In Camera Artistry: Using Any Light Source

welcome and look my job today in a few simple hours I want you to become obsessed with light not obsessed with location now I believe many of us whenever we're starting out or inexperienced and we haven't been taught properly what we do is when we go photograph we say there's a nice wall let me photograph there there's a nice fountain let me shoot there there's a nice building let me shoot there and we totally ignore the light so what what I'm going to do today is talk about the subtleties of light or the subtleties and give you an idea of how to use many different light sources okay we're gonna discuss many and not just the ice like I want to make today just a glorified promotion for the ice light although it will be I'm joking but we're going to end off talking about the ice light and showing you some different ways of using it quite simply guys I don't care what light you use if it illuminates you can use it and here's the thing we have this camera store full of gear that we can use okay and it can be quite exciting or scary at the same time because there's so many things to use now based upon my experience I'll tell you what I love to use and what I believe works for me and perhaps if it resonates with you then that might be good for you too ultimately guys I don't my philosophy is that there's no shortcuts to learning there are no shortcuts so I'm not going to sell you an action set I'm not going to show you sell your filters to to make an ordinary image look really really good because I believe well in fact let me ask you a question what separates us whether we're professionals whether we're a serious amateur what separates us from the person who happens to be holding a camera on the street what do you think it is a higher likelihood of a pretty ok yet definitely consistency yeah absolutely yes the knowledge absolutely yeah so its composition and design absolutely there's all these different things but I believe that unfortunately people don't respect photography as much as they should and the reason being is everyone in the first world has the tool of our trade on their person if you own a phone you have a camera and if you have a camera a phone you probably have the iPhone or the Samsung and you have these apps they can make any image look pretty fun true think of Instagram I mean I don't use the filters on Instagram because they make a really good image look very bad it's underexposed That 70's looking it's got these weird sort of little textures and things like that so I find that what will separate say you or us either as professionals or serious amateurs or that other serious hobbyist is quite simply the fact that we know what we're doing and technically that is light technically lighting is number one not location so like I said it within a few hours I want you to become obsessed with light and please if you have any questions please ask them based upon what I'm showing so if you ask a question that doesn't pertain to what I'm showing we're going to go on a tangent and we're going to get frustrated and it'll be a long day okay so at the end of the day we're going to have a general a question and answer if you have anything you want to ask please feel free and it'll be fantastic okay so we are going to discuss the following sources of light okay pretty much everything you can imagine we're going to show you a bit about sunlight a bit about window light open shade using reflectors and translucent diffusers artificial light okay man-made like candle light even off camera flash on-camera flash which people are normally very afraid of I'm going to show you a technique today that you are going to freak out on how amazing it is and you are going to love me forever unless you already do we're going to talk about video lights continuous fluorescent backlight and LED apart from showing you how to use the light sources around us guys I'm going to show you also how to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary because there's a myth the myth is that many people believe that you have to have a great location to get a great photograph okay which I'm going to disapprove very very quickly other myths that I've heard even said about my work is Jerry you only get great shots because you only photograph beautiful people now that's true in one sense I believe everyone's beautiful if I if I'm photographing a girl or a guy who I dismiss as let's say overweight ugly in a big nose how on earth am I going to make that person look and feel beautiful now that's a whole other seminar but quite simply that's what I'm saying is I believe your photography is a reflection of who you are okay so who are you is the question now I'll let you sleep on that thought but in the meantime how we turn the ordinary into the extraordinary is a very important thing okay now let's look at this let's talk about sunlight who is afraid of sunlight here I think I think you're relying okay let me ask you a different way when you're going out take photographs and it's sunny do you head for the open shade okay most of us do perhaps right and perhaps before I go too much further I would love to know who I'm talking to here how many here are professionals who do this for a living who make their main source of income photography okay all right fantastic who doesn't sort of on part-time has it has a day job and does this as well okay who's that who's a serious amateur hobbyist okay who just spends all the time here in be an agent buys things in because they can big as they retire they got a corporate job and they call this money don't know what to do with who has no money and is divorced and is on their wit's end and is is no manager that's why you're happy look at you all right divorce is a wonderful thing because we have two more chances at the wedding isn't that it's serious it's crazy all right all right sunlight let's talk about sunlight now well in fact I'm going to tell you a basic sort of rule before we go through all these steps okay because it'll pertain to everything that I was showing you most people let's say who perhaps inexperienced or haven't been taught properly whether it's a bride or a port portrait of a girl or a guy we walked into the window and the window light is there we turn their body towards the light source and we think that's the obvious way to illuminate someone because it's illuminating the front and then we turn their face in and we're happy the problem is if we turn a body to a light source then we're broad lighting that person and we're showing less detail less depth less dimension and form the golden rule especially with the female form is to turn the body away from the light source and turn the face back in so if that's the window for example I'll turn the body this way opposing is another seminar altogether but let's say we point the toe we bend the knee and we shift the weight back and we turn the face this way what happens is I want you to turn the body to a point where the shadow starts appear in the middle of the body okay and if we turn the face back into the light now we are shooting on the shadows side of the face if we shoot on the shadow side of the face it's often referred to as the narrow side or the short side and it Slim's us it's very slimming so for the female form usually over 90% of the other times that I photographing a female form I turn the body away from the light and turn the face back in okay for guys you can do both because guys we want to look heavier let's say on the arms and the chest because that's our form for girls it's curves for guys the chest and the shoulders define our shape and that's why perhaps we can turn the body towards the light and then if we turn the face back here and we still shoot on the shadow side it's going to be very slimming for us as well with the strength of that let's go through a few images and then describe them to you as well you see how we've turned the body away from the light and turn the face back in okay so what's what we're happening here is we're having this beautiful shadow on the face on the arms and the cleavage an interesting crop as well for a bit of negative space and that's how that's how we achieve that shot now like I said we're showing you all these shots were taken in the sunlight okay in the sunlight now you might ask well how do we get someone to look in the Sun if that's we want them to look but they just can't handle it because they're they're squinting and they're they're doing all this kind of thing well what I do is I get them to look at a certain spot and I say okay just close your eyes on a count of three look at that spot again 1 2 3 click and they can do that all they want all I need is a fraction of a second to capture that and that's how I got that particular shot you have to tell people to not to anticipate the light because some guys especially they do this you go one two three and they look a little bit nerdy you don't want that you don't mean so just totally relax a forehead relax relax the brow and that's how we got that shot now as we saw again we are shooting on the shadow side of the face and that's very slimming it gives us a lot of depth and dimension and so on okay every so often guys I'm going to show you some empty environments like this and I'm going to show you what I did with it so to disprove the fact that people think that I only photograph in palaces and castles and and all these amazing locations which I don't but I have the same challenges that anybody else has now let's have a look we have this sunlight falling through this skylight over here and what do I do is I expose for the highlights now let me explain what that means when I say expose for the highlight it means I want detail that brought us highlight in the face in the film days if you ever photographed in film it was actually exposing for the shadows and we develop for the highlights now it's different we expose for the highlights now with royal conversion with all these different things we can bring out this detail now I personally love a dramatic quality of lights so I don't mind having highlight and shadow or deep shadows I have no problem with that whatsoever so let's have a look at this shot so what I do is I bring a mirror from a different part of the room and I place it in the foreground I place my camera in the in the way there and with no Photoshop we get this image now you may ask how do we get that that was the bevel the double bevel reflection and that's how we got that image now you must know that what we see and what the camera sees are two different things you're never going to beat God in not I mean God gave us this the best HD are the best built-in raw conversion software in our eyes we can see more detail in highlights and shadows than the camera does so if you expose for highlight then that's that's the kind of result you're going to get now just to clarify - I have no problem with Photoshop I have no problem with Photoshop I do have a problem though when you're using Photoshop to correct and resurrect what you should done in camera in the first place I find too many of us we use the easy way out we shoot on program or aperture priority we just wave the camera around hope for the best and then we fix it up afterwards and I'm just saying is that you know wouldn't it be great to start off with an existing very beautiful image okay that's what it's all about for me and we can polish it afterwards okay using that same principle in theory we had this piece of sunlight falling through a window just on this door now you think well big deal there's no such thing there's no great photograph here or potential well what I do is I place my groom in the foreground there and then I get that shot simply by just placing a minute in that line and then of course we get this one here I often talk if I'm doing a longer class like a five-day workshop or something like that I talk about shooting for the wedding album or shooting for what you want to sell so when I say shoot for the wedding album I'm suggesting that you actually picture the photograph left and right finish the spread in the wedding album inside your head whether it's wedding whether it's a portrait whether it's boudoir whatever it is that you're that you're doing make sure that you shoot to sell rather than just loosely shooting and hoping for the best afterwards so I'm walking the streets with my bride here I see this beautiful texture on the ground highlight and shadow so what do I do I place the bride underneath and we get that shot how many people here shoot weddings how many people he'd just do portraits how many people here just shoot pets what else do you guys shoot commercial landscape architecture yeah Birds and what's her you staged your pictures what do you mean II mean what like what's the genre okay okay so you have a storyline and you find the props and you correct fantastic I love it I love it guys what I want you to know just see if you've never photographed a wedding if you can master a wedding I believe you can master anything because weddings you're shooting portraits fashion commercial boudoir with time constraints weather constraints the pre scaling offer tube the mother-in-law going off at you the this kids screaming the weather is bad no matter what happens you have to get it right on that particular day I believe if you want to get great at it is if you can find someone that you respect and admire and assist them and hold their bags I'm telling you it's the best learning curve you can possibly have and arguably it's amazing that I believe that wedding photography as well you can garner quite a bit of money too depending on where you are and depending on how you value yourself but like I said I believe it's a good thing now here we're going to be showing you a lots of different things so certainly weddings is my forte but I do people so portraits and fashion and stuff okay so what do we see here we see a dead vineyard where the bride and groom decided to get married at is that fantastic out of all the days to get married they get married at a vineyard when it's the wrong season but that's okay Jerry's here so what do we do I look up at the sky and it's very hazy so I want some drama in the sky so what I do is I squint and I look at the sky and what I do is I under expose the sky by at five or six stops now of course now this area is gonna be pitch black but what I do is I lie down on the ground allow the light to filter through and we get this shot a few few moments later and that's beginning with no Photoshop now you know how tall he was he was seven foot two and he was as she was five foot two it was and it's crazy because there was a shot of the groom with the groomsmen and I called it evolution because there was a there was a good there was a groomsman like here and it literally went up to like this seven I'm six foot two right I'm pretty tall for a guy but he was sinful to know well I'm jumping jumping just to fix him but anyway posing even posing if I have some time later on today I'll show you how to pose a tall guy and a shorter girl if you think if you're interested okay okay so I'm doing an engagement session a couple portrait and I'm at that location and I'm looking at that play of lights on the wall now I'm thinking you know what I know that in a couple of hours when the Sun where the sun's going down this is going to be a lot more dramatic so let me come back here in two hours so I did this shoot came back and we got this shot you see how how beautiful light can be you have to be a obsessed with it if you want to be a great photographer now I believe most of us would walk past this location and totally ignore it as a possible place for a photograph all I need is a clean pocket of light a clean pocket of light to have my face and shoulders and that's what I want so what I do I place my model in the way and we expose for her face and we get this image it's funny people say oh well Jerry you could you could take any shot of that girl and she look amazing you know what have you ever seen a beautiful girl in bad light in fact I made an episode out of it from Seinfeld your that do you remember that the girl in bad light freaked me out like it he didn't go with her because Jerry because he was all because she didn't look good in bad light a beautiful girl in bad light is not so beautiful anymore and later on today when I show you my own camera flash technique I'm going to show you some bad exposure bad lighting on a beautiful girl and then and I'll I'm sure I'll prove it to you okay all right well on a wedding day this is what I do i use the force when it comes to where i photograph now you might say use the force what does that mean well i don't have all the locations planned in my mind what I do is if I have the time between the church and the reception what I'll do is I'll say to the limo driver follow me if I stop you stop if you stop it means I want to I want to photograph here and take all the bridal party out so we started this location and the bride and groom were thinking what what on earth are we doing here but alright now we had sunlight too right it was very harsh sunlight I find this piece of red and what I'm doing is the sunlight is like 12 it's literally directly up high what you need to do is to pose them in a way that takes advantage of that particular way so we do this you see that beautiful cheekbone and jaw line that shadow on our arm the beautiful detail there what we need to work out is I find that most of our lighting situations in any situation most light is up above isn't it you think of artificial light like this for example it's up above now your walk in the streets of New York where's the light in bits like a little strip softbox isn't it most people though you know what they did they don't tilt the chin up the faces are there and we photograph there so I'm saying is you need to just bring the chin up a little bit now I find the chin up a little bit is like who does that in their normal life but you know what they people do in the normal life they do this we tilt that's a bit of finesse and a tilting like what would you do when you tilt the face you could be kissing someone you could be hugging someone putting your chin on someone's shoulder so I'm saying to you is if you're posing people give them an excuse to be in a situation that forces their face towards the light and where you wanted to be and I'm giving you all these sort of our ideas now so hope that helps you so this day was very very sunny so what do I do okay so I run for the shade I take this image but wait a second it's sunny I grab the bride take her out into the sunlight and we do this shot that fun so it's like a tattoo doesn't it like a tattoo or lace sort of top or anything something like that what I'm saying is sometimes when you're afraid of something you ignore the possibility of what it can actually be but this is what I'm talking about like all these little different things can make a big difference so with this theory question so technical question am i exposing for the whole lot of the time of my shooting manual I do shoot manual that's my standard I will shoot manual I shoot raw and you know what I'll do in fact can you remind me later on I want to tell you how I expose and what my camera settings are and how I get to my exposure if I talk about it now might get a bit of a tangent but I want to do it at the end is that okay it please you mind me because I think everyone's gonna want to listen to that are you guys cool with that all right fantastic because it takes about ten minutes to explain properly all right fantastic all right so what do we do I'm actually doing a workshop here right so my model comes out with this beautiful little headpiece and this little piece of lace on her hair I'm thinking you know what it's very sunny let me get her to sit down and place the piece of lace on her hair in between the Sun and her face and then we get that beautiful shadow on her face and I get this image so I took a little headband with a piece of lace so my model walked like she met me and she had this little headband with a piece of lace on a little lace bow so what I did is if you're suing your the model I actually placed I took the actual headband off and the sunlight cause a shadow illuminating through it yes if you go back here you see you see somebody else oh I just saw somebody else is holding it yeah so I was I was photographing I was doing a bit of a workshop in in Paris I want to show you a couple of shots here taken you have a look now you might even ask how on earth did I get that shot with a bird well a little bit of luck but it's also based on my technique and let me explain most people who know who who watch me shoot know that when I'm about to take a photograph this site opens so I'm left died dominant so what I what I'm actually focusing on the camera I'm doing this now why I open up this this eye is because I see if I see movement I'm like I might move the camera so that's more exciting than what I'm photographing like at a ceremony for example is a typical situation for example what I'm talking about so I'm shooting something and I'm like okay I'm ready to rock oh wait a second there it is so when I open up my eye I saw this bird flying in the frame I'm like alright let me see if I can fluke it so it was half like and half that the possibility of my eye opening up and that's how that shot was taken or on the new Retina display you press command B and it there's a bird that comes out I'm joking well it was very sunny so my exposure was I think it was around about sort of 500 or something like that these couple of shots were taken with a phase one camera so back then so I shoot with Nick on now but I've got a phase one two bit and that's there all right so hopefully that gives you a bit of confidence to actually photograph with with sunlight like I said what I want you to do is just remember turn the body away from the light turn the face back in use the light and sculpt the body with in the face with it remember to close the eyes and open them up last minute and all these little different things question so with sunlight do I have any feel light with any of these shots that we've actually shown here today to be honest no there's nothing nothing there I love it a dramatic quality of light as in the contrast of light so light the shade so for me I'm totally fine with that if I'm shooting for competition for example if I'm entering for competition yeah you're going to want detail and shadows and detail and highlights now we saw detail everywhere no problem but if you're doing something that's very dark and deep like a shaft of light coming through a room and you're exposing for that everything's pitch-black then it's up to your personal taste whether you want that or whether you want a little bit of detail but that's where royal conversion comes in and you can bring those shadows up as well but those shots absolutely not there was just the one quality of life - Ivy's a polarizer no I haven't used a polarizer since the landscape days I haven't done it for a while now so yeah I try to limit my gear as much as possible I mean I love gear but it comes to a point where you you buy stuff and it ends up being going in the car and you don't bring it out again that's who we are isn't it ask yourself like how many times have you used I don't know the tilt shift lens but you love it you buy it you use it once and it's fun and then you don't use it again it's like ladies shoes you know you buy it once you wear it once and all right I'd rather wear beautiful shoes and hurt then look bad and be comfortable that's one that's all I'm saying open shade let's talk about open shade now open shade is the shade of a building shade of a tree it just could be a very general pocket of shade where we can photograph in now here's the is the problem many people think that open shade or shooting in the clouds for example where the sun's behind the clouds where the lighting is the same everywhere as in it's like one big softbox you can shoot anywhere you want it is the same no there is a quality of life that we have to recognize and let me show you perhaps how we can recognize that well here we have two shots this is the spread of a wedding album and here you can see how very subtly there's a shadow on the bottom part of their faces then I made them laugh and all of a sudden we have this beautiful glow of light in her face what do we say we said if there's two buildings around all those trees or whatever usually the lighting is coming from up top which means that we have to bring the face up what we're talking about here guys is that the difference between highlight and shadow is not so great okay the exposure difference between the highlight and shadow is not so great but it is still there it is still there so what I'm saying is that what I like to do is I do not take a shot unless I get that beautiful depth and dimension unless of course I'm not in control the situation I'm not going to pose a bride during the ceremony of course you know me although I've been known to do this all right okay so it's raining so what do we do most of us I think we would just run for the cover but what I do I see is an opportunity I have the bride I place her in the backseat of the car and now if you've ever try to photograph through a glass it's a problem because you're getting the reflection of the sky behind you getting the reflection of powerlines ugly things in the background so what I do is I have my assistant hold a big overcoat in the way so I can shoot cleanly through it what's a really good other other way of doing it is getting like a black umbrella opening the black umbrella and doing this or the black side of reflector and place it in the reflective way the same way is how I would photograph our people to start with glasses so if I was photographing let's say that the father of the bride with glasses and we had a reflection here there's two ways I can get rid of that reflection either bring the arms up so the glass tilts down or put a piece of black reflector a big overcoat in the in the way of the glass does that make any sense so so for example if you're photographing someone with glasses and I'll get the glasses here then you're going to know that there's some little piece a little patch where it's reflecting off so get your black reflector get the groomsmen's jacket and then just place it in the way and then you get a clean a clean view reflection the flash will you never that's why you'd never cheat flash straight on and I'm going to show that in the moment yeah okay let's look at this again guys so what we have is the bride in the backseat of the vehicle it's open shade okay but we still get that beautiful contrast of shadow now I want you to look at my arm here my arm here represents the the back you guys call it windshield right yeah we call it I forget we call it windscreen sorry thank you I forget I got it I got to speak Australian on a speaker I just came from Europe and Romania and all these different things so anyway okay so this is the windshield and this is the bride's face okay what happens is I don't focus on the bride's eyes I focus on the water droplets above her eyes this part of the glass goes out of focus this way this part of the glass goes out of focus that way giving me like an in-camera tilt shift lens effect so it makes sense so you know what a tilt shift lens is how a tilt shift lens basically just angles the focal plane of the lens so you cannot you can adjust it so you can change perspective and/or have just one part of the image completely sharp and the wrestle fades away a certain way so I focus on the water droplets not under eyes focusing on her eyes would have been the obvious thing to do I think the mystery behind this image is beautiful and when she looks amazing out of focus is that funny you look amazing out of focus but yeah you know it's fun am I ever afraid of my coming out in the rain um not really I have an assistant with an umbrella and we're always there and if it you know I have my camera insured so if anything happens to it there's no problem but you know you just make sure you someone's with you and all that kind of thing so yeah you'll be fine I was written several of your frames our yeah I look I have a very low tolerance for lack of sharpness in the sense that if I want to focus on the person if that closest i eyeball to the camera is not in focus I delete it a very low tolerance if it's deliberate like this is totally fine but for me if it's just slightly out I can't like I'm made my heart hurts a little bit what most people do what they do if it's out of focus they make it black and white make it add some noise at some vignette and make it black and white listen and it's art but I can't I can't do that alright I was doing a workshop recently in in London and it was overcast now I just wanted to show you something here do you see how I brought her chin up and tilted her face causing a shadow on this side of the face okay so though what we do and you see that beautiful depth of shadow just there is just so beautiful that shadow there as well for me I live for that shadow in fact the lighting is not the beautiful bit it's the shadow it's a subtraction of light which is the most beautiful part of the image I believe okay now I'm going to tell you I'm going to show you a piece of video footage here and that is of that theory of turning the body away from the light and turning the face back in of a typical traditional Bridal portrait full-length have a look so that's it and a few sips is one that's here beautiful in your left hand only just like that and this hand just hold there and just bend that a little bit beautiful now I want you to point that side towards me and bend it in that's a bit more that's it and shift your weight back so all your weight on your back leg that's beautiful and now turn your face that way get more tension up gorgeous see what happens when we turn the body away from the light and turn the face back in we get that beautiful shadow on the side of her face like I said often referred to as the short side of the narrow side we also have a shadow on the arms the cleavage and the beautiful detail and we expose for the highlight as in we want detail and the brightest highlight in the face and that's how we get those shots okay you're pretty cool with all that question um no I didn't know that was just Ella's handheld yeah what do you look at as your metering thing the right side of her face that's your review so what do I look at when I when it comes to me meter reading what I do is I use matrix metering or evaluative metering for Canon users so what I do is I evaluate the whole area and then I predict what the cameras going to do and I just accordingly later on later on I'm going to go through walk through that very very carefully to really give you an idea of how I expose I'll give you a lot of confidence I assure you so window light let's talk about window light now window light is my favorite quality of life why because it can be manipulated in many different ways it can be broader it can be softer it can be sharper it can be it can be beautiful so let me show you a few different shots with window alot in fact if I could carry a window light with me everywhere to be fantastic but I don't think I'll get the same kind of light so this was just simply shooting against a window and this was a sheer blind at a hotel with two open windows on the side and isn't it fun they just get a different perspective of a typical cliche shot that is not so typical and again we turn the body away from the light so we get that beautiful texture and detail as well now you might say what shot could I take here it's a pretty boring location in fact I had a two friends of mine from Canada and I was visiting Toronto and other give it was and they met me at the hotel and I said I want to photograph right here and this is OK we trust you nervously and I positioned them in front of the window and I expose for them and then what happens is all the light bled out and I've got do tell in that window whatsoever and we got this shot so light was reflecting in the rumors of course but that's how we got that shot now again I'm going to talk about exposure later on and give you an idea of how we can achieve that if you try this kind of shot to make a window let's say like a high key white backdrop or emulate that it's not going to work if direct Sun lights coming through because what happens is the sunlight will bleed into the skin and just make everyone look like aliens which will look really really weird okay trust me I've tried and it's it didn't work alright so in case you're interested guys what I'm the presentation today is going to be put on YouTube on the BNA channel so if you're interested in you know watching this again and learning from this again it'll be on there on the channel as well certain a problem at all okay so why why is a shot of a back of a Brideshead quite exciting to watch it's a Brack of it's a back of a bride's head for goodness sake why I believe this is beautiful well yes the detail is fun but I believe it's a shadow detail the shadow shadow and the eyelash and of course the composition creates a bit of interest doesn't it yeah but it's that cleaner sort of that clean contrast of everything now I took a shot here of the groomsmen traditional full-length from the front view of course now I took this shot just to show you a different perspective what I did with this next image is I lowered my camera angle I turned my orientation to horizontal I turned my white balance to tungsten which turns daylight into blue and moments later I get this image is it amazing it just what different perspective can do and different white balance can do have you guys ever watched the TV show MacGyver now I don't know bet you guys are I so I was obsessed with him I was obsessed with the TV show so I grew up with him I don't know at you but you know and no joke I got into photography as I started watching MacGyver and I said to myself if MacGyver was a photographer what would he do you know what it makes you think differently I believe creativity is a mindset creativity is a mindset in other words if you go out to do a shoot whatever whatever it is that you do and you think average you think cliche you think pose number 23 model number 47 location of a 21 what will you get you get the same stuff that you did last week now do you know what the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again expecting a different result so when it comes to creativity certainly we have a formula to things we certainly have different things that we do I'm suggesting though go out there and practice and have your mind set and say today I'm going to do something that I've never done before or if MacGyver was here and he was a photographer what would he do okay it makes you think differently okay so what do we have here a typical setting as a sofa there's a window pretty boring and I've got to photograph the bride with her bridesmaids so I bring the surfer out towards the window a lot a bit more and I pose the bride one by one and then we get that shot just simple posing and and obviously manipulate the light the way we want it remember this is a window this is a window light at the side of my career I used to walk into a room and I just use the light that was there as if it was if there was a window open or blinds open there was soft light whatever I would do it now I subtract the light I turn off the lights I close the blinds and then one by one I turn the lights on to see what I can get okay it was really dark this was in Sweden a couple months ago and I'm actually photographing here there was hardly any light at all and what I do is I grab my model really close to the window I used my 105 macro lens and we get this image have a look isn't it fun for a different perspective just fun to sort of do something something a little bit different okay beautiful it I looks as gorgeous funny story I was about five or six years ago I was obsessed with this boutique in LA you know the ivy have you heard of the ivy with a white picket fence with all the Hollywood stars go to dinner and lunch and things like that I don't know if you see that kind of stuff but anyway I was like next door to this place was this beautiful boutique and I thought I'd love to photograph this stuff and this was a Monday morning or Monday afternoon and I was traveling to Vegas for the Big W PPI convention don't know if you know about it was a big convention happens every year in Vegas so what I do is I walk in I present myself and I'd say I'm a photographer from Australia my name is Jared unis I would love to photograph your stuff what do you say and she says well you know we we get this regress all the time I said look here's my website here's my cell give me a call if you're interested by the way I have to shoot tomorrow and I'm like it's not going to happen right sure enough I get a call from the owner literally a couple hours later said yes we're good to go 100% I love your work it's amazing let's do a shoot tomorrow I said fantastic this is Monday night and I had no model I forgot that I needed a model it's LA how hard can it be photograph finding a beautiful man you're not LA so I just walk down the street I walked into a mac makeup store and I said hey I my name is Jerry giannis I'm a stalker from Australia I'm doing a shoot down rodent less habitudes the place is called is anyone here would like to model for me and then she goes I've got a friend as a model she used to work here and actually quit and I said here's my cell call her to call me and hopefully we can have some fun sure enough I get a call an hour later and she goes we were in a rock so this whole shoot was born from it from on a whim and this is the this is one of the shots that we took now the light that happened that we had here was all it was was a simple skylight that was all we had and I found all these beautiful little props and everything like that this is like worth 20 grand 40 grand and I'm like can you just give that to me you know and then the sales assistant was walking around and said you would be perfect in John Paul Gaultier get dressed and let's pretend like your princess and she's a seamstress and all the sudden this whole thing was created and that's and that's that recently I had the pleasure of going back there like five years later and to do another fashion shoot now I could easily do the exact same thing again I thought let me challenge myself to do something different I walk in there and I said to the owner we've got good news and bad news he says well what's the bad news I said the bad news is you're going to have to undress all the mannequins and bring them here right now the good news is it'll be amazing you guys okay so that was uh that was part of it there's a lot more to the shoot but it'll give you an idea one of my favorites of that particular time any questions at all about window light or using light coming through a Steve Gossett so shooting mannequins you know I have never seen it to be honest one thing that bores me a little bit they can talk back yeah so the question was how close do I put the model close to the window or not if I have a choice well it really depends on the quality of light I can't really answer that question I guess because it'll change quite dramatically but I'd say on average usually if this is the window and the lights filtering beautifully they're going to be about where I'm standing that's pretty much MIT but always look at the quality of light don't don't give yourself an absolute answer that catches everything it's never it's never going to work because you have to problem solve this that's what I believe like a wedding is or photography is it's just one big problem that you think it's a probably problem solve everything everything is a problem question when you have harsh light put your philosophy tomorrow's using the screen or diffuser for the actual for the in between the light source and the actual subject well it depends on the subjects I'll just repeat that question here what was the do I believe in using a scream or a diffuser when it comes to harsh sunlight or whatever it may be again depending on what I'm doing I guess like earlier today I showed you that the sunlight without any kind of diffuser very shortly I'm going to show you diffusers and when when it may be appropriate to use but probably a general answer to that question would be maybe when the person has bad skin is when I'll use a diffuser it softens everything an older face like let's say wrinkles and parents of the bride or groom or anything like that I have a bride that I want to show you in a moment she's 65 years of age and she looks amazing with the sunlight and a diffuser because it softens everything so yeah alright let's look at reflectors guys reflectors who has a reflector who never really brings it out and leaves it in the car or just now I'm telling you for the first fuse in my career I had one because every photographer has one and then you go out in location and you just don't bring it out and you think well you know it's a reflector we have one but what do we do with it well after this presentation I'm sure you're going to bring it with you everywhere okay so I go to this location this is a spot that we have beautiful a beautiful location as in a nice colorful background but bad light well what do I do is I have my couple I pose them in the way I actually you know how we said we said turn the body away from the light source either do that or turn the light away from the body and that's how we get that shot you see how I've created that depth and dimension because the reflector is about here and we get that shadow beautiful shadow on his face on the dress and we get that very dramatic sort of fashionable sort of shadow behind the wall behind them there if I did not want that shadow I'd bring them a little bit further away I'd crop them out and that's basically it but I actually personally like it this reflector you know you're actually going to see it right now have a look it's a it's a big it's a big one I I don't know I don't know what how big it is it's probably about up to about two here for me yeah that's the one the way you you you don't want to look really foolish you know how you have to hold it and you're going to go you know all righty so what I do here is the sunlight on the reflector back on the couple inside the vehicle and we get this image again do you see the difference here the shadow and the highlight in the face you might say well a bride or or a potential portrait client or boudoir client does not know the difference between good and bad light I agree with you but they do know what they like are you telling me that a photographer is inexperienced with bad light here and a photographer who's experienced with great light over here they will not get more work come on you might say well just I just shoot loosely and fix it in Photoshop you do that while I play tennis with my wife I you know I mean like it depends on what you want to do Xbox whatever and of course we have two shots taken that environment there as well now how about just using an ordinary sign as a background now what I do is I find this real estate sign and I get a piece of light with a reflector back on the actual girl and then we get this image I mean you would you wouldn't know where that was shot would you like I'm saying is if you are forced to use the situation around you you would but often we take the easy way out the easy way out okay question I use a silver side silver side I used to use a gold side but the cold temperatures all over the place on african-american skin the gold side is great it's all that beautiful syrupy quality of skin tone is beautiful on white skin it yeah it looks horrible so yeah depending on how it works generally I always have it on the black and silver side and I unzip it for those of you don't know I use a five in one reflector so you've got silver on one side black on the other you unzip it turn it inside out you've got gold and you've got white and that's how we do it okay so what do we have here we have a beautiful girl in bad life she's not so pretty anymore issue then we turn the reflected towards oh she can't handle it because the sunlight is there we get her to close her eyes in the count of three one two three we open and that was just taken with a single reflector that crazy you see how we've turned her body away from the light turned her face back in that shadow that should I want to shoulder and the dress beautiful are you obsessed with light yet is the question if not like I said I got a bit more bit more to go I'm going to get you there okay now you might think well what on earth are you showing me now because this is pretty boring spot well what I do is I'm walking on the streets here and I find I don't know what this is it's a bush tree whatever we get a reflector we place it back into the girl I use my 85 1/4 lens 1.4 and then we get that shot the 85 bill lens of course the eyes are in focus then we get that beautiful softness of the of the foliage there in the foreground that's how we get that image you'll be holding your reflectors now won't you sometimes when I have no reflector I'll use people if you can hire a really large assistant with a white shirt yeah yeah just it's a joke but if it it works I remember I had I had a wall of bridesmaids with the cinnamon color dress and they were standing there and I got them to do this and all the say this beautiful glow happened with all these people as beautiful I don't care what it is it just as long as it works so here we have the reflector back on the groom we get the light in the back of his head and then all of a sudden we get like this studio looking portrait outdoors with no Photoshop and the bokeh effect I love saying bokeh effect I could say that all the day long bugger effect that was the that was the 85 one for yep okay so now how we what's the light source here the light source is the sunlight reflecting off his cap off that little bit of a rim of white on this on his cap all of a sudden we've got this beautiful glow on his face is that crazy and the Sun lights hid in the back of his head is giving us the the headlight and then the kicker and all that beautiful rim is separating him from the background I lower my camera angle and I crop up nice and tight so eliminate all the dog walkers and all that kind of stuff and all of a sudden when we get this shot here's another shot from Sweden and now I want you this for me bring it right out hands right out right right wide right right beautiful bringing elbows closer and I want to see your fingers and then just bend your wrist beautiful just make sure that when you lose it you just sort of put it away and then get it back in again right there thank you sweetie now very gently bring your right hand up yep bring it up to your face gorgeous tilt bring your elbow out a bit more that's it relax your fingers and up a little bit height there to go just their eyes at me very playful giggling loving me quality of light that's crazy you know often like I said we we ignore the sunlight we ignore the reflector and we're missing opportunities like this how about we talk about diffusers okay it diffuses this can be your best friend if someone has bad skin or wrinkly skin or anything like that this could be that the best way you can use this this instrument here so this image I was actually photographing a fashion shoot and I ended up going in the back yard of the designers place much to her horror and I said don't worry let me just do one shot if you're happy with it we'll keep on going I find this this piece of lace I don't know what it was there for it was like a like a screen of some description anyway I just found resting up against the fence I place it over her face she couldn't handle the sunlight because it was just too harsh then I placed the diffuser over her and then we take this image and the cool thing is the diffuser is reflecting almost perfectly no pupil so it's giving a this iridescent in her eye because if there's another word that I wanted to use in a sentence today I love her here it doesn't I love that my wife my wife is obsessed with grammar and words so she she subscribes to grammar girl so every day she gets this different and it's really boring it's crazy but she loves it you have to love her for everything she is not who you wanted to be that's all I'm saying all right let's have a look okay so we had sunlight illuminating the couple so I get the diffuser over here i soften and mesh the light in and that's in fact what a diffuser does it meshes light in it meshes the the light between the highlight and contrasts and all of a sudden we get this beautiful softness on her face that beautiful quality of light in her face there okay this next image 65 year old bride gorgeous woman she comes to me and I'm not going to really compromise my style for the sake of her being but a little bit older than my couples that are normally photograph so what I do is a place they're out in the Sun and of course that's a bit of a no-no when it comes to maybe some you know weathered skin and so on but you put the diffuser and all the sudden she look absolutely beautiful and she has good genes as well but you know there it is and sometimes we find a diffuser in our natural environment as in you just walk around for example this is a perfect diffuser if there was sunlight coming through the window here this would be perfect and have a look at this video so you may notice a couple things here obviously one is you might say how do I get the reflection always remember the closer you go to a reflective surface the more vivid the reflection in other words if this is reflective if my lens was here it'll be a lot more vivid than it is actually here most of us see a reflection we go okay great let's shoot this way but go nice and close to it and you get that alrighty artificial light artificial light man-made light okay now this next shots very difficult to explain but I'll do my very very best okay now I walked into this beautiful it was like a homestead mansion type of place where the reception was and I saw this dresser these drawers and a reflective glass top and then a mirror next to it so what I do is so let's say you're the camera and on the couple then we have this so we have the the drawers here and a mirror here so if I place my lens just on the tip of the glass what's better than one bride and groom four so that's actually them that light illuminate of them this is a dresser that stops here I put my 14 mil lens here that the mirror was directly behind that reflective surface so I get three reflections of the actual couple look at my beautiful location that I have to work with for the groom's can't permit so walk in okay I see that what do I do I close the blinds turn off the lights I take this table away get the groom to sit down turn the lamp on walk up the stairs and shoot down I get this you think someone's standing next to me with an iphone would have gotten that speaking of iPhones it's funny no for many years now I've been entering to competition and this year at WPI and for those of you don't know it's sort of like the largest organization photographers all over the world that happens every year in Vegas and you know 15,000 photographers get together it's quite amazing and they have an annual competition so this year I decided to enter a wedding photograph purely on the iPhone without telling anybody now certainly the bride and groom the groom was actually a friend of mine so I get I asked his permission of course can you imagine I I said do you mind if I every time I see a nice shot that might go in a wedding album I'm gonna duplicate the shot with an iPhone so the whole day with a big camera and all of a sudden I get that can you imagine how tap the ceremony was crazy because I had this big you know the big Nick on d3s the big long lens and shooting away and all of a sudden just because because you can't you can't assume it right and the quality is bad so you have to walk really close so and I even had someone come up to the cut a couple of saying well you really splurged in your photographer today mention but what I did I did this with an effort to I guess to explain and to show my future students that yes camera gear is important but it's not going to be the difference between a good and a great shot so I entered this album into the competition and no one knew the judges did not have an idea that it was actually taken with the iPhone and it ended up scoring in 86 and it got an unofficial fourth place and and it was fantastic so now I have this as a permanent sort of display that I can show my my future students and and everything as well I'm very proud to say as well though that I ended up winning the competition this year for the eighth time in ten years so yeah thank you thank you but yeah that iPhone one was fun if you if you want to see it it's awesome images from it it's jerry gillis blog com so go to Jerry giannis Blanc comm and you'll find it so I'm walking past the actual city streets and I'm seeing this window display now what do you do with it well I have my bride and groom nice and close and isolate the particular red color and I'll do this image how beautiful would that be to finish up like a wedding album and extend the black like all the way across two pages would that be fun question how do I expose for that again I'll talk to that in a minute in a minute yeah I promise you I will not leave until I talk about exposure I was going and walking in around Melbourne and I saw this beautiful sculptures very abstract now when you think abstract you don't have the couple looking in the camera smiling it's not going to work at need that they need to be abstract as well one of the very few times in my career where I've actually photographed with a tripod apart from my earlier b67 days camera a tripod I got the couple drifting in the frame and I get this image how about using an ordinary down light and we get this image the biggest problem that I see with what most people do wrong in this kind of a shot is they'll have the bride underneath the light and just bring a face up and she's standing perfectly straight there's no form there's no curves there's no nothing and she looks like a soldier about to get shot okay so what I'm suggesting is one thing a tilt of the face just looks nice is a bit of finesse there and also the problem is if she has a healthy bustline the light will hit the bus and the bus will cause a shadow on the rest of the body so what I did with this girl is I brought her body out of it so and then pointed a toe bent Ernie please don't photograph that and put on Twitter all right all right let me show you this next shot I look okay so how did I get that shot let me explain it what I do is I expose i well i expose for the background first and arguably just slightly under expose it remember if you want your attention to go on the subject you must have the background a little bit darker than the foreground so what I do is I get that beautiful quality of light so before I even take a shot of the couple at all I focus on the chair closest to me so then I bring the camera up to the lights and then I shoot them out of focus okay so I know the quality of life that I want so now I have the background that I want then what I do is I have my off-camera TTL flash using the pocket wizards and then I do that shot and that was TTL so - now let me explain a couple of things where people go wrong doing this kind of shot that's backlit well let's say you have the bride and groom facing each other and then you're the other you're the actual photographer and then the backlight the flash is here now the problem occurs when you're too close to the subject and or too low if you're too close then one you may see the flush - the light might be too bright or just in a small little pocket if it's too low there's only shadows that cause on the face which we don't want so my suggestion about 6 feet away okay about 6 feet away from them from the from the couple the person you're shooting and then the light has to be as high up as humanly possible what you don't know is the flash is literally behind the groom okay where I can't see them now if you want more light on the bride this is what you do let's say this is the groom okay and this is the bride and what do I say you want more light in the bride let's see one more this is the bride as the groom if you want more light in the bride what I suggest you do is bring the groom slightly closer to the camera what's going to happen is the flash will bounce off the actual off the groom and come back on the face now here's the deal make sure that you have a good depth of field to have them both in focus because if you focus at 1.2 or 2.8 if they look disjointed okay so in other words they want to be both in focus where the illusion is that they're both in focus and they're looking directly at each other's lips or something like that but there's more light on one person over here they're perfectly centered so we get that beautiful rim that beautiful glow the negative space and there it is um I think it was one I think it was one or two yeah yeah yeah yeah how many shots did I take to get that shot was one or two just to repeat that yep okay so that part of me let me clarify that so did I mean six feet away the flash be six feet away from the couple or actually from from where you photographed them it's actually the flash be six feet behind the couple and then you can be wherever you want for your perspective yeah all righty question sir yeah that was TTL I believe yeah TTL I think I can't remember sometimes I flicked to the manual to pocket wizards if they're not as reliable sometimes so yeah all right let's play with candlelight now candle eyes whose have a shot with candlelight very deliberately okay you know what it's it's fun it's an it's a quality of light here's where we go wrong with candlelight is when it's too low well it's too low it's really ugly it's like Blair Witch have you seen the Blair Witch like you don't want that so unless you want to make someone look sinister and unless and this is guys guys is different it can be more dramatic for girls it's very unflattering especially let me show you one of my favorite shots taken with candlelight and their candles are on the table and they're looking down at the table know that well they just they are they are you can see what they're doing and that the candles are all here obviously I crop the candles out you have to remove context to improve mystery if you knew the quality of light then it a--just remove the mystery so now you might say how on earth did I get all those amazing expressions I asked for them so I set them up and I said I want you to do this you do that you do this you do that on the count of three go now the speed of my direction caused confusion which made it look real does that make any sense because if they were like like you know mean but so I make it fast and all of a sudden it works all right let me show you this next image this next image was taken in Rome this is the biggest wedding that I've ever done in my life this is a five-day wedding every lunch every dinner was a different host different thing happening a lot of pressure and it was one of those gigs that you sort of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and let me show you a shot and I'll talk about it huge halogen lamp that these exists on the actual open field that's a limit on the actual building and that statue then I thought to myself well it wouldn't be fun to get this beautiful romantic look and feel with a candlelight so I bring these candles here now the reason why this works because they're leaning towards the candles which illuminates them properly rather than having shadows then you know we pose them a little bit a bit of an angle to create a bit of interest someone's standing next to me was smoking a cigarette and I thought perfect I want you to go right behind the couple and smoke alright and and there's a shot in fact B&H now selling cigarettes it's just like a question color balance so we have the mixed lighting which I love in this case because it gives you a contrast and it creates that beauty so what I did was like I put my white balance on tungsten which corrected most of the yellow but made the daylight halogen lamp even bluer which gives him that dramatic kind of contrast because the lighting on that arguably was another light or something like that that was probably more corrected because you've got the halogen lamp hitting it but then there's other light hitting it as well and that's how it works now this next shot that I'm about to show you this made me two thousand dollars big enlargement our spread in the wedding album so if you don't do it because you love it do it for the money it was worth it wasn't it now you might say what are all these lights going on that was the designer the like the coordinator that made all this fancy stuff on the walls in the last projection but I wanted to show a disheveled background as in we had an amazing party in celebration but then here we have this this beautiful moment between the couple it's just about them this is the final image in their wedding album handles on the table there again yeah yep that's Kendall's we're hooking him up with a big album and all that kind of thing so off-camera flash who's happy to use it off-camera flash everyone loves that yeah well let me give you a few ideas the wedding was in a marquee in the backyard of the bride's parents home so the saxophone player comes out everyone's freaking out about the saxophone player and I'm like okay wouldn't it be fun to take a shot with the saxophone player I walk outside this is like midnight just before the wedding it ended and all these bugs and dust particles were hitting my face in that thin crisp clean country air and I'm like I have an idea I got the flush behind the bride and the groom I had the saxophone player playing and we got this shot so be nature's will are now starting to sell bugs and dust particles from Australia and you too can and then another wedding it was pouring down with rain it was pouring down so I said to the couple I said I've got good news and bad news and I said what's the bad news do you want to get soaked right now what's a good news you're gonna get an amazing photograph out of it I said okay so we did now I swear to god that was straighter camera yep your assistant hasn't Rell over the head with the flash in the back no the assistant can't have an umbrella because we would see a silhouette or the darkness of the umbrella there as well so they're both they both have an umbrella first I get my exposure right then we check out the umbrellas and then all of a sudden we get we get that shot so I have my flash on a wide setting not on a zoom to get the full length that was a long focal length like a 200 mil lens mean way back and that's how we got that shot the beautiful glow between them I love how you can see the the the the water droplets above her face because the lights behind him the light travels through their faces and that's how we see a few droplets over there as well yeah I'm perfect I'm dry no problem it's all good with me yes that it's bouncing off each other that's how that's working so about what shutter speed that was about 125 yeah 125 about 2.8 1600 ISO I expose for the ambience here of boats in the background and then then we got that you know what the killer this is practice so many years I've been doing this and I've even had someone say to me in a recent seminar Jerry how do we get as good as you with like without really practicing well I don't know what to say to that I had like I don't want to be rude I'm like it's like saying how do I get muscles without training I'm just saying is that no matter what you do no matter what style a photographer that you're doing you need to practice but not on a paying gig whether you you know I mean like we as wedding photographers let's say half of us here wedding photographers can you imagine we only practice what we do for a living on a paying wedding day it's ridiculous so practice when the pressure is off you now you've you've all seen the movie wipe another crowd ahead right wax on wax off practice repetition experiences your best teacher not an action set no piece of gear here we'll make it right for you okay all right I was doing a workshop in London and this was a Tower Bridge and it was raining as it does in London so what do I do I look at the sky it's dramatic I want it more dramatic so what do I do is I under expose the sky in other words I put the camera to the sky I work at my exposure to under exposure to get a beautiful dramatic escape then I lie down on the ground at the foot of the puddle I have an off-camera flash here and I get this image No so the flash is here the sky is i under exposure to get the drama in the sky and and doing that i get a little hint of highlight in the Tower Bridge of course shadow here I light the foot of the puddle and I crop out where it stops and all of a sudden we get a pretty cool image out of something pretty ordinary question the flash is normally a bit above the person on a bit of an angle so as it's a run about over here about this high yeah very laughs spear flash yep I don't practice a flash I'm sorry you have no idea of hotties for me right now the lens is a now back then I was shooting with Canon that was a 17 to 40 mil 17 number 40 mil now my favorite lender the niccola system is afford not my favorite lens my favorite wide-angle lens is a 14 to 24 beautiful adds beautiful it's how come I switched from Canon and Nikon well I was doing a fashion shoot and I used two 5d Mark twos and in the process of shooting I dropped one of the cameras I didn't drop it I put on the ledge and the car was coming I was about to get run over I run I jumped the fence in my my foot hit the camera it dropped and it cracked no big deal I was insured all that kind of things so I needed a second camera so what I did was I'm like now thankfully a better year before that I had won the competition in Europe a European start of the year thing and they gave me a Nick on d3s is it as a as a prize and I was sitting in a box doing nothing for a year so I'm like let me bring it out and play with it I'm like wow these high ISOs are amazing that the speed of focus was amazing and the focus points were accurate those three things made me convert this is in Greece and I'm photographing the couple I've got the flash over here nothing nothing that exciting nothing that that terribly amazing in this shot so I got the exposure that I saw with my own two eyes I added the actual flash in and that's what I got now this cute little street vendor this little kid with an accordion was just walking up the beach playing for money and the Greeks would quit quick to push him away and I was bringing back and I said here's 10 euros stay there and play so he does the Sun comes out and we get this image we actually are selling that little boy today I'm Jacob we only have one alrighty so then we take this shot this is another couple in Greece nothing that exciting backlit with flash great beautiful color on the sky then I thought to myself what would we guy ever do so I got two guys to stand on either side to hold a handful of sand and I said on the count of three I want you to throw the sand up in the air so one two three we throw isn't it crazy just one simple little change in the shot can do that now at the start of this presentation today I showed you a slide show of a wedding that I shot in Miami and everyone asked me about those images at the end let me show you a video footage and let me explain how I got these shots so how did I get that in camera and it was pitch black I could hardly see where I was walking the only reason why you saw the video there is because we have to bum up the contrast in editing to see it so I walked the beach I'm like the cover want a shot of the beach and I see nothing I see dead people no I I look up at the sky and it's very dark so I literally expose for the sky and what do I get I get a bluey green sky now I want a bluey green sky I want a burnt orange sky beautiful warmth so I changed my white balance to shade at nighttime now this is a second exposure I don't need it I don't need a tripod because blurry clouds look beautiful I need a flash to freeze the motion of the couple now let me tell you something else that I'm doing here if I'm if I'm here with a wide-angle lens on the ground and your coupler like this you notice how I get them to lean forward to correct my perspective because if you shoot it with a wide-angle lens and people stand straight they look this store to look at me weird spitting that my one of my pet hates is having a head or a body part in the corner of a wide-angle lens like a head goes off like a pen to nowhere or or Brides like this and a foot looks like Bigfoot and the other foot looks fine like you got to be careful that stuff so I cropped the awkwardness out I get that beautiful burnt orange sky the flash freezes them this is a cool thing this shadow is cause of the umbrella because that was the original position of the umbrella during the exposure the flash freezes the motion of the actual umbrella but that was the original position you see and that's how we got that shot question so I changed the white balance to change the to make the sky but orange but how does a couple look like that well two things one is that they're not perfectly white there was a warm tone there and and a bit of a bit of color correction in Photoshop but mostly I actually loved using flash with shade or cloudy because it actually looks beautifully warm if you should flash with your flash white balance it's cool it's cold it looks a bit you know it's not the kind of thing I like to do personally let me show you another piece of video footage now from that same shoot have a look so the wind was blowing and it was just amazing it was this beautiful magic in the air I can't explain it have you ever been on fire as in metaphorically photographically speaking where you just you feel like this something to magic it was one of those one of those days and we took that shot then I look at her hand I don't like man I've seen that hand before it reminded me of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam the Sistine Chapel now if I if I got the groom's do this it would be a little bit cheesy a little bit tacky okay so I wanted to pay homage to Michelangelo with that going too far and I think we went we did well so I gave him an excuse to put his hand there as if he was about to hold her hand and then that's how we get the reference okay so you'll notice it oh but we know as a question here question it was well it was it just a flashlight so I could focus and the flashlight had to be off when I took the shot big is up otherwise the ambience would have affected the exposure yeah yeah well yeah a normal flashlight to focus and then an actual flash unit a speed light to actually eliminate the couple because it was off camera so I didn't get that red the red infrared sort of thing to focus on yep now I have the ice light I'll be using a nice light to do that all right have a look at this next shot hey Jess try try bouncing it towards you or close your eyes and bounce it off your face ever that sounds stupid but it might work closer close your eyes sit up straight darling guys for some reason the TTL wasn't communicating correctly and the flash was too powerful I wanted to under expose some Peters there because all these people are in the way so I want to under expose it get a semi silhouette with a drummer in the sky and get a hint of the vehicle so the only thing I could think of to lower the power of the flash after using the obvious things to do it was to turn it flash towards her and then bounce it off her face and that's how we got that so I was doing an engagement session here in New York and the groom actually manages buildings and I said do you have access to a rooftop and he goes absolutely I said let's go up so we took the shot and others and it got dark very very quickly so I thought what do I do I have no tripod but I have off-camera flash but I can't I can't hand hold for a second to get the ambience of the beautiful skyline let me not even try let me deliberately move it so it looks like I was that on purpose rather than a mistake so I expose for the background let's say it's I don't know 2.8 at a second a second exposure at say 2000 ISO so there's my exposure then what I do is I have my I focus on the couple I do this click click with an off-camera flash over here and we get this I assumed the flash head so that I get a pocket of light rather than it be too flooded otherwise I would have got where they're sitting and standing and so on but that's how I get that shot okay the dreaded on-camera flash come on who the minute who's scared of on-camera flash or who does not like the results they get with on-camera flash okay pretty much most of us I am going to show you a technique like right now which you are going to love me forever for okay are you ready but some of you might be saying to me well wait a second you I don't need flash with a high ISO so my one point two lens or one point four lens it's okay I can do anything with no flash and your shots may look like this this was taken at a wedding and the best that I could do with no flash was this kind of quality of light but I want to show you a technique that gets you this quality of light on camera okay now let me show you a few different ways of bouncing the flash because you're you know that I'm alluding to the fact that we have to bounce the flash okay the question is where do we banter how do we bounce it now does anyone have a camera with them if you compute a camera together for me and a flash on your camera that'd be okay does anyone have it yeah yeah put put your camera together put the flash on there and all I know I need it when I say I when I say on camera I'm in a speedlight yeah I mean a speedlight I've got one but I couldn't be bothered taking it out I'll do it in a minute when we didn't wish you with the models yeah just pop it on I just want to show you the orientation now what I'm doing I get perfect deal Kenan no I'm not this is not going to be a war between canonical oh of it okay so this next image there's a beautiful girl in bad light okay full flash boof shame on you if you do that right now okay that's like that so I'm going to point to you as if as if you're the model and I'm here okay this image is tilting up 45 degrees and by the way this is all TTL this is not meant to be fancy okay don't think I'm going to win an award with this is a technique okay that's like this that is like this that is tilting up with a card out like that okay that is tilting up with a card out at 90 degrees which most people do that wouldn't you say okay you're going to change your mind after you see what I'm going to do this is tilting up angle right 45 degrees may you need you need some wd-40 hmmm either that'll you just bought it right okay all right that's about like that okay that is like this okay this is tilting back 45 degrees like that I can't behind you okay this is how I do it now let me explain it because I know you have a few questions but let me explain the theory okay now please don't go to your next shoot and always do it to the right okay let me explain now we're looking at her right now and that looks like no flash wouldn't you agree what I've done is I've created the shadow side I've created the narrow the narrow side of the short side so the theory is I'm going to tell you that most of the difficult way and I'll tell you the easy way of remembering it okay ignore what I'm about to tell you but it's more technical what I need to do is illuminate the side of the face it's further wrist away from the camera I need to illuminate the side of the face that's further wrist away from the camera which is her left side or quite simply point to flash where her face is pointing so if her fate think of it think of the nose as an arrow the nose is like that I'm going to do this down and like that okay that's how I got that shot why bounce hit shadow if I shot vertically with this shot this is what I would do you see if her face was this way I would do that I'm bouncing off a wall bouncing off yeah and this this could be this is no joke even the wall the the very very back wall are being a reception venues where I've bounced off a wall like that TTL I might add plus one on the flash and the power and I get that same result watch what happens if you bounce the wrong way beautiful girl with bad light you see so what well I'm basically right here okay and this is a horizontal image it's down and ninety degrees to the right now you might say Jerry okay what happens if they're perfectly straight on well it's just if they're perfectly straight on this is what I would do so your face is now this way right which means I do that you could be the father of the bride your face is this way guess what I do I do this then you're the mother of the bride and I want to shoot vertically and your face is bias that way so what I do is I bounce bounce this will satisfy almost 90% of your on-camera flash especially when you're indoors obviously if you're outdoors looking to bounce of anything I could be outside bouncing off a building with the exact same theory outside bouncing off a building with the exact same theory and that's how I get that you want to compare the difference between an amateur and a professional now I haven't photoshopped anything or anything like that straight from the camera I did that example on E or we could week or so ago but you get the idea you tell me that bride is not the difference between that and that she doesn't know how she got there or how it works but she just cares what she likes well now this is well this is what I would do if I had let's say a bunch of a family came up to me during the reception said hey I want to I want to shut up us with the family I'll get them all close together I'll slightly bias them this way then I would turn my flash in this direction go bang bang this is the thing more than five or six people it's going to be a problem quite simply because you're going to cause a shadow on her causing a shadow on her and so on this is where I might maybe go back in this way I'm saying to you this is not going to satisfy every possible scenario it'll satisfy 8090 percent of things in indoors trust me you try this and you'll think oh my god I can't believe I was so close to this technique and I didn't know it I'm telling you professionals in the industry for 20 years don't know this technique it's so close once you get it you've got it for life question so if you if you're photographing let's say in a dark well in a dark room what what do you do okay so I was at a reception venue it was pitch black one of those cool funky types right black ceiling black curtains black everything the only thing that was white was the the bridal table what I did was I position myself where there's a bit of ambience like it has chandalier something to break up the background I exposed to that first let's say it was 1600 ISO at 125 @ 30.8 then I load it I come right close to the table I turned my flash over here I bounced it off the the bridal table that becomes my light source and I'm going to soft even life all a big plus-sized student and assistant with a white shirt or the back or reflector yeah and if most churches I will photograph without flush the only facial anomalies in a church is of them walking down the aisle and walking back at they are the rest are quite like the ambience the spotlights and what they use but like I said there's no absolutes guys this will give you an idea thank you my video light now what's video light video light well we normally referred to as a portable light source probably in years gone by typically a tungsten light source like a yellow quality of light normally round or square normally with a quarter and a brick of a battery okay that's pretty much what you normally have now I was doing a workshop and someone came out to me one of my students and said all right smart smart I was about to say smart so that bad word all right Jerry take a shot here prove that you can create an a great shot in this location I said okay let's do it I turn the lights off I get the I get a video light illuminating the bride here we take the flowers off a table tilt the table towards the bride and we get this image that fun so here we take a shot of the bride she's lying on the bed we've got a video light illuminator bride here I hop off the bed I shoot from this angle she does not move an inch at all and we get this image amazing what a different perspective can make I'm photographing a groom and he was obsessed with a godfather and Scarface and all things gangster and this is a shot that we took here to show the scene that we're in so here's the poster we took the poster off the wall I shown a video light on him and then we shoot the reflection and we get this in camera that was his favorite shot forget about the bribe that was his favorite shot so you see the the glass frame yeah so I basically photograph to reflect his reflection off the glass off the actual framed picture and of course the actual photograph behind the picture to get Marlon Brando and and Al Pacino so here I'm exposing for the ambience I shown a video light on the actual bride and groom and we capture that at one point two and we capture the cubital reflection of them as well they're fun who said wedding photography had to be boring who's changed their mind about wedding photography today thinking that it's boring and how good can it be quite simply a bride with no vowels of portrait think about it doesn't matter who it is or what it is it's fun was there a question yep yeah well what I'll do is I'll do exposure on location I I think they don't happen to be the best way of doing it yep this is a shot photographing through a tunnel of people putting their glasses together and I'll shut up 1.2 video light from here and we took that shot all right continuous question so the question was what how do I determine what goes in black and white what doesn't sometimes when I want to remove the color bias and we want you to just look at the moment I'll get you got to go black and white sometimes when there's a mix of tones where I think that a ballot battling for my attention again makes one to go black and white or when there simply is no color as in the soft tones and like a white might be the way to go continuous florescent guys they're fluorescent it's probably the best probably the closest thing that emulates a window light you would say fluorescent lighting and years gone by is very green now it's very white okayed with all the environmental laws and things like that this was taken up an hour and B singer here in New York using a fluorescent light in Grand Central Station and then we caught the other flag on the on the train behind him as well this was photographed outside an Armani store using the Armani sign to illuminate him and this is how we got that shot this was using a simple menu board and we get the couple nice and close and we get that image okay and now LED so you may have heard the introduction earlier today and perhaps obviously certainly part of the reason why I'm here is to talk about a new product that I've actually designed and Wescott have created in conjunction with myself and that is the ice light so the ice light what is it okay well let me show it to you and then we can talk about it and then we'll use it on location so what does it look like no it looks like a nice light oh that was a joke yeah you can see our bright that is right right from where you are now the difference between this light is that quite simply is that there's no life that exists in the market that this portable this bright and cylindrical with a built in battery now you might say well why why cylindrical well we have vertical people aren't we you know often we want a nice little strip of light and we don't normally get it I love this because I like the way I actually describe it it's like carrying window light everywhere you go because you can actually if you HOT if you want it sharper you hold it vertical to the subject if you want it softer you bring it horizontal you want it softer again then you tilt it away again okay so now of course you don't get your model to hold it but you can if you want to have some fun with it of course but let me just show you a few different examples and give you an idea of how we can use this well what I do here is I expose for the ambience and then I add the light in the foreground and that's how I get that shot so this is the this is the actual what I want first then I add the light in this is what I want first then I add the light in okay I expose for the ambience of the lot of the church lighting and of course we add the light in it's a combination of lights that we want to lights behind them nice and bright we darken the background we get that beautiful glow of light that we had with their flesh as you remember here I had my model just lying down on the ground and we illuminated the the girl with light through this sort of the slats there of the bench and we get this beautiful quality of light color temperature it's daylight now every every LED light has a bit of a tint and most LED lights have a bluish greenish tint which has got a horrible especially of people who shoot portraits I love it it's a warm tint if it's anything the cool thing is all these shots were taken with a daylight white balance the daylight preset and the cool thing is that you you get what you get with the ambience because in years gone by when I shot with a tungsten white balance or Taksin light I'd have to correct the warmth what I see with my own two eyes so I ruined the romance and then I illuminate the cupola and I have to correct the yellow by putting it on the other on the actual tungsten white balance now I retain my ambience perfect example is this what I do is I shoot with a daylight white balance I isolate the ambience of those little Christmas lights around the trees I isolate them and that's the beautiful tone that I get with this light he is using two lights one light from the front one that light from the back and all the sudden we get this cool Hollywood portrait in a simple location here is shooting with a model just next to a piece of glass we've got one light on her and all the sudden we get this beautiful abstract reflection and we get that shot you've all heard about butterfly lighting question so it's dimmable so that's the cool thing about it so if you look at the wall okay you can just bring it down in increments the difference the difference about this slide is that most lights when you dim it the car temperature changes this remains the same it's also flicker free which means you can shoot video with it without seeing that flicker in the video a couple other features that I want to talk about with this we're also coming up with accessories which we're really excited about okay next couple of months we have barn doors coming which means you can clip them on to the actual light and you can feather the light in and out we also have a little little item that you basically screw in it's a it's a dual connector so you're basically screwed in the light get a second light and it just becomes double the double the power double length and then you can be like the Seth from Star Wars you know that guy with a red face anyway okay it's a really cool stuff we have a mini tripod which means you can put a little mini tripod and move it around we have a tilt a bracket which is also very cool we have gels for it sort of it's an amazing product because it's very versatile but what I love about it is there's no cords there's no brick of a battery it's built-in and it's easy to hold and it's fun like you bring it out to a wedding I mean all the guys playing no it's a it's a built-in lithium ion battery yeah and it's it allows you over an hour on full power so if I literally put it on full power just left it it'll last over an hour the cool thing is very soon we're coming out with an extra battery pack and it'll give you an extra over two hours of battery life on full power as well so this I use some all my creative stuff if I'm doing family portraits perfect for it if it's very dark this will give me the window light that I need it's fantastic like you're from that kind of stuff question charge two and a half hours to charge it fully if it was completely dead so 1/2 hours it'll be fully charged yep question exactly right usually so if I'm not if I have no ambience if I have no Bambi in' so ever then yes I can just do what everyone with the light but usually when I'm at location as the gentleman said I will expose for the ambience first maybe slightly under expose it then add my light in and that's how I get my exposure this one here you can see the beautiful quality of light that gives off and that's a softer quality of light because the lighting is this way if you want it sharper you'll hold it vertical I was in London recently as I showed you and we walk the streets at night and the cool thing is you can just put it in little pockets of light and all the sudden you know you get this beautiful little balance of light will it damage their eyes they'll look at it I think any any light if you look at it too long any light it wouldn't be a problem wouldn't be a problem no it's so I think you'd be fine I think you'd be fine you've used it with infants and they haven't they haven't the heads don't spin around yeah it's flicker free it's not a problem it weighs about 1 listen 1/2 pounds right 1.2 pounds 1.3 pounds the price is $4.99 90 and it basically includes of course the light and includes the the case which I love actually case is really cool what I love about this and this is the boy in me is you can put it around you and you could take it out like it like a Jedi I don't know is this fun what you do and there's also a little velcro things that can put on your belt if you wish the cool thing is that when you're wearing it you have it on your person you don't feel it now with the old lights that I have with the brick of a battery and all that cont you felt it was all over the place this is just it's just portable quite simply I designed a light that I would use that's the best way I can describe it and why a designer is because like I said window light is my favorite light source but you don't have it with you everywhere now I do now I do yes it's not going to replace a flash a flash is obviously a lot more powerful but the softness and the versatility and the portability the Demme ability you won't find any other light source like I could guarantee you now even during the day you can use it guys so I'm not saying you can overpower the Sun no one can beat God it's not going to happen alright but what we can do is add a bit of a kick when it comes to an overcast situation all of a sudden we get this beautiful quality of life that you wouldn't have got in the first place this here the models actually holding it herself because it's portable you can put it in little looks and crannies and all that kind of stuff and all the sudden you've got this sort of gorgeous quality of light because she would've been flat it would have been in shadow and it would have been it wouldn't have been as nice at all of her reflection of her eyes in one and then her lips in the other which might be fun I don't know if it'll get what I'm thinking I want to get but let's play so Lisa DeVito gorgeous just ten your face extreme this way Oh actually it's too good that's it tilt and stop so I'll just have he done mine now let's have a look let's go about here so why is he doing shot a bit more see I might get like a double triple reflection here we'll see chin up gorgeous look at what it was subtle squint there gorgeous that was using a bevel a triple bevel reflection this was in Sweden basically obviously that my assistant was holding a light over here obviously my exposure was determined by photographing for the stained glass window then the the light was in the foreground and then this is an amazing location but bad light you add the beautiful light all the sudden you get this amazing combination guys just to finish off with egress before we walk outside I want to just share with you a couple of things normally I have a lot of questions about maybe other ways of learning from me if you've learned a lot you know in two three hours with me imagine 24/7 now you might think what does that mean well if you have access to the Internet which I'm sure most of us do I have an educational website called the ice society i stands for inspire challenge educate so if you go on there guys just so you know this is a 12-month subscription that you can have basically you you join for 12 months and you access new information every single month the cool thing is we're almost 5 years old so there's now 58 chapters in existence you only pay for the next 12 but you access all past chapters for free all the videos that I've shown you are like a fraction of what you would normally get per month so as an example every month you get a video of me shooting whether it's a wedding portrait boudoir fashion which is normally a 20 to 30 minute video you also have an audio commentary which means that you can hear what I'm thinking I talk about what I'm to know all the different things behind that shoot I show you every of taken every month with the exposure data as an example every month I show you opposing and lighting techniques so you'll see the finished video about this image I show you every month some different examples of empty environments and what I do with them and then the exposure data behind it you can also send me your work in and I can critique it for you so it's anonymous no one knows it's you and I don't even know it's you you show me your work and I critique it for you we basically have the ice queen to the month that's my ice queen my bride and then we have a bonus of the month this is showing you a portrait album of a couple as well we have a business tip of the month whether it's a marketing tip or business tip as well every month I give you a challenge and you can actually win your membership back for free so this is actually emulate your favorite movie seen as an example the cool thing is you can access all past present and future chapters for 12 months which is really really cool now as a special for you guys if you want to write the actual website down I so so calm it's normally a dollar a day 365 with this promo code 115 off you will get the special for 250 and the offer ends tomorrow at midnight okay so in your own time tonight and tomorrow you can do that if you wish if you want to learn more from me just about what I do about Facebook and Twitter and follow me go to Gerry giannis comm and there'll be all the links to about how to follow me in different ways so yeah great for more information please visit us online give us a call or stop by our New York City super store you can also connect with us on the web

Channel: B&H Photo Video

Views: 910,735

Keywords: lighting, event space, video, pro audio, Jerry Ghionis, bhvideos, BH Photo Video, bh, BH Photo, photo, B&H, bh photo

Id: H2nNxaBA6ss

Length: 104min 24sec (6264 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 05 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Deletraz]

I've used my own morning pee, baking soda and vitamin C pills to develop B&W film. That MacGyver-y enough for OP? :)

[u/stephencorby]

I went for the McGyver, and stayed for the whole thing. What a fantastic video. I need to watch more of his stuff.

[u/MrFunkhouser]

This was already posted here the other day (here) not that it matters much, but I wanted to say I watched it from start to finish.
Apart from the last 5minutes, trying to sell one of his strobes, I found the rest of this presentation EXCELLENT, well worth a watch!