Lessons

Lesson Info

Soccer Shoot: Additional Elements

one of the ideas way had on basically making it look like their arm or you know they're more soccer players on the field is having like you know just like a a leg or something like right here or something right here like maybe he's trying to kick the ball through a couple of people so using these things like you can use the same subject to get these little details and composited later on when we're working color if I decide I'm going to completely change the colors like weaken you know we could make his shorts red and the other person shorts agreeing or something like that that's really really simple do infomercial excuse me in photo shop but it's going to make it's going to make the image have a little bit more depth we talked earlier about having a foreground a mid ground and background so these legs in here that we're going to photograph in just a little bit those air going to act more like our foreground they're going to frame the shot and help make it look like james and said fart...

her back in the image eh so we're going to photograph us basically using the same lighting and he's just going to jump in front of the camera he's going to photograph the back of his legs a few times so it's a really quick you know it'll take five minutes to do but it's something that it's just going to give us more options and then again because I'm compositing these photographing these on a green background I can put them wherever I want so all of these pieces we're gonna be able to move after we photographed in which is a huge huge help um yeah the masking come out actually we yeah that's that's a great idea the mats can come out all right I think we've got maybe a minute or two for questions if there are any yeah definitely tons from up here so how long did it take you to feel really comfortable about your work to where you were ready to start charging and a sub sub question to that is what's the best way to figure out your rates for something like this oh man ok really good questions for me personally I tend to err on the side of like not that confident with my work that's just kind of like who I am is a person I always feel like that um I spent the first year of my photography career that I would say like I really jumped in I did a three hundred sixty five day project where I took a self portrait every day for a year and that's when I learned things like compositing and retouching and I I really tried to take that project and learn photography as much as I possibly could so I wasn't doing anything this in depth during that year obviously cause I was producing one of those a day I was still learning and I was not making any money doing it but at that end of the year I felt like okay I figured out lighting well enough to where if I brought a model on set I wouldn't completely waste their time like I figured that like I knew my way around the camera I knew my way around lights and I knew my way around photo shop and that it took about a year of quite a bit of work and I'm really happy that I did that I went through that process because when I came out at the at the end of it starting from almost the beginning when I started photographing models and started working with different subjects I felt confident with my own work and the shots they were turning out about like what I thought because I spent that year basically just practicing on myself a lot of photographers I know get their start out assisting for other photographers so they get earned their chops there on set you know they might not be the one behind the camera they might be be the one signing the checks but they're still learning everything that happens on set so that's another big big way I if I could go back and like you know if I could have spent a year assisting someone I would have done I think where I'd be in right now would be much much more advanced than what I'm doing right now as well so I can't I didn't do it but from everyone I've talked to his like assistant of really good professional photographer they said the experiences completely invaluable and as far as charging for my work again like I was I had a full time career well before I ever tried to make any money with photography and it really did it took other people coming to me and offering me jobs teo to really start making any money and photography um and that I don't know I think it's different for every person like some people are going to feel confident you know really early on they're going to go out on their charge even maybe their work not might not even be good enough for what they're charging but that's that's them is a person I tend to err like way on the other side and I feel like I I'm really lucky especially with learn and like what I've been able to do with education because like I'm I'm still most of my work I put out there online and you know I'm teaching photography so most of what I do is not commercial photography I'm not signing clients and I'm not bidding for jobs a lot because I was able to kind of fall into a different passion of mine so I'm probably not the best person answer questions about bidding for job in business as a as a professional photographer because I don't consider myself a professional photographer I consider myself a professional educator who really likes photography and photo she oh so we did over the quick little interlude here we changed james socks so we can make it look like you know he's ah different a different player playing for the different team and basically we're just going toe I don't really have a formula for this I was just imagining that you'd be I like doing this kind of tough over here new soccer type things yeah yeah that sort of thing and even if you wanted to if you wanted to have the ball and kind of like dribble around and stuff like that that would that would actually be awesome and probably fun for people to watch that too so um get the ball awesome so we're going to switch back into light room and see about capturing some of these shots oh yeah that's awesome I can't believe we just did that all right well you did that all I did was push a button all right so again I'm in manual focus here for any people have questions and I'm not going to change my I'm not going to change my focal point I'm keeping about the same focal point and then james compounded just move around in in place there so all right whenever whenever you're ready just kind of I was going to take a bunch of different photos and actually if you want to come closer to the camera I'm gonna be putting you like really close to the camera in the final image so yep yeah john if you want maybe roll the soccer bowl in from I'm gonna have you kind of come in from this angle and john kind of roll the soccer bowl in from that angle and if you want to come in like you know pretend like you're about to kick it aiken aiken photograph you is you're going in all right if you wouldn't mind start a little bit farther back james but that yeah I think these guys are clicking too fast but in this case it really doesn't matter for these all right cool let's do it may be from the other direction here on uh james if you want to come closer to perfect a ride I'm on a single thing okay pressing the button many times at this point it doesn't matter we'll take a quick break and I just kind of explain why that doesn't matter so much for the earlier shots it was really important that I was just taking one shot because all these strobes have a bit of a recycled time so if I just take shot after shot after shot the first shot might be at full power which is the correct exposure the second shot might be slightly less by the third shot my lightings completely off it's not really doing what I want for these pictures it really doesn't matter that much because these are just going to go in the foreground and they're going to darken and way down there going to be so dark there basically just they're kind of frame the shot and make it look like it's a little bit more about having a little bit more depth so if my lighting is not perfect like obviously I really don't even need to see his his head or anything like that you know using the shot I'm I have a lot to choose from now but it might just literally be a leg in a shot I might cut it out and angle the leg and that's really all it is so kind of in this case it doesn't matter it doesn't matter so much that you know we might not have his whole body or whatever it is because that's it's kind of the idea behind the shots is yeah like that that's that's a really cool they're just photograph out the bowl move it over to the right side of the frame and then you know we're good to go that it serves what we needed to so let's suit maybe just one more round of this and then we can move onto the next thing that yeah same time all right cool I think we got that so I've got a little on the shot list I'm just kind of checking things off on my shot list so we had a shirt on shirt off legs all right next thing we're gonna do is photograph these soccer ball just photographing the soccer ball so jamie's going to take like a five minute break yeah awesome thanks okay so next we're basically just gonna be photographing our soccer ball and I actually want this in the air yeah if you don't mind so I'm going to zoom in and we're gonna have basically john's gonna like throw it yep just like that and I'll take a picture with the soccer balls in there put some put some spin on it and be cool all right one second we just know my focus think shot all right and whenever you're ready yep if you if you can spin it even if there we go way might not see any movement in this because we are shooting with the strokes but um yep you get all right good to go okay cool and that's that's it way photographed the ball so these will you know extra elements are we might have had a different picture from earlier that we could use that just like taking two seconds and photographing the ball now I have you know that's actually a really nice shot of the ball the graphic is really nice way could remove the room move the graphic in photo shop or whatever it is on def I didn't need to add some spin or some motion to the bowl that's really easy to do in photo shop all right so we're going to check that off our list as well the next thing that we have on our list is some shots from far away and this is going to be a little bit of a it's going to be a little bit of a test I don't I don't know how this is going to turn out but if we could go ahead and turn these rim light's off the actually let's leave them on here I want to see what we can do and again guys I don't know if it's gonna wonder working out so if you know if tomorrow comes along you're like where did you include those I want to see if we can have some like soccer players over here you know like kicking the ball around or whatever running running towards the goal um these are soccer players by the way um you know just people like running like this so obviously again we still have this one person in in the frame maybe you know this person is maybe this person is a little bit closer so he's he's running towards the front or whatever it is just something to make a lot more interesting so with this basically what I'm gonna do it we can take the crash pad up this is just going to be james just as he used right now and I'm gonna photograph him pretty much right up again it's the right up against the green screen for this is well I this is one of those things where he's going to be far away from the camera so we really don't want any that perspective like you know distortion we really don't want we want these shots pretty compressed so keeping him as far away from the camera is a good idea because he's actually going to be far away from the camera in the end you know you those people they should look like a single plane they shouldn't have a foot that's like way bigger coming out through the camera because that's not what it would actually happen they'd be farther away in this case I think we're okay keeping the lighting as it is if not we might turn off some of these lights and just front like this a little bit but I'm actually if you wantto let's give you the ball so you have something that kind of work with here there we go if you want to just kind of like dribble and kind of run around uh uh yep actually you've got let me just focus if you don't mind okay you've got the entire width of the green screen teo to work with you we need to um one thing I would ask is if you could stay yeah all right let's take a look att at the lighting including all the room lights and stuff what we're going to do I'm going to turn off the beauty dish here and we're also going to turn off the and we will turn this room light off is well the reason here is I want these guys look like they're farther back in the frame so we don't need to like them the same as our foreground in okay still making the same amount of noise okay um this is the techniques using in painting a lot of the time a lot of the time you'll put his much detail and contrast on the actual place of the image that you want people to look but for soccer players that air you know supposed to be one hundred yards away or whatever it is we don't want him super riml it because he's he's supposed to look like he's you know farther away so we want less contrast on on him so that's why we're kind of turning these off and we'll be in the thea guy in the foreground kicking yes it probably won't be another ball on yes yes okay let's take the ball out that's uh a really good idea ok go so if you just kind of wanted to run around looks like trigger is probably on one of these okay yeah you know what it is so let's all turn the beauty dish back on um yes so quick little note on triggering here most of your life that you use in a studio setting like these guys are gonna have what's called an optical slave on them which means if they see a light trigger they're going to fire us well and there is our it is great which means I don't have to put a pocket wizard on every one of these lights I think just one or two of them have pocket wizards on them and then now I'm just firing that into the ceiling it's filling the whole room with light and then these other lights are going to fire when they see that light so it's a really good way to just not have to buy a bunch parker wizards basically yeah that you're really good at this way better than I thought we were gonna get awesome all right I mean you want to take a quick break just to make sure that these are coming in are they all black yeah this is really cool so if we need to oh man that's awesome if we need to in photo shop I can change these colors around we can push him back I could probably even change their skin color darker tio tio making you know allowing all this stuff for variation is just uh it gives us more options and that's what we're shooting now would you just call this shooting options do that again for another minute awesome all right james I think we got it man who all right all right cool and that marks the end of james everyone come on back in here let's get do a bow and everyone could clap for you often job thank you amazing amazing um guys we've got two more little things I want a photograph before we cut out and the first of those is a pile of dirt so john or who wants to be our dirt wrangler it's right over here all right we've got we've got dirt and grass and we're going to throw it up in the air yeah this is you can buy this on amazon dirt dirt prop it's about one hundred dollars a pound good stuff the reason why we're going to be doing this is basically the same you know same thing other shot is spray and missed in sweat which were dirty for yep that's that's a good point yeah so trying to make this realistic I want this to look like it's in the middle of a game and it's not we're in we're in the studio but if aiken you know place like little pieces of dirt flying around like coming out from his shoe and stuff like that that's not hard to do in photo shop as long as we actually one second as long as we actually photograph it here in in the studio and again you're gonna want to use the same lighting that you would for um I don't see how this looks I think yeah you know what I think this is just fine dirt um oh you know what we are not going to use a green screen for this dirt we're going to use a white screen for this so what I'm going to get here is a good amount of contrast between let's just make sure it should be a good amount of contrast between the dirt grass and the background let's just take a test shot yep and whenever you're ready to this kind of all right we have ah broome on standby all right yep cool you wouldn't believe how many times I've done this for a photo shoot throw up dirt throw up sand whatever it is these little little elements khun they can add a lot to shoot yeah you would need the element within the shoot or do you would you pull from those other times that you didn't you want to do it yeah okay yeah you can reuse in stock and it's going to depend on what the shoot what the chute actually entails sometimes I'm doing this with like like fiberglass or like plaster or I didn't tiles one time to make it look like my face was being pulled apart yeah what whatever it is it's just you know it takes a couple of seconds to do but you can probably already imagine how adding this stuff into the shoot it's just going to look like it's gonna look so much more dynamic cool that looks good all right we'll do a couple more of these and then whenever whenever we're good with the spray we could do that too all right very cool all right I think we're good with this maybe we could do like a little bit of cleaning for a second I can answer a question and then uh when we get back we'll have some spray awesome that sounds great so pure fifty two heart would like to know what will you do with the floor in the random player shots where there wasn't a green screen under their feet I'm just going to completely remove it reason being here they're going to be so far away so in the background and they're also really not going to be at much for perspective like if we were shooting a little higher up you'd be able to see their feet and he'd be able to see the ground around them but because we're shooting relatively far down which if I could just pop back into photo shop we can kind of see um really you wouldn't be able to see much of the ground around them anyway depending on how far away they are if we did decide to use a player a little bit closer what we could actually do and again this will be based on where we actually placed these tomorrow but there is a really easy way in which you can actually take the shadows from the floor and use those as shadows on the ground in your final image it's basically using channels like we did on day one to select out the difference between the lights and the darks so what you would be doing is selecting out those dorks and then basically now after you have your really accurate selection you just paint inside of that selection and you're basically painting a shadow on a new layer great cool and one last question before we go out when shooting for options how do you usually plan for your shot list could you talk to us a little bit about that project process how much pre visualization goes into these shoots aaron a lot really so for instance these you know these couple of shots that you know that we took both yesterday and today I've been thinking like kind of molding these photos over in my head for you know at least three weeks on dh that's after deciding you know like the shots that we actually came up with that after you know getting rid of maybe ten or fifteen different ideas that I wanted to do it certain point for instance the shot yesterday it was originally going to to be a desert princess standing on a sand dune with a huge dress blowing behind her that was the original idea for the photo shoot and kind of like the maura developed I was like you know what I actually I think it did more dynamic if we got a little bit closer to our subject and then I started looking at more and more inspiration and I found some images and then we found the feather headdress by rooster baby and I was like we got to include this so if we're going to include this it doesn't make sense to do a full body we need to really get in and see that detail so that shot just evolved well along way over the period of a couple of weeks and then after that it's a lot of sketching and a lot of looking references and kind of bringing those together and then some of the things like today like the faraway players and the dirt and the spray those actually developed in the middle of a photo shoot all right so we're goingto pick up where we left off on dh if you guys remember right before the break we were just throwing some dirt and grass in the air and photographing that and we're going to do the same ray we're going to do the same thing with some miss right now and whenever you guys are floating photographing like water or missed smoke anything that's atmospheric and you wanted to show up in the air it's a really good idea to backlight that stuff because it's lights coming from the back are goingto going to do a much better job lighting that upton leading from the front and also photographing these objects in this case we're just doing water as mist in front of a black background so the light is goingto make sure the list is the mist is lit up so it's going to show up this white on a black backdrop it's going make it really easy to cut out so we're just going to kind of play around and we've got a black backdrop set up here we haven't really adjusted our lighting at all so we're just gonna yep we're just going to kind of see if this works and just to nail our focus I'm gonna focus on the spray bottle if you want put that out for you all right we just zoom out here all right and I'm gonna lower I'm gonna close down my aperture just to make sure the blacker the black ground is actually black rash all right and whenever you're ready all right and if we can close it down yep make it look more like water all right could you like spray your hand and I can get it like dripping down from your hand or even yeah let's go let's go all the way with that so I'm gonna photograph these guys and then can we twist that a little bit so it's more of like a actual spray nozzle and I can catch it like kind of hitting off your hands there we go and kind of going through your fingers too I think so let's get it let's take a look at what we're getting here I can't really see what let's go into the light room just to make sure that there were um getting what we need here all right so you can see the back light yeah we could probably lower down lower down your hand a little bit really we don't need a ton here but this this is the sort of thing were like if you needed to do it in photoshopped you could but just having it be actual like mist and things like that does make it look a little bit more real so this sort of thing like isolating this stuff in photo shop super simple just bring us in change the layer blend mode to multi sorry to screen and the black is going to disappear and the white is going to remain and that's really all you need to be able to capture this stuff and if anyone's wondering why we're photographing this stuff it's basically to make it look like beads of sweat are going to be coming off off of the players in the foreground so just adding a little bit more depth and atmosphere in details for the shot so it's you know it's going to look a little bit hopefully more real yep good to go all right let's see what that looks like all right and that's probably all we need this again super super simple here all right taking shots that fast just gonna take a second to bring this back into the back in the library here do you kind of just see they show up on batch which is another good point during a photo shoot oftentimes if I need to take a lot of pictures I won't shoot tether because it really does slow down your workflow quite a bit so if you don't need to shoot tethered during a photo shoot often times I'll just uh I'll just shoot without you know shoot regular so this is pretty much that's what I wanted right there so if I want to make that look like it's coming out of james's mouth or like you know like spring off this chief or something like that this is a really nice bit of spray right there and again getting that toe you know the black background and disappear in photoshopped it's very very easy to do so yeah I think we got what we need there