Mastering the Model Shoot: Creativity

1. Chapter 1a Rabbit: Hey guys and welcome to mastering the models. Shoot video three, creativity. Thank you so very much for buying our products. Now, this video is a real special one because I can talk about techniques, I can talk about lighting, coaching your model. And it's all the stuff that, well, it's pretty standard, right? Of course it's not standard because everybody does it differently. But creativity, that's where the soul of a shelf comes in. That's where you are talking from your heart. That's the part where you, which your creativity in the shot and go from okay to wow. Now this video is divided into several chapters, and you can watch those chapters in new order. We put them in on the video. But you can also watch them in any order you like. So if you see something that you like, just go to that part. And we also have a part on retouching. So enjoy the video and make sure you tell everybody about it because this is video three, and we want to weigh more to become so enjoy. And if you have any questions, just find us on social media. 2. Chapter1BRabbitretouch: Hey guys. So I'm going to show you the retouching from this image. And I chose this image actually because there's something wrong with this image. And I will tell you very quickly why. During the photo shoot, what you saw us do is because the head of the bear was actually tilted backwards. We use some towels to cover the backside of the bear to make it look forward. As you can see here, I took one or two test shots where you can actually still see the towers. And after that, we covered the towel shop with deferred that you can see here. Now, this is one of the test shots and believe it or not, I actually like a test shot better than the final shots. Now, I always tell you guys fix as much as you can on location because you don't want to spend hours in Photoshop. And I'm now stuck with the problem that I will be stuck in Photoshop to retouch this, because again, I love this shot and the other ones are okay, but this one just has his hazard all. You can see the little tail. I loved the expression in her posts. I love the way to bear looks here. I love the lens flares. So this is the image I have to work with. Now, how do you remove the towel? Now, what you can actually do is if you look very closely, you can see that you can copy some further over here and make sure that it looks okay. But then you will get something rough. And again, I'm not a Photoshop wizard. So if I do this, it will look a little bit rough. And I actually did it already to show you guys. So here we go. This is what I did. I copied some of the fur and adjust clone it in here and making sure that I still kept some of this. Now, how did I do this? I actually created an empty layer and I used to clone tool on all layers, as you can see here on top. Now, if I use all layers, I'm actually cloning on an empty layer, as you can see here. So this is what I actually cloned. Now, for me, this is believable, but the problem is, it's way too harsh. I need something to wrap around is like the lens flare because in your original, you can actually see the lens flare wrapping around the firm. So how do you create something like this and make this believable again, the first thing I have to do, and that's the final part of this retouch, is makes sure that this area is a little bit less rough. So I use a low opacity on my brush. There we go. And then in the middle flow, just make sure that this area is a little bit less than divined. Go. But now when I zoom out, it's still doesn't look right. Now. You see the light actually wraps around the subject. So we're going to create it in Photoshop. You're going to make a new layer, an empty layer. And I'm going to take a big brush with white paint. And I'm just going to place it over the areas where I retouched. There we go. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to use a Gaussian blur to spread out that light because I'm actually painting light. Now, zoom into 100 per cent and make sure it looks believable. The more I blur, the more I will see from the original image. And I want, of course, as much as possible from the original image. This is a little bit too much. Now you can see that I Photoshopped. So take the blur down. We go. This looks pretty believable. So now when I press Okay, I actually now solve the problem that I saw the towel. Is it the perfect solution? No, of course not. I should have solved this on location, which I actually did. But somehow. And sometimes it happens. I just like to test shot more so we have to work with this one. Now, this is one thing that I always do and a lot of Photoshop retouching, don't do this, but it's the way I work. As soon as I finished something and I know I'm done. I always do a layer flattened image to go to the second part. And this is where we're going to actually add a little bit of contrast by using a plugin called McPherson intensify. Okay, so for the next step, I'm going to add some extra contrast and detail, make the image pop. Now, I love to plugin called megaphone intensify for this. Now if you don't have a Mac, because this is Mac only software, you can go to to pass labs and download clarity it we'll do approximately the same. The first thing I do is always create a new layer, duplicate layer in this case. Then go to Filters, go to make fun intensify pro. The pro version is actually also has plugins into Photoshop. The non-profit versions are just standalone, so I always go for the Pro versions. Now the first thing I will do is I will go into my presets. And one of the presets I love, and by the way, all these presets are for sale on my website for €7.50. So this is a perfect starting point. And after that you have to fine tune yourself like I'm going to do now. I always love this one, the poppy drama tree. As you can see, it's really enhances the image. This is the before. This is after it gives you a little bit more pop. But now let's say I want a little bit less in the mid tones. You can always go into adjust and just fine tune it. And this case I know in the mid tones I just want a little bit less contrast. Let me go before and after. Now you can also change the shadow so I'm a little bit more shadow detail. Just play a little bit more with the midtone Contrast and want to see where it ends up. And I'll actually like it up a little bit more. There we go. This is cool. Okay. You can play with a lot of these settings and they're really nice. The thing getting you can change. I like it a little bit more aggressive in this image. There we go. And it's all actually fine tuning the preset. But that's where the presets are four and you have to find them before and after really loved this and press Apply. Okay, and here you have two effects. Now what you will immediately see, and this is one of the problems because a short F22 and I changed my lens onset. He said I have a lot of dust or my sensor and actually a lot more than I expected. Now, you can clone this all out or you can heal it all out, but there's a better way. And I'm going to show you that very quickly. I'm only going to show you the start and then the end result. Otherwise it will take probably too long. You take your brush and you go into Quick Mask. Now you make the brush really small. What you do is you just dip over all the dust particles and do that very fast. Well, okay, At first glance, this looks really bad and I will make a note to myself, clean sensor now. But in all honesty, it's not that bad. Normally there's a lot of less dust on my sensor. So I do have to clean my sensor, but I'm using a filter called intensify from Mac fun. And that's really gives you a lot of detail that you normally would never ever see on an image. I think 99% of these dust particles will never show up if you don't use the filter. The filter really gives that pop in my image. So I love to filter, but makes sure that if you use the filter and you're shooting on something like F22 that you take into account a little bit of time to clean it up. So I now selected all the dust particles, including the ones that are very, very faint because megaphone intensify really gets those also into your eyes. And what I now will do is I will de-select my Quick Mask. There we go. I will go into select an inverse because I only want to dust particles to be selected. And because I'm on a separate layer, I'm going to use Edit Fill. I'm going to use Content-Aware with color adaption and just press Okay. It takes a little bit of time because it's a 60 megapixel file. But after this, this problem area, I still have to go through with my Healing Brush because this is just to dance. So there will be some dust particles that are actually copied from other areas in which Photoshop thinks that it's cleaning up. Now this area will be 100% clean. Okay, so now the sky looks pretty clean. Now let's zoom in. There will always be something left because it was rather heavy on the dust. It looks okay. Some smaller parts you just heal away, which are healing brush. Especially on this area, there will be a little bit left because there was way too much dust to take it out 100% correct? A few. But the other side will be probably very clean. There you go. This is 100% clean. Okay, Very nice. So now we're gonna go to the next step and that's where we can attend to the image. Now, 40 tinting of the image. Now, when it comes straight out of the camera, It's okay. You see that the image looks pretty nice. But I always think that's straight out of the camera is a little bit lacking in show. I don't know how to explain it, but I always love to turn my images and maybe that's because I love analog photography. And with analog photography, you actually choose to film role for the look that you want. With digital, all the files look exactly the same. They're perfect. As you can say, perfect, right? There are different ways to change your images. Now, two of the plug-ins that I use the most are DHL film Peck and aliens skin exposure. Now for this image, I love to work with aliens can exposure because I have a certain plug-in that's actually connects to a certain image is a little bit difficult to explain. I can never say to people, You only need the actual film pick or you only need to use aliens can exposure because both have different looks. And for this image, I've actually created a preset and aliens can exposure, which I think will fit it perfectly. So first we duplicate a layer and then we go into Filter, and we go into alien skin exposure seven. Now these settings you can actually also by on my websites, I've several packs like for example, for DHL film bag, for analog affix Pro. And of course make fun. And aliens skin exposure. Now you can, of course just click. And I was as a joke, All these two clicker, you click into it until you see what you like stuff. But in my case, I already know what I'm gonna do. There's a filter here called red pulp. This one. Now I really loved this one. Here. If you see the before and after you see that it's a pretty big difference, especially in the rats. Love that. Now, let's say I want to open up the shadows just a little bit. You can still do that here in your settings. You can open up the shadows. You can play a little bit with your highlights. You can really costume make the look. You can store this, of course, as a new preset. In this case, I'll undo it because I only have one image that I will retouch. The only thing I have to check if, if there's no noise because in this image I don't want any film grain. So I will put my overall film grain to 0. So one more time, the before and after. And I will just press Apply. Now for me, this concludes the image. It now has the look I want is retouched. It has to pop that I really like my images. And if I would've if I would have taken the towel away, onset like we did in the later images, the whole retouch would be pretty fast. The longest time is actually spent on removing the dust from the sensor, which was very clear after using the Mac phon intensifying. So this is my final image. So here we have two before and here we have the after. So as you can see, if you take care onset that your lighting is correct, that you meet it everything correctly, you don't need a lot of Photoshop. In essence, the only thing I do is sharpened my image, remove some dust, and make sure that the tinting is correct. And the tinting, by the way, I will do for every image separately. There's only one more thing. You see this. There's a slightly different color between this part and that part. And that's 100% true because, believe it or not, this is a different glove. They actually lost one of the gloss from this suit. So we use the one from the bear. So now how do we create the same loop here? Well, that's very simple. You go to 100 per cent view and you take your brush and you go into color mode, now, lower the opacity to about 50 per cent. And what you actually do is you sample a color and you just color it over. And there you go. Now it's approximately the same color. So that's about all for this image. Now there's one more thing I sometimes like to add to an image. And I've been looking at this image and I really like it, but somehow I think it needs a little bit more of tinting. And one of the programs that I love to shoot tethered width is catcher one. Now capture one is a very, very powerful role comfort or actually all my RAW conversion is done in DHL optics or in capture one. And in this case we use capture one for the row comforting, but not in unpacking capture one, I'm looking at it. In catch one, There's always something called Presets. And you can find them here. Up here, you see the little piece and it's actually my presets. Now, when I go through my presets and I go to the warm vintage, I have to be honest that I like this look a little bit better than the standard look. So this is the standard look. When I use the warm vintage, It's really adds a little bit more warmth to the image. And of course, to make sure you can also try a few other ones that I don't like this as much as on the image as the warm vintage. I actually like the warm contrast even better. Go. Now because it's a raw converter, I can still tweak this look. So I go here into my settings. I actually add a little bit of contrast and protect my highlights just a little bit more or a little bit less. Let me see what I like. More like this. There we go. Now, this is my final image, this is my final tinting. And it's weird that they use a two-step process, but sometimes the quality of aliens can expulsion. Do you show film back is stunning and it's great. But I still use capture one to make the finishing touch, for example. And I don't know if I can get this exact same look and capture one as I doing. Aliens can exposure or DHL film back. But somehow I find if you combine the two, you get a really unique look. The only thing I now have to do is make sure that I get a tiff to store and an Internet version. Now, these are recipes and capture. One, tiff is actually a tiff uncompressed pro photo, which I store all my hard drive, That's my main original. And the Internet version is a jpeg. On 82, longest side can now be 1250. And we use this on an output folder and we actually put our logo in there. Okay? So now the only thing I have to do is process and then the two images will be created. So one tip for storage and one JPEG version 40 Internet. 3. Chapter2lensbaby: Hey guys, Now one of the problems is, of course, creativity. Now, this whole video is about creativity. And you can do creativity with your lighting. You can use smoke, you can use styling or weird outfits like, let's say a rabbit. But there's also some creativity that you can do with your gear. Now, one of the things that I really like is the lens and now actually have on my camera. This is a Lensbaby, but this is a very special one. This is one that you can actually twist around. Now probably, you know, lens babies from those lenses that gives you that, that weird in the middle focus where everybody goes like, Yeah, that's weird. That's a Lensbaby. And although I do like them, I don't really use them a lot. The one that I do like is this because this is actually not the one where you put it in the middle somewhere. This is the one where you actually shift, or sorry, you don't shift U tilde. Now, with all the technical cameras or medium format cameras, you had lenses called tilt and shift lenses. Now those lenses made it possible to shoot something that's actually under an angle and to create it that it's straight. We all know those problems, right? You walk somewhere, you see a nice building, you shoot it, shoot it slightly up, and you see all those comforting verticals going up. So the building looks more like a pyramid, the hen, what it's supposed to be. Now, the Tilton shift lenses make it possible to make those buildings appear totally straight. So it's an architectural lens, right? Well, you can also use them for some creative stuff within your model photography. Now we have Nadine over here and we have the Lensbaby on here. And what I can do is I can just change my plane of focus. Now normally when you shoot an image like this on F4, like we do now, It's a very simple matter of almost everything will be sharp. So let's start out by just shooting it like you would normally do. I'm focusing on my model now remember these are manual focus lenses. There we go. Awesome, Great. So when using the normal focusing, you will see that there is depth and field of, sorry, there's a depth of field almost all over the image. Now what I will do is I will break my lens. Don't worry, it's built for that. Okay. Inch and up just a little bit. Look straight into the light. Awesome. As you can see, the effect is totally different. Now you can see a whole blurry effect on the bottom, just like with a normal tear glands. Now, it doesn't shift. Now on these cameras, it doesn't really matter that it doesn't shift on a medium format cameras and extreme changes, that's where the shift comes into play because otherwise you have dark areas in your image, but with this lens, you don't need it. Now you can also make it a little bit looser. And now you can move it around a little bit easier or you can tighten it. So you can really just set your focus. If you want to do something close up, you can actually make it into a macro lens. So let's go really close to our model. We go, This is awesome. Now I can come really close and still get a nice effect. Okay, ice up towards the light, please. Awesome. So now I have like the macro effect, but this effect isn't strong enough for me. So I'm going to tilt my lens actually even more. That's nice. Awesome. And I can see that the effect is really strong. Don't want the effects strong. I will just go back to the middle position in the EVF. I can actually see exactly what I'm doing. That's pretty nice. That's cool. Chin down just a little bit. That's awesome. Great. So as you can see, creativity with lenses can also be really fun. So we're gonna do a few more shots. I'm going to stand all the way over here. I'm going to create some more effects. And make sure if you move back, you click that back out to actually still in macro mode. Really nice meeting. And always keep telling you models, he's doing nice. That's cool. Awesome. That's nice. And a few in landscape mode. I always loved landscape and remember you don't have to move it up and down. You can also move it left to right or up and down. You can do whatever you want. Just be creative with your focus. That's nice. I can even make the blurry areas around. There we go. That's really cool. Okay, so now how do you focus? Of course you have to do manual focusing. Now, many were focusing with lenses like this. On an O fie F, that's an optical few finer, that's what most cameras nowadays have. A little bit tricky. So what you can do is you can use the Beck display now on the Baptist play on some cameras, on most actually, you can use an option called peaking. Now with peaking, you can exactly see what is in-focus and what is out focus. Now, because I'm using a Sony camera, I've an EVF, that's an electronic viewfinder. And in this case, that's awesome because now I can actually see everything that's in-focus. I can see bright yellow. So if I turn around my focus, I can actually see a bar moving over the wall until the eyes of the model, until the eyes of the model start blinking pure yellow and denser. And I know she's in-focus. So that works pretty well. So more creativity with lenses. Try this lens. It breaks, but it's designed to break. So don't try it with a lens that isn't designed to break because, well, it can also be very creative. So let's go to the next thing. 4. Chapter3lensflareandmist: This is a trick that I really like to get some real move into a fixture if you don't have a smoke machine handy. Now, the setup is really simple. We have one stroke on the back, we have some prompts, and we have our model. Now we're going to light the model from the bag, creating a high-contrast shot. Now how do we meet or something like this? Well, if you have my light meter video, you actually know that you always have to aim the light media towards the area where the light is coming from. One is correct on your model. Sounds complicated, right? It isn't. Now let's say I want this side of my model to be correctly lit and I'm using an incident meter reading, I would actually meet her like this. Meaning I would meet it a light falling on debt part of her face. Now in this case because I want backlighting, I will actually meet or towards the light source anymore studio setups, you will always need it towards the light source. So let's power the meter on. Aimed towards the light source. I got to meet a reading of f 11.5. F 11.5 means f 115 tenths of an f-stop. Let's say I want to go to F6. So I'm going to add five clicks, 12345, iPhone remote control in my life meter. So if you don't have a remote control, you have to walk to your strokes or use an extra Skype Word or any other system you use. Okay, Now we're on F6. So I'm going to set my camera for F6, ISO 100, and we're just going to take one shot. I'm going to show you how it looks. And then we're going to start adding some atmosphere. Going to choose for a lower angle because I'm shooting up at one delight inside my frame. Now I have to coach my model. Actually looks a little bit towards the light. So can you look a little bit towards light? Very nice. This is already a cool shot. Can you take the hair a little bit away from your eyes? Really nice. Focusing on the closest side. We go. Now you can already see some spots on my lens, right? This is dust. I always leave a little bit of dust on my lens. Now, a lot of people clear their lenses with with brushes or little bits pieces of cloth. I always keep my lenses a little bit dirty with dust because if I'm shooting back lit, that dust will actually show up in the image and it creates a pretty cool effect. I think if I want to clean lands, I can always clean my lens very quickly. For example, if I don't want that effect, but the dust won't show up when you normally shoot. It will only show up when shooting backlit. By the way, that's really cool. In-between tip, if you're buying a second hand lens and it has scratches. And photographer who sells you the lens as well. You will never see that in normal use. You want unless you start shooting back lit scenes. So make sure that if you buy a lens like that, you test it with a back-lit scene. And if you see the scratch down by lens, okay, So there we go and chin up. Just a little bit. Very nice ice tray that really cool. But now let's say we want to add a little bit more. A little bit like there's a smoke machine, but there is no smoke machine. Now the oldest trick in the book. Take a few son who would take a deep breath. Just breed over your lens. Focus on your model to shut and you get this really cool, diffuse light quality. Very nice. Now as you can see, I have to refocus, and that can be a little bit tricky now this camera focus is pretty fast. But if you have a camera that starch hunting when there's a lot of missed on your lens, which this one also does. There's a trick that's even better. And a week. Can you please come here? There we go. Just leaves the camera there. And now you come from behind the camera and you're going to breathe on the lens. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to refocus on my model, making sure I have the composition that I like. There we go. And I'm going to ask any week to do the honors. There we go. Now it's way easier to control because now I can pre focus and I know you can, you do it again and shoot. So really simple trick to create some extra atmosphere in your photo shoots. 5. Chapter4projector: Now let's talk about creative lighting. You have different ways of lighting your subjects. You can, for example, use strokes like for example, the big strokes in the studio or your speed lights. And you can take those strokes, of course also on-location. The advantage of those strokes is they give a lot of power, meaning you can shoot an F6, F11 to fight the sun, or you can set them on a lower output. Another option is constant lighting, like the lights that are now actually lighting me and we'll studio use less panels from let-go. You can also use those in photo shoots. The problem with those is they give a little bit less output. Meaning if you want to freeze motion, well, that's very difficult because you have to keep the shutter speed low. And of course the output is not F22 on 125th of a second or 12 thousands of a second, which you will actually need to freeze motion. But for a portrait, they worked fine. It's constant lighting, great quality. Now, of course, you can also use different light sources. For example, light bulbs, fluorescent tubes isolates or whatever you want. But one of the most creative light sources out there is of course, a light source which you can manipulate, which you can change, which you can make, do whatever you guys want. You can actually probably already see it here. And now standing in front of one, and it's called a projector. Now some of you guys know a projected from a home teeth are set up or from your business meetings where they showed us boring slides from Excel or PowerPoint or whatever. We're going to use the projector in a totally different way. Now, first of all, you have to note that the projector is not the same, like any project or you base the same, they are different ones. For example, I'm using an epsilon. The reason I'm using the epsilon is because it has a Wi-Fi transmitter to my computer. Now, that means that I don't need any wires. Well, of course I need one wired power, otherwise it won't work, but you don't need another HDMI cable. So that's very nice. You can move the projector everywhere in the studio where there's a power outlet. Now, where do you have to take care of when you buy a projected for this kind of stuff. Make sure you buy one that has a high NC lumen output. And that's very easy to explain. The higher DNC lumens, the more light output. Now, if you go figure, you will actually figure it out yourself, of course, because the lower the light output, the higher you have to crank up your ISO or have to open up your shutter speed or your aperture and you don't want it. So you want a high-end syllabus. Now, what is high? Well, anything into three thousand, four thousand insulin's will do just fine. The fun part about trajectories, if you can connect it to your desktop, you can actually start painting your light. For example, we now have setup where we use Photoshop with a big black canvas. I'm just going to paint the light with a white brush. So we're going to call in our model Nadine. We're going to turn off the lights in the studio because then you guys can actually see what's going on and we're going to start, well, let's call it creative light painting with a projector. It's a totally different way of using light, but it's very cool. Okay guys, so we have our model Navy in here. And as you can see, Photoshop is actually projected over an 18. Now, if you want to make advertising for Photoshop, this is actually pretty cool. But we want to advertise for Photoshop at the moment. So what you have to do is you press the F key and you will actually go into full screen mode. But first I want to show you what I'm going to paint with. Now. I took a brush over here, a very soft brush with white collar. White collar, well, actually it's a wide brush. So we press F, F, and now we're in full screen mode. Now as you can see here, I'm already moving my brush over my model. And I asked my model, of course to close her eyes because this is the very irritating. If you have to say they're open your eyes constantly and if that projector shining straight in your face. So I'm just going to paint my light where I want it. Of course I want to paint her face. And how you can slowly see her styling appearing like magic. Now the fun part is if you have areas where you don't want to paint, you just use black paint and you can take the pain away again. So in other words, you're really painting your lighting and if you want a light out, you paint shadows with black. You could, even if you're really creative, new something in the middle, like middle gray. And you can actually create different types of lighting, which we're gonna do in a moment. But first let's put the outline's there. So we're going to paint her dress. Another tip is make sure that you paint from the area where you're going to shoot. I'm going to shoot this under a slight angle. So I'm actually now taking notice that I'm painting the way that I want to shoot. Because if you don't and you move around your model, you have the chance that you can see some stuff leaking on the background, which you don't want in the picture. There we go. I forgot a little bit of area there. And if you look at my screen, you can exactly see what I'm painting in. So you can actually also see where it goes wrong or where it looks right. Now again, because I'm shooting under this angle, I can be a little bit more sloppy on this side. But I have to be more careful on this side. Because this is the angle I'm going to shoot under wikis under a slightly different angles. So you will get a slightly different look with when the pictures come in, you will actually see what I mean. Very nice. Now I'm going to change my brush to black. As you can see now I'm painting in the areas because I was first looking at the model and I'm just painting in the areas from the screen. So I'm going to press F, F and make sure that your background color is already black because now I can just switch between my colors so I don't have to go back into the full-screen and assumed mode. I'm going to remove some of the excess light on the sites. We go cool. Now as you can see here, hence, needs a little bit more light. But if I'm not careful, I will spill over on the back. And this is the fun part about painting. I can actually make my brush much smaller. Press the X key again to go back to white and really fine tune my selection. You could call it a selection. We're now working on a real mask. It's okay if there's a little bit of spill because again, I'm shooting under an angle in a moment. J not going to notice this. Okay? Now let's say we want the face to be popping out a little bit more and the other area a little bit less. So what can you do? Well, with normal strokes, you can use something called grits to mimic light fall-off, or actually you create light fall off. With this. Well, you can use a little bit of gray instead of standard black. So let's change the background color, not in black, but let's say middle gray. So press Okay, go back to F again, to full screen mode. Press the X and make the brush a little bit bigger. And now what I'm gonna do on the side, so I'm just kinda take away a little bit of the light. And I'm creating light fall-off. This is pretty cool, right? But we can go much further. Because with normal strokes, which you can do is you can control your light fall-off like in a circle. With this, I want a little bit less light, for example, here. Really make her face pop. But let's say I want a little bit more light on the white. So just press the X again. And I will create more light here. Just debit over here. And by changing the pressure on my stylus, I can actually really custom paint what I want. It's almost like Bob Ross. For you guys not knowing Bob Ross, use Google little bit more. And India and I'm almost painting everything in the way it was, except some areas here. Okay, So now how am I going to shoot this? Because now it's time to bring out a camera and shoot this. Now the setting I'm going to use is actually manual mode. I'm going to try for an atheist of seconds. And I'm going to shoot on F3 point to my ISO, I'm going to use on auto. In other words, the camera will figure out what is we'll need to do. Now. Why don't I meter dish? Well, you can meter it, but you know how to ISO does a pretty good job with this kind of stuff. Because I'm shooting is Sony. I can actually see my viewfinder. Exactly what I'm gonna get. So we take the first shot, we go. I didn't look a little bit more towards slides. Really nice. That's cool. I'm going to go a little bit closer to shoot a little bit more angle. Focused on the ice and make the compensation. That's nice. Chin down just a little bit. There we go. Awesome. And a few nice close-ups. That's cool. Again, as with normal photo shoots, keep coaching your model, but do realize that looking into a projector is not really nice. So keep it as quick as possible. Thank you very much. Okay, So this is the first set, but we're going to try to add some extra move by using some colored gels and some smoke. Okay, so now we added some extra strokes I'm using to ELC. And why do I use the EOC is from Allan Grody. Well, very simple. They have a high output modelling light. So I don't have to stroke. I can use the modelling lives of the EEOC to give the extra color I want in the scene. Now, as you can see, it is a totally different look. Now, I will first make some pictures without the smoke, and then you can see that it already brightens up the scene a lot. So we're using the projector for the white light, and we're using the two eLC from each side, one with the blue gel. One with the red shell to give a little bit of light on my model with a little bit of color. Now, one thing that you have to be very careful for is the nose. Because we using lights from the side. It means that if she looked straight on, you can see that she has a really nasty knows coloring. It's not a no shadow, but it's like collar on a note that I don't want. Now, if I asked you to look all the way there, you can see that when I'm shooting from that angle, actually the color is gone from the nose. So make sure that you really take notice of that. Now, if it happens during a photo shoot and you are in the heat of the photoshoot. Go on. Yeah, It's going, Greg, nice look that way. And you still have that little bit of light. You can always take it out in Photoshop. But I think that when you're on set, take the picture as perfect as possible. So in Photoshop you only need minor adjustments. Okay, I'm gonna shoot under an angle and we first got to shoot again without the smoke because we're going to add smoke to the scene. Really nice guy and I didn't look a little bit down. There we go. Now the blue is out of her nose. Very cool, nice close-up, maybe one with the lighting. And we go really nice. But now for the final part, Let's add some smoke and really make this image rock, give it some smoke. And first from the back, of course, fill it up a little bit higher because you really have to steer the smoke in front of the light. There we go. And a 1.5 in front of her. There we go. When working with smoke makes sure that it doesn't read her face. Because then you have a problem because then the focusing will be off. Smoke will add as a reflector. So you will actually get a white image. Really nice. So now we have a little bit too much in front of her face. I'm going to blow a little bit. This is more like a mist, like smoke. Very nice. That's cool. Nice. So I'm adding smoke. We already added a little bit of magic. But let's take it one step further and let's start using the strokes on strobe mode. So how do you set this up? Well, in the previous setup, we shoot on Auto ISO mode. And you already can see that when you using smoke, smoke excess a diffuser reflector. And even as a reflector, meaning your outer exposure will change a little bit. Now because we're using the strokes on the normal setting, meaning they will actually power up and give a really pulse of light. It means that we now set everything on manual mode. And in this point, I chose for 1 eighth of seconds ISO 400 F 3.2. Now that setting is fixed. If I shoot and I still want a little bit of change, Let's say in the output of the projector, the only thing I have to do is change the shutter speed. Because if you change the shutter speed, you actually control the ambient light. If you change the aperture, you're controlling the strokes. Now, the strokes I've already set up, I did a quick test shot and this is what I like. So the only thing I now have to do during the photoshoot is changed my shutter speed if I want more or less light from the projector. Now should I use a light meter? You know, I'm very much about light metering, right? Well, in this case, I didn't use a live meeting. I don't tell you very quickly why. This is a feeling shot. This is special effects shots. This is not a shot where you have to have perfect exposure on the phase of the model and we're shooting tethered to the computer. So I just took a shot that I really like. And DOE settings I'm going to use. Now, if I want the face to be correctly lid, then I will use a light meter. But in this case there's so much going on and it's just let me put it this way. We just mixing everything together too, a look that I like. So that's why we didn't use a light meter for this one. So let's start. We're going to add some smoke, and then we're going to start using the strokes, the color on iodine. And let's make some rocking images. But first, we're going to turn off deadline. You can actually see what a constant lighting does for the scene in a week or you turn it off and let the guys see how it looks. And now it's dark and you can only see Nadine and the light changing my shutter speed to let in a little bit more ambient light. I'm actually also playing with my aperture. The combining the two really cool. Chin up just a little bit. Some of the images you can throw away because there's a lot of smoke in front of her face. But just keep shooting. You're not shooting film, so it doesn't cost you anything. That's really cool. And of course make sure that you change your angles. Now going to sit a little bit closer to NAD. Actually, I'm in the set. Closing up a little bit more. Really nice. Yes. That's nice. The smoke is still there so we don't need any new smoke. Let's try some really low angle stuff. Now as you can see, it's pretty simple to strobes. Gels, colored gels, a projector, and a model, and smoke. Simple. Now, but it started out really simple and that is the cool thing about creativity. You start out with a really simple id, id, light painting with a projector. And then you start adding strokes with modeling lights, and then you start adding smoke. And before you know it, you create a symphony of Light, smoke, and projection. And that's the fun thing about photography. The only limitation is here. If you break down with limitation, you can use any light source you want and you can create some really cool stuff. 6. Chapter5lightblaster: Now for this segment, I'm going to use something that literally blew my mind when I got it in. Now, you all know from the bus, right? When you looked at the old 40s and 50s glamour shots that on the background there were these beautiful patterns. Now they were actually pretty smart. So what they did is they used, for example, the offers, flowers or whatever. They put it in front of a stroke. And that will actually cast a shadow on the backgrounds, or they use Venetian blinds to cast shadows. Now, in the modern days, we can of course, use projectors now after they are called cold gobo projectors. Now those go, we'll projectors are actually pretty simple. They use a metal plate with patterns and those patterns are projected on a wall. Now, those are pretty expensive. So when I got this unit and this is called the light blaster, I first was a little bit skeptical like for this kind of price, can you really get something that's interesting? But the product just works. It's awesome. Now how does it work? It's very simple. In this case, it's mounted on a 1200 watt stroke from Alan Rome. And it's universal. You can mount it on any stroke you want. It has a mounting bracket and you can tighten the nuts over here and it will really fit on your reflector. Now, this is the actually the light blaster unit itself. And insight dares to gobo in this case, we're going to use stars. Now, the front part, that's the important part. You can mount any Canon lens on this. And of course, if you use converters, you can use of course also Nikon or M4, E2 or like or whatever you want if you have a converter, it works. The only thing that's very important if you have to make sure that it's an open aperture and take the fastest lens you can get. Because the light will actually traveled through the reflector, through the light glancing through the lens. That's a lot of trues, right? So it takes away the quality of light, sorry, not the quality but the intensity of light. Now, in this case I'm using a one-point eight lens. So that means I've a very wide aperture. If you put a 5.6 lanes on there, there won't be any light left, it will be very dark and you need everything you can get in light. So make sure you use a one-point for lens. The other thing is, some lenses are stuck on apertures. I believe nikon has a system where it's actually stuck on an aperture. So make sure that if you get the converter, you get a converter that opens up the Nikon lenses to full aperture. Again, don't use 2.81.41.2 is those are awesome. And if you already have a Canon system, you can use your own lenses. Now my case, I'm shooting Sony. So I bought the cheapest, literally the cheapest Canon lens I could buy. And it's a, I believe it's a union or you know, or whatever you can pronounce it. It's a 1.8, it's a very cheap one. It's about €65, and I connected it. Now as you can see, there's a lot of light spill, right? If I put it on now there will be nothing on the screen. So what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to use this. This is included in the package and you just put it over your reflector and the light blaster. We go and make sure that it's light tight. Tighten it very, very securely. There you go. And also on the back, you can see it's real simple to do. Now, the only thing you have to do is focus. Because the pattern on the backgrounds can be focused. And that's the cool thing about this system. You can make it more like in-focus, or you can make it more surreal a little bit, the out-of-focus. So now we're going to use it on our model Nadine. And first we're going to start with only the light blaster as a main light source. And after that, we're going to add a spot on her face. Now, how do I meet or something like this? Well, you know, I always use my light meter, right? I'm miss the light meter. In this case, that's pretty much impossible. So I just have to wing it because I can't meter if I don't know what's hitting the model and it's just all patterns. So for this time, we just leave the light meter in the case. Now as soon as we start adding the stroke on the model's face, That's when we start adding the light meter. Now one more important thing, this part is plastic. So don't, and I repeat, don't leave on your modeling lights unless you like the smell of molten plastic? I don't think so. So how do you set it up? Well, we're going to turn off all the lights and week is pointing the camera towards the backdrop which we're going to use. And I'm going to show you very quickly how you can set it in-focus and out-of-focus. And then I'm going to turn off the modeling light again, turn on the studio lighting, and ask Nadine to come on stage. Okay, guys, so now you can see it totally dark studio, of course, the camera picks up some light, but it's pretty dark. And in the backgrounds you can already hear the fence off the 1200 watts. So I'm going to turn on my modeling light. And as you can see, these are the stars. So that's pretty cool, right? So now what I can do is I can focus the stars or I can de-focus to stars now, as soon as you have the effect that you want, and in this case, I want them really sharp. Turn off your modeling light again because otherwise you will smell some plastic if you forget it. Now, it's not something that we'll start smelling in like seconds. But just be careful because there's a lot of warmth coming from the modeling lights. Okay, so now Nadine is onset. And again, it's very difficult to see what you're doing because you don't have a modeling light. So we actually took some test shots, as you can see here on the back because I want to make sure that Nadine is actually getting light. Were to go projector or delight blast in this case, you have to make sure of course, that the light hits the model on the areas where you want, for example the eyes or the body. So make sure that in-between you always check this. Shoot a little bit slower if you're a fast shooter and make sure that every shot counts. So let's take some shuts off Nadine. And I love the kind of circus. Look. You go, That's nice. Awesome. And again, as always, keep talking to your model, keep telling her she's doing fine. Because C can see which issues, what you see through the lens. And if you want to take your shots and want to keep the energy of your set flowing. You have to make sure that your model constantly knows he's doing more fine. Really nice. Keep talking to your model. Keep that energy flowing in your set. Really nice meeting. Awesome. I love the double faces. Really nice. And even if you take a shove that you don't like, don't tell your model, just keep telling her she's doing fine and all the shots are awesome. Loved that one. Really nice. Okay, So now we only use the light blaster. So let's see if we can be a little bit more creative. And also use a spot on the model and maybe use some color on the light blast to give that real like a duotone effects. So we're going to use a red gel on the light blaster. And we're going to use a spot on the model. So we made a setup now completely different. I'm using a red gel on the light blaster and I'm using an Ellen grooms snoop with grid on my model. So their face gets the normal light color and actually the background is colored bright red with the stars. So it's going to be a funky shot, a little bit different. So let's take some shots in 18. Awesome. Going to change my composition to make it a little bit more daring. There you go. Really likely to get the model on the side of the frame. Love it. Nice. That's cool. Mr. Miyagi. We go lower the head just a little bit. There we go. Awesome. More close-ups. Love it. I'm always focusing on the eyes and then making my composition. So I'm using a center focus points. Now with the Sony, I can actually also use the OK button and make the camera to look for the eyes of the model. But that only works on certain E mount lenses. And it's a really cool in handy technique. Works a little bit faster as you can see. I'm using the Okay button to find the eyes of the model. And then I can just use the trigger to take the picture. The shutter button, of course. Heads. Nice. Keep it at doing. Awesome. Really cool. Okay, final shot. One more. All right, I go one more because you're doing so well. Awesome. Final shot. And other final shelf, really final shot. And another for the final shots. Now why do I say so many times final shot? Because every time you say final shut, the model will give her best because he thinks this is the one, this is the one where I really have to work. So don't do the trick too often because then the model doesn't leave you anymore. Thank you so very much in eating. Oh, that's cool. Do that one more time. Awesome. Okay. So you think we're done yet? No, no. We're going to use some smoke with backlighting with a light blaster. 7. Chapter6lightblasterandsmoke: Okay, now for this next setup, we're going to use the light blaster on the back and I'm going to use smoke. May have to worry about smoke. Now, why do you have to worry about smoke? Because there's a lot of stuff going on. Now. Smoke x as a diffuser reflector. So it can really change the light source. Now if I make a shot like this, so without any smoke, I could actually think that I have way too little light from the background. And I'm already shooting on ISO 200th F4, and the 1200 watts is on full power. Now, light blast, of course, takes away a little bit of light. But this is ridiculous, right? And that's because I'm using it as a backlight. Now as soon as we start pumping smoke into the scene, the smoke will actually start working as a reflector, but it will also take away a little bit of the harshness of the light. So smoke is awesome. Now, you can think about it as when driving on the roads and there's a lot of fog. What you will actually do is don't turn on your headlights because all the smoke and all the fog will actually reflect the light back so you see a bright white wall. So this is also where we take notice when we light our model from the front. Now, I will use light under an angle, because if I use light straight on my model, it will actually reflect back from the smoke. Well, we're going to do this very, very slowly. We're going to start with setting up a shot with only the light blaster. So I'm going to change my aperture around. I'm not going to use a light meter for this. And as soon as I have something that I like, I will look at my aperture and I will try to mimic the stroke on the front on that aperture setting. Sounds confusing. Let's start and we'll show you what I mean. Okay, as you can see, we already put some smoke in the room. And the reason for this is I want a nice curtain of smoke. So I don't want smoke to be only in certain spots like you normally do with smoke. I really want a curtain of smoke. So let's take one test shot very quickly and see if I like it. And as you can see, the beams of light will actually start projecting on the smoke. This is really cool. Okay, in 18, awesome. That's nice. Make it funky. There we go. Awesome. You can even do full buddies with smoke because it actually mimics an area that's flooded with light. You go. So that's really nice. Okay, So now what I wanna do is I want to make sure that my model jumps out. So we do have to add another stroke, and that will be on the face of the model. And in this case I have to look at my aperture and that's F4. So the first thing I set up, It's the smoke with a background because I know the light blaster is the weakest. So the backstroke is actually on full power. And that gives me the effect that I really like at the moment. So now I check on my camera. It's 125th of a second, of course, because we're using strokes, It's F4 on ISO 200th. Now the only thing I have to do is make sure that that stroke, and that's an eLC 500 from Ellen grown with a 70 centimeter octa with a grid. So it's really focused light and have to make sure that that one is on F4, ISO 200th. Now why do we use an EEOC? The EEOC is the new stroke from m1g Rome. And the cool thing about the EEOC is it can go really down low on power. So in essence, I can actually get 2.8 from those units pretty close by. And because I'm shooting on ISO 200th and I need a wide open aperture that's not really wide open, but it's F4. I'm going to need a stroke that Camille really down in output. Now here you're going like Frank. Okay, We bought the light blast. Now we also have to buy eLC. No, of course not. The cool thing about allied blast is you can also mounted on your small strokes. Because if you use it on a small stroke, all the power from the stroke is directed straight through the light blaster. You get way more light outputs. So on the studio strobes, well, it's a little bit figuring around with settings. And you lose a lot of light on the small strokes system, you get a lot of light from the light blaster. But in the studios you can see here it works pretty well. You just have to be a little bit smart about setting up your lighting. So we're going to meet our deadline on F4, and then we're going to make the final shot. Okay, so now we're going to meet her delight to make sure that it's F4, ISO 200th. So you put your light meter on ISO 200. And in this case, I want this area of my model to be correct in late. So I pointed towards the light source. Remember, as I explained in the video mastering the model, shoot the light meter. The light meter is an incident light meter, meaning is meters, the light falling on your light meter. So you hold it in front of the area that you want correctly lit. So in this case, if for example, and I don't know why, but let's say I want this area to be correctly lid. I actually hold it in front and meet it a light. If I want to front to be correctly lid, I hold it like this. But in this case, and that's also most of the times in the studio because that's how you set your lights up. We want this part to be correctly lit. So there we go. 2.89. Now that means that I'm 1 tenth of an f-stop away from F4 because my light meter is set up in one tenths of an f-stop. And my strokes are actually also controlled in 1 tenth of an f-stop. Now 2.89 means 2.89 tenths of an f-stop, and it's almost F4. So the only thing I have to do is add one-click or my stroke. And I can do that for you to remote control, which is now inside this iconic, now this is the 478 with the syndrome system inside. But you can also of course use a separate Skype board or you can use a pocket veto system or whatever. But I'm using Chrome. So really like it that they now bill it inside the 478. Test it again, and now I'm on F4. Exactly. So now I can take my shots and make sure that my model is correctly lid and the smoke is lit from the back. So let's create some magic. Okay, so now I set everything up. Be careful with opposing of your model. You don't want the glued on effect, meaning lighting your model from the side, making it flat. Now, lighting your model from the side making it flat. Frank, that doesn't work right? Because you're always tell them, if you like, from the side you have three-dimensionality. That's correct. But in this case, you also have to make sure that your model makes poses like this where she looks a little bit away from the light. So you can create a nice contrast interface. And remember, shadows are to solo for sharp, it creates three-dimensionality, so don't be afraid of them. So let's take one test shot without the smoke. And as you can see, you create a nice dark area on her face. And you create a nice light area, meaning you have three-dimensionality in your shot and there's still a little bit smoke left. But let's up the end the a little bit and add some smoke. So any week is using a remote control for the smoke machine on the right, and that actually only covers the floor. Now, men who are in turn has the other smoke machine. And he's actually going to fill up the story, the top part. And at 1, you will actually point a smoke machine towards Nadine and make sure that also the floor is covered. Now, if you're the photographer that just puts a smoke machine out there and presses the button. I can tell you now, you will be disappointed because smoke you really have to control like your lighting. So okay. I know we go You ready to do the floor part? Okay. Press the button and minnow, you just fill up the back. There we go. And move it around just a little bit. There we go. Okay, so let's see the very nice wall of smoke behind my model. That's cool. Nice knitting. I remember to keep coaching your model, even if you are very occupied by looking at the smoke. Keep coaching your model because C doesn't see what you can see through the lens. So you have to make sure that it keeps it flow going. Really nice, needing awesome. So let me check very quickly on a monitor. That looks really nice. Menno, can you put a little bit more smoke on the floor? So we're gonna do some full body shops. Little bit more. No, we go so a little bit more. Okay. Now all the way up Minow and aim it towards the back of the model. Nice. Love it. That's great. Awesome. Nice needing, love it a little bit more on the floor. Amino. Really nice. Okay, a few more close-ups meeting. That's cool. Awesome. Okay, thank you. So as you can see, you can create really cool effects by adding a little bit of the light blaster. Of course, without the light blast, you can also use the smoke, but you won't get those nice stripes in the smoke. And that's the cool thing about the light blaster. It creates that gobo effect. And let's see if we can do one more thing that's a little bit more creative with this setup because we kind of use a blue gel on the back. Okay, so we edit a blue gel in front of the light blaster. Now remember you can put whatever you want in front of light blaster. So there are gel packs that you can normally use on your strokes with a little bit of gaffers tape or duct tape, you can actually mount them on the lens of the light blaster as you saw in the previous screen. So in this case we use blue because I like the blue a little bit more with the smoke. So let's see what works. Let's see if it works. There we go. Okay, a little bit more smoke. Nice. We're going to wait for the smoke to build. Very nice. Awesome. Changed my own position to get a little bit more of the effects of the live stream. We're gonna do one more full body. That's nice. A little bit more smoke on the floor, Menno, towards the feet of the model. By filling that up, I don't see my floor anymore. And of course the light fall off also takes care of that because we're using a grid. Remember a grid is focused light. Really nice. Meno can have a little bit more smoke on that side of the model. Make it fast because smoke is getting towards me. And as soon as the smoke is too much in front of me, I can't shoot anymore. One, the focusing won't work anymore of the camera because it gets confused by all the smoke. And of course, the light will reflect back because smoke is a deflector, but also a reflector. There we go. Awesome. They deem, as long as I can, I keep shooting. The Sony focuses pretty well. So I can keep going for a little while. Now it's getting a little bit more troublesome. That's nice. Awesome. Final shot. Remember there's no final shelves. Cool. Okay, one more. Give it a lot of expression 123, and go, Awesome. Thank you so very much. As you can see, creativity is many, many things combined. Outfits, styling, lenses, some simple techniques like breathing on your lens, smoke, light blasters, men, projectors. You can do whatever you want. There's one thing you have to do. Pull that switch inside of your head and that switch always tells you it can be done or it will look weird. If it looks weird, just delete the images. But I promise you, if you turn that switch from might be too, should be, your creativity will grow and your images will be awesome. So thank you so very much for watching and see you next time.