Hey guys this is Daniel Norton.
I'm here in my studio with Erica, and we actually
just shot a video about the catalog
lighting which you probably saw.
If you didn't we'll put a link, I guess, and
Erica had this beautiful black kind of
sweater dress... right?
That's right!
So I love textured black stuff for
black and white.
Wee were talking about that, so we
decided to do something, and so I
decided I want to make a video
about thinking in black and white.
I think a lot of times people will go out
and they'll just shoot in a little bit...
Oh this one might be good in black and
white, but I think when you're lighting
something... setting something up,
if you plan on making it black and white,
you think about it differently.
So that's kind of what we're
talking about a little bit here.
So this is... the attention
here is going to be like a close-up shot
of her face in black and white.
Lots of contrast, so number one I
switched my lens.
I've got the 150 Irix lens on
this, it is actually a macro lens.
So I can get it as tight as I want to get.
150 is gonna give me good breathing room, because
I want to get in close to her.
So I don't wanna be like right up in her face,
because we'll start to have distortion
at that point.. you know>
Because the distance to your subject
determines basically that stuff.
There's a video about that... you guys can
watch it!
So but basically we're a good distance apart
for this, which is not gonna distort her
and look really nice, and I wanted to
keep it as simple as possible.
We kind of will do some classic shots, so I just
took my Profoto OCF beauty dish,
and put it really close it's in a Profoto B2,
it's basically smooshed up, have the
Savage multiflex stand here, I've got it
like jammed up, because I want to keep it
almost flat in front of her..right?
I just want this LED to fall to the front, and
create this really dramatic shadow, and
none of the light to hit the background,
so you know.. in this studio cuz it's so white...
sometimes's it hard to do, so you gotta get
the light right in the right spot. So the
other thing that I did was, I added a
reflector though, cuz it was a bit too
shadowy. We decided to make it a little
creamier in the end, you know... you know
sometimes it's nice to be creamy. I did.. I
do have my Profoto B1 X's on the wall,
that I can fire them up, and turn it
white if I want in the background, but I
think we're gonna start dark like this.
So let me just show you what we got here.
I'm at f/7.1, 250th of a second, like I said,
I'm using the 150, I've just got the one
light turned on, we are in Capture One
here, so basically what we're gonna do is
shoot a frame with no flash to see if we
get a black frame, and we do, so there's
our black frame. Not a light in space
affecting our shot as always.. right?
Now when I fire up my light, this one
happens to be in the B channel, so I'm going to
turn off A and C, and let's see what we
get here. This is a manual focus lens so
I'm gonna take a second image.
I get nice and sharp right there,
all right good. So here's a shot in color,
like I said. You know it's okay right?
It's okay, it's basically a tight shot of
her face, and it's a little on the warm
side, but I'm not really gonna worry
about that right now, because what I want
to do is switch it to black and white.
So, so we can see the, the difference it'll make.
So let's go back here,
I'm gonna go Styles.. now I have a
built-in style that we made a while back
called Cadence BW... which I love that's my
black and white style that I like to
start with, so you can already see how
much of a difference that makes, and let
me get a good tight focus on this, and we
can see that, sharp.. and you can see the
difference it makes... because remember in
black and white, your, everything's about
contrast right? So I'm actually gonna, I'm
gonna start tweaking the light a little
bit. I'm gonna bring it up 2/10,
you know we bring up a tiny bit more,
what I'm doing is, I'm just working it up
a little bit right? You know the correct
exposure is what works the best for you
in that situation.
Remember that's so basically I'm kind of
finding a happy medium between the two
eyes because she's not perfectly flat to
me, and believe it or not this distance
it's even at f/7.1 ,one eye is
gonna be slightly sharper than the other.
Some kind of like focusing on one, then
rolling back to the other. Then it's
actually a little too hot on the back
nice...
just like that, nice and simple right,
right at me, nice, and we can see how nice
and beautiful that is.
Go drop your hands down for the
approach... okay, do this with
your hair, actually, I want to see that,
now you notice she has these cool
earrings. Here we'll get a little, a little
bit of that showing up, perfect, hold... focus,
yeah we can see those kind of coming
down as well, and because there's not a
whole lot of light going on, basically
her arms that are in the back, fall back
into darkness, and really keeping the
focus on her beautiful face.
Good good good, good good, good good good..
right.
There that's it. Good, nice it's basically
a special highlight right in the center
of her eye, and that's what I'm using a
focus spot, right?
Trying to get the best
focus possible again. I'm cutting the
corn.. the differences between the two
areas. Oh really, now just because, we're
pull the reflector out we were deciding
earlier that we wanted the reflector, but
now you know now that I'm making the
video, I change things, so that's how we
do it. Yeah, I want to see
if we bring the reflector out, you'll
guys will see the difference here, right?
Much, much more stark, which can work for
some things. Actually move your face
towards the light like that beautiful,
right we'll see how that gives like a
wash of light across her face, which is
really nice, come in a tiny bit closer,
also coming up a little bit. I'm just
basically within my angle slightly, cuz I
I want to get framed up the way I want
it. Good focusing... yes, yeah, yeah, that's
really beautiful, yeah, that's probably a
good compromise. Let me actually try it
a little something different with the focus, but this
is so tight. Good focusing.. okay, oh yeah,
that's kind of cool, no, no we could your
whole head in this.. mmm that's perfect
right there,
beautiful, beautiful, good, good, good
right there, yeah, beautiful, very nice,
very very nice, yeah, one more,
that they did right there..
yeah,
just kind of tweaking across,
like that,
yeah basically constantly pulling the
focus back and forth, because even a tiny
bit of a movement is going to knock it slightly
out of focus, I mean the reality is, is
that, if you get a beautiful shot, it's a
tiny bit soft, it's nothing in the world,
but you know, you want to try to keep it
good. Good, beautiful, I love it, I love the
mood of it. It's very, very kind of, a
classic, feels kind of old, but not
old-fashioned, and since you know, it just
has this nice creaminess to the black
and white, which I think is really
important. So yeah, looks great, man this
lens is beautiful for portraits, it kind of
falls off in a really nice way. Yeah one
more, I'm gonna, it's the macro lens, and
since we can, I'm gonna actually as
always, do something that I wasn't
planning, and I'm gonna get in really
close.
Wow,
So... now I'm like ultra close,
that's good right at me, perfect,
beautiful, yeah, the symmetry of her face
really works.
You're very symmetrical.
I do my best..
She does her best
to be symmetrical...lol.
No it doesn't always
work, it could you know, the last one,
this is the one, cool,
so framing this up,
really powerful shot, good.
Now just slightly tweaking to focus on
each one, to get it focused exactly where
I want it.
It's so interesting.
oh wow... because of course there's light
in the space right?
So you can see certain things... but yeah
let me try the one thing, also doing one more thing
because you know I'm thinking about when
I'm looking at this thing, and actually
the way the light is in her eyes,
actually really nice, turn towards the
light, like that, just like that, beautiful,
and I'm actually going to drop my
shutter speed.
Okay that was a long shutter, yeah
interesting.
I let, let that all light in
the space come in, which is just kind of
actually really nice,
but it flattens it... you know?
I mean that's one
of the things that I think is kind of
cool about lighting, something is that
you get to choose what it looks like, and
like in this case if I was dealing with
the ambient light only, well first of all
was crazy slow shutter speed, but
secondly, it's a, it's a little bit flat
for me. So yeah looks like our first
decision was the best, which is often the
case right, so 250, f/71. seven point one
last shot, this one's the, gonna be the
cover photo I think!
we shot all vertical,
so they'll be no good as thumbnail!
Yeah I like the contrast, really
really like that.
It's beautiful, sharp and moody, actually
if you can give us a little more profile towards
the light... this could never end !
I never end these when I say I'm going to!
I'm gonna do two things here, I'm backing up a
smidge, and I'm going to focus on that!
Perfecto, and just cuz I remember I
mentioned at the beginning of the video
and I didn't do it, there's lights in the
background, so I'm going to turn them on,
just for comparison, no see, I like the
dark better right? I think our initial
decisions are we make them for a reason,
yeah, so I don't know you guys, let me
know if you like the darker or lighter
better, because obviously you like Erica.
okay so make sure that you guys
subscribe to AdoramaTV, follow Erica
who's information we'll put in the
description.
Follow me @DanielNortonPhotographer
and I'll see you next time OnSet.