lighting Is This Just Light?

[kases]

or some kind of editing, effect or something?

how did they make the picture look so incredibly nice?

http://img314.imageshack.us/img314/9849/bscap0047vb.jpg

second example:


http://img314.imageshack.us/img314/853/bscap0050iv.jpg

i'm using premiere pro and getting after effects, let me know if there's a way.

if you don't know what i mean, i'm talking about her skin looking so much like you used photoshop's blur and then faded the blur through darkening. it looks like art.


another example... any way to get that done in video?

 

[clive]

it just looks so much better then when i turn something regular in to black and white.

That might be because B&W needs to be lit differently than for colour. With B&W it's all about contrast, making sure that you have strong highlights and dark shadows, otherwise everything comes out in shades to grey.

 

[Shaw]

ND cuts down the amount of light without changing the colour temperature. This effectively makes the depth of field smaller

Only if you can open your iris more though . Once you have it wide open the DOF isn't going to change due to ND. And, of course, lenses are softer at their extremes (wide open + shut)