Fashion; Glamour; Modeling; Posing; and Lighting Photography Tutorial (outtakes @ 15:00) Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

hi I'm Chelsea and today I'll be walking
you through how to knee and I took these
beauty fashion shots I'll be going over
the gear and the lighting that we use
I'll be covering some challenges that
you might bump into with your camera
settings I'll even go over the posing
and styling of the model and lastly I'll
show you some of the post-processing
that I did in Lightroom and Photoshop to
really give the pictures the final touch
I'll start by going over the gear use
the lighting is very simple we used as a
main light we used a beauty dish with a
grid attached to a strobe and in the
background we used one two three strobes
to give some nice rim lighting and to
separate the model from the background
but the lights are also in the picture
so they're a part of the background the
strobes that we use are made by speedo
Tron and they're a part of their brown
line which is the least expensive line
that they make so one of our strobes was
about 160 and our beauty dish was about
200 dollars but I went online and I saw
that you can get beauty dishes for 30 -
about $200 if like many people you're on
a budget you don't have to buy expensive
strobe lights for the background they're
really mostly there for rim lighting and
ambiance so feel free to experiment and
find other sources of lighting around
your house if you have other questions
about gear and lighting check out
chapters 3 the flighting section in
chapter 6 the portrait section of our
book stunning digital photography if you
don't already have the book that these
videos are supplementing check out this
description down below I provided a link
to our book and check it out if you're
interested in learning some more next
I'll cover how to set up your lighting
you want your main light the beauty dish
on axis with the camera that means it's
going to be in the same line as the
camera facing the model the reason why
you want this is because when the model
turns to look at the camera you want the
light to be falling nicely on his or her
face the strobe light should be placed
behind the model facing into the camera
now the strobes are going to make some
nice rim lighting but also separate the
model from the background since they're
a part of the picture you want to
arrange them in a way that's
aesthetically pleasing so don't clump
them all behind the model but spread
them out a little
and to make them look interesting in
your shop like you can see here next the
lens that we use is the Canon 72 200 F
2.8 I love using this lens for portraits
because it makes me look better than I
actually look the reason for that is
that the telephoto one's tends to
flatten features so if you have any
exaggerated features like a prominent
forehead or nose or chin this is going
to flatten them out a little bit and
make you look really good also below
aperture makes a really nice smooth
background also known as bouquet I
understand that everybody has two grand
to pop down on a camera lens but don't
sweat it any lens you use is going to
put your own touch on this photo shoot
and make it your own
so if you don't have a telephoto lens
just work with what you have we actually
use a lens baby spark like you can see
here which was $80 and took some example
pictures just so that you can see you
don't need the most expensive gear to
get an interesting photo we made a video
on this $80 lens baby spark and it will
be coming out soon so if you'd like to
see it subscribe to this channel and
you'll get an email as soon as it's out
lastly we use a plain black backdrop to
make this a low-key shoot the trick to
making your backdrop really dark is to
make sure your lighting doesn't spill on
to it for that reason I moved all of my
lighting about 15 feet away from the
backdrop and put a grid on my beauty
dish to focus it on me
and not let it spill all over the room I
also briefly experimented with a piece
of pegboard that I found in my basement
if you like this look you can go to your
hardware store pick up a piece of your
own and you can experiment with it I've
seen people paint it white black you
could even paint it metallic or any
other colors you like to get the look
that you want I'm going to recommend a
low ISO a moderate aperture and a
relatively fast shutter speed what I
used was ISO 100 °f 16 and one 250th of
a second to capture the movement of me
flipping my hair and such if you are not
firing strobes or a flash it gets a
little bit more tricky for you because
you need more ambient light
so that the picture is exposed this
means that your background isn't going
to be as dark but it's just a different
mood and I think it comes out looking
just as nice you're going to want your
shutter speed high so you'll you'll use
probably one 250th it has to be higher
than if you were using strobes because
flashing light captures some movement
right and freezes it so another problem
is that you'll need a high ISO I used
ISO 1600 to 2500 but a problem that I
encountered is that the pictures came
out a little bit noisy I remedied that
by just taking it into post-processing
and running some noise reduction which
actually worked fine because it's a
fairly simple composition so it didn't
really blur anything too important the
aperture you want it wide open I was
lucky enough to have F 2.8 on my lens
but yours might not go that low so
you'll just have to use the lowest
aperture possible to let in as much
light as you can next let's go over the
styling and how to pose your model
unless you're extremely talented with
makeup and fashion I recommend that you
just keep it simple so that it's not
distracting for my clothing I knew that
the lighting would really be playing
with whatever I was wearing so I tried a
black shirt with sparkly shoulders and
the black just faded away into the
background so I realized I needed to use
a color next I tried a green kind of
shiny silky shirt it was nice that it
was reflective but it felt a little bit
like mom at a PTA meeting so I knew I
had to glam it up a little bit
so the next thing that I tried was a
neutral sequin dress and the sequins
played with the white really beautifully
and were nice and reflective I'm not a
professional makeup artist but I've
learned a few things from stepping out
in front of the camera for Toni first of
all the lighting really washes out your
face so you need more makeup than usual
so tell your makeup artist or whoever's
doing the makeup to add more to the
cheekbones blush and/or bronzer and also
your eyelashes and your eyebrows get
washed out and your eyelids lose some
depth so be sure to use eyeliner mascara
eye shadow and to fill in your eyebrows
a bit
and that brings out all the right things
on your face don't forget your lips you
don't want them too shiny because then
every little imperfection imperfection
with your makeup artistry shows so I
usually just do a very simple like lip
gloss II look next I'm going to give you
some basic modeling and posing advice so
the models pose is really important in
the shot because she is definitely the
subject of this picture if you're not
using a professional model don't push
your model to be something that she's
not modeling is really difficult and
when somebody's kind of pressuring you
to be cheery if you're not an especially
smiley person or sexy if you're more shy
and introverted then it might come out
looking unnatural and kind of give away
the fact that your model isn't very
experienced I'd recommend just letting
your model go with it being very
encouraging stay away from saying things
like don't do that or that looks bad
just say all right good and move on
let's go to the next thing let's try
this so this particular shoe actually
requires some more specific modeling
advice too because you'll be flipping
your hair and there's some kind of tips
and modeling that most people don't know
when I was doing this shoot with Tony I
was flipping my hair around a lot and I
didn't just do it randomly I kept a
rhythm so that he could anticipate where
I would be in my movement so I'll show
you an example of that I would countdown
for Tony and then flip my hair so he
knew when to capture it and so I'll show
you I go 1 2 3 go
1 2 3 go and keep a rhythm so that you
can both predict the movements another
thing that I did was I flipped my hair
back like this and that was the same
thing I would count and flip and count
and flip all the while keeping a nice
steady rhythm I will say another
difficult part is that you want to keep
your face in the light as a model so
model if you're watching this you want
to keep eye contact with the camera and
you also want to make sure that the
light from the beauty dish is hitting
your face in a flattering way now that
we're down in my office I'll show you
what I did in Lightroom and Photoshop to
get the finished look for our photo
shoot now that your photo is open and
photo
shop I'm going to first start by
selecting my lasso tool and selecting
these unwanted little background
features like this lights and so you
just sort of left all around the light
stand and then I press shift f5 and use
the content-aware fill now I press ctrl
D to deselect and see what it looks like
so you can see that there's this doesn't
look so great and there's also a little
dark spots down here so I'll circle this
again and shift f5 again and that's much
better I'm also going to select this
part of the bulb in this light here just
because I think it's a bit of a
distraction so shift f5 again and use
the content ortho next I'm going to
smooth out my skin now I do a lot of
editing on people so usually I use a
plug-in called portraiture though it's
$200 so I'm going to show you a more
affordable way I'm going to take out the
bigger imperfections in the skin using
the lasso tool or this tool the Spot
Healing Brush and then we're going to
when we bring it back to Lightroom we'll
use some settings to smooth out the skin
so I'll show you that when we get to
that step but for now let's zoom in a
bit and find some imperfections in the
skin and take them out it's not
perfectly smooth but a lot of these will
be taken care of with the luminance tool
and Lightroom so we'll just be looking
for any big things like these birthmarks
here so I'll circle them I press shift
to circle more than one thing and let's
see here what else and then I'm going to
do the content-aware fill for my face
for the fine lines and the little
blemishes I'm going to use this spot
he'll brush
so that looks pretty good so next I'm
going to go in and use the Dodge tool to
bring out my eyes a bit so let me zoom
in here it's on mid-tones and my
exposure is 50% so make your brush a
little bit smaller and I just kind of
brighten them up a little bit so that
they pop next go in to the burn tool and
I'm going to use the burn tool to kind
of smooth out my makeup a little bit in
my eyes so it's still on mid-tones and
50% and I'm going to go in here and just
kind of smooth this out and make my
brush a little bigger and put the
exposure down to about 20% and just fill
in my brows here and put a little
definition on my eyelids not a great
makeup artist but I can make up for that
in Photoshop that looks good to me so
now let's go to file and save it and it
will automatically be exported back to
Lightroom now that we're back in the
Lightroom
we're going to go to develop initially I
used a preset called cold process too
but I realized that not everyone has
this preset so I kind of figured out
what they did to make it look like that
and I'll take you through that but first
we want to smooth out that skin since
you don't have portraiture so I'll zoom
in here on the skin and let's go down to
luminance and bump that up let's see I
think 30 will be good so you want to
smooth it out but not so much that you
lose too much details and the eyes or
look doll-like and strange I'll bump it
up to 70 just to show you how strange it
can look if you use too much luminance
you kind of get some smudging of the
skin and the highlights look funny they
actually make the skin look worse and
the eyes look too smooth and creamy it
looks unnatural so let's bring that back
down to 30 now let's go to the shadows
select this color box here and
a blue shadow so you don't want to go
too deep because then it gets violet
looking so move down to the center here
where it's less saturated and just pick
a blue that fits your preference I like
it about here so you can see now there
are some nice blue shadows to the
picture that make it look glamorous but
my skin still has skin tones to it I
don't look washed out next let's grow up
to our contrast and we'll bump the
contrast up a little bit to about 10 or
12 I like to bump the shadows a bit I'll
bump those up to about 20 and that
brings out some definition in my hair
and let's also bring up the clarity so I
think that 17 is good you don't want to
do too much because then that brings
back all the roughness to the skin so to
me that looks good I like the cold tones
in this photo I like that my skin looks
nice and warm and smoothed out but
you're also welcome to play with the
settings more until you get a look at
you're satisfied with I added that I
edited this picture a few times before I
made this video so let me show you a few
of the other edits that I did let's take
a look at this photo I basically did the
same thing as the last photo but in this
one I bumped up the temperature so that
it was a bit warmer has a warmer glow to
it and it's a bit dewy or I like this
one too let's take a look at one more so
this photo as you can see is much more
processed and less natural than the
picture that I edited with you I use
portraiture on this one so my skin is
much smoother unnaturally smooth
actually I prefer the one that I went
over with you and I also added an
artificial lens flare using a filter and
Photoshop if you'd like to use that you
can go to filters in Photoshop and then
click on render and then render lens
flare and there you can play around with
that setting so I realized that my
screencast required some previous
working knowledge of Lightroom and
Photoshop but if you have any questions
please ask below also if you'd like to
know anything more about our photo shoot
that you saw check out our book stunning
digital photography there's a link to
our book in the description below thanks
let's face it that was the best
photography video you ever saw I was so
good if you tell people you're cool then
they know that was really good gels did
you like that video you liked it you
liked it subscribe me like me never call
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it's super good it's super good super
good you'll love it it's great super
super good that's it super fun yes very
beautiful Chelsey pretend you're
somebody else that's too much tuna
oh this is what Scott Colby does huh I'm
Scott I'm professional read the book I'm
Scott all the technical terms go whoa
beauty dish yes new we got a stick now
on two camera sitting ppl hey yo see I
so say is oh I'm so smart at photography
you know what's next
styling dial Drew's the whole thing's a
ruse look at my slippers I'm a mess
peace and watch this except for Brendon
code this is usually when the cast of a
TV show walks out now tell me nice
things
CIT keep it together take two take what
your mama gave you he ain't baby boom
boom boom BAM baby I cracked me up