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Crazy Stupid Wedding Light

I got twice as much content for you, so get ready strap it in guys because we're going to get going all right? Uh crazy stupid wedding light okay, so when it comes to weddings how to keep a say in this insane world every wedding is different and unique each have their own set of challenges I kind of estimate that it takes about fifty weddings to kind of see everything okay? So it's like when you're first starting out with wedding photography, you go to a wedding and go and you didn't realize, oh, shoot, I didn't know howto shoot and low light in this ceremony and you think, ok, I'll do it better next time and then you go to the next time and it's like, oh, wow, this is bright light at the beach I I wasn't prepared and then you go teo so there's always something that you're learning that you feel like I just messed that one up and so but it's a learning process and you'll get by and as I'll I'll teach later that you really don't have to be overwhelmed with weddings because really all yo...

u need is about fifty shots that tell the story of the wedding day that's all you need and then I'm going to go through and give you those key shots those money shots it's gonna earn you a lot with this with their weddings but right now let's talk about light okay on and the number one question for creating wedding wow, iss does baby got back light okay, so everything is about back light when in doubt. Backlight okay, just do it. It works, but weddings are about and you saw this picture yesterday. Backlight is a key ingredient. A tte ingredient for creating romance and drama. They it just really fits the wedding theme and that imagery so learn to use it a lot, right? Ah, simple thing here is using that back light. We saw this shot yesterday, posing the couples just back light everything. This is a particular shot. I envisioned this shot before the wedding. Um, so I you know, I said, oh, you know, they're going to be walking down this area when it be great if they were walking down and he took her hand and he kissed it and I've set a flash back there to make me believe that there was sun and so I thought of that exact same shot before I did the wedding. So bring a lot of vision to your weddings, too, and the more tools that you have, the more skill that you have, the more things that you can pull off and then you feel like you're macgyver, everybody see that remember that show that you know you got like three pieces of duct tape and a timex watch and you couldn't make an atomic bomb you know that's what it is the wedding photography just got some light and you just got then you just make it happen you just put it you don't have a greatest setup but you put it on this ledge and pointed one way bounced the light off the wall or whatever and bam there it is that's what's fun every wedding to me was a challenge it was like a puzzle and so I would go to it and I would like okay what challenge is going to come to me today bring it on I'm going to see if I can conquer this thing and it got to be very fun and challenging and it pushed me to be innovative pushed me to try to do better than the next time and that's what I loved about what photography we did this poem I showed you how to do this pose yesterday in one minute right but two chairs down kind of perpendicular to each other sit him down bam shoot it I think I'm not sure fight on my instagram I kind of showed the picture that I took so it's there and we talked about this shot you know? We all do these shots I don't necessarily like wanna live on these types of shots where the bride and the groom look the same, but it's great and but when we talked about landscape shots where the landscape really is is the key to the shot and then the couples that just adds accenting the landscape and but it still has back light on it. Backlight here this's in italy, venice okay, backlight here everywhere you can see it even on the way we do that today, yeah, we are going to be doing I mean, of course we don't have a grammy award winning singer with us, but we're going to be doing that today. Life is going to be fun, we're going to just sit, try to set it up right here and we're going to do my signature reception lighting I you know what? This is gonna be great because it's going to be a really life situation because I did not predetermine the settings or anything. We're just gonna come in here and get it to work even though this situation is a little bit different than a reception is not as dark, but I'm goingto just you're going to see my thought process and we're just gonna work it out first dance so light is beautiful, romantic and mysterious bastos of blessing from above on your subjects that's really what I feel what light iss it's so magical I was I don't know I was really listening cem techie lecture talking about physics or something like that and they they said that they can eva been described like they haven't really put off they can't get a grasp on it yet and they said it can on lee best be described doing some sort of formulas or something in the fourth dimension I don't even know what that fifth dimension I don't even know what the fifth dimension is because there's only for that exist that we know of right three dimensional space that we have and then with the other dimension is time so what the heck is the fifth dimension but anyway that's what they described light at and I think einstein went went crazy near the end of his life because actually he said that the speed of light is constant but now they're finding out that is actually slowing down and they have no idea what that means so it's very mysterious we don't we can't even define light but we always knows that we love it and it makes our pictures look right so use it right it's just a gift from the heavens and just use it okay look it even back like and loan can work for you on dso just by itself it works pretty cool with one of you if you jail the background over its color it looks even better okay here's a revolution idea revolutionary idea number one and I talked a little bit about this yesterday and it goes into how do what is my signature style? What is my e equals m c squared when it comes to lighting and I came up with this term called sandwich lighting and you sandwich the person with light and what it is is that you get the main light the way you want it, the light on the subject it could be, you know, right they're evenly exposed or it could be a little bit under exposed I like to do it sometimes a little bit under exposed on then on the back light this other half of the sandwich you do anything you want to do a complete freedom, okay? And it really frees your mind because I know a lot of times we were taught all we have to have this race you or that or do this or do that, but you know what? I'd like to just explore all different options sometimes I expo's over exposed a lot sometimes I just do it a little bit whatever I'm feeling or whatever I feel fits the mode and that's what you're doing and so what is this this kind of formula that's so simple like this it's freeing your mind and bringing out the creativity but still giving you some results that looked really good so that's what it's really about its freedom and so my kind of rules that I do yours could be different I don't know is that I use kind of slightly under exposed a lot for the front light and then on the back light I overexpose it and I know probably the reason why I flunked out of college was I used to watch a lot of movies, right? So I watched a ton of movies and I think actually that helped with my lighting and that also helped with my composition watching movies when you go watch a movie and you pay for it, you can write it off because it's a learning right? I'm not getting it issued write it off on eso and I noticed I would get really mad when I'm watching the lighting set first of all when I would watch really good movies, they always have some kind of rim light or some back light on the subject just to define it. And then second of all, I noticed that a lot of times they underexposed the exposure I would get like they're under exposing the exposure don't they'd know that they're getting paid millions of dollars it's under exposed I would get all upset of whatever I get, you know like, oh that scene and then I started to realize, you know what they're getting paid millions of dollars they know it's underexposed why, if I can I kind of think I figured it out it's because when some nothing is slightly under exposed it makes you focus in closer to that subject, right cause you kind of want o c it's not just obvious. Oh, there it iss but it forces the viewer to kind of focus in on that subject, so I oh, that is an interesting idea. So I started using that with some of my lighting techniques. Okay, so here's a very classic type of, you know, evenly exposed, exposed on this subject. And then you know that back light there, uh, which was just a simple flat. This wasn't shade. This was incomplete shade, but I wanted to give it some dimension, so I exposed her, and I just popped a little catch light in her eye with my one of my little video lights. And then I took a flash on the other side with the orange gel a cto. See, teo, does anybody know what cto is? Stands for color temperature orange. So it's orange jail to give me that orange light and I just put it across her back that way, but that's a very textbook classic look to it, so then you get into wedding photography and you see a lot of this this style is very, very but popular and I kind of term it the classic modern style because it's almost like classic look now because everybody does it but it's just been done within the last few years on so what that iss is there's a lot of back light and it's over exposed on the back and it's because people don't know how to use flash that's the reason why this this look became popular is because they put the light behind the subject it makes the subject darker so the in order for them to see see them you have to over exposed on the subject but it blows out the back light so if you're going to do this type of look it's best that you have a dark something darker in the background or east or elsewhere background will be completely blown out it'll be all white s so if you're going to do this style make sure that something is dark behind you because that background is going to be over exposed at that point and here's something that we're going to actually in the next segment two we're going to actually do this type of shot where you're just using backlight on lee as a rim light and I'm going to show you you can do this shot anywhere in the world any time and you could do it probably within one shot maybe two shots bam I'm going to give you I'm gonna hand over the formula you don't even have to know guide numbers or anything of my little chart you just write down what I tell you and damn its gonna work okay great. You're wearing a hat too still to be perfect so guess who's gonna be our model here's a situation where it's that underexposed feel to it right in the movie scene you could so you could go either way you could go this way and kind of under expose it and created mysterious or you can just you know, make it evenly exposed uh I just messed around with it in light room and this is actually the reason why I just shoot in j pick because if I could do this and j paige then I'm cool what I did wrong ok good enough for me, ma'am. So that's well that's another subject j peg role which probably don't want to get into but anyways yes I shoot in j peg I must confess that's all I do is steven j bag there's another look there too well, we did that pose yesterday right? That's the face to face but we're the faces that the bodies there are facing each other but we you make the heads do a tea right and who my featuring here, right? Right. Okay bigger is better okay how to find quality available light so the first thing on wedding day is you need to really learn how to find quality available light. It is a must if you saw me, uh, shoot a wedding. I'm mostly living in a way. I know I'm supposed to be this flash guru and whatever, but I use available light a lot. That is my first choice is available light because it could give you a very, very nice look. And let's explain that. How do you know when you're in great light is when you seek hatch lights, okay? And what that isthe are those those little white dots and the pupils and that's. What gives the magic to that photo? And that tells you that you're in a great lighting situation and let's go a little bit on why that works. Okay, so look at this is the same image. Ok, but I what happens is when you are going looking for catch lights it's giving you directional light, big light from one source area. And when you do that, you actually see the highlights. Come out. You see the bright spots. So I purposely under exposed that so you can see the the bright spots and the highlights that come out and makes the person glow. When you have those highlights especially if they have dark skin that's why I love shooting people with dark skin and you bring them in a nice light situation and they just got these pockets of light that and it seems like their skin is glowing is because you know the five points glow they teach that in classic painting I guess whatever it is right the five spots who invented that which pay knitted I don't know it's classic right rembrandt who knows but right so it's like the top of the head, the chin, the two cheeks and the nose so that the five points that are going to give you that glow uh, right? And then you'll see other parts that also glow, so if you look at it, um you need toe under expose the subject because ok in your camera let's, if you aaron, this is why you need to go to manual mode because when when you're in automatic mode, you get this sort of picture where your camera is seeing the what what's the predominantly the dark hair so it doesn't know between hair and face a lot of times so is trying to expose that hair evenly and it's going toe over exposed that image and in your camera is gonna look like that because it's trying to expose the hair properly when you're in auto mode but when in your manual you can control it and say, hey, you know what? I don't want this evenly exposed a lot of dark is showing its tricking the camera I need to put it in manual and I need to get that glow in the face so I need two under expose it a bit so that's why you gotta ride your manual and you've gotta learn to go into available light and actually under exposing a bit that's what I find when I'm coaching newer photographers is we'll do this exercise in natural light and I'll be looks way too brightness that take it down stop laurette because you need thio find that glow that great light that you found is going to make that skin glow and you've got to see that and you do that by slightly under exposing it okay so finding big light okay, how do you do that? Well big light it's it's directed or channeled light passing from a very large source to a narrow space that will create directional diffused or filtered light light from the window archways tunnel hallway to all's whatever etcetera ok in this particular photo here okay where's that light coming from this is in paris by the way during one of my workshops is an awesome place to shoot we had that entire place this mansion to shoot for the entire day it was the place where horse racing was originated it's a huge grounds but this year we're going to preciso anyways but anyways I die gress will be going there drinking coffee together stuff like okay so where is the light coming from? On the subject this is a brain everybody notice sabrina from jsa their awesome photographers but anyways, uh I was taking some pictures of her okay? Where? From the yacht. That door, right. Those that windowpane so where it it's the light outdoors which is a huge source funneling in through those windowpanes there and that's what's giving me that nice light. Now in photo shop I had teo exposed her legs a little bit mohr because there was some fall off in the light but in general on her face that light was beautiful where's the nose pointing towards night and that's how I get that shadow her cheek to define her cheek. Okay, and so is that large source funneling in giving you a nice soft light and that's a gold mine right there, here's another situation where I've got some beautiful light and you can use kind of see the highlights in the skin right and so I know about highlights somebody some people ask me about how you scott, I just love it how you make your skin glow all the time. Well, first of all, to have skin glow, you have to put it in a great lighting situation. You can't skip makes skin look, go good when you're not in a great light, you're not using big, soft light. So first of all, you have to have big, soft light. And then what you do you know about this glowing is that you exaggerate slightly the shadows and you exaggerate the highlights and that's why it looks like it's schooling and then usually skin smoothing techniques and that's basically my technique for post processing. But it all starts. I could on lee do this when I started learning how to find a good available light. So here it wass it was an area where light was coming through kind of a channel way and we opened up the four doors. So let that light in, and it just casting beautiful light on her here's another situation here where it was in between two walls and the light was coming through here's another situation here. Uh, where? I don't know if I show it. Yeah, here it is right here. Don't you love that skin? How is glowing it's great, okay, these air also two of my students. But I just had imposed together because I always wanted to do this loki look and so this okay, the girl on the left is lisa and you're actually going to be able to hear her story this was her very first workshop that she went to about three years ago and she's the only one that I know that we're in less than a year she came with her digital rebel and her kid lands at this workshop okay? Within one year she became a world class photographer she's the on ly person that I've ever meant it that has gone that quickly climbed up the ladder and you're going to hear her amazing store what she's doing now in day three but anyway here it wass I always wanted to do this type of look so I said, well to make this work dude you're gonna have to take your shirt off and it's like okay, fine, I'll do it on so I find this light okay now this is in a very low lit area okay? And there's a not a lot of light in there at all but it's not the quantity of light it's the quality of light and to take advantage of technology now we can raise our cameras toe so whatever now sixteen hundred I think I had the five d at this time I only have a five d okay this shot is with a five d and it's with that hundred dollars fifty millimeter one point eight lens and this shot has been seen around the world it's won awards and that's all I used to take this shot but it's finding that quality of light so you can find great quality light and very dimly lit areas so if you put a fast lens on and you turn your s o up you're unstoppable okay? Because now at that point all you just rely on this you can go anywhere in the world and you can find these little pockets of great light and then when you bring your bride in your groom and you bring them to a dark lit area and then you pull off a shot like that they're going to go wow, I I thought it was too dark in here you are amazing and anybody you know shooting over your back they probably won't get it right because they're probably over exposed to shot anyways because they're in auto mode and urine manual so that's just some great natural light and then a little video light behind to create that edge let's sandwich okay it's not the quantity but the quality of light here I just used light from the window and that's just in a hotel conference room and sew the hat kind of access my separation light and what it wass wass I just close the curtains down to give me a strip box just took the curtains closed it all the way down and then now I've got this huge strip blocks and just put my subject right there to create that light here again remember what pose this with the hands remember what was so unique about this what it was the plot it was to write what was he was the polite clap and and hands the heart all at the same time and who the only person in the world I mean I photographed a lot of people but this is the only one that has done that okay so the same thing I reposition the chair so she could turn her head towards the light I close the curtain down to give me that nice soft box and bam there it is doesn't it look like her skin is glowing? I exaggerated it I took the the shadow parts I made it darker and took the highlights and I made it brighter and ban it looks like it's glowing and I also probably darkened down the background a bit too to give it that kind of uh feel to it nose towards the uh you got it nose towards that it doesn't we know this post right we know this pose same thing I pulled those curtains down around so they just give him a little strip of light right there bam okay, soft shadows when you see soft shadows on the wall put him around their shadows creating mystery okay? And it makes your it takes your photography to that next level because there's some mystery to it right ladies, don't you like those guys with a little bit of mystery to them? Right? Okay, same thing with your photography creates a mystery once in awhile used those shadows and you might have to it might take a while to move subjects were their nose pointing towards okay see there's half the posing that I'm serious that is half of it so I'm going into situation you're completely confused and I don't know what to do I'm just not feeling it today I'm it's that time of the month and I'm emotional and yeah wow okay and so you go in there, okay? Calm down. Okay where's, the light coming from ok the light's coming from those windows all I know is that I need to face everybody that way and I just got a break their spine have them look over their create different heights and I got my shot so you just bring it down to very simple things that helps bring that chaos of that day down to a manageable type of situation. Okay, now when you do that when you do find that great light to see the catch lights in their eyes it was you could see that it has some great light in there, but it didn't look this great in the beginning I had to do something to it and how this situation is is that you can run into light contamination will first of all, I put them by that sliding door there because that was the best light so that light coming through the site sliding door was very great light but as you can see, was very dim light because what's my eyes so thirty two hundred so you know that it's not a lot of light, so but it's good light, but what? So because it wasn't very much good light come it was a very little light coming in there was this other light in the chandelier contaminating the area so didn't look like the light was coming from one direction so that glow and their skin on their face was not coming out. So you're losing glow when you get, like from all over the place. So what do I do is I gotta turn it off, so I went into hey, why wait this is not working because this is very little bit of light on them, so any other light that in the area is going to seep in because I got my eyes sew up that was thirty, two hundred so any little life I was just going to flood into that area and it's going to take away from your glow so you have to turn it off and that's what I do a lot of times during wedding day is that I'll get this nice light and I go okay, what other lights around here it's not making it lie like and then you turn around, turn some lights off here and there and then you just get that one light from that one direction on them and then you could create some back light if you want to. Okay, turn off ceiling light if light is not behind some checks. Okay, here it is again where's the light coming from that door so I use doors a lot um like especially when I'm at home in the living room and I want to take a picture of my kids they already know they just go by the door because I just open the door up and I haven't stand there we have a really small place that's just over the door happens down there and they just nowhere to go and take a picture there here is light from an overhang. So what happens on overhead? This is kind of an overcast day, so it's not the look is not as exaggerated but you can see that you see the glow on them you see that the light that quality of light is there and how this is working here and why this works is this son will come down and it will reflect off the ground and go back into your subject. Now, if you have very, very bright light and there's a overhang, what I do is that creates a shadow, right? So there's places where the sun hits and then there's shadow on the ground. I put my subjects just past that shadow area because deck around, right before there is my reflector. So you have a natural built in reflector if you just goto overhang and there's light coming down and you can use that and it gives you that beautiful up light coming through. And that was that situation on that shot there. Okay, notice that this is the same situation. Do you notice the catch light on the bottom of rye so that light is actually coming up? See the glow on her skin that I kind of enhanced? Maurin photo shop it's that's. Because that's, that light is coming through an overhang it's hitting the ground and bouncing back up and giving you up light up light creates glow. It really enhances if you want to make your subjects glow out, we can demonstrate little. Now I'm not going to say that cause it might not have time but if you take your video lights right and I and I do a little bit of up light it makes that that subject really glow and I love a plight okay how do you use harsh light son harsh sunlight that's a situation right like oh my gosh it's two o'clock especially living here in seattle or canada vancouver the sun never sets so you got a harsh light situation almost all day right until like six o'clock seven o'clock eight o'clock nine o'clock okay you're good to just be in harsh light of course you probably get extremely long sunsets which is cool but how do you go and work that situation when you have harsh light what's the first rule that I say nose to the light okay you still use that rule? Okay? Oh, sorry that's not this like this what the easiest way to do harsh light is you can create a silhouette I think that's the easiest way to do it so that's one option but well here's another option that people don't think about and when I said no so the light right hold on that shot their harsh light situation you still put the does till the light just having close your eyes you don't have them look into the sun but you create oppose with again you don't know what to do you see a shadow on the wall you put him over there the nose towards the light the post is done for you you knew about ying and yang and you knew about like oh ok if I using that v to frame the head I've gotta have something on the other side so if I do this then I got to do something back here and I can't break the spine so there there's a post it's easy peasy you just break it down, calm down and you just go follow those rules and you're gonna get something and then that other top half of that shot like I mentioned yesterday was just done in light room so theoretically they could there could have been no shadow there at all and you couldn't create your own shadow so I want to see this shot for you guys okay? Just go out and bright light there even then that doesn't even have to be a shadow just pose it like this cools their eyes create two shadows and light room bam there you go using the grady in't tool uh if you don't know how to do that stuff, I'm sure creative live has like a billion in four videos on photoshopped that will teach you how to do that for ninety nine dollars so go get it here is another one where you're looking for shadows and it's a little bit different, but it's the same concept I was in a little narrow between two kind of buildings and because of the sun and what it was hitting and the shapes of the buildings, it was creating this different shatter shadow pattern and I love shadows. I'm looking for shadows all the time and I saw this pattern and I go, oh, that would be great if I kind of used this pattern of dark light dark and put my subjects in there and so I had to pose there there it's not the best post in the world because it very awkward because I was just trying to use natural light on dh got her face featuring her and then kind of just threw him in there and created that but it was looking for that dark light dark situation here is another we were on the great wall of china here and, uh it was very bright heard noses towards the light she's closing her eyes. The wind is blowing and I used to flash is to give me the sandwich on the back end. So what's gonna happen if if you don't use the flash on the other end what's gonna happen is you're going to expose for the face, right and that's very bright so what's happening now is if you're exposing for the face, then behind her is going to be very, very dark, right? Because the sun's not shining on that, and you're exposing for a very, very bright area. So it's going to create even more contrast in your picture. So in order to see that detail on the other end, I used to flash is on the other end. Two opened up that other, and so I sandwiched her with light.