Tag Archive for: light meter

Creating depth and contrast in your model/portrait photography

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How to create depth and contrast in your model photography?

However, if we want to create depth we do need to change the direction of our light. And today we are looking at one of the solutions to open up the darker side and get some really cool effects. Continue reading how to create depth and contrast in your photography

Depth is one of those things

We all know the term “3D looking” And maybe you also struggle with getting your images to look more “3D”
In most cases, it’s “just” a matter of changing your light to the sides of your subject.
The problem is often that the other side of the face becomes really dark. And often also the background creates really bad looking images (unless you love that look).

For me, at least the background should be lit slightly beyond the dark side of the face. This means there is some separation between the model and the background. Letting everything turn black or hardly visible is sometimes cool. But most of the time you are just left with an image that doesn’t feel right.

 

Accent vs flare or maybe both

When I started out with model photography I loved the Rembrandt setup. But somehow I never liked the darker part of the face. The easiest solution is of course using a reflector. But, a reflector only works when it gets enough light to bounce back. Because I use my lights mostly pretty close to the model there isn’t a lot of light hitting the reflector hence not reflecting enough back to the model.

Inverse Square Law

This is of course due to the inverse square law. This dictates that light falls off over the distance, meaning if you place your lights really close to the model it will fall off really fast and not have enough “power” left to also reflect back on the face and have a major impact.

Solution

So most of the time I solve this by using an extra light source on that side.
Now you can choose to place this behind your model and just hit the side opening up the shadows, moving it slightly back to only light the jawline, etc. This already works like a charm but let’s up the ante.

By using a light source with a more diffuse light source, like for example the Rogue magnetic system without or with the omnidirectional dome we can do a lot more.

We can now not only create a cool lighting effect on our model, but by placing it correctly (slightly more forward or backward, just experiment with very small increments, this really works very precise) you can also balance it so that the side of the light (softer and less output) hits the model. Creating a beautiful soft quality of light. But the main part of the output actually hits the lens creating an awesome lensflare.

If you are not happy with your lens flares, try older M42 lenses. Or even better, get the same filter I use, the K&F concept black diffusion filters, these make it much easier to create great flares without influencing your images when you don’t use backlighting.

Video about creating depth

Ok, because images say more than words, let’s look at a lot of images after each other, which we call video 😀

I hope you now understand better how depth and contrast can change your portrait or model photography.

Visit www.frankdoorhof.com/shop for the gear I use.
Visit www.fotografie-workshops.nl for the Dutch workshops
Mail us for our totally new 1:1 full-day online workshops in English or Dutch.

And some of the results
model: Claudia

Depth and contrast in your photography

Depth and contrast in your photography

 

Getting outrageous skies without Photoshop but with gels

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Color manipulation is fun, get outrageous skies without Photoshop

Today another part in our series on color and color manipulation.
part I
Part II

We all love easy to do tricks of course, so I thought today would be the perfect time for just such a tip.

When we look at the color triangle we can see that all colors are connected through the white point.
We talked about this in the first blogpost in this series.

This also means that we can manipulate our white point by choosing a whitepoint that is way off the black body curve and choosing this as a new white point.
So let’s take a look at how this works in real life.

Look at those skies

Let’s take our model Lois on location.

Yeah, well….
There is nothing wrong with this shot but it isn’t really popping right?

So first let’s add some strobe power.

Ok that’s a LOT better, love the sky and the model really pops out.
But what if….we want to push the creative factor up.
Let’s add a green gel to our strobe.
You can use the Rogue magnetic system for this.

Of course it’s vital to shoot a color checker for this.

Now click on the whitebalance part and look at what happens.

Don’t you just love the effect.
In essence it’s very easy what happens.

Normally the white point is on the black body curve.
By using a green gel on the strobe we are now placing the white point above the black body curve, by correcting this to the correct white point everything else drops down, meaning white becomes more magenta. Enhance the colors a bit in your favourite editor and you can have loads of fun with it.

 

An extra tip

As you have read Key is the luminance of a color.
This means that if you don’t have a correct exposure of your shot the colors will not look accurate.
Now of course sometimes you want a more moody look, but it’s important to understand the basis of color to be able to manipulate them the way you want.

To be able to judge your colors correctly you need a proper workflow.
For me this contains a lightmeter and colorchecker.
This means I get my exposure correct and with the colorchecker I can create a profile and white balance for that series.
And do remember this is just to get all the images looking the same so that all the presets you run or anything else in your workflow has an expected outcome.

On the side of the monitor I’ve been using BenQ monitors for years and can highly recommend them.
They have a great line up of professional monitors and a great line of P3 colourspace monitors (in between sRGB and Adobe RGB) for very affordable prices.
Besides great quality most BenQ’s also support hardware calibration. Which means you don’t calibrate your operating system but straight into the monitor.
This is a much better way of calibrating your screen than via standalone software and of course the software is delivered for free.
We have a few 10% discount codes for our European vistors, please contact me for more info.

Combining 3 gels for awesome results and even white light

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Colors can be mixed, Color Manipulation part 2

In the previous blog post you could see that colors are all connected.
So today we are going to play with this.

Additive and Subtractive colors

Often this leads to a lot of confusion about what primary and secondary colors are.
For photography and video we are using Red Green and Blue to create the color we see.
A printer uses CMYK to print the colors we see.

These are two different ways of working with colors we call those additive and subtractive.
Additive colour is created by mixing light. Subtractive colour is created by mixing materials.

For today we are going to work with 3 colors Red, Green and Blue.

And I mean that literally

When we combine a Red, Green and Blue gel and aim it at a subject we will get an awesome effect.
You will see a mix of the colors in the shadows, but the fun thing is that where all 2 colors overlap you get a “white” light.
This is how gels actually work, so you can create some truly stunning shots with this.

In this setup I’m using three strobes with gels.
Let’s first take a look how it looks without green.

As you can see it doesn’t really look right. There is a harsh shadow line and it doesn’t really pop.
So let’s throw in the green.
The green strobe is aimed directly on the model, while the red and blue are coming from the sides.

Now let’s start to play a bit with poses but more importantly our own position.

As you can see by changing the angle under which the model poses and where you shoot from you can play with the colors and get very different results.
This is without a doubt a very creative solution, but… do remember this is not something you shoot for a client without showing the result before hand, I love it, but it’s not for everyone 😀

An extra tip

As you have read Key is the luminance of a color.
This means that if you don’t have a correct exposure of your shot the colors will not look accurate.
Now of course sometimes you want a more moody look, but it’s important to understand the basis of color to be able to manipulate them the way you want.

To be able to judge your colors correctly you need a proper workflow.
For me this contains a lightmeter and colorchecker.
This means I get my exposure correct and with the colorchecker I can create a profile and white balance for that series.
And do remember this is just to get all the images looking the same so that all the presets you run or anything else in your workflow has an expected outcome.

On the side of the monitor I’ve been using BenQ monitors for years and can highly recommend them.
They have a great line up of professional monitors and a great line of P3 colourspace monitors (in between sRGB and Adobe RGB) for very affordable prices.
Besides great quality most BenQ’s also support hardware calibration. Which means you don’t calibrate your operating system but straight into the monitor.
This is a much better way of calibrating your screen than via standalone software and of course the software is delivered for free.
We have a few 10% discount codes for our European vistors, please contact me for more info.

A cool behind the scenes during a fashion shoot including all the info free tutorial

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A behind the scenes look

This is how digital classroom started.
Just a webcam starting in the morning and ending when we were done, and I could hardly believe it but some people stayed awake the whole day, which for them was actually night time.

Although this was fun, it was not really something we could do often due to the very bad internet quality.
A few years later we wanted to start the live streams again but in a different format, a 3 hour live semi workshop.
At that moment we had to stream via a satellite uplink, which mostly meant I was worried almost the whole episode, because just one fat cloud and it would fall below the range of YouTube which meant “lost connection”.

Nowadays everything has changed.
We are now streaming with 4 live cams, we have a chat running where people can ask questions and of course we are now streaming via a super fast fiber connection.

Digital classroom has grown

Digital classroom now is totally different from when we started, but we are continuously looking at ways to make it more interesting for you guys. And the first thing we did was shorten the episode length to 90-120 minutes (3 hours was too long).

And of course we can’t do it without the support of our sponsors. So let’s give them a big shout out.

BenQ :
Great monitors for designers, photographers and video.
Without a doubt my choice for monitors.
And they sometimes have great offers for our viewers, like a 10% discount for all EU customers (mail us for the coupon).

Rogue :
We’ve been working with Rogue for almost as long as I shoot models.
The Flashbender is probably the product I’m the most involved in, but Rogue is the kind of company that really listens to their ambassadors and create awesome products. I use the flashbender and magnetic system in almost all my shoots.

Geekoto :
Awesome compact strobes, with great easy to setup softboxes.
And for the price, it’s almost unbelievable what they deliver. I’m very picky and have been shooting with them for over 2 years now and didn’t have any issues at all.

Calibrite :
I always advise to get a proper calibrated workflow, and Calibrite delivers all he goods you need.
I’m using their colorcheckers and analysers to get proper colors in my workflow.

Cascable :
When you see me shooting live there is a 99% change you see me using an iPad Pro, and on the iPad Pro I’m running Cascable, without any doubt my favourite tethering solution for iPad, it’s super fast and reliable, just what a I need under stress.

IQwire :
Tethering is showing your images directly on a large screen while shooting.
IQwire delivers the fastest and most reliable tethering cables and a complete defence system for camera, laptop/desktop and cable.
Available in 5-10-15 meters length (I’m mostly using the 15mtr which makes it possible to move around my whole studio without ever tripping over a cable.

ClickBackdrops :
We started with a signature series and I ended up with my whole studio filled with their amazing backdrops, and eventually we started selling them (they are just too much fun). Available in almost any size and in 2 materials. Vinyl for sharp and “harder” prints and ProFabric, which mimics the old canvasses we all love but can’t afford 😀

Most of these products we now also sell in our webshop at frankdoorhof.com/shop so make sure to check it out.
The reason we chose these brands to work with, or sell, is that they are designed FOR photographers/videographers/designers instead of designed for the photography market (a huge difference in usability).

Ok…
Let’s go straight to the brand new episode of digital classroom with our model Claudia.