In this video I'll show you how you can
go beyond Basic Beauty Lighting
in a small home studio.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey
and you're watching AdoramaTV
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for us photographers.
In a recent video I showed you how I did my
very Basic Beauty Lighting here in my
small home studio.
Well in this video
I'm going to go beyond
my Basic Beauty Lighting
and I'm going to do that by adding in
things like some props some better
lighting and some great hair and make-up
to create a fantastic final image.
Now of course if you haven't seen my previous
video go check it out
on the Adorama Learning Centre
but don't worry
I'll cover the basics very briefly
in a second before we get into these slightly
more advanced part of this video.
So with that in mind let's get some lights,
let's get a model in, let's get shooting.
So it's great to have Beth back in the
studio who will be the model for this
beyond beauty lighting setup but before
we get to the advanced bit let's just do
a quick recap on the last video.
So last time we looked at the basics of beauty
lighting and I had a key light which was
around about this sort of distance
elevated and slightly separated from the
model and it gave a result that looked a
bit like this.
Here we go Beth.
That's fine except the shadows,
there quite harsh
underneath Beth's chin
and that's where
we added in the next light.
Well technically a reflector I'm going to write
in the silver reflector like that it's
on a solid board,
which means that Beth
can lean into the shots give us a little
bit more variation on the posing.
I'm using the silver side because it's
relatively far distant from Beth
and I like that little bit of extra fill so
let's have a look and see how the silver
reflector adds to the scene.
It fills in the shadows and looks really good so
that's the basics,
let's go beyond that
and there's a whole bunch of different
ways we can do that.
One of the ways you
can improve your beauty shots
is with the help of a make-up artist
Beth's been through hair and make-up
and looks fabulous. If you hire a
professional hair and makeup artist into
your shoot, you're going to get way better
results straight away trust me.
Next thing is lighting .We could just use
these one light set up here
but I like extra lights.
I've got a bunch of extra lights including
this one so this is the Evolv200 from
Flashpoints and I've got it in a
standard reflector which I'm going to
pop right in behind Beth pointing at the
background so this is going to be a
separation light or a background
illumination light. It adds a whole
other level to the shoot and it looks
a little bit like this.
It completely changes the dark gray background.
If you put enough light out of it,
well it will make the gray go pretty much white
but the great thing about having a second
light that's controllable is you can
choose how much lights or how little
light it produces. So let's get that same
light and reduce its power down. Let's
come down to maybe 1/32 of its full
power, so if I take the power down,
it looks like this completely different.
Now I actually quite like that, I like the
natural vignetting that I get from that light.
But this is the beauty of beauty lighting
in photography, you can change this
however you want to suit your needs.
Other things we could do with that background light,
we could put a gel on it and color the background
and make it a totally different color if
that's what you want from your shoot.
It's entirely up to you but I like it
nice plain gray so we're going to leave it like this.
When it comes to lighting you
can stop at any point during the .process.
One light was good,
two lights was better,
but what if we add some more
and in this case I've got my two speedlights,
I've positioned them behind Beth
and pointing slightly towards her shoulders
and her cheeks. Now the idea with these
is they should add a little bit of a highlight
just on the cheeks and on the shoulders
and it adds a kind of thinning effect.
Now Beth doesn't really need thinning
but it will add a bit to the shot. Let's
see how it looks,
and that adds a nice little glow on the cheeks
and the shoulders and it looks wonderful
in a simple Beauty setup like this.
Okay let's take a few shots like this,
see how it works.
So lights can really add to the
creativity of your beauty setup
but there's one more thing we can add to
this and that is a little bit of styling.
The final piece of our Beyond Basics
Beauty Lighting is the styling
and in this case we've got Beth to wear a
little wrap of feathers around her neck.
Remember it is a tight headshot that
we're shooting here so you can shoot
with just that area styled and the rest
of it can be well comfy clothing.
So let's see how this changes the picture.
Here we go.
In this case I've gone with
just the two lights;
the key light and the background light.
The extra side lights,
if they were firing through feathers
would cast a dappled lighting across the face
and that's not really the look I'm going for here
but this look is simple effective and should make
some great photos so with that in mind
let's do some pictures. Okay Beth you
ready? Okay here we go.
Well that really was a great fun shoot
and the final pictures do look amazing
it's also reminded me the power of flash
in my small home studio because once
I'd set the basic light,
it just didn't change shot after shot
and that meant I could focus
on the more important things
like the creativity, the styling,
the extra lights and so on
and it really is amazing
what just a little bunch of feathers will do
to completely change the look and feel
of a simple basic beauty lighting portrait.
Now of course this is just one of an endless
number of possibilities
you can do with Basic Beauty Lighting
to create something
that's unique and your own style.
Now if you've enjoyed this video, don't
forget to like it, leave me a comment below
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I'm Gavin Hoey, thanks for watching.