In this video I'm giving you an
assignment that you can do in your
dining room, or a kitchen, and it will
improve your technical lighting skills.
We're going to be taking inspiration
from modern-day football players, and
17th century Dutch Masters to learn a
few things, so don't go anywhere
we're gonna get started right now.
Hi everybody!
Welcome to another episode of Exploring
Photography right here on AdoramaTV
brought to you by Adorama.
It's the camera store that has everything for
photographers like you and me. Well
you've probably seen football players at
some point in your life practicing
before the game, and they're doing crazy
things like running down the field,
putting their feet in tires really fast,
or they're pushing these big heavy
things, sleds down the field, or they're
jumping into mud. I don't know, they're
doing crazy things, that they would never
actually do in an actual football game.
So why do they do that, well it's obvious
they're trying to increase their skills,
their agility, their strength, their
decision-making, all that kind of stuff
that they will be using in the game, and
as photographers we need to do the same
thing. We need to put ourselves through
these agility practices, so that we can
understand things, like specular
highlights, and shadows and direction of
light and color temperature and
retouching, and all of that kind of stuff!
And so that's what we're doing today, I'm
giving you an exercise that will help
you in your actual photography game, but
this might not be something that you
actually use to publish, and so this is
an exercise to help you improve your
skills, and we're going to do something
that was originally invented by painters
way back in the 17th century, and even
before, but it really became known in the
17th century by the Dutch masters, and
what they would do, is they would paint
still lifes and they would do that to
show their expertise, by showing how they
could paint the cloth and the highlights
and the shadows on fruit, and they'd also
throw in some political statements and
things like that along the way. We don't
have time to get into that, but we are
going to be shooting a still life so
that we can understand how to control
light, and understand specular highlights,
and shadows, and direction of light. All
of that kind of stuff, now if you do this
at home and try it yourself,
it could take you an hour or two, or four,
to do everything.To dial it in exactly,
but once you're done with this, you'll
have a much much better understanding of
how light works, and how your light
modifiers work. So let me show you the
setup we have, right back here this is
something I'm doing in my apartment
living room here. I have my Leica M10,
with a 50 mm lens thats set to
f/8 for a nice depth of field, and then
at the other end of the table, I have
some fruits and vegetables, and a glass
pitcher full of potpourri. The reason
we're doing this, is because if you'll
notice, this is really shiny. All these
things are really shiny. So we have these
things right here, these are called
specular highlights. There are the
reflections of the light sources and
then in this room we also have these
four chairs around a glass table, and
then the entire thing is being
illuminated by this window, to the side,
and this other window over here, so we
have lots of light streaming in, and then
on the ceiling, we also have this normal
incandescent light. So those are our
light sources, and this is how everything
is set up. Well now that we know what
this scene really looks like, let me
explain to you why I've chosen these
specific things. The reason for that is
they are highly reflective, and that
means that they show the reflections of
the sources of light, and so they're
going to show the reflection of the
light coming from the window. They're
going to show the reflection of the
light bouncing off the table, they're
going to show the reflection of
everything that light the reflection of
the source of the light is called a
specular highlight, and so if you hear
somebody say that something is really
specular, it means that you can see all
of the different things that are
illuminating that object. So shiny
things are really specular, and so we
want to control that specular light in
this exercise. So the first thing I want
to do is just take a photo using the
ambient light, and we'll see what it
looks like, and then we can see all those
specular highlights. So I have my camera
already set up. It's at f/8 it's at ISO
100 and the shutter speed is going to be
determined by the camera. So I'll just
take a quick picture here, and we can
look at this, and you can see it's sort
of lifeless and bland, but we can also
those specular highlights. Look really
close, you can see the reflection of the
window lights, you can see the reflection
of the table, and the chairs, and all of
that stuff on these shiny objects. So we
want to start to control that. That's the
exercise, that's the agility that we're
going to go for. But what we want to do
remember, is we want to take inspiration
from those 17th Century Dutch Masters,
now if we look at these old photo, or old
paintings. You'll see that they are
really shadowy. The shadow is toward the
front not the back. We have these muted
tones, it's really dark, we have chiaroscuro,
which we talked about in previous
episodes, and so that's what we want to
do, we want to take this really sort of
high key bland light, and we want to fix
those things. So the first thing we need
to do is get rid of all of this ambient
light, and so to do that I'm just going
to close the windows. So let me do that
really fast. Well now that the blinds are
closed the only light that's
illuminating our subject, is the light
from the apartment, and the video light
that's illuminating me right now. But
because we're going to be shooting with
a studio strobe, our shutter speed and
our aperture are going to be too fast
and too small for these lights to do
anything. So the only light that our
camera is going to see. Ss the light from
our flash. Now when you're doing this at
home, you can use any flash you want. You
can use a speed light. You can use a
studio strobe. All you need is a flash
and some type of softbox. It can be a
small, medium, or large softbox. That's the
beauty of this exercise, is that you can
see what those do differently, and so try
each one of those things. So what I'm
going to be using is my Profoto. This
is a B2 with a two-foot octa box. Now
normally when we're shooting portraits
or normal subjects, what we would do is
we would take our key light. That's what
this is. I'm going to turn on my modeling
light here, and we put it in front of our subject,
but what we're trying to do is to really
control the specular highlights. The
reflections of the light from our light
source on our subject now. Because this
is glass. If we put this in front of our
subject, what we're gonna get is we're
gonna get a reflection of this light in
the glass, and on the tomatoes, and on the
grapes. It's going to be specular, it's
going to show up. We don't want to do
that, so the way to do this
is the exact opposite. This is something
I learned from my friend Rick Gale. He
calls this the circle of beauty. So what
you do is you take your softbox, your
large soft light, and you put it behind
your subject, and you can put that
wherever you want to the right, or to the
left, as long as it's behind the subject.
now what we're gonna do is, we're gonna
put it directly behind. The other thing
that you want to do to control specular
highlights is.. you need your light to be
close, and really large, so the larger
your softbox the better, and the closer
you can get without your softbox showing
up in the frame of your camera better,
and even if you can put multiple layers
of diffusion, that's even better. So we're
gonna keep it simple, something that you
can do in your kitchen or your living
room, or dining room, like I promised so
we're going to use one medium or small
softbox. We're going to place that behind
the subject as low as we can possibly
get it, and as far forward as we possibly
can. So that the front of our softbox is
actually even with, or even in front of
the subject. So we get light spilling in
front of that, and reflecting back, and
then a lot of light behind that, and so
it's really important to play with the
placement of your light. So when you're
doing this at home bring it closer, bring
it farther back, move it around, and see
exactly what that does to your photo. Now
you'll notice that I have an issue. I
have a light stand right in the middle
of my photo, but we're gonna get to that
solution next. We're gonna do each one of
these things one at a time, and build on
all of that. So the next thing we need to
do is, we need to meter this light, and so
let me get my light meter here. I've got
my control, I've got just my little
Sekonic Light Meter, now normally what I
would do is, I would point my light meter
to my camera, but I can't do that because
if I do, well I'm gonna get an incorrect
reading, because well the light has to go
through all this stuff. So that's not
going to work, and so then I would
normally point my light to the light and
my meter to the light itself, that's
probably a better option. So I'm going to
put my meter right here in front of the
glass, because I want to see how that
glass is affecting the exposure, and I'm
going to meter that, and that meters at
f/8 which is exactly what my camera is
set to. So let me take a picture and
we'll start with this and we'll see
exactly how it looks. So we're going to
make sure this is all framed up, and
focused. It is. Let's take a picture. I've
got to put my remote control on here,
just won't let me do that. All right, all
right now, we're set now. Let's take a
picture.... ooh look at that!
We've improved things dramatically, but
we still have some issues. If we look
really closely at this image, we can see
some specular highlights to the side of
our glass here, what the heck is that?
Well it's these chairs, so they've got to
go. Let me do that, and we'll do another
picture. All right? Well we've removed our
chairs, so let's take another picture
really fast. Everything is exactly the
same, and take a look at that. When we
compare these side-by-side, you can see
the subtle difference that the
reflection of the chairs in our glass
vase made. They created some specular
highlights, that just by moving those
chairs we were able to eliminate. Now in
your dining room you might have
something on the wall. Some painting,
something if you look really closely to
your shiny objects, look for the things
that are creating specular highlights,
and try to eliminate those. You can do
that either by moving them out of the
way, or you might be able to cover them
with dark cloth something like that, or
just put things in the way to block
those reflections. The other thing we
have to fix is that light pole back
there. So we've got a light stand that is
clearly showing up in our photo. Well we
can fix it with something like this. I've
set my camera to a 12 second delay, so
when I push the shutter release on my
camera. It's gonna wait 12 seconds, and
then the flash is gonna fire, but because
I've manually focused, everything is set
exactly as it is before. It's going to
work exactly as it did before, except for
this time I'm gonna run back there. Grab
that blanket and hold it up so it gives
us a nice black background, and it
obscures that light stand. So let's do
that right now. I'm hitting this, I've got
12 seconds, gonna run back here, make sure
this is nice and still as far back as I
can get it, so don't get any light on
there...
and then and that goes off! Now let's
take a look at this photo, and you'll see
that now we're dialing it in. We're there,
we have our specular highlights the way
that we want them. The background looks
pretty darn good, but we still have one
more thing that we need to do, and that
is to touch this up in post-production.
So let's do that really fast. Well here
is the image out of the camera, and you
can see that we have some problems with
this image, but that's okay, let's not
forget what we're doing here. We're not
trying to win the big game, we're trying
to learn the skills it will take to win
the big game. So this image is perfect
for us to learn from and to practice
some of the new skills or some of the
old skills, that we need to sharpen up. So
specifically in this image, there are
some things that we can learn. We can
learn that we needed a little bit more
front light, because this is underexposed.
We learned that well we needed a flag,
it's a little bit better, that's not as
seamless as I would like. These table
legs are a little bit obnoxious, we've
got some things that we can do here.
Ideally we would have done that on the
table using some lights or reflectors,
but now is the time to learn how to
correct things. In post-production you
can do this with Lightroom or Photoshop
or whatever image editing software that
you want to use. It's up to you,
the key principle here is for you to
practice. So let's learn how to do this
really fast. Adjustment brushes are a big
deal in Lightroom, and photo because
we're going to practice using thes,e and
so we need to increase the exposure here
on these tomatoes, and the grapes and the
apples. So I'm going to take this up by... I
don't know how much.. but let's give it a
maybe one stop.. around there, boost so now
I'll go down here and I'll just start
painting this in, and it looks, looks okay.
So I think we guessed correctly, you can
see that's really fixing it, and so what
we're doing here is, we're trying to
figure out how far we can push our
camera. If we need to, we don't want to do
this, unless we absolutely have to, but
it's good to know if we can do that, if
we need to, if we run into that situation,
so I'm just going to sort of paint this
in here. I think I'm going to change the
feather of this brush, so it's not quite
as abrupt on the edges, that looks pretty
good.
I'm going to go in here, and do these grapes.
To me the grapes are a little bit too
much. So what I'm going to do is, I'm
going to erase what I just did there on
those grapes, so if you don't know how to do
that, well guess what you can practice..!
That's what this is for. There's an erase
brush, I'm going to get a new brush here.
I'm going to take this up by... oh I don't know,
just a little over half a stop, and let's
see what we get with that. Make sure you have
a nice big feather, get this a little bit
bigger brush, and make that feather a
little bit larger. Okay, yeah, that's a
little bit more pleasing to my eye than
what we had before. All right! So we also
have some problems up here with this,
this, line here, so let's get a new brush.
Let's take the exposure down by how
about 2 stop's, something like that.
It doesn't have to be really specific at
this point, because guess what, we're
learning that's right, we're learning so
I got a nice soft brush here! So that's
another thing you can learn, is how soft
does this need to be, and we can start
going in here, and correcting this, and
really spend some time now. Obviously, I'm
not spending the time to do this right
now, because you don't want to watch me
do this forever, and that's okay. I'll get
a new brush, we'll clean up these legs
really fast by just taking this exposure
down by, I don't know about 4 stops,
something like that. Go in and then you
can see that these tomatoes then need to
have some correction, we need to erase
that. You get the idea, the idea and the
key principle here, is to learn how much
clarity do you need? Is it 43? Is it 28, I
don't know. You can play with that. Do we
need to increase the vibrancy a little
bit? No I think that looks pretty good.
The other thing that we can do here is..
take this, and maybe we can go over into
Adobe Photoshop to play with some of the
filters there, or even learn how to use
smart objects, and once we have that
image in Photoshop, we can fill this we
can start practicing our shortcut keys.
We can maybe go in and take this into
the Nik collection. In fact that's really
what I want to do, I want to go see what
I can do in the Nik analog effects plus
analog effects Pro 2 software, and once
that's, and you can make this a large
fill. Fill the screen here, and then you
can start doing some different adjustments...
dirt and scratches or whatever it is you
want to do, just play with this. I did a
little bit earlier. I created this custom
camera here called apples, and it's
pretty good. The one thing that I don't
like about it is the frame. I don't like
that so I'm going to take that frame away,
and then the other thing I don't like
about it is. I've got these dirt and
scratches that I thought would look
pretty cool but they make it look pretty
nasty. So I'll take those away, and also
this photo plate here, I don't really
like that, but I do like the bokeh, that's
pretty cool. The point is to get in there
and play with things, until you get a
result that you like, so you can repeat
it when you need to. Use that in a
real-life situation. So I'm gonna hit
okay here. Bring it in maybe. I'll let
this sit for a week and come back, and
try it again, but it's an image that I
have that I can play with, and when all
is said and done here is the final image
from my practice session today.
Okay. So let's review, what did we learn?
Well we learned that if we put our
illumination behind our subject,
sometimes we have a more pleasing light.
We know that we can control the shadows,
we know that we need to change things to
remove specular highlights from our
subject, and we know that we can do some
burning and dodging and changing of
things in post-production to make it
absolutely perfect, but the most
important thing I hope that you learned
from this video, is that you need to do
this yourself in your own studio or your
own dining room or kitchen or whatever
space that you have, and then you need to
make small adjustments. Move that light
around, use different light modifiers, use
a small softbox, a large softbox. Try that
from the side, use different types of
reflective objects, use silverware, use
some nice fine china, maybe use some
crystal. Whatever you have, and then work
at this over and over and over again.
Learn the post-production techniques, and
it's going to be like you being a
football player right before the Super
Bowl. You're going to learn all of those
different things that you need to use in
the big game,
when you get to that big photo shoot, and
you have a small problem you'll know how
to adjust, and fix that, because you've
practiced before you got there, and that
is what this video is all about. Thank
you so much for joining me. Don't forget
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behind the scenes stuff that I do, and
all my travels around the world!
Thanks so much for joining us.
I'll see you again next time