Hi everybody, welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography
right here on AdoramaTV.
I am hanging out in Kampuchea
Party Republic Studio, and there you go,
that's how you spell it, and I am hanging
out here with a very special guest. Her
name is Nikki Nikki. She is a
singer-songwriter here in Cambodia, and
pretty spectacular work I have to say.
Just Google Nikki Nikki, and you'll see
all kinds of stuff on YouTube from her.
What we're doing today, is we are going
to shoot two different styles of
portraiture using the exact same gear,
and I'm going to sort of walk you
through how we're going to get there. Now
we're going to start with one of my very
favorite lighting setups, it almost
always works. It's a no-fail lighting
setup and then we're going to use the exact
same gear to do something, that's a
little bit more risky. A very cinematic
gritty portrait, and we're going to make it
really emotional. So let's get started
right now. This lighting setup is one
you've probably seen me use several
times before, and the reason for that is
I want to make sure I get a beautiful
shot of Nikki, and so this setup is
simple and it just works! So what I'm
using here is my Leica M type 240 with
a 50mm lens. We're shooting at
about f/8 and I have my favorite
portable lighting setup, it's my Profoto
off camera flash B2 system. So it's
right here. I have my b2 triggering this
with an OCF 2 ft octa-box. It's going
to give this really nice, soft light.
There's no grid on this, and so we have a
lot of light that can just spread out
and get really nice and diffused. Now to
give us a little bit more motion, we've
added a fan right here. I'm going to turn
this guy on, and this fan is going to work
well with this dress. It's really flowy
and it moves and Nicky's hair also it's
really flowy, and it moves, so that's
going to give us some motion. But one of
the things that's really important for
Nikki to understand is which way to face,
because if she faces away from this
light what's going to happen, is the lights
going to go this way, all of this is going
to show up in shadow, and the fan is
going to blow her hair across her face!
That is not what we want, and so instead what
she's going to do is, she's going to face
into the light. That's still going to
give us a nice soft light this way,
with some shadows over here, but her face
will be evenly illuminated,
get really nice catch lights in her eyes
and that fans going to blow the hair out
of her face, and that's going to work
just perfect!
Now because of the direction and the
distance of the light to Nikki it's not
really close to this background and
we've already learned that this will
fall into darkness, and that's going to
complement everything, so we have a
winning lighting setup. That's just one
light, one fan and a perfect model so
we're going to shoot that right now.
Now that we have that beautiful portrait
that works, we want to do something
that's a little bit more cinematic. A lot
more emotional, and much more punchy.
How to do that? We have a few tricks up our
sleeves. The first is we're not going to
use any flashes, none at all, what we're
doing is we're going to use constant
light, so I have my modeling light turned
on on my B2 and that gives us a few
tricks that we can use. The first thing
is, it's not extremely bright and that
allows us to crank up the ISO and my
camera, which makes this look a little
bit more cinematic, because we're going
to add some noise. I'll do some
post-production to turn that noise into
film grain, and that is going to look
really cool on you. The other reason
we're using the modeling light, and not
the flash is, because I want to shoot
this more as a more cinematic look, so I
need really shallow depth-of-field.
so I'm shooting with a 50mm 1.4
lens at 1.4, and that means that the
background is going to fall out of focus.
I've added some lights back there
they're going to show up as specular
highlights. It's going to look really
cool, but it's going to do one more thing
for us, that I think is going to sort of
wrap everything up, and that is we're
going to have this little trick with color
temperature. So this modelling light is
about 2100 degrees Kelvin but the
background back there lit up by the
normal studio lights, well it's about
4000 degrees Kelvin. Which means when we
set our white balance correctly for
Nicki, that background is going to fall
into blue, it's going to look really
really, amazing. Now we want to make sure
that we shoot this widescreen, just like a movie
16:9 aspect ratio to do that.
I'm using my camera's Live View feature
and on this. I actually have some guides
that will show me exactly where I need
to crop the image so there's 16:9
guides and because I want to see
through the lens, and not have to use
live view, I'm actually going to add an
electronic viewfinder. So on a Leica to
be able to see through the lens you need
one of these little guys, so I'm going to
put that on top. That's what that is, so
everything is going to work out for us to
create this really punchy look, and I
forgot one thing that we're going to do.
We want to make her a little bit more
emotional, so she is going to do some
things with her makeup and look like
she's crying, so when we add all that
stuff together. Shallow depth-of-field
color shifts,
a really wide screen look, grain and an
emotional model, this is going to look
cinematic and I think it's going to look
awesome. So let's do that right now
these images look great. Straight out of
the camera, but they look even better
with a few Lightroom adjustments. I took
them to the next level by jumping over
to photoshop and doing some skin
retouching, and then I took them over to
the Nik software collection. Specifically
analog effects Pro - to add some texture,
and while I was in analogue effects Pro
- I discovered that the images, because
of the color contrast, will they just
lend themselves to all kinds of fun, and
so once you shoot your images like this,
try some post-production to see the
different effects, you can get by just
using the presets in analog effects Pro.
You can get some startling results and
it's free software, so why not play. I
created my own custom preset and here
are my results.
Thank You Nikki, we had so much fun in
this studio today.
Nikki better known as Nikki Nikki is
quite famous here in Cambodia as a
singer. You should check out her stuff on
Instagram and Facebook and especially
YouTube. You can see all of her awesome
songs. I've included links to those
videos in the description of this video
and here's your Instagram feed, so you
can check that out and see all of the
stuff that she's doing right now. I've
also included in the description of this
video some links to other videos that
I've made about white balance and a Nik
software collection, so you can see sort
of how we did all of these tricks for
this really weepy cinematic look. So
thank you so much for joining us for
this episode. Don't forget to subscribe
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Thank you, and we'll see you again next time.