Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduction

He's been shooting for over three decades she's shot fine art she saw fashion glamour boudoir she's shot advertising and commercial work she's an award winning photographer she shot five hundred and ninety seven editorials for playboy magazine she was the second woman photographer for playboy she knows her stuff and we're very excited to bring on miss lou freeman luke come on thank you thank you thank you so incited tohave you thank you thank you how are you feeling today I'm great insight can you get this is exciting stuff this is this is a really fun day you know what's the most exciting part of it is I I'd love to come up with ideas on to come up with new ideas for just for this show was just really fun to do and it has been so receptive and excited to see what we were going to put together so we have everything from the simplest to the most complicated setup and the creativity that's involved in it is just sensational it's going to be able to bring it right here for you guys live a...

bsolutely we are excited to have you here and I'm gonna turn it over to you salute thank you thank you very much how is everybody this morning great great it's nice to see you all shiny faces so I'm going to talk just a little bit about just why even chose to do this show I should play I went to school and study photography I have a master's in photography graphic design was my focus and it worked as an art director for about eighteen months and in that time frame I realized that everything that I studied in school really didn't have that much to do with what I was going to choose to do with my career and most of the things that I focused on with my lighting in my work and my channels of paths that I took with playboy and all the fashion magazines and catalogs all of that stuff with I had to sort of teach myself how to behave, how to light, how to create, stay a step ahead of everybody around me. So when I came here and made the decision to do this three day program and break it up in the way that we did was talk about the things that I felt were significant my life, sometimes you have to step away from the painting to look back at it to see what finishing touches you need to do and when I'm looking back at my life and all the accomplishments I made, it was the stylistic things and the lighting techniques that I created that really have helped me stand alone not just the posing but those things so what I decided to do with this class for you guys is to create something that would be educational with lighting from the basic standpoint to show you that it's not as hard as you think the creative part is what I want to end still with you when you leave today, I want you to go out and make great pictures, not just take pictures I want you to get beyond using seems pp a piece of paper. I want you to make art because that's what we notice his art, right? You want to move people to want to shoot with you would be talking about you the same way that I've been intrigued to dio I go to the trouble to take the best picture whenever I can have never allow something ordinary to exist, I don't want to be a wallflower, I want to stand out so that's important s so what I'm going to share with you guys is all my lighting setups, and then when we do our live demonstrations in the classroom environment, we're going to actually act out those lighting setups, and we're going to go back and forth between speed, light and studio lining, and at the end of today, I'm going to give you a demo on how to set up your speed lights as I talk too lightly about speed like chester, I'm going to tell you how to set them up and put them in your lighting kit so everything we pull him out, you're not freaking out about which way to go and how to set them up. So it's easier for you. I'm going to show you bunch of different lighting modifiers and neat ways to use the same simple lighting that we talked about yesterday for headshots but in a much more creative way for boudoir and glamour and we're gonna put a fashion bannon art span on everything so nothing will be simple will be highly creative and there's no dumb questions so just take a little note when we come up to the time to ask you a question just feel free to ask me anything you want so I have three dvds in my look fabulous siri's one of the dvds is focus completely on glamour lighting. It has an intense look into the lighting set ups that I did for playboy. I also have created this modern light dvd siri's, which is just one video based on speed lining and creative ways that you can do it for headshots and for fashion and glamour photography. So we're going to talk about my gear again. Some of you are new to talking with me today and some of you yesterday and saw the awesome spy speed like set up but like I said yesterday I have six strove six speed lights on lots of natural light gear that I use and I take all of it with me every time I go anywhere because I never fails. If I leave it at home, I need it. So don't be afraid of your lights, your camera use what you're currently carrying around with you if you find yourself, if you've bought something and you're not using it, get it on ebay and get it sold keep new stuff around you that you're excited about it put more positive energy back into your work. Um, I used the cannon fire demark three and I have a one d x and my lenses vary from the fifty to eighty five, seventy two, two hundred and seventy two, three hundred, and I'm a creature of habit, so I'm when I'm travelling. I want comfort, so I just try to cover my bases with the linds links when I'm traveling to make sure that I'm getting everything I could possibly want to shoot covered there's lots of other little lenses that I'll talk about in the background that these air your must have scrims and things like that. I'm going to use the scram on our first set up today to show you howto kind of improvising, so you go to shoot somebody's house at someone's house and they don't have the greatest bedroom. In the world maybe the lighting's not so great and you want to really make it special I'm just going to show you a couple little things that you could do to tweak in ordinary circumstance and make it extraordinary today someone was talking to me about what I do for guys when they're dressing for photo shoots and thiss morning I was like, you know you can't go wrong with a wife beater are a vintage style t you know the next shirt and a pair of great genes so your scream jim is going to be like that in your bag of tricks it will always work s o we're going to work through the reflectors in the same way we did yesterday with our head shots this morning someone asked me how to how to google to cake pan light andi I laugh but it is available at party city if you want to buy the individual pieces and then tape it all together that's my inexpensive but works great little reflector and I have keep them everywhere so that I can shoot no matter whether I'm in new york or at the beach the lighting I'm going to work with today is the bull wins jim and I kit I have to five hundred watt kit heads and each kit andi I have three of those kids that I'm going to be working with today on then what could work through several different kinds of modifiers to show you different effects in different cool dramatic lighting effects as well as hire key lining with same kids we're going to work with the cannon x six hundred artie flash unit's on the trigger transmitter that they provide the std three transmitter we're going to set up all of our speed lights and operate them from the transmitter and we just really great we're gonna set the lights up and groups so I can adjust the power up and down on the lights individually from never leaving we're going to see myself to take the picture which is awesome for you guys working by yourself that's really key so they're six hundreds are the first already a transmitted available flash units that there are speed light style flashing it's that there are which means that you can put these lights inside soft boxes or you got an umbrella or have them outside are around the corner lighting a hallway in the distance in the background and they can still receive a signal from the transmitter which is awesome for me that just immediately a take me on to another level with that I'm not stressing about making sure that the light is in the line of sight of the transmitter I can get great speed like coverage and to be honest sometimes I can't tell the difference after I've taken the photographs and gone to the trouble to print to see that there's really any difference in the lighting to me, it's the same little quality of white light, no matter where it comes from, how you manipulate it and what kind of easing travel you need to get to the location. So when I'm traveling, the speed lights are going with me quite a bit further, some of them modifiers that I used today, we're going to work with some of west cuts modifiers going to work with a beauty dish in the orb, the strip thanks thehe polish trip banks from westcott. We're also going to work with some of thie lighting attachments that you actually put for your hot shoe for the slide your flash on it could put it on a light stand. I prefer to use the tilt herbal heads so I can change the angle of the soft box there's all kinds of fittings and available to put the hot she write on the light stand. But this particular brand has one that shifts and I can also put an umbrella on its it makes it very efficient for what they are, and I keep several in my bag because I lose one and I can't get the lighting set up the triple threat is a really cool speed light attachment, a cz well where you can put three heads. Onto one or three speed lights on toe one setting. If you need additional power to overpower the sun outside and bright light, I also am working with rope products, and I'm using the extra large flash bender that I can also adjust and change into a strip bank. I used the large flash bender and the small, and I absolutely love the grids almost every cent I have set up today, except the first one is gonna have a lot of jails on them, a swell to amend the color and just the overall field, the power and those come from the little kids that were provided by rogue. So now we're going to talk a little bit about lighting itself and what I think you're probably the most four most important things that I consider when I'm doing a photo shoot of any kind, the first thing I do is sit down, and either with my subject who calls me on the phone or if it's, a magazine that calls me and there's an assignment to be had. I'm listening like a writer would to write an article about someone I'm taking notes, and I'm starting this whole visual ization in my head and it's hard to be a good listener, but you have to we have so much that we need to tell or, in part to our clients when they call us and want to do a boudoir shoot, but the most important time that you want to listen is in that first thirty minutes, have your syriza questions ready that you want to ask him and start trying to get a vision together in my process. Thes four things are concept what I'm going to do with the shoot was it going to look like? And then what kind of white doe I want to see with that concept? Is it harder? Soft on? What kind of stylization is that? Kinda have? That doesn't just apply to set, but it means the clothes, the hair and makeup. What color the clothes? What color is the set? How does it blend in and affect what the person looks like? I'm going to be shooting? I'm starting to visualize all those aspects and then communicating. Communicating begins when the phone rings and they say, hi, I want to do a boot to our ship with ur clamor photo shoot or last night is tobin and were speaking, they may call you for a head shot, and then it turns into something really awesome like this, but you have to you can only hear what you're willing to hear. If you're too distracted when you speak to them on the phone, you're not going to get all these juicy little pieces of information that makes such a difference and the effect that you can make on someone's life when you're taking pictures. So I have my questions ready from the beginning, and some of them are questions like, well, where do you live? What do you like to do? Can you see me a couple photos of yourself that were taken, like in the past couple days? How long is your hair? Do you color your hair? You know, I'm lady also upto wondering if there hair color needs to be done or updated right before I shoot with them. So I'm asking all those important questions because I'm getting that idea candling going for myself when they call may I never picked the phone up and say hello, I always wait to call them back when I'm calm, and I have thirty minutes or so to talk to them. In the beginning, it took me an hour to tell them everything because I had to have some, you know, blah, blah conversation in the beginning, two kept me calm enough to actually talk to people, but now I'm very direct and very quick, I keep a little question a list for myself not far too far from may I usually carry. I still write notes for myself and then transfer for them over into my computer and folders, every single person that I shoot with since me photos of themselves, if they've had photos of themselves before I ask them, if there's any fears about what they look like in five minutes, they're going to tell you what they're afraid of on their body. Well, I'm not going to the gym like I wass or, well, you know, I mean really great shape, but my legs, my hips, my thought, you know, they're going to say what they want, what the worry is and you are already starting to imagine ways you might want to work your shoot so you can work around that. So I have a theory that you only will see in my images what I show you. So I start building a set that will allow me to easily conquer all of that.