In this video I'll show you how you can
create different looking portraits in
the corner of a studio, by lighting it in
three different ways.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey, and you are watching
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Now if you're a regular viewer to the
channel, you may notice my small home
studio has grown a little bit, it's got a
corner, and that doesn't sound like much
but trust me, having a corner to work in
opens up a whole new world of both
lighting and posing possibilities, and in
this video I'm going to show you three
different lighting techniques, all of
which use just one light, and work great
in the corner.
So to help me out today
I've got the amazing Sofia.
Sofia is going to be the model for this shoot and
as you can see she's sat in the corner,
now my first lighting setup is going to be
something fairly straightforward, it's
actually a centrally positioned light,
so it is fairly even distance from both walls.
I've got it elevated above Sophie,
and that should cast light down, and
light the walls, Sophie and a bit of the
floor now to make it much more dramatic
I've added a grid to my light, and that
is really going to help give a fast drop
off at the edges of the shadow and light area.
Now I need to make sure this is
metering correctly, I'm shooting at f/5.6,
so I'm going to take my light meter, pop
it near Sophie's chin, Sophie can I pop
this near your chin, and just take a
light meter reading just to confirm that
my flash is indeed metering at f/5.6.
Okay let's take a test shot, and see how
this looks, here we go,
this looks really good, the lighting on
both walls is fairly even, the lighting
on Sophie looks great, and the curvature
from the octa box and the grid really
shows well on both walls, with this shadow
forming a nice arch against the highlights.
Okay let's do a few shots like this.
I'm gonna move myself around a little bit
just to see how that changes the look.
I'm gonna come dead center as well,
you stick your hand back onto the wall,
so that works really well - the lighting
is symmetrical on both walls, and even if
I move around from one side to the other,
I still end up with basically the same
look on the walls, so for the second look
I'm trying to reproduce the feeling
perhaps of a large window over to the
side, so what I've got is a large strip
box here with a grid,
you might notice as a theme developing
here with grids, and it's going to shine
across this wall but hit the far wall, so
what should happen, if I get the angles
absolutely right, is this wall will be
darker than the back wall now, that seems
counterintuitive because it's closer to
the light here, but that's where the grid
really comes into its own, let's take a
test shot and I'll show you it in
perhaps the slightly wrong position, here
we go..
So with the current angle of the
grid and the light, is lighting Sophie
just fine, but the back wall, the one
that's actually closest to the flash is
very dark indeed, now that could be
exactly what you want, but the smallest
of little feathers just back towards the
background wall, will put more light in there.
Now we could switch all the room
lights off, and use the modeling lights,
or we could just take a test shot.
Let's do that.
Brilliant, so now we have two
different illuminations on the wall,
the wall that Sofie is standing against is
much brighter - the wall behind her is
that bit darker, and that gives that
sense of three dimensions to this shot.
Okay so let's take a few pictures like
this, Sophie are you ready, okay,
here we go.
Shall we give you a chair to mix it up a
little bit.
So my third and final corner lighting
technique involves much harder light, so
again I'm going to keep the light coming
in from the side, but this time it's
harsh sunlight that's beaming through.
To achieve that look, I'd switched out to a
standard reflector, but with a really
tight 10 degree grid, so for this to work
it's actually really hard to see it with
the video room lights on.
So we're going to turn the video lights off
and just rely on the modeling light, so with the
modeling light I can now see where the
lights going to go, and I've got control
over it, so at the moment we've got
Sophie in the middle of the back wall,
and with the tightness of the grid
almost no light is hitting the wall on
the side at all, and that's giving me a
very distinctive look.
Let's take a few shots like this,
here we go, so this works
really well, but it means that Sophie
can't move, so she steps into the corners,
she's no longer in that circle of light,
but the great thing about the grid is
it's very directional, so if I just turn
it around to the side, I can put the
light back onto Sophie, and into the
corner, but there is one more advantage
of having this setup.
So instead of being a good two three feet,
away from my wall.
I'm actually going to slide this right
the way up against it, and as I do some
of the light will just catch this wall
here, and it'll give me a beam of light
into that corner, and with a little bit
of careful positioning of the light,
something like that, I can light both the
wall, the back wall and Sophie, and she
could be in the corner, which is the
whole reason I've got one of those.
Okay,
let's take a few test shots like this,
here we go Sophie,
and these look great, so we'll do a
complete shoot, you can really throw
yourself around in there as well.
We've got loads of light to play with,
loads of space to move around into,
let's try a little bit of hair movement
3, 2, 1...
having access to a usable corner space
is a great asset in any studio.
Models will appreciate the extra posing
options that they get, and you get some
fantastic lighting opportunities to really create
a sense of depth and three dimensions to
your photos, now if you've enjoyed this
video or you've got any questions leave me a
comment below.
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I'm Gavin Hoey thanks for watching.