Skip to main content

Live Shoot: Clear Glare in Glasses

Lesson 17 from: Build your Lighting Knowledge

Peter Hurley

Live Shoot: Clear Glare in Glasses

Lesson 17 from: Build your Lighting Knowledge

Peter Hurley

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

17. Live Shoot: Clear Glare in Glasses

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction

10:34
2

Natural Light Overview

30:31
3

Live Shoot: Maximizing Window Light

15:51
4

Live Shoot: Use Reflector to Enhance Natural Light

22:12
5

Live Shoot: Back Light Your Subject

19:59
6

Live Shoot: Back Lit Subject with V Flats

19:26
7

Live Shoot: Utilize ProBoard with Natural Light

23:27
8

Continuous Lighting Overview

21:45

Lesson Info

Live Shoot: Clear Glare in Glasses

Alright, guys, so this is what we're gonna do, we're gonna do my set-up, we're gonna work on glasses, so I'm gonna start talking about glasses a little bit. So here we go. Here's a dude, right? This is Carl, who was my intern, this is Carl the intern. He is the best intern I ever had and you can see that in his glasses, the flex kit was creating that pattern, right? In the glasses, it was a weird kind of reflection. That's strange and unusual and annoying, isn't it? The glare is annoying. How the heck are we gonna get rid of it? We have to do this because people wear their glasses, right? And if you wear your glasses, Erin, do you love those glasses? They're fake, they're totally-- They're totally, the glare is horrific. They're not real. It's just a mess. They're like three dollars. Oh my gosh. Don't judge. Alright, well I love my glasses. People like their look in glasses, it's part of them. If you take their glasses off, they feel like a different person, let alone l...

ook like a different person. So we have to know how to get this straight. We have to know how to get this glare out of the glasses. I'm gonna give you a few techniques so one of my favorite things to do, well let's see, look at this, isn't that better? Is that better, or this, or do you want this? Is this good? No, not that, you want this, you'd rather have this? This is better, right? That's better, no, that's better. That's better. There's no glare. You don't like that? That's strange. You like the glare better? Okay, you can, we'll leave her be. For me, this is what it's about. I don't want the glare to take away from my image, however, I wanna, I don't mind seeing that there's a little bit of glass in here, so something like this, seeing that there's some glass in there. Cause sometimes I used to in the past pop the lenses out and it just looked strange to me. It just doesn't look like when there's, I just like to see a little glass in there. So I don't mind a little glare in there, alright. So we're gonna do the starting technique that I do which is, and this is listed in my book, okay, so you can get the book if you want and it's all in here, everything that I'm going over is in the book, okay. If you wanna get the book for free, you can sign up for headshotcrew.com, just go there, sign up for the book deal, you get three months of coaching and you get the book for free with the paying for two months of coaching. Just go to Headshot Crew and it explains it, okay. Or you can get two months free of coaching by using the code CREATIVELIVE on headshotcrew.com but you don't get the book, okay. So if you want the book, you just gotta, you gotta pay for the two months of coaching. Alright, so it's all in the book and these are shots that I actually took out of the book to show you and to illustrate my point. So the first thing that Carl was doing is he's doing a little trick, a little trickery, a little move. If we're working on reflection, we're basically looking at where the lights we're placing are reflecting into the glass and then coming back into our lens, right? That's what's going on. So if I changed the trajectory of the light that's hitting the glasses, it's gonna be reflected in a different direction and hopefully away from our lens. So, with Carl, it's hard to see cause his hands are there but I'm having him lift his frames off the top of his ears. So watch me, my hair is down today, I just, I'm having a moment, I just figured I'll mix it up, I went man bun yesterday, I'm going hair down today. So anyway, okay, so this is the deal. Watch this. If I go like this, I just changed the trajectory, let's see if they'll stay. Would be nice if they stayed. I changed the trajectory a little bit. That's gonna help me with my thing, otherwise if they're down and they're like this, it's coming, the light's gonna be reflected back into the lens. Here, can you tell that I did that? You really can't tell, right? (audience murmurs) You can't tell, can you? (audience laughs) Alright, well, anyway, that's the first move that you do. It depends on the person and their hair and how much you can tell, okay. Alright the second move I make is I start to adjust my lights, alright. And I'm gonna watch the bottom of the light where it reflects into the glasses. And I start to tilt the light till it gets out of the, and I'm looking at the angle of the lens, so John, can you come in here? Can you help me set up the lights? Sure. So we're gonna get this flex kit set back up and then, once we're ready to roll, let's shoot this and then I'm gonna bring up, let me see what we got here, I'm gonna bring in Capture One. We're gonna go Capture One on this. This is Aidan from yesterday and I am gonna bring up our subject. John, are you ready to go? Yeah. Come on in, man. John has got a killer beard too. I've been looking, I've been eyeballing that beard. (everyone laughs) Alright. So we got a simple white backdrop which we're gonna not even worry about lighting, it's gonna go gray. Come stand right here. Hold it right there, let's see the glare in the glasses now. There's not much, those are pretty good, you got the green glare. That's not bad, you paid the big bucks. Big bucks. You did, didn't you? You did, so, you didn't? No but we'll keep it secret. Okay, you're taller than the average male. Yes. I have a maneuver for that. How tall are you? 6'5" on a good day. 6'5", 6'5". Alright, so I'm about 6'1" and a half so for me, if I wanna shoot, I don't mind shooting, I don't, can we go with my men's settings? Okay so my men's settings on the flex kit. Let's go with a, let's go, go nose this way for me. Go nose back the other way. I'm gonna go with, this is what we're gonna do, we're gonna go 30 right. Okay. We're gonna go five left, and we're gonna go 20 in the back and you're gonna move the, where's the kicker go if I'm going for the right side of his face? Go opposite caddy corner, right? So let's move the kicker over. Here we go and then we'll go 20% on that. And that, let me see John, look here. That glass is pretty good. That glass is not bad. Are we on on this? There's my buddy, I got my buddy in here, ready to go. Alright, let me see, come straight ahead, right there, hold that. Alright now, guys, what I wanna do is I wanna get, yeah, I see it, I see this sucker in there. (audience laughs) Chin down a little bit, although nose that way. Geez. This is a, this is, hang on, we gotta go like that, alright. He just paid the big bucks for this, I'm trying to do glare here and it's really not that bad in these glasses. Does anybody have a really crappy pair of glasses I can borrow? No, I'm kidding. (everyone laughs) Alright. So, 6'5" and I'm 6'1" and a half. Luckily, I don't like shooting above people, I like shooting from below so a little bit, although he's still pretty tall on me. Let me see here. Did you change the settings on this yesterday? I haven't touched it, we were shooting the Canon last night. What do you mean, this is the Canon? What do you mean? Let me just take a shot and see what we're doing. Okay, there we go. Guys, I'm just getting set up here. We got 200 for the setting of the lights. Yeah but somebody's messing with my camera. Alright, here we go. I might need the other camera. Alright guys, so what are we doing? We're gonna go to my settings from yesterday, what's, remember guess shot, right? Do we remember from yesterday? ISO? 100. I was at, come on, I'm at 200. I can't shoot on this, I can't stop it. (audience murmurs) The auto focus is on. Let me take a look. Did you turn it on? No, I didn't touch it. Let me play with it. Alright, so we're doing what? [Female Audience Member] 200 ISO. We're doing 200 ISO, what do we do, tell me the order at which, let's see if there was learning, if there's been learning over the course of this course, let's see. The order at which I set my guess shot. [Male Audience Member] You start with ISO. I start with ISO, okay, give me one. [Female Audience Member] F-Stop. 200. More than 100. No, I do 200, I'm 200, okay what do I do next? F-stop aperture. Exactly, what's that? Over four. Okay, good, what's the last thing we have to do when we're in doing photography? [Female Audience Member] Shutter 1/160. We're doing shutter speed, 1/160, you're good. High five, you got it all, you got it all down. Awesome, awesome. I remounted the lens again. Oh, okay, alright thank you, perfect. Alright, guys, so I got my settings in. I'm going four point, I'm doing exactly what we got, we got ISO 200. 1/160 of a second. F/4. John, I need you to do a maneuver, I just launched a new video, I do videos on how to make people look better in front of cameras and if you, are you married? Yes. How tall is she? She is 5'5". 5'5" so you got a height discrepancy? Yes. Do you ever do this when you're taking pictures with her? I'll do that. Can you do that for me now? It's called spreading 'em. (audience laughs) You gotta spread 'em when you're tall. Guys, look on my YouTube channel, spread 'em to look better in pictures. I launched a couple weeks ago and it's gonna help me out. Alright, let's do this. Alright, come forward while you're spreading 'em. Awesome, awesome, hold that, hold that right there. Let's take a shot and let's see what this glare's doing and let's see if we can actually create some glare in some pretty nice glasses. Jam your forehead out to me, tilt the head this way a little bit, hold that, hold that. That's pretty cool, right off the bat, guys, we're firing, here we go, okay. We got a little bit. Can we get some V-Flats? We got a little bit, we got a good shot, John that's a good shot right off the bat. You're working the camera right off the bat for me, that's amazing. Guys, he's shebanging right out the gate. (audience laughs) Right? I mean, he's a little bit hot on the highlight. I can probably bring it down a little bit. I think we might be getting some, he's on 30, I think we might be getting some fill from the outside. Just put it in, Behind you? Yeah, put it behind me, why not. Oh yeah, put it right there. Open that up, wait no, you're gonna block the TV. I'll put it behind this. Come forward a little bit. Come forward a little bit, John. I'm still gonna knock it down a little bit, let's go. Let's go 125, let's try this. Let's try this, let's try knocking it down. Chin down a little bit, go nose hard that way. Hold that look, there's some glare, I got some glare now, I'm happy. He's so good, look at this. There's some glare, alright, that's annoying. Does that annoy everybody? Yeah. Everybody's annoyed right now. [Female Audience Member] Sorry. You're all unhappy with that? Okay, so let's get rid of it, alright. So now, John, stay on that same angle your face and I want you to, I want you to just lift your glasses off your ears slightly. No, don't go ballistic, what are you doing? (audience laughs) That's better, let me see, that's good. That's good, let's see if that's noticeable, guys. You see how the frame tucks in right here? Let's see how this is noticeable. Let's go, chin down a little bit, nose that way. Hold that, that didn't, good, that didn't help me, that's fine. That did not help me, he just raised it up a little bit. So watch, if you go, if I go back and forth. It's up a little bit, it does not look great up there, does it? So that's not gonna work in this scenario. If he had hair like mine that covered it, it could work but it didn't help us anyway, did you see the glare go away? Not really, it's not helping us. So let's see what we can do. So what we're gonna do is we've got the flex panel and I'm gonna watch, keep your nose on that angle. Keep spreading them for me. And we're gonna raise this light up. We're gonna get it and I'm gonna look at it. Chin down a little bit. Chin down a little bit more. There we go. I'm gonna change the trajectory of it like the angle of this sucker. There you go, chin down slightly. There you go, right there. And I'm gonna watch the glare as I shoot him. I want this a little bit closer to you. Now I might have to jeopardize my lighting a little bit. Just a touch. Most people aren't gonna know, I know. Why do I know? Cause my awareness to light is serious. What's my, it's my what? (audience murmurs) My base, it's my foundation, I know, most people won't know. Chin down, you guys might know, you're photographers, right. We're supposed to know, that's the whole thing, you're supposed to have an awareness for light. Chin down slightly. Oh wow, there we go. Now, I don't mind it creeping in up top. Let's just see if it creeps. Chin down just a little bit more, John. Yeah, right there, okay, guys, what do we got? We got glare? We got no glare. Let's go 1/160 again. Good, stop looking so miserable. There you go, that's better. It's come good. He should be happy because we got the glare out of the glasses, right? (everyone laughs) Hold that, hold that right here. Now go nose straight to me. Now I can work and these glasses look great but now, look, I went nose straight and I got a little glare back, watch this. I got a little bit of glare back right here. This is, who is that, what is that from? [Male Audience Member] Fill. My buddy just screwed that up, right? My buddy fill just created that so I still want fill to help me out cause, why do I want fill to help me out? Shadow density on that cheek, right? Now, I think we've got enough light in the room, the kick, see how subtle the kick is? I think we got enough of light in the room, I could just let fill take a, I could let fill relax a little bit, I could let him take a break. I'm gonna let fill take a break. Let's see what it does to the shadow density. Fill can just relax over here. Okay, let's see. There you go, good job, John, I like it. Chin down slightly, I can work with that. Good, amazing. Good, now what do I got? I got the glare out, I have no line, and how's my shadow density, guys, is it too much? Is it too heavy for you? I took two shots, right? It's a little heavy. It's a little heavy, let's try and, let's figure out how to get. Let's, I miss fill. (audience laughs) I want fill to get back off break. Okay, so I want you to watch. Now, the key to it is is that I'm gonna mess with the light so that I'm gonna have the light on an angle that's real thin so you're gonna barely see it. I can watch, you have to look at this, this is the reason why continuous light is so good, I can see exactly what's going on, are you with me? Alright, here we go, I'm bring in fill. John, don't worry, here he comes. Let me see, you gotta look straight, though. Okay, so there he is. Look straight to me. This way, little, nose this way. There you go. And I just barely see him in there. Let me see if we bring him in. Okay so I see him now, this is where he was before. Let me, what I'm gonna do is, this is basically the same shot as before, I'm just gonna do two shots so you can see this. Chin down, there you go, good. Fill's just disappearing on me, just to help me out. Like, it's barely there now, right? I just, I'm moving it to see the angle and, if I really wanna hide him, I'll feather fill so I'll turn him this way and move him in so he's real skinny but the light is still kinda hitting it, it's just feathering off to the side of this edge to light John. We're gonna do some feathering later but I feather the flex a little bit. Chin down a little bit. There you go, chin down a little bit more. There you go, John, that's it. Bring your nose back to me a little bit. Chin down more, there you go, now fill is just a little slight, little tiny line that you can barely see but I've still got some light in the eye that I didn't have before. You got it? Cool. Alright. I don't, John that was awesome, I think we got some good stuff. Did we get good shots of John? Yeah. Did you get anything that you really liked? I wasn't paying attention to the shots, I wanna make sure he goes home with a good shot of himself. Did you see them? Yeah. Are they acceptable? Totally. Okay, good, did we shebang one? Yeah. You look a little miserable there. (audience laughs) Hold on, let me just check. I like that one, that one's great. Okay, you're good, alright man. Thank you very much, can we give him a round of applause? (audience applaud) Thanks, bud, thank you, thanks, thanks, thanks. So, that's a little trick you have to watch the, you're gonna watch the glasses and eyeball it and see. If you're shooting, let's say we're gonna do a speed light set up next, let's say you're shooting speed lights that don't have modeling lights on them. If I was shooting profile, I got modeling lights, I can see the reflections. Speed lights you gotta shoot, you gotta move, you gotta shoot, you gotta move, you gotta shoot, you gotta move, you gotta really take your time to do it, okay. So, with the light so high, if he was bald, sorry, John, would that be reflecting off, give him super fivehead or? It could, potentially, it depends. Yeah. But, yeah, that would be something if that was the case then all I would do, if it really bugged me is I would take a piece of black duvetyne or something and throw it over the top of the light. Okay. You could just shorten your light and it, especially if you don't mind fall off on the body. So I'm doing head shots, right, in this case, if I was shooting I would have to use some sort of fill to get light on the body if I was shooting a small light to light the face like that. We got another question you kinda answered this one yesterday but about distortion in the glasses causes somebody who has like big lenses in there and it's creating distortion on their face. What I do, I honestly like what glasses do. Yeah. I mean if you're wearing them and they do that, Yeah. then it's not gonna bother me too much, like sometimes if you turn them to the side, you'll see like the, you'll see their face indented and like their Right. you can see like the stuff in the background over here and outside the glasses and it gets funky, that's what glasses do, guys. Yeah. That's what they do. If they're walking around in public like that, that's what they do, I'm not trying to, I'm looking at it on John, he's got it going right now, his head looks indented in and I see the background, I mean that's what glasses do and I'm not a miracle worker over here. (audience laughs) I don't like going, I don't like going in and retouching that. Some photographers will retouch that space, I leave it, I think the stuff that happens in nature or, I mean I know glasses aren't natural but it's happening in real life, how about happening in real life should remain in the image. Now, again, you're the artist, you decide for yourself how much does that annoy you and you can change it or limit it from moving them around, moving their angle, their face around and stuff like that, so that's gonna change it and limit it. And also, after this came up as well, before was that the eyes can become bigger or smaller when you put glasses on, right, was it bigger or smaller? [Female Audience Member] Smaller. They're become smaller when you put your glasses on. When you're near-sighted, right, when you're near-sighted your eyes become smaller and when you're wearing like reader glasses to see up close, it makes your eyes bigger. Okay, see I hadn't noticed it but I don't make my clients take their glasses on and off and look at the size of their eyes, I'm like I don't know, I'm like I'm looking at you, this is the way you look. Again, in the real world, you like your glasses, your eyes get smaller because that's what happens, you shoot it that way. I'm not gonna go in and worry about that. You either want your glasses or your glasses off. That's it, you know, it's not, if it changes your appearance that much then take your glasses off. You know, or have, if you're on camera a lot and it really bugs you, then have a faux pair of glasses that have no prescription in them and be shooting those. I think you have to be very cognizant of whether you're on camera or not and if that bugs you. For my clients, it's a discussion that I'd have, you know, like Erin, if I was, if you really wanted to shoot those, I'd be like geez. Can we get a camera on her to see this reflection in this? (audience laughs) I have a prescription. Yeah, alright, anybody at Drew what do you got, come on? I feel like we're good. We're good? Okay. Somebody wanted you to go back over the basic settings for lights at 30, he thought it was 30% key, 5% fill, 20% back. That's what it is. That's what it is okay, cool. That's what it is, yeah, he's right. So yeah, I keep the light, I usually like 30% on the flex kit cause they're so bright and I'm a sensitive guy, I'm very sensitive to light so I usually go at like 30% at the max cause it really, when I get in there and get shot with it, it really annoys me so I don't like leaving my clients in there. So when we shot Aidan, it was like, what was it at? 80. 80. What? It was at 80. He handled it. He could handle it.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with RSVP

Gear List
7 Peter Hurley Discount Codes

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Setting for Peter Hurley Westcott Flex Kit

Ratings and Reviews

Hannah Walker
 

I truly enjoyed this amazing lighting class. Peter Hurley shows you how he achieves his signature look using all forms of light shaping tools from natural light, to speelites and high end strobes. Seeing first hand how the placement of the subject to the light source and your lightning set up is so important to avoiding the hazards of flat light and haze. He teaches you his unique methods and secrets on how to make eyes pop and get the best color contrast without harsh shadows. You will leave this class energized to hone your own creative vision with light and shadows using the methods taught by Peter. It was a privilege to learn from a master like Peter Hurley. Thank you Creative Live for another amazing class!

pete hopkins
 

Peter Hurley is the real deal. Not only does he know and share a ton of really practical knowledge of studio lighting for headshots and fashion, but he cuts through the crap and tells it like it is. He is very encouraging and serious at the same time. He had our attention from Day 1. and never lost it. *Bonus Gold - You've got to check out his Hurely-isms. They are priceless! Aside from the new bag of industry tools to work from, Peter gave me a real, sober perspective on what it takes to be PROFESSIONAL fashion photographer! And CreativeLive provided the perfect setting as well. The whole CL staff were warm and inviting and the food was great! I highly recommend CL and P. Hurley to anyone who wants to learn from the best of the best! I can't wait to start shooting with my new skill set. Sign up for CreativeLive! Take advantage of all that they have to offer! Build a foundation, own your light, and Shebang!!! You'll be at the top of your game in no time!

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES