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Finding Inspiration

One of the biggest questions you have and where do I get my ideas? I will tell you this presentation is everything else like yesterday's presentation almost every single shot was a regular person. I mean, like a regular portrait client it's not a model, it was in a commercial, it was clients that I had my portrait studio that I had photographed this isn't this is my fashion photography, so it's models it's commercial clients because I want to show you some of the more robin guard ideas just to help you get an idea where they come from and you can apply them to your own work. I'm gonna kind of buzz through that. I do have this presentation for those of you don't purchase the course it is on my block block that lyndsey other photography dot com under class notes and says in search of inspiration it's not this identical one it's from I don't know, maybe six months ago so it's missing some of the newer photographs, but these pictures haven't been published yet, so I can't put them online f...

or the newest ones until they're publishing the magazines. So that's why? Um, for me for my inspiration, every client that I have, whether it's, a jewelry client or whether it's going to be more commercial, they want me to be as creative as I've ever been um and that's really challenging this they say okay here's our product this is what we want to do but you have to catch people's attention through all of the media we all see everyday you're flipping through hundreds of pictures and magazines as in new york city and walking on the street it's images everywhere and so my challenge is how do I stand out from the crowd and you saw this image yesterday and if somebody comes in and says I'm a basketball player I need you to photograph me but I want you to photograph me in a way that no one else would what would that be? And so this is why, although I have an easy job most the time in the sense that I'm photographing beautiful people and beautiful clothing and beautiful locations all of that stuff it's challenging because my job is to be creative everyday I can't use canned solutions for each individual it's it's new problems it's new goals with every client so for me I'm shooting a little bit of everything and then of course for magazines trying express what my vision is to catch people's attentions so I'm always having to seek inspiration from a million different sources so I'm trying to create images that haven't been created before so that's what we talk about all the different techniques um as a side note it's somewhat of a self plug this summer I am running fashion intensive in new york city and this is one of the locations that my fashion intensive will be at and so the idea behind that is a lot of workshops that you go to use the models in hair and makeup just to kind of test techniques in my intensive zits the models I would use in hair and makeup I would use and locations I would use so should be really fun so this is one of the shots of locations in new york so thank on and lindsey where can people find out more information about your photography intensive dot com? I think there's a link also from my block under workshops cool that's all they're so oska it's really, really, really fun l a things like that so for me my challenges I'm not taking a photo, I'm actually creating a piece of art or creating a solution to a problem, which is interesting cause then you're kind of stepping yourself back from being an artist first and foremost and said your problem solver that needs to be creative when you solve the problem. So when I'm shooting I'm thinking about impacts because I I don't want people to look at me images and then forget the photographer forget what was and I want things that kind of state screams at you but this is my style and so my images are going to be a huge dress this dress had its own taxi to get to our studio um and we painted this girl in silver head to toe eso maybe that's my impacts or maybe it's the lighting in this shot or maybe it's really really graphic lines this is shot in harlem and everything around it does not look like that but I'm trying to look for clean, simple and impact so every shot maybe it's the color maybe it's a technique I'm trying to create images that are memorable memorable this is a paint with light image done with small colored leads so we are going to try a little paint with light it won't be the same technique but looking to be memorable a tip that I can give all of you all right so if you are how many people have a studio studio here just curious so we have like two out of the six um what tends to happen for somebody either who has a studio or is an aspiring professional is your like thank god somebody's paying me to take photos and you just shoot what pays you because well that's what you're trying to do what you're trying to make a living out of photography but what happens is when you don't shoot personal work is you get stale, you don't push yourself and your work doesn't improve because you kind of shoot what's comfortable and what your clients expect and so a lot of people their portfolios to stay the same for a long time there's nothing exciting so something I would encourage everybody on the internet everybody here to do is give yourself assignments, figure out your favorite photographer you have out there. What could you dio to be more like that individual? Is it that you like their lighting? Give her this yourself an assignment to shoot lighting like they d'oh or for example, I know one of your favorite photographer's is tim walker, so you give yourself assignments to maybe do a set or lighting or styling like tim walker, if that's something you'd like to incorporate into your work so don't think that just because you're trying to make money at photography, you still shouldn't do free personal work because it advances the quality of your photography, which in the end helps you reach more individuals and interesting proves you work in general. Um I touched on this before I just want to harp on this point one more time uh, you need to shoot the type of work that you want to be hired for. So for me, you know, when I had these shots over and over again that we're cute kids on white backgrounds with the soft box, that of course is what I had a lot of work, which which is fine that's you can shoot that, but what I wanted was at sunset a girl in a beautiful dress or hair blowing in the wind, but I had nothing like that in my portfolio, so people didn't know I could do it and couldn't ask for it. So I shot personal work to put in my portfolio so people would hire me for that. So that's, where this inspiration comes into get all these creative ideas out and your personal work let people know your capabilities. Uh, inspiration isn't out of thin air. I don't just say boom, I have an idea, um, and shoot it. What I do is I look a lot of visuals. I look at other photographers there, look at music videos. I look at images online, uh, and I basically how my approaches as I pick a piece, maybe with the prop, maybe it's the location and I just let my mind float around it. So I see that location, and I'm sure you guys have had this before. You see location. Okay, I know exactly what dress a girl would wear standing right there and what I would want the leading to me. Sometimes it just speaks to you under the same thing with props look at that province, see what type of shoot could I build around this prop or maybe a tight talk to the client and I figure out what their passions are and say what kind of image would like iconically define that passion that they have that sport that they play what could I do to take each element and just build a shoot around it? So for me it's just saying okay I like that location what kind of dress can I get with that? Okay, I got that dress. What kind of hair would go well with that dress right? What kind of lighting should go with that scene? And so I build it's not out of thin air I just take a piece so these are all things that get inspiration from location props, models, creative team, other photographers creative kind of photo websites clothing, music, video movies, song lyrics all of these things I just kind of let myself be inspired by everything. Um one of the things I do is my computer. I easily have five thousand pictures saved uh for inspiration when I see lighting that I like because I never know what I want to go back and reference and aiken deconstructed I could look at and say how was that like done and then give myself an assignment to go try to create it so that I have that in my arsenal it's in my pocket of something I could do in the future with a client uh, so I save poses and lighting and locations, and I save these piece of inspiration and for you guys out there who missed yesterday, but our entire audience, they're shooting on our third day there, shooting tomorrow, their own concept. So based on the type of work that they do, they're doing their own fashion flare shoot using hair, makeup, wardrobe or props or just something to have a little bit of a concept. And when I asked them to do and it's available on my block, blogged at lindsay out of photography, dot com has asked them to create a mood board, and it would board is just that it's a pse aboard that summarizes the mood of the chute. So it has a picture. If there's going to be here and make up, what should it look like? If it's going to be on location, what should it look like if there are clothing so it sets the mood for a shoot? So maybe if you do a production, you might consider putting this together what I think, what I recommend for people to do who's looking for inspiration creates a mood boards just kind of grabbed photos and st louis, you know, someday when I find the right client going to do a shoot like this or I'll pitch it to abroad you know what I love to do this kind of floral and let's do something out in the woods where I'm hanging lace from the trees I'll kind of bring that together in a piece of paper and say well what would you like to do something like this so I have it all these ideas kind of stored up because otherwise I just forget on dh so I have a mood board and the tear sheets saved for these shoots when the opportunities come yes I have a question somebody asked yesterday which was how do you literally how do you keep that you said you have thousands of of images on your computer do you keep that in a manage way so that you could go back and find them? Sure. So the folder would say inspiration um and generally what it's divided into is I have what inspired me about the shoot or what I liked. So I have something that separated by mood and so that's the mood of the photo your location or the hair and makeup and then of course I have the folder that just says I've really loved these on dh for those that I try to do is just put a file of uh make the file name have a keyword aiken search that I know in the future all remembers when I look at this picture it's dreamy so I know that I believe put the word dreaming and I can come back when I'm looking for dreamy images and find it so yeah, I mean, a lot of times I probably spend a little longer than I should, but I have that many images but it's great because I am constantly for my fashion ships going back and saying, you know what I remember had this shot that was lace and I'm doing the shoot with lisa that's, my my stylist, she'll type in lace and I'll bring up all these photos have lace in it kind of pulled from those and so okay, lisa, can you get me something like this? That's cool it's really helpful, thank you, no problem. All right? So I'm just going to kind of go through this real quick where I get inspiration tell you how I'm going to talk quickly because this is meant just for you to get the idea is not necessarily the technicals because that's not what this class quite is about for this, um, locations so this is in the upper west side I see long grass is I'm thinking, what do I think long grass is I see a lion or a cheetah can I get cheated clothing and stick a girl in the grass, so I took the location and was able to move it forward or for me, this is also on the upper west side. I saw a really graphic kind of structure in the background, so I said to my wardrobe styles, the structure is really graphic can you get me really rigid graphic clothing? So I built off of that um in upstate new york um I have and we're going toe probably go over this image on sunday upstate new york I grew up and my whole childhood my grandpa planted these trees, it was rose and rose and rose and lines of trees and it was just so beautiful and get a model there, and I wanted to do something with symmetry because that's what I saw in my head is its repeated patterns that strike me so I get the model there and I put her in the end, the photo is terrible, it wasn't working, it wasn't symmetrical, so this is actually mirrored in photoshopped or and so for me that's how use photo shop if I have an idea that I can't execute in reality because it's just not possible feasible, there isn't the budget where it just doesn't exist then photoshopped to the rescue to help me express my ideas so again so locations triangles in the background can you get triangles in the clothing that's that's what I do, I take a piece and I build off of it the next thing would be props so if I find a prop will do the same thing look at that property figure out what what is the perfect image for this problem that's basically what I'm asking myself what would be the best use of this prop and how can I build issue around that I get props and I told you guys this yesterday from ebay in dv in r and etc from antique shops I team up with local artists if there's an artist who makes kind of sculptures can you make me a head piece there's no reason and the keys one of the key things I wanted people to remember from yesterday is to ask not be afraid to ask if there is an individual who makes really cool props ask them to make one for you why not? They might just ask for you to cover kind of general fees around it um so this is one of my iconic images is one of the first images that I created for fashion photography thiss image cost me less than twenty dollars it was it's goggles on ebay for seventeen dollars and then lipstick from cvs for three um but I saw the image and what struck me what struck me about the glasses and that they were really really clean and graphic and so I needed to make an image that was clean and graphic that's that's what appealed to me or I had actually seen another photograph with balloons on a beach, and I said I wanted to my own blew it on a beach shot, and it was windy that day that's it it wasn't actually photoshopped. The next thing that will inspire me is actually the subject. So this is why I said everybody talked to your clients. You never know what ideas they're going to give you, how they're going to inspire you to take your chute in a totally different direction you wouldn't have thought of so for here, for example, this individual, this is an electoral pop singer andi I was hired to do her shoot for bullet magazine. And so for her, when she was describing her influences for her music, she was talking a lot about this era and this style and how it affected her music. Now this is not how she dresses on stage. This is not how she dresses in everyday life, but the fact that she said that type of music and era had influenced her is why I chose to shoot that way. So do the same thing with my clients. What are you inspired by? What kind of photographs do you like? What touches you? What do you passionate about? If you can work that into photo, it makes it have a lot more meaning. Or sometimes the models just look a certain way, and I just I saw her face, and I just wanted to kind of the finger, cole, and that this is my lens flare again, this is that that set up that we did yesterday, that's, how that these were done so that that same kind of idea. So sometimes you see a subject, you go the model that have later, aleida she I saw her picture, and I go nineteen fifties, and she just looks like that. And so that's, why we ended up doing the shoot will do later, that that was just her as an individual, so hopefully we'll see that and say, okay, I get exactly where you're coming from. Um, the next thing for me that inspires me is my creative team, so I work with hair and makeup and wardrobe, and again, not all of you need to do that, but let's say that you do find a makeup artist that you really like, and you start doing shoots with. So for me, I also recommend if you're working with women, sometimes if you just put false eyelashes on and a little bit of blush that a professional makeup artist put on, they feel more confident to get more into the shoe they're willing to go out on a limb a little bit imposed more creatively or just kind of embraced your ideas so something to consider even if you don't want to do crazy hair and make up but for my creative team sometimes I'll just say to them hey lisa, stylist to save any cool clothes recently stated my harris does hager cell and equal hairstyles you wanted to try and they're actually bring me ideas so I don't have to be the one to come up with everything I could take that hairstyle and look at it and say what type of clothes would go with that hair? What type of makeup would gore look at that makeup and say, how could I build a shoe off of that? Uh so an example here, um, I had a question yesterday in one of the chat rooms about using gels this is an example where I've used gels um and so somebody and so I said to lisa, say anything cool, she's okay there's this designer mercury sunglasses the most amazing glasses and so I saw them and we based the shoot around it. So it's it's a lot easier if you're working with other creative, so let them do what they do best so you can focus on what you do best the lighting or the posing or interacting with your subjects in this shot, I had my makeup artist come to me and she showed me this makeup and I thought it looked really cool in graphic and so I took it and made it a three d effect but she brought that makeup idea to me so kind of color surrounding the eyes I'm indifferent really kind of graphic patterns around the eyes the next thing that really inspires me and I think it's totally legitimate is other photographers I look another photographer's work all the time. The key is people like oh, you know, you don't want to copy someone well, I never set out to copy someone that's never ever my goal so it doesn't happen my goal is to look and say okay, you know what, richard avedon love his lighting what could I do to be with, like his lighting or ellen vernon worth? I love her storytelling. Can I do a shoot that has her story telling her tim walker, I love his use of props can I do something like that? So I look around at the photographer's I love and just pull what I love from them. David lash up l love his color theory. Can I do a shoot that utilizes the color through that david last repel uses in some of his images so it's not copying it's just pulling inspiration and taking what they do best and trying to work it into my work these air a couple photographers that are the masters of fashion photography there are absolutely, positively others to add to this list helmet knew in for example, I mean there's a million I can add, but I recommend that if you don't know much about fashion photography knew thinking, ok, I'd like some sources of inspiration search these names even to search them in google images on and take a look. And so again, like herb ritts, it's going to be really clean and really graphic and solve a son's boat, I would say this photographer is the one that influences me most out of any other photographers paula reverse e it's soft and into dreamy eso all of these photographers, they're drastically different they've almost nothing in common for most of them, but they've all influenced my work and none of my work looks like any of them. I would we should look like robin and I are like huge trance, so hopefully I'll meet him that would be my photographer to meet, uh, anyway, so the master's uh, this shot she's barred out because I can't shoot community on this, but she has boobs uh, just see it out there and if you've seen the shot, you know this was inspired by a photograph by lois greenfield and it's a guy curled up in a ball jumping off the ground covered in powder if you've seen it and you've seen it if you search lois greenfield powder or flower in google images that it'll pop up if you put the two images side by side you'd say ok yeah I get where lindsay get got the idea from what this is all my own it's completely unique to me it's my own image and so it's not about where you take the idea from it's where you take it too and so I love this image but it was definitely inspired by another photographer tim walker in his book I have his giant book and if you have it it's awesome you should get it it's amazing in his book there's a shot of trees in a forest that air outlined with like those lights that you put around the pool it was like the strings of lights and I saw it you know I said I would like to do something like that so instead I used fire on did a paint with light with fire it was taken from him you put them side by side you see where I got the idea but it's totally different I took it to a different place and this is a close up shot there's no additional light to any of these images except fire it is a tiki torch I'm wearing all black and I'm wiggling the tiki torch madly trying not to catch myself on fire during like two minute exposures we actually true story the cops got called on us because we're in a public parks they wanted these trees that were lined up but this girl on the left she's been in a brazilian vogue and the cops came and she she we flirted our way right out of that she I didn't really do it she was just like, oh, let me take a picture with you is great so you let us finish our parachute and we're all set um and then this was inspired by another photographer who had done a series of african american models painted in black latex and so this was my take on the shoot yes it's an african american model like paint in a black latex, but I did styling and I made her kind of animalistic and this we call that shadow warrior, so it was meant to be aggressive and totally different this other photographer you put aside beside you know where it came from them other artists for some reason photographers don't if they don't consider themselves artists, we separate artists and photographers and I think that's a major fault because what happens is we get stuck on ok so you can't have blown out highlights there's certain compositions we need to use and and you should have your pictures and focus and okay I'm not saying that you know every time these rules are broken that it's unwell actually most of time not what happens way stick to photography and photographers rules we put ourselves in a box so I look at a lot of other artists to break out of that show and so it's giving an idea this one artist that I looked I came across online and what she did and she took slides of flowers and then she would project them using a projector onto a model's face and then would either do live installations or photograph the projections of the models in the face the flowers in the model's face to kind of get that's just you know I would really kapini on a face or it would be like I don't know what she was doing and I saw it and thought okay what can I do with this with my photography so this is done in photo shop um and so I did flowers on the face but it's not real flowers it's flora pattern and susan come something called the displacement map so it was I would never have come up with this idea if I wasn't looking at other artists and this is a is a fine art japanese artist can you click back if you go over a couple inspirations um, there is a director bruno, a valiant, I don't suppose name, but if you search, you'll find it. He did a series of luton and where it's called the traveler thankfully, luton the traveler and every shot looks like you're peeking through glass or you're peeking around the corner and I love that voyeuristic feel or that it made it more dreamy. And so we're going to do this today we're going to use these lens flare tools that I've created to do effects like this s o I would shoot now inspired by a director and other artist, I used this all the time and so here's another shot, and this is something I'll talk about, not now, but someday in the future I'll be releasing their moving images will make it play one more time. Uh, so they're fun, yes and handsome again. So that same director because he put things in front of his lens to do the voyeuristic effect. Then I started playing with crystals in front of lens, and so just this one artist I had this one technique, I take it a whole different direction. I love it now this picture it's not in focus, and I usually say, ok, probably have your pictures and focus, but if it's meant to be a dream then you can break out of those rules so I am not saying you always break the rules but they have their place and so here's another picture it's meant to be a dream it's not meant to be reality on these images will be an astonished magazine which is available in big cities at barnes and noble um and the images before of this this was in sync magazine and those are in all major cities you can get them at bookstores as well magazine stands did anybody see the movie watchman do you know the character roar shock okay so that was my editorial based on the character it's this guy who was kind of the rorschach ink blot test that goes across his face and so I decided to an editorial based on this character and watchman so just other artists directors characters in movies I mean it could be anything um that was another way that I took that same idea and pushed it further so it went from the ink blots on the face from the first shot to actually doing the mirrored image for everything another flower shot um for me remember how I said you guys should do give yourself competitions or assignment say okay here's what I need to do another major part of that is deadlines if you don't give yourself a deadline and never happened ever uh and that's why I like magazine themes and competitions because they have deadlines so I actually will shoot for like I shot and was one of the finalists in the pt and the look competition last year because I shot for it and gave myself a deadline for that competition, and I've done that for a variety of different things. Um what I find more often than not is when I can shoot anything and everything it really stresses me out um, rotary else but when I could do anything, I have so many ideas I don't know what to focus on. So when somebody gives me some type of boundaries, I actually find myself being more creative because I find ways to work within those boundaries, and it gives me some ideas of if it's a single word what I'm inspired around that word instead of picking from anything in the universe. So that's why I really like magazine seems so to give you an example, um boundaries could be good. The theme wass for this you if it was one two, five magazine and the theme was religion, so I was thinking what religion and I okay, I could get deep in artistic, and I was talking with my friends about religion and how some people's religions don't match with their lifestyle so it's his inner battle your inner ward, you know, religious warrior, religious crusader, so we shot religious crusader that's how it evolved not I'm usually not that profound at all because I used to go for kind of cleaning graphic this was shot using a lens baby so to give you an idea of what lends babies actually are playing into my work we're going to do that for the set we have over here today we'll play with uh a bunch of different lenses we have but also with the lens babies so this was done and so what I did is I shot her in the studio it was actually studio strobe and then overlay grunge textures and words of religious texts in the background so that was based on a magazine theme this theme this shoot wass the theme of the magazine was ever upwards and so I was like okay ever upwards and not profound as like oh birds are going up so it's like I'm going to do issue themed the crow or the ravens and the reason this is how I think that boundaries are good if I thought ever upwards is just so much I could go so I actually named my shoots a lot of time before I shoot them so later on I titled my chute message in a bottle so your mind should already start going what do you see for message in a bottle and that's why it's good to get yourself out of it because now I have a million ideas what pieces do I need to tell the story of message in a bottle and it gives me ideas for props and for clothing for heroin for makeup and location same thing for here so entitled to shoot the crow or the rave in and so I said okay clothing I want clothing that maybe feels like a bird or like a ravens we have movement here that looks like a bird and then the next thing the shot behind me I said ok need accessories that feel like a bird or a crow and so this again is the string with feathers on it and so that gives me ideas and the next thing I said is well maybe poses I would never pose a model like that except for it's themed flying birds so imposing a kind of like historic so those boundaries I think helped me come up with more ideas and help me give direction to my chute so recommendation if you do an engagement shoot me with a theme give it a title give you an idea and then as you're referencing back and forth with your client they start getting because they've themed it's their productions there's two it's like their own little movie that they're starring in um another example um a magazine seemed the theme of the shoot was holiday and I was all I could think of was christmas trees and snow and I've seen it done a million times so what I did is I was talking to my sister and she's my little sister but she's actually not that much younger she's like three years younger but her favorite christmas cartoon which she was watching eyes called a year without santa claus and there is a villain in the cartoon called I don knows heat miser um and heat miser is a mean guy that has fire red hair and tries to melt christmas um and so I was like oh sweet heat miser we're doing red hair and white skin on and that's my whole shoot was and so that's from that same shoot that have upon the wall white skin red hair white skin red hair and so I did entire siri's all about this technique and so you can draw inspiration from anywhere but just giving myself that boundary and finally deciding to titled issue or decide okay the shoot's about having white skin and red hair and red lips that helped me open up my mind creativity and kind of execute the shoot there all right so how this applies to you guys? I've given you some examples I'm going to run through real quick if you guys I did this for a workshop for training that I had done um but I shot two engagement sessions I'm going to flip through it real quick but I think princess and the frog in your head what do you see see princess probably see fraud you probably see prince and so for me, when I give myself a title it helps open up the idea so we of course have the princess alone I'm gonna tell you real quick about costs a lot of these productions they don't need to be really expensive. So can you convince an antique shop to lend you that chair? Maybe you can maybe have to pay thirty dollars to rent it something like that can eat the frog we borrowed this it was actually six dollars from a local pet shop so you have the frog she wouldn't kiss the frog so we've got that shot okay? And then a shot of them together so what's a key part of the story is the fact that they kiss uh so I wanted a sign or something incorporate you'll see my use of sign again for message in a bottle. And so since kissing is such a key part of the story I had my assistant lila make this on dh she made it out of kind of would you call card stock and stencils and twine so five dollars, ten dollars something like that we do have a variety of these signs that actually sell on my website in case you guys want a couple of these, I have a whole bunch of different ones and then of course them it's nuzzling and I'm going to talk about how this is one hundred percent in camera that that blur, and so we'll be demonstrating that later, and then you need a shot of them together and then kind of closing shots. And so I'm telling a story I had her alone, I have them kissing, I have the shots of the frog and so giving that titled opened up all my ideas, so this was could be an engagement shoot. You could do this purely to get people excited. You could just do it to create a buzz, put it up online, have a block post hope that everybody talks about it. Pick a select bridegroom to do that with you do the same thing for high school seniors and pick those senior rebs. Or you could offer this a specialty sessions. You could say the end result is a guest book that people sign as they flip through, or you put this in their album. Or maybe this goes on as a wall collection, thinking of ideas of how it applies. Um, and then one other example, same thing, little red riding hood. What do you see the season cave you see, like a wolf, the basket, you know, see specific things, so breaking us out of what you might see there's your red cape, right uh and so this is all natural lights reflecting on her face and she's got the basket she's kind of sweeping this cape you could make it out of red fabric. This is actually a cape that was rented so thinking of cost let's say in twenty dollars um they have a dog. So that was actually where the inspiration came from talking to the couple what did they have? No, what do they loved in life? And they have a husky dog. So how can you work that into a shoot little red riding hood theme so she's wandering through the forest, you got to get the beauty shot of her youth the shot of him protecting her he's coming to save the day got more shots the dog. So, like just kind of building a story around the theme, and so this is their own production that on little movie that they get to be in and these images that they would never have a chance to shoot ever again in their life on then, of course, you know, drama let's have really dramatic images. Um a tip for everybody. If you can include movement in your shots, it takes it from being a still frame to capturing a moment in time, so the fact that I have I have an assistant just flapping the cape it makes it instead of just a frame that I took where they'd be standing there and this makes it a dynamic moment it's really dramatic it's capturing a moment in this romantic scene so if you can get someone jumping or moving or that's what you really are drawn a lot of times to those fashion shots with hair blowing in the wind not because the hair blowing in the wind looks so great necessarily it's because you're capturing a moment in time it's setting a mood and a feeling behind it so if you can get movement and dress and feet and hair and anything, it makes a picture more dynamic, so I recommend you give that a try um, so I am good for a couple of questions um and then we'll probably think its message in a bottle next, right? I think so and we have we have another way have a bunch of questions I can't find the person's name at the moment, but I was wondering where they were wondering how how many clothes you have in your studio? What is the size of your wardrobe that you just have? Okay, so, um somebody brought this up yesterday about they caught that I said I don't have ah washer I live in new york city in a brownstone, a one bedroom apartment I have almost no wardrobe uh when I was in, um, upstate new york, I had a small it was the extra bathroom in the studio that I made into a clothing closet, so I really really don't have that much, but I have some go to things like a piece of lace that I would use over and over again and that like kind of basic black dress that I would use over and over again and I hope I would say it's more props than wardrobe I'm very, very limited wardrobe because my clients are all different sizes all different shapes, they've all different types of needs, so I always would have you know, I have the feathers on a string and I'd have the same point glasses and I would have some basics, but right now, uh I just have some tupperware bins of props underneath my bed and then everything else is pursuit and I'd rather not buy it and have tto how's it I'd rather rent or find someone to borrow borrow it from or to source it from the clients themselves for my fashion shoots a have a wardrobe styles who takes care of everything but for portrait chutes that you see a communication than figuring out can we get it from a vintage shop? Can we buy information? Can you find it from somebody on, etc that will let us borrow in exchange for photographs the question from mary from costa rica is what do you do if after discussing inspiration with a client and agreeing on a concept when the shooting day comes, the client is entirely convinced or gets cold feet so I will confess I haven't had that happen um and it's something I talked about yesterday was the good and the perfect and talking I mean, it's just all positive and constantly showing my excitement oh, my gosh, don't work this's going to be awesome and you know what? There's some photos if you don't like what, you're going to see it beforehand it's not like anyone's gonna have to see it, so I just tried frame everything, always in the affirmative, and I am excited about shooting, um, and I just make sure I don't hide it, you know, it's not like this is fake it's not like saying like, oh, I'm so excited, you know, I actually am excited, and I just don't hide it behind what happens is people would act too professional, but you have the yes, this will be a great shoot, and then people were like, okay, awesome, but if I'm actually saying this, okay, but she's into this, you know what? I have more confidence, so I really don't have people back out on things, but when I got into a shoot once where, you know, I want them standing on a, you know, an alleged and at the top of my building or something like that, you know, I have them get freaked out, I'll just take a couple shots if you don't like it or if you're uncomfortable, we'll move on. So I always tell people, it's, digital it's not cost you any money, it's a little more time. We'll just delete it if you don't like it. Cool. Thank you. No question of audience. Yeah, um, when you find your concept, you find your client and you start the story process. How long does it take you to get the props? Get the location, get because to me, it seems like like some client will call me and say, can we shoot this weekend? Michael? I mean, that's just not feasible to me because I'm just I don't know if I'm a perfectionist aware, but I have to have everything like in place. So would you say two weeks? Because that's? What? You okay? So usually what? I I will tell you most of it. If you looked at all these fashion shows I did, none of them had more than eight days. Uh preparation like all of those chutes that you saw hye in fashion but I have a wardrobe sauce so she takes here for stuff I have hair suddenly so we all have a weak basically usually what I dio is we pick a day on dh then maybe that sunday is when I send them the model and said okay, guys, next sunday we're shooting this concept for me when I was doing it all myself I use about two weeks for something like that that's why I'm saying does not meant to be like high volume necessarily you could do it to create a buzz or you can use it as ah higher volume uh uh kind of value added package or if you're doing okay clients I did what I did it most for would be maybe clients who did we did post wedding session so for there after their wedding and they come back from the honeymoon before they go we would do a production and so I've already been planning the whole wedding day. This is just another thing that we're putting in there and she's kind of in the stream and in the flow of how we're working and then for the little fashion flare stuff I mean I just say ok let's you know let's put the feathers on, okay cool you like it or have it here says make up artist what kind of photos do like okay, you want me to do something where you look really punk? Okay, cool. Well, do that so it can be a big production or it could be really little where we just decide three days before okay, I just want to give a shout out to janni our friend yanni in seattle who had asked the same question and I love it when ours in person audience uh, ask the same questions people are asking online. So yanni there's quite a few people in the chat room asking this question, and this is from bob jones in new york. Can you go over in more detail? How you scout locations? So one of the lawyers tell you on my end of things, I'm kind of in the fashion round, there are things that are location scouting companies that have a database, and so they have a large database of anything you can ever imagine. I've only used one twice because most people have budget for that because you're paying someone to scout, you're paying for the use of the rental all fat stuff. Um, one of the main places that I scout or get information of scout is facebook I say, hey, guys, I have this idea I need a chute, a location that looks like this have you seen anything I would say seventy five percent of the time I asked on facebook and somebody knows something and then I proceed from there so using your social media and this is I taught a class and knew me and social networking this wednesday thiss past wednesday for creative live it's a full day and so that's one of the reasons I said networking with colleagues people tend to think like oh you know what I don't want to waste my time networking with colleagues I want to get the client yes you do but the fact that I have all these colleagues out there they're my friends I give to them they give me when I have a question hey what's a cool location I always have responses um I want to do this concept shoot with a very very well obviously we're very old wrinkly lady is how I worded it against a very young fresh skin model I just facebooked and people like oh you can shoot me grandma where I have a contact at this you know home like there's so many different things that really weird and random but when you have a community they help you out so most of my scouting is there otherwise it's often it's often like just going out and shooting and then trying to figure out what how I could get a permit for that and then a lot of times is well if I see a location in a shot um, you can try calling up and seeing if it was like in a magazine saying, if they will tell you where it was shot, sometimes they will. Sometimes they won't. But you never know till you ask.