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Shoot: Glamour Headshot 2

So what I'm going to do here is have you right against the paper and we're going to slide these little guys in thiss one is still not bright, all right, beautiful so when I'm shooting somebody right against the paper since this is such a great shape, I might choose to back off even though it's a glamour beauty shot I might back half to her and have her poser body kind of kind of curving like exaggerate a little bit beautiful, right? No no it's on it's just not right powers all the way down and this one's all the way down would you put that when I have stopover no that's under turn that one all the way down and put this one up have stopped beautiful were coming toward you promise? All right, do you want to come be the fan lady? So since we're over here, maybe just below the tips of her hair across that way, all right? And I need my stool back. All right? So what I've done here is created because it's canceling out all the lights lines on her face and not that she has anybody to totally ...

flatten out that face and I'm going to position myself hip level and then stand up as high as I can to get right into her face and I'm going to curve her body and just make beautiful as shapes curves are more interesting sexy lines than straight lines so something's just standing here that's not sexy you curve it and you automatically have sexy right? It also looks like she has intention she knows she's beautiful she's gonna win the pageant she's not just in it she's going to win it so you have to give her that kind of confidence are you entangling me so you want to give her that kind of confidence so beautiful great let's see what we have here stand beautiful bring your forehead toward me just a moment go ahead with your fan. All right, beautiful uniform bring your forehead toward me a little bit awesome way have no tethering forehead toward me and ten down little bit awesome. All right, let me have the seventy two, three hundred tall ones. Thank you. All right, so what I was doing here is by lighting with everything in this clam show. We're also lighting um there's beautiful beads on bringing life to the beat. If it were dark on the bottom, you would not have any life on the beads. So you want to have nice, soft, broad light like that let's have the fan go around the side a little bit more and blow her here a little bit more intensely awesome, all right, shift your hips way out to the side over exaggerated great, beautiful. And then take this hand here. Maybe grab a little piece of hair. Really? Exaggerate your hips like super. Curb it. Drop it down a little more. More, more, more beautiful. Show me the pinkies out of your hand with the ring on your hand around like that instead of here. Come to hear great that's. Beautiful puts your head toward your hand. Good. Beautiful. No. One moment. This looks like it's gonna be beautiful. Pretty. All right, let's, go to here. Would you mind adjusting the power up a little bit? So, let's, go up half a stop there. Right now we need a lot of movement in her hair. If you could get that beautiful right. Put your hands on your hips like this. Really shift your hips out like this. More, more, more. Lift your shoulder here, roll it forward on that side, your chin down like that. All right, now give me a big smile, laugh. Awesome. Head into the fan to a little bit of you laugh. Awesome. Jump up her hair looks amazing. So I'm going to zoom in and capture that laughing big. Awesome. Bring your forehead toward me and around awesome. When your head this way for me laugh a little bit. Awesome. Rotate your body this way for me to turn your head toward me again and laugh again. Awesome. Beautiful can also bring the fan back around the front and hit her straight on here. Can you just take your hands and lightly tip it out? Just a little bit? Maybe open it here. Thanks to your earrings a little bit. All right. Just a couple of more beautiful lots of energy and your laugh. Kind of good. Lean toward me down last beautiful chin down good and to take your hands to the side and laugh. Beautiful. Bring it again and touch your cheek. Beautiful. Awesome. So there's, other options. If you have a flat in the face you khun up like a little stronger from the bottom and really one of flashes and fire there a little more up. Light from the bottom is good, but the head has to come down right into it. Even with the, uh, plight with the phil today. Keep the chin down into it. Even though you might have initially see the up circles here, tip into it. So is part of your posing is not just for her but for the light to make it all great perfect. All right, you want to show a couple in a row there for me so we can just see or maybe the whole contact sheet of that last little set up from maybe there are down that's great so you can see is I've raised my camera level up back up to her face again and back to the body shots I'm sitting on it hip level make sure you include all the fingers in all the hands it's okay to tip the top of the hair all right say you have any questions before I move on to the last thing? Yes, I notice that you're framing when I see that first is a little bit above the head but then it I'm creating impresses in the um light room are you framing higher or is it changing when it's coming in a light room? C that's a good question actually I can't see it from here and not one moment I think I may be I can hang on, I can't retrieve to tell you what I did shoot, I usually crop right at the top of the head like that and then come all the way down to the part almost everyone seems as I would to shoot it for another two all right, so let's have you come off for a moment? Thank you for doing that was great. All right, so it's going to take a split second for them to change this up? Do you guys shoot silhouette? Very often? Do you know what silhouette is? Have you ever tried to set that up on your on your own? Some of you, um, give this off to somebody gonna hand this off to somebody that can reattach his whole tangle? So what we're going to do next is normally I would use phone corby's, but we don't have any, so I'm going to show you what a solution would be. And as photographers, I think we're problem solvers as much as we are photographers, you kind of have to be have a little bit of, um the guy ver in you to be a photographer and be willing to find a way to do what you need to d'oh on what I'm going to do is simply use the soft boxes to his giant reflectors to put light against this wall, and then we're going to eliminate her floating in space. It's still awaited with this is the main line there's lots of ways that you could do silhouette tomorrow morning our very first sheet we're going to do is gonna be an all white set, and I'm going to show you howto make a beautiful set when there isn't one with my screen gems and you can use this cream jim is background that's my point if you don't have if you don't spend the money on seamless paper and you want to work in a greener thought process usually scream gym project light through it I've done it with speed lights and in my studio to chief great results for the background and you can also use it to eliminate subject turning into a giant self fox if you need so the larger the soft box obviously the softer the light larger the source that's after the light so what I'm going to do now is we're going to pull off this wall and set up everything down about halfway to here and then I'm going to shoot back into this position with a nice light that will help her dress come alive when you're in the pageant world you want the dress to sell as much as her so illuminating it with small soft box it'll have black falloff in black darkness where the sequence are not illuminated so you want a really big soft box source to light it if she were wearing like a gold dress that was sequins all the way to ground, it might not be a bad idea to position her in between to scream gyms and light through that so that it just becomes a glowing oscar type look that makes sense for you guys. So do you have any questions before we start moving right into setting this up? Got a quick question from online, and then we can go back in here into the studio audience. We have one from unsteady who noticed that you were shooting at the model's waist level. Is that something you frequently d'oh and what what makes you choose decide their versus higher? When I pulled back from her body, I dropped down to a show the dress off, so I was featuring that whatever my lens level is at its what the feature will be in the shot, where when you pick up the picture and look at an imprint or see it in a magazine, let's issues in they going to be published in some sort of a magazine, I'm running for a pageant. If we can see more of the dress, then you want to drop down, emphasize that fortunately for her, her hair is such a big part of her character, of her look and it's long enough so that I could come back to here and still feel like I was still shooting a headshot. I know that sounds a little unusual, but I dropped the camera angle to follow with the dress it's just a natural habit when I shoot three quarter length shots, which means cropped at the knee usually my camera sitting at waist or help level when I shoot fashion, I'm usually sitting right on the floor it's kind of an automatic thing for may it's not the most comfortable place to be, but what you do emphasizing the clothes more by doing that puts the camera angle right on the subject. You want to emphasize it's a great, great concept I love that thank you, uh in the audience when you have the clams lighting here, were they even as faras what they were set to? Or was there more light coming out? Well, I had them set even because she had a beautiful flat sculpture to the front of her face, which is unusual everybody's faces or shape different we all have different shape cheekbones and I sit in or flat if I can say that I'd like more light on the bottom than coming from the top. I would say I would do that most of time today I shot it even, but you never want to go up more than a third coming from the bottom, but the solution will always be that she has dealing into it a little bit, so you don't see it otherwise you might increase texture under the eye and that's considered a headshot yes on the waist, so if she were entering a competition let's say she called me and said, lou, I'm going to be in the miss washington contest and I need head shots. The first thing we would do is she'd have a package that would be delivered to us from I have the group that she would be entering with, and they would give her specific illustration of what they would want the crop to be. That may be a trend this year that everybody's being shot from the nia. It may be the trend that everybody's harris straight. You want to make sure that she looks exactly if not better than what is being shown to you. Just like the commercial headshots range from year to year? Well, close. The crop is in around and lance choice same thing's gonna happen here. So do homework before you take the picture and make the very best of it. I haven't ever shot a man a pageant headshot in natural light. Never it's always been in this kind of a setup, and I usually charge a little bit more for it because it takes so much longer to do it takes longer for the makeup. It takes longer for the shoot, and then everybody wants to look at every single picture with you and say, what do you think? So you're looking at another hour and a half of your time so it's okay to raise the price up for that to justify that. But if you're bringing killer pictures, it's really all okay, so you guys let's bring that whole set out this way about seven or eight feet leave those lights where they are and pointing directly at the wall, and I may want teo, is it all right with us with me, right on top of you like this? So people tell me all the time that they don't have enough space in the studio, and we've just rocked this little spot right here and didn't really move so it's, how creative you can be with the lights, you don't need a gigantic studio work in, you know, people tell me they want a teaching that they have a garage double garage or they're working in the guest bedroom or they're sharing a space with someone and I'm like, you know, it needs to be long enough for you to roll out a piece of same less and shoot a full length with a decent lens. And I would say, like, twenty, thirty feet square is plenty, you just want height if you're choosing a place to work and, um I have a tendency to go to people's homes and shoot because I want a new place to shoot in every time a new environment, rather than sitting on top of studio and leaving my lights in the same place I find if I do that, I do shoot the same thing over and over and over again, so in a constant pursuit to be unusual, so let's move those boxes off the set and let's suggest the power of the lights a little bit, you know, mine. So when I'm setting up a silhouette and that means I want a glowing white background, which I do sometimes that was one of the first specific things I had to do working for any kind of a department store, because initially people wanted silhouette so they could put anything they wanted in the background, our type around it. And I can't tell you how many times I could've magazine cover it would be so excited, and they're like, oh, we're going to shoot on white. I was like, great, can we do something more interesting, but you really have to know how to use it even though she was against white, it turns gray because there's no light on it, so if you want to see white light, you have to light for it. So I'm setting this up. We're going to use this nice octus off box here. This is one of my favorite beauty lights. If I were going to take my own judge, I would choose the octu soft barks because it looks like daylight kind of it's nice, big and flat. It was also in my examples how to move the light. The last one that I showed you, it feels in nicely. If you only had two lights, you got beauty edition this you could work your way through two strokes, like for one kid of lights. How many lights to somebody need I have six of speed lights, have six studio lights, and I never want more. If I happened to get a job and I've got to shoot a gigantic theater like I showed you that theater head shot, that was probably eight because I had to run light downstairs to eliminate this space that grew and the capacity as it went off in the background. So that was probably nine total lights, battery operated lights on the background, plug in lights on the front. Andi was able to achieve all of that beauty with that, but the average bear average person needs three is a minimum, you know, you have something to do, you need to be able to do a clamshell when you want teo and you need to be able put something of interest on the background. So three is a good place to start. So I would buy three strobes in my scream june kit and a nice reflector. And you should be easy to roll from there. So the light on actually ask you one more question getting questions about it because people are amazed at your folding reflector here that is so very fancy. Could you one more time for everyone at home? Tell us exactly what that is. What it's made of I probably. What about stock in a party city before I started teaching these? Because if anyone bake cakes, does anyone here bake there's a store that I go to call party city it's a chain? I'm sure there's some out here in the section where they make for birthday cakes. They have all these oil lease plastic serving dishes. This is actually what goes under a children's sheet cake, a sheet cake of any kind against, not just children. Sticky. And I found this because we were shooting a commercial job at a big studio, and one of my assistants left all of my reflectors like thirty miles away, and we were on a commercial booking and I had nothing. And the person that left it I looked at him and I said let's send you off to party city and see what you can find I don't care if you come back with plastic you know pretend you know starling silver pants that's something we need some reflection here so we didn't have time to let him go so the next thing I knew he comes back with a shopping bag full of things and we found the cake board and then you can buy cardboard with silver on it but it's too shiny the thing that works about this is it's taken on the texture of this cardboard so it's kind of matted a little bit so the other reflector that I use other than this is my six and one reflector and my preferable color there is there's a color that's kind of silver and gold woven together and that's my favorite for in the studio and the mirror here is just a you know classic mirror you can do both sometimes I'll lay this down and put a mirror in the center just so you have the little pin of light and I it's just particular matting effect from the texture is really interesting I have thought about that but it makes perfect sense that's really cool it takes the edge off find those it basically any baking supply I think they have a website is called under their name bored or cake? Pan something along those lines they doesn't go on board or this's cake platter platter on it's just cardboard letter board something yet and the cool thing is you can fold it up so it was probably seven dollars total, so I love it. Yeah, that was a very popular subject so far. Of course everybody loves these things, so the other cool thing about it is that you actually use them on on real shoots, its not just something that you do just for fun on the side. Absolutely too real to him you can also take it outside in the sun can you feel that light moving and the sun? You can use it for hair lights and everything. I actually have lots of these my closet little favorite thing I have put a velcro on the back the velcro tape and put paint sticks so it becomes a picket sign and I moved the sun that way and you saw my assistant today when we're on the set, he had one with the sticks and he helps the sticks back. That way you could get far enough away from the model and he's not standing in the frame while I'm shooting over his shoulder again also when you saw me shifted above the head don't be afraid to put the light above the head as well, so louis we have a couple folks moon pie and others who were wantto talk about catch lights on dh with these sort of set up is there a concern that the catch lights on the bottom of the eyes with the mirror set up with the reflector sent up tell us your thoughts on catch lights you know I have a lot of people in different photography groups ask ask lindsay and I both questions when we were on the tour this summer about moving catch lights and I with photo shop would you do that and I would never do that I try my best to make the catch lights attractive so that the color in the eye shows because that's what the pretty part of the eye iss s o I very seldom change it traditionally I think we're used to seeing the light come from high and fall naturally on the bottom but when light is coming from all around like that I think it's okay I personally think it's so what what do you think of as attractive catch lights? Where are you trying to place them in the eye? I'm they happened by accident based on how I'm filling in the face I want to correct the face first and then phil feel that in the best way possible and they have nice, beautiful even light right on the eyes very seldom to people asked me to remove it when I shot for playboy, the thing that we did there is most people think a bedroom eyes having a violated pupil we went our way out of our way around to not have that happen because you want a bright light source near the face so that the people narrows down so you could see all the color in the eyes I'd rather see and I with sparkling intent then a doe eyed look do you understand what I'm saying by that? So you want to play with that and look at the pictures side by side after you shoot them and you can see right away which one's gonna have more life? We're life that's really cool that's all love and then interesting of what we do psychologically based on where light falls on the face in the pictures that I shoot most of the glamour I don't think people sit there and go ways to catch lightning I should wonder she took that out wonder she changed that although you hear a lot of photographers that study through the professional photographers of america asked questions that me like that and about what rules are and in fashion the rules are very different than they are in portrait wedding industry, so I think really it's up to you and what you think works best on your subject you know you don't want to call zadar otter abstract shadows on the face ever so catch likes fall where they may I have made tried to make pupils change and I think it looks odd what do you think of ring lights I like the ring light I know I kind of feel like the ring light is overdone and overused and lost it's it's gotten really overdone I think um I used the wrong line in the mid nineties of when I was working for you turn the light on um when the mid nineties when I was working for italian harper's bazaar and working in europe but I never put it on the camera always used it off to the side because I like the contrast of the light in the quality of it but I never put it right around the camera because it gives a kind of a scary look there was a time around the year two thousand that I was asked to do it for catalogs and fashion and then it was gone from the industry and I have a continuous flooring light and I have a cannon speed like green light and I use that ring line all the time but I pull it way off to the side it's like having a little mini self box right on your um speed like and when we get to the triggering part in the explanation part tomorrow on the speed lights you're gonna find out some cool things about your older lights that you can actually use them again and to trigger your five eighties if you haven't.