Drew Gardner's Brown Bag Video Series
Long-time readers of this site are already familiar with London-based commercial and advertising photographer Drew Gardner. Many of you will be happy to know that he has just released a commercial series of walk-thru videos of over a dozen of his more notable shoots, broken into McDonald's lunch-priced segments.
I have always enjoyed Drew's lighting, but even more so his creativity and imagination when approaching a shoot. And frequently, that ability to source a location or bootstrap say, an elephant or water buffalo as a prop for a shoot is more key to making the magic happen than knowing where to put your soft box.
I have had a chance to view most of them, and the takeaway for me has been that there is generally one unexpected or unusual thing you have to figure out to make a shot come together. For me, that is a big lesson -- because I am usually about the light.
But Drew seems to have a talent for hitting the curve ball that comes at you from left field. And I would give a lot of lighting skill away to be able to do that so seemingly effortlessly. I learn something from the guy every time we talk.
Drew kindly made one of the tutorials free, and I have embedded it above. (Blip.tv is ad-rolling it, but you can click them away.) You see the other photos selected for video tutorials here.
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Posted at 1:50 AM.
18 Comments:
Really interesting and helpful! As an amateur strobist this kind of break down and piece by piece illustration is perfect. Thanks so much for posting this!
David, any idea how much actual behind the scenes material there is in the other videos? Not a lot in the one you published. I have Drew's DVD "Location Lighting". A bit pricey at £30 a pop given the amount of content. Liked it all the same.
Thank you David and Drew. These peeks behind the curtain are invaluable. Ah-pree-shate-cha!
What a great video! I always enjoy watching Drew Gardner. Just hearing his voice is inspiring.
On a baseball note, anybody who can throw a curve ball from left field must have quite an arm:)
@Wayne-
They are quick-hit walk-thru's, similar to this one. What he covers in each is pretty much driven by the variables of the picture itself.
-D
Thank you David for this post. I downloaded a couple of the videos and really loved them. Drew explains the process and the exact set-up in a way that is both approachable and detailed.
As an award-winning photojournalist, making the transition to using lighting on portrait shoots, I find it easy to get into lighting cul-de-sacs and end up repeating myself.
Even from these two episodes I now have lots of new ideas and feel keen to try and apply some of the tricks and tips to the next shoot I do.
The animated illustrations are a particularly good way of showing lighting rather than always seeing the actual set-up in a photo. It introduces the details in a way that makes them easier to apply to theprofoto heads and different light-shaping tools I use.
Many thanks once again. I'll certainly be getting the rest over the next few weeks.
J
I often look at location lighting diagrams and feel like there is a missing element. An ambient exposure reading would sure help me out. The variable of in this case the ambient fill can have an enormous impact on the overall feel of the image.
I never get hung up on ratios and diagrams but I do think that if one is going to go to the effort of trying to explain the lighting...
Am I way off base?
I was very fortune to be among the small group of beta-testers for the entire series and I have to say I was completely blown away. There is something to learn from every episode and on a couple of the shots Drew even shows the original image before any post processing.
Personally I highly recommend them. :)
Amazing stuff. I don't like to be one of those guys who nitpicks photos, but I do have to say that the doves actually detract from the image to me since they are in proper scale to the subject. Had they been shrunk down to be more "life-sized" to the miniature homes, I think "Alice" would have had a much stronger impact. In any case, thanks to David and Drew for the education.
Hi all, first post here.
I have seen his work before and his images have always been in my top ten of photographers, so great post and the fact I have a insight to how his mind works and even better to see how they were done.
"Amazing stuff. I don't like to be one of those guys who nitpicks photos, but I do have to say that the doves actually detract from the image to me since they are in proper scale to the subject. Had they been shrunk down to be more "life-sized" to the miniature homes, I think "Alice" would have had a much stronger impact. In any case, thanks to David and Drew for the education."
I agree with Mike about Doves.
The image still looks killer.
Great stuff and I enjoyed watching the video but I have a bit of a different take on the doves. I think that they kill the illusion of "Alice" being large. I think that if the birds were small (in proportion with their would-be relative size to the buildings) then her largeness would have been reinforced. Just my humble opinion
Doves? Doves? What in the Wide World of Sports is going on here? This was a post about a series of educational videos and yet some people take time to complain about doves?
Fantastic behind the scenes glimpse of Drew's process. Thanks for sharing!
The schematic drawing of light placement is simply brilliant. Clear, decomposed, all the information in it and beautiful. Very 'didactic'. Thanks a lot for that. Such a clear explanation is very often missing in a lot of 'how to light' video.
Thank you again,
Greetings
really awesome lightning. but do the doves really fit there? the houses are small and the doves are the normal size, if they were not there (on the rooftops) maybe the gigant Alice effect would have worked better.
I love what Drew did in the "Alice" shoot. My question is can a similar shot of similar quality be achieved with a DSLR. I'm a student of photography at the Art Institute and not very familiar with medium format digital systems mostly due to the exorbitant prices, but also due to the fact that medium format photography was taken out of the course outline. I'd like to know if such a result could be achieved with a DSLR and what techniques could be employed to make it happen.
I've just realised, I live less than 20 miles away from where he shot this!! Right! I'm off to ask the owner if he'll let me re-create this scene :)
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