Transcripts
1. Why Tunnels are Great: As you've seen, things don't always work out perfectly. When we go out to take photographs. We sometimes have to be problem solvers. We sometimes have to try things again just to make sure that they work. This class is all about photographing in tunnels. We've got a range of different options for your shooting in tunnels. Tunnels are great to shoot in. I love shooting in tunnels, were lucky to have quite a few around my local area in New Castle. And it gives me the option to be able to use a range of different lighting opportunities. I can use natural light when I'm down close to the edge of the tunnel or the end, I can use other long exposure techniques when I get into the middle of the tunnel where it's a little bit darker. Every tunnel is a little bit different, as you'll find in this class. You're going to see quite a lot of shots that I've taken in tunnels around my local area over the last 10 or 20 years. And you'll see a live shoot that I'm doing in a tunnel that I'm going to explain the techniques that I use and why I used those particular techniques. And you will learn about shooting in tunnels from watching all of that stuff. Now, the reason why I love shooting in tunnels is the diversity, particularly if the lighting, but also of the locations. Some tunnels around sum of squares, summer, a high ceilings. Some are just shorter and allow a bit more natural light to come in. Some of them that completely black and dark. So I have to take my own lighting along to be able to use to create the photographs that I'm trying to create. Channels are great because they also have graffiti in them. Often. They look a little bit grungy. So the sort of photography I love to do, I love to do fashion and portrait model photography. It often suits that sort of treatment. When I get into tunnels, I can do a range of different techniques. My shots look that little bit different. Now when we are shooting in tunnel Cis, a few safety things we need to think about, which we'll talk about in a little while. There is some specialized equipment that we might need to take along. Nothing too out of the ordinary or too expensive, but some things that you might plan to use that will make your shots look that little bit different. A couple of other reasons why I love shooting at tunnels is because you get those great converging lines in the background. The lines of the tunnel heading down towards the entrance at the end or the curve of the tunnel as it sweeps around the corner. There are lots of different effects we can use, particularly with wide-angle lenses, but also a telephoto lenses, which we'll talk about in this class as well. Tunnels are great for shooting on rainy days because you're protected from the rain. You do need to be careful that you don't get a torrent of water coming in through your tunnel. But a bit of planning and using it as a backup location on a rainy day can really work well. Tunnels also allow me to use some more unusual lighting techniques. I do a lot of light painting with torches or flashlights. I can do double exposures. I can do long exposures with a bit of movement in them. Shooting in Dhaka conditions allows you so much more flexibility with the lodging and the effects that you can do. In the live video shoot that you see in this class, I'll be using some powder to backlight my model and throwing powder in the background. I'll also be using fireworks or steel wool to spin sparks around inside a tunnel. Which tends to work really well because the tunnel restricts the movement of those sparks to a particular shape of the tunnel. And that can look really effective. I do a lot of flash photography, I do a lot of bounce flash. We can do some uploading, some downloading, a whole range of different things. We can use snippets or we can zoom in our flesh to give us a narrow band of light to light our subjects. So there's huge possibilities from shooting in tunnels. So please join me in this class. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. I'm sure you'll learn a lot about shooting anywhere, not only in tunnels, but you see the enthusiasm that I have for shooting in tunnels. And hopefully you'll get that when you finish this class. So getting here, have a look. I'll see you on the other side.
2. Recommended Gear: The equipment that you need to photograph in tunnels is not a great deal different to the equipment you need to do normal photography. You need a camera. Obviously, a flesh is a big advantage to be able to use that flesh and know how to use that flash. But with those two things, you can shoot pretty much anything you want you inside the tunnel. Often when we're using slow exposures or slow shutter speeds, a tripod is a big advantage if there's nothing there to rest your camera on auto steady it. A tripod allows you to position your camera wherever you want to, in the right angle so that you're framing your subject in the right way. And a tripod will keep your camera steady. So you can do slow exposures. You can do one to 10, 20 seconds exposures if you want to, to create effects similar to the ones that you'll see in this class. You don't want a really heavy tripod. You want something that's fairly solid, that's going to hold your camera will. But a cheap tripod is going to be a disadvantage because you're going to end up with blurry shots. Spend a bit of money on a tripod, you spend a lot of money on your camera and your lens. So spend an equivalent amount on your tripod and get something really good. It will last you for 50 years. I've had a tripod, this lasted me for 40 years now and I anticipate using it for the next 10 years, at least. The other thing that might be a good thing to take along with you is a torch or a flashlight, or an LED lamp. Something that is going to enable you to see things, particularly if you're shooting at night in a tunnel, or if you're shooting in a tunnel that's very dark, some of the tunnels are shooting a completely black. There's no lacZ in there whatsoever. So without some sort of artificial light, I couldn't see what I was doing. So a torch is a great idea or a head torch can help you more than anything because it leaves your hands free to do the things you have to do. But remember to turn it off when you start photographing. Another thing that you may not think of to take along is a broom or a leaf blower. Just to clean up the area in the tunnel. Sometimes I can get a little bit messy in there. So having something to clean up the area can really be a big benefit. It's probably better broom than a leaf blower because depending on the tunnel, sometimes a leaf blower can blow up a lot of dust, which could be a problem with your camera, with your exposures or with your lighting. If you've got a tunnel That's quite well ventilated with a bit of a breeze coming through, then that would be fine. But a broom is probably better. That's not going to stare up as much dust and it will be handy for other purposes as well. Another thing to think about would be spare equipment, because you don't want to get it in your tunnel education ready to go and something fails or battery goes date or something like that. It's a good idea to have some spares, either keep them in your car or keep them in your camera bag so that you can carry on with the shoot if you need to. Now thinking about lenses, you could either shoot with wide angles or telephoto is or anything in between in a tunnel. I really love shooting wide angles as you've probably seen in other classes that I've done. Wide angles give me that really fantastic perspective. It can give me those converging lines in the background. My tunnel look much longer as well because of the exaggerated perspective, I do need to be careful when I'm shooting people, which is what I mostly do. That I don't distort my Paypal too much with that wide-angle lens. So I tend not to put my people towards the edge of the frame where the most distortion happens. Or I try to not use to widen angle. Because if I start using something in the degree of 10 or 15 millimeter lenses on a full-frame camera, it's going to really distort my model and make it look a little bit odd. So keep your wide angles to reasonable degree. Shooting telephoto is can help quite well in tunnels to particularly long ones, because it tends to bring that background closer. It tends to make your tunnel appeals shorter. If you're using something in the background such as pada throwing or water or fireworks. You don't want to get that on your model. So you can have those things further back in your tunnel and have your telephoto lens exaggerate that perspective. To try to flatten that perspective, I mean, to bring those things closer to your model so that it gives you a more spectacular Look to your shot. So try out both ends of your, of your lens. So if you have a zoom lens, It's ideal. You can use a wide-angle end and you can use your telephoto end as well in a tunnel and you don't have to go cutting around 70 lenses. The angle that you shoot your tunneled to can vary. You can shoot it from rock and low, which tends to give you a very spectacular drop off. Shooting that floor right back to the end of the tunnel. Or you can shoot from above, which gives a different perspective as well. When you're shooting people, it does make a difference Because I tend not to shoot down on people if I'm shooting full length because it makes them look a little bit short. And I don't want to shoot from below if I'm shooting a head shot of someone in a tunnel or anyway, because it's going to exaggerate their chin and look up the nose and stuff and it's not very flattering angle. So depending on how you're going to shoot your subject, you choose the angle of shooting to suit that particular purpose.
3. Stay Safe: Safety is a factor. Whenever we shoot in abandoned places or places like tunnels, safety can be a consideration and you need to be very careful because ultimately the most important thing is the safety of yourself, your subjects or your clients, and the people who go with you. So think about the hazards that you may strike when shooting in tunnels, depending on the tunnel that you're using, there could be things like spiders in there. So your broom can come in handy there for sweeping away any spider webs or any spiders that might be around. Some of them are models that are used are not particularly keen on posing next to spider webs. So that helps me to, help to calm the models down to get rid of those spider webs or those cobwebs, even though I think they would look really cool in the photograph. We have to please, uh, models because they are the most important person in the shoot. A larger type of hazard could be bats. If you're in a tunnel That's got some very dark areas or a quite long tunnel, you may have Batson they're living. So if you disturb those beds, that can be a little bit scary when they all take off. So stay calm, don't panic. Things will come down after a while. I've only had probably two or three instances where I've had a couple of bets in a tunneled urban shooting in, and it hasn't caused too much of a problem. A couple of things that can be an issue though, is rubbish on the floor, particularly glass or, or rubbish, rubbish that people have left there and things. So be careful about where you step, where you walk. That's where your broom will come in handy as well. You can clean up the area that you're working in if you want to. And that will make it a little bit easier for you there too. One thing you need to think about as well, or another thing you need to think about is to try not to go to these places alone. Try to go as a pair, as a couple or take a couple of people with you so that there are people there in case you have an accident, In case you trip over and break your leg or something, You need somebody there to go to safety or to call someone to help. It's much better if you go to these places in a group of people. It's more social as well. It's more fun to be in a group of people. You can all bounce ideas off each other as well, which can really help with the results of the shoot. So consider taking somebody with you when you go into these sort of spaces. Sometimes people live in these places as well. Homeless people or people who just want to get away from it can live in these spaces. So if that does happen, it's never really happened to me. But if it does happen, respect their their personal space and their place of residence and just moved to a different spot, go to a different tunnel planet beforehand, maybe visit that tunnel before you go for your shoot just to make sure that there isn't anybody in there because that can cause an altercation and cause a problem for you as well. One other thing that is something that you really don't think about, but this comes from our engineering background. I was trained as a marine engineer and we were always taught that if we went into a confined space, we should take a hammer or some sort of hard object with us just in case somebody closes at hatch or closes the door and we get trapped inside. So it's handy something you can bang on the concrete or bang on the wall to try and make a bit of noise to make people aware that you may be trapped in that tunnel. It's not likely to happen, but we want to make sure everything's safe. I wouldn't take up a hammer with me in my camera bag because it's just not going to fit. It's going to be too heavy. So just something heavy that you can bang on a wall that people can hear you. Now it goes without saying that you stay away from working railway tunnels. You don't want to go into a tunnel where there's a working Rahway. It's a stupid thing to do. And I wouldn't tell anybody to do that sort of thing. Stay away from working railway tunnels. There are plenty of other tunnels that you can work in that a safe and you're not going to get squashed by a train coming the other way. In fact, stay away from railway lines altogether. There's been a lot of accidents over the years of photographers working on railway lines. So make sure that any row I launch your work on deserted and there's no chance of any locomotives coming along to spoil your day. Now one, not safety factor, but one consequence of working in tunnels is that they tend to amplify noise quite a bit. Noise that's within the tunnel. So you do need to be careful when you're whispering to somebody about somebody who's down the other end, they can often hear what you're saying. So you don't want to cause offense to anyone. So be careful what you say when you're talking to someone in a tunnel because they can he or she is saying down the other end. Okay. So we're gonna get into the specifics of shooting in a tunnel in the next lesson. So I'll see you then.
4. Lighting Your Photographs: As photographers, one of their main considerations when we're taking images is the lighting that we use. And as I mentioned before, one of the big advantages of shooting in a tunnel and see you've got a vast array of different lighting conditions and lighting options and opportunities that you can use to create images that are a little bit unusual. When we're shooting at the entrance to the tunnel, we get that really nice available light. We don't particularly want the sunlight coming down through there or a, although you can use it to some degree if you're clever and you know how to work with sunlight well, but generally, that nice soft light that we get from the other part, part of the sky is better to use in those situations. So we get really nice soft light coming into that tunnel, lighting a subject or a person, in my case, because I shoot people, most of my photographs are people. As we move back into that tunnel or as we move through their subject back further into that tunnel, a couple of things happen. The light diminishes, so it gets less intense. We know that inverse square law that says that the light will decrease quite rapidly as we move away from the light source. So it means that we might have to increase their exposure, maybe raise our ISO or open up our aperture, lengthen our shutter speed depending on how we want to work. The other thing that happens when we move back further into the tunnel is that that light becomes lower. The level of that the angle that the light hits your subject when we're at at the entrance to the tunnel is quite high, maybe up to 50 degrees, 60 degrees, coming down onto our subject. As we move further back into the tunnel, that will go down because the entrance to the tunnel is effectively lower in relation to our subject. So we might be looking at a 20 or 30 degree light coming in hitting your subject, which can be much more flattering because it's going to fill in the eyes is going to show the eyes so much better. It's going to fill in the face. It's going to be more of a flattering light. So think about where you place your subject at the entrance to that tunnel to get the available lot the way you want. As you move further back into the tunnel, that light will diminish greatly. So you might find that your exposure is giving you just a totally black subject. This is the time when you can do a range of different options to increase your versatility inside that space. We can increase our ISO. In the video shoot that's accompanying this class, you'll see that I bumped my ISO up to 5000 on occasion to give me the exposure that I need in that situation, just using the available light that's inside the tunnel. Now, the image does look a bit noisy, but it's suits that sort of grungy atmosphere. And I quite like that, particularly in black and white. But even in color, I don't mind shooting my ISO up to 5 thousand or even more to get the effect that I want and to get the results that are one. The other thing we can do is add artificial light. When we're in that situation, we can either use flash, we can bounce flash off the ceiling or off the walls because these locations tend to be concrete. The concrete is gray, which is a neutral color, so it allows us to bounce flash off and not change the white balance of our image. The tunnel that I'm shooting at the end of this class is a great painted tunnel. The council paint this tunnel gray to cover up the graffiti from time to time. So it's a great surface to bounce light off because gray is just as good as White to bounce things off. It just means that you'll get less intense light. The other thing I can do is use my torch for light painting, as you'll see later. Or I can use some constant lights and merely daylight if I need to. Now the tunnel that we're shooting in, the video has got rid fluorescent lighting covers, so it is quite red, so I had to alter my white balance a fair bit. That's why the colors will look a little bit odd inside that space. But the effects still works and it still works nicely. You do need to be careful when you, when you're working with graffiti in tunnels because there's a lot of graffiti and a lot of tunnels. Depending on the color of that graffiti, your light will bounce off that surface with that color. So if you've got someone standing next to a green wall that is painted with green graffiti. Their face will have a reflection of that green graffiti on it. If it's blue, it will reflect blue. So be a little bit careful of that. Sometimes it can add to your image, but be aware that that's going to happen. They're going to take on the color of the light that the wall is painted. So play around with all these different situations. You can use slow shutter speeds. If you've got a tripod, you can do ghost images. You can have your person there for a short time and then move them away. You can have multiple exposures. Move your person from place to place during the exposure. There are multiple different things you can do in those spaces. And that's why I love shooting in dark spots.
5. This is What You Can Do: Now here is a series of images that are taken in tunnels and various different, similar places. Over the last 10 or 20 years. There are lots of different kinds of tunnels around New Castle, and I'm sure they will be in your location as well. You just need to research and find out where they are and do a bit or pre-planning, maybe visit the spot beforehand to find out what she can expect and to plan what you're going to do. These first series of images from an underpass. It's not actually a tunnel. It's a drain. It's a storm water drain that goes underneath one of the largest road intersections in New Castle. It's about 50 meters long, so it sort of acts like a tunnel. There's light at each end and it's fairly dark in the middle. It's tall enough so that we can stand up freely. And we can use the pillars and the concrete and the graffiti in the same way that we do with a lot of other tunnels in the area. There is a drain running through the middle that's taking storm water away. In dry weather, it's only very small, but you need to be careful if there's predicted storms or anything. You need to be aware that you may need to leave that tunnel in a hurry because they are prone to carry a lot of water. So make sure that you can get out of that tunnel quite quickly. This one's very close to the cowpox, certainly probably 20, 30 meters away from the cowpox. So there's no problem with that. Legally, I'm not sure if you're allowed to be in those sort of places, but if you're sensible and your plan properly, there shouldn't be a problem. The great thing about this tunnel to is that I can use things like fireworks or powder or smoke because it's well ventilated. There's a nice breeze comes through there all the time. It's a great place to be in the summer because it's very low and the cool air comes down along that storm water drains. So it's quite a nice air-conditioned spot to be in the summer. The next place I want to talk about is a set of tunnels that is under one of my favorite locations in New Castle. You've probably seen shots that I've done all the gun emplacement are king Edward park up on the hill in Newcastle. There are tunnels underneath that gun emplacement because he used to be a very big gun that worked hydraulically, that came up under hydraulic pressure and fired out to sea to any boats or anything that may be showing you, counsel during World War II, which happened a couple of times. So that area of New Castle is riddled with tunnels. There are tunnels all over the East End of New Castle up near the beaches. And occasionally you can get inside them, which is great and it's a great spot to shoot just outside those tunnels. Here's some really noisy areas that I like to shoot as well. And you've probably seen some of the shots that I've done there. And it gives me great law at its really nice, grungy sort of an area. So it's a terrific place to shoot. Now occasionally when you go there you find that the gate to the tunnels is unlocked or somebody's pulled in great offer window that you are able to gain access inside those tunnel areas. Now, it's a great place to shoot because there's some fantastic available light coming in from both ends. But there are ammunition rooms all through that area that are completely black, they completely dark because there's no light gets into them at all. But they're very unusual concrete spices that you can use to take shots. Now you do need to take lighting with you. That's why I always carry torches in my camera bag so that if I do get the opportunity to do this sort of thing, I've got light available to me so I can do all those techniques that we just talked about. I can do the light painting, I can do the natural light up the central part of the tunnel. There's some really nice light that comes in through the grates on the windows and the doors. So you can use those bars to give you some great effects. With your shots. They look great with fashion shots or, or with portrait shots, model shots, those sorts of things. And you can use them in your composition as well as you can see here. Now, there are other areas that you can move further down the tunnel that allows you to use that light coming straight through. Or you can use Flash to simulate that light coming through it, which I've done in these couple of shots. Then there are places where we use torch light painting, where we have dark spaces and we have a model still against a wall or standing very still so that we can use their torture or a flashlight to light her in this situation. So you can see the sort of shots that we get out of these tunnels. Awesome. Now another tunnel that I use quite frequently is just a short one. It's I it's actual tunnel that was built onto it under disused railway line to funnel the water from a natural stream that was coming down the hill. So the floor of the tunnel is often wet or just a little bit wet, maybe up to a centimeter of water or so, but they are dry patches as well that you can use. The wet floor is great because it can reflect some great lot up into your camera, particularly for shooting at night. I've shot in this location quite a few times. I've done some videos and I've done some still photography. We've done some fire and some steel wool spinning in this tunnel. It's a great location to do that sort of things. And just outside the other side of the tunnel, there are some fantastic locations with a little waterfall and stuff in the national park. So that's another one of my favorite locations, very close to a cowpox, so we don't have to carry idea to fall. Now, these shots were taken at a road underpass. There's a road that goes over the top that goes over railway bridge. And this section is dropped beside the railway line, opposite broad mid or a railway station. It's very dark brick because of all of the train exhaust over the years, probably some still left over from the steam trains when they used to go pass. So it's a very grungy doc, sort of an area with the archways that really lend itself to this sort of photography. Usually this area is covered in cars because it's where people park their cars to commute to Sydney to work. But this day we were there, the council was doing road works and they stopped all the cows parking there, which was great for us. The council workers must have been often smoke at the time because we didn't see any of them there and we were able to use this spot as much as we wanted to. So it works really well with the light coming in. We used all available lot with a little bit of light painting. And the models white dress really works well again says Really doc bricks in this particular location. The next tunnel is one that I've used often and you've probably seen me use this some other classes. But it's a square tunnel. It's reasonably long, but it's very easy to access. It's only probably ten meters from the COP, OK. We can get motorcycles standing there, which is a real benefit because finding some way that you can access to shoot motorcycles is a great thing. So we've done a couple of motorcycle shoots down in this tunnel. We can control our loading really well. In here we've got a flat ceiling and flat walls and the gym really painted gray, although sometimes there are some graffiti walls there as well. So it allows us to bounce lot around. We come back lot. We can do all of the sort of techniques that we've talked about in this tunnel. And this is the tunnel that we'll shoot in later on in this class. When you see a lot of shoot. Here are a couple of circular tunnels. Tunnels that are closer to the light, just a few kilometers from my place. These tunnels are unique because they are circular. They give you different sort of feel to your shop. One of them actually has a corrugated surface on the ceiling and the walls, which when we backlog at it, particularly with the blue Jill as we have here, We get that great corrugated sort of effect on that ceiling. And with their model wearing a red dress, it really allows it to stand out. And it's a real feature of this particular tunnel. The other one has fairly smooth gray walls and ceiling. There's not a lot of graffiti in here because it's a well-used tunnel. They've actually put a coffee shop at the other end of the tunnel now. So it is quite popular for walkers on the walking track to walk through here to grab their coffee in the morning and the evenings. So you do need to be careful that their opportunity people around when you're shooting in here. But again, it gives us a different perspective because it is circular. It, it'll ask me to Photoshop this tunnel quite well so I can exaggerate that perspective in Photoshop and make it look a lot longer than it is. But it's a unique space, just the same as every other tunnel that we shoot in. And we use it to full advantage. Now these few shots are just various different shots in tunnels or tunneled lock places around our local area. There are places that have a ceiling over the top that are reasonably doc. You often find them the freeway interchanges or things like that. Pedestrian access through to railway stations. All of those sorts of things. There are lots of different instances. We can find tunnels and be able to shoot in the ways that we've taught you in this class. Okay. Good.
6. Live Model Shoot with Telicia : This is a live shoot that we did at one of my favorite tunnels that damn you've seen previously in this class. First of all, we begin at the end of the tunnel, at the western end using the available light that's coming in because there's beautiful light comes through the entrance to this tunnel. So I positioned to Alisha our model in that light and took a few headshots and some shots with the receding tunnel in the background. As you can see, the light was quite dark. It was an afternoon light because she wanted to shoot to progress from late afternoon into darkness of the effects that we wanted to produce. Just asking to Alisha to tilt her head to the side a little bit. You notice that my instruct the models how I want them to look, where I want them to look, how I want them to pose because I need to be in control of all of that. Then we went further into the tunnel, right into the darkest part and a shirt, a couple of shots with 5000 ISO. As you can see, they're a little bit grainy, but I still like them. Then I set up my tripod in the darkest part of the tunnel. It doesn't appear to be dark on the video here because of the light capturing abilities, the video. But it's quite dark in this area. So I knew that I would be able to use some slower shutter speeds to give me some special effects. The first thing I wanted to do was to do a double exposure of Tully-Fisher in one position and then moving to another position within the one exposure. So I set my camera to around about 10 seconds. Shutter speed are compensated with my ISO and my aperture to give me a correct exposure on the image. And I just asked her to stand in one spot and then move to another spot when I mentioned it. So we've got a double exposure on the same image. It's not particularly great. The results weren't fantastic, but I've learned something and I can use that at a later date. So it's always good to try things even if they're down work, you learn something and you can progress me photography. I'm no perfect photographer. I make mistakes the same as everybody else does. So then we move to a different part of the tunnel. We were lucky that we had lots of graffiti in this tunnel. At this time. The council sometimes comes in and covers it all up. But what I wanted to do was a little bit of light painting here. So I used my torch, my flashlight, and a slower shutter speed, maybe about five seconds or so to illuminate to Alisha in various different poses so that I could get that light lighting her. She needed to be lighting. She needed to be leaning against that wall so that she stayed nice and still during that exposure. And you can see there's a little bit of movement in a couple of the shots, but her face is quite sharp. Then I just changed the angle of my torch so that that light was coming a little bit more radically from the side onto her face. My focus and my exposure will be exactly the same as long as I stayed the same distance from her with my torch. And you can see some of the results that we got here. Like painting is something I do off often. And it's amazing the results that you can get. It's always a good idea to show your model the results and show her the techniques that you're trying to put forward because often she doesn't understand the technical side of things. So showing her the settings, showing her the results that we get will help them to become part of that session. And it's always better to get a team method. Next, we started to use a bit of flash, which for me is much more comfortable. I'm really comfortable with flash, particularly in these sort of unique environments, because the ceiling of the tunnel was quite gray and neutral in color. I could reflect light off the ceiling, bounce light off the ceiling, which gave me the opportunity to soften that light down quite a bit. The graffiti in the tunnel can sometimes pick up a little bit of color. But I wanted to use an area that wasn't too colorful to bounce my flesh off and the ceiling didn't have any graffiti on at all. So my position to Alisha, back against the wall. I tried to get back against the opposite wall because I wanted to get as far away from her as possible so that I didn't have too much of a wide-angle effect. And I've bounced my right off the ceiling to give that sort of light that I was looking for. Even when I tilt my camera to vertical, are still turned my flesh around. So it's aiming upwards to get that nice bounced light. I told Felicia where to look in the shot. And I got some low angle shots which are really love. Many of you would have seen my low angle shot that I've done before. But in this case I flesh myself in the face, which wasn't the best thing to do, particularly if I'm trying to focus through the viewfinder. So be careful. Looking at your flesh, flesh this off in the iss. Second time round, it worked quite well because I remember to close my eyes. So that low angle gives us a really wide sort of perspective on the shot. Sometimes you can go to low and it distorts our model a little bit too much. But I think it worked well. Now I'm just trying to shoot with some flesh on cameras direct flash straight into siliceous faced. It gives a very immediate hard sort of light, but it is quite flattering because it's very close to the lens axis. A lot of photographers say that on camera flash is a waste of time, but you can see these shots look quite acceptable and they work really well. So on camera flashes, something that are used quite often, particularly when I've got a modelling these sort of unusual situations. And I always use manual and my flesh so that I can control how bright or how dark it is when we're shooting in darkness like this, sometimes your flesh on TTL or automatic can give you the wrong exposure. So when I'm shooting manual flash, I can get the right exposure at the same exposure every time I shoot. So you can see these on-camera flash shots look quite good. They look acceptable, they suit the environment because it's a very harsh sort of hard environment that we're shooting in here. Kim. Next we did some off-camera flash. So I placed my radio trigger on top of my hot shoe on my camera. And I asked Michael one of my systems to hold the flesh they are forming. It could be classed as a mobile voice activated light stand. It works quite well when you've got somebody holding your flash because all you need to do is direct them and they can move around quite easily. It's much easier than using a stand. But having that off-camera flash gave me more direction to my light. And you'll see the difference that that this sort of lighting makes. I still had to light her from above because that light coming down onto your model is a prerequisite. It makes sure your lighting look more natural and your brain expects it so much. So having that Angular light makes it look a little bit more acceptable to your brain. Getting down low, especially when I'm shooting full length shots gives a more attractive perspective for your model. It allows her to look her normal height. If I was shooting from my normal height, which is around about a 190 centimeters, then it looks a little bit short, makes her look short. So my low angle shot again will accentuate that perspective and give her a lot of power and a lot of commanding sort of look in that image. You can see the effect of his off-camera flash has its much more dramatic. Those shadows are really deep. It just looks amazing compared to just having soft light or bounce flash. It's a different type of image. Then we move further down the tunnel and took advantage of a different type of graffiti, some different colors. I ask Michael to hold the flesh close to the wall is time so that we've got more dramatic lighting because it's coming right along that wall and that right-hand side, Dr. Lisa? Yeah. Camera left is much darker even though you can see that bright light outside. I can control my camera exposure with my flash to give me that dark area and that bright area. So using flash allows you to be so much more creative with your exposure and the contrast in your image. Your normal. Now Michael is just aiming the flash towards the wall opposite to Alisha, bouncing that light back onto her, creating a large light source on that wall and reflecting the light back onto her. So gives us a much softer light, a light that covers a larger area, and a light that wraps around our model so much better. You can see the results that we get from this because you've got a shiny surface on net damn graffiti. We do get a little bit of flair of that. But that's okay. I think it looks still looks fine as long as our model is exposed correctly and a photograph is composed properly. Next, we modify their flesh by shooting it through a screen, which is a reflector simply with a bit of translucent fabric on it. Most reflectors, five in ones have this option. So we had Marco behind the scrim, Alice and holding it and shooting that light through the screen, which again will make that light larger, softer, and a more acceptable light source for BD types shots or fashion type shots. We changed the direction of the light because it was a little bit radical until issues face. So Michael can move further back or closer in to change the hardness of that light, depending on how big the pool of light is on a scrim will determine how soft or how hard that light is on our model. Then we modified it slightly by getting my Michael to aim the flash at the scrim, which is opposite to Alisha. So this is reflecting the light, bouncing the light off the screen. So we can do this with any sort of white surface. It's going to bounce the light back onto Felicia as a soft light, because the hard light from the flash softens by filling up that large scrim and bounces back onto her as a soft light. So you can see the effect. All of this is done with a simple small speed like IDEO $90 for a speed light. And you can modify the light in so many different ways. Particularly in this tunnel situation. It helps if you've got a couple of assistance there to help you. But I always like to take a few people along with me to the shoot because it makes it more fun. It allows me to work less because I'm on, my knees aren't great as you can see. And I can teach people how to fold reflectors. As you see, Alison is quite adept at folding the reflector. Well, not quite. She tried and tried, but not particularly successful. Those of you who've done it before know that there's a bit of a bit of a trick to folding up a reflector. And you'll see, when I do it, we simply grab each side of the reflector, twist their hands in opposite directions, and it just folds up into a small bundle. So it's quite a good party trick. Speaking a party tricks. Robbie was playing around with his gimbal here to give us a bit of an effect and worked out quite well. Looks pretty cool.
7. Live Shoot Using Backlight : In this second part of the shoot, we were using some substances in behind to Alisha to backlight her. You'll notice there's a flash in the background on our small stand. We were going to use some dust in a can and we're going to use some baby powder as well to throw around in the background just to add a little bit of interest to the image and to see what we can get inside this tunnel situation. So the lighting that I used was the backlight from that small flash in the background. And I LET to Alisha with the flash on camera. But you'll notice I've got it aimed up and to my left so that that light is bouncing off the corner of the tunnel, the gray surface, and bouncing back onto Felicia. So it gives me a soft light and allows me to get nice soft features in the face to make it look more attractive and still use my flash on my camera. Now, the Dustin, uh, can work quite well, is quite expensive stuff. But after Alice and learned a little bit more about how to use it and how to spray it. It worked remarkably well and we've got some nice shot by backlighting it with the flash. Then I've placed a red gel on the flesh. These are just little cheap jail she can get pretty much anywhere online. They come with a rubber band that fits around your flash. And the red gel simply slips into that rubber band on the sides and gives you a red flash. So when your flash fires, it will give you red light instead of white light. So we did the same sort of thing again, had Allison spray and then she stepped back at a shot and I fired the flesh and we've got that red color from that gel and a background. It works really well. It allows you to change the color of that smoke quite easily. We used a couple of different colors here as well. And you'll notice in a little while we're going to use the blue gel when we start using the flower in the background. It's a little bit hit or miss with the spray. We should have done it down on the opposite end of the tunnel because as you'll see when we start shooting the flower, there's a little breeze coming towards the camera. And it would've been better to have the breeze blowing back away from the camera so that we didn't get dust on your lens and on-air camera. But it worked quite well. Everybody who was quite happy with it. So we did a few variations of this, just different sprays in different patterns. And you can see the results. Then I changed the red gel for a blue one. On my flash. These Joe kids come with 50 or so different colored gels. They're really easy to carry any camera bag. And it allows you to change the color of that light quite easily. We moved a little bit further back in the tunnel to give us a little bit more space. Because sometimes this powder can make a little bit of a mess around. It doesn't matter so much in a tunnel like this that people don't use very often. But I'm showing you here how I wanted to pose. It's much easier if I show her rather than try and describe it because she can see exactly what I mean. Even though I don't look as good in the process she does. It gives me a way of controlling how the model stands. You'll notice we've got Alison in the background with that little dustpan with some flour in it. I instructed her to throw it up to the ceiling so that it broke up a little bit. And I just waited until the powder was dispersed enough and then I took the shot. You see that it does blow the wrong way. I'm totally she got a little bit covered in parallel, but it wasn't too bad. And here's the result. You wouldn't get that same look without the flushing behind. So the backlight is a really crucial part of this on a deposition to Alisha so that she's hiding that flesh in the background. Otherwise, I would get a flare into my shot. So another one who got Alice and throw up again. And as that powder falls down, I would take the shot and try and hold my camera out of the powder paths so I didn't get covered in it. This one's not quite as good. You can see it's a little bit off to the side. But as we went, we refined it a little bit more and altered the power of the back-light as well. And that gave us a really good result in the end. So sometimes these techniques just take a little bit of trial and error. Have a look at your first shot, see how you need to fix it. Play around with it, and then you'll end up with something that's really different. The last thing we wanted to do at the shoot was to do a little bit of steel wall spinning. So I've made this apparatus to make these things easier for me. I've done a lot of steel wall spinning. So I've made up this apparatus that fits on my power drill with a eg whisk on each end, I simply put a little bit of steel wall in each of the egg risks. And then as I spin the drill, the egg was move around and the wind or the air going through the steel wool throws out those sparks. I need to get him behind to Alisha to try and hide myself as much as possible. I had Michael pressing the shutter. And as we went, he just pressed every few seconds waiting for the flesh to charge and we will get a result with all of those sparks in the background. You notice I didn't do it too close to Felicia because I wanted her to be safe from this. I didn't want to burn who you need to be careful with all of these sort of techniques whenever using fire. Because safety is a major factor. I've done this many times before, so I know how this is going to work. And particularly this apparatus on the drill, quite safe because it just throws out sparks in one plane. Even I didn't get any on me simply because I was holding it half a meter or so in front of me. As we went and we got some great shots here with that sparks in the background. But it wasn't as spectacular as I really wanted. So towards the end, we changed or we upgraded it a little bit. I moved into a little bit closer to the camera without Felicia in the shot. And I did a bit of spinning closer into the camera as you'll see in a minute. So these are a few variations, just a few different Photoshopped images to show you the results that we got. Now here I am a little bit closer to the camera to get a little bit more spectacular Spock movement without totally sure in there because I knew that I could Photoshop this into the other shots later on. And I'll show you the result that we got. So this is the two images blend in together. So we've got sparks in France box at the back, and ended up to be very successful shoot, we all had a good time. We finished quite early in the evening, so that was great. And I had some great helpers.
8. Your Project: Your project for this class is simply to shoot some photographs in tunnels. If you don't have lighting equipment, then confine yourself to the open-air end of the tunnel where you can get that really nice light, but you can still get that receding. A feeling of that long tunnel in your background. Place your object or your subject a little bit to the side so you get that receding lines and the lot at the other end of the tunnel, stay away from railway tunnels, any tunnels that have trains going through them. You don't want to be in at all. It's very dangerous and it's silly to be in those sorts of places. So make sure it's a tunnel that safe. You're not going to have any train's coming the other way and stay off railway lines altogether. But place your subject, you don't have to shoot a person. You can just pick an object on a piece of furniture, a motorcycle or a bicycle. Anything that you can think of to put in that tunnel to serve as your subject. Put them in the project section below and I'll comment on everything that goes in there. I really like to see your projects. So put them in there and I'll be glad to get back to you with some feedback.
9. Wrap Up: Take advantage of the possibilities if tunnels take advantage of the opportunity. So of those receding lines of the graffiti, of the, the grungy sort of areas that you find in these particular tunnels. But make sure you stay safe. Do some planning. Visit the location beforehand so you can plan the sort of attack that you don't have to do, the sort of shots you're going to do when you get to these tunnel locations. Thanks for watching this class. I hope you've learned a lot out of it. I hope that you get out there and do it in post in the project section. If you have any questions, please let me know. I'll see you in the next class.
Warren Marshall, Passionate Photographer
