these things are a brilliant source
of soft directional light, you can use them for all sorts of
photography such as still life's, or portraits or whatever, i'm gonna hopefully demonstrate
both to you in a minute
but what makes this great soft directional light
this light is soft because there's no sun
coming in through the window if there was it wouldn't be soft at all it would
be really really harsh.
They'd be you know, highlights on the wall here and
window shaped highlights going on here and it'd be much much too bright
in the bright area compared to the darker areas where the highlight wasn't
for your camera to record it, it'd be right outside of it's range.
a window that faces north or window on a cloudy day
just as long as you haven't got sunlight coming through it you got
great soft directional light, it's directional because it is all coming this way.
There's nothing coming from above or from the sides or below,
and speaking of above if you're gonna use the light don't put the interior lights on
because it's probably gonna be a different
colour to the daylight , if i switch those on things will start going yellow.
Just work with the window light for the time being. Why is directional light so
good?
well it's because it brings out shapes and contours so for example right now
this light coming in towards me is really what we call male lighting,
this side of my face is quite bright this side is a lot darker,
Now for a bloke us rough craggy trouser wearers
that's not too bad because it actually brings out some sort of wrinkles and things like
that.
If you're photographing a woman, if she had a few wrinkles, she was my age
is not going to look at all flattering, but if you do a shot like that with someone
who's a lot younger with a much smoother complexion it can look
absolutely brilliant,
but first of all let's just take a really really simple kind of a still life, a little kitchen interior
we're actually at Tasha's house and we're gonna call her in, in a minute.
i wanted to shoot it here because you know it's a nice little house you know in a
terrace, this is obviously much easier if you're in a great big open plant space with
with floor to ceiling windows you've
got tonnes of light coming in and you can move yourself around better and get yourself
further away from your subject.
Anyway i got a set up shot here, kitchen utensils and
a thing of tea, I've got the camera ready to go over there. The directional light , this
light blowing in from the side like this
across, is really picking out the texture
of the word utensils that's engraved into this wood tub thing.
If you can see there are shadows
and highlights going on in here and it's those shadows and highlights that
make it really kind of stand out to bring out that texture and this is why
directional light is so good.
If the light was coming straight in from the front
it'd lose it's shape, let's just have a little go if i turn it towards the windows
are you seeing that Jayne is that
softening It up? yeah,yep.
Okay, so let's put it back in there and have it sideways on so the light is
really bringing that out, i'm just gonna shoot a little still life thing of that.
Now we're indoors so this could be a great place to do something on a rainy day.
You're thinking ah i'd like to go for a hike on the hills but you can't because it's pouring with rain.
and you're being a blouse. So you could do something like this
indoors because it doesn't matter if it's a bit dark it's about the quality of the
light and
not the quantity by that i mean
you can always use a very very slow shutter speed now i've already got the shot
set up as you obviously don't need
to watch me do it , let's just get the camera on focus so i'm just moving my
auto focus point onto the word utensils, there we go
the cameras focused, i'm using two hundred ISO so it's a very very fine grain but
because I'm using two hundred ISO for the best quality and the finest colors
and the
finest grain, my shutter speed is right down to a tenth of a second
i'm using a seventy mil lens
i don't wanna get a blurred picture so on the tripod.
Excuse me, big sturdy tripod.
best to use a self timer because I know how sturdy my tripod is so i'm just gonna take the picture
you can see straight away there's a shadow going on a soft sort of the
shadow and it's bring out the textures and shapes that
those utensils and its kinda putting a highlight
on the front of the tea packet and a darker side too,
you can see in reality over here, see we've got this brighter area here but
this sides a bit darker and it's that soft directional light that always works so well.
Let's have a little play and see if we can shoot a portrait i think.
I really like the idea of juxtaposing, i like these tiles and i like this shape,
it's a great frame to put someone into
and i also think it's quite nice
to have these wedges against the softness of a person and this test that person is Natasha
Tasha, yeah right thank you.
my most loyal suffering step daughter in the world aren't you,
so we're gonna do a shot with tash there, now you can see
what i mean about the light, I'm gonna come over this side because i'm blocking it if i stand over there.
Turn
that way a little Tash, that's it about there perfect.
You see how the light is blowing across Tasha's face we've got a bright side and a dark side,
and it's all coming from that window but because Tash is young it
still kinda works for her, and it'll wok well. just turn your face towards the window a bit.
There we go, and it's put highlights on her cheeks and things like that.
Let me just shoot my portrait, as i said i wanna
get a bit edgy with it, i'm using the tripod
using the lovely naked
window light, as Mr Oliver would say in his cookery programs.
He'd be talking about olive oil or something a bit pansy.
right let's have a look,
let's just kind of zoom the lens back a bit, i'm still using aperture priority
so i get a bit more edgy with this. i want
Tasha at the bottom of the picture rather than at the
top so we can really use the shapes,
going on behind her and Tasha go that way only about an inch.
perfect, woo too much oh sorry. There perfect.
i like that.
Lock the tripod, composition sorted
auto focus on her eye here we go,
oh that's a little bit too high, i don't wanna cut her hair off
there it is, got it.
gonna need one of those just kind of staring straight into the camera
yeah that's pretty cool. i quite like that, i like the shape.
Tash do one looking out of the window, just kinda look that way, turn your head a little more
there we go, it's sort of put highlights and shapes on to her face.
Come back to me again put your chin down a little
and see you can kind of play with this stuff a little, turn your face towards the window
a bit, that's better. That's quite nice.
now i'm saying if you were doing this with someone who was a little older
you may need to soften the light on this side
of her face and to do that you'll need a reflector
sorry can i squeeze past and i'll squeeze back
there we go Jayne's pinned against the wall, can you see what's going on?
So look when I bring in the reflector
onto Tasha's face
when i bring the reflector onto tasha's face
just look at the camera nat, do you see how i'm lifting that
and it's
probably a nice look, it depends whether you want moody
you're gonna have to work you know with the shadow, or whether you want something a little bit
more softer sort of a look just i bring in the reflectors, how do you do that?
well we just prop it up over here somewhere
it might even work doing that.
nearly works,
let's get it near the sink
okay so we just need prop it up, i'm just gonna prop it up with my tripod now
very unlikely to be able to
take this shot hand-held
and have it sharp because the shutter speed is so low so
i'm gonna have to push the iso way way up
and take the shot,
so i'm just smacking the tripod down so it's
smaller there we go, and stand it on the kitchen work top
about there
and just leave the reflector like that
and it works, okay to make up to the
lack of tripod to boost up the iso
I'm gonna go quite high as 1,000 because it's gonna need
bit more of a shutter speed to give it more of a chance
of holding it still, just move a tiny bit,
it might be fuzzy forgive me if it is.
Let's focus on Tasha,
tasha you look as though i'm about to attack you.
So relax, just put the focus on you don't have to be smiling
cool. Got it,
you can see as you flick between the two
how it's just kinda altered the way the light is.