Lessons

Lesson Info

Image Review

I'm going to do I know you already heard this, but in case there's new people joining us, I'm going to do mini bio tell you what we're talking about and then kind of jump into a keynote. If you look at today, we're going to start endorse I'm going to talk a little bit about where I get my inspiration I'm going to give you some tips listen tricks, then we're going to do a bridal shoot indoors with natural light, and then we're going to jump out doors and do an engagement themed engagement shoot on location, using only natural light. So to give you an idea of kind of what we're doing today, um, and as normal for you guys and for everybody out on the internet, send me your questions for me. As a photographer and a photo educator, I think it's important that I don't hold anything back, so if there's something that you want to know, how did you take that photograph? What was your lens? Lei ting retouching where did you get the clothing? Anything like that? Send the questions my way and of c...

ourse kinda will be moderating, and so we'll keep it nice and relevant try toe reached, you know, people that want to know the specific topics, so let me give you my bio quick right now I live in new york city uh my studio's on eighth and thirty eighth and I'm a fashion photographer and you're going to build to see samples of my work and what I do in my everyday life but that actually is really new for me I've been in new york less than three years on before that I worked as a portrait photographer so how this kind of ties in and if you guys have heard this yesterday you know this story after college I had a portrait studio in upstate new york and what I really wanted to do was to move down state to move to new york city and pursue fashion photography and so I was doing my portrait work and so I was doing what I thought was a fortress europe what you're supposed to do so black background white background soft box kicker late people in you know, black drapes on the background just really simple but trying to capture their personalities, which is great and it's a completely valid form of portraiture but on the other side was doing fashion photography so I was doing these big productions where I would get together professional models and I'd have hair and make up and wardrobe and cool locations and we'd have really intense fun concepts and I love that word and then all of a sudden I saw that my fashion work started to influence my portrait work so once in a while, I would do some hair and makeup for clients, and then we kind of brainstorm together and come up with concepts would go out and cool locations, I'd use it unusual lighting, and so all of a sudden I saw that my portrait work became significantly better in every way, shape and form, and not only that, my work went from being okay. It's liked by people in the community to people were eager to be able to have a shoot with lindsay out there to do a concept to have some kind of cool production to create images they couldn't get elsewhere. S so that's what this class is all about it's not about becoming a fashion photographer, it's not about finding professional models and shooting high end designers. What it's about it's for you who are shoot weddings, you shoot high school seniors, you should families shoot boudoir or dancers or even models, how to take all of those different careers that you have all these different specialties in photography, and take the concept I use in everyday life as a fashion photographer to integrate it into work. I think it helps you stand out from the crowd, and I really do find it really fulfilling when you can take all these creative ideas and manifest them into an image. So, um, what I'm going to start with is going over images from yesterday. So if you guys out on the internet didn't see yesterday, I will do a little bit of description of what the lighting looks like. It's going toe talk through, tell you what I did or didn't retouch on dh, then take any questions that you have. All right, so here this is the first image from the audience online asked me, how do you create that kind of glowing lighting that you typically see? And so what we have here is we have two lights on a white background, so the background was white. I have a beauty dish on her face, kind of centered and above. And then I had two of my lovely assistants here hold two silver reflectors in a vey around her face. And so you can tell that if you look at the catch lights in your eyes, if you look in her eyes, you see kind of the circle in the top and then to bright highlights beneath, and so I'm making what somewhat referred to his clamshell lighting so you have a light above, and then she is the pearl in the clam show with two reflectors below, and that gives you light coming from all areas. But what's nice about this you see how you can still see her cheekbones and her jaw line that's from using a beauty dish if you use the soft box it wouldn't be as defined and then if you use one of the silver reflectors that often come with your lights it might be a little bit too harsh and contrast e so for me it is a white beauty dish twenty two inch with two silver reflectors beneath and the beauty dish above basically no retention because she's gorgeous so just so you know how that works okay um the next shot that I did I was switching the light up a little bit I took what was a piece of it was like a fainted shawl um that I got instead of using as a shirt we draped over her face um and the light here is a beaut dish above and a white reflector beneath so you see how it's not glowing but I didn't want the shadows underneath the chin to be too dark so we added the white reflector to fill in the shadows just a little bit and use the big dish to define the features on the face. So that was another look we did with her um this was my demonstration for how I do my lighting technique that I'm often known for on one of the images here on the wall is using this lighting technique you're using you can do it a couple of different ways, but basically it's flooded frontal light so it might be a beaut dish or soft box, and then it's taking reflectors writer needs a chin or to the left and right, and just more or less eliminating the shadows in the shot. So for this particular shot we had to soft boxes in the front kind of evens, or shooting between the soft boxes, and then reflectors beneath her chin for this as faras retouching, I pulled out some of the reds and yellows in her skin, and that's what made it paler so that's, not what her skin look like on set, um, the other thing that I did dio as I mirrored her hair because it wasn't I wanted it to be perfect, and I wanted to be kind of graphic because that's my style clean and bold and graphic um, yeah, so I thought it was like a heart shaped frames her face and so did that, yes. So lindsay, yesterday when you were talking about pulling those colors out of the skin, I'm imagining that I'm hoping that when when we go for retouching, you're going to show us that definitely great sunday there was somebody who was asking that all day yesterday and we will be getting to that on sunday, so there you go that's retouching on sunday and I can go much further than this, but I still wanted to retain some of the color because there it's much more fashion, she has no color maybe she could actually be painted where this could still be a portrait um and still be something that people can relate to a little bit more for their portrait sessions. So again, when you're looking at these images, keep in mind how you might use them for a client so not everybody looks good in a red wig, but for me, if you can put a red wig or the you know, red glasses on or do something where you make it a picture that's kind of pop art and graphic but something that people are much more inclined to put up on a wall or to share with individuals versus just kind of a close above their face if it's going to be a huge print on the wall, so that was how that was lit and this kind of my signature styles um then the next shot that we did you could use this easily for boudoir and then also for high school seniors. I've also done an engagement session kind of nineteen forties glam or you can make it feel like nineteen twenties depends on how you style it, but again that's that's how I view so I didn't engagement session but you are high school seniors in the past, so here I have a beauty dish centered on her face. The light is raised higher up, the higher up you raise the beauty dish, the more that the light is cast down and carves out those cheekbones. So that's, why you can see her cheekbones there if you have to, like kind of even with her face it's not casting shadows down it's just flooding light, so if you raise it up, you're going to have more to find shadows and the cheeks and jaw on. Then we had a really strong backlight because that's what that light looks like typically with hair light, I wouldn't go that strong if it's just a normal portrait, but here I wanted to feel kind of hollywood, so we had one of those silver reflectors to the back left catching that the late on the hair there again, minimal retouching. I basically flipped it to black and white in light room, um, and made it high contrast, we'll play a little bit with the kind of adobe camera raw tools that you have there for playing with blacks and if you have light from fort it's totally changed from light room three, so what I'll probably do is we're gonna work within the tone curves because that stayed the same and so I can show you how to control those get a kind of high contrast black and white regardless of what light room you had um so here they're going to the two images that I did with lens flare and this was the flooded light this was the five light set up ahead if you didn't say so yesterday you're going to just have to take my word for how I described this I had to be flats which are just really, really large white pieces of foam court in front of the model the white facing the model when I did is I pointed to lights into those so they became giant white reflectors which means that that light is just glowing from everywhere at once it doesn't really have a direction I have two lights on the background so it's white and then one light over her left shoulder so that's what gives you the length once for that kind of wraps around her body? So for me this works really well for bridal sessions when you're going really soft and romantic also high school seniors it works well for little girls if you're doing kind of the princess feel but it's soft and it's glowing on dh then here was a close up shot of her face and so you can see kind of lens for wrapping around her hair you can see in her eyes those really really large catch lights that's because those v flats or those big white reflectors are the light source it's not actually a light it's the reflectors that become the light source on dh so I pulled out for retouching on this one I photoshopped out the light stand because you could see it for how the framing was I painted it white didn't clone it painted white because the background is white on dh for this shot, I pulled out a little bit more color and increase the contrast whenever you shoot lens flare by default, you're decreasing contrast so I have to pop a little bit more contrast into the shots. Um then we had our kind of vintage boudoir model and for me, whenever I shoot what you are, I don't shoot it as kind of laundry a sexy in the bedroom I usually treat it like a fashion suits, a tear makeup and wardrobe and its period and maybe it's personality or maybe it's just a little bit more about the fashion feel to it. S so here's a shot on the left and then if you wanted to add a retouching technique, you could make it look like an older photo if you wanted teo the retouching on the left I did smooth out the skin on the legs, andi I also pulled out vibrance a little we'll talk about that it works for me to give you that kind of a little bit more of that pale skin look s so when the skins pillar for me and increase the contrast it it's feels more fashion, it just does. The color isn't quite what reality is, and for me, everything in fashion, I'm trying to pull us a little bit away from reality, and then we also covered posing eso just kind of recap what we're doing there on the left is when she was kind of standing with just your two legs together and on the right I had her cross her left foot over her right kind of pop your hip out, and so it gives you a much nicer curve. It gives you kind of a leading line through the image. This was what we did when we played with the kino flows and kino flows are constant fluorescent tubes. They come in a variety of different shapes and sizes, I use four foot four banks, and I literally used gaffer's tape to tape them into a tic tack toe pattern and this lighting I learned from a photographer named jeff lucado when I was in college, so I've used ever since he uses it to photograph women, I love it to photograph men, so if you look in those beautiful catch lights and for me it's kind of male beauty lighting but it works really well just like a ring light that many of you have probably used your scene before the same quality of light but it gives you interesting catch lights in the eyes it is constant so I am shooting an aperture priority I'm using and this I was using I believe a seventy two hundred on the next shot was using one fifty and I shoot at two point eight and so when I have them lean forward and this is what one of you were talking about when you have somebody leaned forward and looked at the camera the closest thing to the camera is going to be their eyes you focus on the eyes everything else goes out of focus so you really connect with the subject's eyes there and this is a shot with the one fifty macro um and you know again three touching I did is I used this is just telling you what I did I pulled shadows and highlights and his eyes to pull out some of the detail in the iris I don't know if we'll go over it sunday but just kind of providing you those those keywords so if you want to look it up online you can find it yourself um then we did steampunk uh we had a beauty dish off to the left and then I had a strip bank on either side give the highlights on the neck and this is what I'll be showing you how to do kind of a retouch so it's kind of old fashioned it looks a little kind of hdr grungy the reason I'm definitely going to demonstrate this particular technique is because for my mail portrait sometimes with men, if I'm doing fashion floor, it feels a little stifled because you don't dress him up into hair makeup and things like that so typically what I did for fashion flirt with men is they would take them out on location or we get a cool props, but this type of lighting and grunge technique was another way that I could continuously shoot men and have a little bit something different than other portrait studios had available. So I do have a question from scott in tampa, which is what is the difference? What is the difference between fashion the types of clients with regard to produced an unproduced so maybe that's just what is that terminology? Okay, I mean produced when I think of a production it's either bringing additional people onboard so it's hair, makeup and wardrobe or really just doing something beyond can you show up and I'm taking your portrait on the background we have available with my studio late, so we go out and shoot naturally it's actually having production beforehand it's what I would say so it's discussing do we have a concept are we going out on location? Do we need to rent anything? Is there going to be wardrobe? So what is going into the shoot beyond just this is a portrait so for me when I'm I still I don't anymore for a while I would do kind of corporate head shots that for me they show up and they were wearing their suit and we do the shot versus from my portrait I do a production every single commercial or fashion shoot that I do is always a production it always does it always depends on how big so it'll range from everything from being two people on set and the model or the subject to twenty people on dh that usually is for me if I'm doing like a music video or a big commercial shoot it's you become you feel almost like an event planner that just happens to take photos at that point. So that's why you try to keep it simple and that's something I think it's important that people who didn't want yesterday that you know I'm not saying everything needs to be a production with hair makeup wardrobe locations instead try to pick something toe, add a little bit more interest or help you stand out from your competition so that might be that you go on cool locations where you might have a particular lighting technique or you might style you might have concepts just try to do something different because if you shoot like everybody else, how do you stand out? Somebody else is probably doing it better cool so just a follow up from sky in tampa what he actually meant his question was the types of clients between person and produce, what types of companies or that's not exactly what we're talking okay, so I'll address it in like two sentences right production for the things that I do everything that I do the production so that is going to be singers up incoming performers, wrappers, professional athletes, it's going to be people that design jewelry it's going to be handbag cos it's going to be celebrities that terms like very, very generally nowadays so it's anybody whose end use is generally intended for publication our public relations purposes versace for personal comes consumption, but I like the idea that you can create a produced image with a little bit more production value for an individual who might never have the opportunity to be in a magazine or doesn't have a pr team, but they can still have those images that they can share with people on facebook, online or with their friends. I have just a quick comment from vivian photo who says thanks so much, lindsay for the time spent editing the images for us to see today the images are amazing and you rock and I just want to say I mean your images are incredible I mean I feel something with every single photo that you take and that's that's awesome that's great I mean I could not imagine myself in any way shape or form doing anything other than photography so every shoot every shot that I do I put my heart and soul into and so that's and this is a tangent not to be all like kitty but that's why I love teaching because I know that if you're here or you're in the iast year watching this photography's your passion too so if I can help you you live and succeed in your passion some way I know how much when I do something with my passion my creating image I love definitely more than anything else s o that's why I love teaching because I know I'm helping other people get that same feeling so thank you awesome so I guess I'm going to jump into inspiration one thing I wanted to hit on real quick I had I saw online ps I do jump into the chat room a little it took a look around guys so you know I see you no I'm just getting a couple questions I did see real quick lenses and cameras were used now I can go in too much but shoot the cannon five d mark to um if cannot see with mark three I sent my wife a cool um I shoot the eighty five millimeter, one point four usually for face shots with constant light, so kind of mid length and up because I can have one point four and she really narrowed up the field and so when we're shooting outside later, we're shooting in a but not the most beautiful alleyway in the whole world at all. So what can shoot at something like two point oh, or to point to it helps me really reduce the clutter in the background. I live in new york city there's a lot of clutter in my locations and background there's often people so I could shoot at a narrow down the field helps me simplify. Um, I used twenty four to seventy for mid range shots or if I have somebody jumping are moving a lot so I can zoom in and out. Um, I shoot the fifty one point four on location for full length shots where I want to really narrowed up the fields seventy two hundred's great for close up headshots, beauty in the studio and on location I use the one fifty macro lens for really kind of close up tight head shots, beauty shots, pictures of eyes, lips of any details and then also lends maybe composer and today will be playing with that a little bit baby, is it and linz all in itself, or is it like an attachment to the lenses that you already have? Okay? It is a land us all in on itself, and we're going to play with these later. What it is is you have the lens, which is the composer, and then you have adapters ago within that that decide basically, with the focal length is or what capabilities that lens has, and then a little things you, khun slide. And if you want to make it be like a pinhole camera and what not, but we'll be playing with, I don't know which ones we have here and open it up. I think we have the composer pro with the edge eighty. I think we have the edge eighties here, or it might be the sweet thirty five, but I'll we're shooting that after our next break, so we'll take a look at it.