Hi everybody, welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography right here on AdoramaTV.
I'm Mark Wallace in Tactic Studio in
Madrid, Spain, joined by Diana Tobar,
she is one of the most spectacular
models in Madrid, and I'm so happy to be
working with you today.
What we're going to be doing is we're
going to start by creating a very simple
high key set-up,
that is a white background, with sort of
a shadowless light. It can be a little
bit blah, when you're shooting high-key
portraits, but what we're gonna do is
we're gonna make a couple of small
modifications to our basic lighting
setup, to show you how you can really add
some punch to your high-key portraits.
But to begin with, we need to start with
our basic lighting setup. So let's get to
that right now.
For our main lighting setup,
we have just a large umbrella, a large
white umbrella, that's giving us nice
soft light on Diana, and then we have to
separate the light on the background.
We just added a second light, with a normal
reflector, and then it just adds light to
our background. Well let's start with our
very, very basic, lighting setup this is
the foundation, from which we'll be
working now. This is just a large
umbrella here, this is a white umbrella.
You could use a large octa-box or if you
have a large 7-foot westcott parabolic,
something like that, that would work.
Even better, you want a large soft source of
light, that's what we're starting with,
and it's right above our camera, so it's
right on axis, and so what that's gonna
do here... I'm gonna first go over here, and
meter this light, so we only have one
light at this point. So I'm gonna meter
this, and I've already dialed this in, and
so it's metering at f/9, and so Diana,
we're gonna take just a very quick
picture here.
If I can get my remote on there.
Okay look right at me, perfect.
We're gonna take a shot okay, so you can
see this looks pretty good, but because
the background is falling off, so the
light here is falling off, because of the
inverse square law.
So it's sort of a dark gray, so what I want
to do is I don't want to add a bunch of
lights and do a bunch of crazy things, and
so I'm just going to add one light, with just a
hard light reflector.
So if we zip around here, camera's are a
hard light reflector,
and then what I'll do is... I can take that
and I'll turn it on, so I can do that for
my remote control. So I'll turn that on
now, I've already metered this on the
background at f/7, so that's not exactly
the same as our key-light, because I
don't want that white background to be
perfectly white.
I want it to be a little bit on the gray side,
but you can adjust that to your preference,
so you can take
that up to be equal to your key-light.
I'm keeping it...key-light f/9, the light on
my background at f/7. So let me just take
a second photo, and we'll show you the
difference. So again Diana look right at me,
beautiful I love that.
Take a shot okay,
so you can see that that just adds a
little bit of a punch, and because of our
circular directional light, it actually
creates a vignette, so we could shoot
that all day maybe. I could add a
reflector under her chin, do some things
like that, and we'd be okay, but I want to
take it up a notch.
Well I've added a couple of things to
this lighting setup. Specifically two
kicker lights, but we're gonna do some
other things as well, but first let me
show you how I've metered and set up
these kicker lights.
So remember we have metered this key
light.
If I meter toward this light, I'm metering
that at f/9. It is exactly the same as it was
before, and so what they need to do is...
I want these kicker lights to meter at the
exact same amount, and so to do that on
my light meter, I'm gonna put my
lumisphere down.
So I'm only getting the light from that
kicker light, and nothing else. So I'm
gonna come behind Dianna here, and
meter with my light-meter pointed to this,
and when I meter that, that also meters at f/9.
If I meter to that light it meters at f/9,
so I'm pointing my meter at the light,
and so I can see exactly how much light.
So I'm gonna balance those kicker lights
with this key-light.
If it metered a little bit hotter I turn those
down, if it metered lower, I turn them up
but I want them all to be metering about the
same now.
This is a setup that you can adjust to your
taste, so you can take those kicker lights,
and make them a little brighter, a little bit softer.
We just want a nice little addition to the
cheekbones of Diana now.
The other thing that we want to do here is
because Diana's hair is down, these kicker lights
are going to fall on the hair,
and they're really gonna be hair lights.
That is not what I want, I want a nice
highlight on her face. So Diana, if you
will, could you put your hair up in a
ponytail, and what that's going to do for
us is, it's gonna allow the light from
those kickers to fall on her face, not
her hair, and that is going to shape her
face. It's gonna make a really, really big
difference, and so once your hair is up,
What we'll do is, I will show you exactly
how all these lights are set up in
relationship, or in relation to each
other, and then what we're gonna do is
shoot some before-and-after images,
because I think you'll agree that the kicker
lights, with her hair in a ponytail, is
the best solution.
We're keeping our original high-key set up,
so we have this umbrella as our key-light.
We also have this secondary light, that's
going to add some light to that white
background giving us that
really nice high-key white look.
Well we've added these two
strip lights to the side and notice that
they are on-axis with our camera.
So if I zip around the camera here you can see,
that they are equidistant from our model,
and so what we want to do is add just a
touch of light to Diana's cheeks, and if
we zoom in here, just a little bit, you
can see we have done just that.
So let's take a few pictures, and I'll show you
exactly how this looks.
Well thank you everybody for joining us
for this episode.
I think you will agree
that adding a couple of kicker lights,
and changing the hair of your model,
makes a huge difference for your high-key portraits.
Speaking of models, I want to thank
Deana for being a spectacular model, you
can follow her on instagram @dianatobbar...
Perfecto...
and you can see it's right here, so you
don't miss it.
We've also added a link to
her Instagram profile in the description
of this video.
Also make sure you check
me out on the Instagram, because I'm
always adding behind-the-scenes videos
of the Adoramatv shoots, and extras and
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Thanks again for joining us, and I will see
you again next time.