Transcripts
1. Intro: As a photographer, light is one of your biggest tools, you have to make imagery that is captivating and exciting and new. Hi, I'm Dallas. I'm a photographer and filmmaker working here in Brooklyn, New York. I've been working as a photojournalist for many years for outlets, like Bust Magazine, High Country News, and The Village Voice. I started doing portrait photography because I love making art outside with my friends. After years of doing photojournalism, I wanted to start creating the stories, instead of just following them. I love being outdoors and making photography with my friends and with my subjects, and I hope that through this course, I can help guide you in learning how to use light in different and dynamic waves to make exciting and new compositions in your work as well. In this feature class, we're going to be learning how to use outdoor light in new and interesting ways, using back-light, front light, and a few different props and learning how to use light at different times of the day. Through editing time and studio time, I personally spend so much of my work as a photographer inside at this desk. Using light in new and different ways outdoors can just bring a whole new element to how you're able to engage with your photography. Another thing that I love about going outdoors is being able to make work with my friends and with new people who I haven't yet worked with. So right now I know a lot of you are spending a ton of time inside. I know I am, and I just want to really inspire everyone to get outside. This is a class that you can use right outside in your backyard or even from your window. Using light in new and interesting ways is something that you can use in the smallest spaces or the largest spaces. So someday, hopefully we'll be able to bring this out to the big great outdoors, but for right now, let's just try it in your own backyard.
2. What we'll learn: In today's class, we'll be learning a lot of different lighting techniques. What I'm going to have you do as your projects for the end of class is choosing three of those different lighting techniques and making three different photos using those lighting techniques. My challenge to you is to try and take all of those in one day. To help you at each step of the way, what we're going to be going over today is equipment that you want to be packing to take with you, selecting a location, lens flare, back light, front light, shadows, using props, shooting at different times of the day, and we'll also be going over a little bit of editing process after your photos are taken. A couple tips for making this class experience the best you can, during the process, I want you to think about what time of the day you'll be shooting at, what props you'll be using, and how to make one location seem new throughout the process. Besides just lighting, this class is all about getting outside, that's the most important part of what we're really going to be enjoying in this classroom together. Make sure to grab a friend, get out there, and just really enjoy taking photos with these new techniques that you're going to be learning.
3. Packing your equipment: Before we get outside, we're going to go ahead and pack up our bag. I like to use a small photo backpack that I have that holds all my lenses and equipment and usually some snacks and water. The first thing that you want to think about is what lenses you're going to use. I personally always go to my 50 millimeter. Some people call this their nifty fifty and I particularly like this one because it's just easy to stay focused on your subject while still getting in a little bit of their surroundings, but not too wide of a lens. I also really like to bring a 24 millimeter with me, which is a little bit wider. You're going to get a little bit more of your surroundings and still be able to focus on your subject. Some people prefer to use a zoom lens, so you can just bring one lens and have a few options. I love to use a 24 - 70 for that. Another great lens to use for this is a 35 millimeter. I prefer the fixed lenses, but again, you can always use a zoom lens if you would prefer. I'm going to pack these two lenses. Next is my camera body. I go ahead and always use a cannon. This is my preferred choice but you can definitely feel free to even just use a camera phone or for this class, you could try to use a film camera. I usually always bring a film camera with me if I'm going to go outside for a long time, just to give me a few different options of different cameras that I can use. Once all of your camera gear is all packed up, I like to pack some props with me. Props, like I mentioned in the introduction, just give you a little bit more of an ability to create different dynamic imagery. You can just use things that are from around your house like this bottle that I found this morning in our cabinet and these are some pieces of glass that I found on the beach a couple of weeks ago when I was doing a photo shoot with someone out there. I'm going to go ahead and bring those. We'll talk a little bit more in the lesson about how to utilize those in your shoots. Today, I'm also going to try something new and bring this piece of glass that I found today in my basement, don't really know what it's going to look like. I've never used it in camera before, but we're going to go ahead and bring it and see how that works in our images today. If you're going to be outside for a long time and maybe you've decided to go to a place where you're going to be hiking or you're going to be a park for a while, always want to make sure to definitely bring your water and a snack. We'll just go ahead and put those in here. Again, if you're going to be out for a long time, you wanted to spring a few extra SD cards with you just to make sure that you have enough space for everything that you're going to be wanting to shoot out there. I'm going to go ahead and just pack those up and that is everything I need. I'm going to close this up and now I'm ready to go. When I'm out photographing, I'm pretty much always outside whether I'm on assignment for photojournalism or I'm making portraits outside. I like to always keep my equipment as compact as possible. Pretty much everything I need always fits in this little backpack. Just makes it easier for me to get around and be really spur of the moment with what I want to be shooting and how I want to be shooting it. I pretty much always used small fixed lenses and just one body and it all fits in here and I'm just ready to go with this one little bag. This is the kit that I like to use when I go out and shoot but you can use a bunch of different types of cameras. You don't have to stick with cannons. You can use whatever you feel comfortable with and again, you can also always use a film camera for everything that we're shooting today. If you don't have any of that equipment, you can always just use your phone. Your phone camera is going to be your handy, your pocket camera for any of these kinds of shoots that you want to do and you can definitely use it today as we go out and start playing around with some different lighting techniques.
4. Choosing a location: One of the first things that you're going to want to think about in setting up your shoot is, where your location is going to be. This is a class that you can take right into your backyard or you can go to a nearby park, or maybe you want to go somewhere a little bit bigger where you can also be going hiking and doing some other activities. A place that I like to think about going to is somewhere that I know is going to have a lot of biodiversity, a lot of different shots that I can set up so I like to go somewhere that has trees, also open spaces, and maybe some nearby water to just try out a few different textures when I'm thinking of making my composition. Today we're going to be shooting in Prospect Park. I come here for a lot of different shoots. I love how many different types of trees there are and different types of biodiversity that's going on inside the park. It just gives me a lot of opportunity to choose different types of shots and work my subject in new and interesting ways throughout the process. One of my favorite places to shoot in is actually just my own backyard. I love the limitation of space and trying to figure out new and exciting ways to make one space look different and interesting for every single shot that I'm choosing. When you're thinking about choosing a location it can be really helpful to think about a place that you connect with. Somewhere that you go a lot that you already have a personal history or experience with and that's going to make it easier for you to know how to set up your shot, how to choose different locations that are there so go back to some place that feels familiar, that already feels like it has a story behind it for you.
5. Choosing the right time of day: One of the things that you're going to want to think about when you're deciding on where and when to shoot, is where the lighting is going to be for each different time of day. For me personally, I love to shoot at dawn and I love to shoot at dusk. I think you get the most interesting lighting in those times of day. Today, we've actually chosen to shoot mid day where the sun is right overhead. When you're thinking about when to shoot during the day, you want to think about where the sun is going to be, how that's going to impact your shots. You want to think about the place that you're choosing to go to and how the light hits that place during different times of day. When I shoot in my backyard, I know that we don't get a lot of morning light, but we get a lot of afternoon light. I love to shoot there between 4:00 and 5:00. But just think about different times of light that you're going to be getting through out the day. When you're going to be shooting in mid day, it's mostly going to be overhead lighting, you're going to get a lot of high contrast and that might not be necessarily the vibe that you're going for. When you're shooting in the morning or in the evening, the lighting is going to be a little bit lighter and have less stark contrast and be a little bit more of a glow in your photos. Think about how the light is impacting the place that you're going to go to and think about the style of the shoots that you want to be doing, and then decide from there what time of day you're going to be wanting to go to. If I want to be shooting something where I want to get a lot of different contrasts, where I'm going to be utilizing a lot of different shadow work, then I'm going to choose midday where I know that the shadows are going to be the most intense and the contrast is going to show up them most. If I'm going for more of a softer look, then I'm going to shoot in the morning or in the evening so that I can play with the light in a way that is just a little bit softer and I'm not going to be getting those hard contrasts.
6. Working with a model: This is Steffi. She's been my model for today. Steffi is my model a lot of the time, she's one of my really good friends, and we've done a lot of work together. I think for this particular lesson, it's going to be really great for you to work with someone that you already know. It makes going out in nature a lot more fun and turns it into more of an adventure than just an assignment. Choose a friend. I love to sit down with the people that I'm going to be photographing, and just exchange a little bit of conversation and dialogue, so we get on the same vibe together, and can go into the shoot feeling really good about, what we're going to be creating together, makes it less about just the photographer and makes it more of a creative exchange between you and the person that you're going to be working with. When I'm sitting down and talk with the model before we go ahead and get started, I just like to see where they're at, what's going on with them and their day to day lives, how they're feeling that day, and I think a lot of that engagement can really help inform the way that you're going to be working with them that day. Just being able to really be there and be receptive for what it is they're feeling, and maybe bring some of that about emotion into the work that you're going to be doing with them.
7. :: DIRECT LIGHT ::: So right now I'm using some direct light to get a lot of really high contrast on Stephy's face. We have here, some really beautiful shadows that are coming across her face right here. I'm choosing that to capture and to create some interesting imagery inside the shoot. When you're shooting in direct light, you're going to be mostly working with really high contrast shadows. You want to be thinking about what part of the subject you want to have in the light, and what part you want to have in the shadow. It can be a little bit challenging, but it can be also something really fun to work with and get creative with. The difference between using backlight, and using direct light, is going to create a very different feeling or emotion in your shot. When you're using direct light, it's going to be really harsh and contrasty and that might make it seem more edgy, or having a little bit of more of a harshness to it. The next process that we're going to do is focus on backlighting, where we're actually going to have our subjects, the light coming from behind the subject. That's going to give you a much softer glow. You're not going to be dealing so much with these harsh shadows that you are when you're using direct lighting. It's all comes down to what your preferences. Some people love high contrast, super dark shadows, super light lights. Other people just prefer a little bit more of a glow where you're going to actually see more of your subject's face and be dealing less with shadows.
8. :: BACKLIGHT ::: We're going to go ahead and start on our backlight process. All we're actually doing for this is taking the same tree that we started with for the direct light and turning around and using the other side. Like I said earlier in the class, I think that it's great to try to use a small space and make it look a lot in different ways. You're going to be adjusting a lot of different things when you're switching from direct light to backlight inside your camera. You want to make sure that you're adjusting for the fact that your subject is now going to be all in shadow. That's just going to be making sure that you bring your ISO to the right place and your ISO to the right point. To make sure that their front and whatever it is you're trying to capture on them is going to be lit in the best way possible. What we're getting here with the model is really nice flow right around Steffie. That's what we want to capture when we're using the backlight technique. Is this really nice glow that's going to be in their hair and around their body. It gives them this really like ethereal and very whimsical vibe to them. That's something that I'm always trying to work towards capturing when I'm putting the light behind my subjects. Because when you're using the glow of the backlight, you're going to be able to see a little bit more softness. You're going to have a different relationship with the subject because you're going to be seeing this glow around them. It's going to create a little bit more like an ethereal sense to it. First is the sharp contrast of direct lighting. When you don't have a lot of space to work with. Going from backlight to direct light can allow you to get an entirely different feeling right in the same place that you are working with. What we just did was using this tree. We started on the side that was directly lit and then we switch to the side that was being backlight. That gives us an opportunity to make two completely different types of images in the same really small space.
9. :: LENSFLARE ::: When you're using backlighting and other thing that you can also try out is lens flare. What you want to do is put your subject in front of the light, just like this. How we have stuffing right here in front of the sun that's going to be right behind us. What I'm going do is go ahead and take my camera and just drift around her in different ways and see when I actually catch the flare in the camera. Once I get there, I'm going to take a few different photos. The best way to do capture lens flare is if you have something that's cutting the light. Right here I have these trees above me that are cutting the light a little bit. That's where I get a lot of that lens flare and starlight qualities. Another option you have is to actually put your subject right in front of the light. So it gets a little bit lower on the ground and make sure that her body, whether it's her head or maybe her shoulder is cutting the light in half. That's going to allow some of this lens flare to come through over the top of her body. So those are a few different options. As you're shooting this lens flare, you're going to want to move around a lot and just try different settings and different adjustments for where the camera is, to make sure that you catch the lens flare that you really desire. An aperture is really an important aspect of getting the right lens flare. The wider your aperture is, the more likely you're going to be letting in. That's going to give you more of this light blob effect. When you have a smaller aperture, which is actually a larger f-stop, you're going to be letting in less light, which is going to be giving you an effect with the lens flare that is a little bit more crisp and clean versus this big light blob. So you want to be making sure that you're having your aperture at the right setting, that you want to be capturing, that lens flare. So I'm switching a lot as I'm moving the aperture around to make sure that I'm getting the lens flare the right quality. I'm also switching around the ISO a lot, trying not to much to change the shutter speed because I have that set in a way that I really like. But moving the ISO around to up and down depending on how much light I need versus how high or low the aperture is. Lens flare isn't always the easiest thing to capture. It really depends on the time of day that you're shooting and what the different conditions are for you to be shooting. If you're trying it out and you're not having the best success, don't worry, it does help to shoot it a little bit later in the day. As you decide practiced a bunch of different places and didn't exactly catch the exact lens flare I wanted, what we are super excited about. But you can just keep trying. Again, it's not going to be super easy to catch it, but sometimes you'll get that exact perfect moment where it hits the lens just straight. Those are the moments as a photographer that you get really, really excited about.
10. :: SHADOW PLAY ::: When I'm out shooting in nature, I'm always looking for little spots and pockets of trees that I can shoot in. I love the background, I love the greenery and the different patterns that you're going to get from the different shadows. This is what we call dabbled lighting, where you're in half shadow, half-light. What you're going to really want to focus on for these photographs, that your settings are going to be set for both the high exposure of the spots of your subjects that are lit, and the darker exposure for the shadows. You just want to make sure that as you're photographing and checking back on your camera, that you're making sure to be in the middle of those two. In posts, you can bring up or take down any shadows or highlights for the most part. If it's a little too dark, we can brighten it, and if it's a little overexposed, we can dark in it. You want to choose a middle ground for the exposure for when you're shooting in shadow. Here we're using some different shadows to cast on Steffy's face. We just picked an area where there was really good direct lighting and show some tree branches that had a really nice shadow effect and got those focused on her face. These really interesting ways that come out with these different patterns that we're seeing, just bring a whole new different texture to the photographs that were taking today. I'm actually noticing as I'm going through these, that there's a little bit too much shadow on her face and I like the ones that are just a little bit simpler. I'm going to go ahead and try and take a few more. I'm looking through the viewfinder, I'm just trying to figure out exactly where it is that I want the shadows. You can have a really slight change and change the whole idea behind what the final image is going to look like. For me personally, I don't like to have a tone of shadows right over her eyes or right over her mouth. I think that those are more spaces that I want to see really shown in a photograph. I'm just trying to choose the best composition of shadows as I am moving the branches up and down. It's up to whoever is taking the photograph to decide what it is they're most drawn to. But that's my personal approach to how I'm choosing these. I pick a branch that I really like the design of, and then I just keep moving it up and down around her face to decide where it is. I really like the composition. Like right now I'm finding where I really like. I'm also shooting through these little leaves, which is giving me a whole new element of color. The shadows give a really stark contrast. I'm only getting her facial tone and then the darker tone of the shadows. When I bring in this nice little pop-up green in either the top corner or the bottom corner. It gives it a really nice frame for the whole shot to work together. These ones are a little bit different than the ones that we took with the branches. When you're using branches and they're really close up, you're able to get a lot of really nice shapes with a more general broad toppled lighting. You're going to get these bigger shadows and bigger shapes. It's going to be less directed. But it still is adding a really nice element to the photographs, especially if you're focusing on portraiture. You're just going to be able to really get a lot of different effects. Like this one, especially I like how we see her eye, really pops here in this one with the contrast of the shadows. I also love here how we get this greenery has this background which gives us a really nice frame.
11. :: PROPS ::: For our last lesson we're going to get really creative. When we were packing up our equipment I said that you might want to bring some props with you. We're going to be pulling those out right now. If you remember, what I brought today were some sea glass pieces. This piece of glass that I found and this bottle. The way that you're going to use these props using lighting is holding them up to your lens and getting the light to catch in different ways. You're going to want to move the angle of the prop around your lens to just change it up and see where it looks best. Really props are, if you don't have anything in your house, they're really things that you can pick up and just play around with. Anything that will catch light in an interesting way, you can use a can or a blank CD and you're just going to hold it up to the lens and try to capture the light and to cast it on the frame in different ways that are going to change as you move that prop around. I'm going to hold it up to the lens and keep moving it around and see if I can catch the light in different ways. This is just a really fun way to add another element to the photos that you're going to be taking. You can bring a really fun, dreamy quality to photos that would usually not have too much going on with them. You can try this at different times of day and you're going to see that it's going to catch different types of light for different types of day. Most of the time when I'm choosing a prop to use, I'm just going to choose whatever I have lying around and sometimes, all often, I just pick up things that I'm finding around the place where I'm actually shooting. This sea glass I really like to use, so I've kept it in my kit for a while just because it's got a lot of interesting elements going on. I think that this creates really dynamic photos that I have a lot of fun playing with. When tending to think about when you're using props, sometimes your lens will try to focus on the prop if it's in front of the lens. Another thing to think about is to actually focus your camera first until it's ready and then add the prop after you focus the camera. When using the props you want to think about some of the things that we were talking about before with the direct lighting versus the backlighting. For the last few shots I was doing some backlighting techniques where I wanted her to be more framed and have that glowy effect that we talked about earlier. Now I'm going to go ahead and try for more direct lighting and see how the light catches from behind versus as from direct light. You want to think about the way that the object is actually catching the light as well. If the light has light coming through it, it might look a little bit different than if the prop is having a light bounce off of it. You want to think about those things the same way that we were thinking about them earlier and bring that lesson plan into also what we're doing with the props right now. Using different types of framing, think about where you're putting it. I'll move mine from the side of the frame to below the frame, to the top of the frame. As you're moving the object around, think about how it's framing our subject and what that's bringing to your composition.
12. Overview: The sun is about to go down. We've used all of our hours of light that we can. We learned a lot today, we got dappled lighting, how to use props, direct light, back-light, and that mystical lens flare, and now we're going to go ahead and we're going to go back to the studio that we started in, and start editing some of our photos.
13. Editing :: Introduction: We're back in studio here getting ready to edit some of the photos that we took today. I hope you really enjoyed the section of being out there and shooting with your friends. Now that we're ready to edit, I just want to talk about a few simple tools that I'm going to be mostly focusing on. I personally keep my edits pretty simple, keep more of a natural feel. Don't over process too much. That's definitely an aesthetic choice. You can keep playing around with things beyond what we learned today. But I just want to focus on a few simple tools for today. The first one that we're going to go over is contrast. That's the first one that I'll play with. This is going to give you an idea of what a really high contrast is. Then we take the contrast away, is really low contrast more of a soft vibe. When I'm thinking about contrast, when I'm on the lower end side of contrast, it's going to make it feel a lot softer, a lot more gentle. Whereas when you have really high contrast, it's going to be more of an edgy feel to it. You're going to be getting really dark shadows, really bright brights. When you're choosing what contrasts, you want to think about what vibe you're going for. The next tool that I use a lot is clarity. I think that that's another one that really lens into deciding what your overall vibe is going to be. I generally like to edit towards the side of a little bit of a softer clarity. Really soft is going to be all the way fuzzed out like this. I'll probably usually land somewhere around here. If you want to have more contrast and more edge to your photos, a high clarity is going to look more like this. I would suggest usually when you're using these tools, you don't want to go too extreme. Landing somewhere just above or below the middle is going to give you a nice medium amount of impact. After choosing the contrast in the textures, what all the other things that I'll go in to work through are highlights, so we can look at what? No highlights is and what really high highlights are. Remember when you're using a lot of directly, you're probably going to want to bring your highlights down. Whereas linear backlight, you're probably going to bring the highlights up. Also another tool I use a lot of our shadows. Here again with bringing the shadows down, making it much darker, a lot more contrast and that versus bringing the shadows all the way up where I'm losing a lot of the contrast and a lot of the form, but I'm also heightening some of the pieces that you've lost if your shadows are too dark. Especially with backlight and direct light we're going to work a lot with highlights and shadows. I don't work too much with whites and blacks. I'll do that a little bit if I feel that the highlights and shadows wasn't enough of an impact for me. But just to give you an idea of what that looks like here is no whites and here is full weight and then the blacks here is full black and here's no black. Really similar to highlights and shadows again, I don't usually go into those but if I need a little extra pump of shadow or brightness I'll go into that. The last section that we're going to be using today is going to be our color tools. You have a few different options in your color tools. You've got luminance, saturation, and hue. For Today we're going to be mostly staying within saturation and luminance. Saturation is just going to give you an extra pop. Here let's play with the blue's a little bit. This blue background, when we bring it up it's going to bring the saturation of the blue up a lot, make it super poppy, really vibrant. Then we bring the saturation down, you're going to completely lose that and it's almost going to be more of a tone of a black or white. Working with luminance gives you this extra little glow to the color that you're working with. For example, if I wanted to bring a little bit of brightness into Stephanie's complexion, going to grab this orange and it really just lightened her face a little bit. Again, if I want to bring that color down, we can bring it down and it's going to make it a little bit darker. Luminance is just going to add a little extra glow or darkness to whichever color you're choosing. Here's what a blue would look like with a little extra luminance to it or bringing them luminance down is going to make it a little bit darker. Overall as you're using these different tools and deciding what tools to use, you really want to think about the story that you're capturing with this photo. You already have the composition and the subject in front of you, but you want to think about how that composition is telling a story and how you want to further the story that's already there. If you think about the different colors and aspects that you're highlighting, it's really going to bring in a different feeling for each of those choices that you make. For example, when I use clarity and I bring it down a little bit and it softens my photographs, I really feel that that gets it this whimsical, mysterious and fairy tale essence to the photograph. That's for me my own personal choice of how I like to choose to enhance that aspect to them playing on when I'm choosing my anesthetic. Thinking about what color choices that you're making and how they're lending to really enhancing the photo, if you bring up the color of your background, it's going to really add a lot of pop to your subject and bring the eye of the viewer right to your subject. Just think about how your editing techniques are enhancing the story and the composition of the photo. You've already discovered this new exciting dynamic compositions with the lighting techniques that we're using. Editing can bring in a whole another way to really enhance those choices and compositions that you've already made and bring a whole another really exciting element. When you're going through your photographs, sometimes in camera it can seem like you didn't get exactly what you wanted. The editing process is really the chance to heighten and bring to life those stories that maybe you didn't capture exactly in the camera and allow them to come to life in editing process.
14. Editing :: Direct Light: I already went through and chose some of my favorite photos from today shoot. We're not going to go through every single photo that we took today. I just picked out a few ones that I liked best and going to do a little bit of an overview of each of the different tools that we went over and talk about what my editing process was like and selection process was like and then we'll start going into the editing. For this first set, this was the direct lighting set that we chose and just wanted to give you a few different examples of what these photos look like before the edits. As we jump around through these, just want to talk a little bit about the direct lighting you get here. A lot of that big contrast that we were talking about, big difference between the light and the shadows. This one in particular I wanted to bring into use as the example of thinking about how the shadow is falling on your subject. This one, I don't really like how the shadows were cast from Stephie's (phonetic) nose over the rest of her face as opposed to something like this where you're getting a really even skin tone and the light is really even across her whole face. As you're doing shooting, you want to be thinking about how, when especially with direct lighting, you want to be thinking about how those shadows are actually going to be cast on her face in the end. A photo that I really liked was this one. We do get a little bit more into shadow work later, but this was a really beautiful photo that I liked. Here again, when you're working with the high contrast, you've got to think about how your shadows and your highlights are looking in the final photo. I'm going to feel this part of Stephie's face is a little bit overexposed compared to this darker part of her face. I'm just going to go over here and the first thing that I do with my edit is going to be to bring the highlight down. Just bring that down and then now she's going to even out her skin tone a little bit. So you get one similar exposure for the whole face. You want to really think about how your exposure is looking across the entire photograph and how the different light techniques that you're using are impacting the way the final photo looks. For this one, I'm also going to bring up the contrast a little bit, just to give those shadows are really nice pop. I love the way the shadow was cast across her face here, so I'm just going to bring more attention to that. I also personally really like a more of a glow in my photos, so I'm going to bring down the clarity a little and then that's going to give her complexion and faces really nice glow to it. I'm still seeing is we're editing that this part of the face still has a little bit too much of a highlight to it. I'm going to go over and use this tool up here that helps us to just target one area. I'm going to choose highlights and then I'm just going to bring the highlights down. Not too much, just a little and come over to this area, my brush is a little big. I'm just going to bring that brush size down and just hit her cheek right there. That's going to really help bring the whole complexion to one overall similar tone there. Then I have been thinking that the blacks are a little dark there on her where her hair is. I'm just going to bring those blacks up a little bit and then I noticed that I can lose some of the contrast, so I'm going to bring the contrast up a little bit after that also and then I'm going to think a little bit about what the temperature and tint is. Those are going to be your tools right up at the top of your toolbar up here. You can try out auto and see what that does. That gives us this a really nice blue tone. I'm going to stick with that because I like where that's going, but it's a little too blue for me, so I'm going to bring up the yellow a little bit, give it a little bit of a warm glow, and then maybe even a little pink going on the pinker side of the tint. I'm liking that, but I'm still and feeling a little bit like the red here is a little too intense and pulls away. I'm coming down here to my color selection. You have a few different options, you can do hue, saturation or illuminance. I'm going to do saturation on this one and just bring saturation down a little bit on the red. That skinner also help to even out the skin tone and to bring it all to one overall color. I also am loving these blues and greens that are back here. I'm going to go ahead and pop those up a little bit, so I'm going to come down here to the green, pop up that green, and then pop up the blue and it's not something that maybe even anyone else would notice in a big way, but I just love to play with the color a little bit and add that extra effect. Going to put a little tiny bit more contrast on this and then I'm going to call this one done. We'll see the difference between this is the original photo and then this is the final photo. Again, I didn't do a lot of edits on this like I said before, I really like to keep a simple edit. I'm only adjusting a few things. Just to keep that natural aesthetic is something that I really like to go for. Some of the biggest parts that I'm focusing on in this photo are just making sure that the skin tone is even overall. When you're doing these, the direct lighting, you're going to get a lot of contrast. You just want to make sure that what you're exposing for the highlights and the shadows, that you're able to balance them in the editing. Here I brought this area, I brought the highlights there down to bring this more like even skin tone you can see here it's down more. Then I really love to boost up the contrast on this one, just to pop those shadows. You see here it's a little bit lighter and then here you get a little bit darker in the shadows to really bring that out and also the contrast really brings a lot of attention to this eye which I really love seeing that the light on her eye just popping out there is, I think, really, really beautiful and then again, just bringing attention to these colors in the back they are a little bit more dull here and faded and just brought them to life a little bit. Bringing a little bit of extra color pop to this photo. Those were the main things that I was focusing on for this one. Remember again, you've got your color options down here under HSL in color and then these main tools here are usually what I'm working with and then for this photo, I also brought the clarity down a little bit just to give it that softer feel to the whole composition of the photograph. Just going to go back over here and again with this one I'm feeling because I was trying to adjust for the darker shadows back in here, I did overexposed her skin tone a little bit. I'm just going to bring the highlights down and we're going to see that that's going to bring this more golden hue into her skin as we start to get more of her skin color unless of that blown out light. Then again, for this one, I'm going to bring down the clarity. That's a little too much, so just something there right in the middle and then going to just bump up the contrast a little and we try to go with this auto see. I wanted the auto for that one and noticed that it's away too golden for me. I'm going to actually go back to the original one I shot and just bring it down more into this blues. Yeah. I really love that and if you wanted to have more fun with the color, you can punch up these pinks more, go into the green. I think that that's a great effect. That's not necessarily my style, so I'm going to keep it more like this, but that's a really fun thing to play with. Same with these colors down here, if you're wanting to go with something a little more fun, you can really start to bring these other colors out and have a lot more fun with your background colors, like what I can do with the sky here. That's an area that you can really let your imagination takes you to a new and exciting place with your photography is giving those colors just a different effects and how that contributes to the overall photo. This is the original photo from that one and then here it is with all of the edits. Like I said, I don't usually do a lot of the color but in this case, I actually think it's really fun to have that extra green and blue pop. The original edit is really, really soft, really light, almost pastel and here we brought up the contrast, brought up those colors, and just gave this one much more of a punch and I think that color is a really nice backdrop for Stephie's face and really brings the viewer right into the center here.
15. Editing :: Backlight: Next, we're just going to go over the backlight section. If you remember from class, we actually stayed in the same area and just turned Steffi around. So it's going to be interesting to look at how different the photos can be, even when you're right in the same location. As you're editing the photos, you're going to want to be thinking about the fact that you're really exposing for two different exposures here. Because you're thinking about the way that the back job is, which is going to be really bright, and the way that your subject is lit, which is going to be a lot darker because the shadows on her face. The upside of working with this lighting is that the way that your subject's face will look is going to be very even skin tone. Unlike what we're working with the high contrast of the direct lighting, this is going to be even all across just because the light is coming from behind. So that's the benefit to working with it. The challenge of it is that you do have a little bit more editing to do in post, because you have to be working with both those adjustments of the light in the background and then the darker light of the foreground. So we're going to go ahead and just look at a few of these photos. These were some of my favorites that we took during this session. So here, I'm actually getting a lot of light coming from behind Steffi. So that's giving her this really nice glow effect, which is in a lot of contrast to this one where the light isn't coming from behind, but it's just working across her hair here. So we're getting a lot of nice glow on her hair. But we're not getting that overall even glow that we're getting in something like this. So those are the two different ways that a back-lit photo is going to look. Here's another example of that. Here we have this really nice overall glow. Then here it's a more direct glow that's just right behind your subject, and you're going to get a lot more clarity here with overall where the subject's face, whereas here you get this misty look and you don't have as much clarity. So it's really up to you what your choice of aesthetic is here. Here again with the glow versus this one that is less overall glow and more of this background halo around your subject. So I'm going to go ahead and edit this one. We cut the light here with this big, huge piece of the tree. I just love how we are getting this filter light coming across the whole photograph. So again, like what we were talking about earlier is that you have to think about the fact that you're editing for two different exposures. You got this really, really light background and then darker shadows on your subject's face. So what I'm going to do first is bring up these shadows and bring more light into the subject's face. I think it's easiest to bring the shadows up first and choose how you want your subject to look and then start working with the background from there. So after that, I'm going to play around a little bit with the highlights. I think I like it there. We start seeing this background come through with the blue. I personally like to get more blue into the photographs if I'm showing the sky so it doesn't just look like this whited-out blob. So I'm going to see if bringing up the blue saturation helps at all. That helps a little bit, but not too much. So I'm going to go ahead and go back to this tool and with the highlights again, like we used before, and I'm going to make it a little bit bigger since I'm working with a bigger area and just there. That's we really start to see more of the blue in the sky there. Which is what I really like in these photos. I'm even going to come in here and try and look up those highlights in this area. Then we really start to see more of Steffi's face starting to have a little bit more of a pop here. So now we're going to go to contrast. I'm just playing with contrast a little bit. I love how this is really starting to bring out these highlights around Steffi's face. We're really starting to see this glow coming through right there. Then again, I love to bring down a little clarity and just give it that soft touch, just to give you an example of what it would look like if I took the clarity of the other direction. We just start to get more of these hard lines. This is definitely just different aesthetic approaches. I like to have a really softness in my photographs. So I'm going to bring down that clarity and leave it at that softness. I'm feeling overall, it's a little bit overexposed. So I'm just going to bring this down and then maybe bring up some of my blacks. Again, with the blacks and the shadows, that's really for just impacting your subject's face and bringing light into it where it needs to be. Then playing a little bit with the exposure again. Since we're doing just these really simple edits, I'm going to leave it at that. Here's the difference between the two. See this first one is a lot darker and the background of the sky is really faded whereas with the photo after the edits, we really getting this nice blue pop in this background and starting to see a lot more of Steffi's face. Again, here's the original, really dull and a little bit too dark and then this is much brighter. We're really getting that blue coming through. I think that bringing the blue out also just really draws us into looking at the subject. This was the color balance between the two. So next, we'll work with one of these ones where her face is a little bit darker. Let's go ahead and do this one. So when you're thinking about back-light and we're going get a little bit more with the lens flare, but like I mentioned before, you can get this really nice glow throughout. But if you cut the light out entirely, you're going to get a very different photo. So this is actually the same composition pretty much but it's a completely different photo. It's much more something that I'll probably lean into using more contrast here. Again, with what I was saying before, using back-light, you get this really even tone on your subject's face versus the harsh contrast that you have to edit through when you're using direct lighting. So this one without the glow, without any light filtering into the lens, we're going to just work with this contrast that we have now. So I'm going to lean into that a little bit and just boost the contrast a lot and see how that looks. I think this is great because we're really getting this nice glow around Steffi's whole frame here and we're also getting her eyes popping a lot. This photograph versus when you're letting in light is going to have a little bit more that harsh, edgy feel to it. This one is a little bit more light, a little bit more whimsical. Then this one, I feel just has a little bit more like intensity to it. So again, we want to bring up the shadows as our subject is just more lit with shadows, but I don't want to bring them up too much because I do like this dark feeling we have with this photo. Again, I'm going to go here with the blues and try to just bring those blues up, and we want to work with these highlights, see, we're starting to really get those background highlights coming down and starting to get the blue to come through. So I think now I'm just going to go ahead and use this tool, bringing up the highlights on our subject. So just a little bit. It's not something that's even super noticeable. I think also what I want to do here is play around with the shadows. I like how we're bringing a little bit more lightness into Steffi's face. I'm starting to love the way that this is coming through a lot more. We're getting this really nice glow all around her. Again, I'm just going to bring the clarity down a little bit to just soften. I'm going to go down here for luminance. I use luminance a lot when I'm working with people's face tones and trying to just soften their face tones or get a more even complexion. So I'm going to play with some of these colors that are coming through. It's not always super obvious, you've got to play around and see. Here we're seeing this is like a really extreme version of lightning that. I don't want it to be that much but I do you want to give her a little highlight on the face here. So just going to bring that highlight up a little bit, and then I think I'm even going to go back to this guy and bring down the clarity a little bit more just to give a nice overall soft complexion here. The shadows are a little bit harsh. So wanting to just soften that up. Sticking with these more simple editing techniques. As you can see, I'm really only using a few things. Contrast, highlights, shadows, whites. Some of these, I'll get a little bit into the blacks, but not too much and then clarity. So that's pretty much where I always stay if I want to use a little extra pop or play a little bit with color, I'll come down here. But mostly, just staying in this realm of tools. I think that you don't have to play around too much with a photograph using too many different ideas to still really give it a lot of extra texture to it. So here's the difference between these two. Again, we really are just bringing out a lot of color here and bringing a lot more light into her face. When you're doing these back-lit shots, you really want to start thinking about how you're going to bring light into the face because it is all in shadow.
16. Editing :: Lensflare: We are back here with the elusive mystical lens flare that we've spent so long capturing earlier on today. Lens flare, like I mentioned earlier, is something that you're not always going to get it exactly right the way you want it. Today, I wasn't super excited with a lens flare I was capturing, the sun was a little bit too high and the leaves weren't necessarily grown out enough where we were shooting to really be cutting the light the way that I wanted. Just remember that when you're capturing lens flare, there are a lot of different ways that you can utilize this tool. Even though I didn't capture the exact lens flare that I wanted, we did get a lot of different types of the way that the light did filter through the lens. Just remember that you might not get the exact one that you want, but keep playing around with it, and you will eventually get something that is good to play with. Some of the ones I want us to just go through here. This is an example of lens flare that I really liked. This is where we were using the subjects actual body to cut through the sunlight that was coming from behind her. We are getting here this really nice starlight effect and then also getting this flare popping out over here. I really loved the way that this one came out. I thought that was great. Again, using your subject's body to cut through the light is a great way to use lens flare. Here's an example of an aperture that I think was a little bit too wide. I was probably on an f-stop, I would say 4.5 around there. That's when you're going to start to get it to blob a little bit more versus having this more clearly defined starlight coming through. Remember that as you're choosing your lens flare settings. But you want to really be thinking about the aperture. The wider the aperture, the more light you are going to be letting in, and the smaller the aperture, the more you're going to be getting these direct starlight points. I'm just going to go through these different ones that we captured today. Here again, this is probably my smallest aperture that I used all day, I was probably somewhere around maybe in F-16 or so, and you're getting these really, really pointed lights. Again, it's all just about aesthetic preference. Here we are again, this one is super, super nice, really beautiful the way that it's coming over her shoulder. Again, thinking about where you're placing your subject, this one coming over her shoulder versus this one more around her head. You're getting different qualities of light depending upon the way your subject is standing. But I love the way this one came out, this a super beautiful. Then with this one, this is having a whole another effect I wasn't even necessarily going for, but I actually love how we're getting this really cool, like blue coming across here and then this rainbow light over here. Yeah, as you're going through your photos and working with ones there specifically, know that if you're not capturing the exact idea that you're going for, that you're probably still getting some really magical notes there inside your frame. Light is as much as it's something that we can play with, it's not necessarily something we can control. Get used to that as you're out there outside and when you're at favorite places, maybe you're getting a little frustrated that you're not getting the perfect shot. That light is something that you have to play with and not think about exactly what it's going to look like. But just have more of an open mind about what your final subjects or your final composition is going to look like. Again, this one has this really beautiful hue to it. This one was way too dark, there's definitely a tendency to get your subject too dark in order to get the lens flare. You want make sure as you're choosing your aperture points that you're thinking about how your subject is lit. You can get a really amazing lens flare if you go to a dark in f-stop, but then you're going to lose your subject. Just be aware that you want to be lighting your subject as much as you also want to be capturing the light that's coming through. Again, similar with this one. Really beautiful lens flare, but it's not really a usable photograph. Again here, we'll just go through a couple more. I love just this little tiny, tiny flare we got over here, it was really nice. Then this one again, more like broad strokes here. Instead of trying to capture a small, tiny point, we're getting these really big strokes coming across and getting a little bit of this nice lighting over here. There's just so many different ways that you can capture the elusive lens flare and just be really ready to meet the light words add. Try not to get frustrated by not getting your immediate outcome, and just be more open to the outcomes that you are getting because you'll often capture something really beautiful that you weren't even intending to if you just keep an open mind. I think for this one, I want to go ahead and edit this. I just really, really I'm drawn to the way this star-lighted out here. I think this whole composition is really, really beautiful with, step these hands. I was lucky enough to have a model that I've worked with a lot. She brought some of her own props, so she actually brought this scarf we ended up using a lot. When you're working with your model, if you want to prompt them to bring some of their own props. I know we talked about some of the props that we wanted to bring in our bag, but it's fun if your friend or model brings along their own props that they have a personal connection too, where feel goes with their own aesthetic. It really creates a fun dynamic between the two of you to let them also have a little bit of creative freedom in the photographic process together. We'll get started with this one. Again, you got to remember that you're editing for two different exposures here. We've got this really, really light sky, and then a little bit darker of a subject. I'm going to start again like I did the last one, we're doing the shadows first. I'm just going to bring the shadows up on Stephi, I love seeing how we got brightens for face. We're going to get these more tones in the eyes right here, and we just really started to see her face brighten up. Can we go next to contrast? I want to make this one too contrasted just because I do like the softness of how this one is looking. When you bump up the contrast, I think that it gives your photographs a little bit more of like a harsh look or an edge you look. You think you want keep that in mind about what vibe you're going with. For the photo again, I really like to keep my photos super soft and natural, so I'll almost always keep the contrast pretty low and bring the clarity down. Then I'm going to go back up here and bring our highlights down. I'm muting out bigger, mask here. Just loving watching the details come out, seeing more leaves as we bring this down. I think it's so fun when you're editing, how you're really just unveiling the photograph. Sometimes when you look at things in the camera, you can feel a little bit disheartening if it's not exactly the way that you thought it was going to look, and then you get it on-screen here and it's just so exciting to start to see the different elements really started to come to life. I'm loving this, I feel like she just looks like she's on some magical adventure here. I'm going to go back up to these blues, I'm loving bringing these blues. I'm going to saturation and bringing these blues up. I'm really seeing that fun blue part in the background. Then also I think I'm going to see what the green is going to do to those leaves. Yeah, I love this extra color pop we're getting back there. I think it's really fun. Bring the exposure down just a little bit to bring some other background in. Then going to bring up the blacks, I want to make sure that my subject is really the main focus here. Tiny bit more contrasts, and then going to bring some illuminance into the face like we did for the last one. See how we're getting a little bit of those highlights just so a little bit to just brighten the face. This one might be a fun one to try to do a little adding some more colors like we were talking about before. Again, you can really just play around with these a lot like this might be a cool vibe if you're going for a more yellow, warm tone. I'm going to keep it pretty much where it was. Right there. Just going back and forth to the original, so here's our original photograph. Really, really dark. Again, for the colors are a lot more dull. Here, we're just bringing a lot of life, I think, into the face here and each photo tells a story. I think that when you start working on the editing process, start thinking about how you're really bringing that story to life through the different colors that you're bringing out or the different highlights that you're bringing up. How is it all contributing to the overall story that you're telling? Just being aware of how these different micro changes, can really add a lot.
17. Editing :: Shadow Play: Here's our dappled light section. I'm just going to quickly go through some of my top favorites. Remember, as we're making these, we were really thinking about the composition, the foreground and background composition of what we were using to frame subject space and then also what shadows we are casting on their face. This came in two different sections. One where we're using this very direct shadow using props or just branches that we found that we liked. Then we also had this other section where this is more of a dappled light effect. Again, with the dappled light you really want to be thinking about how your subject is being lit. This one is something that I actually overexposed and that is easy to do when you're trying to capture light and shadow. But it's better to be a few f-stops down, just to make sure it's easier to bring up information out of the shadows than it is to bring down information from the highlights. So it's better to underexpose like I did here versus overexpose like I did here. So when you're shooting, it's just something to remember. This is one that I really loved where we are just using these natural tools to create this shadow on her face. But the ones that I want to edit from this section are some of these I really liked the way that these were coming out. Let's go ahead and work with this one. So this one, we're using a kind of direct light effect. We're getting a lot of direct light here and a lot of high contrast. We can also see that kind of here in her eyes were getting a lot of contrast, and we've got this really beautiful light that we're capturing right on her eye. So I want to keep a lot of that information so, I'm going to just bump the contrast up a little bit. Again with direct light I love to lean into the contrast, and instead of trying to soften it, just adding it, bumping it up a little bit and really getting those shadows to pop. I am going to bring the highlights down a little on this one, it's a little bit too bright. You're probably going to end up seeing that a lot when you're working with shadow work inside dappled light. They are going to probably be bringing down the highlights quite a lot just because you're trying to also expose for the shadow part of the subject so, just remember that kind of balance. Then I'm going to bring the clarity down here just to give it that soft glow that I really, really like. Again, I want to play here with some of the colors. I think that this one with a little bit of a pink tint to it actually looks really, really nice so, I'm just bringing up that pink tint. Then I want to play with, again with the way these front leaves are. So I'm going to go back down on my color and just see what the screen looks like. It's actually not changing too much so, I'll just leave it like that, let's play with the aqua, that is it. Not really seeing too many changes here. So I guess I'm just going to leave it at this brightened green. Then this one is just, I think such a beautiful photo on its own without a lot of edit. Here actually all I did was tints, contrast, highlights, and this green coloring and clarity. That's just four really simple tools that I used and then I'm already really liking this photo so, I'm just going to leave it at that. Let's just look at the difference. Here the colors are a lot more flattened and again, Stephie's complexion is a little bit overexposed. Here we go to the final product, it's just much more of like a rosiness to it, and we're really seeing these shadows pop in this kind of last rendition. I just don't think that you need really too many edits. If you have a really interesting and dynamic composition, you don't really mean to change too much, just a little contrast boost, bring down the clarity, then again I love this kind of rosy glow so, I'm going to keep going back to that. Then yeah, I just think that these are really kept simple are really nice. Again, you can play with the editing however you want, but I think keeping it simple is really nice.
18. Editing :: Props: This was the last section of the day where we were starting to use some of the props that we had in our bag. I'm just going to go over a few different tools that we used. For the first one we were using this sheet of glass. I was pretty much just putting the sheet of glass right in front of the lens, so it was catching the light really nicely across it and giving this really awesome lens flare effect. But you can see here, so these are a few that we took and I want to talk about also the difference between using the direct light and the backlight. When you're using the props, you can start using some of the other techniques that we use from the earlier in the day. With these props, I shot them with in both direct light and backlight, so here's the using the glass, this glass sheet with using backlight and then here it is using direct light. I think you're getting a really nice, when you're using direct light, you get these really cool reflections and when you're using backlight, you're more so getting these flares going across your subjects. You want to think about how the objects is actually catching the light and what that's going to look like in your final product. Next we have this glass bottle. Again using it, this was using it with direct light. It's catching the light really nicely and you get this great green color that's really fun, bringing another element into the composition of your photography. There's another one with glass. Then today, I didn't love the way that the sea glass was looking. Some days it captures the light really nicely and some days I don't like it as much. Today I wasn't super stoked about how these came out. But here's a really nice one. We're getting this really nice glow on the side of the frame. Here's another one, mostly using backlight for these. The direct light ones were a little bit too bright for me. That's an overview. I think I'll go ahead and get started with editing one and these ones with the bottle. I really love this bottle color and I'm excited to play with that. I'm actually going to go ahead and just start with the green and bringing that up right there. I'm just really loving this green color so much. I think it's so fun and bringing this aqua color up also, you can see how that's changing over here in this area. Sometimes the changes of the color are pretty subtle. But if you look at the difference between the before and after, you're going to actually see that it does bring a lot into the final photo. I'm going to bring the contrast up on this also and I'm seeing this yellow over here, I want to play with that bringing that up. I love how we're playing with these really bright colors in this one. I'm going to bring the clarity down again and I'm just, this one is just turning out to be so fun. This is what you're really going to find with your props, is that you get a lot of chances to make pretty normal, basic photos into something super fun and playful. Can I bring the highlights down? I feel like she was a little bit overexposed here, so just bring down that light on her face and let's see how this tan looks if we change it a little bit making a little bit more blue. Yeah, I'm loving that and then just to keep on this trajectory of playing with color, I'm going to bring the highlights down out here and bring this, that's going to make this blue pop a little bit. Yeah, so let's look at the first one. Again, super muted colors. A beautiful composition, but definitely with just bumping up the contrast and playing with a little bit of the colors were getting a really fun photograph that is just bringing me into this super dream state. I feel like I don't know what she's looking at, but it's very dreamy, whatever it is. I guess, we'll just do one more from this section. I really want to play around with some of these ones with the glass. Like I said in the beginning, I had never played with this glass piece before. Let's go ahead and do another one with a direct light. I'm just bumping up the contrast, bringing down some of these highlights, softening up with the clarity and then I even want to come in to the section with these trees and using the contrast boost. Just really bringing up, playing up this reflection that we've got right here. The props are super fun because you can really have a good time with just playing around with what effects. I'm loving all of these different reflections that we're getting and just boosting those up a ton. Yeah, I love what we just did there. Then I'm feeling like her skin complexion is looking a little orange. I'm just going to go back into our illuminance and try to soften that by just bringing up that highlight and then maybe bring the exposure down just a little bit here. Yes. Again, we're keeping these edits really simple, I'm just doing a few things but we're getting huge impacts by just playing with just a few simple tools. That's another great reason why using Lightroom is such a great tool, is that you can really keep it simple. You don't have to know any complicated Interfacing Systems and you can still do a lot with your photographs. Those are all of the different techniques that we have, that we were taking photos of and we definitely went over a lot of different concepts. Remember, always have great go-to is contrast and clarity for capturing different fields or vibes for your photograph and then once you figured out where you want your clarity and contrast to be, starting to go in there even a little bit further and playing with highlights, shadows.
19. That's a wrap!!: Those are all of our edits that we have today. Just remember that mostly what we were playing with those starting with the contrast and doing some clarity adjustments, really picking what vibe you want to go for in the photograph. Do you want it to be soft and have more of like a glow and what was cool vibe to it, or do you want it to be more harsh and edgy and higher contrast? Be thinking about that when you enter the editing process. Just go ahead and really enjoy playing around with the photographs that we took out there. That wraps up our class for today, we did spend a lot of time learning different lighting techniques from dappled light, direct light, back light, how to catch the ever elusive lens flare and using props I'm really excited to see what you all come up with out there. You don't need a lot to do this lesson plan. Just grab a camera and a friend and go to your favorite spot. It can be in your backyard, a local park, your favorite place to go hiking. All you need is your camera or you can even do this on an iPhone. There's tons of editing softwares that you can use for the different edits that we were talking about. Really just go out there and have a good time. One of my favorite parts about doing photography is spending time outside with my friends and learning these lightning techniques and utilizing them in the lesson plan and sharing our lessons with a class, is just going to be a really great way for you to go outside and have a great adventure, and also come up with new and beautiful photographs of your own. After you get out there with your friends and create some new dynamic and beautiful compositions. Please, upload them into the project gallery. I'm excited to look at everything that you come up with and share some of my thoughts with all of you. Really excited to see what you're doing out there in the world and excited to be connecting.
