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Lesson Info

More Light Control, Just Grid It!

In this video it's all about mohr like control via the grid now if you've been paying attention to this chapter then you'll realize that we started a chapter with a modifier that has basically no like control the umbrella it allows light to essentially spill everywhere into a scene while placing a little oven emphasis giving more light toe where they're essentially the flash is focused or wherever that umbrella is pointed but still that light kind of spills all over with the apollo strip and the apollo or that we showed you these soft boxes they give you maur like control but again they're still gonna have some spill around the edges they're going to open up that's where we essentially get mohr control we can add these modifiers and then get additional light controlled by adding grids onto them. Now we're not going to go too far in depth on this course because again we expect you to already know this from lighting one o one but what is a grit essentially do well it just cuts off the di...

rectionality of light so essentially when I turned the grid just a little bit you'll see that I disappear and I reappear okay, so the grid essentially prevents light from spilling out wide okay? And it just funneled that life forward the dear serena grid versus say a snoot is that a snoot can throw light a further distance than a grid camp but essentially they're kind of doing a very similar thing they're controlling and they're pinning that light toe one specific area of the image so let's go over this shot over here on the right let's talk through what we did here now this is for our we did this awesome triumph tribute shoot I love doing style session laura stiles shoots because they're just really fun it's a chance for me to play around to really fall back in love with photography so this was a style shoot that I wanted to do for a while this is just in a local park, okay, just a local park for crying out loud. We're shooting in the morning now for compositional attributes. What I wanted was f one point for for one a shallot at the field that natural lin's been getting and also the boca effect that we get over that backlit kind of trees and stuff in the background, the fog and everything the background thought look really cool, shallow and really created great separation the subject. Now we're working in the morning, so this is actually a sunrise shoot. And while we got up for sunrise when it having a little couple snafu every shoot has a couple things that go wrong, so we didn't start until like two hours past when we actually wanted to start shooting so with sink we had initially in the morning we had the perfect amount of light that we could have shot this without any neutral density filter or high speed sync, but by the time we started shooting we had too much light so we actually needed to get at least a three stop neutral density filter but here's the thing at the time I was actually shooting with my sing ray filters my sing great neutral density filters, which are great filters by all means but for the price again that I can't recommend enough the tiffin filters because for the price and what you're getting, you're getting equal if not superior optical quality for a far smaller price okay, so I had a three to five stops sing gray and the five stop was the one that actually had good optical quality, so I opted for that one even though in this scene you really only need a three stop andy filter because we're dealing with kind of overcast and fog and that kind of stuff it's not hard midday sun is kind of softened already. All right, so we have that taken care of with our three stuff and the filter we're shooting wide at one point four and so with the three stop r shutter speed at one, one hundred is over two hundred we get the ambu light to kind of that nice dark enough point now what is my exposure for I mean you can see over here on the left side this is with the significant failure art one one hundred a second at one point four so eight hundred this is the five stop nd it six thousand kelvin this is att f one point for is a two hundred and the five soft nd so basically we have the same shutter speed with the same aperture but this is to stop darker in s o right and you can see how much more dramatic it looks without two stops I don't want to go so far that we get, you know, lots of dark colors up here because then we lose the branches in that book effect if we darkened down further than that. But two stops was adequate to kind of really make that fog pop to get him into kind of darker range where we can add light and create a great split light look so this is the choice of aniela exposure and from here we just need to add our flash. So what do we do with the light direction? The quality we place our three foe takes metros is into our brackets we have are three our triangle bracket we plays into a westcott apollo orb so the orb is the larger soft box of the orb in the strip and then we place the diffuser over the, uh the soft box and also the grid on the outside of that. So now we're basically preventing the light from spilling out remember that a grid will absorb, it'll cut down light, okay, so in addition to funding like it does reduce light as well. So you need to be in a scene where you have enough light power because we're defusing and we are gritting. So those two things cut down quite a bit of light, which means that even in this kind of a scene where it's not mid day sun, we still have to bring the modifier we start to bring the light source very close to our model, so the light source is being held just two camera right now. Why did I select that angle for the shot will again if you notice his pose and his placement this's very deliberate, I've placed the sun over on the side of the frame. Why? Because it's gonna light up the rays of fog that we're adding to the scene, and also it creates a rim light on the left side, his face. If I were the light from that side, it really would if I had a light from the left side, not only would have an issue with distance to the subject, but then also really would de emphasize that entire rim light so I go opposite the sun, so that way so we create this light there and the rim light creates a beautiful edge on the other side of his body to create depth and dimension and add shape to his face and his form. What do we do with that light? We bring it off to the right. Significantly. Why? Because you want to create a very dramatic look, and we achieved that by split letting his face. So what we can do here is we can split light by having him, lou, look into the camera. But if I haven't just bring the chin over to the left and look towards the light source, we can get a rembrandt light. So it's a nice little direction there where we can kind of just use the models position to adjust how what kind of light pattern would get onto the face? Okay, so the test shot was with the camera looking with the model, looking in the camera, the flash to emulate was solid and look fantastic. And then from there we just start basically shooting our light color white balance was at six thousand kelvin I love shooting scenes like this with a bit of warmth to it, so add, I'll shoot like six, six k or six thousand kelvin just to give it that warmth and that look all right. We have our asse faras the posing the frame, the shot. Like I said, we place is back in place. The motorcycle there so that the sun would light it from the side. And so we get these rays notice that we use the rays as leading lines. This this entire shot has purpose behind it are raised. Come in their leading lines that bring us right into our subject. Right here in that right piece of the frame. So we added with his beautiful composition, nothing is unintentional. This is not by accident. This is all deliberate. I want you guys to get used to that. Get used to posing and framing and using the natural elements of the scene toe add to your image. The last thing to mention here is that we actually added our own fun. And we did that with a roscoe many v I originally had the roscoe nineteen hundred, I think. And that thing was so ridiculously powerful that I ended up just trading it and getting a smaller one. The roscoe many of you. And when I brought the mini me out to the scene, I was like, it might not be enough power, it might not be in a fog. To fill this entire scene and I surprised myself because when that thing going full blast is definitely enough fog to fill a scene like this, the only trick to that is that you need to make sure that you have an assistant or someone there to open up that fog because there's gonna be wind even the smallest amount of wind which is always present is going to be constantly moving and shifting that fog around. What we want to do is get a nice, even fog spread around the entire background, so that way we have the opportunity for these light rays to come through when the fog is kind of poofed up into these cloud types shapes we don't get that kind of a look, and it doesn't look very even it doesn't look natural ends up looking just like someone added a cloud of smoke to a shot, so actually had our assistant logan, who is well he's more than just a assistant he's actually manning the camera's here he's, one of our just impeccable production crew that does camerawork that does everything and he is a master of laughter, but he was wafting fog like nobody's business man with there's reflector out there just waft in the fog and he got a perfect even spread across a shot as soon as we get those spreads, you know they only last for about five, ten seconds when you get that fog and just the right spot, you have to be ready to have to shoot because it's very short lived and then you have to again kind of play and move the fog into the right position. So that's that there again with each shot with each adjusting the pose, we're analyzing the highlights from the rim light and we're analyzing the shadows, making sure that everything looks good. The apollo orb is the perfect light source for this shot because it's a little bit bigger and it helps us to light a little more. The area lights a little bit more of the motorcycle everything, as we have the subject over a larger area, but we're using that grid toe to prevent it from basically spilling like onto the ground, other places in the shot. So we end up with, like this light that looks just fantastic because we're not ruining the dramatic nous of these shadows, and we're paying the light just to exactly where we want in this final image, and it looks fantastic. So that's how he moved from this, you know, basically this shot with just ambient light on ly with just the fog just exposed for skin over to our shot right here, where we're exposing for what we want the amulet to be with that darker look over to the final shot where we've now added our light via the the the three foetuses firing through the west kind of paula or by the way, as far as power settings for this type of a shot, you're going to be anywhere between one quarter toe full power to get enough light onto your subjects especially given that we're using a five stop the only reason that we have a little bit we might be able to adjust down like maybe one quarter one half power is because we have the iso boost it a little bit were also at one point four so we're allowing a little more light in but that five stop is cutting down a lot of that and we're also using a diffuser in a grid on top of it too which is cutting on more light so get your life source placed close to the subject and make sure that you have enough power coming out of it you'll get really great images like this one now last thing as far as power goes, just remember that your pocket strobes have limitations with a shot like this were working in overcast type conditions that aren't super bright and we still have the flashes at one half one quarter even up to full power in that range with three of them going through that modifier placed very close to the face so you're going to remember that because when it gets to mid day light, we're just not gonna have enough power, so you want to work within the limitations of what you've gotten. Don't be surprised. Once you start adding a five stop on their once you start adding diffusion and grids, your pocket strobes are just not going to be quite enough. So be ready to take him with the full power and use three of them if needed. Once you get over the mid day light, then we're gonna need to convert and use medium strobes. Either that or you just get ten pocket strobes and just put ten of them up and then do that. But that kind of gets a little cumbersome. Frankly, hopefully you all enjoyed this little tutorial. Let's. Go to the next video now. Video seven, take one. I am your god. Uh, I need a fan so I could get the proper effect. Grins. Just don't do it. Actually. Okay. Ah wei. Perfect. Okay, kill the dog and then waft over this way a little bit. So kind of get inside of it a little more, logan. So step in and then waft over. You know what, let's? Keep going with the fog and dissipate so quick?