couple of reflections I have to remove the body shot logo and the shape of that
water there not a single bit of retouching on that shot that you're
seeing there and I'm going to show you exactly step by step how I shot that all
the lightening and everything before I do that we want to make sure that you
get notified about great tutorials like this that we'll have coming up but
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the end it helps us out as well well that's it let's get on with this
tutorial
don't choose the very end of this episode to find out which one of you got
to name her
okay so let me talk you through the setup so far I have my camera on a mono
stand and then I've got a low block table with black gloss acrylic and then
above I've got my diffusion material on a scrim frame one that I just make
myself and that's supported by two C stands that's holding that up and you
can see I've just got one bran color uni light above at the moment through my
diffusion material but that's giving me the glow in my perspective will give me
a perfectly cylindrical glow the difficulty with this is my planning and
arrangement of the layout because what I want to do is I also want to put some
pools of water on there as well with the products with the pools of water I have
to consider exactly where I'm going to put those and what they're going to look
like so I start with one light from above I'm going to tether my camera in
now and I'm just going to assess the results on the gloss black perspex I'm
not even worried really at this stage about what the products look like I'll
deal with those as I go along so my very first test shot you can see the light
was very overexposed so I simply go over to the pack and then just simply turn
the power down it was on power eight so I've dropped that down to power five so
you can see the very overexposed result and then dropped it down a little bit
dropped it down further until eventually I end up with a the ball of light kind
of how I want it where I am now I feel I've got a sort of level of intimacy
with the product and the emotion if you like of the composition feels better to
me so this is going to going to be my starting point now on the composition
the lighting on the prod still needs to be taken care of to get
the light in this side of this one I needed to get a light over there and my
scrim c-stands were on the other side before so I've swapped the whole scrim
and spun it around so that I don't have any legs in the way at that ends and
that allowed me to put another scrim roll over here that light there which is
just behind my scrim roll this diffusion material but you can buy from our
website by the way that light is doing that okay so that that light there
that's shining into the back of that capsule you see now I've also introduced
this light in here to make that work I use or is it this one here which is a
Pico light that has a projection attachment on it and it has a projecting
lens on it that allows you to focus the light but also more importantly it has
these aperture blades that you can move in and out to control the light into a
very precise space and if I move the aperture blades you can see how some
light will hit this object in the foreground and if I move the side one
you see how I can block and shield the light coming in there so I can control
the light you'll also notice that I've put a piece of white card inside that
blusher capsule just bounce a little bit more light down it's not doing a
tremendous job but it's just filling in a little bit of that shadow that
Crescent shadow there so it's all a step by step methodical process of figuring
out what's what where's what works what you like so I'm trying to do as much as
I can in camera which is what I always do good product photography shouldn't be
about lots and lots of photos where you should try and do as much as
you can in camera which is what I'm doing now so I'll continue on okay so
I've added a second Pico light so there's the first one that is
illuminating the color inside that thing here's the second Pico light so I put
that white card inside and now this Pico light I turn it on and off a very fine
beam that's only hitting the inside of that white card to bounce some light
down into the surface here because this was completely black now that added that
subtle bit of light that you can see in there which is really nice which I'm
really liking so this is the raw file these are the raw files this is the raw
software straight our camera no Photoshop work yet no editing of a4
light setup at the moment - pico lights uni light from above and a light from
the scrim behind look at the control in here the light on the edge here the
light in here a light on the makeup okay no Photoshop work yet next task is to
illuminate the edge of this brush let me talk through what I've added into the
mix now so we've got the two Pico lights that I showed you before which are
isolating the blusher and the white card I put inside the blusher I then added
this third Pico light which is isolating just the nib of the lipstick from that
direction so only highlighting the lipstick and
you can see I've added another scrim role you can see that graduated below
coming up from it and that is with this Pico box an angle to sever some light up
here coming out on this side which is giving me illumination in this side of
the lipstick and the brush and we have a look on screen there because
he said that illumination there and on the inside of the brush wasn't there
before if I go back that's what it was you see
so it was much darker on that side and now I've added some illumination in
there now everything that you see there on screen at the moment that's all been
done that's straight out camera that's the war file now it's not perfect I'm
not saying that you shouldn't use Photoshop to finish things up there's
probably going to be a couple of things that I want to finish off is one funny
little reflection I can't do anything about with the lipstick at that angle
that's going to have to require a little blip but what I'm getting at here is the
closer you get the shot to perfection in camera then the more it looks real
because it is real you know a lot of photoshopped images look over Photoshop
over manipulated you can see the Photoshop work you know it's not real so
I want to get this image to looking like a quality image without Photoshop and
then if necessary some minor little imperfections can be brushed up so
that's the lighting setup so far let me just run through this Pico box here
that's on power five point six that one is at six point seven that goes to that
one which is highlighting the color of the blusher that one is at five point
two and the one hitting the white card inside you can see is right up at eight
point five because I'm trying to bounce as much light off of that white card
then over here I've got my light from the side here which is light number one
which is at just at two point seven that's the one that is creating that
little catch light on the edge of that when we look at it from the other side
so that's why it's such a low power and then the other one is at four point
eight that's the one coming over from the top we get so many people that say
oh what's the ratio of the light to the other one and what's that ratio well
that's just such an honor question when you're dealing with
precise lighting because if you knew the ratio and I told you the ratio just like
I have what you also need to know for the physics of it is the distance of the
light from the subject because without the distance there knowing that ratio is
absolutely pointless so unless you know distance the type of light the joules
etc of the light is absolutely pointless so how do I decide the ratio how do I
decide it well it's very simple I do it in this step-by-step process of looking
at the light looking at the light in same right that one's too bright so I'm
going to take it down that one's too hot so I'm going to take it down this one's
not bright enough so I'm going to take it up I just do it by looking at it and
visually assessing I don't use the light mica I don't measure the light but
there's no point measuring the light I've got a big hazard screen coming out
my Hasselblad here there's no need to measure the light this is my light
measurement and these are the analytics on that light measurement making those
decisions you have to look at the picture and decide what's good right I
think this is as far as I can go without Photoshop if you look closed up added a
little bit of blip of light on there and that was from holding a reflector out
here and I've increased the power of the light on here not happy with that
reflection there but I can't do anything about it because it's coming from this
so the only way I could do is to take that away and then shoot it but I don't
want to do that for this shot I want to do as much as I can just in one shot so
it's all one shot we'll add the water in a minute but what I want to do is take a
picture for you with each only each individual light so that you can see
what that light's doing on its own and that's to hold my reflector after what
that's doing what that's doing what that one's doing so I've got four Pico lights
there now oh that's the other thing I didn't show you I've added that Pico
light in there which is actually just highlighting the
nib of the brush only let me show you what it's like without that there so you
can see the nib of the brush it was basically black then I added the Tito
box in front but then you can see I can now have now illuminated just the nib of
the brush to add a little bit of color and that's been done with a really fine
precise control from this pico light with the projection attachment shining
right down just onto the nib of the brush what I want to do now is I want to
actually take a picture with just one light each light on no other lights on
and then the next one on and no other lights on so you can see exactly which
lights are doing what and then I can talk you through it
we've just left the top light only on now I'm going to take a picture so there
you go that is just the top light on its own you can see that there's no other
illumination in anything else is just the glow in the perspex right now just
do this side scrim on that pack please Bend so this is just the light on here
now this is just this one light on its own there you go for that that light is
illuminating just that okay this one is the light that's shining into the white
card inside the blusher that I put inside there tube out this light down in
here and you can see that's also illuminating the color and a bit of the
Chanel logo that's just the nib of the lipstick being illuminated that's
illuminating the side of the brush side of the lipstick that's illuminating just
the nib of that brush okay so that all the individual lights showing what each
of them are doing we can now put all the lights back on to there
original power settings so that we've got the global illumination now we have
got all the lights back on and capture the shot and hopefully we should be back
to where we were and we are good now admittedly yes this is looking like
quite an expensive setup because I've got three skoro packs I've got five pico
lights and two uni lights in action but sometimes for certain types of
photography you do need the right equipment there are ways of doing this
cheaper with snoops and very tight grids and you know sort of fixes but it's the
level of control that I want which is why I use this equipment and this
demonstration is primarily just to show you the type of work that I do but it
also gives you an insight into how I would like something like this now I'm
going to add the water in
take that shot ah tape open I'm shake do not quite the right shaker
round shit funny
ah
so here's the unretouched image and here's the retouched image unretouched
and retouched well I hope you enjoyed that video and that step-by-step
walkthrough on my lighting I know that many of you are going to comment on the
fact that I was using tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment to achieve
that photo shoot and you know what you're absolutely right I was but it's
my job those are the tools that help me do my
job more effectively so those are the tools that I choose to use as do many
other professional photographers back in the day I used to use a lot of homemade
tools snoots my own grids and devices to create small pockets of light and
control light in a small way but obviously with these tools that helps me
do it more efficiently maybe I can make a video if you're interested if you want
to comment below I can make a video in the future about how I can make some
homemade tools that you can do yourself to create little pockets of light but
yeah leave some comments on that sorry the video was a little bit shaky because
I was holding this camera that I've got now by hand as I was working so it was a
little bit shaky and sorry the white balance kept shifting a little bit as
well because it was shifting between the screen balance and then the tungsten
lights modeling lamps on studio life but anyway I think the video hopefully will
inspire you give you some ideas for product photography if you like the
video please please click the like button because that helps us a lot
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on future video anyway thanks very much for watching learn photography with me
Karl Taylor. KarlTaylorEducation.com with
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