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- Most of the successful business people that I have met in my life had a mentor.
Someone that helped them, directed them, and helped them to accomplish things that
they really wanted to do in their businesses. We want to be that for you.
We're going to start The Slanted Lens coaching class. It will meet once a week,
we'll have great speakers that come in once a month. We'll have different
coaching classes each week. If you miss a class you can go online and catch up to
the things that you missed out on. We're going to teach you how to set up your
business, we're gonna teach you the things you need to do to be able to grow your
business, we're going to hold you accountable to do them, and then we're
gonna watch your business grow together. So go to TheSlantedLens.com, click on the
Business Coaching tab, and sign up for a business coaching class that starts in
June. Let me be the mentor that helps you grow your business.
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- For today's TSL lesson, our objective is to get shots of Will Roberts, our
world-famous trick-roper sitting on top of a plastic horse spinning a 50-foot lasso.
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- Here are the obstacles. First, choosing a simple background that's going to work
with our talent. Secondly, overcoming a lighting challenge presented by the
background we're going to use. Third, the talent needs room for his 50-foot lasso.
Let's start with the background. I always want a simple background to allow the
subject to stand out. This case was difficult because there were power lines
to the north and to the south, making those directions impossible to shoot at.
Much too busy. I only had two choices: looking into the setting sun, or using the
sun as a key light. Looking west, the setting sun will be over his shoulder, and
wash out the background. I don't have enough strobe power to light him and
darken that sky. Regardless of what I would've done that sky would've been
white. I really want a deep, blue sky. I turn him so the sun will be acting as a
key light, and this will allow me to expose for his face,
and that will give me the deep blue background that I want.
I'm going to need more room for that rope, he's hitting the tree on the right hand
side of the frame. So I'm going to have to turn my camera more towards the house. In
doing so, it's just way too much house, so I'm gonna try to split the difference so I
can see a little bit of fence, a little bit of house, and give me a nice one-point
perspective as I look between those two. This gives me a simple one-point
perspective with the house on one side and the fence on the other. There's just
enough space for the rope, I think it's gonna work fine.
I'm going to go with a very simple lighting solution here. One flex flash as
a fill light. Gonna open up the shadows, kinda get us a nice light on his face.
That's gonna be all we're gonna do. That opens up the shadows very nicely and
allows that sun to work as a key light. Let's look at the camera settings. I'm
setting my ISO at 100 because I want as little light as possible. I will shoot at
1/25th of a second so that the rope does not blur too much, but does give it some
movement. And then I'm going to go to F9 to give me a correct exposure. I'm
shooting on the Tamron 24-70 MM lens at about 35 millimeters. It's now time to
photograph Will doing his roping. He's a very talented guy. He said he used to
drive down the strip in Vegas, sitting in the back of a convertible swinging his
50-foot lasso around the car. It's pretty fun to watch.
The first thing I'm going to do is take my image into RAW, and I'll be able to
process it there. I'm simply going to go in and I'm going to bring the exposure
down a little bit, so the light on his face looks correct. I'll then open up the
shadows just a little bit to give us a nicer fill.
I'm going to open up my image in Photoshop. I'm going to my old CS5,
because I've got that connected to Nik software. I'll then open up the image by
double-clicking on Color Effects Pro. The reason I'm going to do that is I want a
nice blue sky, and I'm also going to make the grass just a little warmer. I like the
look. I'm going to select the blue from my upper color. A nice blue that I've put in
the program before and used. So I'll use that nice, deep blue, has a little bit of
purple in it. I'm then I'm going to go to the color that I want for the foreground.
As I was experimenting with this, I mixed myself a color that was just a little bit
warm, we could add to the grass to give just a little bit of a warmth to the grass
in the foreground. I'm now going to go in and I'm going to
take this effect off of his face. I'll put a negative control panel there to be able
to take the blue effect off of his face. I'll do the same on his hand, so his
hand's not blue. And I think I might even do one on his hat, so his hat's not so
blue. Cleans that up a little bit. That'll take care of his hand and his hat.
I'm now ready to say okay, and I'll quit the image. And there we see the
application of the color effect we chose, the bi-color. It's very strong. So I'm
going to go up to my opacity, and I'm going to draw this down to about 47%,
maybe somewhere around 50 to 47% just seeing what I like. It gives me a nice
background color, nice foreground color, but doesn't overwhelm the image. That's
my final image, I'll go ahead and output it as a Photoshop document. And I'm going
to immediately output it as a JPEG. And have both those versions. I always like to
keep the photoshop document just in case I wanna go back and adjust the color or play
with it. So there's the look of our final image.
Here are some of the final images.
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I've learned a lot of things from this assignment. There are always compromises.
I wanted a dark blue sky, and a clean white simple background, so I needed to
use the sun as a key light. We made it work with a single ISO fill, but not
necessarily my favorite lighting setup, but one that worked for what we were
doing. You know, what separates a professional photographer from an amateur
is making things happen in the time-frame and the situation you've been given. It's
a difficult thing to do sometimes, but it was a great assignment. So keep those
camera's rollin', keep on clickin'.
- Don't let him lick you, it's slobbery...
- I don't want him to lick me.
- Don't forget, you can win a Glidecam XR-2000 by going to TheSlantedLens.com,
we've got three of these we're giving away. So go to TheSlantedLens.com, win a
Glidecam XR-2000. We're not giving away the Photoflex Speedlight Kit, because the
horse snotted on it. Next month. Glidecam XR-2000. The Slanted Lens.
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