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Coloring Light for Corrective Effect

Now it's time to go over multi point light setups. This is a fantastic way to basically start practising the use of two and three light setups and here's the thing guys and gals, I would not recommend this technique for outdoor shoots and the reason why is because for this type of stuff toe work reliably well enough to really have a model standing and to be able to do all these types of things you need to be in an indoor location where you can sit up, stand it's reflect their stands with the reflectors on them if you're outdoors generally there's probably going to be wind, and if there's wind it's going, not three fletcher stands over or it's going to move them, even if you have sandbags on it is going to move them around and make it very difficult to get consistent light setups. So this one of those fantastic techniques that's great to start practicing two and three light setups, but more off enclosed environments environments where you don't have a lot of wind or a lot of outside kin...

d of forces interacting, because once we get those type of situations, really you're going to be better off using off camera lights because there I'm going to be much less prone to being moved and bumped, and they'll give you more consistency in terms of the way that they light but let's go over this because what we're going to do here is we want to set up this shot where it looks like we have two, three and in the bottom ones that it looks like we have straight up like three or four lights set ups when in reality, it's just good positioning and then setting up lights around them. So as number one let's, start with our tips first you guys can look through the gear list will be talking about all of you that we're using each one of these shots tell number one. Always, always, always, always, always, always, and I feel like I've mentioned this probably like ten times. Start with one light, start with one light, get that light into the right position and then number two after dialing in your camera settings and setting up your one light, then look at the image and analyze it and see where your shadows are and see what you need to manipulate and to change tip number three and two and one and two kind of combined to north three is just because you can add more like doesn't mean that you have to add more light and doesn't mean that you should add more light look, a compelling image needs to have both highlights and shadows. If you open up all the shadows and everything is in the mid tones it's not going to look cool it's not gonna look dramatic it's not going to look great if you likewise leave too much in the shadows it's not going to look great either so it needs to have a balance between and it always depends on the look you're going for so let's go and start from the top I want to show you basically the construction of this image from start to finish because at each one of these points you could actually stop and say hey that's the look I'm going for it's totally fine there's nothing wrong with either of these so starting with the top left so all three on top of the on top right here it's with the twenty four millimeter f two point eight mark to our cannon twenty four seventy right here we're at around sixty three to seventy millimeters for all these shots we're at one, two hundred second at two eight and s o two hundred the only thing that changes between these three shots are the modifiers. So what do we start with? Well remember we start with this shot before, right when we're doing a one light silver dramatic setup, we start with this light and this was the exact shot that we got okay the same shot that we talked about earlier so what we know is that for this shot there's one silver reflector just being on the stand directly to the models left side for this next shot look what happens here the light there's a little bit of light on the right side it just opens up the shadows a little bit here there's no phil here there's a little bit of phil what is that coming from it's coming from a white v flat on the other side of them we just placed of white v flat so basically what happens is this flash we kick this into that silver reflector it bounces onto him and across to that b flat b flat kicks up kicks it back into his right side okay that's great. We have a little basic two lights set up right here now what happens in the other one look at this one from this to this there's some dramatic change going on right? I've adjusted the silver a little bit just so we get a little more kick into the face and we get a little more drama everything I've adjusted the silver to tiny but where the white b flat on the other side but what we had I added one more silver I decided that I wanted the focus of this image to be really on his features his core his his abs so I put a silver reflector right around where his chest and abs are so what that does is once I bouncing this left side, it goes in the right, we hit the entire b flat b flat kicks and filled in light on this side and in the silver adds additional light just into the abs. So essentially, this looks like a two or three lights set up yet, it's just our on camera flash with additional light modification once you get this set up, if you're in the studio, you can shoot consistently and get the shots consistently every single time. One thing to keep in mind, too, is one of the techniques that I like to use, and by the way, if you are shooting in studio, you're shooting in dark situations like this. One thing I haven't mentioned is absolutely you can use a manual flash on your camera, but one thing that's really beneficial it's really nice tohave is the focus assist built into a full feature flash because they're working in dark environments and in dark environment isn't nice to have that feature because it helps really a lot with focus. Otherwise, you need some sort of modeling life, some sort of light just in the room to well, to get your focus to able to see, okay, all right, so that's one nice thing about having that so one thing that I like to do a lot is one of shooting I'll have this hand just kind of guiding the the flash it's only turned this to manual quick and what I'll do is I'll just open my left eye when I'm shooting I'll open my left eye and I'll just look at the side so if I'm shooting this way my subjects right there watch I'm just gonna keep my left eye open eyes glance the left to make sure that this is aimed right where I needed to know that I can get my little test and see where it's hitting and I simply looked back and fire it's a very simple way of making sure that your flash is on point and you can also make sure that it's either you know wide enough it's tight enough and zoom or if you need to go even further and had a grid to make sure you don't get spill anywhere for these shots because we're shooting the studio we don't want any lice bill we are using grids on the flash head so that that way it's kind of controlling from spilling either top front towards the model or anywhere else we're hitting just the reflector and it's bouncing like just the way we want it otherwise the background is going to start lighting up in other areas in the images to start lighting up that we don't want because it's spilling out and bouncing off walls and so forth so just remember to control your light use your grids if you have a snoot use whatever you need to control it make sure it goes into the primary modifier and that modifies bouncing into the other modifiers the way you wanted to work with one built to two and then if you need another third go for that too but whatever you need so once that was set up we just went ahead and we got a bunch of different shots and one of my favorite shots is basically once again we have brandon looking towards the light on that side so that way we kind of leave the other side of his face and shadow and had I had him turn just a little more we would have even had a little rembrandt like because we would've got a kiss of light underneath his cheek or I could have pulled that silver for just a little bit we get a beautiful highlight along that shoulder and along the chest on this side and then we get that nice kick right into the abs we have a good phil on the side so he doesn't drop completely in a black like he does appear okay but same thing those bottom left was same exact camera settings one hundred second f two eight two hundred again bouncing around one quarter toe one eighth power off of the silver plus a b flat plus a silver moving on to this shot. Now, this these two shots going part of our case studies. So we'll talk more about it in a little bit, but essentially place them in front of the garage door. We open up the garage door a little bit, so we have little background like coming in. We did something similar here except we just flip things around a little bit. And this is what I want to talk about in this video. If you want that primary model fire to be more speculator and to be brighter, use a silver. If you want the primary modified to be a little bit softer and to be not quite as bright, use a white there's a benefit to each one, depending on how you're bouncing the second and the third light if I want the second light this this light that goes under the abs if I wanted to be close to the same brightness as the first light than what I can do is rather than using a silver as the first bounce, I can use a white as the first bounce so on these two shots were using a white as the first bounce and then I wanted the highlight on the abs. To be closer in brightness to the shoulders I didn't want as much discrepancy there, so I used the silver on the side so we're catching white on the left side and we're filling back and using silver is the phil so why it's not gonna be as bright and silver could be brighter, so the silver gonna kick a little bit more fill the wind's going to catch a little bit less as the main light so depending on which main modifier used first is going to determine how the second and the third modifiers also act. So in this middle shot, what do we have the same lens twenty four seventy five to eight mark to this is that seventy millimeters at one fifth of a second again, we're balancing for that ambient light at one fifth of a second because I want some of that ambiance, some of the background of that garage door to kind of pick up there where f two point eight, four hundred we're flashing at one half toe one quarter power, okay, we're using heavy flat with a silver balance to kick into his abs and also for these shots. We also used a fog wishing we used the roscoe many v it's like a foreign dollars fog machine it's absolutely fantastic for indoor sets and for rooms where you just want to add a little bit of ambience to it you just don't want it to look so kind of contrast e where the shadows and everything it just it just kicks up a little bit of the ambiance look that smoke and sometimes I like to use it where it looks like smoke sometimes I like to use it where it's just like this, it just looks like a little bit of ambiance where it catches and picks up more light so the background doesn't fall to this pure crushed black okay looks absolutely fantastic same thing with levi in this shot that v flats after this side, I haven't turned his back toward us, so we can kind of focus on his arm and he's doing curls right now. I want to focus on his arm and then we get a nice kick into the avs to show detail. In definition, we're not lighting the face in these shots, guys, we're not lighting the face here, here or here. These aren't about the face it's about it's about features it's about muscle definition it's about the body when I'm not lighting the face intentionally, I try not to bring the eyes to the camera because generally the faces not lick correctly when you look at it it's gonna look kind of scary, so I want the attention to be away from the eyes away from the face he's looking down, kind of focused on weight lifting that curl he's looking down focus again on the weights. He's looking away from the camera. This shot up here, he's looking in the camera simply for illustrative purposes. This is the actual shot that I would use from this set or shots like that. So just remember, when you're lighting for these different features, you might want to pose them in ways that it's it's still flattering. Basically, if you have them looking into the camera, always in the faces, not correctly, well lit it's gonna look a little bit too scary a little bit too dramatic. And that might be what's wrong with your image. So just have them looking different positions haven't do something. It feels a little natural. So when you look at this and we'll talk more about the decision making process when we got to this set but when you look at this, it looks like there's one light right here. It looks like there's. A background life behind the garage coming in. It looks like there's. A back light on him that's lighting his edge up over here. It looks like there's a back in light going against the garage to kind of light up the background. It looks like there's a phil along the entire side of his body on the right, and it looks like there's another brighter light over here in the center of the corps. Same thing with this image looking there's, a there's, a rim light along the side, we have a little bit of hair light, we have background like everything it looks like it's a four or a five lights set up is one single on camera flash. Okay, this all of these were actual professional shoots. I want to mention this because if I weren't confident enough in using these techniques on an actual professional shoot with actual models who intend to use these images when I feel like these techniques are kind of pointless, like what, you're only going to use them, you know, for when you're messing around or some like that know these air fantastic techniques that you can use anywhere, but I would say that if you're going to use multi point bounce setups, do it indoors because you don't want wind and things blowing and modifying was like, you want to stay perfectly, those modifier need to stay perfectly where they're at, and you need to bounce perfectly into them so that you get consistent results, and to do that, you should be indoors for that type of stuff. Hopefully, this kind of opens your eyes a little bit into how much more you could expand on these techniques and what's. Fantastic about this guys is this is light shaping. This is all lighting is, regardless of whether using on camera lights with an on camera flash off camera flashes, studio flashes, constant lights, it's the same thing, it's light shaping. So the techniques that were teaching you hear, we're going to take further into lighting to one and lighting three one. As we continue let's, go ahead and move the next video now.