I Used Only Window Light and DIY Backdrop to Create Portraits on a Budget

This video is sponsored by Evoto AI. Hey guys, Irene here, welcome back to my YouTube channel. Today I want to get back to my roots and show you how I took some self-portraits on a budget. If you've been following me for a while, you might remember my DIY videos. When I first started photography, I couldn't afford expensive backdrops, lighting equipment or studio rentals. But I made it work with a small budget and, you know, a few creative ideas. So for today's shoot, we're going to be using a DIY backdrop I made from cheap wallpaper, some roses my husband bought me, so technically they're free, a thrifted dress and some natural light in my living room. So let's get started. So the idea for this DIY backdrop actually came to me quite a few years ago when I saw this photo by Sue Bryce on Pinterest. And I've actually had it saved on my phone since 2016. Pretty crazy. But I absolutely loved the background in this image and I thought maybe I can create something similar using wallpaper. So I found this one on AliExpress and I will link it in the description. But there are tons of other really pretty options both on AliExpress or Amazon. Amazon is definitely more expensive, but the shipping is way faster. So it's up to you. I also found some really cool textured wallpaper on AliExpress that I'm already eyeing for my next DIY. So the first time I tried making this backdrop, I thought that I just glue the wallpaper onto a paper backdrop. But I definitely wouldn't recommend doing that as it came out super duper warped. So this time, I decided to just tape the wallpaper pieces together with some packing tape. First step, I laid the wallpaper out with the right side facing up and lined up the edges as best as I could. Then I attached the pieces with masking tape. This tape isn't super sticky so I'll be able to remove it later. Once I had three pieces taped together, I flipped the wallpaper over and reinforced it with some packing tape. I also added a few strips across the width of the backdrop to hold everything together a little bit better. Then I flipped it back over and removed the masking tape. And it turned out way better than I even expected. And I only spent about $20 for both wallpaper and the tape. Next I did my hair and makeup and went into my craft room to decide on an outfit. We are in my craft room. This is where I keep tons of my costumes that I use for photo shoots and like accessories and flowers. And then I like to do my little DIYs. And I wanted to show you guys how I normally go about like choosing the outfits. So for this photo shoot, I'm going to be leaning very much into that inspo picture. So we're definitely going to try something pink. And I have this really beautiful old dress that I got from Etsy. It just looks like tethered and old. I think it's going to look very nice with that vintage looking backdrop. So we have this as an option. I'm also really loving this as an option. I got this dress from LaceMaid recently and I haven't used it yet. And blue on blue might look really, really nice. In the end, I actually went with this flowy cream dress that I thrifted. And I also decided to add some flowers as a prop. As I mentioned before, my husband got me these flowers and I was about to throw them away but thought that they still looked quite nice. And I really love that they kind of matched with the dress. So I held some of them in my hand for the pictures and I also put some in my hair. For my setup, I used Canon R5 with the RF 50mm f1.8 lens. And I decided to tether my camera to my laptop using Avoto AI. As it's super helpful to see the images on the big screen, especially while taking self-portraits. Now you've seen me use this editing software to retouch my images before. And now you can also tether through it, which is awesome. I love that I can apply presets as I shoot. So the images already look amazing on my screen. And this is perfect if you're working with the client and want to show them a polished version on the spot. With retouch skin and color correction, rather than just showing the raw images straight out of the camera. But that's not all that Avoto AI can do and stay tuned for the editing tutorial later in the video. Since I wanted to keep this whole photoshoot on the budget, instead of using flash or LEDs, I'm just using natural light coming from the window in front of me. At the beginning of the photoshoot, the weather outside was a little bit gloomy. So the light coming inside was very soft and one directional. But then the weather outside changed to something very magical. So as I was shooting, the sun is going down outside and I saw that some of it was peeking through this window right here. So I thought, why not move my backdrop just a little bit to the side and have some of the light come in here and light me up from the side. So it's like having two lights set up with just windows. And it actually looks pretty nice. So I'm going to go ahead and take some pictures with that. For my camera settings, I wanted to open up the aperture to f1.8 or f2 to let in as much light as possible into the lens. As the light coming through the front window wasn't really that bright. And for my shutter speed, I stayed at 250. I never go below 250 to avoid any motion blur and to keep my images sharp. And finally, I compensated with my ISO and stayed at around 500. I would much rather shoot higher ISO than lower shutter speed. So now I want to show you how I very quickly edited these images with help of Evoto AI. You've seen me use Evoto AI a bunch. I still really, really love it. It's one of the best. So I'm going to go straight into portrait retouching and just start going through some of these sliders one by one. I do the freckle and acne removal. So this does it for the face. Here's the before and after. As you can see, it took out some of the imperfections. We're going to do dark circles. As you can see, that removed the dark circles. Lip wrinkles and flakes. Next, what do we have? Smile lines. I do have those removed. Body blemishes. Okay, that's a big one. Look at my arm over here. Look at the before and after. That is absolutely insane. Do you know how long it would take me to retouch my arm? And the fact that I can do it with like one click is just absolutely insane to me. Next, neck wrinkle. I do have those. So that's going to be removed. And let's go now to skin retouching. We are going to do some dodge and burn for the face. They also have now the sculpt dodge and burn, which is really cool. It can kind of bring back some of the dimension in the face. So we're going to do just like a little bit. Let's do texture smoothing. I don't need to do. I actually quite like to leave a lot of texture in and I'm not going to do any skin softening. But we are going to do some dodge and burn on the body. So dodge and burn on the body. Now for the skin texture, this is quite interesting. You can do dewy, satin or matte. I'm just going to leave it the way it is. Although dewy looks quite nice as well. OK, maybe, you know what? Maybe just a tiny bit of glossiness. And I actually like to add a little bit of texture and a little bit of clarity here. My arm is quite darker than the rest of my body. So let's do a little bit of this. Unify face complexion, unify body complexion. OK, maybe not as much. And look at that before and after so far. It's pretty insane. Now, I also really like that you can control the temperature of just the body. So I can make it more cool or warmer. I think I'm just going to leave it the way it is. I think it looks nice here. Or I can even give it a little bit of a tint. I absolutely love this. Now, let's see skin radiance. That's kind of cool. Just brightens up the skin. I do want to add just a little bit of that. But I also really like this select skin tone. I don't really like to change anyone's skin tone. But when you add an overall skin tone on top of yours, it kind of just unifies everything. So what I like to do is I like to find the one that matches my skin tone in the picture and then add just a tiny bit of an amount so that it kind of unifies everything together. And look at that before and after. Isn't that insane? It's pretty crazy. Within just, I don't know, a few minutes, I was able to fully retouch the skin on this image. I also really like the makeup section of Avoto AI. So you can add just a little bit more makeup. Do you see the difference? I just like that it's quite natural looking. And then I really love adding some blush. Look at these. Look at these options. Again, it just looks so natural. Let's see which one looks the best. That one looks really nice. See the before and after? Let's add just a little bit. And I also really love adding the lipstick. Let's add just some lipstick here. And again, you can add as much as you want or as little as you want. Let's add this one. And yeah, that looks great. Isn't that insane? It's just crazy what it can do. Every time I do this, I'm just like in awe of what this software can do. Now, once you're done with your image and you like the way it looks, you can just go save preset. I'm going to call it Irene. I'm going to save that. And now when you go to your next image, all you have to do is just select that preset and it will do all of that in literally a second. Again, look at the before and after. Isn't that insane? So I can retouch pretty much my whole set in about five minutes. Again, here's another image. I can just press the preset that I created and it's done with just one click. What I love about Avoto AI is that they're always updating their software and coming up with some really cool new tools. And one of them is in the color adjustments and it's called Color Match. So essentially what you can do is upload a reference and it will match the colors from your reference to the image that you're editing. You can use your own images like I did here. Here is a picture I shot a while ago of myself. And this is the color match that I did, which I think is really, really good. Like look at the reference image and this one, like it matched it really, really well. You can also adjust the amount. And yeah, I think it looks really good. You could also just upload like a random image you found online. Let's do that right now. Let's use this picture. I just found it on Pinterest. And this is what I did here. And I think it's really, really cool. Also, I wanted to show you this was the edited image from the shoot that I fully color corrected. And I used it as a reference and this is what it did. And again, I think it did such a great job. Now, what you can also do, let's say that you really like this retouch, right? Let's make it just a little bit less strong or maybe let's keep it this way. Now, what you could also do is have this as a base and then go ahead and do some more adjustments. So it has all of the adjustments that you would have in something like Lightroom. So you can go ahead and change your shadows, your whites, your highlights, the clarity, the temperature. It has the curves and all of your color corrections, like pretty much color grading. Again, it has pretty much everything that it would have in Lightroom. But again, such a cool way to edit your images. So check out Evoto AI if you haven't already. I highly, highly recommend it. You can download and try it for free. And if you like it, use code IRENE15 to save 15% of your purchase. Links will be in the description. And let's get back into the video. Now, I will admit that I don't love taking self-portraits, but I find that this is the best time for me to experiment and try out new techniques. I have shot in this living room for years, but this is the first time where I've discovered that at a certain time the back window gives me this beautiful backlighting. So now, I can't wait to try this out with the model next. So this is it. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Let me know which one was your favorite picture. And if you would like to see more DIY videos. I definitely have lots and lots of other ideas. So give this video a like if you liked it. Subscribe to my channel. And I'll see you guys in my next one. Bye!