Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: Iconic Male

We've created two dynamic sets here on a budget I had these wonderful fabric backgrounds that are actually photographic prints on cloth from denny manufacturing, and the first time I met these people, I absolutely love the backgrounds I thought, what a great idea! I don't have to leave my house, I could do things right there. I don't my studio, I could do it right there and make it light it do other things with it, and this particular background looks so incredibly ria, when it's photographed, I have done things like put like from behind it, so it looks like some lights coming through the window as well as put light on it or let it fall of darkness and what we're going to be doing today with this is making I call it an iconic portrait of him of has kim jon, where you ran somewhere, I've asked him to dress sort of like a rocker, meaning that this would be also something you could use is a headshot for an actor, but it wouldn't be the first or the second choice would be the third thing y...

ou come up with, I'm gonna have you kind of sit on, maybe put a foot down, yeah, and then I would take your shoe off your left leg and put it up on this boxing kicking for shooting aside so I don't know how started those boxes are so don't jiggle around too much. So what we did here was grab some palace and rocks and boulders and pulled together some boxes that were vintage like old coca cola boxes, fruit stand boxes or toolboxes, and pulled him into the set used roofing paper tar all things that are inexpensive and not to mention all the gravel on everything from outside, and we're going to repurpose all of this stuff and do it in another shoot or two over the next two days. One man's trash is another man's treasure, right? So what I was trying to do with this is get something that looked like it was authentic to what the background wass and then dressed him appropriately, and because there's paper and stuff on the ground is going to make it really easy for cleanup. We don't mind is that because tourney is already torn save your old saint lys paper, we use it again. Use it till it's like dirty, dirty, dirty instead of working against it by throwing it away repurpose it and use it as it's supposed to be dirty you worked on getting it that way, you must keep it right what I have set up here, I've got two shoots set this plan here one is hidden here in the background behind us when I'm working in a studio like much like I like to work when I'm in atlanta and photo studios because I have so much room in there, I can have three sets going on on one set of a nice psych wall has big you like this and I can have two sets here forty five degree angles I'll have to do to turn the light and then set up, yet a third over here makes it easy on me makes it easy on the system. We put the table in the middle and I just turned my job focused too that I go into the job knowing that when I set up in the morning so he'll have to do is just bring it home and make the shots happened right there know what kind of light I want to see wei have speed lights set up here. Wei have the polo strip banks on, I have you can see this one here has a grid in it. What I'm doing with the speed lights is I'm redirecting the quality of light through a soft box, so we have self white now, and I'm going to direct where that light goes, like controlling the spray of a spray can down two through a tiny tube, so just enough light falls right on him and the background can fall to darkness. What's ultimately going to happen is it looks like we're seeing everything here but it's going to read totally differently because we're controlling the spread of the light, so knowing that can exist, I could shoot with one or two split light makes muscle tone show up, creating shadow as your friend is supposed to your enemy. We just talked about canceling out all the shadow that we're going to bring the shadow because we're shooting him shadow makes things interesting. It defines formative bustles, arms faces all of that when you're shooting someone's body lets that took his shirt off when we were shooting his body, the sidelight would be great on his body, but it's going to be a little interesting on the face, maybe too much so you have to work your poses into the light with the face or work with one working with an extra curvy person challenging bodies is what I call it. I use strip lights in a darker background and sometimes also use only one and sometimes in the severe case, I might only use a black card on one side and loud the darkness to be my friend. The last shoot we're going to do on tuesday we're going to do some of that shit just slender, slender little split of lighting on one side to make art happen. So what you have to do when you have those challenges is focus on the great things. So as soon as I saw his picture the first thing I saw was a sculpture of his face kind of his hair muscles got a great v shape. Well, we want to show that off, right? So any pose I put him in in front of this light is probably going to be wonderful with the shadowing on his arms everything's gonna look like it's even more. Most of the people that come to me that want to shoot a body shot I want to see more muscles. Most people look great in the mirror, but they're not used to seeing themselves in the studio like if you put too much light on somebody with muscles like we did the beauty shots guess what happens flat? So you just have to think with a different thinking camp for this type of lighting so I have loved this little card by the way, I've got everything on here I need to put a little, you know, non skid, rubberized fabric, here's some nothing will fall off and I just moving around wherever I need to be have all my lenses right there I've got my eye slights because I'm going to bring these out and do a couple interesting media lights I might even let him hold one or two and I've got my loot my glasses and everything right here at hand I'm going to need a stool actually could bring me an apple box I think I might be fine with that it doesn't have to be a new one so the house lights are on which is fine we need them because we don't have a modeling like in our speed life so I'm going to sit down and try to find a spot there I'm right at his eye I'm going to try to shoot this where I have all the way down to his fingers in his knees but the focus is really going to be about his face even though she eating more of his body ultimately it will be a head shot um I have this sent on tl er which means I'm allowing the camera to meet her for me there is ambient light available that we can use if I let the shutter speed go down low enough right our shoot with high end if I s so I am going to start this at a neutral setting no plus or minus and will take a shot and see where we are just a little bit still got the seventy two one excuse me seventies who three hundred lands on beautiful the set looks amazing joy's beautiful when you're doing the test on this field lights it fires once at the time so that you can see them all fire which is really cool when you shoot of course it's simultaneous beautiful awesome that's the first one it's actually really pretty I think what I'm going to do here that was raise up the shutter speed so I can have more ambient light and drop my excuse me raise up my eyes so so I can have more ambient light showing all right you take one more peek here dropped down to beautiful there is still the same that's beautiful I think what I'm going to do you guys can you put together one more like forty speed light with how about about that gun at a light so he looks great all the lights emphasizing his face in arms and body let's take that one around to the back ground it kind of sited over in that corner so what's your thought process to add this new life I feel like I want to see just a little more of the background and I raised up my s o two three twenty and down to sixty second I'm still not seeing enough so what I'd like to do there is kind of fan the light away from the background so just a little bit of it shows so I'm going to give a little construction to the background another thought I could do was to put light actually behind it and let illumination come through the window because it wouldn't take much to show through that is like a big soft box back there in fact you want to try doing that let's take the south box off was try that to start and see what we get there's amazing color in the background to the background was great in black and white or in color so your expressions for this I would work with kind of weird would be a bad guy I'm gonna be pissed off at me I think sometimes when posing is happening like that is hard to hold that expression so I don't want him to try to look at me for five minutes while I'm tinkering around with the lights with holding this expression because the intention of it is lost after he sits there for a few minutes so it's sometimes better if he looks down and looks up and brings it and I click it then he looks away and come back and look at me again I click it because you want to catch him but at the height of the expression so it really says what you're trying to ask for if you miss it or you haven't sit there too long then you lose that hopper opportunity I think could you maybe talk a little bit about your choice of the lens phil birdie is wondering why the seventy two three hundred rather than the ever popular seventy two two hundred I personally tested this lens against the seventy two two hundred I thought it was sharper and to be honest with you I don't know about everybody else but it was too heavy for me the weight of it and the lynns distance the addition of having it up to three hundred just kind of stepped up to being my favorite linds on you know packing now when I go to the airport is an issue even when I came here it was an issue you have to forego what am I going to use what's the one or two things I have tohave and for me it's usually a wider lens up to where this one begins twenty four to seventeen in this up to three hundred I kind of feel like even if I went on a vacation I could cover it I have something to show you beauty with can get a long distance if I want to shoot something that's far away from me so basically that's how this is all kind of come about with this lens all right wanted to attest make sure it's firing yes let's take a test and see where we're at beautiful the set looks amazing only I could see the flash going off in the background looks pretty good um can you turn it toward the wall instead of toward him and there's a wrinkle in the backdrop at the bottom kind of point that also point the light tip it down a little bit like this toward the wall so what I'm doing is as you face you it's got a bright spot in the middle of a hot spot in the middle if I turn it away from me it will bounce off that wall and flatten it out a little bit we find to put some rogue jails on it too do you want to grab some of those same color bring a gel pack out of one of the road kits out the ones that are the long strips weaken maybe places have some fun with building the color in the background so when you're shooting to me and iconic headshot or something that would be maur editorial type portrait you could have fun with color like that there's not all the astringent limitations of what everybody else wants you want to make the person look dynamic but you really want to add some style and flair when you can again start safe and then build on it it's okay to have him sitting there shooting him for twenty twenty minutes twenty five minutes and then that jazz it up a little bit if you've got somebody that's really nervous start with a head shot then moved to the three quarter and then keep the person moving on and off the set every time they come back us what they're more comfortable than they were before so I'm going to start shooting a little bit of this because I actually like the way that looked on going to start zoomed in all right let's take bring your hand with the bracelet out kind of maybe having underneath your chin a little bit let me come in closely to you and do a couple of good shots good keep your face kind of very intense great, beautiful awesome you turn your head here like this but cut your neck with your hands good, beautiful, handsome squinted a little bit beautiful beautiful hold it awesome let's have your back up a little taller. Great, beautiful, awesome. All right, now maybe turn. Look into this light a little bit great. Beautiful. Keep your shoulders strong and your arms kind of flex like that plane over out onto your knee a little bit more good, beautiful. Can you tip your head like this until little bit? Now look up at me. Good. Turn your nose toward me. Just a touch beautiful little more great. Turn all the way around it's right into me lean your head forward and down beautiful awesome! So when you're using the speed light if any of your batteries are low the signal comes from here after it circulates around all of them and it will tell you everything's charged and there's a little symbol that'll pop up here if you start to notice that there's a big delay, you don't have them all set up to synchronize together or you have it set so it will draw from the batteries in the camera and not from your external. So tomorrow when I show you how to set that up, you're going to really appreciate that because you see how fast everything recharges, you have to shift it in your custom functions to set to the external battery. So you're gonna love that setting as well if you're using speed lights. So what I'd like to do now is joyce, do you think the low box is strong enough for him to sit on? Do you think that lower box is strong enough for you to center? Yeah, have a seat down there great and turn to the side a little bit and you guys can we pull the lights up a little bit so he's these lights just pull him a little bit forward, you can turn this drove more toward the background just have one lights turn your body this way you turn that box on its end, push that toward the background and just turn the head that way that's great comfortable there great. All right, let's, bring this around in front of him. Just a touch so it's lining him straight up but great awesome history don't get too far away. All right, let's do another little test so when I'm looking at the background just like he would in reality you want to make sure there's nothing that's converging lines right into his head like right at his eyes could be above or below and I will just change my angle around that. So now we have from looking at that shot we have light on the background um let's gel it did you bring the joe packs? All right, let's, show them these things so these are really cool. This is a delicate that comes from rome, and even though I'm working in this speed lights, they have these standard gels that are cut to fit the actual speed like is your head? So I'm thinking that the background needs to be green or brown or something along those lines so let's do it pick one of those and we just change it up just a little bit. This is wonderful there cinema jails and color correction pump up green bright green every time I use them I have to reorganize them they're good ones, right great there's a brown one in here too that you might contrive brand one might even be the best, actually, yeah, brown first her two seconds because I can't flash thing while she's looking at the strobe let's see there's quite a few questions coming in, this one from unsteady and also san diego and a few others who are wondering about your speed light settings. If you wouldn't mind talking about that, I'm sure when you would you go into e t t l settings and also, if you wouldn't mind going into zoom power output. Okay, great. I I have these set up on group mode, and from there I'm powering all of them from the top of my transmitter. My transmitter is telling them exactly how much power to put out. Right now. I have him set on a group and they're kind of all balance to uneven setting because of a split light. But I can choose from the transmitter to actually change the power of each individual light, which is very cool, and I never have to get up and move or ask her to do it. After you realize how simple it is to change all of the settings here. It just really makes it super easy power output right now I have them set at full power, but I can drop them down. Minus three if I like on either side of have that latitude and I could also go into each one of the groups and change if I want to set one to manual went to tl or are however I would like to set them individually but they're right now all set is a group on the group mode allows me to have the most control over that so you are losing a little bit of the output because it's going through soft box and then threw agree on things like that but the flash on the background has nothing on it now, but it gels that was going to appear a lot brighter even though they're all set on the same setting so let's do one more test shot with with you um as you are there when we take a peek it circumstance here great let's get you in a little bit more interesting pose here great think I shall want you back up onto think your foot a little higher you scoot back and put your foot back on that so loud you having the foot up in the air gave you a little more support with your that's actually great turning a little bit of an angle just so it's not tangent with the camera that's great and then flex your shoulder there a little bit great beautiful can't wait to see what the brown jail does in the background so the gels have added such a level of creativity well it's going to change everything that's really nice don't you think so we could tone it down a little bit but it looks like the sun is setting coming through that window doesn't I think I think we have something here we could work with so what I usually do it once and say okay I like it then that's when I start rocking out the shot all right so why don't we start with you just kind of doing some interesting faces here to get some expression going there god just kind of keep yourself looking a little bit upset a little bit concerned and your face just needs to turn from side to side to filter into those lights I'm going to shoot one or two full length beautiful there's a little wrinkle on the bottom of the backdrop that I c can you just pull that a little tighter right at the light stand that's great you got it that's good beautiful one or two more over the full link beautiful awesome beautiful awesome why don't we try just for fun now that we have this beautiful light and let's have you sit down on that turn a little bit around this way this way toward the light here stan do you have your cake pan handy little reflector just kind of put that underneath his face a little bit put it up high flat beautiful great and just kind of lean in to her a little bit like this turn your head toward me hear beautiful awesome beautiful turn your head a little bit to the light beautiful more think we had a flash at that point great good make fists with your hands but one in the other good it's beautiful awesome hang on we have to wait for that recharge come up I had one where skip the flash wasn't recharged that's wonderful so with this you can get outside of that box of shooting straight into the eye ah when you get into art and fashion and things like that you can change the camera angle a little bit from shooting directly in the eyes but he still needs to have his interest point straight at you so let me turn you around that way little bit more great khun just her gran's put your fists underneath your arms there that's great come out on your elbows on your knees sorry you did the right thing even without me saying the wrong thing beautiful turn your head into your shoulder a little bit good by telling your back teeth and then turned had a little straighter here for me beautiful awesome yeah it's gonna pop up there in a minute this is this lois it'll get we need to pop this crate out of here and tip the head down so I love the way the backgrounds photographing the depth of field and I'm at about I'm an f nine there, and I still think is interesting enough, but not distracting. You might want to pull a little bit of the warmth out. I still feel we could pull something up from this, so I just asked her to pull the grid out so we have a little more light just a little bit toward in that's great. So since she's got the little head on there for the speed light, she could tip it and adjust the whole thing down. We'll show you how these air made it right at the very end. I'll tell you, this is lois, it'll go way over way. No. Well, actually, that might not be a bad idea handy. So she just made a suggestion to me. There's two stands that I love tto have we all get in the habit of buying light stands and there the standard size my favorite light stands that I owned I used like every day there's a little. Why aren't x that you could get that sits on the floor and you can put a little plug and it's about this tall and I cannot tell you how many times I have to have kick light right on the ground. So you want to buy a couple of those little pieces and with different links one about two engines one about four because when you get into unusual places like this, how great is it? If I could put the light right here on the stand will only go down so far bogan makes a super clamped is another thing that I used quite a bit have like six of those things and that could put the light here if I wanted and lower it to here and at least have a go to we can make the light into another stand so having little things that you can work with to change the lighter put the letter you want is also key I still can't get over had that background change one speed like like sen wonderful. Just one more example you might have to have the pole this is gonna be too short actually, you know what? Take this way. Yeah, just just turn toward me a little bit beautiful. You know what might be kind of fun. So it's shoes down on the ground can we move that box off to that corner and a have you lie down on your tummy it's a guy that's why beautiful and then you want to get your shoulders right up next to that put the bracelet arm on top listen, someone going down so the only thing I want to change is I have a tangent box in the background can we raise the box laid over and I might like to see that fabric closer to him look at me this box right here just lean it over on an angle and I love the fabric and I'd like to see it yeah can you just pick it up and put it in that box can you inch see how there's like a gap with the gravel can you inch into that beautiful it looks like you're in the war zone but I'm always looking for something interesting I just pushed the lobby button and my shifting beautiful that looks amazing um wow all right that's really awesome all right what I'd like for you to do is just turn your head and your shoulder a little bit more on the hand that's holding here can you just make a fist and push your arm forward so you push them up we'll have a little bit more turn your head into shoulder a little bit it's the lights over there beautiful kind of really push it in there squint your eyes down a little bit beautiful awesome beautiful and one last one that's absolutely beautiful you guys so what do you think this is awesome in that really pretty and you could crop into it make it a vertical and a good tight shot but the background on the whole setting, all of it, is important. So the light here that's on the top speed, like to my right, is what's lighting all the fabric and it's very subtle. We didn't agree it off the front line, so now we're a little bit broader light sources we were working with, and I think we worked through this till we got something really amazing. Thank you for laying in the dirt for us. It was awesome. You have a great face, you're welcome, and thank you for lying in with.