July's giveaway, Light Blaster, Nero Trigger. Look at the end of the video.
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Today on The Slanted Lens we're shooting a style life shot of a girl with an umbrella
being blown by the wind. Just a fun exercise in lighting and also a look at
just simple set pieces. We'll create our environment with three elements. Number
one, clumps of grass in the foreground. We're going to bring these closer to the
camera and further from the camera, just kind of space them out. Closer we get
them to the camera, the larger they're on the foreground and more of the frame they
cover. They also give us more depth as they fall out of focus in the foreground.
Number two is a tree branch overhead. We have tree branches held up by a clamp in
the foreground on a combo stand. This is going to frame the top of our frame to
give us just a little bit of framing overhead. Number three is a backdrop. It's
grey and mild kind of looks like stormy sky. Just non script makes a nice
background for us. I also created a small structure for her to lean against to give
the impression she's leaning into the wind. Last of all, we're going to add wind
and leaves to create action in the frame. Let's get started. I'll be shooting on the
24-7mm Tamron lens at about 63mm. I set the aperture wide open at 2.8 so my
depth of field is very shallow. I'll set my shutter 160 to the second to slow down
the leaves but not stop them. Then the ISO set at 250
to make the other settings possible. Let's
look at the lighting breakdown. Our first light is a Dynolite Studio Head with a
medium soft-box with a grid. These Dynolite Studio Heads have very nice soft
quality about them, makes a very nice light. We're now at a three background
lights. These are three PhotoFlex Flex Heads. They're going to be on the floor
aiming up towards the background. I want it to be darker at the top and light at
the bottom. This gives me a sense of depth or the sun kind of going down. Our last
light is a Dynolite Travel Head with no modifiers or rim light. That's going to
give us a nice hard light in the left. It'll rim her, it'll rim the grass. It
gives us just a lot of depth, makes for a nice look. Everything is ready now, we're
going to go ahead and start the shoot. In order to get the dress up so it catches
the wind, we've fishing lines tied in about three places that will help pick the
dress up, let it catch little wind underneath it, and the guys now start to
throw leaves into the fan as we shoot its frame.
This process is slow and gets a bit tedious as we have to throw leaves and
lift the dress after each shot. To create the flowing look at her dress, Julene
took two dresses from H&M and layered them one on top of the other. The top dress was
cut all the way up and the bottom dress was slit just above her knee. This gives
us lots of fabric to blow in the wind. Julene will go in and PhotoShop, kind of
clean up the the rough edges. Here's some of the unedited
images using the structure.
Here are a few where she did not use the structure and just leaned forward. You
know it really doesn't look that bad, I think this is almost as effective as the
structured and maybe one of the ones I'll use. This really will become a composite
image when we're done. In post Julene will take several images and composite
them together. Leaves from one and a dress from another, a body from one and a face
from another. I want the background a little more out of focus so she'll outline
the girl and make it a little more soft in the background. Let's take a look at the
final image. I love this type of image, I find the shoot and create a great product.
Now it really doesn't take a lot of large elements to create a great looking large
set. We've got some old grass and tree branches I cut down from my yard, that
really becomes our set. So get out there, take those elements around you, create
some interesting environments. Keep those cameras rolling, keep on clicking.
Here's our international giveaway for the month of July. A Light Blaster and a Nero
Trigger. Go TheSlantedLens.com and sign up. Don't miss out.