- Next, I want to talk about the magic
of working with doorway or garage light.
Now, why am I calling it garage light?
Well, often this type of light comes
from scenarios like this.
With this example, the guy here, my subject Jeff,
is standing literally in front of his garage.
And what this type of light is...
Is often what you'll do is, you'll have someone standing
in a space where there is walls surrounding them
above and on the sides and back,
and they're facing that open light.
Now, that type of light can afford you to create
really strong, really powerful and wonderful portraits.
Let me go through a few examples here
so you can see what I mean.
Here I have a subject sitting in a doorway,
and in order to create the look that I have
in the black and white version of the photograph,
I just had her step back into the darkness
just a little bit.
Now, the camera doesn't necessarily pick up the darkness
behind her.
It's almost like she's illuminated
from that opening in front of her.
And that gives us the ability to create images
and portraits like this.
Here's another example.
This is Ben Harper, the singer and musician.
Again, he's in that lighting environment,
and we feel so engaged and connected with him,
because of that kind of light.
Again, it's almost like he's glowing
in a little bit of a way.
You can also see the light really show up in people's eyes.
Now, depending on where the subject is
and how close they are to the opening,
you can create different types of looks:
ones which are darker and moodier
or other ones which are a little bit brighter.
And you can see with these different examples
that it's allowing me to create different types of images.
Alright, well how do we create this?
Well, here I want to run through a few different examples
to show you how you can think
about finding this type of light in order to create it.
With this first example, you can see
that I created it simply by a small door,
and I just got close.
The background became all of that darkness.
Because he's standing near the edge of the doorway,
we can see how it looks
again like that luminous, glowing type of a look.
It makes for a really strong, natural, clean light.
In this scenario, I was at the Patagonia headquarters,
and we can see there's a warehouse there
in the background,
and I was there to photograph the founder of that company.
It's an outdoor company,
and what I wanted to do was to create some images
which captured him, which had a little bit of strength.
So this light isn't all about just soft and beautiful light,
but you can create really strong images as well.
And this particular image,
you can see it was captured right there, right?
I just open up that little warehouse door.
He was standing in it, looking outside.
And you can see the door opening,
often as a little bit of light in the person's eyes.
I love to have portraits where the eyes are really lit up,
and this is a great way to try to do that.
Another situation I was on location.
I saw a warehouse door,
and whenever I see a warehouse door, I get pretty excited,
cause I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh.
This is going to be great."
Garage door, warehouse door, any kind of door.
I just need to throw that thing open,
have the subject stand there.
The background will just go black,
and you can create these really beautiful images
like you can see in this example.
So this image, obviously, was just captured
from that scenario right there.
Alright, couple more examples for you.
These two images, when you look at them,
you don't necessarily think that this is garage light.
Right? They're not black and white,
but they do have this little bit of a glow as well.
How are these created?
Well, here was a shot of the warehouse.
It was a surfboard factory,
which is located actually, just a few blocks from here.
And you can see into that surfboard factory,
and you can see that there's this big opening,
illuminating this.
And the light falls off really quickly.
What I mean by fall of is
it's really bright at the opening
and then becomes darker and darker and darker and darker.
All that I need to do
is have my subject stand inside of there.
I had him stand in front of a few surfboards,
so it created a little bit of a white background there,
and it allows you to create these type of images.
Look really closely at the eyes.
You can see the opening there of that warehouse door,
and it creates for this kind of soft,
illuminated, beautiful frame.
Here is another image.
In this case, I didn't have a door.
I didn't have a garage.
I didn't have a warehouse.
So, what do you do?
Well in situations like that,
sometimes I'll create it myself.
And so here, I have a subject
with a lot of light surrounding them.
And I just create a small cover on top
and a friend's holding that.
And you can see the type of images
that you can create in that environment.
Then I moved in a little bit closer,
and you can see a couple of images
that were captured in that scenario.
Now in these images, it isn't maybe a true garage,
because we have light above being blocked,
light on one side, but then one side's open.
We have more of a two-sided type of approach here,
but you can see that gives a little bit of direction,
and really adds some beautiful
and wonderful light in that situation.
And with this last example, I wanted to show this one
just to illustrate or highlight
that this is something that you can create anywhere.
I created this in front of this old trailer.
She was sitting on a couple of paint cans,
and it allowed me to create beautiful images, right?
And you can do this as well.
It doesn't require a lot of expensive gear,
but it does require a keen awareness of the light.
You want to look for those doorway openings, right?
Then you want to position your subject
inside of the doorway,
and then have him or her move forward
or backward until you find the right spot.
So that you can capture the portrait
which really expresses your own vision
of what you want to say about that scenario
or that person on that particular day.