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Shoot: Avant Garde - D1 with Beauty Dish

Lesson 9 from: Posing, Styling and Lighting for Beauty Photography

Lindsay Adler

Shoot: Avant Garde - D1 with Beauty Dish

Lesson 9 from: Posing, Styling and Lighting for Beauty Photography

Lindsay Adler

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Lesson Info

9. Shoot: Avant Garde - D1 with Beauty Dish

Lesson Info

Shoot: Avant Garde - D1 with Beauty Dish

Very last shot that I'll wrap up is we're gonna add some gels, and so I'm actually gonna just switch it and we're gonna go for a cool color. So let's do this. Nicoma what color palette have you selected? Purple and yellow. Purple and yellow, okay. So I'm gonna go with purple and pinks for the gels. Can I grab something purplish-bluish for the background? (gels crinkle) Cool, great, so I'll probably do that, I use gels all the time, so I just have a giant pile over here. One of my lovely assistants organized them in order of hue and color the other day, but now it's gettin' um... I do this to her all the time unfortunately. Okay, so I'm going to switch the background. Instead of five, I'm gonna put it back to 10. Yeah, alright, so let me switch it to 10, give me a little bit more spread of the gel, and I also know when I add a gel it cuts a lot of light, so I'm gonna turn the power up. Okay. Purple's great, so I'm gonna get me a nice purple hue behind. Great. And usually we just use...

gaffer's tape to tape it on, and you usually put a little space if you're just doing it on a bare bulb, you put some space between the gel and the bulb or it melts it. So, that's good. Cool, that's fine. Okay. Now, let me see what I want. Can I have the third light with a beauty dish I think? I'm feelin' this out, this was not planned, it's an emotional thing. The question was how much did you plan it, I mean, I planned, CreativeLive, I planned, but we're selecting, figuring out what I want. I'm gonna tone the shadows with this one. So I have whole classes and things on gels, but just to give you an idea, there's kind of like four ways to use gels. One way is to gel the background, to change the color. Another way is to fill in the shadows, give shadows a color tone, that's what I'm gonna do with this light. You can also use gels as rim lights, and you can also use gels as main lights. So we're going to use it as fill and background in this particular setup. That's beautiful Nicoma, looks great. Thank you. I love that. You want the beauty dish as your main? Um yeah, well which one do you want on? Yeah, doesn't matter. This one, 'cause it's already up, great. Okay, alright, thank you. Make sure I've taken this down enough, good. Alright, so I'm gonna have purple on the background, we'll see how it looks, and I gotta make sure I turn off my same as previous, 'cause that's not what I want. Perfect, alright, so let's see so far with what I've got, and I think I need a grid on this beauty dish, let me plug it in. By the way, you see how I get all messy? That's totally what it looks like when I'm shooting in my studio, 'cause I'm like oh I want this tool and this tool, and it's a little more organic is what I call it. Messy is organic. Thank you. Great, okay. I hope my wife's listening. Oh, great, great. So she understands the organic. I'm earning points with John now too, this is great. Okay so let's see, we're gonna do beauty dish on the face, turn this up just a little bit so I can see the modeling light. And then we've got purple on the background. So my thought is, she's got the pink under her eyes, I'm gonna go with purples and pinks. The background I have the purple, and then I'll figure out what color I wanna tone to the shadows to unite it all. So let's try real quick, let's just see, I have no idea where I'm at, we're guessin' here. Turn a little bit that way with your shoulders. Perfect, long neck, and then tilt your head back this way. (camera clicks) Okay, so first of all, I'm underexposed. Can you turn that one up a little bit, and I'm gonna go to ISO 200. Gracias. (camera clicks) Okay, so now my background will be a lot more purple, which is good, and now my face is correctly exposed, okay. I, can you turn it down half a stop in the background? It's a little strong. Alright, so right now the face looks too normal for me, if we're gonna go for crazy color, I want crazy color. So I'm gonna change my white balance to tungsten to make it all blue, 'cause if everything's meant to be blue and purple, I want to see her cooler tones. Same thing. (camera clicks) Okay, okay cool, and you'll see she's gonna look deadly, but I like it. Okay, and 'cause it's RAW, I'll cut the difference, it doesn't need to be that blue. And then John, so that final light, can we put it on this side as fill, and that's where we're gonna wrap it as. And I'll just add, so I'm looking at it and I think, yeah I made her a little bit more unusual color to match the unusual colors in the eyes and the unusual color in the background, but I need one more thing to pull her back into it. So we're gonna add, I'm gonna add a pink gel on the shadow side of her face, and I've got that pink gel right here. Perfect. And gels show up most in shadow areas. So I already can tell where the gel will show up, and actually there's not that much shadow on her face. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna move my main light to the side, the more I move it to the side, the more shadow it creates, the more shadow it creates, the more gel will show up. So I'm gonna move it just a bit this way. Great. And then, I don't know, let's just start with it at like five and see, and then will you pull it off a little bit more to the right for me? Okay, we'll see and maybe I won't like the tungsten anymore, we'll see. She won't be that pink, but it's 'cause everything else is lower power. That modeling light's probably high power. Yup, okay cool, so I like the feel already. Okay, so it's kind of all bringing it together. I'm gonna try it not tungsten just to see what it looks like. (camera clicks) Um, I like it better tungsten. Yeah, I like tungsten better. Good, lean forward long neck, long chin. (camera clicks) And then I wanna pop the highlights on her face just a little bit. And then I'll shoot it and it'll be done. So I'm gonna pop the highlights so I get really bright, yeah, okay so that's the look I like, I'm gonna do same as previous, shoot a few shots, and then we got it. Okay here we go, you look perfect, okay, and I'm just gonna bring this just like an inch forward. Perfect, okay. So I'm gonna shoot low, strong power angle, beautiful just like that. Now look your eyes that way and just strong chin out. (camera clicks) And chin down a little. (camera clicks) And now tilt your head that way and look at me. (camera clicks) And then chin down towards me a little more. (camera clicks) Good, tilt the top of your head back up towards that light. (camera clicks) And now do one straight on at me. See how it looks. Ooh, what, it moved! Boo. Light, on a control. Okay, beautiful though. I'm gonna try this one more time, I'll turn you back now that we have this gel. Sorry, real strong look that way, perfect. (camera clicks) Just make sure that looks good. Great, and look down at me, tilt the top of your head away. (camera clicks) And bring that shoulder forward just a little. (camera clicks) Pull it back a little more. Great, and chin up, and then chin rotated back towards the light. (camera clicks) Perfect, okay, those are totally what I was goin' for, totally look and feel. Mysterious, bright colors, picks up on the makeup but unifies her and the background and the makeup together.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Beauty Photography Keynote

Ratings and Reviews

Margaret Lovell
 

I'm enrolled in a number of Lindsay's courses, and am moving slowly through them. Although I'm more of an outdoor photography, I am interested in fashion photography. I decided to take this course because of its focus on beauty photography, which I feel is a subset of fashion. Lindsay is an excellent instructor who gives plenty of easy-to-follow tips. She's extraordinarily passionate about fashion and beauty photography. I love that she'll set up shoots for classes so that you can watch how she applies her knowledge.

Alfonso Ruiz
 

Loved the course, Really good info in a fast and concise way

Stefan Legacy
 

Good course for someone new to photography and looking to learn how to pose and light their subjects. Very clear teaching style and easy to follow along.

Student Work

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