This video is sponsored by Squarespace hey guys my name is Francisco and nandus
and today I'm doing another episode in my building the shot series if you guys
are not familiar with what this series is it's a series that I started recently
where I explain as much as I can about how I created a certain photo that I'm
gonna be hiding in every single episode today I'm gonna be going over this image
on the screen of my friend and model Julie that I took last year in August if
you're already familiar with this series you would know that this is just the
final version of the shot and in a bit I'm gonna go ahead and explain step by
step how I created this image as well show you guys some of the images taking
it directly before it but before I go ahead and explain that I want to talk
about the gear first because that's something that's really important to the
shot as well I'm gonna go ahead and take this image off the screen for a second
so I can bring up the behind-the-scenes shot of that photo so you guys can see
all the gear while I talk about the gear when it comes to the leg that we use I
used a rare two light setup I typically use one light but this shot definitely
needed a little bit of separation because it was a little bit dark behind
Julie so I used two lights the main light is a coax 8600 B also known as the
Explorer 600 TTL but I shot manually I didn't use TTL and it's modified by the
rapid box XXL that's their 48 inch octal box the rim light is a quad X 8200 also
known as the Evolve 200 and that's modified by the cheetah stand 26 inch
quick superboy believe they call it which is their beauty dish the things
that are holding these lights are a flash points east and on the left you
can see that as she's on the flash points East End and I actually really
like the C stand because it's very sturdy but it is also a little bit heavy
so I recommend using something like that cart there that you can see in the
foreground that's a foldable cart that's Eli's he
has a red version of it I have a blue version but it's really helpful in
carrying a lot of gear in case you need to move around a bit and have a lot of
stuff with you the thing that's Welling to go down to 8200 on the right there is
a Photoflex light reach Plus which is handheld very dramatically by elion
fronton another friend and photographer of mine and he actually set up the shoot
so big thanks to him for allowing me to take a couple of photos during the shoot
if you're curious about the other gear that's in the shot you can see the ten
bub bag that I used for holding my lights there next to the cart and inside
the car is an Omega reflector that I personally don't own it's Eli's but we
didn't really use for any of the shots that I think we
took that day on the rapid box I had two layers of diffusion anything guys are
curious about what diffusion is or what it even does to the light I have a video
on that that you guys can check out in the top right corner of the screen on
the chest on modifier I believe there's only one layer of diffusion on the
outside with an internal reflector on the inside but if that's not true or if
there's something else I need to correct I'll correct myself on the bottom of the
screen right now that's pretty much all the gear that we use I'll leave links to
all the gear in the description area below in case you guys want to get some
of that gear yourself but one thing I want to talk about now is how the lights
are positioned because that's something that you guys have been asking me to
explain a little bit in this video series I'm gonna go ahead and leave me
behind scenes on the screen right now so you guys can kind of see how the lights
are positioned as I talked about the positioning of the lights I typically
have the main light always above eye level by at least a foot and angled down
because I like a little bit of drama and the shadows that you get by positioning
the light like that you know a little bit above the eye and angled down you're
gonna get nice shadows to define the face and you're also gonna have a nice
little bit of depth that's gonna be created with those shadows it's easily
my most used lighting position because I love that depth that you can create with
those shadows if you guys are curious about where I decide to place the light
I always have it facing wherever the subject is facing so if they're facing
to the left side camera left then I'll place the light camera left if they're
facing to the right then I'll place the light camera right the Codex 8200 on
camera bright isn't at an angle because I wanted too light to be nicely even lit
through the back of her head the top of her head and a little bit to lower the
back because as we were taking pictures I noticed that there needed to be light
hitting that area so I didn't have it at an angle if I had it at an angle then it
would just be hitting pretty much on the head and maybe at the shoulders and kind
of just fall off after the shoulders all right so that's all the gear in the
lighting positions now I'm gonna go ahead and show you guys some of the
strain of the camera shots that I ended up taking before that final shot that
ended up editing okay so here's the first straight on a camera shot that I
ended up taking over Julie in this area if you guys are thinking to yourself it
looks a little dark it's because it is a little dark and one thing I ended up
doing in Lightroom is adjusting the exposure to be 2/3 of a stop brighter as
well as really bringing out the colors so after I did those adjustments it went
from looking like this to this I could go ahead and show you guys
the rest of the shots exactly how they look like straight out of camera which
is gonna be a little bit dark and a little bit less vibrant but I'm gonna go
ahead and just skip that process and show you guys how they look like with
those adjustments made so with this shot I did end up thinking that I wanted to
take a horizontal photo and that's what I ended up taking but for this specific
shot that's why I had in mind and one thing I do want to let you guys know
before I even continue talking about the rest of the photos I ended up taking is
that this was my first time working with Julie so I didn't know how she works
with photographers and one thing that I learned as I was taking photos of her is
that she likes to flow pose if you guys are not familiar flow posing is it's
basically when you take a shot and the model changes her pose after every
single shot I'm not a fan of flow posing because I like to nail down my lighting
and my composition other things and I want that pose to stay the same so when
I was working with Judy for the first time I realized that I could either tell
her right away that you know can you calm down for a second cuz I'd like to
keep the same pose but one thing I ended up doing for this shot was just letting
her do her own thing because I didn't really have an exact pose in mind the
things that are going through my head as I take this first shot is that her back
is showing a lot and it's very dark so I do want her to adjust her pose so that
the back is showing less or what I end up doing later is getting a light to
kind of fill in that dark area so that I can continue taking the photos and it it
just starts sticking out like a sore thumb being very dark and to contradict
myself and what I just said in the very next shot there's still a lot of back
showing and also the horizon is a little bit weird I don't know what was going
through my head when I took the shot other than me seeing all that blue if
you focus on just the background in the previous shot which is this one right
here you can see that the blue is still there but I wasn't angled in a position
where it was just kind of fitting up the entire frame so in the next shot which
is this one again you can see that all that blue was fitting up the shot and
you think that was going through my head the most with all that color so I don't
know why my horizon is all messed up I don't drink so so yeah just I just focus
on the color that's pretty much why I chose this framing but the writing is
still a bit off another thing that was went in my head when I took the shot is
that it's important orientation and previously another
and last shot I was using landscape orientation so I do tend to favor
portrait orientation so I stuck to it for the next shot but a couple of other
things are adjusted as well in this shot here I used the setting of 1 6 4 th of a
second shutter speed in the next shot I end up going a little bit faster at 1 mm
of a second which makes the background darker and I also add a secondary light
source I add that godox 8200 with the chitosan a lot of fire in the back so
this is the next shot right here so at this point I feel like the background is
a little bit too dark I think that's what I was aiming for but once I took
that shot I realized that's not what I wanted after all so one thing I do want
to mention is that when I change the shutter speed to be faster from one six
forty eighth of a second to one mm I also have to increase the power output
of the lights so that they're not going to be underpowered or underexposed so
just keep that in mind whenever you adjust the shutter speed to be faster
you also need to increase the power output of the lights with this shot and
introduced the rim light so you guys can see a little bit of the light hitting
the side of her arm I feel like it's a little bit too low so I end up adjusting
it to be brighter but one thing I do want to focus on or one thing that I'm
focusing on right now as I see the image is that I do like the richness of the
Browns in her hair but again the background is just a little bit too dark
so I went from 160 fortieth and the first shot in the second shot and in
this shot I'm at 1 mm and in the next shot I'm about to show you I go from 1
mm of 2nd to 1/8 hundreds of a second which is this shot right here so what I
do right now is store both of the images on the screen so you guys can see
exactly how they differ the shadows aren't gonna be different at all because
the lights were in the exact same position but there are gonna be changes
in the ambient light like I mentioned before as well as things like her hair
being a little bit different because of how windy it was that day but back again
to just this photo on the screen I want you guys to see the difference in
between this shot and next one because it's not going to be different in terms
of lighting output or ambient light but again just her post being different the
main difference in this next shot and the last shot is that her head is tilted
upward the light is filling in her face a lot better than before so I'm gonna go
ahead and go to the last shot right now so you guys can see that there's a
little bit of light or a little bit of shadow actually in the bags underneath
her eyes as well as not enough light hitting inside
eyes so the difference between this shot and the next one is how much light is
fitting in her face so I'm gonna go ahead and throw back the other shot the
next shot on the screen so you guys can really focus on that in this shot you
can also see that her back is showing a little bit more because of how harsh it
is compared to the last one one thing that was going through my head
was not so much the pose in the shot but how much RIM light was showing up on her
back initially I thought I wanted just a hint of it so you can get a little bit
of separation but then I wanted to add more of that RIM light to be more
present in the shot so I went from this shot to this one you can definitely see
that she showed more for back in this shot which shows more of the rim light
that I increased the output of and you can see that her hair is also showing up
a lot more because of how much light is hitting her hair this shot and the next
one were again flow poses she was deciding her poses on her own and I was
just kind of focused on the lighting and the composition I thought I wanted to
portray orientation for this shot and the next one but obviously I messed up
on the composition on this photo but I went ahead and just decided I wanted to
go horizontal orientation landscape orientation so this is the next shot
after this one right here once I took this shot I realized there was a couple
things that I really liked in terms of the orientation I liked how the
landscape orientation looked like because of the different colors that
were showing up in the background and not just only blue I also like lighting
I felt like the rim light was exactly where I wanted it to be as well as the
main light and I really liked her pose being on the railing so those were some
things that were going through my head when I took this shot the only thing I
didn't like about the shot was how much the light wasn't filling in her eyes and
underneath her eyes because of the way that her head was positioned so since I
like all the other things like I mentioned with the composition and the
lighting and her hand position the only thing I need to tell her is just to go
ahead and just aim her head a little bit up so that's why I ended up telling her
to do and it ended up with this shot as soon as I took this shot and the light
was filling her face a lot better and her expression was great as well and
everything was exactly where I wanted it to be I decided this is the photo that
I'm gonna go ahead and stick with and I only took I think one more shot after
this one before I went ahead and took that behind scene shot if he curious
like me and want to see that shot I'll go ahead and show you guys right now
this is that shot that I took after that last one the one they ended up editing
and as you guys can see since her head is tilted down there's a
a little bit of lack of light in her eyes and her Neath her eye now back to
this shot that we're gonna be talking about after I took the photo and I made
those adjustments in terms of exposure and the color I felt like there's a
little bit more that I could do with the image in terms of how much light is
fitting in her eyes so I did a couple of different adjustments in terms of the
adjustment layer brush and Lightroom I increased the exposure in her eyes just
a little bit as well as the color and I added a little bit more exposure I
believe in the hair area and a little bit on her so after I made those
adjustments it went from looking like this to
looking like that right there you just what I do in Lightroom I pretty much
always minor ones in terms of exposure and color and do more of the heavy
lifting work in Photoshop and I was gonna show you guys a screen recording
of me showing you guys all the different layers individually but for some reason
the screen recording was acting up and instead I'm gonna go ahead and just show
you guys each of the different layers that I exported from that Photoshop file
so you guys can see exactly what I did so what you're seeing on the screen
right now is the photo that I ended up exporting from Lightroom with all the
different adjustments that I made in terms of adding a little bit of exposure
on her face and the eyes and a little bit of exposure around her but the next
shot that you're about to see is the adjustments they made immediately
afterwards the first thing that I saw him when it came to this photo was how
much her ribs for showing a little bit too much so one thing I ended up doing
first is adjusting the color as well as dodging and burning her ribs so you guys
can see that in this shot right here the next thing that I noticed I needed a fix
was a little bit of the bag underneath her eye as well as a little bit of
brightness in the forehead I felt like was just a tad a little bit too hot so I
went ahead and just dodge and burn those two areas to get the shot right here
one thing I also do in push-up that I could do and lighten them technically is
remove some of the blemishes using the spot removal tool so that's why I did in
this very next step right here the next thing that I did was frequency
separation and sometimes I don't use this at all because it can easily be
overdone so when I use it in this image I try to keep it as light as possible on
her one thing I did adjust a little bit dramatically was the color in the sky so
let me go ahead and throw the image on the screen right now so you guys can see
exactly what I did from the last image to this one I felt like the blue in the
sky and specifically on the top left there I felt like it was just kind of
just too abrupt so I wanted to try to ease
transition to make a gradient of some sorts so I did my best to do that using
the stamp tool I believe and I went ahead and just kind of used the
frequency separation area as well to kind of just ease up the veins on her
hand and on her wrists there the very next thing I did was remove
some of the distractions that kind of just were going through my head when I
was looking through image and scanning it I felt like that boken ball right
there in the back was just sticking out like a sore thumb so I went ahead and
removed it let me go ahead and just throw the next image on the screen right
now so you can see that I removed the bulk ball right there I also removed a
little bit of the scar on her belly button as well as some of the things
that were showing up on her shirt after that was done I felt like the image was
pretty much edited exactly how I wanted it to be and sometimes the last thing I
do was add a little bit of noise so that's why I ended up doing which ended
up being this shot right here it's very minor but you can kind of see it in the
shadowed areas and that's pretty much everything that I can explain about how
this photo was created if I forgot anything or if you guys are curious
about something that I might have not mentioned definitely let me know in the
comment section below as I mentioned before in the beginning of the video
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