Every day new and exciting images are competing for our attention. Famed UK photographer, Jake Hicks returns to PRO EDU teaching a fundamentally simple yet powerful technique to create long exposure portraits impossible to ignore.
Combining ambient light with studio strobes, Jake introduces four unique methods of creating portraits while capturing unbelievable practical effects in-camera.
This tutorial was designed to teach you not just the technical aspects of long exposure photography but how to be truly creative in the studio and experiment in ways that will set your work apart from the rest.
With a third model, new wardrobe, and new lighting setup, create an entirely new variant of the long exposure technique with the lighting emphasis moving back to the subject. Walk through best practices, with lighting, with the goal of a achieving a vibrant, light trails effect.
Work through test captures to refine the edge lighting setup and experiment with different shutter speeds to achieve ideal results. Continue to walk through the lighting rationale, building towards perfect results.
With the edge lights locked in, iterate through multiple captures to refine the key and fill lighting. Reinforce the importance of keeping the ambient and flash lighting separate to achieve the long exposure effect while maintaining tack sharp focus on the subject. Adapt with Jake, as he makes a ...
After a quick wardrobe change, work through multiple captures to create the light trails effect. Analyze how camera movement works with the specularity of the wardrobe, to create fiery trails of light. Study how camera movement and shutter speed directly relate to the light trail effect and how t...
With proper wardrobe selected, lighting and camera settings honed, and camera movement on the subject refined, focus on the proper posing to shape light trails around your subject. Compare Rear vs Front Curtain Sync Flash methods with best practices for this studio shoot.
With a final wardrobe change and new color gels, put all of the techniques together to create a final set of unique, long exposure images. Employ camera, subject, and fan movement to shape dimensional light trails around your subject. Test and vary your movements and implement of your gained know...
Apply a second pass of skin retouching, using dodge and burn to isolate targeted problem areas
Efficiently apply the same procedural method of skin smoothing to the third image for an even, smooth tone.
As in previous lessons, utilize the variety of masks to isolate subject from background, and efficiently dodge and burn with intention. Create a global sense of dimension with highlights and shadows as you move towards the final stages of retouching this long exposure image.
Apply the same methodology of sharpening to the third long exposure image, with the same mindfulness of not affecting the entire image’s color balance.
Complete the image with a final pass of color toning, utilizing separate channels to isolate specific colors in the highlights, midtones, and shadows. Tweak the highlights of the light trails, leveraging the masking work, for the final finishing polish.