Lessons

Lesson Info

The Final Reveal

well I think you are going to show us the reveal of a lot of these images that you've been working on and that that's the grand finale right I can do that I can show you that I have ah it's fun to let me just hit the flag here I just feel I show you the ones that I flagged and let me just get back to normal I ft yes so we could just run through these real quick and again some of these these edits were done really fast late night on an airplane but uh but you kind of get the idea there's some subtleties here let me just tell you one little trick about this wonderful family that we had first off we're thrilled that this family gave us their time they didn't meet until one minute before we started the shoot they're not a family little boys from down the street the woman's from across the street and the guy's an actor locally in the place in theaters so they were all just actors they were just there were models for us and I love that we pulled it together and made it look like they were a ...

family and they were they they had a ball together when we finished up we had a wonderful conversation with him and uh it was just really fun for me to try to pull this together and make that happen and make them feel great about what we were doing and they did they loved it they had a ball and so that that was another part of the reason for the individual headshots is to make sure that everybody got a picture that they won't wanna hang in their home this one they're not gonna wanna hang up because her husband doesn't know that guy and she has no idea of the little boys and shit on any kids so but it was just a great great day and these people were so accommodating and again we got in there and this was this was done with two lights remember we've got are big octa and then we have our small four by four and and that's it and it's just you know quick and simple and easy just a little ahead of it and yet a little bit of ah a hit of saturation just to bring up his skin tone just a little bit on that and that's about all we did on him he was fun he was fun his his eyes looked terrific he looks great uh the mom was terrific she was fun you can see that I had done that with that eye on this particular pose also on that same patch tool uh little action that patch to trick trickiness and uh yeah so it was it was it was real fun day for for me and I just wanted to do one in black and white for her a little bit of a c p a he's got great eyes good looking guy looks like to me he looks like one of those rugby players are the australian rules football players they all smile I'll have the same look a little bit of stubble they're all kind of stout and then of course evan was fantastic to work with her parents could not have been nicer they came with their course um they have four girls that are right there together an aged and they're all just this is just a nice family really nice and of course your dad was cracking up over there and he was making faces at her and you saw some of that when we were going and so she was she was kind of having some fun with her dad and I just let it go and start shooting but this was kind of ah again garage door lining with the with the sweep of the draping in the background kind of going the same direction she was looking there uh draping like that sort of leads the viewer's attention to her you kind of go right to with the draping to her face and then there it is similar one but a little bit more of a been yet to it a little bit more isolating on her uh one thing I would do on that one is I would go then you can see how brighter thumb is I would go down and darkened thumb a little bit I failed to do that but I think it needs to be again take a look at that and just squint squint your eyes just really really squint and look how bright the thumb looks I've got to pull it down that tells me I gotta drop it a half stop my my bad on that one I should have I should have done that same with that arm that arm on the bottom I need to darken the arm which I'll go back and do that but I just this is great that we have a moment to talk about this and show you and kind of evaluate what we did everything you saw on the screen on the videos all the way through those were all director all out of the cameras including the including the tabletop work that we did um yeah I just I just like this girl she was terrific she was so nice and then just a little bit of heaven yet to sort of match the feel of the the gal in the bottom being curved just a little bit I want to curve then yet just under it to draw the attention and get hold the attention and same thing there and I thought it looked really nice and black and white so I wanted to work on a couple black and whites for her there's there's a difference with it in color and black and white dad was standing behind me when I start some of those and he was he really liked what he was seeing again folks garage door lining one o one right there you've all got that life source and as I mentioned in the video to john the recycled time was fantastic there's no waiting for the flash toe to recycle you just keep shooting and let a kid crack up occasionally I liked this setting just a little bit and then I decided I really needed to be in black and white and so I had it a little bit more like that a couple more of those but it was just it was just a great shoot for me I'd dark in that neck just a tiny bit further and then these and I thought as I was started this one I thought horizontally I just wanted to try something but I knew all along I had to go to vertical and as soon as I want to verticals like okay there's our shot for me this is one of our heroes of the day I just think it worked out really really well and again the contouring of the face with highlight to shadow can be done there several things that you can do you can actually uh you know with with with the right makeup artist you can use makeup tto help you and be your friend as well uh I hesitated to do that because she's a a teenager you know but that that's something you could do uh as well as bringing in black flags bringing light subtract er's into the pick in the picture into the mix um and you can see subtle changes there I threw this in because because why not uh my friend and my partner in crime for this week john cornyn chelo who was so great john is uh he's a legend up here he's great and he looks like wolf man jack right there that's all I remember you ever hear well fat jack that's cracked up jenna it's fun seeing you laugh on then of course I got talk about this guy and thank this guy for a wonderful week mr kostecki if you're watching thank you jim think this is jim's new passport picture uh anyway I didn't wantto wrap up a couple more things here let me just scoot down this is the this is the bedroom finishing up that little small office scene and I'm way down the hall firing back in again all I did here is a subtle hit on her skin a little bit of vignette er color and color and densities weren't changed at all now with the window situation you can you saw in the video as we were going through this that you can see how the house how hot the highlight is coming around her face hitting her on the shoulder on the forehead and especially on the tip of the nose that's what I was talking about with hedley that bothers me a little bit when there's too much light from behind on the nose um and so and then look out bright the light is on her chest right into her neck it's just too bright for me uh and and you can go in and work on it all you want and you can end it all you want but why should you have to let's just fix it and let's just turn to the opposite direction and then when we bring up our reflektor are big sheet look at the difference in the sequence look at the difference in the jewelry it makes all the difference in the world folks and it's it's a melted all it is a simple element of light control speculum highlights speculum highlights interesting to me how a lot of shiny products the highlight the speculum highlight becomes a design element I photographed a lot of wine bottles in my career the highlight on a wine bottle is critically important to the success of the picture it's the highlight is a design element in the wine bottle and you better have a clear label and you better not put a shiny highlight over over foil shiny label that the wine company might have and I think I ended up somewhere about like that for my final on the on the jewelry uh I think I liked it better without the and then this is where we're really popped the vibrance in the saturation a bit and uh you start seeing a little bit more detail when you start doing that you see things that you might have missed early on and then of course that was before and after with the silver on the on the bag and again that might not have been the best choice for the for the draping behind the bag but it was just something that the last man we want to throw in just to show you some of the subtle difference you could do with ambient light only in a small studio and then this was yesterday this is our gal caitlin who did a wonderful job force and gave us the ability to do some light control with here of course one light source and this was ah light background a light grey background that we made go dark because of our distance and because of the angle and position of the main light which then gave us the ability to bring up pure saturation return of color with one gel over one light and we got some screaming colors we got some really great colors and it really worked out well I like this on a lot I think this has like this feel of this I liked the feel of her pose like the feel of the color I just like this a lot and um as you go through these things you know you find you find yourself liking certain things and then you kind of fall into a trap of doing them over and over and over again and I find that I do that a lot with hands up I just like hands up I dont you never know quite what to do with hands anyway and uh and the last thing I'm gonna do is have a hand up in somebody's hair and all that stuff I don't like that but but I do want to do something and then finally this I think is my last image that I wanted to show uh this very very subtle edit on this all I did was at a very very slight ten percent than yet uh on the horizontal frame uh it's not cropped no color balance no adjustment of exposure and then I put just a little bit of the soft skin adjustment brush on her forehead both cheeks and down her arms on her neck that's it folks that's all I had to do this picture and I think for me you know this it does sort of I have to show you guys that I practice what I preach this is the stuff that I preach every time I got to teach and and I better be doing it if I'm telling you I'm doing it so that's why I love the fact that they showed the raw files there was none of that weight don't anybody see those intel I edit him there was none of that I didn't care showing that that's what we did and that's what this is about and you know I always talk about like controlling and if you define the word control in the dictionary control is defined as the ability to guide or manage I need to guide and manage I need to be in control of my pictures because I'm not a photojournalist I am a photographer who creates a moment I don't record a moment so since I'm going to record that and since I'm going to create that I'm in charge of it so control is huge for me and and some photographers like oh I don't have time for all that well that's fine that's okay I do when I shoot it what I don't want to do is take the time to do anything afterwards I got people I want to go see I got people I want to spend time with and I don't wanna spend all my time not with them so any final questions from this panel in here you bet miss you you grab a microphone curiosity so do you work mostly in photo shop or light room mostly in light room I use photo shopped for some things and there are certain there are certain edison I do that I really want a layered file for and I want to pee and I wanna save is the psd for a for a number of reasons but yeah I'll use photoshopped a fair amount but I'll bet you I'm seventy percent in light room probably probably the good mix for me all of my files are formatted and brought into light room in my light room catalogues my filing system for my files and my file management uh I don't know if I'm unique because I don't go to very many light room classes or anything but I have one catalog I have one catalog and it's big and it goes back to the year two thousand and I shot my first digital files and uh I've got it backed up in four places I've got it everywhere believe me and I have dated regularly but I will tell you that it's not on this machine this machine keeps things that are one year every month I clear off the last month all for this machine it's always have one year of files on my travelling laptop but my catalogue of files are on my my external tbs all my all my terabyte filed a terabyte hard drives but but I can go into my into my tony's be a catalogue that's big asked sorry I'm going to my tony's be a catalogue and click on it and there's all the years two thousand two thousand one two three four five all the way up to this year and then you click on that year there's all the client files of every folder by the name of the client that can click on that there's all the files oh and there's the hero files because I was always a folder of hero files those the ones that I selected or the ones that they selected and that's the ones that we probably worked on and retouched I can find anything because it's always gonna be in that same catalog it's always there so that's how I do it well I didn't want to share a few comments that air coming in tony uh in in addition to that ass cute for a final question but just wanted to say you know thank you so very much for all of the great bits of knowledge from the technical photo side to the business aspects there were just so many things that you have taught us in the course of these three days on I love also looking through these final images how you don't have to do very much post processing and that's what this whole class has been about how you teach us to control our scenarios and teo get it right in camera and everything you know that it takes to do that so the people are so so very appreciative of of these and one one more lucy helps tedder says tony I've taken courses with you before and I'm always impressed you are the encyclopedia of photography so lucy that's a great woman right there she's a good woman I know her so tony just you are a professional you work out of your home you have been successful at what you do you're now teaching us how to do that tell us a little bit just about final words final thoughts about these three days and what you're hoping we all go forward with using this new knowledge first and foremost get your head around the fact that you're in charge don't do what the last instructor taught you to do oh you're going to hate this next sentence don't believe anything I've told you in these last three days I don't believe a thing I taught you until you go test it for yourself it's the empirical method of learning you can't learn something unless you've tested it to be true yourself if it empirically is working for you what I do works for me and if I've empirically tested it to work for me that means with my camera and my machine and my lab and my meter and my taste and my client and my home and my lights in my soft box it might be different for you and your camera and your taste and your clientele and your home and your lab and you're like bucks you have to test all this stuff and see how it works for you because there are subtle things that I've shown you this week that you're going first off you're going to go I don't like that great I'm glad you don't like it don't do it go figure out what works for you though and now at least you might have a few extra controls that you can go to work with and I think that's the biggest thing that I see so many people go and study under uh photographers and instructors and they immediately go home and buy everything they were told to buy and they immediately do everything that they just saw and then after a couple months there kind of bored with that they wanna look at the next thing find your voice we don't need any more tony's we don't anymore joe ls we don't need any more suze what we need is another elizabeth what we need is a new julia and may so you guys go find your voice and that's my my biggest message here is find your voice and do it with control do it with quality and make sure that that quality comes across and everything that you do in terms of the image how you present yourself your business cards your price list how your home studio looks when your client walks in and how it smells everything you're in charge of keep the quality up on every single aspect of everything that you're doing and you can't lose you just can't lose