In this video I show you how to take
some really wet portraits
in a small home studio.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey and your watching
AdoramaTV, brought to you by Adorama the
camera store that's got everything for us
photographers and today you join me in
my small home studio, but you'll notice
it looks slightly different and I don't
just mean the fact we got some black
fabric here, I think it's probably the
black tarpaulin hanging up here and the
fact I'm standing in a paddling pool
yeah, I'm going to do a portrait that
involves splashing water. In fact we're
going to freeze the water rather than
having it blurry will do that in a later
video and to freeze the water I need flash
So I've got my StreakLight 360 in a
small Glow Softbox that would normally
be the most important part for freezing
water, but today there's one thing that's
more important even than
flash and it's this.
Today of all days you really need
to know where your towel is because this
is going to get wet and messy.
I think I should've got a bigger paddling pool,
but never mind let's get a model in, set
some lights up and we'll get shooting so
So today I've been joined in the studio by
Sam who's going to be the willing volunteer
for this shoot.
Now as you can see it's a little bit
damp around here already, because well I
told Sam what we're going to do. We've
had a little practice because you really
don't want to spring this sort of shoot on
your model, they need to be prepared,
I think and Sam's really brave to do
this I think, crazy man,
but it should be good fun.
Now in order for this to work I said
I needed flash and flash is the critical bit
for this.
The idea is I've got a streetlight 360
in a Softbox, I want that to have a very
short flash duration, the lower the power
the shorter the flash duration. Now I've
set this to 1/64 power. I find anything
under a 30 second power for the
streetlight 360 is enough to freeze the
water in midair. Now that leaves me three
things I can control;
I've got the ISO, the aperture and
shutter speed. Shutter speed really easy
flash synch speed 1/250 of a second for my
camera, ISO I'm going to shoot 400 ISO
so we're not straining the flash too
much, we can get that flash power
down. That means I need an aperture and
we can do trial and error or we could take
a meter reading, but I've already
metered this out.
I know f4 balances this up. Now that's
something called the exposure triangle, get
everything to balance and you'll get a
correct exposure. Check out the
Adorama Learning Center
for more information on that.
So we're going to have a couple of
different ways of getting water on to
Sam, but the first one is going to be
nice and simple and hopefully not too wet,
because we're going to get wetter as we go
through, so we'll start with the
technique. Make sure it works before we
really get water over Sam and I'm just going
to start by pouring water into his hand.
I say, I'm going to do it, but of course I'm not,
I've also got another Sam to help me as well, so
Sam's going to be pouring water, Sam is going to have
water poured into his hand, try and
follow along. We've set this up, I know
this works, I already metered this out.
Let's just take a little test shot, make
sure everything is ready to go.
Okay yeah, I 'm happy with that. Right, Sam
if you want to pour some water
in your own time,
lovely,
so that worked okay but
there is a couple of things we can do to make
this better, now most cameras including
this one can do high speed shooting
whether the flash can keep up is another
matter, but one of the advantages of
having the flash power down low, is not
only does it freeze water but it recycles
really quickly so I'm actually going to put
my camera into high speed shooting mode
so that's 10fps on this.
Let's pour some more water, see how we go.
Okay are you ready? Test shot first.
Okay Sam and Sam, on three, two, one.
Fantastic!
Okay so it kept up pretty well until the
bufferfield and that's fine that worked
really well we've got some great shots
in there, lots of splashing. That looks
really nice.
Now you might be wondering why I've got
the light in from behind, well the answer
is really simple.
I like the direction of light, it gives
a lot more shadow and alot more drama to
the shot also really illuminates the water,
and there's no reason why you can't
have the light at the front, it will look
different, but it could work.
The great thing about this sort of
technique is experimentation and with that
in mind we'll just take a few shots like this
and see what we get.
Okay Sam do you want to put two hands out for me?
Do you want to put a little water in there
first of all Sam? That's great.
Okay, are you ready? In your own time,
three, two, one.
So for the second set up we're going to get a little bit
wetter, I say we're going to get wetter?
Sam is going to get a little bit wetter,
sorry Sam but hopefully it should
be a much more dramatic shot because
we're going to do a portrait, now I still
got my light in the same position I 'm
just going to test the exposure.
I know roughly what's going to happen the
idea is Sam is going to lean back, so let me
just check the meter readings for there
before he leans back,
because it's kind of hard work.
I’m using my flash meter it's still on
f4, that's terrific but I'm going to
put this well out of the way. Water and
anything electrical are a bad mix.
Fortunately my camera is weather sealed,
so a little bit of splashing, that's not
going to matter too much but you will find
splashes go a long way and hopefully in
one of my pockets hidden away is a small
lens cloth, so len's cloth is really, really
useful for this shoot. If you have any
spots of water on your lens it can
really ruin the shot.
Okay we're good to go, same technique
we're going to get water poured this
time onto Sam's face by Sam. I've still got
my high speed shooting, I'm going to take
a test picture first of all.
Yes we're looking good.
Okay is everybody ready? Okay, here we go
on three. Ready, one, two, three.
Fantastic!
Now towels are a really essential
part of this shoot.
You'll also notice that Sam is wearing
black as well, because it means that,
although you will get wet, it's not going
to completely ruin it for the next shot.
If it was completely white, then it would
go transparent, but black well it's going to
have a nice shiny look and hopefully
that should add a little bit of to the shots
as we progress, getting Sam
wetter and wetter.
Speaking of which we can change the
setup ever so slightly to get a
completely different shot. I'm just going to
swing the lights around at 90 degrees,
swing Sam around at 90 degrees
and we'll do exactly the same technique.
Okay Sam are you ready?
Okay let's move things around a little bit.
So for the last setup, once again,
we have Sam in the paddling pool, once again
we got the light in, roughly the same place
as it's been for some of the other shots, but
this time there is going to be a bit more energy,
because we're literally going
to throw water in Sam’s face.
Sam's going to throw water in Sam's face
and if we get this right we should get a
great splash.
Now this is where they
really exciting stuff happens, that's why
we've saved it for last, because it could
go horribly wrong. It could get really,
really wet.
Well let's just try it and find out. Now once
again, I'm going to take a test shot
first of all, so let's get this
and make sure everything is where it should be.
Okay test shot looks pretty good, right, so Sams!
Are you ready? Okay hey, here we go on three.
Ready? One, two, threee.
Fantastic!
So I'm still doing the 10 fps
and I'm starting to press the shutter
just as the water is coming in and that
gives us a nice selection of shots.
It's a good start but for portraits to
really come alive sometimes it's the
facial expression that makes all of the
difference and I don't think Sam is going to have
much trouble with this, when I say Sam
Can you give me a bit of yell?
A kind of an "Ahh"
okay Sam don't aim at his mouth,
because that would be really bad.
Okay are you ready?
Okay on three. Ready? One, two, three.
Ahhh!
Did you get that on the audio? Fantastic.
Let's just double check,
that looks excellent.
Again we’ve got a lovely selection of shots
absolutely brilliant.
Now water is a very unknown quantity.
You can't really plan that much for it.
Every time you do it,
t's going to be slightly different.
That means we're going to do it a few more
times, I'm so sorry Sam but when you're
wet you might as well have a few more
goes at staying wet,
by the way I should
point out the water we're throwing on Sam
is ordinary tap water but we have at least
warmed it up for him,
a little.
Okay, are you ready?
We're going do another "yelly" one,
on three ready, one, two, three.
"Ahhh!"
Well I was right about one thing we really
could have done with a bigger paddling pole
or taken this outside,
if it wasn't so freezing cold but a
little bit of water soon wipes away
no damage done.
Now if you enjoyed this video
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I'm Gavin Hoey,
thanks for watching.