vorhänge wohnzimmer großes fenster

hey guys,it's me - lyonel. today i want to show you how me made this picture of the wanderer in the cloud forest. enjoy! creative lightning the inspiration for this project was caspar david friedrich. you propably all know this painting here. "wanderer above the sea of fog" it's one of my absolute favorite paintings. it's also standing in my office, as you can see here. i really liked the central perspective of this picture and the human in nature. it's inspiring. i wanted to do my own modern version.

i put the wanderer out of the mountains into the forrest. before the whole shooting actually took place, i had to prepare myself first. in this example i drew a draft sketch. i skribbled the idea. with such a draft sketch we can see how the final picture is going to look like. it's very practical, as you can add more details during drawing that cross your mind. in this example, the hat and the pose. the pose i picked for marco, the upright standing in the forrest, almost apathetic, was also inspired by an artist. from the surrealistic painter renã© magritte.

you probably know these typical paintings of anonymous gentlemen with suit, coat and hat. there is this one painting, where it's raining lots of gentlemen. this inspired me and i wanted to have this for our picture. for the glowing umbrella we created something special. we've been creative and thought we use a translucent umbrella. we normally use these translucent umbrellas as light formers for lightning. we often use them for outdoor shootings. for this shooting we thought we'd alienate the umbrella and use it like a real umbrella. we simply needed the translucent umbrella, opened of course, an adapter, which we stuck to the handle.

onto the adapter a remote release and a flashlight. with the difference, that we put the flashlight at the end of the handle, so the light could spread evenly. as location we decided for the "groãÿer feldberg" in the taunus. the forest we have up there is untouched and looks enchanted. even though there wasn't snow at our shooting day, we still had very low temperatures. that's why it was important that we reduced the time for shooting to the essential. so we, as a team, didn't have to freeze too long. that's why preparation was really important. but the cold wasn't just negative, it had some positive effects. the fog, which we needed for our mystical atmosphere, lasted longer because of the cold.

this forrest provides a beautiful background from many perspectives. from this side we had a really nice contre-jour "wall". it looked really nice on site, but the glowing umbrella, which was too bright for the also bright background, couldn't show to advantage. for light to be seen, it needs darkness. meaning, we needed a darker background. we rotated in an angle of 90 degrees and situated marco in front of a darker part of the forrest, where we didn't have backlight. the flashlight can take effect much better now. left: background bright, contre-jourright: background dark, less ambient light

the umbrellas position was very important too, as it is the light source. depending on how the umbrella is being held, the cue state is different. i wanted to have a silhouetted illumination. it was important that he didn't hold the umbrella behind his back, because then his back would be illuminated. the umbrella had to be positioned in front of him, so he would be frame by the light. we didn't need to take many photos, because we already planned the picture beforehand. after five or six shots, the had the picture. in post-production i adjusted the colors and contrasts and added a light beam, which supports our mystical atmosphere. done is our picture.

wrap-up what we need for such a creative shooting with flashlight: 1. write/draw down your idea in this situation we drew a draft sketch. i recommend this to everyone working with something you usually don't. otherwise preparation for a shooting is really important. 2. (in this situation) what background do we have/need we decided for a forrest, because it fits to the picture. plus, we payed attention to how bright the background is, because we were working with the flashlight. 3. we have to make sure that the elements we want to illuminate are suggestive for the idea of the picture.

you shouldn't do this somehow, just so everything is bright, but you have to try to tell a story. 4. what shouldn't be forgotten, the post-production. the pictorial design doesn't stop with the photography, but we can supplement the impact in the post-production. finally i want to tell you, we can do a lot of stuff with flashlights. here we used one in an umbrella. we've also used them in lanterns, or made a lampshade out of jerome. you can do a lot of things with them, just be creative and tell your story! i hope you enjoyed this video. i'm always excited for your feedback that you give me in the comments, if this video inspired you. i wish you lots of fun for your shootings. we see us in the next video! bye.

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