Hi this is Vanessa Joy on AdoramaTV and
I'm going to show you my latest three-point
light setup on a commercial shoot.
Here we are shooting an editorial
for Sophisticated Weddings Magazine
in New York City.
We're shooting
downstairs in a basement of an old bank
so there's literally no light down here.
Knowing this on the shoot, I made sure
that I brought the best equipment
possible. I have three Profoto D1's
here. Although I do love the new D2's
that came out, this was before I could
get my hands on them. I also have my
light shapers.
For this shoot, I decided
on a beauty dish with a grid that I
wanted to highlight the bride's face
with. Then I had an umbrella, lighting up
the entire scene. Finally, I used a
1x3 softbox with a grid to give a
little bit of rim light.
Because we
wanted to have this shoot feel like a
nighttime shoot, I decided to add a red
gel to the rim light. The reason I chose
the red gel is because I wanted the rim
light on the subjects to match the roses
and the overall theme of the shoot.
Setting up the lights was fairly simple.
I have them all here on light stands and
then plugged in with extension cords
into the nearest outlet.
I have the
beauty dish off to the left so it's
pointed directly at the bride's face and
a little bit high to have a glamorous
sort of lighting. The umbrella is
providing more of a fill and flat light,
being to camera right, it's really just
filling in the entire scene.
The rim light
is behind my subjects.
There are some shots here with it and some
shots without, so you can see the
difference when there is just a little
bit of red rim light as opposed to when
there isn't.
When deciding what exposure I wanted to
use and how I wanted to set the power on
the lights, the first thing I did was set
my camera for the ambient light in the
room. Which, to be honest, was very little.
So my shutter speed was fairly low but
thankfully I was using a tripod.
My ISO
is fairly high so I did have to do some
noise correction in Lightroom later and
my aperture was in the mid-range, about
f/5.6. I wanted to make sure I have
all the details, the flowers, the
cake and the dress. So I couldn't shoot
it at a lower aperture, as perhaps I
would have liked if I was doing this
shoot for myself or for a wedding day. I
knew ahead of time that this shoot was going
to cover a full spread in the magazine
so I needed everything as crisp as
possible.
Once I had my settings for the
ambient light I started adding in one
light at a time.
I started with the
beauty dish and started on the lowest
power and worked my way up until I got
the correct light that I wanted on my
subject. Then I added in the umbrella
light to fill in the shadows and to even
out the overall lighting in the scene.
I started at the lowest setting and worked
my way up until I got what
I was looking for.
Finally, I added in just a touch of
that rim light, the red, in the back to
the right just to give a little bit of
dimension and highlight a little bit of
interesting color. Thankfully, I was
tethering so I could really analyze how
the light was hitting my subjects and
make adjustments as I needed to.
When you're setting up a shoot like this
always give yourself as much time as
possible.
I know, we don't always get a
lot of time but thankfully this was an
editorial shoot where I did have the
time to set up each individual light and
get exactly what I was looking for and
what my client was ultimately looking for.
Taking a look at how the lighting
appeared on my computer instead of just
on my camera really helped me hone in on
my settings.
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