In this video I get creative with lens
flare in my small home studio.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey and you're watching
AdoramaTV, brought to you by Adorama the
camera store that's got everything for
us photographers. Now, one of the very
first roles I learned inside of a studio
was never to point your lights back at the
camera and it's generally a really good
bit of advice, because if you do you're
likely to get some reduced contrast and
lens flare amongst other problems.
However the thing about rules, once
you've learnt a rule, you can break
that rule and that's what I'm going to
do in this video by deliberately
pointing lights at the camera to get
some creative effects. So let's clear
this down, get a model in, and get
shooting. Today I've been joined in the
studio by Beth who's gonna be the model
for the shoot.
Now before we get to the lens flare part
of things let's start with the basic
lighting. I'm going to use a modification
of the classic beauty lighting. That
means I've got a single light flying
high over Beth here. This is the Adorama
Explore 600, and it's on a remote head
with a small Glow soft box. Now this is
meted for f/8 and I take a picture like
this, well it's going to give us some
interesting lighting, let's, let's have a
look.
As you can see that looks quite
contrasty. Now normally for beauty
lighting we would add a reflector below but
bearing in mind we're gonna add some
lens flare that's really going to reduce
the contrast of this shot that's
absolutely fine.
So for the background I'm going to put a
second light in right behind Beth and
it is gonna go right in as close as I can
tuck it in behind her and that's gonna
point at the background and light this
gray. Let's have a look.
That gives the background
a lovely natural vignetted look. So
Whilst that gray is really nice we can
actually put a color gel on that
background light and create a whole new
color that matches Beth’s dress. So I've
got sort of blue and red here. I think
red is going to be the color to go for.
So let’s go with red. We'll just pop that on the background
like that, and let's take the same shot
but with a red gel on that background
light.
As you can see the pinky red
color really goes well gives a very
colorful shot i really like that that's
great.
So for the flare I'm going to use some
light, some speedlite's and I'm actually
gonna get these to fire back at the
camera, so I'm gonna angle these down. Now
I've got these on little boom arms. You don't
have to use boom arm but when it comes to
the photoshop bit we'll get to later on
having boom arms is just a little bit
easier to remove than a whole light
stand. So I'm gonna fire these back. Now
before I do the position of these lights
is going to make a big difference. At the
moment they're quite a way back behind
the light that is lighting our background and
although that might work fine there is a
potential problem with that.
Let's have a look. Here we go Beth, there,
and sure enough you can see that those
background lights are casting a shadow
on the background itself, and rather
ruining it making the photoshop bit
extra hard. So the solution is to bring
the lights forward so they're not going
to be hitting the background light not
gonna be casting a shadow onto my
background and that actually works
really well I actually quite like the
lights fairly close to the model bearing
in mind we're working in a small studio
environment these are the sorts of
things you have to make compromises on
but I think this is a compromise
I'm ok with. Let's just take a shot like
that, see how that looks make sure
they're out the way, and as you can see
although the lights aren't turned on, they
are still within the area of my shot and
that's exactly what we're looking for.
So I've switched the lights on, they are on
their wide zoom, 24 millimetre zoom, and
they're on their lowest power. Now let's
take a shot like that, and see how it
looks because although we could meet at
the key light we can't really meet these
background lights are pointing straight
at the camera it's just two random.
It's better to do it by trial and error, so
lowest possible power, and the lights
fired but it's not particularly bright
I mean, it's ok, but we can do better than that.
What I'm going to do, is I'm going to
increase the power of the lights by a
stop, and then test it, and a stop, and
test it, and when you reach that point
you start to get lots of lens flare, but
there's still detail in best we can see
that the shadows are there, but they're
very much more washed out.
That's the sort of look you're going for,
you can take it further, or you can pull
it back, that's one of the great things about
this technique. So everything's set up, what
we need to do now is take some pictures.
So Beth are you ready? Lets take some shots.
What if you don't have a gray
background, and some colored gels how can
you make this effect work for you well
if you still want the the lights you
could use one, you don't have to use two
of course. You can get rid of the
background light, don't need that.
Lets bring Beth back in again, switch the background
light off so it doesn't fire at the
camera, and I've changed to just a black
pop-up backgrounds, and these
black-and-white reversible pop-up
backgrounds are extremely versatile, it's
well worth getting one for any small
home studio. Now in theory this should be
basically the same, the key light is the
same, the background flare light's are the
same. So let's take a shot see how it looks,
and it looks basically the same, you get
that nice kind of flare going on there,
the white light is fine, nothing wrong
with that at all, but if you have access
to little gels, and these are just little
Rosco gels for speed lights, these are
great because you can pop that on your
speed light and you can change the color
of the light I'm just using a bit of
blue tack to attach those on, let's just
take a shot like that see how they look.
Again and it looks really good, got some
lovely bright lights there but there's
one more thing we can add into this to
make it more exciting and that's a puff
of smoke.
So I've got my smoke machine or setup
here warmed up ready to go we don't
really need much smoke for a small
studio so I'm just gonna give this a
very small puff of smoke, and then we're
gonna take some pictures so there, are
you ready?
Ok let's give this a blast of smoke here
we go
need to give that just a moment, for that
to circulate, and what that's going to do
is as the flash fires, and it fires through
the smoke, those lights going to become
much bigger. That's the theory.
Let's take some pictures..
The combination of good light and great
makeup, often means that you don't have
to do too much work in post-processing
and that's certainly the case with the
black background, and the smoky
background shots, but with the light
background there was a bit more work to
do because well I could see the light
stands coming in at the edges, now that
means I'm gonna need to do some cloning
or healing and as always in Photoshop
there's so many ways you can do the same
thing, but some will work better than others.
Let's have a look. So this is the shot I
want to work on, and if I just sort of
zoom in a little bit over the bit that's
troubling me. It's kind of this thing
right here and you can see why it's,
well it's part of my lighting setup, now
fortunately using boom arms to the side
means it's actually relatively small in
size. If I was using a light stand it would
be much larger and a little bit more
work. Now to remove it, I'll try first
of all the good old clone stamp tool, now
this is a a great tool. All you need to
do is just a sample from somewhere, up
here for example, and just sort of paint
and hope that it kind of matches but
it's actually quite difficult tool to match
when there's a gradient going on, and we
have a gradient from lighter to darker,
it tends not to work so well so in this
case that's not going to be the tool I'm
going to use. I'm going to jump over and
try my favourite, the Spot Healing tool
Ok, so let's come in here and do a little
bit of Spot Healing. Now this is a great
tool, there is no need to sample you just paint
and cross your fingers and hope that it
works. In this case it actually works quite
well, but sometimes it can be better than
others, so there's one other way to try
this tool and that's on proximity match.
Proximity match is a different sort of
mathematics if you like, and when you use
it, often the first time nothing happens.
Don't worry go over a second time and
that's when the magic actually happens,
and the actually gives in this case a cleaner
fill. I think. So that's what I'm going to
use. Ok, so it should work first time from
now on. Yes it does, there we go.
And i think is one more little bit I
want to do and that's just this bit here
I've got some flairs, I got these little
flares here, that on her shoulders, but
that was part of the technique I want to
keep them in the shot, but this bit not
so sure about that, that was a bit of flair on
the edge that really wasn't adding to
my image and they we are. In just a few
moments I've cleaned up all the unwanted
parts to give me a lovely final photo.
It''s so often the case that breaking the
rules of photography would increase your
creativity and this is one of those
really simple techniques that works wonders
even in a small home studio like mine. So
if you wanna see more creative effects
for myself and the other amazing
presenters right here on AdoramaTV you know
what you've got to do you going to click
on that subscribe button.
I'm Gavin Hoey thanks for watching.