Lessons

Lesson Info

Multiple Lights Tips & Techniques Part 2

Let's, go back to doing some lighting for fun and hopefully profit. So okay, so the one, like I said, we didn't get a chance to shoot with the beauty dish, so I want to start with the beauty dish if you would please thank you. And rick, could you tell again what the brand of the beauty dishes people out there will know? I'm sor yes. So this beauty dish is made by shim era and there is that they are the only ones who make one that collapses. I think you get the other ones to collapse. But once you banned him, you can't unbending so and it comes there's a twenty four inch one in a thirty inch one. Excellent. Thank you very much. My pleasure. My pledges. So let's, go ahead and do some nice light and work on adding hairline lights so we have to boot all this up again. Although this appears to still be booted. So let's. See, we conduce hear this song let's bear with me one second on, we may have to repair the whole thing. No, see what's gonna happen? Well, nice pick, rick. Okay, let's. Firs...

t, we're going to take a look at the effect of a beauty dish by itself and so great it's a picture for like, boots monthly so let's give this a slight bit of an anger like that and let's just bring this guy up a little bit I'm gonna bring this in nice and close at about that point ugo let's see what's going to happen here already external bit into the light that's great right there that's lovely like that we're going to get and it's still not going to come up on the back of the camera. Okay, it's kind of nice little more contrast on what we had with the soft box that might take a little bit of exposure out of it yet not bad. Okay, now we've got little shadowing on the here maybe I want to fill that shadowing in so I can be using any one of numerous items of course I am running ups a daisy so I could be using some form co write could be using this let's see if I could quickly put this together now the advantage to this over a saw a flex field it folds is this doesn't fold and there are all sorts of ways you can do this we could do with foam core mean this tends to be more reflective and normally I would use a heavier light stand but this happens to be what I have a good habit to get into when you're putting something on a light stand that's got any weight put it over one of the legs okay what's going this way can tip easier than going to tip that way so let's just see if I can quickly jerry rigged this stay may not work because it's not quite the right clamp here what you would uses a clamp that I could lock this sandwich oh, I got it I got a great assistant hold that way got that okay there's gonna pop off so you get some sort of a super clamp it's going to work a whole lot better than this or they make a couple of clams let's see, we're going to fill this in I mean we have to pay you twice once is the model and once is the assistant look up to me again so way filled it in okay? So just play means of putting this very reflective surface here we filled this in if I wanted it softer I would go to the white side so thank you so that's looking good there you go and now let's start to add a little more to this so let's start to bring some hairline light into it which means we now have to have two strobes working so let's go ahead and do that push this off side let's see, are you going to work? Um I'm going to have to redo the entire system uh see that looked like it worked didn't it? I'm gonna spread this light out a little bit I'm gonna pull one of these grids out of here. Andi, we're going to start with just white light, and then I don't know what color here you want purple for brutus first let's go for weight and then we'll go from point. This thing sort of fits in just like this. And you put these really hi tech system through these rubber bands around it, but it works and that's all we care about. So wait, maybe squeeze crushing the monitor a little bit. Come back to come back to your position, please. When you're setting your hairline line, you kind of want to actually figure out that it's actually hitting her hair, we want to hit her hair and not the side of her face on. We don't necessarily just do this with a model. I mean, we may be doing a corporate shoot and we just want to get a little hairline light out. If somebody has dark hair and it's a dark paneled wall or they're dressed like I am and it's it's dark, we khun bring it up so we're going to get highlights on the shoulder. So there were a lot of different ways we can do this again in a fairly simple fashion. So we're gonna do this lock this guy in place because we try not to pick them up off the floor in the middle of a live demonstration see nice I'm going to sort of come around to my subject excuse you're going to be rude I just want to see if my lights aimed correctly so we bring this back a little bit around let's bring this guy down little bit let's see what we're getting so now this one is going to be on b that one's going to be on a now we're using our control a little bit more so let's have a look and see we get so we're going to make sure he's been off the whole time that we had to turn me back on and then we'll start with it on zero on the controller here wait go about that spring this guy down to zero on this scale doesn't matter so and be let's see how close we are to make sure you get your focus blocks where we want it looks nice on let's see what happens the suspense is killing me okay so it's it's too wide and it's too bright I've got a little too much highlight on the shoulder so let's start by knocking some power out of this your own teo before I'm still on t tail yeah I'm still and you know I still haven't taken out a light meter I have them, but we just that's one of the beauties of this system. I mean, it takes a couple of frames, but that usually takes a couple of frames. Anyway, I'm not a little my timing's off, not yours, let's. See if that better, right? Still a little hot. So I'm gonna knock a little more out of it and then change the angle of it a little bit again. We're still doing things that you can do alone. You don't need a crew to do this. We're gonna put this guy here on dh. I'm kind of thinking maybe I want to narrow that beam out a little bit. So it's, come here. Now, remember, there were two ways they could narrow it out. I've only used one of the two grids in here, so I'm going to stick the other grid in which is also going to eat up some light the other way. I could have done it was rapid and cindy foil there we get and that's going to get lips. Sorry to turn my back, teo. Really bad manners. Okay, let's. See how that's doing that sort of aimed, right? Yeah. Look, um, pretty good it's going to see what's gonna happen here, please work no, much better. Much better now I may even be to the point where maybe I want a little more hairline light so if I do all I'm going to do is come to my controller and turn it up or maybe I want a different kind of hair line like maybe I want a boom overhead we could do that maybe I want to bring highlights all the way around your hair so if I want a boom overhead could I have the boom please keiko thank you take this guy apart because I need a piece of this so the fact that we're not using really heavy lights means that I don't need a really heavy boom so we use is thank you very much and it's going to reset this remember this was our flex feel holder tighten this goddamn bring this down here and by the way, this item here this is another one of those inexpensive things just throwing your tripod bag he's run out of forty fifty dollars so which could become my zip his cold or my flex for holder would ever wanna call it on guess what it's not a bad kind of do this bring this down a little bit don't worry I'm not standing under you are so let me just kind of rig this for you now what I'm going to do now if we had heavy lights we'd really have to worry about counterbalancing this and this is a case where if it's over there so when you start to get too heavy gear you need to think about doing need to sandbag it um I actually don't use sandbags a whole lot because they kind of have this heavy thing that I probably have with me it's called my camera bag have got enough dead weight why should somebody asked me recently I'm doing a shoot on the beach do I need to bring sand bags if you want to carry more sand to the beach go ahead all right so let me just sort of rig this guy here and say we can make this work pardon may thank you let's make sure all the pieces are on before we go ahead do this think that grip there weighs more than we're going to do make sure this stuff's locked in folks I find if you drop your gear on your subject they're no longer good subjects to set this guy like this so you know you might get to the point where you want to counterbalance it on some like this I'd probably slide this clip down here and just hang something from it but I think this will be a right good I'm not under it skews may she's gonna go running off started going running off to set any second okay, now I need you to actually we were going to bay and she's like no okay, so we're gonna raise this up no, no, we can shrink the model or doctorates though why stand so if you would go back to where you were please I can't goal is teo bring some light down on the top of her and just sort of bring out these nice highlights in her hair alexx stable and again if I want to soften it out a little more throws some tough spot on it so let's see what's happening let's bring you this way it's like we were gonna get pretty would want to be shooting this one a little longer glass and we've got some nice down like so it's they wanna add a little more let's turn this guy up about a stop there you go you were starting to pick up highlights now let's give it a little bit more but great to me let's give it one more time it's beautiful now although I don't do fashion I do like people and that's sort of the dead well that's not very good, rick it all so one more thin recycle tried again wait go now remember we'd filled in shadows earlier. Well, it would be the same thing we might want to do that but let's create one more kind of light okay, so we're going to stick with the beauty dish right now on don't worry, you're safe from taking this down so and generally I do ask people toe not be under them when I'm setting again if we were using studios strobes we would not be using a boom like this we would be using much heavy boom with a counterweight but for this stuff that we can get in and out quick this works beautifully so let's take this guy off looks let's take this off. Would you hold that, please? Thank you let's just pull this. I want to use us for that thing by the way, we've act thank you. Like I won the broken strobe award. You know, we've done shoots where we photograph scientists remember one general we walked in and he had all these cool models of molecules. Oh, all over his office on the portrait we ended up doing of the gentleman is we took a couple of those and some fishing line and we just hung them so they all look like they were floating in mid air and in our actual big africa we carry all sorts of things like fishing line, you know, anything we can think of we might use, but that's, you know that kid gets pulled out when it's trying to go back to the car and get more and more stuff so if you go back to where you were, please let me see if I can set this have you square your shoulders a little bit and I was you know say I was just about to touch your shoulders and I wantto mention something to you know when you're working with a professional model you know for a photographer to adjust their hair with something it's not really unusual it's not that bad okay if you're working and I do this with everybody including a model why feeling as you do not touch the subject in any way shape or form without saying do you mind if I fix your hair do you mind if I touch your shoulder because if anything is perceived to be inappropriate again your time may not be up but the chance is a pretty good your shoot is over so just that respect for your subject and your models could make a lot of difference now that I've said that can I touch your shoulders ok turn that way look I'm not even touching her so we're going to do is you know when it's done if something you know is a male shooter I have to be very careful what is appropriate and what is inappropriate it's one thing for me to say to a guy fix your jacket okay if my subject is female it's actually much easier for me to say to cook to keiko would you please adjust her plus otherwise stay to your subject could you please do this now you you take each situation so we're just going to put this guy in there right about like that and a cz long as when I get to the camera I don't see this what I'm going for is a halo for you let's see we can do that so yes look angelic let's go for the angelic look c come on angelic one she has played at so I might want to bring that up but you know he said you wanted purple hair let's do purple hair so again we could pull a purple gel out of my lighting kit and just tape it on the front of it or we could go to the road kit and throw this one in so I'm actually gonna throw one of these in and this kid has like been decimated so what's that is that is that the appropriate color for you? Okay, cool pull this thing apart rip said daisy now if I wanted that halo halo to be a little bigger than I would just pull one of these grids out so let's try that so this thing's sort of notched and it's going to drop right in there is such trump in there is such he says with great hope in his voice they're gonna put this thing down that should do throw this my pocket so I can't find it later the end of a shoe you can't believe how much stuff I have in my pockets just make sure when you're done to reset your kid in case I say in case the plane falls out of the sky okay there we go there we g o let's see if we can make her glow all righty way like that way that's what's gonna happen okay, so it's a little blown out on the purpose so let's dial it down no on let's say whoa! That worked really good so much. Okay, take two. Yeah. There's like no key. I have no idea why did that other into forming there we go now we've got it so let's play around with out a little bit more so I want a little more spread and through here we got some kind of cool highlights though you have to say they have to aim light very technical adjustment. Yeah, that looks right. Let's see, we're going to do now here we owe you a talent. Yeah, look at that. So now we've kind of added this in we could make it more intense, but let's, take a look at our wall. Okay, let's, take a look at our war now we have a lot of light hitting the wall, okay, let's, try to change our lighting up, get rid of a lot of white on that wall so depending on what I'm using for my light source if I am using something like this okay, you khun get I'm gonna turn this towards you guys, okay? So you could get what's called an egg crate which literally looks like something you would put eggs in on you would buy one that's this shape that would narrow what are being or I can go blow off the side for the lights only going one direction I can go to a strip light so let's see how we conduce this within our time frame because remember, we're journalists in the end it is going hey, twenty minutes till deadline take the time picture so it's going to bring this off to the side a little bit on and let's see if I can do with this uh, clamp, clamp, clamp, clamp. I think I need a better late stand than this. You know, I may just let's just see, I think that I probably realistically would not be using a beauty dish at this point. So let's, switch a couple of things around on let's, see if we can go there. So we're going toe quickly switch this. We're going to put the soft box back in the day z piece of equipment on the floor okay, so this guy's going todo here were going quickly reset this oh, hi, kinko and why do you why do you not want to use a beauty? I want to control the soft box a little more thie answer is because I feel like it. All right, so why don't we just I'll just see what you got there, okay? Give me this, you can have this, so all we're doing is we're just popping this offer this bracket on, we're going to hand you the beauty dish and then action, I need the light stand. I'm just going to thread this guy back in, so I mean, it's facing the right way and there's some newer brackets that air actually a little differently designed then this one will be perfect, as I've had this one a very long time that's gonna come around like that, okay, something's talking to something which is good and I'm not getting electrocuted, which is better we're gonna put you a little further away from the wall, and now the goal is to try to have virtually no light at the wall. So I think he probably easiest thing for me to dio is to get a really big gobo. Oh, I was going to use this one, but keiko's actually just set up the black side of that flexible, which will also, well, my breaking things cups ol didn't, so now part mean it's actually gonna work now. I still need a light stand. So it's done, it's not quite high enough, so we need to just lift this thing up if that clamp will hold it, which it may not. Which case? Realistically, I would not have this on location. I'd have, like, a two by three sheet of foam core. Yeah, I know it's a lot easier to lower the light stand she's trying to reach up. Look, allow me what's today's he grabbed that. Thank you. You think this is really gonna hold? We'll find out in a minute. Won't weigh we're gonna hold. We're gonna be able to lift it. There you go. You notice the whole lot of what we're doing is we're just jerry rigging it, coming up with the answer. And this is kind of realistic to our world is to just sort of get there and doing okay. So let's bring the goal is for you to be about here. Okay, so this is just off keiko. This thing could go a little that way, please. Just yeah, that'll do. So what I'm trying to do is make sure that my life is hitting my lovely model, okay, and or actually you could be a scientist now they're sitting my lovely scientist and on and not hitting the wall we want that wall to start to go dark so for the moment we're just going to pull this light out so we can sort of see what's happening let's see what we're doing here let's see here that let's bring you but half an inch that way I just say that to see if people are actually listening to me who are you now? A little bit into the monitor but we may pull the whole set a little bit over look at the color my wall now okay my wells really gone a lot darker didn't let's say I want to see something here let's bring our let's pull so it's pull our light back kick so we got no was pulled back down the phone call that way perfect now let's just trip over the wire one more time okay and then come right to me and they need about half an inch on the phone. Yes, as we would say in boston look wicked smart let's say we're going to get well we made the wall doctor I'll say that much let's try again nice to meet thank you say there you go now we're getting now we're getting to what we want when we want to continue to get that wall darker, okay? Because once that wall goes dark now I can throw color on that wall so think of the picture of john on the cover of the lighting kit this is this is the procedure so let's pull pull her life back a little more you are light I'm sorry oh maybe that's the answer keiko said that the bee light is still firing but you know something happened let's put the bee lie right back into the picture come on another idea let's take our be light let's throw it that way assyrian throws some color on that wall as you can see this is very well rehearsed which is the way most of our chutes are done well let's see what happened who looked at okay so we went from a white wall to a purple spot on the wall so keiko let's move the spot just that where the slightest bit on day we do this a lot meaning trip over light stands okay let's try that again that's cool way gotta pretty close that time kind of fun isn't it if you looked back towards the life and if you could hold a bunch of test tubes all pretend you're a scientist okay towards me hope in the test tubes you think it's this way and the expression here is oh damn my experiment fails but let's actually give you somethingto hold women excuse me one second folks I didn't mean to leave quite so quickly we're going to use these in another part of the shoot but congratulations you are now a gear manufacturer now what you're going to dio okay because of your aguilera manufacturer and I might really kind of want this product in it okay so maybe you're just going to kind of okay so you're gonna hold it there like that looks good hopes and holding a tad lower triple now eyes to me that's good but you head down a little bit that's cool it's mysterious care manufacturer that's see that's that was much cuter yeah yeah hoo do that again yeah why don't you just sort of leaning on there you go that's cute let's see we're getting but we go on one of these shoots I mean the prompts we use we just find their most of the time once in a blue moon let's go no yeah but no photograph detective see there it is okay so now keiko would I want you to do and I'm not sure let's take a player out this livermore let's take that chair please ah no I think we're going to try to widen this out just a tad okay so you know what I want you to do? We're gonna put this light back you're going to try to hold that we're going to see if we can project a pattern of the gear on the wall normally we wouldn't have a great up but we just happen to have one so let's use it okay okay so we'll get unfortunate the monitors right don't don't go against the black right that's it we cannot bring it up close with you look, I miss gear it a little longer glass here let's see what happens wait, wait quite get a pattern out of it though we got the rest of it so can you try again back there? Oh no it's going to go sideways yeah and then hold it little lower so we may have to pull that that narrow grid off the back in order to do this but let's try to get okay miss gear bring it out to me there, rick you want to hear? No, I don't know what to do with that lies to may that's good let's see if we're getting a pattern yet on the back who happened way lost it again you know what might work better? I think we gotta have our beam too narrow so let's make that wall more purple so rick will your while you're figuring this out? Well, I'm hiding behind the curtain. Yes, well you're heading. Yeah, a number of people have asked like, is this the sort of thing that you would do while the subject is already there? Would you be experience experimenting with this or what? You have already figured it out ahead of time? No no, I can't say I would have figured it out my general approaches that when I go in, if I'm going to be photographing a scientist on I will I like to say hello quite often they want to show you around their lab and then my line as well, I think we'll do this this's going to take us twenty minutes to set up. I'm sure you have something better to do with your time unless you want to learn lighting and then you're welcome to hang out, but I find generally people have x amount of good time, and I don't wanna waste that while I'm fooling with lighting unless, you know, on occasion, there interested, but overall, you know, they go back to what they're going to d'oh, we're ready, you know, I've lit the photograph again, I've let everything for five foot tall japanese woman on dh, then we bring him in and quite often will show him the test. You know, depending on the subject's experiences with other shooters, people come in, they spend a huge amount of time, they string cables everywhere, there's nothing worse than following a major network television crew into his chute because they've been there for three days and the guys pissed off because he was on nightline for eight seconds, so I want to waste as little of their time is possible when I find they're much happier. They're appreciative. I mean, we have a studio, we do some portraiture and some work in it. It's quite often a place for us to experiment with lighting one of the reasons that people say, well, should we come to you? What do you want to come to us? And my standard answers I'd rather come to you. The reason I'd rather come to you is that I don't wanna waste your time getting into a car sitting in traffic coming to my studio when the hope the shoot is going to take fifteen minutes of your time. And the guy or the woman is there an executive when they said we had already wasted forty five minutes getting her, I'm a ready in a bad mood lately for my next meeting, I'd much rather bring the whole thing to them. If we have to build a studio on set on location, we're happy to do it, and we have one coming up for one of the major corporations and you know they're they're very happy to have us to pay us to be there and bring all this stuff in so the ceo can get up from her desk, walk in, have reporter it done and go back to work. And so will take fifteen or twenty minutes of her time. This is actually how we met. This client was on a shoot like that on the head of communications that I can't believe this is all you brought on. So they like that and it worked out really well, that's awesome for sharing that. My pleasure. How we doing back there, miss keiko? Probably not very well, because I'm holding the grill. You want some of these pieces? All right? So we're going to play around with this and see what else we could do. But this is all variations on a theme, one that he actually did yesterday. And maybe we'll give it a go today again way. We were throwing shadows like we did earlier. Except we colored the shadow because if the wall is white and the on ly part of the wall that's dark is the shadow, then I can throw colored light into the shadow so let's say, we can nail this one then we nail this one. Okay, that's sort of funny. I've actually never done this with gears. I've done it with microscopes. Well, I like that. Okay, now you're gonna turn your body a little bit that there you go and then the gear. Yes okay now okay go let's see we're going to get see if I can see it now one of the things that we get in the section for we're going to start to bring out some studio strobes I'm going to a little mixture of studio strobes and speed light one of the advantages studio strobes is we have a model we could see what we were doing right however then I have to move the study esther of so pluses and minuses come on cool there's our dear okay so take a couple of tries we had to spread it out but look at the shadow off the gear right there so we want we want thank you thank you thank you and thank the gears so we walk into a place we saw some gears around how can we go from this plain white wall to this now we could get even more creative with this if we wanted to because when we talked about this yesterday we put this gear on a table and we replaced that with a grid spot. Now I'm going to let you and I can let the gear go into shadow in the foreground and shoot through it and then I'm looking on the wall like it's actually there and then come into this so by playing with our speed lights and how much were angling are light we can create all these things in one situation no. And give our client a lot of choices. And that's, one of the things that we try to do when we do is shoot. We don't just go in and shoot a portrait now, some publications say, okay, just one is fine. A lot of the publications I work for it's I need choices, rick. In other words, the art directors going I need choices. So when my boss says, is that all you've got? You can say no, I've got more. And in our very, very limited period of time again. It's twenty minutes, maybe by twenty minutes. All right. I'm sorry. Yeah. That's all right. What did she just change back there though? That changed it from the one we saw a wizard. What did you do back there? Okay, so what? What she did was and is that we went from the grid and very quick thinking on keiko's part she took the head shell and just taped it over. Now, now my beam of light is spreading up more, uncovering the wall. So there is a certain mickey mouse element to the whole thing. They're really soto wing it as we g o.