GODOX AD300 street photography: Transform your shots with TWO LIGHTS!

Are you wanting to take your street photography to the next level? Well, check out this #godox AD300 street photography tutorial! In this video, we'll show you how to transform your shots with just TWO LIGHTS!
If you're looking for ideas for street photography or portraits, then this video is for you! In this tutorial, we'll walk you through the basics of setting up a two light setup and show you how to take some amazing shots! With just a few tools and a little practice, you'll be able to create stunning photos like never before!
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[@TeddyCavachon]

I learned lighting apprenticing with top wedding photographer Monte Zucker back in the early 1970s who took all his posed portraits using skylight through a north facing window with a reflector for fill and re-enacted the ceremony and shot the reception with dual flash, always having one flash 16” above the lens for Fill, placing the off camera flash on a modified medical IV stand which could be easily rolled around to keep it aimed at a 45° angle to the nose and overhead so the shadow of the nose falls over half of it modeling it’s 3D shape ideally, the same angle the noses were pointed toward the window.
The mistake many beginners make when using artificial lights is to put the Key light and Fill at opposite 45°angles. While that might seem logical it results in a pattern of two crossed shadows on the face and unfilled voids in the smile line, corners of mouth, teeth, inside of mouth etc. Monte taught me to look critically at photographs I took with flash and look for the darkest shadows in the image which are the result of no fill flash reaching those areas.
When setting up the lights I learned to always start by setting the desired aperture for DOF on the subject then turn on the Fill source first and raise it to where the camera can record detail in the shadows. Back when shooting film an incident meter was needed for that but with digital it can be done visually using the playback and histogram. All of my portraits have been non-models who aren’t paid by the hour and don’t have the patience to stand around while a photographer futzes with lights and meter so I put drape white and black hand towels on a stand to represent the extreme of the tonal range for setting lights. Why towels? The loops in the fabric create sparkling specular highlights and draping a 3D reveals visually whether or not the fill light is reaching everywhere is a way a flat black and white target can’t. After setting the Fill so it is creating as few shadows as possible and raising its power to reveal the detail in the black towel the playback. Then the Key light is turned on and raised until the white one is just at or below triggering the black-out clipping warning in the playback.
From that baseline of full tonal range the lighting is made to look softer or harder with a given set of modifiers by changing two variables: 1) change the distance of the light to the subject which will affect front-to-back fall off and shadow contrast, and/or; start with more fill for a lighter softer look or less for a darker look.
Back in the 1970s before instant playback what we would do is find the distance for Fill and Key which produced a full range of detail (e.g. fill at 8ft and key at 5.6ft and then tie a string to the lights using them to set them. The inverse square law makes light fall off with distance very predictable and if you tie knots in a string at intervals of 16, 11, 8, 5.6, 4, 2.8, 2, 1.4, 1 feet or meters there will be a one stop difference in intensity. We used that method without the string to set ratios between key and fill and change exposure when moving in and out to change crop. For example if shooting from 11ft our aperture was f/8 to expose the shadows correctly with the fill, and the off camera flash was place at 8 ft to make it 2x brighter, the ratio need to expose the highlights it created over the flash correctly. If moving into 8ft to shoot tighter the aperture would change to f/11 to keep the exposure the same and the off camera flash would be rolled in to 5.6 ft to keep the ratio and highlight exposure the same.
The difference between one- and two-light strategies is seen in the shadows when photos are exposed per the highlights. By adding a fill flash you can control the mood of the lighting.
When shooting outdoors and adding flash over ambient you need to look critically at the eyes of the subject in the ambient light to see if the brow is shading them. That is nearly always the case when shooting a subject while at eye level with them in skylight because of the high incident angle of the skylight. Light in the eyes or not, is one of the subliminal body language clues we react to. Shaded eyes covey a different message than brightly lit eyes. If the latter is the look which is desired then it is necessary to pose the face of the subject up into the skylight outdoors the same way you would by a window then if you want the flash to create the same pattern it needs to be placed to hit the face at the same angle which outdoors requires tall light stands. Finally to avoid then shooting up the nose holes of the subject the camera needs to be raised so it is looking down at the top of the nostrils by finding something to stand on or bringing a 1 - 2 meter step ladder to shoot from. Adding a 1/4” - 20 pitch bolt to the top step of a ladder and attaching a tripod ball head is a handy hack when shooting outdoors😊

[@OSHENS1991]

Learned a lot, thank you. 🙏🏾 😊

[@MartinV.]

Great Video!!

[@scottharrald6050]

Great content as always. While I noted you were working primarily in open shade, I’m curious on what general power settings did you have to use with the AD300. Were they maxed out?

[@xofilmsphotography]

Nice video brother, it would be perfect if you show out your settings as well. Love the pictures!

[@Fotohayat-at]

foto Ipman 😁

[@jaym5938]

Can't f-ing stand this guy! Why are you dealing with him?