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Shoot: Gatsby Look Part 1

I'm really excited about the set up with a beautiful model ali here and I am doing a gatsby theme, which is one of my absolute favorite themes to shoot on vintage it gives an excellent excuse to add texture is over, we can kind of take it back to that kind of old time exile in photography and I cast ali because she has that look about it she's very karen elson she has that beautiful gap be looking really what's my theme, so when I saw in the package, I knew that she would be perfect for this, so this is a completely different set up to what we had last time and what's going to be interesting here is that I'm going to be using mirrors to kind of create a really interesting effect, and I found this fruit of photography ical parlor reverse e and I found a youtube video where he was shooting into a mirror and he was shooting here of this dirty mirror with the texture, and she was over here, and it was just pure natural light, so I'm gonna talk for a few of the settings as well, and felix i...

t's obviously going to come in and help with the kind of technical side, but this right now, which is relying on pure natural light from the window here, just kind of coming down, given a nice kind of feel to the face so what we were doing earlier with the soft box we had the similar kind of light just coming down, but now we were relying on this you can see the shadows on the face here and with the makeup it's kind of got a slight sheen to it, which really enhances that as well we've got a textured backdrop which is by all offend backdrops one of seas I love thes backdrops you don't have to spend a lot of money on these these could be something you could do tied I campus I have a few of these myself there's obviously going to be a few tutorials online about how to do that um even just getting a dirty old cloth and like making something of yourself spray painting it that can be worth doing something like that and then even the good thing about that is you can kind of come off the background shoot on a wide aperture and that text you will be very different from a few up close as well and I was sleeping in the model forwards and backwards and we're using the v flat again another essential a key piece in the studio we've got the white because we don't want the dark that will admit this light we want it add some reflection back from this window to bounce back and fill here so I'm going to talk a little bit about siddons so right now who are on the opposite side of here so my white balance would have cb very different what we had before before we had the stroke we had the white balance on flash now I'm going to pop this on too me too see here I'm goingto what I was the lie on here is possibly even order white balance I would trust it to kind of especially because we're shooting in roll yeah, I would trust thie auto to kind of handle this because it's not a strong light source it's a very soft or if we wanted to be more specific we could put it onto the cloud as well because it is quite cloudy outside it's very diffused I'm going to start in this kind of situation again I don't like mita I always have a specific that I start on and then I worked from that when we're doing this kind of environment that's not a lot of light, my ire so is actually eight hundred and that is because I don't mind the fact that they would be grain and noise it's helping me let a lot of lighting I can go wide on my aperture, which I want to make it soft and I'm also down at one sixty on my shirt of speed and one sixty is where I'd really trust it handheld if it was any lower than that and I know photographers like problem of us, he he would have a tripod and he would be very still and he would like the motion blur a swell. Okay, so I'm using my fifty mil lens one point too, but I think I'm also going to switch you out to the eighty five because I wanted to be a little more crunch. Octus well, okay, so I'm going to be using this mirror here, so this is actually a meryl we've sourced and it's got kind of like an old texture on the top. We've got it at an angle so that if I'm shooting here, I can see allie here, so I'm gonna take a shot to show you what that looks like it's going to do a quick test and you can see on the camera there that kind of order affect its given and from the white balance and everything it's already starting to fall into that kind of gatsby style already even without process it. So again, I'm manually focusing, but that's just a preference off mine was shooting on a wide appetite, so want to make sure that the focus is here, so I'm always going in locking my focus on the eyes and then leaving myself away. If I have to a swell. So remember the light's coming from above so we want to make sure that her chin is slightly up and there's not too much shadow here is well, ashley phillips, would you mind grabbing the reflect to justice? Sure. Backup option a minute. Okay. So, ali, with poses, hear gatsby is very kind of light romantic in a way. So I think it's just gonna be about kind of like the sadness and, you know, you great at what you do. So you can kind of give me something to start from reposes. Then I'll start to suggest from that as well. As long as you keep your chin slightly up to the light, I think that would be great. All right, so let's, start for family, she's going to marry. So if you're looking into the mirror to me, it was a perfect, beautiful looks good. Okay. And again, just chin up and kind of you yet really nice. Okay, just a few more and lean in mortar. This way. I'm gonna have to remember the reflection when I say that way, kind of into yet it's great. And I'll just say that, you know, if you take inspiration from the way this light is here, you could actually mount two giant soft boxes. On top of each other and that's important, if you have a commercial client and you're shooting a celebrity that's only available at night, you couldn't do this, so you'd have to be able to let's take a picture of this and go, huh? I know the light that's gonna produce and replicate afterwards, could you two get step back more towards the background yet you can go a little bit further? Felix, could you come in with a little bit of reflection because there is some kind of shadow on the year that I want to try? And yet, so I'm gonna try now because we're further enhancing what there movie flat is doing here, and I'm kind of just playing around. I like the joint here and the middle of things, so I'm creating like a double image as you see on the tether, and then I would get rid of like the orange bit in the middle, add some textures to it kind of even replicate one image and put another one on there. So it's kind of like a double image or it's even really interesting, like paula reverses shooting two girls together, having some movement having long, half flowing, there was a lot of ways you can kind of experiment with this beautiful ali. So when this is all going to be about the hands ago, remember I mentioned I'm all about the hands, and I like models that use their hands are too soft. It's about the pose is about the romantic kind of pose is that she does, and the shapes as well, because it's all about the shapes for using it, allie, the way that you move your shoulders and your hips as well. Aaron, do you want to talk about this? Um, this hat he made because you really surprise me with what you created from this while I'm shooting. Just have the shop thinking about what laura and I were planning. And I found these christmas tree ornament that and thought that it would make a fantastic hat. So I did. You constructed them a little bit. I took out the thing that you hang the ball onto. I used my glue gun again, and good cem ribbon sewed it on top of this old turban that I had at my house on beautiful me, this hat and it's, really inspired by the party of gatsby's house. The champagne bubbles, the water splashing she's, a showgirl, she's at gatsby's house as part of a show, and the next look, wilby, a normal dress will be a participant of the party but here she's really playing the part and I just thought it would add some great drama and give the model something easy to work with and to make a great picture with and as you can see, I'm just kind of moving around a lot I'm kind of this one this one moving her closer because it's really confusing when you're working with the reflection which way is what and you'll find I'm like, ok, that doesn't work but ollie's moving around a lot and actually probably helps you to see yourself doesn't it to kind of with posing itself and this is a good technique if you have a model that doesn't really feel comfortable in front of the camera in a lot of my earlier models that had just got experience he's tohave a mirror behind me was even in my house and that would really help them and decide how to posi you learn with them as well, okay, I don't know if you guys just have that orange gap in between the mirrors and then lovely lovely as she is, she said, I'm going to finish up that out and I thought I'm just going to move them together things yeah, just about that's great allie beautiful just mouth I've been just a little bit yet and ten down great and with this reflector also want to say we're kind of I'm moving around, I'm not always catching it exactly with this kind of thing, I think you always have to just think on your feet try to, you know, there's little variations that happen, especially something as reflective as that headpiece. I'm going to really add something to it as well, and you get it's quite tricky to focus because if I'm doing the two, I've gotta focus someone or the other, but it's quite nice to kind of throw off and make this one blurry, whereas this one is kind of shop and because it is got speed and it's kind of going back to early photography, I don't mind that the focus is slightly off again. We're not looking for perfectly sharp images here. We're not looking to shoot for the clothes we're looking to shoot more mature. We're looking for the idea. We're looking for the concept in the darkness and the emotion there's some folks who are wondering if you could take a shot of her directly and then through the mirror so that we can compare them and kind of see the effect that the mirrors happen. All right, chin up just a little great, then I'll take one in the mirror, so what you're saying that if you could bring those two images up is the mirror is adding it's quite dirty and like around the size it's got kind of this matted feel it really adds the feel it's almost like it was printed on an old film or it's got like an old polaroid texture to it and it really helps enhance the theme of that on after this we're going to be shooting gruesome vasselin on some glass that I'm going to scratch I'm going to show you how I do that in a super simple I did this with my last gatsby shoot on we're going to be just shooting for that so if you don't have something like this because they're not easy to find I think you guys have a hard time finding these when I defended think they may have made them think I mean our department but you can just shoot for glass for this as well so there's so many ways of making this happen and it's so simple and again you don't need a lot of money for this is just natural light a canvas that you can make and marie that you find in your house or even shooting threesome perspective that you can pick up a d I y store okay so we're gonna do a few more of these and I'm gonna change out you know far if you come a little closer to that just make sure you chain is a little up great felix if you come closer you can probably get away with come in that's what we're doing with this is we just moving around as she moves we just reflecting that light back into the silver in its belting are punished him to get rid of all these shutters here and here a swell beautiful really doing a great job just take a slight step that yet just a few more kind of push your head yet and in some way you kind of looking down and it's kind of sad like frowned just slightly great kind of a boxing her in and can I just quickly grab that crystal? I just wanted what because I'll forget completely to do it another thing I like to do because when I'm outside I'm always shooting through foliage anything like that simple things in the house doesn't have to be crystals plastic plexiglass like even cutting off the edge like a water bottle and sticking that overland reading glasses experiment with every day items because their role in our houses even things like this like I've got these in my chandelier and I take them off all the time and just sticking them in front of the lens and they work best when you using natural light you're outside and you have a wide aperture because it focuses through in this kind of shines in the light so it may not be right for what would you know? But I just want to show an example of what it can do for the same thing again so it's kind of tough because I'm also trying to focus and then hold the lens and we did that on that miley job bad about four crystals glued to my lens and trying to focus on trying to get the light and the smoke together and all you've got to do is just keep moving it around as much as possible and I'm just going to keep it just in my focus it may take a bit of time but trying to get now you could felix crystal has to catch a flight yes that's true you can even shine like a torch into it remember when we were doing that and we were doing was torched at it and then like you know super specific angles just to get yeah tickets different things so you can see how interesting just something a simplest that even just taking the outside if you do poor trades if you do any kind of photography sticking something of simple is that even if you do videos behind the scenes videos in front ofyou lens and moving around an experiment and as much as possible because again that's how you're going to learn from this okay, I would love to change your outfit we'll change the backdrop to the textured one and the more keep working okay all right so in the meantime well she's changing I would love tickets and questions most definitely we can start with our studio studio any other. And if anybody has a question, what dictates for you whether you want to use a continuous life or you want to use a strobe? That really depends. I think if I can get away with using natural light and soft I will. A lot of clients pushed detail like clothing designers. Look books, a lot of commercial jobs. They want the texture, skin. They want to see all the detail in the garments so they will push for that and that's. Why we have to know how to use strobe, but as we would natural as well, because then you kind of get the best of both was what you would want. But you still get the detail for that too. Excellent. All right, we'll take one from online, we have doug gottlieb, who says this is an awesome in camera technique which has a lot going for it. But to play devil's advocate, why not just shoot clean and then do the grunge in post and s o that you have both options and more control of replacement of dirt? Yeah, because you could do it in post and I am gonna add more to it. But every time I try and shoot something, I when I first started, photography was all about shooting something simple and adding it together in photo shop now as much as you can do in camera the better so for me I love the effective I can see a visual image almost finished in my camera so I love to added many elements as possible and they just simple elements but it helps me official eyes later on where I want to go with the post a swell okay anymore it will quiet do you ever find that some of your textures will actually maybe mess up the skin tone like it orange or something like that and how do you kind of caught the safe for it if you really want that texture but you're struggling with maybe the flash is like that orange and it's monsieur skin well the reason I use a lot of texas and what we're going to be teaching it how to use textures but we do different modes on the layers and we'll see masks to a raise it on the skin so it's not just adding the texture and that's the final thing we tweak it a lot we color it, we invert that texture we kind of de separated we change the hue so the so many ways of playing with them and that's what I did with the textures that sue showed you there not just textures I've shot I've gone and process them so that they're interested on top of the image themselves too so we have another question from mount lola on dh it's why two mirrors can you tell us again? Is that just what creative I gave you or did you specifically request it for some reason yes I was difficult and wanted t marry from cranium like difficult I like the idea of the murder because it's almost that we've got a little corner to work from you again like sue said it's not just about having a flat image sometimes we're just kind of adding a bit of depth to it and I like the repetition of the image it's a little dark I've seen it in a lot of editorials plane with reflection you could even have an editorial where you shoot it like this and it's over two pages he could switch one girl hour in a different kind of look at it expression and place it on to the others who is almost like a different complete image on the other side so it just adds another element of interest I would say and that's the thing I was drawn to you when I was inspired by the technique and just a follow up on that is this something that you had sketched out as well? Yeah yes definitely I would sketch this out I had a plan for it I saw the inspiration I sketched it out I made a mood board that I shared with my team with aaron, ben aaron made the fantastic hats out of almost nothing on dh, then obviously brought the idea tto life by them, casting the model from that as well. Just a quick question from texas, tim, is there any post processing being applied on import toe light room right now? Or are these just pretty close toe? Ron? Yep, there's a parade just straight out of camera, so that's, why I like to do all the in camera techniques on set because I like to have something, and especially because I shoot tepid a lot. My team likes to see the image straightaway, especially hair makeup, they go in and they're like, can I seat biggs I want to see when they show the makeup is right, what lighting you're using, so I try and get it close to the final as I can and that's just over in the past two years, I've really taught myself to do that. Even when I'm shooting with clients, such is the drop we did with a little words with mylene klass, celebrity, what was great about that is the client wanted to see an image processed so my digital assistant and again, the beauty of having these people and set was they process it close to the way I would put a curve or a tone on so that that would be delivered to the client, and they would view it after that. So if I was doing this on a shoot as well, you could also add, like, a curve so that every image can prove that would be like you're intending color vision. And you could see how the final would look straightaway teo, and having an onset was like, on that job. Our director was there, and we were having that, you know, micro feedback, like, do you want a little bit more light in the eyes? And we were making on the adjustments and just getting everything perfect. We could reference it, strayed off that screen, make such a huge difference, and I don't have to be running to laura, like looking in the back of her camera, hoping, okay, glimpse.