Original subtitles

I went back to

our one light master class, and we're going to do what I call cracking the

code to lighting, to crack the code.

So

I'm going to cover a few things in this little section right here that I've

covered under my

master class.

I did under the craft.

I covered a lot of lighting.

I have added a whole bunch of new stuff, but I've got a few things that

I've got to repeat.

And since some of you may not have watched that, I want to make sure that

I get all this information to you.

So I think this is very important.

When you're done with listening to what I'm going to say, I think

you're going to say,

I have never looked at it like that.

I've never thought I was that simple.

It is as simple as I

can't even imagine.

Imagine trying to learn lighting in the old fashioned way of

lighting ratios

with,

well, I say, use a flashmeter, but taking and trying to work it from a

technical perspective.

I'm going to teach you lighting from an intuitive,

artistic

process.

Why is this important?

Well, for one, the end result, for us to get a great picture is a creative process.

Yes, we have technical things we have to learn.

if I can learn a technical process, creatively, or using my intuition, and

as my guide,

then I am

really a lot further along that someone that's learning technical, because you

can learn all the technical things about

creating an image and have a complete boring picture.

I don't want that.

I don't think you want that.

So I want to go beyond that and say, I want to create an image that's dynamic.

So I know there's two worlds, the technical and the creative.

However,

I think

the way I teach is that if I teach you from your intuition, your creative

approach, you can light anything, you can get to your end result.

Very easily.

I find that most people that learn lighting from a technical perspective

get complete, bogged down.

They lose sight of what the result is, and then they get this, I say, what, I

think, a very average or boring picture.

So I don't want that.

So let's go from here.

And we're going to talk about cracking the code to lighting.

And this will be part one.

All right, I have said this before, and I say this a lot, is that how light

strikes a subject to me is paramount.

So I look at that.

I don't know why I'm drawn to that so much, but for some reason.

I just love lighting and how it lights

a subject.

Now

I've mentioned this before when I talk about music.

I was in a band, I played a guitar and wrote and saying, whatever.

And so the same basic principles apply in music as in photography, and that

you can learn all the technical things and how to put your fingers on a guitar

and make it a core progression.

But if you learn,

like, for example,

how to create emotion in your song,

you draw your listener in.

If you create a motion in a photograph, you draw your viewer in.

That's what I want.

So there's very similar

things that I look at that when I was doing music, the same thing with

photography is that I'm trying to bring and win somebody over and suck them in,

pull them in.

What's the hook, those kinds of things.

lighting is one of those things that

is paramount, meaning that if you get your lighting right, boy, those things

look great.

And so I think you want to get your lightning skills up.

And so that

is important.

So here we have my cowboy, guy, like this.

This is sitting over my fireplace downstairs.

I say that if you take an image, and you make a print, and put it over your

fireplace.

It must be pretty near and good, or at least it must be, to me, something that

I really like.

But look at this guy's face.

This is Greg wildman.

the horse has got a good looking face too, you must admit.

the face,

the roughness of him, the way the light's cutting across

his coat, as vast as chaps,

and it is just like,

wow,

maybe you want to be a cowboy,

or you want to

hang out with the cowboys.

In fact, you're kind of a dian breathe.

We don't have as many cowboys as we had 100 years ago.

But I love this picture, and I, I say, goes great over a fireplace.

All right.

So I'm going to give you a secret to lighting.

Here it is.

When I was at brooksarst institute.

I put this up, and I hears what it is, it's the size of the source time, the

time's, the corresponding shape of the modifier, equals the subject to value rating.

Divide that by the distance to the subject, minus the diffusion factor,

plus the number of Watts output on your flash, equals a number of lighting

ratios.

Take that fraction, one over 125th times the n l r equal to your f.

Stops then the sunny sixteen rule, divided by the inverse square law.

This gives you the point to source in three dimensional space,

ok?

That's a total joke.

The reason why I did that is,

I've gone to lectures where someone goes, and they give you this incredible

formula, and you're going,

I'm confused.

So that is a joke.

Folks,

hope you got to

laugh out of it.

Let's talk about how simple lighting really is.

Ultimately, there's no right or wrong.

There's no right or wrong.

Folks,

why is that?

Ok,

because

it is a subjective process.

So

you may want shrieking from the top down, across the face.

That looks like, kind of like a horror, you know,

movie

that's your goal.

That might be your goal.

Now, if you're doing beauty fashion, that probably isn't going to work very

well.

So what I mean, by there's no right or wrong, is that

you can take any light source out there, and

take light from below, you're taking a flashlight and go, he, scare.

I guess your camp.

When I was at camp, we need to do that.

Scare my camp mates.

So you can take lighting and do some really drastic things to it to produce

something, an outcome.

And so if you show me a picture, and I look at it, and I go,

well, for beauty fashion, that's not really good light.

I might say that,

but I really say, I don't know what gin result is.

So there's really no right or wrong.

So I think it's crazy when

I hear critique and things like that, and photographers that

want to

show off how smart they are, whatever, they'll shred somebody's work.

And I look at it and I go, hmm,

I don't know if that's the best way to approach critique.

I might say to someone, what is your inn result?

Why are you doing this?

And then they may say, and I say, I would not approach it with that

lighting.

And so that's how you might critique something.

But I wouldn't say, oh, I did it all wrong.

Because, again, I don't know everyone's result.

I don't know what

your inn result is.

And as an artist, we have to know, accept that not everyone's going to

like what we do.

But in the end, what's most important is what you like.

as we create images,

or as you create images, as you work toward any result, you have to go by

what you like.

And we talk a lot about that in the artist.

So if you have not,

if you have not

looked at my

whole series on the artist.

I go into great depths about this, and is so, as important as you become a

creative person,

you understand how to do that as an artist, how to be an artist.

So my goal is to master.

Or the goal I think I want you to go, is the master,

the ability to control light, striking, fix.

I want you to master that.

You can say, where a client comes to you and says, I want this, look, you

got it.

The problem.

And I have the confidence now that pretty much anything you throw at me,

any client, throws up.

Mammy.

I can figure it out.

I can do it.

And it is fun.

And there's always problems on a set.

Whenever I do a big commercial ad shoot,

and things are twenty, people standing around and, yeah, makeupar's wardrobe,

you got everything's going on,

art, directors, the client, creative dictors, whatever who's there,

and all of a sudden they go, oh, we have a problem.

Can we do this?

I'm like, yup.

I can do it.

I love that.

I love it because I've done my homework, I've cracked the code to

lighting.

I can solve it very quickly.

I want you to do that.

And I know I feel very confident, you can, by the time you get them with this

session, you can have that.

All right?

So we had to look at something

that when I'm standing outside in the sun, maybe it's high noon, the sun's

kind of breaking across me.

Or sometimes you stand underneath a light,

you've been in a building when you stand on the light, and it's just like,

really bad lighting.

Jerry seinfeld did a thing where he met this girl,

and she was under this beautiful flat lighting scenario.

And then

he set up a date, whatever, and he went to go pick her up, and when she opened

the door, there was this really harsh lighting going across her face, the

whole skit

of that

sitcom, whatever.

That

was basically lighting

matters.

Like, he's important.

Because he thought of the different girl.

I was like, I'm here for so and so, oh, that's me, what?

You don't look the same, because she was on a beautiful flat lighting

before.

And so it's kind of a funny thing.

Well, so, but

if I want to duplicate the real world around me,

well, there's really bad lighting.

So is my goal to duplicate the real world around me?

I have people come up to me and say, oh, you know,

that's not a realistic scenario whatever lighting them do in a picture,

I'm like, that's not my goal.

And my goal is not to create the world around me.

My world is create a fantasy world, me, or a flattering world, world that makes

people look good, or a superhero, or

an athlete, look tougher than they are, or whatever it is

I used to shoot a lot of

CEOs, or top

profile people, politicians.

You've got to make them look like they are somebody of authority.

If you make them look like a little whimp,

they're not going to be very happy with you

unless you don't like their politics, maybe.

And that's what your goal is.

The point is that

my goal is not to represent the world perfectly as I see it around me, but to

create something that is,

I don't know what you'd call it, Hollywood, I mean,

or a fantasy lamb, right?

I want people to pay me to and also like what I do.

So I want them to look great.

All right.

So I've said this, and we already talked about this.

And when we looked at a bunch of pictures, the most flattering light

it's top down.

I got a big, old soft box right here.

Top down, I would make myself look, is as good as I can I wish I had a big old

card and hear that help a little bit

across.

The top light coming down, or cross light, those are the two most

flattering lights on the planet.

Now, you can run a light 45 degrees to your subject.

You can do that, and you can get nice soft light coming across.

And to me, it's acceptable.

I like it more.

Going cross that's just my personal approach.

And I believe the Renaissance, the Baroque painters,

we know by studying

that.

I studied them that their studio were set up with a window that was ninety

degrees to the subject, was not 45 degrees.

But

if you like a 45 degrees, you can do that.

But I want to teach you basically, top down or cross light.

And you can vary that in lots of different ways.

So let's talk about a definition, and that is the quality of light.

So I'm going to define that by,

I can either

increase

my softness, get us softer, or

decrease it or get it harsher.

So I want to either make something softer, make something harsher.

Once you learn that,

then you could, like I said before, I think when I was going through the

pictures, you can pretty much do anything

you've got to know how to increase or decrease your

softness or harshness to your subject.

Once that happens, it's so easy.

Folks, so let's think let's talk about two things that determine the quality

light to your subject.

Now, if you've heard this before and you say, Joe, I just heard that on your

craft and went through all that, I got a whole bunch of new things in here.

So stick with me.

But I'm having to go through this because I know some of you have not

gone through my other courses.

two things that determine the quality light to a subject.

Number one, the size of your source, how big your source is and how far it

is from your subject.

How big the source is, or the modifier, what do you want to call it, and how

far it is from your subject.

Death.

Number one, number two, is how much bounce or ambient light comes back in

your subject.

Those are the two

single most important things that determine the quality of light

and how to make something softer harsher to your subject.

We're going to now break that down

when I say that I, for probably the first 25 years of shooting and creating

income and shooting national Ads, and don't tell the art directors this.

But I really did not have it broken down this simple.

I was fumbling, and I would often

I'd stumble across something and go, oh, I look really good.

And then I go, well, why?

I didn't really know why.

And then a week later, I was trying to duplicate it and turn out the way I

had the week before.

So I was really stumbling.

So

I don't stumble, I don't fumble around now.

And so I don't want you to either.

So these

are the secrets to the whole thing right here.

The source.

Let's talk about the source, the larger

or the smaller, the source

or the modifier.

You got to call it source modifier.

And raceship to study, it's soft, the heart.

I'm going to demonstrate that here in a minute, but

it's

almost opposite of what you would think inspect might teach this.

And we're going to talk about the inverse square law in another session.

And

when I look at the infra square law, I'm like,

that's opposite of what I thought it would be like.

So the inn result, as I get to understand it, I'm like,

that's opposite.

And there's a lot of things like that in life.

As you go through and you go,

that's exactly opposite what I thought it would be.

Right?

And lighting is like that in a lot of ways.

When you start to, you think I back up a source, it should be spreading light,

wider across the scene.

That is true,

but it's making it harsher, edgier.

So

let's take a look at this.

We have a source here, so creating a softer harsher source.

So if I move that

closer, it's going to get softer.

If I go away, it's going to get harsher.

Now, when I talk about this, this seems to me pretty obvious, but some people

come up, mask me go.

What about the exposure?

Well, yeah.

So keep in mind that you have the just exposure

to

get whatever you call an acceptable exposure to your model, to your

subject.

So as you bring your soft box or light modifier in, it's going to give you all

brighter value to your subject.

So you have to counter that.

You have to.

And I do it by either use.

I do it by the power of the source, not of the light, not enough stops.

I keep my app stops the same.

So I bring it in, downpower the light, I back it up, power the light

now, or the power of the start.

Now if I get back

twenty feet and on my full power

and I want more,

you probably usually change my iso or my f stop.

But the fact is, I'm adjusting the power

in and out

as I move.

My light

that's a given.

But as I move closer, it is softer.

As I move it away, it is harsher.

Now

when we say softer, I'm going to use it term, broad

Broads the light here.

So this help illustrate.

This is some new stuff that I just got through putting together here.

So let's say, this guy's looking toward the light.

I just had to grab a little clip art.

And so

I want

to have you illustrate.

So this lights way away,

so it's very small and compared to maybe the size of his head.

So it's really far away.

And that light coming to him is going to be what we call a short light.

When I use the tumor short

there, in the old

Hollywood, they would say the short light is the light that has a least

amount of light on the face.

The broad light is the

amount of light that's mostly filling the face.

But

that term is, yes, we use that term.

So don't someone email, mean going on.

So definitions here.

When I say short it's going to be a harsher light.

So it's the harshest shortest,

what I would call this, that we're look at shadows in a minute, but it creates

a very harsh shadow.

As I bring it in, it's going to get broad.

So that's why i'll use the word broad.

It gets broader to my subject.

That creates a softer light, because it's wrapping my subject with light

where, when it's far away,

it has a very narrow angle of view to your

subject.

So if you turn like that, there's nothing on this side it's like dark.

The bigger, the bigger the source, the broader it gets, the softer it gets.

So let's take a look at this.

And this is what's really confusing about

lighting.

And when we come to all these options, we have modifiers.

So you have to understand something.

If you just started out photography today, which some of you probably have

not.

But if you're pretty new to photography,

we have today

a whole bunch of modifiers that we have

purchase.

And so we hear the term soft box, octobox

stripped lights.

We have

just the radar sockboxes, rectangle boxes of square boxes,

there's lanterns.

Now that you drop that you know have just kind of 360

it done for film.

But we have all these different options.

Now, when I started,

you know, the options are, work, basically for a modifier one, well, you

say the hood that you had on your strobe was one, and then umbrella.

I've saw we pretty much had we had to do.

And I made my first soft box out of.

It was a phone core in tracing paper, and one of them cut on fire.

That's how bad it was.

That's my starting out

with monifiers and lighting stuff.

So there wasn't a lot out there today.

We have a lot.

So what were the options that we had that?

And I didn't know much about lighting back then.

when I say this, I can look back and see what a lot of photographers are

using.

I didn't understand at the time, now I understand it.

But you could take a white wall, and I had to sort of separate this so you

could see it.

But let's just say, that wall in the back is white, but it's kind of it's

subdued with lighting.

And I blast

a spot, move it really close, and it's just a small circle on the wall.

I put a subject next to that that wall,

say, it's the side, ok?

So here's my light, hits a wall, and I have a small circle of light, and it

bounces back to my subject.

That's going to create a short light, or a harsh light,

because it's small,

it's a big wall.

So in a way, you could say that wall is a modifier while it is,

but the light that's hitting it is very small.

So we would call that it produces a very harsh light.

And so

photographers that didn't have big soft boxes, and stuffed, back in the old

days, in fact, I remember shooting a car for a client once years ago.

Oh my gosh.

I didn't know anything about carsic.

They then hire me and I'm like, sure, I can shoot a car.

And the studio that we rented was

flats.

They were on big cranes or whatever.

They could move.

The big flat flat was like, literally thirty by forty feet or something.

And so you go, you put your car underneath it, and you move it,

whatever, accordingly, and then you throw a light up into the flat.

That's

a fairly simple way

to create a big, broad light.

Now, movie industry did it.

The movies did it.

Now they shifted a little bit because they loved in the 50s.

I still like that.

They had some really harsh lights

because they didn't have modifiers like we have today.

So, but they did use flats.

Now we also use silk.

We can shoot through a big piece of diffusion,

so that becomes the modifier.

But if you take a big piece of diffusion,

like a scrim, like, say, I have, I think, eight by eight,

I set it all up, and I take a light, and I walk it toward the scrim, and I

make a small circle.

That's going to be a harsh light.

I back it up, it gets broader and broader and broader get softer and soft

or softer.

That fills the whole screm.

So this is my point to you, is that I can use a wall or a flat, and I can go

and I can broad knit by backing a light up.

Or if I take just a grid, I can make it really small,

and then just take the grid off, make it wider, and it blastline that wall.

And then it comes back to my subject.

Make a very soft light.

So I hope you get my point here,

how to broaden your light.

Now i'll interject here, which is really important.

When I first got umbrellas, I didn't know how to use them.

No one showed me how to use them.

There wasn't YouTube.

I didn't I have a fine arts degree in photography?

Nobody was coaching me.

In fact, back when I was doing photography, very few photographers let

their secrets out so that you couldn't walk and do a studio, or say, hey, I

love your work.

Can you show me how you do it?

Hub.

Z, it was mum's was the word, right?

Because everybody was worried about their competition.

Well, so my point is is that I had this umbrella.

I did not use it.

I put on a standard hood.

The umbrella rod came through the head back, the packs were on the ground at

that time, and then I would just slide it up and shoot it.

Why didn't know?

I had a sixty inch umbrella, but I was blasting light in the centre.

Only had a twenty inch modifier,

twenty inch circle of light.

And I'd put it over and take a picture of a subject, go, wow, that's really harsh.

Then I put a sop box on when they came out and go, oh, sockbox are soft.

Umbrellas are harsh.

I didn't know what I was doing.

I wasn't broadening the light on my mon, my modifier.

So

you could take a

soft box.

You take the inner baffle out

you blast your head through there, and it hits the center of the diffusion,

and it's not dispersed evenly.

And you have a hot spot in the center.

You put that up, and you take a picture.

It's going to be fairly harsh to your subject.

You put the inner baffle in, it spreads the light evenly across the diffusion.

And then you get a broader source, which is softer.

I hope you get what I'm trying to say here.

It's kind of fun

to look at it.

This.

So don't think about modifiers

that are in a

black

material with a white diffusion

that is a modifier.

But modifiers can be anything.

So let's take a look at that.

Here we have an optobox.

Let's just say, it's off the side, or I'm looking straight at it.

Here, my camera would be coming

straight toward him.

The same as cross light of thing.

And

lets you say

that.

I

like that light.

Let's say,

someone walks in, they take my modifier and run out the door.

They steal it out from underneath me.

And I'm in the middle of a photoshoot.

I'm like,

what do we do?

Panic city, I've got to go down and buy a new one.

Well, I don't have time for that.

The clients like let's do it.

Now

here's what I can do.

I can take a piece of foam core, take a light,

blast it in the center of that

piece of white flat, and it gives me the exact same quality light as that

octabox, if I get the same exposure value to the subject.

Now, the hard thing I don't have, I don't have a barn door on here, or a

flag.

You can set up a flag.

I've got flags that I bought that, or a piece of foam core you can set up to

block the light from that hitting his face.

You don't want that.

So if you can

not allow that light source right here to go and strike the subject coming

across, but only strike the

piece of flat.

You cannot see the difference between the two

modifiers.

So

you can take anything.

In fact, I did this once, and I heard someone do this.

So I'm not the first originator of this, but you literally take a white t

shirt, and you just take your strobe, like, you know, you're doing something.

You get your camera, and just taking blast light into your shirt, and it

bounces back into the subject to give a soft light.

So there's a lot of fun tricks you can do of course, you know, you take a

speed light and bounce it off a ceiling.

That broadens the light across

your room, and that will soften the light too.

So I want you to think like this.

The reason why I'm going this is because don't think in just terms of

soft boxes, beauty, dish octoboxes,

strip lights, all those things.

Because once you get locked in there,

you're thinking, oh,

I got this.

Someone came up to me once and said,

I had this,

I'm not going to mention the brand, got this modifier.

Oh, it's god's light, it's better than any other modifier on the planet.

And I paid 895

dollars worth it's worth.

Every penny it's like, it's just a modifier.

Folks,

it's not made of gold.

It's a modifier.

It's broadens the lighter, shortens a light.

Those are things.

So

what do you pay for in a modifier?

Well, you pay for the quality, is in the construction

of the materials and whatever.

Because you're going to be settin it up, tearing down, settin up, tearing

down, you know, over years.

So the material, the construction,

and I always say,

is it easy to transport?

So I helped design with westcott that 24 ins, beauty dish that come, packs up

and sticks in a little sleeve, and you put it in your suitcase or whatever,

and you on their plane.

I couldn't do that with a beauty dish to hard shell beauty dishes, it's too much.

So it's the transporting of something as small as a transport.

And as it can, you set up and tear down very quickly.

So my brother bought a five foot octo on

bbay.

He was so excited.

I went over his house and he showed it to me, and I said, wow, that's that

beautiful?

That's great.

But

how quick does it set up and tear it down?

And he says, oh, it's a nightmare.

It takes me like twenty minutes to set it up.

It's not worth it,

unless you have a studio, when you always leave it up,

and

you get what you get what you pay for in terms of quality, generally.

So if you buy a really cheap modifier is going to fall apart.

I mean, I've had grids,

not from the company westcott.

Grids are amazing.

Before that, I had a company that I was using,

and the grids, within a year were literally shredding,

coming apart,

fraying everywhere

I've got grids right now that I'm using on my

36 by 48

soft boxes that I got when

I started with westcott about six years ago.

And you see me, I'm a rip, and I'm off, put them, rip it a moth, put them on.

And I do that.

I don't honey days a year.

And they look brand.

Not one little fray, not all on little things.

So you get what you pay for in the construction

and the ability to set it up, tear down and transport it.

So

don't believe the hype.

So that's what I'm saying,

if, look, and i'll say this too, and I want you to think about this.

I'm just like you.

I want the best quality, right?

and when it comes to strobes, we can.

We've talked about strobes in my other session quite a bit.

I've done some YouTube channel things on strobes.

I want my struggles to work.

I want them to be consistent, all that.

But I don't want to go pay a fortune for

a stuff that, if I get it for a cheaper price, i'll do that.

But I don't want to compromise also, if I'm doing a big ad campaign, that I

have a piece of crap, you know, strobe, and a key,

not working on me.

So

there, sometimes you say, I'm going to spend that extra money for something.

But when it comes to modifiers, don't believe the hype.

When someone says, oh, this whatever brand is just incredible.

The reason why it's incredible, the photographer that's using it,

understands lighting and knows how to light, and that's how they're getting

an amazing picture.

It's not the modifier.

So don't get caught up in the heights.

So let's take a look at this one concept that I always talk about, and

that is,

what about

all these shapes and modifiers?

What about that?

So the shape has little to do with the quality light on the subject it's how

big it is, how close it is the subject,

how many times are going to repeat that.

So I didn't know that.

And

I got all worked up when I came to

silver interior versus white and tier.

I didn't know what the difference works.

Well, you put a piece of fusion on the front.

Doesn't matter.

If you take the diffusion off, like, say, a beauty dish that has a silver interior,

it might give you a little more specular punch than the white interior.

But when you put that diffusion on the front, you cannot tell a difference.

I've done a gazillions of tests, trust me.

So don't get too cut up on the shape.

So you can use a round modifier over the top of the lens, and I do that a

lot and mostly.

And it creates a circular

reflection in the eye, which is very pleasing.

But you can use our rectangular softbox

over the top of your camera and get incredible results.

So

the shape

is not as important as you think it is.

Ok, let me repeat this one more time.

In the end, the quality light is determined by how broad it is

to your subject

and how much bounce.

And Phil comes back in onto the subject

there's your secret to lighting.

So

let's do this.

I know I'm going fairly long here, and I want to take a break.

And so I call that part one.

So let's go and take a break, and then I will

start up right here at part two.

And we'll continue on.

I got some really cool stuff yet to come