Hey this is Daniel Norton, I'm here in my
studio in New York City with Mackenzie,
and we're gonna make some kind of fun
portraits. Now you guys have seen me use
cookies before, I like cookies.
We all like cookies you know. So in this
case though I'm gonna kind of use
that sort of pattern on her. I want to
mess around a little bit. I was actually
throwing it on the wall, and I thought it was
kind of interesting we can try that too,
but I thought this would be really cool
to kind of put the light on... so we're
gonna have this here. Right, basically
this is the Chimera frame, it's a 4-foot
frame and they have kind of these
removable cookies. They're plastic
essentially and you can get all different
ones. This is kind of the classic cutout...
they also make a clear one which I'm
gonna mess with later... you can draw our
own pictures on it. Not in this video,
we'll mess around a bit. I got the clear
one cuz like why wouldn't you do that. So
I had that here, and I'm just gonna use
my Profoto A1 flash right here, up
on a stand to project through it. I'm
using this flash because it's got that
Formell lens so it's gonna be kind of
like a punchy light, like a nice and
crisp so I want that right, versus using
a regular head that might spread the
light too much, I have this focused in a
bit. So what's happening is I'm just
going to use... Oh, I have another flash on
top of my camera, I guess I should point that
out, but I'm only using it as a
transmitter. So I'm just gonna frame it
up and the tricky part with flash here
is just gonna be to get her in a
position where we like it, so what the
best way to do is just take a shot... and
take a peek at it.
Oh well that's pretty good right off the bat.
Alright so, so you just have to have
Mackenzie, actually that's really good,
just kind of lean slightly on your right
foot... I want to get a little more with your
right eye. Alright and what we're gonna
do is; we're gonna move her
around inside the light right?
To kind of create, yeah so we can reveal
that irl. So let's try the other way see if
we like that. I'm in TTL guys I'm
actually gonna get myself a tiny bit
more exposure. So this is just you know
a matter of working our positions and
depending on where we want the light
to fall. So here we have more like just
the eyes showing through, which is kind of cool.
Here we've got you know... more of the face
with the lip. So I guess I like that better.
A lot more of your face. More face!
Yeah so, so then once we have that, we can
kind of just work it you know. We can
kind of figure it out. Just keep you know
watch as you're going... that we're getting
stuff that we like. You just check it
periodically. I'm tethered in the capture
one, so I got to keep looking over my
shoulder, but if you're you know using...
if you're just looking on the back of the
camera... you can just have it pop up after
you take each shot, just to make sure
that everything's good. I mean I'm also
just kind of using the screen on the
back here... because I'm kind of blocked in.
That's why if you're wondering why I'm
shooting it like this. I don't really have a
lot of space, I mean I guess I could do that.
It's a little weird for me but I don't know,
it's fun right... people do it. Yeah I can do
anything. I feel
more professional. Keep double tapping.
Good. Look... it's it's recycling really quick...
like so its working. Okay good,
that's nice, nice and simple, good. A
couple more. Do you like really strong
and very just excessive.
I like, I like a strong projection
shooting towards me a bit, here we go.
Love that... love it... and again because I
wanted that contrast I boosted this up.
So I'm in TTL guys but I gave it an
extra two-tenths of a stop, so it's a
little bit on the bright side, which is
the way I like it. You can adjust your
exposure as needed. Let's just just for
the heck of it, let's have you go all the
ways back to the wall now. I want to send
her back to the wall, so we
can see what that would look like if we
put her out there. Let me get a little
more about in the shot too. Whenever
you ever set up like this... like you're
only here, you know doing this now, you
might as well try different things, even
if you feel like you've got the shot. Oh
this is interesting.
So again we've got like part of a face
lit up... but what's happening is the whole
thing is a little bit flat, because of
the you know... the lights for the back and the
fall-off. So I'm actually just gonna
crank it a bit. I was at 2/10ths more I'm
gonna go to 7/10ths more, so another
half a stop. Let's see what that looks like.
Okay that's interesting too. It's nice,
but what's happening is, it's still just
a bit like everything's just kind of the
same tone. You don't have that really
harsh like hard shadow, which I thought
really worked nicely in the other shots.
So what we're gonna do here is we're
gonna go a little bit brighter, just another
half a stop just to see if I like that.
You know it's bringing everything up.
Yeah it's.. it's not... it doesn't change it
that much, because the nature of the way
the lights bouncing around. So I think I
liked her up close better, so let's bring
you back. Going to back down to
2/10ths over... because it's what I liked.
Let's close like that... well I lowered the
camera... so raised it again, well that's
cool yeah, I like the little profile thing...
Right there's good, hold nice, nice, nice.
Now again you need to be aware when
you're doing this... that there's a cookie,
so we have to so, we're gonna take the
shot, and she's gonna stay there... we're
going to look. Okay so... it's right over your
eye. So just lean back slightly so you
come. There we go. Yeah yeah a little
more, good.
Focusing.
That's cool let me just re-adjust my
camera. Something like that's good,
beautiful, kind of fun. I like it. I like
that it creates kind of like a cool look
on your face. Oops there we go good.
I really like that.
Good, nice, nice and simple. Yeah I love it.
Yeah it's so interesting right... and that
hard light really works. I mean obviously
if you're gonna do exactly this... you need
to think about the outfit and the model and
they need to work well with hard light,
because hard light doesn't work for
everybody, and if you were to put - you
know... a diffuser or something on this, you
wouldn't get the hard shape. I mean you
need hard light to use a cookie, so
that's kind of, you know part of it. So
this isn't for everybody, but it can be a
really cool look if you want to use it,
and again this is the Chimera fram.. it is
like a prepackaged thing. So you can
actually just buy also from Matthews you
can buy cookies. If you don't have that
and you just want to try this out you
can certainly cut your own... out of
cardboard... we've done that before, you
can. There's a lot of ways to make them but if
you're going to use this kind of stuff a
lot... and sometimes having the actual tool
is very beneficial to you and again you,
could use a hot light here. You could use
a regular flash, but if you do, if it
doesn't focus you're probably not going
to get as crispy of lines, but you know
still play with it, see what you get.
You're going to want to control the
distance of the model to the cookie. As
you can see her further away made it a
little bit more diffused... and also the
distance of the cookie to the light will
make a big difference. So play around
with that. Let me know how you guys to do
with that.
See if you could make some cool shots.
Now I will put Mackenzie's information in the
description... so you guys can follow her.
Be sure to follow me Daniel Norton
Photographer and I'll see you
next time OnSet.