this week I'll show you how to get a completely black background AdoramaTV
presents
exploring photography with Mark Wallace
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your host
Mark Wallace hi everybody welcome to another episode exploring photography
I'm
Mark Wallace and helping us out today is our model this is Alexis now what we're
going to be doing is talking to you about how to get a completely
black background and this conversation actually came up when I posted some
pictures on my facebook page
and people that have to do that so it wouldn't explain it today now the key to
getting a dark background or completely black background is
the position of our light in relationship to our subject and distance
those two things and that's because it's something we learned about episode 59
a digital photography 1 on 1 and I think it's called the inverse square law
to get get into all the details of the inverse square law but you can
go back and look at the episode I want to love summarize it for you here
so Alexis if you can get on your mark rate there what happens with the inverse
square law
it really depends on the distance on your light from your subject
and what happens is light falls off really rapidly
and so when are light is really close to our subject what happens is that light
is a very powerful but right here what I just her falls off
and so the amount of light that's on our background compared to
what's on our subject is very very low and so what we
wouldn't do now what we can do which is totally counter-intuitive
a lot of people in training in a dark background I'll take this light no movie
way back you like this
and what happens is the light falls off right here so cool with the light falls
off
and now the light is about the same here on our subject as it is in the
background
so that makes our background show up sort of as a dark gray we don't want
that we want this to fall completely
out so the key is delight being very very close
to are subject to get really really close as close as you possibly can
and that will give us rapid light falloff and give us a dark background
the other thing is you want your subject to be at a distance from the back and
you don't want your something truly close we have some
a distance this is about six feet right here now to really help you understand
this
Alexis and I are gonna show you this crazy demo and so we're gonna do that
next
I am gonna show you an extreme example on the inverse square liners we have
this big wide open studio here with all the lights on
you can see the back we have that ugly nasty garage door back here
what I've done here is alexis is really really close to this
Oct a box right here it's about are now an inch or so from her shoulder maybe
two inches
and so it to happen is light enough of extremely rapidly
and also notice that this is sidelight and so even a light if it wasn't pulling
up
is still would need to that background now to make sure that we get light on
both sides of her face
I have this silver reflector right here and so we can have and nice fall off
I left to right with him feel like from a reflector so look pretty good
let me show you how this works Rd metered this F-twenty which means its
gonna knock out all the
ambient light are only in a city like from a flash let me take a picture
just make sure there's no gimmicks Alexis on have you hold up to one
I get your face so there we go number one held up there
good I have that and you can see that it is
absolutely a dark back in with nothing showing up
and that's the beauty the inverse square law I can just drop the light of
in seeking make that background really dark of you don't have that much base
with you
when I do is I use a black seamless background
and that way any light that happens to get back there is just absorbed
with that dark back on select put those principles into practice
okay well let's put this into practice with a black background
we have are like very very close to alexis is about a foot-and-a-half
something like that
we've already meter this FF 13 on it take a picture really quickly
so Alexis looked right at me perfect
we can look at our camera we can see we have a totally black
background now look what happens with me back this light
up some to come out quite a ways and then can you meet do that for me
really quickly so that meters at 7.1
so I'll do that will take another shot
just like that when I look at this
you can see that our background is a little bit lighter than it was in the
first shot
and the last thing we need you Alexis on having kamali back here right in front
of this paper
and in I'll have you meet her that in a second increase the power just a little
bit
on my flash okay if you can you do that for me really quickly
and that meters at nine so I'll change my aperture value
in our and take another shot we look at this
you can clearly see a shadow on the background in that black background
becomes
this really really at light grayish
so actually a darkish rail I did them back what that is
some shade of black it's not black is what that is and so we don't want that
well now we have this was put into practice by shooting an actual portrait
with a totally black background
on out using the principles in action I'm gonna take one more picture this
time with a little bit more realistic lighting setup
we had an issue with Alexis we she was just falling into that black background
so I added a separation light
might appear and then I also add a reflector dad is a little bit more like
to the other side her face
to let me take a couple pictures we'll see how that looks animal rap everything
up the
duh
the
well before leaving I need to tell you a couple more things that'll make you
successful in getting a dark black background
the first is make sure issue in raw and that will allow you to put your photos
into
Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom and then you can use the blacks
slider in the developed model or in the Adobe Camera module to make sure that
the blacks are absolutely black so I usually take the CNN just just that
maybe -25 -50
to make sure those are rock-solid also don't forget to check out the inverse
square law video that is absurd 59
digital photography one-on-one and of course you can find that the Adorama
Learning Center
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episode because they're awesome and also think you Alexis for all the help today
and we'll see you again next time
to watch me cubic did you see that
for a dude
I'm flexible tool that migrating power hurt
I do this all the time crowd
no as an excuse you kicking back worse not better
all he saw were looser pants and you can keep people in the face like this
a cow in this matter this teach
imagery yeah want to get the most
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