Hey this is Daniel Norton,
I'm on location in Connecticut,
very far away, here
with my friend Nerlande who we've shown
before in some videos, we came here a
couple times and shot.
A good friend of mine, yeah for a long
long time back when
we were just children,
we're just babies, and you know we wanted
to hang out and shoot, so I thought make
a location video, kind of show you guys
how I might light a portrait at
somebody's house on location, and it came
in to the great room, as it would be and
has beautiful light coming through the
windows, I mean if you're just here
that's really nice right, but when you go
to take a picture of it, you just get a
really bright window and it's dark
inside, you know because the camera
doesn't see what I see.
So plus I want this to be a little more
dramatic because even though I showed up
in jeans and a t-shirt for some reason,
who knows right, this this is how she
dresses right... so I thought I'd so
something a little more dramatic with a few lights,
um and we're gonna do is.
I want to still make it feel a little bit kind of real,
so we're gonna have a key light above
her, which is gonna be a nice soft box to
give a nice kind of beautiful light on
her face, but then I'm just gonna for my
fill light, I'm just gonna bounce this
Profoto A1 off the wall, basically
giving a lot of fill light from one side,
making it feel really smooth and natural.
This one I have the wide angle adapter
on, and I have the head focused all the
ways wide, so I'm giving the most spread
of the light, it's gonna spread out and
kind of give - again fill from this
direction, now the the key light I kind
of put in the center here, I've you know
you can do a lot of different things
normally if I am on-location,
I have these skinny stands,
I try not to boom the light too much,
but there's windows behind,
and they are at an angle, and as
we all know right light comes in and
bounces out the same angle, so if you put
the light to one side and I have tilted
windows, I'm going to for sure get a
reflection of the light in the windows.
I'm even getting it here but because
she's in the middle, she's just gonna be
in front of it.
So I'm gonna be cautious
of that to make sure that we don't see
the reflection behind her in the window
you know, if I do it can fix it or
whatever, but I don't like to do that
stuff because I'm lazy, so we're just
gonna put it behind her and pay
attention right?
That's why I shoot tethered as always,
and we're gonna watch
as we go, the third light is actually to
simulate the window.
Again I couldn't put
it directly behind her,
but I kind of put it off to the side,
I've got it high it's, it's A1, I just turn the
power up all the way,
and I'm just shooting it basically,
directly kind of a hit because
I can see with my eyes that lights
hitting the couch, is hitting the edges
of the chairs, I want to
simulate that, so I've got that what we are
doing to the next level up, cause we want this
to be kind of a glamorous portrait,
so I just cranked it full power.
I'm not using TTL or anything like that,
I'm just going to give a full power blast to that,
and finally my shutter speed is going to
be based on basically the window, how
bright we want the window to me,
we'll play around a little bit,
I don't, it won't make sense for there to be
really dark, because I have light coming
from that direction right,
so we're gonna make it a little bit bright,
but still keep detail out there,
so let's shoot some and we'll see what we get.
What we'll do is...
kind of build this up piece by piece,
I'm shooting with the Nikon Z6 I'm
gonna start at 1, 1, f/4 because I don't
want to see what's out the window, so I
want a shallow depth of field and
I'm going to... my shutter speed about 1..
1/120 of a second,
I'm just gonna make a shot with no flash,
just to see what we get,
right and you know as you might
imagine, we have silhouette, and it's
actually a little bit dark out the
window, so we know we want a little bit
of a slower shutter speed, let's go for
1/60th will do one stop, we may have to
justice as we go,
clearly if you're not making a video for
Adorama or you have a friend you can
shoot this part while the
person's getting ready, you don't make
them stand there..
again none of that lights really gonna hit
her so I can even go as slow as let's say at
1/130th of a second, what we want to be wary of is
just that we don't want to see how she's
starting to come up there,
we don't want light on her, because it
might make her blurry, so I think a 1/60th is
about as far as I'm gonna push it,
andcwe'll start there, so I'm going to turn
on my key light first, which is my A light,
that softbox above, and we'll get a good
exposure there, so that's just the
softbox again, it's the Profoto A1 in
Chimera extra small, will just take a
shot there in the center, and we can see
that kind of shapes her right,
it's a smidge on the dark side but I'm
gonna wait till I have all my lights in
before I make final decisions here.
On exposure... but that actually looks pretty
good, skin tone wise it mostly looks dark
because there's no kind of catch-light,
nor is there any fill.
So let's bring the fill in first,
which is my B light,
again that's just a bare head
bouncing off the wall, let's bring that
guy in, gonna be using TTL just to set
this up, see now we can see the whole
room gets a little bit more light in it,
and see how much brighter she looks,
she's like I'm right now, so that looks
pretty good,
but again that's what the room looks
like, this is if you walked in here,
and just shot this and so a lot of people
might stop they might be like I'm gonna
stop now.
We don't stop because we have more
lights, and the more lights we use the
more we get paid, so wait till she gets
the bill for this one.
So I'm going to turn on that C light again,
this one's in manual...
Good, so I'm switching everything to
manual, now this one is just cranked I
already put it at full power, and we're
gonna shoot it and let's see where we get.
We can always adjust both, yeah, but we can
see actually that.. well that looks nice,
except for the fact that again - this is
where I've mentioned before,
if we're not careful,
we'll get the softbox in the
window,
so we could actually shoot we'll
worry about that, but notice how much the
whole thing got filled in, because even
though that light is coming from the
back it's also bouncing all around the
room, so we're getting fill from that
light as well, so I think my overall
exposure is pretty good.
I'm gonna make one quick change,
cuz I can see in the right corner here that
the lights in the ceiling,
and making a little you know...
that does happen in rooms when light
comes in, but in fact I can see with my
eye over there, but I'm gonna try to turn
the light a little bit, alright now that
I'm here... oh by the way I'm at 35mm,
I know people ask that
question a lot.
More or less point the camera straight at
or about waist-high, a
little higher, take a shot there, yeah,
that, that took care of it a little bit.
Actually what's kind of interesting is
if she turns a lot like she just did,
she gets a little bit lighter in her face.
I'm just gonna look and make sure yeah,
it's not overexposed, but I don't
necessarily love it, so we'll try to keep
your head more or less straight, and I'm
gonna have you move slightly this way.
Let's see, let's look for that reflection
in the window, that's good yep,
now she's walking it so it's all about just
position, making that work,
there we go, and again if the pose is great
I don't want to restrict her too much,
so if we have to deal with taking another pose...
we can, as long as we just favor
that left side.
Or you're right either.
Yhere yeah, oops,
alright my focus, so I'm going to do here
is I'm going to set my focus point on
her face, I'm sure they're just going to
quickly switch here, because she's moving
around a lot, I don't want to let the
camera pick the focus point, I just want
to make sure that it stays locked in,
something's gonna pick a point and we'll
leave it there, because I'm not moving,
and even though she's moving.
Her face should more or less be in the same spot,
again, and you know even though these are
speed lights or small flashes, we can
shoot relatively fast, and still get good
exposure.
Yeah this is nice, did the classic Daniel
and left the the arrow on your face, yeah
I do that, okay here we go.
Ok that's nice, right elegant.
She's got the blue shoes...
wherever Nerlande goes she wears shoes
that match the furniture, but it's like
hmm... where are we going today, yeah, so
they're gonna actually take a half step
I want to see the shoes,
Yeah good, little did you know, yeah so
she's got ... I mean I'm you know, the
light is spreading on enough that if she
does step back the angle changes
slightly, but it's totally fine, it's, it's
well within the range, because the
light's not super close to her, so I
definitely have room to move
good, good, good, good, a couple more,
it's so fun with us, now do you like it, like a
like lean a little bit heavier this way,
Who cares about that! exactly
I'll do a couple more beautiful, nice and
soft, that's it good,
good good, that's pretty, good, good good,
Yeah that's pretty, it's fun you know,
just a fun elegant shot to do, it looks
really you know, it looks kind of natural,
if you didn't know how he built it up, which
i think is kind of cool.
We had a little shine there in your
forehead yeah,
So that's partially me,
so we're gonna quickly and .
.I'll always keep somebody around to help
with hair, .. everyone who's watch will be like I didn't know this...
does she always has this stuff going on?
Yeah,
that's really pretty, yeah it should be
good, maybe just work this way slightly,
yeah, you come in,
yeah I had her work that way because you
know again my key-light is, is, it's gonna
be the most obvious right,
specular highlight on the, on the person...
is a reflection of the light source,
so if you're seeing a shine on somebody's
head, if I point out towards the, the fill
light, which is actually a larger light
source, you're not really gonna see, it is
gonna spread out, so that's one solution.
If you just had to quick, to quickly fix
it just have her work slightly that way,
but now we have, a fixed hair, good, good
good, do a couple more, arrow on your face,
oops good good good, couple more, and
we got it.
A little more, straight yeah, good pretty
good, this is an advanced technique where
you don't look at the model, I've just
been doing this, really yeah, I can
actually hear you stopping, which is
actually funny, you can hear of the
weight of her feet or her shift, so if
you're wondering how I'm shooting when
I'm not looking at her its cuz I can hear
when you stop, because your weight shifts,
because it's a wood floor, another
advantage of wood floors, there we go,
if you're in concrete, I couldn't do that,
good yeah, that's really pretty,
well can't end of that one... give me like
a smile...
cuz I look at me like...
Yeah Sell it!
Awesome yeah, so you know when you come
on location like this, look at the lights
that's there, I mean just cool sometimes to
do like a more dramatic crazy shot that
doesn't really make sense to be trying
to go for some like weird effect, like a
fashion shot or something, but sometimes
it's nice just to make it feel like the
light in the room, light that kind of
feels like it's natural, but is caused by
flash, gives you the power of the flash,
to freeze it, to control it, but also kind
of just looks natural.
I said natural a bunch,
but that's that's that's one thing
we want to go for,
cuz one complaint I hear a lot of people
don't wanna use flashes, they say oh I don't like the
look of flash, but flash can look like
natural light if you understand where
it's coming from, and how to control.
So I'll put Nerlandes information in the
description - you guys can follow her,
be sure to follow me okay,
@DanielNortonPhotographer follow
Adorama, and ring the bell and I'll see you
next time OnSet.