In this video I'll show you how using
lighting props and a bit of
post-processing, can add some character
to your location portraits.
hello I'm Gavin Hoey and
you're watching AdoramaTV,
brought to you by Adorama, the camera
store that's got everything for us photographers,
and in this video I'm
going to show you how I add some
character to my location portraits.
So the first thing you've got to think
about on a location portrait, is the location.
This adds the character straightaway,
and today I'm at an abandoned building
here at the Gatwick Aviation Museum,
that's about to be demolished any day
now so it's empty more or less,
and also really echoing in
here as well.
So the location is the key
to getting your character,
but then there's other things as well.
So let's add some more...
after the location the next most
important thing by far is the model,
so today I'm really lucky because
I'm working with the amazing Beth.
Beth's gonna be the model for this,
and we need to talk about the styling of
what she's wearing...
so we could have gone for
something that fits in with the grungy
theme of this location,
or we can do what we've done here,
and do the exact opposite.
So we've gone for something stylish,
a nice red dress it should
counterpoint this location really well.
Character comes in all sorts of ways,
and one of the things you can do to add
character is lighting control.
So if the light in this room was absolutely
perfect, I could just shoot with the
available light, but I want to add my own
light to create some character.
So first things first,
what is the ambient light like?
So let's just take a little test shot.
Beth I've gone for about an 1/80th of
a second f/2.8, ISO 400,
and I can see some of the ambient light
coming through.
I like the light in the background,
there's a bit of light on the foreground
but not much on Beth,
and that's where the flash comes in.
So all I have to do is either by trial and
error, or by getting my flash meter is
make my flash match my camera,
and we should be good to go.
So let's just see, that's f/4,
that's just a little bit too bright.
We'll bring that down in power until it
matches f/2.8 and I'm good to go.
I'm gonna try doing it really low down.
just so we can.. ya just to get a
different look and feel... ok....
ready 1 2 3,
surprisingly difference just by closing
one door at the back makes to the
pictures, really bring these to life.
So location and styling and lighting can
get you quite a long way to add some
character to your pictures, but
ultimately you're going to need some props.
Props do a couple of things, they
can help to tell the story of your image
but more usefully they give you
something for your model to do.
If you want to get some character there's only
so much you can do if you just ask a
model just to stand there.
If they can interact with something that's
always a good thing,
so what have we got for props?
Well we have a weird random red balloon...
and we have a bit of fabric,
we have random odd things like a red
umbrella, we've got a flag, and there may be some
smoke involved later in the video..
watch out for that...
so I think what we're gonna do with this
one is, you're going to hang on to it a
bit like a shawl, just keep it over your
shoulders with two hands, and then we'll
get Sam around here just to give it a
little bit of a kind of a throw in the
air....
one two three....there it goes....
go against as it's totally uncontrollable.
Okay are you ready?
Okay... give us a spin...
boom, yeah, okay.
Let's try that again.
Ready... give us a spin,
excellent that one...
I'll do one more,
okay, ready, give it a spin...
ready with your dancing...
is there any jumping involved?
I'm just thinking maybe a
little bit yeah, that's it a bit of
movement, you want to find out a bit of character..
that's a great way of doing it,
a bit of movement...
Okay.... pretty good, I need to get my
shutter speed up accordingly though of
course, because otherwise we get motion
blur... it's not it's not the most
sensible dress to be doing it in I will admit,
when it comes to character in your
images, post-processing can play a really
large part of the process, or it could be
used just to fine-tune what you've
already shot.
Let's have a little look so...
here's an image, and I try to get
everything right in camera as much as I
could, including using a nice warm white
balance, but there's a few things I need
to finesse... for example,
this large blue item in the
background I don't like, and well this is
the one that really annoyed me.
There is Beth's safety boots...
yeah they need to go, so let's get rid of
the boot...
first of all I'm gonna make a brand new
layer, by clicking on the new layer icon,
and then here in Photoshop, I've got a
whole bunch of choices for removing the boot.
I could use cloning, or healing...
I'm gonna use the patch tool,
patch tool is really good just for drawing around
objects, and patching them,
especially if you have a straight line,
may not be absolutely perfect at first go,
but that's pretty good I'm gonna stick with that.
Ctrl D, command D to lose the selection..
So that's the boot sorted, but what about
this large blue item back here...
well it was far too heavy to move,
so instead what I'm going to do is...
repaint it a color that matches the rest of
the scene and when I say repaint it,
I don't mean physically,
I mean in Photoshop... so
it's surprisingly easy to do this...
there's a bit of preparation to do, and
once you've done that,
you're good to go.
I'll start with a brand new layer,
once again that gives me a
get-out-of-jail-free card, but also will
come in handy in a moment, you'll see why,
and then I'm gonna select something...
now it's not the thing I want to repaint,
which might be the obvious choice.
Instead I'm gonna select the bit I want
to keep...
an untouched area, so in this
case it's going to be Beth.
I want nothing changed on the color of
Beth at all, so I'm gonna drag a quick
selection over Beth, now I need to make
sure I invert that selection, so select inverse...
so now the outside is selected...
meaning I can adjust it and the bit of Beth
I selected is protected.
Finally it's up to select once more...
down to modify, and feather this by I don't
know two pixels...
Not many, just to give a slight feathered edge.
So this looks more real when I
paint it in.
Right let's get on with the painting, so
this is the fun bit.
All I need to do is select a color my
foreground color is currently black.
I'll click on the swatch and choose a
brown color because everything is brown
in this picture.
From inside the image click OK,
and then I can just get a paintbrush.
Let's get the brush tool,
and just paint Brown over
this image, and you can see it doesn't
matter how hard I try.
I can't go over Beth's dress...
so you're probably
thinking that is the least convincing
paint job you've ever seen,
and you're right...
but his way I've done it on a layer,
because now I can change the layer
blending mode from normal to color,
and I can even change the opacity down a
little bit, and I can blend that color in
with the original.
Now the color blending mode basically
takes the color you paint
and puts it over the texture on the
original image.
So because everything
around this is so brown and dirty it
doesn't really matter that I'm not being
desperately accurate....
not even being close to accurate...
and it just works,
that's just luck of the day...
everything was brown in that room okay...
there we go, whilst I'm going...
there's a few other bits I could do as well
for example that nose cone looks a little
bit out for me...
and maybe the red of the flag.
I can just tone that down,
and maybe that window a
little bit... there you go,
and with a few other tweaks and changes,
there it is, there's my final picture
completed... so
there you go,
there's how I can add some
character to my location portraits.
The location, the styling, the props and of
course having an awesome model like
Beth makes all the difference.
Now if you've enjoyed this video don't
forget to leave me a comment below..
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I'm Gavin Hoey thanks for watching.