Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: Environmental Portraits

So we are shooting in the studio today and the original plan was to shoot outside in alleyway but there's rain in seattle as we kind of expected so we moved it back inside the studio and the awesome thing about this set up is that you can do it anywhere at any time now what we're shooting today is an environmental portrait so this environmental portrait is basically going to show off the natural beauty of our subjects and the reason why I love shooting like this is because I truly believe that everybody has beauty within them and if they have that natural beauty then we as photographers khun bring that out in a beautiful way so if I have the model you know, laying in this dirt with mud all over her like we plan on doing it sounds a little bit weird it sounds strange it sounds like it might not be very pretty but I tend to feel like the more natural you could make someone look the more beautiful they are in the more their natural soul can sort of come out in the image so we're going to ...

be playing with lots and lots of elements today we've got dirt that we're going to play with and mud and then we also have sand that we're going to lay down for sort of ah beach theme sort of thing and then we also have water and funny story about this water I sort of kind of forgot to mention to everybody this morning that we needed water and a kiddie pool and a black backdrop, so about an hour ago, I said, would it be possible to bring in a baby pool and fill it with water in the studio and everybody just jumped on it, so that was really awesome that that happened. So now we have this amazing pool to shoot with, which is actually just a kiddie pool, so I will show you that a little bit later, but I do want to get started shooting, and I want to first take you through some of the props that we have, so if I walk over here, I've got all of these props available, and I'm calling it props, but this is actually our wardrobe for today, so the models that we have are not dressed in anything but the materials that you see here, aside from some netting that I have that we had one piece of so the model's wearing it currently. So what I have, I have some yarn, and this is something that I don't use is often to fully dress somebody in because it's going to take a long time to wrap the the model with all these little pieces of fabric, however, it has amazing texture to it, I got this very neutral color it's sort of brown with little specks of beige in it, and I thought that it would just go perfectly with the dirt that we have in the sand and all of these elements. So with everything that you'll see here, I am trying to pick things out that have texture to them as much texture is I can get in the image that's what I'm looking for, it makes it feel like you can sort of reach in and touch the image rather than it being flat, so I've got this yard, I'm going to probably use that in the model's hair today, so I don't waste a ton of time wrapping their whole body in the yarn, and then I have this little piece of fabric here, which is just a neutral piece of fabric it's really dirty, because when I use fabric like this, I tend to take it over here in the dirt and then lay it down and then just sort of jump on it like that and make it as dirty as I can, and so when I do that, then it has again, amazing texture to it. So what I'm trying to do is emphasize that texture and make everything look like it belongs in the scene. If something doesn't belong, then I'm not going to use it it's kind of common sense, but in a way that, you know, I don't always think of it, you know, I might take this fabric, have it big, perfectly clean and ironed and wrapped them in it, but then it doesn't really go with the scene, so I'm thinking again about color, color, super important to me. So when I am choosing colors and choosing something very neutral, I'm choosing something that as earth colors in it, because we have this earthy scene, I'm also choosing something that isn't going to blend in too much to the scene that we're working with. So that's, why I have this lighter color as a base for the models and then I've got a bunch of burlap, and this burlap is very inexpensive, just like everything else that you see here. So I didn't spend more than ten dollars, on anyone individual thing here, and most of it was five dollars or less, so if I just grabbed this, I just cut the burlap into little strips, and then I was able to wrap the models and it really easily just by taking it right around just like that, and then pinning it on, I just use some safety pins really simple. Now, if you have something other than safety pins to work with materials like this, that could be great. I use binder clips a lot of the time you can use something fancy or like an actual photography tool, but I don't know what they're called, so I just used binder, but I tend not to use safety pins even though we did today because they can come unpainted pretty easily if the model stretching the fabric too much and we don't want to hurt anybody, so binder clips work amazing for that and then I've got lots and lots of flowers no, these air fake flowers that I have, and we also have some real ones as well to use. I got some red rose petals and I just got these in a craft store. They were in the wedding, I'll and they comes, then you can just, you know, throw them down the aisle as you go, but the's, we can use to add a little pop of color to our scene, so I've been talking about color, how neutral is best in this situation, but it's all personal, whatever you feel like doing, do it now, I liketo add little pops of color around the subject because I don't want to overwhelm the subject in a color I want her to blend into the scene very naturally. So by adding these little pieces of flour all around her you're still adding some color but it's not overwhelming the scene all right so let's get our first model in here this is kika kika and I'm just going to bring her over here into the dirt pile now I'm going to take a couple shots of her without any mud smeared on her and then I'm going to smear mud on her and she has the worst job today because she is not only getting more smeared on her but she's also getting in the kiddie pool and not just a kiddie pool but we're putting some coconut milk in with her insisted on coconut milk I said is there any non animal milk around and we have some so all right so I'm gonna have you to sit here for right now and then I will come and pose you once I have my camera all set so I'm just gonna grab my camera thank you so much all right now I might need the stool again so I am going to figure that out in just a second and I'm gonna have to come around this side to shoot because again most of the light is coming from the windows so I want to make sure that I do not block that light is this is going to be similar to how it was shooting yesterday shooting from above I'm also going to shoot on to the black backdrop so I'll be doing both but first I want to start shooting from overhead and I want to do that because I really want to show you guys how amazingly simple it is to post somebody in this way now I started doing portrait's like this because I was doing a fundraiser I was doing a fundraiser where is raising money to go to india and I was basically just offering these environmental portrait sessions I had done a few of these before for my own fine artwork but never with you know anybody who wanted to sign up I always had my my adorable little model friends with me and you know, it's the sort of thing where anything that they do they look amazing doing it and then I said, you know what if I were to shoot myself in this position, I wouldn't look like that and I want to figure out how to make myself look like that if I were to be in that position so I started shooting just anybody anybody at all and I started learning how to pose different body types in ways that would look really flattering and really elegant so I'm going to sort of walk through that process today of how I would pose kika in this setup so I'm going to come grab the ladder thank you just right here yeah, thank you come around here sorry there you go so I'm just gonna climb the ladder treacherously again I'm very bad at this and I have a long dress on today but I won't die or anything it'll be fine okay, so I'm going to start like this and then maybe bravely move up to the next wrong oh there's a light there okay, so I'm going to get my camera settings and I am going teo s o to fifty right now and I'm just going to see what my camera is saying to me about that now it might be a little bit dark so I'm going to take my shutter speed two, two hundred and my f stop is three point five and we're just going to take a test now we talked yesterday about how to focus a little bit with this kind of scene where I'm shooting from above and now I'm not shooting with the camera to my face like this that's not what I'm doing so I want it perfectly to be right above her so I'm going have to reach my camera out and I'm going to catch it like that so I want her in the center of the frame I already know this personally because that's how I like to shoot so I'm just going to go ahead and set my focal point to be right in the center and we have it right there in the center so at this point, I am going to start posing her, and I'm not trying to do anything amazing yet. I just want her to sort of lay down on her back, stick straight, and then we're going to start posing from there. So if you want to lay your head down there and you're feeding this end that's perfect and if you could scooch a little bit closer to me, you it's perfect. All right? She looks gorgeous just like that. So we're in a good position here, so I'm just gonna go ahead and take my first shot, okay? So now I am just taking a look at what I have here and it's just looking a little bit dark, I think so I'm going to go out and change my settings now I'm not too worried about getting a lot of motion blur in this situation. I'm not really moving too much she's not moving at all. She could be dead for all we know actually look, very definitely right now I have to say just got dirt all over her legs and but I like that so it's good. So I'm going to take my shutter speed down a little bit at one twenty five now for my shutter speed. Try not to take that I s o up I s o is always sort of my last resort if I have tio macon image brighter than I will take my eyes. So, uh, but if I can avoid it, I try to so we're going to take another shot just to see how the lighting looks okay now, that's looking a lot better to me, so the lighting is a lot better now that I have that down, I can start to pose her and I'm always posing for the light, so I know that the light is coming from this direction. Mostly I don't want to get any weird shadows on her face, and I want to walk you through a few different poses that I would start with. So for example, you know, when I have clients like this, when I was doing my fundraiser, I had a few different women come and do this sort of set up with me, and they were of all ages all sizes, and I always start like this. So I always say we're just going to start on their backs, and then we're going to start moving from there because this is a comfortable pose. I'm not immediately saying, ok, lay down and twist your body and do a back bend and do all this because that's just gonna confuse them, and then they might get a little bit discouraged if they're not doing the right thing right away, so I don't want to start with something difficult. I want to start with something simple, take a few shots, let them know that it's looking good and then move on from their son, they're comfortable. So first thing that I would like you to do is roll over on that side. Perfect. Yes, wonderful. Now bring your left shoulder back towards me, and you can sort of keep your arm right on your stomach. Perfect, just like that now. Like I said yesterday, I want to take advantage of lines, so when I'm creating images like this, it's all about the shape of the body, it's all about how she's moving her limbs, so I want you to take your left leg and just bend at the knee and pull it back a little bit further. Great, that looks nice. Now, if I leave her just like this, from my point of view, what I'm saying is that her leg is sort of cut off, I can't see her other thigh at all, and I'm going to get a little hit of that in the image so if you could bring that left leg back just a bit perfect now I can see her knee and that looks a lot better to me so I'm going to have you take that right arm and just pull it up over your head a little bit more great that looks really nice now I can have you turn your head to the light perfect and I'm just going to see how this looks one more little detail that I like to tell people is to point the toes so if she has her toes pointed it's going to look very elegant and very natural in the scene so we're going to see how this looks all right, so I do like how that's looking and I'm noticing that her fabric around her torso is just getting a little bit bulky so I'm going to go and fix that because that's a mistake on my part certainly not her part so I'm just gonna hop down from hero quick and I'm going to fix her costume now I did this costume just, you know, right right before we went on just, you know, wrapped her up real tight and then left it at that knowing that I would have to fix this outfit at some point I'm gonna try not to step on you are you a comfortable okay so I'm just going to start talking this underneath her to make it a little bit tighter through here so it's not bulging so the issue that we had before was it was coming away from her stomach and because of that we're getting a shadow on her stomach so it was making it look even bigger and it was drawing this the eye right to that area so I don't want that to happen at all one other thing that I could do it would be to bring her head a little bit closer to the light and move her butt away a little bit from that light and then the light would hit here just a little bit less it's not going to make a lot of a difference because we have a lot of fill light coming in the room but it would make a little bit of a difference so I'm just gonna have you moved back this direction thank you and then move your upper body this way great and I'm just gonna talk again dr tuck and get that all underneath and tight okay sorry am I hurting you? Okay all right looking good so I'm gonna hop back up on my ladder now and I'm going to try to direct her you know just with my voice as much as possible so I'm not trying to you know go over there and touch her and move her and yanker around I want her to feel like she's doing it on her own so in a client shoot like this I would be saying to the client you're doing great just move your arm here and giving them words of encouragement as they go because I know from taking pictures of myself like this but it's not easy to get in a very elegant pose so I am going to just hop up here again I don't know why I'm so scared of this ladder but it's really playing mind tricks on me okay, perfect so she is still in the same pose and point those toes wonderful all right? And I'm going to take one more shot okay got it so that's looking a lot nicer on the stomach area and I could still stand to pull it down a little bit so I'm probably going to go fix that but I want to show one more thing that's going to help this image a lot so with your right hand if I could have you twist it so then your pinkie is towards me a little bit more uh sorry other hand okay, yeah. So curve your pinky towards me yep, there you go. Perfect. So now we're creating a little bit of a thinner line going down her arm and weaken seymour fingers, which is really nice having that depth in the shadow all right now we could do the same thing to the other hand to her left arm and the reason why we want to do that is because it's flat right now on her stomach so if we create more of a soft hand it's going to look a little bit more elegant perfect if you could just spread your fingers a bit good yep just like that okay so I'm going to take a test shot all right good so I like how that's looking and the only thing that I would say to her is that her hand is pushing into her side and so that's creating a little bit of a shadow there so if you could just actually pull him off yep just like that okay good it's now unlike ng how this is looking and I am going to fix that bottom half of her that's something that I do want to sort of take away a little bit and it's also something that I know I can fix later on in post I could make that a lot darker and it's going to be just fine it's not like we're blowing out the highlights it's just a big area of interest so I am going teo hop down again and I'm not only going to try to sort of de clutter that area but I'm also going to wrap her in another piece of burlap to make that area a little bit darker are you comfortable? Okay, you can relax your body if you're not thank you this should be okay all right, so I'm goingto unwrap her slightly here sorry and try to let you stay where you are and just pull that down a little bit so it's not so bulky around her waist perfect that's much better and now I'm going to start wrapping her in burlap so I'm just taking the burlap and I'm really I'm not trying to you know, wrap it all around her right now this is just for this pose to cover up what we don't want seen so I am just taking this and moving it around just to cover that area a little bit more and we can also see a little bit more of her stomach now since I pulled that fabric down I'm gonna go ahead and climb back up all right? And this is already looking much nicer from my point of view so hopefully it looks nicer in the camera now can you sort of stick your chin out a little bit more? Yep just like that. So by having her do that by having her sticker chin out her chin is an intersecting with her skin anymore with the burlap so now it's against the dark background so I can see the line of her chin really nicely taking a shot all right, so I like that a lot better I really like the burlap covering that area a little bit more and I could tuck that little piece in and make it look a little bit more sleek. So then it actually looked like it was wrapped around her, which I am going to do. I'm feeling a little bit anal today about all this stuff, so I'm just going to tuck in tuck, okay? Now, if I were doing this, you know, with a model I would know pretty much what out that was going to look like before, and I was I wouldn't really have to play with it too much. So this is taking much longer than it actually would if I had the whole shoot plan beforehand. But in this case, I really want to show how you can use multiple, you know, different types of fabrics and things like that and it's great, because if this is a client shoot and you really want to please that client thing, it's a great idea to have all of these materials on hand and say, which one of you most drawn to what do you want to be shot in? Ok, so one more shot here with that fabric tuck down perfect, all right, great, one more direction here I am going to have you take that left hand and put it up on your hip good just like that and now bring your pinky up in the air if you can get just like that and bend it here you go good perfect just a little detail and now if you could bring your right arm up a little bit higher yep just like that that was perfect down a little bit okay and then tilt your head back a little bit more yep there we go okay all right and we got that shot so no I would probably leave it at that I like how her body's looking right now and now I want to move into the next pose so I'm going to step down so I can talk to her down here on the floor instead of up on the ladder and I am just going to let her know what we're doing next it's the next thing that I want to do is something a little bit with more of a contortion innit so let's say that you have a situation where you really want to thin someone's stomach out well in that case it's a great idea to tell them to do a back ben because that's going to stretch their stomach out obviously we don't have that problem but we're going to pretend that we do right now so if I could have you still facing the white but basically I want you to do a backwards you shape so your whole body's bending like this yet oh, exactly. Just like that. And if you can pull this leg back any further, that yep, just like that. Okay, wonderful. You're fantastic. Okay, well, that was way too easy. All right? I'm happen of here, your great. And then turn your head towards the light again. Yep. Perfect. And then point the toes. Great. Okay, so you can see how now we're really seeing her stomach and it's completely stretched out and it is a point of interest in the image because it's it's a lot brighter than her face, but that's not a problem because that is exactly the kind of thing that we can fix very easily in photo shop. So I'm going to be showing that later today how to fix something like that, how toe add light to the face takeaway from other areas that we might not want to be highlighted so much. But this is looking pretty good to me, and I just want to tuck that fabric one more time so it doesn't look so bulky and just in the back there, okay? So we're just gonna talk that in there and in this part here. So what I'm doing is I'm trying to make sure that the fabric is not sticking out in any weird way because she is so pale against this backdrop her line of her body is really going to stand out so if we have fabric sticking out in a weird position it's going to break the line of her body and I don't want to do that okay, so that looks much much better to me and I like her hands I like her feet she's nice and pointed but I think now we need to get her muddy so let's move on tio smearing her with mud this isn't one of my favorite things to do in the whole world so you can relax no need to point your legs anymore we have a bowl very fancy yeah that's great let's just pour some dirt in there. Hey, brooke. Yeah? I ask the question absolutely. So I was actually just wondering this and I've seen a couple of questions about models of different sizes does a pose like the one that you just did work for models of all sizes or what do you think it ends? Not all it depends on the body shape more than the size really and we have two models with different body shapes that were going to be working with. So I'm really excited about that and I would say, you know, not ever it depends on how you convention because I've worked with models who are much larger in size than kika here who you know can bend so much that they could just stretch their bodies out and it looks amazing I've worked with people who can't bend at all and then it doesn't look is amazing and that's where you kind of to work with them a little bit to get into the pose that you need and that's also where sometimes compositing will come into play where I'll get their upper body and a great pose and they don't get their lower body but not together and then I might have to put the two together later on we'll often okay so I'm going to rub mud on you if that's all right okay all right here we go it's not because she says that it's like she's got the spa but it's it's this is really cold mud I'm just gonna warn you right now all right oh yeah I know that was really bad so I'm not just going to get her skin I'm going to get the outfit as well because I want it all to be very cohesive and this is great because now I'm going to make that fabric a little bit darker that I felt was a little bit too light I'm just patent you up there we go so I'm not trying to do too much I just wanted to look nice and painterly I wanted to look like brush strokes on her rather than just clumps of mud everywhere I'm actually gonna de mud her a little bit on her stomach with my dry hand I might need a towel in a second to be able to hold my camera. Okay face time okay, okay so close your eyes good. You have beautiful makeup though I'm sorry about that. Okay, now I love getting some blood on the neck because then I is going to be drawn to that area so we'll just do that now I already know that I'm going to keep her facing the light in this situation if we had light coming from overhead I could move her either direction so I'm going to make sure that I get this arm on that side as well ok and her legs are already pretty pretty bad. So another thing that I like to do is just take the mud on my fingers and then just do that and sort of splash it on because it gives a really nice sort of splattered effect that's not comfortable, is it? Ok, so I'm done muddying letting has a new word okay, I'll set it right here for now. Thank you, lad. Okay. There's a white towel. Oh, well, now that I have her all muddied um now she kind of looks like she's part of the scene which is exactly what I want so I think I'm dry enoughto hold my camera again okay, climbing up so let's, go ahead and move her around a little bit so I'm gonna have you let's see, put your legs down here in your head up here and so now we're going a lot more extreme right now with how we are positioning her towards the window and hopefully this is going to get even more light on her face and a little bit less on her lower half. So let's have you roll over that direction again? Great, perfect. And I'm gonna start talking and trying not to get super money myself. All right, so now let's, try something a little bit different here. We're going to put your legs out straight. That is wonderful. Perfect now in this case, sometimes I do like to come down and just start moving people we've already worked together for a little while now, you know that your great so I'm just gonna move this leg right here. Perfect. And then this one you khun bend at the knee great. And I'm going to try not to get too much dirt on top of her because I want to see the lines of her body and you look wonderful now, this time we're going to take your left arm above your head, keep going with it perfect, and then you can take the right arm down at your side great and then flop your arm over that way yep and then bend at the elbow and then pull it into your body great and then bend a little bit less of the elbow yep just like that. Okay, great. So I'm going to move with her with my stool, okay? And now I can climb up here and in fact I'm gonna try to move a little bit more just so that I'm really with her head here instead of being so far at her feet I don't want to distort anything with this lens in case I don't get it perfectly overhead great taking a shop all right, so I kind of like how this is looking, but what I'm noticing now is that her leg the one on top is going down into the dirt and that means that it's looking really short so if I have her pull her foot up it's going to create a straighter line so there yet anyway you can lift at the foot yep just like that and then keep it pointed great. So we're just cheating a little bit here I'll take a test shot of that so now it looks a little bit better than I did before in terms of having that leg go straight down to the dirt versus up towards the camera a little bit and the more you can cheat that the better because anything that's going down into the ground is going to look further away from the camera, we're using a wide angle lens, so we're getting even more distortion in that situation. All right? Any questions? Yeah, somebody in the chat rooms actually just asked if you could kind of explain your thought process about your plans for post production with this image, so they kind of want to know what you're working toward, definitely so what I'm working towards in this situation is something that's very elegant and very natural. So what I want a lot of this has really done in camera because I have chosen a very specific background for this model with a very pale model, no offense s o I have a dark background and that's going to naturally allow her to pop off of the background and that's going to be even further. My goal in photo shop is to make the background even darker, make her skin glow and pop. Now, the other thing that I'm going to want to do in pose is to straighten the lines of the image. And I like to say straighten the lines of the image rather than make somebody look thinner because that is not my goal, but that is something that I'm going to do in photo shop, so if we have a line of an arm that sort of curved a little bit we're just gonna want to pop that in just to make it straight not thinner though so I've done this a lot of times and the model always agrees she says you know what I'm so glad that I don't look skinny you know that I don't my body doesn't look distorted but the lines of the image or straight so that's something that I'm going to be thinking of in post thank you so now as one little last thing here I'm going to get her in the most extreme pose that I can and then I'm going to scatter some flowers around the area and I'm going not not mess up my camera so while I'm doing that I'm going to start to direct her into the pose so we're going to do something similar to the pose that we did before with the backwards you shape so if you want to start contorting into that pose that would be awesome and I am just choosing my flowers that I'm going to bring in I'm bringing in some purple and more neutral flowers great and I'm just gonna sprinkle these around making sure there aren't clumps of flowers making sure they aren't too evenly spaced which is an issue sometimes I'm going to put some on top of her so then it looks like they're sort of falling from a tree on to her I'm gonna put one in her hair as a nice detail just like that make sure that I don't forget that side there we go okay so if I can have you push your hips forward great and then I'm gonna move my stew a little bit for you and then as much as you can bring both arms and both legs behind you that's what I want yes just like this perfect love that okay so now if you can have your leg separated I've been mentioning how that's really important to separate the legs a little bit and so if you can have one a little bit straighter and then the one that's underneath come back even further I know it's not easy that's fantastic I love this girl all right now I can already see just by stepping up here that we're gonna have an issue with the fabric around her hips because it's already proofing so I'm just going to get down right now I'm going to go in there and I am going to talk hopefully you're okay for a little little bit okay? I don't want any bulges here that is for sure I want this to be a nice straight line and this is the kind of thing that like I was talking about mike sort of um tuck it in in photo shop instead of having to do it all right now oh it's money okay and now I see this little piece I'm sorry just kicked you and that should be really good and if it's not then this is something that I can say I will fix it later in photo shop okay all right perfect all right you look fantastic thank you and I'm just going to snag this shot beautiful so now I would probably go in and fix that fabric again and I'm just gonna do it as fast as possible to get a perfect shot here and by fixing the fabric were taking away from the bulk in that area now I have her pinned in here so for the sake of not like unp ending her in front of everybody and having her said here in our underwear we're just going to try to pull this down a little bit but you know if I didn't have cameras all over the place right now I would probably take a moment to just take this fabric off of her and redress her okay so talking a little bit more hey brooke yes um I think I lost the question because there's something there coming in so quickly so I'm not sure who ask this but okay somebody earlier asked about if you like glue or tape things to your models ever d'oh okay I d'oh what kind of glue if they trust me ideo yeah well I don't glue anything I should say um that would that would be really overkill I think but I do take things thank you uh, I just use any, like, duct tape and uh um, they don't usually appreciate that, though, you know, we all are covered in hair, so that's not usually a pleasant thing, but I'll try to take the little things like I always ask my models this is a great thing to point out. I always ask them, tio where nude underwear underneath what's what they what I'm wrapping them in, and when I do that, then I can tape or pin things to their underwear instead of having to put it directly on the skin. So it's, just a great way of anchoring everything, so I didn't, you know, go back in the dressing room and say, get completely naked, I'm going to wrap you in this stuff I said, you know, can you get in your underwear? And then I'll start wrapping you and that's a really nice way of doing it instead of going directly to the skin. Okay, ready perfect. All right, so I think that we have pretty much got that shot, and I'll probably take this one into editing for you guys later today and show you how I would brighten her face and how I would send out that fabric because it's not her that needs thinned out it's, the fabric that's puffing on her okay, so I'm going to change scenes and while we're doing that while we're getting our stand in here and you can relax thank you so much and you can actually hop up. So while we're doing that let's take a few more questions while we get this bags of sand in there was a question that came up from suzanne g in vancouver who says brooke, would you shoot a blank plate of the stuart background first, in case you need to digitally pose your modeler? Yeah, absolutely that'd be a great idea and in fact I wouldn't do it first I would do it last and I would do that because I would already have my focus at that point, so instead of focusing on the dirt and then focusing on the model and having to focal planes that aren't matched, I would do it at the very end once she gets up and I would just stay up there for another quick moment, flip my lens to manual and then shoot that dirt so a lot of people in the chat rooms air wanting you to come back for opposing workshop oh, really nice, yeah, so can you just kind of explain in just a couple of words again what you look for? You said lines yes, absolutely lines with the most important things I'm looking for straight lines and angles so when I'm posing her arm of making sure to bend her at the elbow and I'm doing that because I want that triangular effect because that's a wonderful thing in an image or I goes two triangles, so I'm looking for that I'm looking for the straight lines, if she were to just have her arms straight above her head like that that's when it tends to look a little bit stiff and I want elegant, so is she? If she bends and she can stretch, then she stretching her muscles and her skin, and then you're creating that elegance instead of being super super stiff, yeah reminds me of ballet or some, I think definitely and it's funny, I've never taken a dance class don't know anything about it, but I seem to I get asked all the time. Are you a ballet dancer? Because that's, how I pose my models, but I just like elegant things, and so, you know, trying to work with that and make sense of it has been really helpful, and also looking at paintings has been really great of ballet dancers like degas and things like that seeing the poses that they get into, I have found that would be very inspirational, I think we have a couple questions and student on you, so you were doing some of these for clients, right? Yes, would you most yourself you have their hair flying? Would you do that? And I probably would not do that here. I would just make sure their hair is sort of pulled out and looks really elegant and beautiful. So in this case, I wouldn't I wouldn't bother with that because, you know, if they're on the ground, there probably isn't wind sweeping through them on the ground, and if it is, it probably wouldn't fly up. It would just go over. So it's the believability thing again, where I want to make sure that every little thing that I'm doing makes perfect sense with the image, so, you know, I might have have a little bit of movement with her hair just looking like it's laid out to one side, but I probably wouldn't toss it or anything like that, but that's not to say it couldn't be awesome, I've just never done it. I was wondering if you put your focus in the middle. Yeah, other part it's normally focus on their face. What? Why so in the middle? Okay, so there are two reasons. One is that the bad answer, which is that I'm really bad with focus? I just don't I was going to say I don't focus on focus, but yeah, I am not a stickler for the eyes being the sharpest thing and that's just how I shoot so you could absolutely try to figure out where the eyes are going to land in the shot and get that focus I would recommend it's a great idea but she's generally on the same plane and you know I wasn't shooting at a one point for anything from my f stop so in all likelihood her face will be in focus the same as the rest of her body on this plane and if not, I'm only concerned with having her body mostly and focus because that is the focus of this shot for me. Oh yeah okay, san it's ready? I don't know if I can lift it's okay? We're just pouring it were just pouring the sand to try to cover. This starts as much as we can I'll get away from all the noise so I'm going to come back here and talk about this a little bit now the reason that we have sand happening here is because I wanted to get to contrast ing sets so I wanted to create a scene where we had the dark background first and then a light background on top of that and I specifically asked for two different models one with dark skin, one with light skin and the reason is that you know you never know your client's going to be it could be somebody that's tiny that's, that's really tall that has light skin, dark skin, whatever it is and you want to make sure that the scene fits that subject. So in this case, I wanted the subject to stand out from the background, not blend into it at all. So for example, I would never put kika on this backdrop where it's the same color as her skin, it just doesn't really make sense. So I'm creating a different sort of scene here is looking great, by the way. Thank you. I'm creating a different scene for our model is chelle out, right? Shelagh? Yes. Okay, awesome. So we have shell are coming in and I'm going to get a sort of grabber in here and I'll first I'll introduce you to her outfit. So what I did was I decided to wrap her in the light colored first, so then it stood out against her skin, so I used this. I just cut it in half this morning and I wrapped her in this fabric. This is a great fabric because it doesn't wrinkle very easily. It's super super stretchy. So I actually use this fabric when this is going to sound strange, but when I I've done pictures right, I've tied fabric to trees and then gotten inside the fabric toe hanging from a tree I know it's really weird, but I've I've used it for that kind of thing but it's just fantastic because no matter what size your model is, you can wrap it and stretch it and make it look amazing on them so I use that and then I got this really really cool netting from a craft store is just like a nautical sort of net and I used that as well because we have the sam scene so I want to make sure that everything makes sense again and I'm going to use some of the red rose petals in this scene because I really like the red with the color of her skin I think it's going to look beautiful so do you wanna go ahead and lay down in there? Awesome oh man it's ah really dusty in here in case you guys get me that ok, I'm just moving my stool back because we're going to do the same sort of thing here perfect now if I could have become a little bit closer to me that'd be great so I'm just placing her right in the middle of the sand so than I have room to work with now what we have here is a very tall model, right? I'm not used to working with tall models personally because I tend to attract the shorties I don't really know what it is but I do so I am going teo, just fix her fabric here, she's wearing pants underneath, which is totally fine and that's something that is great to mention declines if you're doing a shoot like this that, you know, they don't have to strip down into their underwear and brought, you know, they can put on whatever they feel, come trouble in and then it's our job to dress them appropriately. Now, it's not that she wasn't comfortable just happened toe to be a good lesson to keep those pants on. So that's, why we're doing that today now? All right, we're going to start like this. I'm gonna poser from there, just like I've been doing. Okay, so I'm just going, teo, that camera thing you so much, we have a much taller models will probably have to get up on the third step here, which is fine. Uh, yeah, it's fine. I don't know. I'm even more scared today than I was yesterday. It's not good. Could I have you scoot your head back just a little bit? Otherwise she's going to hit the kiddie pool? That's. Perfect. Thank you. And I'm just going to take a test shot. Now I'm gonna have to brighten up my settings here. So I am going to take my eyes so up to about five hundred right now and we're going to see how that looks again I'm at one twenty five for my shutter speed and three point five for my f stop okay, so I like how that's looking it's a little bit bright on the fabric at her leg but that's something that we can cover up with the netting so I'm not too too worried about how that looks so I'm just going to go down and I'm going to fix that and then I'm going to get her into a pose thank you okay, so I'm gonna come around to the side of you fix the pants laughing fix the netting try to pull that down a little bit who took you? There you go. You're good. Okay, so I'm gonna have a rollover anyways, so I'm not too worried about this, so if you can roll over this way towards me perfect. In fact just like that not even anymore. That was great and then take this leg back a little bit yep. And then bend at the knee? Yep. Great. And then point your toes fantastic. All right, so now I'm going to take this arm and put it on your stomach here just lightly and then take your elbow and put out away from your body more perfect. Okay, so did you guys see how that really opened up this area here before her arm was a little bit squished in and now it sort of pulled away from her body creating a much, much nicer line of her arms so that's it I'm looking for here I'm also looking to make sure their boobs look off sign so I want to make sure that that area is looking really pretty and it is so you lookinto I'm sick and I'm just going to play with this other arm so this is a perfect example of how if this arm is perfectly straight out of her body it's going to look really stiff especially if she has her hand flat on the sand so we want to make sure that we avoid that so anything that I can do to move this arm I'm going to do that so let's go ahead and start with that arm also upon your hip they're perfect. That looks fantastic. Okay, uh, thank you. Ok, thank you. That was very brave that time. All right, so if you can turn you know what state just how you are, I'll tell do this in two parts here, so let me take a shot, see how this looks okay, so I want to show you in this picture how her chin neck area is looking so it looks very very stiff and that's because we're not creating any angles in there so I want to make sure that we turn her head either direction doesn't really matter which way you go in this pose as long as there's light hitting her face so I am going to position or towards the white but I want her to turn her head then we're seeing a jaw line and we're seeing separation between her chin and her neck so if you could go ahead and turn your head that direction perfect and then tilt your head back a little bit so at the chin just lift up great that looks fantastic so I'm going to go ahead and take that and we can see the difference great okay, so for that shot from one to the other uh it makes such a drastic difference just the little turn of that head so now we're seeing the jaw line and the light and shadow variation instead of seeing everything sort of jumbled up all in one straight line I'm still not terribly happy with the way that the bottom half is so I'm gonna have her pull her left knee over on top of her right so if you could go ahead and do that that looks yes just like that and then you can let that leg drop and can you point your toes anymore? Yep fantastic now I'm going to go out switch up her arms as well a little bit so I'm going to take her let's see left hand and put that above your head and keep going with it keep going so then your hand is like on the other side of your head there you go. Perfect. Now I really like how that's looking so I'm going to take a shot of that, okay, so I really like how that looks I like her soft fingers, but I want to make sure to sort of move her a little bit more I'm gonna come and just fix her top a little bit oh, thank you. So I'm just gonna put this up for you. There you go looks better and now I'm going to have her role a little bit more because one thing to note when you're creating an image like this is that if you have the person's body open to the camera than it's going to look wider and we don't want that, we wanted to look thinner, so I'm going to have her just roll this shoulder her left shoulder over a little bit so then we're not having his broad wide, uh, shoulder area, so if you could just roll over a little bit more with your top half, yep, just like that great and then we can put this elbow down here yep fantastic. So now I noticed that when she does this it looks a little bit stiff with both hands so I'm going to move this arm a little bit for her and we're just going to take it down about there and maybe a little bit less there we go so now we have the variation in the hands so it's not so stiff and symmetrical so by creating this asymmetry in the body you're creating more lines and more interest in the subject okay, I'm just moving a little bit closer I'll climb up first, okay, thank you. And now I am taking another shot if you can turn your head even more away from me yep perfect she's a really, really beautiful uh line of her face um can I so I don't owe climb down can I get somebody just fix the that fabric on her leg there where the black is showing thank you. So I'm just trying to make sure that every little detail is in place because I don't really like to shoot unless I know that it's all working out all right? You look beautiful and toes pointed as possible yep, there we go awesome. All right, so I think that might be the shot that I really like and I'm just going to adjust one more thing if you could bring your shoulder down your right shoulder yeah yeah just push it down as far as you can there you go now we're creating even more separation and if you can create a straight line going across the shoulders and that's going to look a lot more elegant than if you have them sort of hunched up okay and just one more shot perfect okay I like that one the best definitely all right so I'm gonna climb down and do one more little set up here and then we're going to get in the water so you are good to go thank you so much all right now one more little little set up that I'm going to do is posing on a backdrop instead of shooting straight from overhead so if I could get my other lens on there so if I could get kiko back in here and that lovely suit case that we have thank you breath yep thank you. Got it. Okay, now I'm just going to set this right over here and we're just giving the model something to pose on so then she's not just sitting in the dirt which she very well could be but we're going to have opposed on top of something and by having her sit up a little bit higher than being on the ground you're allowing her body to move in different ways so and you know you can see my legs are sort of spread right now and it's creating a lot of different lines and shapes and we can have her sort of contort into different poses. But if I had her sitting down here then there's not so much room to go. You know, the legs are coming out to the camera now instead of down flat to the camera. So no dirty you can go out and have a seat there. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And I am going, teo yeah, I'm going to pose her in the same way that I just did myself. So if you can have it so good you were watching me that's awesome. Just setting that down for a second. I'm just going to fix your your fabric now you know what actually was cheated this way so let's, just flip your legs the other direction. Yep. There you go. Perfect. Yes, that looks much nicer. Okay, I'm pulling us down as much as I can because I want to be able to see her stomach a little bit great. Now I'm going to start posing her hand. So if we have her hand flat on that box it's going to look really stiff and really clunky, so I'm gonna have her actually curl her fingers? Yep, and so you're like fake leaning on that hand a little bit and now I'm gonna have you scoot your butt this direction good and then arch back yes exactly so now I'm going to take a shot of this and see how we're looking hey brooke uh uh just a quick questions is like the floor of the texture looks amazing, but are you planning something different for the background or he's just going I'm planning texture for the background, so I'll leave it dark very dark, but I'm going to sort of mimic that really gritty texture in the back as well and I'm going to darken down the floor a lot as well, so you're still going to get that pop of the subject and in the background and the foreground will probably end up matching quite a lot more than they do now, okay, so I'm just working around the kiddie pool I might step in the kiddie pool, we'll see how it goes, but this looks just fine. I have a fifty millimeter lens on now, so so you guys know? So I switched that from a twenty four I believe it was to a fifth d and I'm going to go ahead and take a shot and I might need to adjust my settings good all right, so it's looking a little bit right from my taste but uh that's because I'm such a chronic under exposer but it's actually really nicely exposed, so I'm going to leave it late. They're not actually gonna have to move your whole body over so you can move your hand as well to the edge of the case. Yep, it, brooke. Yes, another quick question. Um libby is asking if you have any tips for facial expressions and how you coached your models. I know you said that you have hair flips happening a lot, yes might not have to worry about it, right? And like stacey was asking, I think about the hair flipping and what not this is a situation where I would work with hair a little bit. Yeah, so I'm going to turn your face to the light and what I'm going to do with her faces. I want this sort of wistful expression from her, and so I often say to people, just go like a sort of a little breath in and mouth open a little bit and I sort of popping at that same moment and then I'm gonna try to catch that, so if she could go like that and lift the eyebrows that's what I'm looking for so sorry I wasn't doing that to you, which I realized that you can't see me, but if you could excuse for to go like that for the shot that I would love that and I'm ready when you are great perfect so I really like that facial expression on her I'm just going to zoom in so I can see what I've got here and that's really beautiful to me and I might have her just close her mouth a little bit more and I'm going to have her cheat her eyes over here so yeah, a little bit further over. Yep. Perfect. Now I can see the gorgeous blue of her eyes and we're going to do that one more time. Great. Perfect broke the internet is absolutely loving this awesome. I was so happy there really digging it. Okay, so that's looking really beautiful. Now I just want to make sure that I get the focus on her face on this one because her body is back a little bit further here so I'm going to go portrait style instead of land escaped that way I can really get that focal point on her face right on her I great. Okay, so now there she is in focus, which is fantastic. And now there are a couple more things that I would do here just to sort of fix everything up perfectly. Um I am going to have you move your right hand right on to your hip yep and then in front a little bit more and then pull that elbow out great exactly now let the hand sort of fall naturally yeah just like that and now with the other elbow if you consort of angle that a little bit more yep let's do the otherway out yep just like that now when you do that your hand goes in like this and make sure it still comes out yep just like that and then straight and ever so slightly more with that oboe perfect so I'm just making sure that I can see black in between her elbows and her body so if I can see that then you're creating that little space so that it looks like the arms or thinner instead of being pressed up against her body right perfect and back to the window and that is actually a perfect expression great okay so I really like how that's looking um I'm just I think I have more of a statement than a question really it just amazes me that there is no makeup artists or here you know person doing hair and there's no expensive gowns there's burlap sand and mud and you're making this amazing image from that and it all goes back to what you were saying yesterday about the storytelling about the inspiration about pulling that inspiration from yourself so I'm going to ask like my question is what's the story behind this yeah so for these types of setups I love to show somebody who sort of completely engrossed in nature and what their connection is to that so this is one of those things where I was saying earlier that there's a really literal story of you know you can you know the backstory of the character and all of that and this is one that's really more based on the emotion and the feeling that you get from it so I'm trying to create a body shape that has that sort of expressive you know, connected with nature sort of feel to it that's why I love the mud and I'm dressing her in this way so this is really heavy on figuring out what clothes they're going to it's sort of express that emotion how I can pull a facial expression from her that has that same light and airy feel to it so it's kind of where I'm going with this one all right, so I think we've actually got the shot of her so we're going teo move into the kiddie pool so first thing that I want to dio I'm goingto hand my camera over and I'm going to grab my coconut milk I'm vegan so I insisted on coconut milk and I was I was such a diva this morning about it okay? So I'm going to pour some milk in here and that way I can have a little bit of murky water because it's just going to add some interest to the shot you know we could very easily use regular, you know, let's do that first we'll just get her in the water and then we'll put some milk in it that way we can see the difference in the shots should be all right. Okay, ready? Okay feel free to hop on in awesome. That was not my doing if it would have been me, it would've been really cold water just getting okay so you can just go ahead and have a seat. We're gonna have some really dirty water in a second here. Now again, I'm going to position her towards the window, so if I can have you flipped over or turn either way awesome. Now we're just gonna want you to push your butt that way and then layer your top half down good and this is the first pose that we're going to start with she's a trooper. Okay, I'm just going to move my my stool back over here right up against the pool. Thank you. Okay, and then I'm gonna climb back up. No, one thing that I'm noticing is that her hair isn't what yet. So we're going to take one without the wet hair so you can leave it for now? Oh yes, please thank you we're going to switch my lens so what I'm looking for here is to make sure that I see the line of the water on her body. So for example, you can see on her arm right now that we have this really nice sort of line of of the water and that's what I want to see more of because we don't want it to look like she's not laying in water, that would be a really big issue, because then you've got a model laying and water for absolutely no reason we don't want that. Thank you. All right, we've got a nice compact model now in this pool, so I don't need to get up on the third step, and I'm just gonna take a shot here potentially oh, yeah, I changed my focal points. I'm going back to the center, okay, okay, so now I didn't quite hit that focus exactly right? And I need to get a little bit closer, so I'm going to see what I can do to just move this stool over a little bit more. There we go that's where I want to be, and I think this will be good. Now. One thing that I want to think about is the fact that I don't want to see the edges of this pool, so I'm actually gonna have her in an extremely compact pose, so if you could go in and curl your body up yet just like that and then bring that arm in yeah beautiful that looks fantastic this is this is me all the way I love a fetal position okay, just a little test shot so obviously we're seeing a lot more than we need you here and that is okay because we can always crop it in and we can also extend the water outside of her so even though we have a really tiny pool we have enough water to where we can actually clone that in or extended or even just paint black all around and I'll be showing that later as well so I'm going to take a couple more shots here and I'm going to make sure that I can get her hair wet so go ahead and sort of fluff your hair in the water there thank you beautiful and now one thing that I love to do when I'm playing with wet hair is toe have some hair strands going over her face so this is where I would create an anonymous character and I'm going to come place those strands that way it is exactly as I wanted obviously she can't see herself so she doesn't know what she is looking like right now but you look beautiful by the way oh that's that thing again there's a bug here again okay, here we go I'm just placing little little strands of hair on her face and I'm making sure that they look nice and elegant and not like they're forced or anything like that okay here we go people just want to know if that's just a black sheet that's kind of oh yeah I think it's a tablecloth correct me if I'm wrong but I think that's what we use this morning nothing nothing special okay so that looks really need I love that and I am going to go ahead and shoot it so what she just did she just pulled her hand up out of the water a little bit and I was so fantastic because we're seeing the line of the water on her so that is what I want okay and I love her face right now she's being perfect if you could crawl those legs up a little bit yep yep that's great okay wonderful so I'm just gonna try to get a little bit more over her there we go oh cut off her foot okay there we go I got her all in this time now one thing that I want to change is the fact that her arm is draped on top of her body which means that it's squishing her arm so we're going to go out and fix that so if you could take your left elbow and you just perfect and I'll move it even more out a little bit more and then pull the elbow up towards the camera yes perfect. Okay, now we'll see the difference there. Very, very nice. So I really like how this is looking so we have so many awesome triangle's going on in lines and I'm just going to zoom in to make sure that we can see the water when we can. Now the milk is going to help that even more so let's get some milk in here. Oh, awesome. So we have a milk poor, so go ahead and just do a little bit and we'll see how it goes. Oh, man, we should have heated the milk before we did this. Ok, so a little bit more and then we're going to swish it around so it just blends a little bit. All right? Salute! Yell it! Swish it, huh? We've got a swishing team now, so I'm just making sure that it blends evenly, although it could be really awesome if it was, we left it as it wass, but I do want to get some around the bacchus. Well, now this is the kind of thing where we're really getting into something that a client might not like it much because this is getting a little creepy, at least in my mind, because I'm thinking about rebirth and birth, and I'm not gonna talk about all the things that I'm thinking right now, but but I love this theme of rebirth and it's looking really really primal and interesting to me so if we could create us us wish that one right there it's just getting a little thick and at one point yeah thank you. Okay, that looks great so now let's pull your legs up again yep and then pull your elbow up towards me great and then in a little bit more sorry with your hand yep. There you go perfect and then up with the elbow great okay and then looked cast your eyes over towards the window and more yep great a little bit back it was me yeah get pa there you go. Okay, so there we've got our shot with the milk that is definitely looking really interesting at this point and it adds more texture to the shot so now you can see that she is definitely laying in some thing and it's not just, you know, a black sheet with some water and it were creating a real atmosphere here and she has great hair color for this is well because her hair is showing up in the shot, which is just what we want so I am going to stop posing her here and I'm actually going to let some of the students come up and take a couple shots and while we're getting somebody set up with my camera I will take a couple questions there's been quite a few questions that I can't book about getting the model to do what you want, and I'm not sure how much difficulty you've ever had with that. How do you get them to do things that they don't want or do they often bulk and say, how do you explain to them before you get started? All I explain everything before so I will never, ever, you know, get a model in and say, oh, by the way, we're going to go jump in the water, although I did do that last week, I admit that, but aside from that one instance, I always let people know what they're in for. So if it's a model, you know that I am, you know, not have that I've not worked with before, then I'm definitely going to explain thoroughly before we start every little thing that might be happening, you know? I'll say there's a chance you'll be getting in the creek there's a chance there will be milky water poured all over you, things like that, but it's never something where, you know they're not going to expect it, because if it's a model wanting to work with me, then they pretty much know that something weird is going to happen if it's a client and, you know, they've only seen the select body of work in that case, I'll simply say, are you comfortable doing this? Are you comfortable doing that? And I'll just build it around what theywant to dio so you're inspiring a lot of people right now with this, and I just had to like my jaw up from the floor we have that looks stunning. Lucy wants to know, have you ever tried using food coloring to give the water color? Or is that something you would do in post? I would probably try to do that in person. I have not tried that, but one thing that I have done, in fact, I forgot to even use my flower pedals over here, but one thing that I've done is I've used flower petals like this and then by accident, it has changed the color of the water, and it looked really cool, so I have done that by accident, but I didn't really like it, so there are definitely ways of doing that, and I would certainly try thank you. Take a couple more questions. Yeah, definitely. Okay, um, there's a question from, uh, jack's who said, have you ever had any ideas that are so surreal that you wouldn't be able to recreate them, or do you always find a way of making it happen? Uh, almost always, I definitely still have ideas that I have not been able to dio and, you know, that becomes an issue at the moment, but I know that I'll be able to get there somehow. So for example, one of my all time shots that I've always wanted to do is to photograph a ship at the bottom of the ocean, and it started out where I, you know, I was way too scared to even think about doing that. I'm scared of the ocean, you know? I'm never there whales, yes, they're whales in the ocean, you know, I've I've never gone diving before. I didn't know how to shoot underwater when I thought of this and it's the kind of thing where I thought this might never happen, and in the second that I said that to myself, I realized that there's no reason for this never to happen, you know, other people do it, why can't I do it? And even if nobody else had ever done it, it's still completely, you know, conceivable that somebody would. So what I did when they started shooting underwater for that purpose because I wanted to get to that shot, so in order to get there, I knew that I had to learn underwater photography. And if I did not learn that I would never do it. So I started that I started underwater and then I started looking, you know, where can I go get my diving certification and I have not done that yet. But that is the next step. I highly recommend australia. I do too. I've never been, but I am working my butt off to get there. Okay. So, um, do you want to take another one? You ready? Okay. So manuel from austria is asking, how would you go about doing fine? Art shoots with male models? Hey, says, I feel like it's so much easier with women to add a little add little details, like floating here and dresses. So how do you approach shooting men? Well, this is a particular set up that I probably would not do with a man. So that's just the kind of thing where I would probably are you okay? I thought it was time to ask. I would probably not do this set up with the guy most likely unless it just really if it now, if this was an art thing for me, if I didn't have a client to work with than absolutely I would stick a guy in here and do the same exact shot, and I think you look incredible. But in terms of elegantly posing you know over here I probably would not go that route and I would probably do something a little bit more stoic so I would do something where they're standing and looking very masculine looking very regal almost whenever I do use a man in a shot it's usually not in a very elegant way not to say that it's you know bulky or anything but I try to make them a character that doesn't have to be you know like running or jumping or doing something that's very feminine tryto separate the two thank you we're ready to shoot okay so we have stacy over here and she's going to come take some shots so if you want to hop up on the ladder very good so you are mike yeah oh awesome. So it's a c um what do you want to do with this set up because I'm gonna force you to change it I'm not gonna let you shoot that now I was thinking more like curled up perfect and I like the rebirth thing but I want to turn her face too okay wonderful. So let's have you get into the opposition so why don't you go ahead and try to direct her into the pose? Okay, I'm gonna have you just pull your knees up on your body down a morning like a fetal position do you want her arms wrapped around her knees no, I actually want to take your right arm can you drop your elbow back a little bit further and almost put your hand here and then drop your elbow back into the water? Can we hit her burlap a little more? Yes weaken burlap her no, I mean can I get more went oh, yeah garcia, I'll help you if you stay up there it's fine. We're gonna sorry you're freezing really drive we're going to give her so many hugs later it's gonna be fine. No, she can stay though he okay, so I I know I want to turn your face and have your eyes closed when we turn to the side but I don't want to drown you, so we'll wait till you need to get out of here. Okay, so what she's doing here is creating an image where her faces in the water by putting her face in the water. We're going to have that really nice line of water along her face it's going to look absolutely beautiful and see this is the kind of thing where I'm watching stacy and I'm like, oh, man, I should done that to which I love can you take your right you write me and bring it down a little bit and drop it and bring me a right foot back a bit more and then curly and now I keep thinking about if her top half is open to the camera it's gonna look wider which is fine doesn't really matter one way or the other okay, I'm gonna I think I want to be dropped that actually no curl way over pearl even more yeah just like that like I'm chained up and stretch a little bit and then when I say go I'm gonna have you turn your face halfway into the water hold it right there were okay great think a moment okay, now I can breathe again well until you stop I'm sorry okay um I think I want to do that again but I want it and when you turn your face go a little bit further down into the water so I see like a rim on your nose can she keep her eyes closed? Oh, yes ok eyes closed and then just kind of stretch and extra church in this way and then if you can curl your head down and when you do it just kind of pulling okay? Go ahead. Okay. Oh, okay. Thank you. I feel like I cannot say anything during well, doing that oh, my gosh and you get I love you do one more time and I'm gonna be dropped this elbow way back and just drop it way into the water at all the way down and there's curl your hand in yeah, just like that. Great. So by having her arm in the back like that's just creating a nice shape of her body because she's running her hand along the shape of her body so by doing that, you're mimicking that same shape and it all flows together here. Okay, all right. One more time. This car away up close your eyes and go albright's cloning out. Yes, but cloning. So having issues off the cloth at the bottom coming up, but it's the kind of thing that we have so much space that looks all the same all around her with this milky water that we can easily fix that photo shop. So we'll be going over some stuff like that as well. I think you got your shot also wonderful. It does look very, very beautiful, so I'm looking at her shot right now and I really, really loved what she did, and the only thing that I would personally change about it is to have that arm drop into the water a little bit more in that way. It's really immersed in the shot instead of being lifted so high because it almost looks like she's gonna raise it out of the water, so I'm going to take one more shot here of her and we're going to play with the water in the pool so I'm I'm gonna torture her a little bit more oh thank you and I'm gonna have you stay in that position so we don't have to move you too much and if I could just have could you uh throw water on her as we're doing this so I'm just going to have john here grabbing some of the water throwing it up and letting it land on her all right uh anywhere really doesn't go in the water all around her so anywhere that it splashes is just fine and I'm going tio all right, here we go I'm ready so you're gonna turn your head just to the window a little bit more perfect okay, great. So we've got a little bit of a splash there and that's the kind of thing that I would definitely play with a little bit more you know, if we had tons and tons of time and not a freezing model she's already been laying in here for a while I would definitely go ahead and just sort of get that splash to happen a lot of different places so let's just do one more and yet just right in the center right in the center I'm ready and even then the getting the shot right after you know we get the water rippling and that looks really beautiful so in this kind of situation I might even say to the model just move your arms and legs around a little bit to create that movement in the water so let's, go ahead and do that let's, can you backwards you shape for me in here? Yeah, there we go. Okay. Now with one leg and one arm, could you just sort of splash around there? Yep. Great. Ok. And now hold still good. So we've got that movement happening in the water that she created for us, which I really do like so now she doesn't quite fit in here with the backward u shaped pose, because is that she's sort of hitting the sides of the pool, but you know, if we could fit her in there if we had a bigger pool, I would definitely played with more poses like that. But in this case, the crawled up pose looks best. You know, I'm going to get you out of the water right now, so let's, get her tout off and I will take some questions until our time is up. All right, so dean one, two, three and actually, this is a question I've seen a couple of times says does brooke get a shot of the model before she gets dirty and all muddied up for composition purposes? Yes, I do and not so much because I need that shot, but just in case the model wants it for some reason but I also just think it's nice to pose them before I get them super uncomfortable so they know what they need to dio so it's it's not so much a matter of you know having the needing to get that shot but it's more effect of if we can get that model understanding what she needs to do before we smear the mud on her get her in the water anything that I'm going to do that so before I get a model in the water if they have to do something kind of complicated and that's when I intend to pose them on land first and say hey, this is what it's going to feel like this is what you're going to do when you get in the water and then it's just a much much simpler way of sort of you know, taking them into the scene and having it be done a lot faster cool okay, we have a question from fashion tv from singapore who said in any execution of concept if the vision fails during the shoot do you have a bag of tricks to fall back on like if all else fails then do this or is there no room for ares any advice for us during planning? Yeah, they're definitely is and I think it just depends on what kind of a shoot you're doing because you know what if I'm doing a finer shoot that's one of my weird ideas that is my idea and I usually don't have a backup for that and that's where I just let the model no, this might not work and I'm really sorry if it doesn't and if they're not okay with that, then I might pick a different model or figure out, you know, maybe I'll pay them or something like that, but but in general, I don't have a backup plan for my pictures because I've already thought it through to the point where I think that will be the best plan, but if I'm doing a client shoot than absolutely, I'm going to have a backup plan and that's why I have all of these different setups kind of ready to go. So for example, when I was shooting a set of very similar to this with people who signed up for those slots, I took them and I didn't shots from overhead, there were some people where it just really wasn't looking very nice with them and that's when I set them up in a different position and so it's great to have some shots standing, sitting and lying down because then you have that variation and different things are gonna work with different body types, so when I did that particular shoot, I had somebody standing in a tree and posing with a tree and it looked really elegant you know even though they weren't the tiniest person they were still able to sort of create a line of their body that matched line of the tree and mask thing is a little bit that way so that was a long way of saying yes I have backup plans for those types of shoot so karl p from texas is asking when creating a composition involving multiplying multiplying several elements within the image this book does brooke create the shadows when shooting or does she wait until great question I tend to wait until postproduction I don't always though so yesterday I showed a picture that I did with lots of orbs flying around and I showed how I use those orbs to create a natural shadow so if I can create natural shadows then yeah absolutely I will do my best to create those in camera if it's just not working out in that case I will fake the shadow and a lot of times I do that anyways even if it has almost worked out because the thing about shadows is that nobody knows one way or the other what that shadow looked like unless it's way off so if I can recreate every shadow and just I take it that way then you're tricking the viewer a little bit and it works so brooke you've mentioned a couple times talking about doing portrait sor commissioning portrait's for people are we going to be talking about that more? Not so much that I do have a question. Yes. And this is from in davies. Who said, what is the process? When someone commissions you to do a portrait with them, how do you go about deciding what to shoot? Okay, so no, I'm I'm really bad person to ask about this in a sense, because I have not done many. I mean, I have done an engagement shoot. You know, I've done a few a few portrait's like thiss and things like that, but I have nothing set up to where people can email me and rick quest to shoot like that. It's not like a business of mine that I have it's, just something that I have done. But the process for me is to say, what are you looking for and just ask them, you know, why are you contacting me about it? Not in such a blatant way, but to say, you know, what is the reason that you wanted to do this shoot and what are the different elements you'd like tio have involved? And once they let me know, you know, I'm looking for something elegant. I want a portrait for my husband. I want an engagement shoot, whatever it maybe that's when I start to throw ideas out of them and I'll say things like, okay, well, what do you think of this location? What do you think of this kind of pose? And I mean, a great thing to do would be to create a pinterest board for them, which I just started doing a week ago, so I don't really know howto work interest, but but creating a sort of mood board for somebody a client is to me one of the best things that you can do because it gives them an idea of, you know what your sort of going four and I usually compile a list of pictures that I've already created, and so I can show them those pictures and say, this is what I've previously done. Do you want it to be similar to this?