Hi, I’m Jivanta! You may have seen me in several magazines like SHOW, maybe in your latest R&B or hip hop videos. Today I’m at John Ricard’s studio and we’re going to show you three different ways how to use a beauty dish.
Now, what I have here is the pro-photo beauty dish. As you can see the light goes through here, reflects from here on to your subject. So here at John Ricard’s studio we like to use it with the grid spot. You place it in right here, like so. It just gives it a better light with the grid spot.
Now, we’re here on set. We’re about to take a couple of pictures and we’re about to use our beauty dish. Now, the beauty dish can create shadows which can be a good thing or a bad thing. To illustrate our point about shadows, remove the light all the way to the left side. On my left side, as you can see there is more light on this side and no light on this side which creates a shadow which would be bad for the picture.
Now, this position of the light is an exaggeration. In reality, you would never take the picture with this light, this far to the left. So we’ve moved our light to a more realistic position although it’s to my left is not all the way to the left like it was before. However, even though the light is at different position, you could still get the same problem, shadows on the right side of my face. One way to solve this problem is to put the light directly in front of me. So now, you’re looking at the model’s point of view. The beauty dish is directly in front of the model and the photographer is in front of the beauty dish.
Now, we’re back on set. You may notice some room lighting around my arms and my hair but it’s not coming from the beauty dish, it’s coming from the two lights that we added coming from my right and from my left. These lights help to separate me from the background. Now, that’s one way to use the beauty dish. Replace the beauty dish directly in front of me and two side lights behind me. Now, let’s look at another way to use the beauty dish.
For our second use, we’ve moved the light all the way to my left side because we know the position that I’m in will create some ugly shadows on my right side of my face we’re going to turn me directly in front of the light. Because I can’t look into camera, this maybe a limited shot, however, it is a beautiful shot with a lot of mood and emotion. This position works best if the model actually works with the light, maybe touches her face, just feel the emotions and the mood with the light and move with the light.
Now, we’re here in our last segment. As you noticed, the beauty dish has been at least two to five feet away from me. Now, were going to do something different. We’re going to move the beauty dish back to maybe 10 or even 15 feet away. What this is going to do is make the light really, really hard which is almost like having a spotlight on me. We’ll be shooting more of my body this time and you’ll notice that the shadows help define the shape of my body.
Hey, its Jivanta, thanks for checking out on set with John Ricard. If you want to see more of him, check out your various magazines or more of me check out myspace.com/Jivanta. Thanks for watching. Bye!
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services