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Flashed Double Exposure - Adding Scene Elements

Lesson 25 from: Lighting 301

Pye Jirsa, SLR Lounge

Flashed Double Exposure - Adding Scene Elements

Lesson 25 from: Lighting 301

Pye Jirsa, SLR Lounge

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Lesson Info

25. Flashed Double Exposure - Adding Scene Elements

Using a double exposure technique to create otherwise impossible shots, Pye combines a photo of a light fixture in a parking garage with a backlit image of two subjects. Post-production instruction is included in this lesson.

Lesson Info

Flashed Double Exposure - Adding Scene Elements

as we close out lighting three. With these last few videos, it's really all about adding additional creativity and your shots. And in this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to use double exposures to add scene elements into an image when it's otherwise really not possible to do. And for the specific example. Well, there's a parking lot that I really wanted to get this shot in, but I couldn't because we weren't permitted to shoot there. So as soon as I took a shot security cards already there and asking us to not take pictures. So I got a shot of the light fixture What you're going to see, and I'm going to actually just incorporate that into a later photograph, using the in camera double exposure I can perfect it and post if I'd like. But hopefully this will give you a few more ideas as we go ahead and dive into the video because we're working in the shadows and we have this shade, I'm going to take advantage into one other shot just so I can get this image in camera where they're kin...

d of frame directly below that light that we did in the last video. So let's do that here. I'm gonna go ahead and use these two lights and let's place them now against this wall, I said in an earlier video What I meant was earlier in the day. So this is actually right after we parked our cars. Now, when we were unloading equipment to come and do this shoot, security was already over to us saying that we couldn't shoot in the parking structure so we know this were not permitted to be there, so we didn't have the client's posing underneath anything. But that doesn't stop me from being able to get this photograph to be able to use it later, and that's exactly what we're doing here. It's the same thing that we did with Heath and Gina when it wasn't possible. It's not safe to put them in the middle of street, so we simply shoot them separate, and we'll incorporate via an in camera or a post double exposure BC and Taylor. I'm gonna have you guys actually standing like right here and holding hands with a little bit of distance between both of you. I didn't explain, but the reason that I liked this door was it was a natural framing object that creates a very dark background directly behind the couple. So this means that if I wanted to use the image to basically screen as a layer in Photoshop, it would be very easy to do so. There we go. Right there, guys. So, essentially, what I want to do is I'm gonna get a quick test shot. We already set up our lighting. We already did all that in the last video, so I really don't need to worry about that too much. What I'm gonna do is go ahead and get a focus. Are the other lights off right now? Mhm. Okay. And then what we're gonna do is take a quick shot. Making sure that all we have is then lit up at the bottom of this frame. And that's exactly what we have. We have a tiny issue where we're lighting the outside edges of the of the kind of door frame. So I kind of almost think that might actually look cool in the shot. So let's keep that now. Taylor, can you take a tiny, tiny step this way? Right there? Perfect. Right there. I love that, guys. Now, what I'm gonna do is go ahead and enable multiple exposures or select our second image. Okay. All right, guys. Now from right there, look toward each other. I love that smile. Earlier, we talked about faces. I mean, if I'm gonna be fair, there's a face hell faces that I am happy as f to be taking this photograph. Apparently. What do you think, Carlos? Content just happy is fine. Okay, What I'm gonna do is shoot down. So, guys, I know this is weird. They can go through. You can go through. This is gonna be weird because you're gonna lean from your hips towards me just a little bit, okay? So lean from the hip into me? Yep, into me. So the other way there and then turn, like, almost like this. So you're angling towards me. So, like the hip? Yep. From the hip. There you go. Right there. Looking at each other like that. That's cute. Many of you have probably seen us do this lean before. It's too correct. Perspective, distortion from shooting below. So we're basically shooting from below and up. And rather than having them straight up where They're kind of like their heads are getting smaller as they go away. We're correcting that by having them lean into the frame a little bit. That's so cute. I love that laugh. Hold that lap right there. Perfect. I love that. Now what I can do with this is I have both files as Ross right now, so I really have everything set up the way I want. I'm gonna make sure I'm just zoom in and just make sure the hair and everything is good. So what I might do is taylor just press the hair down, like, get all the hair behind you, and then press it down in the back. There you go right there And then look at each other smiling again. Hold hands and let's do that one more time. So I'm gonna go ahead and just go back into that double exposure mode. I want to select our first image. Got it. Okay. And Karen, I got you in a little bit. There you go. Guys. Look at each other. Smile with it. Here we go. Lean from the hips in the meal. A bit more. Right there. Right there. Right there. I love the laugh. Let's check it out. Perfect. Their frame just right, right underneath the light. Now, I have both those files as raws. So if I want to go in and perfect that double exposure, I totally can. But it's gonna be so easy because all I gotta do is basically layer the boat raw files into post and then everything else is done for me. I just mask in and out what I want and we're gonna show you that in the next video. So we're done. Let's keep going now. So I didn't want to lengthen this video out too much, but I did want to show you some of the in camera double exposures that we got, so we actually didn't see this lighting setup, but we already covered this lighting set up. It was the two light pin. We left everything dark around them. And then we took that that light element that we shot earlier, and we use that for the double exposure. I thought it was a cool and interesting shot, but I thought I'd just show you that in post because we weren't going to create the final image for this particular one. But it is a fun idea that I wanted to present to you guys. This is actually let's find the in camera double exposure for our final. Actually, I might have rejected it here, so let's go ahead and go to all images. Okay, so this was the in camera double exposure for the scene that we just did. This is what the camera rendered out. Now it looks nice, and we could essentially deliver this, but I kind of like my camera exposure. I like my double exposure to be a little more clean. And we have so many options in post that I thought be fun and maybe show you some of those different options and ideas. So let's do that. So what I'm gonna do is go ahead and jump out of this and let's grab our actual exercise files for this. So I'm gonna go over here. Let's grab the exercise files, which for this tutorial, we're gonna be using this guy as well as the light. There's the light. Okay, so let's just do this. Let's first process this image. And we have several different ways that we can go about this. This image is really shot to be kind of a dark image. So I'm not going to go and jump into this and really raise the exposure of dramatically because that's not what it's intended to be. So let's go ahead and keep it kind of dark. What I might do is add a little bit of shadow detail, but then kind of clip out my blacks a little bit. Keep it about right there and I'm also going to, let's see, leave the image a little bit on the cooler side, maybe, like right around 4200 Kelvin ish Calvin ish. I think it's a word. Okay, if we wanted to be completely cold, we totally could too. But I think I wanted to be a little bit on the warmer side. So this is totally fine as it is right here. And what I might do as well is just raise a little bit of my clarity and darkened a little bit of the exposure. Okay, so now I'm gonna grab the other image, this guy So honestly, if I want to make this easy for me, I'm just going to go ahead and select everything and blacken it all out. Okay? Everything except for that light fixture. So now all we have here is just this black image with the light that's standing out. I'm gonna grab both these and layer these. This stuff is so much fun to me because it opens up so much creative possibilities and what you can do. And as you start piecing all this together, you're going to see images that were never even possible before. Okay, so here we are in Photoshop and we have plenty of different options available to us if I just want to incorporate this kind of line that goes directly to our couples, all I would do is flip this top layer over to screen and screen is going to knock out anything that's black. And because we processed it too well for everything around it to be black, it works perfectly. I can also press V and I can actually move this over. If I press my arrow keys, I can actually move it directly into the center of our couple. Now, if you think the image is kind of cool like this, then by all means, keep it like that. But what I think might be more interesting is actually to Is this in the shot? No, let's not get it in the show. What I think might be cool is to basically put a blank black layer between this and let's do this. What I might do even is let's go ahead and make a new black layer. I'm going to fill this layer with our let's actually pick a color and see if we can't just select a color right here from the image. So I don't want Web only colours. Otherwise I'll just drop It is black. So I want just this kind of, like, nice, deep, dark tone that we have right here. It's almost like a dark, dark, dark blue. Okay, so I'm gonna press. OK, so we get that color dropped in notice that we do have a little bit of this, this object right here, kind of in the frame. So I'm just going to remove that you can paint black over if you want to. Whatever. So we have our line. That kind of leads into a couple. Now all I'm gonna do is place them up top just above that blue layer. Hold alter option and press the masking button. And we're going to go ahead and paint white now to reveal them directly in that spot. Now, this is really fun to me, because what we end up getting is this image that looks truly unique. And because we selected a kind of texture or a color that blended with the wall directly behind them, it looks as if it kind of just fits in this negative space. And right now, I'm just gonna go ahead and feather off and kind of round this out perfectly. And there is the image that I kind of had my mind, this beautiful negative space image. Does that blow you away, Carlo? You having a good time right now, Carlo? Yeah. You enjoying that? Okay, now I don't mind this area behind them. Honestly, it almost looks like their breath directly behind them. If you don't like it, though. Well, the simple and easy fix is just to go on a new layer and we can sample from all layers. And you can just basically sample a color from over here and go ahead and just start essentially drawing this in and kinda just being careful. It wouldn't take you more than a minute or two to basically clone in that color and texture. And really, it's just a color. It's not even a texture. So if you wanted to just paint brushes in, you totally could. But I'm gonna go ahead and just clone it in and where we get to the edges. We're just gonna lighten up a little bit now, given that this is on a new layer. I'm not having to worry too much if I get it perfect or not, and this first go around because I can really easily just mask out whatever areas are not right. So if I if I end up making a mistake here, it's going to be a super easy fix. Also, the fact that this is against this color makes it so that I can remove any excess flyaways very, very easily by just painting them out. Died paint over twice. There we go. Okay, so in just a moment we can make quick work of this, by the way, little Photoshop trick if sometimes it's easier to paint at an angle. So if you press R and rotate the canvas, you can actually rotate the canvas. So that way, it's a little bit easier to kind of get smooth and kind of straight consistent breast strokes. Okay, so that's fine down here. I'm gonna do the same thing. Kinda just paint this out. Actually, I notice much down there. Not really. So I'm gonna press are again and go to reset view. And I'm just going to make sure that I'm going to add in a little mask right here and make sure that I erase anything in here That kind of muddies up the edge. So sorry, we can't do erase, because we're doing it over a masking layer. So go ahead and paint black. And, uh, dummy, that was dumb. Me not, dummy. Carlo, don't Don't get upset. I'm not being mean here. Not being mean. Okay, so we're gonna do is just kind of tweak and perfect the edges anywhere that we kind of messed them up. I'll show you one other thing too. With shots like this, this is looking good. If there's anything else that we noticed, we can we can tweak it and take it out. But honestly, this is this is completely fine where it's at. I do notice a tiny, tiny bit just right here on her arm. I'm just going to paint that in. Okay, so one of the thing, too, is when I'm shooting profiles. Um, I am going to actually eliminate this. So not what I what I was going to try to say. I'm gonna eliminate just this some of the flyways, not all of them. I just want to kind of reduce some of them a little bit. The ones that are a little distracting, actually, believe that. Last one, we'll take this one. Okay, here we have a little odd transition. So we're just gonna go ahead and select that area and let's go ahead and do a content aware fill with color adaptation. And that did a piss poor job because we didn't create a new layer. So let's go ahead and create that new layer and do it again. Moving quick, because I think you guys get this by this point, I want to just kind of move quickly through this. Okay, This is good. So now the last thing I would typically do on a shot like this is press control shift X or command shift X to bring up my liquefied tool. Oftentimes, in natural kind of expressions like this, where our subjects are laughing and whatnot, we don't end up getting the most flattering jaw lines. And so I like to correct that. Now, keep in mind that I'm pulling on her shoulder as well right now, So I want to be very careful to not basically pull and manipulate the shoulder. All I'm gonna do is basically add back in the natural kind of shape and line of her jaw line. So that way it doesn't look like we have this kind of unflattering view. Do the laughter. I'm gonna do the same thing on BC side and then I'm gonna go ahead and press, OK, that looks great. Let's save this out and we're done now. This was a fun way that you guys can basically incorporate anything from any time of day from any part of your shoot to create very interesting and compelling images. And you can do it in camera, and then you can, like, really perfected and dial in and post because you'll have both the raw files. Just be sure to look up your specific camera in terms of its double exposure settings. Some cameras don't give you the raw files for both of them. Some will. So let's take a look at our final before and after in this scene. This is a fun one. I love this. Let's see if we have the Okay. So this was the natural light in this photograph, right? They look pissed. I mean, that's like, straight up mug shot style. That was the natural in that scene. Now we knocked it down and we end up with kind of this dark overall image. This was the in camera double exposure. And this ends up being that final shot. And this is so much fun. I love this image. Actually, that wasn't even the edited image. Let's go to the emitted one. It was the final freaking light room with a bug. It didn't update the tiff, okay? Or maybe I didn't save it out. You know what it was like? It was like rooms fault. It's not my fault. I never make mistakes, that's all. That's us straight. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this final image. This is super fun. Let's go on to our last and final tutorial.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Lighting 301 Exercise Files

Ratings and Reviews

Jackie Stewart
 

Lighting 301 is excellent! I learned so many new techniques throughout the class. Pye Jirsa is brilliant at explaining new lighting techniques in such an easy to understand way and his mastery of Lightroom is amazing!!! Loved the class and can't wait til implement the things I learned!!!!

Doug Rogers
 

This is a great course! I learned a great deal about lighting and editing in PS/LR. Pye is a great communicator and I appreciate his wry sense of humor. Note, this video was before AI, so that is not covered.

Dani
 

I love the Lighting (101-201-301) courses; I have finally understood the concept of lighting and how it works. I have been referring to my notes and go back to all the courses with ease. One of the best courses I have done for myself and my biz; I am so impressed with my work and the lighting I can create.

Student Work

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