Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: Lila - Taco and Sideline Poses

um lila is how many days is lying she's eleven days this is her mom casey um so a lila is eleven days old and how much does she weigh they're supposed to be aboard for me somewhere but I'm not sure quite sure where there were this um how many pounds she seven eleven and how long sorry guys she's nineteen inches so she's a little one little one she's got a middle of the road size wise I'm was she born full term sixteen days early awesome ok she looks like she's recipient you nice and full and fed and awesome um okay so basically we're going to kind of take you through this process from start to finish set up wise what I have here is our pvc pipe bracket which really even get directions on how to do this anywhere on the internet it's like twenty dollars at home depot to make this you just need the pvc pipe a few corners and bands and then a pipe cutter which will make it for you and then I have are being bag underneath which is a pox style beanbag um I get this one from shoot baby and it...

's just a opposing being bag it's vinyl which is nice because things slip on it easier which makes it easier to put buildup in towels and layers underneath to helpyou uh pose your baby and also if it gets wetter pete on it's easily easily cleaned which is why I like the vinyl then we have a large flock adi rug this's that big fluffy rug the more layers you have underneath here the smoother your backdrop is going to appear and I'm all about getting it really good and camera so that this poor woman over here doesn't have to do it kind of work um so tiffany does almost all my post processing and then I end up finalizing images after there after she has her hands on them that I go through and crop the way I want to crop do some final retouching and things like that and then we present them to the client so uh this flick on the rug and then we have a secondary blanket underneath the secondary blanket is a heating pad ok right now it is set too high I wanted to warm up quickly then about partway through the session it shuts off automatic place so it shuts off at about a thirty minute cycle so it just stays form you don't want these to get too hot obviously okay but it stays under the baby underneath this this layer and then our backdrop layer goes on top of that and what you'll notice is I'm a stickler for it being stretched tight okay um the other thing that I have back here is a backdrop stand I want that backdrop stand to go as low as possible you can kind of see over here the backdrop stand I get mine from from westcott and they have won that drops real nice and low if it doesn't drop too low push it further back the whole goal is to make your blanket on your beanbag swoop backwards as far as possible so that you can get that beautiful boca and your image is naturally in camera okay if the backdrop is too close and you don't have that nice sweep and stretch you're not going to get enough distance focal distance to really create that boca family's got questions already yeah I go for a girl fabric do you typically yours is ideal I get most of my fabrics from roses and ruffles I also go to fabric stores and then becky gregory from intuition backgrounds were going to shoot on one of her backgrounds were just developing a line of new background so we're going to some kind of different fun and creative with with any old with this type not any old background but like this type of wrinkle fi fabric backdrop and her fabric is so lovely because it has a little bit of stretch to it which allows you to really make it nice across being back so first word this is rosa's and ruffles her stuff and by the way she has a two hundred dollar gift card on the pennant to win this contest so you could like seriously get some nice backdrops from her and s so this is from her and you can see that my it's very stretched its very tought I don't want any wrinkles in it ok a lot of photographers have their assistant hold it up in the back and then you end up having to post all that out post process it so as little as much as we can do in camera to get it right is my philosophy okay so backdrop stand low farther away if it's to hide just create that swoop that distance baby usually goes over more on this side of the backdrop and then we shoot diagonally across okay so I'll show you that as we get shooting here so first things first let's see here we're going to white balance um I use a photo vision target card I love this thing I discovered custom white balancing about two years ago and it saved my life coast in photoshopped this thing is a godsend um it has the three tones on it this is a perfect gray okay I could do a custom white balance on it with my nikon camera which gets me perfect color every single time in studio I don't have to do any adjustments in camera or later in light room at all okay so not only do you have the three color tones here to get your exposure right but you also have the gray car in the middle that you khun target off up to do a custom white balance that's what we're going to do um so first things first I'm going to get my light in here a little bit more where I want it that should be good and then I hold it with the white up okay so that I get proper exposure I don't want this over here on the right because it'll have too much light on it I want even light across it does that make sense you guys might explaining that right so that when you have your white gray and black you're getting even color tone across that you don't want to turn it like this because then the white will be receiving most of the light does that make sense so put it this way and then on your setting I use a nikon d eight hundred and on your camera there is a white balance but you can put it in pre mode and I'm not sure what the cannon the cannon equivalent is some somebody knows that yell it out to me but you could put it in the pre mon and hold it down okay and then we'll start blinking and you could basically once you have the proper exposure cameron I'm always just can't take it off take it off like have it you can just shoot fill your frame with gray ah and then shoot and that'll give you proper white balance now I totally did this already without getting my exposure first so let me just fire that often no good it tells you no good when it's not right okay so let me get my exposure correct here I have to be nice so this light is different than at home so funny when you're starting to use new equipment and new stuff here like oh it's different okay I need to get my white belts just seven seconds hold it down fill the frame with gray and we're good okay so that basically white balancing I'm balanced for my entire session now because it measures the temperature of the light measures that off gray and then the kid tells the camera what to set it up ok so it'll never change don't ever shoot in not a white balance the camera changes the white balance for every situation that it sees so every single image will be different I'd rather have you shooting flash mode or daylight mode and color correct everything the same then have to worry about auto changing every single image okay okay so it's going to this baby set up her name is lila right lyla lyla lyla lyla lyla she's so cute um this hand sanitizer is the best in my opinion it is made by three a m is the hospital grade hand sanitizer it is awesome stuff cause it doesn't try out your hands um I actually one day we were putting up our display in the hospital and I accidentally stole a bottle of it and I loved it so much I ordered like four more online you can find it online it's made by three a m and it's just called ab ab gare de and its like twelve or thirteen dollars a bottle but it's got this like lotion in it so it actually softens your hands so you don't get that you know how alcohol winterize it so this is is really really good stuff keep the stuff on hand wherever you go I didn't mean to get it online uh she gives me a hard time no matter where I go okay so um tiffany has been holding lila and kind of gauging her lila's pretty sleepy right now so I'm gonna go ahead and start building up to we want to start with taco are sidelining right into taco so we're going to start with taco pose I'm taking a basic towel teo just get a set from costco they have like awesome dad towels and all kinds of sizes and I'm gonna go ahead and um start with my initial layer underneath on the right side you kind of see I've just tuck that under there and taco I tend to build a little bit higher because the baby needs support underneath her um her belly and this is where the value of two hands just comes in incredibly much because one person can have their hands calm on baby's head helping to calm and then the other person can help owes the child so to put baby and talk oppose she kind of already positions her right away in her arms and then places her down so she's gonna go ahead and grab the tell off to conceal this and we've got our little feet she's pretty flexible girl awesome and she's going to support her head until we get her in position and having these four hands and posing is kind of a stage thing you start off in one spot let them calm and settle and then move into another spot okay she's doing pretty awesome here washcloth okay tiffany's asking for a wash cloth under their hands we just use these towels to help support where we need it the five s has come in very handy hear me going hsv tiffany's rubbing her forehead help calming her down some babies love this some babies need a little jiggle you just jiggle him and they'll quiet down wait so now I'm just placing her hands details in newborns v r ki hands and feet must be placed properly there are times when you won't work it won't happen maybe spence will be clenched up you'll see like them push like this and the white their knuckles to get white tense in the hands tense in the head so if there if you see that white knuckle stuff going on just let them settle let them calm a bit she's doing amazing tiffany's just propping her up a little bit the other thing with newborn photography on the beanbag is the angle of the head you don't want to I'm tucked in like this you want to see the face so we will often use concede tiffany's lifting her chin upward towards the light almost to create that angle of the head so she's pretty flat right now she's super hero here that will fit sticking out she's in a really good angle right now and I'm gonna go ahead and and shoot this and what I do is I get really close to my light you can see I have a really pretty butterfly pattern so I love these continuous lights because what you see is what you get so I'm shooting f once one point six at one one twenty fifth of a second and I told my camera towards little munchkin to get the shop going we'll see this or no good new image I can't see what I'm doing here we go little hot is that true color of my true color on that man's celebrated it's okay um so I'm a little bit hot so I'm gonna go ahead up my shutter speed just a touch of there we go shooting down the nose this is key okay you want to shoot you never want to shoot up a baby's nostrils okay looks terrible you want to shoot down the nose and you can see that as I'm for those of you who were back here when I'm in shooting on the baby I told my cameras just a touch to create that little uphill thing that everybody loves so much ok so we're going to get this right in camera that's a bit of a steep angle that I have on the screen right now but I can play around with it and kind of see what I love it when I don't that little foot of course is darling and parents love that little kind of twiki thing that's just not quite perfect you know I'm saying so I can go ahead and create lots of negative space on this and you can see that my backdrop when I shoot this you can see that I have backdrop on the end there that I'm missing so it's not quite a perfect in camera image obviously my set up here is not what I'm used to quite a home and at home we have this totally stretched on the left side so we get it right almost all the time in camera but we can easily stretch that background I'm actually glad this is happening because we will I'll show you how to fix it later if you're in a situation where you have to we have to shoot like this okay so the key to these poses is shooting down the nose making sure you have that butterfly light okay the worst thing in the world is tohave flat light it just looks awful you want some kind of um thank you dear you want some kind of butterfly pattern on the face and you can see when I move my life this direction the light's falling down this way and creating these gorgeous shadows under her nose and under her lips okay we have directional light it's going to create much more interest in your image okay so now when I should you'll see a little bit of a difference her foot is misplaced but notice the fingers there's no curling of the fingers they can start placing hands and feet in different ways and we can also start adding interest with different things like props and scarves and things like that so when I shoot thes I shoot far medium close up so I'm gonna go ahead and just do that right now we're gonna do that next so far for lots of negative space that I can play with later miss she's rocking it clothe okay so these I don't see these showing up are they her left hand is kind of tucked under underneath her helping to support this side it's sometimes you'll feel them fall back a little bit just take a towel on dh supported the towels are your key like those that's why I have like I got a costco like once a year and just buy a bunch of that a set of towels and that will help you to kind of proper you need it is really all this ok when I get the food out so now we're gonna adjust the pose just a touch to create a little more interest in a way I did in there was a little soft gray one from devoted mitts on that is it that you know there is um I have a few prop companies that I just really adore um devoted nits is one of them she makes these beauts she just started making these beautiful little halos we call them by the way everybody in the audience gets one from her she gifted everybody one um they are handmade by her and what I love about her stuff is that it's so delicate um and it suits the baby that's okay wait now the halos I like just across the hairline I don't like him too low and I don't like him too high just across the hairline is kind of a good rule of thumb that foot is just delicious oh no dear I'm ready to shoot so this is a very simple set up it shows she's a girl we've got a good unique taco pose it's not true it's not true taco taco would be um both legs on either side but I like it when two legs come out one side it creates more interests um so let's go ahead shoot that's the lighting is a little bit too much mama she is so cute that little foot just about kills me so far my underexposed little bit okay don't look at that one I think I feel so blind without my chipping ability I'm such I'm such a temper so I'm really just pointing the plane of my camera right down her nose okay and then I'll go medium and then I'll go close in she gonna smile acting like it the smile is coming you can kind of tell when I might need some fill her shadows are really deep like yeah we could bring like closer more watch first there we go that's better so did you guys see why wasn't happy with that the chin is very dark and it's caused her chin has talked a little bit but a lot of that's because her foot in the way or hand this place so I'm just going to kind of move my light around and you'll see a huge difference in the placement of the well light and how that helps her chin a little bit yeah I helped a lot okay so we can also tuck that foot in we can do lots of different things with it tio change up the post let's go ahead and draper with and then we can start adding um it's grand moving to sideline and tio let's go ahead into do it now okay sideline yeah I'm just gonna go ahead and hold her head and I won't just move the legs just wanted so I'm just gonna transition her quickly into a sideline position which with that crooked taco poses really easy I just basically moved your legs in transition her and she was fine I'm gonna go ahead and um draper with a little cute I'm just tucking in this um wrap around her belly the thing was sidelined that's super important is that you shift the legs away from the on that you put them on the diagonal so you don't want her parallel here you want the butt back towards the angle of shooting so that the face is the closest thing to the camera this is what's gonna help create that depth of field and make the body go out of focus and the face not on the face be in focus so tiffany just said hey I want to get her head real quick so I put my hands on her just to help her stay calm and tiffany just lifted the chin slightly to get that angle on the light and to get that angle on her body okay I'm just gonna make this real pretty and cute we sometimes call this the laffy taffy shop because the scarf looks like it's laffy taffy for those of you in the states you know what that is but it's basically a candy that's all laffy taffy beautiful chair we're just losing backed up I'm being totally picky fussy here we go thanks so again shooting down the nose hands like the feet look good getting that shallow depth of field my under exposed a little bit so hard when you pressure shooting under pressure and when you angle the body back like that again you'll see these so when we shoot when the legs are pushed back from the body a little bit you know on that angle you create that depth of field down the nose and will blow the feed out of focus which is kind of what you want you want that face to be the total center of everything so and then when we drape the scarf back along that plane of focus as well it's going to make that go even more out of focus and you're going to create all that delicious poker that we love so much naturally okay without having to do it in photo shop or if we would just wanna accentuate it later in photo shop we can do that without having to build it from scratch okay she can smile and that's why an assistant is key did you see that moral reflects okay the jolt and jerk and when there's an assistant down there close she can capture her and not only save the pose but more important keep baby from flying all over the place and waken herself up and you know getting hurt there we go there's the image right there I was exposed perfectly liver for the first time so that creates by putting the legs of the body back towards thie the diagonal you're going to create that sense of depth of field with the face being the first thing you see okay go ahead shoot this one more time oh no it was doing making them already under the rap no worries she's such a good little baby she's just waking up when they're gonna smile you'll see this kind of breathing their bellies will go in and out like that and then all of a sudden I'll just give you this little smile and sometimes you just have to totally wait for it you see her breathing like that sometimes they'll make noises someone little munchkin and you're going to give me a smile or not and sometimes they don't do it she is playing hard to get kind of waiting for a little bit but I don't think she's gonna do it come on so we let her get to me she's the breather in that breathing thing ok in the earnest of time I would normally wait a few minutes and see if I could get it but in the interest of time I'm gonna go ahead and let her go let's go ahead and rapper so um so we can kind of show some swaddling techniques let's see what color should we do pink pink maybe should do a stretchy one to kind of this one can be funky at times huh yeah that's gonna work I think it's good tiffany's like whatever you want girl okay so rapping long rap sir make it easier this is not a stretchy one okay sometimes the stretchy ones make it easier um but I'm gonna go ahead and do it once with one that's not a z z yeah so I'll just put this underneath let's to commit your hands like this together around shakes risk together okay get nice and close it can I come in okay so the initial part of the swaddle is the most important so this first rap comes over the top and tucks in and I make it pretty tight like you'll be shocked at how type this is swallowing is a tight process then I tuck it under this is a really wide scarf someone make sure I don't lose your feet here and tiffany just hangs on to her head gives her that security and comfort while I rapper so again you can see how having an assistant just makes this process that much easier and I literally just wrap around tucking and pulling and for the feet are the hardest part because it gets bulky down here at the bottom but you can kind of talk and pull and fold and make it look cute I also know that this is going to be out of focus down here so it's not gonna um as long as I can see the cute little feet I'm happy okay so she's nice and wrapped I'd say with what seventy percent of our babies we start off this way maybe seventy percent will start the session this way if we think they're not going to be sleepy because the minute we wrap her up like this she's going to fall asleep and she's like happy little baby right now okay um with girls I'll tend to make this fly kind of cute like in a scarf like pattern because it's really cute to shoot from above um with boys all tend to wrap him all up so it's not quite as feminine here's to lucio costa with cheeks I don't like babies and all can you tell I don't like babies at all so all we did was move her her little hands into acute position it's kind of awkward like she's a little bit solution herself but it's super cute oh your face face and parents doesn't dig these cute little squishy faces I mean they just think that I mean look at mom she's like so cute because they are they're adorable so I want to do again is in the interest of time I'm not going to do exactly like I wouldn't a regular session but I would go you know far medium close up again and then I would also do it from above so I'm gonna go ahead and do angel shot way call this angel because they really do look like flying angels when we do this so I get up on a well what your fees for increase my f stop to two point five make sure I get everything in focus my problem is I'm totally having to rely on old mess of methods of exposure instead of being able to use my history ram it's got me crazy huh huh actually the little hand on her cheek is kind of cute awesome look someone's correcting it for me and light room as it comes in I love that can I hire you whoever you are also but yeah so we'll take a cup like this and then we'll fix her and get the face more but we call this the angel shot because it's just it's a beautiful wall portrait it's just especially in a nursery a pink nursery we could also put a headband on her and make that computers let's go ahead and just her hands so we can see your face yeah just down to one eightieth yeah I am that's too that's true slow I don't like to go down under one one hundredth of a second yeah I'm kind of thinking under way oh you're huge sorry e don't like their little uh yeah don't mind me it's funny what you say when you don't realize you're saying it you know anyhoo okay so now we're going to take it and we're going to see her face just a little bit more you gonna smile on me apply she's threatening smiles isn't she go ahead and shoot it one more time from here with your hands like that we'll move on she's delicious baby is delicious okay so moving on let's go ahead and change backdrops and to bowl um I want to do bull with becky's that's right so um you wanna hold her while you change that out can I hold her way we all get our like serious baby fixes in the studio like every day it really makes your hormones go crazy so morning fair warning to those folks who babies