Category: Studio Lighting

Learn how to create amazing studio portraits with 3 Point Studio lighting techniques. Or is there really just 3 lights? Portrait photography in the studio with a step-by-step example. #betterpix #dust2life #portraits #howtophotography

From YouTube Transcript

To start, the first light we want in our setup is our key lighting our key light, is also otherwise known as our main lighting, key light is the same thing as Main Light. I’m using here a very large light on a stand I like my light to go a foot or so above the model’s head I don’t like to be straight on it creates a different shadow angle that doesn’t mimic the Sun so I like to go a foot or two above on the subject so I’ll go up here about a foot or two above and roughly the safe spot the normal spot and you can break these rules about 45 degrees between me and the model that’s our nice 45 degree angle light.

We could bring in a secondary light which would be a light either off to the side how about on the opposite side 45 degree angle or so if you don’t have a second light or an extra additional light you can use a reflector typically I like to use a reflector so I’m using my large reflector it’s about a six foot reflector and I’ll put that off to the side a little bit mimicking The Fill light the second light is the fill light now the thing I like about reflectors is for one they don’t cost as much for two they’re easier to use what I’ll find is someone has a actual another light or Flash it’s hard even if you have different modifiers to know how much is getting to which spot you might be blasting them with the same amount of light the nice thing about reflectors you can’t make this light brighter on the fill side you control the intensity by moving the light the reflector closer or further away but you can’t overpower the main light will still be the main light regardless of settings and modifiers which can be kind of tricky when you start using several different lights so I’m going to use a reflector I’m going to move in about like this on style so you can see the difference on the Shadows on our cheek on her hair it is significantly different than the piece let’s go ahead and bring that in for a photograph looking right here I’m also going to then add a third light now there’s a couple different varieties to this one I’m bringing another flash behind her now some people will move this flash off to the side in the same side as the main light opposite of the fill light they’ll light this one up and bring it onto the side of the face and it helps add like a little sculpting a little Third Dimension to your subject but it’s not necessarily it has to be directly here if you’re doing a tighter shot you could actually move the light behind the person and then it’s still not going to show up in the shot but sometimes don’t people don’t like that being if you’re doing a full body or three-quarter body it will show up in the shot then you have to touch it out then it’s just a pain so a lot of times people move to the side so let’s try one off to the side and then we’ll move one right behind look in your style I can see the reflector kind of coming off to the side let’s move this this called the back light now there’s a difference here we’re going to add in a background light which is definitely four lights and I said there was three kind of like the Three Musketeers so the backlight is on the subject’s back a background light will actually be on the physical background I’m gonna put this onto the back about like there and you can see it’s it’s more subtle you can see it definitely the hair but it’s not doing as much as the other one did but it’s a different look a different feel now I can blast this up a little bit harder if I want to maybe make it more pronounced and let’s try that we’re gonna blast a lot of light there more than I probably typically would I want full power we’ll see what happens and make a glow like an angel you see the difference there is more pronounced on the hand now let’s add the fourth light this fourth light here is considered either a hair light or a backlight depending on how I position it I have it on a boom pole here and if I put it on a boom pool.

It’s going to actually accent the top of her head which is on a hair light now if you’re bald it becomes a headlight okay that’s a bad joke I want some separation for safety so if it falls which it shouldn’t I have sandbags and precautions but if it was to fall get tripped on it’s not going to fall on your person that’s liability painful and a mess we don’t want that so it’s going to fall it’s supposed to fall away from her that’s important in case something goes wrong um so we do have the hair lights and come onto the hair a little bit on the shoulders and then I’m going to take this like that was on her back and I’m going to turn it into a background light just by turning around blasting it right onto the background that’ll create a little different look some subtle variations on the gray background so main light most powerful light on the subject other angle got your reflector or a fill light then you can have a hair light or a backlight or you could even a background light to create all your variations so three point lighting there’s a lot of variations between moving Parts you might not even use a light you can change the angle you can change it you can break up the rules but the key is to make an attractive very nice three-dimensional style lighting background lights are variations lots of things you can put in your Arsenal hopefully that’s helpful we’ll see you next time on better picks in a few clicks thanks for watching better picks in just a few clicks make sure you hit that like button and subscribe to see more videos on how to take your photography to the next level

Learn how to create amazing studio portraits with 2 different lighting techniques. Find out when you should use broad and short lighting and the importance of a light reflector.

Transcript from YouTube

Welcome to better picks in just a few clicks today. We’re going to look at Short lighting versus broad lighting let’s take a look. Portraits aren’t going to be necessarily straight on. In fact, most of the time we want the model to be off to the side a little bit turning their head we see the light is coming off to the side cast a nice light onto starless face that is further from the camera so I’ll go ahead and turn and look a little more this direction and now she’s in turn a little more towards the camera with your eyes there you go and a little more with your head too right there so now the side the further side of her face is now being more Starla now I could do two different things I could make it broad lighting by actually physically moving the light to the other side or I could actually have the model really turn the scene flip the scene so Starla go ahead and turn this way and then she’ll look towards me this way now the closer side of the face is actually getting broad lit right here and there now these are using a one light setup I’m only using my Beauty Dish set up here which is a round setup which helps give a roundness in the uh catch light of the eyes which is very natural like the sun but I’m going to add in a reflector to kind of change some of that tone so staying right there Starla we’re gonna bring in a reflector now you could bring in a different light as well what I’m using here is just a very large about a five and a half foot six foot reflector to bounce in light to change the shadow so it’s not quite as dramatic you’ll see the difference there on Starla’sface it does make a difference as the light reflects onto the face lighting the close side the broadside face and let’s go and flip around for the short light Starla facing your feet towards the camera or towards the light sorry and looking right here and now more of the short style lighting and look more off this side I’m going to change a little more direction as we change our light a little bit it can change some of the style of how dramatic or how intense that short lighter broad lighting is it’s not all the way 90 degree angle from me to the camera. I like to go about 60 to 50 degree angle somewhere in between it’s not straight flat for the camera it’s not all the way to the side it’s somewhere in between and you have some variation as photographer Choice. Short Lighting: Why does it make a difference depending if you want to add a little more drama you want to actually with a broad lighting light the person so it’s easy to recognize them as this is so and so we’re short lighting is a little more uh dramatic there’s more Shadow and it does help to slenderize the face and gives a very attractive portrait as well thanks for watching better picks in just a few clicks make sure you hit that like button and subscribe to see more videos on how to take your photography to the next level.

#betterpix #dust2life #portraits #howtophotography

Photography by definition means “Drawing with Light”. In this 90-second video, learn how to push your creative abilities and grow your photographic abilities. Think outside the box and stretch your PROFESSIONAL photographic skills. I will teach you the basics to get yourself started in literally “Drawing with Light.”

Transcript from YouTube

Today on better picks we’re gonna be using a projector lighting and just a camera because photography is drawing with light so this week I decided to work with projector lighting. Something I’ve been inspired with for a while and experimented with lower quality projectors I upgraded the projector to a laser light very intense bright which allowed me to use a faster shutter speed than I was able or to keep my ISO at a more manageable rate choosing different backgrounds that I download and given a different shape a different light a different form and sometimes using the image itself to wrap around the eye or the body in a certain way that gives us the image one of the things with projector lighting you have to be careful of is your projector will not give you the intensity if you’re using a strobe light so you’ll have to go to a slower shutter speed raise your ISO a bit I like to shoot in the low 100 or 200 range for studio work but here I would raise up to 2000 ISO and I did use a little bit of noise reduction in post-production in Adobe Camera Raw to take down some of the noise which did soften the image but I thought it was a good compromise. I used a slower shutter speed a 1/60th a second making sure I used an image stabilizer in my lens allowed me to make sure that the subject was not blurry from my camera shake so projector lighting is all about shape and form and experimentation and trying something different but the creativity aspect of pushing yourself to do something you’ve never tried before is something that you really should experiment with it’ll make you a better photographer it’ll make your work stronger in the future.

#studiolighting #howtophotography #photographyhack #photographyislife #portraits #photographylife #betterpix #dust2life #drawingwithlight #artist

Do you have what it takes to photograph in the studio? In this short 2-minute video, learn how to create amazing studio portraits with 2 different lighting techniques–Split and Monster lighting. Be careful, these techniques are very dramatic and not to be used by just anyone.

Transcript from YouTube

For this light setup, we’re going to be using a split lady where the main light is almost to the side of Abby our model, and very much at the opposite angle of me almost 90-degree angle to the photographer and off to the subject, this creates a very dramatic side we see light on one side and very quickly we’ll fall off almost no detail on the other side let’s take a look there you go looking right here maybe kind of lean forward just a little bit there you go excellent.

That’s cool very dramatic same thing I’m gonna bring in a reflector the large reflector again it could be something as cheap as a couple of dollars Elmer’s board. Here is an excellent split with a reflector much different look and if i want i could even come here and i could do a harsher look move away the reflector and go to a stockless option which is going to be much harsher for my light because i’m taking off the sock i’m going to lose i’m going to make it a much more intense light so i have to turn down the light because i’m much brighter let’s turn it down about a stop and a half looking here much more harsh punchy one two and three a little more dramatic style between the different looks so variations that you can do between with a sock without the diffusion with the reflector without the reflector make a big difference on the final product for our next lighting setup we’ll look at a monster lighting I’ve taken the main light from being high and beautiful like typically on a subject and i put it nice and low pointed up at the subject this comes from a lot of horror films that use a low style of lighting that’s kind of where we’ve assumed or we have been conditioned to a monster lighting and it can be a little more spooky style sometimes maybe kind of glamorous i’m coming with the shot nice and low one two and three and create a lot of light there’s no not gonna be shadows under the neck but it’s gonna be different style of shooting.

#betterpix #dust2life #photographylife #photographyislife #photographyhack #howtophotography

In this short 3-minute video, learn how to create amazing studio portraits with 3 different lighting techniques.

Transcript from YouTube

For this light setup we’re going to be using a split lady where the main light is almost to the side of Abby our model and very much at the opposite angle of me almost 90-degree angle to the photographer and off to the subject, this creates a very dramatic side we see light on one side and very quickly we’ll fall off almost no detail on the other side let’s take a look there you go looking right here maybe kind of lean forward just a little bit there you go excellent. That’s cool very dramatic same thing I’m gonna bring in a reflector the large reflector again it could be something as cheap as a couple dollar Elmer board something like that excellent split with a reflector much different look and if i want i could even come here and i could do a harsher look move away the reflector and go to a stockless option which is going to be much harsher for my light because i’m taking off the sock i’m going to lose i’m going to make it a much more intense light so i have to turn down the light because i’m much brighter let’s turn it down about a stop and a half looking here much more harsh punchy one two and three a little more dramatic style between the different looks so variations that you can do between with a sock without the diffusion with the reflector without the reflector make a big difference on the final product for our next lighting setup we’ll look at a monster lighting i’ve taken the main light from being high and beautiful like typically on a subject and i put it nice and low pointed up at the subject this comes from a lot of horror films that use a low style of lighting that’s kind of where we’ve assumed or we have been conditioned to a monster lighting and it can be a little more spooky style sometimes maybe kind of glamorous i’m coming with the shot nice and low one two and three and create a lot of light there’s no not gonna be shadows under the neck but it’s gonna be different style of shooting.