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5 Two Light Set-Ups: 3 to 5

We're going to go to three and this is one of my favorites and will take a second to set up. This is wraparound beauty light, so the set up will be as such. We're going to make a high key lighting setup on white without having a white background, and so what we're going to dio is we're going to actually put the soft box behind our subject, and that becomes our white background. In this instance, we have a three by four foot soft box, which is good for a mid length or a close up shot. If you wanted to try this technique for a full length, he would need a four by six soft box and I have done a ton of times it definitely works, but most of us probably have something smaller like a three by four, so the three by four foot is going to go directly behind our subject. When I say directly, I mean right up against her. What that will do is it will create a bright background, pure white, and it will start to give me a little bit of room like that wraps around her and that's before I ever go to a...

nother light, and we saw that yesterday at the end of the day with a three foot octo box, but the octu box is a little small for that effect. Ideally, you'd have something a little larger, so we're going to take a look and this is a two light set up I'm gonna maybe put this one off to the side so we're going to start with that soft box perfect and then just a little bit higher I know you guys can see only move this out of the way for a second, okay? Perfect just like that, you're gonna step back into it all right now I have been meeting a bit so I could give you guys some exposures give united deal of if you wanted to know ratios or if you wanted to know that stop this one is you kind of got a guess because she's up against it like the correct would it be correct if you want blown out highlights? What it's going to try to do is give you correctly exposed skin tone it it's not going it's not going to work, so we're going to guess here and I'm going to try it at six point three and this is going to be too bright, but you'll be able to see the direction of flight so look with this soft boxes the on ly light source amusing look what it does it wraps around her jaw line, it wraps around her clavicles it wraps around her face and it gives you some really nice definition eso I'm going to close down a little bit so I'm going to shoot at nine o and so what that will do is it'll darkened down that late a little bit okay so I think that this is beautiful light on her face ohad but what you do want to know is I told you I switched your right up against that soft box the distance she is from the soft box will make a difference the further out she comes from the soft box the smaller those highlights they won't wrap this much we'll have you take a step forward right there perfect you see all the small that was I mean was that like six inches maybe six inches forward? The light will change completely so watch the size of the highlights on her jaw here on the right hand side and then it shrinks I bring her even further ford it's even less so the distance of your subject to that soft box will control how much the light wraps around and then you decide how bright that light is. So this is giving me a pure white background without having to have a white seamless well having to light a background and we'll talk tomorrow a problem I see a lot of people run into is hideaway how to light a white background evenly and make it pure white well, we don't even have to worry about that here so I get that right now I could as I said yesterday should her just like that as one light could you turn sideways from that same well kirby posting I could show her like this and I've shot this with maternity with a four by six and squish right up into that subduction they're perfect you could shoot her sideways and this looks good for who'd watch so it wraps around and all of that we're going to add a light to the front because we're going to do a portrait set up this would be much more common I have chosen in this case a beauty dish I want a little bit more contrast to the face I want to have more control over the shadows you could use another soft box you could use an umbrella if you only have an umbrella I just like the quality of the shadows and this is going to be an awesome beauty shot we're gonna put that up there like your face and I'm going to put the beat additional in total paramount but close and other words kind of flat lit to the center because I'm going to try to eliminate shadows and I've decided that's the direction I want to go for this set up really glowy really high key very, very joyful and its feel so pretty flat onto her and then the other way we talked about how to eliminate shadows is that a reflector underneath so this is going to be more or less a clamshell reflector underneath and that beautiful soft box wrapping around from behind so have you hold that little be perfect and then let's get a commuter meter reading on the face here see I don't put my bill I'm gonna put my belt gun see how useful it it actually use my hands right hump it up a little bit more time change it to t stops I don't even know what that means okay he's going to fix it for me you're all right and I can give it a little test here you can just kind of give it a guess so let's see that's not too bad a little bit break right ten point one okay I like over exposed skin just a little bit all right so what you see is beautiful beautiful highlights wrapping around her jaw line and then you have the light from above that carves out her features and then you have that phil reflection from below personally for me I would put the beauty dish a tiny bit higher and pointed a little bit lower because the problem will run into is right now the video dishes pointed where straight back and this reflector I need to catch a little bit of that beauty dish like to bounce up to her so I'll point it down just a little right there should be good china and I like being my life a little bit closer for being just remember how I said the further you back it out that starts to lose that beauty diss quality and is this center pointed more or less in your face or a little above? So I want to point out her face I think that's good and I can actually kind of see it on her face from practice, but I just asked my subject I mean, I don't know what I'm doing I'm just saying, is it lined up with your face living one ok a little all right, let's, give this a try oh that's perfect, beautiful! And I do like to overexpose the skin just a bit, but nice shape light on her face and her cheekbones are awesome if you're late wrapping around her cheekbones usually just the jaw line, but when you have the cheek bones that amazing, you get that too? All right, so this setup is fantastic when photographing women it's glowing it's high key it's clamshell if you want, you can get rid of the reflector s so they're here and I can d'oh a little bit I can do a little bit more shadow, for example and it still has a pretty nice aesthetic it doesn't need to I'm glad now so I can go that direction but we're going to talk in our next set up how to make this more dramatic or maybe more applicable to men because men we don't usually dio really flat really clamshell light so really even lighting so let me talk about the set of business will switch it for the next one so in this set up what we have going on is the three by four foot soft box behind her we have that so she's right up against it, so the light wraps around if I move her further up, the light won't wrap around as much. I then take a beauty dish more or less centered in the front so have flatter light and high up so that it carves out her cheekbones I can either use no reflector or use a silver a white reflector to start filling in the shadows giving me clamshell light so this is high key grate for portrait's great for beauty could also do this for a maternity shot if you wanted so it's definitely got that that glowing seven and look to it okay, so we're goingto switch the next example here is we're just going to make this a little bit more dramatic yeah, so if you wanted a fuller length the shot so I know you said to do it for by six and the back what about in the front? What would you suggest okay so it depends on what the look you're going for if you have four by six in the back and then a beautician the front it'll just fall off in light it will get darker a that could be okay but if you're going for like really really glowy light you could put another soft box in the front or if you don't have another soft box you could do a shoot through umbrella you just need a light source that you khun back up a little bit so that the light spreads out because right now the beauty dish it's super close and it basically just like her midsection so something that you can get a broader spread of light so we're going to make this a little bit more dramatic and what I want is I want the beauty dish to be loop is shore rembrandt ish a little bit more shadow to it I'm going to maybe about here and the whole idea behind this is I want to introduce shadow where we're not going for the flat light glowing I'm getting rid of the reflector that we were using and I'm moving the beauty dish off to the side so this one is going to be lighting set up number four off this segment all right so I've got some shadow on her face I want to make sure I could still see catch lights and rise which I can lord tiny bit that looks good and it may take a shot like that so you can see and see how my distance worked so it gets a little bit more dramatic and what I love is that highlight from the background really shows up on the shadow side and this touches back to something we were talking about before you're asking ok in the beginning of the day why would I put the strip light opposite the main light and the reason is is wherever you have shadow if you put a highlight on that side in the background is a rim light that's where it shows up more so I'm able to start getting more dramatic lighting and I can pull the light off further to the side get even more dramatic I love how this makes her cheekbone and jawline work look beautiful feel anything that you can do as well is you can actually move the soft box left to right so if I move a tomb of a little bit to my right what that will do is will actually give more light room to start wrapping around so by putting the soft box more to the right hand side this highlight wraps around more if I go the opposite way the highlight shrink so I'm gonna take a shot both ways one like this great and you can keep going you're going to go in a good way to go in write that and so let's take a look at the two of these compared side by side one is a really broad wrapping highlight and then it gets more narrow so I just have to life set up here it kind of reps and fills in here so it fills in her jaw line on the on the right hand side it fills in her job are left hand side it's filling in her jaw line that's when it's further over has more room to rap where is on this side? I moved it back to the right so it's moved more this way and it just gives you a little bit of highlight so I have two lights the soft box in the beauty dish I can have it around to the front with a reflector everything filled in glowing and centered and then switch it and make it more dramatic move the light off to the side move the soft block so it wraps more it's two dramatically different effects this one I would be much more likely to photograph a male subject and if you want to make it even more dramatic for a male subject I would add a grid ah great is going to focus that light and a little bit more and add a little bit more contrast so I could shoot this for male subject rembrandt grid and it's night and day but it's the two lights and I just moved it a little bit off to the side it's a totally different look so I want to see if there's questions on this one because this is like the tour my favorite to light set ups have a place in my heart I can tell so we do have question about whether this is from diane oh can you get the same effect that you're doing there with somebody standing on model standing in front of just a window you can so I just did a tutorial for expo imaging and it'll be a good thing with them showing how to use their flash bender speed like and I wanted a similar effect and I had the subjects in right up against the window had chain attention to where the highlights were wrapping and then use the flash better which basically small little soft box effect it's like her face the downside is you need to know how to balance ambient light and speed lights or studio strobes so that takes it like another level of knowledge but it is something you khun d'oh good question ok so what type real quick what type of window he was saying is it can't be direct sunlight if it's direct sunlight you will not be able to balance it correctly and will be too harsh it needs to be in direct sunlight so every the north facing window the northlight that you might have heard about or it could be a window with, like, like a thin, like, clear ish white curtain that would work well, but you don't have to have that. It just can't be direct sunlight. Thank you. Would it make any difference if you flip that? I made it a horizontal. Yeah, so the biggest difference for flipping it making horizontal is when I flip it where when he puts his family, the light will wrap around more. So I'll get even more wrap of light on the jaw line. But I won't be able to shoot as wide of a shot if I was aiming for a wide shot. But you can definitely do that. I've done that when I want, like just glowing light to go even further. Like almost the tip of her chin. I can do that, britney. Yeah, that highlight actually does. It will go like it goes all the way to the tip of the chin all the way out. It's. Not a drastic difference, but there is a difference there. Nice. A lot of people were asking about lens flare. Are you concerned about giving lens flare when shooting directly into that light? I was waiting for that question because they always get that question I knew it would come all right, so losing you don't know when you shoot into a light source you get lens flor that's just kind of how it works and so it's like when you're shooting outdoors if I'm photographing you backlit by the sun I'm framing up with the sun even not in the frame just kind of into the sun I said I'll get less sir and what lengths where does is it hits a lens it's light that bounces around and it gives you a flat or muddy image and sometimes it'll give you bright highlights like actual flare up in your photograph so usually that's not desirable although sometimes I will have created it in studio on purpose you know you learn the rules so you can break the rules but in this instance I am shooting directly into a light I should probably have lens flare except we've done two things to help ourselves out the first thing that I aimed to dio is I try to have the center hot spot of the light kind just below her back and not say over her shoulder if that center hot spot or that you're actually the strobe of the light is right over her shoulder I tend to get a lot more lens because it's going to be a flare up of brighter light so right now where it's placed it looks like it's like right mid back like right in the middle of her back right about here and so if you're getting ones for, try to reposition that the other thing that we've done to help ourselves out is we have inner diffusion any time you add diffusion, it spreads light out more, it makes it softer, and it gets rid of chances or reduce his chances of having lens flare and the last thing that I didn't do, but that you could see us should dio is having a lens hood would help a little bit wouldn't help a lot from shooting straight into the light source, but it would cut out a little bit of light, and when you go back and look at those images, if you actually look at the history grams, there might not be a true black. I think if you if you know what a history graham is and you're looking at the distribution of light and dark in the photo, there might not actually be a true black point because I am shooting into a light source, and it probably gave me a tiny bit of haze, but it's close enough that if I needed to, just at a tiny bit of contrast and posts like, oh, just a little bit, it would look perfect, and I think it looks pretty good already beautiful, I'm excited for you, too, tomorrow about how to get a white background with no shadows because I know when I first started that is like that I don't understand how I could get rid of those shadows, so having this as an alternative when is wonderful, beautiful? Yeah, well, it's also much, much more simple for me, like much simpler when I need a white background and I'm all by myself, and I don't want to change the background. I don't know if anyone else does that, but I hate changing backgrounds and so like, oh, myself box and explicit around these awesome, awesome, very cool let's go the next one. Oh, good question e I was just wondering, I know this is a little bit off topic, but as faras colors like for makeup and for clothing and things like that, when you have a lighting set up like this or like really bright light, what would you recommend those two things in the first shot when it was really, really flat and the front you have to do something more of contouring makeup wise, so if you are doing, if you're working with a makeup artist, what they're doing is they're adding shape to the subject's face, their darkening down the shadows with makeup and lightening up the highlights with lighter makeup, the reason being is when you flatten out that light there's not much light to help you shape their face and so that it really enhances the things we think are beautiful like high cheekbones usually there's not a right or wrong answer usually when I do this glowing light I aim for later or more neutral tones I don't usually do super bright color and I definitely don't do like heavy black or smoky eyes or anything like that but it's a personal taste all right? We're going to switch on to the next setup that was number four of medium difficulty okay? And this is number five we're going to get super dramatic and I want to show you what a grid looks like on a subject's face with us to take a second for us to switch we're going to have a grid on the face and a grid really really helps you to focus light in I just want to show you how tight I can get a grid and this would be great if you're doing like film new are or if you want like a really dramatic men's portrait or maybe it's a musician and you want just like tight dramatic light on their face so can you give me with the smallest when they have their five let's put five and I just want to show you what this looks like a cow tight I can get this light all right just like that's great now the other thing was this is ok I when I'm using this how it works and it usually focuses the light so much and cuts it out that it's hard to see so because the light is being blocked by this grid sometimes I have to pump up the modeling light so I can see what's going on all right to pump it up so you can see already where it is on her face this is the smallest good I have this is a five degree grid if I wanted to be really focused on her face right now looking at it it is about the top of her forehead to just below her clavicles pretty tight late already with the closer I bring this light they're more focused and focus and focus and focus and focus that gets a little bit right probably so right now it is pretty much on lee here on her face just by moving that distance by choosing a really tight grid like that so I'm going with this here and I can do this is where you might see hollywood like paramount lighting the butterfly where you get the little butterflies in the nose that could do that here but I'm gonna go right about here ok super dramatic so I'll get her face and then just a little bit of her shoulders and I would shoot this personally in black and white here's why this can look good in color it is something you can achieve however you know in photo shop when you increase contrast in a photograph the colors get more saturated and we noticed that when you pump up contrast in one area like a red will look more red or blue will look more bill everything increased contrast equals increased saturation that's just a part of how on color and light and saturation work together atonality and saturation work together so what that means is I have just put on and insanely high contrast modifier it is really bright light really focused very contrast e which means her skin will probably look a little bit orangish red like it a little shift the color a little bit and also it tends to not be very flattering on the skin by shooting black and white and I over expose a little bit it looks more like old hollywood where is in color I don't want overexposed as much because the color shift they're just giving an idea this would personally for me to be something I would shoot in black and like let me give this guy get a test on no would doing away with yeah all right let me give it to us one turn it down we're going to take a guess your first I wasn't too bad okay, so what he just made the comment of like that was faster than finding the meter I mean, it kind of is I wanted to let people know the numbers that I get the number on the light meter and then I mean like I'll get the number on the light meter and a little higher a little to put it right in the middle of her nose he's watched the difference so when he met measured here it's too late when he measured here it was a tow a drastic difference I really and for those of you didn't see this yesterday I really rarely use a light meter if it looks right it's ok, I just check and make sure I don't have horribly going on highlights and a light meter is good if you don't feel comfortable judging what's right or wrong if you're still trying to figure it out so when we see a little bit student right there all right so this is what I have just from the grid so far in this life is just like just on the center of her face there I could bring it in closer like I can actually move this in tighter I can actually avoid her shoulders if I wanted to move the light down, you get an angle like that where your shoulders a little bit more and you chip just a little bit good, bigger eyes for me good so I can have insanely focused like the problem is she just I mean, she just disappears in the background it's not all that dynamic so at a second light to carver out from the background but for me it wouldn't be appropriate to have a soft or wrapping like this is dramatic and harsh light so we're adding a barn door and we're adding the barn door on the shadow side of the face and even though this is mostly centered because this is such a tight light notice this side definitely has more shadow than the other, so we're going to add the highlight there and I'm going to switch this I don't know if it will stick in light room I'm going to switch this to monochrome so you can see what it looks like in black and white so it might just pop up with it and I would have you open the barn door is a little bit great perfect let's try that again and then she up right there good all right, so what you'll see super tight light on her face and then a nice highlight that carves her out and I could bring this even more centered if I want to try one more get and I'm gonna put it down just a little great super duper dramatic later on, you'll see that if I were doing this is true like hollywood film you are, I would add one more like so about all the highlights and all the contrast but that was five lighting set ups there with two lights but they're a little different a little more unusual so if you're just starting and you only have a soft box that's fine go to the first section the first segment that we did and that will give you a whole bunch of two light set ups but if you're getting a little more adventurous and you want to try a grid and you want to try barn doors then I had a couple of them for you here okay? What kind of questions yet when they do love light I decided you get talking through all these love it love it do we have any questions here? Leonard light story reflects so I got really excited because I have been shooting some hair campaign images recently and so if you go to my facebook page you see them all over I've been posting a ton of them but I got really excited because most of the time I use one or two or three lights and using most of what I'm talking about here but all of a sudden I had like ok the one light on her face and then I had another phil light and then I had to back hair lights and then I had another one for shine and then I had a flag and I never learned it but it was all the things I taught you just stuck together, and I was like, this is awesome, and I had, like, six life and it worked, and it looked gorgeous and like, wow, the theory actually works is right, really excited, very proud of them. I think that's the thing is just combining that theory with the play and that's, what I'm continuing to take away from from what you're teaching us is knowing the use different tools and then knowing what affect you're looking for, and then how to play tio test to get them right. I think I see a lot of people asking for really specifics about what's the power number on here, or and I want to keep saying, and I know you keep saying, like it's about getting out there and experimenting, not about the exact numbers, is that correct? Yeah, what it would be a swell is where the actual numbers would perhaps matter if it doesn't matter if I'm shooting this shot at five point six or f sixteen, okay, sure, it affects the depth of field a little bit. What would be more applicable would be based on the brightness of this light. How bright is that back like like the ratios of them? How bright is the rim light? How bright is the phil light compared to the mainly that would help somebody in understanding how to re create it with the more that you look at the light, I could have that back barn door twice is bright. If I wanted or I could have a half is right as they wanted. It depends on how much I wanted to pop. So that's what? I would kind of keep in mind. Yeah, sure. If you want to recreate it, yeah, it does help to know. Ok, this one's five point six and that one is five point o but it could easily be seven point one because that's what looks better to me at that particular moment? Because I wanted it brighter. So the more you know, the more you kind of piece things together you mentioned before that you start sometimes with the rim line as you're like setting up set up is that kind of how most your thought pattern works for most your lighting setup, sir. Is it always different? Ok, that's a good question. Yes, my brain is erratic. This is true it's goes all over the place, but for something like this, if I know that I have a room light that my subject can't move too much what I try to do is look at my in my studio, I'll take some shots with the main light first and I'll figure out like, roughly what angle I want them at and then I'll turn off the main light and I'll get the rim like position just perfectly and then I turn it back on so I know they're angle cause some some like this barn door from here to here the light works or doesn't so that you do what I do, they get the field right ad that back in, but I make sure to turn off my main light whenever I'm setting my back life thank you. I think you showed us this yester earlier, but can you use that this is from mads easy can agree and give you a nice spotlight in the background to like you're creating on her face and that I'm trying to remember what number it was. I was using it for a set up that I called checkerboard lighting I let the subject with the soft box and then there's a shadow side of her face that just blended into the dark background so it took the grid and pointed it at the background for a highlight and if you want and they small circle it would be five ten gets a bigger circle twenty gets even bigger, yeah I just like this question which is from the furby lindsay how do you remember all of these set ups when you're in the field kind of similar to what's your thought process absolutely but how do you remember this perfect I don't remember any of them because that's what this exact thing I don't I don't ever think of it like setups I think of it saying all right so mainland on the face so I want it soft or harsh harsh ok let's get the grid perfect stick that I want really really tight like all right do I want more shadow on the side of her face or less a lot more all right let's move this over here let's get some more shadow all right take a picture I like it but she totally blends into the background I can and do I have a street box with me or do I have a barn door so I never like thinking about set up to ever my brain just goes okay what's the feel I'm going for what's going to give me that feel and then you have the right tools he just kind of pick and choose what you want and build it and I changed my mind often as well we've got one more question back here I noticed the way you're talking it it's obviously you use a tether system concert it's not just on the back of the camera this is a good question okay? And I have a funny response to this so what other system is something like this? This is a tether cable and this is hooked into my camera and then it feeds over into a laptop or a computer and I didn't shoot tethered to either light room or capture one capture one is a software that it's great for tethering but it also will handle like medium format cameras and what I'll do is I'll shoot and they can pop up on the screen there's a couple times when I do or do not use heather I do use tether sometimes if I just want to see like a creative director there or a client that needs to see the photos I can have them looking and telling me is that the look that they're going forward that work with the layout do they like it whether they feel or maybe it's for a makeup artist to see if you know I said you know what I think we need more contouring take a look at the photo so it's not just on the back of my camera when I so here's a rule of thumb when I want people to see the images I tether when I care about their opinions I tether when I don't I don't tether like because what'll happen is everybody starts looking and giving an opinion and sometimes I just don't I'm not I'm not finished slating. Yeah, I'm not ready yet. Like I want to get it set up. So sometimes I won't plug in until I'm close to where I wanted to be, that I don't have to have worry about people looking before I'm done. So I used both ways.