Single Light Portrait Techniques: OnSet with Daniel Norton

we are live on YouTube but not Facebook come on Facebook catch up come on you can do it and we're alive across all the Adorama channels worldwide all right guys welcome we're live if you don't know if you're sitting here so you might not know this if you're online you probably know we are now streaming these on Facebook and YouTube so if for some reason you can't make it you're on a date you're at a wedding we're at work may be visiting the in-laws whatever you don't want to pay attention what's going on you could always stream us on adoramatv or facebook.com slash Adorama that sounds right okay good got that out of the way I'm Daniel Norton if you guys don't know who this was Marissa and Dave I won backwards there Dave who's helping on and Marissa is our models today Seth is on the mighty mixer and yeah we're going to do some single leg portraits so this is always a fun one and I thought I'd kind of burn this one back so we're going to explore kind of working with the basics in a sense when I say the basics I mean twenty thousand dollars worth of equipment no I mean anything that I do this is a common question right like we're using of course I have like the Hasselblad today I have the x1d and I've got Profoto lighting the concepts are pretty much the same in expect in this particular demo I'm probably not going to use too many if any special features right I'm not gonna use TTL I'm not gonna use anything like that so whatever you got use the technique right - to do it with what you got so if you're gonna ask me like you're gonna go can I do this as a speedlight right that was your question right you already had that ready yeah you can do with speed like why not short is it gonna be exactly the same probably not speed like maybe it isn't as strong blah blah blah but the concepts are the same so I try to keep this one really generic I will say what the equipment I'm using is because I get one penny per mention so you know I got to make some money or if people ask so if I don't say what something is please ask and I will tell you if you have any questions please online over here please shout it out so I'll start off by saying I used to a really small studio not as small as Gavin's may be as small as Gavin uh it wasn't in my garage though but it was in it was on 36 Street and my studio was so small and that I usually had to how small was it no I I had to use usually a lot times I'd only use one light because there wasn't really a lot of room for a lotta light stands up there wasn't a lot of room for things so I got the biggest light that I could find right which is probably you're making a face right this is exactly what I always people come to me they said Daniel what light should I get I want you to know I only have a small space and I say oh I don't know like a four four doctors I'm about four foot octa you know that's mostly the reason why you would want to use a large light source in a small space is because if you want coverage right if I take a small light let's say I have a like this big and I want to shoot all of Marissa I have to back it up really far right to get to spread out enough to to cover her if I have a large light source I could pretty much put it right next to her so having a large light source in a small space is actually to your advantage using smaller light sources will give you more control often times if I'm using multiple lights I'll use smaller lights and we will we'll use some different sizes and stuff we'll play around but the idea being that the larger light source is going to have more coverage and since I only have one light I generally want to get a decent amount of coverage right I don't want to shoot a portrait of Marissa a full length and only have her face lit up and have the rest of her black then I'm wasting megapixels and nobody wants to do that right so yeah that's that we're gonna start off with a large light source I get the Profoto d2 as I said it is in a pro photo silver deep large and it's called umbrella or it might be deep silver large alright so does that mean it's a large deep and silver right I mean so large is what I just told you right large light source is gonna be softer softer as your shadows right so large light source is gonna give you soft light so soft light is going to give you nice diffusion transfer rather between your shadow and your highlight so that's going to give you soft light which is generally preferable to port it's deep deep sources for umbrellas you usually see that means that it's gonna have a little bit more directionality to it so I'll give me a little more control it's still gonna go everywhere and yeah we could mess around and get it so that it doesn't get anywhere on the background but I'm not gonna do that I've only got one light I'm probably gonna like my whole set with this one light that's the plan right and silver is gonna give us more specularity cuz I wanted to go for something that was a little bit more of like a punchy fashion feel I know I have a relatively young model although she just had a birthday birthday Marissa so I know that she's got good skin she's gonna have makeup that's got shine to it so specular light sources which is silver makes it more specular that has to do with my highlights so I'm gonna have punchy highlights with the silver umbrella punchy highlights but shadows that kind of have a little bit of transfer a little nice for transfer that's what I'm going to go for with this umbrella it's really simple it's on a c-stand it could be on anything I suppose and like I said I'm using the Profoto I'm gonna start with it far away from her now this is where and I actually did an entire video on this what you could watch or just I'll explain it now the difference between the position of your light to your subject and to the background is going to be important because there's a thing called fall-off right so basically if I put my subject really close to my light they're gonna be brighter right because they're closer to the light right so if my background is really far away it's gonna be darker right but if I pull my light source far enough away that this ratio between here and here becomes smaller then the background begins to become brighter effectively right which means that theoretically like let's say I had a white background I have a grey one but let's say it will any background really and I put Marissa right against the background and I lit her right and I exposed for her the background would be properly exposed because they're both in the same light right the further I move her from the background and closer to the light the brighter she'll get the background will be less bright right so you're going to want to play with that that's going to be important at this distance I can pretty much tell you that this background should record pretty much close to its actual actual color because of this gap here right pretty much it's not gonna be exactly because we don't deal with exactly I'm also gonna raise the light source I'm almost always gonna want my light to be higher than my subject why because light in the world right is generally from above right this is what what the eye sees as normal so almost always you want your shadows to go down right so you're gonna be somewhat sideways but the more the lower you get with the light source even all the ways to sideways with it will start to add a lot more drama and and start to change the viewers perception of it if I go all the ways to the point where the light is below her and shooting up that's often called horror lighting or whatever that can be you know it's often called horror lighting that says no Cosette this is horror King or maybe a prince I'm not sure oh you're just a child alright so anyways alright so I've got my light set up I don't know right but I've been told I don't know exactly what the exposure is here not using TTL or anything because I don't have that function but the house blood I could just guess nobody came here to watch me guess all day somebody's a light meter that seems like the right thing to do this is a sekonic 308s - EU so basically the way a light meter works is it's going to record the light falling on it it's an incident light meter as they say so it's picking up the light falling on it it's going to give you an exposure so you pointed out your light source generally you're going to dial in and this one you dial in your shutter speed and your ISO and when you fire the flash it will give you the proper aperture tell you what the flashes power is right but before I do any of that what do I want to set my camera who knows right now so generally speaking you want to when you're using flash you have two options right you can either use the light in the space the ambient light if you will or not right those are your choices so I have light here right you can see me right I'm on the dark which means that I could make this light part of my picture if I want to I could set my camera so that this light does something and then use my flash to either fill or add contrast or whatever it I'm not gonna do that right now instead I'm gonna opt to get rid of the light in the space so I'm still using it in a sense I'm just really under exposing it so what am I do is I'm I set my camera at 250th of a second this camera actually is magic no I don't know why I think I know if there's a leaf shutter or what it has but you can actually sink much higher but most cameras sink around 250th of a second meaning that you can't use a flash with them above 250 ish unless you have high-speed sync which is a whole other class you'll have to pay for later so the same thing you paid for this one so 250 is where I set it at 100 ISO because it's lowest the camera goes to that's how I'm going to walk in here the then the aperture needs to be whatever it needs to be to get the space dark how am I gonna know that I can take my light meter again and put it in mbf I want or use the light meter in the camera and I'm going to look at it until it shows me an overexposed image so I want to be maybe like three stops underexposed so I'm gonna go and I think I want to shoot around about maybe five six so Y five six sounds good I want to have a little bit of a shower lit up the field this is a medium format camera so it might be too shallow but I kind of like how Marissa's hair is gonna kind of fade off into nothingness if it goes real shallow so I think five six would be nice so I'm are centered at 560 at five six I'm gonna go to the ambient setting and I'm going to set one and dry so okay this Hasselblad is the x1 d50 so I'm gonna do an ambient reading on the the space basically towards the camera is usually the easiest way I'm getting point five and six tenths which is basically no light at all so that's super underexposed at 250 100 so if I take a picture does the camera run it is right if you can do it I think safe you probably have to focus in order to do it so Dave took a picture and oh it's beautiful I called this one black on black version six okay so that means we're really underexposed none of the ambient light X I can kinda see her a little bit 10 Hasselblad's in there high dynamic range you see her alright so I pull it all the ways over at two stops I can see her come up a little bit that's really underexposed I don't worry too much about that I'm not gonna go crazy now I want it to be at least a couple of stops underexposed because in the in the in post-processing I may decide to bring my shadow detail up especially since I'm only using one light I might have really strong shadows and maybe I'll want a little detail in those shadows that isn't doesn't go up naturally hopefully I'll shoot it correctly or I won't have to do that but perhaps we'll be doing one of these test shots to show you guys something gonna be my favorite picture then I'm back so this gives me the ability to recover a little bit but still not affect my shot so now I'm gonna switch to flash mode the way it works I press the the the testee button and it's flashing it's waiting for a flash I'm gonna point it towards the light it's giving me a seven point one I don't like that seven point one I'm gonna shot that way since in 70s I'm gonna turn the light down a little bit this controller does that I think I had a large-format lens that was seven point one six point three get in there so basically it's given me readings right so now I'm just dialing my flash down I have the ability to do that because I'm lazy I could walk over there but come on who wants to do that five point six okay now okay so why am i using an umbrella instead of a beauty dish we'll get to that in a second let me get a basic exposure first but basically because if you want back the video a couple minutes where I talk about soft and all that other stuff this is softer because it is bigger softer light is generally better for portraits but we will play around a little bit with the beauty dish I think I still have mine here right mmm-hmm all right so we're at five point six we're at a 100th of a second how are you stool they're gonna be a baller and handhold that's right no not I was going to but that did that would seem like about it yeah I was like nah I am NOT gonna be a baller I am NOT gonna be a baller all right so I don't even know baller means all right so I'm gonna race my tripod up a little bit I'm assuming somebody you plays ball thanks Marissa and Dave you gonna have a team team sports here all right so always prep before your shoot okay so I'm gonna drop my tripod down I'm just gonna do basically like a I don't know like maybe a chest up kind of portrait I think cool mm-hmm I see nothing let me take a peek hey you are oh that's interesting apparently the tripod has to go this way they didn't say that in the directions boom I touch the button on the back with my nose all right so I'm at 5.6 250 100 ISO all right hold that please all righty let's see there's a picture of not holding for any face yet all right so this is the white balance card which we will use we're not gonna use till we get proper exposure you can put down your luck for now she had all excited cause she knew to us we've been using these all day okay finally she knows all right here we go she's looking at me and taking a picture here we go and oops focusing and good and didn't happen here we go oh I waited till she looked down on purpose beautiful all right so look at me actually so we get a proper one let's see ooh now remember that I took a picture earlier right and indeed it was black so if you may have noticed on that one but I'll take another one the background is lit correct a bit right now it's lit because as I mentioned this light is carrying over and landing on the background behind her right as simple as that okay this is focus which is Hasselblad's own software which is basically which used to tether Hassell blood you can import other photos but it only tethers to a supplied so so we've got this isn't a great shot but if we're you got a basic exposure right remember that when you're using a light meter it's going to give you what it thinks is the correct exposure right so that seems pretty good actually well done sekonic but always take a shot and make a judgment whether or not you think it's the way you want to look or not but before we go too far into this let's hold up the white balance card so we can get proper white balance so go ahead and hold that up in front of your grill your grill oh this one is different than mine I guess this one is mine but this is different otherwise ooh all right so I'm doing the white balance now because people always ask me that I don't usually do it live basically you photograph this thing you grab your little dropper whatever software you're and you can do this boom you see it's just white balanced now it's going to have correct white balance so now when we take a picture is just gonna carry that over for the rest of our lives we'll have a good white balance now if we change modifiers we should do another reading nice look right at me versus getting funny now all right so now we have good white balance but the light itself is not really that great which is really basic so I've only got one light I am a light in the background but I've got shadows on the side of our face right which is generally not what I like right if you guys have seen me do any of these I generally say photographing women it's usually best to keep the light more or less in the center that's because you're gonna have shadow wherever you don't have light right so we generally want to shape the face beautifully keep it nice and even and what we're gonna do is move the shadow now into the center right what other options do we have before I do that if I want to we have no other options man we're stuck what are we gonna do yes we could use a reflector right do we have era one like one of those brooklyn-born you'd say Brooklyn boy that's al yeah you're watching TM Brooklyn made art is new yep perfect yep does that Superboy know know what's good all right this is a reflector card now I know what you're saying Daniel you said this was a one light shoot and now you're cheating well yes I am so I can take my reflector card and I can hold it out here Marissa's actually doing all the work boom there we go and we can fill in right now while that is much more acceptable I still don't like that kind of shadow on her face like that typically speaking for again for a female subject I usually like to keep my light in the center and I'm show you the difference now so yeah let's roll that into the center Dave thank you yeah I'll just slide it over one advantage of having such a big light source like this and brelo just gonna move it over and we know what kind of centering it on Marissa as best as possible centering it on her grill Oh Chris tonight we found the cup holder it has been found you didn't give back to me yet but he found it don't lose it again is that what you gonna do you look down like that okay yeah no don't that's terrible it's important to always give the model instruction notes yeah yeah all right so sorry all right this is the touch screen and I keep changing with my nose if you have a big nose be careful yeah here we go I thank you all right here we go boom boom boom focusing on her eyeball bad all right so now we're centered now we can see the nice light even without the reflector is much nicer on her face right she was a hideous troll in the first shot and now she is a beautiful young lady well yeah okay but what's kind of nice though about having such a punchy light as you can clearly see you know again we're getting this like nice specularity to the skin which gives a glow now if you don't like that use a white umbrella right easy as that that's basically the difference I did a whole thing on umbrellas what you guys can watch if you like good simple right thanks for coming next week we'll know we'll do more all right so we got that let's maybe use the reflector anyways why not right hey go did you wanna hold a reflective I feel like I'm cutting Dave out of everything Dave feels lonely back there oh yeah I do it like that okay you can do that why not do it all right so we're gonna yeah that's good why not is that reflecting the light she's hiding basically silent is that doing anything probably not Marissa's getting good at this yeah that's not bad I did something not a lot yeah well I changed my composition all right so yeah go ahead and uh yeah go ahead and actually hold it properly said more in the middle there we go so this is going to give us some reflection kukuku hold on you're good changing my focus point boom boom nice here we go alright so now we got a little reflective kicking in to add a little bit of fill the closer we put it to her the more it'll fill in basically but what you really need to do is go yeah you got to go like this turn towards the light okay fine we have Dave hold it you were doing a good job immersive but now you're killing it no I was killing it a good thing well you're killing no there we go I know all the terms I'm so new yeah you are in a bit and good right there's good focusing on your eyeballs boom all right there we go now we got a little fill going on and we're good you know we can play around with the chin position and such we can see it kicking in a little bit again it's not completely wiping out the shadow it's just filling it in also the lights not perfectly centered it'd be nice to Center it more yeah I moved everything moved over cuz Marissa slid over let's have you come here to the center of the light nope yep there you go kyoool you know I'm gonna have to be a baller I can feel it so okay something's loose there we'll figure it out all right yeah I'm gonna go under the light here we go I think that's more or less center now we should be a little better yep a little bit nice and filled it right some mud no yeah I'll be am I'll be a baller I guess I'll hand hold it why not actually Marissa's skin is terrible no I'm just kidding no she has good skin it is important to use if you're gonna use a specular light source to make sure you use it on somebody whose skin is gonna be acceptable if you have very very shiny skin by the nature of it you're exceptionally oily skin the specular light source like a silver one is not going to be ideal remember that there's a difference between soft and hard and specular and diffuse you can have a large light source which is soft but still have specular light which means that it's got highlights to pop it's all about contrast that makes sense so that's the that's the easy one right we what's so why am I using a tripod if I'm shooting at 250 well the reason why I generally use a tripod except in this case that thing was in my way is that it keeps you consistent yeah simple as that plus I don't lose the camera that way and I'm tethered anyways so there's nothing worse than getting like a great shot of somebody and then they look at it on the computer like let's do that again you can't find that exact spot again cuz you're moving around on the thing so I always you sure a tripod expression over shooting commercially I recommend it highly but yeah if you're shooting portraits and try to be more loose sometimes it's nice to grab the camera hold in your hand why not that's cool all right so that's one light right that's easy there's not a whole lot really to do with the giant light source so it somewhat limits you yeah if it's all you have you can mess around with it and we could probably eat the background really dark by yeah let's just go side lit for one just to show we can do that right but part of the thing here that we're gonna explore is using different modifiers that's really the key here we only have one light but we're gonna use it in different ways to create different kinds of looks so this is you know nice simple young girl comes in for a headshot or even a model a comp card or possibly a small beauty shots this is totally fine light you could definitely shoot full-length I don't have the 45 millimeter lens so I can't shoot full-length Hasselblad if you want to for me anyways but yeah I mean this is a good clean safe light like this is the way to go if you said hey Daniel I need one modifier what can I get to get started whatever I would probably say a big old umbrella is gonna be super good it's gonna be cheap it's gonna be effective it's gonna get you the job done right we're gonna change its position now and we're going to go really side lit so merciless gonna face forward to me like that right and we're gonna get probably like maybe like this yeah exactly and then we'll see one thing that you that you can do I'm probably gonna have to use our reflector but it'll to say with lighters let's just show where the light is first actually what I'm going to do here is stay perfectly straight to me first I'm gonna shoot a dead-on so you guys can see where the light actually is and then we'll move her face around to create a better shot right that makes more sense so you guys can see so she's dead on right now what didn't I do meet her it right yep is her forehead overexposed absolutely not oh look at you still at five six it probably looked over exposed on the the stream because you're looking at a low quality shot but her face is pretty much evenly exposed this texture every place keeping in mind of course that her forehead in this case is a highlight so that's one of the brighter parts of her skin of her skin all right so straight at me here we go alright so this is gonna be like a like a split face thing going on here it's not gonna be anything because the flesh didn't go off there we go try again okay you're supposed to actually put the receiver on your hot shoe apparently who knew that there we go BAM alright so she's lit from one side we got a lot of problems right number one we can we see have her face no but it's overexposed right right here now we're overexposed for people to head over expose questions there is detail there but that's clearly overexposed right this is also ever expose here so we've gotten our exposure issue but if I just dial down my exposure then he's gonna be way too dark because actually my neutrals look not bad right so what can we do right now we're basically cutting on half of this light we can move more of it in front of her right like we can go like this and pull the whole light source forward there we go what does guy do two things right it's going to make it so that more of this part like the edge of the light is going to hit her there so it should help that a little bit also some of this light might even come around here a little bit and if it doesn't actually get on the other side of her face right now will at least have more light to work with with our reflector so straight on again let's see what that does cool right now we've got a little bit more that's a little nicer right already didn't change anything on the camera haven't changed anything right just move the light it could also move Marissa or whoever your model might be you might not be Marissa could be you ever know okay shows the RGB values does focus show the RGB values that I am not sure about probably I don't know but capture one does and you guys probably see I do that a lot with the capture one where you can just float over it and I'll show you the RGB I don't know if it doesn't not so we are going to start with that shot cuz I was like kind of cool alright a little moody but let's maybe add the reflector back in right what do you don't learn here if you're only gonna have one light make sure you get yourself a reflector set sells these for $300 handmade in Brooklyn doesn't sell very many of them a drainer dollars way that stuff through no okay oops oh she's also turning towards the light for some reason nobody I showed you that but it might be cool all right there we go right now it's a little bit more punchy right a little bit more drama and because the light is kind of lower honor we're actually getting let's compare this to this one there's that one and that one there we go no that's that one twice there we go all right two different looks right ones like a little bit brighter and kind of more open a little more high school right this one's definitely college my college picture was terrible so having a good anyways same light source same model same camera same settings same white card same coffee no one is different is the position of it relative to her the light being it and the background right this is talking about this the beginning ladies now much closer to her relatively speaking plus the angle of the light is not really here the background over there so much we're getting a nice dark background versus a lighter shot all right that makes sense same source easy cool that does not make any discount reflectors unfortunately next year he's next year he's going to start distributing them through hmm all right so we'll have to be the cheap ones oh we could do silver let's do a silver reflector let's see what happens if we use a silver reflector this is a very hard silver is mirror silver so oh yeah there you go why not good good idea whoever did that we're gonna destroy her all right I think that's a bad thing I'm not sure now cuz I thought that grill was better what is he killing it was bad that's nice cool we are getting a bit of a highlight here on her nose which you don't really love but that just a matter of turning her that doesn't look terrible that's basically a silver reflector Coolio yeah well does it on the backside of her cool all right awesome I apparently had this honk um some kind a weird sort order so I'm not gonna worry about it I will learn how to use focus not when you guys are watching me live all right so here we are let's change the modifier right now though let's play around but you saw what a giant umbrella will do right now that that's one thing so I could take my giant umbrella I can do kind of a dark background more moody shot I can do something it's a little bit more neutral and clean but what if we were to use I don't know a softbox people like soft boxes right they're soft in their boxes I tend to like a strip box now I will say this if you only have one light you said Daniel I only have one light what should I buy I already told you umbrella but if I wasn't this an umbrella I would not say this strip boxes are great for some stuff but they're somewhat limited because you don't have a lot of coverage but since I have this one I'm gonna use it this by the way it's cliff here this isn't ocf strip box you're not supposed to use on the d2 so don't do that you know it's mostly because the modeling light exilic dave said if not 100 because the Milan light so we're just not gonna use them on the light yeah I didn't actually feel it's a little bit hot we'll leave the back open I feel okay with it you guys feel okay with it what's the worst thing that can happen it'll melt I know a place in New York City on 18th Street we can get new softboxes at a good price exactly now this is going to be much more controlled right softbox we want to use that what we really have to control the light like here I was like I'd be cool if we've got a dark background but we didn't need it right if you needed it to be a dark background this is gonna give you a lot more opportunities to do that because you can clearly see the light is going to travel that so let's do a let's have you slide this way slightly perfect and then sit in the center of it more or less yeah and look right at it all right so we're gonna do a nice profile shot right not a fake but well maybe a fix with Facebook profile shot LinkedIn gender is it a profile shot tender though I don't know you know you're like sooner he's more of a bumble guy all right that's seven point one six point three now even though this box is going through the lighter should say is going through a bunch of diffusion which is the softball what makes tough luck stop box it's actually more powerful the setting was and why yeah it's trying to let down a bit because this is smaller so I'll like staying in the you know the one space now it's small or but it's still relatively large compared to the size of the subject that what you're shooting which is Marissa's head so it's still going to be pretty soft and we're gonna do one of my favorite things to do with the strip is this kind of profile shot and then we're going to maybe move its position relative to Marissa back and forth almost see we can get so look straight at it and again this is we're gonna see this is a five point six I'm going to change my focus point here we go nice alright let's see what we got okay interesting right kind of cool we're getting a little bit of light wrapping around her it's nice and even we've got like a little bit of detail back here we probably could throw a reflector it's not gonna this is where a silver reflector might be nice it's not gonna throw too much light back because again distance right but let's try the silver reflector just see if we get a little bit detail in front of her in the front of the back of her that makes sense okay you're in a smidge good good that makes her chidden go down perfect okay so no reflector reflector now to me this is nicer right I mean we wanna make judgment calls when you're doing this kind of stuff if I'm gonna shoot a really contrast to you profile I don't really necessarily want to filler in all the way but some people like that and it kind of comes down to the shape of your models face and who you're photographing and what you want to look like but let's talk about shadow a little bit more we could actually instead of using her fly ricard we could also move this light more over here that would likely get a little more light on that side over right because this lights over here right let's see what that does this might be a smidge underexposed right here okay I just fired the flash to see it ya know it's nice right that's a little prettier right got a little little softer glow across it she seems a little sad she's like oh I couldn't work today but it's raining and I want some recipient of Cubs they only had M&Ms you know here we are but we could also get more contrasting more moody right we could put the light for the back what's that gonna do that's gonna create more shadow towards the camera right because now we're gonna basically be letting this side of her face which the camera is not really seeing right yeah that'll work look straight ahead perfect just like I went to the movies and there was no Twizzlers and now we have you know very dramatic moody feel right make sense all that light's still there it's just over here somewhere right and to that effect maybe we can do you think we can grab some of that light and go like this with a silver card let's try that let's try that I was like hair lightish yeah like you're like kicking back at her well you know Carroll a dish we'll do the weekend we're never gonna get a full like bright hair light because the light is travelling and then bouncing back right oh yeah there we go Dave's in the shop well you get the idea that includes one Dave with that technique but uh yeah actually let's make that a little go ahead and tame your ponytail a little bit yeah good alright yeah and then we'll try to deal with other things I feel like this could be nice and bring your chin up a little bit when you do it good now where her chin is is gonna change the shape of her face that's why I'm doing that right cuz if I have her chin down this is gonna get a little bit under her chin right not a double chin like I would have but you know she's got a little bit more more options you're stretching that muscle the the mandible something I don't know I don't know that's muscle or how much I'm not a doctor I just pointed south because he knows stuff that sounds right nobody knows so we're good all right all right your hands in a bit dear right there perfect good good good here we go and boom nice now we've got tamed hair she closed her eyes for some reason she's waiting for it she's like I wish upon a star to get some Twizzlers or goobers Raisinets I do they still make the Mars bar used to love that but it was small was like smaller than rest of the candy bars I love Charles since you actually bug uh if anybody is watching and they can get me a Charleston chew I'll take it thank you I like the strawberry ones but I'll take chocolate or they're Anila alright anyways that's a strip box what else can we do the strip box oh I don't know perhaps we could turn it on its side what why would you do that you're crazy right this is gonna give us more coverage this way especially when I'm only shooting this much of it right I don't need all that other light right so now we can even do a more extreme yeah let's go this way right it also looks a lot more like it's like you're in a spaceship which can be fun alright so now we're doing this right strip box and and I want to say time for the sponsorship message no I'm just kidding one thing that you should do when you get a new piece of equipment right and this is actually people come to me and say Daniel I said a lot today people do come to me a lot say Daniel for some reason it is my name and they say I have I'm buying these lights and I have this this and this what else should I get and I always say to them what I say nothing right use what you have until you can't do what you want to do then get something else buying a new light or buying anything else and getting every piece of equipment you could possibly see because some I told you online that you should have a beauty dish whatever is not the way to go learn how to use what you have you'll reach a point where you can't do something then you know what you need so to that point when I get myself a strip box and it's like wow Daniel uses the strip box so I'm gonna buy one now you would you buy more of them if my name was Sonic cuz I'm trying to work on a little contract but anyways you know the did is it so I want use it so okay I got the strip box let's do everything we can possibly do with the strip box right and this is kind of where you want to be so we're messing around this I'm going to show you like just different stuff we can do with it right so now remember the shot here will we hide it sideways and when we brought a little for to give her a little bit of fill we'll go ahead and and and go sideways down let's see the difference okay so straight at the light again nice right now that whole side of her face is beautifully washed in light right because we're gonna big the boxes right it's wrapping around this side very nicely but it's small relatively this way which is giving us a nice shadow under a chin shaping that face making it look really nice also with all this extra light over here that's much more light for Dave to bounce back let's go silver the silver reflector by the way is perfect yeah exactly nice picks up a little bit a little bit of detail again we're never gonna have as much light in the back as we have in the front because you know light falls off as it travels yes that was out back with a glue stick making the silver thing so you guys should really appreciate their log okay so the other cool thing you do with the strip which isn't gonna be that effective right now because it's a single light is keep in mind this end doesn't have to always be this way or that way all right it can be somewhere in the middle so we can actually tweak it a bit nice hum you know and we can do things like this we can kind of split the difference right we can bring it around around now what's gonna happen here right this part of the light is what closer right then this part so it's gonna make the light uneven oh my god uneven light why are you doing that I can't believe it that's high roll so go ahead and look this way I think good why not it is like a prison outfit except you're supposed to have matching pants or whatever okay here we go the box is in my shot a little bit so I'm gonna make a funny composition because I feel like it shows go this way good nice right right now we're getting contrasts of light right and we've got just a little bit of catch light in there for an eyeball right delicious now it's a little bit blown out or a little hot on our forehead here and it's a little bit under I mean again there's detail but relatives beginning it's a little bit underexposed there that doesn't mean it's wrong right it adds a little bit more character to it and remember that things don't have to always be 100 percent perfect if you especially be trying to build lighting that looks more like real life right at a certain point you're gonna have done the basic stuff like that I can light you head to toe nice and easy and make it look really perfect and totally even and I don't have any blow no that's not how life is right and you'll find that as you start to develop your own style you can start to play around and really push the push the limits and know what you can do just know your camera and you know people want to experiment a little bit but yeah let's throw a little bit of reflector in because we always throw some reflector in why wouldn't we you just break that chair nice yeah why not okay give them a composition here here we go nice we gave the softbox in a little bit but right now we got a little bit of fill if we want that detail there for us right so there's a whole lot of things you could do if you need to make it perfect but like I said I don't think that with this kind of thing thank you did apparently I'm notorious for leaving the pointer on top of the thing peoples you just shot at me if I do that okay cool questions thoughts concerns anybody want to do a some poetry or anything like a poacher's yep alright so let's try a different modifier let's go to the other direction right let's go really small and hard right why not I'm gonna take my softbox off again this is the one by three strip OCF don't put it on in d2 I'm also gonna use the ocf grids I guess yep which you shouldn't put on a g2 player I know I asked for the d2 because that's probably the whoa you guys for it I did I asked for a d2 why did I ask for d2 why wouldn't you ask for UT row but some boys like will I do you want home do you yeah if you have access to it this is just it's a yeah great thanks dude so this is the grid set the ocf grid set basically it goes on the front of the light a grid is going to reduce your spread right it does not focus the light that's important focusing your light will bright make the light brighter this does not do that it just reduces the spread so it also feathers a bit so it also adds a little bit of contrast so grids are really interesting they're really common to use they're great just to add a little bit of something let's go with a yeah let's go at the medium there's a crest were jealous but Seth says not to do gels with one line I think and it'll make everything one color but you know what we might do it anyways just because and we'll see what it looks like right let's try it we're gonna go a twenty degree grid grid twenty degrees right so you know alright this is gonna give us now all right so we're gonna risk it cliffs not here right hey Griffin so we're gonna turn this on for a second so we can see where it's going but only for a second so we don't melt it and we're just gonna aim it at our grill I think right here for me right here yeah let's do this let's look at 3/4 turn this to turn right here perfect no no that's good I think that'll cover most of her face yeah so now we're gonna give like a circle of light on her face and let the rest of it fall back now this light is smaller smaller light is going to be hard hard light is gonna have abrupt switch to shadows so we probably should meter it again proponents to make an Apple watch app so I can just fire it from my watch for okay this is that for right now so I'm going to turn the energy up that should be one stop is Wow like when that math works sometimes when you have a light system not Profoto and you'd like to turn it up one stop and it goes up like seven stops or half a stop and you'll so they do a good job with that well done all right here we go five point six 250th of a second 100 ISO twenty degree grid Marissa New York City ooh interesting so it's hot right and this law is also specular because we haven't added any diffusion to it right so weird now or forehead is a bit blown out again there's still detail there but I'm also shooting with the Hasselblad and remember too that I'm no I has a big square there because the computer is acting funny but I'm not gonna worry about that remember that think about delivery this is key I can't tell you the number of times that I've seen a picture somewhere where it looks like crap and you know that like when they shot it it probably looked great but the problem is your screen right the computer you're in Photoshop you're looking at the 16-bit files that's not necessarily where it's gonna be displayed you might make a print it might end up being a poster here in the store it might be wherever you have to think about your final output when you're doing this so it's best to be a little bit safe if you can be so I can see this is a bit hotter in her forehead so I think what I want to do actually is just I'm gonna change the angle of the light I'm not gonna change the power except I change the power the rest of it will go dark so maybe we'll tilt it down a little bit right or raise it until the or turn it away a little bit yep you can also feather either way basically we're gonna feather the light we're gonna not use the center of the light the center the center of the light is the hottest part right now it's pointed right at her forehead we're gonna point Center of light over here now and we'll point it down a tiny bit to change the angle this is the Marissa after dark shot that you're after dark face really there we go all right that's an afterthought face there we go so okay so alright so here we're definitely gonna need some reflector right cuz we got this is like no detail what we wanted to be but before I do that let me just demonstrate something for a second remember that we're standing with the camera is really important and this comes down to the hand holding versus being on a tripod whatever moving oh that's good a little punk rock a mohawk good good just put it in front yeah why not this is like a flock of seagulls yep there we go is that the name yeah that's right right we're going to flux he goes on you guys it's happening I'm also the only centered and I think down a bit maybe up and down I'm gonna change that yeah we're gonna raise the light and then pointed down okay so what am I doing here partially part of his I'm being a goof and I liked it a hair was like that but what else her head was forehead was hot right so what am i doing I'm covering it let me come on listen every solution is not change something on your camera right I mean sometimes you good just move the model or move yourself alright there we go this is the flux Eagles right right that's it that's her shot right put that thing on Instagram throw some filters on it you guys are done Yeah right you should have bangs that's actually kind of nice this is not as terrible as you think all right no it would make this even better a gel come on let's do it and let's do this you know what I'm gonna do let's just cover part of the light with the gel oh that's right out of the box today well let's do it that so let's just cover a little part of it and see what happens this could be terrible you never know we'll assume it's gonna be gummy who's watching what's the worst case that could happen so I'm gonna try to cover part of the like to see if I can get a little bit alike to have color to it right and not a lot to you to read because Seth use read already we're using red let's just use it we'll start with the riding we'll change it if we need to no no hold you hold the hand cross her arms well I think she has to hold her hair to keep it in place yeah yeah you know I thought were on the bottom though all right so basically yeah exactly you can do that you want for the mullet for a second are we gonna risk it blue cross the orange would be really nice cuz blue and orange are complementary colors so neutralize that's very smart set those guys color signs down he wasn't messing around alright don't screw this up oh by the way what did Marissa do who Harry shot a model before oh that's right you see that every model does that that's how you know a real model that's right and you aspiring models out there watching you know how many of these wristbands I have that potato head bends rather I've had to take out people yeah alright that's it give it to me you have to give like fashion terms we start doing weird stuff work it that kind of stuff you could even throw in the work it girl if you want that also helps there you go a little bit of color I didn't make it crazy red interestingly I thought it might have given us like a red spot but it just made the whole thing a little bit warmer which kind of looks cool on my voice is also changing apparently average puberty this is good I'll be happy yeah it didn't yeah a rim light come on now we can do a rim light we got time for that it's getting crazy it's nighttime all right Dave's doing something so what do you guys question thoughts concerns yes okay so can you recover detail in post-processing in highlights if there's detail there yeah I mean sure the thing is okay it really depends on where you are right there's this this is the philosophy on this I'm not gonna bash you for saying profiles because I you know I know a lot people might do that or say that's all you should do you have to think about what you're doing right if I if I have Marissa in my studio like I know Marissa we've shot together a gazillion times she discovered me my knee when I was a young man basically we basically we shoot together all time I'm goofing around we know whatever if I just met her and she's given me a thousand dollars to shoot her head shot and I sit down at the computer I start shooting him they start looking at and it looks like see the face I'm making and then I'm like oh no I'm gonna fix that is that what is that what you want to be is that worth the money that they're paying you that's what I would say about that if you're doing it because you love photography and you're learning it or you shoot something where you don't really have any control when you're in a Russian you have to get it and the camera is capable of bringing back till it sure bring back why wouldn't you right but to be able to get it in camera as close as possible is really key if you want to actually do this for other people not just for yourself so think about it like that okay do we get things I know I was talking know we in deal we just subscribe I know that would be a good idea and hold it like that do you want to do that I say we do it alright David can do something awesome lady and while he does that I'm just gonna shoot a few more like this cuz I kind of like the shot it's gonna be on my Instagram tomorrow be sure to follow me yeah I'm gonna do it I've never before put a picture of Maria more so Marissa nice called her Maria I will never hear the end of that yeah alright yeah it is the sleeves do the hair thing I like that I like the hair thing you guys like the hair thing no too bad do you like it you like it yes see I knew you had taste yeah now I like to chin up a little bit and you're kind of like oh right Jacqueline alright good when you try didn't change the setting up my nose again that's good you're like oh my god my hair is so weird okay I am so avant-garde yeah that's it let it fall Foom - there we go do something weird it's always important to shoot until it's bad right because cuz then you know that you got it but that one's kind of cool alright so we let the hair fall and then we just let it go where it goes you know oh we got some pink gels going on oh there we go see Dave knows what he's doing so when the gel was really close to the light right it was too close right all the light kind of got together and it was like oh what's going on here and became like one source right it was became homogeneous like milk right we move the gel further away right then the lightest time to kind of do its thing be like hum light and then a little bit of it hits the pink boom we're good so let's make the pink happen I like milk okay sorry I don't know what she's doing oh yeah listen we got to do this we're doing this hair thing for the rest of the day nobody wants to see your eyes they're terrible Marissa has Marissa has the best days ever thanks Cathy Oh am I supposed to Marissa we don't know yeah that'd be awesome blossom awesome blossom hasn't anything from Chili's I'm so hungry but they don't feed me here anymore alright are we in place okay here we go Oh beautiful here we go and boom now there we go partial gel and we can play around with it right she's in the club right actually let's put it from the top cuz that makes more sense right she was in the clue apparently I'm not supposed to say disco anymore I've been told that that's not cool I mean in Spanish isn't it discotheque whose make Spanish here right discotheque no no he says anymore we say the club okay she's gonna tell me what I'm wearing Spanish today we're good see maybe I maybe I took Spanish a long time ago and it was this good day all right here we go just go tech go Dan yeah that's why I say there is another word okay focus on ooh that will be an interesting composition oh not terrible all right now we got just a little bit alive from the top right we're playing around with the gels now another thing you could do if you didn't have a Dave and you really wanted to do this let's say this is something you want to do take the gels ancho entre entre I don't know what does it mean it just means Club huh honor tool all right I'll say if knowing what I'm hanging out so we could actually form a kaleidoscope would it be a class yeah kind of a kaleidoscope would shoot through the middle yeah like Lucy you might have a cookie no even got a cookie have you got it it has a cookie we're off the rails now it is happening so basically what I'm thinking is let's say I'm gonna do this right let's say that I told you guys this was a one light demo but now I completely gone off the rails so this what we're doing now and we had this cookie we could put the gels we actually did make a video about this last week but we use it on the background now we're going to use it on the foreground yeah we're gonna make a thing anyways but I think for this we're having a conversation now any questions guys while we're Jews yes yes you couldn't watch my videos at the later date so I placed him in the audience by the way that was with yeah if you guys are watching right now and Adorama TV so youtube.com slash Adorama TV you'll see these live streams or you can just follow me on YouTube but Daniel Norton photographer and you'll have these plus my other ones plus some stuff that's maybe not as friendly as this if you know what I mean Marissa swears in one of them she says the f-bomb she totally does twice I think all right awesome so now we've made a cookie remember we when you're a professional photographer it's always important to have really high end gear it looks really fancy you know we don't want using that junk right so now we've got this and we can shoot the light through this we'll get a mixture of light let's see what that looks like let's try it you don't have a Dave look oh well interesting well we do both we try to keep it you know you know we keep it multi radio we're like a yeah we hit the spectrum I'm gonna go for it cuz I have no idea oh that's kind of interesting but dark why is it dark because it's a bunch of gels in front of the light so he's gonna turn the light up by like one stop now how do I know I turn it up one stop I'm just looking at it really to be honest with you but if you didn't know you could go over to your Evie slider and just kind of move it up till it looks good so they move it to one snob you know now we're starting to get neutralized I bet it could even go a little bit less than one stuff but I think one stops oh okay I went up one stop and days backing up why is it backing it up back that light up right let's me say two lights that you see on the street that you're interested you know hey those I music Marissa that's that's all I'm here for this is really yeah he's banging loads can have more spread it's all something a little bit harder harder light is going to create a little bit of a tougher line there and it lowered the power that's actually lowered it a lot so much so that you can't see anything I apparently turn the light off you know just to keep us on chin up a little bit is it okay what one good you doing a good job all right so what's important here is she's got all this crazy hair stuff going on well it's kind of interesting now this is where a modeling light would be awesome cuz I would love to have some light on her lips so he may have you just risked the gel not the gel leave the grid Oh wasn't going on cuz it's too hot yeah let's hit the grid off and see what happens you're gonna return that didn't melt all right we're lowering it once stopped to compensate for the missing grid and we're gonna do a test shot hold on to your seats it's happening I am ready for you Marissa pop a bit more I'm some lip good right there right there right there hold hold hold hold hold here we go all right oh okay that's weird yeah can we kill the house lights sorry online will hear me Doug in the dark for a second I don't think it's down yet it's probably in Washington switchin Tim too okay so here's what I'll say to that about DIY modifier is being unprofessional maybe ever seen the Godfather they built all those lights for the most part to create that look that's so famous now you build the light that you need now I will say this if I'm turnt owes me a little Marissa Dave you're in a tiny bit right there's good that's a perfect hold hold hold if you are if you're in certain situations there we go if you're in certain sital underexposed yeah let's turn up something if you're in certain situations where something exists like would I build a softbox out of you know an Amazon packet lotions Amazon here Amazon box with a with a with a piece of tissue paper in front and bring it to a corporate headshot you know of course not but if the thing doesn't exist you like who makes this right Seth to mix it but I mean besides that best god I'd like it yeah we're getting some fun stuff here right yeah we're in the Wow I never thought anybody could say Spanish worse than me but that was it you basically you could go to the discotheque ah here we go last one this one's for her LinkedIn profile any questions by the way what well anybody that's pretty cool yeah I like when a little bit of bear light hits the background here we go nice cool okay so settings on the camera 100 iso 250th of a second 5.6 that has not changed now I will say that when you're shooting in the studio I mean we're messing around here I'm hand-holding it cuz I'm wild but one question we had early what tripods and stuff is when your studio try to be consistent with what you do right so if I might have met my camera set there's no reason to change it if suddenly I wanted let's say left up the field or more depth of field for something ok I'll change the camera but otherwise there's no reason for me to change my camera if it's underexposed I turn my light up if it's overexposed I turn my light down camera remains the same it's a good habit to have now if you're only have one light you're only using one light you could probably do either as long as none of the ambient lights affecting your shot the problem is when you start having four or five lights and I go oh this lights too bright and then all of a sudden I turn my camera now all my other lights are wrong right this is why you want to get in the habit of leaving your camera set to where you want to be right you're the photographer you already decided I want five six I want this change your lights okay so that that's a good that's a good kind of general rule even though I don't like rules come on rebel Dottie I'm alone or not you're a troll they'll go thank you sir okay good let's do one more modifier what do you guys want to see beauty dish somebody on the line ask for you don't like beauty dishes you're like you know something handmade well I don't think we have anything else handmade I'm sorry yeah that is not a bad idea we can yeah okay so okay we'll do that quickly for you okay so let's say you don't have any modifiers because I don't know the light was really expensive two thousand dollars and everybody gonna write so we're gonna we're gonna try to make something so we could bounce the light pretty simply off of the board even though the board itself is three dollars but it's still cheaper than some things no it's too much working let's do it like let's do love them pretty dramatic let's let's bounce it straight up into this and then down and then we'll go card underneath yeah exactly cool so we're gonna build like a little thing I will name it after and you guys can buy it from from what are your company's name gonna be best Scott I used to stand for this so we're over here making up stuff listen there was a time when Gary Fong was just a guy that was a wedding photographer who knows that you should become the I'm gonna put this on a c-stand because I'm using a $2.00 piece of cardboard why wouldn't I put it on a $300 stand all right three dollars its phone course is that gonna flop too much yeah it'll work all right all right fine Dave's looking ahead there we go this is why Dave does all this all right oh and we have a clamp we have so much stuff going on here yeah there it is I can't get inside the thing for some reason are you 29 you're cupping me join us for the David Daniel show well we stick things into wait a minute there we go there it is I've done this before I swear all right so we're gonna go like that make sure it's little so we're creating a little bit of a roof here because we got a request for a DIY which I didn't prep for at all I should know better than that that's pretty good right I think it's too close too low rather go a little higher I just I want too much to spill on her yeah how's that it'll do it so we're gonna bounce into this it's gonna come down creating terrible life from above and then we're gonna bounce light back up and to fill in the shadows there we go and by terrible it might be awesome one thing that I always do which i think is a good idea when you're messing around trying things is at this point like I already have in my mind right okay we're gonna put this light here we're gonna bounce it we're gonna add another look I'm gonna take a shot with just this light first cuz guess what I might be awesome right it's probably not gonna be I mean what I know is that it'll probably catch terrible shadows but if she has her chin up a bit which she does right there we also don't want any of the naked light to hit her Facebook doesn't like the naked light no that's not bad actually is this meter just broken this on five six all the time like what's happening here that'd be hilarious actually it's been pretty good this is actually I don't know say this a lot not this one because now it's - you for some reason which I don't know what that stands for we could party find out this was the very first light meter I ever had and it fell on the ocean and the second light meter I ever had which was left on a subway train by a makeup artist and the third light meter I ever had that was stolen I bought that one a lot now I have the five whatever the new one is now let's do without the hill first so let's do a couple things number one straight at me no just yeah that's fine you can hold in your hand like that no don't just rub the down look straight at me like I like oh yeah like that look yeah like that I'm a mannequin look see that looks like okay just so we thought bouncing from above on Marissa not the worst light in the world why cuz she has a pretty nice face for it big eyes you know she's she's what we call a ringer a ringer like you're beautiful don't tell anybody all right chin up a little bit if he works towards the light he'll have more light in her face but then she'll also look like she's looking up at nothing right which may or may not be good depending on what you're doing what if that's some kind of a lip shot let's say for a beauty editorial there's a piece of cardboard write it again this could be just about anything this could be a speed light this could be a pro photo d2 wood you could purchase right over there for $2,000 this could be anything but let's say we want her looking at me because I like what Marissa looks at me she has a kind face we're gonna need some fill so this is where the reflector comes in we're gonna go silver just to be crazy okay I'm getting nice and close you can actually lean forward a little bit this is gonna be very like over-the-top actually one of them won't let's see whoosh now it's like I'm discovering something right totally differently I'm also closer to her of course one all right let's be not so much in your face okay like that that's good yeah there we go nice and clean crisp beauty shot and what are we using and why can we do that without using a beauty dish right this is basically the shot that I was going to make if I put out the beauty dish was very expensive right because we understand light right we know what it's going to do we have an idea we want to shape her face with light from above that will then give us all the nice jaw bone and show everything up make the cheeks come out and everything but that makes it too dark in her eye sockets so what do we do we bounce light back up to fill we're bouncing the light around because we have only one light now if I had more lights I could add her to the background I could do all kinds of stuff I mean I could put a pink gel and just lay it on the silver maybe yes what's the ISO at 100 okay so whether or not you need a light meter a light meter is a great tool to get things set up quickly and to repeat things and I think personally that it's a good idea to have one if you have it in your budget can you is it like oh my god I can't take a picture cuz I have a light meter no of course not but if you can come into a situation and be like okay mr. CEO I need to make your portrait pop pop pop five six BAM the first shot comes out of the camera perfect that's a heck of a lot better than going I think it might be five well hold on you don't want to do that right nobody wants to be the position it comes down to the thing about the fixing it in post right you don't want to have to do that it's good to have the skills to be able to guess maybe I know my lights well enough maybe I can do this and oftentimes what I'll find because I use these lights a lot is once I get the basic setup I don't pull the meter out every single time I change something because if I move the light only a little bit over here I know it's the same distance it's not really gonna change right but when you're first getting into that environment you need to start shooting the light meter can be incredibly incredibly useful and I definitely recommend it I mean I think it's super useful even if you're working primarily with daylight it can help you because you can walk into a room and meter different parts of it to get an idea of what its gonna look like you may just see it can be very useful you know all right yeah let's just especially have use new film yeah oh that's enjoy here don't see her that's a jolly oh my god we spotted Vanessa joy and at around my New York City all right she's very excited yeah why not oh yeah there we go let's see I'm getting real low open getting a phone call guys I'll talk to you guys later Oh dreamer the time where I did this I hit the wrong button and it was cliff and I had talked to him on the live stream that was hilarious that will not happen again hopefully all right so now what's happened right now we've bounced light from the silver card some of it has pink on it not all of it but some of it has pink on it so we've got this leg a little pink let's lay all the gels on there once you ask me for jealous it just doesn't stop like it just becomes it now theoretically we can even put a gel up here it wouldn't be the same exactly but it would add some I've been more likely cause color cast versus actually giving a spot of light the reason for that is this light up here it's bouncing off this white board just like with the gel close to the light it's going to diffuse around and get all homogeneous like milk right milk right yeah yeah milk look at me as I'm crazy yes $5 per question yep no so the question is am I using the light in the ceiling absolutely not I'd have to pay extra for that at around only have so much budget I am absolutely not using it no we're only using the flash we establish at the beginning that with no flash no I know I'm gonna show you again because I'm that kind of guy see honest I am if I turn my flash off I take a picture good just so she knows I'm not cheating so when we take the picture with no flash right what's that light on the top doing that's right now if I wanted to use that light could I sure but I don't want to ready boss hold hold on you can do it we've been shooting videos all day wait you see the next video more there's more okay so let me just go over what we're doing one more time before we do it you always wait - you're about to take the pictures you stop that's the key to this you know if you do so the lights bouncing off here creating a overhead light nice wash across her face which creates us that or with her chin up that right but we want her to look right at us so we're getting this right so if you take this picture yeah don't show me that picture cuz I'll be like what so we added a reflector right reflector really close reflector a normal position makes her ever mouth open like that right the flexors make people have to breathe through their mouths I don't know why it's weird what we're gonna do now is we added a gel to the reflector that's right cuz you can't just yellow lights you can gel reflectors because the reflector is in fact kind of like a light right I mean why not and now we're gonna go crazy by shooting a black frame alright so now we've got three gels on there because we're nuts oh yeah oh that's interesting right some of the gel like the pink one really seemed to make a lot I feel like some of the Blues up here in the shadow the green I'm not really seeing so different gels are having different effects depending on where they're falling on her face that's interesting to learn and play with right now I'm all tangled up in the corporate some resume okay other questions that was too fast I said one more thing and that was really fast try do one more all right we're almost 6:30 any questions you want to see anything yes okay so what I improved my shots well these are okay no these shots are perfect at the best structure ever going to see me no okay so of course right I'm not saying I would never say that so he's asking what would I do something in post-processing actually to be honest probably not to not to these there are simple shots they're meant to be simple I generally shoot to process meaning that if I wanted to maybe some of the funky color ones like for instance if I look at this and I think it's too dark I know you're gonna hate me for saying this but I just wouldn't use it because I would have just shot one that was correct now if I had no choice again like I had to get the shot I'm on news whatever but I'm here right if I look at this is too dark I don't like it what would I do shoot another one sees that now that's another reason to be on a tripod and have things on stands I mean we're doing a demo so I'm not doing that but frankly any of the shots that I would might use here like you might do some post-processing to it meaning that I might tweak her skin tone slightly if she had a pimple I might take it away am I gonna add light modify it try to fix it no I didn't need to do that with these I mean there's times where I shoot something where it needs nothing I shouldn't say need times when I shoot things where I know I'm going to do a lot of post-processing and when that's the case I make sure I shoot for that right I think that's the key right there's nothing wrong with using all kinds of funky things that's actually awesome to create all kinds of cool filters and effects that you like but if you're doing it as a reaction to you see took a picture and you don't like it so you're just throwing something on top to make it acceptable I feel like you might want to rethink how you shot it that's my philosophy there if you shot it with the intention of you saw some cool thing that was kinds of post-processed and you're like I wanted something like that and you shot it for that yeah of course you would do that in pose no no reason not to do post processing these pictures weren't shot with that intention so I don't see myself doing anything besides maybe a quick touch-up on the skin if I needed to but yeah I mean I don't know what else I would do to it do you have a suggestion okay no I mean if you did that's fine I don't know yeah I mean okay what's that oh yeah maybe I mean you could do that you could mess around with the color like saturation and stuff depending on the gels yeah it would really depend if you want to play with it and I think actually if that's what you're into it'd be fun to set up a bunch of gel shots get a model or a friend or whatever shoot a bunch and then start messing around with the HSL see what it does and then set up another shoot knowing what you can get with the HSL and get even better at it right and that's what I'm kind of talking about like I think doing Photoshop or Lightroom or whatever as a reaction is generally not all you want to be doing it as a planned shoot is awesome like that's where you want to be right you want to be at the point where I'm gonna shoot this like this because ultimately it's gonna look like that you know I'm saying that makes sense so no this is a demo I wasn't really shooting for anything I mean I'll give some bitters to Marissa I'm able open one social would ever mess around but these aren't you know professional shots so in that sense where I'm selling them so I wouldn't do much to it okay frequency separation whoo that's what you don't do that no I'm just kidding so frequency separation if people don't know what it is a new new way to it's the new duplicate the layer do Gaussian blur in a race which people used to do but better and nicer that's a fine technique as long as you do it within a certain amount of control if you go into somebody's skin if you don't know what this is you can look you blur out all the changes of color and then you leave all the sharpness which what you do then people start to look like weird mannequin freaky things that's that's not my style I don't like it some people love that whatever I feel like color is part of what shapes somebody's face right so if Marissa has red cheeks in her foreheads a little bit more yellow and she's got some you know around here or I want that I used that to shape her face and I start removing all that I'm blending it all together that disappears now there are people that have really patchy skin and if you wanted that's one way that you can really clean that up is pretty much the separation it's really good for that so yeah it's a pretty decent technique if you do it correctly most people don't because Franklin and I say most people don't because if I know that you're doing it you didn't do it correctly right so when I say that that's probably a gazillion people that are doing it awesome and I just don't know they're doing it because any retouching for the most part in my opinion should be so minor or subtle or done in such a way that you don't really see it unless you're again planning on doing a shot that has a certain look and you want that feel you're doing this alien funky super space vibe shot like maybe what we did with the gel set not an alien like you do but like some kind of weird if that's your style awesome but again if I shoot Marissa and she's beautiful and she's here boy said that twice and one thing I'm gonna give her a big height if I shoot her and she looks the way she looks and then I give her pictures where all of her skin is gone and she's like why am i doing that like what's the why did I even bother to shoot her right that's the way I look at it and frankly I find it to be insulting it's the same answer I get people when they're like they go and start making people skinnier or fatter and more muscle or more boobs or low but less boobs or make them tall or whatever people are what they are right shoot people the way they look as good as possible and make them happy with it so that's my philosophy on that a bit of a hippie oh sorry okay questions yes right okay so Leah's trend is to show people naturally okay good awesome I think so yeah I mean I like to shoot people the way they look at me okay this is the way I look at it when I retouch as a general rule I try to only remove what isn't always there so in other words if Marissa shows up with a big pimple on her forehead she doesn't always have that pimple right hopefully do always had the pimple no but she does have a scar right here right and you will see in every single time that I've ever shot Marissa if you look at in the picture that scar is in every single shot I lie her so it doesn't have come out super majorly you're looking like does she have a scar you haven't seen it right cuz but I don't remove the scar because that's part of her now if it was for a campaign where they wanted to remove that's different I'm sayin if I'm making a portrait of somebody anything that's normally always there freckles moles a scar unless somebody specifically asked me to remove it I would never remove something like that I think that's just not the right way to do it personally it's me you know I also don't make people's eyes more blue or more white look that's the worst okay questions we should just we'll hold on retouching yeah maybe we'll do that in overtime one time so by the way if you guys don't follow me please follow me on Facebook de noir photographer a YouTube Dan Lauren photographer you can follow Marissa Marissa Roper on Instagram or you have Mercer Rubicon right yeah and she has that nobody goes there follow her on Instagram she likes that better dave Brusco uh what's it my Instagram make sure you follow me Daniel Norton I try to put stuff all the time we are doing more and more stuff if you guys don't know Seth he's over here doing the mix but that's he's the photographer pretty awesome photographer don't tell him I said that he does the devil is here so make sure you guys sign up for those demos when you can what's that three o'clock on Mondays on Adams Instagram he does like a little quick thing called live view so check that out he did messes things up and makes it awesome message that means cool right okay all right I don't know anything else what's that he's killing it all right yes okay I'll tell you that in a second we're gonna close online and then we'll go over some of the equipment alright thanks for watching guys online we'll be back next Thursday for something and on May 6th if you guys don't know here and also drawn line I don't know if I should tell the yeah I'm I tell you basics being Seth we're doing a you got it which is like 50 bucks something you got to pay for it 75 bucks hands-on limited number of spots we're gonna be a ghost studios over here on 29th Street we've got a penthouse rent it out it's through Adorama and a bunch of brands we don't know exactly who they are yet but there'll be something good they're gonna have equipment set up we're gonna have models you guys can shoot it's gonna be all hands on it's could be like half a day on a Sunday which is May 6th that's also says birthday it's not true you guys can fly to New York get on Expedia right now book some ticket secure here book them and go on to our Eventbrite which is ou adorama.com /a minutes check that up guys sign up for that that'll be awesome you can get hands-on get to use the equipment Dave will probably be there even though he doesn't know it yet so if everybody who wants to be Dave come to that that would be the thing Marisa might be there will will say will inviter will say when we'll do a vote of which models we want to invite anyways thanks for watching guys next doors didn't we back with I think it's men and women Oh hard like softly so hard light soft light next week we'll use a whole bunch of lights we'll play around and we'll get more intense so thanks [Applause]

Channel: Adorama

Views: 147,109

Keywords: photography, video, adorama tv, adoramatv, adotv, adorama

Id: v59_rLQqvcc

Length: 89min 24sec (5364 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 19 2018