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
Strobox Demo with Chris Coe
Drawn up by hand, which is really important. This is how we started when I first started learning with Clay was sort of noting everything by hand in our own journal and that was our lighting diagram, that was our play book, that was our cook book, and that's how we can keep good record of everything. But for me, I'm a bit more methodical, a bit more full of anxiety and this looks a bit messy to me, which is why I like to really bring it in and put it into computer program that can draw it better than I ever could. So if we could swap back to my computer. Great, so what I did is I just grabbed a screenshot of this finished picture and then a screenshot of our wide picture of the set as well and online is a free lovely tool, it's called Strobox. So when you load it in, this is exactly how it looks, got your little dude right here backdrop and the rest of it. And you can move everything around pretty easily. So let's think about this. Let's see where he was. So he looks like he was square...
to the camera. That's perfect. You can tilt him around just like this. It doesn't look like him, I'll say that much (laughs). And our light was just about right above the face, very close, you said about 12-16 inches, right Clay? Yeah. Excellent, so I'll move that there as well. Then what we can do is export this right to your desktop as a PNG. Because this right here shows us top down where everything was on the set. So you get to see where your model was, where your camera was, where you put your light, but if you look at this a month, two months, a year from now, it's gonna be pretty useless. You might be using a different pack, you might be in a totally different scenario. You won't know the important information, because what we need to know is the ratios. We need to know how powerful the light is that we were using on set. Also a couple of other things are simple, but really how far, what color our background was maybe, how far it was from that background, you know if he was very close to that background, it might have shown up gray, you know. So there's a lot of little things that might seem very matter of fact right now, but as we go through these next couple courses and it becomes two or three lights, it becomes imperative, you know. If you're looking at this like, "My God, this seems so ridiculously simple," it's about cementing the stuff. Exactly And committing it to memory in a different way. It's like you kind of remember it, I don't know about you. Like how many phone numbers do you have memorized? Anymore? Like none, right? I don't know. Yep. My mother's really (laughs). So what I'm gonna do is just put this in a little photoshop document. Nice and easy to see. Make sure we exported this PNG. It's gonna toss it, yep, right about here. Gonna move that to the desktop. Excellent. So we have this lighting diagram right here, so then it's replicatable. And then what I like to do, I'm gonna move it down here, cause I don't want there advertisements on here. Then what I find really useful is to be able to actually just type right on your document and talk about what exactly your light was mirrored at, so we were at, what was it, Clay? Yeah, cause no matter what, when we look at this thing, we don't know which one of these we used, right? So that's the first thing we wanna say, five degree grid. I'm on it. Yeah. Grid's back. Yeah. Yep. And we wanna just say, maybe we wanna say yeah. That's perfect Chris, killing it, killing it. Thank you. Right on. We will wanna say we use the pro photo D 2 Light. You got it. We'll move that up in a second. Porotofo, rather. This is a new brand that I'm working on. And then we wanna say the subject was maybe four or five feet from background. And then that gray seemless was turned black of course through the impersonable through how it fell off, so. And then, you know, you could totally nerd out on this stuff and take it as far as you want, you know. I'm not using the 85 millimeter lens, I said I'm using a 100 millimeter lens, so you might want to make record of that. You know the camera you use, if you change cameras, maybe you change cameras from time to time. And this is good too, cause you can sort of pick your own system and make sure that you have all the information here so that you can repeat it down the line. And as Clay was saying too, you really can go very deep on this. If you've got a tape measure on set, you can measure exactly how tall the light is off the ground, which can be very useful, especially in a case like this, where we are working with the subject and angling the light to get the right shadows on the face. Yeah, so let's think about that, right, I'm about 5'10", that's about six feet high if you wanna just throw that in there. Yeah. Light's six feet high, kind of it's, you know if this is a 90 degree angle, this is about a 45 degree angle, right? So it's about a 45 degree angle, you know. You won't regret having too much information. You'll only regret if you're missing some stuff, you know.
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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Portrait Photography