Lessons

Lesson Info

Image Review and Q&A

Okay, so I thought what I would do right before lunch gets here which is apparently going to happen any minute here uh it's the kind of review sort of what I what I did we started off with this this high key lighting set up here and of the main thing here is that there's really like no shadows to contend with we're not you can't really see very minimal under under the nose because it's all being filled with light and from every direction of the the strong white background is reducing the contrast even further by literally creating a flare situation uh in the in the lens s oh, she has you know, she's sort of very filled and very, very pale so you know, not as much of a retouching challenge, you know, because we're really were so filled in um that you know, we don't see a lot of that fine wrinkle detail now when we switch it's go forward now to the next lighting situation okay, now here we're in a much more contrast the lighting um so I've taken away all the white reflectors on the sides...

and she really only has the nose light reflector and it's it's a it's a more dramatic kind of lighting, but this is going to require now a little bit more um a little bit more retouching to kind of glamorize the image you can see the darker shadow under under the chin it's actually giving more dimension to the face the the really flat lighting that we had before it is literally does that it flattens out the features so here we get to see some shape I think is there's sort of mme or energy in uh in the image this way and uh let's seeem go through ah that there's a change in here somewhere so these air it's not it's not fully uh super contrast in dramatic I still have that nose like very close it's very close on its providing it kind of a nice phil now here where I move the the that that chin or knows light away now I've got really dark shadows I had removed it completely was like this is just too dark is to black under there so now I'm going to bring it in so now I've brought it in just a little bit so we can see a little skin tone in there and didn't doesn't go just a black and and then with this is basically our main beauty thing here's I lowered the light a little bit okay so you see the shadow doesn't extend down the neck as much it's up a little tighter so it's a little closer to the chin because I brought the the main light closer to the camera same thing with the nose and nose shadows not extending way down anymore um so it's a little more flattering but it's still contrast because I'm not feeling that much uh with the uh with that with that nose light reflector some of our james bond spinning stuff uh but uh yeah here we go so again, you know, like I would just be using this portion because I think that hair looks nice and I would look for you know, maybe I can put both of them up for a senate interesting effect here's another one where this side looks good this side doesn't well, maybe we'll play around with that today when we when we put the final post production uh into place here very nice pose here. Yeah, okay, so that my god boy my in trouble here all right anyway, uh I couldn't we're pretty wrapped on we're I think we're ready for lunch, right? So, uh, way have a few more questions maybe this is a good time. Questions in the audience in I've got to ask my one of my favorite questions so you are so attentive to the lighting with the meat oring here's the question what considerations do you give to exposing and shooting people of darker skin or people of even fairer skin specifically with the emphasis being on the exposure right? Uh, well, we're goingto be shooting a dark skin model tomorrow that's a whole other range of issues to deal with we have a fairly fair has got that that sort of freckled peaches and cream kind of complexion that this is a certain kind of color of skin too, but uh, you know, my my main consideration is not toe over expose it because I don't want I don't want highlights on the skin to goto white, which is sort of the danger and uh so with fair skinned, I'm sort of looking to make sure that I'm not getting two hot highlights um got to pay attention to like and especially today in this heat oh my god, it's sze hot in here, people out there in the internet can't really experience that part of this shoot, but it is warm and so our model is going to sweat and that's what you know, glisten it is kind of showing up under the eyes and there's a little bit of extra highlight going on that I would normally want to try and avoid so way would normally maybe be more on top of it with powder on uh ideally of course ah don't shoot in such heat, which is you know why we use flash back in the old days in the hollywood glamour days they used hot lights and you could you know you could feel the heat coming off of these light sources, so you know nowadays with flash the flash is very bright but it doesn't generate anywhere near the kind of heat that comes off of those big tungsten movie lights so um we normally think of you know, flash lighting as being a cz being cooler but today where we have no such luck so yeah, we're so this is actually going to become a kind of a retouching issue so we'll uh we'll have toe deal with those little highlights and, you know, kind of smooth things out um with darker skin people and your concern is more about get them going to dark, you know, so shadows and things could go black uh if you want drama, you have to have some contrast in there but then you were we're also concerned that uh darks can not look too dark in print so uh and will be dealing with out tomorrow um said close enough to answer your question or is there anything different specific to the to the way that you exposed to you over exposed to under expose? Do you do it exactly the same? Um, well, you know, in my high key shot I actually over exposed a little bit in the lighting was so flat and had no contrast, so I wasn't really worried about little speculate highlights on the face because the face is just really kind of evenly lit, very filled so I could push exposure just a little bit to get a real pale rendering which is kind of common in the high key look um so yeah, I may tend to overexpose a little bit or or underexposed depending on the effect my tendency is to overexposed just as far as I can because it's always easy to make things darker as long as you got detailed there if you push it too far, you know if you're over exposed too far and you've got blown out highlights because an issue of trying to bring the detailed back when you want a dark and things so um you know those of the considerations but I'd like to keep the base exposure up because that gives me less noise in the shadows and higher quality just in general question from one of our regulars in the chat room mary from costa rica asked if you wanted to make her skin look a little bit softer with this lighting set up, how would you do it? Or is the skin usually shot as it is and then soften in postproduction? Um, I would say these days because with with just about all images and especially portrait ce we're going toe they're going to go through photo shopped at some point on there's an expectation that it's everything's going to be retouched so um you know something like this I just know that it's going b we're going to do a certain level of retouching on it because of that I'm allowing you know, certain things and I'm not going to stress over them because I know that I'm going to fix it later on when we were shooting film it was much more common to try to avoid retouching because it was expense so I would put a diffusion filter on the lens um these days almost nobody bothers with the diffusion filter because that's an effect that you can create in post and you you eliminate your flexibility as soon as you put a filter do something to soften the look uh you've you've closed off some options so I like to keep all my options open so I'm really just going for, you know, trying to get a clean image so I'm not going to stress over, you know, like, oh around her eyes looks a little harsh we'll take care of that later but you know, you do have you be really concern is with the direction the light if you want good direction nice modeling on the face so that the features look nice and uh um and then you're, you know, sort of softening stuff is so easy to do in post that try not to stress over it while you're shooting yeah, great, we stops more question one is from darrell s for those of us who can't put put a makeup artist into our budget what is the best advice that we can give your clients both female and male about how to come prepared with makeup uh how to come prepared I think that's sort of a question for our makeup artists is the expert but if you didn't have a makeup but um well, you know, very often the the call on set will be come makeup ready if you are using professional talent they usually know a little bit about makeup and usually enough to kind of be passable when they show up so that's that's kind of the normal of kali would say come make up ready but you know really you're sort of at the mercy of of your of your talent if you're not if you have, you know, working with people that are not professional don't know about makeup uh it might be good if you do this a lot. I know photographers that do like headshots for actors and actresses they actually go to makeup school, learn how to make it themselves so they can do a quick fix, you know, right there without without needing to make a person um, my preference always work with make a person that knows how to do this stuff because I don't want to have to do it, so maybe no coma could share some tips for those photographers who don't might not be working with makeup artists and so what you would recommend they tell their clients you don't have a budget for hair and make up the one thing that I highly suggest to every photographer is to get a lesson yourself, so make sure that you know about basic foundation application and you know the main thing is your model's skin needs till it good on camera and I know that photo shop is a wonder, but isn't it great if you could take a little bit of that time out? So if you could take a lesson yourself and become knowledgeable about makeup and even have a very small kit that's something that I would highly recommend if that's something that isn't within your reach than tio ask your models if they can tow actually go in and teo north strom or macy's and have a professional makeup artist put their makeup on them so that they're going to have again a foundation that's going to match their skin that they're gonna have stuff that's gonna last all day if you absolutely those are not in the question and you need your model to do their own makeup and then just be prepared for whatever is going to show up the thing that would be honest, honest truths, makeup ready the lighter the make up, the less likely it is going to look bad on camera um but yeah I would try to send them to somebody who knows something about make up otherwise asked them to come in with just the basics thank you very much for that okay I think we'll take one more question before we go to lunch good. All right this is from jin is from malaysia who says while the face is probably the most important to focus on do you pay as much attention to the net collarbone hands etcetera when shooting or in post processing uh well certainly in in post and certainly imposed I would do that really ideally you need to be paying attention to everything or certainly at least have an eye out for something that um looks odd or out of place or you know um but you know, neck collar bones yeah, lighting can change how that looks in general if you have good light for the face the other things they're kind of there was they should fall into place so it's not like we need separate lighting uh for hands versus neck versus face you know you're going to cover it all with the same light but you might you know, pay attention to features that could be problematic if there's you know, if she's got like a birthmark or a mole or or something you know you might choose a different angle or you know something toe toe work on on that minimizing that kind of defense but other than that, I would say, you know, not not a huge difference between lighting for the face and the rest. The body.