Capturing Powerful Portraits - Photographic Tips and techniques

[Music] hi I'm mark gala I'd like to take the opportunity to talk to you about the way I capture powerful portraits and we can take a look at my lighting styles my composition and also the camera settings I use for successful portraits each and every time okay so if you want to catch up with me after this presentation you can find a lot of free information on my website which is mark gala calm okay so obviously the primary thing that I would encourage you to focus on when looking at portraits is of course lighting it is the photographer's medium and it will make a huge difference to the portraits you are capturing okay some people will dive into flash photography a little bit prematurely before they master and before they look at the ambient light that we can actually work with for instance this was captured with an a7 s 250 1200 ISO admittedly but this image would be completely destroyed by the addition of flash lighting because the light source is the mobile phone this young woman is holding so my encouragement or my advice really is to master your ambient light first this is an image that I've captured just using the ambient light and carefully choosing the background we can also position our subject in light that is very favorable or flattering to the subject we'll be looking at an alternative portrait that I captured of this young man using flash lighter in the presentation so when you're looking at your subject that you want to photograph if even if it's only a fleeting portrait image that you're capturing it's important to look at how that lighting is playing with the shapes of the face to see whether that is an appropriate vantage point for you to be capturing this portrait because often we do get the opportunity to move around our subject to change either the way the light is falling on our subject or the background behind the subject okay I would also encourage you to look not only at the light but also the shadows sometimes the shadows can ruin a portrait and maybe dappled light coming through the leaves of trees can create a mottled appearance and then ruin the other shape of the face in many instances okay so looking at light and looking at the shadows is my primary advice one of my favorite lights lighting conditions for Porcher is not sunlight but where light is being diffused through cloud cover I can also move my sitters into the shadows to remove the problems that sometimes sunlight can cause this flat lighting I've used successfully on on many occasions and it obviously creates this flattering light that we can we can work with and the power is coming through the color in this instance in fact both of these images they're successful because of my my vantage point the way that I'm framing my image you'll notice that I getting quite close to my portraits and will look take a look at my composition style in a lot more detail a little bit later so always working close to my subjects I'm engaging with my subject most of the time I'm not taking candid snaps of the people that I want to feature in my photographic narratives I'm approaching them and I'm working with them to get the best possible portraits of them at ease I don't ask people to pose for me I just get them nice and relaxed in front of a camera and this is just through prayer maybe just experience of approaching people not spending too long with the camera settings but most basic alee taking an interest in them what they're doing and then for working very quickly to get them at ease okay so this is actually taken in the rain they say there's no such thing as bad weather for photography just different sorts of lighting and the the overcast lighting on this particular early morning is beautiful for taking these beautiful soft lit porch it's okay and if on a sunny day you're you're not liking that sunlight it's amazing how quickly we can seek out much softer lighting that this is actually a bright sunny day and on top of the pier we have some very harsh lighting but I can quickly just move the the subject underneath appear an excess a much softer light coming in from the daylight that's entering to one side and this is a way that I can craft my portraits when I'm engaging with the models and they're working with me okay sometimes we will again look at the the quality of lighting coming in from a maybe a low angle or direction and this is the sort of thing that stage lighting or theatrical lighting does it removes the lighting from overhead and pushes it in from a lower vantage point such as the side this portrait is not actually a studio portrait it's lit by the light coming through an open doorway and an open window and it creates it doesn't create flat lighting it creates this beautiful modeling light source and this is actually very difficult to achieve when using flash lighting and so working with window light and the light coming through open doorways is probably one of the best light sources that you can get as a portrait photographer now sometimes when we have to modify sunlight because we can't remove the subject out of that harsh lighting we can use these five-in-one lighting kits they're not very expensive like if I just this is actually part of a movie that I'll just stop so you don't have to watch all of this this is me just using a diffuser sometimes where I refer to it as a scrim I just cycle through to the point where I actually get my assistant to move the diffuser and basically remove the harsh lighting we can see the very awkward shadows at the moment that we're dealing with in harsh sunlight but just the process of putting that very inexpensive diffuser over you can see how that will interact with the model and here it goes is just moving that into place and creating that soft directional light that is excellent for portraiture when I'm working the way the Porsche I actually gravitate to certain lenses that I prefer to use and these usually aren't the zoom lenses that are often easy to work with because we don't have to change our position in relation to the subject but what I do like to be able to do is drop the backgrounds out of focus we can get some beautiful bokeh or background blur behind our subjects and this focuses the viewers attention on the subject and not any distractions that might be happening in the background fortunately for photographers these are relatively inexpensive lenses to purchase the 50 mil 1.8 lens is an excellent portrait lens for people working with cameras with crop sensors or aps-c sensors there are some of the most affordable lenses that the manufacturers make and they do give that figure-ground separation basically dropping that background out of focus if you are working with a full-frame camera I would encourage you to maybe look at a slightly longer prime lens something like the 85 millimeter there are some 1.4 aperture lenses available at this focal length but they tend to be twice as heavy and more than twice as expensive as the 1.8 and some of these 1.8 85 is enough to create that figure-ground separation and they can be exceptionally sharp the sony 1.8 that I'm using quite a lot these days he's actually sharp wide open and that gives me that beautiful figure-ground separation sometimes I like to work with a little bit of a longer focal length when doing Porcher at events where I'm having less time to interact with my sitter and sometimes I'm standing a little bit further away than my preferred working distance which is with that 85 mil on a full-frame or 50 mil on a crop sensor and I've been working with this batis 135 and that again is excellent when using it at the widest aperture which is 2.8 okay so let's get on to some tips about composition okay for me this is the next best thing that we can do to choosing a suitable lighting for a photographic portrait now we often refer to the vertical framing as a portrait orientation but I have to say even though I do capture some images in the vertical or portrait format my preferred format for shooting Porcher is actually the horizontal format often referred to as the landscape format what it does is it allows me to create be more creative with my design and Composition and it also includes a lot more of the background bokeh in my subjects we'll just go back one slide and just show you these type portraits of these subjects here we have very little background around the subject so we can't really admire that beautiful how to focus bokeh that we can when we use the landscape or horizontal orientation if you're working in editorial as well these horizontal framings also give the desktop publishers a lot more freedom when working with their desktop layouts they can use that negative space that background blur for dropping in type or text or the heading of the story that you're working with and so you're giving those people a lot more creative freedom and these horizontal framings with our mega pixel rich cameras that we're using these days can always be cropped to vertical later when you're working with the relative strangers that you might have only just met there is a slight temptation for newcomers in photography to stand a little bit too far away and so when you're working with this interesting couple that I and riding unicycles there is a temptation to feel uncomfortable on their behalf and they end the portrait session a little bit too soon but for me I would actually then move a lot closer now you'll notice this in Hollywood the tight head and shot her shoulder shot he is is a feature of many of those ways that the camera can move closer to look into the character and soul of the subject that we're working with and we can really see that expression come to life if we get a little bit closer now when we're getting this close we're often cropping into the top of the head and this is also something that a lot of newcomers to photography don't feel comfortable doing but again if you look at that Hollywood tight head and shoulder shot that is a feature of nearly every movie you're gonna see that they are coming in this close we are gonna crop into the top of the head and it looks quite natural because we're so used to it in the movies and so this will be a big feature of my own portrait photography is to create this very tight composition okay so the other thing that I would encourage you to do when you coming in this tight is there is a tendency again for newcomers of photography to put the eyes in the center of the frame typically you need to raise those above Center okay so this gives a little bit more relaxed composition a little bit more space under the chin and puts the eyes out of the center of the frame for a more dynamic composition we can see this is it's a natural framing for me some people will refer to it as often the rule of thirds but typically I'm using a ratio called the golden ratio which is a much more comfortable place just to put the eyes just above Center and also the the chin just make sure that for most of these portraits using this horizontal format is we're not putting the chin too close to the base of the frame it and look a little bit tight if we do that too often okay so this is an interesting character I'm photographed at an event and we can see that my framing or composition would typically go into that golden ratio we can actually get these overlays to appear when we're cropping our images in post-production Here I am copying our even tighter than where I was standing when I captured this fellow and you can see those the lines are travelling through basically the eyeballs of this portrait and that is the golden ratio that I'm using not the rule of thirds typically when I encounter somebody for a photo narrative that I'm creating and I want this character in my story I'll I'll see them at a distance first so I just wanted to give you an example of where I've first spotted a character and then how close I will move into that character to get the hero shot and this is the hero shot from that character that I saw from that distance if we just go back on slide and just take a note of the background that I'm choosing I'm choosing not only how I approach him but also the way that I'm going to approach this person will put my favored background behind the subject so the background that I'm choosing is going to be that wall and the closer I go to my subject the more out-of-focus that background will go so we're actually losing that structure of the wall and it's becoming that very smooth bokeh and now the highlights falling on the face are the brightest part of the composition okay and so this has created this effective portrait for me okay one of the other things to consider about compositions where you may have a horizon line in the image is that horizon line will often pass through the neck or the head of your sitter or your subject and one way is to control the composition is just change your height in relation to the subject now just a simple act of bending the knees for instance will lower the horizon line and push that horizon line down through the shoulders this will create more negative space more background bokeh and remove that distracting very strong design and them at the horizon line down perhaps onto that golden ratio or rule of thirds a composition that you might be looking to create so just remember think about your vantage point not only your relation to the subject and the background but also your height to the subject okay sometimes we are faced with impossible backgrounds backgrounds that will look a little bit busy or cluttered even if we're using a wide open aperture but don't underestimate what we can do in post-production we can actually dodge and burn some of these are some of the oldest tools known to photographers in dark rooms which is to make tones lighter or darker so we have some distracting highlights behind this subject that I'm photographing here so just grabbing a brush with a negative exposure value and brushing that over those highlights can often get me that composition and focus on the lighting that I want to achieve if we go back one you will also notice that I played a little bit with the color here I couldn't dictate the color of the T show this guy is wearing because the whole portrait session is going to unfold in just a minute or two so what I'm doing in post-production is I'm taking that color that is a little bit distracting to the composition and I'm just desaturating that green color okay so let's take a look at some of the camera settings that I would start a portrait session with now I will often vary these settings but the it's always good to have a starting point now I often refer to these as my safe settings and you can program program them into the memory of a camera I have these portrait wide aperture portraits settings programmed in on the top of my shoot mode dial on my camera's now shutter speed even though I've got a camera with stabilization or using stabilized lenses vibration reduction Nikon call them is I will still make sure that the shutter speed doesn't go too slow and that is because even though I'm confident that I can hold the camera still in my hands the subject might move slightly so I do want to raise that minimum shutter speed to maybe one one sixtieth of a second the aperture that I will typically start at it might even if I own a 1.4 lens I'm not going to start at one point for when we're working very close the depth of field will be very shallow so even though an 85 mil 1.4 or 1.8 lens is going to give figure-ground separation typically I'll use that 1.4 aperture when I'm standing further away from my subjects and I will stop down a little as I get closer so I know I'd actually start at f/4 or 2.8 on a crop sensor and then go wider if I want to push that background further out of focus you do have to be careful though with very very shallow depth of field because we're always trying to get the eyes pin sharp and there is a possibility that if you're working wider than f/4 on a full frame camera you may lose that focus on the eyes if your technique isn't a solid okay so we've looked at focus on the eyes now I will look at technique just shortly which is called eye AF on the cameras that I use the Sony cameras this helps me always get the eyes sharp if I'm working with that shallow depth of field and exposure compensation tip typically I'm using the multi or segment exposure come so the the metering in the camera this is usually the most reliable but occasionally we can under expose or overexpose depending on the tonality of our subject in this instance for an example the subject is wearing a lot of white and that could cause the camera to underexpose slightly most modern full-frame cameras are tolerant to a little bit of under exposure and we can correct that in post but typically I would be correcting it in camera as well so in an instance like this I might be raising one stop to counteract those very bright tones in this image so we've looked at that minimum shutter speed and this is a prime example this is a fleeting portrait that I've captured of this man standing in this doorway and there is a chance for this guy's going to move as I take the picture and so that a one one sixtieth of a second is going to help ensure that I that my hit rate for sharp images is going to be much higher than if I set to say the shutter speed at a 50th of a second which could introduce a little bit of subject blur if that subject is moving as I press my shutter release okay some people believe focus points the most accurate focus point is using a small AF point and if you have time to place this AF / AF point carefully then yes they can be accurate but in most Porsche we don't have that time if our subject is moving this would be an example of an unreliable small AF point because what that AF point is looking for it's looking for an edge with high contrast and if that's placed on a cheek or on a nose with no strong lines then the AF may struggle and we may miss focus really if you're going to use a small AF point you need to be able to position that over something with high contrast edges such as an eye very very quickly so that is a technique that some people will choose personally I would just go to a zone focus I tend to start with a wide focus area and only come down smaller if and when I need to now face detection is also a feature for many cameras and just switching that on will also help the camera find focus quickly so we're coming back to this image typically when we're using a wide AF area you're using the whole screen and letting the camera choose the AF area Khem some cameras can be distracted by subjects that are much closer to the camera than our primary subject in this instance you'll see for instance we have a character standing on the left and also the right and some cameras would jump to those to pull focus just pulling down to a smaller zone from wide AF will tell the camera ignore subjects that are standing at the edge that are close to me and then just push through to the subject in the zone that I'm showing to the camera so I've talked about iaf now when we're working this close this is pretty much the only time I would work wider than f/4 on a full-frame 85 or 135 prime lens and that is if I have the confidence that the camera is supporting me by finding the eye in the face typically when we're working at very wide apertures the tip of the nose and the ears will be well out of focus when we're working at these ultra light apertures such as f 1.8 iaf will quickly snap on almost instantaneously and for the camera that I'm using it will also work in continuous autofocus so if the subject is walking towards me their camera will track the eye even at wide apertures okay so on the latest model Sony cameras that I'm using the third generation of a seven cameras and also the a nine camera one of the great features for a AF is it now works when the subject is in profile view so we can actually snap iaf onto the eye of a face even though the character has turned into profile away from the camera lens okay so we might have now a newfound confidence to work at those much wider apertures but there I should give you a word of warning we've been looking at single subjects here getting in tight to a single portrait but occasionally we do portraits with more than one person or the sitter or subject that we're working with turns slightly away from the camera and therefore the depth of field may not be sufficient to cover both eyes in this portrait for instance we can see the leading eye the either is closest to the camera's pin-sharp but the eye that is a little bit further away from the camera is a little bit soft it's a little bit d focused and this is even stopping down to f/4 point 6 in this instance at a 70 mil focal length so what I would encourage you to do is if you have two subjects and you want both of them sharp because one isn't more important than the other I would encourage you if you have been working at F one point eight or two point eight or even f/4 stop down I would typically stop down to F five point six or f/8 depending on the depth of the subject I use is one sitter or subject standing behind the other or are their eyes are relatively close on the same focal plane ie the same distance from the camera so in this instance where one subject is standing behind another I would stop down to that F five six or even f/8 if I'm working close okay so if the eyes are you pretty confident that the eyes are the same distance from the lens you can open up if you're confident and get both the subjects sharp this is actually shooting on the bat is 135 wide open at F 2.8 so the depth of field is quite shallow but both subjects are the same distance from the camera lens so I've managed to nail the focus on both of these subjects even when working wide open but that can be rare and you don't want to start using subjects because the the depth of the subject is a little bit larger than you anticipated for an example of this is this portrait of these three monkeys I've actually stopped down three stops on an 80 film five mil crime lens but because of my proximity to the subjects ie I'm very close there at the monkey in the top left hand corner although the whiskers on the mouth are sharp the eyes are starting to go a little bit soft it's okay in this instance but you wouldn't want to be pushing that further how to focus in this instance I'll give you one of my tips for techniques that I use quite a lot for good lighting in a composition and that is if I'm struggling to find an appropriate background my first port of call is to look for an open doorway this is a sculptor Jim Dolan standing in front of his workshop the workshop was very cluttered and it was difficult for me to find an appropriate background so I've invited Jim to come to the door of the workshop and we're shooting beyond the doorway into the workshop but the light passing through the doorway falls off very quickly it becomes very dark and this gives me the figure-ground separation in tonality as well as focus that I'm looking for when I'm achieving it's also given Jim a prop to lean on so his whole body relaxes into this portrait session here's another example of the open doorway this is just a roller door at a sort of a factory situation but again getting the the subject close to the doorway but not out in the sunlight just one or two steps back into the shadows and then the light falls off very rapidly as it goes back into the interior of the building and becomes almost a completely black background without me doing anything in post-production and again again that gives me the figure-ground separation that I'm looking for this is captured with an 85mm lens at the maximum aperture of 1.8 the the subject has turned to put both eyes at the same distance from the lens and we can see quite clearly how shallow the depth of field is in this instance the ears are out of focus the tip of the nose is out of focus even the eyebrows are getting a little bit unsharp compared to the pin-sharp eyes okay this creates a certain look that we do like I have to say but you you have to know that the camera is going to work with you to get those eyes reliably sharp most of the time and I have a ninety-eight ninety-nine percent success rate with my sony and prime lenses that I'm using with the help of that IAF here's another example of that open door technique again that I'm using and this time again I've got the character to use the doorway and lean and relaxed and occasionally you can get people to look off-camera and sometimes you will ask them to look back down the barrel of the camera lens one of the things that I do when I'm photographing in these situations is I never have the camera at my face for more than a few seconds I keep the conversation going to keep everything everything relaxed and just point shoot and then lower the camera almost straight away here's one that again just a very fleeting moment but again we're using a sort of a natural open door here I didn't actually ask this character in Ubud in Bali to lean on the doorway or to stand in front of the doorway this was just a natural open door portrait and this was taken with an 85 mil batis wide open @f 1.8 okay let's look at other situations where the background may not be perfect here's an example of a guy the lighting is quite flat so that's okay but the background is as a motor vehicle it's cluttered he's leaning back he's got sunglasses on look at the timestamp here it's 10:40 29 now I'm carrying a piece of black fabric in my camera bag and I've asked her my assistant just to move a on the back of this subject and completely change the way this character is photographed as my subject is moving around the back with a black piece of fabric that will be held as a new backdrop I'm asking the guy to remove his sunglasses so this is ten forty one and seven seconds so 38 seconds has elapsed and what we can see here is a very different portrait we've got a character now whose eyes are really coming to life and the background is no longer distracting because it's just a piece of black fabric this was actually photographed with a 50mm 1.8 lens at maximum aperture to give us that shallow depth of field again which is giving us that beautiful bokeh or blur the sides of the face there okay so let's so look at introducing flash it is a popular thing that a lot of amateur photographers get into and it has to be a skill for professional photographers working in Porsche I I don't use flash as my first port of call I much prefer the ambient light if and when I can use it but in some situations when I'm trying to create a certain look then the flash will be introduced okay so let's look this leg is actually an image that I shot of this cowboy Randy Ryman in Montana and we actually haven't used flash I've also got to lower the exposure slightly and exposure compensation to stop the very bright rim of that hat from clipping from losing detail so but I've actually managed to recover the shadows and also the highlights in post-production I've just grabbed the highlights and brought them down grab the shadow slider and board it up and we can actually create a very sophisticated well lit portrait with a little bit of help in post-production so I didn't need to use fill flash in this instance a lot of full-frame sensors they're very forgiving of having the shadows opened up in post-production so I don't pull the flash out immediately when I see how high the lighting conditions are I know the the limitations of post-production and so I know that the character is still the character of the lighting is still good without using flash the times that I do use fill-flash usually not with Porcha I'll often use them maybe in wooded areas with wildlife and if I am using that fill flash in those environments I will push the ISO of the camera very high maybe 3200 or sometimes even higher because I want the flash to supplement the ambient light I don't want the the flashlights to become the hero element or the hero lighting in this shot so the a flasher or fill light in this one is really quite subtle you can actually pick it up in the next shot because of the branch of the bird is sitting on and you can see the secondary shadow from that flash just hitting the tail underneath that branch and you can also see that catch light of the flash in the the bird's eye there typically I would have the flash compensation dial down to minus 1 or minus 2 stops in this instance so the ambient light is still the hero in the situations you could apply the same technique to two people in the shadows that you want to create a little bit of pop of detail but again fill flash is usually not my main lighting technique when working with flash if I'm going to be working with flash typically I will get the flash off the camera and in order to do this we need to work with trigger systems on the Sony's that I'm using they refer to the trigger as a commander and then in order for the commander to talk to the flash now that it's off the camera we need a flash that can receive those signals those radio signals or we need to buy receiver units to put those flashes on and this is basically radio communication now between the camera and the flash that we're using now I typically don't like harsh light sources when dealing with Porcha as we've looked at in this tutorial already so I'm going to want to spread that light to make it softer or diffused and typically I will be looking at using something like an umbrella and our lighting stand if that flash is going on to that lighting stand now the the umbrellas are perhaps the cheapest inroads into these lighting modifiers and I would advise that you have one that can have a black cover to the to the umbrella because if you are bringing this into an interior it's a way of stopping the light spilling out onto adjacent walls and then bouncing around the room so you're a much more control with an umbrella that has a black background or black backing sometimes they're your removable but you do want to have access to that black in some situations other lighting modifiers that you might see that a little bit more expensive things like soft boxes and beauty dishes I've actually got the product on the left of this slide here which is can be converted from a beauty dish into a softbox if I need to and the whole thing is very very portable it can be collapse down and put inside a messenger bag when when it's getting carried around because I do tend to travel very light the other thing thing that I will also carry a home if I don't have an assistant is basically this s bracket that you see on the right side this is a way of quickly putting your speed light or flash inside there it's very quick it just takes a few seconds to put into that bracket it basically gives you a good hold on there and will also support the lighting modifier now the lighting modifiers they come generally with a couple of different mount systems typically they're often referred to as L in Chrome or Bowens mounts and so if you if you're buying an S bracket to hold the lighting modifier maybe on a monopod maybe in your hand then you're wanting to make sure that you get a good match between the lighting modifier and the s bracket that you're using okay so this is an example I was doing this at a university for some students showing them this technique playing out I've actually got the same character in the same shot twice but I'm only using one light source for this the other thing that I'm doing in this particular lighting technique and I'll go into this in a little bit of detail is that I'm underexposing the ambient light so I've got a situation where the small light source that I'm using the flash that I'm using can have the hero element in the shot I'm actually seeking out shadows I'm not going to be using this in full light it's very difficult for a small flash unit to compete with the Sun so if we push down into shadows or use the late part of the day or in the light the ambient lighting isn't very bright and we've got a little bit more control how that flash looks and in this particular instance I've under expose the ambient by two stops and correctly expose the flash which is why that we're getting such a lot of figure-ground separation not just because of focus but also because of tonality if we look at my technique here is how typically before I even switch the flash on I'll be looking for an exposure that under exposes the ambient light now you can use this in auto mode TTL through the lens we can usually use an exposure compensation dial to lower the ambient light exposure in this instance I'm pushing it down to two stops under and then we correctly exposed the / now you're looking at my technique here I'm using a small handheld speed lights and a lighting diffuser or scrim you'll see that the light is spread beautifully over the broad surface of that diffuser giving me a reasonably soft light on this character the reason this particular image is out of focus it's become going to become the background plate behind the hero element which is the figure in the foreground there which was shot on a different image and then the two montage together inside our Adobe Photoshop okay so let's look at that technique one more time I'm looking for a location out of the sunlight and maybe on this underpass underneath this bridge is a perfect location to do that because again as I said the the flash can become a hero element when we want the ambient light to be subservient or just applying a little bit small amount of fill to the flash which is now our primary light source so again I will set up often a three-point lighting setup for this three-point means that we've just got three sources of light and I'm listing them here one is that umbrella on the lighting stand with the number one day top right number two is actually the ambient light itself that ambient light even though I'm under exposing it is going to be softening the lighting of the flash and then we've got number three which is a much smaller flash unit which doesn't have a lighting modifier it's been fired directly at the edge of the subject to give us that RIM light again choosing an exposure that will give me 2 stops underexposed this is how the image would look if the flash wasn't switched on it basically gives that darker background that we're looking at then we put the flash on we correctly expose in this instance I'm raising the the flash exposure compensation because my subject is wearing white and this would lead to some under bozhe because of the exposure metering systems in the cameras and the flash units I want to make everything mid-tone in this particular instance the subject is brighter than mid-tone so I just need to push the exposure compensation a little bit higher in this instance so ambient light under flash compensation up and gives me that nice balance and again we're creating that slightly darker background giving me that figure-ground separation okay so there is the set up in a slightly different position in this underpass and again slightly less figure-ground separation now mostly done through the focus but again that background will is under expose because of the ambient life the reason that the the background isn't quite as dark as before is we're getting light spilling from my main flashlight now onto the wall which is quite close to the subject okay but there again we're now returning to that with us the background is much further away the light falls off so we're getting get that much darker background in this instance I've actually left that little secondary rim light in view bottom left-hand corner and that is giving that beautiful edge there if I didn't like that I could just crop that a little bit tighter you do have to be a little bit wary of flare coming from your secondary rim light if the angle of view or the spread of light coming from that RIM light is too broad you might have it spilling on to the front of your lens so I would encourage you to use a lens hood in these instances and just narrow the angle of view of the flashlight most flashes have a zoom capability so they can spread their light wide or come down to a narrower beam in this instance we're just avoiding the flare in this instance okay so here is one of the portraits that we looked earlier this is a portrait of my subject just using ambient light the background is actually sunlit and I've positioned the subject under a little bit of shade that I found in the open area and I just wanted to show you this fur this is Amby Amby entirely but as an alternative I'm going to use my beauty dish as as the primary light now and under expose by two stops so I'm showing you that the light source that I'm using there and we're getting underneath that the light source isn't held too high typically I would hold the light source slightly higher than I level but in this instance I brought it down slightly because of that peaked cap but now we can see how dark that background goes if we're wanting that figure-ground separation of focus I would also encourage you to look at the technique carefully before you try this with in a photographic situation you might want to test this because if we're working with sunlight sometimes and an open aperture sometimes you might need to employ a technique called high-speed sync I use shutter speeds faster than the maximum sync speed of your camera your camera and flash need to talk together quite well in order to do this high-speed sync alternatively if you only have a cheap manual flash is to put a neutral density filter on front of the camera this allows you to open up a little bit wider without over exposing the background typically we can't open up - if one-point-eight on a sunlit day and not have that background overexposed so we might need to use an ND filter or high-speed sync to prevent that from happening okay when I'm positioning my main flash light if you don't have a modeling light you'll need to take one image and then review the image to see where the light is falling now I'm giving an example of a shot that I showed earlier where the light is coming through an open doorway and window and typically in this instance with this character on the right I will ask the character just to angle their head slightly so we get a small amount of the light falling onto the shaded side of the face this is a very well-known lighting technique called or Rembrandt lighting now typically you don't want two triangular shadow coming off the nose when the light source is harsh typically you want the any shadows coming from the nose to extend out and touch the shadows on the extreme shaded side of the face so we're getting our triangle of light now if you look at Rembrandt lighting you can see some very obvious high contrast examples of this play down but often it can be very difficult to notice that subtle illumination on the shaded side of the face unless you're really looking for it one of the techniques to help you see the light on the faces is basically just to squint your eyes slightly this will help you see the contrast of the lighting amplified and there you might be able to notice and so I'm showing you the position of my primary light and often I'm practicing on a mannequin if I'm practicing with a new light source a wholly new lighting technique and this is again with the mannequin I'm now now that I've got my main primary light the angle of that light identified what I'm going to do now is put in that a rim light okay typically you don't need a very powerful light source for that RIM light because often I have my rim light dialed down and they're typically only working get at a very small amount of their maximum power output once you get into lighting off camera to start playing with variations in three-point lighting is something that you might get into here I'm showing you a three-point lighting and I've listed them as a B and C now on my commander I'm controlling this time in manual rather than TTL I'm controlling the power output of each of those flash units and you can see the key like the soft light that cell illuminating the model is being fired off at half power the background which is a big soft box is being fired off at just 1/16 power and the rim light is being fired off at just one 64th power so those three lights are of equal power and you can see the power ratio of each light source to create that effect there in another example you this time using a dark background we can see the primary light maybe a little bit of soft if the primary light is a little bit harsh for your subject because the primary light sauce isn't broad enough that's one a reason to put a little bit of fill light typically the fill light comes from the position of the camera whereas a the primary light might be to one side to create directional shaping of the face and then dropping in the rim light again sometimes you have to be very careful with those rim lights they can spill if you just get the angle of that rim light slightly awkward the rim light can hit the tip of the nose and and that's usually resolved just by repositioning the rim light or asking the model to turn slightly okay so hopefully you have enjoyed some of the techniques so they're just thumb ZUP if you have and subscribe to the channel if you want to catch up with me at an extended period of time I'm running a couple of workshops in the US next year so in September I'll be in Yosemite and Death Valley and then the the tool that immediately follows up there will be doing the deserts and canyons so if you're interested in spending a week with me you can catch up with this through world photo adventures down lille is the primary photographer there but and i support him on a few of the workshops there and the two that I'll be spending with Darren next year are these two in the USA in September okay so I'll catch up with you next time I'm Mar gala and hopefully you've enjoyed this presentation [Music]

Channel: Mark Galer's Alpha Creative Skills

Views: 394,113

Keywords: Sony, Alpha, Camera, Photography, Photo, tutorial, tips, techniques, settings, howto, learn, Portrait, Portraiture, Flash, Off-camera Flash, Bokeh, Composition, Lighting

Id: PVdwKiTcJNs

Length: 50min 56sec (3056 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 18 2018