Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of Exploring Photography right here on
AdoramaTV. I'm Mark Wallace. In today's episode I'm going to show you how to
control shadows on a white background like this. To keep things simple I'm
going to use one single light. We're going to use this Profoto with the
soft box attached. Now we're going to use a fantastic model from South Africa, this
is Amy she is the rockstar down here and so we're first going to show you how to
do this and they were actually going to do a real shoot so let's get started. To
start what I'm going to do is I've already taken the softbox off of this
flash because one of the big ways to control a shadow on a white background
like this is with the light modifier. Let me illustrate this by first taking a
picture with a bare head.
So we've already metered this. we’re shooting this at f/11 and so Amy will have you
look straight forward, just like this and we're not looking for amazing pictures
were just trying to illustrate. Wow look at that crazy shadow. You can see this
right here. Really, really big nasty shadow right here behind Amy. Now watch
what happens when I just add a soft box, This is a two-foot softbox here and I’m just going to
throw this on. Amy is at the same exact place. Now our soft box is going to
consume a little bit of light.
We've already metered this and I know we're going to go from f/11 down to f/8.
So I’m going to make that adjustment. Going to shoot one more time, get everything in
focus and perfect.
Bam and look at the difference between the first picture and the second picture.
You can see that we’re already affecting that shadow in the background making it
much softer. Now the other thing we can do is change the position of light.
That's the best way to control a shadow. Now we could try to add a bunch of lights back
here and wash that out. It's really not going to work as well at just moving the
position of our light. Now we have to do that in relationship to where our camera
is. So the camera is right here shooting Amy and so what I'm going to do is I'm
going to move this to this side and when I do that what you'll see is now the
shadow is going to go that way.
So when I move that light that way, the shadow goes this way. If I move the light up
the shadow goes down and so by moving the light in
relationship to the camera for fixing our shadow. So now we have this over to
the side, move this right over here. I'm going to meter this one more time really
fast Amy. Amy is multi-talented she can meter and model.
Ok here we go, we're to do that and we're at f/8. Ok so we're going to
have this shot again. I'm all focused here.
Perfect, all right now notice two things that just happened right there. One, the
shadow went away but also notice what Amy did. Now she is a professional
model and she knows about the light in the position and the key light and where
she needs to position yourself. Notice she went from straightforward to
this way because she knows what to do.
Look what happens if she positions herself in the wrong way. So we'll have
you move away just like that.
Excellent and now I'm going to take another shot and now notice her face
falls into darkness and we don't want that. We can do some artistic stuff and
how to move around we can really work with this would be a lot of fun but when
you're just starting out your learning about position of light make sure that
your model cheats to the key light. Always sort of going toward that light
and that will help fix those shadows. Now here's another thing. Remember that this
is all about the relationship of the light and the position of the light
relative to the camera. So the camera was right here, we got rid of the shadow but
watch what happens if I come over here. So now I'm going to come over here,
focus this up and watch what happens to our background. Click, now we have a
shadow back there again because now I’m on axis with the light. We don't want
that. We want to make sure that we keep our camera and our light separated so
that our shadow goes from right behind model to over here. There's one more thing
that we can do instead of moving the light and relationship to the camera we
can move our model and relationship to the background. So we're going to start
with Amy where she shouldn't be and that is right against the white background.
Now what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to take a shot to show you
exactly why this isn't what you want to do. So when I take this picture, bam you
can see that she's got this nasty shadow right next to her,
even with the softbox, against this background it’s just sort of this hard nasty
light. All we need to do is have Amy come out. This is about five feet or so from
the background and now we're shooting at about f/10. I'm going to take the same picture
now with her out right here. So let me focus this up just like that perfect and
then we'll take this shot and you can see that we've gotten rid of that
background shadow and we can start working with that. So to summarize all
this. If you have shadows in the background the easiest thing to do is
either move your light in relationship to your camera or move your model in
relationship to the background. Now that we know all of that stuff we’re going to take
some real pictures and have some fun with it and we'll show you the results.
So let's get going.
Well that's all there is to it. Remember it's about the position of light to
control the shadow, more than trying to make things really complicated. It's also
about having a fantastic model, thank you Amy for joining us today and don't
forget to subscribe to AdoramaTV. Amy's done it, I've done it and you should do
it too.
Thanks again and I'll see you again next time.