Lessons

Lesson Info

Class Introduction

I wanted to basically start out quickly with an introduction of everybody so we can all get to know each other most importantly when the students when life audience is telling you what they're struggles are and what they what they just are tired of feeling this awful five feeling in your stomach when they're about to photograph or or if you ever feel a sense of disappointment when you come back from a photo shoot or do you ever look at somebody else's work and be like why can't I get to that point but what does he have what do I have to do I mean I'm a human I got arms I got legs I got ice why can't I do that right on especially all of you out there who are struggling to pay bills or rent or mortgage or whatever and photography is your job uh that's the worst feeling in the world I have good news for you which will expand on that later but I feel like there's a solution to financial problems when it comes to photography so honest how is my good friend friend who had just met yeah andi ...

I wanted to basically ask you guys to tell me where you're from tell me why you decided to do photography what drew you into this into this crazy crazy industry by the way I am from mexico city so I say crazy with a national crazy with the sea like I can't even pronounce that word so just bear with me it's crazy um there's lots of stuff I can't pronounce but I'll try okay so tell me why you decided to be in this industry and especially tell me what are your struggles whatever the things you want to achieve what are the things that are inside of your just burning up and you're like frustrated about when he comes to your photography business so this is friend everybody hyo friend how's it going um well I started photography my backgrounds and counseling and I was doing that for way too long and I've been having a few conversation about that anyway so I decided to wear my looking I decided teo to get into photography because you know when you're really passionate about something but it's um it's never the full front um I was sick and tired of putting what I was really passionate about in the back burner so I decided that I was just going to step out and getting to photography and just uh give it a shot you know you gotta be in it to win it so that's kind of how it started in terms of struggling I've been struggling a lot with the whole lighting aspect idol of on location photography for the most part and so um you're workshops pretty sport on in that um it's all about location imposing and so forth and I don't work with a lot of models I worked with a lot of like aspiring models or just the everyday person and so it's really hard to be able to direct people that don't have experience and usually when it's like a first photo shoot you find that they're really nervous in front of the camera so the first like hours so forth is usually nothing that you can use and so I'm hoping that I can you know nail it and just learned from you that's really good thank you bet pay roberto from san francisco well my name is pepe barca and I'm from california hemorrhaging from guadalajara mexico which is the second largest city supposed to the mexico city and I've come from criminal justice at sociology background which have been doing all my life and I about four years ago picked up a camera and started you know just doing us a hobby and then I did my best friend's wedding you know he asked me to his wedding here uh was in a budget so I say I want you to give it a try you know I wasn't charging also like if I missed up by myself you know no pressure and I fell in love with it and I've been doing that ever since I usually do ah wedding photography on location photography so um but I struggle a lot and posting is you know most waiting's are you know uh for a journalism type of shooting but when it comes to the like the formal portrait we have toe you know try to oppose them I struggle a lot so I'm glad I'm here with roberto uh which I've met before and I know she's a great teacher so super excited to be here we're happy to have your baby it's good time we're happy to have you oh thank you nicki hello I'm nicky closer and I live here in seattle and I have been a social worker for the last ten years and I'm used to interacting with people um and dealing with emotion and what I was sort of finding is passionate about working with people but I it was kind of starting to feel just down after ten years of trying to solve people's problems and I do quite a bit of traveling and I would take photos and I liked them but I just thought that I don't know I just decided they weren't that great and so one day I picked up my husband's camera and I loved it and I fell in love with it so uh that was in december and I was kicking myself for not doing this sooner um so in terms of what I struggle with I mean obviously there's always room for growth in every area but living in seattle we have such amazing backgrounds and amazing locations to shoot but clients often asked to shoot and really busy area is really popular busy areas and so I kind of wanna make sure I'm using those locations in the best way possible without just having a background where I lose my clients in the background so um yeah location location and and also posing posing an execution off camera lighting I mean there's always room for growth so I'm excited I know you're an awesome teacher watch your pee pee I read your book so it's gonna be great thank you uses when they really important losing your clients in the background that's we'll discuss there's a there's a really big misconception about beauty in the background on how you use it how you incorporated in a photograph when you're photographing it's a different story when you're looking at it with your eyes when you're looking at a scene with your eyes it can be beautiful when you're photographing that scene has to have a purpose on the purpose is beyond its its beauty it is to play a role with your subjects and if you don't make that connection that background becomes a distraction because their it's a pretty background on it could be just as pretty as your subjects and you compete toby photography it's like so much fun it's like a game consistent competing with myself and competing with the surroundings and competing with who's competing with my subjects if anyone's competing with my subjects I'm going to take him out see what I mean so there is no question no doubt in anybody's mind when they see my work that my subjects are the star of the show nothing no matter how cool the location is there going to be the star of the show somehow on that something is like a little science we'll discuss all that later on hello how you doing I'm originally from brazil and I live in hander seuin fifteen minutes away from las vegas trip um I just need to say hi to my daughter my son she thinks I'm icarly so hi lillian max hi my skips on my school friends um I love photography always loved and since I had my kids I pretty much held the camera really close to me and taking pictures all over and over and over and I discovered that um my passion for photography was much bigger than expected so I've been studying and working and I struggle a lot supposing couples that's one of my main things putting the subjects together it's kind of a puzzle for me I met roberto escape and I love your work and I can't wait to go through this three day so that's about it I'm good thank you hello well ary hi I'm mallory and I have mallory rene photography um I got into photography when um I was watching my wedding photographer do her thing and I just thought that was so cool and like how fun would that be to just goto weddings all the time and get paid for it I'm like that's a dream job and um so I went out and got my first camera and started practicing and um so but what I struggle with oh I'm from southern utah and I have two three kids by the way um so it really helps me teo kind of be able to do my own thing and have sort of a job um but also be home with my children uh but I think that the thing I'm struggling with the most is you know every wedding location is different obviously and so it's kind of scary going into each wedding location and wondering am I gonna be able to pull us off is it going to be pretty whatever and so I I don't quite have the confidence yet to go into any location and feel like I can master it and that's really what I want to come away with so kids do you have kids you look like you're like super young well I have to step kids so we'll kind of how yeah one of my own and to step kids so I didn't start very young wow I need to get going on that apartment over there eiji based in phoenix arizona I'm new to the exciting world of photography for living well exciting terrifying same difference so I want to find something yeah I've been shooting for a little while I've always had photography in my life though I come from a nice background but in a pass seven years it's become something that it's something of an addiction I don't shoot for a little while I start getting withdraw and so I knew this is something I needed to do for a living and um I'm really passionate about it I've done a lot of made a lot of effort in terms of improving my lighting I'm trying to generally learned as much as I can in that department creative life has been extremely helpful followed a lot of the courses online and it's bean fantastic um now I struggle with posing and locations posing in the sense that I learnt a little from practice but I need to have a method a system no I'm going to nail it every time and in terms of location sometimes get to a location and seeing nice design element and I know there's a picture in there somewhere there's something good if I could just incorporate this but somehow it doesn't quite work out why is that so that's what I'm hoping to get out of this and that's what I know I'm going to get out of this and I'd like to thank creative life and roberta for choosing me to be here like I said thank you so much for coming so thank you for that david let me first of all this location stuff that we're talking about it's going to be the most fun ever because you're gonna we're going to break down locations and we're going to make sense out of a very chaotic situation so when you walk into any situation and it's like it's chaotic because you have about two million little stimuli going on at every location right it's like how do you separate what you don't need from what you do need how do you create the best photos from this place uh I'll talk about what I'm gonna teach about next but I wanted to do this a little bit about myself I'm sure you already know that um I wanted to share a bit of a story that I usually don't share too much but I think this is a good time to share it just because ofthe what I'm going to be teaching I want people to know where I come from more than just a quick because the story so interesting um then you can see why I have there's so much driving in my head and why fight so hard to do things and not ay ay ay I tried to be an excuse less person I don't have excuses for anything I just tried toe make solutions it sounds cheesy but I just don't have excuses for anything if I'm failing is because I'm failing not because of the economy makes sense um when I was in high school I was not quite on american citizen yet not quite is an understatement if you know what I mean um but that's not because we like came into the country or anything like that we came into the country illegally but things that happened while we were here turned us into uh my dad put us in public schools he wasn't allowed to put us in public schools we were supposed to be in on the private schools and we were in private schools but then we were put into public schools for some reason I made that because of that my dad broke the law and that we became illegal right away so we became we went from being allowed to be here to illegal but point is I was only ten years old it's not like I know what illegal even means but I was just kind of like rolling with it we came here for personal matters that I won't go into but once we arrived we were we were in the school in elementary school and junior high and everything happened on right around when I was in high school um I had really good grades in my last three years of school my last two years of school I really wanted my life to get back together I was not doing well my freshman year I was like lost and not a very good person back in the day and my junior and senior year I really I really turned it around on dh I turned it around because I joined the cross country the thing which is just I mean in cross country all my life like long distance running but the people who do long distance running recently like the nerds right like the geeks off the school so they're like they're all the smart ones you know on dso I got surrounded by all these people on these people influenced my life and they made me wanna get good grades and turn things around on uh because of that I was very college bound like now that I got all these ap classes and I got a really good cheap a and all the stuff I was ready to little college um I had ah I had an opportunity to being this competition political competition I love politics and I I want my political competition in my high school and so they they sent me to compete against a top political students in the state andi I competed against them I ran for office I think the speeches I did everything I had to have my hope cabinet and everything going on I had a campaign manager the whole nine yards point is there was five hundred students in the state of arizona that were competing against me and those were the top five hundred on two were chosen out of those toh goto washington dc and compete against the top two of every state in the whole nation and so when I say a long story short I won the nomination and I was one of the two people from arizona and I flew to washington d c on all the people that were competing against me were like sons of senators and stuff like really senators on I was just like only go or I'm going to get killed and I'm from mexico like is not gonna work um at the end of the at the end of that week I ended up winning that national one as well on dh I was invited to go meet with the president of the united states like to have a one on one meeting with him on I flew to the white house I was going to fly to the white house and have this whole meeting with bill clinton because he wanted to meet me he wanted to meet because he met the president joo kennedy when he was my age in the same program he got to me j f k in the same program that I was meeting bill clinton so because of all this I got a presidential nomination to the united states air force academy and I also got a full right toe university very sauna northern although you know all the areas on the schools I could just speak to school and it would be one of your full ride right then it turns out I'm from mexico and I'm still not legal so they took everything away from me my presidential nomination was gone I they uh I actually almost didn't even get to meet the president because I wasn't allowed to so it turns out I went to meet the president they allowed me to be there andi I was shaking his hand I talked to him for a while we discussed everything on uh I was told I told him that I was on fire and I was ready to go for the u s air force academy turns out when I went back I got a letter that my nomination was all taken away on all my scholarships were all taken away andi I say so now how do I go to college and so we went to court to get we had to court scheduled the judge at the courtroom said um you will be allowed to go to college but without scholarships without grants without financial aid on dh the best parties we will not give you permission to work in the united states and then they said good luck and I was just like oh you do not know who you're messing with you no I'm saying it's like you bring it on yeah but the fire that I had to go to college having all these opportunities and then having everything taken away from me bill's a bit of a fire inside of you see what I mean so it turns out I was going to church on my church I had a band are full of brazilian guitarists on one of them came up to me I mean I went up to one of the minister and I told him that I have to find a way to this was like in april um yeah it was like in april and I said to him I need to find a way to make money to pay for my tuition for college and he was very expensive and I can't work so mcdonald's mcdonald's are or any of that one would not even be an option for me so then he says you should teach guitar lessons and I was like that's true when he said I charged like ten dollars an hour and I was like ten dollars an hour that's five dollars an hour more than mcdonald's so I said oh my god I was totally pumped up on fire I'm gonna teach guitar lessons but then I forgot I don't know how to play the guitar on I don't know I don't even own a guitar you know I mean so I said like it was like this like dream and then he was like a reality check like you don't even play the guitar you don't even you never have so I had to figure out a way to uh I got it I got a small guitar he was like thirty dollars on it was a classical guitar nylon strings there were cheap cheap on dh I asked my friend my friend dustin into santo come and so see if he could help me he was a classical guitarist he came over taught me one lesson I mean he came over the next week taught me another lesson that was only like hour long and then I was so ready to pay for college I don't know what I don't care what it will take I was going to pay for college before the summer was over I have to pay for college in august he was april so long story short as soon as I kick gave me these books and he goes you need to learn how to read music you need to learn howto understand music theory you need to understand how to do courts unison how everything comes together and it's going to take you like ten years and I was just like I have three months I have two months because I have to start teaching guitar so I can make the money to make a very long story short I was working on my guitar literally literally fifty hours a week trying to get become good enough so I could go play I mean I could go teach a month and a half went by I went to a music store and I was playing the guitar and it sounded really beautiful I'm the owner of the store came out to me and said you are selling guitars but just playing the guitar you need to be teaching for us I was just like I do need to be teaching for you on I decided to charge twelve dollars ah half an hour twenty four dollars an hour because I had to hurry up I didn't have time to go for ten dollars an hour anymore so then he said um okay I went to the they were opening a new store and I became the head guitar teacher at this store that was my luck by the way but after this story started coming in on I had to start teaching uh two and a half months later I paid my tuition for the university of arizona on that was pretty awesome because I just when I paid my check and I was going to go to college I was the happiest human being on earth this is why I am excuse less person there's no excuses for anything or anyone um then I had teo I ended up teaching guitar on becoming a professional concert guitars for ten years of my life now I'm gonna click that's me playing in front of an entire orchestra on there was I don't know seven hundred people in the audience and it was a guitar concerto so if you make a mistake the whole control goes out the window and there's like one hundred instruments in the background and they're all listening to you and you are the one that the beat is on so if you make a mistake if you slip up and you stop everyone has to stop and it would have been a total disaster what does that mean it means you have to prepare it means you have to prepare in a way that when you do perform you're not guessing you are a master of your domain you are and that's and I mean that literally you are a master your mind I can anticipate the finger movements before they even happen because if your fingers have to move from the top to the bottom and you you start thinking about it when you already have to move it's too late you're playing seven six seven eight notes per second so my mind is about two seconds ahead while my fingers are catching up on my brain is always two seconds ahead on emperor flying through it with all these instruments the only way to get through that is to prepare like no one else's business now in music you have the staff and you have you have little they're called measures little pieces off parts of them staffer called measures each little measure you practiced the finger movements for every little measure on you put it on a little metron on me I don't know if you guys know what I'm a journalist the little take that take that take that take that thing well that sounds in my years forever ten years of listening to that those little movements have to be so refined and so well made that when you are nervous it doesn't affect your fingers whatsoever when you are sweaty and you haven't eaten on dh there's pressure like you have you're not feeling well your fingers can go right through it and that's what a professional photographer should be able to do this is the difference between people who like photography on people who really want to become photographers okay and photography is complicated it's complicated as music there's no difference and it hurts me and it's the worst when when photographers become photographers on they go to their jobs and that's the that's where they practice can you imagine if I perform if I well if I got on that stage and that was when I was starting to play my c scales what by the time you get to the performance you already on your supposed to already be a master of what you do it means when when things don't go right you have answers see what I mean I went things cool right you blow it out of the water it means that we have to make a decision about what kind of how serious we want to take our photography we all want to be good but most of us don't put the time or effort to really what he thanks to be god and I have news for you and for you and for everyone listening in the world there is no shortcuts to photography it is hard right repeat hard work and you have to make a decision I am I going to take that leap and I'm gonna put up put the put the time and effort or am I just going to keep showing up at events and that will be my practice session because if that's you you're going to be at the same level for the next thirty years of your life I went things don't when the economy tanks and stuff and you just can't you can't separate yourself from the rest of the competition you are going to go out of business and you will blame the economy because you don't blame yourself right we never blame ourselves we blame something else is the economy that's really thanking that's why I'm suffering but if you were the best in your city and your photos were black and white I'm not like in wedding color but they were just like night and day in comparison to your competition people will not only pay you they will do whatever it takes they will need tohave you instead of one toe higher you can let me repeat that the difference will be your clients will just say I need tohave nicky closer shoot my wedding I need it it doesn't matter what the price is I need it if I don't have nicky I'll postpone my wedding I don't even want to get married like or by the way this is not a wedding workshop this is opposing workshop right it doesn't matter if your spite of shooting fashion senior portrait or anything if you work stands out like clearly you will continue to get hired regardless of the economy I get hired all the time regardless of the economy who cares and people don't hire me in the us well maybe another country has a booming booming economy and people get married there too and they fly me there when your work is so far out there people will just hire you no matter what happens but you got up with the time okay um so this is what I was gonna ask you are you sure you want to be a photographer I know what I want to ask you is seriously because now after what I said they put a different twist photography's not by cool equipment on go out there and have fun with your new lenses it's not just play time even though it is fun you know what's really fun is when you do have a camera and you're also really good at howto handle it that had had a candle the scene and how to handle people then you can really play you see what I mean um seriously is because everyone out there listening I want him to ask themselves am I serious about this because if I am I'm gonna have to put the work there are no shortcuts on I don't believe in talent I wasn't even if I wasn't even a photographer when I was a guitarist how come when I was a guitarist nobody told me you are such a naturally born photographer you know why they didn't tell me that because I wasn't a photographer back then and when I wasn't when I was a guitarist people never said when I was a guitarist people say like oh you are so naturally point of the tire was like did you know that I practice fifty hours a week with my little metal click click click going crazy all day long did you know that talent it wasn't even in the picture yes I have fingers that doesn't mean I have talent you know we'll have cameras that doesn't mean we have talent talent doesn't even exist in my mind I think it's there you have some tendencies that are some easier for people in others but talent to me it's an excuse we give ourselves to excuse ourselves for not being as good as somebody else like we say he's talented that's why I'm never going to be a good thing because that's why I don't have to work hard because that person is talented I'll never get to that point so I don't believe in talent I don't think talent exists I think hard work exists and if you want to really learn something you can and we're going to spend three days exponentially increasing your skill level in photography exponentially because it's going to be tough this is going to be the groundwork for when you will go home to continue doing what we did in this three days and lo your peers out of the water blow yourself out of the water and best of all blow your expectations on your clients out of the water okay what is that for talking me into you so nicky let me ask you when you have a job let's say you have a job in two weeks what does that mean to you did you have a job doesn't mean money I have money now I have a job doesn't mean I have a pretty brad I'm gonna take some pretty pictures doesn't mean what go ahead first time on the spot the first of many you know I think it's a combination of things it's it's it's it's a challenge to make sure that I am giving my clients the best possible photographs that capture their moments in their emotions and um it means money absolutely I have bills to pay um it means that I have a lot of work to do to prepare for the job um it means I'm excited and I'm having so much fun and I can't wait to do it I mean it just it's it's everything I think that I have to throw your life into your job if you're gonna be the best you could possibly be uh that's good it is a combination of different feelings to me when I have a job right now is uh third off was a date six sixty the six of september right so let's say I have a job the twelfth of september I job to me means an opportunity toe create no mistakes and learn from them so I always push myself during the week and then I passed those things at the weekend at the were at the job and then I'm ready to fail at those new things I'm trying to do and then when I do fail I will know what it takes to solve those issues toe me every job I do is like another opportunity to try something new create new mistakes embrace them learn from them capitalize from them and then keep going and then the next job have another set of mistakes I'm ready to make what I tried to avoid making the same mistakes I made last week that's why we have the weekdays that's why we have mondays through fridays to get rid of those mistakes if you haven't problems with posting fixit monday through friday don't wait till saturday when it's already another job right um here is not one that this is one of the things you know going around kind of in the industry a little bit and I wanted to discuss it I want to ask you are you performing on a wedding or a portrait shoot or a senior portrait or a fashion shoot are you performing who are you hoping and by that I mean our performance means it's something that you prepared for your performing it already on hoping is when you're not prepared but you just really hope something turns out okay right when you just like I have to do something if I should enough friends per second there will be one or two good ones in there okay that's not so when I when I show up at a wedding I have worked very hard to feel like I'm performing what I already worked on but a lot ofthe people I feel like show up to a wedding hoping something good comes out of it and I don't hope I know it's gonna work out because I prepared you know I mean I put the hours I put the time I went to my I went through my bad my bad photos during the week that was that I took out my job and I started up a room in a folder on that folder is like my gold folder like I don't that folder is like the the seed to my new learning because I made those mistakes because I have a lack of learning our lack of knowledge on that particular area and how do you know what your lack of knowledge is if you never look at your bad photos because when we when we when we pull the photos from a job we look at the best ones we pull that we start them with five five stars we separate them we photoshopped him we clean him up we strain then we color correct um and then we send it to our clients and we we pat ourselves on the back and we move on to the next job you missed out on the best part of the world just you missed I don't know you're bad photos the photos were you screwed up on because that's the best that's what holds the key to your new knowledge you do not want to let that go because new knowledge means bookings means improvement means money at the end of the day means who cares if the economy tanks or not who cares if mitt romney wins or not who cares because you're going to be okay see what I mean so during creative life which is awesome won't get all you guys are so funny we're going to solve the problems that most photographers have we're going to look at our location on we're goingto basically train our eyes and I'm gonna pick on all of you on you in the audience you could do the same I'm gonna pick on you and I'm going to say where are the gifts that this location is giving you every location has little hitting kids just like a scavenger hunt I'm looking around this room I like little gifts are bumping out in my ice and I'm like oh look at that look at that look at that see what I mean you look at this room and you may have other gifts idea yes or you may not see any gifts at all ok or you may go for the obvious gift like there's a fireplace I will pose the bride by the fireplace because it's it's the easiest one right but he doesn't do anything so we're going to break down locations in a way that is going to give you the tools to make sense out of any situation whether you're indoors or outdoors okay the next this is huge body dynamics for confident posting I'm not going to teach you how to post people because that means you let's say a teacher ten poses then what happens when you want to get out of that what happens when the ten poster for women and you're posting the guy doesn't show I mean what happens if the guy is like a different body shape and those posters don't work I'm going to teach you body dynamics which means I'm going to show you how the body works doesn't matter what a songs you have legs and a spinal cord at the neck and head we're going to study those body parts so we can build not learn new poses or memorize them but we're going to be building our own poses that's a difference we're not memorizing post one two three four five we're going to be learning the structure of body dynamics so you can make your own posters and now you have unlimited process to choose from because you can just do whatever you want as long as you understand this it will always look good okay so that's the best part we're going to talk about once you understand how to break down locations and went to understand how to pose and once understand body structure and dynamics and all of that then you screw everything up if you don't understand execution of lighting lenses and angles they're wrong angle on someone destroys a perfectly good location on a particular good post okay the wrong lens same thing but most importantly is the angles that you choose to shoot from we're going to be discussing angles all the time here I'm actually going to take photos of the models with bad angles just to show you how horrible that beautiful model will look okay I mean two seconds we're going to fix the angle we're going to make her look like a supermodel okay and the best part which is what can I say we're going to go about howto learn so when you get out of here you're not stuck with only what you learned here you can continue to improve on your own okay so next time somebody says I am a wedding photographer or I am a portrait photographer people respect you as a true professional not as a person we just went to costco and bought a camera and now you're a photographer I mean this industry will be much more respected because the level of work that we're going to provide people when we call ourselves professional photographers is going to mean something is going to be leaps and bounds uncle bob with a camera okay and of course at the end we're going to talk a little bit about the monetizing of skills okay how do you get all this and turn it into some sort of money to pay our bills feed our kids okay um I want to talk about I wanted to add this because this is very important the language of photography to convey what you want to say I chose this course carefully the language of photography because to me posting it's like vocabulary words but without the grammar you have no structure or how to use the poses that makes sense so let's say paper you you know three poses its like you learning is like you know in three words in greek and once you on when somebody talks to you passed those three words you are now lost when when you have a person who you can posting and stuff like that memorizing posters it's not going to help you because it's like memorizing three words in greek you wanna be ableto handle the language in a way that you can create your own conversations okay so my goal for you and this is going to sound rough my girl for you is I don't want to inspire you I could care less because inspiring means you're pumped up for like a short period of time and then you go home and everything goes out the window for you we're really pumped up for like ten seconds right like when I go to the fbi and I see people get out of that room there like I'm pumped I don't like and then like I launched they don't even know why they were pumped for they're totally like they were inspired for like two seconds they they cry and everything is always very inspirational and then when they have a photo shoot in front of them they're like oh man that didn't do any don't don't didn't do me any good what I don't I don't want to inspire you I don't want to fight anyone watching online I don't care I want to encourage you tto take action to make something during your weekdays tto give you the encouragement like just that the heat in your heart it says I want to do this I want to go out and try this I want to make no mistakes I want to look at my mind my bad photos and learn from them I want to know where I can be in a year if I do this that's encouragement that's why I never care for inspirational in inspiration stuff okay okay this is my knowledge database when I was learning photography this is where I used to be so I push myself I try new techniques right once you push yourself I failed because that's the next thing if it's no you're going to probably fail right there in my friend after you fail you're going to learn biggest learning comes from failing and after you learn you're going to evolve yourself and you're gonna be expanding your database off knowledge this circle should be never ending for you never ending because when you start out your knowledge database is a puny little dot like this you know three poses kiss hold hands and kiss everybody let's go to the fountain because there's a fountain in the park let's kiss in front of the fountain everybody there's a really pretty tree over there it's coming to me let's let wei I see the way let's kiss in front off the tree let's kiss you know how about we hold hands and walk how about we just walk in hands and then you look at each other and get lost in your eyes that make sense these are your three vocabulary words in greek this is where you go this is when you freak out you go to your comfort zone you're like ah come first I'll kiss kiss right this is what I'm gonna do where is the fountain there's no fountain here I'm lost like I don't know what to do if you do that if you do this process you push yourself throughout the week took to create new techniques let's say off camera flash reflector oh my gosh you guys are gonna have an overload of stuff by the end of three days uh you fail when you fail you recognize where the failure is and you write it down you make a note why did I fail here you're going to learn and you're goingto above and if you do that your knowledge database it's going to get bigger I now you have a kiss hug kiss hold hands walk fountain side park tree dog fireplace piano go like this on top of the piano right and then you're going to push yourself you're goingto fail you're going to embrace the failure you're going to learn you're going to evolve I'd endured acknowledged database will be that big not that now this is your comfort zone when you go shoot a wedding whether it's an indian wedding a person wedding whatever wedding your knowledge databases so big you will be able to just pull from a thousand different things build your own language of photography and just speak to people in the language of photography and your photos will look like poetry doesn't make sense so we're going to embrace the mistake's and prepared avoiding avoid repeating them today I'm going to force you to make a mistake and then I'm also going to try to push you to not make the mistake again when you make another mistake we're going to do that again okay we're gonna almost gonna put you in a situation that's out of your comfort zone and you're going to learn you're going to fail you're going to evolve okay uh kind of like the guy in south park uh mr garrison okay okay right I want take a look at this real quick the english the english language is approximately seven hundred fifty thousand words now what happens what if you knew the seven hundred fifty thousand words do you know what to do with them if you don't know grammar you have no structure right you just have a bunch of words so the structure off the english language comes in comes from eight parts of speech within those eight parts of speech you can put all those words and now you have sentences that you can talk the language right look at all this stuff this stuff here is the structure the architecture's off where to place those words in what order to create a sentence makes sense when you go out or even here when you look at this carpet when you look at the floor when you look at the walls miserable words I'm going to try to give you the framework to make sense out of all of this and create sentences that people can understand because if you look at a photograph that has a lot of stuff going on people won't understand and they they won't pay you for it okay we start out when we start out with photography it's kind of this is obviously an analogy right if we start out with photography we start out speaking in sling like this is how you're talking kind of slang terms after you learned the structure and proper grammar and you don't have to put the words you start speaking with complete sentences because you know what the words are but it's only when you know what the words really mean like the true meaning of the word I knew master those words that you understand and now you can create poetry and when someone speaks english that's so refined it sounds like poetry doesn't it doesn't it sounds so beautiful you're like when barack obama speaks or something is like just sounds so good whereas when mitt romney speak like that getting teo um for bringing in politics is getting okay so we're going to try we're not going to be satisfied speaking in complete sentences in photography we're going to be satisfied when we can create poetry okay that's what we're gonna do when your photos look like everyone else's photos it's because you're just doing complete sentences but when your photos look like a work of art you're creating poetry with photography teo check out this guy the music framework all the music in the world well not really the eastern world all the music in the western world was created by using justice twelve notes that's it if you combine those twelve notes and you put him in different order and you you make him a different length of time you can create all the music in the world are sorry in the western world because in asia they have like micro tones and you don't wanna get into it okay so now that you have these notes if I give you a piano and I say here the twelve notes play mozart's symphony number five you're not going to be you're gonna be like what the heck do we do with this twelve notes you have the tools you don't know what to do with him it's like saying you have your flash you have your lands you have your camera you don't know what the hell to the will is the same type of thing but you're going to combine them to make something so make sure to make poetry this is that this is the structural music when you have those twelve notes you can have theory you're gonna have structure off how they know they're going to go you're gonna have harmony when you have three notes or more and you're gonna have an architecture that's going to make the notes sound like music just like you gonna have your cameras your lances and your flashes in your reflector be making music in a in a post okay that's all the types of music that you can play um even music like blues and classical they mean these two could not be more different from each other all came from those twelve notes off off off music which means with the tools that you can have with photography you can create your own style of photography you don't have to copy my style or copy this other photographer style you are gonna have the tools and you can make you want to play new new age you want to play jazz you want to play blues you can do it with the tools but you're gonna do it really well you're going to like poetry okay a couple of people just radio quick comment um this is jill adams is fabulous I bought your book several months ago and it has been transformational I've been practicing and re reading and loving my improvements I will this's great I will buy it at the first break uh from jackie sorry I have a question from jackie photo in new jersey I think what if you have another full time job or go to school or volunteer would you say someone shouldn't be in the photography business if they don't have time to practice no of course not when I was teaching guitar I was also going to school like you can make time my uh my little sessions that I do during the week sometimes last five to ten minutes it's just that I do them that's the difference there's no people have kids like you have like twenty years you have three kids right you have three kids like people have kids and keep everyone's busy but we also waste time no matter how busy we are on dh I mean you can go about this in so many angles if you spend three hours editing your photos maybe try taking them really well so you don't have to edit them so much that will free up one hour that you could use for something else for may be working on your something new