Lessons

Lesson Info

Flashlight Lighting

Those of you like play with flashlights mean forcing the the ice light from what westcott that's kind of most popular one as far as people know that from jerry and that's awesome and I've got those and I love him and I use them in the great and but sometimes this is that this is a just a very simple um every a flashlight and but I just I found this online a while ago and that the kind of cool thing about these in particular is the three different levels and the look at the bean powder has a nice, even smooth being pattern don't know if we're gonna need to turn the house lights down a little bit here but he's one of those and it's also zoo mobile so that I can go from a very tight I mean for a very, very dramatic spot and just pull the head back and zoom in anywhere in between okay? So I wanted just like, illuminate that whole area or come out from something tight and stream it down across which you might play with that may well put her against the wall here and stream that across her s...

o these lights are great, it costs about twelve dollars, which is hey that's in my book that's good stuff there are three different levels so you can change between a low, medium and high or stroke optics coptic dance mode if you want to get the party going so there's high, medium and low which we have the lights down that's actually usable on the low city as well so I have a bunch of these I brought three of them here that we can kind of play within combined combination and it's down again yes, let me may show one more thing and we can bring the lights down so hold on one sec great! They grab their device so there's different ways you can mount now one thing we can also do which will play with as you can use a flashlight and when your modifiers in your light box if you take your flash out your speed light out you could actually put a flashlight in here or two probably too. You would need to there's a full put on the white house setting here on its how much of a culmination do we get here? You get a spot about that big, which is pretty nice that's about beauty this size and it's still diffused. So you need to do is to duct tape that flash or wired up so that's right hanging right there in the middle and use this is a constant light source if he for these constant rather than speed lights so this is like the super budget vernon if you can't even afford speed lights and all you can afford it a couple of twelve dollars flashlights these air bright enough and if you put two women here it's going to play bright and you've got your diffusion you can actually make a the soft box type delio from it. So how do we do that? Well, you could duct tape him or some of these will do dads that I showed you earlier these are these are the wire bendy things and these are pretty pretty handy because you can actually wrap them around stuff like that toe hold something for you getting into here it's been hit into the ring itself because these air so bendy that they actually could be positioned wherever you want you don't get stuck so there's one one light holder on high tide beans way want a duct tape it or strap it on a little tighter okay duct tape the whole thing way could zip tie it is a little permanent more attachment with zip ties finally did touch that that way um or clamp it but usually these been these work pretty well. The other thing I'll attach this to instead of a soft box would be something like this toe hold so you want to hold it up and create a beam coming from above? This is my extension model pod I think I talked about this in the beginning of the show put a speed light on it can hold things up wherever you want to take that attach this there is well and grapple that around a speed light it's little of strap is actually a good idea to put this on as a safety thing because a lot of time when you die why things fail and we'll just fall on your usually your subject's head so it's a good idea to safety it up somehow wrap that room there down there security okay, so there's air are secure for a beam of light they can now be positioned so that it comes down and across and we can imagine maybe ever our model standing in that position there we could resume the head a little tighter being pattern work that they're all right so let's play that we bring that the house lights down a little bit and then I need somebody who wants to volunteer to hold this for me don't everybody stand up in once come on should be long enough because it is there so we're going to kind of do like this danielle you can come on over here and kick it up against the wall maybe play with that way kick a foot uh let's try the other foot good okay, so nice thing about existing life is that you see exactly what you're going to get right so we know what it's going to look like the place took you hell it's good you're going away so we have harsh light we want to kind of keep her looking towards the light from the part you keep your eyes closed we're ready to go on and then let's go over here more so we're we're trying to get a little bit of a feather so it feathers off a little bit from her hips um and then we're gonna bring your face come when we get ready to shoot yeah we'll be right there way get a different lens on oh, come on it's not that heavy it's a little flashlight hello? All right so now way don't have any flash on here hopefully let's see what we're going to get? I'm gonna just go manually want to keep most of the dark ok daniel was slow shutter open my eye so a little bit cool groovy let's work on that limb or so kind of play with that light and you my assistant lovely light holder you're creating the light right now so much of this is you not so much me but you that's nice tan attention towards me slightly daniel right there beautiful looks didn't change my shutter speed I did change my eyes so that's going to change now the school more time changed my shutter speed bag let's bring it back down again so it's more I mean, they like beam down down here we go across good then you like your hand up against the wall kind of flat like that there chin up just a little and towards me just a little should get a little darker now back to where we were before. Very cool. We'll have a nice drama so let's play with that being a little more let's see if we did a tighter being what would happen if someone bring this down here zoom in just a little bit can't make a little tiger beam skimming across the summer I want to make sure he skimming across that we have the shadow of her hair and her body over there in the wall keep it right about like that. Okay, all right, then I need one more lighting. One more light person. We're gonna add a little bit of edge light to her on this side. Okay, so this time we're really tightening up this being and we're gonna kind of I'll tell you where it's going to go there kind of on her hip there and you know this do this it's just that it's a little bit amused by sticky phil do this time on the flashlight just a little hint of bite now we're gonna get a power level two oh, so close I was gonna bang a nice hold on right there her win her hair is blowing in the wind and the show was like wound okay so just playing with the lights what's kind of funnel of flashlights as you just continue to play so we brought a little bit of an opening to that shadow right here and their hair blowing in the shadow right there again the main thing with your harsh light like this on the faces that it should always be following her nose to keep this light in her eyes in the jaw line that she can look the other way and it can be harsh but it could be interesting safe she's looking down in the other direction they just try let's go that way yeah, her faces turn your face towards me just slightly and then but then this way okay not quite. Go back a little bit. Okay, there's we're sort of split lighting her now actually be open your eyes and look like that so maybe this is this other hand might have to stick out against you also put your your body back against the wall rotate your shoulders that way just a little bit. Okay good and then put that arm just down a little bit okay, right about there to kind of break that up let's see what if we put this hand up and wonder what we look like I just like looking this way better? Yeah I can't even look kind of down and to the side to lean the top your head back into the wall the way into it escolar you could drop in a little bit on her hair I think that's just groovy so I'm gonna take that filter off it's dropped at two power level marie but high medium low okay, so we're going to bring that one in want you to come into this site is going on under harris lee and looking up that way may one in there yeah let's bring your bigger knee up just for the heck of it and kind of like the way that shadow of you're going that way that's good nicely esseker of their that's cool we get a little bit booming read on her hair that's going cool it was interesting right what's going on here at some separation and from a hair from the wall the north makes see into the shadow now because she added that phil light from the second shadow said adds an interesting little opening to the shadow here right there which also separates her dark hair from the black shadow of the background which before we had just hair big blob of hair but now we've separated that's we can actually see that she has not that much here, but we still have our shadows makes like an interesting actually interesting and I love the line here it gives her along her hip the shadow creates a nice lying very sexy line there and the only thing I want to do I want to do the same thing again but want to bring your chin just ever slightly left and you also that your your nose is not breaking across your face your cheek your cheek yes separation so generally you know general over portraiture if you don't want that nosy there has to be a cross but not right on the cheek line and I didn't look closely enough on that so I'm gonna bring it her face ever so slightly to left so I can see the cheek behind her nose is what I'm looking for okay and then a little more for other side eye but you guys lighting people we did the right thing I like that so let's bring try to get that similar set up you sure got her her hip line so for I feel like make sure that you're aiming this not onto her face and I won't open up her face a bill it's going to be coming there right to here that's a good daniel just ever so slightly chin to the left yeah your face looks great now different angle nice cheekbones separation on your hair we did lose your right hand but I'm not so broken up about that um nice line in there that's the last one with your hand up like we did on the wall, same kind of their faces in a great position there and run that across the body. They're getting to the left just a bit. Little more toe left that's it good. Cool. So I'm gonna pop into hero quick let's. Just take a look at some of that flashlight lighting. So one of the things with flashlights is that you may or may not have the color temperature to be exactly right. This is these air pretty close to daylight and that's something you want experiment with. Some of them were a little blue to pay on the led lights that you're using so it's a little blue, of course. Weaken, weaken white, balance this to be perfect white balance. We're going develop mode and take your white balance tooled and say, for example, the law should be white. You can click on it different parts of the wall, some take my white balance tools. Shortcut is w and just click on this wall in this well is not really white it's kind of a greyish white, but if I click on it there that fairly well gives me a perfect white balance on her face or skin tone looks normal looks natural, that's good, so basically you could do that. A custom white balancing camera when you're shooting flashlights, hold up a great card, take a shot of it to accustom white balance, he has not do that right or do it later long as you have something in there to reference, it wouldn't be using her dress because addresses not white scream the wall is the closest thing we have to white or just put a great card in their boom, take a shot and worry about it later white balance that later on that's great kevin, because actually we had people commenting, asking questions, including a double shooter about the white balancing because you're using things that aren't necessarily already white, balanced in general, mom and the variety of different tones of white s o the question was, how do you deal with white balance, considering the different sources of the translucent and reflective materials? Yeah, and that's, really, if you want perfect white balance, the kind of cool thing is is that you can correct for just about anything is if you have a dirty fabric like my old dirty fabric I've started noticed my portrait, you're getting warmer and warmer over the years. Is because my diffusion was getting dirtier and dirtier as I was shooting it was aging and so you're going to correct for that but it's really easy because once you have everything set up you just put a white car great card in there take a shot and then by bouncing afterwards or to accustom white balance right there and and then it compensates for if your lights are a little blue lights a little warm your effusions warm the lights or blue combines the council each other out maybe but you know you know so we're doing a custom white balance this is a good way to go to again keeping in mind that sometimes a perfect white balance is not perfect you know, some of the effects that I have here are designed to add warmth you know post a reply that one on there it's a very warm preset I may like it like that maybe apply that one and I think which dramatic like the warmth that feels like a hot street light or something beaming down on her maybe that's what I want if if you like it it's okay so don't be obsessed with perfect white balance either you know want make something that gross like skin tones especially if you're doing fashion or catalog work you have to have perfect white balance that's not we're talking about we're talking about just your artistic vision creating portrait's that's whatever you want ok, so a lot of a lot of times I apply effects that aren't perfect white balance so they take a perfectly white balance photo and then they make it not perfectly white balance anymore because I like it like the mood of that evening of warm light versus the straight up perfect white balance light doesn't have nearly the same mood to it, you know from that to that I think I like that better also makes their skin tones with more healthy and glowy and surreal, which I really like I'm actually keep that pre so that's fifty eight vette was one of the presets I'm using here one thing I may do is to just go in and gnash your eyes look pretty good and that's look pretty good and I burn this down just a little bit here we had a little bit of spill from that like, so I'll take my k brush over here on the developed section and I'm gonna create a new adjustment and it's going to be smokeless burn preset I've created basically dropping the exposure down a little bit and when you're painting on one good thing to know about your brush settings on the right you have a density slider which should be all the way up and your flow should be down low we're talking twenty twenty one or so you don't want to go too low just twenty or so okay, now when you have that down low, you can paint in and it will gradually build up the effects I could just dab a little bit they take that hot spot down my tablet, but on the whole wall here kind of even that out a little bit and that was pretty groovy there, all right? Other than that, I really think I don't want it too much to her face looks great that preset softened up and even doubt her skin a little bit and it's it's cool let's see if we make a virtual copy and just try one of these in black and white I just created a virtual copy, which gives me another one to play with, um or reset my settings and let's just play with some black and whites on this one. We're going to do some really fun black and white stuff tomorrow, so we want to play too much of black and white here but give us a chance to play with black and white to see what looks like and then I'm also going to throw in there, let me just do this first under the black and white and do a skin softening kind of glowy to make a little more hollywood so there is one in my other preset pack cold is conserved, then I'll throw black and white on there so the skin soft preset and I'll show you we can do this manually to and then a black and white that's kind of a nice nice way to go to let me show you a formula for making black white were on it I think just be fun and people but here you guys he was like room oh god yes that was enthusiastic I venture to say the most pro or aspiring pros they're using light room for most sort of work you know, most of the time I still need voter shops still use photo shop but light room is bang pretty yeah like room first for sure say eighty percent of my work is done in light room and if I need to heavy retouching or some like that I'll jump into photo shop but like mom works pretty pretty darn great so we have presets um oh black I was just going to make the black and white so I'll give you a little little secret here in my black and white formula for those of you who want to make your own black and whites obviously there's a million ways to do it if you scroll down and look at your black and white mix one of the things that's makes her cool black and white is to pump up the red orange and yellow and that will tend to make skin tones blemishes people have splotchy red skin whatever like that or anything it tends to even that out and kind of bring that make the skin tones a little cream here if you have a dark skinned person that is going to different tones you have to find out which exactly tone that you want to use to adjust but basically playing with atonality to see what it is you want and I'm trying to create crime contrast so if we lighten the skin and contrast for the shadows and then it gives me a punch your kind of an image but maybe not lighting the skin is not what you want then you may have a different effect like if I photographing african american people this preset kind of works but basically creates enough detail there helps on the detail in the face too but have different ones for that set up so I'm gonna just and you know to see on her skin tone here we can change the tone by just dragging these sold lighters here so I'm going for the tones in her face and then I'm also going toe bring up the green and the aqua and that's just on this particular black and white formula and dropped down the blue and that's so that if this was shot outside my sky would get dark mme or like an infrared is not quite infrared but it's a pseudo infrared ok some dropping that down and dropping down my magenta and I mean, my purple content is just slightly above zero, ok? The main thing they want to do, though, is going to be in the split tony, and I'll show you that in a second here, the tone curve, I want to have an s curve and you can use the medium contrast with a strong contrast curve. If you want a real punch in black and white, choose strong contrast where your curve to give you a nice little s here, just choosing strong contrast, and then the split tony's where we want to really put some, but some thought the split toning is kind of like that secret formula that makes the black and white when you print it out really rich and have a little more depth and look more like a selenium tone, if you as you see his darkroom stuff, this is kind of cool. So how you create that as we're looking for a slight warm tone to throw into the shadows of the image, but not so much in the highlights? We don't want to mess with the highlights. We want to just put it into the shadows, so I'm going toe pop up my shadow saturation slider up. A bit so that I can see the color I'm actually working with. And now we can see is it's cranked up here that it's kind of a cpi of brown? And then you can open up the color swatch for the shadows and if you want to just could have dragged this around till you find the brown or the tone that you want. So I'm looking for something kind of chocolatey, kind of like that, right? Then I take my balance slider, which is generally right in the middle here when you start off so that's what it looked like, it looks almost like a sepia, but what few scooch the balance lighter to the right? What happens is it pushes that chocolate into the shadows them or you go to the right, the more it favors the shadows of lessen the highlights and that's. What I'm going for here is not to push it right about eighty ish. Okay, over there. Now that scott nice chocolate in my shadows. But it left the highlight it's pretty clean and natural. And you notice to my highlights on the top here. I don't have anything there's, nothing going on on the highlights I want to keep the highlights clean my shadows, selenium and that's an awesome little formula right there. All right, everything else pretty much the same vignette ing if you want to throw vignette ing into your preset here be the place to do it. We don't need anything getting on this image because we've got natural vignette ng from the flashlight shadow, and then we'll save it and important thing when you're saving your presets if you scroll to the left of the pre set menu is and click on the plus button, save it as my warm and tasty, the w saving into wherever you want, but make sure they're only checking off the settings that affect that that black and white presets so don't just check everything off, but make sure you go through and say, what did I actually change? I didn't change the basic tone now that I did affect the tone curve didn't touch the clarity that created the black and white treatment on the mix in the split toning post crop than getting turned that off for this particular one and the process version you, joan, we want to keep that on, thanks that remembers what version of light room you did this in. It was anything else that I changed to create this preset when you think of anything, no, you can't, because I don't think there is anything else to be changed on that that's basically lies and then we create and it saves it so now you have your own warm and tasty. We can apply to other images as well.