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28 Days Review

Did 28 challenges based on what would actually help you create an incredible portrait studio. I'm going to go through them quickly. Natural light, okay because I shoot natural light. I love it. It's soft, it's beautiful, it's contemporary, it's modern glamour and I love it. Mapping your sets and outfits, so teaching you how to create a shoot in an hour and a half where you map out your sets, your outfits, and how to shoot them. One composition, five poses. Every single time somebody lies down, sits down, or stands in front of you, you need to nail five sellable poses before you move on okay? And this will be the most significant posing lesson that you can learn. Flow posing, you must learn when somebody is standing in front of you and you are holding that camera, when you go blank, you know that moment when you're like, you take a photo, you look at the back of the camera, you think oh no, you take another one, you think, oh double no. You take another one and you are lost. All I do no...

w, is rely on what I know and what I know is how to move people. So I start with simple things like this, turn your shoulders, and I act like I'm just looking for the best light, the best shoulder, really what I'm looking for is that sweet pose where I just see that moment where they're in the perfect position. I'm like move your shoulders this way, slow down, slow down, slow down. Look back, look back, look back, lean forward, lean forward. Shoulder around, and then I find it. But I see new photographers unable to do this. I see older photographers unable to do this. I photographed a girl that does a lot of modeling and acting last month, and she said to me, "In the 12 years I've been photographed "I have never had a photographer direct me." She said, "You directed me right down "to what my hands were doing." I said, "Yeah." She said, "Why don't other photographers know this?" Flow posing, it will change your photographic career because you've got to learn how to take control and direct people, so when you feel that most amount of fear when you're stuck, when you don't know what to say, this is where your assertiveness will take control of the situation and you will practice this. This is probably the session I want you to practice most, the flow posing, the moving through the flow of the poses. If you can't get that right, pre-draw your poses before you start shooting, lock down at least 10 poses and 10 scenarios before you start taking the photograph. Trust me on this one, 'cause once your energy gets going and you're shooting you need to visually have a reminder of what you wanna achieve, otherwise you forget. How often do you look at a shoot and go, dammit why didn't I try that? Dammit, why didn't I look at the hands? Dammit, why didn't I do that looking over the shoulder pose that Sue always talks about? Dammit, why didn't I? How often do you do that? All the time, every time, right? Okay, I could teach posing still, I could do posing class after posing class, after posing class. But I am telling you right now, it is nothing to do with posing and it's everything to do with confidence, okay? So look at this, Nicki can you come up here? Now Nicki and Mapuana are here today, and the reason I brought Nicki and Mapuana here is as you know, they're doing their own businesses and you've followed them right from scratch, which I think is really cool, but I've got a mixture of people that we've been watching and people that are new to my audience. But what's really important is Nicki and Mapuana are not afraid of being really honest about where they're struggling and where they're not. Okay, so if Nicki's my model, go back. Okay, I've got my camera, I'm photographing Nicki, I'm completely blank, I'm like (groans) I've got a couple of choices, look over and say, "This is the shoot that I've designed for you." So before I start shooting her, I was like, I love the yellow dress you brought, so I though something flowing and moving. I really love the white lingerie, so I thought something lying on the white ottoman. I love the black dress you brought so this is like a silhouette. And I draw it in stick figures. My clients think I've just locked it down. What I've done is given myself 10 prompts to shoot her. Okay, that's number one. If you don't do that, and you're in this position here where you've got the camera and all of a sudden, I'm like, that looks like crap, okay. And I get my light, and that looks bad too. And she's like, are you getting something. And you're sweating, you know, sweating and you've lost the ability to speak properly. I don't know how that happens. And it's really weird, it's a different kind of sweat than normal, 'cause you emit the smell of fear that is quite pungent, very odd. You don't have it on a normal, you don't have it when you run for an hour, it's kinda like what is that, where is that coming from. And then you realize it's you. Okay, right. This is all I want you to think about, okay, Sue says flow, Sue says flow. Rotate, that's all you have to do is rotate her. Rotate her shoulders. Perfect, stay there. Move this shoulder forward, chin around this way. And just tilt this way, chin this way and down. I'm just gonna pull your earring here. That's beautiful Nicki. Take a shot, bang. Eyes down, little smile, beautiful. Big smile, look up at me, let's have a big laugh, hahahahaha, love that okay. Four shots already, bang, bang, bang, flow. Think like this, we flow with our shoulders, then we flow with our hips. Let's move them side to side. We move our hips like, perfect, let's tuck this hand around to define the waist. We flow with our shoulders, let's flow with our hips, that's perfect. Let's move our feet a little bit. Let's go back and forth and just flow with the skirt, slow down, there it is, slow down, lean back, lean back, bring that chin around. Think about it like this, you flow with the shoulders, flow with the hips, flow with the feet. Let's just start moving them a little bit. And some people are real awkward movers, you know they're like this. Okay, so you're not trying to get them to do anything, this is not like, you can't dance. How many people do you honestly get in front of you that are like this, you know like I can do all of this? You don't, everybody is generally kind of like this. But all you're looking for is movement enough to go stop, push your hip further, drop the shoulder down, push your chin towards me, there it is. All you're looking for is not movement, 'cause you're a stills photographer, you're just flowing their body to give you the opportunity to see. And it makes a difference. Thanks Nicki. So that flow is vital. Posing couples, because let's face it, we photograph women, but if you can photograph couples, you make more money. 'Cause if the boy's involved, he's more likely to spend than her on her own if he doesn't want those images. Capturing beautiful connection and expression. This segment of 28 days is one of my favorite. Have you all watched this one? This is one of my favorite, and I'll tell you why. Not only is it the magnificently beautiful Kenna Klosterman. We had so much fun doing that. But this is the single thing that will sell you photographs, learning this, you must learn connection, you must. If you can't connect to the eyes in a photograph, you don't have a portrait. And if you're gonna take beautiful scenes and the girl's not connected and she's out, you must connect her body language. Okay because so often I'll see a beautiful image of a girl on a rock, and she's doing a beautiful flow pose and it makes sense, that's connecting the body language to the scene, and I understand the image. But I don't understand a girl out on the rock doing something awkward and weird and just looking like a girl on a rock doing something awkward and weird. If you're not connected to the eyes, you must be connected to the body language of the image. You're gonna learn my rules. How often do I tell you these rules? Chin, shoulder, hands, hourglass, assymetry, body language, connection, you should be locking these down now. 18 months, and for the people that are about to join us, these are the ones I want you to nail down. They will change the way you shoot. It's such a simple methodology, and it pretty much sums up every part of the body. You don't have beautiful images unless you coach your clients through styling and wardrobe, so in the pitch today we'll talk about that. We'll talk about how you get the maximum out of your shoot by pitching that they bring in more and coaching them. But the truth is, is in your consultation is when your first connection is made and when your first sale is made. Your selling is done before the shoot. If you pitch right, you're not selling after the fact. You're selling right in that moment. And that will change your income. Shooting girls with curves. All right, trust me, there was a period in my life for about eight years where I do not own a photograph of myself. I was too big to stand in front of a camera. I'm about to deliver a talk in Vegas called My Invisible Life, that I could be a portrait photographer, and not own a photograph of myself because I wasn't good enough to be photographed. Do you know how many women are walking on this planet that believe that? And whether they're 10 pounds or 100 pounds overweight, they don't think they're good enough to be photographed. One day, those photographs will be more important to you than anything your family and loved ones will own. You must exist in photographs. Today I'm gonna talk about the pitch. The pitch is why you do what you do, and for me it is to get every woman in front of the camera, every woman in the world. Posing groups of twos, threes, and fours, love this video. It takes you through two girls, three girls, four girls, and the cool part about it is you make glamour dazed. That is not one glamour sale, that is four. Women don't go to the toilet on their own. I'm going to the toilet, I'll come with you. And then once we get in there, it's like, I tell you, we're all chatting and talking about lip gloss, and oh I love your shoes, oh thank you. It doesn't happen in the men's urinal. Happens a lot in the girl's toilet, very social, we like to go places together, we like to chat, we like to have experiences together. I love shooting four girls in a day. It's four times my average in one day. And the best part is I get to hang out with four incredible women that are all friends, and they might have a glass of champagne, but wow, learn to shoot them together, so that you can give them a free shot at the end of their own folios. This has been one of the most significant marketing tools for me, the before and after. You must learn how to do this properly. We are fascinated by the transformation. People wanna see it, it's the one comment I get on my website, love your before and afters. I would never, ever advertise with before and afters if people didn't advertise them. Posing teens, another one of my favorite videos. We must pose teens age appropriately. We don't want them to look like 25 year old hoochies, they're 16, they should look innocent and beautiful and glamorous, like young princesses that they are. You want them to value these images so that when they grow into women, they look back and remember how much they loved and respected themselves as teenagers and how much they deserve to be loved, beautiful, and respected women. And this is such an incredible genre to photograph. Marketing and shooting the family first demographic, I've broken down the shooting demographics into, sorry the selling demographics, into four, which I love. Posing and shooting families, which to me is just a big glamour shoot with a family on the end and more income. The corporate headshot, because I feel like this is both a sustainable income, a viable business model, and every single time a boy or girl comes into my studio, pays $300 or $400 for corporate headshot, which I give them three images for, I potentially am marketing to a new client, a new wife, a new girlfriend, a new sister, a new mother, or if it's a female, I'm marketing to her and all of her girlfriends to come back and do a glamour session. And they've met me, they know me, they trust me, they like me, they've spent money with me, they're a given. Glamour shooting on location, I really wanted to shoot on location for this video because I felt like so many people didn't have studios yet and you can still take beautiful glamour images outside. Contouring, Photoshop, and the two minute rule, I need you to get faster on Photoshop. I could do more segments on this, in fact I might record something soon on the cloning, 'cause so many people are still asking me about it. This incredible demographic, 50 and fabulous, I've now got photographers around the world solely shooting 40 plus, and I'm so proud of these people, these photographers. They're choosing to only photograph 40 plus. How cool is that? These people have all the money in the world, and they're beautiful. Shooting that backlight, nailing it, marketing and shooting the girl power demographic, mother and daughter, because the mother and daughter is my favorite, favorite relationship. The beauty shot, marketing and shooting the independent woman demographic. Posing men, love that segment. Product and price lists, sales and production, and then phone coaching and scripting. Right, that was 28 days. That's what you guys have been working through. For those of you who haven't got it, that's what we want you to come and join us, get it, start working through it, join the study group. Okay, join the study group, it's very, very important.