In this episode, I'm going to show you how
you can get a low-key look, from just one
light. Hi everybody! Welcome to another
episode of exploring photography. I'm
Mark Wallace, and once again I'm joined
by a beautiful Katie, and we are wrapping
up our four-part series on the
properties of light, and the position of
our light, and how that affects
everything. And so if you haven't seen
the first three episodes, make sure you
check that out!
Well in this episode, we're going to be
doing is something a little bit
different. I want to get a really low-key,
high contrast portrait of Katie. We're
going to do a profile shot. We're going
to do that with one light. We're going to
make this using all the principles that
we learned previously. So normally when
you're in the studio shooting, so we have
a white background back here.
Katie come right over here. Normally what
we do is, we have our light facing our
model. But as you can clearly see this
light. That is our key light, is facing
toward the camera. I'm going to be
shooting right here, so I'm gonna be
shooting this way toward Katie, so how
does this work?
Well we're combining some of the things
that we learned previously.
The first is diffusion, and so we learned
that when we have a light source close
to our subject, we have a large effective
size, because what happens is, that light
is bouncing all over, and that's exactly
what is happening here!
So can you stay right there, you're going to
look this way, so even though this is
facing toward the camera. A lot of this
light is spilling, and wrapping around
Katie's face, and because she's going to
be looking this way, that is going to
give her a really nice soft light. We
don't want this light to go onto the
background, and so we're actually facing
it toward our camera. The other thing
that I've done here is, I've added a grid.
That's just going to keep the light, and
control that, so it's not scattering too
much. Because I don't want it to fall into
the lens of my camera, and give us lens
flare and things like that! So this grid
is just going to make sure that the
light is directional. So it's soft light,
it's diffused light, it's directional
light, and because it's close to Katie
that the effective size is large. That's
how we get that nice soft light. The
problem with this, because this is all
coming this direction, the other side, the
opposite side of Katie's face, is going
to fall into darkness. We need to fix
that. Somehow and I have a trick.
Right here, we have this. This is a sign, a
little whiteboard that we had hanging
out in the studio here. I'm going to place
that on the other side of Katie, and what
that's going to do is, this light that's
coming this way, is going to bounce off
of that, into the opposite side of
Katie's face, and we're going to get this
really awesome portrait. So without
further ado, let's shoot.
So one quick note, I don't have any other tripods or
assistants or anything. So I'm going to be
doing this all by myself.
So I've pre focused my camera, and you
might see me getting a little bit closer
and farther away from Katie. The reason
I'm doing that is, I can see when I'm in
focus, and then I'm just going to hold this
up on the other side, so I can bounce the
light. So you don't have to have a lot of
stands and assistants, and a bunch of
fancy stuff. You can do this as a one-man
show, and so Katie here we go!
I've already metered the light at f/8,
and then take about a half a step back.
Perfect you're looking in exactly the
right place. I'm going to focus my camera
really quickly first. We're going to do a
shot with no reflector. This is beautiful,
I love this. Awesome. Now I'm going to cheat
a little bit to the right... as we learn,
when we look at the position of our
light in relationship to the camera,
that's helping out, that is gorgeous, and
so now I'm going to add a reflector, and
then just make that as close as I can
get it without being in the shot, and
perfect!
I absolutely love this image, and just by
understanding the position of light, the
quality of light, and language of light,
we were able to create some really
dramatic results. You would never think
that pointing the light toward the
camera would give us a shot that looked
like that. Well I hope that you enjoyed
this little mini-series!
If you want to see more about lighting
and studio lighting, off camera flashing,
all that kind of stuff. Make sure you
click Subscribe. So you don't miss a
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again next time!