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Shooting for the Scene and Transitions

so that's your basic story structure. But we still don't have all of the pieces to put a story together, and a lot of photographers will reach out to me personally on Facebook or whatever. Just kind of asking for help on album design, Right? And one of the biggest problems I see is that photography will come to me and show me the images for the album, and all the pieces are there. It's not a cohesive there's. I don't have the pieces to build an album just like I said before with the house, right. If I forgot to buy some two by fours or some drywall, we won't be able to build a house right? So if we're missing pieces of those pieces, don't fit together Well, it's really hard to design a Cosi cohesive album, and if the clients see that, it's not gonna resonate with them, and it's not gonna tell their stories, so they're not gonna want to spend extra money on it. All right, so, uh, one of things that will be talking about later in another lesson is that you have to choose. The album selec...

ts You can't let the Giants clients choose the album selects because they don't know how to tell a story unless maybe their movie director, you might want to let them. But other than that, you know, that's like the only maybe, maybe so we're gonna talk about shooting for the scene and transitions, right? So I've identified three basic seen types in photography, which is great. There's only three to remember, right and then seven basic transitions. And when I mean by a transition, Steve, could you hand me that album up when we talk about transitions we're gonna be talking about? Thank you. So here's a beautiful album from Miller's Nice would cover. Um, a transition is going from this image to these images over here, right? So I'm going from here to here, and transition simply means the conto continuity between the pages. Right? So we have to think about that during the shooting in the design. So the This is a wonderful image by Danny and Julia Deng, who we had dinner with the other night. It was great, the super cute couple, right? So we have the hero shot, the hero shot. That's that's what we're best at, Right? Is the hero shot. That's the one that goes up a Facebook profile picture. That's the one with a double page spread in the album, you know, or it can be the single big panorama on a wall, right? The next one is the, uh, the main and supporting. That's when you get the main shot, and then there's one or two or three or more supporting images. You can throw that up on the wall. So and next ones what I call the collection of equals. And these are usually either a strip of images, which visually creates movement. It's like a filmstrip on, almost so like the, uh, there's many instances were in a wedding day or a family shoot. We want to create that sense of visual movement, right? That's when we're building that excitement or the collection of equals might be the grid of 15 detail shots. Thank we could also put that on the wall, and it doesn't matter if you're shooting weddings or you're shooting families. You can always have a hero shot. Here's another of Christie areas work right, and we can put that up on a wall, right main and supporting images completely different than the ones before main and supporting collection of equals collection of equals. So if we keep this in mind when we're shooting the hero shot, it goes in the album, just like from Charlie's album, We just saw Main and supporting images. The design is different, but the concept is the same and collection of equals. Some are a little bit bigger than the others, but it's still the same concept, right? So let's ask ourselves. You know what parts of the wedding resonate with different layout types like the hero shot? What? What's that? Usually in a wedding, right? The double page spread. So what? What what kind of shot is that? That's the editorial like an editorial taking them outside and just usually the couple and it would be unethical. Big Panorama shot, right? Right. So how about the main and supporting image like when? When's a good time to shoot that type of layout during the day, exactly. Getting raised a classic right to get the bride with her makeup on. And then we turn. And then the bridesmaids are all watching her and laughing and whatnot, maybe holding the dress around right? So we're visually taking the viewer across the scene. Right? In cinema, everything's moving, so it's easy to do. But in photography we have to. We have to give the slices and let the viewer piece everything together. Right? So right down the scene types, right? It's one of those things. It's just like with our photography and your you've memorized everything on your camera. Second nature, you got to do the same thing with our shooting. So how do we shoot the same? So I'll be showing some images from Jerry Guinness, who's one of the best shooting for the album in the wedding industry that I know of. It's like second nature to him, right? And so these air his images, right? So that means when we shoot this, we also shoot this and this because we're not just taking a portrait were telling a story. When we shoot this, we also shoot this and this does that make sense, right? So because we're shooting with the end in mind and that ended minded during a wedding is on album, all right, we have to shoot for that album. If we don't shoot for that album, we're not gonna be able to create an epic album, right? And when we're shooting portrait's family portrait, for example, the end in mind usually isn't the album. The end in mind is usually the wall art. So we're shooting for the Wall Art. But the concept is exactly the same. And then when we're shooting a scene, when we turn the page, we have the next scene. So we have to shoot for the scene. So I'm gonna show you a slide show of Jerry's album. So it's a slight set to music. And what I'd like you to think about is that each slide is a spread, right? So think about what? Ca next the two spreads together, right? I'm gonna quiz you a little bit. Stream me through, please. Oh, stay, stay, stay. It's all right. Good. So what connected? All these spreads together One of the some of things that made that connection from one spread to the next. He went from the hero to the different transitions. Yep, every time the euro shocks up. Then there was a collection of equal in the support. Yet what about you could feel a connection on every spread because I'm looking for that one spread, every photo made sense. It would all connected together. And then the transitions just everything felt connected, right? So that's exactly what I'm getting at. So there's there's simple concepts and weaken. If if you look at these and then you start watching movies, you're like, Oh, yeah, okay, I see it so and there might be more. These are These are the seven that are kind of easiest to remember for photographers, color and tone, which he cheated. Everything's in black and white, right? But, uh, when we go from black and white and then you turn and then you're still in black and white, that's one connection. Place is a connection, right? Light the lighting. He's very consistent with his lighting, right? So window light on one side window light on the next side. And it might not be window night light, but it looks like one delight emotion, and this is huge and that which is also a huge inch. Armies like just emotion can carry us across spreads, right connect. You know, you got mom and Dad crying. The new yacht, you know, bride, mom, crank that emotion connection or dancing like the excitement of the reception can carry to the next spread. Focal length, right. If we're shooting 50 millimeter on the bride and then we turn and we're shooting 50 millimeter on the groom, that visual, same focal length, same framing can connect. The two spreads together. Obviously story because we're in a wedding, and then characters. I'm a dad on one page bombing in the next page, right? So as we look right, color and tone. So on the left, you'll see one spread left page right page. So here we have left page right page, and then next to it, I have another spread left page right page, and so we can see the connection, right? The color and the tone is exactly the same. But that what that means when we're processing in late room, we have to be really consistent, right? Consistency is key and story place, right? One spread. We have the garden on the next bread, we have the garden. And that consistency helps the viewer view that keeps them engaged in the story. In the album late Thank same lighting. Yeah, it's these shots that I'm just like Come on, Gerry. How did you get that? out of that emotion. That's what's connecting these focal length. So there's regarding focal length. There's actually a great example from modern cinema who saw the new Mad Max. And we see the new Mad Max really, really fast paced movie, right? Lots of cuts. So, uh, there's a video on YouTube that kind of broke this down. But what the director did is that it's really fast paced and a lot of cuts. But the most important thing in every scene is always in the exact same spot on the screen. So as a viewer you don't have to move your eyes, right. So the scenes completely different. But the most important things in the exact same spot, right? And that's that same thing with focal length right is where you know are framing of the bride If we use the same lens and the same framing of the groom on the next page. It's an easy transition for the I, and that's really the goals were trying to make it as easy as possible for the viewer tow. Watch the story and then we have story, right? So here's, you know, up on top, getting married characters so the Mawr transition types. We can include moving from one page to the next page one spread to the next. The stronger that transition will be. You gotta have at least one right. So if you go from black and white of the bride and the groom kissing and then you turn the page and it's a color landscape, you know, you're like, What? What happened? Where are we? What's going on? Is this the different? I don't know what's going on because there's no transition, and then the more we can have. If you have three or four, you know it's the same tone. Same lighting, same characters, same focal length. Then the story flows. All right, so here we have two spreads, right? So this is a square album, so the top spread is left and right page in the bottom spreads left and right page. So what connects these place? Color, exposure, exposure, the tone, color tone, place light, characters, characters? Well, there's no characters in the top one, so that wouldn't connect it. Focal length Felt telephoto story. Right? Story stories perfectly find two. How about this one? Characters light, light, color, tone place. Same place all right. So just thinking about these connections between the spreads can help us shoot for and design better albums story. Well, what's that one? Emotion in motion. All right, so we have place lightings the same emotion, focal length because we went telephoto and then wider and then whiter. We're getting closer and closer. Question, Yes. How How would you suggest? And it's done here. Go from color to a black and white spread. Yeah, so exactly so. So, color and tone is one of the transitions, right? And so color to black and white. We're removing that as a transition type. So what we do is we bring in other types of transitions. So in this one, we have place light, emotion and focal length, so it works. It also works a little bit better in this instance because we went from a dark color photo a dark black and white, which is a kind of tone, right and story write stories, thes weddings. Their weddings are much easier because story nine times out of will pull us through when we make a mistake. Right? Families, food, war, high school, seniors A little bit more difficult. Night Owen characters. All right, so we've discussed the power of print. Alright? Storytelling. All right. In the next segment, uh, will discuss pricing and how to communicate that price. So you know his homework really? Right down those elements of seen transition and those story types and commit them to memory. And as you shoot for those, they're gonna become second nature, just like when you reach for your camera and you know where the shutter wheel on where the aperture wheel is, right? Just instinctively you can start shooting instinctively for these These, uh, story parts and these transition types? Yes, some questions. A couple questions from the internet, just regarding transitions. Um, we had a question here from photo maker who kind of wanted to know kind of finding here. What is the best way to transition between, You know, when you're when you're going from portrait to landscape. If you what are some of the best practices of finding those those most important factors. If you're going, just don't have something there Any advice toe how you can post process, create a transition. Exactly. So, uh, just very similar to Williams. Question right. If we're going from a portrait to a landscape. So we lose character, right cause so character can't be a transition because we've gone from having a character to know character. So we take a look at the other types, right? So what we can do is we can look at color and tone, right? We can also use focal length. So if we do a telephoto portrait, then we could do a telephoto landscape. Or, if we do use a wide angle to set the scene with the portrait, we can. You do a wide angle landscape. So it's a simple is revisiting those seven transition types and trying to include as many as possible weaken. I don't let's say almost never because I've never thought about. We can almost never include all seven seen transition types, right? That's those magical moments when you get all seven. But we can always include at least one, and if we can include two or three even better. And, um, are you considering the seven transitions while you're shooting? I think I think you should, as you get better and better than yes you should. And, uh, you and really, when you look at the seven transition types. It's all about just being consistent. Shooter. Right? So if you're a consistent shooter, your lighting's gonna be consistent. Your post processing is gonna be consistent. Your shooting style will be consistent. So, for example, I know my good friend Bend Chrisman basically usually only shoots with the 35 in the 85 right? So if you're using two lenses, then it's easy to transition on focal length. Because usually you got just two, right? Great. Thank you. That my pleasure.