In this video I get my camera as high as I can to shoot some overhead portraits
in my small studio.
AdoramaTV presents 'Take and Make Great Photography' with Gavin Hoey.
Hello, I'm Gavin Hoey and you're watching AdoramaTV, brought to you by Adorama, the
camera store that has everything for us photographers. Now in this video I'm
going to try and get an unusual point of view at least for my photography by
shooting a model directly from above. Now, let's be clear, if you're only going to do a couple
of shots, there's nothing wrong with just grabbing a step ladder, climbing up and being very
careful taking your pictures. But if you're going to do this for any period of time you've got to
do something like a boom arm set up. That's what I'm going to do. Let's get the
camera on here and go through how to set this up.
I'm going to be using a boom arm
for this shoot. Boom arms come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and designs. Whatever
design you use, you have to think about the safety of your gear and your model
below. So at the moment you can see this is fairly extended out but it's not
perfectly balanced so to make sure everything stays safe, I've got a
counterweight at one end, camera at the other and I just slide it along the arm
until it balances perfectly, even on its unlocked downstate. Once you get to this
point that's great, that's balanced, that's safer. Let's tighten everything up like that.
I've also got another sand bag down the bottom. That's just a given, and if you want
even more safety then you can have the the leg pointing in the same direction
as the boom arm. So, what about the camera? Well, I'm using my Olympus OM-D E-M5 II. On top
is the flash point StreakLight trigger and in my pocket is another one. It's the
same one, same channel, same group and I can use this to remote trigger the flash once
I'm doing metering and that's kind of useful to have too, not essential but it
helps. Now to see what's going on I need to be able to look from the camera point
of view down and, of course, I can use the the flippy foldy screen here
and use live view to set that up but I like to use a laptop so I've got my
Microsoft Surface book and I'm going to plug it into the USB cable.
This is the one that comes with the Olympus cameras. Some cameras like
Olympus have their own USB type socket so it has to be their cable. The other
end of the cable, it goes
orange and the orange bit is a tether tool's USB repeater which means that as
the signal goes down the long cable it doesn't lose quality or strength, meaning I
don't get any dropouts here I'm also using the Olympus software which means
that I will get not only a review of the image when I take the pictures but way
more usefully I'll get to be able to preview a live view from the actual
camera itself so I can frame this all up, get everything absolutely perfect and
that just helps an awful lot when I'm setting up the shot.
Speaking of which, let's get a model in and start doing some shooting. So once
again I'm joined in the studio by Adrienne. Do you want to say hello and she's going to be the
model for this shoot so we're going to use Adrienne, we're going to get her to lie down on the
background like that I've already got the camera setup. It's all tethered, it's ready to go.
But there are a few things you need to consider so let's start with the
background. Normally when I'm shooting I would have a separation between the
model and the background, that will allow me to light the background separately.
Clearly that's not going to happen because the background is the floor and unless your
model can levitate, there's no way you can actually light the floor separately
to the model.
So, think about your background choice, it will matter. Next you've got to think about the
lighting in general because you've probably got an idea of how you want to light a
normal upright portrait but when you go overhead you have to think everything is
flipped over. So normally I'd light the light from the front slightly above but above
actually means further away. It means higher, as in, away from the camera, where
you are and that will give me above lighting. Now, will that work for exposure?
Well, the way to find out is to take a meter reading. Let's get my flash meter
and I meter exactly the same as I would if Adrienne
was stood or sat up, so I get my flash meter, I've got my spare remote
trigger and I'm going to pop this underneath her chin with the little dome pointing back at the light I
want to meter and I'm getting f11. That's perfect. The camera is already set to f11
that should give me correct exposure. Let's take a test shot and see how that looks.
OK so, Adrienne if you can look towards the camera for me. As you can see that looks fine, except
we've got a lit side and a shady side, which might be alright, but I think I would
like to have a bit more even illumination.
So to even things up I'm going to do what I wouldn't normally do, get a second light
and push some light in. Now I could put a second light sort of over here and just light the
shady side but I've got a softbox on one and a bare light on the other side. That's
going to give some weird hard shadows on one side but if you work in a small studio
like I am here and you have white walls, well use those as an impromptu
light modifier. By pointing my speed light at the wall it'll become much bigger,
bounce in much softer light. Let's just take a test shot like that and that fills in
the shadows beautifully. So lighting when you've got somebody lying down and
you're shooting overhead is no different to any other sort of lighting, you just
need to think that it's slightly flipped. So let's have a little think about
posing because there's loads of different poses you can do but there's a
couple of things to consider. The first one is where are you going to get your model to look?
Now, normally we interact with the model by having a camera in front of us and
talking to the model but now the camera is up high so you've got to remember to
direct your model from the point of view of the camera. Next thing to consider: gravity.
Now, gravity has an effect, we know how gravity works, it works on a downward
direction, which is easy to guess what's going to happen when someone is sat or
stood up. But the minute they lie down gravity doesn't play ball. Let me show
you. OK, Adrienne, we're just going to take a little picture. Have a look at the camera,
and as you can see, gravity is not doing what it should do. Adrienne's hair is going
everywhere
apart from where gravity would normally dictate it goes, which in itself is
brilliant and half the point of doing these overhead shots. However, if you want it
to look like it's more natural, you need to think how does gravity work? So Adrienne,
I'm going to come down and move your hair if that's OK? So I'm just going to bring your hair a little bit tighter
in towards your body and we'll tuck that underneath like that and we'll come around the other side
and we'll tuck that underneath like that. OK, if you lie back down, that's great. I think they shot you can
And when I take this shot you can
see that now things seem to be working much better. Now that's great but
everything has an effect, clothing, the skin on your face can have a different
effect with gravity, bear that in mind.
OK so that's some basic ideas. Let's take some shots like this, see how it goes.
So I've completely changed the background. We've gone for something much more interesting. We've
got a whole bunch of books- forty books down on the floor here that I've laid
out in a nice sort of circular pattern and we're going to get Adrienne to lie down right in the
middle of that. Now, I was able to get this all nice and laid out using the
Live View feature and again being tethered to my laptop, here, means that I can
actually do that really easily and well let's just give this a whirl
so, Adrienne, if you want to lie down right in
the middle of that pile of books, see where those two are together. OK, so you're
going to need to come back towards me ever so slightly. Ok, keep coming, keep coming.
That's it, hold it right there. Fantastic. OK, now I haven't
moved the lights. They are exactly the same, same exposure, same settings so if I
take a test picture if you look at the camera for me. OK, that looks pretty good.
I'm kind of happy with that. OK let's do a shoot like this. Are you ready?
Well, I think those pictures look absolutely amazing and while shooting
overhead really does bring its own set of unique problems, especially in a small
studio, it really is worth the effort.
Now, if you want to see more videos from myself and the other amazing presenters
right here on AdoramaTV, you know what you've got to do? You've got to click on
the subscribe button. I'm Gavin Hoey, thanks for watching.