For the last three years or so, Scarlett Johansson has been the face behind the acclaimed Spanish clothing company Mango. In their latest Spring/Summer 2011 campaign, set in the Goldstein Residence in Beverly Hills, photographer superstar Mario Sorrenti builds his images exclusively with natural light and reflectors. It's hard to imagine a wet haired Johansson ever not looking incredible, so it should not come as a surprise that Mario and company produced some stunning images. Hopefully these photographs will encourage a lot of photographers to step away from the strobes every now and then and work with the best light given to us: the sun!
"Hopefully these photographs will encourage a lot of photographers to step away from the strobes every now and then and work with the best light given to us: the sun!"
So why does the photographer in the video have a honking PocketWizard Transceiver stuck on the top of his camera?
i was about to ask the exact same thing
Same here! That was my first question!
Are the little bands of light that happen around 2:20 strobes or just part of the video?
Strobes IMO
He's triggering the sun! Silly rabbit...
could it be a wireless file transmitter?
When I've shot model shoots, like this, with a mixture of strobe and natural light, I've found it easier to just leave the PocketWizard on top of the camera. Nothing is worse than getting into a groove, decide to switch over to strobe and realize you ahev to dig thru a bag to find the PocketWizard. Just leave it on. When you are on tight time schedules with bigger budgets, you need to be as efficient as possible with your time.
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I think it was for the second and fifth photographs down in this post, used as a fill light.
It really doesn't matter how you shoot at the Goldstein house, everything just always looks good.
One issue I always have when lighting with reflectors is no matter how much direct sunlight is hitting them, they never seem to light my subject enough to properly expose the whole scene. Anyone have any tips on how to keep the background readable while still illuminating the subject? Or is this all a photoshop trick?
what time of day are you shooting? are you backlighting? what do you mean by background readable? Unless you have low sun, you will usually always clip your highlights if they are backlit when using a reflector.
Perhaps a very large diffusing panel or I usually use the models head to block out the suns direct harshness, enabling a much more even light balance.
There's a "scientific art" to finding a location and angle that is flattering to your subject while also allowing the visible background to be less bright than the other surrounding areas, so that you still have enough direct sunlight to actually use a reflector, but a background that is sufficiently not-nuked to balance well with that reflected light.
Does that make sense out loud? Look for contrast. Put your subject in the sun, roughly backlit, with a shady spot behind them to be used as the background. Obviously there are plenty of other arrangements and solutions, but when I'm shooting available light with a reflector this is the first arrangement I look for.
I think it depends what effect you are after. I like it when the sky blows out and you end up with blue tinges around the edge that go to pure white when you get to the sun, like in the images above. Maybe if you had a huge reflector it might bring the subjects brightness up enough to expose them and the sky correctly but I wouldn't want to be the poor assistant holding that reflector!
YUP.
Look at the photos. The backgrounds seem pretty blown out to me.
I like my scarlett with a little bit more meat on her. She looks a little to skinny.
I agree ! Too thin. I think she's been on a those Hollywood crash diets.
"Lost in Translation" Scarlett, right?
i like her on this pictures the most..but that is just personal taste :)
i feel inspired, but not in a professional sort of way.. love scarlett
If she would have strobes on her the background would have been very dark, not blown out. So patrick is right, i cant see a way to illuminate the subject, have a proper exposure on her, AND have a proper exposure of the background. the only way i think one could achieve that is by exposing separately the subject with strobes and then the background.
i attached an example of illuminating with strobes in bright sun. Photography by Karl Taylor.
Found this video not to be all that great. Maybe a show off for all those photographers who are living the high life shooting super stars, but behind the scenes? What did I take away, that I saw a beautiful model with thousands of dollars worth of makeup/clothing/accessories and a photographer with the same in lenses and gear to go along with it?
If you want to show me behind the scenes, don't cut away into this artistic nonsense, not that I don't like it, I can't pull anything away on how someone could work with those and create beautiful imagery. Also, whats with no one throwing in outcomings in the video? Seems like I have to always wander around to try to find what the finals were.
Then of course going into the full post, I see the finals, scratch my last part of my comment.
maybe you should show us how its done then?
you can balance the strobe to ambient all you have to do is drop shutter speed
I came across this set recently, absolutely love the resulting images. I want to try natural light only but I feel insecure without my strobe.
Anyone know what kind of camera he's using?
without strobes? And why is there a pocket wizard @ ~0:46 on the cam?
I guess I'm in the minority here---I'm most comfortable with natural light, always have been. It's strobes I struggle with!
As far as getting exposure on background and subject even is concerned, it's really all about time of day and location. More often than not though, the background is gonna be a little under or over exposed. I don't think there's a good or bad where this is concerned, it's all about what you want as the final product. I like to blow out the background a bit, get some flare going on. In the image attached, I spot metered for the subject's face and let the sun do the rest.
@Kurt---this video obviously wasn't made specifically for photographers in mind. It's more of a promotional vehicle for the clothing line. Useful though since you can see the setups a bit and then see what they got for final images.
@Robert---it looks like Canon glass. The body--mabye a 1Ds? I may be wrong about that though since I would think he would use medium format for this type of work.
This was shot with strobes for sure. I don't even have to look at the final shots to see that. But to get the shots to look like this, you can see they clearly shot her in the shade thus making her under exposed. They then relit just her to expose her. This is my guess. This shot could also be a composite. If I want certain situations to happen in my work, I simply just make them. Tripod, expose for the background with no one in it, shoot bracket exposure, then bring in the subject and expose for them, shoot, composite the two.
Pretty cool shoot, love using only avail. light! best feeling ever!
on a side note; anyone can tell me what's the song used in the video? i kind of dig it.
Music is Chromatics - in the city - they are from a label called Italians do it better.
On an other note does any of you know what kind of Photoshop process makes images nicely saturated and glossy like those? I mean I know it sounds like a silly question, but there is really somthing I can't get my fingers on. It's glossy as if it's like a mini hdr process or something like that.
the shots from this shoot are pretty good, but HOLY CRAP! Have you guys looked through his portfolio on Art Partner? He's incredible! Really fantastic work #inspired
I think the fact the only obvious giveaway that the shots were strobed was the Pocket Wizard says a lot. Very well balanced light. Great images regardless of how they were lit.
Maybe he used a strobe in one picture, the sixth, the only one not in backlight.
look at that, you can see clearly that the sun has almost gone down by the glass reflection.
there wasn't for sure enough natural light to light the subject, and the reflector can work only if placed in opposite to light source.
It looks like all the published photos were shot with natural light but it's hard to imagine they didn't have strobes, etc. set up (or at least in the bag).
The Chromatics soundtrack adds a lot to the video; I really liked how they used its tempo to pace the transitions between stills.
Very beautiful, soft and feminine shots, love the look of daylight. Sure When the weather's good sure but I still prefer the indoors for reliability on so many fronts and as I now exclusively shoot head shots (Business Portraits) in the studio I leave the outdoors to our model portfolio shoots which we do for fun and experimentation :)
Excellent! Great article, I already saved it to my
favourite,
Pretty sure you can see a soft box in the reflection around 1:58 so I'm jumping on the strobe bandwagon.
The girl looks bored out of her skull.
(did anyone see her crack a smile at any point in the vid?)
They removed her tattoo .. :)
I think strobes will be always in fashion pros bag, because most of the time they like to go easiest and fastest way, but natural light is so beautiful and in my case I try to avoid strobes till my last breath :) Though I am just wedding photographer :)
Kestas
www.fotorumba.de
Shooting exclusively with one light source or another is limiting. A mechanic does not leave for a job with only a flat head screwdriver in his toolbox, nor should a photographer leave for an assignment with only a reflector as their light source. Understanding the limitations of each tool gives you a better understanding of how to orchestrate and be ready when you need Plan B or Plan C.
Extreme cases, use a tripod to anchor your framing to maintain a accurate registration between the background of each shot of that particular scene.
Shoot an ESTABLISHING shot without the model in place, under expose the establishing shot which includes the background to the degree you want the final EV to be, then bring your model in and shoot however you prefer, from the same tripod setting and register as the establishing shot.
When you get in Photoshop, load the establishing shot, the darker exposed background in one layer, then load the shot with the model which should be in perfect register with the previous background, then just erase the washed out background around the model so the darker establishing shot/background shows through, you have a proper EV on the model and the EV you elected to have as the background.
I think the California Sunbounce reflectors give the best percentage of reflected light back onto the subject, most of the less expensive 5 in 1 circular pop outs seem to reflect much less.
Again, like the mechanic that should carry an array of tools in his toolbox, 4x and 8x Neutral Density filters should be in the toolbox so if FLASHES have to be used, the photographer can regain control of their wider apertures, more shallow depth of field in daylight conditions.
The ND filters bring the daylight down to a manageable EV via wider apertures allowing the photographer to shoot at f 5.6 or even f 2.8 for a beautiful Bokeh, with flash in daylight conditions.
As I often joke about, the one thing I learned in my 27 minutes in the Boy Scouts was... BE PREPARED!
The difference between PROFESSIONALS and AMATEURS is.... PLAN B!
And frankly... I am not a fan of the HALATION seen in these photos. There are times when it works well, but one of my snarks is...
A pint of water quenches one's thirst.... 16 pints result in a drowning!
KEREN
I feel like, for the professionalism of the photographers and the fame of the model, they could've of produced better shots. None of them "wow-ed" me in particular.
Scarlett is one of the most beautiful women in this solar system. Only the women of Omicron Persei 8 can hit you harder.