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Dark Background & Light Foreground Scenario

Lesson 11 from: Strategies for Shooting in Difficult Situations

Susan Stripling

Dark Background & Light Foreground Scenario

Lesson 11 from: Strategies for Shooting in Difficult Situations

Susan Stripling

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Lesson Info

11. Dark Background & Light Foreground Scenario

Lesson Info

Dark Background & Light Foreground Scenario

From there I took that ring off I use the same lighting scenario the same chair and I put her ring on it very similar one o five millimeter one hundred sixty eighth of a second f eleven now I need f eleven because I want this whole ring to be in focus and you can even see for those of you who are looking on it on the screen at home this part of the ring is in focus right here the main forefront but once you get to the side stones those aren't even in focus that's f eleven right because of the magnification of the macro lens which a lot of people forget about I s o fifty six hundred still inoperative priority why did I have to take my exposure compensation from minus one seven two minus three three between the image before and the image here well the difference of the shadow and light got even mohr prominent I literally have black and bright in here and that's it if you look at the history ram it does this like so there's a lot of bright and there's a lot of dark I'll just punch this th...

ing over backwards creatively I would never have me back again if I killed their tv you have to be smarter than your cameras meter you have to either change this on manual and fix it yourself or know that if you're going to be on aperture priority for something like this that you're going to take it down several stops if that makes a mes same scenario not changing anything about the light not changing my background I just tossed down her bracelet same thing one of five hundred sixty eighth of a second three eight why three eight at three eight the smallest smallest bit of this bracelet is in focus so little such a small depth of field but that's what I wanted I wanted it to come from very out of focus into sharpness and then literally just fade away into a ditch indistinct blob at the edge of the image that going to f three eight changed my eyes so remember how high I was before now that my my s stop has gone to three eight my I s oken come down it's not eleven and my exposure compensation is still hovering around about minus three stops so now lest you all think I shooting fancy places all the time I'm still in the hotel room it's actually the same hotel room as the images before it's just the other suite that the other side of the suite right like it had like a little living room sitting area in the bedroom I've been in the bedroom this is the living room sitting area and you see this this light that's coming through right here I saw it and I saw the patches it was making on the ground and if the table wasn't there it would've continued to be like a long strip of light right there but I needed to get the shoes up I didn't like just sitting them on the ground I didn't like the the foreground and background very much so I just put them up on that particleboard you know what I mean table right there but I put them right in the light because I wanted them right in the light so if you think oh I can only make images with really great light if I'm like you know jose via and I live in southern california and everything is like drenched in this aura of beautiful light you could make beautiful light even in like the radisson in levittown pennsylvania it's gorgeous no matter what but what I wanted was the little curve ah a little loop at the end of her shoe laces because it looked like it made a little heart I thought it was cute like a little infinity heart so I still had my macro on there one one thousandth of a second at three too and also one hundred well one one thousandth of a second what's that all about you know I'm staying around a hundred like a sixtieth and eightieth one hundred sixtieth why am I all of a sudden it s o I'm sorry why am I all of a sudden it shutter speed one one thousandth of a second we're talking about using auto? Eso the lowest I can go is s o one hundred so when you hit I s so one hundred if it was s o one hundred one hundred sixty eight of a second this image is not going to look like this that's those were the wrong settings at one hundred sixty eighth of a second it's it's actually terrible so what auto eso does there is it allows your shutter speed to start rising usually what auto I s o is doing is keeping you from a bad situation whereas it gets a darker it's adjusting so that you can stay at the shutter speed that you want to be at well when it is so bright that your aperture that your essay was actually is low as it can go it feels fine teo adjust your shutter speed on up so that's why it's so high is because my eye is so is so low f three two because when you combo three two with one hundred five millimeter macro straight up literally that is the only thing that is going to be in focus everything else is going to be gone aperture priority minus point three because exposure wasn't quite there so you could do a lot you could make beautifully lit images in a radisson and you don't need a lot of space when you're working with a macro you really only need a very small amount of good light because you are only capturing a very small amount of space if that makes sense yes susan yes co for we discussed yeah yes it is kind of scary to make a couple questions about what you've been doing so far why not let it idle and one other want to know if you could talk briefly about how you choose your focus mode and focus area in camera when you're doing such like really shallow depth of field shots how are you focusing I'm always on single and never on continuous because I'm too much of us passed honestly I I've always hated continuous and it's just a personal preference I don't like it don't use it for anything ever in fact every once in a while I bump it and I think I've gone crazy ondas faras where my focal points are I'm generally a center focal point and recompose shooter unless I'm at like two two or shallower and then I have to get my focal point right exactly on my subject or else it's going to be out of focus we have an audience question yes eso what kind of white balance I using are you thinking about the album at the end of it because if you're using our picture priority and the eyes so I mean the colors keep changing are you thinking about that when you're shooting off yes and no I used to shoot a lot on cloudy white balance now that I'm at the d seven, fifty auto white balance is generally sco bang on perfect I'm either on auto white balance all day long or when I put a flash on my camera or use a flash off camera I changed over to flash just cause it warms it up a little bit we do you know tweak the white balance in post a little bit to make it better but it it is going to vary throughout the day as light comes up like goes down rooms change so on and so forth but I don't go crazy dialing and like custom color temperatures or anything like that because quiet you know if I were maura commercial shooter if I were more of a portrait shooter it might be more urgent to get it right at the very beginning but because the light on in the wedding's just changes so fast and the white balance khun change as you just circle around in a room I'm not gonna try to nail it every single time I'm going to use auto because I know it's going to get me apparently close yvonne and a couple other people also wanted to know when you're talking about using the ice light we know that those air great products but but expensive use a video light or led or something else instead of you I have lit a ring shot with the light from my iphone before I mean you couldn't light a bigger thing with that but yeah and led I for the longest time I used a twenty for ninety nine light that I bought on amazon that was horrible broke over and over and over again but it was twenty four, ninety nine I just buy another one um yeah you don't have to go all the way to the top like I said with any of your gear start with something smaller easier something you can afford at one point in time I actually bought one of those like flashlights that look kind of like a gun from home depot the ones that took a big flashlight it's got a handle and you pull it and it's like a love light he's one of those for a while I mean the white balance was terrible but it was like twenty dollars so you know as the prices do get higher you get a better quality you get a better color temperature of light but there's no need to go out and drop hundreds of dollars on something if number one you're not sure you're going to use it or number two you don't have the budget for it like do not break the bank over your gear it's not worth it it's just it's just not a good thing for people to hear uh yeah I'm I am a huge thats why when we did thirty days we did all of the business stuff and we did financials and pricing information and my big thing is don't buy everything on credit cards don't buy more than you need don't overextend yourself because the worst thing that you can be when you're in business is financially terrified I mean we're all financially terrified enough as it is you don't have to you know add on mountains of dead if you don't have to on dh then maybe one more and I know there's something that we did touch on earlier but it does keep coming up so I want to talk about a little bit more roco photo time photo couple that people wanted to know how is the so so high not showing any noise how are you not seeing straight up nailing the exposure and again I'm not standing up here saying I am the awesome ist ein el my exposure everytime I totally don't like I don't but when you are up there way high with your eyes so you have to be bang on with the exposure and you have to not go crazy cropping your image afterwards because the second you start cropping and pushing and pulling the file all over the place it's going to start showing every single bit of that noise I also use attached to my there's there's two other things that I do that smooth the image but it's too smooth skin it's not to smooth the images itself jeffrey friedel f r I e d l if you look him up he actually is a plug plug in for light room that will allow you to manage the noise of an image on export. I don't have the exact I'll find the exact information later. If you follow me on twitter, which is susan stripling or if you go on facebook and look for susan stripling is the dynamic range come, I have a facebook group come join our group. I will approve you guys that lunch I promised everyone of you in all posted the jeffrey friedel information in that dynamic range group later today so that you have it and also I use portraiture, it's my final step before delivery, deliver a gallery to a client. I just do a quick batch with portraiture at a very, very, very low setting. It's not to smooth the noise and the images to smooth face is just a hair, but a nice side effect is it often sometimes smoothes anything that looks roughly like a skin tone in the image, but none of this like when you see these images, I've not gone in and heavily manipulated noise at all, because if I did that, then I'm not teaching you correctly.

Ratings and Reviews

user 1c7bd6
 

Wow! Fabulous course! Ditto with the above reviews! Thank you, Susan, for giving us such helpful information for shooting weddings in such challenging situations. You have such a brilliant and quick mind for making the magic happen! The camera settings by each photograph was so very helpful. Since I didn't write anything down I shall be in search of your books. Susan's class is a must for anyone considering a career in Wedding Photography. Thank you Suan and Creative Live!

Kat Penniman
 

As the description says: MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING! Spot on! Thank you Susan for sharing what you know and helping me become a more creative photographer despite less-than-perfect scenarios. As photographers, oftentimes, we find ourselves placed in a position where we are expected to create beautiful photos in the midst of difficult situations like low light scenes or crappy background. Her explanations are very clear and she definitely knows her craft. She cares about her clients and she's determined to give them great pictures despite what's thrown at her. If you are a strobist or use flash in most of your work, this course is not for you. But if you a natural light photographer and sometimes struggles to take photos indoor where light source is very challenging, take this course! You won't regret it!

Jessica Lindsay-Sonkin
 

Susan is amazing. This class is a pile of case studies, with behind the scenes and camera settings, to help you find the light. There are parts that can be repetitive, but that is because Susan is passionate about helping photographers memorize this message and put it into practice. A worthwhile watch!

Student Work

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