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Shoot: Pod Method Pose

Were going to demonstrate this and go into, our last posing segment here. Where we're learning how to pose large groups, but instead of just lighting them up, each you know, "girls on this side, guys on that side." Right, it's so basic, it's not very creative at all, and if you want to break down large group into small pods and, it works better for you, okay? So, for example, this next shot here, where they have the little flower girls that they wanted in the photo, this is the exact same thing as the Accordion right? And so another thing that I do, when I want to make it random and I don't want all the girls on one side and all the guys, on that side, I say, "Pair up with the person you walked down the aisle with." Okay? And so, when you're doing a wedding, everybody knows the person that they're walking down the aisle with, I say, "Pair up with them." Bam, automatically, they're paired up and it's guy, girl, guy, girl, and now, you can actually do the Lock Arms too, because, in gener...

al, two guys don't want to lock arms with each other. But if you put a girl in the middle there, then that seems to work better, right? So now, you can do the lock arms too, it you want to and do that and break off into pods too. And this works well, if you've got other smaller children, where you can just separate them, so you can see that. So, I have them there, and I have them in pods, and I just separate them, and give them space, and it looks nice. And so, this is what I call, the Broken Accordion, where you have the accordion, but you break it up. Especially if you have, shorter or, kids that are involved in the picture. Okay, so, so you can just keep splitting the pairs, to add more people and, throw them in between and, go for it. Okay, now what's interesting about this, is you don't have to do it where they're all standing. And so, if you have a large group, let's take for example, you have four bridesmaids and four groomsmen, okay? Which is a typical amount, you can do this with, literally, just two chairs. So, you have your bride and groom in the middle, you have the ring bearer there, the flower girl there, maid of honor, in the back, best man there, then you have one chair, over here. You have a female sitting, and you have the two guys up above here, and then, you do the opposite over there, where you have the male sitting, and you have another pair over here. So, actually, this is a female, and this is a guy and a girl, or whoever's walking down the aisle together, and then this is the male, and you have the other pair over there. So, that's a very easy way to arrange everything, with what, ten people, but with just two chairs. And it looks very nice, because it's just not all standing, all the bridesmaids on one side, and all the groomsmen on the other, this has a little bit more pizazz to it, especially, do you know how to pose somebody, sitting down now? By what? Doing, well maybe demonstrate this, when she's doing a rollover, right, they've got her hips popped, one way, or the other and everybody's looking really nice and you shoot the group shot, where you can see everybody posed, it looks amazing. It's gonna get you paid big bucks, I guarantee it. So, you split them up, into pairs, but then, you do some coaching on how to pose people, it's gonna look really, really good. People are gonna look at that and go, "Wow, that's an awesome group shot, because not a lot of people put in effort into doing a group shot well. But, if you do, it's just gonna put you up to the next level, you don't have to just do this with a wedding party, can you do this with a family, right? It works so easily, you can do it with a family also, so that's not a problem, actually that's a good idea, you can set this up somewhere, and then you can bring in families, and whatever, and shoot them, in the same area, also, while you're at the wedding, or whatever, and that would be beautiful, they would love it, okay. So now, yeah that's four four, so let's move on from there. So let's try to do this pose, how's that? So, what we're gonna need, is the bride and groom, and, we don't have any flower girl or ring bearer, so we'll do that, but okay, who is the maid of honor again? Okay, and the best man, right. So, you guys stand in the middle here, okay, and then we're gonna get two chairs, if that's possible, okay, who else was standing up here with us? Right, so you guys are gonna face each other, okay, if you could come out, just a little bit, that would be great, let's get this out of here, get that out of the way, okay, who was the maid of honor and who was the best man? Come on up, right, and you can stand, just a little bit behind, right here in this space, good, and you're over here, in this space, and then we're gonna have one pod here, and one pod there, and then, I need two, okay I need three and three, I think, yeah, I need three and three, so who else can, I need three guys and three girls. Is that possible, we don't even have any more guys. Okay, so what I do is, I'm gonna split up one couple, let's say these two, were walking down the aisle together, so, I'm gonna split them up, right and, if you can sit in this chair here. I'm gonna have her do the rollover, but I'm gonna turn the seat, like, we could either have it like this, right, where you're rolled over, like this, sitting, okay? Perfect right, and so then, I can move this closer, yeah good, and then I can have him standing on the side okay? Now on this one, I need a guy, so I do opposite, so if I have a female sitting here, then I'm gonna have a male sitting here. And so actually, if you can, just kind of, sit here, maybe just lean forward, like this, see how that goes, right. And, oh, strong buddy, strong. Okay, so I'm gonna pull you back a bit, because I don't want you in front, so, can you stand up for a bit, I'm gonna move you back here, good, go ahead and do that, and then I'm gonna have you, kinda just, standing here, in a very sexy way, just be normal. (laughter) And so, good, actually, I'm gonna create a little bit more space here, so I'm gonna have you two together a bit, and then I'm gonna have you guys stand back, so I create some dimension, yeah I like that. Right? That looks like a great group shot there. Okay, I'm gonna see if I can get wide enough here. And so, if you had more, you could stand another person in the back, right, and then, also if you had even more on that, so you can add two more people, right, because you have another space right here, and you have another space right here, but then you can also, let's say you had another set, you can have a guy sitting down here, right, and then you can have another girl, doing the rollover, like this. (giggling) Right, and so, you have room for more there, but this is the basic setup, okay? And then you can just add on top of that, and it's an easy way to create a really great look. Hey, you guys look great. Okay, and so, one, two, ready, (camera shutter clicking) good, I got it on. Can you move your chair in, just about, like 6 inches or so? Yeah, a little bit more, good. Alright, good, and don't be afraid of her, come on up a little bit, move on over, just a tad, and can you move your chair in just a bit? Okay, right there, perfect. Lets tie that all in, right and, (camera shutter clicking) I want the couple to move over three inches, right there, good. And, I need a little bit of space right there, for the maid of honor, too much, just right in that space right there, perfect. One, two, three, (camera shutter clicking) and it has a nice symmetry to it. And it has a nice triangle feel to it, and you're breaking up the height, so not everything is at the same level, and that's the key with group shots, is that, you wanna show different heights to it. Okay, thank you very much, that was great. What are you using to light a group that wide? Very good, I am using a flash at that point. With an umbrella? Depends, it depends on how bright the sun is, okay, if I get 'em in shade, I can probably all light them up with one flash, and maybe an umbrella, 'cos if you're in shade, you're probably shooting at about 5,6, or maybe lower, so you can probably get away with, hitting it with a flash and umbrella, to spread the lighting out, but to be safe, if you have wider, and you have, maybe stronger, back lighting and you need to fill it in, you would kind of divide your light up, so you would have a flash here, and a flash on this side, and then, go towards the middle, you can have a super, or you can have two flashes, paired together, real high in the middle, and that will light it up too. But, it depends, I usually, like I said, I could shoot a wedding, and you can just give me, two flashes, and I could shoot a group shot. Because, when you're pulling light this far back, even if you have an umbrella on it, it doesn't, you can't tell the difference in the softness. I'll get into it tomorrow, but when the light is far back, from the subject, whether you put an umbrella on it, or you just have a bare flash, you're not gonna notice the difference that much, when that light is so far away from your subjects. If you've got it this close, you're gonna get a huge difference in light quality, but when you pull it that far, it doesn't really matter that much, so, even if you just popped it, and got some lighting with two bare flashes, you'd be fine. Alright, especially if you backlight, if your backlight looks good. Yes, question. Alright, we have a couple of questions, coming in from the folks at home, Question from, That Personal Touch, who says, "What if you don't have that much space, and you can't spread them out that far, can you still do, the mini pods?" Well yeah, you know, this is relative, okay, if you don't have more than, what is this, 15 feet, you gotta go to a different area, I'm sorry. (laughter) We just did this shot with, how far is this? About 15 feet or so, I'm not sure. Can't do it. Yeah, so, I got all those people in there, with just, like, a few feet right? And, if you're trying to do it, it's like, you can't really do the impossible, so you're, if you got a group shot of, let's say, more than ten, you gotta get it in an area, where you have at least 20 feet wide, to do that, and you should be fine. Good, yes. Scott I know we've mentioned the depth of field calculator, a couple of times today, but I wanna make sure and, maybe some people are just tuning in, I think people are still getting caught up on, the fact that, you can use 2,8 for a group, and they're all kind of in a similar focal plane, but they're not exactly, can you explain again, the distance and, If you're shooting wide and let's say, you're shooting 35mm or wider, and you're at least ten feet back, from you're subjects, you're pretty safe. If I'm shooting with an 85mm and they're walking, well, maybe yes, maybe no, I don't know, but when you are shooting wide, it's hard to get a shallow depth of field, when you're shooting wide, try it. It's really hard to do, especially if you are shooting at least ten feet away, everything is gonna be sharp, okay? Especially if you're shooting wide, now if you're shooting with a 50mm or 85mm or, 70 to 100, you've gotta move back 20 to 30 feet, in order for you to get a decent amount of focus, depth of field, so you can't, If I'm shooting 85mm, and you're that close, I probably got that much focus depth. But if I move way, way, way back here, then I'm gonna get a lot more, and everybody's gonna be in focus. So, if you're shooting wide, just remember, if you're shooting 24mm or wider than that, most likely everything is in focus, especially if you're ten, fifteen feet back, and people. The thing is, that people, "What the heck is ten feet?" So, you know, this distance here from here, to the chair is like, this is A, this is your height, so you know your height so, that would give you a good estimation of what that is, put two of you together, or less, two of me together, maybe I need three to get to ten feet, I'm not sure. (laughing) One of Kenna, or three of me so, (laughing) Anyways, if you're ten feet back and wide, I don't think you have too much of a problem. And especially, if you're showing emotion, you're gonna get some leadway on tack sharpness, because you're shooting it photojournalistically, if things are a tad blurry here and there, "Oh he was just catching that rare, you know, moment." And they're not expecting everything tack sharp. What they're gonna wanna love, is the expression and the emotion on the face, that's gonna be the main thing, so you have a little wiggle room, in terms of tack sharpness, when you're shooting something that's, fun and crazy like that, okay? Good question. Scott I have one more question, as we come in earlier, as we're talking about portraits. A couple of people we're asking about cropping of, arms, legs, are there things that you, when you're photographing people, that you're considering? Yeah, you know, I don't really like to try to, I don't like to crop off the arms, and so, if I'm shooting waist up, now here I didn't really have a lot of time, to really get into the pose, and fine tune it. But generally, when I shoot waist up, I wanna see both their hands, in the picture, somewhere, okay. I just don't like to cut one off, if I don't have to, but in general, if I have room to back up, and things like that, I have freedom to do that, I try to keep that in there, so the hands and the arms are really important to me, so I try not to crop those off. But you know, you need room to move back, and you need time to adjust the hands and things. That's why, that lecture on hands and arms, was really important because, you need to get those in there, to finish off the posing, so, that's really important. Lets get, let's review this a little bit okay? The Accordion, right, that was one of the killer poses there, we did that. The Group Hug or the Best Buds, we had Talk with your Hands, we had Lock Arms or Hold Hands and walk. Then we had Run at the Camera, which we didn't really demonstrate. And then, we had, the Dance in your Seat, and finishing off with the Pods, okay? And so, those are the 7 ideas that you can do, there's more, of course, but that can get you started. And what I really love about this, is getting that emotion. You need a dynamic range of emotion, and these are the poses, or types of poses, that you can do to get that out of them, right. You should have the set stuff, where you pose them, they look beautiful, nice smiles, perfect lighting, and all that, but then you need some random stuff, that you've gotta throw in there. One, you're gonna get more sales too, right, if you show a variety of things, and plus, just the book, or the set that you've shot for them, "Oh I can't decide, it looks all amazing, I guess I'll give you $3000 more." Right, that's what you wanna hear, (laughing) So, the more variety that you put in there, then the more money that you're gonna make, that's all there is to it.