In this video
I'll show you how to use
a cheap plastic dust sheet
to create some
amazing portraits.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey
and you're watching Adorama TV,
brought to you by Adorama,
the camera store
that's got everything
for us photographers.
Once again you join me
in my small home studio.
Now, at some point
I've got a painting and decorating
project to do in here
and I thought I'd cover up
my equipment
with some dust sheets.
These are large plastic sheets
and then I thought;
You know what
these could make
wonderful photo props.
So that's what I'm going to do
in this video,
I'm going to show you
some great ideas
using these large
plastic sheets.
They come in all sorts
of different shapes and sizes,
I got loads of them.
Both of these
came from the pound store,
£1 a bag,
absolutely brilliant!
However, as I looked at this stuff
I realized it is quite industrial.
There is going to be some post-processing
but don't worry
you'll see that in the pictures
and I'll show you
the post-processing
at the end of this video.
Right, let's get some lights set,
let's get a model in.
Let's get shooting.
So once again
I've been joined
in the studio by Beth
who is going to be the model
for this shoot.
Before we get too
much into this,
we need to think a little bit about health and safety.
We are going
to be covering Beth
in a plastic sheet
and it will be fitting quite closely
to her face, so Beth
if you feel like you're
short of breath at any time
just let me know.
Be sensible with your models.
Don't get them to do anything
that you wouldn't be prepared to do yourself.
Right,
our first set up:
simple black background,
one light
I'm going to ask Beth to cover herself
in the plastic,
and we're going to let it
fall down
and drape like a veil.
Let's try that.
Once we've done that
we can try changing
a little bit more,
getting a little bit more exciting
or different by asking Beth
to pull it right down over her face
so she's completely under
the middle of the sheet.
Well those are really nice
but this stuff has got more to it
than just that.
For example,
it really is rather floaty.
It really does sort of,
well, float
like the lightest of fabrics
but of course it's actually plastic
and that gives me an idea
but I do need an assistant
for this bit, so Sam, if you
want to come in.
We can get Sam just to give
this a little bit
of a floaty movement
and that should help
give us a bit more excitement
into these shots.
Let's try that.
Okay so that was really great fun
but here in the studio
we have one more thing
that can make this
even more exciting
and that's a wind machine.
So let's start
the fans please.
If you want to keep hold of one end.
So that arm you just need
to bring a little closer towards you,
that's it,
a little higher up if you can.
That's it, there you go
and then just turn
a little bit more
towards this light.
Then finally,
what we're going to do here is,
we're actually going to stick it
to Beth's face
by letting the breeze
blow in.
This is where things could
get a little bit dangerous.
So Beth
if you do end up
with it stuck on your face
and you need to get out
then let us know,
we'll kill the fans immediately.
Thank you.
So what I've done now
is taken exactly the same
plastic dust sheet
but this time I've stretched it
out over a frame.
Which is actually just
a background support
and a couple of lighting stands.
Now Beth is behind this
so we're going
to shoot through it.
I've got this reasonably tight
so we can kind of see
her through it.
Not too tight because this
stuff will tear incredibly easily.
What about lighting?
The lighting's still the same single light.
I've got it, up in a fairly diagonal direction
just to try and get some
of the texture from this plastic.
We'll take a meter reading
for that,
it's reading f/8 that's great,
that's what I want to shoot at.
Let's try this shot
see how it looks.
Beth is about 40cm back
from the plastic
and although we can see her,
she's not particularly sharp.
That's because this is a diffuse material
it's giving us a blurry view
but if we ask Beth
to come closer, so she's actually in
contact with the plastic,
that's going to look very different.
Once again we have to
think about health and safety,
don't suffocate your model,
that's not a good thing to do!
That kind of distance works really well
and when we do that
we actually get to see
almost through
as if it was completely clear,
very nearly,
and that works really nicely,
it gives a great look.
Okay let's just try this
and take a few shots like this.
If you find that background
is a little bit gray
because we have a white
background that's fairly distant
from our light source,
well, we can lighten
that up a little bit
using a second light.
In this case it's the eVOLV 200
from Flashpoint
which I'm just going
to pop in round the back.
It's on pretty much its
lowest possible power setting
just to elevate that white
to a slightly lighter
gray background.
So for my final setup
what we've done is
we've actually punctured a little hole
through the plastic sheet
and I'm going to ask Beth
to look through it.
Now, for this shot
I want to have
a very dramatic light.
So I've got the light in much closer.
That should give us a nice drop-off
in light on the background
so that drops to a darker gray.
I've turned off the background light
but I need to re-meter
the key light here.
So I've got my light meter.
I'm going to pop it
where Beth's head's going to be,
which is about there somewhere,
f/11, so it's a stop
brighter than I'm shooting currently.
I'll just reduce the power of the flash.
Double check,
yes, f/8.
Okay, let's take this shot
and see how it goes.
So we're pretty much done
for this shoot.
Well this dust sheet
is not going to get used again
so I kind of figure,
why not just destroy it completely.
So I'm going to ask Beth
just to rip it apart slowly.
It's the end of the shoot
Let's see what we get.
They look absolutely brilliant.
That was
great fun to do.
Beth was a total star
doing that,
but we need to do a little bit
more work on these
in Photoshop.
So let's get one of these images
into Photoshop
and we'll do a quick edit, right now.
Now I've had a chance
to look at the pictures
from the shoot
they were fantastic
straight out of camera
and although I don't need to,
I like doing post-processing.
So this is a typical picture
and I did all of the editing not here,
inside of Photoshop
but actually in Nik's Software.
So I'm going to go to filter
Nik Software
or Nik Collection
and choose the Analog Effects Pro 2.
Now Nik Software,
if you've never played with it before,
it is a completely
free piece of software
that works in Photoshop and Lightroom.
It used to be paid for
then Google bought it
and now it's been free
for a couple of years.
Takes a minute to load
but once it's in, well,
you can start doing some
wonderful things.
First thing is the Standard Effect
isn't what I want so I'm just
going to come across
to here where it
says Classic Camera,
press a little arrow,
come down and choose
the Build a camera Kit.
Now, this will allow me to
switch features on and off
by coming to the left hand side
and clicking either
on the - button
if they're currently on
or the + button.
So I'm going to turn on Bokeh,
turn off Dirt & Scratches
and then I'm going to tidy away
that side by clicking
on the little button.
That just sort of tabs away
that left-hand side.
Now, there's a few things
I need to change.
The off-the-shelf isn't quite right.
I'll turn off the Bokeh
by clicking on the the tick
and the Lens Vignetting,
we'll come back to those.
Let's deal with the film type.
Now I do want it warm
but I don't want it that warm.
I'm actually going to choose
this one here,
just a first level of warmness
and then I can reduce the strength
so it's a lot less strong,
maybe 50%, something like that.
I'll take away any grain
by making it soft and big.
Next well,
let's go through the other two.
Let's work our way up.
Let's do some Lens Vignetting.
I'll turn that on.
I'll change it from a circle
to a bit more of a rectangle
and because the light is coming
in from the right hand side
I'm just going to drag
my vignette off to the left
so I have a bit more vignetting
on the right just to counteract
that light direction.
Final one is going to be my bokeh.
So let's turn the bokeh on,
we'll increase the strength
a little bit and really what I want to do
is just to reposition it.
So if I drag that up slightly
and maybe just change the size
and shape a little bit.
Let's go something a bit more like that
and rotate it around,
there you go!
That probably feels
a little bit better.
I just want a little bit
of a blurry edge,
just want it feeling like there
is a sort of a blurry vignette
in many ways
and that really adds a bit
to the motion of the image.
When you're happy
click okay
which is just off the
bottom of the screen.
If you want to find out more
about how to use Nik Software
don't forget to check out the
Adorama Learning Centre
where my colleague Mark Wallace
did a brilliant video
on how to use Nik Software.
Right that's loaded in,
let's see what we got.
That's nice but I think just
a little bit of a finish here,
just drop the opacity
for the Effect Layer
because Nik Software
puts itself on its own new
layer which is really handy.
I can just drop the opacity
ever so slightly
and with a few other tweaks
there we go,
there's my final image completed.
Now, as I said,
I do believe in not asking a model
to do anything I wouldn't be prepared
to do myself hence I'm here.
It was amazing how much fun
a £1 dust sheet could be.
If you've enjoyed this video
and you want to see more
then don't forget
to click on
the subscribe button
and of course
leave me a comment below as well.
I'm Gavin Hoey,
thanks for watching.