How Lighting Can Change Your Photography Forever.

what's up guys my name is sawyer hartman and today is probably gonna be one of the coolest videos i've ever gotten to film because i have two bronze color 800 l series strobe lights now i have no idea how to use professional lighting like this but the guy we're shooting with today michael muller does and if that name doesn't ring a bell to you here's some of the images he's taken in his 40-year career so welcome this is my first ever artist spotlight tutorial where i get to go learn from one of the best in the business and share it with you also thank you bronco for providing these very sexy lights [Music] one of the many cool things about these lights is they're actually run on battery so i can hike these into crazy locations like volcanoes and stuff and still have professional level photo strobes so i am beyond excited for michael to teach me how to use these because i'm gonna start using these in my like daily career all the time i think and like that we're good to go my goal for this day was a lot more than just learning how to use my lights i wanted to get inside the mind of one of the best in the business and honestly i had no idea what i was in store for so this is hubble's studio this is where we're filming today i want to thank hubble's studio for letting us film here so this location is actually where michael does a lot of his shooting i've never in my life shot in a studio this big this professional it feels so cool to be in here check this out now while i've never personally shot in a studio of this size or frankly any size instantly i knew that working in a studio with this big of space meant two things one i finally would have the space needed to be able to move lights around as needed so that i could actually have room to work and secondly working in a studio this big and this professional means you have to step up your game whether you know what you're doing or not and honestly i had no idea what i was doing but the studio sure was inspiring before michael gets here will you give us a tour back here yes here we have the first makeup studio welcome to my office and check out these big hallways open up into individual actual changing rooms and then this this is studio two aka the matrix room aka where i'm going to be shooting some of our interview stuff because how cool is that lighting right all right see when michael gets here now michael muller's career has spanned over 40 years and he has captured some of the most iconic images whether you've seen them or not from shooting top-notch celebrities to some of the biggest movie posters in history this guy is an absolute professional i am currently right now sitting down with michael muller himself but more importantly this guy understands lighting and what comes second nature to him could be career changing for someone like myself now i knew i wouldn't be able to tell you guys everything about lighting in one video but what i did think i could do was ask michael what three basic lighting setups every photographer should know are this way no matter what level of your career at you'll be able to take some information from this video and apply it to what you're doing now but when i asked him he started to go into so much detail i knew it would be easier if i just let him show me and this is where the fun begins get over here stand on the mark right here is a basic uh portrait uh headshot using one light the first setup is a very very simple single light setup michael told me that this was very important because almost every photographer whether it's from home depot or a company like broncolor can get their hands on one light at least for one day and this is some of the knowledge michael dropped on me and it looks like you're putting a little bit of shadow on one side of the face is that to give it a little bit of a little bit of contrast a little bit of shape cool right we put a white board in here that's gonna fill it this is absorbing this is black well michael's taking his head shots behind me something i just picked up from him that seems to be a really big part of his processes not only is it important to dial in lighting but it's also his job to find the angle of his subject that's the most flattering and then tailor the lighting around that to be able to add in the shadows here's one lighting right now i explained to you how i did multiple so you got a clean look right yep jude's to step up about two inches right there i'm just moving right here oh wow look over here at me right there and what you get is a completely different oh wow incredible that's just from stepping to the shadowed side of the face it's light playing with light that's a whole different lighting setup so these are the little little tricks now no we turn on the uh real quick turn on the edge light with this sort of lighting setup what it's going to do is it's going to light the back of his head because right now there's still some light bouncing off the studio wall when you throw in this additional light see how it lit up oh wow yeah you can enhance it yourself but that edge light would be just lighting right there just lighting right here i would show that kind of like hero jawline yeah exactly the most important thing is one really good lens spend the money and get the best glass you can it's better to have one really good lens than four lenses uh because you know it makes all the difference in the world all right so the next thing we're doing is cutting out the lights here we've opened the garage door and we're gonna try some headshots with available lighting now even though this video is all about how strobe lighting can change your career forever i knew that we had to have at least one lighting setup where if you didn't have a light you could still start to understand how to use light so i asked michael exactly how to use it so you know basically here's here's a available light portrait as you can see pretty much everyone's got a house and a garage if you open up your garage you're going to get this nice fall off and as we move jude closer here see more light hits his face which is beautiful and so now i'm gonna have this light sort of like we did in the studio lighting here a little more contrast over here but i have the white wall behind him it's clean even lit i turn them sideways i rotate them now and so the sun's in this way but you get a little contrast here just by changing the direction you got to shape the face you know light shape otherwise it's flat which you know sometimes works but shaping light's always about this is what the strobe heads have are light shaping tools and every one of those you know umbrellas does something a little different so i always want to be you know shaping it a little different this is going to be this is the outside with a single stroke yes okay now our last lighting setup is really where these brown color cirrus lights shine because they're battery powered we were actually able to take these lights outside and use them in tandem with the sun the bronze color lighting kit i showed you guys this morning is like that completely mobile all right walk into the smoke and the results were instantly so dramatic by using artificial lighting to pump more light onto your subject you can actually darken the background and create some really dramatic moody looks so for this last setup michael is setting up his favorite dramatic portrait lighting and he's going to be taking a photo of me all right do you want to take a second to run us through this setup you built here this is basically you know the paro 133 single light source light that we were doing uh the same sort of light we were doing before only straight on we've got dual flags those two flags he had not only absorbed the light but also directed where the light actually hit my face and i started to realize it wasn't just about the type of light you have but the knowledge behind it so that you can control the shadows that hit the subject's face and when you're shooting black and white like the majority of michael's work shadows are everything it illuminates here more and allows the cheeks to kind of fall off into shadow will that give me more of like a chiseled approach that and uh and you're fighting down in the back you're mobile i'm fighting it's gonna give you your chisel here the entire experience just left me feeling so inspired because now using the sun or my brown color lights no matter what lighting source i choose i'm now starting to shape light on my subject it not only opened doors creatively but it allowed me to start thinking of cool ideas before i was actually shooting and honestly the four and a half hours we took shooting this went by so quickly because i was learning so much now i haven't been able to share all that with you in this video but now i have the knowledge to be able to implement in future videos and continue to educate you on lighting but that brought me to the final thought now a lot of the famous shots from michael's career are a very famous celebrities throughout michael's career he's been given 10 or 15 minutes with certain celebrities to try to get some promotional shots and in this 10 to 15 minutes he's able to capture some of the most iconic images from their entire career so how does he do it what is your tip for getting the most out of your photo shoot the best shot you're ever going to get the most striking portraits is when someone gets out of their comfort zone and does something that they maybe usually don't want to do and they end up loving it's their favorite photo you got to get them to do that which means they got to trust you so what i do to get people to do those things is this i say hey listen try it if you don't like it you'll never see it we'll delete it you got nothing to lose and then like oh yeah and then they do it and they're like oh my god that's right and you're done you know having the people close their eyes use their hands jump do this what um i just like to try stuff and i usually don't think about too much before the shoot it's spontaneous so when i'm at the shoot um and the other thing i do is i don't look at other photographs i don't go online i don't go to magazine racks don't find inspiration i get inspired by the moment and what's at it i don't want to copy someone else's thing so um i you know i just try to think what would look cool what would be fun um and challenging you know i love working with elements fire smoke rain so you know i've done a lot of portraits with fire you know joaquin phoenix lighting the guitar and fighter oh yeah like people think that's photoshop because everything's photoshop i'm like that was in camera in all honesty me and michael continued to talk for another 27 minutes until my camera ran out of battery but what i took away from this day was not just new knowledge on lighting but an entirely new way to approach photography even though michael's been shooting twice as long as i've even been alive he's never lost the fun of discovering new ways to take a photograph whether it's getting his subjects to try crazy things or just repositioning a light he always tries new things and at the end of the day that is exactly how you create a photograph that no one has seen before but before i knew it my time with michael was up and although we've already planned a couple new videos for the future it was time to get home wrap up this video and start putting my new knowledge to work well guys that is it we are back in my little office studio back from the shoot with michael what an incredible day i really hope you guys learned something i definitely learned a ton as creators just like you watching me right now we grow and learn a lot by watching other people around us create so by watching him i think i've maybe stepped up a level in photography at least in my mind on how to actually go about capturing the photo that i intend to capture also brawn color thank you so much for providing us with those lights believing in us sponsoring me and the channel as well as putting me in contact with michael what an incredible collaboration you guys helped me pull off and other than that that's it i really hope you guys enjoyed this video if you found it useful if you found it interesting please give it a thumbs up and feel free to subscribe i make brand new photography and filmmaking videos every single thursday and sunday and if that's not enough and you want to see more of my life or follow me feel free to follow me on instagram the link will be down below as well as probably been on the screen the whole time and that's it i love you guys very very much thank you for dropping by and until next time remember stay motivated stay inspired and never stop creating and i'll see you guys on thursday's video [Music] peace [Music] you

Channel: sawyerhartman

Views: 862,290

Rating: 4.8863053 out of 5

Keywords: Photography, Tutorial, Professional, Lighting, Broncolor, strobe lighting, how to, sawyer, hartman, sawyerhartman, sawyer hartman, petermckinnon, How Lighting Can Change Your Photography, lighting tutorial, cameras, filmmaking, michael muller

Id: Z4eVEmcBwxk

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 30 2018