Hey this is Daniel Norton I'm here in my
studio in New York City, and I'm going to
make some kind of fashioney portraits
of Loreena today, but I got a question
from a James Ryder... He had written me
about a video we did a while back
episode 128. We did kind of a beauty shot
and I had thrown some color gels in the
background, just kind of as the
background. I kind of glossed over it
because that wasn't the main point of
the video, but he'd asked to go in more
detail. So James there you go... so this is
essentially the same setup, different
gels though, and what I, what I have is
what's called a cookie, and I made this
one. You can buy them! It's essentially a
piece of foam core board, black foam core...
and it's cut with various oddball shapes.
And what you do with this thing is, you
throw a light through it. It throws
patterns on the background right? So all
I really did was, I just took a series of
gels, and I have a this particular set. I
got from Rosco..
'The photo lighting kit'. Rosco's got lots
of these kits. It's a good way to get
gels if you're just starting and you
don't really know what to get. It doesn't
come with that cool mask though, but you
know anyways you get a bunch of gels
with it. So I put the gels that I like..
obviously you want to think about who
you're shooting what the vibe you want
to be, what you want it to look like. So I chose
these particular colors, and what I did
was I just taped them, and I made sure I
also overlapped you know! I didn't take
the time to cut out each little piece of
gel and put it over the holes. I just
kind of laid it across and I didn't want to
waste my gels. They kind of lay over.
Make sure that your colors blend together. It
looks kind of nice, and if right now
because of static electricity, they're
just kind of staying here with a little
bit of tape, but if they start flopping
on you, you can always tape them. Just
make sure you tape them together in
between the the cookie part so you don't
see the lines from it. You know what this
is going to create is color on the
background, but it's going to be kind of
almost like a stained-glass window! So
it's a cool fun effect, and you can get a
lot of different looks from this, and
depending on how far away, or how close
you put the light to it'll really change
how sharp the lines are too. So play
around with that, pretty easy technique. So
let's make some shots of Larena though.
So Larena.. She's hanging out here so
basically I've got Lorena here. Really
simple, she's got a cool red shirt on. We
decided with the colors that I'm using
of course, the pinks and the blues and
stuff, and I'm just lighting with the
softbox. Now what's important here is
this is the OCF 2ft x 3ft,
with the you know it's got a recessed
front. I'm shooting from the side here because I
want my light from my softbox to hit my
background. If it does it will absorb
some of the color. It'll kill some of the
saturation, and we talked about that a
few videos back, about color saturation
in gels. So if you, if you, you know, if you
can't do this, then make sure you have
enough distance, if you want to put the
light in the middle! Make sure that you
know it's not hitting the background,
that's key, this is just a Profoto B1X.
And over here, I just have another piece
of foam card just bouncing in so we
don't lose her! I've got my Hasselblad
here the the, X1D and I am tethered into
Focus, which is their software, and I'm
going to set it up! So I'm should be good as
far as exposure wise. So let me actually
show you the two different.... first of all..
no flash at all
should look, should give you more or less
a black frame ideally. Right this frame
right here means that none of my lights
affecting the shot. I mean because of the
dynamic range of this camera, you probably
can see a little frame of her but, it's
not so bad. Then over here.. I can go in
and I'll just shoot, let me just do the
background for you guys, or turn off this
light. Okay!
So I'm just going to shoot with the one
light. I could've done that from the
controller too, but I didn't know which
number it was actually that's why. So
this is going to be like a, almost a
silhouette right? Which is also kind of
cool right? She's got this funky
background going on. Silhouette, you have
a nice silhouette. That's a, that's a good
side for you.Yeah, so she's lit up like
that. Softbox now is going to come in. And
essentially we're lighting her from the
front. This is going to showcase her cheekbones
and stuff. Perfect. Here we go.
Good, so I'm shooting again. I'm in focus
here. I'm creating some nice drama here
on her, with the side light here. She's
got nice cheekbones, so it works, and I'm
picking up the detail back here because
I've got the reflective card brought in,
just a really simple, I think I'm just
playing with the colors in the
background. You could also go back in
time to like 1980, and buy this exact
background as fabric! I'm pretty sure
somebody has a high school picture... but
it's kind of fun right? Nice so I'm using
the 90mm lens here. I'm shooting
at f/8 1/250th of a second, and just
creating a variety of poses. Remember
keeping the mind her, her silhouette, and
just the fun light behind her. So really
simple. I think technique right? You can,
you can get all kinds of different looks
this way, and you don't have to put a
million different colors. We could have
just put all blues on the top, and pink's
on the bottom, and you really can play
around with this and get a lot of
different looks from this. So you can
follow Larena on social media, we'll put
the links in the description. Be sure to
follow me on DanielNortonPhotographer
on Facebook and YouTube, be sure
to subscribe to Adorama TV.
And I'll see you next time OnSet.