it because because of the because of all the life in the studio but you can get the idea and this is one of the things that rembrandt sort of introduced and and and he got known for its called remember and light but he really didn't use it that much. Um, you know, a lot of the cinematographers talk about there's a guy named vilmos zsigmond who most people have never heard of, but vilmos zsigmond is a is a brilliant cinematographer that did hey was that he was this dp on set for close encounters for spielberg murder scene with a little boy opens the door and there's that baseship it's back let me just gives it zigman let that he lived that scene and he always talks about this kind of like quality and he always says you know the dutch painters asshole the studies the most and he says most people think that all those old artists use always soft light and he said not true and he said especially of the dutch the dutch painters did that they wanted that chiseled feature of the light two to delicately outline the features of the face and that's how they would set that light they would find the right time of day to paint they could paint for an hour and then had to start painting because the light moves are changes like this girl exactly the same thing not too shabby yeah yeah but why did he get the f four lands? Well because of that love it yeah so we have a couple of folks bunch different folks so I'm not going to read everyone's names but a lot of people who are basically looking at buying an umbrella like this and are wondering about the difference between the shoot through a parabolic you know all those different things and then also wondering about the flexibility about whether you can for example bring it in closer and get a wraparound soft bach effect soft box effect yes to all the above. There you go, what's interesting to me is that when this first came out the first time I tried this light, um, I was pretty astonished. I'm thinking, mom, I'm going to use a silver umbrella it's too big it's, silver it's going to be too speculative and, you know, and then I started testing it, and so I did some side by side test with a gun and that teaches and brooks institute in santa barbara, california, named tim mayer who's, one of my great friends and a genius. When it comes to lighting, tim said, you need to really look at this side by side because I'm finding things here that I didn't know existed and what we found was that with the silver seven foot umbrellas, we were able to finally see that side by side with the white in the silver, we weren't getting more speculative hot, shiny light with the silver, it was just giving us more output, but we're still getting the same like quality, so the silver became more efficient. But I didn't degrade the quality of my light source and that's what I was afraid of, so I was just I was completely thrilled when I when I realized what was going on when you when you shoot with the white one do you still see the ribs of that umbrella in the catch like that is so cool you do yeah, that that exists it's just they're so it doesn't really do with the reflection of now and so is a softer light than with the white versus the silver because that first just more power I think it's just more power I mean I mean, you know the case could be made that the white is a little bit softer but to my way of thinking uh due to the size itself it's going to be soft up close no matter what you do right now, the challenge here is that most photographers that I know won't use it up close they wanted for faraway well then then it's far away and you're getting great light and it spreads everywhere but it's going to be hard edge shadows that's pretty that's even that's priest that's not too soft on those shadows and look how close it is to her. So it really is and this is the first thing we're going to talk about tomorrow morning size relative distance it's all about the quality that light and there are subtle changes in subtle controls that we have that we're going to hit pretty hard tomorrow for sure tomorrow tomorrow's a work day I mean tomorrow we got we got stuff to do tomorrow we got a lot of stuff to do, then wednesday is a play day wednesday, we're taking pictures and we're laughing and we're creating, but today is the tools tomorrow is the like qualities like quantities, and then we get to play on wednesday, so but I do think that we do need to pay attention to, uh, all of our own results of our tests, you know, I think that, you know, I remember a guy one time saying, hey, pro tested, when someone would say something from the stage and and I would say protest, he said, yeah, pro meaning for for testing and say, I'm all for testing, I want to test it, but you have to be careful as an instructor and as you know think that was very nice of somebody say I was more of a teacher than instructor, I appreciate that. I think that as as I take that on, is a responsibility, and that is I have to test all this stuff out, and it works to be true oh, empirically meaning for me and my taste and my meter and my client and my camera and my studio and my life and my light stand and how I like it, how you choose to interpret all of the stuff that we're doing this week is totally different. You guys are going to have wait and you guys going to a lot more with this on paper done with this, you guys will take it, places I've never even thought of. I see work today that I am so excited about. I wish I had done it, take about twenty one year old kids, and I just shake my hand. Good thing it, man, I wish I could see like that. I can't. I understand how they did it, but I can't do it. I don't think of it. I don't have that kind of a brain, so I wish I did so nice, right? Yeah.