Lessons

Lesson Info

Sigma Demo

I'm going to talk about my favorite food were linz and first before I get into that, I'm going to talk a little bit about me I am was a state home mom before I was a photographer, so I was with my daughter about three years before I picked up the camera, I asked my husband to buy me my first camera in a bad I think it was about two thousand seven everything sort of a blur at that point, I'm taking care of a little baby, but I have a figure drawing backgrounds. So my whole life I had been drawing news and I was an artist, so I figured, you know, I was kind of one of those how hard could taking a picture be? So I asked him to buy me a camera, and he bought me a nikon d eighty, and it was great except that I turned it on and I had absolutely no idea what to do with it. There are a lot of knobs and buttons and dials, and it didn't really make any sense to me, so I sort of just put it down and just kind of let it gather just for a little while about a year or so after that, maybe about six ...

months to a year, my daughter had started nursery school and we were trying to have another baby and we had a couple of complications and things you know it was a kind of a hard time for may so I turned to the camera for some relief from what was going on in my life I said okay you know what maybe I could pick up the camera with my daughters in school I could teach myself how to take pictures I'll play around with the camera and what I did was I took the camera one day and I put a glass on the table and I took a picture and then I sort of moved some knobs around on I took another picture and so on and so forth and I call them up on my computer and I spent some time just looking at what the differences were between the different pictures so I could understand what things were like aperture and shutter speed and how they affected an image and that's what I did so shortly after that long story short I started shooting a couple of a low payments in new york city so I would go to central park and I would shoot people that were away loping and it was fun but it was never really my love it was good to get out of the house good to get away from my kids for a little while it was good to make a little bit of money is a stay at home mom but I really wanted tio pursue something different I just don't know what it was I didn't know where my place wass in early two thousand nine a girlfriend of mine who is also a photographer asked me to go in a boudoir shoot with her she was shooting two sisters in a hotel. My camera had better aiso capability than hers did so at that point I had upgraded camera so she asked me to go with her and I absolutely loved it. We had the best day of photographing these two women and I ran home and I said to my husband, I want to be able to our photographer when I grow up and like a good husband does he said to me, whatever you want and go ahead make it happen and I did I shot out of my bedroom for three years that was the one thing my husband didn't know right away I forgot to tell him oh, by the way, and I'm doing it here, but I would I started the business out of my bedroom it was like I said I was there for three years and about a little while I think because it's almost about three years ago in actually moved to studio in new york city and long island city, queens actually right outside manhattan and that's sort of my journey in a really condensed version of how I became a boudoir photographer so let's, just talk about one moment. What is in my camera bag? I do shoot with all signal lenses. I absolutely love them. And in my bag I have the thirty five I have the fifty millimeter, the standard fifty and I also the fifty art, which is the new lens. We're going talk quite a bit about that today I have the eighty five millimeter, the twenty four to seventy and the seventy two, two hundred. These are my goals. Who lenses for everything. They fit in my camera bag and I take them with me everywhere. So no matter what the scenario is, I know that I'm prepared for any situation. So people ask me all the time I get this question, what is your favorite lens? We know you take these with you ever, but what do you shoot with the most often? And the answer is absolutely the fifty millimeter. I love this lens. It is the first lens that I bought it's what I built my business on and it's just sort of like you say, jim a nifty fifty and I absolutely love it. Like I said, it was the first ones I ever bought and there's a lot of good reasons for that, and we're going to talk about that today, so if you are newer in boudoir or portrait or you're starting out or you're not really sure. Well, I want a prime lens and I'm not really sure where to go to. Like I said, this is the best lines in my opinion and we're going to go through the reasons why, first of all, it's affordable that is number one and the most important reason to have a fifty and it was why it was the first ones I bought. I wasn't making any money in the beginning, I was just doing it for fun and I was starting at my business. So what do I do to get a quality lens that's going to give me great images? But I don't want to spend a thousand two thousand dollars right away, so the answer to that is definitely the fifty I have a very small studio and I thought it was small when I shot out of my bedroom. But to tell you the truth, I moved to this studio in new york city and it's, even smaller than my bedroom, so definitely a fifty millimeters great to work with it's hard sometimes to go. I mean, if I had room to shoot with the eighty five, I might do that more often because I love that lines as well, but the fifties just might go to its perfected it gives me a lot of flexibility. It's a great portrait lens and I shoot portrait so it's very important for me to have that and I'm going to go through some images and show you why it's so amazing it's a portrait lens it also stops me from being lazy eye I love my zoom lenses I do shoot with them whenever I can but the primes I don't know I like to be up and moving around and working around my client and connecting with her. Sometimes I find what I'm shooting with zoom lenses. I could just stand there and jim in and you now and it's not as active for me, but I find it keeps the energy up in a session when I'm able to move around and have that kind of flexibility. First, we're going to talk about this fifty the original signal fifty, which I absolutely love it's, a one point four aperture and it's fast it's a large average your lens, which is wonderful, and you're going to see in some of the examples that I give why I need that, especially as a portrait photographer it's molded glass with a spherical elements and the carrying case lens hood and the front and rear caps are also included, of course, and this is a fantastic lens this is the lens that I started out with when I started using sigma the fifty art lines is the new redesigned fifty and that's what I'm shooting with now, although I do take both of them with me at all times in case I want to throw one of my backup camera and shoot with both of them. It's completely redesigned and re engineered it's a different body, it's a little bit heavier it's what I have on my camera here. So if you could see that's a little bit different in shape, it's exceptional image quality on I could say that hands down I absolutely loved images that come from this lens. It has incredible focal point sharpness, and especially when it's wide open, which again, when you're shooting portrait and you're in a small space, you're in somewhere that's, low light, it's really, really important tohave it pairs very well with pro level dslr so that's really important for me. Obviously I shoot with the night konzi three s s o I want to make sure I have the best lens for a great camera and of course also the caps are included and the hood is included as well. So the obvious question is, well, what's the difference between the two either lens is capable of professional results, even the original one provides good, sharp images compared to what you would get to a lens from another brand so I like I said, I've been very happy with this lens it's been giving me great images and I think it's is the perfect thing to have in your camera bag it offers a smaller, more lightweight option to the fifty millimeter than the new art lens so that's a little bit of advantage also for people that are concerned about handling or wait in your camera bag, it provides us smaller for you. I personally love the intimacy of a small lens I never ever shoot there started shooting like a seventy two, two hundred or a large zoom lens because I feel like, you know, if I'm all the way back here and my client is all the way there and I'm like, oh, hey, look at me and look sexy m over here it doesn't really jive with what I'm doing I'm really trying to make sure that I have a close connection with my client and that means sometimes being closer to her in proximity. In addition, sometimes people are a little leery of large lenses to begin with there warming up there, getting used to the camera and getting used to you so that shorter, smaller lens gives the intimacy that I'm looking for in my sessions with my client the original fifty is priced substantially less so that's really helpful for some newer photographers that are looking to start their collection it's great for sir students or like I said, beginners that just don't have the money just yet to invest in larger or more expensive lenses you're still going to get that amazing image quality for a lot less money fifty millimetre art is absolutely outstanding for its optical quality without a debt I mean, even I I took pictures with that right away and I blew them up and like him, I could not believe the sharpness and the detail that I was getting from these images. It was amazing when you're looking for unmatched obstacle performance it's above any other auto focus fifty millimeter on the market hands down because of this performance, it provides sharp images even when you're wide open, which is so important, especially like I said in boudoir we shoot wide open a lot I mean, I don't even think my camera goes above at four I'm teasing it does, but I barely ever use it because I like to shoot white open I like the look of it and you're gonna have really sharp images with that with this lens, you know that switched okay s oh there's, some technical stuff that's sometimes a little over my head, but I'm going to tell you about it anyway and it something that's really important the fifty millimeter art lens is part of the new global vision siri's this means that you can use a dock to find tune your lens and the performance of it for your particular camera on the advantage of that is that you don't have to bring your camera into the shop for adjustments in your lines in the shop for adjustments which is a huge problem for us especially for not living locally to the manufacturer the camera store what now who wants to start sending their gear in this is a huge advantage you can make these changes right from your desk so again these are my may four main reasons why I love the fifty and we're going to break down each one individually first, like I said it's affordable again it was the first fifty it was the first lens I bought and added to my camera bag so definitely part of the reason for that was it was affordable I wasn't really in business just yet so I wanted to make sure I wasn't spending a ton of money the original fifty is around four hundred dollars depending on where you get it and the discounts you may get but it's around four hundred dollars I mean four hundred dollars is next to nothing you could make that back in one shoot or if you're a beginner it's definitely an investment in your business it's so important to have the new alliances around nine fifty and yes, I know it's a little more than double what the original lens cost however it's worth every single penny. Like I said, I shoot with this lens probably eighty five to ninety percent of the time in my studio for me one thousand dollars as a as a full time professional it's something that I need to invest in my business to get the most amazing quality images that I could get remember I told you I have a small studio I know most people don't believe me but the truth is my studio is ten feet wide by twenty feet long half of it is dedicated to our about I would say about thirty percent of it is dedicated to hair makeup area and some garbage I have in the studio just props and light stands and what not? And the rest of it I shoot in and it's small and it's tight and it's really difficult to get what I'm looking for sometimes and I have to make the most out of my space. I have to create different looks I have to shoot in different areas on I have to make sure that the images look amazing so this is a picture of my studio and it's kind of distorted because it's a panoramic picture so it looks much larger than it actually is so I have a little video that I took that you could see it it's it's pretty narrow here is only about ten feet there's not that much room to work with. This is a little video that I took, and my studio is really ghetto I mean, it's like new york city urban I call it urban glamour because it's kind of just it's beautiful in its ugliness, and I don't have a lot of stuff, and if I had any more stuff in it, I wouldn't have any room to shoot, so it would be a bad situation. So when I'm not shooting out of the studio this to say when I'm not when I'm not shooting out of the studio, I'm typically shooting in smaller locations, like hotel rooms. This is a perfect example is in a hotel in brooklyn. I rented a suite I couldn't wait to get there. It was very expensive and a sweet I mean, you're thinking, ok, it's, a big space, a hotel suite, but let's not forget. This is new york city space is not easily found. So here I have my client up against the wall, and I'm literally sitting on the bed I mean, this room was a big room and it had a king size bed in it. And about a foot of walking space around the bed that was the sweet, so I had just sit on the bed to take the pictures. Can you imagine doing that with a larger lens, like a seventy two, two hundred? I could never, ever find the room to shoot her the way I want tio based on the space that I have what's nice about this, though, is that even in the limited space, I'm able to get some full body photos and I could go close up to her also because, again, I like some movement I like to move around, so even though I don't have that much room here, I'm still able to do that with the fifty I'm also able to get these full body shots, which is nice because it has a little more space around her. So we're getting all sorts of varied images just from the one lens in a very small space and you would never know look at these pictures that I'm pressed up against the bed or laying on the bed or standing on the bed in order to get what I'm looking for, like I mentioned it's, a great portrait lines is absolute must have if you are a portrait photographer, it works just a swell in artificial light, like something of this nature. This was shot with I believe it was a beaut dish I can't remember off the top of my head but this one works great with artificial light and gives me all sorts of different looks in that capacity you could see this is just one person in my studio I'm creating different looks for based off of how I'm changing light same ones and I always kind of make sure I get this nice clothes and shot it's really nice for the clients it works great and natural light also so I have a lot of beautiful natural light in my studio and I love to use it and you see a lot of these are very intimate feeling I'm very close to them I'm really getting a nice feel and in boudoir we want to really make sure that we get a head shot like this because she's not always going to go on facebook and post all of her boudoir photos but we want to make sure that she's going to share have something to share with her friends and her family and say look how beautiful I am look at what jen took of may this is amazing and she composed this with no problems so we want to make sure it's our finest work and that we're showing great detail and in her eyes and her eyelashes in her hair the fifty millimeter art is going to help you with that it also works really well with a combination of the two different lights artificial and natural and here's some examples of that as well so again and getting some full body I'm getting some three quarters I'm showing a lot of different options here just by using the one lens and moving my feet back and forth and just kind of giving me the flexibility to move around her and see what it is that way want tio again another one where she's just laying down a combination of natural and artificial light and she looks really amazing because of the open average and allows for more freedom with natural light which is great so how many of you raise your hand even though I can't see you have walked into a hotel room or have walked into somebody's home or any type of scenario anything studio and you forgot a flash or you're not using you know he said the client said oh I have windows don't worry I have great light and ends up being a really cloudy sir stormy day and you're like what am I going to do with this scenario? Well now you can just open your opportunity you don't have to worry about the sharpness of your images and I could show you that here this was shot in vegas and I really had no idea what the light was gonna be like I had never been in this room before I didn't know what to expect. I didn't have a lot of gear with me, I was traveling for a convention, and I just didn't have a lot of stuff, so I said, ok, I'm just gonna grab my camera, I'm going to grab my fifty, I'm going to go on, I'm going to hope for the best and it was a little dark. It was not the best time of day for the light. So here you can see I shot this at f to aid, just pretty wide open, but I could go even lower if I did it, too. When I pulled back and I want to get a full body shot, I now drop it to one eight and you could see it's a beautifully sharp image. A client absolutely loved it. She was really happy. Now this was shot in the bed, which was right next to the the light or the screen door that we open, you know, the sliding glass door so you can see that there's plenty of light coming in. Although it wasn't as bright as I wanted it to be. I had light, but she bought she reserved a suite for her shoot, and she wanted to shoot in some other areas of her sweet. Now the light was not coming in as well on the other side of the room, so I'm thinking on one of my guns, you here? So as I bring her over to the other side of the room, I dropped two one four again. I have a beautifully sharp image and she loves this picture. This is one of the ones that she shows, and I love it, too, because it's intimate and it's fun and she's laughing, and I'm able to get that because I'm really right there with her and able to make her laugh and show emotion. This was another area of the suite where there was a couch and there was a wall sort of blocking this area and the door where all the light was coming in. So it was really dark and again I had to drop to f one four for the aperture to get all that light in. But again, I'm so glad I love the shot. I got the shot, it was one of her favorite. She absolutely loves it. It shows some fun and emotion, and she really wanted to do something with those red shoes and had I not had the fifty with me that day, if I had taken a different lens, I would not have been able to get this picture. Again, even though the zoom lenses are really great for portrait's and believe me, if I was shooting outside and I had a ton of room, maybe I would use a zoom lens more often, but I really love the intimacy that the fifty gives it so important. I know I keep saying it, but with portrait, you want to connect with your client, and this lens allows you to do that. I love making my client's laugh. I love making them feel sexy and empowered. I want them to show emotion to do that. I need to be close with them, and I need to say stupid things and make funny jokes, and you just can't do that if you're across the room. This is now my friend carrie, who I worked with in miami, and I adore her. We've become good friends since I worked with her, but I mean, she had this amazing skirt that she wanted to be photographed in, and can you imagine? I was like all the way across the room, and I'm like, alright, carrie, play with your skirt, it's just kind of, you know, we need that intimacy, so I come up really nice and closed tell me about the skirt, let's, play with it, let's have some. Fun let's throw it around you know she was doing this to celebrate a new occasion, a birthday and we were just kind of having fun and connecting and I truly believe we wouldn't have had that if I was across the room I love showing her movement let's have some fun with the skirt let's play around let's do some silly things. This is my friend alicia now I'm showing you I shot her actually in her studio she's an amazing boudoir photographer as well, and I shot her in her studio so again and walking into scenario where I have no idea what the light is like and I'm going to make the met the best of it and I'm so glad that I have the fifty with me to do that and here in the first image we're creating a nice little intimate moment I'm telling her story maybe think of this or think of that or this is what I want you to dio or who are you thinking of them were creating this nice moment and I'm able to pull back a couple of steps and get her full body, so I'm not limited to the types of pictures I'm taking just because I'm shooting with the fifty if I have room to move, then I'm in a great position here it also gives me the ability to take some detail shots so I take a really long time to get somebody into oppose I really think about my posing very carefully so in this shot with kamber when I got her in the perfect pose I want to take advantage of that I want to get more than one shot of that so what I did was take her three quarters and then I could go right in without her moving and take another picture of her detail shot of her belly which she's very proud of she works hard for the gym and now I have two very salable images from just the one lens without her having to move at all just a couple more examples of some women that I work with just kind of creating that intimacy and again these headshots air so imp horton in boudoir to make sure they have something they could show their friends or put up on facebook without having any embarrassment I mentioned before that it prevents me from being lazy and I'm going to show you another example here of that hotel that I shot in in brooklyn now if you can imagine the brick wall that I showed you prior to this is now behind me and I'm shooting on at least on the bed so again I don't have all that much room to work with here but I'm going to try to make it work I want to make sure I get full body up close, and I'm just kind of moving around her and seeing where the best shot is, and this is really important when you're shooting with the fifty just to kind of get an idea also because it's not as big as a zoom lens, my arms, they're not tired, I'm not holding it for four hours, so it gives me that flexibility as well. So again, here we have our a full body shot, and then I come and really nice and close to create a more intimate picture of her and again, we're just kind of moving it around. What else could we do? It's play with different poses. We have her in one spot, I'm so limited as bars where I can put her that I want to make sure I make the most of every single poses shoes, then I'm able to pull back enough now to get some more full body shots, even with some negative space, which I love. So imagine when we're designing an album wanna have all these variations? So even though she's on lee on the bed, we have a whole bunch of different ways that we can shoot her with this leads, so first I have her kind of sitting down on her, you know, knees or on her legs, and we get some variation there. And then I'm able to tell her just to kind of come up on her knees in the same scenario so that I could make some different looks, and I can create a beautiful album for her, and again, the more shots you get proposed in each set, the more sellable they are, the more money you're going to make. So it's great for you also here's some examples in my studio of a client, and again, we're going to go for sort of this full body. Now you could see I have on a little bit of an angle, it's hard for me, sometimes with my son space constructions, to have somebody lay across the bed because what happens if I can't get them into the frame? So I that angle them a little like I've learned to kind of pose around it, I can get her in the frame because sometimes I'm like way up against the wall and, like there's nowhere else for me to go, so we have to kind of move her around, so I've gotten really good at that as well, and you could see in that angle we can take another close up shot and get really nice close in there, see her curves, create a more intimate feel for her, and again, I can. Have her come up now on her knees and give me a little bit of a different post. There were a lot of different variations here that we can dio and of course we have to get the two shot. This is the famous this is this is what I love that created live. I can show two shots without getting in trouble, but, you know, we want to create those the's details we want to kind of keep rotating her, moving her around and see what we can get again. I'm just doing this all with one lens, it's not taking me time to change it. I don't have to have two cameras. I'm not moving lenses around, I'm just creating all of this with the one lens again. This is one pose where she's lying on her back and all I had to do is switch her arms and take two steps to the right and I get this shot so much less work and having tio move her around and change it up. I'm just doing everything with the fifty it's a couple more examples so you could see there's a lot of variation here because I could move around more easily, I cannot more fun too, so this was something that I what I did last week where we just kind of threw a really fun dress on a model, and I just wanted to play around with some lights and get some practice with them, and she just kind of moved around. I just kind of kept snapping away and having a good time and, you know, when she was twirling she's kind of moving around a lot, she's falling all over here and all over there, and I'm able to kind of just go with her and it's really easy for me to move around instead of, like, zooming in and out. Wait, I missed it, I miss that shot. I'm just kind of moving around with her and snapping as I see fit. So it's a lot more fun for me, too. I have a personal project that I'm working on called shamelessly feminine, and some of you might have heard of it, but I'm really proud of it. It's showcasing women through storytelling and images, and I just started this just about the last month or so, so it's fairly new, but it's really an emphasis on their unique definition what femininity femininity is on how they live it. So even though it's a personal project there's still great responsibility to deliver really beautiful images, if not more, of a responsibility so for my paid clients of course I'm going to give them great images and I always do but for women that maybe can't afford photography or I'm trying to tell their story I'm trying to create an impact it's so much more important for me there to to create these beautiful images so one of the project I'm working on is called or it's part of the projects called no makeup and so I shot one without makeup on these air women that every day we're makeup don't leave the house without it go to the gym with it go anywhere they need to go they have at least some sort of maker bond so you can see I'm really nice and close in with my clients on making sure that they're telling me their stories I want to hear about why they wear makeup what does it mean to them I want them to open up to me the image here is sort of secondary to the story or I shouldn't say secondary maybe it goes along with this story so the story is just as important is the image and I couldn't get that if I was halfway across the room shooting that way so from this is meredith actually and from her shoot we get something like this meredith I love that she came in without makeup she wears it all the time and she has like the most amazing face and x oppressions that I think sometimes makeup might even take away from so she was able to show me that and there's just a couple of more examples of women without makeup on these air unedited images there straight out of camera there's no sharpening or anything but you can see how amazingly clear and sharp in every detail that I see and some people might argue. Well, maybe you don't want to see that because they're not right any makeup, but just the opposite. I really do want to see it, I want to see every little bit of their face and I'm able to do that in the color is beautiful me, how great has her hair just love it so a little bit more of a personal side, I want to tell you that I don't only use the fifty millimeter for boudoir. I also use it for my personal images it's almost always attached to my cameras. So like the other day when my kids started school, I just grabbed the camera and I take some fast pictures of them and again they're moving around, they're running, but I'm able to get I mean really this's just a shameless plug for me to show you how my kids are, but no really tasting around after I was begging them for me to take pictures of them is hard, but the diff fifty absolutely love it and this is a barbecue or so my brother in law got married a few weeks to go and we had this big barbecue after andi I was able to just grab some images I took the camera, they didn't ask me to their good brother and sister in laws. They didn't ask me to take pictures but is a gift to them. I chose to and I didn't want to start lugging all my equipment, so I just threw my camera on with my fifty I said ok would ever have today happens I'm just going to get what I can get and again this is my daughter and it's nice because you can capture sort of the intimate moments that are happening between the party this is the happy couples you could see I could take a picture of two people it works that way two and three people and my crazy family now you understand why I'm like this, but it's also great for groups so you can see I'm not an event photographer whatsoever I'm sure these images are nowhere near as great as they can be. However I'm trying to show you the flexibility I want to take intimate pictures, but I also want to take group photos and everything in between in any kind of light and that's why I love the fifty so much this last image I'm going to show you is obviously of me but what's so great about this image is that my four year old ticket and which he actually understands back button focus which I think is brilliant but just to show you it's perfectly in focus it's not that heavy it's not it's so easy like a four year old could do it so if he can do it, we all can do it right so again there's some important points to remember number one it's affordable, which is so so important in today's economy and trying to run a business that you don't waste money on things you don't need this is a lens you're going to use your going to think it's worth every single penny and you're never going to regret it again. I have a small studio and I would imagine if many of you were portrait photographers especially boudoir photographers you are too also shooting in small spaces again it's great especially if you're worried about light or ugly spaces like you walk into somebody's house and you're like this's awful but I could use this wall this is great let's just go over here it's perfect it's a great portrait lens for work and for fun and for your personal personal photos also and it stops me from being lazy which also helps me be more creative and see things in a different way again, it's. Flexible in group situations. So if you do shoot events and portrait and you want kind of a mix it's, a great lends to throw on and kind of get a mix of everything. So that's, that's. My reasons for aps really loving it. And by the way, this is where you can find me. If you're looking for me and you have more questions about the lens, or you want to see more images, you can also always email me. Jen rose, obama, gmail, dot com and, again, it's. What I use, I would say, ninety percent of the time. So it's, a great, great latin's.