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Introduction To Lessons 17-23

She needs no introduction she is a photographer she's an author she's a speaker and thankfully for us she is an amazing amazing educator and I would just love to bring on miss time relax tamara ok you go that's a lot of information just that's what I do is really cool and you do it well well thank you, darling. Thank you. And I'm just gonna pass it right over to you. Wonderful. Um thank you guys for the uh my comments I kind of feel like I don't want to screw it up by coming on today just ended it was good um and evelyn I know you told me this morning you're like she said my name one hundred times last night tomorrow tomorrow not tomorrow and then like all that pressure, it was like a wave on you and then you're like the cool for tomorrow god, I did it. I have been saying your name in my family that I know so just get the camera that's the easiest thing in the world you know we should do we should put like a camera on your laptop like you have to look around it. Um mr khan, you mean yo...

u can call me whatever you want to call me? Oh, um okay, so, uh I wanted teo actually kick off the map and I got to score the necklace, by the way before kick off. I don't know if you know, but if you've ever had a mic on you, they always take your jewelry away. They take your necklace away. And so I wanted this mike so badly that I pretty much went on a second or third date with heart attack to get the microphone in jewelry around so I will not move too much with this story on, so I can keep it. But of course, if you start hearing noises, that means is going to come here, rip it off me and probably slapped me with it. I wanted to actually do a quick deviation from how we were going to start this morning, which is jumping into composition framing to instead show, uh, probably a dozen images or so from yesterday. So as I mentioned yesterday when I was doing the live bedroom shoot, it was the first time that ever shot with a live tether that was working, and I didn't realize I'm sure I got the information and then just deleted it that when I just keep going, you guys don't get a chance to see the images, papa? I thought everything I shot was just hanging up there for the live feed to see on dh and so I I learned later that that's not the case, so I want to show you a couple of some of the images that I did get in the frenzy of that chaos um okay, so just in a very simple way I'm going to step to these and preview mode I have ah have ah love hate relationship with preview mode I don't like how it displays things I don't like what it does to the images, but it's the quickest thing out there to just quickly show something unless there's another software tool that I don't know about in which case I'd love to hear about it s o just quickly this was yesterday. The images up here are a tad bit brighter than what I've got on my screen but you get the point. What we were combating was the hard the harsh contrast the lighting a cz you heard in the whole segment I did earlier that's the one thing that I set up so I don't have to come back obviously you can still take beautiful images with it, but you see that shadow behind her it almost looks like it's some sort of shadow figure like some sort of creature from a book coming to get her this could be symbolizes, like, kind of shadow and light, like your dark side, but that wasn't what I was going for. Um, we had that, and then we had our sweet little baby sweet, sweet little baby if you remember, during the chaos of this right away, we had him for a solid twenty five seconds, kind of with me, but the way I had him with me was I positioned him, I moved because we were on a bed, we had a nice I think it was mom was right there somebody dad, I think, was right there. I always do that, like, on a bedroom set, like on a bed or any sort of chair, anything, I never just put him up there and say, let's, go for a great photograph, you have to have someone nearby, and I've had a number of instances where it could have been really scary because kids are so unstable. S o you know, and I actually have told a couple stories of this in terms of times where I've been like on a bridge and kids started like, going head first over and and things like that that you would never expect, but part of what's happening is when you're engaging with them really strongly, they get lost in your interaction. And they have no idea where their physical body is and a topple is not a hard thing you know that happen at all it's not very difficult for that to occur so you always wanna have someone nearby but in this image a cz you khun see we had I had I ducked down and low on dh the reason for that angle was twofold one I like the composition the way he was in the frame with those little toys kind of blending off to the end um but he also wanted to make sure I got his eyes lit up. If I'd shot from a little bit of a higher angle because of the harsh contrast the lighting I would have lost them there have been very hooded and there had been little dark spots there that was the reason I went down. Um this is another one, you know, kind of pulling back as you can see my angles a little bit higher than the other shot. Um and then we have we still have some brightness in the eyes but it gets a little bit darker. That was kind of the trade off. I do this a lot where I blend from color to black and white and then that way what I do is have a lot of different variety so simply these air seconds apart but by him sitting up and then or him laying down and then changing the post processing and then the vertical with versus the horizontal we just have a different feel and obviously the thing I see first when I look at this image is the shadow behind him again I don't want the shadow behind him so were these were things that if you set up your lighting optimally initially then you don't have to worry about this was shooting down on mama and baby, by the way, not only where all our models awesome all the parents were awesome, everybody was so into it and fun and easy going and did whatever you want. I'm literally like over them, you know, arm like legs on either side shooting down and he's rolling around and that is super super common with babies and toddlers they roll as if there's an engine here that just makes them go everywhere I'm going back and forth and it seems almost involuntary they must flip. And so in that case you are shooting a fast moving subject and you have to make sure your settings are set appropriately, which means your shutter speed really has to be high to do to get this because otherwise what you get is her frozen and beautiful, his his middle, maybe fine and his head blurred have you guys ever gotten the shots with hands and head blurred because they're just going. So you have to make sure you're shooting a fast moving subject. This is a sports shot from anyway. I did. I did an article for photo shop user magazine on fast moving subjects, and the whole thing was athletes and toddlers that's mean, exact same technical settings and mindset is there for both of them. Um, this one I put up on my facebook, uh, business fan page like paige, what are we calling it? I don't know why that stumbles through facebook public profile that I'm not sure that's accurate? Yeah, what's that called I'd love it. Um, but I put it up on the term like photography facebook thing on I love that this was if you saw this was how long do we have a quarter second, but you can get those shots in those little amount of time if you have everything else set up. And I pulled her hair for just a hint for the shot when I said to do all the details because I love the foreground of it, I love how it lays across. A lot of this was in the cropping. The original shot was a little farther back, she was a smaller part of the frame, and we had more around her. But that's, where post processing comes in when I come in and then I think, okay, ideally, if I weren't chasing her and flipping and trying to get everything down to the second, how would I have cropped it if I'd had a slow, thoughtful moment to do so? And this is what I would have done in terms of the framing. I'm obviously low. We have the reflector right here. Gorgeous reflector work. Uh, with the reflector right there, giving that great papa light in the eye. Um, and and again, normally we wouldn't have to worry about the soft shadows at all. Uh, here's another look. So this was not that long after the other one, right? This was we weren't moving her around. This was me wanting to change the entire look of the scene in the space we had and again changing your composition the way you frame it. And everything else in the scene can have a big impact on the overall look of the image. This is our little boy, joseph. He was up and he was commanding with his hands, his packet. Um, for this kind of image, I love the love, the fact that we had to work now, I big lesson learned from this working with this little boy beautiful kid he wanted to please did you guys see that you wanted to do the right thing? He wanted to please his mom actually said that he didn't want to come here at all like he didn't want to do it and then he felt like he had to get up and give the smile and he gave us the exact smile I was talking about yesterday, you know? I mean again what what I find when I see that smile is, um I'm reading that as a child who really wants to do the right thing and there's such a softness and a loveliness and that what I want to do is give him permission to not have to do that and shake him out of that. So when I did kind of quirky, weird things like pet his nose or whatever you're doing, it was to shake him out of that, that was just to get him to think, I think I was looking in his ears, which were very clean and I smelled him um so like kind of silly things like that all that's doing is getting what I want to do is interrupt the memorized set of behaviors that is what I'm trying to dio I need to somehow stop it and get him to restart in a new way and that that was my goal to get him to the smile in terms of stop saying things about the shadows because at this point adam back there is like, shut up I did a great job and you did. But if you kind of pull back one of the reasons I want that curtain in there is that I love the complimentary you know, that background look and how it it just kind of comes in a little bit often if you'd just have just a plain straightforward it could be pretty simple and you want some other interesting element it from from a composition especially when you have such a black and white clean image um here's another view just a straight image. I I love this composition. I'd like to do this a lot. It's very editorial in nature if you notice that you see this a lot of gap ads and such it's a different way to frame it, the heads chopped off but the eyes are right up there where I like um um and and I just like the way it puts everything where you want to see it in terms of eyes and face this image of you remember was actually focused horizontally. I shot this horizontally with him laying down the bed with his arms out what I wanted to do was kind of show him framing him I knew I wanted to deliver it vertically but if I haven't stand up and do this right, I can't ask a child to do that without it being very awkward, a professional model could do that an adult could do that, but a child will find that that he will be spending so much time focusing on how to get it right because member, he really wants to please, you could see that that I would not be able to get his genuine smile. So what? So the flipping I do that often, I'll shoot it one way, knowing we're going deliver it another way. Um, and then lastly, the fund with mama and daughter in bed. Um, we had, um, jumping around and dancing and under the bed sheets. I've got some great ones for that, but I was falling asleep last night. I could share them later. Really fun ones with the expression underneath the bed. She but, um, but this was just them flown down. I think we threw her down for a second. This lasted again point two seven seconds that we had her stable before she jumped up again. But again, I love this composition as well the way they were going to go all in on them and show them really close and tight to each other. So there you go is that she can't handle the acuteness we've got terra cotta who says get the freak out I am blown away I would have never thought to edit that to a vertical nice I like that we gotta we are not going to get freaked out stay here and time was going keep teaching all right funny okay, so any questions about that, by the way does that make sense? Yes. So no, I have never thought to use the gold silver reflector but see you use that yesterday because I guess I always thought like with gold it just looks kind of yellowy but that just had, like, the most beautiful light and a real warm kind of warm phil yeah had like a really nice balance what was warm but it wasn't like gold. Yeah, so um so that wasn't a question just one you? Yes. Yeah, well and then part of it too very normal normally when I use a reflector it's nearly always the white side and I will use the silver side in really dark situations where it's like a lot of cloud cover. And I have very like little light to reflect so I have to use the silver or the gold but in a situation when you're dealing with a lot of contrast the light you need a little bit more power in your fill to be able to even out the shadows because the shadows are really dark and deep and so that is that is what I don't normally use the silver gold side in that kind of situation but the main light because the shadows being caused by the main light work calling for a need for a more powerful phil yes gus hey eso and request the reflector do you use different size of the reflector depending on skin tone complexion yeah, but maybe basically it's need for phil so what I find any time I see that this the white part is just not cutting it it isn't necessary different complexions and skin tones it's the light that it cos the different skin tones and collections so I could have a very dark skin tone in a super bright situation and only want the soft white side or I could have a very pale skin tone in a dark contrasts situation and must use this over so it depends on that the other thing that you may have noticed with a little boys he had the white t shirt on with this really bright light he had darker skin then the shirt ideally, what I would do in a studio situation when I can control is I would have some sort of flag on by flag I mean anything that blocks the light or tempers down the light so if I'm photographing a exactly, joseph so little, darker skin than the bright white shirt in the studio on a white backdrop, what I would ideally do is put some sort of flag between the light hitting his shirt, just that part, and that could be, I mean, there's, technically flags you can buy in terms of from a light equipment, but it could also be just a scrim or some sort of soft diffuser that's just blocks some of the power of the light hitting the shirt, so you don't have such a difference in terms of tonality we want to expose for his face, but we're blowing out the highlights in the shirt that controls how much light hits the bright white shirt. The other thing, of course, to make it much easier on you is that your clients not to wear bright white, you know, because especially when you're outside and things like that, you could have a lot of issues, one other really big consideration when you're shooting anything with really high contrast ing bright whites on, and you have to deal with highlights like you're on a beach and it's sunny and there, wearing a white dress, and they've got bright blond hair is to go ahead and borrow a little bit from your cameras technology and use either active, delighting on nikon that's what it's called or highlight tone priority on cannons, that's a function that you can use that actually pads some of the tonal steps between before you blow out, it gives you a little bit mohr toe work with, uh, it's a wonderful tool toe throw on when you're in brighton white situation and you feel like you're gonna blow your highlights and it's it's it's packed into most cameras certainly it's on the eight hundred and the five day debarked three and the nikon d four but that you don't want it on if you don't need it because it can add some extra noise to your shadows if you don't need it, does that make sense? Okay, um, good. Um so do you want to take questions from the same? Sure, just maybe like, two quick questions. Jj, enough. When you say fast shutter speed, what do you start with so fast? Shutter speed with children who are moving very, very quickly. I want to be above one, five hundred if I'm if I'm dealing with a slow, methodical child just moving through a field, I could be down. Teo want one twenty fifth. Uh, but if we're in a situation where they're flopping like a fish on a bed, um, I know that I need to crank that up it also depends on your camera model I have shot with a number of different camera models andi I've come to realize that they kind of work a little differently in that regard but you know I used to say try to never dipped below one one hundredth or one one twenty fifth but I found that my style of shooting has has changed over time I am less apt to just sit there and try to shoot I'm more have to move with it and because of that I have to make up for my movement and have a faster shutter speed as well and so calculate that as well if you're sitting there behind a tripod and you're just directing the action you can dip a little bit but if you're moving to you have to correct for you photography by tina wanted to know if you could only choose two lenses to use when working with children which to would you too if you could only have teo that's what she asked I'm gonna I'm on an island you're on an island okay I get that question in time as vegan if you're on an island and you're being attacked by a lion with a way we'll find out what the lion eats and when that what that eats and then I'll eat that that's a while and then I'll hide from the lions but if I were on an island I only had two lenses I would choose. Well, certainly the twenty four, seventy two eight. That is just the workhorse lens thie that that allows you to there. It moves very quickly. It zooms very quickly and allows me to jump around and have a lot. It's not my ideal lens in terms of how images look at a camera. Um, but it is my ideal lens for like, I don't know what my situation is and I've got I've got to get something and I don't know what's gonna happen. I will choose the twenty four seventy for that situation. Thie other one? Well, that's a tight as tight as a tight race between the and you guys saw like I was switching out. I proud I readily switch out between three or four lenses at all times, sometimes five or six, depending on the situation. But it's gonna be a tight race between the eighty five eighty five one for the one oh five macro and the thirty five one four lens and I say the tight race because if I'm dealing with one subject, I would probably say that would be the eighty five if I've got to, I'm gonna have to go to the thirty five. But the one oh five macro has been a new discovery for me. Because I just started using that about nine months ago. And I, the christmas and clarity and the ability to go super close on a subject with that lens, blows my mind. I love it. There's, so much mind blowing, going on some kind of gross like. But I love it. I didn't have access to a lens like that before. Before I was shooting icon, and I love that lens.