In this video I take on Mark Wallaces Portrait Challenge
Adorama TV presents Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey and you're watching Adorama TV brought to you by Adorama the camera store that has
everything for us photographers and today
I'm joined in my studio by Mr Mark Wallace no less - hello!
He's been on his world travels he thought he'd stop by somewhere important like my studio so
- and I needed a place to sleep
What we're going to do is a little Portrait Challenge, now if you missed the first
video in this series this is what happened
- and we have decided that we are going to use the same model
- yes
the exact same equipment
- yes
and we are going to have a time limit of about 20 minutes
- should be ample
I'm going to the model
with the gear and Gavin is not going see what I'm doing and then you're going to do the
exact same thing I said I'm not gonna see what you're doing and they're going
- absolutely
I'm not going to see what you're doing
- no
and then we're going to compare our results.
I've been joined by Brian. I've got the same model that
Mark had, I got the same equipment that Mark had as well but hopefully my picture will
be a little bit different so my first plan is to get Brian towards the same height that I am
Brian do you want to stand up just for a second.
As you can see Brian
is well over eight feet tall
There abouts. Sit down for me. So getting him sat down immediately brings
him down to my eye height and thats a good thing.
Equipment wise; I don't need all this. I'm going to go really simple so I'm going to get
rid of the reflector. Lets just pop that out of the way and I'm just going to shoot with
the softbox. I've got an idea in my head. I'm going to put the softbox way over to the side
right at the back, like that, so we're going to rear illuminate Brian to a
degree profile shot. But for a profile shot, Brian I'm going to need you facing this way.
Fantastic! Ok now I need to figure out the light so I get my flash meter
and I'm going to get the little dome on the flash meter and point it at the light
because it's coming in at an extreme angle I need to meter for the light that's
falling on Brian. That's giving me f5.6 I'd like f8. I'll increase the
flash by one stop and that is three clicks on the remote and I want f8. So I've got the exposure
that I want. Let's see if that actually works.
Lets take a picture here we go
So that is ok but there is a little bit of contamination of light on the background so if
I get the softbox and I just feather it away from the background that
should stop it being quite as bright. Lets take the same shot
and that's great, that gives me a lovely light on Brian's face, and in itself that's not a bad little shot
but I like to do pictures where I've got the model doing something rather than just sat
there so lets have a little rummage around I've got a book. We've got this lovely rather
tatty old dictionary which is just perfect for adding a sense of interest
into the shot. Not that you're not interesting enough Brian of course you are indeed but that
just adds an extra element so let's get that into the shot, lets have a look at that.
Ok that's pretty good, can you hold it just a little bit higher lovely
That works rather well but but I've got this crazy idea,
I don't know if this is going to work
but we've got a little bit of baby powder talcum powder and I'm going to put this in the book, then I'm going get
Brian to slam the book shut. Hopefully this will work. Let's just pop this in here and
how much to put in that should do let's try that
Ok there's going to be one shot at this
So let's give this a whirl; set everything up first, I'll take a test shot.
If you doing this sort of picture where there's a one hit wonder you need
to do a test shot just to make sure everything's going to work ok.
Yes I'm happy with the lighting. Ok Brian on three. Ready; one, two three [bang] Ok fantastic
That's superb!
That works really well. We got some aggression from Brian's face, we got some cloud, a
big puff of that powder going absolutely everywhere and that's going to look a
fantastic shot particularly the lovely contrasting black and white image.
So when Mark set me the 20 minute time limit he didn't say whether that should
include post-processing for me I think it should that should be part of the
challenge to to get the shot done from beginning to end in the timescale allowed.
So I'm going to do a bit of processing but not too much and because I really only shot one final
picture that's going to be the one I edit. Let's have a look.
So this looks fine. I love the effect it was an idea I had in my head for a while and I'm glad I
managed to actually get around to doing it, but there are few things I want to
change. Now I know I'm going to do black and white in this let's jump over to the
HSL grayscale, convert it to black and white because with portraits in black
and white I like to take the oranges slider and increase the oranges because that
tends to be skin tones in the image and we'll make them nice and bright. Now let's go
back over to the main basic panel. I know I want to put some clarity now normally I actually
take clarity away for portraits, that's quite flattering, but in this case watch
what happens to that powered as I increase the clarity it really stands out well
and Brian's face can take the extra clarity I think. Now the powder as it
flies out towards the the light is getting brighter and that makes sense as
you go closer towards a light source so is the brightness of your subject's going to
increase and I really had no control at he had no idea where it was going to go
whether it was going to go all over Brian or well over me or in this case mostly over the
light but we can deal with that. Let's get a graduated filter and I'll just
reduce the exposure a little bit and the highlights. Lets just bring those down as well and
we'll just drag a nice little graduated filter just like that,
that looks pretty good. I reckon maybe one along the bottom just pull the
exposure down there, because I want that to be a little darker and maybe a hint of one
at the top without the heavy exposure. What I'm trying to do is just get the
the book and Brian's face to be the brightest two parts in this shot. I can even pull him
one behind, just so the back of his neck isn't quite so bright.
Ok let's have a look see how we're doing. Now with that adjustment that has had
a bit of a negative effect on my histogram. I just need to
balance everything up by just pushing the whites a little bit more, little bit
more contrast. Yes there we go that looks great and I reckon that's my shot
completed well underneath the 20 minute time limit.
Wow that is a spectacular image Gavin. The thing I love about it is it's got some action and it's got the
contrast and has got the angles and it's got all the stuff, that mine was sort of
you know it's really laid back and you brought sort of this punch to it.
Well that's the idea isn't it. - Awesome
When you get two different photographers you get two completely different ideas - Absolutely
The home advantage to be fair I at least I knew my equipment I knew my background
I've worked with Brian before and that really does count you can't beat having a bit of knowledge of
your gear and knowledge of your surroundings but yeah I really enjoyed
that was great fun to do.
Ok we've got to thank Brian of course. - Of course. - Brian come on in here!
So Brian has been a brilliant model throughout this. He has put up with the two of us which
is really asking quite a lot for anybody to be fair. So thank you very much for coming along.
Thank you very much for watching
and don't forget if you want to see more videos from me and Mark and the other amazing presenters
here on Adorama TV you've got to click on the subscribe button!
I'm Gavin Hoey that's Mark Wallace Thanks for watching.
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