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Creative White Balance

Lesson 23 from: Lighting 101

SLR Lounge, Pye Jirsa

Creative White Balance

Lesson 23 from: Lighting 101

SLR Lounge, Pye Jirsa

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Lesson Info

23. Creative White Balance

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Chapter 1 Introduction

01:26
2

Why Just One On-Camera Flash

04:22
3

5 Reasons to Use Flash

10:37
4

Common Flash Myths

06:51
5

What Makes Flash Challenging?

04:56
6

Chapter 2 Introduction

01:36
7

Flash-Strobe vs. Ambient-Constant Light

08:19
8

Flash vs. Ambient Light Exposure

03:07
9

Flash vs. Ambient Demo

06:42
10

Flash and Ambient Balancing for Natural Effect

07:11
11

Flash and Ambient Balancing for Dramatic Effect

04:19
12

Flash and Ambient Balancing for Creative Effect

07:10
13

Understanding Flash Duration

08:37
14

Chapter 3 Introduction

01:34
15

5 Common Key Light Patterns

08:38
16

5 Common Key Light Patterns w/ Diffusion & Fill

07:42
17

5 Common Secondary Light Patterns

08:28
18

3 Primary Subject Patterns

05:27
19

Light Qualities

09:56
20

The Inverse Square Law

07:50
21

Inverse Square Law in Practice

08:21
22

Corrective White Balance

10:02
23

Creative White Balance

05:47
24

Chapter 4 Introduction

01:58
25

On Board vs. Hot Shoe Flash

05:57
26

Full Feature vs. Manual Flashes

08:59
27

TTL vs. Manual Control

08:12
28

TTL vs. Manual Recycle Times

04:43
29

Flash Power & Zoom

09:18
30

HHS vs. ND Filters

12:29
31

FCS vs. RCS

07:11
32

Chapter 5 Introduction

01:38
33

4 Tips When You Must Use Direct Flash

06:00
34

Bare Bulbing Done Right

11:42
35

Grid Snoot + Direct Flash

06:43
36

Mini Beauty + Direct Flash

06:08
37

Ring + Direct Flash

07:52
38

Understanding Modifiers

09:24
39

Direct Flash + Shutter Flash

09:07
40

Chapter 6 Introduction

01:55
41

Ambient vs. Direct Flash vs. Bounce Flash

14:27
42

Silver Bounce

14:27
43

More Light Silver

11:02
44

Soft White Bounce

15:41
45

Overhead Bounce

11:39
46

Overhead Bounce + Fill

09:42
47

Event Bounce

12:42
48

Chapter 7 Introduction

01:38
49

Natural vs. Dramatic Light

17:43
50

Filling and Refining Existing Light

08:44
51

Coloring Light for Corrective Effect

13:33
52

Coloring Light for Creative Effect

10:27
53

Chapter 8 Introduction

00:43
54

Case Study 1 - Dramatic Sunset

09:45
55

Case Study 2 - Desert Sunset

10:04
56

Case Study 3 - Sinister Headshot

09:40
57

Case Study 4 - Family Portrait

08:21
58

Case Study 5 - Athlete Portraits

11:19
59

Case Study 6 - Working Angles

07:22
60

Case Study 7 - Drag + Composite

08:09
61

Case Study 8 - Less is More

07:16
62

The Good Karma Jar

01:41
63

Favorite Feature Flashes

05:52
64

Favorite Manual Flashes

21:35
65

Favorite On Camera Flash Modifiers

21:21

Lesson Info

Creative White Balance

Now our final video in this chapter is all about creative wipeout, which is totally my favorite use for white balance and jails and so forth because this is how you create the holy crap. How did you do that kind of emotion in your client's? I hope I didn't freak you all out right now, but this is basically where we will intentionally modify the color of our flash for creative purposes I'm gonna have the perfect illustration is featuring again jill who is in our lovely or in her lovely swimsuit not our subsidies I'm borrowing ourselves would that be weird she's in herself suit now we're shooting this shot the son is you can see just behind her head right here and it's setting and this is writer on forty five hundred grease kelvin we can see that we get this nice what kind of orange look in the background which looks nice and everything. I added a jelled flash I had in it kind of an inkling that I did want to gel the flash basically. But I wanted to see what the background look like whil...

e she was lit up and as soon as I took the shot I'm like yeah, you know, she's got this blue bikini on and if I really made the background pop it was blue as well it would work so well with that bikini also I wanted to look dramatic, I want the water to look crazy blue, I want everything to look just amazing, and right here it looks cool and everything, but it has just a little bit of something missing. So with a gentle my flash, I have my assistant hold a silver reflector. We're going to talk about this more in a specific case study on how we approach the scene, but here are the basics have my flash jail. I'm at thirty five fifty kelvin in camera, okay? And all I'm doing is bouncing off this reflector that's to the left of me as we shoot her and we place her right basically in front of the sunset, and we simply take a few shots as the water is rolling in now, because my flash is my dominant light and because it's been jelled toe orange when I balance so that this light is slightly neutral, slightly warm, then it sends the background into a deep, deep blue, and this is one of my favorite use of this is this kind of almost became known as the sports illustrated effect because sports illustrated used to use this effect so much in all their photos, they would always do this, they would get these super blue backgrounds and all just cause they gel there, flash and so forth. But it's an ashley fantastic look, whether you're doing couple session, whether you're doing something like this it's, a great look and it's going to make it climbs go holy cow! That doesn't look anything like it does here in real life. Now, here the primary tips for this kind of creative white balance techniques just the same as corrective white balancing. We don't wantto basically mix multiple colors of light across someone's face, okay, meaning, and this is going to play mohr into when we, when we talk about using off camera lights and then jelling off camera lights two different colors when we want to do is make sure that each of those lights isn't overlapping with each other. If I use a yellow light behind the body and a blue light in front of body, I want to make sure that those lights don't cross over the face. If you get mixed light over a face, it generally is not gonna look good because you'll have this transition from yellow to blue and it's not gonna look natural, so we try and separate that. Even when you're trying to create like a kicker on the side of the face, you want to make sure that the kicker, if it's blue it stops here and in your other color here, doesn't kind of transition into it looks messy. If you get light bleeding into each other, so we want to make sure is that we're not lighting our subject with multiple colors of light, so if you'll notice in this shot, the exposure on her is she's almost pitch black. Okay, so the light that I'm adding is primarily it's almost one hundred percent flash I'm cutting out all of the ambient light so that this is the dominant light over the front of her body, and so that way we don't have any mixed lighting over skin. Okay, so that's basically what we're doing here so don't like the same subject with light sources of different colors create a clear separation between light colors and don't allow different colors to bleed one over one another that's the same thing we're talking about, like kind of lighting from behind lighting from the front two different colors light we don't want them to bleed over one another same things before remember that jelling does reduce power for this shot were bouncing off of a silver reflector and I'm flashing probably around I think this was around one quarter power one quarter toe one eighth power off that reflector again, it's all about distance I generally don't like to use tl and we'll talk about that later on just because I like to have control over that power and have very specific and precise control again, we're covering the entire flash and with a gel the most commonly use gel again for both creative and corrected purposes is this cto we're using the same exact cto and if you want to get the background even more crazy blue, I don't know, I really wouldn't want to for this particular shot because this looks enough crazy blue for me. But you could stack another gel and stacking on the job will pull this light even more orange you khun balance down to say, twenty, six hundred degrees kelvin and in the background becomes even more blue. So remember that you can get kind of take it as far as you want for the pretty good style and the look that you want your images but this is one of my favorite uses for gels is for that creative effect in your images. All right, so this is jelling for creative effect, and we will cover it more as we go through the workshop will get into additional details and additional examples, but this is one my favorite uses for flashes to gel and create these creative effects because it makes for images that makes your clients just drop their job, they just go, what the heck, how did you do that? This looks nothing like that.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Lighting 101 Slides

Ratings and Reviews

Sid
 

The best class for understanding light and lighting there is bar none. Pye is an excellent teacher and the quality of the material provides for a rich and very informative experience. Pye breaks down the fundamentals in easy to digest packets and then elaborates as needed. If there is one class that you watch this is it! Worth purchasing and saving for future use. I would also HIGHLY recommend downloading the saving the PDF of slides that accompany the videos. Again, and can't say it enough, this is THE BEST video to lighting on Creative Live. A must watch for the novice and the expert.

Petra
 

Great course, I highly recommend it if you want to become a more confident flash user. Pye is a wonderful instructor and just such a nice guy, it's a pleasure to listen to him

Simon Metselaar
 

This is the best thing that happened to me since I've been into photography. What a lifesaver. Unfortunately I already payed for some courses that are not Pye, but Pye just nails it. Amazing, and kind of a life hack. Thanks again :)

Student Work

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