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  • In his video

  • I show you how to use a second light in your home studio

  • to separate your subject from the background. Adorama TV presents

  • Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey.

  • Where you'll learn how to take stunning photos and in polish them

  • in post-production. Hello I’m Gavin Hoey and your watching

  • Adorama TV brought to you by Adorama the camera store that have

  • everything for us photographers. In this video I'm back

  • inside at my studio as we continue our mini series on working in a small home

  • studio environment.

  • Now in the first part we look at a few ideas that you can do just using one

  • single flash to light your portraits. That's great, but you kinda reach a point

  • where one flashed just

  • isn't quite enough you, need well a second light.

  • Now your second flash doesn't have to be exactly the same as your first one.

  • In fact this is my Streaklight 180 Ws.

  • So this is the smaller, lighter, lower powered and

  • a little bit cheaper version of the Streaklight 360 that

  • I've got hidden away inside this soft box. However you set your lights up

  • adding a second like can really lift your photography and give you loads of

  • creative options.

  • In this video were gonna look at adding a second light as a hair light,

  • a separation light, an accent light, call it what you like. A

  • light just two separate are subject from the background. Speaking of which we

  • could probably do with a subject really. So

  • let's clear this out and set up the shoot.

  • I'm joined in the studio by Freya, give them a little wave Freya.

  • She's gonna be the model for today and the idea is really simple we're gonna

  • get her to blow some bubbles. Were gonna do a profile picture is gonna look fantastic.

  • But before we get to the bubbles which can be a little bit messy we're gonna

  • set the lights.

  • Now to begin with well just use one light, well just use this one here. The

  • other light is switched off, and I'll show you the problem with just one light.

  • Okay Freya can I get you to turn and face the

  • softbox. Lovely and we'll just take a shot here,

  • here we go. So with just one light we get

  • very nice exposure on her face but by the time we get to the back of her head

  • it really disappears into the dark shadows of the background.

  • So to get the hair to separate from the background

  • we need to add in a separation light a second light.

  • So this is our second light here and well just turn it on of course,

  • and then well pop it a little higher, so it comes down from above

  • and lights the top of her hair and her shoulders. Now we can't just put that in

  • place we need to know how bright to set it. So

  • lets takes some meter readings with the flash meter. So well meter off the front here,

  • which has given me F8 as a meter reading on the front

  • but I also need to know how much light is falling on Freya hair.

  • So let's take a meter reading for that light as well,

  • and thats telling me F4. So the hair light

  • is two stops less bright than the front light.

  • Now that might be right, that might be wrong, let's take a test picture and have a

  • little look and see how that goes.

  • Okay so here we go, and as you can see

  • there is a little bit of light on her hair and on her shoulders, it just separates her from the back and a

  • little bit.

  • But we can easily increase the power of that hair light,

  • by well using the remote here, adding an extra stop.

  • So this will be one-stop less light than the key light.

  • And we can increase it again so we can

  • even up the key light and the hair light, and we can even

  • overexpose the hair compared to the background light.

  • So we can increase the amount of light, change the look and feel of the

  • hair like, the accent light simply by increasing its power

  • compared to the key light. What's correct is entirely up to you

  • and it will vary from person to person and hair color to hair color.

  • So I think we want it a little bit less. Let’s go for about a stop less light

  • on the hair compared to the face. Now you'll notice that the background in this

  • shot

  • is black and that is because the this

  • softbox is pointing towards the camera and away from the background.

  • However it wouldn't be a problem if I didn't move the key light

  • so it also hits a little bit of the background

  • as well, and that will put a little bit of detail in the background.

  • Okay lets take the shot. There you go we now have a very small amount of detail in the

  • background.

  • I think that's the look I'm going for. So there we go, that's the light set

  • now all we need is some bubble and let's get blowing. Are you ready?

  • Okay well that was really great fun to do. Freya did fantastically well blowing

  • bubbles. It’s harder than it looks, honestly it really is isn’t it?

  • Okay so let's get our favourite picture into Photoshop and well

  • do a bit of editing and we're gonna do that

  • right now. Don't forget to check out Adorama’s latest contest

  • and your chance to win amazing prizes. Well it was very very brief

  • but did you see me holding this thing here? This is a a bubble machine and there was

  • bubbles

  • streaming out the front. So what we found as the shoot progressed was

  • although Freya was very good at blowing bubbles, I wasn't so good at capturing them.

  • It was just trying to get a along stream of bubbles in a fraction of a second.

  • Actually is quite challenging to do. So were gonna take

  • the the picture of Freya and the picture's of the bubble machine

  • and bring the two together, and using Photoshop its really simple to do.

  • Let's have a look. So this is the picture we want to add the bubbles into and

  • the reason when I wanna add bubbles is pretty clear in this shot. I like everything

  • about the picture except the,

  • well the lack of bubbles I guess. So

  • bubbles, well I got several pictures. I ended up getting the short straw because this

  • was a really messy to do.

  • But this machine blow’s out plenty of bubbles and we photographed them

  • on the black background. Now to get the black background

  • it was simply a matter of turning the the key light the main light away from

  • the background

  • towards the camera. Basically no light hits the background and it goes black.

  • Just like the pictures at the beginning of this video. Now the black background

  • comes in handy in a second but first we need to actually select the bubbles

  • and were just going to get the free hand selection tool and I'll draw around some of the bubbles.

  • Around and back to the beginning and then we'll go to

  • edit and copy, close that down and choose

  • edit and paste. Now that will put the bubbles on a brand new layer and I can put

  • them anywhere I want,

  • but you'll look at that you'll notice that they don't really blend in at all.

  • Well here comes the magic. All we need to do to blend the bubbles in

  • is change the layer blending mode which is currently set to normal,

  • and I'm gonna change it to screen.

  • One of the magic properties of screen blending mode is

  • it takes anything that pure black and makes it

  • well transparent and those bubbles actually looked like they were really,

  • really there and its absolutely fantastic.

  • Okay so that's one set of bubbles, but we got more picture’s of bubble’s so let’s

  • add some more in, why not? Lets get another freehand selection tool and we'll draw around

  • some of these bubbles

  • here maybe, and well copy those and well edit and paste them in

  • and will put them into position, use the move tool. They can come up the top here

  • somewhere.

  • And we'll blend them in with a bit of screen. Then we can go and get some more weve got another one here

  • and this one, this one’s got

  • loads of bubbles. So again we'll use the the free

  • hand lasso. Maybe we'll get some more bubbles like that

  • and right around to the beginning. There we go that’s great.

  • Well go to edit and copy. Go back to this picture,

  • edit and paste. Lot’s of bubbles now that can go anywhere

  • we like . So well pop them up there. Well blend them in with a bit of

  • screen blending mode. So that puts all the bubbles into the picture but

  • remember these are layers, so you can move them around and you can put the bubbles

  • any way you feel is correct and if there are bubble’s that you want to move for

  • example maybe these three down here,

  • you can of course just get the free hand selection tool. Draw around them

  • and then get the move tool, you can drag bubble’s anywhere you like.

  • There we go. Select and deselect so there we are. There is how you can

  • take

  • a picture with very few bubbles and add in as many bubbles as you want

  • to create the final image. Well if you've enjoyed this video and you want to see more

  • videos from myself

  • and the other amazing presenters here on Adorama TV you know what you've got to do?

  • Youve got to click on the subscribe button.

  • Okay well, something like that.

  • I'm Gavin Hoey, thanks for watching.

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