Lessons

Lesson Info

Creating Impact in a Dull Space

I want to talk a little bit first before I just jump into shooting about my process here because it's a little bit different, so I found out that most other people I come into the creative life studio and everybody's saying, you're so weird here, do you know that you're so nobody does what you do here? And I realized that it's because I don't have lights that amusing and like I even said to them, could you just get me like, a a really cheap black background, like a piece of felt, and they were like, okay, so were you shooting on a piece of felt today and and so I want to embrace that weirdness if possible, and there's a friend back home from where I grew up, who is always saying, oh, you're the weird one and embraced being the weird one, and so I am, and so I want you guys to do that, too today because everybody has that bit of weird inside, and I think that is the best part of a person by far, so I want to take that today what I love to shoot most and show you that so I'm doing someth...

ing really simple on this black backdrop. And with this black backdrop I consort of create whatever I want I can let the subject's pop off of the background I can have dresses that contrast from the background that's what I'm looking for here is something to just pop and make me excited so we're going to be working with movement we're going to be working with interesting shapes I especially want to pay attention to the fabric choices that we're making here and how the texture really plays into that because we've got for example address that's it's very textured it's very rough and then we have another texture that's just satin it's just very smooth and so I want to play with that by bringing in different props and working with the motion and just doing anything that I can to really play that up as much as possible so first things first I want to do a little imagination session really quick um let's just let's just grab a model I don't either one of you come out here real quick okay now unlike a photograph are beautiful model yet but I'm just looking at her right now and this is how I get inspired this is how I like to start working I'm working with this model we all know this we all have the opportunity to shoot her if we would like to against this black backdrop so I'm thinking to myself what would I do if I could shoot anything that I want with her right now what would that be and so my mind is working in a way where I'm saying well I wouldn't do something surreal and whimsical on exciting something that excites me so I would probably have her lay down on her back and pop her feet up on a stool and make it look like she's levitating in the air that's my idea you know it's not something that you might do and that's fine so let me just get a volunteer who wouldn't mind sharing your thoughts yeah come on out josh about what you would do with this model oh I know I'm putting you on this model it's hard it's not easy I love your hair I would probably want tohave you jump and stretch your arms out throw your hair back get a lot of movement fantastic okay so I want you guys to vote who has the better idea ok for josh vote for me it doesn't matter that's the point you cannot possibly say which is better and that's the point that I want to get across right now it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if his idea is better if I'm sitting here looking him like oh my gosh he just came up with the best idea and now I don't know what to do because his ideas so much better than mine then are never going to shoot anything and that's what we do to ourselves so often we go look on the internet and we say, oh, somebody already did this or what if somebody else was going to use this dress and they had a better idea than me who cares? That is so not the point right now the point is that we're shooting what we love because we love to shoot it. So right now I want to start photographing these models in a way that makes me happy and if it makes me happy, then chances are it's going to make somebody else happy as well so thank you very much and I love your idea by the way. All right, so let's keep you here cause you're already I'm actually did you tell yourself yes okay, you're all tied up so I have each of our models today we're shooting three models and the three models are all wearing very, very different outfits, so I'm going to show you how I would shoot this outfit this model on this backdrop. Now I want to point out something. The amazing thing about this backdrop is that it's going to provide really pretty light it's going to allow the subject to stand out and on top of that it's black and I happened to have this black stool here, so if I photograph the model on this black stool well then the store isn't really going to show up because it's on the black background so this is sort of like fake levitation that we're going to be doing here um of course they're there are different ways to do this if you don't have a black backdrop but in this case we can take advantage of that naturally surreal effect so I'm just gonna grab my camera over here and I'm going to start playing now another thing that I want to point out here is that I am not shooting with fancy equipment I just put my camera in this stool because that's my tripod for today and I don't really see why we need much else right now I just want to tripod so that if I need to composite something later I can so let me explain that thought process really quick to you guys when I'm shooting anything I like to have a tripod and you know it could be that I am just taking a really simple portrait of somebody and that's it but what if you know I've got the model sitting here and I'm looking at her and you know I'm taking all these pictures and then all of a sudden I'm like but what if she just did that and we had a little hair flip going but I didn't think of that soon enough in the picture that she loves his way in the beginning of that set well, I'm on a tripod, so that means that I can composite that piece in. So the theory behind this is that if my camera isn't moving and the subject isn't really moving too much, well then everything is locked down, so if she's sitting here in position and I'm taking your picture and everything is great and then I do a little hair flip, I can just pace that little hair flip on leader and it's going to match up in the frame because my camera's not moving, so I'm using a tripod stool today and that's exactly the reason why? Just in case I don't know if I'll be doing any compositing leader, I'm just working on the fly with you guys because I want to show you how I would actually approach this, so I have like, I've never taken a picture here, I haven't even shot my camera off yet, so I'm working as I go so let's get you in here now, first thing, I'm just going to try a simple portrait just to get my lighting, right? Because there's a good chance that I'm gonna have her in a highly uncomfortable situation here, so I'm not going to put her in that situation yet I'm going to wait to do that until I have my focus, and I know that the whiting's right and all of that speaking of lighting let's, explain that really quick. We've got windows right in front of us here, natural light hitting direct to the face. I love that it's, my favorite kind of light. So lately I've been shooting in a sewer and it's I guarantee you one of them most beautiful places you can shoot I'm not kidding you're laughing, but trust me so it's sort of the sewer that I shoot in has it goes underneath the bridge there's definitely sewage in there but you know it's okay, because we have showers, so it'll all be fine. And so the white is beautiful because there's a nice dark background because it's a sewer and then there's beautiful white filtering in but it's not coming from directly overhead so I can go into that sewer and shoot any time of day doesn't matter. So I was in there at twelve noon, the sun was bright and shining and on one hand it's a bad time to shoot because then you have lots of families watching you as you're doing it, they're trying to feed the ducks and you're all like, I'm getting in your sewer and it's awkward, but but on the other hand, you have really beautiful white and so that is the wonderful thing and we're just imitating that right here we have light coming in from the front and so for most people I know that I can speak for myself being whipped from the front is the most flattering a lot of people we'll be photographing people outside it will be overcast light so the light is coming from above even though it's defused and I'm taking people's pictures and every time they'll say I look so ugly I don't like it and then I'll say okay told your head back and then they love it and so it is just that that kind of light that were getting natural even on the face so yes it's hitting the background just is evenly as it is her but I have dresses picked out and skin tones and things like that to contrast with it so if I had a darker skin tone I would go with a lighter background and I would just try to contrast that a little bit all right? So let's just have you take a seat there perfect and I am just going to get my framing now I'm not very concerned with framing right now because I'm going to be cropping this I know that for the this image, so I'm not worried about expanding my frame what I mean by expanding my frame I can't see you guys over there hi so what I mean by expanding my frame is that sometimes I will shoot very, very close to the subject, so I'm just getting her in the shot, but maybe I want extra pictures of the scene all around. If I d'oh, then I will then tilt my camera down, take a picture, tilt my camera up, take a picture and then blend those in later. And so what I'm doing is creating a much larger frame in photoshopped the canvas size is expanding, I can print much larger because of that. So there are times when I will do that. This is not one of those cases, because I'm going to have her in a very uncomfortable position. You have back problems, okay, so I'm gonna have her in an uncomfortable position. And so if I were to shoot really close to her and have to photograph her body and multiple images that's just going to be uncomfortable for her, for me to say, okay, hold really, really still, as you're balancing up side down while I take a picture of your foot, so we're not going to do that, so I'm pulling back the other off. Something about a black backdrop is that I can actually just paint black all around her if I want, and it could become a much a bigger canvas so I'm not too concerned about that, so what you'll see in my frame once I take my first shot is that you can actually see like equipment all around and stuff like that in my picture, but I'm just making sure that she is in my shocked so I'm going to step behind my camera and take a look at what I see okay? Does anybody have something that I could stick underneath this? Uh oh my gosh, you're very, very smart, thank you, yeah that'll do it okay, so I just have a general focal point on her I'm not worried about locking focus or anything like that, yet I'm on auto focus, I like to shoot on manual settings and that's partially because I just like to challenge myself and see if I can guess the settings and see how it goes. So what I have right now is I'm trying to decide my depth of field what kind of f stop should I have? And so I'm going to go to about a three point two right now I shoot with a very shallow depth of field most of the time not so shallow that I'm going to like one point for something but shallow enough that I'm not gonna have everything in detail in the background in foreground so I am going to stick with three point two um I I s so is it five hundred right now and my shutter speed is one thirtieth of a second so I'm just gonna go ahead and see how about looks and my framing is all wrong right now but that's okay no big deal and so I'm just taking a look and I think it looks really beautiful so right now what I have is an image that a lot of people might think is underexposed and that's because when I look in the back of my camera here and I'm really zooming in on her hair it really blends in with the background well, that looks quite a lot brighter than my camera does so if we go with that it looks just fine but unlike era which is what I'm looking at, her hair is blending into the background and I think that's a really important thing to note because when her hair is blending into the background I'm looking for just slight detail I don't really care if you know the back part of her hair is hitting hitting the background I don't need that separation light behind her because that's not the look that I'm going for so instead I'm just making sure that I can see little highlights in her hair and if I can see that on the back of my camera that I know that I can pull that out later so I'm not that worried about it so I really like this exposure, and I'm just if anybody does have a little something that I could just stick under there, I'd like to just lift this a little bit, and this is how I like to work at home, too, so I'm not just doing this for for fun often times when I am going out into the woods or sitting in my bedroom, taking a picture, I'll use whatever I have available, and so often people say to me, will you have this amazing tripod? And you have this great camera and I say, so what? I mean, first of all, I don't, actually, but if I did, it wouldn't matter because I can use the stool and get the same picture. In fact, recently I did a photo shoot with my cannon five demark, too, which is what I'm shooting with, as well as a little point and shoot compact camera, and I could not tell the difference after I edited them and so that's, something really important to me to note is that I did it's great to have a nice camera and everything, but that is not the point here. The point is that you can use whatever you have available to you to shoot something like this, so I am taking another peak and that is much, much better, good. Okay, so what about the test shot? And now I'm just checking my focus and making sure everything looks okay. You'll see that everything is tilted and that is totally fine because we will be fixing that later on in photo shop. We will be doing editing during this segment as well. So keep that in mind I'm not just going to shoot and then leave you all with raw, unedited images. Ok, so focus is really nice. I like my exposure. I am personally happy with this so now I want to move on to what am I shooting? Because I'm not just going to shoot this beautiful girl here sitting on a stool even though it would be beautiful I could pose her around in different ways and see what was possible but instead I'm going to do something it's a little bit strange and I hope that she'll be okay with this I hope oh my gosh! I should have okay, so part of me is like I should have practiced this first but it's fun to see the failure of it so let's just let's just go for it. Okay, alright, stare guys so you can step off and now we cannot see the stool in these pictures it's going to be totally invisible it's going to be very difficult, all right I was going to try to do it myself but I don't want to flash people film not going teo basically what I want you to dio is lay your shoulders down on the ground over here and then try to get your butt sitting up there just so you're propped up on the store so you can sit on it and then lean back could I get somebody to help her just lean lean back here we're creating a levitation pose for all the ways of her shoulders hit the ground yeah just keeping me on it great yep justin he is what you need yeah and then I'm just gonna have you push your hips up as much as you can yep just like that you've got it and you look beautiful. Okay perfect now stay like that as long as you can. Fantastic. So now I'll take a picture just like this just to show you show you what we have because she is not opposed correctly yet at least what I consider to be correct and so I am going to just get my focal point on her very generally I'm not like you know, pinpointing the eye or anything I just wanna make sure that her body in general is in focus and so when I take a look at this picture it's very a flat the pose is not very elegant yet obviously she's trying to balance on a stool so there are some things that I want to do to break it up as much as I can break up a pose that is what I am going for so you can see how she's just very, very flat throughout her body I really can't see her other leg because it's being hidden back there so what I want to start to pose you yes if I could have you take this neat up and then this leg sorry I'm just gonna lift you mind there you go and then point the tower and then bend it this anymore just like that that's going to create some some nice lines in this image and I'm gonna take this hand and just go like that perfect and so now we're already much more elegant because we've done that which is great I'm just going to move your hair a little bit are you okay? You just you just yell if you're not cause I know I've done this many times it's very uncomfortable okay perfect so now I'm gonna take another shot see how far we've come and then see what we need to adjust and if you could turn your face just slightly towards me and then look up off in the distance yes great okay so now we have what I believed to be a much more beautiful image just based on how she is posed so we have her legs sort of creating that separation the arm is broken up now it's not just a stick straight body and that's what I'm looking for now I'm going to make one more adjustment that you don't have to do yet until I get back behind my camera but when you're ready just shove those hips up as much as you can okay and so now she's not going to be so flat okay I'm ready there you go perfect no house have your face towards me a little bit off into the distance and if you could bring your other arm up above your head there you go and then a soft hand so it's curved towards me there you go fantastic so that would be the shot that I love from this set you can relax in fact let's just get you off that story there you go. Hey, good job. Thank you. That is the worst suppose two d'oh o okay, so as I look at this image, I'm really happy with the curve of it because the fabric is moving in a way that sort of works with her body which I liked about this dress in particular it had the tears in it so it kind of broke things up a little bit now one thing to think about is the fact that the stool is right behind the see through fabric so if you're doing something like this and you were working with a stool that does not blend into the background that would be a problem that would be like a cloning nightmare and photo shop and we don't have to deal with that so that is my only concern about this kind of set up but it's the stool matches you will never see that stool when I finish this picture it's just going to blend straight in there especially cause I'll add contrast was just going to kind of go away which is what I want so just for fun here I'm going to do josh's idea so josh, why don't you come out here bro quick and I'll click the button because as we should all know, it doesn't actually matter who clicks the button if it's his idea it's his idea and so why don't you go ahead and director real quick so thinking ah lot of movement from the side so kind of like throwing your body up like that and then kind of coming off the ground a little bit just so you're just barely off the ground and your fina pointed straight just perfect so I shot it okay so now given his idea we're going to have to change our settings she's just going to be a blur unless I catch it at the exact moment where she's perfectly still in the air so that's not gonna happen so I'm going to go ahead and just adjust here, so what I am doing is raising my shutter speed, taking my I s so up, so I think I think that might be all right there on that shutter speed one one hundredth of a second, and my eyes so is twelve fifty, so yes, I'm pushing that up a little bit high, but it's going to be absolutely fine, especially because you're going to see the grain more in the shadows and the shadows or what? We don't care about the background, okay, before you start, can you kind of bring your hair forward a little bit? That way? It really moves. Thank you. I'm ready for you. Beautiful. I really like your shot as I thought I would, I might have cut her foot off. We'll see. No, I don't. So I just wanted to show that example of the fact that there are so many things that you could do in this such a simple setup now she's wearing this beautiful ballerina type dress. So, you know, josh's concept worked perfectly for that because she and you were really good at that, by the way, so we've got the hair moving and the excitement of it, and if I were going to continue with the shoot this is the kind of thing where I might say ok let's get somebody to foot the dress forward as she's jumping and then we get that big motion in the air and try different things like that but for now I think that was just absolutely perfect I'm just glad that I got it and focus to be honest since it's not my big sure thank you okay so let's bring out the next model there you are oh you look perfect I just got this from goodwill that's another good thing to note that my dresses don't come from you know like three hundred dollar stores online or anything I just go to goodwill most of the time see what I can find this was two dollars it was great on dh so I just I just see what I can find I do have certain dresses that air from thrift stores and stuff like that I'm going to bring one out later that's one of my more extravagant dresses but this is what I love shooting this is the kind of thing to me that you can shoot over and over and over again it's not really going to get old because it's so simple I have some dresses like the one that I will bring out next that is very distinct that I can't use over and over and over again despite trying all the time but I can't and so this is just just perfect to me I was so happy when I found this a couple notes on styling as well does this come untied easily yeah so this is how it looked before it's I mean it's really just like somebody's big nightgown and if I had her coming out like that, that would be just fine but if you think about the way that I'm going to move this dress, I'm probably going to end up doing this with it and it's going to billow from the top and out and I don't want that I want to give her a really nice shape so if I just sensed it at the waist like this I don't even know what this is a straw or something this is strange but I love it and so so what I'm doing here is just trying out the way so that when we do move her dress out it's going to come from the waist and it will cinch your waist in and then flow outward and make a really, really beautiful shape, I'll tell you back up here. So when I was getting the string, I asked everybody a creative live and I said I need just anything to tie around her waist as long as it looks natural and that was really important because if it didn't look natural it would not go with this whatsoever and I wanted to make absolutely sure perfect so now that we have that tied around her waist when I move this outward it's going to send to the waist and look much nicer and more elegant you ready okay, so I'm going to get her test shot and I just want to make sure that my settings air good before I have or do anything weird so I'll have you just stand right here staring at the camera and I will see how we are looking so I'm bringing my eyes so back down to five hundred and I am taking my shutter speed moved down to thirty and I'm just taking a test shot okay? So I'm saying how that looks I think that it looks just fine we the models were really very similar in the skin tone and the dresses or similar color so I knew that there wasn't gonna be too much that needed to be changed back in my camera looks ah lot darker than that so don't worry if you guys were like what? Okay, okay, so what I want to do, I've got my test shot she's in place so now I want to play with her and I'm really thinking about the fabric and how I can move this fabric here so I'm going to have repose but I'm also going to have somebody moving the fabric and this is why it's great to have an assistant on set but if you don't, you can always do the ten second timer you can use a remote I had my remote earlier and then I set it down somewhere so it could be anywhere right now so I'm going to use a ten second timer andi I'm just going to do this all myself because I can because I don't need to have somebody with me and the same goes, you know, say this was me if only but say this was me and I was standing here and I was going to do this shoot all by myself do a self portrait I could just move my own skirt, you know and that's why compositing is so great because if I didn't have anybody with me I could still do this pose I could get in place I could do everything how I need to do it and then as it's, the last thing that I do just flick that dress and then add it on later so we're going to use this stool again and I'm gonna have it right here and so what I'm going to have her do because I'm going to actually just have her lean back as much as is possible in fact I'll let her lean sylvan her head is towards you guys you can watch her turn red is the process goes on sorry, so now she is very tall I am not I could lean my back on that store I don't know if you can it's it's a long way down. Okay, so if not we're just going to somebody hold you and that's fine. So let me see how far back now you know what I can already see it's away too far. Okay, so let's get our beautiful assistant in here you want to come hold her up? Okay, so this is another great option if you don't have a stool, you're trying to do some trick photography and you just don't have the tools to do it. I use people. There was one time when I was teaching a workshop. We're doing levitation and somebody needed a stool to go on a bed from the model to be floating on the bed. But the issue was that the stool kept falling over and she kept toppling to the floor. So in order to be safe about things, I decided that I would get down like this and go like that. And then she laid on my back. And so you know, it wasn't comfortable, but it got the job done at least and that's worth it? I think so what? I'm goingto have you d'oh stand just like here embrace yourself, okay and hold your hands up okay, so you will be just holding like this yep. And then you're just goingto so you can start with your yes just like that yes and then as far back as you feel comfortable leaning that's what we're going to ride you so you can move with her further that'd be great keep going keep going might go this way yeah that yep yep you're you're just fine great now we're shooting from the side so I don't actually care that I can see arms and stuff here I will edit that out later so what I want to do is if I'm looking through my camera I'm kind of down so if I can see a hand on her back then I'm just going to have her sort of roll her shoulder this way so that I don't see that so I'm going to and in fact I can then see her beautiful neckline and that's really great as well so I'm trying to create a ballerina pose here something very, very exaggerated so if I could have I don't know any ballerina terms but like when your hands go above your head yes that you're perfect okay, so now I am going to just take this shot this is just more of a test to see how it's going great perfect okay, now there are a couple of changes that I will make so you can relax for now and so what I'm going to do is make sure that her arm has some separation from her body, so instead of having her, I'm just straight up like this, I'm going to have her maybe pull her elbow back a little bit and create those lines that we've been talking about, so I don't want the elbow, for example, just to be so close to her face put back a little bit, the other thing, of course, or the feet, so I'm gonna have her toes pointed and then maybe one tojust look out in the air like that, and then that will create another good line for the body to sort of run your eye across the last thing that I'm going to do is move her skirt. Now I am going to do this all in the ten second timer, so I'm going to run over, grab the skirt and just start moving it now. I am on a thirty second shutter, so one thirtieth of a second, and because of that, I can't be waving that fabric around and expect to get a good result it's just going to be like a ghost fabric moving, so I'm just going to hold it gently and just move it a little bit as I touched that fabric, so I am changing my camera right now I am putting it on the a ten second timer on my cannon five d mark too I do that by doing a f drive and then I can just use the back circle tool thing on your camera I don't know technical turns the wheel yeah, one of men's first invention so I can move that so then it's a timer there's a little symbol that has, like a little remote with a little time or next to it and that's how I know that I'm on the right setting and I do need to get my focus before I do all of this so I'm gonna have you in your pose as much as possible right now so why don't you go ahead and lean back there? There you go. Great. And then I'm gonna come yep. You got it with that arm. So let me just take a look through my camera, make sure that the arm is how I want it. So could you bring your left elbow down? Just yep there that's. Perfect. Okay, I actually like that a lot more, so I'm going to go ahead and leave that great. And now if you can point the toes also yeah, you don't think I like going point or anything like that, just like that is great, okay, now lean back into her so then she'll be totally supporting you no don't feel bad she's very strong I checked beforehand now if you khun air you able to balance on one foot I got you but that's even great too that's yep that's perfect you can still leave your toe on the ground just pull it forward there you go fantastic ok I am locking my focus okay I'm putting a manual just so that it doesn't move I want to be sure and now my ten second timers going so just ten seconds guys it'll it'll fly by maybe here we go just like that okay, you can relax it's always important to let your model know when they can relax otherwise they will most likely hold it forever so I'm just taking a look at that now I am not as happy as I could be right now with how I was holding that fabric which is always kind of a bummer if it's my fault when something like that doesn't work out so I'm going to have us do it just one more time and I'm going to make another change I'm gonna have you go profile for this picture so instead of looking towards the camera just look straight ahead everything else was good so back in position very nice good and so I am changing what I'm doing by not holding the skirt up like this I'm just gonna hold it down here and just wave it great. So we will see how that looks so you can relax aside just like sure. D'oh. Okay, so that looks a lot nicer to me. I love the way that you can see the jaw line now that's important to me, andi, I do like how the fabric is moving. I'm just going to take a look at this really quick and zoom in and make sure we've got that shot. We don't because it's out of focus so let's do it one more time, okay? I'm in focus on my timer. Now something else that you'll notice is that, of course, we can see a human behind her arm. I'm not concerned about that. That is the kind of thing that I can cut around easily because her arm is so bright and sansa stark fabric. So again, not a big deal. Okay, now I like that one quite a lot more than the others. Definitely I love the soft hands. I love the tip toes on her feet. I like the line of the dress, I hope it's in focus, I'm in double check focus is my arch nemesis and I am not kidding. I mean, I can't get things and focus pretty much so like don't hire me for anything just kidding, but but really it's like it's, my downfall thank you so we're gonna do one more pose with this dress because and you can thank you so much you got like double workout today so we're going to do one more pose with this little stool here yeah thank you I actually I stole this from lou freeman I think it's hers bird tomorrow or something but I was just sort of buying it up in the back room and I was like I have must have that so I'm taking it because of this dress so not only does this is this a nightgown so it goes with the sort of like bedroom theme but it's just this soft soft fabric and it makes me think of a fairy tale and very very soft princess and so I wanted to have her posing on top of this I'm just going to move this to about right there and if I could have the posing on it I'm just going to have you I'm testing this first I'm gonna have you up here and I'm gonna have I'm not going to do this because I will not be flashing people again but I'm gonna have knees up and sort of curled to your chest and then hunched over and I will pose you from there and if you I mean if you want to face that way and not flash people to that's okay but either way I'm sure nobody minds yeah okay very good and so now once she moves the stuff, I'm actually going to take care to take this fabric out from under her as much as I can canvases in it'll drape nicely and if I wanted to I could even create some movement in here just by moving not around and letting it ghost then it sort of flies in the air a little bit all right, first things first I want to create an extremely delicate pose because of what I'm doing here is creating a fairy tale like image I wanted to be soft and pretty and very, very elegant, so I want to create nice lines one thing that I want to see is her back I love her spine here so I'd like to see her spine so that means to me that I won't oppose her where this shoulder is dipped down lower that way I can see more of her back and by dipping the shoulder down you're going to see more of her neck as well and so that'll just elongate this whole muscle that I love that goes down the neck so let's have you lean into your knees fantastic now let's drop this and move this shoulder down as low as you can there you go and now I'm going to have you just very, very softly rest this hand on your toes they go what's curly like that there you go now this one we can pull it over there and then just softly resting there now if you can put your chin just right up on your there you go I thought I couldn't think of that word from okay, so we're going to try this out and see how it looks okay now my setting should all be exactly the same of course I'm locked down on manual focus so I'm switching out of manual focus I'm taking my ten second timer off, which must be a miracle because it's the first time I've ever remembered to do that getting my focus snapping okay? So I'm taking a look at this now and I want to see what I can change because opposing is most often something that you have to refine a little bit and so I do really like this I like all the shapes that I'm saying this is the kind of thing that I might edit out later just cause it's certainly poking off of her back but it could be cute I'm not sure yet okay? So in looking at this pose I think that this would be much better if she was in profile the way that she has her neck turn you can see sort of like the wrinkles in her neck and I mean it's not like that for certain things but not for this so I'm going to have this arm dangling down in between your legs of possible great just like that and then lean in as much as you can can you scrunch your ankle into your butt even more there you go perfect lovely great and I'm going to bend this one even more and just do that and then shoulder down as much as you can and then head profile so chin up great now still lean in as much as you can see lakes that chin out there you go okay great in fact let's do head back even more fantastic okay I'm taking a picture and something that you'll notice so you can relax thank you so one thing that you'll notice is that I don't even look through my camera before I say perfect I'm taking the picture because I don't need to look through my camera this isn't about that I'm looking at her I can see what my camera sees of course I could get down like this you know and and take a look but I'm not relying on my camera to take two hundred pictures of the same thing and hoping that that little difference pops up and that is a fine way to work it's not like I think that that's a bad thing to do is just not how I work and so when I'm shooting I'm looking at her I'm studying every little detail and I just run my eye over everything like I'm skimming a book and so I'm starting with her hair and I'm saying does the hair look nice if I shoot it from the side and you know is her chin tilted up enough and then I moved on to her shoulder and is that shoulder pulled down far enough and in this case I don't think it wass so that's something that I want to fix for this next shot that we take I do love how this hand the right hand is sort of coming forward and you can see that little line and so I'm studying her in person and in studying the image and then making changes from there so what I want to do is that whole same thing one more time so why don't you start getting back in position great there you go and so let's just drop this is muchas possible there you go perfect I love that and now chin up great yes, I think I like this so let me just take this arm instead of holding on let's just do that and bend of the wrist a little bit and soft fingers okay, yeah, that looks really nice. Great. And then chin er yep turned up more uh face a little bit more towards me a little bit more you're going great and now cast your eyes upwards a little bit more? Yep, fantastic. Can you push your chest into your yep there you go I know it's it's not easy very go great okay that's it fantastic now that is the pose that I am looking for so that final picture was what I wanted in every little detail and I didn't have to take two hundred pictures to get there I just sort of worked with it as it was going and that's how I like to shoot perfect thank you okay, so we're going to get the last dress out here now and thank you very much for your amazing modeling uh okay so the last dress that we have coming out hi I have met you yet okay so we have this beautiful dress that I shot in my last creative live and this is just like my pride and joy the dress that I love it gets me so excited this is the first time they're bringing color into this space something very important to think about with color is that if I had multiple colors competing here then I would get very, very upset with myself in this whole set because that's not what I like I want one main color to shoot and then the rest to be very very neutral and that's how I work with colors it's very natural too you need to do that you know I didn't go like study, color theory or anything it's just something that I felt good about when I created my images back when I started creating, I was doing a lot of very, very dis actuated images, um, pictures that were, you know, didn't really have any mean color in it, and so I started to branch out and I said, well, what if I added orange? And what if I added red and sort of putting colors in? And every time I did that where I had say, orange and green in the same picture, I hated the picture, and I started realizing it was because I didn't have one main color focus. So in this case, I love this set up because I mean, yes, she has blonde hair, which I guess you could count is yellow or something, but I mean, I'm not going to get that picky with it, but I do want to focus on this beautiful red dress, so first thing that I want to dio is just take my test shot like we've been doing, I'm actually not gonna do anything too crazy with you, I'm going to do something quite normal with you, but perhaps with some assistance and just get that dress moving. So one thing that I didn't talk about too much was the fact that I could take this black backdrop and do something. Fun with it later I don't have to leave it black if I wanted teo I could drop a forest in the background something like that so when we start to edit you'll see me do that I have a picture of the forest that I took I'm going to just drop it right in behind her and splendid really, really seamlessly hopefully and the goal of it is not to you know make it look like this vivid forest all around her I just want to make it look like a hint of nature is sort of coming into the background so I'm going to go ahead and take my test shot good so what we have here is a nice exposure and just leaving everything as it is so to repeat those settings and that f three point two I s o five hundred one thirtieth of a second and that's how I'm going to shoot here now if I start to notice that the motion is just too much for the shutter speed allah just again just like we did before for josh's shot so I need an assistant yes and we're both going teo fling her dress all about although not actually fling it because we're at one thirtieth of a second so uh so what I want you to do is just pick up some of the dress there's sort of a front and back where I notice with this thing there you go. There is a lot of dress. Yes e I don't know if you guys can see that it's like completely mud stained I'm not gonna lie it might be sewage but I'm not so okay but I think I think it's just mud all right, so what I want you to do is just this just back and forth yep just like that and so we're going to take a picture just like that now this dress is great because it's sort of short here so we can actually pull that above and have your arms come out and I just want you to sort of cross yep just like that and so I'm basically just cinching her waist without using a band she's just doing it herself and in the dress will move out from there. Okay, now I'm gonna put this back on my ten second timer so back on the ten second timer taking a look at my framing and what I would like you to dio actually I'm going to keep your elbows in so then you're still synching, but I'm just going to take this arm up and I'm going to cover your face and I love your face but you know, just like that yep just like that and then, uh chin down quite a bit, so really yep there you go fantastic and now I'm going to create soft hands so I do that just by turning her hand just like that and same with this one turn like that okay fantastic and I'm getting my focal point walking it down to manual at this point I'm going to click my ten second timer and we can both just start moving that fabric and make sure that here you grab that too great okay so let's take a look at what this is like hoover that looks vibrant up there all right so now I want to make the two sides symmetrical and they're not symmetrical right now so I need to make sure that we coordinate enough and so I'm going to have you when you were moving this side of the fabric so you can see how your kind of holding it up so then there's a dip in it don't let there be a debt ok ok great so let's actually move you over a little bit on the dress doesn't go on the background that's great and you don't have to hold it completely out you can actually just get lower to the ground and just move it down there yep just like that and let's see if you can grab that piece is well here we go perfect and so I'm going to change her pose a little bit too it's a little bit static for me I don't like static poses and so I'm making this up on the fly like what would I actually do right now if like this was my client and I had to please her and I had to create a really dynamic pose so I'm going to have you create some shape in your body a little bit so because your hair sort of up to one side I'm gonna take advantage of that and he knew that direction so it looks more natural with the flow of everything so why don't you go ahead and sort of bend at the hips this way great and then we'll put this up on your neck this being your hand and this one back up here over the side of your face good and I'm just going to keep turning your wrist await your wrist doesn't go that way that way yep just like that. Fantastic. And then this one I can just go down like that and then lean your body even more yep just like that okay, don't fall over and then if you could tell your chin up for this one and then look off in this direction great. Okay, I'm gonna refocus just in case focused foot to manual focus got my ten second timer find the fabric which is actually a more difficult job than it seems great, okay, so let's see how we did with that one, huh? So great all right so you can see that that's a lot more dynamics it looks like she's actually doing something instead of just standing in front of a camera now the only thing that I don't like is the fact that her elbow is up a little bit high so it's coming straight at the camera so again I'm doing this analysis thing I'm looking from head to toe what do I like? What do I not like? I love the way that she's hiding her face because it looks like she's almost scared of something and so I'm finding inspiration in that I'm thinking about the force that I'm going to drop in later from dropping in a forest well then it has to make sense in that space she can't just be standing there or she could if that's your story but it's not mine. So I'm going to continue this pose exactly except that instead of having her arm like this and it's going to bring it down like that a little bit just so than her the flat of her arm back here isn't up to the camera it's going down a little and I could always change my stool or my tripod height if you're working like a normal person andi right? Raise it up a little bit, but I think this is a pretty good height so I'd like to stay shooting at about that height okay there you go now I'm just gonna pose your hand again real quick because that was the key here yeah just like that great great okay and then this one like that okay so you see me flipping hands a lot and that's because I really like to see the sides of hands instead of the front side I am just getting my focus okay okay great. Okay and so that should be my last shot I don't anticipate having to take another one great okay, I really like that I love the way that the dress is moving its really pretty I am going to do one more but we're going to be very very quick about it so back into the pot's ready go okay oh yeah you got it she's on it now. Okay, now this time uh marcie I'm gonna just tell you when to drop it ok? Ok so you could just hold it out and then when I say drop it just drop it and it's okay if we get some blur okay, I hope I get the timing right after hold my breath drop great. Okay, so hopefully that just had a little bit of a flutter at the bottom of the dress we shall see okay good so I think that is what I want to use because it's not too much motion for the shot that we're going to be doing next thank you so much okay, so I want to move into editing now and if we have any questions then this would be a great time I was just uh you don't seem to be too wrapped up in the perfect exposure so do you tend to go a little bit under or a little bit over and why I go under and part of it is just that that's my style I know that I will be making the image much darker leader so I kind of think that line minds we'll start with that. The other thing is that I have a hard time bringing back the highlights a lot of the time and have an easier time with the shadows and I don't mind a little bit of green in my pictures, but if I have an overexposed highlight I will not keep that picture like it is in the trash I will never try to salvage it so so yeah, I should under expose for that reason. The other reason is that I tend to work with lasso tools a lot so you'll see me sort of if there's a dark area I'll just quickly lasso it and then just pull back that area and I find that to be a little bit harder to do with highlights just to sort of have a natural fall off with highlights and then one mark can't so a lot of your shoes come from a particular idea or thought how far do you deviate from that if things happen to go in that direction, you just run with it or do you try to stay to tea? Well, the good answer is that I try to run with it um I don't know that I always succeed in doing that I am a very stubborn person when it comes down to what I love to do like if if I have an idea I'm going to do that idea and my friends are always like why do you even ask her opinion if you know that you're not going to listen to it it's like I don't know for good measure, I suppose, but um but yeah, when I shoot, I would say that about ninety percent of my chutes end up how I envision them half out of stubbornness have half out of just trying to planet a lot to make sure that it goes that way, but there have definitely been plenty of times where, you know, setting up my camera and I noticed the model and she's doing something and I say that's, the better pose and I'll go with that or or you know, a location just isn't working and I just swing the camera around and try something different and I think it just really depends on how much is at stake with the shoot you know, if like, if there's something that I have to get done, then I'll try to work with it, and if I don't, then I'll just say, you know what? Sorry for dragging you out here, but let's, just go to starbucks and have tea and call it a day, and we'll try again later, some so a couple questions from the internet. The first one is from a new dubai and he's, a regular here creative live about the back job. Do you prefer paperback drop cloth backdrop? Is there a reason when paper is better than cloth? And again, we're talking about creating in this little dole space. Yeah, I have never used paper before. Actually, I did once and lindsay adler studio, but but, yeah, I don't own backdrops. I don't you know, I don't have that that material at my disposal typically. So I use whatever I can so like, if this was me at home, this would be curtains, you know this this would be whatever I could find. And here I'm so fortunate to have this, like, stand and everything's perfectly set up. But the thing about paper is that I it will wrinkle it, I guarantee you, I mean, when I was shooting at lindsay studio, I was like kick in the paper and stomping holes in it. And it's not good for me. So I just personally prefer fabric. I like the way that it folds as well. And sometimes I think it looks nice in the final image. So, you know, fabric for me. Cool. Thank you. And another question is from maybe when you go shopping for dresses like you mentioned and general shooting outfits, do you have an idea in mind? Or do you just see something and say that could be fun to play with both? Both? When I go to goodwill, I'm just going mostly to play that's like I go in and I see what I can find. And I came home the other day with, um, just like a ruffled bedsheets. And I was like, this will make a great cloak, and so I love to play like that. But I would say it's fifty fifty, I go out a lot with a very specific thing in mind. And if I don't find that specific thing, I will not settle for anything less. And I get really intense about it. So I can sense a theme here about your personality. Yeah. So are you then? Are you taking notes when you're coming up with these things? Are you drawing images? Oh yeah, what is it that you're doing? What do you recommend for people to dio there coming up with these ideas? I keep an inspiration notebook all the time, so I have this really pretty natural journal it's so beautiful and just looking at it inspires me and so I might general processes that I will write about a paragraph one, two, three paragraphs of note it's and I'm saying everything from ok, I want a black backdrop, I want the backdrop to be felt I want a red dress, I want the red dress to be flowing, I won her in this pose and and I'm thinking all the way through the editing as well and that's something that a lot of people don't think past, you know is ok, what is the shoot going to be like? Yes, but what is the editing going to be like a swell? And if you're you know, a natural shooter, you don't do photoshopped that's great, too, planning is still amazing, but I'm thinking for the final product because I find that if I don't think about photo shop, then that's when the picture start to fall apart. Because I don't foresee these little problems that I might have so if I wanted to have a stormy sky in the background then I'm going to be thinking about editing in the fact that I'm going to change that sky to look really reddish yellow or something like that and so I'm going through the first paragraph is typically just literally what is the concept second paragraph how am I going to do it when I'm shooting third paragraph how will it look when I'm editing I always couch too so terrible sketches little stick figures but just anything to remind myself perfect well let's move on to editing speaking of fantastic okay so I'm going to move on to editing and these are images that we have here now the first thing that I want to do I believe I'm going to open up one of the first ones that we did which one would you guys like to see only do one of either the satin dress or the fluffy dress you guys tell me fluffy ok that is great so I know that this was the one that we had so if we can open that up into photo shop oh I can do it I've never used light room before and yes okay great so is there any way to move that monitor a little closer? I don't know that I have bad eyesight or not but I can't see it through ok no I mean I can look here this is not an issue but okay, so first thing that I want to do is I want to try to edit this for what you guys are seeing because this is obviously far brighter than what you guys are saying at home so I want to make sure that I am doing a fair job of that so what I want to do is first I want to crop this so I'm just going to go to my crop tool now you're you'll hear me saying these things a lot really really simple tools when I edit so crop tool lasso tool any any brush really all use but not in a fancy way not like toe add hair onto a girl or something like that just like normal racer brushes I tend to use so first thing in my general processes that I always preserve the background layer so I want to go in and just right click and duplicate layer and say ok, I might be a little bit slow with this because uh I'm using just a mouse here but I will do my best so I have the background copy layer she's on a dark background we can see the stew a little bit in there but I want to go ahead and crop so I'm just going to generally drag this along here I'm trying to make room for her hand and now, given that this is one of my images, I do only squares, I do not have my normal keyboard here, so I'm just going to generally, like, move this into a square shape and hope that I'm pretty close. I think I will be there we go, that looks square ish to me, so now I have her in the frame and the way that I am framing her is basically the rule of thirds, so I am making sure that her legs are in the top portion and that her head is in the bottom portion, and I am just going to hit this check mark to say, okay, now, as you can see, we have lots that we don't want in this picture. So my first thought before I am worried about anything else, changing the colors or the darkness or anything like that, I want to make sure that I fill this all in because this is what I call the compositing step in editing it's, not actual compositing cause you're not putting multiple images in together, but it's compositing in the sense that you are adding to a picture of something that wasn't there to begin with, so I just want to do something extraordinarily simple, I want to go ahead and use my paintbrush tool, and I just want to paint so I'm going to use the little eyedropper tool, and I'm just going to select black from my background, so I am selecting from my background because I want to make sure that I'm filling in a color that is actually there, I don't want to just choose pure black and then hope that it's the black that we have captured in the image so oh, wow. Oh, thank you, yes, that's that's awesome, yeah, thank you. Okay, so I am selecting just anywhere in the background. You can see that I'm clicking and I'm just defining a point, and now I want to go back into my brush tool and take the size up with this little size slider. So it's said to forty, right now I'm just going to take that size up quite a lot, much more than that a little bit less than that nam it nine hundred now nine eighty two so that looks pretty good to me. Another thing to note is that I'm using a very fuzzy brush, so when I am editing, I don't want to use the hard brush because then you're going to see harsh lines running throughout the picture, so if I go back into the size, you can also see hardness down here, and the best way to show that difference is this is a one hundred percent fuzzy brush, this is a one hundred percent hard brush, so that translates into zero percent hardness one hundred percent hardness. I want to go back to zero percent hardness because that is going to create a nice, fuzzy transition in my edit, so I'm just going to click and drag and paint, and I'm just painting away now, what I want to note is that I don't want to get close to her hand because obviously if I were to do that, that would be very bad. Thank you. Okay, so I'm just going to keep filling this in in the bottom there we go hopes I got her a little bit again. Oh, yeah hey, I have a keyboard. This is often okay, so I'm going to make my brush eyes a little bit smaller. I'm just adjusting the size of my brush based on where I am running it over. I don't want to get too close to her because then we will have quite an issue if I right click I can also adjust the size and so I'm just going to take that down. Maybe asks is there a reason why you love square? Yes, squares they're like they're my life no, really, I see in squares I'm telling you like I don't even have peripheral vision I know ideo anyway but no, I've trained myself to think in squares because I love the square format so much so when I see a scene I think okay, how would that look in the square? Yeah, I love squares because they they represent to me something that isn't a photograph I know obviously there's you know, medium format beautiful film that square format but to me when I started photography I saw photographs as a standard two to three ratio and I actually didn't like photography when I started photography I didn't know that it was an art form I guess I was I was kind of sheltered in that way where I you know, I didn't drop looking at photography as art and that's a really sad thing to say because I think that everybody should but I didn't and so I was really in love with painting and I thought that by doing a square format that would allow me to create something that was beyond the photograph that was different. So then you looked at the image and you didn't say, oh that's a picture and you might say, oh maybe it's a painting it's mixed media but you're seeing the concept before you see the actual you know, whatever the medium is it's like the famous quoted it's about the medium not it's about the message, not the medium something like that often work it up what? Yes, thank you or john cornyn cello coming out I'm going over there good, I'm back in business and I'm just going to keep filling this in and now I only chose from one little second spot back in the background so I might even go in and just select a little dip it of a different color for the floor here just so then it's all blending and this isn't going to blend perfectly and that is just fine right now because we're going to fix that later so I'm just going to get in here now again you can see that's different color, so I'm just selecting from a nearby area and continuing to draw great now I want to zoom in on this because I need to get in there right where her arm is and make sure that I am going very, very delicately right around her hand, so obviously I need a much smaller size right now I'm going to not worry about the hardness of the brush until I get right up to her fingers. The way that I determine the hardness of a brush is to determine what I am erasing or brushing against, so if her hand is very much in focus, which I doubt it is because I know myself so I'm just gonna zoom in so it's a little bit blurred we're really jammed in there now, I want perhaps not one hundred percent hardness on my brush, but I definitely want to kick it up a little bit because if I were to try to go in around her hand right now, it would look like that, and she'd be missing some fingers. Nobody wants that, so I'm going to right click take my brush size down again, the more detailed it is, the smaller my brush gets, I'm gonna take my hardness up, I'm going to try it somewhere in the seventies, seventy five percent, and I'm just guessing I have no idea if that will work now that I'm on a keyboard. If you use the left and right square brackets, that will make your brush size bigger or smaller so you can much more easily toggle in between there. And so now I am just moving into her fingers. When I am at home, I used a walking tablet, um, and I do not have that here right now, but that's quite all right because I'm going toe not be a spoiled little girl and say that I have to use the tablet to be able to do this it's certainly not the case I have edited many, many pictures just with my, you know, little ah trackpad on your on your laptop and stuff like that I am not skilled with my hands that's one thing that I am not so when it comes to trying to hold my finger still it doesn't work so that is why I typically will use a walking tablet okay, so we've gotten in pretty pretty well around her hands I would spend a little bit more time on that just making absolutely sure leader but this looks okay to me so now I want to go ahead and make this overall darker I want to make sure that we can see lots of detail in her dress so to do that there are a thousand ways that we could be doing this but instead I don't have enough again that's okay simon said I want to go into curves so curves is my all time favorite thing in the whole world because curves allows you to make things brighter darker add contrast take contrast away thank you and so because of all those things I am allowed to change whatever I want about the picture all within one tool so so when when this comes back I will go into curves here come on up coming up knowing a good portion of your work you're probably going to take a lot of detail out of the background yeah, but if you weren't trying to take detail out of background later on uh rather than using the brush to paint onto the background how could be cloning definitely? And then do you have a particular way that you like the club I do actually with something like this because it's so non descript I might actually paint it like I just did and then clone at about fifty percent capacity over the brush portion because then you don't to worry about okay there's a white background and then I'm gonna close black on top of it and it doesn't look perfect this way you have still that black bass that you're just painting in and then you're putting texture on top of it with the clone awesome earlier uh if you would replace the background like perhaps the forest but she wanted it to be kind of a soft merge in there, do you just for including a forest let's say would you just decrease the pass? Ity of that background layer that's certainly one option and I tend not to decrease opacity just because it kind of leaves it's something a little bit hazy instead of being like a crisp image in the background, so instead of decreasing capacity I would probably change the layer mode which I will be doing later and that just depends on what kind of background you have, so I find that person for a really dark background like this something like, um screen the layer mode screen would work really well and so we'll be working with that when we get to the red dress picture also thank you yeah thank you all right another question coming in from the internet with a nuke to buy and I think you just talked about this but uh question I'm painting with color when you're painting in it loses the texture how do you fix that? Yeah, so that I actually fix it two ways I fix it either buy cloning something from the background at a low capacity like I just said or I'll use texture so often times I will overlay a texture on to the image and that's actually a good thing to note I have a texture pack that if you're enrolled in the class I believe you get this texture pack so you can definitely experiment with that as fifteen textures in it and the textures are basically anything like I could take a picture of that wall it would be a texture I added onto my background and then boom you have texture but back into the image awesome are we get going? We are okay so I'm going to do this very, very quickly because I'm going to I know start talking way past when I'm supposed to so uh first thing that I want to do is go into curves and you can either go image adjustments, curves if you wanted to make this darker you could do a levels you could do exposure there are so many things that you could dio but like I said with curves you get to do everything all at once and so with curves you have channel rgb that's where we're defaulting right now an rgb that is letting you know that you are changing the brightness darkness contrast of your image so the way that it works is that you have these two black points right down here you have two white points up at the top that represents your shadows down here and your highlights up here everything in between his mid tones so this picture is letting me know that I have a lot of shadows and in my image and that's good but I want more so this little bottom triangle here that is representing our shadow portion so if I were to pull this line down I would be making the image darker now that's not just what I want to do though I want to make sure that I am doing a little bit more to this to make the background blend so what I want todo is pull my shadows up and I'm skewing them to be gray this is something that is very signature in my style I do it to every single picture that I have ever done pretty much I liketo have gray blacks so no, blacks like dev greys, and the reason is because I think it looks a little bit more painterly. It looks a little bit dusty. I just love that feeling, but I still want to add some contrast back into it, so I'm going to go ahead and just make that a lot darker just like that adding the contrast now if I were looking at this and I felt that it was still too bright, if if she was a little bit too bright, I could go right up here to the highlights and just bring that highlight down and so it's creating sort of a creamy consistency that's actually my least favorite word in human history creamy, but but that's, what it's doing is creating a creamy consistency, so I'm going to leave it just like that and say, ok, all right, now we can still see little bits of the stool in there, and so this is would be a really good opportunity, actually to clone stamp, so I'm just going to get the clone stamp tool in there, which is literally transferring pixels from one spot to another. I'm gonna take the opacity down a little bit on that into the seventies, and now I'll be defining a source point and then just clicking and cloning just like that. There we go to get that out of there. Now, I am running right up against her skirt, and I obviously don't want to do that with a soft brush, so I'm going to take the hardness of my brush up quite a bit because she is pretty and focused there here, I will take the opacity up just to make sure that we get rid of breathing right in that little space and then just click and clone make my brush size smaller just to get in detail here. I would definitely fix right up along her leg so you can see where it's touching her leg. Now, this is the part that I really wanted to show you guys with this edit, so if you are doing things like this and you have skin that is pressed in from a stool, that is ok, because we're going to fix it, so I'm just getting rid of that stool in there. Now if I want to pop her leg back out, I'm going to do that with liquefy I don't wanna have to load the entire image and to liquefy, because that becomes very daunting for a computer to handle, so I'm just going to use the rectangular marquis tool, and I'm just going to draw a little box around her leg, and then I'm going into filter liquefy. And I just want to pop her leg back out so I am on the forward warp tool and liquefy liquefy allows you to click and drag pixels, so I want to make my brush size just a little bit bigger that looks really nice and I'm just clicking right on the edge of her leg. You can see this little cross section of the tool on putting that right on her leg and just dragging a little bit just to make sure that she has some shape back in her leg. I don't wantto make it look like she has a flat leg or anything like that, so that just added a little bit of shape. Now, if I were going to continue with this, I would add a little bit more shading right in here where I just sort of stretched it a little bit, but I want to move on to our next at it very quickly I'm just speed editing for you guys to show you a few little things that you can do to make the picture pop a little bit uh, I would fix that, too, on being a perfectionist, but I can't be right now so just know that I would and trust me, okay, great, so now I'm going to go find this picture that we did oh, wait, I don't oh yeah uh light room people thank you. Okay, great so I'm opening that into photoshopped the main image here and I also want to go file open and go to the desktop and find the picture that I am looking for. This is my forest and I'm going to open that up so I'm taking look, this is my forest that I shot it's already cropped into a square and now what I want to do is go back to this picture she's nicely on the black backdrop and I'm just going to crop this that was a little too much there we go, okay? So we have her cropped and I'm going to add that force back in first I want to make some changes just to make sure the background is truly dark and so I'm going to do that with my curves, so I'm going command m right now for a shortcut to curves instead of doing image adjustments, curves make this all little bit darker that will make the red pop a lot. Her skin was so nicely exposed I don't have to worry about it going too dark because I'm not pulling from the highlight portion of curves and pulling from the mid tones so you can see the preview there that made a big difference and say ok, I'm going very quickly grab my clone stamp tool make it larger take the fuzziness down and I'm just going to start cloning little things out that we don't want, not that those hands weren't beautiful uh not quite what we're going for, so I've just clone that in just very quickly and what I want to do is drop this forest in so I'm going to use my move tool I'm going to go ahead and click this forest picture and just click dragged to the tab that we're working on and then drop it on top oh, it was quite nicely sized actually that's wonderful so I am going to now play with this so like somebody said earlier we could lower the opacity if we wanted to add that into the background it's not a bad idea because we can then add contrast to the images well which would then make it pop more but I don't want to do that I want to play with my layer mode it's so layer mod right here is set to normal it's right above our layers and there's a little drop down menu and so I can click each one to see what they do and then when I see one that I think might blend well we'll stick with it so multiply color, burn, linear burn obviously these aren't working yet but that's ok kss we'll get tau one so lighten that works pretty well you can see everything in the background screen that also works pretty well so either one of those I could probably use right now and it would be great now one thing that I want to do to make this blend morris to darken it a little bit so I'm going to go into curves on our forest layer and just make that a little bit darker because like I said, I wanted to be in the background of the image I don't want it to be like this vibrant forest all around her necessarily this is more of an implied look, so I'm going to keep it just like that and say ok, now what I want to do here is start a racing this but I don't trust myself to use the eraser tool, so I'm going to create a layer mask on this forest layer going to use my brush tool on black to start erasing so I'm going to lower my hardness take the size up quite a lot more my size is about four hundred pixels now for fifty and I'm just going to go right in here and started racing the forest off of her dress and I can leave it in certain places like this little stick if I just flipped x here on the keyboard will flip toe white I could bring that little stick back even and it would look like she was really there, so I kind of like that and then back to black, and I'm just erasing now, one thing that you will notice is that the black of her, her dress here where you see a shadow doesn't match what's in the background. So I want to fix that. I want to make sure that the black points match because that is one of the keys to good compositing is to make sure that all of the tones are matching. Now I'm going to go in at a bit of a lower opacity here and just bring back some of what I a race just to make sure that what more natural around these edges, uh, we'll get that off of there gotta stop doing this, being a perfectionist about it, okay, there we go. So I kind of like how this is looking now, and I want to fix her up, so I'm just going to go ahead, go into curves on the layer with our subject, and I'm gonna pull those blacks who backed down there we go nice, and I'm going to go back into our actual forest layer, and I can add contrast to that as well, so I could make it a little bit brighter if I wanted I could add some contrast to it, whatever I wanted. Now the other thing that I noticed about this is that the colors are all wrong, so I have this vibrant red and she's really saturated the forest is very de saturated. I want those things to match, so I'm going to de saturate her because I like a d saturated forest, so I just did command you, and that is going to allow me to pull up saturation, and I'm just taking that saturation down and saying, ok, now, if I wanted to continue playing with that red, which I'm sure that ideo I can go into image adjustments replaced color choose with my little eye dropper tool anywhere on her dress that pulls up this graph black and white whatever's white will be affected by our changes whatever's black will not be if you didn't select enough, you can change your fuzziness slider pull that up and now we have her dress selected I was going to take that down a little bit and so we can see our image here we can take the saturation back up if we want I don't really want teo, we can change the color if we would like I like something a little bit more on the yellowish side there we can take the lightness down if we wanted to make it a little bit darker, which I do like and then say okay, now the last thing that I want to do is to create an adjustment layer and so that is basically going to allow me to go in it curves but affect both layers at once and what I am doing is going into the blue curve because you can also change colors with curves I am selecting from the highlight portion and I'm pulling down and that is going to add a yellow to my image going to do the same thing with the red curve going to pull up just to add some red to the highlights of our image and that's just adding some pop to the picture at this moment I'm going to go back into my saturation on the layer with my subject and just pull that back a little bit to about there now I would continue to work on this I would add some contrast to it I would do a lot more but for right now that's where I'm going to leave it, I shot important to note I shot her and the forest at the same height is that something that I paid attention to when I was shooting the plate, which is just the blank shot that we edited her into? So do we have any questions about that? So my question is about perspective control? Do you always manage perspective in camera or do you find that you're manipulating I'm mostly doing in camera now I was just at photo shop world and adobe introduced this incredible perspective shift thing that you're going to be able to do in photo shop, which I'm really looking forward. Teo but I try to do it in camera and I mean it's not like I take a tape measure anything like I'm not that, you know, you know, focused on that, but I do want to make sure that, you know, if I'm shooting basically around hip level like he's, not the same and things like that, and then if you were doing an image like this with multiple subjects that were at different layers, so three, three or six feet behind each other and you weren't shooting them all at the same time, how would you then manage that managing focus or perspective? Yes, both. So I would well, basically, I would shoot them, I would try to understand in photo shop where they would be placed based on the camera is obviously if you're moving somebody away, it's going to be a different perspective based on height and all of that, I would try to know that ahead of time and that's, where thinking about the editing part comes in handy when you're planning, you know, will this subject to be further in the background? Will they not and so I would think about that, but the most important thing is focus who's going to be out of focus? Or are you going to be shooting at f eighteen or something like that? So so I would think about focus, and I get this question a lot about how do you know where to place somebody in the frame? Based on focus, I change focus a lot in photo shop, so if somebody wanted to put somebody in the background, they were like wearing a hood and creeping around in the forest or something, I would probably just blur them in photo shop with the gaussian blur or box blur something like that. Andi, I blur my scenes a lot, too, so if I have a blank shot, we're putting somebody in it, which I don't do very often, but I have to do from time to time. I'll typically try to get either one focal point where I know that subject will be, but sometimes percent perspective doesn't match, and they have to be just here where it's out of focus. So I tried to get you in focus picture everywhere and then in photo shop, I select certain areas and blur it to make it look like it was a shallow depth of field.