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Testing and Personal Work

Um I quickly want to start with yesterday she was all about you know, behind the scenes of crane a shoot as um as a new photographer so we were going into shoots with we were going and making our own things like the prop sunset um we had a great team of, um creative team we had great model was on board but it was all accessible like so yesterday was all about how you could approach it it was accessible for every type of photography so today's shoot is actually just gonna go back to hear sorry jumped so today's schedule is all about approaching a full production shoot, so we're going we've got a fantastic team again the same team we use yesterday we have a new stylist on board we have really experience models but we're not gonna go too far from us down the light in um we're gonna bring in some lives but we're gonna focus on natural light too. So I'm gonna give you an overview of what we're gonna be talking about today. So today is all about your style the vision, inspiration and shootin...

g. So the style what you at a zoo photographer? How to improve your style, how to engage your vision how do you start on your shoots a swell and then we're gonna be shooting around the studio and later outside too tomorrow is gonna be the day that we do retouch in business and marketing so this is a really great day if you want to know about this course for business, this is the day to tune in for so today's schedule is the morning we're gonna be talking about testing personal works, televisions, inspiration and I feel it's important to have this because photography is really about vision it's about your style and how you use it on set so I felt like this needed its own day um and that's gonna go that's gonna be relevant to what we're gonna be doing in the shooting later midday, we got a shooting in the studio, so we're going all around the city in different environments and again later on we're gonna be shooting this to you on location as well. So fast think it's fucked. I'm gonna talk about testing and personal work and we did get some questions about this yesterday, but I feel it's important to kind of get back in there for people that may be tuning in again. So testing and personal work see, I too find these is two different things testing and time for print for me experimenting with an idea or a new equipment, so if you're testing an idea, this differs from personal work because you're going out there and you're doing it for the model, he may be inspired by your tests and idea maybe you have a new piece of equipment and you want to test it testing with a model or team, and I would say when I'm testing with the model or team it's basically getting a model in front of the set and I'm inspired by them, and I want to capture that look, captain, what they're about, I don't want to bring the whole team it's not a body of work, that I'm going to include a set of pictures, it may be just a test to get one picture, a test, you know, test a model later for an advertising shoot as well. So personal work is a body of work, and I want to find personal work, something you later going to use for gallery event, something you're gonna lay to submit or even used to attract clients, so often photographers, we'll use a body of work that they were shoot out if they were in pocket, that they will then present to a particular client because they want to track them. And this is often with the creative team involved in the reason, because of this is because it's personal what you've got a body of work you need as many, um, school sets on the shoot as possible, you need hair makeup, silent to make it a great body. What? To show clients. So what is the importance of tested? And I get asked this a lot. You why do people need to test kind of just go out there and shoot with clients? Um and I was very naive to this one. I started, you know, I started with nothing, and he came from first few years of my career. I was constantly funny money from my pocket. So a lot of first few years of my career was tested. But later on, testing is important mainly because of these reasons clients respond to personal work over untested over commission work. The reason for this is because clients want to know more about you as a person. They want to know what inspires you. What? Your vision. Um, what makes you tick as well? They don't want to meet you and look at your commission work and go ok flicking through this another taxi, another client name. And often, when you are presenting work like that, you just booked to do a certain job. So it's, not your tree vision. So whenever I go into meetings and I have personal work in my book, um it engages them. There as soon as they cook over the pages or even in the portfolio and they flip to a page and I'll say what's the story behind this they don't want here oh, I just got a job for that they want to hear oh wow so you did that out of your own pocket you did that, you know, on a budget like you brought that together because that's what your inspired by it also gives you freedom to experiment and make mistakes now everyone makes mistakes and photography this is how we learn I made tons of mistakes and I still do, you know? And this is why I love testing because it enables me to go out there and you know, I'm not with a client so a client is not going to say to me, you know you've made a mistake um it also gives me freedom to experiment with sudden things, so if I know in the future I've got a sudden job, the experimentation will come just so I can practice before that as well improving your technique it enables you go, they're testing you lenin's task to new lighting setting tests like a theme or a vision you may have maybe it's with natural light maybe it's onset on dh it allows you to be inspired by that as well, which I'm gonna be talking about later on and the most important thing here is fashion photography involves around network, and you can't really get somewhere in fashion photographer without in network and whether that's online, whether that's in person, whether you're going to networking events, network him with new talent comes hand in hand with testing. So a few tests on a shoot, you're reaching out to a new makeup artist, you reaching out to a new wardrobe stylist? When a job comes up, they're gonna put you forward to that bag in a network you father so it's creating a conversation about your work and spreading it further. So the main thing with importance of testing is with testing and personal work never be afraid to make mistakes with that, we all do it it's fine, we just learn from it and move on and do better next time. So I wanted to give you an example. Yeah, I'm wondering if you can share with us one of your biggest mistake. I'm gonna go free, though I replied that actually, but I'm gonna show you. Thank you. So I'm going. I've got these two images here. This is a great example of what testiness for me these two models, when I saw them on the the boards of the agency's, I loved the look, I loved what they were about, so I get these girls and I arrange a shoot around them, so I'm that inspired by their look that I want to test them in front of my camera often I have them with natural light, just simple portrait oh, I bring them into the studio and shoot on state on seamus with one light and all I'm trying to do is create beautiful fashion portraits, everything simple it's all about the models expression what they're given to the camera, the relation between the viewer on what's going on in the picture as well. So that's basically what testing is about for me simplicity, beautiful something that I'm spied by good connection and again a few more images um these two girls this was both of these were on the side of shoots where was doing editorials? So when you test ago often it's hard to get great girls on set. So whenever I do shoots like this, I will do in editorial, say, or in advertising pain and I'll take some time out at the end of the day and I'll say to the model, could I describe you for ten minutes? And could we get some shots and it's just a really simple setup, often there in harem make up already and it's great, because not only will you have the editorial advertising shoot you will then have a chance to get some beautiful fashion portray it's in your book, and this is great to show the model agencies talking about again, why went over yesterday with model agents? They love this kind of stuff. These are the kind of pictures that sell their models to clients, so personal work is self assigned either to protect practice techniques or to shoot an idea to attract a particular kind again, personal work is all about going out there, shooting what you're inspired by a body of work, whether it's putting it forward to a client to attract them, whether it's putting it forward to a gallery or to shoot into have something great, any portfolio that clients could talk about meetings so I know I want to talk about, um, he said about the mistakes, right? Okay, so this is something going into one of the shoes I went to was really lucky to get the opportunity to go to hawaii last year on what I was doing a workshop on dh I'd always wanted to try and do what photography and, you know, I haven't absolutely no clea I can swim, and sometimes I'll need some something under me to keep me up, um, but the water was very deep, we got out there. I met this girl. I'm just before the shoot. She was amazing, her dad or into a boat, and I was like, hey, can we just can we just go test this idea? So we got there. I got on the phone, um, got out into the sea. I got incredibly seasick. So after about half an hour flight lying on the side of the boat, nearly wanting to throw up, um, I just threw myself in the water because it would have been better than rocking on a boat, and I said, we've got twenty minutes let's do that. So I rented an underwater housing for my cannon five mark, too. It ended up being the wrong housing, which was awful because when I was I got in the would I realized that should've wouldn't. It was something to do with the click, so I couldn't get it all together with the with the settings, so I had to shoot on opportune priority, and I went down on this is what I got and the way I got it was just, um, valerie's dad would push me down into the water. I had no, like nothing on to kind of keep me breathing underwater just pushed me down, and I'd have ordered focus, an aptitude priority, and I shoot as I came up and hope for the best and what I loved about it is it's not technically perfect when I put this into photo shop and made it look so much more better than it actually is, um, you know, it's not technically perfect, but that's okay? Because I made a mistake with the way I just went out there and thought it would be okay to shoot. I thought that, you know, I'd be a master of this first time I was doing it, but I was like, you know what? I'm gonna try this again. It inspires me to try again the second time I tried it, I'm gonna show you that now in the next life. So again, this is a great quote it's important to take bad pictures, it's the bad ones that have have to do with what you've never done before. They can make you recognize something you hadn't seen in a way that will make you recognize it when you see it again. And this is an excellent quote by dying arvis, which I loved, um, it's what I live by with a lot of my test and experiment toe work, it's something I kind of remind myself whenever I'm doing it. Never have had a really bad shoot. I get back home, but the other day, and I'm like, you know, this went really badly. What can I do? I might you know what? That I learned something from that and I can move on from that is so going on to the underwater thing. I thought, you know, I got these shots in hawaii that we're okay. I'm now going to try this idea in a cool an indoor pool, see, if we have better results that you can't be worse than getting seasick in the middle of the ocean and just, you know, experimenting. So I took this poor girl, um, and we got to the pool. I paid the money for the location, which ended up being a club, which just had, like, a really seedy pool in the back of the room. So handed this guy's some cash, and I was, like, less, just let me use your pool for four hours. So we got in there and there was no light in in the pool, so we were just relying on as much light as we could that was coming in, um, and I completely failed, and I had made that that's fine with me. I was so upset because I thought the shoot was gonna go really well and I got there and the girl had red eyes. She was getting tired, like she was spluttering. I was getting really tired of trying to go into water and capture shots. So I said, ok, let's, try something different let's at least get one good shot from this. So we tied it up a little bit again and they pushed it to the back of the wall and I said, just pose in front of the mirror. It was very steamy around the mirror and we just had one continuous, just artificial light in the pool coming down. And this is what I got it's, not one of my best shots that I have in my portfolio, but to me it speaks something because it was a learning curve for me. So whenever I have shots like this and I go back to my portfolio, I'm like, okay, that didn't work. But what went wrong, how can I improve that next time? Okay, so never be afraid to make mistakes.