The harsh environment of the beach
In this session I’ll talk about my experiance shooting on the beach. Afternoon and evening and in November so it was cold. The sun is pretty harsh and you cant run and find shade. You deal with it.
I’ve shot many times out there and at different times of the day. I can say it gets easier as you try different things and see what works and what doesn’t. Finding things that don’t work is pretty easy. (grin)
All of these images where taken with a single little Godox/Flashpoint 200 light. Some with the modifier and some just the flash. The reason for just the flash and no modifier was all related to the wind and Marry Poppins action with the umbrella.
The images above show the lighting. My wife was my voice activated light stand and the light is a simple Good/Flashpoint 200 in a mount on an extending paint pole. It was fairly windy so it was a chore keeping the light pointed at the model. But you can see the soft light on her. The sun was just about the picture as you can tell by the shadows.
The second image is the actual shot that I decided to edit. It was very bright in the background and I wanted it darker. So I selected her using the subject select and then did an inverse so I basically had the background selected. I then changed the brightness of the background. The video below will show that process.
The third image is the finished product.
This was later, closer to sunset. It was very cold and windy by then so no modifier on the light. It would take a couple people to hold it with an umbrella. So, it’s just a bare strobe light. I did get a lot of glare, lens flare, from it and I should have had him point it at the ocean. That would have lit her up but the body of the light would have shadowed it from the camera.
Second image is the same lighting and only a little later. It’s the raw image before editing.
And the third is finished. I didn’t change the background in this one to make it lighter or darker because it was ust fine.
Two things were changed to make this image work. As you can see, there is hair on her face from the wind. I could have left it there but I wnated to have a clean face in the final image. It just looks more powerful that way. The other problem was the gap in the columns. I didn’t want that light on the right side. I selected the columns on the left and flipped them horizontaly and put them on the right side of the image and blended them in with a mask. it was surprisingly easy to do. Gap gone!
So, here is the video for changing a background in an image to lighter or darker or even toning it or bluring it.