Transcription
Wow. Okay, that's sick.
Oh, thank you. The intro now. That will be the intro.
Hi everyone. Hope you're well. I'm Neil Refern. I'm a wedding photographer based in the UK. And I want to say, as always, a massive thank you to Magmod for inviting me to make this video on their YouTube channel. I have been so proud to be a MagMod ambassador for a number of years now. And it's easy for me because I love Magmod. I love what they stand for. I love their products and I couldn't make the images that I do were it not for Magod. So, as always, a massive thank you to Magmod for inviting me to make this video. And as I always like to do each time I'm thinking, what can I do to really offer some really valuable information and advice? And one of the best ideas that Helen and I, my partner, have come up with for this video is to show you how we create off-camera flash composite portraits. Cuz these images that you're seeing on the screen now are now a trademark of Helen and I's style when it comes to wedding photography. We love to create images like these and they also help us in our business as well because these type of images really help us stand out in a wedding photography market that seems to be just saturated with natural light and direct flash. These images offer you something completely different to that. And the great thing is couples are not used to seeing images like this either because although in our little bubble, our Magmod bubble and flashmasters bubble, we may be used to seeing images like this, couples out there generally aren't. So it can really help you in your wedding photography business as well.
So, in this video, I'm going to show you how we take these images in camera, and then at the end of the video, I'm going to show you how we edit them in Lightroom and Photoshop to create these really amazing, creative portraits. These portraits basically are impossible to achieve with just one photograph because they almost exclusively have the light source in the photograph at the time that we take them. And that has two benefits for me. One, when we have a light source really close to our subjects, it creates really soft light. One thing to remember is that the closer the light source is to your subject relatively, it becomes bigger. And the bigger the light source relative to the size of our couple, the softer the light will be. And by softer, I mean that the graduation between the light and the shadow on the face blends into each other in a really soft way, which is very, very appealing for portraits as opposed to say harsh light where you just have light, shadow, and a line in between, which you would get if you were outside in the middle of the day and the sun was at its highest, just harsh light. Soft light is just better for portrait photography in my opinion, especially when it comes to wedding photography. So that's the first advantage. By having the light source really close, we create soft light.
And reason number two is that the light that we create by having that light source very close is dramatic light because of the falloff. So the falloff means that by having a light source close, the light will affect, say, if I had say the Magbox just above my head here, it would affect my head and the top of my chest here quite a lot, but then it would fade away. The light would stop impacting as it goes further down my body to a point where it may not even hit my feet. Now, that wouldn't happen if the Magbox was much higher because the falloff would be bigger. The further away our light source, because of inverse square law, the more the light will have an impact on the whole of my body. The closer the light source, it has more of an impact up here and less of an impact once we start getting down and it starts going lower towards my feet. So the light source being close creates dramatic light. Also by having that light source nice and close, we can control the light better as well. So these shots that you're seeing on the screen now and that we'll be taking today with our models Rose and Eric contain bright ambient light sources that we're exposing for. And then when we expose for those bright objects, the rest of the photograph is going to go underexposed. And we want to control the light that then hits Eric and Rose in today's video. And we don't want it spilling everywhere because the more it spills, it just starts to become messy. By having the light source close and controlling it well, by using things like the grid, it will just really make Eric and Rose pop out in a way that you would never be able to do were the light source not in the photograph in the first place.
Now the downside of all this obviously is that we end up with a number of photographs where in this case Helen and I, Helen or I will be in the photograph looking gormless holding the Magbox. So we need to then remove ourselves from the photograph for the final image. And that's what we then do in Lightroom. And I'm going to show you that at the end of the video. So this video is going to be very much in two parts. Showing you the process and we'll do that a number of times. And then at the end of the video, I will edit one of my favorite photographs from this shoot to show you how to blend the images together to remove the softbox and Helen and I in this example.
How was that? Pretty good, actually.
Okay. Excellent. So, we're going to start this process in this room. Now, we are at the beautiful Crew Hall today. It's a stunning, stunning venue, and most of the shots that we take in this video will be outside of this room. But because we are making a video and I've got a tendency to talk a little bit loud when I'm doing these things, we don't want to go out into the communal areas just yet because we'll be a bit quicker. We'll talk a bit quieter out there. So, we thought we'll talk through the process in this room. But, this is not a great room to do these shots in just because it's not got an obvious bright ambient. We've got these lights on the ceiling which are very nice, but it's hard to include them in the composition. But what we will do is show you the process. Then you'll see us using that process outside.
I should also have said a couple of things. Firstly, I feel a bit bad in a way actually teaching this technique because this is not my technique. I first became aware of shots like this from members of our Flash Masters community. Far too many to mention, but yeah, just be aware that I'm showing here. I'm standing on the shoulder of giants. So I have not created this. I've seen this from many other members of our community. And then I've just been so inspired that I've started doing the same. Much, much as Helen would like to take credit, again, we didn't come up with this, but we now use this technique all the time at our own weddings. In fact, I don't know what you're like, Helen, but this would feel strange to shoot portraits with off-camera flash not using this technique. I couldn't go back.
Yeah, exactly. So, it's your fault, like Jesse Moral, Plan, Christen Cardona, Jason Vincent, Jeff Tisman, all those people. We're blaming you for this. We will be using today the Magbox Pro 24 Octa. And this is on an Impact Quickstick it's called. I think it's on the screen now if we got that wrong. And in here we have a Godox V100 which you might see has my initials on because Helen has a tendency to take things from my office. So, and a sticker on the Magshoe. It's like the Wild West. This, by the way, is exactly the same technique as we use for group shots like this. These examples of Helen's here were all taken using the exact same technique that we're showing you in this video. It just so happens that in this video we've got Eric and Rose rather than a whole bridal party, but the technique is the same.
This is going to be A. So Helen and I always use A, the group A, as our key light. So we always know that's going to be on A. So it is. I'm going very low power. Should add as well that we have the grid, the Magbox grid on this as well because especially when you're shooting inside, you don't want that light hitting and spilling everywhere. And I said before in the intro to this video, we want to control the spill of the light. And we do that by using a grid. So the light will not come out at crazy angles. It will come out in more of a beam, which is exactly what we want. And notice, actually, I'm going to just take this off here for a second. What's important, if Helen, if you can just demonstrate where you're going to place this in relation to Rose. If Rose is going to look that way. That's it. Notice how Helen here has the light and it's feathering Rose. It's not above her like that. It's more to the side. So, it's just coming down and just barely affecting Rose, but it's going to create this really lovely soft light by holding it in that position. And it's something that I think a lot of people don't maybe get quite right is that they have it more above Rose directly, which is not what we want. We want it to be as Helen's got it there.
To make these shots work well, it's really important, vital in fact, that you don't move in between shots because if you do, it's going to be very hard to blend these exposures in Lightroom. Cuz eventually we will end up with a shot of Rose being lit beautifully with the Magbox with Helen in the photograph. Then Helen will come over here and she will light Eric the same way, but she'll be in that photograph. So, we're going to have two versions, two photographs with Helen in that we need to remove her from. And in order to blend those images together and remove Helen, it's important that the layers are very, very similar, if not identical, because if they're not, Lightroom and Photoshop won't be able to align them, and we won't be able to use the layering technique I'm going to show at the end of the video to remove Helen. So, really, you should use a tripod. And Helen and I, when we're making this video or coming up with the idea for this video, to think, should we use a tripod? I think yeah, probably should in many ways because when I'm showing you this, it's better to do it the correct way. But it might also be a little bit disingenuous because Helen and I don't use tripods for this technique purely because we are wedding photographers. We work quickly and we've used this technique for a long time now. So it's ingrained in us what to do. So with practice, you can, you don't need to use a tripod. But if you're starting out, I would recommend you use a tripod. But it would be a lie if I pretended that I did, cuz I don't.
So, what I'm going to do is take a shot, stay still, ask Helen to then move, take, and then light Eric after she's shot Rose. And then I'll take another one. Then Helen will leave the scene. I'll take another one. And they'll be our three exposures. Ultimately, we want a shot of Rose lit, a shot of Eric lit, and then a shot where Helen is not in the frame at all. That's what we're going to do now. So, let's shoot. I am going to go to 200, my shutter speed, f2.8 and ISO 250. If I don't have my off-camera flash on, that gives me exposure of, which is perfect. Just a very underexposed, boring image. But now we will add in our off-camera flash. Currently that V100 is set to 1/32 power. Notice again that Helen's got it nice and close there to Rose. Beautiful Rose. Perfect. Just lift, looking up slightly, Rose. Just lifting your chin slightly. Beautiful. Notice how dramatic and beautiful that light is.
So now, as I said, I have to stay very still. So Eric, if you can come into the shot for me now, and I'm going to put you just a little bit to the left. Eric, you're going to be the opposite to Rose. So you're going to be, I will say this is my fault. I've not told Eric what the shot was beforehand. So Eric, you're going to take, as you're going to moonwalk a couple steps this backward a little bit more. There. There. Perfect. Yes. You're just going to look towards me. Swave and cool Eric. Then Helen's going to light Eric. Perfect. Really good. And now Helen out completely. And there we go. So on the screen now are our three images. The first with Rose lit, the second with Eric lit, and then the third what we call our plate shot where Helen is not lighting either Rose or Eric and she's not in the composition. These are the ingredients that you're looking to to to buy to make the cake at the end basically. And that's what we'll now do when we go out into the venue. We'll do the exact same technique as you just seen, but just in different places in more creative and just better, better compositions.
Anything, Helen, that you think you would add to what I've just said? Being someone who has messed several of these up in my career, as I have to be honest. My thing would be just following you, doesn't it? Like my top tips is to first of all, once again, just in terms of a process, set your camera for your ambient before you turn on your flash.
Yes, correct. Good. Preferably pose your couple before that rather than asking people to move. That was a mistake. We're going to keep the same. I could just reshoot it. Let's keep it. Let's keep it. Pose your couple. Make sure they know exactly what to do. You don't move and they don't move. Then turn on your flash.
Yes. Another really important thing with this technique is, and I should have said it, I am not refocusing each time either. With that example there, I focused on Rose and I use back button focus, which basically means that this button here focuses my camera. This shutter button does not. So, all I do, I focus on Rose with this back button. I then do not touch that again after I focus on Rose and I just keep on pressing the shutter button. So, I'm not focusing for each different exposure. I focus once and then leave it. And the problem would be again if you're refocusing each time when the software tries to blend the images together, it's not going to work very well. It's going to look very, very messy. So, focus once as well.
Yeah. And just make sure they don't move. Make sure you don't move. Once you've got everything ready, light your couples. And don't forget a plate shot, which I, well, I do often forget. This is the hardest thing when you're doing this in the cut and thrust of a wedding day and you don't use a tripod. Like I say, we don't. We probably should, but we don't use a tripod. It's so easy to take that first shot. Okay. Yeah, got it. And then you walk, you think, I didn't get the clean shot. And then you end up having to use generative fill, which we're not going to use in this example. So, pose your couple first and then go through the process. The couple don't move. The camera doesn't move. The only person moving is the person holding the light.
Change of plan. We were going to leave this room, but I thought, "Oh, I wonder what would happen if I just shot through Eric for a photograph here and focused on Rose, but use the same technique." So, that's what we're going to do now. So, I've going to ask Eric to stand here facing the light again, please. And just playing with your tie, please, Eric. So, again, the exact same technique. And I'm just going to get my composition right first. Now, with this one, there is no real bright ambient in the shot. In fact, Helen, is it even in this one? Let's just see what this gives me. So, I'm going to focus on Rose. Get really close. The closer I am to Eric, the better this will look. I think that's cool. So, I'm going to take a couple of options for Eric. Just slightly looking towards me, but not too much. Eric. Yeah, that's good. Okay. Now, now I'm going to go to Rose. Rose, can you just pick the veil up and just throw it with your left arm, please? But whilst looking towards the window. That's nice. Okay, Helen, you can come out. Again, there are the three photographs and this is the end result after merging them together in Lightroom and Photoshop. Okay, now we'll go and do something else.
So, we found our next composition which is over here. And the reason we've chosen here is because of this lamp right in the middle of these two chairs. So if we expose for that lamp, which is obviously a bright object, the rest of the scene is going to go very underexposed. So I'm going to take a shot without any sort of off-camera flash at all where I'm exposing for the lamp. I'm going to go to quite a short shutter speed. Let's go to 100 ISO 400. And that gives me this, which is what I call my base layer. So Helen, if I can bring you in, please. Let's turn on my trigger. I am using my Godox X3 trigger, by the way. So again, I don't change any other settings. I'm going to get down close. Focus on Rose. Perfect. That looks gorgeous. Okay. Thank you, Helen. I'm not going to move. I'm staying perfectly still. Eric and Rose will stay still, too. And then when Helen is in position, it doesn't. That's interesting. Actually, it doesn't matter. That's cool. Eric can just look towards me this time if that's all right. Really cool. Perfect. And then Helen out. Perfect. That's it. Again, you can see there we worked a little bit quicker, how quick the process can be. One shot of Rose, one shot of Eric, one shot where the light source is out of the shot. That's all we need. Onto the next one.
[Music]
For the next shot, we've come outside because as you can see, Crew Hall is a beautiful venue, especially when it's lit up in the evening and it's just starting to get light. Now, this is sunset time, but this is the UK as well. And as you can see, this is a sunset that we get sometimes and it's completely gray and nothing. But with the building lit up, we can create something that looks really nice. So, what I can do now is underexpose the scene. So, I'm going to go to f2.8, ISO 400 and say 800 my shutter speed. And that gives me an exposure of this, which is very underexposed obviously, which is exactly what I want. So, now we just need to, as we would with any off-camera flash portrait, add our light. But again, we're going to add it twice. Once on Rose and once on Eric and then we're going to ask Helen to remove herself from the shot again. And they will give me the ingredients I need to make the final cake. Again, we will probably need a bit more flash power, but not too much more because I am on my Sony A93, which has a global shutter, which basically means that high-speed sync doesn't exist anymore. Okay, so if you want to just step in for me before we even attempt the process, I'm going to make sure that my settings are correct. So, let me just turn on my trigger again. Godox X3. I'm going to put that on 1/16th. Yeah, that is really nice. If anything, it might be too strong. I'm still getting used to the A93 because it turns little speed lights into superpowers. So, I'm going to actually go down to 1/32. Let's just try this. Yes, that's even better. So, I'm only on 1/32 power at 1/800th of a second, which is crazy. So bear in mind my settings will be very much different if you're not using an A93. Okay. So I'm just going to turn you around a little bit more towards me. Rose, if you can ask it. Gorgeous. Perfect. Right. Okay. And that looks cool. Okay. Perfect. I'm not going to do anything different. I'm not changing my camera position. I'm not changing my focus. Helen is just now kindly going to light Eric for me. Again, remember, we're not changing anything. I'm just saying perfectly still. That looks good. Perfect. Okay, Helen out, please. Again, you need to learn to be very still. Perfect. There we go. There are three pieces of the pie. I'm going to do the same shot. I'm going to get a little bit closer just to fill the frame a little bit more. Before I had the whole of Crew Hall in, so I don't need to change any other settings. Again, just face me a little bit more, Rose. Just going to turn yourself a little bit more. Gorgeous. Okay, now Eric, please. Just looking at me, Eric, please. Yeah. Helen, help out. Thank you. Perfect. There you go. That was it in real time. I don't know how long that took. 30 seconds. Once you get practice in with this, it's really easy. What do you think, Helen? Should we do just sat, sat down one? We might even be able to do this with one flash. Sometimes if you have your couple positioned really close together, heads especially close together, one flash is all you actually need. You still need your plate shot obviously, still ask the person lighting the couple for you, holding the Magbox to take themselves out and take another one, but you might not need two separate exposures of your couple. Helen is brilliant, by the way, at posing, which is why sometimes I just leave Helen to do this part and I waffle to the camera like I am doing now. Yeah. See, I say Helen's so good at posing. That's beautiful. You two. And I'm going to make sure that we've got that light above them both. Good. You two. In fact, I'm going to go to F4. Little soft kiss. Okay. And Helen out, please. That's it. Done. That's how easy it is. Again, because Eric and Rose were so close, their heads were so close together, we didn't need two flashes on each of them, we can get away with one. So, just one shot with the light in, one shot with it out. And again, at the end of this video, I'm going to show you how I blend these together. But here is that photograph. I'm just going to now do that same shot again on an 85 just so you can see the difference. I can't get any further back because of this behind me, but I can't quite get the lighting above them both, which is a shame. And I, oh, it's such an annoying thing. I can't quite get the light above them. What if I get really low? Just. We'll go with this composition. Now, I just need to make sure they are exactly in the middle. Symmetry is key to a shot like this, but that looks good. So, I'm now at 320, F4, ISO 400. Beautiful. Just little laughs and giggles as you're doing that. Beautiful. Okay, Helen out. And boom. There's our plate shot. If that one worked well, here it is.
[Music]
Okay. Okay, so before we go, there's one more shot that I'd really like to get. There's been many times during this we're like, "Oh, we could have added maybe a gel to light a certain area or to just elevate things just a little bit more." And we haven't because we've wanted to keep this really simple and clear to follow. But there's one thing, just being a bit selfish, that I'd really like to include. And I personally really, really enjoy using just a back and rim light to help separate my couple from the background. So, especially when you're shooting in super dark conditions, it's sometimes nice just to have that rim light behind them just to bring some separation around their hair and that they're just not blending into a bit of darkness. So, whilst we're here and we've got a gorgeous couple, I was like, can we just do one more? And can we add in the background light? So, Neil's currently gone inside. He's going to be my assistant for now. And yeah, we're going to have Rose and Eric posed again just here on the steps. And then this time what we'll do as well as using a front flash, we will use a flash behind them. I don't know yet whether we're going to use a grid or not, I just want to be careful about not spilling the light too far over the floor and letting the floor become quite a distraction because it is quite a light floor. It's not shooting on tarmac. It is a light color. So I might use a grid. I might not. I have put one on at the moment. And then just to let you know, we always have A as our key light to light our couples. Any light that goes behind them for him, we then have as B for behind. So, all I'm going to do, like we've done for all the others, I'm going to get my layer one in. I'm going to get my ambience set. So, currently we've got the lights on the hall, etc. So, I'm going to make sure that I'm exposing for that before I add any flash. And then, of course, we'll add in both of the flashes separately. So, I think just because Neil's been shooting on this, that the settings must be pretty good on A. So, I'm going to have a little look at B. Make sure I'm not then blowing any highlights. When you're doing this with a bride, it's so easy to blow highlights, whether it's in the veil or the dress with it being a light color, you can sort of blow highlights in dress and veil details. So, just be extra careful for that. But yeah, I'll set up B. Hopefully not blow any highlights. Um, and then we'll add in A and see what we get.
So, last shot of the day. Like we're adding in a rim light just to add some separation of our couple to help them separate from the dark background. I am on 1/60th of a second, f4 and ISO 400. I'm currently exposing for the lights of the front of the building and the sky behind them. So, B, behind them now, doesn't have a grid and we've set that to 1/16th power. So, all I need now is for Neil to come in with a front light. Guys, you look absolutely stunning there. Thank you so much. I know it's quite cold. Yep, that is looking good. That's absolutely beautiful. Really stunning there. Perfect. And Neil out. You remembered. I know. This hardly ever happens. Boom. Excellent. Thank you so so much. I hope you like that. And like I said, using a rim light there is just helping to separate them off what is quite a dark background. Perfect. Right. Okay. We hope you've enjoyed this part. This is the practical part of the video. We're also going to say bye to Rose and Eric at this point. Thank you both so much. Their Instagram is on the screen now. Please go and give them a follow. They are superstars. Thank you. You go and get warm. And I'm now going to pass you over to me in Lightroom where I'm going to edit one of my favorite photographs from this video. So, over to me in Lightroom.
Wow. Okay, that's sick. That's insane. It's so cool with the dark building. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, thank you. The intro now. That will be the intro.
Okay. So, let's now open up Lightroom and we will blend these images together. This is the photograph that I've chosen. Here are our three jigsaw pieces that we're going to blend together. And as you'll see, these are straight out of camera. I haven't made any changes to them whatsoever. And we have our shot of Rose, our shot of Eric, and then the clean plate shot. And remember, it's always very, very useful, if not vital, to take that plate shot. We often do forget. So, what I'm going to do now is edit these as I would do with any normal image. Now, I'm not going to apply my preset. It's not about the presets or anything. So, I'm just going to do everything manually. All I'm going to do first of all is just bring down the white balance. Notice as well that I'm editing the third, the plate shot first of all, and there is method to that. So, I'm going to drop the white balance down slightly. I'm going to up my vibrancy. We'll drop the clarity a little bit. We'll go down to 10 for that. And maybe bring up the shadows and the blacks. And also what I'm going to do is play with the lamp as well. So I'm going to press K for a new brush. Going to go over the lamp and the area just surrounding it. And I'm going to up the white balance and the exposure of that area because I want that to just be a nice glow around the lamp. And that will probably be it. Now, the key thing we want to do now is apply those same changes to the shot of Eric and the shot of Rose. So, actually, I might just also just bring up the exposure slightly. We'll go to, we'll go to there. So, that's what I'm going to do now. So, with the third, the plate shot image selected, I'm now going to select the other two and then go to sync. And I want it to sync everything including the mask. I've not made any changes to the crop or the remove tool. So, I'm going to just leave those unticked. And let's synchronize those. So, Lightroom will now apply those exact same changes, those same edits to these other two images as you can see there. So, now I just need to edit these two photographs. But when I do, all I'm going to do is edit Rose in this case because I don't need to do anything else about the rest of the image. So, there isn't really anything I need to do to be honest. I might just bring down the highlights slightly of the bottom of the dress, but not much. Maybe something like that. And that's all I would really do. Now, let's go to the shot of Eric. Now, I do a little bit more here because I don't like this bright part of the carpet. And his hand there is a little bit hot as you can see. So, let's press K for a new brush again. Just going to go around the carpet area there. Just bring down the highlights. Yeah, that looks good. K. Another new brush. And let's go into Eric's hand. And I'm just going to take the highlights away from his hand there. Like that. And that again, probably it. This is the part now where it starts to get a little bit exciting because you see the image coming together. So I'm going to select these three images. I'm going to press control or right click basically and I'm going to then go to edit in and then go down here to open as layers in Photoshop. That will take us into Photoshop. So I'll see you over there.
And here we are in Photoshop. And as you can see, Photoshop has brought in those three files or three raw files that we've just edited into Photoshop as layers. The top layer, which we can see, has Rose. If we untick this, we see the middle layer, which is Eric. And if we untick that one, we see the bottom layer, which is our clean plate shot. I'm going to show you something now, which may help you if you've not done this before. If we right-click on the top layer, we can rename that layer. I'm going to just do that and call this one Rose. We'll call this one Eric. And we'll call this one Plate. I would not do that, but this is just for the purposes of showing you how to do the process. It might make it easier. So again, we can see that we've got Rose here, Eric underneath, and then the plate shot at the bottom. Now, the very first thing we need to do, and I often forget this, I must admit, is align those layers because we didn't use a tripod, remember? I know. So, because of that, they won't be perfectly sat on top of each other. In fact, if I untick Rose and Eric here, you might see a little bit of movement in the lamp or especially with this one between Rose and Eric. There you can see that the lamp is moving. So, what we need to do is select all of those images. We're then going to go up to edit and then go to auto align layers. And then when this option box comes up, I'm just going to click okay. Now it's perfectly aligned. This is why you can get away with not using a tripod. And remember, if you prefer to use a tripod, good on you. That is the probably the better way of doing it. But remember, I'm a wedding photographer. I work quickly. And as long as I stay as still as I know that I'm capable of doing, Photoshop can help me out. So that's the reason I don't do that.
So this is the fun part. Now I'm going to first of all select our top layer which is the Rose layer and with the option key held down I'm going to select layer masks. That creates a black layer mask and it looks as though that layer has gone because we can't see Rose anymore. But if we go over here and we select a white brush. So we can see that we have got a white selected there and black. We're going to go up to paintbrush here. And we also want to make sure that the hardness of that brush is set to zero. That means that the edge of the brush is going to be very soft. So you're not going to see the edge. I also personally choose to have the opacity set to 100. And then we paint over the area that we know Rose is. She starts to appear as if by magic. And all I need to make sure is that as I'm going through and going over Rose, I'm not going over the area where the softbox would be. Now, if I did, we'd see that. For example, there it is. So, if you go over too much, you just need to change the color of your brush to black, and that will hide it again. So, that's the Rose part done. We're now going to go to Eric, click on that layer, his layer, and then do the same thing. So with the option key held down on a Mac, going to click on layer masks again. Same thing. We now just need to go back and select our white brush again. And then just go over the area where Eric is. Now I just mistakenly there went over a bit too much. And again, we can see the softbox. So all I need to do is change the brush color again. Going to go a bit smaller with the brush so I can be a bit more accurate and get rid of the softbox. Right. What I now do is I go to layer and flatten the image. And I'm going to crop. You could do this in Lightroom, but I just choose to do it in Photoshop. We'll go about here. I want that lamp to be right in the middle. Yep, that looks good. And all I now need to do is close this and then reopen Lightroom. Oh, let's save it first.
And here we are back in Lightroom. And as if by magic, this is the image that we've just blended together in Photoshop. Now, there is one other thing that I would always check when I'm doing images like this which are very underexposed is I tick this check box at the top to make sure that I'm not losing detail in any of the blacks, which I am. Now, my go-to is to use one of my own brushes, but I'm not going to do that. Um, I don't want it to be about that. So, I'm going to press K for a new brush. Going to just up the black slightly and the shadows and just go over that area just to make sure that we're not losing detail in the shadow areas. It's not a huge deal, but it looks if you're going to print out these images, that's actually going to really make the print look a lot better. And there we go. That is the process.
So, thank you again to Magmod for inviting me to make this video for their YouTube channel. It's a huge honor, as I said at the beginning of the video. And of course, massive thank you to Eric and Rose who were amazing. Thank you to Crew Hall, the venue that we use. And of course to my partner Helen for all of her help and for her amazing images as well. If you have any questions, I will try my best to check the comment section. So ask in there and I'll do my best to answer. But yeah, thank you for watching and I'll hopefully usually saying this on my own channel, but this is Magmod's channel. I'll hopefully see you in the next.