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  • In this video - I show you how to take a small studio background and make it much, much, bigger.

  • AdoramaTV presents Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey.

  • Hello I'm Gavin Hoey and you are watching AdoramaTV Adoroma the camera store that

  • has everything for us photographers. And today you join me in my small studio and

  • the key word is small, if you own a small home studio, or a portable studio, one of

  • the downsides is often your backgrounds are quite small.

  • This shoot the idea I've got requires a big wide space, a feeling of openness, and

  • the background I've setup is this, which is actually smaller than my usual

  • background. Now of course I could shoot this in upright portrait format and just show

  • you that, but think about it, upright portrait, that would make the pictures

  • seem a little bit tighter, it won't have that feeling of space, but also

  • you're viewing this on a wide screen for maximum impact, I want to fill your

  • screen with image. And I can make that happen by applying a few tricks, one of

  • them is bit of pre-planning, the other is a trick we can do during the photography

  • and finally bring it all together with a bit of work in Photoshop so let's get

  • shooting. Today I been joined in the studio by Adrienne, and she's gonna be the

  • model, and as you can see we've got a nice simple setup, here I got my balloon which is magically

  • hovering in the air, it's not, it's attached to a piece of fishing twine and

  • whole set is quite a tall thin set up. Now that's fine except of course I want

  • have a wide shot for the internet. So I've got to do a couple of things, now I'm

  • going to do the post-processing, we'll get to that in a bit but to make life easier,

  • I got three things I've got prepared. First of all the background, the background on this shot has a

  • little bit a texture to it, with a white background or a pure black background

  • then that easy to extend, if you shoot with a more even background, it becomes a

  • bit harder to extend, but texture, it makes the blending of my

  • new background, edges a lot easier to the real background, so that's one thing, next

  • thing is the lighting, I'm going to light this with really soft flat even lighting.

  • If I had hard lighting, or directional lighting again the Photoshop bit, would just be

  • just that little bit harder, not impossible just harder. and I want to make life

  • easier for myself, so I'm going to use the Streetlight360 as my main light, in fact I've got

  • two of them here, and these lights

  • well they are bare flash, this isn't going to give me soft lighting, normally for soft

  • lighting you use a soft box or an umbrella but I'm in a really small studio. The walls

  • in my really small studio, well they're painted white, if I get my lights I put

  • them over to the side, and I bounce them off the wall they become a much bigger

  • source of light, much softer source as a result and that's where I'm going to get my

  • lovely soft even lighting from, Now we need to meter this, so let's just see

  • what power we're getting at the moment, I got my flash meter. I'm just going to pop it in the

  • middle of the scene, will press the test button, I'm getting f8, so that's

  • absolutely perfect f8, I'm happy to use f8, we can test each individual

  • light if I like, by kind of standing in front f8... And not surprisingly f8

  • So it is exactly what you might imagine, lovely, soft even lighting so we got a nice

  • texture background but nice even lighting, my third thing that's going to

  • make my life so much easier, is a tripod. Now if I show you all my shots exactly

  • the same height same position when it comes to adding a new background

  • well that's just come out like it so much simpler so using a tripod but this

  • shoot is something that I'm going to highly recommend, and we will pop my camera, an Olympus10F on the

  • tripod in a minute as we do the shoot.So that's the basics lets actually get on and do the shoot

  • and start taking some pictures, are you ready

  • ok

  • So there we are, we got some great shots there, but my shoot isn't quite done yet, however Adrienne

  • we are done with you, so you may now leave the stage.

  • Thank you very much indeed. Take Teddy with you, fantastic. So I've got one more set of

  • shots to do and my shots basically involve nothing at all. Ok so I'm going

  • get rid of our model, which we've done. I'm going to take the balloon away, here it goes.

  • And I am going to take the same shots on an empty set. Same exposure, same lighting, same camera

  • position, that's kind of important and that empty shot is going to become my

  • new extended background. So let's get the best of the photoshoot and the empty

  • frame into Photoshop and we'll do some editing on that right now. So with the

  • photography done it's time to move into Photoshop and I've gone through the images

  • and chosen one of my favourites, and the empty background. They both had exactly

  • the same processing in Adobe Camera Raw. I went for the sort of pinky tone, I felt that really added

  • to the shot. That's important, they need to be processed the same, let's have a

  • look at the shots so this is the image I want to use and as you can see it's a

  • nice shot, looks really good and this is the empty background image. And as you

  • can see there's no difference other than there's no model and balloon in here. The key

  • thing the angle of view is exactly the same height above the floor it is exactly

  • the same. Now I want to make this larger I'm going to get the crop tool. About a

  • 16 x 9 crop preset in there so if I drag that a little bit bigger

  • that's the amount of space I need to fill in, which is a lot to say the least,

  • almost three times the amount of the original shot. Now I'm actually not going

  • to increase my canvas using white, and actually increase my canvas using a red

  • and this might seem a little bit weird. 'Cause I'm going to cover it all up anyway so why am I

  • bothering about the colour? Well now that become clear in a second, so that's the new

  • working area. Let's go grab this image and we'll just select and copy it going

  • back to the main image and paste this in. Now when I pasted it in, I can get the move tool and

  • I can drag this over to the side, if I hold shift it will stay nice and level

  • so you can see I got a bit of room here and if I drop this down, you can see I've got a little bit of

  • area to play with, and maybe you can start to see why I'm using red as my background colour.

  • But that will become much clearer when I add a layer mask in here. We'll get a

  • brush that's black and I can paint with a little layer mask, now, now you can see why

  • I am using red, so anywhere I just kind of sneak over the edges and get that

  • little red area coming through, I swap to white and can paint that back out again and

  • that just helps me to make sure that I fill in my edges and I don't have any weird background

  • colors coming through. Ok that's one side done obviously I'm going to do exactly the

  • same to the other side, and well it's exactly the same technique, that's just

  • come in here and paste it, it will still be in my clipboard and drag that to the side

  • snap the left edge onto the left edge Upper layer mask in here and again where is it?

  • Actually it's quite hard to see, there it is in any case, we will get a paintbrush make

  • sure the paint brushes is black, and we'll come in here yep you'll see immediately

  • get that wrong, that's absolutely fine, it's so hard to see on that edge, I'm almost wondering

  • why I'm worried about that bit maybe I should just worried about this bit down

  • here, yeah, there we go. That's the bit I need to worry about and I'm doing this in a non

  • straight lines and giving us a little bit of a wobble and a wiggle because I

  • don't want this to be an exact straight-line, I want some bits from some

  • images and some from others. ok that's great now, once I've done that I'm

  • absolutely happy, either flatten the image down or make a duplicate flattened

  • layer, lets just flattened that down.

  • And I'm going to look for anywhere where there's an obvious sort of exactly the

  • same bits here, that's exactly the same bits there, anywhere where there's an

  • obvious similarity between the two shots to use something like the spot healing

  • brush or the clone stamp tool, just to today away those little bits just so we have

  • no exactly repeating patterns. Al least not too many, one or two you can get away with but too

  • many of them and it will start to look artificial so there we go. I can spend a

  • little bit of time just tidying that up and there is my final picture completed.

  • Just because you have a small studio doesn't mean you can't think big and

  • create big as well, if you enjoyed this video and you want to see more from

  • myself and the other amazing presenters here on AdoramaTV, you know you've got

  • to do you. You've got to click on the .. oh no I've broken it... click on the subscribe button..

  • I'm Gavin Hoey, thanks for watching.

In this video - I show you how to take a small studio background and make it much, much, bigger.

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