Quick Snapmatic Tutorials: Moody Warehouse Shots

[Mach1bud]

Quick Snapmatic Tutorials

The Moody Warehouse Shot

 

I often have people ask me, "Mach, how did you take this snap?" so I have decided that I am gonna post some random tutorials

about how to create Snapmatics similar to ones I have made. Of course I encourage you to experiment and find your own style,

but maybe I can help guide you in a direction.

 

In this tutorial, I will show you how to take the "Moody Warehouse Shot" as I like to call it. Very easy to do, and it comes out looking like this.

 

 

 

As you can see, it can be done in color or in black and white. All you need is a Vehicle Warehouse. The one you use to store your stolen vehicles to sell later. Any of them will work, any interior design, and any location. Light shines through the sky lights between 6 am and 8 pm, leaving a very focused square beam of light on the floor of the warehouse. There are multiple beams of light and any of them will work.

 

Step 1, stand in the light.

 

 

Step 2, adjust your camera. Generally zooming in 1.5x or more is the best place to start.

 

 

Step 3, filter selection. What I find best for this shot is Night Moves. If you are creating a B/W shot, Glacial is the best choice. Crank Contrast up to 100. This makes your blacks blacker, in other words it makes the shadows better. That is the main focus of this shot, the shadows. At this point you are going to want to make sure your depth of field is set to focus on your character.

 

 

Step 4, fine tuning. This is a dark photograph, so you are going to want your Vignette a little bumped up to darken the edges of the shot, and lower the overall brightness until you are satisfied with the background. If you want more color in your character, you can bump up the saturation very slightly, but not too much because your character will start to glow. For a B/W shot, all the same still applies but do not bump up the saturation, if anything, lower it.

 

 

And that's it! That is all there is to it! No custom sets or fancy tricks required. Just mostly standing in the right place at the right time and recording.

 

A couple tips: The more detailed your character is, the better he or she will look in the shadows, as seen by my very wrinkly old man's face. Also, using the right stick to "look around" while you are recording will turn your characters head in different directions, this can be helpful for different looks and different shadow placement on the characters upper body.

 

I hope someone finds this useful, if anyone want's to share their shots using the above method as a guide, please feel free to do so. Thanks for reading.

[HKM87]

Great one Mach! I hope there's more.

[Mach1bud]

Great one Mach! I hope there's more.

 

There will be more, at least that is my plan.

[Mangled Crow]

Excellent little tutorial centered around shadowed snapmatics, gotta appreciate this dude.

[AndreasDuke]

Thanks Mach. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us

[HKM87]

Made it!

 

[Mach1bud]

Great job Hot Rod. A quick tip, if you want your shirt to be less "glowy", lower the overall brightness until it dims down. After that, you will notice that the shot seems way too dark, but if you lower the Vignette a bit it will lighten the shot without giving you the glow. Maybe even up the saturation a tiny bit too. The vignette can hide or show a lot though if you play with it.

Just something I come across a lot, in direct light skin/light colored clothes tend to glow quite a bit.

Edited May 9, 2017 by Mach1bud