Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today on The Slanted Lens we’re out here in Hollywood at a very unassuming little place. I’ve got Genevieve here with me. “Hello.” We’re going to show you how to shoot in direct sun using my mantra, “Find shade, create shade or shoot with a back light.” Let’s see if we can take this not so beautiful place and turn it into gorgeous images.
So we chose this location because it’s just average. There’s nothing amazing here. There is some greenery. There are some buildings. But it’s just, it’s not like the most gorgeous location in the world. You can make these principles work in pretty much any situation if you look for great backgrounds and set the right light. So let’s look at this location knowing that it’s not a beautiful place to shoot. But we can make the images look beautiful here nonetheless.
So the principle of finding shade, people think, “I need a huge thing of shade.” Like a huge building or trees or whatever. I’m talking about a little bit of shade that takes the light off the face. Then I can expose for the face or I can put a strobe in. So Genevieve, you come right over here. I’ve got a tree right here. This tree is casting a nice shadow. If I have her look at her shadow on the ground she can find the spot where she’s in the shade. Now if I look at the background I’ve got some deep green way back there. If I go on a 200mm lens and Genevieve I want you to turn that way just a hair. So that’s a beautiful simple shot. She’s found a little bit of shade. I’ve got some deep background that falls out of focus and that’s a great place to shoot. It’s just a little bit of shade. I don’t need a huge amount of shade even though that works as well. So the secret is to get her in that little bit of shade and now to just look up my background. Find the background that’s going to work for me. And if I’m on a 200mm lens I can get back into here and I got some nice bokeh back there at f/2.8 that falls out of focus. That green falls out of focus. I mean, I can even swing around. Do you know how you tell if it’s winter in California? Because one day you wake up and go, “Hey, there’s no leaves on the tree. It must be winter.” But it’s still a beautiful day. So there’s not a lot of shade here because there’s no leaves on the tree. Actually, the dark trees make an interesting background because they just fall into a really beautiful bokeh. I can work all around as she’s standing here looking at me. The brightness of the sky has given me a nice highlight on the side of her face and it looks very good. So there’s the first one, finding shade. It doesn’t have to be a huge area. It can be a very small area. I could set a strobe with this and it would make it even cleaner and nicer light on her face. But right now it’s just that open shade and it looks very nice. So a strobe would help it. But we’re going to show you another spot here. So let’s move on to the next spot.
So I’m walking down the street here and I love this red building. I think it’s beautiful. Look at the shade from the light pole, that’s perfect! So Genevieve, do you want to step into that shade of the light pole? Just find that spot. If I set her in there right I can get a little bit of rim light on her. Now I can use that red background. I’m going to shoot with that red background and 200mm lens again. I’ve got a window in there I don’t love. So I’m going to move over just a little bit and go to a vertical for a few. She’s looking towards that light so the light looks really nice on her face. But it’s finding shade that gives me access to that background that it looks really good. I can flip this around. Look that way. But it’s, I’m going to be looking into a really bright, bright background. I don’t want to do that. Looking into that red in the background looks really good. I got a little bit of rim light on her hair from the sun. Little smile there Genevieve. So the question is, “Can I get away with a full body here?” Probably not. But I’m going to try it. So I can get that shade, it’ll cast shade on her entire body. And I can look into that red background. I’ve got some nice hair light on her hair from behind. And I’ve got that red background behind her. It looks really pretty. So it has a lot of depth. It looks very interesting. So you can get away, I can’t quite get her feet because I start seeing all the brightness of the ground behind her. I’ve got to stay up and on that red background which means I’m getting low so I can look into that red background. But I can get down to almost knee length there using just the shade from that light pole.
So working in people’s home studios, you know. A lot of the people that I work for have nice homes and nice home studios. So admittedly there are some great home studios. I mean, we did “Wasting Life” in Dave’s garage and he would allow no pro tools. It was all to tape and I had a bunch of drum kits in my van parked in his driveway because we had no room to store any gear. And I go in my van and I get snares and I change out the kit that was like as rough as it gets. I go to some people’s home studios and they’re very elaborate and they’ve got all the gear that they want to have and they have their mic collection and you know we just get it done. It’s me, it’s my drums, going to a studio in town. And I need great cases to get it there. I use SKB because it works!
All right, so we’re going to now walk into deep shade. So when we get into deep shade we’re talking about, we are in the shade. And the disadvantage of deep shade is that the sky is not going to light her face for me very well. It depends on what’s out here, if there’s a white van, if there’s a white building, it may reflect a lot of light in on her face. It may give us something nice. We do have a lot of light on that concrete so it might give us something there. But a lot of times I’ve got to set up a strobe to light the face here. But let’s just get a shot here and see what we’ve got. So I’m looking behind Genevieve and I’ve got beautiful sunlight out there. She’s in the deep shade but the sun’s bouncing off from that cement. Which means it’s really an under light on her face, not real beautiful. But let’s take you a quick shot here. So there’s a very pretty light on her face but the background is very, very, very bright. So in order for me to be able to control that background I’m at 1/60th of a second. I’m going to go to like 1/200th of a second. I’m going to add a strobe and I’m going to light her face. And that’s going to give me complete control of the light in this deep shade and let that background, where we see out of the shade, bring it more under control. Bring the exposure down on it. Because I go from 1/60th to 1/125th to 1/200th. It’s almost a stop and a half, almost two stops. That’s going to help that background a lot.
So let’s set that strobe and take a shot. So I’m using the FJ80se which I think is one of the best entry point speed lights out there because it’s under $200. And it just is a great, it gives you 80 watt seconds of power but it’s not super expensive. Although, $200 I know sounds expensive, but not compared to $400 or $500 for a lot of other speed lights. But it gives me all the controls you need. So I’m going to do that. I’m going to put a soft box on it. One of the comments on our Channel said, “Why are you putting a speed light in a soft box? That’s so 2010.” I’m going, I’m not so sure where they get that. If you want a softer, nicer looking light you’ve got to modify it. And soft boxes are still the way everyone’s working. I see it everywhere I go. That’s the way you’re going to soften your light. And it’s going to give you a beautiful light. So there’s a beautiful look, great light on her face. The background is under control. So when you get into that deep shade you really need to add a light because that gives you the ability to control the background. Because you can shorten your shutter. Go to 1/200th of a second. You need to go to high speed sync and shorten that shutter more go to 1/400th or 1/800th. It’s going to get that background under control. It’s going to look really pretty on her face. So there, shooting in deep shade. You’re going to have to add a light. Let’s go on to the next step, create your own shade.
So here’s our first setup for making shade. Making shade is really simple if you have a large soft box. This is a small soft box but we’re going to let the sun cast a shadow on her face. That creates shade. Now the soft box is going to light her face and it’s going to give us beautiful light on her face. We’re looking into a darker background. It’s going to give us nice bokeh in the background. That’s our first setup for creating our own shade. We’re going to use our own light to create our shade and then light the face. I can get down to where I get a little bit of light in the trees in the background. That’s going to give me really beautiful bokeh back there. So that’s a really simple way to create shade and to light your face. It’s a little hard. All this concrete’s bouncing light up on her face. So it doesn’t give it as much drama as I’d like. Let’s go on to the next way to shoot with creating your own shade. So there’s the first setup for creating your own shade. Set a soft box, let it shade your model, that creates your own shade. And then use that soft box to light the face. A bigger box gives you a much bigger shade area to work in and a more pretty light on her face. So there’s the first setup. Let’s go on to the second setup creating your own shade.
So this is one of my favorite ways to create shade. This is a 50 inch reflector from Westcott and that’s just going to give me a nice beautiful area that is just shade. Now I can expose for her face here, especially because the concrete’s bouncing a lot of light. Because we have that beautiful background back there. It’s going to allow me to expose for her face and not have to set a strobe. So let’s take a shot and see what we got. So I’m shooting the 70-200mm EF lens from Tamron. It’s adapted back with an adapter to the S5 II Panasonic. It’s giving me a beautiful bokeh in the background. I’m shooting at 200mm at f/2.8. Just get a beautiful bokeh back in the background. So that’s a beautiful way to look. That basically, that reflector is just giving me a big pool of shade that I can work in. That means I can move that anywhere I want so I can get the background that I want. I don’t have to wait to find a telephone pole or find deep shade. I can go anywhere I want.
So I’m going to walk over here in the shade because I’m looking over there. I’m going, there’s a nice pool of shade there. But there’s so much bouncing off the sidewalk and everything here. I’ve got a nice background in the back. I think I can get a nice shot. Just walk over there and just click away. So let’s see what we got. Into the shade we go. That is just a beautiful light. It’s gorgeous light coming from outside here because we have this entire sky as our light. It’s our soft box. I’m looking into just a little bit of sun on that tree back there. It gives me really beautiful bokeh light in the background because you got to have a little bit of light to get bokeh. So this is a beautiful setup right here. I even got a small SUV in the background. “Get out of there!” Just kidding. All right, here we go. So that’s a quick setup. Just knowing that I’ve got light, this huge light source, and I can look into that tree back there. Sometimes I’m seeing the fence. I can get lower so I can just see into the tree. There’s a gorgeous setup. So let’s go on to our next one.
So for this setup I’m going to do what I call using a translucent as your soft box. And that is, if she just stands here. Genevieve stand there. I’m going to be right over here. So turn around this way looking back here and back up a little bit. If you look at the light on her face right now she’s in a really beautiful butterfly on her face. The light drops below her nose. It’s a gorgeous light. But it’s in hard direct sun. Which means it’s not pretty. It’s not easy to work in and it doesn’t look gorgeous on her face. But all I have to do is add this. I love this little clip here. And now I’m going to turn this into the soft box. It’s going to transform that light into the soft box. Now it’s a little soft for me sometimes. And it is interesting if you come as close to me as you can towards that light. As she gets closer to me, as long as the reflector doesn’t smack her, so the further she is away from the reflector the light coming through this becomes very soft and mushy. I don’t get any shadow. The closer she is to the reflector the harder the light becomes and I start to see some shadow. When I say harder it’s not hard, this is a very soft light. So I’m going to try to get her as close to the reflector as possible. And that’s going to help me to be able to get a little bit of shadow on her face. Just a little bit. I’ll clamp that on there. There we go. So if I get this too low in order to cover her whole body it really moves the center hot spot of the light lower on her body. I don’t want that. I want it to be on her face, on her eyes. So I want this reflector to be up just like I would set a strobe light. I don’t want it to be down because it starts to be a light that becomes below her. I don’t want that. I want it to be up high. I want the reflector to create a nice light on her face. Even though the translucent really softens the light on her face, the intensity is pretty high. So it’s a little hard to work in. It’s not that it’s hard light, it’s just it’s really bright and so sometimes people squint a little bit with this. But Genevieve is doing all right. There’s a beautiful loop light on her face right now. You see the loop from her nose. She’s in close enough that I get a little bit of shadow. So this looks really nice. It’s in the right place. That’s nice. So there’s using the translucent as a soft box on her face. It’s just a very simple setup. You can put this anywhere. But the sun kind of has to be in the right place. If the sun is too high it doesn’t work. So there’s another setup for creating your own shade. Let’s move on to shooting with a backlight.
So the third way to be able to shoot outside in direct sun is simply shoot with a backlight. This is a go-to for me in so many situations. I flip the model around, I look back into the dark shadows in the background. They get a nice rim light and you can do several things with that. You can set a strobe to brighten their face. Now you have complete control of the face because basically they’re working in the shade. But you also can use what I call a shadow transition. Her hair is right, she’s right, if you look at the shadow down here she’s got complete light on her hair. But we’re looking into the darkness of the building behind her. So it’s a shadow transition edge. I get her to where just her head is sticking out. The shadow drops at about her shoulders. Now I can shoot in, I get that beautiful light on her hair and I look into a dark background. It doesn’t matter where I’m at. If there’s no building here with shade, if I was just on a huge open field I would shoot with the backlight because it gives me more control. It allows me to control the light on the face and give me a nice rim light on the person. And especially as the light gets a little lower, a little later in the day, it becomes really beautiful. Shooting with a backlight is a great way to work. Probably the way I start with the most. Shoot with that backlight, bringing a strobe or reflector. Like right now we’ve got a reflector that’s just bouncing some nice light in on her face. It’s using the sun out here, in the sun, bouncing on her face. And I’m looking into the shadows. So shooting with a backlight is a beautiful way to work. Even just the cars back there, the highlights on the cars are giving me beautiful bokeh in the background. It looks wonderful. I can move her in and out and get that transition on her hair to be either a little softer, a little less light or a little brighter. A little more light just as I move her just in and out of that shadow area. We just barely see her head poking into the sun? That’s giving me some beautiful light on her face. Do a really super tight shot here.
So there’s my mantra for shooting outside in direct sun, “Find shade, create shade or use a backlight.”Those are the three best ways to work outside. But look for the background. If you don’t have a beautiful background you don’t have a beautiful image. So you may be able to create nice light on the face but if it doesn’t give you a nice background then you’re not going to get an incredible image. So look for backgrounds. The right light on the face, right background, then you get a beautiful image. Use one of those three and get out there and take some images. Let me see what you got. So keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’!
