In this video
I shoot a winter portrait
in my small home studio
with added snow.
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 today you join me in my small home studio.
Except today we're going to be outside
on a cold winter's evening
with the air full of snow,
yeah?
That's going to take some real
imagination and when it comes
to adding the snow,
that's going to take a bit of post-processing.
We'll get to that in a little bit
but first we need to take some photos,
so let's get a light set,
let's get a model in,
let's get shooting.
So to help me out today,
I've got the amazing Lauren.
Lauren is going to be the model for this shoot
and as you can see she sat on a park bench.
Well in my mind
it's a park bench
but of course we're here in my small home studio.
Now as well as the bench
we've got a black background.
The lighting for this is going to be a multi light setup
which means three lights.
I'm going to do each light individually
and work them out one at a time,
starting with our key light,
which is an eVOLV 200
Now I've got it off to the side
because if it was centered
it would give really flat lighting
which isn't what we're going for here.
I've also got it in a 70cm softbox
with a grid
and it's the grid that really makes a difference
because that means I can get direction
and control of the light,
very important in a small home studio.
I've already metered this out for f/4
so let's take a test picture
and see how this looks.
So that looks really good,
I like the contrast between the lit side
and the shady side
and in my mind this is light being cast
by a lamppost which is off to the side
and elevated up in the air.
So the second light for this setup
is around the back
and it's another eVOLV 200
and it's going to act as a separation light.
Now what this should do
is put a little bit of light on Lauren's shoulders,
on her hat and just separate her off
of the pure black background.
It'll do one other job as well
when we add some smoke
into the scene. It'll put some light
onto the smoke but we'll get to that
in a little bit.
Now you'll notice there is a blue gel
on that light
and that's because this is a winter's evening,
nighttime type shot,
so I want that cold blue feeling
just to go over her shoulders
and hat, so let's see how this works
because if we put too much power
through this it could kill the shot,
I'll start with maybe 1/8 power
and as you can see that's just a little bit
too bright, a bit too much blue,
so let's bring it all the way down
to 164th power
and we'll try the same setup
and that's much more subtle
but when we add the smoke into that,
that's going to be probably about right.
My third light is what I'm going to call
the optional light,
you don't necessarily need it
but it can add a little bit
of something to the shot
because at the moment,
we've got a key light
that's putting light on Lauren
and on that side of the bench
but this side is really dark
and in shadow,
I kind of like that
especially with the separation light,
but because we've got some shadows
there we can use this third light
with another blue gel
to add some blue color
into the shadows for that real cold winter feel.
Now it's on a very, very, low power
just a little hint of light
into the shadows. Let's see how this looks.
Here we go.
That looks absolutely great.
I think we're all set ready to go
so Lauren are you ready?
Let's do the shoot!
Here we go!
I always knew that there'd be some
post-processing to do with this picture
but you don't have to do everything
I'm going to show you
but if you're going to do one thing
it's probably going to be snow
Now if you're lucky,
you have some "real fake" snow
in a can like this here
but you don't actually need this
because we're going to add some
"fake, fake" snow
using Photoshop.
Now to do it,
I'm going to head over to my blog
at www.gavtrain.com
find the Instant Snow V2
photoshop action
and download it for free,
unzip it
and install it. You'll find a link to that
in the description below.
Now I've already done that
so let's have a look and see how it works.
So I've got four types of snow
with this action and I'm going to choose
the second one down;
heavy snow.
I've already got the picture of Lauren
ready to go,
so all I'm going to do
is click on the play button
and let the action
do its thing.
Now what it does is
to create three different layers of snow.
It's all automated
and it just takes a minute or two to complete
but once it's done,
I can control how the snow appears
in front of Lauren,
so if I choose the top layer
and I go get a paintbrush
with a nice big brush,
maybe not quite that big
and make sure that Black is my foreground color,
I can just paint away
any bits of snow
that are in front of Lauren
on that layer. Then the middle-sized snow
I can paint that away
as well and then the small snow from her face
like that now some of the snow
in this picture is actually real fake snow
so I can't just paint it away
and that's fine, I like that,
it looks really good.
Once you're done and you're completely happy
just go up to layer
and then flatten image.
Now we're going to talk about the lighting
in this picture because the lighting
is pretty good
but it could be slightly better
particularly with this.
So this is the lantern
and I want to light the lantern
but it's never going to work,
this is really old
and just doesn't work,
so I'm going to light that inside of Camera Raw,
so to do that, let's go to filter
and then Camera Raw filter
and from here I'm going to get the adjustment brush
now to light the lantern,
I need to set a few things up.
I'm going to put the temperature
all the way to maximum and in this case
also the tint as I'll take the exposure
and put that all the way to maximum,
the highlights all the way to maximum
and finally the clarity
which is going to go,
yeah you guessed it, maximum.
Everything else is zeroed out.
Then with a nice small brush
with one or two clicks,
I can actually light the lantern
like that. Now if the lantern was lit
there would be a nice warm glow around it,
so let's add a warm glow by clicking
on the new adjustment brush.
This time I'll leave the temperature
and tint alone but bring the exposure down
to just under a stop.
I'll lose the highlights
and I'll lose the clarity
and with a bigger brush
we can just add a sort of a nice warm glow
around the lantern like that.
So that works really well
but there's a little bit more lighting effect,
I want to do here,
but because I'm in a small studio
sometimes you can't light things
exactly how you'd like
and Photoshop can really help
with just little adjustments
for example a bit more contrast
on the right hand side of the bench
a bit darker basically,
so for that I'm going to use the radial filter.
I'll take the exposure down maybe a stop and a half,
everything else is zeroed out
and I'll just drag out a nice little sort
of, a bit of a vignette
that just covers the left-hand side
and makes the right-hand side darker
and whilst I'm there let's add a bit
of clarity and just so the bench stands out
from the darkness a little bit clearer,
so I'm happy with that click OK
and that leaves me one more thing to do.
Now in the video
when I was doing the shoot,
I said what I thought was above Lauren
there is some sort of street light
and that's the light that's actually on Laurens face
so to really make that obvious,
I'm going to apply a small lighting effect.
Now to do it,
it's going to be a layer
so let's go to layer,
New and layer,
click OK
and then I'm going to get
a nice big paint brush
yeah about that sort of size
and I'm going to paint a little splodge
of light. Now the color of light
needs to fit in with the theme of the photo
so I could choose a foreground color
from the picture
or I could choose one that I feel
is about right
because I think a lighter blue
would probably be about that,
yeah about there,
let's try that one,
one click and see how that looks.
That looks great
we'll just drop the opacity
down a little bit
just so that blends in really nicely
and just gives that little bit of a glow
in the top left corner
and with a few more tweaks
and adjustments there it is;
my snowy winter bench picture
is completed.
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.