Lessons
Class Introduction
02:42 2Overcoming Common Challenges Of Photographing Children
05:12 3Recognizing Specific Challenges Quickly To Get The Best Out of All Subjects
14:55 4Warming Up Your Subject
06:22 5Drawing Out The Shy Child
11:31 6Working With The "Feels Everything More" Child
05:30 7Photographing The One Who Doesn't Want To Be There
03:40 8Working With Sibling Groups
03:12In-Studio Shoot: Rapid Child Portraits
31:23 10Gear And Accessory Considerations
14:28 11Portrait Lenses
36:41 12Deconstructing A Shoot In Process
14:53 13Simple, Effective Lighting Techniques For Authentic Portraits
21:59 14Live Shoot: Photographing Siblings
52:49 15Review Of Earlier Shoot Images
02:13 16Post-Processing With On1
17:56 17Real Time Edit From Live Shoot
25:10 18Presenting Your Images
08:59 19Portrait Critiques
19:20 206 Tips To Capture Children's Portraits
15:31Lesson Info
Presenting Your Images
Let's say, what are we gonna do next, after we take these images? Why don't we throw them in to Animoto and create a slideshow. I referenced that earlier during my business class that I think one of the best ways to present an image is to make sure you set it up so when the client first sees it, the impact is the strongest. That's what I want them to have. So if I want the impact to be as strong as possible, I need to make sure that they are seeing it in the most appealing way possible. So, are you guys familiar with Animoto? (laughing) (mumbles) yes. Everybody else is saying no? Okay, so Animoto is basically a video software program, I think that would be the way you'd describe it, that enables you to quickly create video, and the reason you'd want to create video, in this case, it's to share with my clients. In the case of me wanting to actually move my work and have people notice it, and have a marketing platform of some sort, (laughing) I'm gonna put that one in there, it's great b...
ecause it affords me the opportunity to get all the social media kick, the SEO kick, the boosting in social media feeds kick that I'm gonna get by uploading a video that I'm not gonna get if I just upload a photo, and for that reason alone, it's a really good idea to start looking into some sort of program where you can create slideshows quickly. So, I just moved some in there. I'm going in here, I'm opening up Animoto. It's gonna ask me right away, which video do you want to create? I can do, on the left, the Slideshow Video, which is what I use for my clients, and on the right, I can do the Marketing Video, which is what I used to brand my coffee shop, but also, what I would do when I want to put together ideas for clients about certain types of work I do, or if I want to reach a market to advertise my work. So I'm gonna go in and create a Slideshow Video, video and it's, you know, as simple as this. You kinda pick which one you want. I actually helped them build this one, called Innocence, which is really fun, but it's a premium version, and not everybody will have a premium version. So let me just do the real simple one, which is called, I believe, Simplicity, there you go. I'm going to create a video. How do I create a video? I just easily drag and drop images in, I pick a song, I go ahead and decide anything that I want to hang out there longer. I'll show you exactly what I'm saying. So, this is a Creative Live Sheet, these are my final images, I'm going to select them all, and just drag them in to Add Pics and Video, oh I can Upload, that's even easier, hello, thank you. Go ahead and take all these. Select All, Open, come on in. So a couple things that Animoto's gonna tell me is one of the things it's gonna tell me is whether or not my files are too large to fit easily into this format. That happens when, I should have thought about this ahead of time, I'm now shooting with a D850, and the D850 is creating 50 megabyte files, and so I am basically not resizing any of them, so I'm gonna start this again, because otherwise it's not fair to them. (mumbles) open, ooh I have nothing to do, that is great, and create. Let's go back to creating. Let me make sure I put in smaller files so you're not sitting here looking at me the whole time saying are you done yet? Create Video, back to what I was saying. As you're doing that, question specifically about how you use Animoto from Ada Jones, who's wondering if you use their Square Videos for Facebook and Instagram. So the thing that's great about Square Videos, great question, the thing that's great about Square Videos is it literally takes up significantly more room in your feed. So think about when you're looking at any sort of program, and you have things scrolling through right, you're seeing videos, you're seeing all these cute things, if an image is like this, or like this, what if it's all together like that? It's gonna block out and it's gonna stand out a lot more in a feed, and it's gonna be more eye-catching. So the Square format, I think is great for videos. For any sort of videos that's marketing the work I do, I love that (laughing). Sorry, I'm realizing that I'm pulling up all kinds of thing here. I'm just gonna throw this all in just to show you a video. So, the Square format, I think is fabulous for that reason. When I'm sending my images to my clients, I am using the regular style, I'm using a horizontal, I'm using a vertical, I'm using something that I'm gonna actually deliver them and it's a proof for my shoot, and sometimes their Square format, but a lot of times their not. So I'm gonna basically give them the proofs of whatever is happening, in terms of the shoot I've just delivered. The ideal reason, and the reason I use Animoto, and love using them, is that, 'cause it used to take me like an hour, an hour, to build a slideshow after a client meeting. When I first started using, I used ProShow Gold, yep, do you guys remember that? And I used it, and I would have to upload every single image individually, and make sure that it was all sized exactly to their specs and I'd have to go find music and thread it through, and I'd have to make sure it timed properly, and it took me like an hour on building a slideshow to now being down to about seven to 10 minutes when I'm building an Animoto slideshow. When my clients are getting their slideshows, it is really easy for them to be, I always envision this, their like walking through a store, their like doing the dishes, their glancing at their phone, all the things I'm doing when I'm getting emails, and I don't want them to get this slideshow that is setup to web, it's a link, they get that slideshow and they are so busy doing a million other things, that there's no impact, that I just worked so hard to create. You know how much work it is to do a shoot, process a shoot, pull it all together, set it up in slideshow, send it to them? And if it's an after thought to them when their looking at it, I've lost every sort of kind of momentum I'm gonna get when I want to go into the sale. So I'm telling them, you're about to get this slideshow, I want you to turn down the lights, I want you to be in a distraction-free environment, I want you to turn up the speakers so you can hear the music, and I want you to have this experience, because I think it matters that much. So that's what, that's what I'm thinking when I send this over. Why don't I just run through how to do it, and not worry so much. Exactly. Okay. This would be a song that's in here, but I can always click through here and say give me some other songs. I can choose any of these songs. I could play them and see how they sound. I don't think I've got this voice thing in here, but I could play it, and see how it sounds, yep, that's the one for me, actually let me try this one. I can see a lot more. Do you guys, are you guys familiar with Triple Scoop Music? So they actually power all the music on here, which is great. So, normally it's $60 a song to have royalty free music that you can use, but here you add this entire section of music you can use, and you can decide in here which is the kind of theme that you're using. Is it for families? Is it for kids? Is it for beauty? Is it for a commercial? And so it'll immediately queue up for you, the music you want. You come back here, no I don't want to, and then you go back to editing your slideshow, you put it in here, you put in the name of it, you put in the thumbnail that you want to choose after you've selected music, you've selected your photographs, and then it automatically processes a slideshow for you. So, after I had this slideshow that's automatically processed for me, which normally takes about seven to 10 minutes when you're on an Internet speed that's working for you, when you have that all setup for yourself, then what you're gonna find is that it lives on Animoto, 'cause that's where it's built. So it is a video that lives on Animoto. Why do I not want that to be something I deliver to a client? 'Cause I get no branding from it. I'm basically saying, hey go to Animoto and check out all their work. What I want to say is, hey go to Tamara Lakey Photography and check out her work. So I'll download that video, which is a quick button you push. I'll download that video and then I'll upload that to my website so that the link that my clients are getting is coming from tamaralakey.com/thesmithfamily, and that to me changes everything, because not only are they getting the link from my name, but their able to share that on social media with other people and their gonna constantly get my name as part of that traffic too. The way this works (mumbles) sales is whole different discussion. We went through that on the business course and the (mumbles) sales course, but it's a wonderful way to showcase your work and have an impact, and it normally takes me about seven to 10 minutes.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
JennMercille
Tamara Lackey brings amazing energy to her teaching and shooting style. She shared a ton of tips and tricks for capturing the true character and personality of each child in both individual and group portraits. I have always found it to be particularly difficult to capture portraits of multiple children that are composed to be both visually interesting and true to their unique story. I learned so much about directing and communicating effectively with child subjects, and how to use my gear and other tools to streamline the process and keep it all fun for the family. No matter how much you think you know about photographing children, this class is an asset that you will not regret! Thank you Tamara Lackey!
Heidi Mikulecky
I love Tamara's tips for working with common personality types found in children. I also love that class allows you to be "fly on the wall" during her photo shoots. It's so helpful for me to see how other photographers engage their subjects (especially children). Tamara brings a ton of energy, excitement and playfulness to her shoots. It opened my eyes to how fun (and how exhausting) a photo shoot can be when you give it your all. Great class!
Sara NAomi
This was an amazing class. Photoshop has been a huge learning curve for me during the past year and it was so helpful to see the quick and easy way you used levels to bring down brightness/hotspots. I will definitely be using it to improve the "ear" on the portrait that you critiqued. Thank you soooooooooo very much Tamara and CL for providing such great content!