Lessons
Class Introduction
13:35 2The Inverse Square Law
06:24 3Shoot: One Light, Single Subject
20:44 4Shoot: Group Photo
14:48 5Shoot: Group with Diffusion
29:06 6Lighting Diagrams
14:48 7Strobox Demo with Chris Coe
05:25 8Softbox Set Up #1: Overhead Drama
13:33Softbox Set Up #2: Beauty Box
09:37 10Softbox Set Up #3: Backlight
07:40 11Softbox Set Up #4: Backlit Silhouette
10:00 12Creating a One Light Playbook
13:02 13Shoot: Bare Beauty Dish
14:47 14Shoot: Stripbank
07:12 15Shoot: Magnum Reflector
11:18 16Shoot: Grids
11:21 17Shoot: Beauty Dish with Sock
08:50 18Introducing Multiple Lights
10:47 19Shoot: Clamshell
17:10 20Shoot: Softbox & Beauty Dish - Main/Fill Lights
27:02 21Shoot: Softbox, Edge Lights/Striplights, and V Flats
30:45Lesson Info
Shoot: Grids
So these grids are just focusing the light again. They're just taking the straightest rays of light. As we use the straight rays of light, we get a little difference in our shadow. When the light is kind of fanned out and wrapped, it's going to kind of wrap around our subject differently. And kind of splay and as it focuses, the shadows changed. With me? Yeah? You guys get that? It's funny, you know, like energy, it's like musicians and photographers are both playing with energy in this way. And we're like Frankenstein-ish right? Ready. Five, six. Five, six alright. You got all the, yeah you can see it alright. Just trying to think of, Chris has got some work to do later. Oh yeah. Yep, Chris has got some work to do later. Right. Cool, so we're going to look at this. And then we're going to look at that grid that we used before so that we can compare the two and see a little bit of the softness and change in it. But that's really doing a sweet job just kind of spotting her and s...
eparating her. I like that, I like this as a key light a lot. I'll use this as my main and then I'll fill in and deal with stuff around it, you know. So some of these lights we're looking at them one at a time. We might be thinking like, eh, it doesn't look lit. Right, like the kids say, lit. Yo that's not lit cleezy. Why are you sleeping on our lessons? Well I think you got to know, they're like paintbrushes. You know, we got to know what's the fat brush. You know, what's my big throw up, tagging brush. What's my little brush. Okay, motor mouth. Yep now let's hit it with the tight grid, right. With the tight grid on the soft box? No, yeah the grid spot on that. The grid is on there. No the grid, grid, the griddy, grid, grid. Oh the grid, sure. The griddy, grid, grid. Let's do the ... Yeah I'll get it for you. Any questions there Shamus? Let's take a peek. We had a question. I want to know where the questions are coming from. Can we find that out? Yeah these are questions from Ray. He asks, What's up Ray? Ray wants to know, what is dumping? And when is it a good time to do it? Dumping, yeah it's really. (laughs) Yeah that's funny! Sound like one of my menacing students, right? Dumping is when we're lowering ... It's a habit that I have that I'm not sure you need to do on these strobes. Sometimes when you turn your strobe lower in power, it still has this much power in it, right? So I dump them to release the power and then start over. So like if I'm going from half power to quarter, sometimes my strobe still wants to fire at a half, right? It doesn't know to go to a quarter. So I always dump to release and reset when I'm setting to lower power setting. Does that make sense? Perfectly. (chuckles) Dumping, is that a real question or? (woman laughs) Is someone heckling me? Who are you Ray? (laughs) Give me a pop there. Ready. Eleven, three. Call that F-13? Yep. Ready Allen, turn over this way just a little bit. Chin down a little bit, over this way a little bit. Yeah perfect. Thank you, alright. Alright, before I even go into ... Can we see those two right next to each other? Yeah. Yep. That's the extra small soft box with grid. And the grid spot. Yep. On my right is this, this is the soft box? On your right is the grid spot. On my right, this right? Yep. Alright, I can look at the number too right. Mm hmm. 95 94. Soft box, grid spot. Looking at the hardness of the shadow, looking at the shape of the light. Also looking at how it's going to fall and fill the space. This is a medium, this a medium grid or a? Let's look. Yeah that's a medium grid. Okay, great. Going to do my wide and tight. Alright. Alright, great. Let's get that foam core in there. Yeah. Alright. Watching your setting as your shooting and as your white balance is set to daylight, you said earlier that daylight and strobe light have roughly the same basic. Why would you just choose the camera setting of daylight instead of dialing in the Kelvin number of the actual lights? Yeah well when I'm shooting raw and if I wanted to get crazy on color balance. In this situation and setting, I would just have Chris come in with his color checker. You got that? I do. You guys ever use a color checker? Right on, so that's how I would color balance. I'm not too, I haven't been attached to it in this situation, but if I'm going to color balance, I'm going to do it with a color checker. I'm going to have it, like, daylight. Yeah, you just want to throw it in there. Sure. Alright, this is the color checker right? We drop this in, we just go through this protocol. Cause there has been some fluctuation, I don't know if you've noticed it? Like that small soft box was yellow. Right, cause it's. It might have been around some cigarette smoke. Or you know what I mean, it might just be old right. I've had that thing a long time right. It just kind of gets, you know you can clean them in Woolite fabric softener but just kind of older. So yeah, if I were going to color balance, I would just go that way and do it with that card and kind of do it as I process. I don't get too finicky about that stuff. If I'm working for a client, maybe Coke and they're all attached to the color of their can, I'm going to be crazy about color balancing. But I'm just trying to get through a lot of things today, so trying to avoid other things, yeah mm hmm. We need the meter though. Okay, is it in my? Thanks, sorry about that. Ready. That's five, six, eight. Okay, five, six, eight. Um can you just go up two tenths? Yep. Test. Eight flat. Eight flat, okay. For fun? Just for fun. Yep, well that would be easier if we shot it on the tight one? No I can zoom in. Boom. Okay, right on. Yeah and then he would batch apply that to all the pictures we've been doing, you know. Right on, so this is the bounce board wide. Right on. Great. And I will say, like, many times you might be in a situation where a, you know we're not all traveling with these giant v-flats of foam core. You know, 4 ft by 8 ft. I don't know whose traveling with that stuff. But you know, definitely bouncing your head off a wall can be a great solution to lighting a broad area. Bouncing your head off a ceiling can be a great light, to light up a huge area. And it's kind of giving us a lot of things that. Can we just cruise through them Chris? Mm hmm. You know, it's kind of like I said, solving a lot of problems we had before. Not giving us a lot of shape, shadow, or texture. So like why, a little bit arduous getting through all this. But I think like, having a PDF, of having all these modifiers, just kind of seeing them and the subtly of it and kind of understanding how the light's going to work. Gonna be super helpful to you. So let's just talk about, let's just talk about couple ways I might use these. Maybe you want to take a break for a second, I'll get somebody else up here. Yep, thanks. Alright, question? You got a lot of light on her glasses on this one. Yeah. How would you, would you move the box around or the? Is that the reflection Chris, what is that one? That's bouncing off the v-flat. Bouncing off the v-flat. Yeah, I'd probably ... Do you want me to problem solve that for you? Right now, like in real time? You want to come back up, yeah. So what we're dealing with here is this premise. Like the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflectiveness, right? When we shoot glass things, when we shoot shiny things, we're going to see. Are those anti-reflective glasses too? Yeah. They are a little bit right? So many times I'm just going to look and I'm going to kinda see where the light's coming from. Can we get another bounce board on the other side? Sure. The easiest fix is just going to be to turn her. To rotate away from the light. And look at me. You want set up on white? White. So I've just waving my hand and I'm looking for where the reflection is, right. And can you turn back this way? Alright, I can kind of see it alright. That's true, I used to work with these still life guys. They'd be photographing a spoon or something like doing this weird voodoo over the set. I'm like, what are you doing? They're just like looking at the reflections right. So that's all I'm doing is look at the reflection. Just turn a little bit that way. Go white really close. Yeah. Woo! So I guess you know they say broad lighting is when you're lighting the broad side of the face that faces the camera. That's just some of the terminology they use for it. So this would be the easiest fix here. Eyes to me, turn back just a little bit, chin down. Nice eyes, yep, right. Here it's gone, right? You know, so just kind of getting her out of the way of it, with that huge, this is a huge reflection, it is a huge source, it's going to be challenging. You know if I had a smaller source, I might be bringing it above her head and in here. Right, but we see the two there. Right, then we can just see how far she can turn back. Turn back slowly, yep. Come back a little bit more, a little bit more. That's probably the edge of it right. This is where it starts to creep in. Just making it bad again. Here it's just a little bit in there. But I think here, you could fix that. Right, that could be fixed. You just want to keep it really out of the center of the eye for the retouching I think. You know, so answer your question? Yeah. Yeah, uh huh. And no matter what, it's going to be like, it's going to depend on who you're photographing with, their glasses are like, you know. It might come down to, you know, just kind of seeing where it needs to be. You see the reflection in her eyes there, you know. You hate this thing? I love this thing, helps me teach.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
KIS Photography
WOW! I was getting ready to go to bed, when I saw this class last night as I was perusing the classes available. Got the notification that it was playing, so I thought I'd check it out for a minute or two. Well, once I turned it on, I couldn't turn it off! As someone who has shot musicians on stage since I was 16, I've recently been interested in shooting portraits of them, so Clay instantly intrigued me! The more I watched, the more I couldn't shut it off, and I stayed up til 5:30 in the morning to finish the course (financial issues, so I can't afford the class right now) This class is amazing! I love Clay's teaching style, his willingness to step outside the box and play by his own rules, and his lighting is awesome! As soon as it is possible, I WILL be purchasing this class! Loved it! Thanks again CreativeLive for introducing me to yet another outstanding photographer to learn from!
Jason Darr
I absolutely loved this. Great instruction, great content and very inspiring demonstrations. I'd highly recommend this course
Gene Tolan
Awesome intro to lighting. I love Clay's teaching style and his personality infused presentation was a pleasure. I highly recommend this course.
Student Work
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