Hi everybody, welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography right here on
AdoramaTV.
I'm Mark Wallace, and I'm in a
pretty amazing studio.
In fact it's pretty much the only studio that
was available in Buenos Aires because of
this crazy time we're living in, so I hope
you'll forgive the echo, there's really
nothing we could do about it because of
the situation we're in, but we are
committed to #creatnomatterwhat and
that's what we're going to do today.
In this episode I'm going to show you how
you can use one light with one simple
light modifier to create three different
looks, so I've got a fantastic model, her
name is Lana, she is right over there,
we want to keep our social distancing
intact, and so we are not going to get
very close to each other during this video.
We've figured out some creative
ways to demonstrate things, and to do our
metering, because we want to be
responsible.
Well the light meter or the light shaping
tool that we're going to
be using is this this is a Profoto
1 ft Octa box, we've got a Profoto B2.
I've got my Leica M10, a 50 mm
lens, but the truth is you can do this
with anything, this just happens to be my
gear that I have with me.
You could do this with a speed light,
you can do this with a studio strobe,
you can even do this with natural light,
the point of this video is to create no
matter what.
get in somewhere keep your social
distancing, but try to create some
interesting looks, and that's what we're
going to do, so the very first thing
we're gonna do is, we are going to be
shooting on this white wall, so let's get
to it right now.
Social distancing is very important at
these times and so let
me tell you how I'm metering, and so Lana
is gonna be running the light meter.
So okay she'll put that - and she knows where
to do that, she will push the button,
then I can push my remote trigger - the flash,
that's gonna tell me what the meter
reading is.
I can see it from here it's f/5.6, if that's
what I want fine, if I want to increase or decrease
my power I can do that remotely.
Once everything is dialed in, then ah...listo?
I'll just tell Lana that we're ready,
she'll put that on a chair, and then we
can shoot and we make sure that we keep
a safe distance, because that's really
important, we are going to begin with this really
awesome white wall, and again one single
light with a softbox, actually an Octa box,
and so for a situation like this, we
can really change the look by changing
the location of the light, because we
have a white wall back here.
That shadow is really going to show up
coming from our light, and so I have my
camera right here,
this is really where I'm going to
be shooting, and then what I'll do is,
I'll change the location of the light to
right above the camera, which is on-axis,
We'll maybe move it over to the side over
here, and what that'll do is, that'll give
us a bigger shadow for more contrast.
Maybe we can start shooting in black and
white, or desaturate things, we'll move
this closer, farther away just by moving
our light, and not changing the model.
The models location, or the background, we're
gonna get a lot of different looks,
these look really good, but they're sort
of simple, and so what I want to do is, I
want to add some contrast by just moving
this light, and so I'm gonna move it
right about here, something like this.
I'm just doing this sort of by eye now, the
problem is we're gonna get a lot of
shadows here, and because I moved this, I
need to change my metering
f/6.7, okay, so we've about a
third of a stop difference.
Okay? listo? And then so what we're gonna
do is, we're gonna shoot this, and I'll
shoot it in the same location that I was,
and then I'm gonna move around and see
what that does.
Okay listo? Alright.
So I move that light to the side, and you
can see from the photos that we're
getting a lot more contrast, but we get a
lot more shadows, and I think on this
white wall, it just doesn't work out as well.
So what I'm doing here is the light
is on-axis,
let me show you, this is my lens right here.
The light is gonna be
right above that, and what that does is,
it keeps the shadows from really showing
up, and so when I shoot this I'm going to
be right directly underneath this light
modifier here, this umbrella, and you'll
see when I shoot, that the shadows
disappear, and so that's the difference
that this makes, just putting it on-axis,
a little bit off axis, or way off axis.
The look is much much different, the
problem with the on-axis light is,
my light stand, so I switch this out, luckily
we had a boom stand in the studio that I
could use, and so now this is out of the
way of the camera.
I can shoot underneath
here without having a stand in the
middle of my shot.
I found this really cool look over here
we've got some old grimy windows with
light streaming in, however the light is
on the north side of the building.
These windows are on the south side of
the building, so the light is not super, super
bright, and that's good news, because
what I'd like to do in this scenario is, to
shoot with a really shallow depth of
field, meaning my aperture is wide open,
and so I'm gonna see what I can get here.
So I have my aperture at f/1.4, with a
50mm lens, and my shutter speed is
set to my cameras sync speed, which is a
1/180th of a second so,
we're gonna take this first picture.
Now for these, because the wall is sort of
nasty below the windows.
I'm gonna have to try to get close to really
tighten the frame, so we don't see a lot of this.
So we're gonna shoot first with no flash,
just so you can see what it looks like,
and so I'm gonna focus this up really fast
take a shot, okay, you can see clearly
that Juana is underexposed but that's
okay, we can also see some really nice
highlights on her cheek, and the
background is out of focus.
That's what we want.
Now what we need to do is - I can
turn on my flash remotely, let me make
sure that it's firing, and it is, and then
we're gonna meter this, so I need my
flash to balance with the ambient light.
Remember the ambient light I'm shooting
at f/1.4, so this flash needs to
meter at f/1.4 for everything
to balance.
So okay, so Juana is gonna
meter that for me, I am triggering that
and it meters right at f/1.4
because we set the power beforehand,
so let me just take a shot now with our
flash on... beautiful, I'm gonna try to get
as close as I can without breaking our
social distancing rules, because I don't
want to show all the nasty wall
underneath, and man these are some really
gorgeous portraits.
The cool thing though is,
we have this neat chair,
we've got this wall, we've got
some stuff that we can play with, so
we're gonna do that, we're gonna keep it
simple, one light, open aperture,
shallow depth of field.
Let's see what we get.
This setup is sort of counterintuitive,
we've been shooting with this small
Octa Box,trying to get that on-axis and
off-axis but let me just show you what
I'm going to do, I'm going to take this
Octa Box, and we're going to get rid of
it, so that's off the camera, and what you
can see back here is, this is a really
shiny background,
it's reflecting tons of light,
and so what we can do is, Juana
A qui por favor -
Juana is gonna get in her spot,
and you can see that now she is on
access with this light, and if my camera
is on axis, we're gonna get sort of a
ring flash glamoury effect, which means
it's very forgiving, we can just shoot
and have all kinds of fun, so we've
already metered this at f/8.
I'm going to start shooting,
and I'll show you what we get.
While we had a blast, we just used a
2-foot Octa box, Juana was a fantastic,
a fantastic model, we were even were able to
get rid of that softbox
and just use a Profoto head, with no
modifier attached, but that's sort of the
point, get into your home studio,
into your garage, wherever you are,
and create, no matter what, try one single light
modifier, try shooting against a white
wall, try some backlit stuff, it doesn't
matter, mix it up and see exactly what
you could get, thank you so much for
joining me for this episode of
Exploring Photography.
Don't forget to subscribe to Adorama TV.
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also check me out on Instagram I've also
linked to Juna's Instagram in the
description of this video so you can see
all the great stuff that she is creating
as well.
Thanks for watching and I'll see
you again next time.