Hey this is Daniel Norton,
I'm here in my studio in New York City
with Polina and we're gonna shoot kind of
a fun fashion look today... yeah!
Little disco fashion action...
right? but what I really want to talk about while
we're creating this shot is, using kind
of zones in your set to light, so instead
of just throwing a big light up, which is
oftentimes what we do when we're just
starting, especially one big huge source,
it looks good, it lights everything up,
it's really good, we're gonna talk about kind of
separating things, because as you get
into more commercial type work, you're
going to want to be able to control your
set better, you know you may want
exacting light on different parts of
your set, so we're gonna use, I find the
more I shoot the smaller the light
sources are that I use, which might seem
the opposite of what people would think,
but that gives you a lot more control, so
we're gonna talk a little bit about that.
We're gonna light up the set, and we can
create some fun pictures, so I made a
diagram because you know I have a
degree in art, pretty good right, so
basically this is our setup here, this little star
is you, you are a star right,
so we have a little star, that's where
Paulina is, she's essentially on this
runway of grey paper that we set up,
which I'm gonna use for depth.
We'll talk about that as we start
shooting it, and what I'm doing is, I'm
lighting the background actually with a
HMI, I have dedolight HMI, and in
that HMI, it's fitted with a projector,
in that HMI I have a glass gobo,
basically it's gonna, I've used these
before... basically it's gonna throw a
pattern, but it's also gonna be color and
in texture, it's really interesting and
you can put them in another focus, and
play around with them, in this case I
chose this kind of red, yellowy one
because I thought it worked well with
the outfit, with the sparkles...
and that just hit in the background so that's a
constant light source.
So we gonna have
to deal with that in a second,
we'll be here, to, to camera left,
I've got a Profoto B2 pack with two heads and,
I've actually got to strip boxes,
now the reason why I'm using two, 1 by 3
strips is, because generally when you use
a larger strip, you know, you you may want
to control the power up and down.
Like I might want brighter on her face, or
darker on the outfit, as I'm shooting
throughout the day.
Let's see if I'm doing fashion or something
you know she might have a white pants
on, let's say and a dark top or something
like that, so I like to do this,
versus getting one long one.
It just works better for me, it's a good
way to work if you only have one head,
and you want to use one single block you
can certainly do that, although often
times the longer ones, the six-foot ones
are usually two feet wide, which means
that you might put a grid on it for control,
speaking of a grid, to kind of give her
more versatility and ability to move,
I've got a beauty dish up here with a grid
on it, that's just to punch some light on on
the front of her, and to her face, so she
doesn't have to work towards this light
the whole day long.
Right this is to give her a nice
silhouette, this here, right here is to
light her face, so if she works this way
she's fine, but if she turns more
straight she's lit here, and even if she
turns more to the side, she'll be fine.
The other thing I've added for a little
bit of contrast is a black card on this
side, that's there for two reasons, one is
that the Sun keeps coming in and out,
cause I am in a daylight studio, so I want to
make sure we don't have the Sun hit,
which we'll talk about more in a minute.
The other reason for that is, because
when you're wearing something that's
reflective, like it has this has shine in
it, if you put black there it will
reflect the black, and actually add
contrast, so it's kind of a nice way to work.
so I'm gonna set up all these
lights, I'll show you where they all are
and let's go for it.
Right so TTL is wonderful, you see me
use it all the time, but for this kind of
thing I like to use a light meter.
I'm using the sekonic here,
the 858, and I'll do the background last.
So I'll start with her, I know we want to
shoot at f/4 and my the sync speed of my
camera is like one 1/60th of a
second, so I'm gonna set my meter at 100 ISO,
and 1/160th of a second, and what I'm gonna
do is, I'm going to point the light, I'm
just using my other Profoto remote
here, I'm gonna do one at a time, so I
will do the, I'll do the beauty dish
first, I want to put the beauty dish
write it up for to start with anyways, so
I'm gonna meter it essentially
pointing it at the light, okay, we're a
little down, so I'm gonna bring it up a
tiny bit, okay, we're getting 4,
4.1 actually, I'm actually going to go down
one more from that, cuz I probably want
this to be a tiny bit duller, I don't
want to look like she's overly lit,
so that's that one, then I'm gonna come
around to this side.
I'm switch to my seat with my C-group,
which is a, which is this light over here,
now there's a couple of different ways
that you could do this,
some people will turn this one off and
then do this one,
that's important if they're touching
each other, but I'm going to meter
down below,
so I'm not gonna worry about that.
What I'm actually going to do is,
I'm gonna leave all the lights on,
and I'm gonna close... this meter has this
thing where I can close this as part of it.
That will keep that light off of it,
I'm just gonna go like this, in this case,
I have them the same.
Right, I have my, my two heads set the
same in the in the boxes.
So it's easy enough to do, I'm gonna
bring this one up a smidge as well.
That's too much, perfect, f/4.01 again,
so this will be a smidge brighter than that
exposure wise.
Now the final thing I'm
going to do is the background,
what's kind of neat about this meter is it
has a mode that I can go into my, my, my
constant light mode, and I can actually
put in, not just the you know, the, the
shutter speed like you'd normally do in
an old-fashioned meter, I could put it in
the f/stop and the ISO,
when I put this against the background,
I'd make a reading,
it tells me a quarter of a second,
it's telling me a quarter of a second will
give me that exposure,
so we should be good, let's try,
I mean keep in mind that your meter is
giving you what it thinks is the right
exposure to get the saturation, etc, etc,
that you want, we're probably going to go
a little bit darker than that the other thing
we're gonna do to make it a little bit
darker is, I'm going to actually turn off
these overheads now, so I had these on
so you guys can see me whenever you're using
like a constant light source, you want to
try to kill as much light in the space
as possible, so we're gonna just kill
those for now, so here we are,
I'll get my Nikon here, and I'm gonna set
this guy up, good, see where we're at,
so I'm here on a tripod,
and I'm gonna get in a little bit
close, part of the reason for that is, I
want to kind of elongate my space,
remember the further back you are the
more compressed of the space,
so I mean long gating my space by
getting in closer to her,
I'm also slightly tipped down
again, I'm trying to exaggerate the space
slightly for that reason, so I'm gonna
come up on the tripod, it's good, you're
good there, and you get a focus on you.
I am set it at f/4, I am at, we'll start at a
quarter of a second, and we're gonna
adjust our stratosphere as we go.
So I'm gonna start at a quarter, because that's
what the media tells me to do, I'm
tethered in the Capture One,
we'll take a shot, and well I guess,
we should listen to light meters, right,
cuz that's, that's pretty darn good, right?
That's a pretty good exposure, right,
there, she looks well lit, right,
even though I'm in a quarter
of a second, she's nice and sharp,
because none of the ambient light is
really hitting her right?
And we've got kind of
a nice look going on, I like that, if we
want to make the background a little bit
darker, which I kind of thought I was
going to, so I'Il stick to my original plan,
and I'm gonna go up to,
you I'll add one stop, so I'm an 1/8th
of a second, again I'm not doing that
because I'm more worried about her moving,
I'm doing it for contrast in the
background, how bright or dark I want
the background to be, so that's just
adjusting my background, because remember
when you adjust your shutter speed in
this situation, it's only affecting the
constant lights, so good, like that.
Okay we're tremendously low light here,
so I'm kind of shooting slower, and then
try to nail my focus each time with the
Nikon, although these new cameras
have great autofocus.
Okay so come in here, and I'm
focused just on her eyes, I mean I'm at
4, so she's gonna be sharp all over,
but we can see now that she has this
nice kind of glow on the outfit right,
and then on this side she's got a little
bit more darkness, because I had that
black card over there, and her face again
is lit very nicely, she has a, you know
light coming from this side, which gives
her this a nice strip, it kind of just
adds some balance and contrast.
So let's shoot a few more like this,
now that's gonna work for anything,
look you don't you know if you're in let's say a
bar, or you're doing a scene of the bar,
or something, I don't know why I'm in a bar first
thing in the morning, we're in a bar right,
and we want to light, let's say the
background a different way, you certainly
can do that, the idea here is that none
of our lights are touching each other.
None of that light from the flash is
hitting the background, and none of the
light from the constant light, is hitting
her, so basically we've got two different
zones, and we're able to create our
images wherever we want.. you know,
and I left a dead spot in the middle,
I did that on purpose,
obviously you could like that as well,
if you really want to get crazy,
do one more straight on the camera,
powerful, that's it, good,
grab hold, take this in, now I
think one thing I'll do just for
experimentation, even though I think this
is perfect.
It's too bad when you get it
too quickly right, we do it too fast, it's
like a day, I'm gonna actually go to a
much slower shutter, so I'm just curious,
I'm gonna go to 1 second now at one
second, some of this ambient light that
in the room in general, even though
it looks dark in here, is probably gonna
affect her, but let's see in this focus.
If she's gonna focus one second, good,
nice, oh wow, now we have like an electric
color, so remember you know if you want,
you know it's all about exposure.
Well you, okay, you were trying to hold
still which is fine, but do you know
that's it, right, we can control that,
basically with our shutter speed, and you
see that the light on her, really didn't
change much, it changed a little bit, cuz
again some of the ambience bleeding it,
let's try somewhere in the middle,
I'm gonna go back to a 1/4, which is what the
is recommended by the flash meter,
let me do one more like that,
good, one more, whenever a
photographer says one more, it always means
two more, we know that by now, and it's a
nice beautiful shot, balanced out, nice
light on her, nice light on the
background, cool kind of a scene going on.
I'm gonna come in a little closer for a
couple, just come here,
as you can see I am not going to actually
physically move, remember if I move it's
going to change the compression,
I don't want you use the compression,
so I'm just gonna zoom my lens.
One reason why you uses a zoom lens.
Definitely should also mention that, ah, it's
go like that hold, focus, good, that I threw a
couple more V flats in the back for
effect, you know, just to see the light
bounce around, because of how we are angled,
you know what I wouldn't mind doing here
actually, so stay there for a
second, so what I'm doing is, I'm noticing
now that backgrounds getting a little
more out of focus, it's not enough out of
focus cuz I'm at at f/4 right, enough,
you know what's enough right, so I can
actually go to my projector, and I can
actually change the focus.
I'm gonna knock it really out, to get it totally
different look.
You know I don't know, I want to shoot
it at f/4 to get enough
focus on her,
but I want that super blurry background,
look something's gonna come in here,
and bang that out like that,
now we've got, ultra out of focus
background, see if you can work it very
slightly this way.
I'm using white beauty dish, by the way
guys to lower the contrast a little bit.
I know I usually use silver, so I know I'm going to
get that question a lot,
this one is white.
It does have a grid on it, though so it's
lowering the the highlight contrast,
because it's less specular,
but it's been, but because
there's a grid on it, I'm getting more
contrast, yeah, that's okay, that was, I
will do one more, that was pretty, that
took forever to, that's like Daniel
talking about lighting instead of taking a picture.
Okay, so you see it's beautiful,
nice light on her, the background is blurry,
like people like...
Let's do one horizontally, because you
know we love horizontal shots,
they know I saved it horizontal,
Okay, changing my focus point,
here we go, good, check that,
Oh yeah I like horizontal, oh that's
actually really nice, huh, say I do like
horizontals, see what happens all right,
we're doing a horizontal shot right.
We're in it to win it,
that's perfect, I'm gonna pull back a
tiny bit, to get a little more in the
frame I like that.
Here we go focusing again,
just focusing on our eyes, guys,
I'm at, you know, quarter
of a second, at f/4, lots of fours going
on, 4 is the lucky number today,
and hold, good, more beautiful, that was nice.
I'm curious if we bring down that top
light a bit, who's gonna come in and
bring the beauty dish down just a couple
of things, just curious, I think the
exposure looks good, but sometimes it's
good to mess around a bit, let's see,
yeah that's nice, we'll get to know where
your hands are.
Right there's good, good, yeah,
one more that's one, good,
wow that's nice, that's really cool,
and I like how the light,
I actually have a kind of a zoomed
the focused on the background guys,
so you can see that I'm getting kind of
almost like a vignette back there too.
So we're getting all kinds of cool stuff, we
got a blurry background, we got vignette,
we're just like all kinds of fun stuff
today, but that's the thing, because the
background is lit and exposed completely
separately than my foreground light,
I was able to make changes as we went,
and it didn't affect the light on her,
the light on her is gonna be consistent
throughout the entire shoot, which is
what we want, we're making a portrait of
fashion or whatever we're doing, and
that's gonna give us the total control.
Right this is all about control, when
you're lighting you're on projects,
that's what you're doing it for you know.
You know you're lighting it to make it
pretty, yes, but you can find pretty light.
The reason why you're lighting is,
because you want control, and that's what
we're doing here, controlling it in zones.
So I will put following this information in
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her, be sure to follow me @DanielnortonPhotographer
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ring the bell and all that.
I'll see you next time OnSet.