Hey this is Daniel Norton,
I'm here in my studio in New York City
with Bird, and we're gonna make some
kind of fashion shots today...
Now I wanted to do something using more
of a high key look..
and you hear people
say high-key all the time and generally
what they mean when they say that is..
a white background...
it's not really what high key means..
high key means a little contrast right?
So generally you're shooting like you can
sees these big open shots against white
background, so people think that,
but if you were to shoot
let's say a silhouette against a white
background...
that would not be high key
would actually be low-key...
I know weird....
so anyways I've got the windows here in
and the light in the studio is very nice
however...
if I shoot in this direction... like I am,
the windows will be completely blown out.
If we just expose for you know the front
side of Bird, so we don't want that,
'cause that wouldn't be high key anymore
that would be overexposed junk... right!
So what we want to do is balance it, and
for that I'm gonna use a flash.
So I've got Profoto B10 plus here,
it's a 500 watt second strobe.
I'm just gonna bounce it into a V flat
now I'm gonna balance it out, so that it
looks as natural as possible,
and I'm going to have it come from this
direction off to the side...
so it doesn't feel artificial right?
if I put it over here,
it would feel more artificial...
because it would be not coming from the
direction of the windows right?
This is kind of the windows go along this wall...
we're kind of fooling the viewer that
it's the window light on some level, so
that being said let's set it up, so I've
got over here my Nikon Z6, and the first
thing we want to do is set up an
exposure, not a black frame like we
normally do.
We want to set up an exposure for the window,
so I'm just gonna look through my camera...
it's a mirrorless camera, and I'm going
to basically, she's more or less a
silhouette right now, and I'm gonna dial
in my...
I'm gonna put my shutter speed at 200
which is the maximum sync speed for
the camera, and I'm gonna dial in my
f-stop to get what where we want to be,
okay so f/5.6 looks pretty good for me.
We'll make a shot... okay,
so that looks decent, the
windows are bright, but there's detail.
Once I add the flash,
I may mess around with this a little bit
because it's gonna affect it on some level
the flash is gonna hit the shades and
affect the exposure.
I'm gonna use my Profoto A1 as my
controller, because I have it here, and
it's easy enough to use.
I don't think I'm gonna use it as a fill flash,
but I have it, so I could always do that if I
want to.
So we're gonna kind of set this
up here, I'll get an exposure with the
flash... let's bring this up...
it's gonna focus on her,
we'll do a test shot here...
and then we're gonna take a look.
Okay.
See what a difference that made,
now if I was to overexpose...
let's say I went to f/8 or f/16 or something
the flash.. on the flash would say...
the window gets super dark.
As it stands they're bright, and they look
pretty decent, but I think there are not
quite bright enough.
So I'm actually going to dial in,
I'm gonna go down to...
there's a few different ways you can do this.
I'm going to go down to f/4.5.
I will have to adjust the flash in a second
but I just want to look... okay.
That looks pretty good,
I'm gonna turn my flash down about half
a stop see...
I'm actually about two-thirds of a stop
less power.... coming through the windows
basically, but I'm only turning the flash
down a little bit.
I should say added 2/3 of a stop in the
window, but I'm only subtracting half a
stop on the flash, because this is a
matter of balance right?
We want to look as natural as possible,
see that we've got...
beautiful light across her,
you can actually see on the ground over
here - light lines from the light,
because the Sun is over here,
on the side of the frame
where the light is the V flat.
Okay, looks nice, natural and we kind of
using flash, it will freeze if she moves
around stuff...
and we'll just make some portraits.
So let's shoot a few like this.. move
nice and simple a few you know...
fairly wide, so I will ask you to move
I can always crop it down a little
bit later, if I wanted.
I'm on a tripod, what I'm gonna do is I
think I'm gonna pop off the tripod for this
because she's got so much room to move around.
I want to give myself a little bit more
freedom there, so I get this question a
lot, I'm actually picking my focus point,
the one on her face,
the reason why I'm not using like the
general setting of the camera for the
focus point is because it
might focus on the wallet behind her,
even though it has you know
face detector, whatever, because she is
totally a silhouette to the camera,
and I don't want to trust my focus
based on that.
I want to pick it, that's just me.
some people love the autofocus systems.
I'm much more of a manual focus kind of guy.
Good what's nice is because of the
inverse-square law, and all the other stuff,
she can move around, and it basically
gives us a fairly good exposure,
No matter where she goes...
good, now what can be fun here actually
though, is our silhouette is really beautiful.
So I can actually go in, and turn my flash
off and we can do a couple of those
silhouettes...
So maybe like looking, extending your
face, yeah, there we go, right, we can
actually shoot kind of a nice silhouette
if we want that.
Look because that's actually really nice
and you know the thing is again,
this is balance, but who's
to say what's balanced right?
that looks nice to me...
you know maybe I like that, but I want
some more detail, turn the
flash back on, and then I'll actually
dial it down.. maybe...
let's maybe dial it down a stop and a half,
keeping everything the same on the
camera right?
So then she's lit,
but she's darker right?
So we can do that to make it a little
more moody..
I think I'll go a little bit, a little bit more...
I'm gonna add... add half a stop.
Then again, this is kind of
like seasoned to taste, you know,
we take a peek at the computer.
Yeah that actually looks pretty good to
me, like she's darker, with some mood,
but the windows are still bright.
So now I'm at f/4.5, we'll do that,
and then the other way,
you could do this guys, just so
you know, all the math here and stuff..
you wanna play around with it is, the other
thing we could do is add some shutter,
or some shutter speed...
Go to 125 let's say 100, we'll add a stop of
exposure to the shutter, so now the
windows will get brighter,
but the flash will stay the
same, and we can play around with that,
because most of the kind of the ambient
light's behind her... oops...
we should be able
to stop the motion even at 1/100th
of a second.
Good, very nice, you know I'm giving
her lots of room to move, that's why they
count the tripod first thing.
you can see she's nice and sharp, and you know
the files are big enough that I can just
crop in later.
I'd rather do that than
risk cropping off stuff that I,
that I don't like in the exposure.
I can't get back, so I can just do that,
you know, and bam we've got a nice
composition, we have nice exposure,
and everything looks darn good,
and also this light is really good,
even for a portrait.
So I can step in,
I'm gonna do a closer shot,
and we can shoot just a nice portrait right?
Not a loss of work...
nice big soft light for a portrait,
clean looks, good,
not terrible, right?
So that's what we like to call it...
not terrible...
so this is good..
like you're gonna find yourself
sometimes in a spot where you want to
shoot fashion.
You want to shoot a
portrait... something in an environment,
and it's a good idea to look at where the
light is in the environment, like where
it's coming from naturally, because that
will make it look a lot more real right?
Don't put the light back here,
because it would, you'd have the same problem...
it should be dark on the other side,
but putting it over here is enough
to kind of trick the viewer into
thinking it's coming from
the same direction...
which then gives you
a nice exposure shot without having you
know, shadow silhouette basically,
and if you like silhouettes,
shoot those too...
but a silhouette is not high key.
So there you go,
we want something new every day right?
Hopefully today is that day...
so oh alright...
so I will put Birds information
in the description.
You guys can follow her follow me
@DanielNortonPhotographer
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and I'll see you next time OnSet.