Original subtitles

I continue on wearing part two of the cracking code

to lighting.

And so let's take a look at what I would call a general rule to help you

understand where to put your modifier, where to start.

So what I do for an overhead light, this is an overhead concept, like I

have an overhead with me right now, a beauty dish, or whatever you want,

and I take the diameter of the modifier, so it'll say it's a two foot

modifier, 24 inch modifier.

Then it becomes two feet.

From the white diffusion, to my nose,

that's a great starting 0.

And i'll show you images here, in a minute, of what that looks like.

Now, if I take a five footer, five foot octo

angle, five feet, that gives me the exact same quality of light as a two

foot or two feet.

I'll show you that in a minute.

A seven foot or seven feet gives me the same quality, only obviously it's going

to spread more.

If I take a sudden photo and bring it in, and at five feet is going to be softer.

Then a two foot or at two feet, if I bring a seven footer in at two feet,

which I don't think I could do, that that's pretty ultrasoft and I've done

not an overhead, seven foot, but I've done it a few times

by experimenting, doing some really fun stuff.

But that's a good starting 0, and it's a rule of thumb.

And I always hate to

go by rule Rules, because you want to break the Rules to fit your goal.

In result, you don't want to be locked into something.

So let's take a look at a visual effect of how that works.

But I just explained to you.

Now

we're going to talk about the invers square law.

I've already actually recorded it.

It's going to be a part of this

master class.

And

the inverse square law, like we said before, you actually,

no matter whether or not you know the law, it applies.

Every time you set up a light and you throw light, the invers square law

happens just like gravity.

I've kind of understood that, and i'll explain this simply here.

And I've done this demo many times

before.

I really sat down and said, let me break down the inverse square level.

Now it makes a lot more sense to me,

and so it's kind of fun.

But

let me give you this little presentation here.

And this was run into my other craft.

And so I apologize if you've already watched that you can skip past this.

But basically, I have a small modifier in front of my subject.

And I go and I create what I think is beautiful light on my subject.

And I say and say, I have a white background, that white background is

going to be a dark gray or a darker gray value.

If

I always get an example, if I shoot my subject and I'm doing it for a client,

and it's going to be goggles,

we're going to do more of the headshot with goggles, maybe even waste up.

But still, the goggles are the most important thing.

Or the cap

speed o,

a small modifier close, works perfect.

It drops down in value.

It gets darker, down toward her waist, down to her

legs.

And if I backed up, her legs be pretty, almost black, dark,

very dark.

No light hitting it.

And so let's Sam.

I feel like I'm a rock star.

And the next week, the client comes to me and says, we want to do another shoot.

This time we're doing swimming suits.

So I go away.

I got really good results in the last shoot.

I put my beauty dish up 24 inches from the subject.

I set it up, and the art director says, no, no, the suit's tooth.

And so I go and I say, I go, ok, i'll back my light up.

So I back my light up.

Guess what happens to the overall quality of light

it gets harsher.

So the architecture goes, that doesn't look like the last shoot we did.

I know.

So how do I know where to determine to put a light source that gives me the

same quality light as a 22 inch, beauty dish or 24 inch b?

Do you set 24 inches,

but spread more light?

Well, very simple.

I can't show you a minute visually how it happens.

I take a five foot or five feet, because I know that's my rule of thumb

right now.

But how do they determine that?

Well, i'll show you in a minute.

But

let's say, now I'm shooting.

The next week, the client comes to me and says, we're shooting

shoes, Nike shoes.

And I set my five footer up.

And thardrey looks at me and says,

not much light still on his shoes.

Better than, say, 2424

inches, 24 beauty dish.

But

so what's my option?

Well, it's a seven foot or seven feet.

So now watch this.

I'm going to hit the silver button right here and just show you that if I

take my 24 inch beauty dish.

Take my five footer.

I usually have an assistant do this,

and I back the light up so that when you come toward

the

subject,

I start to see the edges of the five foot right down around the edges of the

24 inch.

Take my 24 inch beauty dish out, and I snap a picture.

It gives me the exact same quality, because it's the same broadness of light

to the subject.

It's just a bigger modifier backed up.

So once I understand that rule,

then I can go and

get a lighting that I like.

Then I have to solve a problem, which means spread more light on a subject,

but I don't want to

harshen or soften the light up any more than what I have.

My look.

By moving the modifier, I don't have a

modify bigger than seven feet.

But I can put 27 footers up to make roughly it's not fourteen, because it's

going to be elongated.

But 27 foots side by side will give me fourteen across, which is really soft.

If I backed it up, say, 1415

plus feet back, then it'll give me the same look as a 17 foot, seven feet, 15

foot, or five feet, 124 inch at two feet.

So

by visually seeing it, I know where to put that light.

And so it's actually kind of a fun.

Now, if I take my five foot and put it at 24 inches, it's going to be really

soft to the subject, softer than

my 24 inch, or two foot or two feet.

So

I might put my five foot at five feet, and I take a picture, and I go, hmm,

I want a little softer.

The first thing I would do, probably put a little filcard underneath, and

that might soften enough.

As I say.

I go, I still want a little softer.

I might bring that in, let's bring it in about 24 feet.

That's going to be a little softer.

So I have people email me all the time and say, I have a 28 inch beauty dish, and

it fits my proprietary, whatever strobe I'm using.

I bought it from them, and I want to be just like you, Joel,

and I saw you hitted a twenty fourage beauty dish at 24 inches.

What do I do?

I say, well, potake that 28 inch beauty dish and back it up to 28 inches from

your subject.

It'll be the exact same quality on the subject.

It will happen to spread just a little bit more.

That's it just a tadmore.

The quality light, though, will be the same

now.

So, but let me show you, because if this didn't quite line up when I did

this, originally there's these

what's the term when I'm doing my PowerPoint,

these animations,

there's like forty animations to make this thing happen.

And it got kind of tweaked.

And so

it was supposed to happen each time I moved this, but here's how I can pull

it out.

So if I take out, let's say, I'm using my small modifier, I take it out.

And

that just messed up that we did not want to do that.

I can't back it up.

Now.

Well, all right, folks,

that

just totally screwed up.

Now, probably why it screwed up is because I went in there, and I used

parts and pieces to go and build something mouse out, and it screwed up.

But the point I'm going to do in my

inverse square law, I'm kind of covering myself here, I'm going to show

you that all

that darkening and lighting the background by moving your modifier.

But it was applying it's simply here with that last illustration.

And I know that for years, but I just didn't know it well enough to where I

understood the invers square law.

So let's look at some images.

And I run these images

in my other craft, but I'm going to show you here.

So a three foot modifier at three feet,

gorgeous

light on the subject.

If I go to the

five foot, five feet, the background gets a little lighter.

If I go to a seven foot or seven feet, the background gets pure white, or

close enough to peer white, to where I can pull that off as being peer white.

Especially in Photoshop, I can just lightn it up.

So all three side by side

now.

And I've explained this because I do this a lot live.

I did not have a black floor, because there is that light, especially on the

big seven photo.

And a five foot it's bouncing up on the floor, so it's filling in a little bit underneath

the arms and the chin and all that.

And so if I was to do this again, I would put a black,

big sweep or something down, or cloth to block that light from coming up.

But you can see the different values of the background by changing the

light

distance.

And so once again, i'll explain that more in the inverse square law.

It'd be really interesting

if you stick with me on that.

So here

is the full length of that so shoes appear black.

Now we start to get a little detail in the shoes.

But if we took a seven foot, or at seven feet, but you have all the detail

in the shoes you want.

And the background is almost pure white, pretty close to be, right?

She's about four to five feet from the background.

If that background was a little bit closer, it would be even whiter.

But

I was shooting at ad campaign for pistachio, and the art director, crater

vector, whatever, came in and said he had little sketches.

He said, here's, we've got six different people.

We had a photograph.

And the first question I ask is, do you want the subject lit head to toe?

Yes,

ok.

Turn to my assistant, seven foot, seven feet.

That's how simple it is.

If the architecture said, I would like to have a lot of it lit here, maybe

taper down to kind of go to darker the feet,

five foot or five feet.

If the archar said, I want the glow of the face going to darkness,

33 feet, three feet,

two feet, two foot, to be in on.

What modif our head of time

it's really fun once you understand this?

So here's all three side by side.

So see the value of the background changing again that was the inverse

square law.

So let's talk about something that I get emails all the time.

And I sometimes forget to say this.

And that is when I take an overhead light and I snap a picture,

once I get my exposure correct.

So I may have to jest that a little bit and get my exposure correct.

The first thing I looked at is the length of the shadow from the nose to

the lip.

So

nobody taught me this,

and there's a lot of things I think that we eventually, universally will

say that looks better than that.

Some people may say, disagree with you, but you don't want the shadow generally

of the nose to hit the lip.

So it's going to fall short of

above the lip and closer to the nose generally.

And then how sharp that is depends on how close your light is, or how big

your modifier is.

But

to get a longer shadow.

So you say,

it's

filled in too much.

I want a lummer shadow.

You just raise your light up,

and then you go snap a few pictures until you get the shadow.

I just Crick if you say, oh, too much shadow.

Lower your light.

Now there's a point with your lower light.

And this is important to understand folks, because I had to solve this

problem.

I had my say, 24th, beauty dish, and I bring it down, bring it down, bring

down.

And I'm like, oh, this like depends on the model, but she was like, really

deep eye sockets, and it's still beautiful.

But I was looking at her going, wow, wyat.

And I had a filc, it still wasn't working right.

So I was like, I can't get the light any lower.

My camera lens now is starting to show up in my frame.

And I had my 24 years beauty dishonor, and I was like, oh, man, what do I do?

Five foot, five feet.

So I took a five or five feet, and it was just behind my head,

and I could get lower.

And then I lowered it, even though the camera is in front.

I lowered until the light came around and filled in.

And I could do a seven foot or seven feet, with which it would be a lot

further back behind me, depending on what lens I was using.

So I can solve that by lowering my light, or raising my light to get the

shadows on the subject.

So look at your shadows and

you'll find out whether or not you need to go up or down,

all right?

So here we have Jennifer,

and I want to show you, look at the shadow underneath her chip.

that's pretty distinct, pretty sharp.

And the reason why is I have a five foot octo.

Actually it's a zeppelin, so I misprinted that, or miss did that, but

it's the same size, five foot, modified,

and it's about twelve feet back.

And I'm standing in front of it, and it's going just above my head, down to

the subject.

She's on a white suite.

And bam, look at the shadow under her chin.

Now that's still a pretty big modifier.

I'd get it sharper.

If I had a two foot modifier

at twelve feet would be really sharp.

A bare head at two feet, an eight inch modifier would be really sharp.

But that, to me, was a really good.

And I was explaining this to a workshop, how I can get that shadow of

exactly the value of want.

That light's now spreading lots of light.

I did.

I did a couple where she was full linked, too, so she's lit head to toe.

It's a really easy scenario, straight over the camera.

look at her skin.

Looks incredible.

And I don't think I did hardly any retouching on this.

It's just super

it's for beauty fashion or

high key fashion, whatever.

It's really simple lighting to do.

So here's

Bryce with a 22 inch, beauty dish at 22 inches.

And

so just gorgeous light on her.

I was in a wedge wall, and that's hitting a little bit of light on the

sides.

There

here's a five foot at two feet.

So I'm taking a five footer and going closer, closer, closer, closer.

I got it.

Maybe it was two and a half feet, I don't know, but

it was as close as I could get it.

And then I could shoot underneath.

And actually the modifier's touching my camera, and coming around is kind of up

underneath it, a little bit there.

But look how soft that light is on her.

Beautiful.

It's easy.

Of course, you have to have a five foot modifier, but you can do this with an

umbrella too,

especially

with a diffusion on the front.

So the revelation is how

broad your light is to your subject is in the shadows.

So if you look at an image

and you say, Joel here's an image, what you think, and I look at, I go, really

sharp shadows.

That means someone has a modifier.

I don't know the exact size, because it depends.

Now I may say, if, say, it's lip head to toe, evenly, I go, that's a

probably a 24 inch beauty dish at ten feet.

I get bitshaggy pretty close

because it's so far back, I know, spread a lot.

So you can look at the shadows and tell you roughly,

kind of what

modifier in kind of what distance, by how it spread.

So

look at the shadows.

The shadow tells you, it's like the tail of the tape, tape is in the shadows.

And that reveals something

about your modifier in the distance that it is.

So here is an eight inch standard hood on what comes with your camera,

or.

So you're strobe,

and it's about fifteen feet away.

So

I do a simulated strobe about 25 feet away.

It's a little closer, which is going to be a little softer.

But I got a big piece of foam core on that side.

I think I showed this to you guys on the intro, just talking about this

image.

So, bouncing light back into it, which softens it down.

Remember, there's my second number rule, as you could soften the light by

bouncing more light into it.

So here's a seven footer at about four feet from the subject.

I guess, a white wall so, because it's such a big modifier and so close, it's ultra.

I could make a lot of money with this light.

It makes a model look so incredible.

Now that white also bounces back in.

So that's an ultrasoft

scenario there.

So,

incredible.

Here's an eight inch standard hood at 28 feet.

That's about where I try to simulate

the

sun.

Look at the house.

Sharp the shadow is.

That tells me how far it is.

And because it spreads so much light, I know it's a small modifier way back.

So

all right, let's do this.

We're going to take another break, because I don't want to wear you guys

out.

You can take a break.

And I'm going to go, and we're going to talk about crosslight, the Rembrandt

lighting, which is,

I did a whole session, call it the most beautiful light on the planet.

It is absolutely incredible.

You have to know this to make a living at photography.

you probably have seen a lot of pictures with this.

So you're like, how do they do that?

Well,

I'm going to show you.

So let's take a break.