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Drawing Attention via Light Shaping

Lesson 52 from: Lighting 201

SLR Lounge, Pye Jirsa

Drawing Attention via Light Shaping

Lesson 52 from: Lighting 201

SLR Lounge, Pye Jirsa

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Lesson Info

52. Drawing Attention via Light Shaping

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Chapter 1 Introduction

06:59
2

Welcome to Lighting 201!

03:16
3

OCF = Anytime/Anyplace

06:49
4

Chapter 2 Introduction

05:11
5

Wired, Infrared or Radio?

15:03
6

“Pocket, Medium, Full Strobe?”

13:23
7

Our 3 Favorite Flashes “Pocket Strobes”

09:26
8

4 More Flashes “Pocket Strobes” Worth Looking At

14:33
9

Our 2 Favorite Medium Strobes

12:55
10

Understanding Radios Part I: Channels & Groups

11:04
11

Our 2 Favorite Radio Triggers

07:59
12

5 Simple Steps to Trouble Shooting Radios/OCFs

15:10
13

Fantastic ND Filters at Any Price Range

09:03
14

Our Favorite “Sticks”

11:01
15

Our Favorite Ultra-Portable OCF Light Modifiers

19:38
16

12 Mounting and Must-Have Lighting Accessories

12:28
17

Gear Setup - Setting Up a Light Stand or “Stick”

08:14
18

Gear Setup - Setting Up a Monopod Light or “Boom Stick”

09:30
19

Gear Setup - Setting Up a “Medium Boom Stick”

12:15
20

Gear Setup - Setting Up a Manual Flash “Big Boom Stick”

13:30
21

Gear Setup - Setting Up a Full Feature Flash “Big Boom Stick”

09:40
22

Chapter 3 Introduction

04:12
23

8 Steps to Perfecting Each Scene & Image When Using OCF

12:30
24

Over Powering the Sun - Part I

16:42
25

Over Powering the Sun - Part II

12:42
26

Slow Down! Watch the Details

08:32
27

More Power Without The Power

11:03
28

Adding to Existing Light - Part I

10:52
29

Bare Bulbing with Large Groups

14:36
30

Back Lighting to Create Interest

13:33
31

Getting Crazy with the “Whip Pan”

17:27
32

Chapter 4 Introduction

03:44
33

The Flash Modifier You Already Own

12:05
34

The Oh-So Powerful Umbrella

11:13
35

Large Group Shots with an Umbrella

11:21
36

Exposure Balancing via Lightroom

04:20
37

Portable Softboxes - Westcott Apollo

10:22
38

More Light Control, Just Grid It!

12:53
39

Dusk + Modified Pocket Strobes

13:51
40

More Power? Medium Strobes FTW!

12:37
41

Perfect It In-Camera. Then Photoshop

05:23
42

Adding to Existing Light - Part II

12:00
43

Adding or Enhancing Light Direction

11:17
44

Our Ideal Group Lighting Technique

12:58
45

Incorporating Flares with Flash

10:39
46

Cutting Light, Grids and GOBOs

10:29
47

Chapter 5 Introduction

03:34
48

Fog + Flash + Grid = Dramatic Change

08:56
49

BYOL! The 3-Light Setup That Only Requires One Light!

12:07
50

What About the Fill Light?

12:15
51

Backlight + GOBO + Fog = Magic

08:36
52

Drawing Attention via Light Shaping

08:29
53

Visualizing Lights & Color Shifts

09:17
54

Mixing Ambient + Gobo w/ Flash

11:37
55

Better Light Can Change Everything!

09:47
56

Chapter 6 Introduction

01:57
57

Subtle Refinement = Massive Difference

11:31
58

Great Light Changes Everything! Part II

11:50
59

Manually Triggered RCS + Shutter Drag

11:29
60

The Right Power for Each Scene

14:24
61

Dodging and Burning via Light In-Camera

07:23
62

Subtle Light for Natural Portraits

09:14
63

Light Modification & Simple Compositing

10:16
64

Expanding Your Photographic Vision

11:37

Lesson Info

Drawing Attention via Light Shaping

Drawing attention in a scene via light shaping now this technique and we're going to talk about here is very similar I mean basically we're doing the same thing that we were before with adding two existing light right we talked about something similar to this but I want to talk about the process and kind of the steps as to why I made decision toe light this shot this way so let's go ahead and just talk through overall what the heck was I thinking climbing a tree all right so our couple actually had a photo on their mood board that was a top down shot and we saw this little spot where there's the tree and I thought hey it's really cool to get up in this tree and the shoot down you guys like that shot you had on your mood board and kind of get you guys maybe like almost in a position where you're dancing or just hugging in embrace just all about you two but shot from a unique angle so yes I made this precarious climb up this tree once I was up there I had my assistant tossing my camera i...

t was it was very something I probably would not recommend to you but we photographers do these kind of things we pose funny when we're taking photos we have very strange habits of climbing things and that's just photographers in general I'm not going to try and explain it all right, so for composition and attributes well, compositionally wanna shoot top down angle? Uh, actually it's wise, I wanted to shoot this wide open, so I grabbed my thirty five millimeter sigma. This guy, my signal art and I wanted to shoot on this lens particular because it gave me a semi wide kind of look at the scene while I could shoot a f one for get attack. Sharp images have a beautiful looking a photo from it, so I had my signal on there I have my foe ticks odin mounted and I was using odin off camera, but I hadn't decided yet whether I wanted them in the shot. Now the point that I decided was basically when I got up there and I took this first shot, I took it at one one hundredth of a second f one point four, one hundred and again I always like to start warm generally s o I'm about close to seven thousand kelvin in camera this is annual I only their kind of pose so that the amulet is coming directly into them. So we're shooting with the amulet direction as faras the way they're posed already and expose this for skin tones. Now I love natural light I love the way naturally look that's fantastic it's great it's brilliant, but sometimes in a scene like this had the entire background been filled with this grass, you know, and green leaves over here and grass, like all over the background, I would have just left the shop as is, and it would have looked fantastic and impeccable with just natural light, but the background is these rocks and dirt and dead leaves and so forth and there's no way that we're going to clean that up and guess what? Her dress kind of match is that color of the rocks and the dirt and everything like that, so they both end up blending into that a little bit too much. If the background were different, then I might not have chosen to light the image the way I did, but since it was that way, I thought, you know what? We need to give them a little bit of a kick of light just because I wanted to brighten up so that the ground and everything else becomes less of a distraction, you know, if your background and your scene isn't working for you, then it comes down to a light shaping to make it work for you. So what do we do? Well, I know that I'm not going to be okay with sink because I'm already at with this shot, and I saw one hundred I'm at one hundred second and so on. You know, one, two hundred second we end up with one hundred seconds, one, four and fifty, so I know that have two stops of leeway basically between my s o and between my shutter speed and that's most likely enough, I really only need anywhere between one and two stops to get the effect that I'm looking for. I don't want to go any further than that because then it gets too dark and it looks like a halloween shop, which I don't want, okay, so I'm okay on the sink speed now ambien exposure, you know, in the in this kind of busy scene and brighter background, we're basically bringing attention the subject with a to stop reduction to dark and everything down but, you know, one stop production would do similarly as well, and it at least be better than this guy right here. Okay, so this one actually talk about that in just a second, so anywhere between one to two stops is totally up to you, I say beyond that might be a little bit too much for a happy wedding shot and even that two stops it looks a little bit on the dark side, but I'm still cool with that, but that comes back down to that ambient versus light balance and me versus flash balance, right want mohr natural? Look, we kind of bring the flash down, bring the ambient back up want more dramatically bring the annual down the flashback up okay anywhere between there's totally fine I'll let you guys decide on your preference now light direction in quality we have are three flashes we placed three photos metros placed inside of always placed three by the way, just even though I don't need three and a lot of scenes like this I just place them just so I have the power there so I have them on my speed bracket and they're placed inside of a apollo orb and with that orb we basically used our upside we placed inside the paula strip and we're using the diffusion and the grid with that strip um we have ah, you know, usual I'll just defer to the apollo or if I just need a small amount of light and I'm dealing with like a couple of not a large subject that I think will be lighting the light direction the qualities so we already know that the quality is gritted, its diffuse so it's gonna be a nice soft light source and I placed it just out of camera right here why? Because I want to follow the existing light I wanted to just bring them up a little bit from that background so I matched the existing light faras the direction of that existing light and again because we're leaving ambient light phil we're leaving all that stuff in there we're also making sure we're matching the color temperature just by leaving at daylight right? Because our regular color temperature is just daylight over here ok, so we take our test shot this was actually the test shot and on the first headshot I found that I had too much power and there's also light spilling on to the background so you can see like the grass getting lit up over here we had the trees over here was being lit up right there that's the perfect situation for not only number one a lower flash power because I think we're at like what we have I don't think I wrote down the actual flash car there but we can put the grid and the diffuser on there which is going to cut down power and the grid is going to control the light so it doesn't spill on the other areas like the tree and all the you know grass over that you want the light to be on them so it's a fantastic control device to really put the light exactly where we need it. So with that test I got a little bit better of a balance over here we have nice light on them um again, if I had this to do again, I would have taken one shot at one stop under and once shot at two stops under which was this one and they decided in post which one I like better but I still like the shot. I think it could be a little bit brighter and we can always just brighten that in post to the detail is still there it's just been burned down a little bit. All right, so this looks great. We have three foot meet roses with the westcott apollo strip with diffusion plus the grid. We're at around one eighth toe one quarter power with the three of these flashes firing it again. It's gonna depend on how many flashes you're using if you're using just one most likely to get me one quarter power of using three army at one eighth toe one sixteenth and so forth again distance the subject and everything. But if we compare these shots again, you know the whole purpose of this chapter is to visualize what a singh is going to look like when we darkened things down when we add our own light. So when standing up there I know that the shadow areas of the trees are going to become mostly dark, I know that the green is going to become kind of a deeper green and more lush green by pulling it down, I know that the ground is going to become a different color now then her dress, which is what I want, because, that's, the whole purpose of doing this was to make her dress and to make him and her their faces stand out from something that was a little bit distracting overall. So, again, just learned to interpret these kind of things and to visualize what's gonna happen if I do this in camera, if I pull things down, if I add light and if I add lightness, getting in the area that I don't want again, we have our grids. We have our control devices that we can use to control and shape the light into the quality, the direction into the basically size of the subject of the size of that area that we want to fill. All right, so that's it for this tutorial was head on to the next one. Now.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Lighting 201 Slides

Ratings and Reviews

Colin
 

Pye is a god. His teaching style is really engaging, breaking down everything you could want to know about each example in a fun yet detailed manner. The course is absolutely jam-packed full of great information and fantastic inspiration. This course, as well as Lighting 101, give not only a perfect foundation for anybody learning about flash from scratch, but also have more than enough tips and advanced techniques in them to help experienced flash users seriously up their game. Cannot recommend it enough.

Lê Tiến Đạt
 

I'd like to say thank you to SLR Lougne, Creativelive and especially Pye for creating this wonderful Lighting series. Pye has a great sense of humor and he is also a great teacher. He expains everything in tiny details. I love his creativity, all the tips and dedication. Recommended!

Karen Ruet
 

I'm watching this live and am seriously considering buying this course. I really like the examples and all the information. Pye is super generous and easy to listen to. I also appreciate the talk about gear and am happy that Pye is giving us options for different price ranges. Thank you, Creative Live.

Student Work

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