Nothing is easier than working with no artificial light at all. Ok, that’s not 100% correct. But it can be true. All I really want to say is that sometimes you don’t have to do a lot to get a beautiful light because it is already there. It is hard to see those spots at a certain time but this setup-tutorial will tell you something about a specifique photo shot with no extra lighting equipement.

- click on image to enlarge -

What can we see on the photo. What clues does the photo give us???

• There is a nice lighting from the left side. You can clearly see some shadows on the black jacket.
• The light is unbelievable soft but still there is a slight dominance from the top (shadow under his chin)
• You do have a slight wide angle look but still a big blurred background.
• The photo does have a very intense vignettation.

Let’s get this straight out. How do we get this lighting?

• 50mm
• ISO 200
• Highlight Tone Priority
• 1/4000
• !!! IMPORTANT !!! f1.2 (YES 1.2)

And now, the blurred background makes sense. It is the natural result of the extreme open lense. When taking the picture, you should pay attention on the distances shown in it. Without the proper distances you can never show the effect of the open aperture. Take a look at the picture. We tried to use the car for the effect in the front and the wall/trees as the background. The distance between the car and the wall was about 30 feet (10m). Just perfect to keep it visible.

But how do you get that crazy lighting? Take a close look again. The car throws a slight shadow on the ground, you do have a dominance from the left and still, everything is visable.

The answer: It is all about the right moment. The shot was taken short before dusk, the sky was covered in thick clouds but just when we took the shot, the sun was coming out through some little slit between the clouds. It was the perfect moment to get a dominance from the left side but still keep the light very soft.

That’s about all it was. We got the fortune to have the location flooded by soft light with a slight dominance from the left. LUCK!!!

And now to the post-pro. It was done in about 3 minutes.

Here are the steps.

1. Convert the photo from the RAW file with a slightly cooler WB. A couple of hundreds of Kelvins lower than it would be correct.
2. Use a layer of “desaturation” on the background, to get rid of the colors and slide the colors to white. Not to grey!!! This way, it doesn’t look “desaturated”. It is going to look more natural.
3. Open up a layer of desaturation and lower the yellows on the surroundings, but not on the skin.
4. Now you have to change the color of the skin. Use the layer option and click on “selective color”.
5. The last step is to get the blue tone on the image. You achieve this with a layer of solid color (CYAN/BLUE) and setting the layer mode to “SOFT LIGHT”…
6. VOILA… it’s done!

Ok, that’s all.

BYE

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