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Shoot: Retro Boudoir

So over here, it's, kind of hard to imagine all of this after you're looking at such all the lights that aiken then get something that even feels something like that with the speed, lights and there's so much smaller, these air, these awesome lot modifiers from road that I was talking about, I think you have one of them and, uh, in your hand, and we're gonna build, basically that same kind of set was my speed lights, the difference here is there is no modeling like for you to see, so we want to keep the house like times, and we've done a little experiment. We've opened up the windows, and I'm going to consider that there's a light sitting outside the window on a job with a jail on it force colorful light back in the window, the reason why I set this up in this way so you could see how strong the actually transmitter is, and it can go through the wall outside connection see that so we have somebody standing out there by it, so nobody will, uh, decide they have to have my speed light all...

of these things, they're linked up and being test fired right now with nicole from the camera, when you're in the test mode on these and you push the test button, it goes around them one at a time so that you can see them all firing and you have to keep re firing and looking at each one that's pretty smart I think s o you could see that they were all firing including the one she's got in her lap. One thing that I was going to suggest and that was something we had happened, right here's amount last minute is floor stands you know, all everybody buys standard light stance and they don't think about it putting light down low on the ground and your speed light actually comes with a little stand in the back of kit would you mind grabbing the little kit out of on with the little speed light stands out of the back on the speed like cases forming and their I've used them plenty on sets and just set him up and turned them whichever I want set him on the ground in the background they have a little screw mountain in the bottoms you can attach him to a line stand if you're going to be using them like this a lot this you want to get something a little starting or that last year in the long run but you see this stand here is little why stand that sitting on the ground that pulls up flat you can get little extensions that go in there that are about this tall up to about six inches and then up to this one is two feet when our subject is sitting on the bicycle here she's short so I put these boxes here so she khun b here so we have this light position here tto light that's out of her tummy we've a grid spot aimed right at her face that's going to be beautifully flatlining here so justus, we did here with the big studio lights were going to do something very similar to that with the speed lights I'm going to use a low shutter speed s so I can pick up the ambient light and then we'll go infuse that with the stroke from outside said it full power I have another light behind me can you see that to put on the back of her rather than hair light is going to be more like a a real light for her whole body so she can stand here steady some standing on these apple boxes and underneath them we put the skid proof stuff you put in your cabinets in the kitchen to keep glasses from falling over so she can't fall, but this way she can shift her hips she's up high enough that I can see her from across the top of the handle bars and she can lean on this and not fall if she's trying to manhandle the bicycle and she's this tall, you're never going to see anything on her body, so I try to get everything I tested first and make sure it's safe and stable before I put her up on that. So, just as I have suggested earlier, we're going to test this and make sure it looks great and make all of the suggestions before she walks out here on the set. All right, all right. Beautiful. Do you want to come in? Would you mind holding the light for us? What? How the grids work separately now that you see these cute little things on the front, my first gift, that in into the world of rogue here is these air step stackable grids. I'm going to take this one apart just so you could see it. It velcro zone like this and wraps around the light. And the grid's literally just pop out like this, and they're stackable, so you stack them up, gets very degrees. So we're going to put in the perfect one that should light for here and pop it right back on. I'm making this look as easy as I can just because you're using it in this particular shot. What degree grid is that? I believe it's, twenty five and if you decided, which is different from what we were working with with the big beauty dish if you wanted more of a spotlight you just stack a second one in there and it closes down the diameter of the spread you follow me on that so it just gets to be a smaller spread like that, all right? Awesome. And then literally just bell crows onto the front if you decided you wanted to use the grid there's gels pre cut to come with him that popped right on the thing. So if you're working with the five eighties and things like that, the previous units to the six hundred, you want to make sure I used to make sure I have to make sure you didn't have anything in front of the sensor where the radio transmitter is not as crucial that you worry about that completely. All right, beautiful. All right, so I've set up this for you. You're going to kind of put a foot each on love your shoes on each of the wood boxes. Can you watch her to make sure that she can reach beautiful? Awesome? You're not going to sit, you're going to stand that's awesome. All right, so let's, raise this little guy up and do a test. You know what? You guys could probably close that blind and possibly this one and let's, just use the one window that set her back, so the styling of this I might take a second just address that what I'm creating a set you know, I knew I had a red white and blue outfit I had this blue and white checked in a red one checks so I asked the styles to help me find a red a blue or white mike and I said, why don't we just took it in a patriotic thing? It's it's given so she found this awesome ribbon covered the basket made the flowers for me it doesn't have to be really flowers especially if you find ones that look decent enough election kind of look authentic they're going to be slightly in front of her and out of focus a little bit I asked for the makeup to be pinup style and bright red lip I kind of see this shot smiling it's too fun to not have her smiling and I believe sex he's just sexy can be sexy smiling it doesn't have to be all serious and gritty like we just did on the first shot here, then the siri's so I like to shoot up people I don't want to make him look a little taller, tighter, gorgeous so must do a little test here so adorable what happened there, nicole, I'm going to give you this and let you work on it is she outside she's gonna have to take it here you're gonna have to reset everything for me and then bring it right back it's doing a pre flash all around even when I pushed this drug shutter so I'll let you take it away so you can relax until we relax so you can't see the light from the outside but the light on the front of her it's not quite there on her face so it's not positioned exactly perfect the rim line on the back looks pretty good this sad light looks awesome let's have you scoot back just a little bit further that way more from behind or almost great good so we had only one stands what the story I was saying earlier that was floor stand so you really want to have to they can go to the ground or even worked for a beauty like for you to use yesterday when we're doing like the clamshell nobody really realized it was sitting all the way down on the ground and when you need that you don't have it it's very frustrating to get teo put the light exactly where you want it take it beautiful great try it one more time beautiful are you comfortable there? Okay so there's nonskid stuff so you won't slip all right beautiful was troubling little tell shot keep your elbows bent slightly for me beautiful possum it did it again I saw his free free I keep seeing a flash before I take the picture she looks amazing pull us up beautiful shift your hips just a little bit more this way shift still doing it it's flashing on that side before the whole thing starts so as we're looking into that question on the battery packs for these what can you tell us a little bit about them? There was people who there's different sizes and different ones available you can set the flash so it pulls directly off the battery pack if you like or you can set it so that it draws from both or just from the batteries in the camera. If you think you're going to be shooting a lot like a long day like let's say for example a wedding are an event where you want to take a lot of shots in one day and use your flashes and set them up and be able to shoot continuously you can choose different size pacs there's a company called cheetah that has a very inexpensive exhilarate battery but these are the quantum packs they have up to. This is tthe e turbo three which allow you to take between seven hundred fifty two, eight hundred images at full power before it starts to fail. The way it notifies you is there's little green lights on the top and they'll start to diminish you have time to read assess I have also the next size down from that and I've been very happy with that to do like the length of what a normal senior session would cost I get about the time wise would cost me about three to four hundred shots three hundred fifty, four hundred shots before I start to notice it fail. My first quantum battery lasted for about four or five years before I had to start re servicing it and haven't updated and so forth, but it was super amazing just changed the whole way I was shooting from shooting one or two shots and then changing the batteries are one or two setups and constant changing the batteries to moving on into being able to work straight off the packs, so in every scenario I charge them before I go to my shoots and then I as I go through them, I turned them upside down and put him into my bag so they're not accidentally reused keep a power source strip with me on set at all times, they just kind of keep getting revolved through that so as of as an expense remember when I said to you today that point of where things cost a little money to meet when it gets to five hundred dollars? I think about it twice in photography, what I did by buying that the turbo s c isn't eliminated me buying all these extra batteries all the time if I have something where I have to shoot really fast, I will get lithium batteries and put him inside the flash and take just that if I don't want to be working with carrying that around. Um, if I want to be totally lightweight, we just went on a trip to italy and I did away with carrying the packs with me and just about batteries when I got there there expensive, one time use, but they let you shoot very quickly with full charge. Read very quickly. So out of all the things I've come across has probably been one of the neatest solutions you can't ship or mail arcuri in a plane with your batteries. Supposedly. So you have to plan ahead with that. Everything okay on? Uh, somebody is wondering if you can use the same batteries for strobes. No. You have to have different there's a specific cord that you have to get. You can use them between nikon cannon and I believe there's, a sony connection wire. There are chords that come directly from cannon to go to the speed like to the quantum batteries. But you can also buy courts from inter fit, which is considered an off brand, and maybe plug your you know either you're nikon or your cannon strokes and you could also use the older units on the same batteries there's no limitations there a cz well is being able to use you can also use the six hundreds if you use the camp the flashes said and infrared you can also use your older five eighties I don't know if you have any theo older kanan flashes you can choose to sethi flashing over on infrared and continue to shoot it just will not work in the radio transmitted service you can go backwards but the infrared older flashes can't come forward does that make sense to the radio settings? So if you've got a challenging situation lining outside things like that, then you want to try to do that for rent something I noticed about when you're using the studio strobes and your choice of using a battery pack verses I mean, you could plug in in here but you chose not to and I thought that was really smart because the girls are the models are wearing heels and when they're going in and out of the set it's just safer for everybody involved less wires to trip over yes, I agree I agree that one of the neat things about the bow in lighting setup is there is a battery pack connector that they sell that's available for the kit, which would allow you to take that same setup outside if you wanted to work off the battery packs it's a lot cheaper to than some of the other packs that are available that cost a lot more money would do the same thing s o that's something else to look into if you have a tendency to go outside won a lot of light power five hundred watts here you khun like just about anything you would want with a full set up with six heads she could like any house and room if you were going to shoot us chef in a restaurant you had have enough power to light the restaurant and the chef andi fit it all into your trunk of your car which is kind of cool and the case is that they make all of the things that they created to carry the lighting and also it's very efficient um very smart better thank you ok thank you all right let's do one last test beautiful awesome right that's kind of an interesting shot with your purple hair was peeping in the corner alright that's starting to look pretty good um me check up close and pick a peak at her face I think that looks pretty nice and even we have a little bit of a shadow on her tummy if I were to pull in and yet another light like we did for an up light over here for the beauty light I could put a little bit of light down on her tummy when I was shooting for playboy, one of the coolest things that we did was when she started eliminating the face with spotlight she would start illuminating each of the points of the body that you wanted to just play up so the knicks step would you bring in one more speed light and having illuminate the front of her body so let's go along with where we are right now for that and let's just adjust the bow can kind of be reach up and just sort of took that little corner and just a little bit so it doesn't have a shot awesome check the flowers make sure everything is good you look beautiful awesome so we house are light on the back try some with her shutter speed up just a little bit one more test all right keep your chin up nice and high beautiful beautiful I think we're good to go alright you khun lean forward just a little bit to keep your elbows nice and soft and work your shoulders just a little bit keep your chin up nice and tall beautiful awesome keep your elbows bent awesome we're not I think beautiful all right, let me take a peek at that one all right so now we're getting somewhere kind of interesting hold on all right so I think we're getting close light's pretty on her face we could see a little bit of the blue light on the outside all right let's have you long get your body a little bit pull your chest up just to touch crunch you're tommy keep your hips pushed back yeah, I'm just tip him a little bit push yur hips back into the side great chan up to the light slightly bend your elbow awesome awesome great kind of crunchy told me just a little bit beautiful now let's try a couple with you actually seeded so as she follows she's dropping that spotlight has to follow with her your company there you feel stable why don't you try putting one foot all the way down the ground since you have on the high heels great and you might want to just stand up so you can get some control of what your body looks like aim this right at you gorgeous so just a little tip forward yeah, keep it nice and happy light are a wonderful beautiful so there's a spotlight behind her so I'm trying to make sure that we have that under wraps let's put both hands in the center of the steering column there great, beautiful, so cute awesome little laugh awesome once again I have to wait for my flash so beautiful so the way the flashes here work is it kind of has to circulate around the room and then it tells me here with a little signal that the all the flashes air charged and if I'm too fast and it's gonna take the shot before it gets around to me then that's where I suffer the flash not firing also can I see a couple of those in whom is it possible? Alright let's eliminate the one said yeah beautiful all right so I think I'm working on the body I think the most successful one is the third one in so let's look at that image upclose awesome beautiful I'm gonna lower my camera angle a little bit and shoot up at hurt just to touch which means sitting on the ground all right so keep your elbows bent try not to lock your elbows alright keep your chin up and just have fun beautiful awesome nicole, can you come by for me? Can you just make sure I'm the flash isn't um aimed right at her since I'm sitting down here and help me just a little bit beautiful so I raised the angle I raised her up higher than the sky could shoot up at her just a little bit to elongate her face and lengthen her nose and shorten her now excuse me so this is how I work through it I'll start out, I'll get everything just like I like it tweak the light till everything's working get everything consistent then I just start shooting through it from that point I think she needs a little up light and life into her eyes just a little bit on dyken tell that even now I could probably bring that and photo shop within two three seconds but I'd like to see it just to show you guys what a difference that can make with the light coming from up I actually like the backlight all around all with plants is bringing some interesting to mention tio as well so this is another one of the costumes that I was telling you about that I found is that made out of a nice heavy thick fabric it doesn't look like it's many thing that cotton on its washable and it's a total costume you could mix tights with it or put on you know shorts with it instead of the actual pantaloons that come with it it's very small and I have another size up in the red plaid that I used on a regular basis take it when I'm shooting in a barn or something like that something tells me they're into horses offering that whole thing have matching stockings and all that for each one of those costumes luke a question a couple people that got him noticed that there's a lot of shadow on her face it's morris let it on the side is that intentional do you like that what's your what's your thoughts on it some of that is being intensified because she's really shiny right now on a cross her complexion if she was matted down it wouldn't be nearly as noticeable if the makeup artist was right here on the set and powder that away wouldn't be nearly as noticeable so when we come back now with the secondary lights I'm actually going to push the exposure up for her face and that will help eliminate a little bit of that if the microbe artists was here she could literally just step right in and pat but you can see she's shining on the chin chinese on the cheeks a lot of that is coming from the actual glow of her skin people actually really loved this style of bathing suit is that something that was a vintage piece or that you had a new piece but made to look like advantage piece on its popular people like to wear the style swimsuit in this error the legs were longer and taller in the waist curvy girl small figures look really great in this it's also another way to look really sexy without showing a whole lot so I'm going to have um you come straight here kind of hold it right up to her face and it should be said it about the same one so I'm going to go up to a now what I'm going to dio um as I'm going to adjust the power up and they're both on a so what we just did was we put these on the same set so now when I bring the power up it should be nice in terms of bringing light back into the face all right um one's not even aimed at her at the top yours is perfect all right, now we're in a better spot life in the eyes is a good thing, right? All right, so why don't you come up a little bit on the rail like bring you by the ups I can see a little more of you beautiful good just keep a nice happy face beautiful awesome have to slow down beautiful you come up on the blocks on both feet she's moving a little bit so we want to follow her with the spotlight keep your body a long section c arch your back and flex your tummy crunch a little bit shifter hips one way or the other that's great lift up a little bit in the shoulder said so pretty hold it good stay nice and tall that's pretty like your gabbing there awesome let's take another peek beautiful. I think we can keep rolling with that. Pardon me. Speak up. Yeah looks great. Keep your chin up for me awesome it's a beautiful face take your right hand and bring it up by your hairs if you're fixing your hair that's beautiful chin up awesome and won three I'm going to turn around to hear pretty tune out a little bit beautiful simplicity in a little bit awesome beautiful all right so what we've done here is we have nice blue light in the background coming through the window I've raised up the shutter speed up to one hundred andi could if we wanted even mohr intensity we could bring that and you could almost kind of see it on the wall behind or even our exposure is just a tiny bit hot there let's try one more here your face looks beautiful makeup's gorgeous too so you see the shine is now gone not nearly noticing it is much now we have enough fill in the front cute lift it up chin up beautiful one more awesome hold it one more interesting to one more setting is it getting lighter and lighter interesting your fault it's been not that it has been on that since we changed it up and brought you in four good keep it happy lovely beautiful from both hands back on this the steering well in the center and now just broaden your shoulders and arch your back a bit not forward back with your shoulder's great maybe use your forearms for a little cleavage just for working aren't you back up this way got turned down and laugh beautiful awesome on one more beautiful all right so I think we're in a good spot and my favorite one was someone previous to this all right awesome I think we're in a good spot to hand this off to you let's take a peek at several of those you take away all the dark ones that didn't fire the flash choose our number one get rid of that this's really fun so is this one let's get rid of this one on dh it's just lovely and this one let's get rid of that all right thank you so much definitely feels like the era doesn't it so what as you're looking at these what are the things that you're really liking about them as opposed to the ones you got rid of I'm looking at honesty and eyes where she really looks happy she's beautiful she looks like she came right out of the era to me now that I'm looking at the whole thing put together I think she did a successful job of delivering the message for us for sure and what I'm looking for is flaws flaws like for her nose touched her love line she can't help that she smiles their nose tips down so I want to get rid of those I don't want to show her anything that she's not q's sheikhoun bay and I have to have the wherewithal to say no no no no enough so I want her see only fabulous pictures of herself so usually what I do is edit them all down even when I'm showing him even when I'm showing them to her, you know life one before even pulling them down into computer only shot with the ones I want her to see so ultimately if I shot twenty five pictures she's probably on you're going to use to three of them so why not show or ten so we could probably even go all the way down to pick the number ones if you want you want to do that together you want to do that is a group I think it would be kind of fun to actually show like the number one picture um I think I see it I want to see what you pick theirs to that I think you're successful would be well, I don't see any flaws you want to tell you which one I chose first the one in the top in the middle of it she she kind of was like courtney cox there, doesn't she? A little bit uh one let's start with top left the top left is a nice but we didn't have a light right yet second one or heads too far over the middle one she's smiling just enough the shadows of falling beautiful on her face she looks honest with her smile her arms were soft she's not no arms, no elbows locked in place the one next to it is also a good one ah, a little further away more the bicycle showing if you decided you want to bring a little more life on the front of the bicycle you know package you can uh second over that is a nice but there's not the impact in the face is not the same on along the bottom. I still like the one in the middle, the number three and number four in the lineup. What we just looked at those then we could talk about what we might retouch on them. I don't do that. I think there's just enough blue in the background. Which one does everybody like? First on the left? The first one that's said and then that's the top one in the center so groovy, beautiful love it so okay, so loose so we have seen you work with strobes. We've seen you work with speed lights. We've seen you work with a bunch of different gear for someone who's just starting out someone who is really inspired an enthusiastic after seeing this, what do you recommend is kind of starting here to go for right beginning I would get these items on depends on what your budget is too. You know, if you have five thousand dollars you have ten thousand dollars you could get set up for five thousand dollars and go out start doing stuff easy um your speed lights are under six hundred dollars opinion where you buy them and the trigger's under three hundred dollars you need batteries or battery packs if you don't have a battery pack you need to be able to at least afford the batteries you know I don't know that sounds like funny but my assistance or like while the batteries every time I spent thirty five dollars I'm just for you know it's a lot of out of the money if you don't charge a lot for the shoot so you might want to go ahead and get a battery pack or two if you're going to get to speed lights so in a basic level if you could get three of each thing the bowens kits are the easiest to use they're easier actually to use in the speed lights because you just literally go to the dial and turn it up you want one more stop of light you just hit it the price point of the kit withy strobes and stands and the umbrella it's for I'm going to say around fifteen to sixteen hundred dollars and that's pretty amazing for studio quality lighting I would say the minimum three lights if you can afford to get sick so you can add that up so that would be on that level but then you want to buy your modifiers the modifiers here are going to be much cheaper and the speed lights and by the time you calculate the number of speed lights their prices almost the same for the lights and modifiers going we saved the money but do you remember when I showed you the thing called a matic magic slipper and you can make any modifier fit on your speed light so you could get one side of modifier so I'm talking complicated here but I'm all about how to get the light to look like I want and be able to afford to pull it all off when you use the magic slipper it takes the pressure off of the speed light you said the speed light on the stand and that it holds the modifier so you're not gonna damage the light so that's something to think about if you want that quality of life this I think calculated it out what is the special price to you guys have for the kit kit that is being offered on expo imaging dot com is the flash mentor xl pro kit it includes the flashman are large soft bucks kit the road three and one grid rogue gels for grid and two of the flash shells complicate great so that would be enough for you to almost do what we just did here if you had one two three for we used five speed lights total there um I would say for some reason I'm using five now but most of time I used six so my full on playboy shoots, I would use fifteen six to fifteen light and if you have it available, guess what? You're going to dio put a spotlight on face, spotlight on the side, the chest on the hip on the shoes. Then you start creating the background. You can really easily it's like painting. At that point, when you start learning how to manipulate that spread of the light and that's, what the key is for all of this is learning how to get the most quality out of it so you can change the essence in the field. The way the shots look. My most used tools are the beauty dish, the beauty dish with the grid, the two strip banks and you know whichever decision you make with speed lights, the spiel lights are easy to set up once you understand how they operate. There's a learning curve it's not like walking over here to this bowen's and just turning it on and dialing it up or down. So it depends on what kind of person you are. If you're not mechanical and that's kind of like immediately make you go stupid when you turn it on, then maybe you want to think about mine the studio lights there's another way to look at that. Connection is it how much you're shooting your speed lights were not necessarily intended to knock out catalogue shoots every day you can use them on weddings and probably be fine but if you're going to shoot three weddings in a weekend and some headshots and senior portrait so in the week you're gonna wear out your speed like they do burn out you can they cut off when they overheat which is awesome you don't wantto use until you completely have a meltdown so if you're shooting a lot by yourself some studio lights give yourself a break you know I was sitting there watching and I can see the advantages too these fancy cannon speed lights with this complex lord sugar schism that I've been watching a lot of you know it's been complicated watching you ever just use your speed lights and manimal morgan outside just gets a bit expensive manually trigger soapy lights as opposed to this's what it was the decision I made I thought about into the five eighties first and the way that the whole speed like thing came along with me is I was shooting commercially all the time and as the jobs wayne the first thing that was cut off for my assistance and the next thing I noticed I was carrying around all the bags the lights by myself and one day I came home when I went I can't do that anymore I can't go load six things alliance to stand bags in the back of a van gogh there set it all up, shoot twenty shots in today and then go home lug all that stuff by myself I can't do that well I started wagering what I would do to save money and then the next thing I know I was shooting music artist for album covers with speed lights one came out I showed you guys an image, I'm bouncing it off the cardboard that was the first time I ever put the speed and I went okay, we're going to make this work I'm not going to be told I can't have my life I can't handle that how could I do it? Speedy lights next thing I knew I had three lights set up had a mall link together it just sort of birth itself and I was like, this is really great I could put them in the bag and roll it behind me and get my car go so when I had a shot or two to do it just made more sense than hauling all of the gear get down to my car and a truck and having insistent comp u know it just didn't make any sense so that's how I went in that direction you know there's a million ways you khun like things you said yesterday everything from moving natural light, doing cool things you could take this bed set up we did in the previous shot to this outside you know it's about that was about contact you know? So you're gonna have to find a way to move the light then the light we showed the light and what you've feel comfortable with my goal was to show us many opportunities that could why was here and the cool things you could do is speed lights that normally people don't think about it don't think about putting all these things in front to redirect that light and definitely use it in a fashion you know way is supposed to paparazzi your wedding couple of my friends are using these grids to do some pretty dramatic bridal portrait ce with you know, with a light really highly spotlight fall just on the face great light way to slim down the face to have the shadows things like that depends on how you're using it once you set them up at the end of today I'm going to show you my little twenty minutes set up and I'm hoping that you can go home, take the lights apart, look at how they operate and find the pages through the back of the settings and then you save it and then hopefully you won't be fumbling with it every time you go back out we have these numbered labels so that hopefully every time I pulled him out I know where I'm at this's a light the key light the b lights going to be the kicker light the seal it'll be the background like so today when the girls were setting this up I said go ahead and just put those in that format and when I look at the top of the trigger all I have to do is go sliding straight down a b c d and then I hit that button again and change it up or down with power says what we did here in the front in two seconds I change the power without having to touch the light it gets easier but you have to use it and it's kind of speaking spanish if you use them once her every day three, four months you're going to go oh gosh where the settings I forgot so you want to be using it is best if possible so so fantastic to see how versatile speed lights can't be writers anywhere you go and this look that you have with this last model with the bikini it looks like it could be straight from the forties and it looks like it could also be a modern advertisement as well so if you want to retouch something to make it look fantasy it's easy to do when you have the light nice right on dh she did have a little bit shot and facing it still there. But once the light filled it in, flattened all that out. So you can understand my draw toward the flatter light.