Lessons

Lesson Info

Fashion Flair Techniques

For a second I am going to transition from inspiration from all those different things do a couple techniques and then real quick back to some business so this is kind of just miscellaneous things I wanted to make sure you guys got to hear the this thing right here obscuring the lens is a technique that I use that we will be using on location we can try it inside and see if it works, but I wanted to see the show in kino so you'll be able to see the results because it varies depending on the situation. So based on that director that I said bruno of alien who always had things in front of the lens I set out to solve a problem because I loved what he did and so I brought my camera I went teo it was michael's on the upper west side and I spent an hour and a half in there putting every single thing I could up to my lens and shooting through it and I brought a friend and so let's see what your portrait looks like with the candlestick. What is report you'd look like with the top of the jar? W...

hat is your portrait look like with a piece of corrugated plastic? And I run around and try different things ended up spending like seventy five dollars on a giant bag of the most random stuff in the world on dh then I went out and experiments and found what I liked and so I have a couple shots here where I shot through these items so for the sisters shoot, which you're going to see the behind the scenes of and actually see the resulting images I did this technique briefly and a demonstration, but what you're dio is you're looking for something that's uh transparent so light can come through it and you hold it up against your land so in that video you'll actually see, but I wanted to show you some resulting images uh before we get to actually holding things in front of lens when I'm out in the park, you see me all the time where I'm shooting of the cameron this hand and I have a branch or a flower or a piece of grass or something right up in front of my lens and that's what I'm doing here, I took the ivy and held it in front of my lens. And so when you're shooting at a wide aperture shooting at maybe two point eight or wider uh and your focus past that's a pass the things of frontier lens you get this nice blurred and it just gives a little bit of dimension like a foreground middle ground in the background to that shot but I wanted to take it a step further er and so here's the deal um sometimes it looks great sometimes it doesn't and also some people love it and some people hate it uh there was a shot where the light wasn't coming across your face, but I wanted this one um what this is is it is a piece of, um, it's half of a christmas ornament and it's held completely in this instant held completely over the front of the lens and so you can see kind of the blur's in the background and how it catches the lens slur and again, I promise is being explained more later, but what you're fundamentally doing is you're extending the front of your lens to catch more light and then it bounces the light in and creates lend slur um it could be anything I mean, I tap a christmas oranges, candlesticks, it's crystals, it's everything. I've tried so many different things uh for example, this was a piece of corrugated plastic blue um, these are more or less straight shots except for like, I've increased vibrance on this a little bit, but I didn't do anything this was, um I did a split tone in light room it's like, you know, major photoshopping um this is a fashion it's really shot for zinc magazine, the entire editorial, the theme was a held this in the bottom left hand corner and so that's what it's a straight shot that's what it looked like and you kind of see there's a little bit of ah color sheen to it that's what? The colors in the lower left hand corner of the frame um this was to little small crystals that held in avian front of lands and shot through late in the day near sunset. So the key with this is you'll get a lot more lens flare if the images backlit. So if there's light actually coming into the lens because it's going to catch the light and bounce it around a lot, it will work out an overcast day it's just more of a hayes versus kind of bright contrast. And again, it's, you know, plastic or glass or whatever. Um, this was example that I had were held a crystal, so I've purchased some crystals online. Say she a couple other things that I have here will be playing with this later. I have a crystal online crystal that I purchased online, um held in friend lens and you focus past it and so can give you cool effects like that. Um before the a picture for the princess and the frog shot where had that hayes that's that was done in camera that's a it's, not a christmas ornament I don't really know what you call it it's a holiday ornament that I had up against the lens that I shot through or I've been using these a lot date I don't know if they have a name they're like little flowery crystal things that I put up against lens and shoot through another thing I wanted to touch on because I stuck this in here because somebody asked a question about this and why the chat rooms about len choice if you shoot with a fifty millimeter lens and you're trying to fill the frame of an individual, what it does is it bloats out the side of the face a little bit make somebody's face look wider um, there are very few times even if somebody has a really slender face very few times when you want to do this and so for me I'm using a longer lens and so I am going to use usually in eighty five or longer I sell them do a head shot any wider than eighty five millimeters um a lot of people are comfortable with their head shots and they're doing one hundred two one fifty sometimes if you get more towards two hundred millimeters, the face does look kind of flat, which you don't feel like it's a really it's a real person if you don't feel like you can connect with them it seems more like a flat photograph versus a three dimensional individual so there's a sweet spot and you just you have to feel what you're comfortable with so I usually do from eighty five to one fifty and really tight I'll do two hundred between the two but for me usually on location all student eighty five one for almost the time uh let me flip this, okay? I want to touch on the photo shop thing uh when I'm on location and even when I'm going to be shooting over here and I know that for example, the shoot that samantha is doing and I think there's a couple others on the shoot that's robin's doing photo shop actually plays a part in the concept of the shoot the chutes not possible without photo shop you wouldn't be able to do it and that's not cheating and that's not shortcuts and might be because you don't have a budget or in this example those trees are green but I wanted love and I wanted to be a soft pink feminine shoes. So I'm going to show you how to do this technique in photo shop on sunday but for me it's not cheating it's just something else you can add to it for example, you have a subject there's a red car and they have kind of ah, you know a light blue dress but you want them to be wearing a bright red dress you can do that in photo shop, even if the dress wasn't the right color. So this is what I'm saying is you don't need to have a huge wardrobe and, you know, maybe you can't find the perfect dress, the exact color, the exact location, but you do have the ability to utilize photo shop to get it closer to your vision as a photographer, it's all based on that trade off how much time and effort versus finding the item that's just right versus photoshopping yet and that's just right what's important to you. And what would you rather spend time doing? Um, it's decisions that you're making, I'm gonna show you how to do this adding grinch textures do that regularly fantasy? You know, I had somebody that loved butterflies, so can you turn her into ah, butterfly and we ended up putting it, putting that so it was in a frame that looked like it was a butterfly frame that you put up on the wall and that's what she had in her house, among other butterflies and frames. So that's really cool and it's something that appealed to her because that's a hobby that's something totally different that I know that she didn't get from any other photographer that wouldn't be possible without photo shop um, for post processing, we'll talk about this in detail, but if you guys out there want, I'm not saying it's really follow along, but if you want to try to follow along from when I worked with portraiture tomorrow, go download the fifteen day trials I'm telling you this ahead of time, so you have chance to get it downloaded its image gnomic portraiture, so its image economics if you search it, it'll show up. They have plug ins for light room and photo shop. I will be demonstrating tomorrow on the one in photo shop, so if you want to give it a try, try one on your own photograph. Just look for a photo where the skin needs some retouching, but I'm far ast time if it's something that needs drastic retouching, you won't be able to keep up so it's like that you want a little more smooth, kind of uneven out blotchy nous or kind of cleanup skin texture so that will be tomorrow um and if you do to purchase it lindsay adler as a discount code gets you twenty percent off of it. So that's, what I use as my retouching. I also have a couple other codes. If you guys want for nick software, l adler will get you fifteen percent off and for lens, baby, if you guys want a lens, baby lends its w adler for a sick ten percent off of a lens baby products there's one to make sure you guys knew that those were out there um I use presets which already said you could get some store um and so I'm going to do for my last ten minutes before we switch over teo are natural light set up? I'm going to talk a little bit about some business tips and tricks that I wanted to give you the biggest thing that I could give us a tip in trick would be to watch wednesday's class and I'm not just trying to sell it I actually for me social media is an absolutely essential part of how I've grown my business doesn't mean that it's totally replaces other marketing far from it but for me it's how I've been able to target my clients and get them to notice me um otherwise there's so many visuals out there how do we get them aware of my services so did you kind of need a hand again? Oh no I just had a couple of questions from the last bit but yeah I could get it way uh we had a question about sorry let me just go back and find it was about focusing and we're talking about all these cool things that you use in front how does focusing work when you are holding up things to the lens that's from bananas in scotland? Welcome back um, what I do is, well, you could also have your camera on back, quentin focus so you can bat buttoned, focus, block the focus and then shoot, but what I'll usually do is I'll focus on you, for example, lock the focus and then put the lens flare tool in front of it. Um, you know, I am not a finishing in manual because I can't see I've had eyesight, so I'm all about the diop ter and shooting out of focus, so I'll set a focus point, get you focused, lock it in, and then put the lens for two in front couple questions came up about using the lens hood would using a lens hood negate the effect of purposely adding lens flare? And then maha photography from sacramento said when using items in front of the lens, do you leave the hood on offer? Both I leave the hood off. It is actually kind of doing the opposite what you want, because when you're putting a lens hood on, you're trying to make it so that you're cutting out extraneous light so that its not hitting the lens. Well, I'm trying to get more light to hit the lens, and also if the lens hood let's, say, it's two, three inches. A lot of times I want that lens, which will break up against the lens. And it gives me too much distance. So I do take the lens hood off, use linds hood when I'm shooting and somewhat backlit situation where I don't want to discreet the contracts, we still want good. Contrast that image. I will put the lens hood on, but not for long.