Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: Floral Headpiece

Can I have those flowers were goingto pick the flowers in her hair you look lovely. Okay, cool and I'm gonna have you go stand back out there so I actually brought that um what do you call it? You enter the word before, right? The burlap and it was just it comes in a the words again roll roll thank you comes in a roll and then you pin in her hair and it just adds a cool textures were goingto pay in a couple of those flowers. And so for this, as she does that, I'm going to show you a couple other stuff saying that I've got the we're going to take this one first. Okay, so this one is one of my favorite little contraptions, so I brought this out. Okay? Little pricey okay, so I I went teo a place where they sell things for weddings to decorate the tables. And so these air mirrors for decorating tables and each one with a dollar ninety nine. And then I took some gaffer's tape and I gafford taped them together. But now when I shoot through it, I have a prism and it's awesome and here's how i...

t works. Depending on the lens I use, I'll see different types of reflections depending on how close to the model it is, I'll see different types of reflections depending on what focal length I zoom within this I'll see different reflection it is awesome I shot an editorial for zinc magazine using this I also made a giant one of the's that can fit a whole torso that one is this so this one is a couple of dollars right inexpensive the one that I built that fit someone's torso I went teo kind of glass making shop but it's not actually glass it was mirrored plexi and I bought three two by two pieces of mirrored plexi and then gaffer's tape them together and so I done beauty editorials for the whole model you know midsection up is in there and I love it so taping mirrors together you can take it out on location or use it in the studio the thing with the studio that is very challenging is you get reflections of ceiling and stuff so it tends to work better when you're not shooting in a white space where light's going to kick around it works better when you're doing saying it's like black on black and there's not like hitting around to have to worry about reflections of the ceiling and stuff on location I shot on editorial new york city where how I angled it I'd get reflections of the empire state building and then the model in a different reflection was awesome it was like really fun editorial um I'm thinking it might have to be that it's twenty four seventy beautiful that's great. Okay, so here's the other little creative tools I have three of these over there that I bought on ebay for six dollars and so they are chandelier crystals and they're just cool creative and camera techniques like music for two reasons in a backlit situation I can put them right up against my lens and right up against my lens I can give myself lens flare if it's in you know, end of the day I put it up to the edge like kicks in and I get kind of like the rainbow of facts and it gives a little haze and I women feel nice and dreamy with lens flare, so I always like that. But the other thing that I'll do too, especially with window light, if the subjects have the window to the left hand side and I'm lighting her, I'll put this in front of the camera and it gives me a multiple image so I see her multiple times in this shot, so I'm going to take a quick test with this and we're going to change the light. I just want to show you roughly what it looks like in which white balance is going crazy because we're makes light someone at a strobe after that great head towards me just a little good will open up a little bit more and I'm moving it around to get interesting, okay? So it's just like cool and dreamy and fun and I told you my wife balance should be crazy it's like I've got like daylight here and tungsten there, so I might just we'll try one with auto anyway as I rotate this around to get in different effect for each and I did an entire editorial for a magazine where it was kind of lingerie ish and I hung all this tool from the background and then she was repeated multiple times, so it was extra spicy because there's extra of her anyway it's like that's just it's beautiful and it's dreamy and since my set of six dollars and you want to look up specifically teardrop chandelier crystals because if you just search chandelier crystals or crystals, you get the round ball ones and you can't shoot through those because it just distorts the image too much. So you're looking for something that's bigger and flatter because that will actually allow you to focus and what I usually do is a pre focus and then I put the crystal in front because its struggle sometime to focus through some glass and I use back button focus so what that lets me dio I have this isn't in my boot camp and in my location living class, but just basically for back quentin focus is usually they're focusing with your front trigger okay this front button but with cameras by default so you push halfway to focus and then all the way to take a picture right? The problem is if you're in a backlit situation or a situation like this is all like I'll get my focus and then I'll put it in front and then it searches for focus because it does it it's not locked so back button focus over here is instead of being on the trigger it puts focus on the a f button right here so now what I can do is I can focus using this button and I can lock it in place so now when I click the shutter it's locked I put this in front no problem it's not going to search for it so if you're having trouble focusing shooting through crystal it's your f button on the five year mark three it's actually set by default already to back button focus but it depends on your camera you can actually set your focus to be any of these and it's in a custom function of your camera if it's not already set but how I have it is like get the focus once till it clicks and if I don't touch it again it's locked in place and when I want to focus a different time I do it again locked in place so that's the button so that's exactly what I'm doing here is I'm focusing on her great okay perfect nice and dreamy so I'm going tio like this real quick can I have the beauty dish and I'll fix stuff here let's see any questions on that back when focused worker right here yeah yeah I do have a question lindsay because I've used back but focus but from what I gather what you just said now you don't have to hold it once so you want it in if you turn off the front from being focused because by default you have your front as your trigger and your focus if you make it so just the back button for is focus is all your focus then you press it once and it locks it unless you're shooting in continuous if you're shooting in continuous mode that would be for an example these in sports all the time but the bride walking down the aisle okay, what is going to let you dio is if you're in continuous mode and you hold that button it will continue to track her every step she takes so she'll stay in focus as she moves towards you so you can either use it to track focused or toe locket depending on what shooting motorin one shot locks that continuous is tracking their welcome so keep going perfect yeah so we're just going to make this a little bit better lit I illustrated the point now let's make it a little bit prettier and I I got the trigger let's set now my white balance is going to go to flash because before I was I got a whole bunch of mixed stuff here I know that my pro photos that I'm using which are the pro photo d one air five hundred watts that's what I'm using on this set they are the flash white balance is what I like best for them and just do you know the gear that we're using as well this is a three by four foot soft box in the back it was that time erawan xiomara wait okay this shimmer they say shit but kinda remember here is the thing yeah greek monastery will shiver yeah that zeus america its memory but I'm a nerd member so like the greek god like that was my favorite part of freshman year we studied that for like six months I was so into it, huh? And then my main light that I have here is a pro photo twenty inch white be dish if you see in other of my classes I go into in depth on how I use this. I love this one and I think I'm going to light her on this science are in from black and cameras and stuff all right now I am going teo for sake of creativity we're going away from rules we're going away from conventions, I'm just going gas on my exposure and I'm going to be totally wrong and I'm going to adjust it but in all honesty as long as it's not if it's not a client job or son that needs repeatability sometimes ignoring what it says is more freeing because maybe you now that underexposed it's really moody and I love it it's usually better to try it on purpose but it's cool if you uh do it on accident too all right so let's see what I get here and I don't even know if he's around the same channels but we'll test it out that was not me that mean someone is here on the same channel okay ready channel change one second which channel do you want to two perfect I'm onto the same problem solved okay so let's switch and on my remote aiken switch to channel two they're so no problem although that would be fantastic okay all right let me just test this real quick I'm telling you it's gonna be wrong I know maybe not I'm that good huh um that's see that's ridiculous um I actually no I haven't added the crystal yet but I like it the other way I like it really moody the other way I went a little bit more shaped to her face kitchen head towards me little good I want a little more shadow that's really flat to me so trent this way that's it looks good let me grab my crystal not tripping over stuff let's take a look here great you do okay okay you have to stand there and you cool you look beautiful good right now I'm gonna add my crystalline we're going to see how it works considering I'm shooting into a light source out got ahead of myself hold up okay so before we use this as a constant like because I was treating it like a window but I can use my soft box as a backlight I do it all the time and tons of my classes and the reason that I like it as a backlight is because it wraps around your subject it gives you a pure white background especially from not trying to get full length it's really a pain in the butt sometimes to get a pure white background and so I think it's easier half the time to set up a soft box said it behind them creative lighting modifier I don't need to get multiple lights to light that background so I'm going to use the saw fox and the more I want the light to wrap around her I can do two things I could bring her closer to it wraps it around a little bit more or as I turn up the power it wraps around a little bit more so we do something like this and now we're gonna add our crystal and see how it works can somebody it's trying another one I want a little more are still in effect so it's mostly with the this light mostly just giving the lens flare but like it's pretty lens flor but I liked the modeling light better so I think I'm gonna go with modeling like to finish off this shot because I like it better more then I'm gonna shoot really wide and you have to keep the crystal up close if it's too far out you see the outlines so messes it up yes I think I did good and perfect good okay so each time I rotate it looks like something different I need one more I didn't like her face overlapping or faith beautiful okay questions on crystal six dollar crystal I think maybe while we do questions because we can change that that the next model out perfect cool I think that's awesome. So six dollar crystal the burlap was six dollars in the school of it but that's only a tiny part of it and then we got one flower which the lot of them was a few dollars I think we're actually done with her for right now thank you so much. No thanks to back barn doors and this is good but with grid okay so you want oh we're going to do the black background do you want to do that it's together way are doing something's spicy for this? Okay so I have some questions while you guys said okay, I want to make sure that yeah, I kept moving on those um okay, so this question had come in earlier from clive chan who said mother things there seems to be a lot of things that you can do without as where talking about getting creative but is a makeup artist one of those things? Well, I'm not going to say that because my makeup artists will hate me it's sort of it's sort of like you I I need a makeup artist for how I shoot like it's not even really a question because when I'm shooting they're contributing creatively like the way that that burlap came together with the flower if I had done it wouldn't have looked like that like it just wouldn't it was enough for the same thing is it depends I could do a lot of stuff in photo shop, but I would rather creatively direct, so I think of it like a director when a director's on set they're not touching the lighting usually and they're not actually been touching the cameras but the whole thing's their vision at the end it's still their project, so when I work with the makeup artist, I'm directing my vision to them but they always bring something extra when you find a good team it starts off a little challenging in the beginning because you have to direct people and deal with artists and we artists are difficult then there's lots of artists on set it's actually difficult. Well I every single shoot I do I have one unlike the faces covered which happens sometimes so building off that and again grab mike of us happening questions similarly, how do you work in your creative vision if you're working with an art director? Okay, so with an art director you matter less but because when typically there's an art director on set ifit's a client hiring you art director is supposed to be the translator between the photographer and the client so to help the client get what they want and the photographer to better execute that vision and so usually on those sets there's a goal there's objective or sketched out what the shoot should look like and the creative director of the our art director is trying to make sure you get there so that is a little bit more challenging in the past. What I usually do is give them whatever they want and then say oh, but I have such a great idea and I move it beyond that once they're happy with like they have what they want and most of time they go with what I liked better anyway so it works out any other questions from the audience yes please have a seat hank I love your work around here how how do you go about how important is it tio to get a stylist for these you know, shoots and I know we're on a budget but I know I mean how how for you is it important, mike? Absolutely so my current style I have no stylist for everything but when I first started off when I've said this aloud so I guess it's okay but I was I was all about the the bi return, but I usually like asked the places you know or some kinds not, but depending on the situation, I saw a lot of stuff myself even though I didn't have that much style to me it's a lot of things I don't even like h and m's and things like that have some cool, funky clothes, but if I wanted actual interesting clothing, it was the art students or the fashion design students or I tried teo hook up with whoever was at that local fashion week to see if they had any design I've worked with this seems just before who wanted to get funky and try something also for clothing I purchased things online from all those boutiques in china they have endless things, I promise they won't look like they do in the pictures, but sometimes they're passable for a photograph like they don't look like they do in their demo photos on dh then beyond that it's see what other things have done. Costume rentals, costume rental places, shakespearian play like there's, this place in oregon called oregon shakespeare festival. They have the most incredible gowns I would rent from there, so you, I always consider clothing and important part of the process. But if you could do it yourself, you can do it yourself. But in fashion photography want to be in a magazine, you pretty much have to have a wardrobe stylist. You can't really do it yourself, because then, it's, you're worried about everything else. Oh, yeah, and then the photos. So I recommend getting one if you're doing fashion.