In this video, I create a background from thin air using LED lights and a long
exposure a AdoramaTV presents Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey.
Hello, I'm Gavin Hoey and your watching AdoramaTV, brought to you by the camera that has
everything for us photographers. This video is all about creating a background
with a little bit of a difference. Now you need a few things to make this
happen, you need a softbox, and I got my Glow soft box with a Streetlight 360
inside. You need a camera but more importantly, you need a tripod, which is
what I've got here now. The background is actually going to be created by this strip
of LED lights. But the most important thing for the shoot is the model, so no
expense spared, I've flown in the best model I could find and here is Mr Mark Wallace..
Always nice to have you back. Thank you for having me here. Now with everything
in place let's get the show up and running. So I've got my camera set up at
the front here, we'll get to the camera settings in a moment. Let's start with
the light. So the flash, because this is going to be a wide shot I need to flash out of the
scene. I was gonna have to come pretty close to the camera like that. Now the
exposure for my flash. Well I'm just going to put this to full power, I get my
flash meter. We''ll pop underneath Mark's chin and take a flash meter reading. My flash meter tells me f11.
So that's what I'm going to dial into the camera that can be my aperture. So f11
aperture, that's the easy bit, ISO gonna be 200 Iso 'cause that is the
native ISO for this camera shutter speed.
What's gonna happen is I'm going to walk behind Mark with the LED lights, creating
a line of light, but to make that happen I need a shutter speed long enough to
record it. So that needs to be about five seconds. So that's what we're going to do.
5 seconds, f11, ISO 200. Now with the room lights turned on here, that is going
to cause a very, very, bright picture so this needs to be done with the room
lights off. The darkest room you can get. If we do that for the video no one's going to
see you. Would that boost ratings? No it would make me sad. Yeah...that's not good is it? So we'll shoot this,
with the lights on, but we'll take the pictures with the lights off, and we'll
show you both. So the setup is really simple, camera on a tripod, that's not going to move and
the amazing model, that's not gonna move either, and it's important because this is a long
exposure five-second exposure. Now to do this I'm going to use the self timer. So
lets just set that going. Once the flash fires, I'm then going to walk behind Mark in
a dead straight line holding the LED's towards the camera. Here we go yeah
it's counting down, we got two seconds, and I'll off and I got five seconds to
cover the ground, at the end of the five seconds, the shutter closes and these
little lights come out as these amazing streaks of red lights, and it's that simple. It's the
long exposure that's recording the background, it's the flash that's
illuminating Mark, and the two together a really simple but effective result. So
this time we're going to do the same travel across the back of Mark, but
rather than holding this straight, I'm going to give it a little bit of a bounce
up and down. Ok, self timer is going, last couple seconds, flash goes. I'm going to wave this up and
down as I go, and at the end of the exposure those lights now take on that
fantastic waveform. Now the waveform is created by me, just moving the lights up and
down, nothing more technical than that. This is low-tech but
amazingly great fun, and fantastic results. For the next little run through.
I change the lights, now they are constantly changing color. It's just one of
the features of this set, though as I walk across Mark we should have not one color,
but a mixture of colors.
And I'm going to give this a little twist as I go, so not only do we get a little
rainbow effect, but we also get a bit of a wobble going on there as well, and that just again
creates yet another look using exactly the same set of LED lights. So that's the
basic theory. How's that for you Mark? Pretty good. I was sort of still but think we can get there.
Yea, that'll be right! I think what we need to do now is sort of experiment with this. Try a few
different looks.
Lets just have some fub. Be more animated.. Just DO it!
Here we go.
Well there you go. That I think was a spectacular result. It was awesome, it really was.
I had a jolly good time, if I say so myself. It was actually I really enjoyed that.
Obviously you have to get a great model if you can't. you'll just have to do your
best. If you want to see more videos from myself and obviously the amazing Mark Wallace.
You know you got to do, you got to click on the subscribe button. I'm Gavin Hoey, I'm Mark Wallace,
thanks for watching.
Do you want great looking prints at low cost. Be sure to visit our easy to use online printing service. AdoramaPix has
professionals who treat your images with the utmost care that you can count on.
For quick turnaround on photos cards or albums use AdoramaPix.com