hi this is JP Morgan today I have with me hi I'm Eric Mayer you can check her
out on our social media she's here to help me emphasize on the laws of light
shooting in harsh sunlight why is it bad shooting in harsh sunlight why is it bad
because it doesn't make you look very good it does not make you look very good
it just doesn't because of really harsh shadows and hard light those two things
go together when you have direct sunlight harsh and direct and
contrasting so in order to fix that you can do several things you can go find
shadows or shade get into the shade into the shade now you're gonna have just an
open light and that's a great way to work but the problem with that is that
you now have to go find shade which we do you need to change your location
we're up here in all this grass I love this grass I want to shoot in this grass
I don't want to go find shade so we're going to talk about the ways that we'll
be able to shoot where we want to and are not restricted by the fact that we
have to find shade we're going to create our own lighting solutions here in this
field that'll give us pretty light and pretty
images of Maher here and not be able to have to run to the shade to do it so our
Sun is high it's right overhead it's about as harsh and high as you can get
it so we're gonna talk about the ways we can control this light and make it look
good because the Sun is here and you have to deal with it one of the first
things you can do is make it your key light so I'm gonna simply have her turn
to me turning to that light she's gonna look almost straight into that Sun up
chin up and out that weights a little bit and she's getting a great butterfly
on her face in order to make this work I've got to get a reflector in here I've
got to open up these shadows Kenneth you'll just put a reflector in there for
me so I'm working her back towards that
light into that Sun and it's harsh it's really hard
I mean it's working I don't think it's my favorite light by any means but you
can use this tone as a key light I've seen some pretty dramatic and pretty
interesting shots done that way so the pros and cons of just using the direct
Sun as your key light the the con is that it's really harsh and hard and it
destroys the skin it just makes every little flaw in the face is going to show
you have to retouch it like crazy but the pro is you don't have to have a lot
of equipment you can use what's there you can use the Sun and you can make
that work in a lot of situations you just have to really work it around one
thing about it that just is really hard to deal with and that is that the Sun
isn't always in the same place you can't always get the Sun in the right place to
make it the key light it's not like you get to set the Sun right here or right
they to make your key light you have to go is
where the Suns at which means a lot of times it's not going to give you the
perfect key light like you'd like it to so these just becomes this is a tool in
this step these four or five steps we're going to go through here today a tool
and okay I can see how I can use a little bit of that key light of the Sun
and I'm going to add it now with the next one we're gonna do so let's take a
look at that so your next option is probably one that I use the absolute
most if I come into a situation like this I just simply turn them around put
their back towards the Sun because I'm going to get now a rim light on them I'm
going to get just a shadow wall on my side I can now open up with a reflector
and it gives me darker background because the background is also being lit
and rimmed from behind so the background is not as bright so if I look back
towards them with the Sun back behind them it gives me a nice setup when the
Sun is this high you can pull it off very easily when the Sun gets really low
now that sun's gonna come in and you're really gonna have to use it as a flare
or it's just it's gonna become a major player but when it's up this high I can
now use it as a rim light and then add my life for the front so I'm gonna
switch around and try that example there so I'm automatically in a much better
situation here because I've got a rim light on her I've got a great rim on her
hair I can see into a much darker green behind her and now I'm gonna just simply
take and have Kenneth put in a little reflector underneath her and from that
we're gonna get a nice light on her face I've got this little Sun bounce mini
which I love these probably my favorite reflector ever made because they are
tight and flat and easy to handle and it just gives you a really nice light it
gives you a nice even light over a large area
the hardest thing with her is is her hair because she's got really really
really bright white hair so in order to open this up enough make her face look
good that RIM light is gonna be pretty harsh on her hair if she had dark hair
you can absolutely get away with it because that RIM light is not gonna make
her hair so hot and it's gonna work much better but the example we have here is
pretty good I can get a nice shot of her it's open has this kind of open airy
feeling because the lights being bounced back into her face there so I'm gonna do
something that I will work sometimes and I'll not work others but I'm just gonna
get down here on the ground and I'm gonna get mayor to look straight over at
me and I'm gonna let the Sun go directly behind her head so lean way out here for
so if you don't know what to do with the Sun just simply put it right directly
behind the person and it gets appears and gives you a nice rim light from
behind so the pros and cons of this situation you're gonna need equipment
because you need have to bounce light in a bounce just to kind of open things up
and to clean up the light is pretty hard to work without it you can't choose your
background if you're gonna put the Sun behind her you're kind of stuck with
what's gonna be back there you can't move right or left just a
little bit but the reality is you kind of stuck with what's back there which
makes a little bit restrictive also in this situation when you're looking in
that background may be too bright or too dark you're kind of you're at the mercy
of what's back there so it's always a game of balancing things I just think
you have you're the most successful when you turn the person with their back
towards the Sun and you allow your background to have deeper colors and
layered behind her used to have more control in situation you're gonna get a
better shot nine times out of ten so this next way to work is probably the
one that's the most successful I think when you're out in direct Sun like this
and that is that you put a some kind of a translucent overhead to take the light
off from your subject so even though I love looking back with the Sun behind
her there's a great look where you just come around I'm gonna come around her
bring that translucent in this is the Sun swatter by Sun bounce it's called
the Sun swatter Pro this is gonna give me a softbox look over her head because
now that Sun that's hitting her directly in the face now is just be as smoothed
out it gives us a beautiful light on her face if I shoot with a long lands let
the background fall out of focus so the pros and cons in working in this kind of
situation the pros are you get a beautiful soft light with her I'm
looking at it from the backside so I'm using the Sun swatter as the kind of the
softbox on her face I like it using those a rim light and adding light on
that side as well the problem though is is that you get a shadow on the ground
and if you're trying to a full body you have to work around that shadow that
creates on the ground you can try to find a line in the grass you can try to
find a line of the bicycle something to try to hide that line where you see the
shadow on the ground so when you get a hard sunlight out here that shadow
becomes really tough like if you're at the beach you wanna do a full body I'm
gonna put a translucent up it's impossible to hide that line because
it's just a square on the ground now there's a lot of ways to hide that like
right now we were using it Candace will just bring it right up behind the
bicycle so that line was kind of getting kind of lost in the grass and the
bicycle back there and that made it looked really nice and it worked really
well so the fourth setup is we have a
translucent overhead I brought myself around so if that son is still Reming
her from behind my background study is pretty dark which I really like gives me
kind of a nice rich background but I've got a strobe head that's going to just
add a nice light on her face and light her face a little bit of the bicycle and
that gives me complete control of this situation I can light her I can light
her as bright as I want if I have high-speed sync I can make the
background as dark as I want that is the one thing if you that's a disadvantage
to this setup you really need high C high-speed sync if you want to shoot at
2.8 or something you're gonna have to have high-speed sync because you're not
gonna be able to get a shutter speed out in the Sun that's gonna allow you to
just shoot and use your strobes because your strobes will only sync up to about
200 of a second to be able to make this work in the Sun out here I'm gonna have
to be up to like you know a thousandth of a second which means I can't sync
with my strobe so when I bring my shutter speed down where I can sync with
my strobes at two hundred of a second I don't get F 2.8 anymore I mean like like
f9 which means I now have a lot more depth of field than I've had before it's
not a terrible look but it's something to be considered if you want to shoot
with this kind of a combination you're gonna need to use high-speed sync which
allows you to sync up to like a thousandth or two thousandth of a second
and that's a really valuable thing to use in this situation I have feathered
this drove way up and away from her so I'm just catching the corner of it to
lighten up her face and not doing too much with the bicycle with it and that
now just gives me a nice combination of a translucent overhead strobe in the
front and Kenneth is losing that translucent in the wind it's flying away
so the pros and cons of the situation well the first one obviously is you have
to have a strobe so you have to have more equipment and you have to have a
person to hold the overhead unless you have a stand and a sandbag you can set
that up with so it causes you to have to have more equipment more people to be
able to set it up it's not quite as easy I think the Pro though is that you have
complete control of the light here I can make her face as bright as I want I can
allow the background to do whatever I want I'm using my shutter to control the
ambient light that's hitting the background and then I'm adding in a
aperture that is going to make my background look correct but then when I
add my strobe at that same aperture it brightens up her face and now I can make
my light on her look nice and I can control the background so we're about to
do a toss and crashed s with skpk so I'm gonna see how high I
can throw it and have a crash down on the dirt road here so cameras rolling
and it goes
so there you have it the cameras still rolling and it's working fine yes it is
so there you have a look at several different ways to shoot in direct Sun
thanks to our sponsor Sun bounce who really has given us the ability to get
that translucent overhead a great reflector on the front I love those flat
reflectors there's several different ways to use either the Sun is the key
light to a translucent to kill that song so you can light underneath it either
with a reflector or with a strobe head gives you several different options to
be able to use direct Sun and not have to go run and hide in the shade
I mean shade is great and shooting in the shade you can do but if you've got a
location you want to use your location then learn how to shoot in direct Sun
and control the location and get the shot that you want and not the shot that
the shade makes you get it's June we've got a great giveaway from a teletag it's
the 2 by 2 light cloth these are incredible LED light panels you can fold
these things up flat put them in your suitcase they're by color they've got
incredible range of dimming you can DMX them all those kinds of things put
batteries on them or run em AC this is a fabulous light so get over to the Sun
lens calm there's multiple ways to enter get over there and interest many times
you can so you can win it so mayor did you enjoy doing this um yeah
once I had a little bit of shape she almost passed out once on us in the
direct Sun so there's a tip for you don't make your models pass out in the
direct Sun we gave her one small sip of water and then she was okay
so make sure you follow since landlines leave us a comment about what you
thought about what you think about shooting direct Sun what you think about
other ways you think you could accomplish that leave us a comment like
us love us follow us subscribe all those kinds of things that we'd love you to do
because we love you and we hope you love what we do so keep those cameras rolling
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