Skip to main content

Great Light Changes Everything! Part II

Lesson 58 from: Lighting 201

SLR Lounge, Pye Jirsa

Great Light Changes Everything! Part II

Lesson 58 from: Lighting 201

SLR Lounge, Pye Jirsa

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2000+ more >

Lesson Info

58. Great Light Changes Everything! Part II

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

Great Light Changes Everything! Part II

Great light changes, everything part are that actually sounded more like a pirate's voice than it did the word too, but it is indeed the word too in chinese are okay part two of great light changes everything. Once again, we have our lovely model. We're shooting in the hotel room, and this is again another example of you know, I saw this carpet and I was like, this would be really cool to demonstrate how great light can make something like crap tastic carpet look good as a background, so I told my model this was right after the mirror shot. I'm like, you know, why don't you lay on the ground right here? And she has complete trust in me she's seen a lot of images from our shoot, she loves them, she thinks I'm amazing and this is when I'll ask, you know, my couple, my models to do things that seem kind of strange, I don't I don't just come out of the gate, you know, I'm not on a couple session, I don't just come out of the game going do this, I'm going to make this crazy image I always k...

ind of warm up into these images where they might be wondering, like, what is he doing right now? Because if I come out of the gate starting with that, then you know, I don't know it's kind of difficult to get them into those poses and get them comfortable getting relax and so forth but by halfway through the shoot when they see me creating amazing images then I can start to ask them to do more difficult things I can start to ask them to do things that they might think are a little bit weird but then they see the results and they look fantastic so they we've built that trust and that's what I'm trying to say so I said do you trust me? She said yes I said lay down on the carpet we're gonna use this carpet is a background she's like okay now once again this comes down to visualizing right go back to that last chapter visualizing what great light is going to do in a scene like this because this is actually what the scene looks like we have eighty five one point two l we have one hundred of a second f two and sixteen hundred and six thousand degrees kelvin with ammu light on lee and that looks like boop it doesn't look good we have green light everywhere we have yellow light everywhere we have a money background, we have bad skin tone we have no color in the eyes, no shaping the body, we have this red that doesn't look like a red it looks like reddish green and just everything about the image does not work with that ambient light so if you can't visualize what it's gonna look like with better light then you're going to miss over a scene that could be something great and something as simple as just having someone light on carpet could be great. So what I liked about this scene though was that we had these lines and so I thought I'd be cool to kind of have these leading lines kind of leading into our subject and just as a nice simple background drawing attention into her her shape her form so I had her lay down on this and then what we start doing is figuring out what I want for composition attributes already know my composition based on my leading lines but what about the camera settings and attributes? I want a very soft look in this overall image okay, I want soft I want background separation I don't need to see lint and detail on the carpet what why would I need to see that kind of stuff? So I'm shooting at two by the way if you've realized every single one of my courses gets crazy silly when we get to the last chapter, I don't know why that is if you like this version of me just tell me and I'll make this version of me are version through the entire workshop it's really up to you okay so we're shooting this image and I want to go to baron around f too so we have good background separation we have these lines in the background which are visible but we're not seeing detail in the carpet you know we don't really know that it's a carpet aside from she just laying down on something with sink were indoors where indoors crazy people we don't need to worry about sink where you khun definitely cut down our light without having to worry about age ss or envy filters for the annual I'd exposure so check this out what do we do we cut from over here where we're at let's see f to one hundred of a second and I said sixty hundred so we went from sixteen hundred to two hundred that's one eight hundred four hundred two hundred one hundred four stops of so that is f to f too that's the same one hundred to two hundred that's five so a total of five stops sorry one hundred one one hundredth of a second one two hundred second is one stop but that totals five stops logan looking at me like I'm crazy right now so just explain that to you that's five stops of total ambient light total ambient light loss that were cutting out of our scene so now we've reduced and remove your moved all that muddiness and now we replace that with our own light with our pretty light so what I do I papa photo metros into our westcott apollo strip I popped the grid on there because I want to control without lights going I pop the diffuser on there because I wanted to be soft I place that right next to our model's face I'm firing from right to left and then we take a shot and it's still looks like poop as you can see right here we're at one quarter to one half powers I think of this shot we're at around one half hour why do they still look like poop because we haven't gotten the right light quality okay so again back to you know your image isn't looking the way that you wanted to go back to ambient versus flight of flash balance but now we've kind of gotten our ambient versus flash balance over here to some extent we still have a little bit too much annually which we're going to cut away that's our test shot so we're going to cut it away when we get to the one two hundred seconds but the other issue here is the light quality the light quality right now is not matching the look that I wanted to have it's still too hard it's still too speculator is not giving me what I need for this particular scene even though hard light and a speculum is great for other types of shots for this one that's not what I want so we back the westcott apollo strip, and the faux takes inside of it off just a little bit. We bust out the westcott five and one our scream on the inside. Once again, we open up remember the keyword you open up the light source to be even larger, then what it wass so we've opened up the flash once with the soft box, we have gone additional step by defusing that and removing some of speculate e and it also opens it up a little bit more, and now we're adding another layer of diffusion onto that opening up even further, and now it becomes a larger light. The scream is held right next to her, the flashes behind that we're allowing the flash toe open up as it hits the scrim, and then we get this beautiful soft light that lands right on her. What lighting pattern is that I'm waiting? I don't hear anything if you said or thought rembrandt, then you've got your letting one of one light patterns down pat because, yes, that is rembrandt. We have just that little bit of light spilling onto the opposite cheek, highlighting the eye a little bit it's very close to getting luke, because basically for full rembrandt, we kind of need to create a shadow here, but it's close enough it's more it's closer to rembrandt than I would say it is to loop lighting but we go for that light pattern and we can control again the pattern on her face by simply just moving her chin back and forth so moving it a little bit further we get rembrandt moving it further back the other way we get luke lighting but look at how beautiful and soft that is looking with our test shot we still noted that in the test shot there was too much ambient light still at one fifth of a second so we cut that down by going toe one, two hundred seconds so the total five stop removal of ambient light really allowed our own light to take its place and to become the main light in the scene and it becomes beautiful becomes gordon's it becomes this clean toned image with just great features over her skin and we can see just everything like that form and everything it looks fantastic now for this pose what I have or do I have to kind of just kicked the hip up a little bit so we get a nice little exaggeration the hip right here it drops down it comes back up what we're trying to is always maintain that hourglass figure in our female models regardless of whether they're standing or whether they're sitting you know if we go back let me go back to that last image look you guys still recognise this like look at the shape and the body of the shape we're still trying to keep that hourglass figure to keep those curves you know we want s curves want seekers who want curves and the body we want that slimming line to come down to the knees we want to keep those curves because that is what makes a woman look like a woman is what makes girls look feminine and we want to retain that at least in every situation where we want our women to look feminine if you want to make a woman look masculine you pose them in a masculine pose that eliminates curves and that would be basically doing flat footed things not swing the hips not moving and doing these kind of things so for the second shot so for this shot as haver relax and kind of lean onto that one side with her hand right here and then we have it is look straight at the camera give us a beautiful shot of just her eyes we focus on her eyes we focus on her expression she looks gorgeous it looks amazing her hair just lights up it looks incredible and then I have her bring the hand up to the head to kind of create a nice little triangle there we have a triangle here look this triangle triangle triangle tango tango tango tango strangle strangle trickle ok, so using shapes to make your image is interesting, right? So we have her bring her hand up to her head, which kind of brings our attention into the face, but then we don't see the eyes so we're able to kind of glance around the image and taking her form and everything else the eyes are drawing us in, and so I like to kind of sometimes close the eyes and allow the viewer to focus more on the body in the form and everything else in the image rather than being drawn in the face. And then you have those shots where the eyes are open and you allow the eyes just to pull the viewer in and just look because she has an amazing expression and beautiful eyes that just suck you right in so you can tell my life these types of shoots I love boudoir I love fashion, I love fitness I love bikini like all these types of chutes are so awesome because what other type of photography allows you to focus? Um posed and form and lighting in the kind of pure way that these types of shots like you do that with every other type of shot when I'm doing wedding photos, I generally have a couple or a group of people that I'm using to kind of conceal I'm using clothing and everything else is kind of helping me out too to clothe and conceal and to do everything you know that I can't do as far as the post goes, but when you cut it back too just a single subject and you cut that clothing back to something that's either tight form fitting or maybe they're going implied nude or maybe it's a fitness shot where they don't have a shirt on and so forth then I mean for the guys the girls would still have their shirts on. Of course that'd be a weird in this photo shoot I would really be fitness eso with those types of shoots we are left with just the body, the form, the post and the way that we add and subtract light to it so it's such a great practicing tool for photographers and this is why you know, great artists all the great artists of the past, the classic artists they always painted the body because painting and shaping and light shaping the body on campus help them to understand posing and form and all those kind of thing, so I'd highly recommend taking this type of stuff on it's an absolutely fantastic tool to really refine your lighting and posing skills hopefully this helps joel out in seeing how we're going to change visualize the scene and add great light how that great light simply turns a scene that is a walkaway seen something that we would just ignore into something that is actually pretty incredible. Let's, go on to the next video.

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

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES