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Shoot: Senior Portrait Q&A

Cinema teak in honolulu says doesn't matter you shoot stills in vertical or do you try to shoot stills photo still photos horizontal on ly in order to blend well with the horizontal format of the video personally I tend to shoot eighty percent of my photos for example e anyway so it's just a habit of artistic preference I guess yes, I definitely shoot verticals because you know if you're shooting a senior they're going to want that vertical headshot of them and I'm certainly not going to deprive them of that because I'm during infusion piece so you can definitely mix it up what's nice is with an emoto the way that they create the slide shows if you have a vertical picture in there they kind of give you a little bit of a background so it's not like a vertical picture in black it's a vertical picture with some something happening behind it right? We also offer a product product called the digital album which basically album design with moving video elements into it we're gonna demonstrat...

e this but vertical images actually look very good in that page layout so you have no horizontal page layout with vertical still image in than to horizontal videos she looks really good blended together on page all right, let me show you the rack focus that we're going to do with uh tyler here just gonna pull on this warrior a little bit over good all right, what's nice about working against the wall to is I have another point of contact, so a little bit more stability here where I can lean against the wall as well, and then if you could throw that reflector in there of yes, and I'm just going to use the magnification again just to get him to focus and again notice, and she just said they were just there exposure just a little bit to kind of compensate from the area that move from, you know, where the light was hitting into the light where the light wasn't hitting as much when I kick the reflector on here, it's probably gonna might even look no good little bit cold on my bounds, but you're married, you're warming up to you, so go ahead tie just gonna pick up your guitar, start playing with it there, and one of the easier things for me to do would be to focus on him first and then pulled back at a focus. Whatever do that he's focused and just pull back along the line for the wall there. Then I could just go back, and I'm going to go back and forth a few times and that's going to be a really great video clip for the fusion piece, right? Ugo side close ups on the hands you've got close ups on his face like I like to do extreme close ups on like the eyes and the nose and just kind of like, you know, rick concentrated looks, you know, things like that humans really great while we're here actually it's going to grab his shoes love the checkered shoes? Awesome, actually, even this angle's really great just kind of a nice hip length make sure you're focused still and same thing just hit record, let it play out and then rule your focus back. This gives options it's good to do things a couple different ways this way if you like something particularly later on, you have different options. All right, let's, try a pre focusing movement now, so what? I'm gonna have you do it, I want you rested guitar just against the share there, but I'm gonna have you walk away from it and walked towards it and pick it up. So we'll do this in the sequencing shot because this is a really good way to do this. The first one I'll do is just a close up on the guitar as his hand is going to come get it let's go right there in the negative space persons like all that negative space process where tyler is going to end up one thing we try to do is not put all over negative space on the same side every time like this time she's a lying the negative space on the left of the image, whereas before was on the right that's called screen direction. When you cut between shots or show different shots next to each other, it helps to move the eye around the frame so your eyes left in your eyes, right in your eye center than it's up, then it's and just think about that when you're composing your shots, like just have this movement of the eye keeps things a lot more interesting. If you have every shot towards the center of the image senator of the image center of the image center of the image, it just becomes monotonous. You could break it up a little bit, all right, sound focus so, tyler, all you're going to do is walk up to that guitar, pick it up and walk away when I tell you, just going to press record and god cool let's do it one more time, you do a little faster, just like you're actually just going in, you're gonna go grab it. You're a very natural, by the way, for people to do things much slower than they wouldn't really life, right? You just have to do it naturally in the hood. What you mean? And then when the first time they go like this really deliberately slowly just tell him he just do it just just going grab, wait one sec, what I actually just sted is because I wanted to redo that I stopped and started my camera again because I want the good one to be there, all right? So we'll hit record and then go ahead, pick it up that was perfect loved it just for the sake of the tech guys in the booth. Once you start recording, wait a second, you see on the screen and then we'll okay cut to the shot until it's all the same on my screen. No, no, three second away, the next part of my sequence, I'm going to have him walk around and you're going to have a seat, so again, I'm going pre focus and I think let's do this a little lower just get a different angle on like rob said, I'm also going to change it, the negative space, we'll put the negative space on the other side, it's going to go on the right this time. Another thing I like to do when I'm sequencing if I'm if I'm asking somebody to do things over again, it's nice to kind of have him start back from the beginning again from that different angle so we have the close up of him walking over and grabbing it. This is a close up and now I'm gonna have him the ultimate idea is to get him in the chair, right? So he's gonna pick it up and he's gonna come over here and sit down so rather than start the second shot with him already with a guitar in his hand I'll haven't put it back down and then in one motion just kind of grab it well over here and then sit down love it and there's your demo scene for that dad walk away from it, grab it and then come back and let's see wait for that said, and you're good, good, good and now he started to play now what? We had the same thing that we had from before, right? So now we can come together, those close ups that we had on there and that's filmmaking now you're making a film, but for fusion, you've already got everything you really need to kind of tell the story because the photographs show him in the seat he's kind of playing and then you've got these great close ups of him the rack focus and then you haven't actually getting into position, so that's sequencing wanna one that's perfect, and from there we have a bunch of photos well, if I was actually hired to do the session, I would probably take a leaving a little bit more time after this to do a little bit more of the photography, and so I'm going to give this to you. We'll grab some more sexually tether you can stand up and spring this on over way put the guitar down for now, I'm gonna have you just sit right on the edge of here. So the idea behind this is to show you how you guys can really do you do this on your own. If you were going to start out with fusion, you're going to make sure that you're doing it easier circumstances so don't try shooting a wedding and charge fusion for the first time there. You want to do it with the key to in session, trash dressed session portrait sessions, something that gives you a little bit more flexibility with thyme and a little bit more flexibility with your subjects? Is these air great practice sessions? And a lot of the time you could, you know, you might want to tell them, hey, I'm gonna be taking some video of you guys, but maybe he wouldn't, because maybe you don't want them knowing what you're doing there's always you communicate with them. That you hate doing great to stay there giving positive reassurance that what they're doing this fine you'll find that gold remain comfortable and they won't even know you're shooting video so it's up to you it's like dealer's choice do you tell him if you do be prepared for them to kind of be conscious of the fact that you're shooting video so if not just it's, those little in between moments like getting up and moving sort of thing that you can shoot exactly. So tell you're just going to lean on your knees, on your elbows to knees, there you go and you're gonna look towards this wall here that is perfect scribes some photos and you're going to turn your eyes towards me. I love that big, cheesy smile see, tyler is kind of a professional you could look down for a second, so it's really easy to get him to laugh, but you know, not that this is a posing and how to get people to a last thing, but you know, if you look at me, anything works especially fart jokes, so if you've got nothing else, lots of natural expressions from project one of my favorite things to dio years like I did not sign up for this same thing works if you're doing video, if you haven't assistant that, you're letting them shoot let them shoot and you can you know make subject laugh because we're lucky they're not you'll be laughing as well and they have shaking baby so same thing you're just going to stay just like that and looked towards the window having the whole thing with a guitar there on this whole time I haven't even changed my lens which is very typical of me and then turned us your head towards me nice eleven and then lean forward again between leaned towards me you need to adjust your foot serial body comes towards me there you go perfect very manly pose eleven alright do you have any questions I'm not our regular spots I have no idea what's on the video and that you want to see us do so you have no idea you know what I mean I was thinking maybe like if I could just shoot for sure I don't know I could just do some different kind of outside the box creative stuff you can kind of see what I would do in a situation like this taking pictures of their control yeah that's great you guys get the idea how you can really do this yourself on dh then we'll do you want this one yeah you want that now do you want tea yeah okay so what I'm just gonna come up with that let's see some question yeah that's good. I was just wondering if we could possibly see like there is no way I could get like the glider and things like that for a while what air some good shots to do without that like can't quite do the panning shot I understand in the rolling of the focus and stuff but what are some other unique like you said outside the box shots so we can do it you know what my subject with emotion and that's what I'm gonna do in these shots shots going teo and you know, just just to kind of give you an idea of what yeah if you don't have all the fancy equipment you could do some cool stuff so let's let's take another couple questions and then I can start doing that because you do have to be a little creative but it's good because then you can work with that enhance your creativity and then if you end up getting equipment like that it just is like the cherry on top so we do have some questions from destruct o text you destruct o techs are you still focusing manually on your stills when you come out of video so and if you're in order focus of you setting focus and re composing using focused I am using auto focus at no time did I ever come out of the auto focus because when I go into my video mode one it's going to stay where I just had it in auto focus so that's great, because then I'm my subject as long as we both have not moved is probably still in focus, but the other thing is I don't need to change it to manual focus, because even if it's on auto, I've been still manually focus and since I'm pressing the record button and not the shutter button to take the picture or my back focus or any other thing that you know controls the auto focus, I don't have to go back and forth and worry about that because what's most annoying on this happens sometimes, but what happens what happens sometimes is probably is one of my lenses, and naturally he will keep them on manual focus and I will pick them up and I will use it and take pictures of it and be like this and focus I love this broken my camera's broken rob points not take it out of water for you because you could still focus manually with me on this moz elected so exactly yeah, okay, uh, well, yeah, I don't know if you guys experienced this or anyone else, but, um I were reading glasses, so to go from my view finder too looking at the back of the camera is like, okay, when men women, you know, so I'm struggling a little bit, right? Yes the best thing that you would probably get is zik youto those find her on the back because it will magnify it and you might still need that reading glasses but maybe not okay, yeah that's something that needs these reports yeah that's yeah I'm uh I'm nearsighted so I can't see things very well far away so the magnification no, the focusing for me is really important up close because you know, even from here to our camera operators a little fuzzy for me so I have to be real vigil about that focus because what looks what I judges my depth might not be what the camera sees us all right? So another question we asked about fear changing going from auto focus to manual when you're switching from video to film, what about your exposures can say again if you're setting resetting those in between yeah, I haven't been resetting them at all the light here has been pretty consistent and if anything it's like a third of a stop off I am more concerned about catching the moment rather than catching the perfect exposure because I can change that for the most part usually when you're letting edition is consistent, you don't have to worry about that too much it'll be close like we said before once you switching to live you you might have to do a minor but from this part's good sam cox is in loveland, colorado on is asking about rack focusing and says it's very interesting technique and how quickly or slowly you wrecked that's a good question depends on the mood that you're trying to create you could do it really fast to kind of create like this dramatic, you know, switch where you could just do it slowly just to kind of make it more subtle and like where the eye doesn't really pick up on it right away so that's just a matter of personal subjectivity and what you're trying to do, I generally like my shots to be shorter, so video seconds four to five seconds I want to make sure that the full range of that rack focus happens in that time, so maybe, you know, shut the shop will start and they'll count a second and then I'll move the motion and then I give it a second pad at the end and before it cuts away. This's a question from sally side in saudi arabia how and is asking how to make slow motion and video is that something we're going to talk? I generally don't use a whole lot of slow motion, but I'll tell you the technique the way to do slow motion the correct way is to do using a process called over cranking I think we touched on this before you shoot at sixty frames per second and then you use a video editing program to slow it down by half or it's, actually by sixty percent or something like that. There's actually a little asian yeah, and that actually will slow it down on give it a really fluid, slow motion. I don't know a whole lot of it. In my productions, I tend to like things a little bit more real time, but that would be the way to do it. You can slow down any video footage in any nonlinear editing software, but you might find that look it's not the best, just depending on yeah, the movie does have a slow mo capability to write right, might get a little jagged and might stutter a little bit. It just depends and there's a whole technical reason behind it, but I'm not gonna be oh, all right, to be a question over here, yeah, now brought brought up the whole slow motion thing. Like when if you report a sixty five year second and you were just lord like a sarah. Precise number where you have to slow it down so it's just right, somebody else. Before I answer that better than me, I don't do a whole lot of slow motion, so I think it's six, somewhere around sixty percent. I think if you were slowed down by sixty percent, the idea is to get close to lex. If you're shooting a sixty frames per second to get it down close to twenty four frames per second, so and there's a couple different ways to do it. I know that in final cut pro x there's, a method called optical optical flow, which kind of made mimics really high speed cameras like thousand frames per second. Cameras that shoot for really, really extreme slow motion. Andi, I think the optical flow is the best way to do that. There's also a plug in the video program plugging called twixt er, that allows for really smooth, dynamic, slow motion.