Classical Posing & Portrait Lighting

hi everyone and welcome to classical posing and portrait lighting I'm your host Joe Grady and before we get started I want to go over a little bit of the mechanics first of all as always this is a live video broadcast that means kind of heavy bandwidth requirements on occasion so if you lose our audio or you'll lose the signal don't worry this is being recorded we'll have a full HD version available for you for download and also there's a chat room make sure you take advantage of that we're going to take some questions live during today's broadcast today is going to be completely live we're going to have Frank the spends on the set on to introduce Frank in just a minute and we're going to do portrait and lighting and metering to make sure everything is perfect now classical posing and lighting I've heard people first several years saying oh they don't want to do posing they want to do photojournalism well that's all well and fine but knowing how to pose is really critical and even if you're not going to do posing if you're going to sit and wait for someone to do something knowing how to do this posing and knowing what is the correct body position and shape and head tilt and rotation it's what's going to allow you to capture those beautiful photojournalistic images people actually do want to be posed they want to look their best and that's we're going to learn about today so take advantage of the chat room we'll take your questions live and again this is being recorded I'd like to introduce our guest photographer today Frank Dispenza I've known Frank for many years Frank and I share both a passion of photography a passion well particularly Frank a passion for really bad jokes and kind of a rep art a of verbal abuse that we've always had back and forth towards each other and we plan on continuing that today during this live broadcast so we always like to have fun when we're doing this you guys have seen this stuff before we're light we have fun and ask us questions then we'll have a lot of fun so let me introduce Frank Frank Dispenza thanks everyone thank you thanks so much for coming in you can leave now I have actually learned a lot from this man he taught me how to add f-stops on anyway he finally stopped when my eyes store to bleed after so but a really important thing to know so Frank what are you going to do today we're going to take Bethany and we're going to take Phil and we're going to show you from ground zero good body language that makes the female feminine and the male masculine alright and we're going to show you the right and wrong so you can appreciate because different that's that's important difference to when you get to see wrong you'll really understand a lot better when you see oh yes that does look better and we're in a studio today we're doing studio lights but everything we're doing would apply wherever you are absolutely when we bring Beth and step back Bethany Bethany and Phil on here that's the right the wrong is here already you've seen it now go okay so why don't we invite nothing yet you ready to get started I've I well okay I'll get out of the way good afternoon thank you psychotic for sponsoring this this is really nice so let's start off with Bethany have a seat Bethany the goal of the body language the classical body language is to create balance watch stand up a minute flat to the camera arms at your side you can't get any worse than this take a pretty young lady like this and put her flat to the camera hands at her side as soon as we see the line that goes down through the middle of the face line up with the breastbone and we have vertical lines or horizontal lines in the body language it becomes boring and Static it becomes boring and Static so if we take Bethany and turn her with your feet put that foot out to the side as soon as we do that now hands at the side as soon as we do that we create a far shoulder and a near shoulder and when Bethany puts her weight on her left foot this shoulder drops that's what we're looking for we're looking for a high near shoulder and a far low shoulder let me give you an example of what we're talking about if you send a photographer out to photograph a picket fence okay and they take it straight on to the picket fence where the picket fence goes horizontally across artistically it's really autistic excuse me but when the photographer takes it at an angle and shows the large pickets here and then smaller going away from you you introduce depth into the photograph we do that with body language when we have a far shoulder and a near shoulder and a high shoulder and a low shoulder think about the picket fence okay it's no longer static and then we take that centerline and we turn the face so that it's off-center now we we start to get some dynamic looks to it okay so now we got vertical arms here just for the heck of it put your hands on your hips great put this foot out to the side heel down point the toe that way good now he is contra posing we have the low shoulder high shoulder near shoulder far shoulder we're going to take this hip and turn it this way and then open up the shoulder ah that gives her a nice swagger if you will very nice now how much do you turn them well she's very petite okay we don't turn her too far because if we do turn that way if we turn her too far the balance doesn't look good you'll know from camera position how much to turn or not to turn a heavy asset model you would turn a little bit more okay so now let's look at turn back to the normal position look at the hands the hands are on the hips which gives us diagonal lines that's what we're looking for we love diagonal lines but wait a minute now we have a low shoulder and a high shoulder yet the hands form a horizontal line okay so if we leave this down here and move that one higher now we match the shoulder line minor way the camera okay that's her little yeah thank you very much so the low shoulder high shoulder low hand matches now switch the hands that's contradictory to what we want to see and if you gave your client two pictures one this way switch it and one this way with the expression staying the same most of them would pick the right one but they don't know why they picked it okay so looking good yep turn a little bit more open up that shoulder that's good so now turn that heel in that's it right there so now we we have a good representation of her standing again take that centerline of her face turn turn turn turn our main light is on this side so we want for the feminine composition which we're showing here we want the light to go across the garment we wouldn't pose her the opposite way if the main light is there so goes across across the garment she's now in a 2/3 view put all of your hair on this side excellent if we're going to have hair on one side or the other make the hair flow with the low shoulder okay very nice let's have the guy now Phil come on up here have a seat again let's start off with hands at your side okay here again boring and Static turn this way Phil there you go put your weight on your right foot that's it now tip the top of your head this way turn this way great right there turn your face back this way perfect now again Woodfill we have aloe shoulder and a high shoulder but notice that we turned him towards the light for the male composition we want to hit the hit and flatly in the chest we don't want to go across the garment so with Bethany this was how far shoulder low shoulder would fill this is the far shoulder low shoulder high shoulder near shoulder width the main lake still on that side but we got to be very careful now with the male composition notice the head tilt you talk to someone standing there that's the normal attitude of the head straight up and down but that's more graceful than we want to portray to male watch what happens when we tip the head correctly tip the top you head slowly right there turn to face beautiful if you want a rule of thumb you can see it when you practice it but you want to rule the thumb as this shoulder line drops and there's a diagonal line here make the line that goes down through the center a perpendicular line today let's do it again tip turn no no no no I'm sorry just a face a Devoy turn the nose right tip a little bit more I'll exaggerate it gets QC for the guy turn and tip right there that's a much better open up the jacket up here with the left hand over here with right hand that's it in the pocket thumb out okay now this coincides with the low shoulder for shoulder low hand high hand high shoulder it forms a diagonal line with the dark clothing between the two hands matching the slope of the shoulders so the classical rules of portraiture really really I mean it's timeless you go back to the Renaissance painters sculptors they all did exactly what we're doing that's where we copied all the information from and we found that hey it looks better okay so now let's bring back Bethany and we're going to show how we do the female City have a seat excellent put your hair temporarily all the way back okay so now we can't put the weight on the back foot but we can actually cheat a little bit lean forward we want the person to sit tall and lean forward when they're sitting here's another thing that's any stand up and then sit all the way back on the stool okay turn this way a little bit more good now when you do that especially on a regular chair we make the thighs get a little bit bigger when you sit all the way back in your chair so we never want to do that so sit towards the end more no no no no no I never hear that a lot okay stand up a minute we're going to show something else here watch we're going to make the posing stool a little bit higher see if that's good sit on the end okay when we make the posing stool higher put that foot on the ground we have a diagonal line from the hip down to the knee okay we want diagonal lines we don't want horizontal lines when we lower the posing stool we get a horizontal line across this leg over the cup now if we're going to cross legs this is the way to cross them go the opposite way actually you want to hold on people are asking you'd like to see this so we need to do is we need to get a camera down so actually if you're going to describe it from over here folks are asking they'd like to see what's going on with okay zoom in on those okay that's good now if we're showing a full length here that shoe is going to get a little bit bigger than it should compared to the face okay but if we cross the legs the other way now the foot is more in line with her face when she leans forward and this this foot will never be exaggerated in size okay so good that is correct let's talk about hands Oh what turn the face turn chin down good put your hands on your hips just for now okay turn turn chin down okay she is in the feminine composition why let's go over that it's so important low shoulder high shoulder the line going down through the middle of her face is not lined up with her breast ball turn this way which you need just a little bit right there good and she's turned to the near high shoulder now she's turned to the near high shoulder if we put fill in this position it would be very feminine he wants to be turned to the low shoulder we're going to demonstrate him in the next session here so it's really really important that we keep the female when we want to portray her gracefully now the girl is ambidextrous we can pose the girl in the masculine composition or the feminine composition and I'll show you what fill when we do either feminine or masculine with the female and why okay let's have fill thank you okay couple questions yeah it's sort of coming through let's step back for a second and talk about the lighting setup good because people are asking about let's talk about the light I'll give them an overview and you do the metering okay in this situation the first thing you do in the studio is pick a working aperture we're shooting today at f11 it's a pretty tight aperture we we really don't need we really don't need f11 we could have shot at f/8 but if you pick f11 a nice contrast ratio between the main light and the fill light fill lights on camera access main lights at a 45 degree angle okay fill lights going to be 5.6 main light when metered by itself is f 8.6 okay now we say F 8.6 really technically on paper its F 8.5 but like shooting pool with the main light their light hits him some of it gets lost this way and is not picked up on a camera that's about 1/10 of a stop so for the main light to contribute on the chip in the camera F 8.5 we make it F 8.6 okay so we're going to meter the lights and Joe will take over so we've got our two lights here we have a mean people are asking me - over on the side we've got a soft box up above that's acting as a fill so we're going to do each of our lights separately go ahead just alright and point 2 meter toward each individual light so again naturally the dome in dome help frame cause we're going to do dome in to measure each of our legs individually I can even put myself in between this light and come over here and take my reading and I've got f8 1/10 over here we want f-86 right right so we're going to bring that one up I went to f8 7:10 so we're going it we're going for real accurate we're going for actually to a tenth of a stop so that's we have the meter set four tenths rather than thirds what we're going to find out for our camera later is we'll put the dome out we'll take a reading back from the count position and then that will give us our actual game to put into the camera all right so that they ate so we want even six okay we have f8 and six tens now I want to measure this right here if I remember right that was our a light correct our fill light back here so let's go to epic I'm even going to turn off make it easy we're using a Profoto d1 by the way I've got the air system here so it renders oh I lost my mind sorry here we go am i back up I'm back okay I'm back I lost sorry about that lost my mic there for a second so I'm going to measure this light these are Profoto d1 s again I'm using is conic 478 D our meter and the Profoto air system so I'm going to take my reading back to my up and get my main again alright let me turn that down a little bit again we're going for Frank wants f8 and 6/10 correctly okay there we go fa and 6/10 so I'm going to turn this light off for a second and I can do that right from here just turn that head off and take the reading just back to the fill light and that is 5 6 and 1/10 you wanted 5 6 5 6 so I'll just hit the button once the power button once on here take my reading and I get 5 6 and 0 so now you want to reading with them both together by the camera so let me turn my main light back on and now is when we'll go ahead and put the dome out to get the contribution on his face back towards the camera position so I'll take my reading here and what were you after Eiffel oven and I'm coming at a little low hold on a second here very 11 in 110 close enough close enough so we're a tenth of a stop you just put your camera in F oven and good to go so take it over just one more thing about our lighting people may ask well why five six and F eight and a half how does that equal F 11 real quickly I choose to make F 11 with a stop and a half difference between the fill light of 5/6 and the main light of F 8.5 because the contrast ratio on the face for general portraiture is correct if we had a cowboy here rough-and-tumble cowboy dressed in really old cloth like he's been out in the out in the mountains for months and he's got bloodshot eyes and everything you want high contrast we may make the main light and fill like two-and-a-half stops difference to give a darker shadow side okay and all the reason for lighting is is we want to light the five planes of the face with the main light the five planes are as such the forehead aligned down the nose the front of both cheeks and the front of the chin those are the five points the mask of the face that we want to light with the main light to fill light on camera access kind of a very weak light lights from top to bottom left left to right flat lighting the fill light is always on camera axis so five six plus F eight point five is f11 okay so let's go on I'll need that posing table your anything it off so sit tall fill lean forward I'll trigger to lean forward that's it and let's give him something because we want diagonal lines and lower that just a little bit so we drop that children no I'm gonna yeah correct good that's good thank you turn the face lean forward a little bit with your whole body that's now again turn the face this way tipped ahead slightly feminine composition err notice that his head is straight up and down he's got a far shoulder high shoulder near shoulder this line has to be perpendicular to this so tip over tip over good now there's a big difference in attitude look at me Phil turning OHS this way slightly there's a big difference in attitude our position of strength rather than turn the nose a position of grace turn tip right there let's talk about hands the female wrist as we're going to show you later is always bent it's either bent down or up but not for the male if we take this hand and make this horizontal it looks looks out of character if we make it perfectly vertical it looks out of character but if we turn it at a 45-degree angle and drop it slightly okay good let's take this hand here and put it right here good right there now we got the perfect male sitting right bethenny we did do me a favor just stand over his shoulder his right shoulder coming close put your arm around his shoulder put your hand a little bit out further that way yeah there we go now Bethany is so petite that I lose balance there because we hide a lot of her body now if Bethany was a full-figured model this would be a great pose lean forward there you go excellent now we got two people just turn your body this way Bethany that's good put the hand out this way good and this hand should flow we like to show the side of the female hand not the front and we never want the thumb to get too far away from the index finger there you go and then as they get to know each other we can actually take and put it under there and we can move you closer to his head that's it exactly and we would put all of your hair on this side now all of your hair on this side all of it there you go okay go back in today you know get close okay good turn your face this way no not you I'm sorry turn your face this way no just a nose good tip right there gonna take that shot Frank yes take that shot and go ahead and get that sweetheart just tip your head and touch him right there okay rate up me beautiful excellent okay so Bethany have a seat let's do something where we get them nice and close here stand up a minute Bethany come on over here we're going to do facial views right now Phil have a seat I'm going to lower this just a little bit for you Beth have a seat turn your knees this way put your elbow up on here that's good that way cross this knee over the top now turn this way just a little bit very good now Bethany is got full face right here if we can put your hair behind your ears so we can demonstrate okay Bethany is full faith that's perfect now even lower okay hold it right there can you zoom in on her face yes okay notice Chindi notice if we have the chin to fly down look up here we get white canoes under her eyes see the white underneath the iris the colored part of the eye is not touching the bottom lid you got to be real careful some people show that canoes underneath real easy they don't have to look too high be careful in close-up photography you don't want the canoes okay perfect turn the face tip okay now she's in the masculine connotation think about it the far shoulder the far shoulder is this one the low shoulder the high shoulder is this one and she's tipped to the far low shoulder she's in the masculine connotation when she was in a feminine connotation her body language was that way and she turned back to the light now so turn the nose right now she's exactly full-face take that your left your left hand and just behind your ears there you go that's good thank you what is full face we got a close-up of the full face am i yeah if you turn around you can actually see the two monitors the one on the right is the one broadcasting okay can we zoom in on her face okay when we're full face we are actually looking directly at her full face the only time I would change it one way or the other is if one year stuck out a little bit more than they'd been the than the other and in this case she doesn't put your hair behind you Hegel her ears are perfect just like the rest of her okay here we go so she's perfect we we could adjust that by going like this or like this okay so full face is easy to understand two-thirds now is not as easy some people refer to it as 3/4 view of the face so let's turn the face whoop tip the head perfect now what is a good two thirds we do not take the corner of the eye and break the skin line that comes down this side of the eye we have a close-up turn the face this way there we go chin down much easier when you look at the monitor yeah that's why you know what might work if you stand here stand here and a blur front of the camera rather than it from there I'm doing good here okay eyes here okay excellent now I want you to turn the face notice how we're breaking the skin line now eyes back to the camera here see how we broke the skin line on this side here we broke the skin line so the working area for good two-thirds is do not break the skin line turn back right there we're showing a piece of skin on that side of the eye now watch I'm gonna move her face hook back back back back right up right here right there now she's almost in two thirds but you notice we see a piece of her right ear hanging off the right side of her face not nice so let's go right there now the window of acceptances don't show the hidden ear and don't break the skin line but there's a few degrees in there that you could play with and what are we playing with what are we looking for the goal is is to show the knotch between the brow and the and the high cheekbone watch go this way no good too far go this way right look that's flat right there right there if we could zoom in on that you see the notch right here that chiseled look right there there's a notch if we move it just a degree or so this way no right there stay there move it back this way this way it is there's the notch it straightens out a little bit right there before we start the CD ear right there back slowly slowly slowly oh right there there's a window in her it's pretty tight where you either see the ear or you see the notch in a lot of people okay there's a big window of acceptance and you can go a lot before you have that not straight now so look for the notch if it's there seriously it gives that chiseled look especially in a close-up okay so let's lean over with the arm that's it good so that's full faith and two-thirds next we're going to do is profile so I'm going to have you swing around put your knees that way cross the leg over that's good there are two positions for profile this is called over the shoulder obviously over the shoulder we could turn her body 180 degrees this way and put that elbow out there no no no this way put that elbow out there turn the body a little bit more turn into profile no no no just the face just the face look that way all the way all the way turn the body a little bit more yes that's it now this would be called let's call it for let's call it open chest compared to over the shoulder right for the female we could pose her either way over the shoulder which is a lot more feminine or this which is a lot more masculine but the male as we're going to show you would fill we only do this position not over the shoulder for the male okay so it's very very important again put your hand on your hip just for a second good and when we do the profile we want to tip the head slightly towards camera the top yet that's it right there camera angle when you're photographing in the studio and you're doing a close-up the eyes must be in the top third of the photograph don't let the eyes sink down into halfway down the frame gets boring it's static okay so let's talk about the lighting come back to me for full face don't just stay right just the face okay in full face we have the main light you may not be able to see this but the main light is right there now when she goes to two-thirds the main light is attached to her forehead if you will the main light moves with the face look at the camera tip okay right there go move that's perfect look like the main light moves with the face so now when we go to profile the main light moves with the face going to profile and the main light goes all the way back here tip the top of your head towards the camera there you go now this is very important can we have a close-up of her face perfect notice we're lighting the mass go to face right now we go highlight less highlight less highlight and then the fill light takes over when we break into shadow if we allow the model to look straight ahead all we see from camera angle is a white triangle we don't see the colored part of the iris if we take the eyes and shift it to here now the camera position shows the round colored part of her eye and that's what we want so she doesn't look straight ahead she looks about five or six degrees off to one side okay when we photograph the Asians or or african-americans they usually have a shallow bridge to their nose which works out very good if you want to do Rembrandt lighting but you got to be very careful in profile that you don't see the eyelid of the opposite eye if you see the eyelash of the opposite side that's desirable but not the lid let's push the hair to one yeah that's high okay that's good yes so let's do the we have just keep an eye on the camera here so you can see where you're standing in proportion to Bethany excellent yeah that's what we want notice that the skin line that goes from the forehead down through the nose is not interrupted by an eyebrow okay that's a knee turn that way just a touch come go even a little bit more go a little bit more now we're breaking that skin line with the eyebrow not good come back come back come back come back come back right there perfect that's a very very good the composition is wrong it's too close you know we want to chop them off at the neck but that's okay we want to show the lighting on the face stay right there I'm going to adjust the lighting because the video camera is not on auto still photography access so Frank when you're doing this rate what did you change your ratios when you go from profile to full no okay no the question was do we change the ratios no the fill light is still five six the main light is contributing f/8 and a half and it's still f11 okay what I do in the studio is I put little dots on the floor so when I move the light it's always the same distance from the subject and I don't have to keep rimi during and rebaiting okay so let's bring up Phil again come on Phil assume your position like it did before now again put your elbow out there go into profile tip the top of your head to me there you go so let's look at the camera here turn your face towards me Phil just a little bit whoa too much slowly go back the other way right there notice the clean line now going down from his forehead down through his nose and we don't break that skin line with an eyebrow looks great see these easy models to work with turn to me fill just a touch right there and the lighting is good notice we go from highlight on the nose to shadow on the nose to highlight on the front of your cheek and then back into the fill light so that that's good that's good lighting and that's a perfect profile Phil would you tip the top of your head toward the camera towards me even more turn your nose away from me just a little bit right there perfect Phil a little happier Phil I know when we're making your work hard yeah Brittany's going to be in the Britney Bethenny's going to be in the picture with you shortly okay that's a much better expression so let's bring Bethany now we're going to we're going to actually change this stay right there because you look good on camera you know we got to make up for him stand up stand up stand up you you squat side swap sides okay oh there's your feet hurt okay that's okay Frank while you're setting up someone had an interesting question asked about would you ever want to show the eyelashes or a little bit of eye on the far side of that is correct I thought we went over that but let me reiterate especially for the female if we can form and not break the skin line with the eyebrow and you see part of the long eyelash on the far eye very nice but make sure you don't show a piece of the lid with it it gets it gets feisty real quick eyelash yes if it's available without breaking the rest of the rules and you're going to see the eyelash a lot in the Asian and African American because they have shallow bridges okay and you got to be very careful with the lighting with shadow bridges but that's for a lighting class and we won't go over that right now so let's put two people together here turn this way put your arm around her put your arm under him and around his waist good put put your weight on that foot yes and put the other foot out to the side on the floor that's it right there good hand on your hip here's what you don't want to do don't show these fingers coming around the edge here put your hand on her back okay good now here's a common mistake made when we're posing him and her together in order for their heads to come together watch tip tip see their heads are too far apart and they can't get together because their hips are too close watch stand up turn this way get a little closer to her right there now arms around each other now don't get too close that's the whole other now lean towards each other which even with your hips even which have haigo haigo now the tops of them come together naturally because we didn't put the the trunk of their bodies together they can lean towards each other now here's something very important watch this psychologically if you take anything from the remember this Phil turn your face tip your head turn your face good Phyllis is full face to the camera Bethany is full face to the camera psychologically he does not acknowledge she's even there that's hard to believe seriously all right we have to have the taller person Joe would you move that light into main light position we have to have the taller person the person further away from the light source why did we have him on this side if the main lights there we've hit him flatly in the chest and for her it goes across the garment for the female okay now the taller person watch this I'm in the way on that the taller person air Phil turn your nose to her tip your head to her sweetheart tip your head to him she's full face Phil back this way just a touch tip together close close that's it right there he now acknowledges that she's there because he's turned from full faith to two-thirds his body language says she's there he acknowledges it to full faces like that they're two separate to separate pictures okay now it would be nice Britany turn your face turn your face Brittany yeah I know I know but she's on a witness protection program we got to change her name every three minutes Bethany turn your face okay now when she's 2/3 to him they acknowledge each other but the lighting can't be correct for both of them so go back to full face full face tip your head okay she's full face he's two-thirds he acknowledges with his body language that she's there open up that button there Phil we don't want vertical lines put your hands in your pocket exactly so now we have we have a very very nice portrait it should be cropped we got to talk about cropping we can we can have a full length or we can have it two thirds we got a crop up one third above the knees right about in here okay we never want to crop at a joint it doesn't look good so again let's let's review just real quickly far shoulder low shoulder high shoulder near shoulder same for her far high near she's tipped to him right he's tipped to her he's two-thirds she's full face now supposing that Phil here wasn't a well proportioned young man Joe would you get in there I knew this was coming let him take your place hi honey how are you darling now there's going to be a time when you have to photograph grandpa with granddaughter all the nice mud on remember I get to edit I love this yeah and when I say cut we run out of here and that's it okay so wait a minute now look at the balance Jose is broader a shoulder wise and everything I hope so and when we look at petite Bethenny and the broad shoulder the balance is wrong either we're going to have to make her look bigger or make you look small good luck with that well I think we can do it it's a miracle turn all the lights up okay sweetheart would you come out front - stay right there Joseph - come in front of him that's it low shoulder turn to him now when we do that not not yet not yet when we do that I've just cut half of Joe off no applause okay Joe this means you're just gonna have to walk like this in front of me all the time yeah okay yeah I'm not even going to say turn your nose right all right there sweetheart lean back a little bit turn the nose oh right there now if Joe was really really let's say obese put your hand on your hip now we cut across his midsection okay and if the balance becomes better if Joe is a bigger guy than he is okay so put both hands on your hips okay turn that foot towards me bagel and again turn the hip this way open up the shoulder that way great there's how you photograph the heavyset guy with the petite little girl about distance to the cameras should that you ever changed that distance to the camera yes I am NOT following you but you wouldn't want me no no no no not shooting at f11 yeah next now if we had let's say Joe was close to 300 pounds had a huge stomach I would take something yeah I would take something and have him put his foot on it this foot here once he raises this foot and leans forward this diminishes this diminishes will have to learn to walk this way yeah okay Joseph thank you very much all right yes always a pleasure so when she was in this last position he was in a masculine connotation but she was in a feminine commerce connotation because this was her far shoulder this was her near shoulder and she was turned to hop a high near shoulder she was in a feminine composition okay so what actually one more question when when you've got the second person here how much is the full light how much do you have to look out for the shadow that's going to be cast from the main light for her right well let's do it so there's a necklace casting a shadow yeah let's take a look I'll come on in why don't we use you for that so if you're backed up a little bit let me the positioning of the main light turn this one turn this one with your feet hey well let's get rain front turn even flatter this way with your feet okay and then hips lean back no no I'm sorry you step back from her and then lean forward at the waist okay back up this way lean forward chin out here good that's pretty good because from camera angle you don't see the shadow side here so that's something have to look out yes be careful that she doesn't cast the shadow onto his face but in this case it's fine really okay so which is hello shoulder that one notice she posed her right hand lower on her hip than her left hand excellent another question yeah good question in that scenario you're just talking about with big guy small girl what if it's the opposite what if it's the opposite excellent okay okay you're going to be the big girl I had that no have a seat all right yeah okay oh no no we want Phil yeah it was a good choice though she looks good Oh Phyllis yes yes great okay so here's the guy you know I'm getting a little mixed up I'm the big girl now yeah okay come on on this side you step forward here Phil you're not getting paid enough for this not enough step foliat I want you to go behind his shoulder and put your arm under here there you go turn this way you feeling weird yet no oh you know I am sipping this way me and a feminine pose you guys aren't paying enough for this okay Joe stepped a little bit this way behind his shoulder there you go so uh what's this you're pulling out a gun you're gonna kill yourself that's okay that's all right Joe's enjoy by the way you guys on are the other guys have made the end before on camera she's losing it over here so okay so Joe put your weight on you your left foot that's it right there lean forward that's it right there any way we can cover up in fact Joe looks balanced now with his husband no but seriously take a look now and come out from behind his shoulder and take a look at it the balance would be definitely wrong okay so that's how you do it and if your city was turning red well actually somebody else asked question well I'm trying to help these guys out so good job good that's uh we only had a couple of minutes left so let me do some romantic stuff together you can slip your shoes on please keep the questions coming that that was a very good question the more we can use Joe the gorillas here I would really appreciate it you know okay so let's do something romantic let's take this here ah Frank one other good question that just came through while setting up what effect would changing kind of our big beauty dish here - a big soft box or an umbrella how would effect would that change on the lighting okay right now we're using a parabolic well what we call a beauty dish it's about 18 inches across okay what's the difference between using a 30-inch softbox in the same position at the same intensity and using a beauty dish okay the shadow that you see will either be blurred the edge or it will be sharp and I'd like to show you why that is Phil just step out a minute sweetheart just have a seat elbow up on the table these this way but then that nice okay good I'm going to make this a little more dramatic turn the face this way this way yep tip right there hold it right there can we have a close-up of her face really in tight now Joe yeah you said shut the fill light off absolutely let me go get it hold on you want that you went so off yes okay chin down right now we have loop lighting if we have a full-face I mean yeah there you go now notice the nose shadow that drops down here and when you look at it you can draw a pencil line as to where the shadow ends and where the highlight begins now if this was a softbox rather than a parabolic if it was a bigger light source we don't even have to say softbox versus parabolic if it was a bigger light source physically can we show this on camera good why make a white angle this is really important that's perfect when I take this and point it towards the subject I create the nose shadow that you just seen right okay the part of the parabolic here lights this side her right side of her cheek the middle of the parabolic is lighting her nose the edge of the light is looking around her nose at this distance they can see around her nose and is lighting the far cheek that side okay that's important to remember now now if this softbox instead of the parabolic being 18 inches was this big this edge light can see around even more and dilute the sharpness of that shadow this is a weaker light it's further away from the flash tube this is a stronger light this is even stronger so the highlights go from very bright less bright real weak break into shadow fill light only so the larger the light source for that distance the more the edge of the light can look around her nose and dilute the shadow so what will you see instead of a sharp line you will see a blurred edge it'll be very soft in fact if you take a magnifying glass and look at every pore in her face it'll have a highlight and a blurred shadow on the other side of the pore or a sharp highlight and a up shadow on the other side of the poor so do we do this with Grandma no grandma we use a large softbox Corsica tends to flatten out the wrinkles and everything make it look nice question ok we got some more questions and I really you didn't prompt this well I didn't prompt this one and you guys are troublemakers someone asked how do you pose a large woman alone you don't have her you don't have somebody to hide her by yes I do repeat after me our Father so I know how do we pose it well number one if you have no props at all okay if I had a narrow tree here we could kind of grab the tree and take off maybe a third okay by posing yep the same way we did with Jo and his boyfriend I keep getting they stuff yeah is it okay so we can we can do that but if we have no props yep and would you stand up flat to the camera arms down at your sides okay so when we started we said we're going to turn to the body turn the body okay now we turn her very slightly because she's so petite but if she was a heavyset model turn her even more now when you turn somebody that much she looks way too thin for balance but the heavyset girl looks much much better all right so more of a turn continuing on what are you doing we have a large height difference between the two people yes that is really simple what let's say Phil here is 6 foot 5 we sit him down and we pose her next to him okay now let's say have a seat turn your body this way knees cross over the top okay let's say Phil was six foot five right I'm five foot seven so Phil is here in he's six foot five let's say he's six foot one and we only have to drop him maybe two five nine five ten if it's off camera we're cropped just below two joint here we have Phil stretch out his ankles to make them wider he dropped found about three inches when he goes from this to this okay so that's one way of doing it without being obvious okay so now when you go out and you're on location and you're photographing these two in the shade of a tray pick a tree that has lots of roots in the ground where you see it go like this for me it's generally a square a Sequoia yes yes oh yeah we're going back to your roots let's look why all right so if we without talking to your clients and say hey you tall guy come over here and stand in a hole but when there's roots in the ground it fluctuates quite a bit we can pose her on the higher ground and maybe three inches low without them even realizing it we drop him down to the right height all right one last question because unfortunately we're just about out of time and this is it's a little bit different about posing but it's something that comes up a lot when you've got somebody that's got one eye that's substantially and noticeably smaller than the other excellent excellent why we don't have that here the girl is perfect let me think come over here okay good have a seat flat to the camera let's take a close-up of him actually they're almost perfect but will will demonstrate anyway here I can just stand here and go like this if you want yeah okay good look straight ahead there Phil so what's your approach okay the approach is let's say that his right eye was slightly smaller it is but it's hardly even noticeable okay I would make that the far I don't try to correct it by turning him this way and making the larger eye in the back it gets smaller to begin with when you turn them so take the smaller eye unless it's drastically smaller and turn it to the back so do this put your elbow up on there lean forward at the waist okay let's get it good two-thirds on him turn your nose back to me Phil Phil this way more Phil this way the other way towards me Phil there you go all right good now if this was noticeably smaller we want the smaller eye as the father's eye the father's from the camera closest eye father's eye but that's a very good question normally what I do when someone comes in my studio when they got a smaller eye I can look at them from here and then I look at them from the opposite angle and it'll tell you which looks better but most of the time take the smaller eye and make it too far eye so it's going to really depend on how much the difference in size is yes if it's slightly smaller make it the far I if it's a lot smaller you're going to have to play you're going to have to look at those eyes yeah well yeah we're okay a couple question about how do you light with and again this is going to be probably too much than we can handle today but how do you light with one light source indoors and work your no light source with a light meter what kind of ratio you're going to look for say out in the environment let's say you do is just doing ambient natural light yeah what are you going to look for positioning the subject just an ambient light what kind of ratio are you going to without flash at all correct without flasher we're going to do is just meter the ambient light real quick like let's say we meter the ambient light it's an overcast day or you're in the shade of a tree so you're in the shade of its rate come out towards the edge of the tree line okay let's say that the light is directly above okay you're going to have flat lighting so change your angle of camera okay move your camera angles so that the light has its direction and you'll see the direction if you get on the edge of the tree line don't go back towards the trunk of the tree because then you have the light direction at all okay okay two more to end we're going to end up going a little bit over because I had a couple good questions taking the eye one step further what do you do when you've got somebody with the nose excellent excellent gee I wish I could I can fix that come here yeah I forget which I do which I do I which side do you brake to slightly to that stats correct okay why am I on camera yeah yeah my nose turned slightly this way you want to turn that bend toward the camera in other words I would go two-thirds this way if I go two-thirds this way and this is this is bent this way it personifies that look you can see that it's bent but if you turn the bend into the camera it straightens it right out so can we have a close-up please sit there man close-up a frank doesn't be scary okay so look right - Rick's gonna cameras going to be live okay so if I'm in two thirds I'm there's your third year yeah okay if I'm in two thirds it should straighten out the hook if I do this and the bend is this way it shows that it's bent I like to look better I don't know I don't know if you can actually see it oh yeah you can see them okay yeah all right yep but I okay if we got more that's about it because you know you wanted to go over some of the shots we took and I want to do one romantic pose with real quick real quick come on guys stay with if you have to leave by the way just give us a couple minutes we're just going to go a little bit longer because this is really important to Frank wants to show you and sweet I have a simmer it's being recorded some of these that way elbow out here slide this way that's it lean lean down turn it to profile put all your hair on this side straddle this get nice and close do it real quick go into profile sweet huh Britney doesn't go into profile more move your elbow that way towards him that's it move your chair out this way film I'm so what are you glad for here Frank oh I'm gonna I'm gonna go with two people where she's in profile lean lean forward hear me right yeah right there make your chair higher just by lifting it just lift it with your hands even higher do you want the fill light back on that's good okay extend your chin tip your top of your head this way I'm sorry back a little bit bring your face in this way to look at her right there can we bring a camera in here close you want this light background yeah please not that it's important okay so what you go with this main light now what are you bringing away over here well it's profile lighting on her like we showed before okay is she in profile there from that camera angle yep okay get nice and close move in that's it right there a little happier here we go eyes here sweetheart good let me see what that looks like chin up a little bit fill a little happier Phil turn you nose more to Joe Phil hey tip the top of your head back out this way towards me that's it quiet quiet no big no teeth there you go sweetheart that that's a very nice that's a horizontal picture you are seeing but I would make this vertical and look would look really nice Phil get closer with your chin to her there it is right there okay that's all I wanted great all right so Rick come on over here what we're going to do is we took some of these shot you'll kick you guys okay oh yeah okay yeah we took some of these shots with these lighting patterns a little bit earlier some what Frank you're going to go through each of these and we're going to and Frank's going to show you the wrong right as we go through sequence so Jen if you would just show my computer and you will get these pictures online for you to look at later okay so let me go full screen on this let's get rid of that okay so you can just right arrow to go through here we have a young lady here flat to the camera vertical lines for arms the line that goes down through the middle of her face lines up with a breastbone boring static and now we we turn the body a little bit we have a far shoulder in the near shoulder high shoulder low shoulder but we break one of the rules here her left hand in the photograph is higher than her right hand yet it's the opposite of the shoulders so you want to make it correct we switch it her right eye right hand now is higher than the left hand the right shoulder is higher than her left shoulder and everything falls into line here we have a two-thirds almost a two-thirds vote but notice how a right eye the corner of her right eye breaks the skin line okay and when we turn somebody that far we usually distort her right eye her right now.i now is hiding behind the eyelid and is diminished it's very small so you can take a beautiful young model like this and and really you know it doesn't do it justice let's go on now here's to almost two thirds but with the opposite problem she's not turned enough notice the slice of ear that's hanging off her her cheek not nice not nice and then when we go and do it correctly we have a good two thirds don't show the ear alright don't break the skin line let's go in closer and when we get it just right you'll notice to the right of her right eye we have a nice curve in that notch that gives her that chiseled look if we move the camera or her face one way or the other just a little bit that nice indentation there straightens out here's almost full face but it's not full face notice one ear is larger than the other it sticks out more than the other because she's not full face now she's full face now let's look at profile in profile we said we wanted the line that goes from her forehead down between her eyebrows down her nose to be a clean line not interrupted by an eyebrow now for young lady comes in the studio and has one eyebrow all the way across don't mention it okay believe me so here this is correct but look her high position she's looking straight ahead notice you only see white triangles that that's not nice so go next we shift our eyes about five to eight degrees towards camera now we see the round colored part of our eye and we still have exactly half of the face shown notice the lighting now the lighting followed her from full face to two-thirds the profile so now the light is behind her face let's talk about hands we're talking about the from the elbow to the hand here the other hand is not to be talked about here the wrist is always bent on the female and it's always bent into the body notice as we go down the forearm the wrist is bent towards the body and then the hand lens flares towards the camera position the wrist is always bent so the top hand now the fingers are fled and we get a nice a very classical look to the hands here is a good photograph of a young lady sitting sitting on the edge of the chair notice she's got her right leg over her left leg so that the shoe if it was in the picture is not pointing toward the camera it gets bigger unusually big oh one more thing never let the elbows get too close to the waist line her elbows are are actually directed by me a right elbow away from her waistline so that it makes her waistline visible okay now we're switching to the guy his fill straight on vertical lines for his arms boring and Static he turns now his far shoulder near shoulder the only thing wrong with this is he's got his right hand high and his left hand low that's contradictory to his shoulder angle now it looks a lot better the low hand matches the low shoulder the high hand the high shoulder but still we got the head tilt problem he's in a feminine competent competition her composition is easy for me to say now he tilts towards his fall low shoulder now he looks masculine again a close-up not full face notice the imbalance of years two thirds we hide that one year let's talk about hands that his right hand they're being vertical it doesn't work anything vertical horizontal doesn't work so let's look at horizontal really doesn't work when we when we turn it at a 45-degree angle like that looks much better than a or B before it again his elbows are slightly out by direction and that's it I think that's it these will be available online for you to take a look at all right let me just check see if there any other questions we got here by the way if you guys were curious what we were doing is when we're shooting we used to color checker passport first and we created a color profile for the camera and the lights into the white balance so you saw the images coming in with a preset in Lightroom that they were automatically getting color corrected a couple of you asked about doing another webinar but actually do an outside one with both formal and informal situations great idea we still have snow on the ground here in fact we were talking about this just just earlier today so yes when it gets a little warm around we have some nice plants to play with them we'll do that we could do penguins we could do penguins you can do penguins Frank and that's another subject for another day more detail somebody did ask about what color background you prefer just real quick real quick real quick real quick I prefer tree color backgrounds are you ready write them down the first one is green and I'll explain why the second one is green there's $50 to the window the first one text me what the third one is he's in a rut it's already in its green let me tell you why because green makes skin tones for all races look warmer and richer if we could take a picture of her on this brown background and then do it on a green background okay I'm talking about an old masters green background you will see the color difference it makes it's an illusion it makes the skin tones warmer and brighter okay all right good question rate yes Phil get over here you're a bit Phil back on camera I want to thank Bethany and Phil both for putting up with me and for Frank for Frank thank you so much I know that was a lie was actually a lot in a very short period of time and there's a lot to follow but if you guys replay the video and watch what Frank did and watch the position of the heads and what's happening with the light it'll really go a long way towards making a portraits better and again it applies here in a studio situation or in one of those informal outside things if you see a pose that works even if you're not going to pose them maybe you got a long lens and you're sniping from across a a hall in a reception hall when you see somebody do that pose naturally your eye will start to learn what's going to make somebody look their best and when people look their best as a photographer what happens they buy more stuff that's the u.s. that's the whole idea you want to sell some more photographs so again Frank thank you so much your pleasure I know there's a lot in a short period of time so we view it give us 24 hours or so to edit the video and upload it and we'll also make the still images available so that you can see the rights and the wrongs and and compare them as well so that's it for today we ran over a little bit but thank you guys for watching and hope to see you online again soon till then be well thanks a lot

Channel: PhotoVideo EDU

Views: 446,543

Rating: 4.9118609 out of 5

Keywords: Frank Dispensa, Portrait lighting, studio lighting, Joe Brady, Light meter, L-478, Sekonic, webinar

Id: DxPkxS_ezVg

Length: 73min 14sec (4394 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 27 2013