Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan.
Today on The Slanted Lens I'm going to show you how to make a dramatic studio portrait
even though we're outside here on location in the midst of bright sunlight.
Let's get started and see what we can do.
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We've been doing some great environmental portraits here of Keith on his motorcycle.
Now we're going to change it up and show you how to make a dramatic portrait, almost like
a studio lit portrait even though we're in the midst of all this sunlight.
I tell my students all the time, "Carry with you a black and a white."
This has got a white inside.
This is one of the 7-in-1 reflectors that Photoflex makes, I love these because I've
got a black background and I've got a white background.
They're also great reflectors, but they can be backgrounds if you need them to be.
This is extremely useful when you're doing any kind of editorial work.
If you go in and shoot a portrait of an executive and you just want something that looks more
studio, you can get a quick white background in there, a great black and white shot.
It looks fabulous.
This gives you an option to change the look up no matter where you're at.
Let's see how we set up the lighting on this.
I want to get rid of all ambient light in this situation so I can have complete control
and light him with my strobe.
I'm going to use the exposure triangle, the three things that I can control in my camera.
Number one, we've got ISO.
ISO is going to affect my ambient the same as it's going to affect my strobes.
The 100 ISO is great.
I like it low because it's going to give us the best quality.
It's going to affect both of them.
That one's almost not part of the equation.
Number two is the shutter speed.
Put your shutter speed to as fast as your camera will allow you to go before it starts
to clip the strobe.
On the Canon it's going to be 1/200th of a second.
That's going to give you the least amount of ambient light.
Then, I'm going to put my strobe on full power and take a strobe meter reading.
This will probably be at least two or three stops brighter than the ambient.
I'm going to set my aperture on this reading.
That should've crushed most of the ambient that we have in this scene.
To test this, I'm going to take a shot without strobes at 100 ISO, 1/200th of a second, at
F11.
I should have a black frame or almost completely black frame without much ambient in it at
all.
If there's just a little bit of light still showing on your person, I threw up a little
bit of a translucent just to kill the light a little more on him, but quickly that wasn't
needed and we were able to crush the light without it.
You now have a clean canvas you can start to light in.
If you have a little bit of background showing through, then just simply put your black background
behind him.
That'll clean anything else up that's left back there.
At this point you can turn your strobes on, take your exposure and you can start to shoot
away.
I've got my box in there.
I've tilted it up a little bit.
I like to work my light around behind him away from him a little bit.
That gives a nicer light on his face.
I just like the fall off.
It feels like a gorgeous, kind of, dramatic portrait, a one light portrait you'd do in
the studio.
Just by simply controlling the ambient light around me, you can get right to it and you
can shoot some beautiful images.
I'm using a Tamron 85 millimeter lens for this shot.
I like that range, 85 to 100, maybe a little over 100 depending on the person and their
face.
That's the range I want to be in with my lens.
I really like that.
The 85 is a beautiful lens for doing these kinds of portraits.
Now let's take a look at some of the portraits we shot of Keith.
Being able to get this kind of dramatic look on location is a really useful thing.
If you're doing stuff for an editorial piece, for an executive, if you're out with a bride,
you can change the look up almost immediately.
Just jump in there.
Get a different shot, something the bride's going to go, "Wow, I've never seen anything
like that."
It's fast to do and it's simple to do.
Bring something black, something white, a reflector you can pop in there to be able
to give yourself a different look almost immediately.
It's a simple thing to do.
When people say to me, "I can't shoot, I don't have a studio," I go, "We just shot a studio
shot out here on location, a dramatic one light portrait out on location."
Share some of yours.
Go to our community group and share some of the portraits you've done using this technique.
Keep those cameras rolling.
Keep on clicking.
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