Lessons

Lesson Info

Posing Q&A

This is from your loony productions and your loony would like says seniors are so used to having pictures taken of them constantly that I have trouble getting them to be themselves. How do you get them to stop posing it's it's really that connection you make at the start and I, um legitimately I met caroline for like, four minutes before you guys saw all the rest of our interactions we've had and all we did was we talked about outfits because I didn't have enough time to go through that and have her change into the first one with you guys today. So I wanted to make sure that we went through that ahead of time so it's establishing that connection with your client, how do you connected them? It's just small talk we talked about we talked about her family she's telling me about her parents and she's telling me a friend that she had that's like five daughters and in the family and no sons and how it's increased. So you just establish a connection with people connecting with people is so cr...

itical to doing this well, does that make sense like it's just making that connection and also treating like you're the professional photographers, so getting them to be themselves a lot of times when I would tell like if I had a kid that's in there, that's like trying to hit their own poses and stuff it doesn't really happen to me that much because I have the presence of like I'm gonna walk you through what we're going to dio I'm gonna walk you through this so and in yeah it's it's it is that easy though I mean I got a sellable session off of that and there's less than there's like twenty pictures on that memory card and it was a little bit harder I saw that it was popping up with errors when I was the leading in camera, so I stopped doing that so there were a couple of those that I would've deleted in camera won't download all those I'm going to do that in a second when I'm not tethered to the computer, so we're going to download the images but this is is easy stuff and I'll tell you right now that I already know which images I'm going to turn into black and white I already know the images that area know what's going down to those images and so it's an easy uh it's easy you go through this work if you have that vision and you have that kind of mental checklist as to what's the next step, it was kind of funny watching during the in the chat room while you were shooting and you know, talking about connecting with them and you're making comments about being old and the funds, and then lisa pointed out that you reference the funds and then used a hashtag in the same conversation, which is really just spending a lot of time. Nice gun on funds for the parents has tax for the kids, no, really, did it maybe feels so old when I was, like, sit like the fonz and this kid, I'm not kidding you, he looked to me like this, I don't know what that means, and then and then I was like, and I was like, well, maybe that was a fluke, and I tried with the next kid, and the kid kind of got the pose and sat like that, and then I told the last guy shot didn't know who the phone's wasn't easy, I didn't either. I just kind of figured, that's what you wanted me to dio, and I never used that expression with the kid again doesn't like, apparently, that is dating. So we've got a question from jolie, who wonders how you handle situations where the subject is self conscious or distracted with having the parent present. If there is, like, maybe they had a bad morning together or something, what do you do, then? I didn't wanna have them amazing story about this, I have a great story about this, so I always want parents in my session I always want parents in my session I would if you ask me one hundred percent of time I'm gonna say yes, I want mom or dad there, so I had this mom come in and book a session from us. She booked the biggest session we had and she said on and it was for her son and she goes, I'm just like, I'm really excited about this and I'm super excited about pictures and I looked at your pricing and I'm definitely going to spend mohr than the highest minimum order you have, so we're gonna get the biggest session because we want the most images and I said, all right and she wanted to come in and like, talk before the session so we sat down, we talked for, like, fifteen minutes and she goes, well, it's really important to me that I get images of him with the violin he's been playing violin since he was two, and I just really want a formal portrait of him in the tuxedo playing the violin, and I was like, okay, I think I can nail that I can do formal violin pictures, so they get along great, like the kid was there for the prion precession consultation, the mom was there, they're just love and they're best friends everything's great they show up the day for the sessions like a three o'clock session. I looked at my watch it's like three o three and the mom comes in the door and she's like, I am so sorry that were so ridiculously late three minutes that's okay? And she goes he's just being such a little turd today, and I can't get him to agree with anything that I'm doing and everything. If I say one thing, he absolutely insists that we do the other thing, and I just I just I told him I'm about turn around, we just aren't going to pictures today, and I'm sitting there thinking like, I'm so great that this is thie energy where bringing him into the session like we're here to have fun and now you guys in the middle of, like, world war three, right? So we go through and like, the kid gets his tux on, and he has no interest in doing these violent pictures, and so every time I get ready to take a picture, I don't know if you guys remember that episode of friends where chandler monica have to do the engagement session, and chandler smiles like this that's really what this kid was doing and he was doing it on purpose just to be a jerk. He was really like didn't want to cooperate so I did all the formals upstairs and we were down I was downstairs waiting for him to come down his next outfit and the mom looks mean just matthew, we need to schedule a reshoot I just I hate these pictures I hate him and I'm sitting thinking like I'm like ten minutes into your two hour session we can't we shouldn't be talking about a reshoot already like that's that's not good like I don't want to do it I'll read shoot a session if they don't love it if I'm having an off day I will happily reshoot this session you don't tell me ten minutes and you hate everything I'm going to do when I gotta work for an hour and fifteen minutes more so the mom so I said where I'm like well, sometimes people don't five and it's obvious that today you guys aren't vibing, so why don't you just go upstairs? And I said the same thing is that the carolina she was leaving as a bride should go have a coke and a smile go hang out and I'll work with him alone because it was a guy I felt okay with that and I said I'll work with him alone and we'll see if it works and he must have heard me as he was coming down the stairs and he goes, yeah mom go have a soda and she goes that's it and she grabs her purse and she's like I'm getting my nails done by and she left the studio she left the city oh so I'm stuck with this kid now I am stuck with them and I'm like gray and so we drove we did the session I brought an assistant we did the location work and as soon as the mom left the session went amazing the kid the smiles came out the pressure was gone he became or engaging with me and it was an amazing that was so different with her not being there and ever since that session I I always say when parents say do you want me in the session? I was I would prefer to have you in the session but ultimately it's lorenzo's decision if he would feel more comfortable with you not being in the session then we are going to have you in the session so it's your call and I put the pressure on the head and really is an empowering thing for them because they can they can determine now they always say yeah, I don't care mom come in like they generally don't fight it but it gives them the option of if they aren't vibing or there's something going on at home that I don't know about it lets them say like no mom you khun just wait upstairs be cool and then you don't have to have that. You don't have to have that uncomfortable interaction, and you don't have to be the one that kick someone out of the session. You don't have to be the one that does that. So so wait do have a lot of questions coming in about the more technical aspects of shooting, and I want to focus this thing mohr on the things that are special about the way that you shoot in the way you run your studio. So, guys, if you do have questions about, like the technical aspects about lighting, about posing out, because if we have a lot of workshops on that, so check out our back catalog. We can look at the catalog, uh, on our website and see all of those you can search for whatever subject you're looking for, or check out our calendar to see what's coming up in the future, where you can also learn about those subject. But for now, for matthew weed, wacker wants to know whether is you use standard poses for all your senior, since it also is so quick. Quick sessions, do you use standard poses for all your seniors? And if they show their friends their pictures, are they all gonna look the same? Absolutely not, um first of all, there's there's basic posing concepts that are going to run truce there are going to be similarities that run through good, posing just because certain things always look better on women. Certain things will always look better with guys, but I I wouldn't have posed a bigger high school senior head on that's, a different pose, and when a senior comes in initially, one of the things that I do always ask is like, hey, where do you go to school? Okay? Oh, you goto, breck, and then I'm like, how did you find out about us? And was like, oh, my friend julie was here last month, I will go look at julie's pictures and make sure that there's, no duplication imposes and backgrounds, I'll do that work while they're changing, and I try to make sure that your session is different, then julie's and your body might dictate that some of the posing be different than your friends and there's. So there's there's certain variations that are going to occur? And I know a lot of poses like it's, not like I don't have ten like, I know a lot of things that are going to work, and so you have to gauge how it's your interaction is with the client there's some clients that are going toe do it better than others and, you know, there's certain if you want if you have a client, it comes and it really just exudes that she wants more fashioning poses, then I'm going to steer that session a different direction than if I have someone who comes in whose so incredibly uncomfortable and doesn't want to be there and isn't happy in their skin and I'm going to treat those poses and that interactions all going to be different like I was goofing with her and the interaction was was much more much more buddy like with her and if she was really, really uncomfortable and she didn't want to be here and it was it was really a weird situation for her, it would've been a much softer approach. It would've been it would've been much more professional interaction. It wouldn't have been quite a cz buddy buddy because I would have tried to drive home that I'm a professional and I know what I'm doing this girl he knew that I'm a professional nose and knew what knew what I was doing. So all right, I have a question from darryl s who says you and many other creative live in structures have always advises of things to watch for before taking the shot? How do you mentally keep a lengthy checklist yet still focused on technical issues like lighting exposure, etcetera get ticked off fixing it photo shop enough times and you will remember it thank you have because it comes back on me I mean if you're I have an employee at the city oh currently that struggles with getting stuff in the background of our images and like she shoots too wide and it drives me nuts and even though we have another person that does our retouching I'm at the point where I say retouch everything leave the junk in the background that's her job to fix after she fixes that enough times she's going to remember to check for that that stuff that's in the background and it's not that she's not a great employee it's not that she doesn't do great work it's that she had she struggles with that same think keeping that checklist for me I get frustrated wasting my time fixing things that I could have done in camera and if you really sit there and figure out like I just took me twenty min wants to take out her bra strap you're going to make sure you know like to me it's not that I think you have a list that I just remember like I don't want to do that again I never want to do that again so I make sure that I correct it in camera and it's the same thing like she had hair I don't know if you guys could see it in the camera the hair that was kind of coming across her neck and I knew that that wasn't a good look and I knew that that was going to be something that if I left that in the image the mom was going to complain about and if she had if I hadn't moved it yes, I could fix that in post I could've clone it out I could have digitally reshaped her hair and style and I couldn't and I want to remove it move on well and we have been should we get her bracelet back? I don't know where that went. I want one final question for this segment about whether you have the students do their own hair and makeup do you have a hair and makeup artist? You send them to a hair and makeup artist? How do you handle there there? General? Look, we have a hair makeup artist that we work with for our boudoir line now with that line we have like we have ah deal structured and she comes in and she doesn't we pay eighty and we charge one twenty five we charge more than what hair makeup cost because I need to make money while you're using my studio um if we have high school kids that want hair makeup, I don't include it in any packages just because it would I would have to charge for it I would have to have a charge for it, so it kind of goes against the principles of no session fees, no packages, but I'm goingto have a charge for this. It just makes the marketing more confusing, so we don't advertise it. But on han request will bring someone in, and they generally have to ask for it some wonderful. All right, thank you for the shoot. Being able to see it was great. It was funny, you know, yesterday we were talking, and even someone today said this one shot thing is freaking me out because people are so used to shooting so many times to get coverage and make sure that someone who just gets in gets the shot and gets out his rare to see. So it was awesome hearing the theory yesterday and then seeing it put into practice practice today. So what are we doing in the upcoming second? The next time I'm gonna walk you guys through the editing of this now in segment two today, I'm actually gonna be able to show you guys and explain it a little bit more, but we do the editing of this entire session from download sort, color, correct process get ready to print, you're going to see that whole thing done. Now, it's going to be. I'm going to be able to break it down a little bit more in segment, too, because I have more time and in segment for today, you guys going to see an entire session? So everything I just did to finished j pegs in one segment. So on that one, I'm not gonna have much time to take questions in the middle of because we're gonna be moving. But, it's, we're gonna walk you through the entire digital workflow for one session and explain it kind of step by step.