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LIVE Photo Shoot for Brushes and Backgrounds

as I started looking around. If you look for do a search for, like, free Photoshopped brushes, you find a ton of them fact waste a whole day doing that. And I saw some that were anything, but I thought I'd like to experiment with making my own brushes out of anything, including smoke. I thought that would be an interesting option, so I tried it once. It was like, OK, this is cool. So that's why I decided to to do this demonstration to show both the set up for lighting and things. But then you'll see me take some photographs of smoke and then we'll see in the next segment later on how to actually convert them into brushes and how we can use them in some interesting waste. So basically this set up we've got here, we've got a smoke machine and using a couple of light. So in the background, I have, ah, black just a regular seamless role, and I've got to light set up here, and I'm actually using I'm very happy to say brand new lights never before seen actually have been, but I'd like trade ...

shows, but my good friends at Westcott sent me these branding lights. Which of their sky Lux led and basically the idea behind them as they look kind of like a strobe, but their constant light so they pump out, like all the time. I've got a couple of strip boxes on here with modifiers grids on here, so I really want to focus the light. And as you can see, I have the lights kind of coming angle from behind because the black is far enough away. It will stay fairly black. And if it's not completely black, I will make it black later on because we're gonna capture our files and then eventually bring him into Photoshopped. And there's a couple of key kind of points we need to think about here in Photoshopped, the way a brush works. Whatever is black is your brush. Whatever's white is transparent. So I'm going to be shooting everything negatively here because, of course, our smoke is white in the background is black. So as hard as this may be to picture in your mind, I'm looking at it, imagining what will look like when I flip it the other way around, because eventually, in photo shop, I need black smoke, white background. But we felt it was much too expensive to generate black smoke. So using white smoke and ending up black is a better way to go. And again, I'm not terribly concerned. Normally, when I do this in my studio, I turned out all the lights. Once I've got it set up and you go just by the light of here, there's a bit more light in here, but it's still it will still work. You'll still get the idea of what we're doing here. And, um, I'm of the belief that that many of us out there are solo artists. We don't have a Maciste int that says, Hey, you come and move this for me. So for the most part, that was actually my plan was to be completely solo until I discovered that in order to tether so you guys could see it eliminated. The ability to use Interval shooting on my camera is usually what I do by myself, as I use my shooting manual, my camera to say, Take one photo every five seconds and take 100 or whatever the number is, So then I can stand closer to the smoke and do things. So once I've got set up, we're gonna have the automated assistant pressing the shutter every so often to do the equivalent of interval shooting. But realistically, this set up what I like about it is once you kind of do it once, you really can do it yourself. We've got the lights angle. Now I'll change it up a little bit to show you some difference. But right now, like I said, the the led lights thes air 1200 watt lights there daylight balance so you can still get really nice color out of them. And the only thing that you may find is that if you're used to shooting with strobes or speed lights that pop out, a lot of power is you might put your eyes a little higher because this light is just a litte not quite as intense as a stroke. If you're doing still life where nothing's moving at all, it doesn't really matter. But in this case, since this smoke is gonna be moving a bit, I still want the shutter speed to be fast enough to kind of freezing. Having said that, one of the fun parts about experiment. This kind of thing is that you can say, Well, what happens if I put my shutter speed really slow and make the smoke look quite different? So all bets are off here, you can try anything you want. We're not trying to get a perfect portrait of a person where we need to do certain settings. This is all about capturing something so that when we eventually bringing the Photoshopped to make it into a brush So it looks like our smoke machine is ready. So I'm gonna do just a couple of test shots here. Toe. Make sure the hard part is focusing, because right now there's nothing to focus on. So let me just do a little bit of smoke there. So right away I'm looking at that and going, That's already cool, because if you imagine that the other way around black on white and that becomes a brush you can use to do backgrounds and borders and all that kind of thing. Now this is a great smoke machine. The one I have, which was bought at the Halloween store for considerably less mind kind of goes and the smoke goes. So far away. This one goes, and just like, puts this smoke out like this. That's just like, I hope that I turned off Hello, Suddenly not working when I was using it before I could do two or three shots at a time. So any time you can find one where the density of the smoke is thicker, that's gonna help. But even if you don't one of things that I found, what we're gonna demonstrate in a moment to once we get this going again is to you can play with the smoke, too. It's gonna first just kind of shoot out and fade around. But then you have the option off, especially if you do that interval timer thing where the cameras just shooting automatically is. Then you can periodically do a little bit of smoke and then kind of play with it. There we go. All I do is just every so often. There's some nice little general breeze here, just from like air conditioning, so it's starting to spin and do interesting things as it is. But then the other thing that I would often do is just get into it and just kind of play with a little bit and make it less. Now, when you do that, of course, gonna take away some of the smoke. But that's kind of the experimental part. The only downside of these things is after a while, they just get smoke everywhere, so heavy, so often, yet just kind of clean out a little bit and say Stop all that. And most smoke machines are always smoking a little bit, so there's always gonna be some I know. What the word for that B and B and smoke. I don't know what that would be, but something like that. Okay, so we're already kind of along the lines of what I had in mind, and I'm just doing a little burst. That's nice. One not focused, though. So I'm gonna put my focus off of automatic once because I now know I kind of got things in the right place. Then, by taking off auto focus, I won't lose one where the focus kind of gets out of whack. So I've got my camera set. Teoh, I want to say it's 500. I s so I think 6 40 Just because of the amount of light that's coming in. So the other thing I would experiment with to try different things. These lights come with a couple of different options thes air strip banks. You can also get covers that have different degree of grid. So to really focus the light so even that will change things up a little bit. But even just with these ones changing the angle or taking the grid off, pump out more light, so right away, that's gonna make a difference. And I don't mind if I'm getting other things in here. So if I'm see, even if I see the light a little bit on the outside edge, that's okay, because I'm gonna be zooming a little bit and finding different areas that I like. Generally, though, I'm trying to backlight this as much as I can so that the smoke is lit from behind. Now I'm using two lights here. You could use one. You could use seven up to you. You have lots of light than use them, but I would make it as backlit as possible. I tried one experiment once were just for fun. I took a light and put it almost directly underneath it. And that changed the impact quite dramatically. Enforcement put a little bit more light on the background because of the angle. It was so just. The main thing is we want to try to keep the background black. It is possible, of course, in Kamerad to go in and say, Well, let's make the background blacker and the smoke whiter but like a lot of things if I'm taking 85 photos of smoke, I don't want to do that all the time. So I try to get as close as I can from the camera. So that's where I would experiment with the angle of these lights and putting the grid honor off to try and get it as backlit as possible. That is good. I don't know what happened there, but that's look at that. Someone who's an expert in smoke would say That's the worry role Eolas effect that causes those things. Don't know what that is. That's awesome. I've never seen that before. That's pretty cool. And some of those Hey, Dave, which Lynch do you have there? This is a 24 to 70 that I borrowed from Lens Protego cause mine was not working so only very nicely sent it to me so I could try it out. We talked a little about lends to go kind of thing, lens pro to go out and borrow stuff. So in this case, that helped me out a lot. But the cool thing about this shooting for brushes, ideas, anything will work. Whatever lens you have, you just play around with the setting because usually have to worry with lenses about well, that would distort someone's face. Or that would be too wide. Angle here at whatever you know, if you have a wide angle lens, put it closer. You have a longer lens, put it further back. I'm shooting at 70 because I like the look of it. But I could also put it back a little lower and move it closer and get a very different look. Thea other thing that I'm not doing today just because of the tether cable and the way my brackets set up is I would also turn my camera vertically and do some vertical shots. Just change it up a bit. In this case, this because of smoke is coming out sideways. It kind of makes sense to keep my camera oriented that way. But just to change things up, I might choose suited vertically at the same time, I'm looking at the monitor. Every so often I'm imagining it. What would that look like if it was vertical? So I always have that option is just switch it. The vertical afterwards either way just rotated around. So, John, would you like to come in? This is my great assistant, John here. And while we're at it, can we ask about your apertura in your shutter speed and how you talk a little bit about that? I'm just I'm using settings where I'm just trying to get a decent look. I'm I'd probably think I'm a 2.8 on this lens because I'm trying to keep the shutter speed not too slow. And I don't want to put the I s o too high and make it noisy. Even though there's some movement I might occasionally try shooting at a faster shutter speed to make sure I'm really freezing the smoke. But I found as I experiment, I kind of liked the look of a little bit of motion. So that's a very personal preference, I would say If you try and you go, it's a little too blurry for me than change your settings. Put the I asshole higher Shouldn't go a faster shutter speed something like that. So if this was so, imagine for a moment the camera is automatically taking photos. I can't do that because of tethering. So, John, just gonna be the automatic shutter presser guy. So it's all set on manual focus or won't refocus. But this is If I was by myself, I would set the camera on interval shooting to say, Take one photo every X seconds, whatever that might be. Three seconds, five seconds and then periodically I do a little shot of smoke and then I am quite literally playing with the smoke with my hands or with a piece of cardboard, something to try and change it up a bit so they don't all look the same. I don't have any secret formula. This is all just playing around and seeing what happens. I think I will, though, where we do this, just take this other it off, pump up a bit more light. These lights have a dial on the back that determine how much light so this previous their West coast. Previous constant lights were the spider lights that had multiple, like three or four switches. These this has a dial now, so you can dial it up or down to kind of get the results you want. Okay, let's go. So I'm gonna just kind of play with this. And I also fully expect every so often to get photographs of my hands in the frame because I can't get them out fast enough. So you just keep shooting every so often, I go ahead. This is the fun part. You just have no idea what's gonna happen here. So we just kind of do things every so often, it kind of runs out of steam. Get it? That was bad. That was not good. I feel like we should have the smell of incense and Indian music. There's nothing going on down. The one thing you have to be careful of, I realized first, somebody this is having a bit. Now, if you get a little over, do a little bit too much with wind, then it stays around for a bit. So the next time you go to put some smoke out it's going to still be flying around a bit. So I just kind of clean this up a little bit for a second because I really wanna have areas where there's some really dense smoke coming out way. Now if the first time you do this, the likelihood is, and even here, I'm just I didn't wasn't looking at the tether to see where we're at, and that would be half the battle be. Look at someone go OK, I should have changed that. I should have done that differently. But the need part about this whole thing is the net result. It's still a brush and by nature, a brush. If you have one that's semi see through than the brush will be semi see through. So even isn't a sharp is you might want, or there's parts where there's a little bit of smoke at the top. That's still going to be interesting effect. So I don't ever consider anything a complete throw away unless it's like, oops, my hand is right in the middle of it and even that might be cool. Who knows? I've actually make brushes out of all kinds of things, including feathers and my hand and just because, well, you can. So why not try it and see so, um, the first time, like I said, you try. You'll probably have to play a little more with lights just to give you an idea if we move these lights even further back. So it's trying to be even Mawr kind of backlit now. They might get in the frame a little bit, but I'm not too worried about that, because so I made a huge there. This one's in a little bit, and if it's in the corner of the frame, that's okay, because I'm gonna be looking at this part closer to me anyway. And one of the things. The reason why I like doing interval shooting or having John Press the shutter repeatedly is because sometimes it's the fourth or fifth or 6th 1 When you're almost about to press more smoking gun ago, that's actually really cool. So don't give up on it too soon and be constantly shooting out because it's going to kind of foot around and fade around, and if there's any bit of breeze left or air conditioners still gonna have some movement in it, so even though you've been, you're almost like I was just about ready toe. Do it again and I was like, Well, I can still see some stuff that looks pretty cool And every so often, like in this case, it's just it means toe reset and heat up a little bit. Yeah, the lightning's come back again. Well, we're waiting for that heat up. Do we have any questions or comments? Everything. You tell us a little bit more about some of the other objects that you used to use water, for instance, or I haven't. That's the next thing. I'm actually the next thing. My agenda is milk right against the white background, but that's whole, like a little more. I mean, smoke is like a smoke machine. You press a button liquid means protect your shooting area, get a kid swimming pool or something. I've seen people do liquid photography where they like toss, you know, liquids and chocolate and all that kind of stuff. But I'm always thinking brush, so same thing would apply. It would be easier to have a black background and have either very like a paint or milk or something like that, with different containers, and then that would be a little hard to do by yourself. But you still could, because if you go on interval shooting and maybe doom or continuous frame, so is taking 45 in a row as opposed to spaced out. I'm deliberately spacing these out because I want to see the smoke move over time. But of course, with a liquid, it's gonna go away very quickly. So you'd probably in that case, want to do continuous shooting like 45 frames, right? The same times you're getting variations on a theme. I also I'm a big fan, and we'll see this later on of brushes that are made out of anything old like old type. Like I. My mother is moving out of her house and she was like, You might want some of these things and I was like home to why? Because they were like all these old maps with, like, old fashioned writing on them that someone did by hand. So I just photographed those and made those into brushes, or there's graphics on them that are just really interesting and because they're from so long ago, it's not like I'm after concern over copyrights and things because these air, like literally very old maps eso I guess the real thought process there's anything you can photograph or capture in some way can be a brush or can end up with a brush. And in the in my mind, I'm always thinking but black on white. So if you look at something and go, that's a really cool texture. So here's an example in my studio. At one point we bought peacock feathers. Just toe have is a problem that would make a cool brush. It didn't because in color it looks awesome, but as a brush, it's kind of like melted into each other, and it just didn't have the same impact. But I didn't know that until I tried it. So to me. Anything you can photograph has the potential to be a brush because, and just have to remember that as we'll see when you apply the brush, it will apply it using one color. So the problem with the peacock brushes it's really meant to be, have that iridescent multiple color thing. When I brought into Photoshopped, I said, Let me paint with red. It was like I just didn't kind of work. Having said that, sometimes the solution is if you define a brush and doesn't work, inverted and all of a sudden looks better, because sometimes you make it a negative of the original. It actually comes out looking Mawr like you would expect, but I've literally taken also in my studio, someone brought in one of those feather boas that they use, and I like there's some cool feathers. So I tried taking photographs of feathers, and that was a pretty cool brush. So the bottom line is anything could be a possibility. So blacks whites shades of gray, right? And have you done in the experimentation with colored filters or colored lights, too adjuster? Contrast it all to make better brush, and I haven't. But I mean, that certainly makes sense because as you're looking at the results as you shoot it, I'm always thinking that opposite black on white kind of thing. So in order to get that, you may bump up the colors or add a color filter or do something if you're getting to that result now, one suggestion for you. If you're shooting tethered, especially in light room, there is an option in light room where you can say as soon as I shoot, apply this preset so you could have a preset that basically said inverted and bump up the contrast. So as you're shooting live, you're getting amore realistic impression of what your brush is gonna look like. In my case, I'm having to use my vivid imagination that eventually when I bring this in the photo shop will this work or not? Right? Okay. A question and a request. They want to know if your shoes will make a good brush. Can they see them? Well, I don't know. I realize when we came in here, these air, not the greatest shoes, were working a studio because they're, like, very loud. So I feel like I'm tiptoeing around. So I would say these would make a great brush. I just have to, cause it's got some texture. And so, you know, all kidding aside, black and white Not that I would, but I mean anything. If I've made brushes out of sidewalks, Ryan walking along and I go on that concrete got a nice crackin. It's kind of cool. Let's try it and see so later on in this class are in this to day class will talk about what I call finishing touches, and one of them is using texture overlay. So if you take a photograph with the intention of making it a brush, it may end up being a great texture that you use in a different way. So photo shop, there's no rule that says, Well, I'm only shooting this to uses a brush. Even some of this smoke might end up being a kind of a cool texture to apply in a different way or even a pattern, who knows? And that's the creative brain clicking in as I'm not gonna try and tie myself down ago. You must like this this way. You must use this brand of smoke machine. You know, it's whatever you want, Although you must have a piece of card exactly this big. Otherwise it won't work at all. But that's yeah, that's the point is everything is just try it and see what happens. Okay, we have bit more. Okay, We got some some more. So I'm gonna try something a little different, and I'm gonna try and create a bit of wind before I do it, see if that does anything. This is an awesome smoke, Christina. Guys say it makes mine pale in comparison. When I first did this, I was worried that sometimes I was going overboard on making stuff that was so subtle that I'd never be able to see it. But then I started using them, and especially so here's an example where I look at this overall image and I'm like, Yeah, but then there's one little part that's got a really cool little squiggly doo daddy thing at the bottom, so I'm ignoring everything else and going. But that one little part has potential. So don't look at it as well. That whole photo. And that's why I say you can see the smoke machine. Every shot doesn't matter, cause I'm not been. Include that. So even ones where your first reaction is and not sure if I, you know, I'm sold on that it might still end up being something. So that's why either having someone pressing the button for you or even better interval shooting, you just know that every few seconds everything's gonna change. The smoke's gonna evolve and move around as we said before, If you're shooting something else other than smoke like a liquid. That would be different, because then it's B'more instantaneous. But even after a while, this machine is still kind of smoking a bit. There might still be something left over to do something more subtle, so it's all a matter of degree. We're also gonna bring these into camera raw, which by nature means I can make more adjustments to them. So when we talk about how to turn them into brushes, we'll see how you can have an ongoing ability. Surprising enough, take advantage of smart objects, which probably shocks everyone by now that you can make ongoing changes. And from this one photo, I might be able to make five different types of brushes out of it. Any other questions? We might have to see what it would look like if you stuck your hand over the fog machines that came out and then let it kind of billow out, wanting to see different effects. Sure went up, and that was taught from Australia. Good day, mate. So and you know what? Even if there's some with my hand in it, I'd be OK with that, because who knows what that's gonna do. Yeah, that came a little close. It's rather a pleasant smell about you. People at home can't smell the lovely who did that So cool. Even if we didn't take photographs, I just stand here and look at this. It's just really interesting because it's like the waves. Smoke happens. That's probably why, as a child, I used to stare at my fireplace for hours on him exactly like, Ooh, that's cool. Now someone actually asked me something I thought was because I talked about smoke and they said, Could you use use a cigarette? I'm like, Well, yes. But I mean, this obviously has mawr coming out of it, but I hate to answer the same way always, But the answer is yes, every question. Could I? Yes, a way for the answer, because you you can you can try anything. You can say what happens if I try this? I'm intrigued to the next on my agenda, which my insurance agent isn't convinced about his fire. I don't take photos of fire, but I might have to find a way to that outside as opposed in my studio. But again, anything is possible and it's just a matter of trying things. It's kind of the same philosophy we're talking about in the first session when I was saying in photo shop, permission to experiment is all that use a preview? Well, it's the same as if you have a thought. I wonder if this would work as a brush. Okay, try it. At worst, you look at and go. That didn't work at all, but even ones that didn't work at all. This one that's on the screen right now. To me, it's just kind of very vague, but I still see potential in it, because I could selectively go in and really intensify one area more than the other. So nothing to me is a complete throw away unless the camera fell often took a photo of floor. But even that might make a cool exactly, maybe, maybe higher. We won't do that demonstration, by the way, Way higher. Few Cubans may be to come in with their cigars. Yeah, There you go. Hey, in Tampa, Florida, there's a whole cigar industry. They still make hand rolled cigars there, so in it's called LIBOR City, so that'd be a good place to go shoot. So Nancy asks, Have you played with dry ice? And what's the name of that really great smoke machine? And how does one get one? They be rented. Yeah, I'm sure they could. This one is, uh, just says ground fogger, I'm sure, Probably has on they made in China. It says on it. But, I mean, the one I got was literally like a Halloween store, and it was probably $80. I bought it because I'm a little bit over the top when it comes Decker in my house for Halloween. So I have many, many Halloween props. I'm sure to get a really good one. You could rent it, but even the the half decent ones there are not hundreds of dollars. I haven't personally tried dry ice, but that kind of intrigues me that concept because it's another thing to try. And I think that the main points to think is that that nothing is cast in stone. I have found it works best to kind of diagonally back light. But you could put if you had a giant soft box. You might put that right behind and make it very bright and see what that looks like. Because everything you do is just a variation on a theme is gonna give you a different result.