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Shoot: Two to Five Light Athletic Portrait

Lesson 6 from: Photographing Athletic Portraits

Alexis Cuarezma

Shoot: Two to Five Light Athletic Portrait

Lesson 6 from: Photographing Athletic Portraits

Alexis Cuarezma

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Lesson Info

6. Shoot: Two to Five Light Athletic Portrait

Lesson Info

Shoot: Two to Five Light Athletic Portrait

Right, cool, man you ready? Damn. She really dressed you up nice. Come up a little bit. There you go. So you're going to be up a lot more. Keep right here 'cause that's just the background. Keep coming up more. So the cool thing that you can notice with monolights that you have-- actually can we turn off the front lights right here please? 'Cause I do want to show that if that's possible. Perfect. And so go back to how you were. So the cool thing with monolights right, if your subject's there, you can see what these are hitting or when they're not gonna hit him. So I can literally tell him to come up right and come up. And when he's not, keep coming up. When the lights are not hitting him, then perfect. Then I know that's the right spot. 'Cause I can see that right. If you don't have monolights, then you're playing that guessing game where you have to take a shot and see when it works. So there, in theory right? I'm gonna take a quick test shot. It should just be a silhouette, and he s...

hould just be in all shadow, which I think should be good. We're not gonna get a lot of bounce or spill. So I believe those two are in B right? (mumbles) so I'm gonna take a quick test shot. (mumbles) So kinda this will just be straight a silhouette. So kind of just turn to like, there you go like that. Keep that it's perfect. Keep it like that. Looks real good. Yep that's perfect. He's actually got to, take a step forward. I could see a little bit of the light. Keep-- or actually you know John. Just feather that umbrella towards, keep going. There you go good. Keep it like that, that's good. And feather that one to the same way John please. Alright were good for now 'cause we're just doing silhouettes. Keep right here. And actually you know what? See this is why I really, really love monolights because you can see, we're probably gonna bounce from the floor right here. 'Cause you see the umbrella right here? The little monolight. So that's probably just effecting them a little bit, but that's okay. It's not gonna effect it. If we had, if we were doing like a prelight or testing like that, I would tweak it perfectly. But luckily this ground is not that reflective. So we have that here. And those are on channel, same group channel B. Sorry channel 17 group B in the PocketWizard MultiMAX. So keep it right there. And then the next one are gonna be the rim lights that we're gonna add. So let's fire that up. And you know what? I'm actually have you take a step forward. Another one, keep going. There you go. That's good. Stay right there. So let's turn them on John, and let's put these... Is that one 500 watt seconds? B2, where does it say on this one? It should be... Yeah that's 500. Yeah cool let's turn it on. Probably's gotta be plugged in. So on this one what I have in this light right here, 'cause I want this one to make it a nice (mumbles). And these are 500 watt seconds just 'cause I have a magnum reflector on here. So it usually, nine times out of ten whenever you put anything in front of a light, you lose power. But these magnum reflectors, I like to kind of call em a flashlight reflector. What they do is they kind of bend the line and focus it, and you usually get an extra stop of light with them. And why I have a grid on them is 'cause I wanna focus it so light doesn't bounce everywhere. So you're kind of breaking even 'cause when you put a grid on there, you lose like a stop of light. So you have that right here. And then what's why also these are with the 500 watt second lights 'cause this kinda helps out and evens it out. So let's turn em on. There you go with a monolight. You're gonna turn it on and then ah. Seven and a half. And I want both of these, these two are even. These two are even. And we're gonna have to move em back because I want it to be like a rim light on him. And actually if you could take a big step forward, that'd be awesome. There you go, that's great. And we just wanna get the light on him and tilt this down a little bit. And have em up like this, and make both of the lights even. And you're at seven and a half right? Seven and a half. Yep and then we're gonna put these in group, group C right? Yep. So we got that right here. So this is gonna be, that looks perfect right here. Keep right here. Face me direct right here. So like literally right here I could see where that light is coming on this one. So I am gonna, actually John if you go to this one and feather this one inside a little bit more. So you could literally like tweak the light, and see it right before you fire it and get it right. Just turn it in towards him. There we go. That's too much. A little bit towards me now. Right there, that's perfect. And so on this one, I'm just gonna make those lights fire. So this is C. so let's see them both fire. Watch out (mumbles) pop. There you go. So I am gonna take a quick test shot right here. Just hold it right there. Actually you know what? Let me back up. So just turn to your left. Face the audience so you're like that. Perfect. Let's see. There you go. It's looking good. Let's see. I might want to blow him out a little bit more just 'cause I like to be Mr. Dramatic. So if you could just turn both of those up a stop John that'd be awesome. But now we're kind of building them up, right, so background lights are in group B. This was in group C. So now we're just gonna light em in the front right. And when you light em in the front, you can light em anyway you want. So I like the light really nice and dramatic with a small light source. So I'm gonna turn the monolight on. And this works for athletes or if you have a model with a really, really good complexion because I like calling this, this is a 20 degree grid, I like calling that a texture light. 'Cause when the light's small like that, it's gonna chisel him out. Which he probably wants to be chiseled out 'cause he works hard for his physique, and that works really well for him. And you can take your glasses off for this one. Can you check the aim on these again? Yeah absolutely, no problem. Just wanna make sure this is, okay. So I'm at ISO 200 F11. Keep it like that. Did this go off? Oh there you go. There you go, that's perfect John. Yeah. So if you can look he tweaked that light a little bit, and there you go. I'm just liking that a little bit more. So that's like a silhouette right here. So now let's turn those off right here, and then we'll do the next two lights which is this one. Let me turn this right here. I want to get it nice and close though. Keep it right here. And let's just go up. Twice. There you go. I was stepping on it. There you go. And then this one you can see the monolight here, and I'm just trying to get kind of butterfly lighting, paramount lighting on him. It'll be a little bit of mood lighting 'cause I don't think it'll be right overhead him, but that's fine right here. And I think, let's see. Let's do a quick test shot with just this one. And again this one is in, it should be in group A. This one should be the only one that pops. Don't look at it, look right here. There you go. So let me do a quick test and see where we're at on this one. Ah we're almost right on-- I think that's pretty good. Keep right here. That's just one light. Now some people would be happy with this, and I think it's okay. We're getting a little spill on the background. Which is just from this light I believe, right? Should be. That's a 20 right? Do we have a 10? Can we switch this out with a 10? So this is a 20 degree-- whoa it almost fell. That's a 20 right here. I'm gonna change it to a 10 to make it more spotting and focused. So I, 'cause I want that background to be absolutely black. And usually I like having a gray seamless 'cause a gray seamless is easier to underexpose and make it completely black than the white one, but we're just gonna swap it out and... Get right here. There we go. So we'll do a quick test with this one. This, let's check it out. This is really nice. Keep it right there. There you go. So now my background's still, it should have went a little bit darker. I'm still getting a little bit of light from somewhere. What's your shutter speed? 200th of a second. Okay. Yeah that's the only light going off. I don't know if it was fill in from the... Hold on let's do this right here. So what I'm doing here is I just turned off the lights. It's bounced from this one. Yeah. 'Cause if you look-- Hitting the floor and bouncing up here. Yeah I turned off the lights. That's how it looks like when no light pops on him. Let me see if I put black on the floor. Yeah. But he's 100% lit by strobes for the most part. And then just the next light I'm gonna add on him it's gonna be a light in the front.

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