- Bonjour mesdames et messieurs
In this episode, I wanna show you how to do
a cool, miniature photo.
(drum roll and choir music)
Bonjour mesdames et messieurs
My name is Serge Ramelli.
I am a French photographer from the amazing,
the crazy city of Paris, France,
living in Los Angeles, California.
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And also, you can download the source file of this episode
by clicking the little download source file button up there,
or below the video.
Alright, in this video, I wanna show you
how to do a miniature photo shoot
and the whole workflow of retouching
in Lightroom and Photoshop to get this result.
It's just a cool project I did for Halloween
and I thought you might be interested.
Alright guys,
I wanna show you how I did this little miniature,
small world type of photography
and how I did it.
It's actually very simple.
I used a very fancy lens which is the
85 millimeter 1.4,
but you could actually do it with like a 24-70,
'cause I'll show you a trick to make the bouquet more crazy.
'Cause if you use it with a lens that,
I was open at 1.4.
If you were to open your lens at F4,
you are not gonna get the same bouquet.
But first, let me show you the set-up.
Set up is, I just bought at Whole Foods in USA.
You find this in a grocery store.
Just a few pumpkins, there was a couple of candles,
and then I had an LED string light.
You can find this on Amazon for like, $20.
LED string light, there is many out there.
I just put this in the back,
and what I did is
I took a lot of photos, I tried a lot of different set ups,
but this is the one I actually like the most,
so I shot this, I was ready on the floor at 2.8
You see I was not even at 1.4,
I was at 2.8 and I was getting this nice bouquet,
because the light were about two meters,
six feet away, from the photo.
I was making sure that I was,
because 2.8, when you are very close to the object
I was making sure that I was really focusing on the candle
you can see that this is already blurry
and that the candle is blurry,
but I actually like the idea
that the whole foreground here
is a little bit blurry,
that there's only the candle.
I was looking for really a, Halloween mood.
Actually, let me reset this because I what I did is
I did some retouching on it a little bit
so I'm going to reset it, voila!
All I did was open up the shadows,
bring down the highlights, I just add a bit of contrast
with the whites and the blacks.
That just adds a bit of contrast.
And then I added, I think a little bit of magenta overall
and in this case what I did
is I did a little gradient here, up there,
and added some blue.
I wanted some blue, against orange,
so I added some blue there,
and then what you can do is
make another gradient for the bottom
and add some yellow.
You have blue white balance on top, and yellow.
I did that, and then, yeah.
Mostly that, making sure
that's about what I did
and then I pressed Command + Shift + C
to take this, and then what I did,
and then here's the trick,
it's actually a photographic trick more
than a Photoshop trick,
is I took this photo,
I completely went out of focus,
and you can do that with any lens
until I had a big bouquet with the same framing
So I'm going to press Command + V,
so that I have the same retouching that I did
and then I take this photo, so the original photo,
actually let me give this a two-star,
I'm giving it a two-star on Lightroom
because I did so many tests
and a second-star, and I'm going to filter
so we're only going to use these two photos, okay?
This one, and this one.
And I'm trying to do is, actually sorry,
this one and this one, and I want to mix these bouquets,
so this one and this one.
What I did is I take this photo and I take this photo
and I right click, Edit,
Open as Layers in Photoshop.
And that's going to open both those photos
in Photoshop on the same file.
Here I am in Photoshop,
and the top photo is the one that has a small bouquet,
and the bottom photo is the one that has the big bouquet.
All I'm going to do now
is I'm going to put the one with the big bouquet on top,
I'm going to slide it over,
and I'm going to lower the opacity
and I just want to make sure that
the bouquets are at the right places.
Actually I really had the same framing.
And then I'm going to press the Option key on my keyboard
or the Alt key on windows, you hold this, ready for it?
And click the Add Layer Mask.
And that's going to add a black mask, okay?
Then I'm going to take a little brush,
B for Brush, and I'm going to make sure
the opacity of my brush is at 20%, actually no, more.
Like about 50%.
And I'm going to make sure that white
is my foreground color.
Because I've got a black layer
all this bouquet is invisible, okay?
But now if I press X
and white is my foreground color
and I've got opacity at 50%
I can start bringing in a little bit
of the other bouquet
and voila, just to create some magic,
before and after.
It's basically mixing two different exposures
To just make it a little magical,
something like this,
and if it went too much, you can press X
and just bring back some of the original footage
until they are both mixed up.
And then I basically did, File, Close,
Save, and that's going to bring that back into Lightroom.
And now, I look at it and do some last changes on it
once it's back into Lightroom.
Okay, I'm back into Lightroom and this time
all I'm going to do is maybe, just add a bit more contrast
and boost the white, to make it a little bit brighter.
And then, I'm going to go here, I'm crop it 16x9,
I think it'll work better to get more on the subject.
And basically that's it, that's how I did it.
Now, the first time I tried this
I did something a bit different
In this one I basically mixed more of the second light
it just depends on your brush, how you want to use it.
Voila! But that's the basic idea.
Don't forget I am giving you the raw files.
You can play around with them, you can even make
your own type of photography for Halloween
Guys, have a great, Happy Halloween!
Alright guys, I hope you liked this video,
and if you did like it,
please give it one thumbs-up click on the like button,
don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel
by clicking the little subscribe button
and the little bell.
And also don't forget to download the source files
so you can do your own creation and use it for Halloween.
Thank you very much, and I will see you in another video