Day to Night - Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey

In this video , I turn day into night using a coloured gel and some flashes Arama TV presents Take and make great photography with Gavin Hoey .

Hello , I'm Gavin Hoe and you're watching Adirama TV brought to you by adirama the camera store that has everything for us photographers .

And today well , you join me out in the woods because we're going to do a shoot in the daytime .

But I'm gonna try and make it look like we're working at night .

Now it is a summer's day here in the UK , which means it's grey overcast with a little bit of drizzle in the air .

But I'm not gonna let that put me off .

I can still turn day into night using a few tricks with flash .

So today I've been joined by Kerry , who is suitably attired for the Woodlands here .

We've got this nice little archer shoot in mind .

Now I'm gonna be using flash for this , But let's just start with a simple shot just with the ambient light to show you what we're getting with natural light .

OK , Kerry .

So if you'd like to sort of aim it towards the camera , I suggest yeah , that's lovely .

And as you can see , it's a perfectly fine if a little bit unexciting shot .

So to add the sense of drama , I'm gonna use Flash and I'm gonna overpower the ambient light .

Now , today isn't a lovely sunny day , so that shouldn't be a problem for pretty much any flashgun that you've got .

But I'm using the Adora Streak Light 3 60 is my main light , and I'm using an Adora Glow soft box .

I've removed the out of ale , so it gives a bit more direction and shape to my light .

So let's start with the ambient light metre reading .

How much light is it actually here ?

Well , I've switched to manual mode because whenever I'm shooting flash , I'm gonna work in manual mode .

That's kind of a given and the best way to go .

Uh , I've chosen F four as my aperture .

That should give me enough depth of field to make this interesting , but I should be able to blur the background if I need to .

So if I point my camera at Kerry and I let the metre figure things out , it'll tell me correct exposure 1/10 of a second , and that looks like a fairly ordinary shot .

It looks the same as it did before .

What I want to do is overpower the ambient , so I'm going to increase my shutter speed to reduce the amount of light that comes through .

So let's increase it by one stop , and that means doubling my shutter speed to 20th of a second .

Let's increase it again by another stop , so that's doubling it once more to 1/40 of a second .

And that's OK .

But for this to look like night time , I'm going to go the extra step further .

I'm gonna double this once again to an 80th of a second three stops under ambient exposure , and everything is looking really dark and really sinister .

So remember the settings 80th of a second F four .

I need to make this flash produce exactly that amount of light .

So let's get my flash metre and I'm going to set the shutter speed to an 80th of a second ISO 200 press the test button on my remote .

Here we go .

And when I hit exactly the same exposure from the flash as I've set in my camera , I'm good to take the pictures right .

Let's just take a shot like that .

So same as you were before Kerry .

That's lovely .

And as you can see , Kerry is now perfectly lit .

But that background remains as dark as it was before .

We've overpowered the ambient .

That's the first step done .

Now , one of the problems when you shoot against a dark background is that your subject can just merge in with the background and and they don't really separate .

So what this is is a background light or a separation light .

Now , this is literally gonna go in behind .

Where you put this is entirely up to you .

I'm gonna put it over here , though , OK ?

So I'm going to come in at the side , pointing this back towards Kerry .

Let's work out the metre reading for that .

So because I only want to metre the background light , I need to make sure the little white Cone is pointing at the flash .

I want to metre , so it's still set exactly the same as before .

I'll pop this just above Kerry's shoulder .

Press the test button .

I can see this is F 2.8 .

Now , I think I'd like to balance up the amount of light on her shoulders with the face .

So I want one more stop of light from that little speed light .

And again , I can do that here on the remote .

If I just switch channel to the one that the speed light is on , I can increase the power .

Three clicks is one stop and bingo .

I'm on F four .

So I've managed to do that .

Of course , if you don't have a remote control like this , you can just walk over and change it , but just saves a little bit of leg work .

OK , let's take a test shot , see how that looks .

And that just gives me that nice little bit of rim lighting around the side of Kerry and that separates her beautifully from the background .

So whilst that's given me the lighting that I want , it doesn't give me the feeling of night .

It's just basically dark , so I'll switch from the normal auto white balance and I'm gonna go to tungsten or incandescent , and that should make everything look really blue .

Let's see how that goes , and that is very blue .

Indeed , it does feel like night time , but now carry all the skin tones are wrong on the model .

It looks a little bit weird .

Great in the background .

Not so good on the skin tones .

So to counteract the the blue on our model , I'm gonna put a gel in the main key light .

And I'm gonna put an orange gel , which should be the opposite in the colour temperature to the blue .

Now , if you want to do this precisely , you can buy perfectly colour balanced gels that will work and give you almost no post processing at all .

I'm not quite that lucky .

So I'm just gonna pop this onto the flash , tighten it up .

Here we go .

And we'll just do a nice little shot just in that bit .

Thank you very much .

That picture will come in handy later .

I'm also gonna reme her as well .

So let's figure out whether the light is now correct with that gel .

It adds a little bit like a sunglass .

It just stops some of the light coming out .

So we're looking for F four .

I'm actually F 2.8 .

I've lost the stop of light with that gel .

I've just got to remember to move my remote so I'm adjusting the right light .

I can add a stop more light and I'm back to F four .

OK , let's take a test shot .

Here we go .

That looks really good .

And , of course , warm light on Kerry from the main flash .

But that background light adds a cold splash of light cos it's unfiltered , and I think that looks fantastic .

So those shots look really good .

But for this to really feel like night , we're gonna add one more exciting and dynamic part of the shot .

We're gonna add some smoke or mist .

Now , if you want to see how I do smoke , go check out my previous video where we covered how to do smoke away from the studio and you can find that on the Adora Learning Centre .

Now I'm gonna light the smoke , and I'm gonna use my second streak light to do that and then I'm gonna take it way back .

So smoke really looks best when it's lit from behind .

Especially if you're after a sort of a moody nighttime shot .

I'm going to put this in behind Kerry , so I'm going to try to figure out where I'm gonna stand and put it there , and the reason I've put it behind Kerry is twofold .

Firstly , I think it'll look really nice with a halo coming around her , but also , if it's hidden behind Kerry , I won't have to Photoshop it out .

That's got to be a good thing .

OK , let's try this a few seconds to get going .

Let's Here we go .

Let's do a test shot .

First of all , now that looks vibrant .

Way back over here .

Still there .

That's good .

It's still good .

Stand up for me , Terry .

Wow .

So those came out really well .

They look fantastic on the back of the camera , but there's still a little bit of Photoshop work to be done .

So let's jump into Photoshop and do some editing right now .

So setting up the lights and getting the white balance changed and putting a gel onto the flash .

That all takes time .

But the advantage of doing that is that I should now save a lot of time here in post production .

Now it doesn't mean to say there's not going to be any Photoshop .

There's always some Photoshop work to do , but hopefully less than you might imagine .

Let's have a look so This is the shot that I want to edit , and it looks pretty good straight off the camera .

I'm really pleased with that .

However , there is a definite warm tone to the face that I would like to remove .

That's where this picture comes in .

Now you might remember this one .

It was a sort of a grab shot , but this is the bit I'm interested in .

That's the the great card that can help me to get close to the right white balance and to do it .

I just get the eye dropper tool here , the white balance tool , and click anywhere on this grey area .

And that should remove the colour casts and gives me a a colour that is technically correct .

Now , did you notice the word technically in there , technically correct and aesthetically correct ?

They're not the same thing .

This will get me close .

But there are whole other things that have changed .

That might mean that I'm not gonna keep the technically correct answer .

The colour of the smoke had a an impact .

There was some daylight contamination , which was all part of the plan .

Little things can just tweak the results , but let's have a little note of the numbers here .

We've got 23 50 for the temperature , minus four for the tint .

I jump back to my main image .

I can type those exact numbers in 23 50 minus four and then have a review .

Do I like the effect ?

Am I happy with the colours ?

It's close .

I reckon .

It's still just a a little bit warm on the face .

So maybe we'll just take that down to 22 50 .

So we'll take 100 off the temperature that looks slightly green .

So maybe we'll just put a little bit more magenta in there .

We go to zero , and I recon .

That is good .

That suits the look of the image that I want now .

Everything else could be changed if it needs to .

But I think we got it more or less right in camera .

Maybe just a little bit more clarity in there .

That's always a good thing .

And we'll just push up the colours a little bit just to have a nice , um , good base of strong colours .

Now I do find the blue maybe a little bit too strong , so I'm gonna jump over to the HSL stroke Grey Scale .

I'm gonna come down to the blues .

Well , let's go to the saturation , first of all , and then I'll take the saturation for the blues down .

Not gonna go that far , but it's good to know that you can really change this if you want to .

And we'll just bring the blues down about sort of T minus 20 something like that .

Whilst I'm here , let's jump over to the luminance and just increase the luminance of the oranges , which are , of course , skin tones .

And that just adds an extra level of brightness on the skin tones .

Now , I'm happy with that so I can click on open image , and I can leave camera raw behind and jump into Photoshop .

Now , you probably notice these two bits .

Here there is the edge of the soft box , and also the light stand leg is in the shot because I wanted a wide shot .

These things are just going to creep in sometimes , but fortunately , they're really easy to remove .

I'm gonna use the the spot healing brush just to remove the the leg there .

Oh , there's another little something there .

Uh , this is a little bit bigger .

So not gonna use the spot healing brush for that for the larger parts , I will use the patch tool and I'll just draw roughly around the thing I want to patch .

And then the lovely thing with the patch tool is you can move the the sampled area , but you get a sort of preview and I can line up the edge of the tree .

Something like that .

That looks OK , Let go .

And there you go .

That looks pretty good .

A bit of fine tuning required with the spot heating brush just to take away a few little weird bits and bobs .

And I'm also gonna remove all of these little parts too .

So this is where the daylight was just coming through the the leaves .

And if this really was a night time , of course the sky would be jet black , so they don't quite fit in with the feel of the image , but are nice and simple to remove .

OK , and there we are .

There it is , my daytime to nighttime image completed and it's looking rather super .

There we go .

The final picture really does have that night time feel , and I absolutely love the effect .

Now , if you want to see more videos for myself and the other amazing presenters here in Arama TV , you know what you've got to do .

You've got to click on the subscribe button .

I'm Gavin Hoy .

Thanks for watching .

Do you want great looking prints at low cost ?

Be sure to visit our easy to use online printing service .

Adirama Picks has professionals who treat your images with the utmost care that you can count on for a quick turnaround on photos , cards or albums .

Use adirama picks dot com