Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: Colorful Portrait

Who do we have first? I forget who is coming in first. Is it Lilly? Lilly. Awesome. Belinda, I'm gonna have you help with this if you don't mind. Back up to eight, perfect. And I'm probably gonna lower that light a little bit. I don't think she's that tall. And I am gonna take off my shoes. I'm sorry. They told me not to and I'm breaking the rules. It's just hard for me to shoot when I'm running around like crazy. A lot of people shoot barefoot. It's okay, right? I can be real here. Take the shoes off. Miss Lilly is coming in. You guys, her outfit is awesome. Yes. Miss Lilly. How are you? Awe, I love your dress. You look amazing. Oh, look at you pretty girl. Are you ready to help me out? Come on over here. Let's introduce you to everybody. Sound good? Okay guys, so this is Miss Lilly. Is this your ballerina outfit? It's very cool. Who is this? Who's this; who'd you bring today? Fancy. This is Fancy and what is Fancy? Is Fancy a horse or a kitty cat? Kitty. She's a kitty cat. Nice. Is s...

he your best friend? She's one of your best friends? Mm-hm. (laughing) Cuddle, cuddle. And I love your little slippers. Are those your ballet shoes? Uh-uh. Kind like-- They're slippers. Your cozy slippers? What are they. Bunnies. Bunnies. Awesome little bunnies. I love it. Are you ready to get crazy, have some fun? Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna have a good time. What's your favorite animal? Giraffe. Giraffe. What's your second favorite animal? Zebra. Zebra. You like the African animals, huh? Yeah. Do you like broccoli? You like broccoli! Green vegetables. (whispering) I like then too. You know how I like them? I like lots of lemon on them. They're good with lemon on them. Don't you think? Have you ever had that? (whispering) Next time have your mommy put lemon on your broccoli. It's really good. Okay. (chuckle) Awesome. I know it's kind of intimidating when all these people are around, but you're super cute. We're gonna blow a fan on you. What's your favorite song? Frozen. (gasp) ♪ Let it go ♪ Should we sing? ♪ Let it go ♪ No. No. What's your next favorite? ♪ Do you want to build a snowman ♪ ♪ For the first time in forever ♪ Is that your favorite one? (laughing) I love that one too. Get to know Disney, is all I can say. Know the songs. Right now we're into Moana in my house. Do you like Moana? How does that one go? ♪ How far I'll go ♪ Can you sing that one for me? Can you sing it? You don't know it? I don't really know it very good either yet. I haven't listened to it in the car enough yet. Have you? No, not yet. Okay. We'll learn that next time. Sound good? Give me five. By learning kids books, kids movies, kids songs, all this stuff. Even if you don't have kids of this age you need to learn what they love. I happened to know it, because I have a six year old and as a parent of six year old, you get really tired of listening to Moana in the car, but you know the words and this is valuable stuff in your business, let me tell you. I do need to turn on those back lights. Are they powered up, Casey? Are they on ten? They're on ten. What's this on right here? Eight. Let's go ahead and drop those to seven. Let's try seven first and see what happens. We're gonna do a quick light test first. Sound good? These things beep and make noises and they flash at you, but that's all they do. They're just taking pretty pictures. (whispering) I love these. What are these? What is this? Cat ears. Cat ears. They're pretty awesome. Miss Lilly, I'm gonna have you stand right here. Can you stand on the dirty spot? Perfect. Awesome sauce. Right now you don't need to do much, because Mrs. Julia's gonna ... You just stand like that. Mrs. Julia's gonna do a quick light test, okay. Sound good? And then we'll work from there. Let's go ahead and drop-- Move this a little bit to the side too? Let me try it overhead and see how I like it. He's asking me if I wanna turn it to the side. That's originally what we talked about, in the preproduction meeting, just for a different look, but I'm kinda liking the way the overhead is acting right now, so I wanna shoot this and see how it is and I might turn it to the side for just a different look, for you guys to see. We might need to lower ... Actually, it'll probably be okay. Yeah, let's see. Oh, you even got me back up to ... You rock man. You wanna come home with me? (camera shutter snaps) Perfect. Okay. That's actually pretty good. Yeah, you're hired. (laughing) That's awesome. It's perfect exposure. Now Miss Lilly, we're gonna have some fun. They have a fan for me here. Isn't that cool? Should we make it like really windy in here? You think? Yeah, let's do it. Let's make it super windy on you. Then you can fly like a ballerina. Sound good? Shall we fly? Do you take ballet sweetheart? No. You don't? Do you want to? No. You just like to wear the pretty clothes. Yeah, I hear you. I would do the same thing. That's not quite strong enough, huh? Let's blow your hair. Does that feel good? How about faster? Oh. Is that pretty fun? I'm gonna have Belinda hop in here and just make sure that fan stays on her. Move it around. It's a little loud, so Mrs. Julia's gonna have to talk kinda loud for you to hear, okay? Are you cold? Is it too cold? You can do it. Who's in your arms? Who's that? Show me Fancy. Yeah. (camera shutter click) I think we should have a throwing contest with Fancy. Don't you? Can you throw him in the air for me? (camera shutter click) Yeah, good job! We're gonna do it again. We're gonna do it again. We're gonna throw him up in the air. Not too high. There we go; just high enough. You wanna try again? One more time. (camera shutter click) Perfect. Good job. One more time; I'm gonna do it again. (camera shutter click) Perfect. I love it; let's do it again. (camera shutter click) Perfect. Beautiful. I think you should put Miss Fancy right at your feet. Can you sit her on your feet? Can she sit on the floor? You make her sit on the floor? There you go. Beautiful. (camera shutter click) And how big are you? Are you tall? Show me how big you are. So big! So big! Touchdown. Let's see a touchdown. No. Okay. (camera shutter click) I like Fancy. Can you hold her hand? Do you ever hold her hand and walk in the park? Yeah, you do? Just like that. Awesome. Can we get that fan really blowing on her? Bring it in. Perfect! And then one, two, three I think you should throw her. One, two three woo! Perfect. Now what I think you should do, let's pretend to be an animal. Shall we? Let's put Miss Fancy on the side, so she can watch you. Sound good? There we go. Perfect. You favorite animal's a giraffe. (camera shutter click) What do you think a giraffe does, long neck, right? Awesome! And what about a zebra? How does a zebra act? I just wanna do a kitty cat. Kitty cat. Okay. (squeaking) Ooh, I wanna see the kitty cat. Hang on. Where's a kitty cat? Meow. Meow, meow. (camera shutter click) Meow, meow. Perfect. Kitty cat. More kitty cat. Right up here. I want you to do kitty cat. Oh yeah kitty cat. (laugh) Perfect. That fan just does not wanna stay on ... There we go. It's not quite as strong as ours at home, is it? That's okay. You know what I think we should pretend to be like? What? Harold. No. No, you don't know who Harold is? Did I tell you about Harold. No. I didn't. (camera shutter click) Harold ... I don't wanna be like Harold. Do you know what he is? (whispering) He's a froggy. He's in my camera. Yeah, he's in my camera. Did you know that? He winks at you; did you see that? Did you see him wink at you? You didn't? Watch real close. (camera shutter click) (gasp) Did he wink at you? You should jump, like a frog. Can you go down like this? Okay. Oh, hang on, you're too early for me. Hang on. (camera shutter clicking) Jump froggy. Ribbit. (camera shutter click) Good job peanut. Good job. Oh my goodness. One more time. And ribbit. (laughing) That was a good jump. Ribbit. (camera shutter click) Good job. Perfect. Awesome. We're gonna do it again sweetie, but you can take a break. The one issue with this is that when we start to do this jumping like this the light becomes a problem. This is when I actually go to the side. Let's go ahead and turn off the fan, so that we can hear each other think. I'm gonna have Casey move it to the side, so we have more even light across her, because as she's jumping up she's getting closer to the light and then going far away from it, so it's changing my exposure, essentially and because her head is pointed down we're getting strong shadow in her face. Can I bring that back a little bit later in post? Yes and I will. That's the beauty of shooting in RAW, but hello this is awesome, the hair and the fun and imagine this bright, vibrant, brilliant with the colors a little saturated in post and then on acrylic print. Fun and parents are like she used to do that all the time. We're gonna switch the light over to be ... Sorry, I don't know if I made myself clear Case. A little bit more like side, 90 degree angle. Can we do that? It might be a little challenging, with the boom here. Isn't that a big ole thing? Look at that. Can I stand up? Can I get you to move out of the way? Yeah, come over here, just in case it falls. We don't wanna let it fall on top of you. She's being such a big helper. Are you reading yet? What grade are you in? Kindergarten. Kindergarten. I can read. (gasp) Really? Wow. What's your favorite book? Daniel Tiger. Which one? Daniel Tiger. Daniel Tiger. I don't know if I've heard that one yet. What's it about? There's like this little tiger. Yeah, little tiger. Very cool. Does he go on an adventure? Yeah. Does he get into trouble? No. Good. Good. What happens when you get in trouble? Uh-oh. Are you worried about shutter speed with them moving around and only being at 200? Great question. Great question and I'm gonna answer that for you with the beauty of the strobe. It's freezing my action. You can't do this with natural light, at least not in studio and natural light, you'd have to be at such a high shutter speed. You could do it, but you'd still get the blur, the movement blur, which could be really cool. With a strobe, that flash instant that the strobe fires is the moment that you freeze the action and that strobe is so fast that it's literally taking that single snapshot. That's why it freezes it. If I took a shot without the strobe, this would be pitch black. Right, pretty much, with no strobes firing? Because if you think about it I'm shooting on F7.1 at 1/200th of a second and ISO 100, basically. Or less than that actually. ISO 50. So in this environment, inside like this, even with these lights that would be extremely dark, but that flash fires at the moment I do the shutter, so that's what's freezing the moment in action in time and space. Shutter speed does not determine exposure. It's aperture, when you're doing flash. So when I open up my aperture I could be at 1/60 of a second. Let's try that. Come on over here sweetie. We're gonna let you ... Stand right here. You don't have to do much right now. We're just gonna look at your beautiful face and take a picture of it, okay. Sound good? This (camera shutter click) is on 1/200 of a second at F8. I'm gonna lower my shutter speed to 1/30 of second. (camera shutter click) Same exposure. It's the flash and the aperture that determine the exposure, not my shutter speed. Because that shutter speed is freezing action ... Can you wiggle? I want you to wiggle. (camera shutter click) The flash firing still gets me a sharp image even though she's moving. Make sense? So can be at F130 for the second, which it feels funny, I have to admit, because my camera's nice and slow, or I can be at my sync speed of 1/200th of second. I'm gonna get the same exposure and the same sharpness, because the flash is freezing the moment, as long as I'm focused on her. Clearly if I'm not focused on her it's not gonna be sharp, but by me focusing on her and letting that flash fire, I'm getting that freeze frame moment of just the tiny burst of that flash giving me my image. That's why they're so sharp and that's why I love strobes. And they capture her movement. Let's do one last fun thing with you. What's your favorite song? Is it Let it Go? Yeah. Should be sing it? Should the whole audience sing it with us? No. Jeremy's like, "No." You wanna sing it? ♪ Let it got ♪ ♪ Let it go ♪ No. No. Okay. We'll quit there then. You were awesome. You were a good sport. I appreciate it. What I would normally do and since we're on a ... Disney music is copyrighted. I would blare Disney in my studio, which is different than actually having it on air. Thank you Miss Lilly. Can we give Miss Lilly a round of applause, because she was awesome. You did so good. I love your outfit. You did great. Okay? Okay. We'll have you go off to your mommy. You tell mommy you did a good job and that you deserve a lollipop.