Teaching six distinct lighting techniques within a common and familiar setting, DIY Studio Light with Common Household Items from Photoshop CAFE is a 2.7 hour-long course that showcases a variety of useful and practical lighting techniques. Hosted by Dave Montizambert, this series of lessons offers tips and techniques on how to repurpose everyday items and produce professional-quality studio lighting results.
Utilizing multiple camera angles and offering an over-the-shoulder view of Montizambert working, these lessons show you exactly how and where to place equipment in order to reproduce the techniques being taught. Furthermore, a bonus video piece is included with some essential facial lighting tips as well as some lighting principles in general.
Creative Teen Portrait: an in-depth look at creating a studio portrait in your home, using common, everyday items you already have.
Lighting Faces: demonstrated on the face of Mozart, this lesson covers some common and useful lighting techniques well suited for facial characteristics.
High-Contrast Dramatic Portrait: showcasing an easy and inexpensive way to accomplish this technique using just one light, this lesson focuses on the popular high-contrast, dramatically lit look.
Window Light: using just a living room window during daytime and a few other common household accessories, this section shows you how to produce studio-quality lighting that incorporated back, fill, and key lighting techniques.
Self Portrait: this lesson teaches you how to produce a well-thought-out self-portrait with an advanced lighting setup, all on your own.
Top-Lit Body Shot: using a ladder, shelf, broom, some bed sheets, and a hardware store work light, this section shows you how to produce a dramatic top-light, high-contrast look.
Group Portrait: dedicated to photographing more than one person at a time, this practical lesson shows you how to best accommodate groups of people while still achieving a unique quality of lighting.
Final Thoughts: the presentation concludes with Montizambert sharing some final insights and resources for further learning.
- Fine-arts portrait
- Moody B&W fashion body shot
- Environmental group shot
- Shooting a self portrait
- 3/4 length senior's style fashion portrait
- Window-lit portrait
- Lighting with bed sheets
- Lighting with walls and doors
- Lighting with ceiling bounce light
- Lighting with floor bounce light
- Controlling shadow fill bounce light
- How to create facial light patterns
- How to create studio-quality backgrounds from bed covers
- Using shoot environment for backgrounds
- How to create a pure black background
- How to control ambient light
- Controlling light quality (soft & hard light)
- Mixing ambient light with subject lighting
- Control light contamination from unwanted light spill