Male: We’re here with Julissa and the first shot we’re going to try to do is a nice beauty shot. So, what we did was we put up a beauty dish here. And the first thing I’m going to show is what it looks like with just the beauty dish and nothing else. So ready Julissa, so you can’t move, you’re going to stay right on that line. You can’t move because this is almost like a spotlight. If you move you’re going to miss the light. So, all I want you to do is work the eyes to the camera a little bit. You’ll turn the head a little to the left and a little to the right. You move the shoulders a little bit but you’re not going to move your feet. I’m not going to direct it too much just try to go with it. We’re going to do about 20 shots.
Right now you’re looking at a couple of the shots we just did of Julissa and you could see it’s not a bad shot. If she were a male, the shot would actually be pretty good. The real problem with the shot is that we have some shadow underneath her chin and we have some shadows underneath her eyes. That can kind of work for a guy especially if it’s like a guy audience. I shoot a lot of hip hop artist and that kind of look works fine for them but if it’s a young lady and we’re trying to get a beauty shot it’s not really the look we want to get. So, we’re going to do something now to try to eliminate some of the shadows in the picture.
You’re looking now at what we’ve done to eliminate some of the shadows in photograph. We’ve added a reflector, this is made by less to light, it’s three panels here. It doesn’t weigh a lot, it’s very easy to transport and we’ve put them in front of her. And what these are doing is eliminating some of the shadow. I’m going to show the position of the beauty dish which is here in relation to her. Again, you can’t move but you can move just a little bit. You can move the shoulders a little bit left, a little bit right. Sometimes you bring the chest up. Sometimes you try to bring the collar bones out instead so you can curve in or you can curve out. Here we go and think very settle.
Bring your chin up a little bit to start, like that very settle here we go. Give me just a little bit more smile now like that, very nice, same emotion again, drop that hand now, keep the same smile, chin lower, good, very nice there, stay. Drop the hands so I can’t see it, beautiful light there. Now, bring your shoulders square to me one more time, one more square to me this way, keep turning, right shoulder comes to me more, good, very nice. Now, bring your left hand back to the shot again and come flat to me again, just like that, good, and start dropping the chin with each shot, and last time with a smile, and drop the hand again, chin up a little higher, tilt here a bit, good.
Julissa: Hello guys! Well, we’re here and we got some shots done. They came out great, however we have a little problem with my hair. It’s too dark and you guys are not going to be able to see it. So, we added a new light so that you guys can see the texture of my hair.
Male: So, one of the things that’s tricky about using a light like this is I set up the light when she had all of her hair on one side the way you see it now and the light was perfect. It hits this side of her hair. It doesn’t actually strike her face and it looks really nice in the shot. Now, when she changes her hair like put it on both sides of the shoulders, sometimes what happens now is the light is actually hitting her face. It doesn’t look good. However, that doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to say to her keep the hair on one side. You can still shoot even though you know some shots are not going to be right because the light hits her face but sometimes she’s going to turn to the side a little bit like that and now it’s going to look right.
So, as you’re shooting it, you’re realizing that some shots were not coming out right because of the light that’s hitting her face. But again, it doesn’t mean you want to stop and start fighting the equipment. You just shoot. Anyway, you know half of them aren’t coming out right because of the light but there’s another half when she’s naturally turning a little bit, turn again to maybe here and it’s coming out right and the light is back to hitting a hair again so don’t feel like every shot’s got to be perfect. You want it not break her concentration by stopping and stopping and stopping and redoing the lights.
So, you know, some aren’t going to be right because of that light but some will be right with that light. So, you just shoot it and do your edit later.
We’ve moved Julissa to a different set up. We put a little black fur on the floor. We put a black piece of foam core behind her to kind of create something dark and we wanted the light to match that. So, what we did was we let her with a very small light. This is a Dynalight Monolight that just has the standard reflector on it. So, it’s going to be very, very hard. It’s going to be hard because it’s not diffused and because it’s such a small light source, so it’s going to give a lot of shadow. And we really mind that because we did a beauty shot earlier where we did something a little softer. So, we give her both shots the hard, the soft when it’s okay.
I would never shoot only with this light giving her just something hard. I’d rather give her kind of a mix of the two. And then on the other side here we put another hard light. This one with a pink gel just to add a little bit of color since she is wearing white and the background is black, the light is hard. It’s going to look a little too black and white without some colors. So, we edit this pink head here to just give us a little bit of color in the shot. Are we ready?
Julissa: We are ready.
Male: All right let’s see a pose.
Julissa: We’re twittering over here so go get your twitter. Just add this thing right now.
Male: What is your Twitter address?
Julissa: Julissaneal@twitter.com/julissaneal.
Male: Spell it for us.
Julissa: J-U-L-I-S-S-A-N-E-A-L.
Male: Okay, give us a pose here. Here we go, this is our twitter shot so let’s make this real good, beautiful just like that, very nice.
One of the points I like to make in this video is that there really is no right or wrong way to set up a shot. So, we put Julissa in a bathing suit again just like she was before but we purposely let the shot very differently than we did last time. Last time, we remember we have two small lights on Julissa. This time there are total of five lights, okay. There is one here bouncing up to the ceiling. Then there’s a second light here which is also bouncing up to the ceiling. Light number three is in this position bouncing up to the ceiling. This is where that light is in relation to her and then there is a fourth light here which is also bouncing to the ceiling. So, there are four lights bouncing up to the ceiling trying the ceiling into a very big soft box, very soft light. And then finally, there is a light here that’s kind of directly in front of her. This light is set into fill in any shadow is that might be along the side of her body.
So, when we put these five lights together, we produce a very, very soft shot. Something that looks very different than what we did the last time when we use the hard lighting but neither one is right, neither one is wrong and some people may prefer the harder shots. Some people may prefer the softer shot but it’s really up to you how you decide to light it.
Julissa: Well guys, we have come to an end. My photo shoot with John Ricard with me and you guys can follow me on myspace.com/julissa_neal and on twitter of course is twitter.com/julissaneal and I hope you guys. Thank you so much for this shoot, think that you note and I hope you guys have a great day.
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