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: Magnum Reflector
So it's like a reflector on steroids right? It really is. This is gonna, all these hammered out shapes in here, gonna really kick and throw your light, you've used these before? Used these? So what I can do is, I can take this light, put it really far away, max it out, and I can light a huge area with it. That's one of the things I can do with it. Also, just, describe light. Some light's more aggressive than other light? This is an aggressive way to light. Picture a shot of lil' Wayne that I was telling you about where he's got his shirt off, you know it's very sculpted with just the single one of these, so it becomes a lot like your, maybe you like the kind of that raw hard light, it's just a much bigger version of that. Alright? So, thanks Chris. And I'm sure, it's probably gonna be ridiculously contrasty and bright. Probably f32 or something bananas that we can't even deal with. 22 four. 22 four, yeah, so it's even, so we got to dial it down, I'll try to do it from here. Sure.
It's working. Wait just a second, coming down a bunch. Testing Four six. Four six, okay, let me go up a little bit. (beeping) Five six six. Okay, we'll deal with that. Oops, I'm totally underexposed there, sorry about that, I'm sorry people, four six six, is that, you said four six six Chris? Yep. (beeping) Alright, this might be a little bit hot. Let me just come down a third of a stop, yeah and hit it all three ways. Once. Twice. Three times. How we doing on time? Oh we've got plenty of time. We're great Jim. Okay great. Cause right now I know it seems, it might seems a little dull just to lay these things out and look at them they way they are. But I think for your reference and your keepsake and just to know it, I gotta get a little bit wider so we see that reflector. That'd be nice. (beeping) Alright, okay. Alright, so can we see that uptight, close, personal, wicket hard light kind of version? Great okay, can we compare that to the soft box, the last one we did? Is that the soft soft box or the hard soft box? That's the soft stripped back right here. Okay, right on. Soft strip on the left. Yep. Right on, okay cool. So we're seeing some subtleties in the light, we're seeing a little bit more shape contrast, color and punch, and what else is left there? Let's go back to our white umbrella, Yep, you got it. Um, and I don't know, is anybody working in interiors shooting strobe in interiors, shooting on location? This sort of thing, I think a great solution there, I can't really demonstrate it here, but bouncing light off the ceiling is always a great solution to lighting a big area. Right? Like, the um, the bigger the light the softer the light, also you can get more out of that light coming off the ceiling and kind of filling a huge space is great. White umbrellas can kind of act like a ceiling. You can kind of just throw them up into a room like this and it's going to give you that broad overhead lighting. It's kind of a good solution or a huge umbrella. And maybe. Sometimes setting up one of those huge Octobanks can be or a big soft box can be slow and problematic, and working with umbrellas there's just easy, and they're cheap, right? So when you're starting out, don't sleep on the umbrella. You hear that? Don't sleep on the umbrella. Two. F two, so this thing sucking up an enormous amount of light, We're at where? When we put on the magnum we were at 22. So this thing is sucking up a lot of light. Let's go a little bit stronger with it. Sure. Giving you a pop. Eight five. Eight five, okay, we'll live with that. Call it f 10. We'll start with he wide, alright, so Nice. Yeah, it's great. Good job on the posing. Can we see that next to the, this was the magnum. Can we see that next to the magnum? So a very different throw of light right? Very broad, very even, going to fill a lot of spaces. Gonna solve a lot of problems. Cause that's what, a lot of the times, lighting is, right? Problem solving. Right? You gotta light a big area, you got to light a small area, lighting becomes problem solving. Maybe we want to isolate our subject from the background, we want to pull them out, we want to subtract that light, we want to spotlight them, you know? Maybe we want a fuller light. Let's remember Holly, you are an architect, with he master plan for Utopia, that's what that gray seamless is right? You know what I mean? So how do we want to form that relationship that conversation I think when we work on location or we work with light. It's a conversation between the subject and the environment. You know? Like here's Holly, here's the world, how we gonna light that? And deal with that. This is a very different broad, I mean, the umbrella? Don't sleep on the umbrella. It's your friend. White umbrella? Cheap. If you have one, you're never gonna regret carrying it. It's not heavy, right? It's like a tripod, have you ever forgot a tripod? You're always going to regret if you didn't bring a tripod. You never regret not bringing a tripod. You know what I mean? Mono pod? One third as good as a tripod. Just saying. What am I saying? What are we doing Chris? We're going to get the medium and the tight shot. Oh, thank you, keep me on task. You see me. Right, can Chris take over for a little while. Absolutely, so when I'm going through these different modifiers again, it's like Clay is saying, when you have these light weight ones, I think they're some of the best ones that you can pack on and bring in location because I've put together six eight foot Octobanks and they are a nightmare. It takes two people 12 minutes to wrestle this thing to the ground, it's a bad look, but I find that when I go on location, when I have been recently, I've been bringing sources like this that just snap into place, in fact, the next one that we're going to look at is an even larger umbrella that really pops into place. Real Mary Poppins style, and this thing is lightweight, compact, I think it's easy to use. Let's bring it. Yeah, let's see it. Let's bring on the pain. Mary Poppins style, well said Chris. Thanks Clay. Alright, so pretty big beast right? And you know, I say this bigger harder, smaller softer, and I hope that we've all just thought a little bit about modifiers and how to like demystify them and dumb them down, cause I don't think it's that deep and one thing that I'm just going to draw while Chris works there. Is you'll notice that the we cool here? Is this cool for you camera people? Yeah? Alright, we've had, you know, our wide umbrella, and you'll notice that this umbrella, I'm exaggerating it, but it's a little bit deeper. Right? You know? So what's happening here. Here our light is kind of going everywhere and broad. This is gonna take our light a little bit straighter, it's just going to bring it into focus a little bit more. That's why, when you hear the word parabolic, I don't know if you've heard about parabolic reflectors, they're really just going to focus and straighten this light, right it's gonna change a little bit and then this one's gonna spray it wild and big. Though this is an enormous source. There are Westcott huge umbrellas for about $80, you know? These big soft boxes, I don't know, has anyone bought one recently? A huge soft box. They can be a lot more money. (laughing) Let's test the light! I'll take any questions too while we're doing this because there's a little bit of a crossover between here. That's eight two. Doing great Holly, thanks for staying with me, stay with me. High five. Don't leave me hanging. Alright, great, giant umbrella. Alright, going for the . you can see it bleeds on the background a lot more. I'm sorry, you want to throw that one out? It's going to be distributed across the world or something. Can we compare that with our wide one there, just to see that the difference is? So this is a little bit more focused, a little bit more spotty. This a little bit more broad, you know filling the space, also the shadows, slightly different, relationship of the fall off light to dark, a little bit different. A little bit more fall off here. Little bit less here. You with that Holly, you seeing that? You with me? Staying with us? Okay. Alright, and of course they come in silver, this one happens to be white, just ripping through them, let's take it down. If you want we can go to the extra small soft box, we never did that. Yeah, and I want to bounce one into a v flat. Is that one that you would pull out for doing groups potentially because of it's size, or does it really focus the light. No, no, I would use that for groups, I'd use that for a lot of things. I'd use that for big spaces, you know, I would use it for groups, because groups are kind of a big thing, it's like a small car shooting a group really, it's like it's a bigger area and you know, we'll just say as a rule of thumb, your light source is as big as whatever you're shooting, it's just going to get you there quicker. For a full length portrait, we use a big source like this so we can put it at the edge of the frame and head to toe we're going to be lit nicely.
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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