hello i'm gavin hoey and you're watching
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camera store that's got everything for
us photographers and in this video i'm
going to show you
how to shoot a moody monochromatic black
and white image
of a male subject because well we're
still in lockdown
so first thing to do let's get a light
set let's get a light modifier on there
and i've got something
really big and let's get shooting
so to help me out today i've got the
amazing polly polly is going to be the
model for this
for now yay lock down and i'm going to
start with the
main light which is basically the
biggest light i could find in my studio
so i've got this rather large
white interior umbrella could i do this
with a softbox
yes i could if i had enough space the
idea with that is it's going to be an
overhead light so i'm going to put it on
a boom arm
and extend it over the top of poly and
angle it slightly back
something like that now the large light
source should give us
soft light on poly but it should also
give us some
direction of light as well that's going
to create some shadows
shadows give us mood that's what we're
after for this setup
okay so let's just work out the exposure
i'm aiming for f 5.6
and i'm on f 5.6 perfect okay let's take
a test shot
and see how this looks
the result is yeah not as good as i
hoped
yes there is light on poly but the light
on the background
it's a little bit flat it's quite a wash
of light
and what i'd like is some shadows back
there so what i'm going to do is just
angle the umbrella back away from the
background slightly
the same amount of light should still
reach poly more or less but
we should get a much darker background
this time let's see how this looks
yeah that is really quite dramatic now
there is a
much darker background going on there
perhaps just a little bit too dark
so i think putting it somewhere like
that so it's pretty much pointing
straight down is going to work
perfectly i've got the back edge of the
umbrella pretty much in line with the
top of polly's head so
almost all of this is in front of polly
so we should get some light coming down
here
let's see what it does to the background
though
and that looks pretty much perfect yes
there is some shadow on the background
but there's also some light on it
that gives us that sense of three
dimensions in this image
so once again we are still in lockdown
which means no models in the studio so
it's up to me to sit in the hot seat now
to fire the camera remotely i'm going to
use the
olympus app on my phone so i just press
the button
and it takes a picture let's see how
this lighting looks
looking at the picture yes i know it's
not black and white but don't worry
we'll get to that
at the end the large overhead light
looks really good but
a close-up view of my face reveals
pretty deep shadows particularly into my
eyes
so that's something we're going to need
to fix with a second light
and that's going to be a second flash
point evolve 200
this time i've got a small reflector and
a
grid on the front now that's going to
give me some direction to the light
because it only really has to light my
face and part of my body
the smaller light source is going to be
a harder light but i don't think that's
going to matter this is a male
portrait and besides the position is way
more important
now the obvious place for this light for
me is
over here next to my camera so if i
point it
here that's going to be fine and then
any
shadows that are cast are going to come
into this corner
into the darkest part of my studio and
they're going to disappear
so that's okay but there is a bit of a
problem let me show you
i'll turn off the main light so we're
only going to use the
fill light i've got this fill light on a
low power it's 1 128
power so it's going to be pretty dark
but it only has to light the shadows
let's just take a test shot see what we
get
and when i do that yes it's dark it is
just the fill light and we can't see the
shadows
but what we can see is the lighting on
my face is well pretty flat and even
and i'd like something with a bit more
drama
so what i'm actually going to do is put
a light over to the side a little bit
like that now it's only a small shift in
distance but it will have a massive
difference in the look of the shot
the downside with this is it is going to
cast a shadow onto this
wall i'm just going to have to live with
that ideally i'd put a light here facing
in that direction but i don't have room
in my small home studio
now before i take a picture there's a
quick tip with with grids
if you look through the grid and you can
see the flash or you ask your model to
do that
that means the light from that flash
will actually reach their face
that's the idea let's see if it works
and yeah that looks much better a lot
more drama in that i can see
light in my eyes even a little catch
light yes there will be a shadow on the
wall but i guess i'll just live with
that
it's hard to beat post-processing if you
want a really good black and white image
but i'm still going to turn it on in the
camera now how you do this will vary
according to the brand of camera you
have
but for my olympus camera i just switch
it into monochrome mode
and i'm going to go to the curves and
put a really hard
s curve in here for a really dramatic
high contrast image
because that's what i like now this
isn't the
final black and white effect but it will
give me a feel for how these look in
black and white
and that can be really important because
although i've set everything up in color
when you shoot in black and white things
may need just tweaking
a little bit okay let's take some
pictures like this
[Music]
although i shot in black and white in
the camera actually my raw files still
have
all of the color information so when i
open them in adobe camera raw in
photoshop
i have a color image so i'll change it
from adobe color to adobe monochrome to
get back to a black and white
and then i'm going to make some general
adjustments to the image i like my black
and whites contrasty so i'll add some
contrast
i'll maybe tweak the whites a little bit
and add a bit of texture
because i'm in adobe monochrome i
actually have access to the
b and w mixer and here well there is a
reason i was wearing the
red shirt because i can single out the
reds to make those
brighter or darker shades of grey i can
use the same trick to make my face a
little bit brighter with the orange
slider
and then the yellows well that's going
to be the floor of my studio so again i
can fine tune that
and that's pretty much it because there
aren't really any other colors in this
picture
because i was shooting overhead lighting
the floor is fairly evenly lit so to
make that a bit more interesting
i'm just going to put a graduated filter
on there and then using the adjustment
brush i can make a few other
changes for example i think my forehead
could do with a little bit of darkening
down
and then finally it's into photoshop for
a little bit of cloning
to make my small studio appear a little
bit larger than it actually
is and there it is there's my final
picture completed
now in this case i set the lighting up
specifically for
a male portrait but of course you can
take the same basic idea and make it
work for everybody
what you'd need to do is take that small
hard fill light
and make it bigger and softer now if
you've got any questions or you've
enjoyed this video
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i'm gavin hoey thanks for watching