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Lesson Info

Shoot: Outdoor with Tennis Player

We have another sports player, we have a tennis star. We kinda wanna show you some of the stuff, how we use high-speed sync to give us some shallow depth of field. We're gonna kinda get him a little dirty, a little sweaty in a sense with a fake way. We'll tell you about that. And we do this a lot in our high school, senior sessions. Again, most of the time where we live, we don't have to worry about sweat 'cause it's hot and we would make it ourselves. But in the winter, we just kinda like the weather they have now here. You usually don't sweat too much. So, we actually are going to incorporate some of that. Really try to make some edgy senior photos, some more realistic, what we actually would do in a real session. We are limited too, to a small area, because we wanna be able to show you everything. But we're actually probably going to shoot some stuff, Cody we'll shoot it, Amy and Suzy or myself, will light it and we'll actually explain what we're doing along the way. So, make sure i...

f you have any questions, make sure you ask us, we wanna help you explain on each step of the way. And hopefully along with that, we wanna ask the class, if you have any questions, you have any concerns, please ask us, if not hit our Facebook or Twitter and we'll definitely help you out as well too. All right, so let's bring up our model real quick. I'm gonna get some of these tennis balls. If we had a tennis court, it's always good to incorporate the tennis court, tennis courts are so good to shoot on when you have a tennis player, 'cause you have some really straight lines, you have the net, you always have usually a high fence it has a fence, I mean a blockage in the fence that you can use as the background. But sometimes, you'll have other people playing on the other courts and that kinda stuff and that's where we use our high-speed sync a lot with this TTL to block out all that mixture, all that extra stuff that's going on. So, we wanna kinda just, again, you're gonna have to imagine that we're on a tennis court, instead of the green grass, guess it's tall grass court and we're gonna use this, and kinda pose him as if it was a high school senior, which I don't know if you are or not, you look pretty close to it. And then we're going to go from there and have, again, kind of what we really would do in a real session. All right, let's have a seat over here on this bench. This is going to be the all good, just right in the middle of the bench, kind of a tough guy and kind of lean over. In fact, I want you to maybe lean over and put the racket down like that. And you're going to kind of, something like this. And so, when you do this kind of pose, just to kind of let you know, Cody getting him to spread his legs a little bit more, which is more of a mainly pose, we mentioned it yesterday. You want a more of a mainly pose, Get it, get him to lean over, really kind of flex those shoulders, show those broad shoulders. Usually a female, you don't wanna shoot straight on. It makes them look too mainly. With a guy you can, a female, you wanna turn away from the light, a guy You can go right into it. Really aggressive and that's what we want right now. And so, we'll just put a few of these tennis balls down. And this is advantage of a wide angle. Remember Cody talking about, with a wide angle, if you're at the widest angle, anything that's close to the lens is gonna distort. So, when we shoot shorter women, shorter people, heavier people, we shoot down and up wide angle. It extends their legs, makes them look better. This is exactly the same thing we're doing with the actual tennis balls now. So, we're gonna distort those tennis balls, using it as a leading line right into your player. All right, so what I'm gonna do here, this is going to be, I'm not going to make it super dramatic. (faintly speaking) I already have a hair light from the sun coming in super bright. So, I'm not gonna go really dramatic, like I was doing earlier. This is going to be, I'm gonna shoot this how I would shoot a regular senior session, this is something that I would try to sell my clients. So, I don't need it to be extra dramatic on this one, I've got a nice hair light already. So, I'm gonna leave my exposure compensation to zero. So, straight across exposure compensation, I will take two shots just to show you with and without flash. So first shot. Yeah, Stand about here to make sure you get a good view of him. But again, as he's explaining to Suzy and Amy, this is really what you got to learn to have a light stay like we used earlier, that's fine, but we're trying to show you different variables. the mother could actually light this up, lots of times in our sessions, we have the mom light them up or hold the lights 'cause it feels like they're part of the entire experience and brings the family together. But sometimes your family don't want to, they just want to pay, that's why I'm paying you for, we use the light stand and we would move on. Okay, so the first thing that should be coming up, thumbs up when it comes up, first image has to come up. Okay, great. So that's that's what the camera thinks is a proper exposure, it's decent, his face isn't lit really great. So, what I'll do, I'm gonna introduced flash now, got my flash compensation at zero. Here we go with the first shot. (camera shuttering) Great. So, you can see the difference in the two shots. The first shot, it looks like it was underexposed by at least a third of stop. So, I'ma take that shot one more time at zero compensation, 'cause again, the first one's going to be close to natural light and then I am going to make it a little more dramatic by underexposing. So, one more time, pretty close to proper exposure or I don't know what it was. sun. Yeah. (camera shuttering) So, this is probably something that I would sell my client. It is even on camera compensation. So, I can see everything, I can see all these balls in the foreground, I can see him, I can see the bushes in the background, that's that's a great shot. But on the same hand, if I wanted to see what the shot would also look like with a little more dramatic lighting, let's underexpose a little bit and bring in some of that blue skies behind him. So, all I'm changing in this shot, I'm gonna underexposed by one stop, take it back, I'm going to expose about two stops, 'cause I'm gonna make big adjustments and we'll see what that looks like. Also While shooting, one word of advice, I just looked down, it's much like when I played golf in high school and college, you never want your shadow to go across someone that's putting on the green, you never want your shadow, if you're holding the light, you have to constantly be aware of your shadow also on these images, when you're outside shooting like this 'cause I looked down real quick, is it almost like a panic, I wonder if my shadow was going across. The sun's going this way, so we're in great place. But that's something to be aware of, as someone that's holding the light stand, not to put your shadow across the image. Let's take a shot, it should be up by now, nice, beautiful blue skies. He may need a little more flash, I'm gonna bump up my flash compensation and plus one, take a shot one more time. (camera shuttering) I think that's great. In fact, this would probably be the one I would end up showing them. I like it being a little bit darker like that, I like the blue skies, the color and everything, it's just a little more saturated, a little richer than my initial offering of the zero compensation. I really liked the underexposed image better than the first shot. What's your stop? 2.8. So 2.8, what's your shutter speed? I know that's on the screen, 4,000 but I don't know what it is. 4,000. 4,000. So, one 4,000 of a second, at 2.8. I take the same shot and just adjust from 2. and go up to like 16 or something. So again, all he's doing now, is taking the exact same shot at 2.8 and f/16 or something like that because you're in AV, A mode, you don't have to change anything. The same amount of light is going to be outputted. (camera shuttering) We didn't have any light on them. Same amount of lights going to be output, (camera shuttering) everything is going to be the same, you don't have to change anything, except that one dial from 2.8 to f/16. And so now, you're gonna basically have the exact same look, but in the sense of light on the camera, but completely two different depth of field. Now, this lens doesn't show it as well as other lenses. Right. This being such a wide angle lens, the difference in the f/16 and f/2.8, there is a difference and you will be able to see it on your screen but it's not as dramatic as if you had like a 7, or something like that, There is more telephoto, really zooming in. 'Cause this lens has a very wide depth of field even at 2.8, since it's such a wide angle. So, I know we kind of keep talking about that, but I just wanted to explain again. Once more, this is exactly how we shoot, this is one advantage we shooting using the A mode, AV mode, is when you want to change from 2.8 to f/16, so, having a shallow to a huge depth of field or vice versa, you only have to change that one dial. It's really fast and really accurate. I think the sun's gonna be clear for a while, so let me take a couple shots with the different f-stops with the sun and the frame. See if we can see the difference in how the sun flare acts at the two different f-stops. So, I'ma start off with a 2. And also we had some questions why he's lining this up. Again, I noticed online in the breaks I tried to check out, I tried to help people out, we had some questions over what flashes will work in this system? And for the Nikon system, you can have the SB-800, the 900 or the nine, 10, they will intermingle, master, slave any way you want. For the Canon system, you have the 550, the 581, and the 600s, if the 600's in the optical setting, not the radio setting, they can all intermingle as master and slaves. All right, now we're up to an f/22. Let's see if we can see a difference on the the way that it treats the sun. (camera shuttering) I don't see a huge difference with that cloud there. And again, the clouds, you got a haze up here, but also this is the functionality, I mentioned it yesterday of your lens. When I showed on the slideshow, if you've watched the program the day before, when you had the Golden Gate Bridge and you had the really strong sun flare, it's a product of your lens. Perfect example if you're Canon users, the 24 to 70 version one, the 24, 70 version two, the version one, you will hardly ever get the sun flare, the nice long beans, but the version two, you'll get it very simple. Well, the problem is there's a little wispy cloud just in front of the sun. And between the two images, on the second one, I can see the sharp blades coming off of the sun, the sharp sun beams, but that cloud really masks some of the, it's not the best example to show. So, sorry guys. All right, so, with this guy, this is a very simple shot, this is one that's very easy to do, this is a perfect example of how we're doing, we're in this area, but he has the dark hair. So, the sun gives us this huge rim light, you're not going to be able to get this much rim light with an artificial flash, unless you have multiples. So, this is a beautiful example of using the rim light. He has darker skin, He has a darker shirt, so the TTL really shouldn't mess up too much on here. He was redheaded, the black shirt would really call some issues, probably with TTL, especially your evaluative. When Cody had mess up on that first shot, what happened was he probably picked up the sun in that second shot without realizing it, in his metering and that sun being so bright, dropped his exposure down, that's why that shot was darker than the others. And so if you notice, when he's lying down again, he was kinda putting his hand over his sun flare, to kinda block that setup so the value of matrix metering, would not be picked up. Me, I shoot spot metering, I would never have to worry about that sun, I'll just put it on his nose every time and pretty much have the exact same exposure every time. And when I say that I use the center-focusing point and just metered directly on his nose and then underexpose from there. If that helps. Let's do one more, we'll go with kind of a depth field shot. Have a seat on this back and put your feet up here. Yeah, just kinda sit up there. That's fine, I want you to hold the racket out towards me and you can just bounce this ball, just right here. So again, this is a depth field, so I'm going to try to really demonstrate the depth of field with this lens, which is like I said, it's kind of difficult since it's so wide, but if I get something close enough, we'll be able to make it work. You want two? Huh? You want two? sure. (camera shuttering) That's a lot better example. And so, once you're zoomed in, clouds come over, clouds come off, you're really gonna be able to just to leave your exposure where it is, you won't have to really underexposed anymore. And you can just adjust your flash compensation for the most part. You wanna say anything about it? Nice. And look at the color, look at the color that we have, right? Nice, I'm done. Yeah, high five, let's move on. Hey, are you guys ready for a photo challenge? Yeah sure. Yes. Okay, cool. So, now that you have our wonderful model back light, you got that light down, could you demonstrate for a, excuse me, Nifa, I know you're going step by step but could you show us, moving your subject to a new pose location, take the shot and demo how quickly the workflow would be? So, going from like maybe backlight to full lit. Okay. Pose him somewhere, I'm out of poses. So, they want full sun or do they care, What do they want? They just said a totally different lighting scenario. I would turn a little this way, so we'll still get the sign a little bit. 'Cause the problem is, I know he says he wants a different pose, but we're still always going to put the sun in their back if possible. Because I don't want my clients this way. 'Cause I'm literally, I'm not trying to squint, I'm squinting. So I'd rather have him turn this way. And once you have that set, once you have it, even though you can completely change his pose, it's pretty much gonna stay, because that AV and that TTL is gonna get you in the zone, It probably take two shots and probably be good to go. Go ahead and light him from here, both of y'all here, please. One kind of further down or something. Now, if he maybe wants us to go into the shade, from the full sun to the shade, that might work as well too, we could do that. I'ma still make this dramatic, I'ma leave the sun in the shot, it's very similar to the other shot, it's not much different. (camera shuttering) I'm gonna increase my flash compensation, y'all get in pretty close. (camera shuttering) Now I could get something very dramatic like that. Then I can move over and now I'm gonna to get something that's not as dramatic. All I'm gonna to do, is not underexpose as much. Want you to both light from here, please. And again, since he doesn't have any bangs or hair that falls into their eyes, our female earlier in the last segment when she had her hair pulled back, but if you had females with their hair that comes down over their eyes, it's really gonna dictate which side these flashes will go on. You don't wanna come here, if their hair's coming down this way and this part is covered, you don't wanna put the flash in on this side 'cause those bangs will cause a shadow on their face. So, if it's this way, this is where You wanna always try to bring that meaning from this side. So, basically I took two shots, I don't know if they're gonna sell fast or what, I took one shot was very dramatic, I was underexposed by at least two, maybe three stops, really darkened up the sky, but the sun in the image is very dark, very dramatic, very moody. I stood up, I moved over a little bit, I adjust my in-camera compensation to only a third under, which gives me some of the background, the greenery in the flowers and shrubs back there. Took a shot, it was a little flashy. I took another shot, turned down my flash compensation to minus one, and I was there. All right, now come over here. Let's see if we can get that dappled light kind of stand. Maybe lean right here. Let's see if we have any dappled light on his face. Or his shoulder. Get it? Little bit. All right, this may help with the dappled light shot we were talking about earlier. So we're going back to the dappled light. Let me get y'all about right here. I don't know if the cameras can see that, I know we're moving pretty good. So, the gazebo, that latticework, is throwing that dappled light on his face. And so, basically we're going to just pose for the background and then let the splash take out that dappled look. And I'm gonna take this into multiple shots, so you can see how I'm underexposing and adding the external light. So, a first shot, is what the camera thinks is proper exposure at zero compensation. (camera shuttering) Everybody can see the dappled light on his face. Can we know when we got it? Got it, Great. You can see the light. Everybody's been in a situation similar to this I'm sure. And you gonna go, Oh man, I hate that, he's got spots on his face, what am I going to do? Oh my God, I quit. So, but we're not going to quit, we're going to underexpose, I'm gonna underexpose by one stop and we're gonna see what that does to the light on his face, and then I'll add light. We underexposed by one stop, what do you think the image is gonna look like? Dark. The dapple's probably be stronger, huh? No, the dapples are lighter, 'cause I'm underexposing. I'm gonna undisposed about one more stop and we go full two stops. (camera shuttering) Even better. Now, he is extremely dark, I can still see the dappled light just a little bit, but it's not as offensive as it once was. Now, I'm gonna introduce flash, leave it at zero compensation. Turn your chin this way just to the top right. Here in front of each other, perfect. (camera shuttering) Great, that's a little flashy, I'ma turn my flash compensation down, I keep going to zero. He's fairly dark skinned and he has a black shirt on. So again, that TTL sees that and says, Whoa, there's not enough light here, I need more light. So, it keeps asking it to give me more power. So, typically on the shots I've been shooting him, I've been right about negative one, I keep going back to zero for the teaching purposes, but I probably need to shoot him almost always at minus one flash compensation. And if you have the new Canon Mark III or the new Canon X, that's the first two cameras that have that third sensor that's just for, I mean processor not sensor, that's just for TTL metering. This issue isn't pretty much null and void anymore With those new modern cameras. Here's my final shot. I'm at minus two, I'm minus one in two thirds flash compensation, minus two in the camera. And there may be a little bit of model light on him, but, I can barely see it anymore. The final answer? Final answer. It's good enough for me. So finally we got to the dappled light challenge. Perfect. And I believe you did all of that in about four and a half minutes. So, for whoever asked, who's the challenge. Well done, you guys. Well that's about all differences you're gonna get from literally full sun in the middle afternoon to Shade with dapple. And you're gonna have that, we had a big tree, you're gonna have that all the time. Awesome, one more quick question before we return to our shooting, we know that you talked about spot metering yesterday and we've had a handful of questions about it since, so, Enlightened says, you mentioned that you spot meter off the subject's nose to get your exposure in AV mode, after you have your exposure, you would have to recompose an auto focus on the subjects eye, wouldn't you therefore lose all of your original exposure? You can loose your exposure. Okay. It's a great question. Generally, if I use spot metering, absolutely I'll center-focus right on their nose, I'll lock that exposure giving me, which for Canon it's a little asterisk button on the back, you push it locks it for about five seconds. I can recomposed and then I can photograph. Perfect. Well, there you go. Enlightened, Jim and VA and everyone else who was asking. When you do evaluative, you don't really need to do that 'cause it's gonna take in everything. The only problem is exactly what happened with earlier on here with Cody. Earlier, when I did the one shot and the exposure was close to even, I framed it up just a little, actually, I focused on his face and when I did that, the sun was in the image, and then I recomposed without the sun and the second shot, it was a lot darker because it was underexposing, counting that sun. So, the subsequent shots, I did not focus on his face, I focused on his knee, that way, It didn't take that initial reading with the sun in the image. 'Cause that was my problem, I had laid down earlier. Okay, Thank you. Thank you. Is that it? Yeah, that's it. That's it for now. All right, we're gonna do one more and then we're gonna probably get you all sweated up. So, let's get you, what did that one shot look like with the, you did full sun with him? Just standing and it was very dramatic, we could do, Come over here. Just kinda put your foot up, nothing major. Put your foot up, be careful these got thorns, I don't want you to sting yourself. And just kinda do a shot like this, Yeah, that even looks good with tennis racket cross. Be careful. So again, in this small location, with the sun unfortunately, we're gonna have him looking this way, almost in every location we have that were limited with the cameras. Because I want that sun behind him. We can turn him now that we've blocked off most of the sun, so what I would do is maybe even move him, if you can, I'm not gonna push you, but you can move him out just a little bit. And I liked that, looked down. And lots of times what we'll do, is we'll do shots with him looking forward, and then we'll have him just look down. Especially athletes, because it's not just about his face, it's also about the products he has in his hands, the tennis racket, his muscle, wrestler, football player with helmet in his hand, that kind of stuff. So, lots of times, you'll make him part of the image and not the image. We don't do very many of these, because again, grandma wants to see her baby's face, but we'll throw some in here. And so, we're using the sun as the backlight, we're using the sun almost as a rim light, almost as a fill light too, by his placement. And then we'll use a fill light, artificial, to be the main light. All right, we'll do another two part series. This one's with no flash zero compensation. If we had any overhang or anything, we would get out of the sun, we would basically take that sun out. Right now, we're using a two light system, the sun being the backlight and the artificial being the main light, which is our primary way that we like to always shoot. If we can get away with it. We really don't like to use the sun as anything else, as backlight at this time of day. Let's bring more light in, and I want to slide it right, keep kinda looking down and just slide them right in front. Especially the farther North you get up in the country, towards the poles or farther South, you're gonna get softer light, you'll get a longer sunrise, sunset, you'll be able to use the sun a lot more in many ways as main fill and hair. But this time of day, we still want to use it just as a backlight. Next shot, I got this light going right in his face. Really brings him out. The first shot he was extremely dark, all I could see were basically the bushes behind him, second shot, flashlights up his face. All right, I want you to take a break, I want you to go get set up for the next shot, we're gonna kinda talk about some of this stuff. All right, we're gonna get our model set up. And what we're going to do, and I'm going to tell you off camera, since we don't have any sweat, so to say, we're going to go ahead and put some baby oil or something on him to make him glisten, kind of like our football player we had yesterday. We're going to possibly wet his hair up to make it look like sweat. You only wanna do this after you have a few nice shots. So, let's say we did a few shots, we've done 90% of our session, now we're gonna get him wet, we're going to get them tough. If we have any black eyeliner, we always keep the black eyeliner that sports players have, it looks like ChapStick, we can keep a tube in our studio, we'll rub it on there, the baby oil will actually make that run down his face. And will literally getting really tough or her, don't forget about the girls, 'cause I promise you, a softball player is just as tough as a baseball player. Because if you don't say that, they'll probably hurt you. We've had some really tough softball girls, so toughen them up, get them up and then we shoot this towards the end of the session. But also, with this said, this doesn't have to necessarily be a tough guy look, you can get very sexual, very sensual looks from women and guys this way as well. Just remember one rule of thumb when you're shooting high school seniors, you can have two to three sexy things. You can have a sexy look, you can have a sexy pose or you can have a sexy clothing, but you only want two of the three, you don't wanna do all three. You do all three, you kinda go over the edge, no matter where you are, and you're gonna get in trouble. So, we try to keep that in mind, there's lots of times when we do high school seniors and it's too far for us, we'll pull it back. Even though lots of times the parents say, no, that's all right. That's fine with that parent but you gotta remember it's your business, It's every parent that looks at your images, it's not just that one. So, just look at just the two out of the three and we're good to go. All right, here he comes back with some sweat. Perfect, actually putting him on the bench again. sit at the bench again. Same identical shot and we'll show you the difference. All right, et me get you to, I want you to kinda look this way, so that you can lay right here. We do this all the time with our players. In studio and outside the studio. Now you can turn your chin this way a little bit, more. Back it that way. More, go, okay. The bench is not level. Give me a secondary light, I want some well. That may be enough. I think I want some spill on him now. (muffled speaking) I don't know, I'm talking to myself. All right, first shot, I've got zero compensation in my camera. I'm gonna go zero on the flash. See what I get. And what this does, the baby oil, the artificial sweat, it's really gonna make the sun in this case, shine off his body, it's really gonna make the flashes really show up, your rim light is gonna be stronger, everything's gonna be a lot more aggressive and a lot easier to show up. Now, first shot, it's a little bright for me. So it's underexposed in the camera, let's go minus two. It's gonna really darken up those skies. (camera shuttering) And as he's doing this, remember guys, myself, Suzy or Amy, We're back here with a 7,200, shooting also on the same flash, the same slaves, even natural light and shooting completely different look. One of you'll point kind of low. I got a lot of light on his face, it kind of falls off towards his feet, so I'm gonna get one of my light girls here, to bring their flash down Focus just on his feet, good. (camera shuttering) Better. I think that image is great, it looks almost like an HDR. HDR, high definition range. It's got nice blue skies, he's lit great, his really red shoes really pops and the red on his shirt pops. I think that's a wonderful image. And this is what I was saying, you get that strong color, without any Photoshop. You're collecting, you're absorbing that color, trackers really likes color in our work or not really just color but saturation. So, even if it's black and white, well like a strong black and white, sepia, strong sepia, we can do the fades out and stuff, and post if we want to, that's easy, but we really liked this. So, when you have this color, we're really aggressive in collecting it in the image. So, we don't have to do too much work in post work, 'cause I really like to collect what we can in camera, 'cause not only the less post work you have, it speeds up the process. But we also do what we call a quick-take sessions in our studio and some outdoors, that we literally shoot, process and sell within the hour. And it's kind of a hybrid volume. And the better you get the the image in the camera, the quicker you can process and sell the images. So, you wanna be able to get as much as you can in camera, without Photoshop, you don't wanna rely on it. It's a safety feature if you have to, but we want to be able to collect this color and use it. And this technique is Cody just showed you, it's really easy to collect this color. Does that work? All right. Did you get anything in your hair little bit? Not much. Okay. There's actually a couple of questions in the chat room/questions/challenges. And a lot of people don't always have the ability to put the sun behind their subjects, like let's say, at a wedding and they want the church in the background, but they have the sun coming straight at them. And they're getting really harsh shadows from their natural features like we have right now, from our eyebrows and our nose. So, how do you deal with full sun when you absolutely have to be in that scenario? Let's do that shot right now. Cool, and that is from Richie Photo and Molly Mom. And then unfortunately, just to answer the question, this goes back to, you're not making award-winning images, you're making paycheck images. And that's good when it comes to a wedding. So, sometimes you're gonna have some circles under their eyes, if you have a fashion bride or groom, you can come up and get sunglasses on their eyes, which helped tremendously also. So, don't be afraid to have fun with it. But very much like the dappled light, it's almost the exact same thing. The big problem here is, is they're gonna be squinting and that's the big issue that you can't get around, they're looking into the sun, they're going to be squinting, so he's gonna smile, which sometimes even makes the squinting worse when they smile. So, you maybe have them look away, maybe have them placed where they have, if it's the bride, she has her flowers in her hands, and she's kinda looking off and then you have the shot, she can look down maybe even. So, you're not directly having that portrait in her eyes, but it's still a beautiful portrait of her dress, of the flowers, of the church and the background. Again, as I said earlier, make her part of the image, not the image, when you have that bad lighting. All right, here's my first image. I've got zero compensation in the camera. The sun, as you can see, it's pretty harsh coming down on his forehead, his nose, to his eyes are pretty dark. So, all I'm gonna do, is introduce some wireless flash coming in from the left side, which is the darker side of his face. So, if we get one flash up here it'll be good. Perfect, look back towards me kind of the way you were before. This way and keep it kinda the same, good. I've got flash compensation at, I'm gonna leave it at negative one, which is what we've been shooting with him mainly. (camera shuttering) I think that's great, let me get one with his tongue now sticking out (laughing) (camera shuttering) Good All right. So, don't be scared to make a wider image portrait when you have bad lighting situations. It really helps because again, the wider you get away from the eyes, but the problem was in the challenge or not really the challenge, but the question, was the raccoon eyes, the shadows under the eyes, the further you're able to get away from that and bring in other data, other information that the viewer can look at, the better it's gonna look, because they're not gonna just see those shadows under their eyes. But this is the technique, if you have to get those eyes, this is the way you do it. I hope that image answers your question or helps you out. You don't always have to blast them with full power flash. Like I said, I was hitting him with minus one, he's a little darker skinned plus his dark shirt. The regular flash compensation at once, can be more light so I'm asking for less light and that also makes it look not as flashy. Also, flash placement, I'm not using direct camera flash, I have my off-camera flash off to the side, which is still gonna give him his face, that depth and that dimension that you need to look normal. And that's important. Try to always get the camera off, I mean the flash off the camera, get the camera off the camera, get the flash off the camera even a little bit. If you only, people out there listening, if you don't have any other flash, you only have the one flash, even buy a $70, $80 extend TTL, Cody had mentioned earlier and just pull that flash, whole handhold it and shoot it. It makes a huge difference in your images. Sometimes in our workshops and classes, I see people, you have multiple people using one flash to slave off of, and the first person will be shooting here, getting a great image and then another person will be shooting right here, so using this as a slave. Well, this isn't any different than having it on camera flash basically, 'cause it's in the same plane. So, always make note of where your slave is, I try to do something about a 45-degree angle off of my main camera angle. And 45-degree angle's about right, you get any farther away from that, you're really gonna start getting that shadow underneath their nose, that long, what they call loop lighting and if you keep going, you'll go with the old classic Rembrandt, where that shadow connects with a shadow on your cheek. So, you really wanna do about a 45-degree angle loop pattern and it'll be about right where you wanna go. But remember, you can see Amy, hold it up like you were photographing. See, she's not holding it very high above his eye, you got to remember, it's almost eye level, especially with the guys, as I mentioned earlier yesterday, if you bring it up too high, our brow line will actually block the light and you will get those raccoon eyes, which is the problem they were just talking about. So, it's really a direct line. And I think that was also something we've done over the years that a lot of our students have problems with. They just want to hold that flash up too high, like if they're in the studio. If you have a diffusing panel, if it is a cloudy day and you have a soft box in front of it or some just white-ripstop nylon works great as a diffusing panel, you can raise it up higher. But without anything bare flash, you wanna keep it about eye level or slightly, just a little bit above. Another challenge? All right. This one's from me actually, if that's okay? No. Perfect. Last week I had a shoot where the client wanted, it was bright, full sun at 2:30 on a sunny day in Seattle. Of course, when does that ever happen? And the client wanted movement in the photos, they wanted the people blurry in the background and so what I had to do is like. So, the bride and groom still, and then the people walking behind or something? Yeah, so I was able to pull it off using three different tips and techniques and using composite and it was just, it was a lot of work. But I think that the way you guys are teaching, I could have probably done it, maybe with your new-- Dragging the shutter, like we talked about earlier would have done. Yeah. Can you do that in the bright sign out here, maybe with kind of swing your tennis racket or something? Yap. Okay. Yeah? Cool. So to do this, now we got to not use high-speed sync. 'Cause again, shutter speed controls motion, to freeze motion, generally, you're looking at one 500th of a second. Well, with high-speed sync, we're at 2832, and we're probably shooting at one 2,000th, one 4,000th, one 8,000th of a second out here. So, it's going to freeze everything. Waterfalls, everything will be locked in right now. So, basically we're gonna reverse it. You can go into manual, you can go into T mode if you wanted to, but we're going to shoot at a very, or you can leave it in that AV mode and just raise up your f-stop towards f/16, f/22. And lower that shutter speed below one 500th of a second, is what you want. So you'll get that motion. So, as he swings, it'll be blurry. And so, it's gonna be much like what we did earlier today in the earlier segments. With dragging the shutter, we're just gonna do it outside. So, to kind of answer what you're saying, the racket is the motion, but we do this a lot too, we'll have a bride and groom standing there, maybe a dip, a kiss, that kind of thing and the people behind them will be walking and it'll be blurry. Okay, I've underexposed by, it looks like minus one, I'm at f/22, because what I'm trying to do is to add motion, I need to slow down my shutter. I've got a shutter speed, I'm still in AV mode. It'd be a lot easier if I went to manual, but I'm going to try to get through on this one. I've got shutter speed of around one 15th of a second. Actually it's at one 25th. Let's go ahead and go, give me a swing. Now, give me a fast swing. And look at the camera. (camera shuttering) That was too fast (laughing) I was slow on that one. One more. He missed you. (camera shuttering) I'm not loving that. Point it more towards him. Okay, tell you what I'm widening up this shot, I want you to just give me a swing kind of that way. (camera shuttering) Okay, I was, very slow on that, one more. (camera shuttering) And I wanna say, one of the reasons why he's having problems with communication is a perfect example. Don't go so far down. Come straight across. let him get glitter. Okay. (camera shuttering) Okay. The subject matter in the best of this, but this final image you can see motion in his racket and he has stopped, unfortunately it stopped kind of right in front of his face. And then one of the reasons why he was having problems with communicating is, well, let me throw it back to the class. Why would he have problems communicating shooting right now, when he wouldn't over here? The sun. Yeah, the sun. Because the sun beams are coming directly into him and so that slave flash, is competing directly with the sun coming right at it as well. And so, you're really having a harder time competing 'cause the sun is directly in the line of sight as a slave. I'ma go to manual mode, I'm gonna get one that I'm happy with. So now he's upset, now you've challenged Cody and he's not gonna stop until he gets it. Cody, thank you (laughing) So just know when you're using a line of sight guys, and you're actually directly in the pattern of the way the sunbeams are coming, you're gonna have a hard time with this communicating. 'Cause again, the slave flash has to see the flash from the master flash or it won't work. Again, a Radiopopper PX system would solve all this, but if you don't have it, that's the way you can overcome it. Okay, one more. (camera shuttering) I'm fast, I'm missing you. (camera shuttering) (laughing) Okay, there is my shot, There is my motion. I got motion of his hand, he stopped and I think he's too blurry. Now this is extremely difficult with this bright sun because what I'm trying to do, I got to lower my shutter speed low enough that I can get some motion, which right now I'm at one 30th of a second. But since the sun is so bright, there's still enough ambient light on him, that any little motion that he does, he's going to blow also. So, this would be a lot easier if I was in doors where there's no extra light on him, he could jump around and do whatever and I can flash-freeze him and then get motion blur with the camera or whatever in the background. But this is quite a bit more difficult than dragging the shutter indoors when there's a lot less light. Well, this is even more difficult than a bride and groom standing there. 'Cause the bride groom is going to be still, while the background is going to be moving. So, the shot that you kinda described is actually easier than this because when he swings at racket, his whole body's moving. And so, it's picking up the motion where a bride and groom, again, you can have a dip, you can just have them holding hands, looking away, doing something stupid, doing something fun and then the people behind them will be moving and you would easily gotten that shot. Because they're not going to be moving as much. If you have a tripod, you could use a tripod here would even be easier. But that would be the technique. So, you wanna again, when it comes to motion, you wanna slow that shutter speed down, now raise it up, which up to this point, we've been doing the opposite since we have high-speed sync, we've been above the shutter speed, I mean flash-sync speed and this case, we go way below it. All right. You about to sweat it out? No, it's good. All right so, the other thing that I wanna know, we don't necessarily have to do it, when you have this, it's kind of a business thing, when you shoot any, especially your wedding people, I know you do this, but a lot of people forget in portraits, shoot for albums as well. We sell albums, we show albums, we use ProSelect in our sales sessions and we actually do this. So, when you have something like this, your consultation, concentrate on the little details, 'cause the tennis player, they're gonna have nice shoes, football player will have a helmet or something, concentrated all the little details and put light on those as well. So, when you're shooting this, especially people that shoot twos, while one is concentrated on the main shot, zoom in and get a lot of those smaller details for those albums. Yes, we have another question from Karen Wright, she asks sometimes in bright light, I have problems with the main flash triggering the slave, any suggestions? You're gonna have problem with a lot of sides, the brighter the sun. And I'll go back to why, again. Basically they call it the IR system, but it's actually, when you use an external flash, you have in all the wave bands of light. But this flash, has to be brighter than the sun for that slave flash to see it. A while ago, Amy was pointing it and that was just because the angle that we shot it, Amy was pointing her, the part that receives the signal, directly into the sun. And so, now those sun beams are coming right into that sensor and it's overpowering this flash before it can pick it up, it can't quite separate it. when we were over here and we're holding it, we're kinda at a different angle. So, she's holding the sensor away from the sun, coming the same angle as the sun and so this is firing and it picks it up easy. But over here, her sensor was pointed directly at the sun and you're going to have a harder time. The most important thing to always remember, is that the master flash communicates with the flash tube, the slave flash listens with the black bar above the little red window. So, always make sure you have direct line of sight, meaning, this has always pointed directly at that slave, black window. So, her job, my light-stick girl, her job is to always move this black window so it was pointing towards me and this was pointed towards the subject, whether it's over here or whether it's behind her. So again, this is good where it's pointing past her, this is best where the window is pointed directly at this window, that's best line of sight. That's the best you can get. So, anytime you have trouble, make sure this flash tube was pointed directly at that black window. And that's why when he was trying to think of your challenge, and his mind was going to how it was going to do that, that's why I went over here and I literally just adjusted his flash for him. 'Cause I knew that was what the problem was. Right on, thank you very much for clarifying that. Cindy, says in a group scenario like with the tennis player, would you need more than one flash for more people? So, let's say, there is the whole family sitting on the steps of that church and you need a whole group shot and everybody the shadows from their eyes and everything. Where would you angle your flashes for a large group portrait? Yeah, absolutely. You're probably gonna need more light 'cause it's such a small light source. There's ways of getting around it. And it also depends on how bright it is, if you have a diffused light, you could get away with probably one light, you could even put a light panel in front of it or really diffuse it from a soft box again, the white-strip nylon. But if it's a bright day, you're gonna probably need more light or you can over underexposed so much. Unfortunately there are small light source, so it's not going to spread a lot. And there's nothing you can do about that. 'Cause light is light, it's not gonna change. But if you're up here on the West Coast where you have a lot of clouds, like we had earlier today, you could get away with probably one light and line them all up. But generally on a bright day, you're gonna have to worry about that. If that's the case and only have the one flash, I concentrate on the bride and groom and make sure they're lit up, I wanna to get everybody, but my bride and groom are my clients, that's their day, even if mom or dad is paying for it, it's still the bride and groom's day and I use that one flash to light up their face. And I worry about the rest, the best I can. Oh, I have one actually. You have one? Awesome. From Not Just Mama, asked do you ever use diffusers on your speed lights? And that's a question-- Not Just Mama? Not Just Mama (laughing) was wondering about diffusers on your speed lights. And that is actually something that's come up over and over again today, as you guys have been shooting, the plastic piece that goes over your speed light, what do you think about them, and do you ever use them? Generally, No. If we do, we use the LumiQuest, little things, they actually have a little piece of Velcro that just actually kinda sticks around your flash when you attach multiple diffusing panels that they make on there. But the reason why we usually don't use those, is because in full sun, many times you're gonna be at plus two to three, that maximum power of that flash. And the problem is when you put that diffusing panel on there, you're gonna lose the stop of power. So now, we're at plus two is our maximum power and most of the time on a bright day, these flashes just don't put out enough light, so, we really don't want to defuse. As we talked about yesterday in high-speed sync, with one big flash burst, under high-speed sync, it's a pretty harsh light. When you get above high speed sync, it's a pulse system, that flash tube pops many times and it makes a softer light. So, it kind of diffuses it a little bit on its own, it's not a lot, but it does work, but generally that's not the main reason. The main reason is we can't afford to lose any more power with that one flash. Now, if we had two or three flashes as our slave flashes lined up side by side in a row, you could put a panel in front of it, but generally we don't use any flash diffusion. Or if you're shooting in a shade type situation whether it's on a cloudy day or an evening time or morning where the sun is not so harsh, you can use the modifier and have good luck with that. But like I said, typically, if it's bright, harsh sun and we're really pushing these to the limit, we won't use it because of the amount of light that we do loose. Yeah, if you go back to our yesterday's program, if you buy this program and you look at yesterday's part and it was cloudy and we did have a soft box on there, we were photographing and it's because it was cloudy. It was a real cloud today and 'cause it's easier, when you spread that light out, it allows you to make more mistakes. You don't have to be so fine-tune with the light, it allows you to put the light one place and it spreads it in more places, the shadows are a little soft and you don't have to worry about all that stuff. It does make your life easier. So, if you get a chance to use it, use it, if you can get away with it, if we can't, where we're from most of the time we're on a beach, much like the Mallee guys, if they have beautiful water, we don't, but there's no shade and it's very harsh light. We can't afford to use the soft boxes unfortunately or any other type of diffuser. And I mentioned it before, I'll mention again, since it's kinda on the same note, the Omni-bounce that kind of comes with the Nikon, it's not an Omni-bounce, but just a little plastic dome that goes over it. It'll knock off about a stop, but lots of times, if you just have the line of sight, we cut that end off so it won't diffuse it, but you actually be able to see that your main in your widest are actually communicating with each other. It's a nice optical visual alert to let you know that they're communicating. Hopefully that helps. Thank you. Not Just Mama. (laughing) Well played. Enlightened ask, Mike and Cody, are speed light suitable for high-volume portrait photography? And you can plug in that for tomorrow as well. On location, how many portraits can you shoot over the course of a day without them burning out? And yes, I used to do, now that I have more lights, I don't really use our speed lights for volume anymore because we have more lights. But when we first started off, I used to use my daughter's now 12, Megan. And but when she was in daycare, I used to use the Santa photos and other stuff, I used to use my speed lights and umbrellas all the time for them, 'cause I didn't have any other equipment. And, but I usually set them on manual mode, I wouldn't use the TTL that we're explaining today. 'Cause then at that point, not only will it save you battery power and to go to the second part of that question, allow those flashes or the batteries in those flashes to last longer. But two, it's the exact same light every single time and when you're in a control of the environment as volume or you want everything to look the same, manual is the way to go, you meet her at once, you have it and you just go with it. Where TTL in here with the changing environment, this is where TTL really shines, if you understand how TTL works, more than in the manual world inside. So, absolutely we do it all the time. Again, now there are so many diffusing panels that you can use, if you have a Radiopopper system juniors, if you're gonna use manual is what I would go with, you even can control the lights if you use Paul Buff products. It's just an amazing, easy system. So yeah, we use them all the time, but just more in the manual mode, not in the TTL aspect. Okay, awesome. We have just about 24 minutes until the end of-- 24 minutes. 24 minutes, I can't believe how fast this day has gone by, but I think we're ready to keep on shooting with you guys. You wanna move on. Okay, good. Perfect. And now we have clouds again, we've got to love Seattle. This is crazy. So now, basically your shooting is a lot easier. You basically can shoot any way you want, you're not gonna have any hard shadows, you can see on his face, that strong backlight is almost gone, you still see some on his face, that just kind of natural light. But honestly you can use it, you don't have to use it. 'Cause even if I was gonna use that, I'd still need some flash in his eyes to light up his eyes. So in this case, we could actually pose him anywhere we want, because we don't have to worry about the sun now coming on, and him squinting. They don't have to worry about his eyes being all small. We can put him anywhere we want. Let's do an artificial sun shot. so say, you've got a cloudy day, where it's cloudy and dreary, it's been raining, maybe it's winter time, everybody has that block feeling, but everybody wants to have their senior photos taken in the middle of summer or a nice, beautiful spring day. But if you don't have that day, you can make it look like it's a beautiful spring day. So, (camera shuttering) if it was a gun, I just would've shot somebody. I'm just gonna have you just look in this way, it's nothing fancy, I don't really care about posing. I'm just gonna show you the light and how the difference in his hair light is gonna look just like sunshine. So, first shot I'm gonna do, I'm gonna underexposed by just a third, not very much, just to kind of bring in some richness of the background behind him. Why don't you act as my main? You'll be the hair light in just a second, not yet. Turn that one off for now. And I'll even get a little bit of sky so we can see that it's cloudy. (camera shuttering) Let me make sure you're firing. (faintly speaking) Is your flash on? Okay. (camera shuttering) (faintly speaking) Yeah it did. Or did it not. I'm gonna zero compensation, see if it did fire. (camera shuttering) Yes, it did fire. I'm gonna go back to negative one, that was perfect exposure initially. Okay, negative one. Let's get more sky. (camera shuttering) Good. Turn your chin at that light just a tiny bit, perfect. Last shot (camera shuttering) good. All right, now, you can kinda see how dreary the sky is above him, above the building, I know it's horrible composition, but again, I'm just showing you this for the light, to show you how I can make sunshine come in on the shoulders. Now, Suzy, you're the sunshine come in nice and close. suzy's the sunshine. Good Can you get a little higher or you're too short? Mike, why don't you be the sunshine? Yeah. Amy's taller me, they'll switch, They'll be just good. All right, so now, Amy's a sunshine. Suzy is the main. suzy's the dreary, that fits them better. (camera shuttering) In fact Amy, that looks better. I want you to bring it in, I want the flash even in the corner of the, And so, very much like what we did inside when we were doing to get the field shot, this is almost the exact same thing. Good. (camera shuttering) All right, there it is, I can see (mumbles) Now, can everybody see that rim light on the, can you see it on the computer screen over there? I need a darker background, Let me get a darker background. One more, turn this way a little bit. If you had a monopod, instead of Amy kind of stretching out, a modified to hold it up over her would work better. Good, there you go. Amy, tilt it down a little bit more, good. (camera shuttering) Pull your whole flash light down. Because I'm not seeing enough contrast. (camera shuttering) Good, here's my sunshine coming in. I moved my background so I could put the tree behind him. So, we have the sun coming in through the trees, which isn't really the sun, it's all wireless flash. You said you had flare in there, how would you do that with the flash? The way, so you kind of simulate the sun flare. It's basically what I did there. Did you see the one on the screen? Oh, okay, I see it. Sorry, I took a little bit. Now would you make it, if you wanted more intense, would you make it 105? You know, flare is very tricky, especially since it's flash, it's not a constant light source, You don't want me to see it, So just a little bit of an angle change of your external flash can make that flare really strong or it can almost take it away. There's no right or wrong answer on flare, you just kinda got to play around with it and get to a point where you kinda realize, looking at the flash head at the angle of how much it was pointing back towards the lens, you'll kinda get a feel for which one may give you more flare than others. But flare is tricky, it's something that you don't always capture. Generally, like you said, when you have it in there, once you capture it in in your lens, you can maybe fine-tune it and catch that flare. But the problem is like he said, with flash flare, it's just that split second, so you don't know really where it's coming, if it's sun, you actually can see the flare reflecting off your lens through your viewfinder, you can move it around to where you actually get it just right in the imaging and you can capture it. Unfortunately, you don't really get it with this. So, it's a lot different, but you can use it to your advantage. And again, just like with the reflection, how the sun beams are, each lens is gonna react a little bit different to it. And so, you'll find out, I would do some testing to find out which one works best. But we use this technique quite a bit in our business to add that sun, so to say, in the image, add that flare, 'cause people, the clients don't know any different, they think it's sun, they think it's the sun, they're like, that's a cloudy day, how did that happen? When it's really your flash the whole time. And even on our football shots or other sports stuff, when we put the lights in the back, we leave them in there. Some people wanna hide them, we'll use it as a rim light, but we'll leave the lights in there as well. And you will get some refractive flare coming from those as well. All right, let's take one more and I'll leave the flash in it again, just to show how I might use flare. I want you to kind of squat down and put one, I like your red shoes, so I want you to really put that foot in the foreground. This can be kind of a depth of field shot too, the foot can be really big. Perfect, Amy, you're directing it. Suzy, come in. Now, Amy, bring your flash up and over, good. Turn it down towards him a little more, right there. Back a little bit, Amy, towards you. No, towards you, up. There's a (mumbles) on it. Right there. (camera shuttering) And as you can tell, the way Cody shoots, if you can't sit on the ground, you can't get a shot. No, it's impossible. One more, I'm getting a little lower. Pull your flash back a little bit, Amy. Hence the spider monkey. (camera shuttering) It's a little hot, I'm gonna turn the flash down just a little bit. One more. Back with Your flash a little bit, Amy. (camera shuttering) Good. All right, so I left the flash in up in the upper corner. I would probably try to crop it elevate, 'cause I can see some of the base of the flash, I don't really like that, but I do like the brightness of the flash head. This sky behind me is just so bright and white the flash doesn't show up as much as it would, if they was more of strictly a blue sky or if I had maybe, some trees or some shrubbery or something up there to mask it. But oftentimes, I'll leave the flash head just like that in the image. Cool. All right, I think we're unfortunately about out of time or running close to it. I got a few more last words, but I just want to start off by also saying thank you guys, for everybody, not only our class, but also the crew, you guys are amazing. We also have another creative lab workshop that I hope you've seen it's our high volume. I really feel that volume is really where a lot of photographers are gonna be going. Because you have weddings, you have so many people get into the business, which I personally think is wonderful. We were there too, we were beginners, we were part timers, we were weekend warriors, whatever you wanna call it. And I really don't think that, being how many hours you put into the business, is what makes you a professor, not one, I clarify you professional as you having a strong business, paying your taxes and all that good stuff. But two, it's how you treat the other photographers, being ethical, staying in line, don't treat other people really badly, to me, that's a professional. And with that, that's how we got into high volume and it's such a great business of photography. And there's a lot of headaches and there's a lot of things to get too, but we're gonna really go over that, in our other creative lab workshops. So, I hope you would stay and enjoy us for that, 'cause that's going to be really good. So, and then finally I just kinda wanna go into, and you can kind of cut off screen, but I just wanna go to remember when we were talking about not having problems with light, not understanding light, when you have a bad location, you have an ugly location, what to do, many times we actually did exactly what we did inside today, we actually turn off the lights or cut up the lights with our ambient light, and I don't know if they're showing the screen, but I want to make sure, on the screen, you'll see a slide that has a standard church that's across the board, especially if you're in the Bible Belt of the United States, it's a standard Baptist church in the South. And it's a church that I grew up in, it's not the prettiest thing in the whole world. It was built in the 40s and 50s, and we had a bridal session that the bride grew up in this church, her parents were the preachers in this church, and she wanted her engagement session in this church. And Cody and I showed up and we were completely lost on how to get these images, to basically honor this family. 'Cause she was the sweetest woman in the world. This would be like the area that you would say, no, I do not want to photograph it. But because our clients truly wanted to be in here and they were such wonderful people, we did what we could, to get into it. And so, we basically got there, we were wondering how it is, and if you look at the image, you'll basically see, basically a standard church, it's got ugly red carpet, nasty brown wood paneling over on the left side and the right side is basically just substandard windows that are really, they're stained glass, but they're really no pattern, they're kinda ugly. And so, what Cody and I did with one wireless light, we literally sat there and we basically turned off the entire process, turned off all the lights, basically use one wireless flash, kept the baptism area, which is important to her, which was her faith, and use one wireless flash to light her up. So, by turning off the lights, those ugly windows that were ugly, now have that beautiful yellow glow, that you see on the left side as a beautiful rim light. And then the one wireless flash would light her up and we used TTL, We basically used the baptism area as the background, as our sun, as our sky, as our lawn, whatever we were doing today, it's exact same technique. We basically metered for that background, showed that and then used TTL to light up our client. And it basically, all these images are in that exact same church, using the one wireless light and using the glow of those ugly stain-glass windows, as a beautiful glow, once you turn off the lights. If we would have never turned off these lights, we would never had a chance to capture any of these images. And so, I wanna challenge each and every one of you, that are listening, that watched over the last two days, to really challenge yourself, to think outside the box, to be inspired by other people's needs and wants, not just yours as an artist, and challenge yourself to take exactly what we did here, this young lady's faith, in this church and her passion for this church, weren't ours but it was hers. And then we use our art, to make her dreams come true. And I think that's the true sign of a real photographer. A real professional, is when you can take your art and not just push it on your clients, but take your art and blend it in with your clients and blend it into their dreams. And then to get together, you make a complete package.