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Exploring Location and Available Light

Lesson 5 from: FAST CLASS: Lighting, Logistics, and Strategies for a Life in Photography

Joe McNally

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Lesson Info

5. Exploring Location and Available Light

Lesson Info

Exploring Location and Available Light

onto location, right? What are we going to do here? All right, So the first portrait we're gonna try to do is Ryan in the environment of the bar. And as I said earlier, I'm probably not going to drop the bar out. The bar is a player in this regard, so we want that to be included. So quick. Question what? I look at this bar and yeah, you've got all sorts of stuff and character and all that. Sort of what's lighting wise. I've got, like, three tons of lighting over there, but what's my most important light in this room? The natural light, right. The natural light. That's it. Um, the natural light, whether it exists or not, drives your solutions If you're in a coal mine and there's no light that drives your solution, the lack of ambient light. So right now, this is my shepherd here. It's gonna push me and pull me in directions that I may or may not want to go right now. Go figure it's Seattle and it's raining. So it's just kind of there. It's not gonna, like, necessarily push me off a clif...

f. It's also not going to be particularly inspirational. It's just there. So I'm gonna have to shape it or use it as best as I can see fit. But all my solutions will be designed around. How does that natural light embrace this bar? Cool. All right, So, um, now, I did a little pre scouting. And here's the thing that that you go through in terms of location assessment. Um, you'll wander around, right? You look at this. How? How much trouble? In my end, What's the weather report for the day here? How bad is this gonna be? Sorry to be kind of, you know, on the down side of things. But I've been a photographer a long time, and I'm always looking for the fatal flaw, that tragic happenstance that will send my soaring visual ambition down the tubes on any given day and how painful it's gonna be. The creativelive. Brings me in here is an inspirational speaker. You know, they just lift, lift the spirits of the room, you know, just like this is agony. You guys love this. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, but doing this is agony. Sometimes, but you're always making compromises, right? Photography is one big set of compromises. I like these windows. All right, so if I include the windows, I can't get the bar unless I go super wide, and then everything is distorted. Um, all right, so, uh, I lose one of the significant architectural features of the bar by including the actual bar, but I kind of have to include the bar because that could be a church. Maybe, you know, and have on guard church. I don't know. You know, um, but I have to think about the editorial mission of the photograph. You want to know where you are? You want to know the relationship Ryan has to this place. So the information I have to include is some measure indication of that bar, so that automatically dictates to me what I can and cannot put in the photograph, at least in one frame. So I'm going to include the bar. This is a bit of an issue right now. I could skirt it. I could go off off to the side, eliminated altogether. But I actually sort of think it's kind of not a bad thing to have in the photograph. It's an anchor, you know, And it can be depending on your sense of composition. Uh, could be something that could be kind of fun to play with. It's a little bit formidable. Also, there's no light on this. So it could become Instead of having the lights back there in the chandelier, it could become a little bit of simple negative space. Put Ryan in front of. So I know at that point there's really nothing totally distracting coming out of his head is just kind of this piece of wood, which is contiguous with the rest of the bar environment. So and then, using rule of thirds, I can place him here, include a bit of the bar and then sweep this way to keep up, um, and include a couple of the windows back there. The windows will provide me with natural backlight. Makes sense. All right. Makes sense. Yeah, Joe. Yeah. Makes perfect sense, man. All right, All right. Here we go.

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Oh. Wow. This is a must-see class for everyone who is passionate about photography.

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