Lighting for YouTube Videos - Make Your Videos STAND OUT!

What is up everybody? Welcome to the channel. My name is Ben Johnson and today we're going to be taking a look at how to use lighting to make a scene go from this to this. Whether you are into YouTube, photography, video production, design, or art, you'll soon begin to realize just how important lighting is. Lighting can completely change the look, feel, quality, and emotion of your image. It doesn't matter if you're using the highest quality camera available or simply an iPhone, you can still use lighting to create an amazing look for your image. So now we're going to take a look at how we've set up this shot for today's video. I approach lighting a scene a lot like a blank canvas, so the first step is going to be to turn off all the lights. Once all of the lights are off, it's really awesome because you have a completely blank canvas to start throwing lights onto. The key light is the main light source for your image. A great place to start with your key light is setting the light at a 45 degree angle from your subject. Alright, we've got our key light on. The only problem is it's pretty bright, so we're going to want to dial that down a little bit. When it comes to adjusting brightness, we have two options. Step number one is going to be to move the light away from your subject or angle it away from your subject. By doing this, you'll create less light on the subject. The only problem is it may create unwanted spill in other areas of your shot. The other solution is to get a light that is dimmable. This way you can adjust the brightness of the light without sacrificing the placement. Alright, the overall brightness is a lot better now, but a new issue that has come up is there's a pretty bad glare in my glasses and that could be a bit distracting. So in order to fix this, we're going to actually move our key light to the side. This is going to do two things for us. One, it's going to eliminate the glare that was in my glasses. And two, it's going to create a little bit of dimension to the shot by adding shadow to this side of my face. One other thing you guys may be thinking is, Ben, you look crazy orange. So in order to fix this, we're either going to need to adjust the white balance on the camera or the color temperature of the light. I highly recommend investing in a light that has control over the color temperature. This way you can nail the white balance every time. So now that we've got our key light dialed in, the next step is deciding if we want to use a fill light and if so, how much. The key light, while being awesome for the side of the face that it's lighting, also introduces a lot of shadow on the opposite side. This can be used to create a cinematic look, but it may not be ideal for every type of video. To help minimize the shadows that are created from the key light, we're going to introduce a fill light. For the fill light, we're going to bring in a secondary light at a lower brightness level and angle it until we get the right amount of balance that we want. For this shot in today's video, I've decided that I want a little bit of shadow to make the shot overall look more natural than just completely flat. However, I definitely don't want the shadows as harsh as it was before. This shot is already looking a billion times better than it did when we started. Overall, the image is better exposed and the light is a lot more flattering. For our next step, we're going to be adding in what is known as the rim light. This light will be placed off camera, higher up, and angled down to illuminate the edges around my head and shoulders. It's called a rim light because the light actually creates a little bit of a rim around the head and shoulders, which helps separate your subject from the background. This is great because overall it's going to make your image less flat and more dimensional. Now that we have our key light, fill light, and rim light, the only thing left to mention is practicals. Practicals are lights that actually appear within the frame of your image. Typically, they are used to add color, brighten up an area, or just add a little bit of ambience to your shot. For today's video, I'm going to turn on the light bulb lamp that is on my desk, as well as the marquee sign. In addition to this, I'm also going to be using a LIFX Z-Strip that is found on the back of my desk. The cool thing about the Z-Strip is that you can make it be any color that you want. For this video, I'm going to go with blue because it's more on par with my branding. Alright, well that about wraps up this video and I hope that you guys were able to learn something valuable from this. And if you are starting to implement any of these tips and tricks into your videos, let me know in the comments below. I would love to check them out. Thanks so much for watching. Before you guys leave, make sure to hit that like button, subscribe, turn on notifications, and as always, stay creative.