Warming up images either on camera or in post production is an easy task to accomplish. However depending on the image it can sometimes look like ….well we have thrown a warming filter on the image! In this short video Simon shows a couple of easy but powerful tips to add warmth to your images but do it in a Continue Reading
The post Photoshop Video Tutorial: How to Add Warmth to Your Images appeared first on Photodoto.
Gary Fong has launched a new online instructional service, giving photographers a way to become proficient with select camera models in a unique way. Rather than providing a rote list of video tutorials, users are presented with a virtual version of a camera model that is fully interactive: buttons can be pressed, switches can be toggled, and menus can be explored. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Designing a business card doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming. Most business cards are simple enough: they contain, in readable type, a list of information about you, what you do, and how to get in touch. They stay in tune with your branding — the colors, fonts and general message you want to convey to people about your business Continue Reading
The post How to Design A Photography Business Card In Photoshop (Tutorial) appeared first on Photodoto.
From the early days of photography dodge & burning has been used to help add emphasis and impact to selective areas of images. Within photoshop we show one of the many ways to digitally dodge & burn an image with an added level of flexibility. Check out our LAB Color Correction Video Tutorial! Before After
The post Photoshop Video Tutorial: Dodge & Burn Using Curves appeared first on Photodoto.
In this second video on LAB we explore a way to add creative color grading onto a desaturated dusk image. Once again exploring LAB colour mode and curves we get playful to create saturation and color contrast to add life to a dull scene. Don’t miss our first video on the LAB colors tutorial. Before After
The post LAB Color Correction Video Tutorial: Creative Grading Techniques for Images appeared first on Photodoto.
LIGHT MODIFIERS
Hello FashionPhotographyBlog.com readers! The past couple of days we’ve discussed different types of light sources, lights and meters. Now the fun stuff: Light Modifiers! (Please, try to contain your excitement.)
Light Modifiers are anything that can be used to alter and shape the output of light. There are three ways to modify light: block, bounce and diffuse. Light modifiers don’t have to be store bought- technically, a modifier is anything that alters the light. It can be a piece of tinfoil from your kitchen or some fabric thrown over a flash to diffuse the light.
Reflectors The most commonly known types of reflectors are bounce reflectors. These are typically white, silver or gold. With these, you literally bounce the light off of the reflector and back onto your subject. Be careful not to bounce light at a funny, unflattering angle. Different colors create different effects. A silver reflector will create a cooler color of light while a gold reflector will “warm up” the light bounced back onto your subject.
Gold vs. Silver Reflector
Rather than using a reflector to bounce light into an image, you can hold up a black card or board, this will take light away. It works the same way as a reflector, but instead of bouncing light onto your subject, it will cut down on light reflected back to the subject. Black absorbs light, thus resulting in less light on the subject when a black bounce board is held up to it.
Black velvet is the best fabric you can use if you want to not reflect light. Want a pitch black background? Get a giant piece of black velvet!
Cinefoil is great for manipulating light. It works in conjunction with the light modifiers we’ve previously discussed. Cinefoil is like really thick black aluminum foil which can tolerate high heats. It can be clipped directly onto a light source and used to control where the light falls.
Roll of Rosco Cinefoil
Using Cinefoil to turn a Softbox into a Striplight
By placing material in between a light source and the subject, you’re diffusing it. By placing some form of diffusion material in front of a light, you take away it’s specular qualities. The light will now be softer with gradual transitions between light and shadow (see Light, Part I – The Science of it All for more on diffused and specular light).
You can buy diffusion material at a store, which can get pricey, or you can look around your house for diffusion materials. As long as light passes through the material it can act as diffusion. Shower curtains, tissue paper, lightweight fabrics and sometimes sheets act as great diffusers.
Often times, the inside of a reflector will be made of diffusion material. By taking the reflective covering off you now have a diffuser!
Scrims are fantastic when trying to diffuse light on location. A scrim is essentially a large piece of diffusion material stretched over a frame. You’ll typically need some sort of stand system or an assistant to hold it up while you shoot.
Scrim in use on Annie Leibovitz's set
These next modifiers are technically defined as Light Shaping Tools because they’re placed on the light to modify it’s output. These are not all the modifiers out there, but a summary of the most common types.
There are several different types of light modifiers on the market, they include but are not limited to:
Umbrellas create a large diffused light. The light hits the umbrella and bounces back to the subject. It can be hard to control. There are two common types of umbrellas: reflective (which come in silver, white or sometimes gold) and shoot through. Umbrellas are typically held onto a light by sliding the rod through the reflector which holds it in place.
On light Reflectors are not to be confused with bounce reflectors. All strobe lights come with a device called a Reflector. The purpose of the reflector is to guide the light. If you use a flash unit bare bulb (no source of modifier on it) the light goes everywhere. A reflector is used to direct the spread of light into one direction. They create a specular (hard) light source.
Profoto "Zoom Reflector”
Soft Boxes directly diffuse light and create soft shadows. They are black on the exterior and lined with silver reflective material. A white diffusion material goes over the front which creates soft diffused light. A good softbox won’t “leak” any light to the outside world. They’re held onto the light source with something called a Speed Ring. All speed rings are specific to their light manufacturer (not all lights use the same speed ring). Softboxes are collapsable and are put together by inserting metal rods into the speed ring, which holds it in place. There are many types of softboxes, and they come in all different sizes, but they essentially all do the same thing.
The most common soft boxes are either square or rectangular.
Profoto 2'x3' Softbox
Striplight or Stripbank is a thin softbox. Think of it as taking a full softbox and cutting it in half.
Profoto 1'x4' Striplight
Octaboxes or Octabanks are octangular softboxes.
Profoto 36' Octabox
Lit with a large Octabank to the right of the camera
Beauty Dishes are another form of a reflector. They bounce onto a circular piece of metal which reflects the light back into a large bowl like reflector and then onto the subject. Beauty dishes come in white or silver. A sock (form of diffusion material) can be placed over the front to diffuse the light. They create a contrasting light. Beauty dishes are a personal favorite of mine!
Profoto Softlight Reflector in white
Taken with Beauty Dish to camera right and Background light with grid
Grids (Honeycombs) are put on a light and act like a spotlight. Grids direct light from a wide beam to a certain spot. Generally grids are placed in reflector, but you can also get a grid for your beauty dish or soft box. Grids come in different degrees which determine how condensed the light becomes.
Profoto 10° honeycomb grid
Shot with 20° grid
Snoots turn a larger light source into a narrower light, similar to a spotlight by controlling and condensing the cone of light.
Profoto Snoot
A Snoot was the only light source here, camera right
Barndoors control the direction of a light. They either clip onto the light or a reflector and each of the four doors can be moved independently. Careful, they get hot!
Profoto Barndoors for Zoom Reflector
That pretty much sums up the basics of lights and light modifiers. Keep your eyes open for the next week’s lighting tutorial, where we’ll dive into some standard lighting techniques.
Be sure to check out Zack Arias blog for an EXCELLENT comparison of light modifiers and their effect on a model.
If there is anything at all you don’t understand or are curious about, feel free to email me at alana@alanatylerslutsky.com.
– A
IMAGE SOURCE:
Feature image & image 1: photography by Alana Tyler Slutsky from her Surrealia series. To view the rest of the photos from this series visit her website.
Image 2: alasmedia.wikispaces.com
Image 3, 5-13, 15, 17, 18, 20 & 22: Alana Tyler Slutsky
Image 4: bhphotovideo.com
Image 14, 16, 19 & 21: Alana Tyler Slutsky Photography
TYPES OF LIGHTS + METERS
Hey FashionPhotographyBlog.com readers! Welcome back.
Now that you know different sources of lights that can be used, today we’ll cover the ways in which they can be set up.
“Key” light is the main light source and generally the brightest.
“Fill” is used to brighten shadows and does bit create a secondary shadow and is generally a diffused source. (Avoid a secondary shadow at all costs! This is the sign of an amateur photographer.)
“Background” lights are used to illuminate the background and aid in separating the subject. They can provide a sense of depth.
“Hair” light is typically overhead and slightly behind a subject. It’s a separation light which only hits the top of the head.
“Kickers” are lights that help separate the subject from the background. Kickers are also known as “Accent,” “Rim” and “Edge” lights.
No Kicker vs. Kicker – This is a more obvious example. Kickers can be use more subtlety.
“Rim” lights are pretty self explanatory. They hit the rim of the subject to serve as a separator from the background.
Rim Lighting
Reflective Meters are the types of meters build right into your camera. How do they work? Reflective meters measure the light that is reflected back into them. These types of meters take an average reading of the scene and meter for “middle grey.” Be aware of this when using the meter built into your camera (or a reflective meter) to meter a scene!
Experiment: Using a reflective meter, take a photograph of a black card, take a photograph of a white card and take a photograph of a grey card. You’ll notice that all the images essentially come out grey- the black will be over exposed and the white will be under exposed.
The following information and pictures are from Scantips.com
Three cards, f/8, 1/1250 second Nearly exactly Sunny 16
Black card, f/8 1/200 second (result is not black) Result is 2.3 stops overexposed, from first one.
White card, f/8 1/5000 second (result is not white) Result is two stops underexposed, from first one.
18% gray card, f/8 1/800 second Result is 1/3 stop over first one.
Incident Meters are the type professionals typically use. They’re handheld meters which are held at the subject (not at the camera, like reflective meters) and measure the amount of light that falls on to the subject. These are much more accurate than reflective meters and are easiest to use in studio.
The Sekonic L-358 is one of the most commonly used incident meters.
They also come with an attachment to use it as a reflective meter.
Hang tight for tomorrow where we’ll cover different types of lighting modifiers.
See ya tomorrow-
Alana
IMAGE SOURCE:
Feature image & image 1: photography by Alana Tyler Slutsky from her Surrealia series. To view the rest of the photos from this series visit her website.
Image 3: StackExchange.com
Image 2, 4 & 9: Alana Tyler Slutsky
Image 5-8: Scantips.com
GoPro’s in-house production team travel the globe with some of the world’s best athletes and produce videos like the Hero 3+ launch, with over 16 million views on YouTube. This week GoPro and its production team released a new tutorial series called the GoPro Field Guide, a set of videos designed to delve a little deeper into some of the more complex functions of their action camera lineup. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Good morning FashionPhotographyBlog.com readers!
Today we’ll continue on with our introduction to lighting. If you are just tuning in, you can find the first topics we covered here:
Part 1.1 – The Science of Light
Part 1.2 – The Inverse Square Law + Color Temperature Explained
Part 1.3 – Applying Lighting to Real World Situations
This time around, we’ll discuss types of lights and pick back up tomorrow with meters and light modifiers. I promise it’s not as technical (or as boring) as Part I. So let jump on in…
Continuous Lighting also referred to as “Hot Lights,” which is generic term when referring to several types of continuous lighting. Often, continuous lighting is called by the name of its bulb.
Photofloods are incandescent/tungsten bulbs not much different from your standard household bulb (just A LOT more powerful!)
HMI (Halide Metal Oxide) are very small, very expensive bulbs. They’re daylight balanced in color. HMI’s are the most commonly used light in the film industry, with many using Arri spotlight systems.
Quartz-Halogen lights are great for the average photographer! They’re affordable, long lasting and reliable. However, they get HOT, so be careful! One of the most popular and dependable Quartz-Halogen lights used is the Lowel Omni.
Strobe Lights also known as Flash come in many forms as well. All are daylight balanced.
Speed Lights are the most commonly known type of flash (aside from built-in on-camera flash. They can be adjusted for the amount of light they output and (for the most part) work seamlessly with DSLR’s.
Monoblocks/Monolights are strobe lights that are most often found in studio. They are much more powerful than a speed light but not as convenient for location work. Monopacks are self-contained flash units that combine power and light all in one casing.
Monolights are much less expensive than pack lights (we’ll get to those in a minute). A great starter monolight kit I would recommend to amateur photographers would be Alienbees. They’re affordable, reliable and Paul C. Buff is a fantastic company with outstanding customer service! (No, they didn’t pay me to write this.)
Calumet Travelite
Alienbee
Pack Systems are the most common type of strobe light among professional photographers. These can be extremely costly. Because of this, most pros rent their lights from an equipment rental house. Pack and head lighting systems consist of a “pack” aka a generator (the power) and heads (the light). The heads plug into the pack and the pack is used to adjust the lighting. They can be daunting at first but they’re easy to understand once you’re properly taught! (We’ll learn how to operate pack lighting in another post.) Common manufacturers of pack lighting systems are Profoto (my personal favorite), Broncolor, Bowens, Elinchrom, Speedotron and Dynalite. Despite manufacturer, they all pretty much work the same way.
Profoto Acute 2R Pack System (power pack and 2 heads)
Controls for a more advanced professional power pack (Profoto D4)
Catch us tomorrow when we discuss meters & light modifiers.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to shoot over an email to alana@alanatylerslutsky.com!
– Alana
IMAGE SOURCE:
Feature image & image 1: photography by Alana Tyler Slutsky from her Surrealia series. To view the rest of the photos from this series visit her website.
Image 2-9: Alana Tyler Slutsky
Last week I shared one of Serge’s videos on some of the new features of Photoshop Creative Cloud (CC). Serge is a French photographer in Paris and was recently doing a workshop with our very own dPS writer Valerie Jardin. So I’ve approached Serge and hopefully he’ll be doing some videos just for you on dPS shortly.
Until then he has many helpful videos already, you can search through his YouTube library. I found this one and thought I’d share it as this is something that comes up a lot on my travel tours and workshops about travel photography. How to manage your Lightroom catalog while travelling or on the road. You should get some good tips from this – have a watch.
The post Video Tutorial How to Manage Your Lightroom Catalog While Travelling by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.
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