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Multiple Lights Tips & Techniques Part 1

Let's continue talking about lighting and how I go about approaching different kinds of lighting. So before we were actually doing a demo and I want to show you one more piece of equipment that's, another tool, another thing that we use sometimes, and that is this shamir a beauty dish. Now, for those who you work with, beauty dishes, lights a little bit harsher than a soft box, a little more direct this's a really unique beauty dish. What makes this one so different from all the other ones? All the other ones, they're solid this beauty dish when I pull it apart, I can roll it up and it's that big, and I can actually throw it into my camera case for the bracket into the back, through the whole rest of it into it, it actually comes in a case. I really carry it in a baggie like a ziploc bag is what I carry my beauty did a joke about it. Most beauty issues, you actually need a drum case to move them. They're really hard to take on an airplane this when I carry on airplanes all the time. So...

it's a nice look, and in a couple of minutes, when we start shooting again, we're going tow up, play with this, we're going to use this, we're going to play with and we're going to use this and then add some more lights so I want to actually go to a presentation right now show you a couple of images and talk about building on the kind of lighting that we've been doing I get this assignment this is from an education magazine and this gentleman is the president of emerson college. I go back and forth a couple times and communications people busy on guy sort of nicely convinced them that we really need to shoot the cover on dh they say okay, well he has a half hour on this day that's the only time you can have so way get the assignment the assignment involves we need to create a cover of the magazine we need create a double truck or what's a two page spread we need to create a table of contents photograph and we need to create a jump picture meaning something they could stick somewhere back in the article on dh I have a half hour to do it so what we did is we actually shot this gentleman in four locations in two buildings in half an hour and it's all it so let's take a look at the lighting here the main light which is actually the shamir a soft box is over here reflector is over here this is where I start my exposure the element I cannot control is where I start my exposure and now I've got another issue with lights here. I've got this marble column. What if I don't have more light into this? I'm going to start getting huge shadow. Now remember, this all has to be done within a very short period of time, so we're going ahead of time and actually set this. So this is all working beautifully. The challenge is up in here. So you see the railing coming up right there. So what we did is we actually took the micro mini without the arm on it, and I walked up about three or four stairs, and I took the micro many. And if this is the railing right here, I dropped it behind the railing. I then took another speed light the park it wizard on it, put it right here on the ground, shot it up into this and blew the light back because I'm using the pocket wizard. I have no trouble getting the signal to go through that marble wall. So the light is actually going this way and you can see a little highlight right there from it going this way and it's filling that shadow and nicely so it's two speed lights and one reflector, this gentleman is the gentleman at google who has decided that we're going to digitize every word ever written, so we get there and it's cool because he's got an eighteen hundreds printing press outside his office and he's got a bookshelf, right? There's a cool book shelf. The only thing about this bookshelf, those are the spines of books. They chopped the spines off to scan him. He glued all the spines of the books, the woman then had somebody paid him a bookcase. There's no actual bookcase there. So we want todo accentuate this whole thing and we want a light now we're starting to get into we're into two lights now we're into speed lights. We've taken a flash better stuck it right here, okay, but I only want to illuminate the gentleman, okay? I do not want to illuminate the background, so what I'm doing is I'm going to take my flash bender on dh. You will imagine that this is on a light stand on a speed like I don't want to take another one apart, but if I just do this and a mint if the gentleman I've got what white light going here? Well, what ideo come to the lighting kit and here it is, take my piece of sending for a lot of the lighting kit and then by a very technical means I am going to take the city foil and put it right here, the very technical mean is I always carry a little roll of tape in the camera back. You can go by these tiny little rolls of gaffer tape, their chief that, like, five bucks a roll, all right? And I literally just tape this to this. Well, now I'm illuminating the gentleman, but I'm not illuminating the back that's how I'm getting the shadow then we come over to this side right here and you see there's, a beam of light coming down that beam of light is created by I just happen to have one handy. We took another speed like, way stuck the road grid set on it now what's the road grid set the road grid set for a set of grid is designed to narrow light down ok, wave when this soft box and with this we're talking about spreading light out with the flash bender extended way want the light to go everywhere? Well, now I just want this little beam of light, so now I need to control my life is gone and I'm going to do the same thing if I'm doing a hairline like so all I've done is on the other side of this picture let's, just move this like this and then we're going to do this, so now I've illuminated him with white life I've put this narrow beam of light the lake's right there and the only other thing I've done is I've taken a piece of orange gel and you can take the one out of our kid on dh I can tell you by the end of this workshop, this kid will be completely apart, so you quit and come in here and you could take a piece of this and just cut it up and put it in front of it or our friends over rogue actually make a set of pre cut filters that will also drop him so either one will work, you know that won't work on a lot of other things this will work on that, so now I've got a narrow beam of orange light I'm going pull that great a part for you and let you take a look at what we've got here. I said we always carry a minimum of two of the sets, so basically what I've got is a holder and then two incidents and if I put the two inserts together I have a much now a being of light so I can control how much my light is spreading and there are times it will be doing this and even the two of these will still be two live well what's the answer go back to wherever I put my city for that someone say cindy for because that is the answer s so I could take a piece of cindy foil and we can decide you know we can cut it weaken tear it so let's soon precisely measure we go that looks very precise that should do remember we're doing this on the fly we're thinking this up is we go so if this was too wide well guess what something I story big enough to go all the way around now I've made it now so all of a sudden I could start going into just pinpoints of wife what happens if I want to soften this light out? Well we're going remember I mentioned tough spot earlier tough sponge the answer we might just pull a piece of tough spun it's just little loosely drape it over it that'll help soften it up so that was how this was created to speed lights on a couple of gadgets that you know just happened to be in the back of my camera back so let me show you a couple more actually could you get me this so this is part of ah project that I shot for roscoe this is actually a continuous light source okay so this is not a stroke this is an led light and this was shot in our studio is part of an ad campaign that we shot I'm gonna show you this light here thanks very much but very well packaged so without actually assembling it lego thank you so what you've got is a continuous light led bring like and that's how we did this we did that with a hairline light and this was the light I wanted to show you because I was thinking for forensics work this might be very cool toe work with and then we just put the hairline lighting you know now we use ring lights also for strobes the one we don't use any fancy ones like the one that we use just clips onto the front of a speed light is it the coolest one going now but it works fine for certain things in clothes by the way, these couple of things that I happen to be playing with whoops a daisy well, this is filter guy but what are these guys? Well when you use this and you get the catch light in the eye you're going to get around catch like okay, well if I drop this guy in here and there's a little holder all of a sudden minutes a look you're actually gonna get star catch lights right? I don't think for forensics work is the right thing not really sure you're models want stars in their eyes so anyway it's just sort of a cool gadget I just wanted to show you is another option this was, uh, again we're back in england this was done in birmingham, england actually, I'm just literally sitting in the middle of the road which is great when you wear black suits to sit in the middle of a road on dh this was she was a model that actually saw her earlier we worked there in a couple of cities, but the lighting on this entire photograph again the schmira soft box coming this way the reflector obviously this is shot with a very wide angle lens it's a road height and we were playing around with it. The lighting was working nicely. What was happening was we weren't quite getting anything out of the shoes, so what we did is we took another speed light on dh with a plaque it wizard on it and if you're the model, I literally sat right in front of me just put it on the ground now I had a warrant, but is it going to flare back at me? Anybody want to guess the answer? I know this is real technical gang, I promise that ought to do it that's it so I illuminated her shoes and didn't worry about any flair and I controlled where the light was going and look, if I wanted the light to spread out a little more now it looks like a pretty good adjustment okay? And it works his fine it's really simple this was kind of fun. We're shooting this and this is actually the truck delivery route and all these lorries that coming in and we're like in the middle of the road and I'm like waving the guys I'm sorry we'll move guylene zeros we'd much rather watch the blond and unload this truck and so anywhere they just seem to care so we stacked up traffic on that one another picture of viana who was the cover of the lighting kit. This was a completely different sort of set up that we did. This is also in our studio this one she is lit with these rogue strip light not the the rogue strip like in the back we took another speed light put a blue gel on it. Notice the pattern here the the light is literally behind a plant. We just put the light with the blue jail behind the plant and made that pattern but that's old on you know, in a few minutes within the studio we've got some nice little highlights in through here. We have the road grid up there with the orange gel in it to give us those highlights so fairly quick set up and I think it worked out well and she thought she was coming just to be an assistant yugo model this is so fun we got this this's the pocket wizard plus x they send it to us to test andi with a note in it saying go shoot with the plus access so I open the box and I look at it it immediately hits me plus x I got plus second refrigerator and I haven't shot a roll of film in fifteen years but courses still plus x away grabbing old roll of flax and a box of plus act so here's the new plus x and here's the old plus actually actually noticed that you can actually read the number of the channel because my shutter speed is way way down so that very faint light actually comes through on dh that's the set that created the last photograph we just threw this together on a desk in about twenty minutes on go back to the picture so let's take a look at our background our background is white in reality but its orange here there's the road grid got an orange gel on it the effect of using the grid see the drop off that's the effect from the grid we hadn't used to grate it would have been completely even we actually used a bunch of the sun bounce cards that we were using with the bounce wall there great reflectors for doing a product shop and that's that your entire set so is your rogue excel your pocket wizard um some sini foil and as you can see it's perfectly cut even and that's our whole set that's about twenty minutes let's talk about this when this one gets into a little color balance is and the thing with this okay, I've got a slate great day out when we were in wales and it's chilly actually pouring but I have an attractive model in a slinky red dress on I got a castle for the background that I don't get the chute castles very often so I didn't care we're going outside so off we go into this little portico and look at my sky here okay, this is all done in camera member I'll do this post this is all done in camera so how do I get an ugly gray sky to become a blue sky? Never leave the cameron tungsten and go outside and shoot everything those blue well that's how I made my ugly gray sky blue now if I under expose it a little bit this guy's going to go darker in color so my ugly blue sky is now blew her. The only problem is I have a blue model don't really want a blue model so I don't know if anybody's noticed on the top of my speed lights but there happen to be a couple of rather ratty looking filters merrick these air actually better looking most well maestro is daylight I've set my camera tungsten if I pull the orange filter and you could see this very fancy filter system I have ok and I do this with it guess what my daylight strove is now tungsten now my model is model color my backgrounds been converted all done in camera by means of what? Sitting on top of the camp so I'm going to show you wanted two more and then I think it's time to make some more pictures that trick, by the way is one as I tell people in most workshops if you learn exposed for the element you can't control and learn that you get your money's worth especially for you guys but we're watching it live free all right let's go one more right mentioned ring lights a minute ago. Okay, well, let's take a look at this. This is a young professor at m I t and it's ugly out it's another slate gray day out but I thought I'd make it a blue day by means of how I just told you take a look at this that's a small ring light and because I've shot it with a fish islands you're actually seeing the back of the ring right? So this is called a ray light is what it yes on dh take a look at my light on the gentleman though okay with light here it's got some direction to it the reason it has direction to it even though to ring light is right here is the soft box this one has the ring light has a tungsten filter on it this has a tungsten filter on it there's actually another one hidden on the other side of the light there because this was going just a little too dark for my liking but it's three speed lights it's a couple of minutes set up its cross filtered that's what we end up so fairly simple fairly fast no really heavy lifting on but let me preface this by she would go to a shoot and you got fluorescent lights on you know you take a strobe and you're using your light modifier flash bender or cuba whatever happen to be using and you make a photograph and the people are perfect color however is the picture drops further and further into the background what happens? It goes greener and greener and it gets more and more annoying and you really can't get rid of it. Well, this is the solution take my camera going to set it on florescent I'm going to take my green filter and I slapped my greenfield iran now I've made this fluorescent and it's going to get you fairly into the ballpark it's not going to get you all the way there because fluorescent lights or no longer all the same color there all over the place yeah they're all over the place now but you know which means that you I really should be doing custom white balances way tend you something called an expo disc a lot which is an incident meter meter reading and an incident color balance it's simple you do it in camera there is another one on I'm blanking on the name of it at the moment to call a check her passport that one involves a couple more steps but in situations like this do something okay, but a really quick on this one how did we create this picture? So this doc is sitting in front of some old light tables and you know those of us who shot film we had color corrected light tables okay, well that he doesn't care of his glass tables call it corrected so his light table is green. So my first step is to do this now I've got a very highly reflective surface here and highly reflective surface here twice that's only this far away so for the back light I'm going to take my grid wherever I put it on imagine there's a green filter on here okay and I'm going to aim this at the dock and all I want to do is to put some light on the gentleman I do not want to make sure you do not want any light hitting the background because that's my available light that's my element I can't control so now this guy's there we here sort of like this maybe about this angle said you could move the handles there we go about like that so now I've illuminated just the stock take a look on this side of the gentleman put some nice highlights in through there what I've done has gone back to this through my cindy foil in there and made a narrower beam of light. Now this light I'm shooting in between the background jealous that he's holding and the foreground and he's holding it like this the lights going right in between and all it's doing is hitting his face, so we're really controlling where are light is going variation on a theme okay, this is a gentleman over at harvard on all of his work is theoretic so there's nothing physical to shoot it's a man and a apple computer that's it, but I can't go to back to my assigning at it and going, yeah, the guy sits in front of a computer all day. I got nothing to do, I can't do that, we have to come up with something, so what we do is we just have the professor sit in front of his computer and then you see this cool shadow without obviously wasn't there we put that there so when we set the grated light on this side and we've got some tough spot in here to soften it out okay we hit him here and then we blew a shadow across the monitor now when I go to like the other side I want to light the gentlemen and through here but I can't have any white light hit this or it's gonna blow this away we're back to vary now beams of light so remember we're beginning we were spreading light out sending it all over the place and now we're really really controlling it let's see what our next one is ah this is a fun one so this one way get this assignment and we shoot in a lot of labs on we we shoot a lot of labs and we have ah we walk in and we looked around and what we're gonna do with the gentlemen well let me show you what the place looked like when we arrived there it is that's what the spaces like when we arrived now let's go back to the previous frame and we're just sort of right in this little corner is where we are so our white wall we've not taken our blue gel out of the kid we've taken a speed light we literally have stuck that you can see some my gear there who stuck it right here I actually took the flash bender and I put it sideways because I want the blue light only going to the wall I don't want the blue light going to the gentleman so now we have illuminated the wall but I want to when I illuminate the gentleman okay I don't want any of the white light to hit my color because of white light hits my color blows my collar away so how am I doing that grid set creed said tough spun that's my answer blue long white gentlemen stuck a piece of foam core back there is a little reflector where do I start my exposure the element I can't control and then all I do is move the gentleman until he's to the point where he's reflected okay, so we're going to stop this part right now we're gonna go back to making some pictures because I want to show you a couple of things back up a couple steps here but I want to start adding a couple of lights so where the that light that's on the bottom? Is it coming from below one? Sorry why that guy neglected that one. Thank you for pointing that out. Yes. Thanks for keeping me on my toes. Okay. Yes. So actually keiko came up with this idea and I'm sorry I forgot to mention that so says we're put a graphing green goo okay let's sort of like add some green so we literally took another speed light and keiko's literally holding it for some reason, a lot of chutes and last light, she doesn't set up a light stand. She sold so she's down here with another light with it, a grid on it and a green jell because look, his hand's a green. This is highlighted, but there's really not much green anywhere else.