Lessons

Lesson Info

Posing Q&A

question was what kind of reflectors do you use a styrofoam palestine gate if I'm found corps or white cab board thanks but I prefer palestine or styrofoam over anything uh in the movie industry they call it beat wall you know it's like a million beads of of little magic lights and there is no light better than those reflective with the boys made me some reflectors so we could shoot here yesterday and I'm going to bring them into the studio tomorrow and actually show you how to use them and they are sheets of foam core and you'll find that they're really quite amazing to say yeah how how we use them and what we do with them yeah question from ronnie j what do you do if you're only window light is clustering neighbors ability to look into your living room to get a fresh ronnie do you ever use sheer material okay tomorrow morning what I'm actually gonna do it sit up a natural light studio so what I did was I was shooting in a um an apartment so on apartment that are staying in and sydney...

and we got a eight dollar couldn't cover in a fifteen dollars reflector in some polystyrene blocks so it was under under one hundred dollars to create a natural light studio with this year and that shears in my camera bag now it comes with me everywhere I go with pin so I can pin it up and basically you can create portrait shoots in a natural light surrounding it with those three elements posing boxes for staggering diffuse light and bounce slide question from nigeria and my biggest challenge shooting natural light is all the houses how very dense burglary proof and it's also very dense area so their buildings the next bullet is just so close to the next building so I usually hardly on this person's very well family leaving this big compound I hardly ever find the natural light that I'm looking for what's the best way well the thing is this you you have to work with what you've got and so you've got to win when the light is the best in a room so if I'm shooting in an apartment and I can only get two hours of a slither of light for a certain period they will always be a time in most places where you will get something you just have to work with what you've got I can shoot up to a nice whore thirty two hundred gasp I know but the truth is is you do what you have to do to get the shot and sometimes it's dark I've bean in a chute and it has thunderstorms in clouded over and it was almost too dark to shoot but the cameras we have now shoot in the dark that's quite amazing but you can only work with what you've got natural light would be the only thing that stops you from shooting however just because I don't like it doesn't mean you can't shoot with artificial light there are day lights now balanced like amy and light beauty dishes that resemble a lot of what I do I did a consultation in a studio once and they only had artificial like there's no daylight so they were flashing and it was horrendous to me just to me you know it's not what I want to see but I realized they also had this big beauty dish with a constant lights I went up and I turned it on and I treated it the way I would treat natural light and they were shooting in a dark studio with just one constant light and it looked amazing it's just not my preference but just because I don't like uh artificial light doesn't mean that you can't do all of my posing rules just with your style of light you're not trying to recreate my brain necessarily you're just trying to learn all the best parts of it which are the feminine posing making the bodies look good making the chin look good making the face look good add that to your composition and then you've got your own magic when you're shooting at a really high I s so it's like thirty two hundred to go process you go through in minimizing the little bit of noise that is inherent in that or you just let that be part of the character of yeah I like grain I come from films films brain say film is grain to me crying his film so kind of similar to what you were just talking about that lumi row ha asked can we fake a window in a studio like yours and put a big doctor bank behind to simulate the window late so somebody just recently gave me some lights to try out and the first thing I did was put them outside anyone was like that kind of defeats the purpose you know the lights are outside and I said no I'm just trying to pump up what's coming through that window so yeah can they do it in movies all the time uh you know if you find somebody that's really good at lighting they should be out to tell you how to light the outside of a studio so it looks like natural daylight coming through your windows it's not exactly the same but it does work yeah jr is uh excuse me dear perry is wondering uh if you ever use a light meter or if you always trust your in camera meter with natural light I never trust my in camera maeda I watched the back of the camera as well because obviously if the camera's reading a dark background with a black outfit and dark here it's saying that it's a lot darker than it really is because it's mita ring for the black outfit but it's sensing the dag all the way around it so it's naturally going to jump up two stops so often I will meet her in camera take the shot look at the back of the camera and the skin tones jumped up blowing out I'll just naturally drop it a stop myself so I used the back of the camera is my meter I never trust never trust that in camera meter same worth white it'll shut down at this lots of white white background white outfit it won't read this contain the same way so it will jump up down so I always look for that and I should roar because you've always got a few stops to make either way no matter what happens and roar thank you question from misty bradley do you ever shoot outdoors and any tips on bringing bringing the glamour outdoors okay I dont misty because I find that the hardest part about shooting outdoors is finding soft light not direct light um although lately I felt compelled to go into the woods or into mido and she beautiful glamour portrait it's and grass and things that that there's definitely something beautiful about that it's just not my style although I want photographers who do shoot like that to bring that glamour into their outside area you know these days it's very popular for photographers to take beautiful couches and cheers and on eighty years and things out nto and on beaches and everything looks incredible so same rules apply just a different background yeah whatever throws here question for our gentlemen photographers out there they're wondering if you can define ballet hands for them certainly I can yes actually that's a question all the boys ask because even the girls don't do belly seem to know a bella hand is when you put your thumb towards your middle finger so that's when you first lin position one uh in ballet is it's about soft hands so soft fingers um although just saying ballet hands seems to make most women go straight away into soft belly hands um it's something I see all the time if you nine your tummy one of the first things people do is when they're sitting in a natural position they're naturally in fist or chlor they don't do thunderbird until we go to photograph them so thunderbird is it's one of those stiff ones that pops out yeah I like them to beat up on here to this it's really good or thunder bid at behind I really like it when people do a pose and you got a double underbid in a blank face down with underbid blank face so the idea is most people are sitting in a state of semi cloth so they've got like the cross or they've got a fist or just ever lex first closed so as soon as I say belly hands can you do belly hands tobon can you do better hands back you get it right it's just bella him so yeah I would just say I would just say soft hands like that so you could even just get a guy to do a rolex hand and say you know bye hands that would be bella hands and they're not necessarily perfect belly hands but they are uh people kind of registered what soft belly hands are yeah and so when my position I get them into position all to say billy hands and straight away all the girls did it at some stage I said by hands to every one of them and every one of them relaxed their hands straight away just straight away they kind of bring that wrist up and that's another action that's really important belly hands wrist up relax your hands nice soft hands now when you're posing I'll see the pose I'll go back and I'll look back and they re see it so I'll go fate hourglass working the chin shoulder bring the shoulders together election hand simona and bring this hand over beautiful soft belly hands then I'll go back lift up nice and tall chin towards your shoulder working your shoulder forward and soft hands and I'll remind here I'll say it three or four times if I'll keep looking back to the hands it's very important a question from d c studios are there any cut off points on the body that you recommend using such a cz above the elbows above the knees etcetera I cut and I cut off limbs a lot and I know I broke I break some rules there um so when we do composition this afternoon let's talk about cutting off hands and I'll try and answer as many questions as I can yes I always cut off the site lo fi if I cut off the arm I always cut it off just above the elbow so I had the length of the upper arm and there is definitely a different compositions that I use that come in but I will if hand is going out of the shot and this one is over and I shoot that horizontally I will cat hands off at the wrist which is a big no no portrait rolls but it's a total okay fashion rule because beauty images don't always have the hands and the shot so I will compromise the old portrait rules to be more modern fashion and yes I cut off limbs all the time love it uh sam cox from loveland colorado our clients more comfortable posing in natural light because the set is less contrive yeah interesting a lot of clients walk in and say we're the lights the end a lot of the time if I'm photographing and a lounge with a four dollar kit nor an eight dollar kitten in a fifteen dollars backdrop they'll say to me afterwards did you get anything because they're not seeing any flesh is go off they're not saying anything special happening so they certainly don't think any magic has happened uh and that's just one of the things that natural light does is it gives the illusion that nothing's really going on I don't think it's a benefit I think flashlight is amazing and to be in a studio in this face is going on I think sometimes gives you more of a um apparently somebody was telling me if you want to get uh this is a really great tip actually if you're winning photographer uh they said that if they wanted to get the group's attention when they're trying to take the whole group they were just activate the flesh assumes the flesh one off on camera the whole group would turn and look because that was the group's away off hearing that the camera's ready and it's taking photographs we did look so instead of going everybody look this way you know how people keep talking and they're getting a bit drunk and they're getting annoying it's everybody look this way still nothing everybody look this way they just fired their flesh soon as the flash goes off everybody turns and looks yeah I didn't I flash flash question from a river ring our north east south or west facing windows in your studio no you take whatever you can but everybody likes a north facing window let's face it you know you get it all day