Hi everybody welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography right here on
AdoramaTV I am Mark Wallace and this is
Emily she is our model from London
and you might recognize that we are in
Gavin Hoey's studio
and what we want to do is I
want to create some really amazing
portraits of Emily that are interesting
and so in a small space, we don't have a
lot of room to really do crazy lighting
setups like I like to do and so we're
going to do something else. We're going to
create texture instead.
To do that I'm using this, this is a metal
window screen, it is a silver metal window
screen and so we've scrunched this all up to
create some really interesting textures
and so this will give us some motion
and some texture and some highlights and
shadows and all kinds of interesting
things if we do the lighting setup
correct, so Emily we're going to have you
come right back here and I want to show
you how I have this setup. So I have
a small soft box so normally the larger
the Softbox the better the results as
long as you have a grid, so I put a grid
on the front of this. I've done this with
a four by six Softbox
and medium and large Softboxes,
so with a small Softbox
like this really we're going to be
confined to just doing portraits
so if you want to do maybe an outfit
with this doing a dress or whatever
you'll need a larger Softbox than this,
but we're going to work with what we have.
What we want to do is to make sure that
the light doesn't bounce all over in
this space and so what I've done here is
we put up this black background, so this
is a fold-out background that we've used.
That's going to absorb light and then we
have some black curtains on this side to
make sure that the light doesn't bounce
to this side. That's really going to be
critical and key.
The other thing we want to do is to make
sure that this light is almost a
90 degree to Emily,
and so what that's going to do is
to make sure that we cast light
across this really interesting texture
and it's going to catch all of
that and reflect that into the camera.
If we have it too much on axis with the
camera, well it is just going to go right
through this we're not going to get that
really interesting look so we want this
over almost a 90 degree, not quite.
The larger the Softbox the more that you can
put that a 90 degree because the light
is going to wrap around the model,
but with the small Softbox you need to put
that a little bit in front of your model,
so that light will capture her face and her
eyes and all that kind of stuff.
In your studio if you're doing this
obviously you're not going to have a
bunch of video lights because you're not
going to be making a video of you shooting
this because the best way to see what's
happening is to use the modeling light
on your flash,
and so to give you an understanding
of what this looks like and
how you can sort of preview this, I'm
going to turn off the lights that we're
using to shoot the video and zoom in on
Emily so you can sort of get
an understanding of why
you need a good modeling light
to really see what's going on when you're
shooting on a screen like this so,
I'm going to turn off these lights that were using
for video and then what we'll do is
we're just going to zoom in here to Emily and Emily
if you just put that over your face and
then now you can see that that modeling
light really helps us understand what
the camera is going to see.
What we're going to do now is we're going to have
you take this, sort of wrap it around
your head and do some wacky things with it
and we're going to start shooting
and lets do that right now.
Well those first shots look pretty darn good,
I really like where we're going with
that but what I want to do is,
I really want to get a really tight
close profile shot of Emily and so
what we did is we had her change into a
different top, so that we have some
shoulders that are bare because
we're going to have her looking into the
light and get really close
and then we're going
to put this in front of her and play with it
and see how that works.
Now the thing is with this kind of a shot.
We really want to see your eyes
and the way to see through this is to make
sure that the screen is perpendicular
to the light and so it has to be flat
this way to the camera and so the light
doesn't reflect from that, so any kind of
thing that is toward the light like this
is going to reflect light so you have to
make sure that the eyes are going
through something that's flat
to the camera.
Alright so to make this work
what I've done is I've clipped this screen
onto the Softbox and what that's doing
is, before I had this clicked on, it was
falling in front of Emily and so we had
sort of this black space that I'd have
to photoshop some texture something in
so instead of doing all that in post
production we just clip this onto the Softbox
and that adds something in the scene
here and then I'm going to do a really
tight close shot on Emily and we're
going to have her in profile which is
great because she's 90 degrees to this light.
That's just going to just wrap around her
face and create a really beautiful
portrait so, we're going to
shoot that right now.
Well one of the things I'm doing as we're
shooting is to make sure to put the
photos on the computer so that we can
take a look first of all to make sure
they're technically correct so the
lighting and everything is what I want
but also to show Emily what we're doing
because when she's behind that screen, it is
sort of hard to imagine what it looks
like because with all the lights on it doesn't
look anything like it does when
it comes out of the camera. So once she
sees that, it allows her to start
understanding how to pose and move to
the light and do all kinds of things to
make the images look spectacular,
so if you're doing something like this make
sure you show the model what's
happening because it will give them confidence.
It will make your job easier
and you'll get better photos.
Well Emily that was a really fun
shoot we got some great results using
just a window screen, the right kind of
light and of course a spectacular model.
Hey thanks for joining us for this
episode, don't forget to subscribe to
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a single thing and also check out the
Adorama Learning Center for more tips
and tricks for your photography in a
small studio, big studio, whatever, you can
find it right there.
Thanks again for joining us and I will
see you again next time.