Transcripts
1. How the light behaves Intro: How the light behaves. Hi, I'm Ken. I've been a photographer for 20 years and I love working
with natural light. Shooting film for ten years taught me to pay close attention to the light in each moment instead of trying to
fix things in post. In this course, I want to inspire you to seeing the
world with different, with more aware eyes
to what the light does and how you can use
it in your photography. I don't just want to show you set ups to copy
and paste though. Instead, I want to take you on a journey from
daytime to the night. We will explore different
kinds of shade, direct and indirect light. And play with a balance of different light
sources and colors. Oftentimes just a
few centimeters will make or break an image. And finding that sweet spot is the magic that we're
going to explore today. This pretty harsh sunlight. The shadow that is
now in her face, it comes from this leave. As you can see, this
leave that's about 30, 40 centimeters away
from her face. The edge that it throws, it's much more
defined what we've seen before from the tree
that's six, 7 meters away. This is like calling for
composition. I love this. It is important
for me to help you understand the principles
of what the light does. You can apply it to
whatever situation you find yourself in
with your camera. I believe learning to be aware of the light
you're working with is essential as you grow
your understanding of it. Your photography will
make a leap and you will feel much more confident
in your creative process. Whatever kind of photography
it is that you're doing, there's a lot to explore and it's going to be fun. Let's go.
2. Valuable info before we get started: I'm happy you want to learn about the light with me today. I want to say a few words
about the gear that I'm using and how I treated the
image files afterwards. Just for you as a reference, I'm using Fuji cameras
with APSC sensors and lens equivalents of 35.50
millimeter on a full frame. The color profile that I'm
using is classic chrome, which is also available
on older Fuji cameras. This profile does bring
in some contrast, but it doesn't have any
crazy color shifts. Port 400 preset or
something similar You may buy and possibly tweak for 5 minutes will give
you a similar result. Then in capture, run my
raw converter software, I corrected some
minor white balance, misreads, added sharpness
and a little bit of grain. That's it. That
doesn't mean that I wouldn't necessarily be happy with the images as they are. It's just so you
see the real thing. The exposure settings do not
really play a role here, but when they do, I will
mention it during the course. Generally, I'm trying
to be at 125th of a second or faster
F stop of two to 2.8 and I'm using whatever ISO
is necessary to get there. I will be taking
images that are not necessarily good for different reasons,
although there are some. This course is not to show you how to take great portrays, but it's about seeing the light. I believe it's important to
not cut out the process of getting to those results that
I would consider good ones. Otherwise, you wouldn't
learn anything. When you are in a
portray session, it's completely
normal to be going through that search for
the light that you prefer. Last but not least, a couple of words about the way that
I interact with Irina, the friend that I will
be photographing today. Because I will be explaining a lot of things to the camera. I'm losing the connection to her all the time
during the session. I also move around and
let her wait a bit as if she's a puppet and not a human being
with the feelings. This is not how I would
usually interact with someone. When I'm taking portrays, I would be trying to build trust and establish
a safe space. In this case though, she knew what she was getting
into and we have a good level of trust and friendship
built that allows me to work the way that
I do with her today. To learn more about
how I take portrays of people and what it takes
to create that safe space. See my course on
portway photography, but today's course is
all about the light. Let's go ahead and jump in and explore the first
light situation.
3. Reflecting light: Antonio who's filming us
is sitting on a stone. And the stone is been hit by
sunlight, Direct sunlight. Everything that's been
hit by direct sunlight, it reflects the light. Not sure we can see it
now, but I'll show you. If there's this
reflecting surface, then there's just not this
vibrant light in her face. We're now about a mere and a
half away from this stone. I'm going to take a photo of
the situation as it is now. Now what I want to do is slowly, slowly ask arena to come towards the stone
and keep facing, facing the stone, Antonio. Please keep looking
at her face as she goes closer, another step. You can probably already see how this light gets more intense now that we moved
the step further. We also have the sunlight
hitting her hair directly. It's actually a bit strong, would be nicer if
it was a bit less. But what I'm trying to say is we're using two
light sources. We're having the actual sun directly hitting her
hair from the back. And we have the stone that is not just as bright
hitting her face. Now let's move
closer and closer. Oh, now the sun is
getting a bit softer. Okay. And let's move closer
to the sun, maybe down here. Can you go on the
on the side Yes. That you like, Goll?
Yes, Yes, yes, yes. And bring your face
after a little bit. What we're having here right now is that there is no
direct sun on her. It's a little bit misty, but it's direct sun. The light that comes from the stone is not as strong as the light that
directly from the sun. I do this in many situations. I think it's important. Basic fact, know or to
consider is to ask the light. What are you trying to tell me or like if I am in a situation, what is the most favorable
light situation? So I don't know if it's
going to look good, but the light is kind of
asking me to try expose for the sun side of her face and not anymore the shade
side of her face. Let's go back a little bit further to the stone but so that the sunlight still hits the
other Yes. Side of your face. So other than before where
I exposed for this side, the side that's been
lit by the stone, I'm now going to expose
for, for the sun. I can see that her eye, it's in the shade. It
doesn't have lights. If you now move up a little bit and a little bit
towards the sun and a bit more up when I
expose for the sun, we could now see that this
side falls off a lot. It's always not just about the light that
we use to expose, but it's also about the
contrast to everything else. When I go in direct sunlight, it means in this case where
there is not dark jungle, but it's just way far away from the amount of
light that hits her face. That means everything
else just falls off into darkness very quickly. It's an element of composition that you should always consider. And we're going to see a
few other examples of this. Let me check something else. Okay, hold on, keep rolling.
I'll get something. My white towel. So let's
see what we can do if we don't use a dark
stone as a reflector. A white tower. You look at her face, Antonio. While I'm putting in the tower, we can see in her eyes. Now there is a huge white space that's reflecting into her eyes. Again, it brings this
beautiful spark in here that it was there before
in this situation before, but it wasn't as strong. And we see that now the light
that reflects back into her face is so strong,
Is it as strong? It's almost as strong as the sunlight that hit
her face directly. It makes a huge difference what surface you're using
to reflect light off of. Now, until you look at her face and you
keep looking there, I want to do the magic
and pull away the tower. And you keep looking
at her face. This was the exact
same photo taken, same settings, nothing changed. All I changed was the surface that the
light reflect off of. It makes a huge difference. Remember, we can do that
again further away. Maybe this makes it
more clear than before. Again, if you can move away
slowly from the towel, make a step away
as same setting. Still you can already see the amount of light that gets to her face already
decreases a lot. Look at me, just keep
the head where it was. Just the eyes, same settings. And make another step. And now I'm using
the same settings and she's really dark. So I'll just the exposure a little bit and take
the exact same photo. Again, the relationship of these different light sources
and the relationship of the light that's in her face to the brightness
of the background, that changed
significantly within the space of what is this, not even a meter, it's subtle. And we're going to
have other situations where we're going to see how a five centimeter move can make a great photo from a photo
that just doesn't work. At least in my eyes. As always, people take the greatest photos in the
worst light situations. A red shirt. It's not just
brightness of surface, it's also the color of the
surface already you can see. Now let's do that
again. I'll put it there. You keep looking. You see how that
brings a red color in her face just by putting
a red shirt in the sun. We'll take a photo on this. Let's move slowly. So yes, yes, it's questionable. Coming made it better. Again, it's a matter of play between the
two light sources. Means the sun coming
from here and the sun reflecting
off of the red shirt. Yeah, but I wanted
to show it to you. Go to a reflecting light source, the more effect
it's going to have, let's pull it away again. You look at the shirt. Much
more of a colorful light. A bit greenish because
there's lots of green. There was some green
leaves here that have been hit by the light. Yes, that was our first
setting on our journey today. Simple. There is a light source that is being the direct sun. And there is a light source
that is a stone added with a white towel once to
make the reflection brighter, and then added a red red
shirt to give it a color. Then we had variations of how
close we are to the stone. Then I wanted to show you
these two images side by side, as in this moment, we took away the
sunlight that was hitting her face and changed
the exposure a little bit. Yeah, we can just
see here how going from two light sources
that hit the face, the stone with a towel
and the sunlight, to going to just
one light source, the stone with a towel. How that makes the whole
image appear differently. And that was a very small
movement that we did there, but it changed quite a lot. Of course, if you're
working in the studio, you can do the same, take away one of the flashes or bring in the strength of one of the
flashes down a lot. That's what we get in
quite a short movement.
4. Checking the space / The lightmeter: Now we're moving to
the next situation. What I do there and
what I do every time I go photograph somewhere is
I'm checking the space, whether that's a
portray situation where I'm there is this
side of the room and there is this window
and maybe there is another window and yeah, it may be just one place. Or if I'm in a
documentary situation, then it's something that I need to do again and
again and again and again because the setting
changes all the time. And I need to be
very, very quick because I can't
stop the situation. And so I need to understand
the light first. I, I need to have
it like right away. I need to get into the room or the situation and
understand it already. Think about where are
possibly good places to stand in and take photos in different angles and
maybe what could change, what happens if they decide
to turn this light down or, I don't know, close the windows or what
happens if a cloud comes? Maybe there is an open space
in which I'm photographing. And it's super harsh
sunlight and it's difficult and it's not favorable
for what I want to do, but it's a cloudy day. Sometimes a cloud comes through a place that is a space that may be
difficult to photograph, suddenly may have super
soft light and is super good when you come into any situation
checking these things and being aware of these things. That's your joker that
makes you so quick and it gives you the ability to take photos that you
otherwise couldn't. Because you already have
an understanding of the light situation and the possibilities,
how it may change. Whenever you go
into a situation, even without your
camera, whatever, sitting in the bus or something, look around, understand the
light, helps you a lot. Now for the next space we go to, I want to show you
the light meter. This is my light meter.
Very basic thing. It measures the
light through here. It does that, or I
use it by holding it towards the light source that is blighting my
subject or object. I press the button
on the side and it measures the light
that comes in. Now, there are three things
to find on this light meter. There is the time. This is something that I can change
on this light meter. There is the ISO, this is also something
I can change. There is an F stop, this is something that
I cannot change. This is the variable that
the light meter has. It gave me a reading
of 1,600 ISO, That's what I previously said, and I said 125th of a second, and the reading that
it gave me is 2.8 0.7 which is a bit of
a weird number, right? Like you don't find that really 2.8 0.7 Like it doesn't say
that anywhere on your camera, what the light meter does, it says there are ten steps
between 2.8 Where is it here? Ten steps between
two point 8.4 It's saying the exact amount would
be to be at 2.8 and 710. Now you can make the decision. Some older lenses, maybe they only have full and a half stops, so you can only go 2.82 point 8.5 and four newer
lenses in cameras, they have steps of thirds or maybe even quarters of stops. You can now decide
where you want to go. If you're using a
digital camera, you would rather want to
under expose because it's easier in the raw file to
pull the darks up again, but your highlights
can burn out very quickly on a film camera,
it's the other way around. It's easier to pull down
the highlights on a film, but it's more difficult to pull up the dark
areas on the film. Yeah, what I can
do, bar is it here? I can change the, SO I can say, let's say I don't have
an ISO 1,600 film, I only have a 400 film. Then it says, if you're still using
the same shutter speed, 125th of a second, your F stop should be
1.4 0.7 close to two. There is a good chance you may
not have such a fast lens. What you would have to do is change the shutter speed
to 60th of a second. One, stop slower
the shutter speed. And then you would
have two point 0.7 almost 2.8 If I
change it to a 30th, then I'm to four. And this is how
light meter works. Very basic tool, my Hustle blood doesn't
have any electronics. It's completely mechanical. Which is, this is why I'm using the light
meter in this course. I'm using it just to
visualize when I say, oh, look how the background falls off and how
it gets darker. With this, I can put a
number to it and say, look, it's two stops less because
the light meter is telling me this is how the
light meter works. Now we're going to
go and continue in the next situation. Enjoy.
5. Open shade / Diferent contrasts: We went to another playground. The restaurant. This is a
very interesting space. It's an open shade
and we're going to be in different open
shade situations. Light situations that I like very much and
like working in. Actually, we've
been here before. In another video taking
portraits of Atada. We're here to a bit
more in detail. Show you what light is
going on in this place. Again, bring your
awareness to things. The sun is about there
and it's 04:00 slowly, it's going down a little bit. It's nowhere near sunset, But this is where the sun
shines on the parking spot, this is where it
shines on the trees. Generally, this is a open space. What will be
interesting for us also is that it's shining
here on the ground, and we'll be playing
with this in a minute. But before we do that, I want to bring your
attention also to this side which is
also somewhat open. The sun is not shining
directly on these plants, it's not like a very open space. The trees are rather close to
the place where we are in. And the roof there is the back, which doesn't have
any light except a little bit of light that
falls on it and reflects back, but that's not very much here. Again, trees and plants that are also pretty close to the roof space that we're in, but the sun is shining on it. No light from the, from some light from here. Coming from the reflection of the green trees and a
space that is more open. And where the light
shining on trees, shining on the parking down
there and shining on here. Now I want to move
around this space with arena and keep looking at her face and eyes closely and
show you how things change. Yeah, it's a very simple set up, but we'll see that there is lots of change here
depending on where you are. What I first want to do
is start in the back. I'll take a photo of her
just to see where we start. It's a very even light. It's very soft. It doesn't create a
lot of contrast again, this can be something
that you want, it can be something
that you don't want. I'm just here to bring your attention at what
is and why this is. You can see that on
this side of her face, there is a little bit more
light than on the other side. It's only a slight little bit, but that's because on this side there is the sun
shining on the trees. On this side there is another kitchen roof
and not so much light, but that's very subtle. What we can also see, maybe I'll take a photo
that's a bit closer for that look up straight, we can see in her eyes stripe
of light that we're facing. How that reflects in her eye. Yeah, This is just always
something to keep in mind. The reflection in
someone's eyes is always, depending on where
they're looking, that can make an eye really
stand out and make it alive. Or if you don't have
anything reflecting, it can just become
like a dark spot. Now what I want to
do is let's also, just for the fun, make a bit of a light measurement
just to see at once. It says at any of 800 it's 125th of a second and
almost exactly 2.8 Now what I want to
do is slowly walk towards the light and see
what happens in Rena's face. Okay, now we walked
about 4 meters. Let's do this one again. Were 12,052.88 that
means almost 12054. We almost gained an entire stop of exposure by walking
these 4 meters. That's just the
amount of light that changes as we go closer
to the light source. Let's keep going. Here's coming more. Here's
yes, see what's coming. Stop again. This was another half a
stop that we gained here. But you see in this, maybe that was a meter
and a half, two meter. How the light just got
way more vibrant and alive as we moved closer
to the light source. Let's take a photo
at this point again. See what are you seeing
her face, Antonio. Actually, this is what
I wanted to show. Can you go on the
side a little bit? I want to move in and
out, keep on her face. And now I step in and you see how that changes
the light on her face. So always need to be
aware of where I am. Also, how am I influencing the situation
I'm photographing? If I place myself in
the light source, I'm taking away light, again, that can be a good thing. Can be a bad thing. Just again, something to
bring your attention to. Okay. Now, let's keep walking. Okay. And stop here. Okay. So now we're pretty close
to the edge of the space. I found a penny. Um, yeah. So the light in our
face is more vibrant. It is more colorful. It's just overall a
bit more exciting. Um, yeah, a light
that I like working. A light that I like
working with very much the light is
shining on this floor. It's a wooden floor, it's a brownish color. I want you to look at her face. What happens when
we go down there? Didn't take a photo
in this spot. Okay. So she's going with that, she's getting to the
light source which is a mix of the general
open space that we have, but particularly in
particular the floor that the light is
reflecting off. Now taking the same
photo that I did before, if I would use the
same settings, it would be way over exposed. If I now expose for her face, the background falls off
and gets much darker. It's always, not just the
light on your subject, but it's always a matter of composition of
different surfaces. Their color and
their brightness in the space that really
make an image. This is why it's important to pay attention to all of this. It makes sense when
you think of it. And we just did this process of how much light is back there. We can for fun light meter
show you like in numbers, what actually happened there. We're now at 125th and eight. When we started it was 125th
and 2.845 0.68 There's three stops of light that we gained from
walking back from the wall to the front and then bringing her down
closer to the light source. Which consequently means that when we expose for her face, now the space where we started will be three
stops under exposed. Through that you can
separate your subject, Rena, from the background. Because the
background falls off. Yeah, it's not just
open the F stop. There's so much more
to composition and that's one of the
aspects that's really important to know that you're able to play
with it and use it. Yeah, what I want to do now is turn around
with you a little bit and see what happens if we use
this side as a light source or this side or the side that
doesn't have any light. Because that's what I
see a lot of people doing is that they see a situation and they just
go, oh, that's beautiful. I want to photograph that. But not take into consideration kind if the light allows you, if the light says okay, proved, you can actually take
this photo here. Classic situation
is on people on the beach standing
in an open shade. A beach, or in
other situations by a river or something
under a tree, where they want the ocean or the river to be in the
background and be beautiful. But not considering that
the light on the ocean is like 456 stops brighter
than the subject, therefore it doesn't work or you flash the person
in the foreground. Nowadays, basically, phones do everything to try to
make you not learn anything and just use whatever
situation and be like, yeah, the software is just
going to HDR fix everything, you can do that, and then maybe you can
recognize the person. But from a maybe, let's say artistic
photography point of view, it's boring thing to just
flatten everything, whatever. Yeah, let's see, let's
see the light again. The light got much
weaker already as we, as we moved up and
away from the floor. Let's go down on
the knees again. Again, straight down
with not moving so much. Again, the contrast between these two sides as we
see on these two photos, it changed a lot because the light coming
from the ground is stronger here and the other side falls off much more when we're down here than it did when
we were standing up there. Again, matter of contrast. Let's move a bit more into the space and away
from the light source. Yeah, a little further back. Let's go further
in. We're moving away from the sunny side of the space and we're moving back into the space and having
a contrast between between the side
that's more lit and the side that's less
lit as we move, as you can see on the images. And we make another step. Now we are like a meter away from the
wall where we started. You can still see that this side has more light and is lit. You can see how the light
reflects of her skin, but the contrast between those
sides is way less than it was when we were at
the light source on the way away from it. Yeah, we're in a more
evenly lit space here. There's still a difference, but it's more evenly lit. Now we're having some of
the bamboo on the left. We're having some of that
white wood on the right. Generally, it's not as bright as the surface that we
had there before. The entire situation
just becomes more. Which again, you can like that or not like that,
but it's good to know. Now, what I explained before, I want to show you
what happens when you want to photograph something with nice scenery in the back. Can you move over
there a little bit? Um, and you'll just see
the scenery and be like, oh, this is so nice. A looks beautiful and
there is beautiful jungle. Let's take a photo of it. And you would take this photo and you're not
going to get both. Let me expose for
the jungle ones. That's 2.82 thousand
of a second. Arena just becomes a black
space because there's just no light coming from
here which we can do. That's a lot of scrawling is
do this expose on her face. I'm exposing on her face
which doesn't really have a lot of light in it there, specifically the
stripe of light. But everything else
is way overexposed. That can be quite
beautiful to work with. What you can see though, this sparkle in her eyes is
not there because she doesn't have a light source that
could reflect out of her eye. Yeah, that's a way to go. Maybe I would use a
bit more space as. Oh yeah. Something you can do. But like I said, what is difficult to do is
to get both of those things. Either do some HDR thing
or you make a choice. Or if you can, you can reflect, to try to reflect this light that comes in back into a face, even the background
and the foreground, Somewhat similar to what
we did with the stone. Before we can give that a try, actually, let's give that a try. Again, we see there's generally
light coming from here. There's some direct sunlight
hitting here, there. And there is something of the
light coming off the floor. And her right side is
to the jungle that is not hit by the light. What we can try to do is, yeah, maybe you
can just hold it. Bring this to here. We can see this is no reflector. Where is it here?
I can bring it in. This is the right side
of the reflector. If I go to the silver side, that's pretty harsh, but it's a lot of sunlight
also outside. So maybe this is not
the prettiest light now with the silver
light from the bottom. But I want to take this photo
just to show you how I'm trying to even the
amount of light that's in her face with the amount of light
that's in the, in the jungle background. So we'll put the, let
me adjust it first. Oh, here. Can you hold
it here? Out here. Okay. Still the background
is somewhat brighter. But just for
demonstration purposes, this is with the silver
reflector is with the light ref. The white reflector is here. You can see it's already I
have to bring the exposure up and already the background
is overexposing a lot more. And then when I take
it away completely, I have to expose even more. Yeah, that we're back with a similar situation
as we had before where there is a
rather flat light on her face and it's
not too contrasty, but there is a huge
contrast between her face and the outside that
is completely overexposed.
6. Direct sun / Shadows: Okay. We went into our next stop where we
want to look at sunlight. Wait, something I
want to show you. Before that haven't I haven't done like shown
you to the camera, but it's something I
do all the time is when I don't have
someone with me. Or let's say maybe I
have someone with me, but I don't want to
move that person around all around the space to see
what the light is like. I'm using a tool that
is built into my body. It's called a hand
and it's very handy. So just hold it into the space that you're thinking that you want to
check the light. And I move it around and I
see what does the light do. For example, here, I see that there is direct
sunlight on my hand. And when I move it down
just a little bit, I see how it's in the shade. The shade is coming from leaves, though It's a bit like spotty, as you can see. It varies a lot. Let's move around
here a little bit. Move the hand because there's space in
between my fingers, You can see how the
shadow folds differently. I can make these
fine adjustments and just use this hand
as my light checker. When it does this to my hand, what does the light do to
my face? Very handy tool. If you're lucky, you
have two of them, so you have a lot of
stuff to work with. Just something I do all the
time and it's just so handy. Yeah, little tip. What I want to show you
also with this hand, is something about shadow. Let's see where you see how the edges of my
hand are, my entire shadow. But let's just focus
on the hand for now. How the shadow of my hand
is a rather blurry line. There is a certain
distance to the sun, seven light minutes
away from our planet, that doesn't really change. And then there is a distance
between my hand and the surface that the hand
is throwing the shadow on. Now, what happens when
I bring this hand closer to the spot it
throws the shadow on? One thing is it changes
its shape, its angle. But what I want to
point out here now, I'm pretty close, it's the edge of the shadow is
getting much more defined. It's much more of
the sharp edge. You see my hand here, shadow of my hand.
Very defined edges. The further I bring it
away from the surface, it's throwing the light on. The more blowy
this edge becomes. Now I'm like 2.5 metres away from the spot
where the shadow is. In this situation where we're in now and where I'm sweating like crazy because my body is not made for
this temperature. Humidity, the sun
is, when I'm here, the sun is falling
through the leaves, actually first one
tree and then there's a second bamboo set of bamboo here that the sun
is falling through. Let's move around a little bit, just straight, somewhat
towards the light. Let's just move slowly,
slowly, very slowly. You can see now there is direct
sun and now she moves on, that's stop here for a moment. The movement we now saw
that was a movement of like 20 maximum
30 centimeters. And you saw the things that happened in her face
going from this rather rather shady and here
there's rather direct light. I want to see if we
can find a spot maybe. Let's let me take a
photo here just once. I'm taking so many photos today explaining a lot of stuff. And look over to
the light again? Yes. Already just going from one side to the other. I have this side that had more sun and I had the other
side that has more of a Shade but with
little light spots. Like I said, the leaves that the sun is falling through and throwing the shadow
on Helena's face. Those trees are, the main tree is like 67 metres away and then the bumble is
like two metres away. So it's not a very
defined shadow, but yeah, it's rather soft. Let's see, Let's move around
a little bit and see if we can find like a bit of
a more define spot. Ah, at this, at this point she's in a place
where it's not fully, but it's a rather even shade. This pretty direct,
harsh sunlight. The shadow that is
now in her face, it comes from this leave. And as you can see, this
leave that's about 30, 40 centimeters away
from her face. The edge that it throws, it's much more
defined what we've seen before from the tree
that's 67 metres away. As the shadow from the tree
comes the different leaves. This is one solid leave that throws one specific
shade into a face. And the line is much more
defined because it's closer. Move a little bit more
towards the leave way. Just right. Yes, Yes. In this situation, I can play with this
like before as we, and on the image
that we had before, one side had a bit more light, the other was a bit
sprinkled with shade. Now I have this very direct line that I can use as a
composition tool. Maybe I can bring
my body in also. Yeah. So this is how
you play with shadows. Well, maybe just mention that. I don't know if I
said it generally. Of course, maybe I thought
it's obvious anyways. Um, direct sunlight
is very harsh. It throws hard shadows. Now the sun is on its way down, so it's easier like the shadow in her face now in the direct light.
Okay, here we see it. Well, the shade is up
there over her eye, but her eye still
gets some light. Can you hold this
leave Just here. Take a photo. At this point, shadows in her face are super harsh because direct sunlight
is the shadow of her nose. And actually move your head
a little bit to the back, a bit more into the light. Very hard shadows can be
beautiful to work with. Also something we've
seen in the sha, before where we photographed. But here, extreme the
contrast between her face that I'm exposing on and the background falling
off drastically. We can, let's do the checking. Where is my light meter? Here it is. Just to put
some numbers on it. Let's go to 0200. That will still be a
lot direct sunlight. It's telling me 125 to 8.2 Now if I go to the shade
that arena is throwing, it's 125 And almost four, four to four, let's say
82 stops of difference. The plants in the background
will have even more. I want to see, this is a bit subtle. But we can see here
now that I'm just throwing a shadow on her
face with this leave. But because the leave is green, it gives it a green color. So similar concept as we had
before with the red shirt reflecting the light into her face and giving
it a red tint. Now it's getting a
green tint because it's a green banana leaf. And if the leaf wasn't as thick, this effect would
be even stronger. Think of F draws. So we see on the image
how the right side has a bit more light and how the color is
slightly different. It's only so slight here how
it gives it a color tint. And generally to expose, to expose her face, right? Maybe I also do it with
a bit more wide angle to expose her face, right? I have to bring the
exposure up a lot, which means that it gets closer to the brightness
of the background. Again, there is something I want to bring your
attention to in this image. It's something we
touched on before, but in a different context. That is, the direct
sunlight in this image here is shining on
Rena's dark brown hair. And it's shining directly on her shirt and a
little bit of her skin. As you can see, the part skin and the shirt part
are very overexposed, while the part where
it's shining on in the dark brown hair is a
tiny little bit overexposed, but it's very close
to a good exposure. And we can see the structure
in the hair very well still. That is because the
hair is darker. We had that before when we were using the
reflection of the stone. Then we were using
the reflection of a white towel that we put on the stone that reflected
more light into Ren's face. That is
just good to know. When you have a scene where you have very bright
and very dark surfaces, you're running the risk of over or under exposing
either of those. You may want to try to find a
middle ground between these two so that you can afterwards either save the highlights
or save the lows. That's good to know.
It's also good to know if you are working with
a analog camera or with an SLR camera where you're not
seeing a life view through the view finder that the
light meter of the camera, or the classic light
meter is going to measure the exposure
for a neutral gray. Neutral gray, That's
this part here. That's pretty much
a neutral gray. That's what it measures for. If you measure a black
surface with the light meter, the light meter is
going to try to make that black surface neutral gray. It's going to make it
lighter than you would actually want it to
be, and vice versa. If you're holding it in
front of a white surface, it will try to make
a neutral gray and that is darker than the
actual white surface. You should always take
that into consideration if you're working either
on film with an SLR. Yeah, that's very good to know. If you're enjoying
the course so far, I would really appreciate if you would leave a positive review. That helps me a lot as a
creator here on Skchair. If you have any questions, then feel free to post them
in the comments below. And I'll be happy to get to you if you want to show
us your experimentations, what you are playing
with, with the light. You're also welcome to
post them under the class. Let's keep going just for fun. Just fun we have
in This is green. At really subtle,
really not a lot. I take the green banana
leaves away and see what happens if I put a red shirt. Whatever color you're
using to reflect something off of or
what color you use to let the sun shine
through to take away a little bit of light
a second. So coming, he's got some hill
climbing skills. Whatever color we're using to
let the sun shine through. Or maybe the light source, if you're working with flashes or what color we used to
have it reflect off of, that makes quite a difference. This is beautiful example. Now's a good time to work
with direct lights around this time where the sun is. Is going to set in like an
hour and a half or something. It's going lower
as harsh anymore. It's still not easy. But it's easy for Una to look into the light and maybe that's just for a
couple of seconds. But you can do very interesting
composition with this contrast of direct light. This actually, this
is calling for composition. I love this. Let's have a quick look again at those photos
that we took here with some shades coming from the leaves that
were quite far away. And that made a bit
of a structure in the shade where there
is tiny movements that, yeah, bring the shade or the light between the
shade in certain spots. Then we moved on and went
into the direct sunlight that is throwing
hard shadows and that can be an element of
composition to play with. We can see that shade that
is thrown by her eyebrows. Yeah, the shade
thrown by the leaves. And that has very defined edges. We can generally also see
how the image is warm, like sunlight is very warm. It's a very warm scenery. Again, the contrast between the face that is
directly lit and the background is quite
a sharp contrast. And this image was a bit of
an outlier in this scene. And this is why it's
good to look at it again because
we saw how quickly when we move Reina from
being in the direct sun behind the leaf that is throwing
a proper full on shadow. How we need to expose for the face and bring
the exposure up. And that equalizes the
foreground and the background. There is a harsh contrast
in this line that you see where the sun is because that is now extremely over exposed. You can also see it down on her shirt where
the direct sun is. That is the light we
were exposing for before when it was
right in her face, as you can see now is
extremely overexposed. Yeah. No heart shadows anymore? Much softer. It's equalized
with the background. Yeah. Also the tonality like the colors and the white balance that the camera
is going to read, that changes a lot. What's interesting about this
is just to see that, yeah, very quickly, you can change the entire appearance of a
scene by moving into a shade. Yeah. Without changing
the exposure. Also, that was quite
a drastic one. The red shirt, which I liked
very much because that was a subtle color tint and it made there was a
beautiful kind of shade. You could still see that there was hard
light involved in it, but it's not in
the scene anymore. Yeah. Bought this really
nice red color tint. I really like that.
Yeah, Direct sunlight, It may be hard to work with, but you find your
way to work with it. You can create beautiful images, especially it's something
it cannot do this. You cannot tell your
eye to expose for the face and have
everything else fall back. Fall off so quickly. Yeah. Can lead to very
interesting photos. As I promised you, we're going through the process
every time we go to a new space of finding the light and experimenting
and seeing what there is. A lot of these
photos, like I said, are not very good ones either because the light
is just not very good. Also because I'm so busy
talking to the camera, that I'm leaving Irina
on the sideline. And there's not
so much space for the magic to happen,
but sometimes it does. Sometimes we find the light. And sometimes there
is this moment of magic between
Irina and the camera, besides lots of photos that
I would push off the table. There are some that I really, really like at the
end of the course, We're going to have
a look at those together and maybe
edit a couple also.
7. 06 Light spots / Open shade / Being attentive: We walked up here on the way up, I noticed this thing over there. I don't know what it, if
it's a Solar or something. The light hits this thing and then it throws its
light over here. This is what I'm talking
about when I say awareness, when I get in into the
tunnel I'm photographing, I'm in this tunnel, I'm
looking for these things. I'm super sharp depending
on the situation. Also aware of other things, of space, of people, of lots of things, but light, and this is what
we're talking about today, is super important. Oftentimes, this is what
decides what image I'm taking. What does the light tell me? Where does the light say? Here is something for you? This is one of those
situations before it goes because the sun is moving and this reflection will not stay
very long before it goes. I want to just take a
couple of photos with it. So I asked Irina to go and move around until the reflection from this thing
is the strongest. Now, it already moved, so you'll have to search again. I guess we saw a little point in her eyes that was the reflection
of this thing. But also while, while we were like preparing filming this, because I walked up and we set it up and then I
explained things about it. The situation already went. The sun moved. It's only been like like
5 minutes or something. The sun had moved. It
moved to another spot. It wasn't as strong
anymore, I'm not sure. The effect is very
clearly visible. Now, I just want to bring your attention to these little things that
happen everywhere. And if you bring your
attention to it, you can see it and work with it and be painting with light. I want to show you
what an open shade is. I think up there, there's no
direct sunlight coming here. There could also be a roof
over us, like it was there. But what an open shade means
is that you're in the shade somewhere and there is an open space that gives
you a light source. It's not a direct sun, it's just a space that
is open or rather open. Now, this situation
is not very open. It's not like we're under a
tree and there is the ocean. That would be the ultimate
open space kind of situation. There are trees going
here, but there is a, a clear path of blue sky that brings soft light
to Elena's face again. We can see also
that there, again, it's not direct light, but the sun is coming
more from this side. So we can see this is a bit more light then on
the right, very soft. Maybe we can make it a bit more clear if you look
up a little bit. Yes, this is good.
Yes, very good. Maybe a little more down. Yes. Your eyes keep your
eyes up a bit more here. Yes. Yeah. Because the light source of the open space,
it's open shade. When I ask her to look up, this is the most even light, also the background, it
falls off a little bit. It's rather even as
she was looking up, we could see in her
eyes the reflection. We can see the light source. And as you mentioned
before, in the Shala, it was a rather like a
stripe kind of light and now it's a different kind
of shape. Our light source. Yes, and maybe there's, That's fine because
I'm seeing a. Let's move around
a little bit here. See this one? Very gently? Oh, yes. Yes, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. See that we just talked about
it when we were in the in the sunlight about, about the sun falling through the leaves. And
here we have this. We can see this is where it's getting darker.
Getting darker. But here, there is an area that has light and it's very subtle. But if we're going move
a little bit, Yes. Now look up a bit more towards, this is what I talked about, the light situation
Just says look at this. It says there is light
here around this. It's rather dark compared to the open shade shot
that we had in this direction that
was evenly lit. This is now a specific
spot that tells us, look, there's light here because the leaves
are further away. It's a rather soft transition and the background
falls off much more. You take another one
with more background. I move already. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah, let's
go up a little. Yeah, it's a changed. This means three, 4 minutes. The sun is moving down, means the spot of the sun
and her face is moving up. Within those 3 minutes, the whole light
situation changed. Boom. See something? Be quick. Whenever I see an image and maybe there's voice in me
that's like, I'm tired. I'll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow
is, it's not just light. There's many factors, but
light is one of them. When you see something, do it, don't come back. Or maybe you're curious about the place,
about the situation. And I know a friend of mine working with a
large format camera. And he took this
photo off a bridge. And he went to this bridge like 20 times because he wanted
to see Ana, actually did. She did a video project
with her boyfriend going back to the same tree like five times during an
hour hike to get there. Because they wanted
the specific light on this tree and
they just needed to do this hike to see where is the light like the
way we want it. Yeah, If you see something
and it's amazing, take the photograph, do it. But of course, if you're
more of a slow, you know, you're working with a
latch form a camera, you're working on a
video project like like they did and you just
have a specific idea. Go back to the same place, the same place on the next day, There'll be a cloud on the next day,
something will happen. And like you saw here, within 3 minutes,
the light changed. Yeah, light just
changes in temperature. How soft or how hard it is from the morning midday
to the evening to the night. Um, it changes a lot
and it can change your image in a drastic way. I haven't taken a
photo of Antonio yet. This is Antonio Firming us. Okay. Now we're going to go upstairs and do a little
bit of indoor or something.
8. 07 Mysterious / Coorperate light: Are you were just
on their way up? I can't stop seeing things. We walked up here and it's
not like a light situation. I work a lot in or favor a lot, but I think many people do. I just thought, now is the
last chance we can show this. Maybe we'll show this. Sun's coming towards us, falling through a little bit
of leaves, but it's not a, there is two tree branches, there is not so much
coming from this side. I just wanted to have a look
at what we can do here. One thing would be to on the lighter side of her face over expose
the sun completely. This is just about the spot where the sun is not
in her face anymore, just on the side and is lighting up her
hair a little bit. Can you go back a little bit? Oh, this is actually a situation that sometimes I see other people's
photos and I'm like, oh, why am I not doing this? I have, I have a tendency to
want the face to be like to, you can see it well. But sometimes I feel like I'm looking at other people's
photos and I'm thinking, I kind of like the fact that they make it a bit
more secretive and they're sort of not showing me something like I'm not having
like the eye well lit. But it's more of a it's not
really a silhouette shot. But it's encouraging.
It's encouraging more to stay where you are. Lena. Stay, stay as you are. Okay. Can you go back
to how you stood? Yeah. How do I explain
this is imperfect in a way that the light doesn't really fall into her eye
very much. It's falling off. It's what you would learn, like in a Portways Studio or
something, family coming in. You want to see their
face as well, but yeah, it's a imperfection that it can be beautiful and interesting
in a different way. Yeah, I guess how I
started photography in a corporate context
where it was about job, job deliver the job and
make the customer happy. There were just some things that I learned to
do or not to do, a process of learning. Now try to try to do things that I once learned I
should not be doing. And one of those
things would be have the subjects face lit well. It's very subtle now how the sun is getting
softer anyways. And it's like hitting this part, but it's not really
hitting her face fully. Yeah, we win this
in between zone. This is not like a fully
lit, direct sunlight scene. This is purely in
the shade scene. Moved a tiny little
bit into the sun. It's very subtle changes of a few centimeters
here and there. And the sun just becoming
more and more gentle with us now not being so harsh anymore since we
just spoke about it. Let's quickly point out the difference between
rather, let's say, artistic or
mysterious portway to a portway light that I would use in a rather
corporate situation. Just by changing our angle
to Rena by 90 degrees, we go from having half of her
face dark to an image where the whole face is
evenly lit and we have a spark of
light in her eyes. Since we just took both of these photos within the span
of just a couple of minutes, I thought it'd be
good to just put them side by side
and point it out.
9. 08 Last sunlight / Surface brightness / Muddy light: Okay, Yalla. Now,
finally let's go up. Can you can you grab the reflector and the
shirt? Don. Thank you. So, we walk back up to the bungalow that I'm
actually staying in. Um and the sun is still there. You can see here in my
face probably the sun. Yeah. But there are a little spots here
where it's coming to us. You can see light on her face here when
she moves over there. It's really oh, stay there. A and bring your eye to me. In this photo, I had her face exposed for
the sun in her face, which it's getting softer. It's getting more red. So it changes the color of the light. And in the background
of the shot, I have a dark wood
and you can see how the background really falls off because it's a big contrast. Move over here, you
stay where you are. Move over here a
little bit there in the background,
I get the jungle. The jungle is getting direct sunlight and
some shady parts. Again, just like a
little move from here, having the background dark, to moving over
here a little bit. Getting this light in the background makes
a huge difference. Now move over a little bit
into here a little bit, a little bit here. There's no direct sun
in her face anymore. Now the background
is overexposed. Again, it's a matter of contrast between where my subject is
and what the background does. Let's move a back,
see what happens. Yes, a little more. Oh, you can see here. That was just a little move. That's too much. Stop here. There is like the least, the least amount of light
coming directly to her face. It's a bit of a muddy
light in her face. Again, of course there's
not light coming from here, the dark wood. It's just a little bit of
reflection coming back in here, but it's really not a lot. The light source is from the
right and it's rather soft. Now if I move to
the light source, I'm not having this
contrast anymore. Of the sides of the faces
as you can now also see. You can actually see the wood of the house and also the
trees in the background. This is all more even, again, moving from this little
spot in the sun over here makes a huge difference in contrast of the overall image. Let's have a little recap of that scene where what
we've seen before, we had a direct sunlight
spot on her face. And we had dark wood
that didn't have any direct sunlight and it
was dark in the background. Again, a super stark contrast. Then when we turned
around a little bit, we got the jungle in which
didn't have direct sunlight, but it was much more an open space than the
balcony that we're in. It is brighter than
the dark wood. The space is brighter and it is an element of composition. Then as we moved out of the
very direct sunlight into the space where there was still a little bit of sun
like it's on the edge. First we can see how the
color changes in her face. It's not as darkish,
yellowish, reddish anymore. It still is, but not
as extreme anymore. But we can also again
see the background and see how it got
much brighter. Not because it got brighter, but because we are still
exposing for Rena's face. Therefore, we have
to bring it up. Yeah, the background gets
brighter because of that. Then we moved into this spot where there
was even less light, where the darkest spot on
our balcony was there. We can see even more
of the fall off in color like it's
red, less vibrant. Yeah, just less
saturated in general. Then when we move to the last image in that
scene where there was no more direct sunlight
and we turn to the side a little bit
again and suddenly we can see the dark wood. It didn't get brighter
in the last 5 minutes. It's just because it
doesn't have any, there's no direct sunlight
involved in the scene anymore. And her face, as
well as the wood, a bit of a darker corner of
the jungle, they're similar. We still have composition
when it comes to to color. But yeah, the amount of
light that reaches each of those is pretty similar.
Let's keep going. Now, I want to go to
you to the dark corner. The kitchen, which isn't
actually a kitchen, like it doesn't have
a stove or anything, as you can already
see. Bless you. With me, do you see like
we're in a closed space? Actually, there's a window open. Let's see if something changes. When I close that, probably yes. Does it now, I took
away even more light. It's super dark. Let's see here on 816 1,650 of a second, at 0.2 What looks as a light situation when we
came in here and it dark, it doesn't look very interesting when setting the camera to
this and exposing it properly, which is now I'm at the
30th of a second at ISO 1,602 It's actually
quite beautiful. It's really so a
little bit more on this side of the face
coming from there, because this is
where the house is. It's a little bit open again. This is the concept of
the open shade just now, much more subtle
because the light that comes from the open
space is just softer. And it's less. Oh,
we'll see there. Yeah. Something to work with. This was a tunnel,
we would go back. This light would also
become more directed. What I want to do now
is go inside with you because now we've worked a lot with
direct sunlight and reflection of spaces
and open shades, situations that have light and like you can
bring vibrant light. Now, this place,
my bungalow here, it doesn't get direct
sunlight ever. Yeah, probably
situations you will find yourself quite often because unfortunately there's always
a beautiful light source. It is very good and
I think easier, especially for beginner to understand what
I'm talking about when I'm working
with direct light. But I want to go
in and work with some really soft and
subtle in there. And show you this. Let's go.
10. 09 Indoor / Directed light: A big place behind the camera. Now there is the balcony that we've just
been been standing on with the mosquito nets and that's bringing
in a bit of light. There is a rather open space
behind arena at the window. There is a window here. Let's open that window. Maybe have a look at the space. What happens when I
open that window? You can see it on
the bed, we think. You can see that this is quite well lit because
it has direct light from there and how it
falls off towards this, this side of the bed. Now, if we open this, suddenly this has a lot more light. I can close this door. I can close this window. We can play with
this a little bit. Let's keep the mosquitoes out, because it's mosquito hour. What I want to start
with just an image of Lena on the chair. Can you have a seat
then, Antonio? You can come around to me. First thing I notice is
this side of the face that is lit by the window,
it's rather soft. What we can also see, there
is a white wall behind. But this wall doesn't really get much light from anywhere. It falls off into a gray. Again, we have a bit
of a contrast here. If I expose for the light, for the side of a face
that is in the light. Now I would like you to.
Can you move as far as you can to the table? Yes. So now I'm
going from 125th, let me take away that cable. I'm going from 125th
of a second on the previous portrait to
two hundredths of a second. Again to expose for the
light on the side. Yes, Yes. Stay there on the
side of her face. The background falls
off even more there. We see in our eyes again, we see the space outside
reflecting in her eye. Now as she turned her face in. We also don't not so much of a contrast anymore between
the two sides of the face. Move your head a little
bit Slowly, slowly. To me. Yes. Let's have you sit there on the bed. And then I want to
work with the window and the door already. You can see in her face. Now you need to be careful not to stand
in the light source. She moves back now a meter
from the table to the bed. The amount of light that reaches her face a decreased a lot. The setting I used before
in the previous images. Right by the window.
Let me check. I'm moving down like
about two stops. I'm moving down to expose
right for her face. By moving a meter
back from where she was in this satellite, this fall off of the light. It happens quite quickly. We can kind of see here also. Can you where you are, can you move down from there like this, Kind of Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay. Stop. Wow, so on
the previous image, we've seen that her
shirt was quite light and it's because of the angle that the
light comes in there is. There's like forest there. The light is, the open sky
part is rather further up. The light falls on here. It doesn't fall straight
in but it falls down. When she was sitting on the bed, her face was just it wasn't really where the
light is reaching properly. As she moved, she moved into the angle where the light is
actually coming in, coming in a beautiful
angle and it's very soft. Yeah. Beautiful to work with. Now, I want to just keep the
same situation and I want to see what happens when I close
the door and the window. That's the door of the
balcony that we just stood on and we go back to the same situation. Wow, yes, Yeah,
what they did, it, it's still a soft light input, but because I closed
these two sides, I took away some
of the light that actually lit more
of the surrounding. So that makes it
focus. Oh, stay there. Yeah. Very beautiful. Soft shadows? Yeah, one light source. Because we're in a room and because it's directed
through a window, that makes it a direct
light rather than being in an open shade where
there was also passive. There's more light,
there's less light. But this is a pretty
straightforward, simple one window, no direct light like the sun is probably has gone down by now. Just light that is in
the, that is in the sky. Let's have a look
at those again. First, we're by the
window and it is a rather soft light that we're getting there
in terms of it's not direct sunlight or anything, but it does appear quite
harsh in that situation, it's a very directed light. And the other light sources, the open window and the door, they don't bring much into this in comparison to the
light from the window, but especially because she's with the side to
the light source, the side of the face that
is not facing the window, it falls off a lot. This is why it appears
contrast like. It has a lot of
contrast this light. But actually when you
look at the shades, like down on her
neck for example, you can see that they're
not very harsh shadows. It's more because, yeah, she's turn with the side
to the light source. We could also see
in those images how turning the person to the light source can bring this light spot in the eyes that otherwise
wouldn't be there. But what I found really
significant here was the scene on the bed where we had the first scene with the
window and the door open. It brings light into
the back of the scene, also because she's
not as close to the window as she was
in the first photos, but she moved rather back again. It's this concept of
equalizing the light sources. But what was really
interesting to me was she was going
down and she was getting into a space
where the light folds in more directly that
just made a beautiful light. That again, allowed me
to have the background fall off much more and have more of a separation between
her and the background. I love, you can see there are shades under her eyebrows and from her chin it's
throwing a shade, it is directional, I think
where you see at the best. What I mean when I say
it's a soft light. Um, it does throw a shade, but it's throwing a soft
shade, really beautiful. And then again, when closing
the door and the window, the background folds
off even more. Yeah. Let's keep going. Okay. Stand in the entrance. So I closed both windows inside. Oh, wait, wait. Say that. Oh, that's okay. Okay. Let's turn around. No, already in the ten, 15 minutes we've been inside, the light changed again. It's it's even
softer than before. It's very warm evening light. Now, what I want
to do is slowly, slowly walk in with you and see how the light changes as we go in and
enter like a dark space. Yeah. So you can take
a step up and go in? Yes. Do you see that? One step one thing is she moved up a little bit and
because there was a roof. Um, again, talking
about angle of light. Yeah. This is making
a difference. And that's not even
like that's going back 10 centimeters and going
up 15 centimeters. That's what made the difference. Now, if we start
moving in slowly, slowly, okay, stop there. First of all, more and more, we notice how just
the light goes, but also there's not much
coming from the sides anymore. Again, it's becoming, it's
becoming more directed. I need to do some acrobatics
now to photograph somehow. I need 3,200 Yeah, directed light again. Let's, let's make another
step all the way to the bed. I think I need to be careful now also to stand in the little bit of light source that I have because when I do, it's having an effect. Now I have this little
surface there in the back that gets a little
bit of light from the door. I can use that as a light spot. You can see there's not
much coming from the right. If I go to the other
side here somewhere, the background is darker. Just for fun, you stay there. I'm going to open the
window again in the back. By adding another light
source in the back, it makes the
background brighter. But it's also an element of
composition to play with, To have basically
a white surface. It appears on the image
because the outside is much brighter than in here. Again, for fun, opening the
other, the other window. Now we have two
elements to play with. The whole space appears lighter. We have more than
one light source, so it's not only
this directed light. Yeah. So whether
you do that with flashes or you do
that in a room. Yeah. Of every light source even if it's just the
end of the day and there's not much light coming. As we saw the distance to the light source, you
could see that here. It makes a huge difference. Again, how close are you, what does that mean
for the contrast of the foreground
and the background? Yeah. All things to consider. Yeah. Now we're going
to leave the house, maybe have a slice
of watermelon again, and go to the outside
where the sun has now set. And yeah, we're going
to say bye bye today. Bye bye to the light, see
what we do with what's left.
11. 10 Last light of the day: You're rolling? You're rolling? We're rolling in the studio. The source, the sun has set and different shades
of blue are in the sky. Sub soft light. Yeah. It's a matter of half an hour, 45 minutes until it's going
to be fully dark cloud. I really love this light. So you can come out here a
little bit and we can see, we can generally
see in her face, the light is very soft. Again, we're in an
shade this time, it's just an open space. Now, it's because of sunset. It may just be a cloudy day, this could be the situation. Let's have a look at
this in a picture. How soft light is affecting our image as
she's standing now. Can still see there is, there is a side that is
facing the light and there is a side that is yeah, no light. If we would be doing the
same thing in a more, with more sun, again, this would be reflecting, it would change the contrast. But now there's not really coming much
reflection anymore. Yeah, nice composition. Here again, we have these
elements of a brighter surface, a darker side of the face, a lighter side of the face, and then darker nature
in the background. So we have like a light. Just a little thing
that I noticed now. Again, play with surfaces. Be aware of how light they are. Then of course, we're not even
talking about color today. That's a whole other thing. Now, when we turn
to the light, Yeah. We have a very evenly lit face. Very soft colors. Colors are very soft. Yeah. As soon as the sunlight, there was a boost to color
contrast to vibrance subtle. Now, let's move into the studio. A ball down, and stop there. Now she's still by
the open space. Can you take this
leg down a little bit by the open space, but the light falls
off in the background. This is beautiful.
It's similar to what we've done in the
bungalow before. Yeah. In a bit more spacious setting. Now in this image, you can also see that color comes in that she skinned light and then there is a soft green because there's no
more direct sunlight, the entire light situation
of the world right now. Even out more. Yes, I can bring more elements that if I would be here
in the same situation, like two, 3 hours before and there would
be full sun here. I couldn't be working with the same elements or I
could work with them, but they would have a completely
different relation to each other during the day. Yeah, the strength of
the light changes, the angle of the light changes. It affects our whole ability to composition with different
elements in the space. By the way, light has different
colors as you noticed, and those light colors
are measured in Kelvin. A candle has a color
of 1,500 Kelvin. These light bulbs that
you see behind me have a temperature of 2,700 Kelvin. This light in front of
me has a temperature of 3,800 Kelvin in a day. It can range anywhere from
5,000 Kelvin in the morning, then the daytime,
somewhere between 5,600 which is considered the standard daylight
temperature. But it has a bigger range
depending on if it's cloudy, if it's the blue hour, what time of the day it is. You can look those
up really easily. It's not something that I
have in my head all the time and that I'm thinking about constantly when
I'm taking photos. But it's just something
I wanted to at least mention once
in the course. The light that is so not very strong is now
softened even more by this, I guess it's bamboo mutt. Can you turn your face
a bit more to it? Turn, yes. Bring
your eyes to me. Let's move just a tiny
little bit away from it. This again goes into
this direction of, I've kind of been told
not to do this and not to work with
something like this. That, that is maybe a bit
more mysterious or not clear. Like I cannot see
her eyes very well. But that can be part
of the magic to, to have more communicated through a body
posture, for example. Then through actually seeing a face and what the
face is expressing. Something I want to
encourage myself to do, to dare to do that. Okay. If you follow me, we can actually also
see in my face, like now I'm nicely
lit somewhere here. Okay. We want to go down slowly to the
restaurant where we've been before and switch on
some artificial lights. Yeah, see if we stumble on
anything on the waiver. That's the plan. And then
we finished for today.
12. 11 Artificial light: We left the open space
that we've been in, 10 meters up from here, like right where
the open sky is, we went down here
and now as you can see there's trees and
behind that is the sky. But it doesn't have much strength anymore to
bring significant light here. Yeah, when we see in our
face look into her face, we can see that her eyes
are all rather dark. There was a little bit of
light coming there still, But yeah, depending
on what you want. I would say this again, this is what you're looking
for and if you find a specific style that
just works in this light, you may be creating
beautiful body of work for the Portway photography
we're talking about. Now, this is getting
a bit more tricky and so well lit if
you want to say that. But I saw something on the way down as we go down with her, you can see in her face, so how there is some
light coming in. Now, Let's stop here. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's this little lamp
on the side of the path. It's not a red light, but it's pretty dark orange. And that folds on to her. And if I go down,
oh, can we see this? Can we see this is arena
without the light. Then if I move to the side, this is when the light comes in. If I turn around and bring, trying to hide the studio, bring in a bit of the
surrounding light in there. Yeah, you can see
this nice contrast of this really warm light
coming from there. Um, and the light of
the sky that gets cold. Let's move to the
light, let's go again, like a meter and a half moving from over
there to the light. It's, it's becoming
much stronger. It's an interesting time
to work with this mixture of artificial light sources and the rest of the light
that the space provides. Here, what we talked about in the beginning with the stone. Now we have this bright
concrete path leading up there. Beautiful the blue sky that is slowly going
in, getting darker. It's reflect this blue rather
cold light onto the path. And then we have a contrast of this warm light
hitting arena. Yeah. Special time, special
time of day to mix this cold or rather cold light from the space and
artificial light. Beautiful. Let's get really close
to the light for once. Yeah. Go down with your face. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's a lot in a way similar to a situation that we had up in
the bungalow now where there is pretty
much one light source we're working with, but the light source is like 30, 40 centimeters away
from her face. Pretty hard light
source and everything. Everything else. Fw before we took a
photo where she was, she was further away
from the lights. So we could bring
in the environment. If I now go over
to the place where The path would come in. You can see that it's not coming in anymore because again, in contrast to our light
source, it's not strong enough. That was fun last
stop, I promise. So we're back in the
restaurant where we were before when there
was sun coming in. Yeah, there was some
sun on the floor. Sort of an open shade situation. But now as the sun is setting, we came back and turned on these beautiful warm
lights that we have here. Pretty quite soft light. I just want to take
a couple of photos, because now the amount
of light that comes from these lamps and what is
outside is somewhat similar. I would say the lamps
are a bit brighter than what's outside, but yeah. Oh, see there. But this beautiful contrast of the warm artificial light and the rather cold
light outside. Oh, yeah. Can you look up again? Yes. What she's doing now is very favorable because the
problem that you have a lot when when being inside
with artificial light, a problem that you have a lot is that the light
comes from the top. And the area where the eyes
are just fall into the dark. Again, this can be an interesting element for a photo to actually not
show someone's eyes, but show lines on the
face that are being lit. But keep the eyes in a
kind of a mysterious spot. So what she did before
to look up like that can be a thing to do to
bring the face to the light. Or maybe you can move the
light and bring it down. Or there is a light that is just more on the height of the
person you're photographing. So it doesn't throw that shadow. Yes. And I think that's it. Maybe let's go
somewhere where we have nice light. How's that? Yes. Yeah, Also something we can do. Move away a little bit to have a better angle on the light. Thank you very much
for joining us. That was a to different
light situations to play with different times. Not only for portrait
photography, but if you learn and
master this skill of looking and understanding the light that
you're working in, this is a big step
in your photography, whatever it is
that you're doing. Thanks very much to Antonio. Filming to Dan assisting. And yeah, I hope you've learned a lot and I hope you're
having fun taking photos. Okay.
13. 12 Favorites / Editing / Outro: Let's have a quick look at my favorite photos of the
day. There were a few. Like I said, it's
always a journey to find the magic in the light. Also, like I said, so much explaining
to the camera. I left no on the sideline, there was not so much space to create a space that is
actually suitable for taking portways and for having
a connection between me as a photographer and Reina is
the person I photographed. But every now and then all
the magic came together. We're going to jump
into capture one. My converter software. Yeah, have a look at
my favorite photos and edit a couple of
those. Just a little bit. Let's go. This photo is my first
favorite of the day. That was actually quite
a while in our session are just took us a while
to get into the groove. Me and Antonio, the
cameraman, and Rena, and the light of course, I
think here is where it came. It all came together
for the first time. I'm really liking
that is the image is surrounded by these dark
areas all around here. Then there is blight in
the center on the leave. And her face, the
shirt and the pants. I also like this
color combination of the green, brownish colors. And then, yeah, leaning into
the red, almost the pants. Now, what would I maybe
do with this image? I would like to try to equalize more the
face and the shirt. As you can see here, I had already brought exposure up in the
image that you saw. That is, this is how
I took the image. I didn't want to take it
here because as you can see here was seven
point something. The shirt is already going
close to being overexposed. This is why in the situation I exposed the photo
rather down here. Now I could either go and brighten up the
leaf and her face. Let's try the middle thing
to be, the 70 exposure. And then here, bring the
highlights down a little bit. As you can see that mainly
has an effect on the shirt. I'll bring it down just
a bit and then make an extra layer to make this a little bigger
da mask on the shirt area. I think that's good. Another at 100% opacity, which is why I'm doing it twice. Then I can only, in this area, bring the highlights down
as you can see a bit more. I go to the general
exposure as well, then maybe let's make
another layer a little bit smaller then draw another
mask onto her face. And bring that up a little bit. Yeah, I think somewhere
around here I would land at Sea Vignette does anything. Let's not do that now. This is how I would leave it. We can have a look at
the white balance, but I think I would be
happy with this as it is. Let's not mess with that. Nice. Okay, let's keep
going to the next one. This one, I really, really liked such a chaotic,
weird background. Yeah, I really like that. I don't think I would
do too much to it. Make it a little bit? Yeah. Possibly even Et, but just ever so slightly.
Yeah. I think that's it. Maybe bring the highlights. Let's see, on her neck. That's where it should
have the most effect. Yes, bring down the
highlights. Yeah. But again, I wouldn't do too much to it,
which is a good sign. That means that we paid
attention to the light and the scene in
situation in the moment. Yeah. It's not a bad sign to be happy with your
images as they are. This one I really, really liked. That was the moment
when we had closed the door and the window area, the background is falling off into the darkness
quite a lot. I was actually explaining something to the camera
in that moment and then noticed on the side that
A got into this posture. I got her in a situation
that she naturally got herself into that and I found
it quite a good posture. Let's do a little bit with that. I think the light is a bit cold. You remember the sun had gone
down? It's a little cold. I would make it a
little bit warmer. Maybe bring the highlights
down a little bit. Has most effect on the bed. I'm looking at a face now. Then again, I would make a
second layer in light room. If you're using light room,
you can do the same thing. They work in a slightly
different way. This is not about showing
you a software anyways, just using basic functions
of the software. Then let's make
this a little big, maybe a little bit of a harder edge then I would see if I can this
bed down a little bit, especially down
here on the edge. I think this is where
it's the lightest. Again, I'm not working
on 100% opacity. I'd rather go over it twice and having a bit more
smooth then I can take away some of that mask that I
just make a harder edge for that to take away some of that mask
that I drew onto the shirt because I don't
really want it there. I want it on the bed. Then I would pull this
down a little bit. Yeah. Make her stand out even more Because the bed is white again. It reflects more light and it pops out more than I
would Maybe you want it to? Yeah, let's see, the green tint. I'm in the wrong layer now. Let's go back. Want to
go to the main layer? Yeah. Yeah, run about there. Maybe it's a bit too much. A little bit too
much of the green? Yeah, Again, not too much. I think mainly bringing a little bit of warmth
in there because the light was a bit cold
at that time of day. That will be my next
one interesting. I found that quite some of
the images that were more mysterious and where you're not seeing the eyes very well, they tend to be up in my
favorites of this day. This is one of them really
mysterious. I like that. One thing I did with
this, I'll show you. There was this one light here in the background that I took away. What I also did is that I
brought the exposure up a it's something with this Fuji camera that when I photograph
with it in the dark, it makes the image
in the viewfinder appear lighter than
it actually is. It's something that I just
don't always think about. I forget about it.
Underexposed images that, in a rather dark setting. But it's a raw file and digital raw file that
I have quite some, some room to bring
it up afterwards. And you can see here,
I already brought it up about 1.5 stops. What I also did in this one was a white balance
adjustment because, yeah, this is the original
scene that I got. I found that to be very cold, Much colder than it
appeared in the moment. That's what I mean
with a white balance. Misread that. The camera doesn't
always exactly know, especially when it goes to these situations where it's dark and there's
artificial light, natural light in a mixture. That's where can get a
bit confused sometimes. But again, it's aphile and
it's not the end of the world. I'm bringing it up
again a little bit, little bit into the green. Somewhere here. Yeah. These are the adjustments that I did and that you've seen in the course that I had to do for the reasons
that I just explained. Apart from this, again, just I'm happy with it as it is my last favorite of the day. I'm really liking the
warm to cold contrast which comes from the
artificial light and the light outside. Again, an image where you
cannot see the eyes very well. Yeah, this is also an image, I don't know why there was
a one contrast. That's odd. Yeah, One where I
brought it up a tiny little bit as you see, but apart from this I
would leave it as it is. Yeah, So those are my
favorites. I took. I'm not sure how many exactly 130 or something
photos in the day. Considering that I was
actually explaining things to the camera and all the
lacking connection with Lena, I'm quite happy that
we ended up with, or I ended up with five
photos that I would be very happy to show
them to the world. That was it for our journey. Exploring the light, experimenting
and playing with it. I really hope you enjoy it, and that you feel that you
took something from it. But the next step has
to be that you go out in the world and you explore
and experiment yourself. And try and fail
to find the light that holds the
magic in your eyes. Doing so is also a great factor when it comes to
consistency in your work. May that be just
one photo series? Or generally, if you
keep finding the things, the light, the topics that
you want to work with, the specific camera
you want to work with. All of these things
contribute to making your work
recognizable as your work. Think about that next time
you're out with your camera. For now, if you
have any questions, you're very welcome to
post them below the class. I'll be happy to
get back to you. I would really appreciate
if you would leave a positive review for this course because
that helps me a lot as a creator
here on Skill Chair, I have a beautiful website that I put a lot of work and love in and social channels that you're very welcome
to follow Of course, if you want to talk about
your own work and you want a second set
of eyes to look at it and get feedback and maybe inspiration for where could be a next
step for you to go. You're welcome to get in
touch about this as well. For now, I wish you a
beautiful rest of the day. I'll see you one day. Bye bye.