In this video I'll show you how you can
bring a little bit of winter into your
small home studio hello I'm Gavin Hoey
and you're watching AdoramaTV brought to
you by Adorama the camera store that's
got everything for us photographers now
outside it's cold and wintry so I
thought the best place to be is inside
where I can do a shoot in my small home
studio where I turn it into a cold
wintry scene. Yeah that makes sense but
inside of course I've got control of
everything including the weather because
I'm going to make it snow now my snow is
going to come in a bag artificial snow like
this and to make it feel a little bit
more like the outside in here, I'm going to
use a piece of fencing I've grabbed out
of the garden and the most important
prop is going to be this a cardboard box.
hmm...
Okay to see what I do with that keep
watching but for now let's set some
lights up, let's get a model in, let's get
shooting. So it's great to welcome Jade
back into the studio she's going to be the
model for our winter themed shoot but
before we talk about lighting
let's talk cameras I'm using the Olympus
m1 mark 2 and the Olympus 25mm
F/1.2 lens and I want to use it at
F/1.2 for a shallower depth of field but
with all the room lights in here, I need
to think about getting rid of those and
I'll do that by using high-speed sync
and using a shutter speed of two
thousandth of a second now this is going
to be a multi light setup but to break
this down into single lights will make
sense, so let's do that. Let's start with
the first key light that's lighting Jade
and see how that looks. So Jade I'm going to
bring the camera in and we'll take a
shot like that
that's lovely now because I'm using high
speed sync what I can't do is use a
flash meter but what I can do is trial
and error.
Take a shot review it and adjust if
necessary but that looks about right. Now
you'll notice the background is fairly
dark but I don't want it completely
black so to add some separation back
there, I'm going to use this which is a
gobo. Now you might be thinking that's
actually just a cardboard box but you'd
be wrong. It's not just a cardboard box
it's an Adorama cardboard box and I
punched a bunch of holes in it I'm going to
add another eVOLV 200
and shine that through the holes to give
me that dappled look on the background.
Now don't be fooled, the shapes that you
see on the background are there as a
guide. You're seeing the difference
between an LED point light source and
the bigger flash tube it will give a
different pattern and the best way to
find that out is to take a picture,
so here we go Jade, let's do that shot as
you can see that works great. We have a
lovely dappled background, so I'm ready
to start adding in some snow to the
shoot and it's really more like confetti
than snow and I'm going to just blow some
snow into the scene. So let's just see
how it looks. Now here we go, so I've got
a little bit of snow and I'm just going
to come hold it pretty much in line with
the lens and to give it a little blow
and take the shot Jade are you ready.
Okay here we go
One, two, three except the snow in this
shot well it's there, but it's not quite
as good as I'd like. It's not
particularly bright and if we look in
places it's actually dark and patchy so
what's going on here? Well for this to
work we've got to think about the
lighting. The lights that's going to light
the snow is going to come from this key
light here but if the snow is in front
of it then very little or no light is
going to reach it, the end result is; it's
going to be underexposed and even cast
shadows in front of Jade's face, so we
need a third light one that is
specifically designed to light the snow.
so this is it this is going to be my snow
light it's one and only job is to
backlight the snow confetti, so I'm going to
pop it nice and close in like that, so it
is aiming at the lens I've got my lens hood on
I recommend that because that should
help reduce the flare a little bit but
I'll take a test shot just to make sure
that this flash isn't flaring into the
lens. Okay let's do a test shot Jade, here
we go and that's absolutely fine, no
flare whatsoever. Right let's add a bit
more snow and see how this changes the
colour and brightness of that snow,
here we go.
The end result is incredibly different.
That snow is much, much brighter. Is it
too bright? Possibly. If it's too bright
well I can adjust the brightness of the
snow. I have that flash on Group C, so I
can just drop the power down by one stop
and try that again, here we go,
so I can control the brightness of the
snow by adjusting that backlight power
but I can also control the blurriness of
the snow by deciding when to press the
shutter the more snow that is close to
my lens the more out of focus and bokeh
like the snow will be, the later I press
the shutter, the more it will reach Jade
and the sharper it will be. Let's try
this here we go now of course what you
might want is both big bokeh snow and
sharp snow. Well for that you might need
an assistant like Sam over there. She's
going to add some snow in behind Jade.
I'm going to add some snow in front. Let's
try this, here we go, are we ready? On
three. Ready? One, two, three and that works
really well to give a variety of size of
snowflakes so that's the basic setup.
Let's take a few shots like this, mix
things around a little bit and see what
great pictures we can get, so Jade are
you ready?
Sam are you ready? Okay let's take some
pictures.
Well that worked really well, however
there are a couple of post-processing
things I want to do just to complete the
look that I'm going for. So let's see
what we got with the picture of Jade and
see what I'm going to do. So here's the
image I want to work on and it looks
fine but I want to adjust the contrast
just lower that down for a slightly
different look. Now to do that, I'm
going to come up to layer then down to new
adjustment layer and across to
brightness and contrast. I don't need to
give it a name I'll just click OK now
here the key thing is to click on the
box that says use legacy because it's a
different way of doing contrast and it's
the way that I feel looks good for this
shot, so I'll just get my contrast slider
and bring it down to anything between
-20 and -30 somewhere in the
middle, that looks good to me. Right so
that's a little bit less contrast but it
can leave some banding in the image, so
we're going to cover that up and I'm going
to apply some texture into the
background to make it feel a little bit
more outdoorsy. Now textures you can
create your own or you can find them all
over the place.
Head over to my blog at gavtrain.com
and you'll find lots of free to use
textures there. I've got one downloaded
already,.I'm going to use this one right
here and to add that onto the image I'm
just going to select and all then over
to edit and copy then back to the main
image and choose edit and paste. Now when
I paste it on it will completely cover
the image so to reveal the original
image let's go and change first of all
the layer blending mode I'm going to
change it from normal, I'll drop that
down and change it to the soft light
blending mode. Different blending modes
will give different effects, so feel free
to experiment there. Next I'm going to
change the opacity and just drop it down
a little bit, I think around about 70 ish
percent should look good just to have a
little less obvious texture and because
the texture is sharp and parts of the
picture a blurry, I'm actually going to blur
the texture by going to filter and then
blur and then Gaussian blur and I reckon
anything between 5 and 8 should work
well let's go with 6, okay, with something
in the middle a little bit of blurring
that looks good
now of course that will apply the
texture across the whole image including
Jade's face, so I don't really want it
there. I'll just go up to layer, layer
mask reveal all and then paint that away
with a paintbrush
making sure I've got black as my
foreground color and I can just click
and paint any texture away from Jade's
face and arms like that and there you go.
There it is my Winter Portrait shot in
the studio is complete. I guess the only
downside with this technique is the snow
gets absolutely everywhere, but I think
it's worth it in the long run. Now if
you've enjoyed this video don't forget
to leave me a comment below and if you
want to see more videos from myself and
the other amazing presenters right here
on AdoramaTV, you know what you've got to
do, you've got to click on that subscribe
button I'm Gavin Hoey,
thanks for watching.