What happens when you cross a chicken and a dog and a light outfit andd a dark outfit
in a low-key portrait? Check it out.
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J.P: Hi, this is J.P. Morgan. Today on The Slanted Lens, we're going to do a baroque-type
portrait, dark and moody, kind of low-key. But we've got a light outfit and a dark outfit.
These two are from New York City, they work for an ad agency there, and they're doing
a shot of themselves as a creative team. And we're gonna use this to kinda advertise who
they are. So we have very different personalities here, obviously.
Jamie: Yeah.
Marisa: Yes. I'm a princess, I have a Pomeranian.
Jamie: And I have a chicken.
J.P: Jamie is my daughter, actually.
Jamie: Yeah, we just wanted to do something that was a little different. So we had the
thrones in it to make it a little more fun.
Marisa: We're like, "Let's make it more difficult, and add animals."
Jamie: Yeah, chicken.
J.P: Gotta add animals, a chicken, and a dog. So let's break down doing a low-key portrait.
To begin with, you've gotta have kind of a low-key setting. Our background is a wall
that we built. We painted on a blue on the walls first, and then we can put a gray, a
dark gray, and painted that with a broom. And that broom just gives you a great texture.
Kind of an up-and-down texture, and it also lets some of the paint below it kind of shine
through, which gives you a great look. There's a lot of depth in it. It's just a beautiful
way to do walls. Because if you just paint a wall a solid color, it's just flat and it's
just so uninteresting. This gives the walls some depth and makes it have a little bit
of interest.
When you have this kind of dark setting or going for that dark, moody shot, we really
want, though, to have some rim light here. So I have a rim light on both sides of the
camera, right and left. It's gonna rim each of them from the background, and I'm gonna
keep that pretty subtle. But at least enough so that it will outline them, and bring them
out away from the background.
We then put a octadome in the middle, with a grid on it, and I just pan that up just
enough to be able to get it on their faces, and to start to give a little bit of glow
in the middle, in the background. Now, Marisa on the left side here, with a softbox was
just favoring Jamie on the right side just a little bit, so I added a grid on Marisa's
face, so it would just open her face up just a little bit. And that angle was nicer, coming
across hitting her, because we're really going for that strong Rembrandt or that profile
where you get the great butterfly light in a profile, and which falls into the shadows
on the camera side, which is a beautiful light.
So two rim lights, octadome upfront for a key light, and then I had some lights on the
background, and we ended up not using those. We had them in there to just kind of turn
on the light on the background. It's like, you know, we don't need to see all that detail
in the background. Just let it go a little darker, so we turned those off.
So there's kinda our lighting setup. This is the kind of stuff I love to do. The lighting
on this is just fabulous, it's beautiful. The challenge here was putting dark and light,
and we really met that challenge by keeping the light pooled on the people's faces, and
let it fall off, and then rimming them from behind so that they'll stand out. And then
we can live with that dark and light because we've handled it from behind, not lighting
them so much from the front, which makes that light shirt and dark shirt hard to deal with.
We just rim them from behind, put a little light on their faces. And then just let their
clothing colors fall where they want to.
So their clothing is more of a modern clothing, with just kind of a nod to that renaissance
kind of time period, which just looks really cool.
Okay, so we've done the group shot now, two of them together. Now we're gonna do them
individually and going to really change this light up and make it very, very Rembrandt.
Kind of low-key so it looks very high-contrast on their face, but falls off quickly. So I've
got a grid on the face of our softbox or octadome, and we're gonna just turn this in.
When you set up key light straight in on someone's face, it gives you a great profile, and as
you move around, it gives you a great butterfly straight. Those are two beautiful lights,
and you see examples of each of those. So let's ask Marisa and Jamie what they think
of the images that we got.
Jamie: We loved it.
Marisa: Loved it.
Jamie: Awesome.
Marisa: Super pumped.
Jamie: Chicken, Pomeranian, we got it all.
Marisa: It's perfect.
Jamie: We don't need anything else.
Marisa: It's all we need. Thanks, J.P.
J.P: Thank you, ladies. It was fun. It really was fun. It was a lot of fun, so keep those
cameras rolling. Keep on clicking.
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It will help you understand what platform works for you and the type of work that you
do. So go to theslantedlens.com where you can get the download today.
Jamie: Awesome.
Marisa: Mic drop.
Jamie: Great.
Marisa: Amazing.
Jamie: Spectacular:
Marisa: Fabulous.
Jamie: Really great.
Marisa: Awesome. Follow Slanted...wait, what is it? Slanted Lens.
J.P: Subscribe.
Jamie: Subscribe.
Marisa: Sorry, subscribe. Redo.
Together: Subscribe to The Slanted Lens.
Jamie: Subscribe to The Slanted Lens.
Marisa: Do that.
Jamie: Because he's my dad.
Marisa: And because he's awesome.
Jamie: And my dad.