Pinch
Veteran portrait photographer
A well-known photography blogger on Weibo
He specializes in gentle retro and Japanese style shooting
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The most romantic seasonal element in winter is snowflakes, especially for southern children like me, snow is a great attraction, after all, it is rare to see. It doesn't snow in southern cities, but in order to enrich our subject matter, I decided to shoot a set of snow portraits in the yard through artificial snow scenes. First of all, I will show you the puzzle of this shooting, and then share the scenery and the idea of the pre- and post-shooting!
For this shoot I used the Nikon Z 5, an entry-level full-frame mirrorless camera that is small and compact and easy to carry. The Nikon Z 5 has a deeper grip than the Nikon Z 6, and its grip is so comfortable that it's comparable to any camera I've ever used. Although it is a micro single, its practical high picture quality and good tolerance can fully cope with daily portrait shooting work, and the appearance is also more retro, which is very suitable for appearance, which is very friendly for female photographers.
In terms of lenses, indoor shooting recommends choosing a fixed-focus lens with 50mm and 35mm focal lengths, or a zoom lens with 24-70mm focal length. If the indoor space area is too small, it is recommended to use a fixed focus lens with a 35mm focal length. In terms of aperture, it is recommended that small apertures be preferred for close-up shots, and large apertures should be preferred when the background is cluttered. For this venue, I chose the Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S lens.
Nikon Z 5 aperture f/2.2 Shutter 1/200 ISO200 Focal Length 50mm Lens: Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S
Today, pinch here to share with you about the shooting process, I hope to provide some shooting ideas for the small partners to refer to! Without further ado, I will share this set of realistic shooting experiences from the aspects of site setting, pre-shooting techniques and post-production ideas.
First, the pre-shooting and artificial snow scene prop preparation
Before we plan to shoot a set of stylistic portraits, the first step is to clarify the characteristics of the style of portraits to be photographed. For example, in this snow scene shooting, I chose a Japanese courtyard as the shooting location, so in terms of clothing matching, I had to choose clothes that matched the Japanese courtyard. So I chose a red kimono as the main color, most of the ambient color of the snow scene is white, red will be particularly colorful in the white background, can quickly catch the reader's attention.
Nikon Z 5 aperture f/1.8 Shutter 1/800 ISO100 Focal Length 50mm Lens: Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S
When I was shooting, I preset the three main colors for the picture: white on the snow background, red for the large area of the costume, and blue for the sky and shadows. So for accessories and props, I chose a long-haired white plush shawl to echo the winter atmosphere, and used two shades of blue false flowers as a decoration. The subject of this invitation is my professional model friend, Hui Hui, who is a beautiful girl with a beautiful girl's appearance, sweet and lovely. The makeup of this shoot is more girly, and the hairstyle is lazy long curly hair, hoping to create a more aesthetic atmosphere in the snow scene.
Field Map 1
Field Map 2
Artificial snow scenery needs to prepare the following props: snow scenery cloth, snow powder or snowflake spray or snow machine, if it is only a small field shooting, the latter three choices of the same to two can be, small cost if you do not use the snow machine can also be completely, find a piece of lawn can be photographed! Due to the light of the venue, I prepared two shooting points, as shown in the picture above. The first shooting point is to hang the snow cloth on the tree, so that the sunlight can be directly into the entire snow cloth, which can create a mottled light and shadow in the background, and the model's skin tone will be more transparent in the sun. The second shooting point was in the courtyard, where I spread snow cloth all over the yard and sprayed enough fake snow on the roof, leaves and snow cloth of the yard in advance to create a snow atmosphere. Everyone must do their homework when doing shooting planning, for photo shooting, clothing, makeup and venue are indispensable factors for a good photo.
Second, sharing shooting skills
The theme of this shooting is artificial snow, so we should try to avoid wearing gangs, before and after the "fake" snow scene should be taken more realistically, in the shooting, we should try to control the distance between the model and the background snow cloth, properly control the depth of field, and then with a large aperture lens, to achieve enough background bokeh effect, so that the snow cloth is hazy; or conditions allow it, you can even fill the snow scene, so that the brightness of the background cloth is high, simulating the light of the real snow scene. Of course, we can also solve this problem through the later stage.
Nikon Z 5 aperture f/2.2 Shutter 1/200 ISO400 Focal Length 50mm Lens: Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S
We can ask a small partner to help spray snowflakes when shooting, but neither snowflake spray nor snow machine can spray directly at the model, but try to spray at the sky and control the snowflakes falling from the air. Especially if the amount of snowflakes like the snow machine is large, you also need to pay attention not to spray between the photographer and the model, because the snowflakes are easy to block the face of the model, and it is also difficult for the photographer to focus.
Nikon Z 5 aperture f/2.2 Shutter 1/150 ISO400 Focal Length 50mm Lens: Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S
But some lenses need snowflakes in front of the model's face, you can make the model slightly sideways, let the small partner move to the front of the model, the photographer shoots on the side of the model, which can improve the shooting efficiency, otherwise you can not even shoot 100 photos may not have a perfect good photo that does not block the face. Fortunately, the focus performance of the camera I use is good enough, and the shooting efficiency has improved a lot. When capturing dynamic images, such as the beautiful moment when a snowflake falls, be sure to turn on burst mode.
Nikon Z 5 aperture f/2.8 shutter 1/125 ISO400 focal length 50mm
Lens: Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S
Overhead camera position
When shooting, there is another trick to share with you, that is, a variety of shooting angles and compositions. As mentioned earlier, we should try to distance the distance between the model and the snow scene, which may make us give up some overhead angles. In fact, we look down and shoot there are also ways to make the distance between the model and the snow scene, such as using the grass stack, see the picture above. Let the model's head and shoulders lean against the haystack so that the problem can be perfectly circumvented!
Nikon Z 5 aperture f/2.8 Shutter 1/100 ISO200 Focal Length 50mm Lens: Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S
Shoot the camera position upwards
In addition to flat and overhead shots, we can also try back shots. The day of my shooting was a sunny day, and the sky was not particularly blue, but it fully met my shooting needs. Looking at the shooting location mentioned above, we also have a general understanding of the shooting environment. Although the surrounding houses are not particularly tall, it is still difficult to shoot the blue sky at a slightly lower angle. At this time, I let the model stand on the chair, I can sit or crouch on the ground to shoot back, when shooting back, I should remind the model's head to slightly face the direction of the camera, so as not to shoot the nostrils such as death angles. The Nikon Z 5 I use is a touch screen with a folding screen, which is particularly helpful when I shoot back, and I no longer have to lie on the cold and hard ground.
Before shooting, the photographer should determine the color tone of the work, take this shooting as an example, my color requirements are very clear, high saturation of red and blue has long been planned, the other part of the picture color is the color of the character and the atmosphere in the shooting site caused, the color of the character I have long thought of the warm tone, although the atmosphere color we only have the right to choose, but we can directly through the camera's white balance settings to express the mood of the picture.
Most digital cameras on the market currently have white balance presets, such as AWB (Auto White Balance) at white balance settings. In this mode, the camera will automatically offset the color temperature deviation caused by ambient light, so that the picture reaches the middle value of the color temperature, not biased towards too cold or too warm tones, for professional photographers, manual control of the specific color temperature value that is, the K value is the most accurate way to control the atmosphere of the picture.
The Nikon Z 5 has built-in white balance and white balance offset settings
As an example in the above figure, we enter the camera's white balance settings and see that there are two things that can be changed, and on the left is the setting of the color temperature value: a four-digit selection, which can be adjusted in 10 units. We generally take 5500k as the median value of color temperature, in standard light, below 5500k, the picture will gradually turn blue, the atmosphere is cold; above 5500k when the picture will gradually turn yellow, the atmosphere is warm, the greater the value change, the greater the color of the picture will change. Nikon itself will be a little yellower, shooting snow scenes, the white tone of the snow cloth and the blue tone I want to add later, I set the value of the white balance to 5000k, so that the picture is a little cooler. The G-M setting on the right is the white balance offset setting, which allows the picture to increase or decrease green and magenta, because this shooting is a natural style, and there are not many changes here. Nikon Z 5 also built-in more than 20 kinds of creative filter effects, but also can customize saturation, contrast and other parameter settings, if you are interested, you can adjust it yourself, subjective creativity is very strong, shooting straight out there is no burden!
Third, the later stage of the idea sharing
When you see the photos shown above, do you think that the film looks like a film tone? The overall post-production idea of the photos I took this time is to imitate the sense of film, and first show you a comparison map of the front and post..
Front-to-back comparison chart
From the comparison of the above figure, we can find a more obvious change in tone, the blue tone of the shadow is aggravated, the proportion of yellow is increased in the red, the skin color becomes warmer, and the saturation of the whole picture is also aggravated.
After adding blue to The Midtones and Shadows, remember to wipe out the shadows separately with a mask and change the color of the blues further.
Change red and yellow in "Optional Colors", and then pull an S curve to lower the shadows and increase the highlights.
Nikon Z 5 aperture f/2.0 Shutter 1/800 ISO100 Focal Length 50mm Lens: Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S
After doing these few steps, we create a little more luminous feeling, so that the background snow cloth looks more lustrous And the picture is more beautiful. For this step, I was using the infrared glow (medium) in the Exposure7 film filter plug-in, and after this step back to Photoshop, I remembered to use a mask to wipe the character out so that the glow only existed on the snow cloth. After that, I made the film texture of the picture again, and in terms of texture, I did high contrast retention and added noise, so that the texture of the picture was closer to the film sense. The order of operation is to select filters in Photoshop - other - high contrast retention - (select the appropriate pixels to see the outline of the character), and then change the blending mode of the above operation layers to soft light or overlay. Adding noise is also the case, just choose the filter in Photoshop - noise - add noise - choose the appropriate number and distribution. The rest is some individual environmental colors and small details of the treatment, here will not be repeated,
Finally, thank you for reading, I hope this sharing can be helpful to your shooting!
Author | Pinch
Edit | Huang Bin
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