All language subtitles for 4. Open Shade

Open shade, it's our best friend.

Basically open shade means that you could, the

sun is not directly hitting you, you're out

in the open air.

It could be underneath a veranda, it could

be underneath a tree or behind a tree.

Ultimately it is something where the light source

is not directly hitting you, the actual light

source itself.

But ultimately now the sky or the clouds

or whatever it may be becomes the light

source and it's flooding in.

Now, I think the biggest mistake what people

make with open shade is that you feel

like the lighting is the same everywhere because

the sun's behind the clouds as an example,

therefore the whole world, all the clouds are

one big soft box and everything's the same.

No, it's not.

In fact, open shade sounds easy, feels easy,

but not as easy to find the shadow.

So let me explain that a bit more

further detail.

Let's look at this photograph.

Where's the direction of light coming from?

You can see the glow of light, it's

open shade, it's not really sunlight, but you

can see that open light, that iridescence, that

saturation on the skin that we're looking for

is actually on the groom's face, it's on

Eric's face.

Now, you might say, well, why did you

turn his face away?

Well, I'm broad lighting him, often considered masculine

as we've discussed in previous segments, but then

I've got Megan hugging from behind, leaning forward

and turning her face into the light.

So she arguably gets the better light, even

though we've got beautiful light on him as

well, and then we've got some negative space

and some foliage framing them in that photograph.

But it's important to know that there is

a direction of light.

And you may have heard me in previous

segments to say that I'll often look at

my hand and look at how it reflects

and how it deflects and all those different

things and look at the saturation, iridescence on

my skin, and I'll just keep on turning

around.

This is a great way to do things

when you are working in open shade, because

you might just think it's just, the lighting

is the same everywhere.

No, it's not.

Remember that the camera picks up more contrast

that you do with your own two eyes.

So in other words, when you see a

subject matter, like looking at your right on

the camera, for example, you will see more

detail.

You've got a higher dynamic range in your

eyes than the camera will pick up.

In other words, you've got built-in HDR.

So just know that if you see a

subtle shadow with your own two eyes, the

camera's gonna make it more contrasty if you

in fact expose for the highlight, which basically

means you want detail on the brightest highlight

in the face.

So a couple of keys to this is

this, and you've heard me say this previously,

is turn the face, that's one of my

signatures to my work, tilt the face and

chin up, and what will happen is you'll

get light hitting the face, filtering through, not

so much filtering through per se, but skimming

across the face on the bridge of the

nose and illuminating the eye socket, which now

becomes the eye that's closest to the camera.

So remember, a very, very important point is

when you're photographing in the open shade, as

in just no direct sunlight, no direct spotlight,

it's just open shade, like I said, under

a veranda, in any capacity, you need to

bring the chin up, and what I do

is I often tilt the face.

Now, why do I put the chin up?

It's because, well, the light looks better on

me if I tilt the face upwards.

If I bring the chin down, I might

get little shadows on the eye sockets, perhaps

some shadows, maybe give the bride a five

o'clock beard type of thing, and that's

not very, very attractive.

So what we wanna do is bring the

chin up.

The problem is with being the chin up,

it doesn't really, it's not really natural.

We don't do that in normal life.

But when you tilt, that's the way you

love someone, that's the way you hug someone,

that's the way you kiss someone, that's the

way you endear to someone.

So that becomes more natural.

The cool thing is when we bring the

chin up and tilt the face, we now

angle the face, the side of the face

now becomes a shadow side, as we see

in this environment, that we create the shadow

side in two ways.

We tilt the face and chin up, so

light's coming up above, we deepen the shadow

also by bringing her against the wall.

And that way, we get beautiful direction of

light in open shade where it normally wouldn't

do that.

Same example here, I just said to the

bride here, I always call them brides, but

basically Megan in a 20th anniversary shoot, I

said, put the hat on yourself.

I wanna feel like you put it on,

you're having a bit of a giggle about

it.

She tilted her face and chin upwards.

And even though they were in open shade,

we still see a very beautiful direction of

light.

Light's coming over here, she's tilting her face.

Her face now is parallel to the ground,

somewhat parallel, and then also the wall is

cutting away light, giving her a shadow, therefore

contrast, therefore we get this sort of beautiful

looking camera.

Whereas most people think that my work, there's

a trick to it, that I have an

incredible Photoshop artist that gives me all these

things, but you can't beat good capture.

Great capture, like direction of light, all the

composition, the exposure that you want that allows

you to move in many directions in post

-production is very, very important.

Here we are in Florence.

So lots of people walking in this walkway,

but I cropped them out this way, lay

on the ground, and again, turn her face,

chin up a little bit, and then open

shade looks like a very, very strong direction

of light.

Shade on him as well, it just looks

beautiful.

So remember, with open shade, usually the key

is look for the iridescence in the skin

tone.

If you can't see it on somebody or

in the natural environment or anything like that,

make sure that you're observing everything that you're

seeing.

In other words, if you're in a local

park and you've got trees everywhere, then I

want you to look left, right, up, and

down, and you will see foliage look more

saturated and there's more of a quality of

light, there's a beautiful iridescence about it, then

that's where you know where the great light

is.

Remember what we said about the five steps

to a great photograph, we said light, location,

pose, technique, emotion.

So light, basically the beauty of light is

the iridescence, is the direction of light, gives

us contrast, and gives us beautiful depth and

texture and dimension and form is what we

want.

So practice this by looking at your hand

when you're photographing, do a 360, tilt the

hand up a little bit, now you know

what you need to do and what position

you need to place your subjects as well.

Keep practicing, and next we're gonna look at

reflectors.