Lessons

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Class Introduction: Part 1

Everybody, good morning. Um, welcome to trick it live. I'm chase jarvis. Uh, it gives me. Well, first of all, I'm incredibly disappointed that I'm not live in the studio. They're creative live with everybody to do this in person. I get called away in last minute to something down in l a and so I'm actually an airplane right now. Please forgive the background noise and everything, but I didn't want to miss the opportunity to welcome a new instructor to the creative life family. It gives me great pleasure and it's a huge honor. Teo, welcome, tamara. Lacking to the creative I family you guys were in store from for an amazing weekend. I've been keeping tamara for quite some time now I can say definitively that there's arguably nobody in the world there's been a better job of capturing kids on really authentic way. And tamara it's, great to have you again. I will be there tomorrow was going to drop by and see you yesterday. Brief is it wass but, uh, we're so happy to have you on board and t...

o the creative live audience you guys were in store for an amazing weekend bookshop she's goingto basically teach you everything that you wanted to know and a lot more about howto work with kids. I am going to try and crash the party sometime on saturday or sunday to come in and watch. I know nothing about photographing children, so I'll definitely pick up a few things, but without further ado again, because great pleasure to welcome to create a vibe, to introduce tow all you out there in their world. Uh, the amazing tamara taken away. Have a great great workshop on, uh, good luck. E it's like box in a box. A box that's. So sweet. Okay, so I'd like to say back to chase, uh, that is very sweet. Thank you. Um, so I go now, ok? Ok. Um first, I definitely want to think chase for the invitation. It was very sweet and very flattering. Definitely too. Craig swanson who's been working tirelessly on this tirelessly like call it to him. I have a thought way we kind of started out initially when we first talked. When I first got the call was so fired up, I was like, yes, I would love to. And we first tried talking about kind of what this class would be, and the question was, you know, forget restrictions or limitations or anything, just kind of start out and dream it up on dh, so we did that went back and forth and try to put together okay uh I think if we can start with theory and overview and then move into practice and then show it and then have people jump in and do it I know that's how I learned very well so we were kind of putting everything together but the last couple days specifically um I flew in tuesday night and with a seven a m call time on wednesday ah fareed of a bridge and it was me and celeste producer um and uh we got niko over your finding nico camera upper video and jacob um we all went over and at bainbridge did uh four and a half shoots is that what he said for half shoots where we were creating our content um that were basically get a show today um and very raw and cold and wet um and then yesterday we ran around did a budget design challenge so um everybody has been working so hard at this and I think there's what twenty five people are working on this right now not to mention just the amount of feedback and buzz and excitement on twitter is crazy it's amazing I woke up this morning to like my at mentions I was just like still beautiful it really was I mean I thought amazing on dh then I called my kids and my son just want to know where she was and it's right for you dad um but as we're gonna be going through this process I'm gonna be using some things that I don't really exactly know what I'm doing with so craig assured me that this is a live that doesn't mean it's perfect um so I could guarantee non perfection guarantee that right now and this this just put in context can you see this arm? I don't know what I'm gonna be talking to no it's just who knows? Okay um uh this seems like it's only got four buttons but then there's this and there's an outer dial and an inner dial so I'm really blown away with that this would be navigating the keynote presentation and the video presentation and switching back and forth between camera feeds as we go on but um, before I go any further I would love to introduce our audience. Um I think that when we put out the call to see who wanted to come, we were just amazed at the videos that came in and the the heart that a lot of people put out and it was really cool I sat and watched with my kids and they decided everybody comes e called craig he's like no way don't you think this is a lot of orchestration uh so we were able to narrow down to you fabulous six and I would love it if we could just kind of start alison, we'll just start with you no pressure um if you could just, uh as we go around tell us like where you're from, what you shoot, um your twitter handle because I think a lot of you are gonna want to be talking to you and anything else you want to share, okay? Um I am alice and henry I am for las vegas, I have five amazing kids and I'm super excited to be here. Um I love seattle already and twitter I'm just allison henry and a l I s o and h e n r e my first name wasn't hard enough to spell I had to marry someone with henry within our e so just to shake it up, you know anyway of super happy to be here and love toe just hang out with you guys, so I learned today try to not say something really ridiculous. Um I'm katie and I'm from savannah, georgia originally from new jersey um and I shoot children and families and I'm really excited to be here. A swell on my twitter handle is katie fulton oh four k a t I f ul teo and zero four I am the macarthur and I am from calgary, alberta, canada it's a great place up there, we say out house and stuff and on the lifestyle photographer uh there and my twitter handle is at epic danger e p I c d and g r was my kid's name's pretty cool that's pretty much it my name's jim and I am from seattle washington represent who on and I also do lifestyle photography and um I really think thank you tamara and creative life for allowing me to be a part of this wonderful experience I um twitter I'm just new to twitter and my at is jim cat studio j m c a t s t u d I o and that is also my facebook page so if people on the internet friend me today that's great how accepting friends talking friends as of today thanks jesse clements I am from orlando, florida and I have zero kids but my wife and I are working on that right now and one of the reasons I am trying to get into this I'm primarily shot weddings but we're looking at a way to supplement my wife's income. So this is kind of a new venture for mei I've done some kids and families but really looking to see what tomorrow's got to say they're, um my twitter hashtag er what does that even called I'm getting to it is well you say your name is clemens c l e m e y es and I'm also accepting new facebook prince they're brand new I'm sarah sarah came in but we don't like from dubai in the, uh photographer up there on dh er most of me to twitter um my handless sarah with an h c under school and eight s a r a h okay, next time like I think a day in I'm gonna make you guys do that again and you're dead good. Thank you guys welcome. Thank you. Um as we discussed a little bit I really want this to be interactive I should watch how much was said that? I said that when I spoke a pee pee in new york I think I feel like a third of my presentation. Uh but I do love that because really, I mean, I have three days of course work, but the assumption is that it's going to take the turn of where people want to go and that that means you guys I mean, you obviously one of things we talked about is that you were selected because you were a great representative of the worldwide audience, all of you in terms of varying experience levels and locations and just kind of backgrounds that everything um and so anything that you are thinking about don't be nervous and jump in and, um I'll drag you in uh that would be great and then of course online with cute and chat grams I'm really excited to see what people want to know more about what they want to know a lot a lot of questions already okay should we do a little break for questions before I go into a little bit we could always break for quick okay let's just do a couple questions then we're gonna drop it I have a question from bunny trails in colorado she's one of our regulars okay everyone of our workshops um what's the most challenging age for you to shoot most challenging age to shoot so um multiple ages present multiple challenges you know I don't know that there's a most but I know what kind of look for at various ages certainly when you're talking about um an infant a newborn infant the challenge is they have no neck in control and little things like that you've got to do a lot more obviously adjusting do right time of day and there's somewhat of a challenging that especially if you kind of drive off interaction um with, um the kind of early preteen set I'm going to talk a little about this later you start getting into some of that too cool for school you know where you have to combat the fact that they don't actually want toe be there and so there's a whole challenge in that um and you know I guess the answer is it's less about age and more about personality type because I'm thinking through it it's not necessarily what um what the ages it's what that personality brings and what kind of challenges presented with that yeah, that makes sense so as I completely changed my answer halfway through like you're that's all right it's like uh a question in the chat room from mirage I was what is the largest group of multiples of children that you have photographed I have a client that has quads what is your advice for shooting multiples and still capturing great images yeah so um in my experience of photographing multiple children um it's less about how much they look like and it's more about how how different they are in terms of if they want to be held tight if they want their space if you another they respond to kind of ah faster energy or a slower energy eso I think that quite whether or not they were four siblings all in a row or for children that looked exactly like it's more gonna be about how much they want to interact with each other and how it can pull their attention in is that diet question yeah definitely hey e did not expect that good okay, I have another question from misty from alabama um how did you decide to specialize in children's photography? Misty that's a great question because when I started out in photography um I had the thought that I have a camera school, he can photograph anything, and I really kind of did I started out photographing um, portrait's, family's weddings, engagement, commercial work, editorial work and head shot someone said, can you photograph this? I'm like I have a camera course second photograph that that was kind of my mentality and when I found besides, the very fast burn out that came along with that was that I was kind of good at a bunch of stuff we're pretty good at a bunch of stuff and not really specialising in anything, and so I just stepped back and said, okay, where am I getting the most emotional value here for myself? What do I find that when I'm doing this kind of shoot, it brings me this and when I am photographing products or widgets, it's very wrote to me there's no exchange there, you know? And I find that I'm going through him like, yeah, you know, you can light it perfectly and everything's great, but it just wasn't very satisfying for me that way on dh, so I started kind of pulling out the pieces that I felt that if I'm not being really charged up, I'm probably not doing as good of a job as I thought, um, and as everything started tearing down, I found myself very much focused on people photography and specifically within people photography realizing that when I see children, everybody has a different feeling when they come across children we're talking about this nicky was saying like christ you go for e actually don't love children I like him all right? All right, all right uh and that's when you know the fact that you know that the awareness is huge because it may have zero impact on your photography whatsoever a songs you kind of call it I think and I realized that when I see children when I'm out about, especially when I'm in a very adult focused situation when a child walks in the sensation I get is more of a sense of relief like, ah, yeah, yes it's not like, oh my god, I love you little wiggly with you it's not really that it's more like I feel like it's more than a sense of relief like okay, somebody I could talk to, you know, that's kind of what sometimes it feels like for me. And so when I started recognizing that I started recognizing that I wanted to specialize more on dh not just photograph kids but really understand how I could work with all kinds of children and my goal early on was to never have a situation that I walked out of a student didn't get it and and what that means is I've been able to be successful in being a little pool great shots remember shoot I do but it doesn't mean they all take the same amount of time so some of my sessions have gone very long but it's the determination to make it work great go from here yes uh and then where is joy I want to introduce joy real quick I should go to step in and say herro joy bianchi brown and if you might know join jules I run a business and she's got she came in zipped up from oakland to be my what is the word we're calling you everything go to girl my very adorable go to girl s o uh joy is going to be you stepped in and you're like okay can you help dress the set and to this and tell me when my hair sticking up so I just want to say hi to joy she what's your twitter handle just yes okay so if you have any questions for joy or you need her to do anything amar my bank's massive yeah okay thank you I beg you for straw do you know if you find one just straw would be awesome I can guarantee this is gonna go down the shirt within a few seconds keep whisking uh okay so we're jumping in yeah yes right so okay I'm going to use my star trek enterprise command base thing back to the beginning, okay I actually have had the great joy of speaking a number of times but I realise I've never actually kind of got into a little bit more detail about where I got there tio here and this is the first time that I have like three days to kind of go over stuff so I actually was kind of those things where you take a path in your life and you don't quite know why you're doing it and then you wake up one day you're like oh my god that totally worked out no you guys have done that okay yes yeah that kiss think you can that's perfect take it works right okay again huh? Is your everything girl all right I wouldn't have even known that genius doesn't hold up yeah so it's delicious that sounds terrible it's vey delicious ok just came in I can guarantee this is going down the shirt okay um I'm glad there's no audio on when they were putting the audio on us that was funny okay tweeted later don't yeah it was just a matter of time the background so I I was born in frankfurt, germany I'm not gonna go that far back but I was born in frankfurt, germany and I lived there till I was eleven my, um part of military family my dad was in the u s army for twenty two years go army. And we moved around a whole bunch when I was growing up through, like texas and pennsylvania and ohio, etcetera. And by the time I graduated from, uh, college, I graduated with a degree in mass communication, specifically broadcast journalism and fine art history. Actually, it was just art history. Um, and I ended up graduating, thinking that my dream job would be to do p a work on, like here on a show where I could run around and grab coffee and get cords and get whatever people need. And that's what I so so one two d'oh. But I paid for my own schooling and worked several jobs during school and then also graduate with stack alone's that, um so I decided to take a job that would help me pay off the loans faster and eventually get back to doing my dream thing. That was my decision point. So I joined accenture. Anybody know? X century management consulting firm, you know. Well, not well, no. You see there you see their ads in the airport. Um, ex censure. And my job was as a management consulting consultant doing organizational design and development, which means we worked with various companies, and the company I work with most was t helping them tio redesign their business processes. To be able to do things more efficiently and utilize technology in a way that sped things up and cut out the extraneous activities they didn't need to be doing so that was my job with accenture and I traveled one hundred percent at the time, but I didn't actually start that way I started as a coder this is a universal language for coding right started everybody's stephen colbert type, eh? So I started as a coder and uh I was at a uranium enrichment plant in ohio, so it was like one of the nuclear power sites things right uranium enrichment plant and my job was to put on a business suit and pantyhose and drive to this uranium enrichment plant in ohio and go in the front door and then go down to the very bottom where there were orange tubing. I'm not making this up orange tubing going all the way around where they were flushing chemicals in such and sit at a computer and code all day long until like super late at night and then go back to like my little apartment with round front unsure and get up in the morning and do it again and I did that for nine months and at the end of every week you leave and they test you for radiation buildup so they would test you and every week it would pop up a little bit but then they give you this friendly little pamphlets have said things like there's raid on and peanut butter and every time you get on airplane, you're getting radiation and I'm like, great cause I got an airplane to get here and I had a pimp their jokes and now I'm in the plant experience though was something where I felt like I had to do it I had to make the money I had to pay back, but it left me recognizing that I also had to take some control of my own life and do something that wasn't going to kill me and, you know, a few months and then I actually had a lot of joy for so, um ended up switching venues, which is why I wanted to organizational design and traveled one hundred percent until I moved to san francisco because I met a very cute boy who we decided teo, you know, up and get married and move to san francisco, and when I'm living in san francisco, I'm realizing that traveling back and forth to new york was kind of sucking the life out of you, you know? So I quit and I walked into a executive recruiting office in downtown san francisco and the point was to go in and ask for what kind of job can I do now with these kind of random skills? I have but I was sitting in their offices and they were gorgeous. They're like cushy and like this beautiful they views of the water and it's like twelve minutes in my apartment, and I just asked, so what is an executive recruiter? D'oh? And I got a job isn't exactly recorder, so I ended up working there for a few years, and, um, in hindsight, of course, I learned a whole bunch about sales because the whole job, as does anybody know what executive recruiter you familiar position, it's a hundred percent commission and your whole point is to connect people cos they're looking for companies are looking for people to do jobs with people who are open to doing them, and you're supposed basically pull people out of organizations and bring them into them. But I actually found that a lot of people were just posting resumes, and it was more matchmaking. But the way I learned it was watching videos that say how to sell, and they were terrible. They were like, you know, all about finding your mark and making sure you get the weak spots and you close on them then, and this whole. Thing that was such a turnoff to me was trying to do it the right way and so I spent three months making zero dollars and zero sales and feeling a ton of pressure and watching these videos of people saying that I've got to be harder and go for the kill and thought that the um and so finally I just tossed it off because I knew it was going to be fired anyway because I was sucked and I decided to just um asked what people really wanted to do with their lives and what the company's really needed from a cultural fit for perspective because in short order I found out that yes, you need the skills to do this job but people especially with their startups and small organizations they really want to like you um and when I shifted that little bit in terms of just stop just didn't try to sell anymore and just try to talk to people um everything went kind of amazing, amazing, amazing. And so I was I was promoted to director like within a year and I was financially it was ridiculous because of san francisco and it was nuts and everything was fabulous and, um I sat down with my boss peter lovely lovely man and I told him that I thought this was great and it was fun but I wondered if I could bring some creative elements in but I started getting all these ideas about like ways we could make the organization we're creative and he's, just like I know that this is businesses commission, this is bottom line, why don't you take a leave of absence? So I took a four month leave of absence, um, with the cute boy married, and then I moved to san francisco with and my husband and I backpacked for we've got around the world trip ticket and we backpack from asia all the way back to san francisco, and we had this really cool a thing where we had a ton of miles and hotel points built up, but we did the whole trip like backpacking on the cheap, staying in a buck fifty place here and a tent in the mosquito farm here. Uh, and, uh, and then every couple weeks we check into, like, the western banyan tree would walk in that maybe, like because he smelled our hair was messy get the backpack, yes, we're staying in the principle, so he took it out, which we did, and so that was the whole trip. We didn't pile on a plane kind of like what? You saw that chart with chase, we were in like first class, and it was brilliant, then we go and be scummy again for two weeks but we got back from that trip and I gave it one more year before realizing that if I didn't do something creative I was gonna just die um and then uh we're starting up a company that worked with venture capital firms which was nothing to do with creativity I did that for you here but learned how to build a business from scratch I got pregnant and I became mom earth I just ate it for nine months and was just I was I was one of the few pregnant women to think like this looks amazing on I'd like to look at pictures I didn't look amazing but I felt that way uh and when she was born I started taking pictures and decided to become a photographer yeah I'm ed so looking back I mean that sounds a little rambling but I learned a lot about interacting with people about how to run an efficient business had a streamline operations to do things smarter had a kind of mice like build a business I mean literally from the ground up we hired fourteen people all xx century people to work for us the company started and I learned also that every time I tried to do it like what the instructions told me I usually did really poorly and when I finally put that away and I say what I think is really important here um I ended up doing very well at it so that's where I got to today um intimate how long have you been a photographer? So I've been a photographer over eight years for eight years professionally and s so I'm not the person that picked up the camera when I was two and I have always had a gift most of my pictures up until I became started really focusing on photographing my daughter well, we're terrible or sucky their snapshots I didn't even know how bad they were I look back now I'm like no, I did not produce that but I did like again and again again andi I loved photographs like tons of albums but it was like I would be oh, um and get everything everything printed you know, but it was film or digital or whatever and then put them on the album and it's awful. So how did you decide to go from snapshot the pro I mean, what was that transition like it's so funny you should ask that because my next slides like you really this was the kind of photographs I was taking when I started getting into photography and thinking I was pretty good. Um this is my new toe baby when she was a munchkin um, you know, I remember thinking to myself, it's awesome my little girl when she was six months old was twenty two pounds and my five year old, when she was three and a half was twenty four pounds just got a funny, but I thought at the time, the photographs were kind of fine, and then I started thinking, how do I get from images that, like, over time, they started looking worse and worse to me because I was studying a time and I was training my eye to see just how much I sacked, you know, and it became more and more apparent because I wanted to be shooting things like this, you know, where I was. It was just I mean, if you think about, like, and again, I didn't know what I thought. I'm down on her level, pretty much I'm getting could shot. I can kind of like I got rid of some of the shadows here. That's pretty good, uh, and started recognizing there's a big difference in terms of using reflectors and getting expressions and using movement. You know, um and I wanted to be doing things where I was. It was less about snapshots and, you know, all right, joy could get another straw. No, I lost it. You mean, like, take two of them together or something, but to answer your question, jesse, thank you we'll be eaten so many days, um one of the things I can honestly say made a huge difference in the course my imagery took was when I first started photographing I was way less concerned about getting a lot of clients and it was way more concerned about having my photographs look better and I think that focus alone um shifted the whole dynamic of my business because I really cared about that and it would be awesome if I could get some stuff funded so I could get more equipment and all that sort of thing, but that was never my primary focus and I'm ahead I'm glad it wasn't because I do see people getting in and that of course markings and important and getting your clients to speed and having people to shoot and pay for your work is huge but I think your clients can read that focus and they want to have a confidence that you really care about this imagery this may be a question for later and let me know if it is but brand did you jump right in and you had this great tomorrow lucky brand or that evolved well, certainly there was no greatness no, there was nobody there zero brand I initially knew that I wanted like a logo and but my logo has changed and my um I did have an idea that I wanted most of my look to be very simple great clean and open and this and that so that was that's pretty much stayed consistent in terms of looking field of branding but um now in terms of uh did I have somewhere to start with her name to fall? I thought that you know, I had no name and nothing um husband make a joke about the two names together that we're talking about afghan brah I have come to realize that a lot of people do the tag names their their maiden name and they're married name and some of them are very silly about that um yes so I mean, I recognised that part of getting their part of being a builder brandon and get into something was it was going to be about getting better equipment I knew that and so I did get better equipment it was going to be about learning post processing well, I got really, really, really good at photo shop and I really cared about kind of all those little things and all the windows do I think it's easy to get intimidated by photo shop initially, um it's one of those things that if you just sit with it and just keep going after while you're like, oh my god, I know this you know, I think it's julian cost with adobe was saying that because there's always a moment where you're just working on one file and you're something like I know this application it's kind of like that um and I knew that I was gonna have to be able to understand my settings very well and, um I joke all the time about read your manual but you you sit down with your camera and your manual and you read it three times and you do all the little things that you just learned every time you can actually master your technical settings very quickly it's all right there it's just no fun to read, especially your very visually oriented person, which most photographers are it's not very pleasant to read, but yeah, so I think all that mattered and I think more than all of that when I wanted something like this where I could get people to act and silly and and I'm not normally of the mindset of like, everybody hold hands and jump in the water and laugh like, you know, there's nothing wrong with doing that, but I don't feel it if I were to take that shot and then actually, um engage in experience that led to that we would have such a different image versus me telling you that I want this is how I want the look to look um, versus let's take some time to naturally honestly get there and then get that shot so part of that needed to be getting really good at interacting with people and engaging with the children and the adults who always come with him. So that was the other thing. I started learning. So if I had to think about the three things I started really studying right away when I wanted to get better at photography. It was certainly the mastering your technical settings. And that was just a lot of technical burbage that I just kept working on in practicing until it didn't seem strange and hard anymore. It was, uh, the post processing so working in the application and, um and it was the same thing that I think a lot of people dio working till two, three in the morning on photo shop. You know, I did a lot of that on dh. Then lastly, was really slowing down and thinking about these interactions I'm having and trying to study the people I was working with and get better at being honest about it makes sense.