Hi everybody,
welcome to another episode of
Exploring Photography right here on
AdoramaTV.
I'm Mark Wallace hanging out
in - Buenos Aires Argentina,
and this is Ari and she is going to be
helping me show you one of my favorite
lighting techniques...
and that is setting up one lighting
setup, with many different possibilities.
So we can turn on and off different
lights to create totally different looks
without ever having to move anything at all,
and so without further ado let's dive
right in.
The key to this lighting setup
is a lot of different options,
so we're gonna go through the sideways ,
so you can see what's happening here,
so my camera is on a tripod, it's pretty
much gonna stay center,
we're not going to do too
much with that, but the reason for that
is what we have right here, so I have
these two boom arms, and I have two
different light setups, so let's start
with the top one, here this is a Profoto
B2 and it's got no light modifiers on it
at all, so we can shoot with just that,
and it's a small light so we're gonna
have hard light, but because of the
position of this light, Ari has very,
very strong cheekbones, and so we're
gonna get this really dramatic low-key
look that's beautiful, we could just
shoot with that and nothing else, but to
give us some options, we have this
soft box right here, and it's a pretty
big softbox, so this is going to be
bringing a bunch of light to fill in
some of these really hard shadows that
we get from this, that's going to give us
our second look,
we might even turn off this key-light
and only use that with some other things
to create a more, I don't know, camp fiery
look,
something you wouldn't do but we can
break the rules in this lighting setup
which is really cool, so light one, light
two, let's keep going, we have these
panels right here, now what the heck are
these, well they're not reflecting
anything, they're protecting lens flare
from entering my camera, so if we go
behind these, you can see that we have
these two lights.
So we have one here and,
we have one over in that corner, and what
these lights are doing is, they are just
coming right back here to the back of
Ari, and we're getting just highlights
on her cheek and her hair and on her
shoulders, it's just giving us a little
silhouette, so we can turn those on, or
off, and do that in different
combinations with our key and our fill
light to give us different looks.
The. these panels are just making sure
that light doesn't spill into my lens,
creating lens flare, it's isolating things.
Now we have one more light that we can
turn on or off, that's right here
it's got a little grid on it,
this is illuminating just here on the
background, and all it's doing is giving
us a little vignette of light that once
again we can add or subtract, we might
even throw some color gels on here to
change the background color, we can pull
off that grid to throw light everywhere.
We have a ton of options, now it's easy
to walk through this and talk about it
but let me show you exactly how it works,
now that you know how everything is set
up, let me just show you quickly how I've
metered the key light.
The key light remember -
is this very small Profoto head,
and it has no modifiers
because of where this is positioned,
which is right above the camera, and it's
above our model we want to make sure
that we meter correctly.
Normally I would meter under our
models chin, but not for this, because this
is a very small directional light,
it's going to be incorrect,
let me just show you exactly
what happens, so I'm metering up here at
the forehead, that meters at f/9.
if I meter her underneath the chin,
that meters at f/7, so there's a big
difference, so I'm always going to double
check and make sure that this is the right
reading.
again we have f/9 down here, we have f/6.3
meter to this side, at f/7,
so I need to take a few readings and make
sure I get the hottest of the hot,
which is f/9.
Now to save time in all of
these lighting setups, I have metered
everything else in advance, and so
everything we shoot, we're going to be
shooting at f/9 so my camera is set to
sync speed which is 1/180th of a second,
my aperture is going to be f/9 through all
of this, and then I also have my ISO at 100 that's
not going to change, and if it does I'll
let you know.
So let's start with this first setup.
So give me a really strong look,
there we go, so I'm going to go in
here I have to make sure I'm careful not
to get this softbox in my frame, but
we're pretty good right now.
There we go, beautiful and we're gonna do
one more, exactly, move your..
there you go, perfect.
I need my Spanish to be a little better,
beautiful, okay, now we just look at these
very very first two images, you can see
that they're really high contrast, they
look wonderful, we're going to shoot a
little bit more of these a little bit
later on, but you can see with just this
one light, we have a lot of options,
it's sculpting Ari's cheekbones, it looks
wonderful.
So the next thing I want to do is, we're
going to add in some fill, so I'm going
to take off my Profoto remote, and I
changed my Profoto so that is in slave
mode, and I'm going to this Godox
transmitter, so when I fire that it's
firing this second light, right here,
so I've already metered that, so now once
again I have my Godox transmitter,
transmitting to this fill light..
that's firing and triggering my Profoto,
so we have two lights firing right now.
Now when I metered this, I kept it at f/9,
but what I did was,
I wanted to make sure I
overexposed this fill light just a
little bit, and you'll see why right now,
so we're gonna meter this, we're gonna
look right in through the lens, our focus
sorry, and beautiful, just like that, and
you can see that we have a really
wonderful light.
So let's have you put your hair back,
just a little bit, and you can see the
shadows, we're gonna do this
one more time, beautiful, just like that,
excellent, so that is a really cool look.
We actually overexposed just a touch, it
gives us that nice dewy glow kind of a
look, with that campfire light coming
from below, it's not something you would
normally do, but for this it works.
Alright, let's go to the next option, so
I'm going to go into my remote here and
I'm going to turn on those kicker lights.
So those have already been metered so
I'm gonna turn those on this, is gonna
give us some highlights on the cheek, so
if you'll have your hair, there we go so,
she's gonna put her hair back a little
bit, and so we're gonna get some kickers
on the cheekbones, good again, very fuerte,
there good, strong pose, so I'm gonna
focus this up, we're gonna shoot and that
is awesome, yes, there we go.
That is so cool, so now we have a really
high-key look, with some highlights, we're
sculpting this light from low-key to
high-key, and we can even do one more
thing, so way back here, so I'm gonna
come way way way back here, we have a
light hidden behind Ari, and so this is
going to light up just a small tiny vignette
around her head, now we have to be
careful with our lighting
setups on this one, so first thing I'm
going to do is turn it on, so it's on
Group C, I'm turning that on again, I've
already metered this, so we're going to
take a quick photo, that looks pretty
darn coo,l so it's a very, very subtle,
this light, so to make this more
pronounced, what I'm going to do is, I'm
going to turn off the fill light, so I'm
turning that off, now it's totally off, we
just have our key light, we have our
kickers and we have that little vignette
light... there we go,
beautiful,
I love that, that looks cool,
all right so now we're gonna do one more
thing,
we're gonna do something really crazy,
so what I'm going to do here is,
I'm going to turn off the
kicker's, so they're off, I'm going to
leave on the vignette, I'm going to turn
on this fill light, and I'm going to turn
off the key light.
So now what we have we just have,
the fill from below, then we
just have the vignette behind,
let's see what that gives us,
okay I love it,
perfect that is sort of cool, the other
thing I want to do here just to bring
out a little bit more of that is - I'm
going to turn on my kickers.
I think that'll look a little bit better,
again no key light is going on, right
here,
so we're going to do that, beautiful,
beautiful, that is so cool, it's just
something that's really interesting, we
can play with this.
You can see that that light from below is
it's just not something that's standard,
but with all the other light sculpting it's
something I think we could get away with,
maybe with a little bit of light popped in
there,
so now that you've seen all of
these different things set up,
I'm going to start turning on and off lights.
If we're gonna play with this,
and I'll show you my result.
Well that's all there is to it,
one lighting setup that has many, many
different uses.
I love the different pictures we got.
We got some high-key, low-key,
everything in between, and we never
did anything but just turn on and off
lights, and change some of the settings.
You can do this in your own studio,
my suggestion is find what works for you,
and then play with that, add and subtract,
and do some things until you get a
system that looks like this, so you can
do one setup and create a lot of
different looks in a short amount of time.
Your clients will love you.]
You'll make more money because you'll
have more time to spend on other clients.
It's all good.
Well thanks so much for joining me,
you can follow me on Instagram and
watch all my travels around the world and
behind the scenes from making videos.
You can follow Ari on Instagram, I have
included a link to her Instagram account
in the description of this video, and
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will see you next time.