Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: Paige

so I do use a handheld meter especially with studio strobes unless you're gonna fire and look at it you're not gonna be able to make decisions so this is a l three five eight sick connick I'm an f eight on my main light I'm gonna go ahead and have you drop that down to I s so one hundred I think we're gonna be okay with this background light if it if it gets ugly I'm gonna change it out we're five six here on this background on this back our lead I was worried about the fall off this way because I would normally not be using this but across the board here we are right at four point oh and that's his hard normally would be five point six if it was neutralized but because it's kind of broad I'm not going to push it too much more and then here were five six which is exactly where I'd wanted were one stop less on our kicker than our main light so we should be pretty good you switch me to one hundred correct just gonna white balance one more time um just because I think that's going to give...

me a better look so yeah that's better already so I'm in a custom white balance again he's going to pull back and get a look at that background coming be right where you are sorry someone up to the head all right so if my subjects low I'm going to go low yeah we're pretty good to go all right helen let's go ahead on walker now helen has already created a relationship with paige normally we have kind of roll the monkey creates the relationship started way do it in the studio it sounds horrible when you do it on situation like this but helen created a relationship with page so I'm not going to try toe come in and circumvent that by becoming a new object to her so let's go ahead and have you walk her in she seems very comfortable with helen which would normally not be the case I mean that's something that you know usually we have to earn that kind of trust but we'll see once we get her in here what happens mike you helen with paige you want to go she's got a little band aid on the knee we're going to leave the bandit on the knee because that's usually like a process we'd have handled beforehand what's that she likes the car paige you want to sit down on the box comes down so how's just kind of letting her do her own thing cause she's listening if she weren't listening we would pick her up on we would move ran but she's kind of engaging in just some child play ready on c she can understand exactly what helena saying all right paige paige guess what are we gonna tickle you what's this oh she got a little sleeve down if you want to catch that oh what's this we're going to get it uh here we go oh let's get you she's gonna kill you you get paid wait get a shy girl no way a let me go ahead and switch you for a second I'll stay behind and let me just shoot and play here for a second so I'm gonna go without an assistant for saying hey paige you want to play a game don't play games you know how to give me five can you give me five waiting with airplanes sent an airplane o knows that an airplane where's is up in the sky all right can you give me five give do you give me five ready pick anyone do it again all right get me get me to tell toto hey did you get me uh oh what's this are you ready what's this one teo what is that oh you're going to get to tell me I'm gonna get teo uh getting kid tio tio get you oh my goodness to do it again to do it again uh oh I'm gonna get you so I get that tow should I get that tio I got you daddy I'm gonna have you give her a little ticket with this just be real careful keep it low oh daddy's gonna get you uh daddy's gonna get you are you ready here comes daddy go right upon her tummy now or she's gonna bounce out of there but I always daddy are you ready tio she is like really into this toes okay let me try that again I'll put you back in right paige ready where'd she go where'd she go oh and she'd go get can I get you uh oh no it's a go oh I'm gonna get you where's the doggy page first taki did he go bye bye oh did he go away okay sit down we'll find the dog leash we find the dog she she totally under oh okay paige do you want to see the doc can you clap your hands clap your hands paige where is the puppy where did he go what you don't know did he go bye bye you can see she's completely engaged in what we're saying where did he go did he go away she'd get the stand out of the shop a little bit oh no where did he go did he go but by yeah can you clap your hands show me how pages claps her hands when you say yea page patty cake you know how to do that patty cake patty cake can you give me five you can't can daddy give me five should have daddy give me five ready alright mommy you give me five ready suqami should should mommy give you five go ahead and go in there and just let her give you five and do the same thing just kind of play elche dig in there it comes okay we're getting there so see if you could see people behind her she's concede people moving you dude that was perfect she's going to engage we just have to kind of lock everybody else down so head back in there and play that a couple more times than have you do that then I'll have you bounced back this way oh she's gonna get to get mommy get her get her I didn't get you all right mommy you're gonna have you tickle her oh mommy's gonna get you oh here she comes she likes the toes yea paid very good whoa be careful she's on that corner and here she comes she got it she got it hell let's get her something to play with since she's being so serious let's give her a little something and serious is ok I mean if this is how she wants to be she's a little intimidated by some movement back there too so what's this page I'm gonna move over to come here we're gonna get all there you go safe right here doing a pretty necklace play okay put it on can you put it on oh nice nice what isthe it paid what is it let me get a book or something for a toehold and this is typically where I would go for babies being really serious I'm gonna give them things to do so I could get a multiple series of images for an art product so it might be a collection or collage you know one where she's serious one where she's reading a book where's the dog is a dog in the book where's the doggy there it isthe what's this pains what is that a good girl that's awesome okay I've got that little serious so that would make a nice little wall collage oh paige can you play peek a boo where's paid there's paint booth oh wow where is paige can you hide where's paige where's page boo I got tio oh where's paige uh where did she go here it comes I got to get her chin up a little bit what's that she likes the toe tickle huh one too teo get you get you going to go take okay we need something to throw so just give me a area who's this page going pop on camera who's this who's this who is that is that your bear do you like it you wanna don't you wanna hold it you wanna hold it okay hold that mare really oh nice can you give that bear love oh where is it where's his nose I gotta make sure she's looking the right way where's his knows is that his nose right there where is it oh can you throw it okay manny throw one teo I gotta do it again ready throw it too tight oh way to go you're good can you throw out one two three up he's right up here I'll do it one keystroke it one watch paige watch I'll do it one two oh I got him can you do it many pages turn one throw it she's like I don't want teo here my turn one two oh good girl do it again ready one to you like it that was a little look of defiance there she's like you're not digging him can you throw him one two three do it again you know where to go do it pretty one can you throw it can I have a turn I love that face we go oh oh oh I got it can you do it again ready throw it throw it hey good girl she just thinks I'm the dumbest thing out there ready to do it again I throw it let it go doing yeah where you go there is oh he's going up here one of that face he's going to get you is he going to get you one teo the one thing that's not normal about this is that she's sitting there that is absolutely doesn't it make sense to me she should be running around and taking off paige are you ready I see you do want to stand up we can get off those boxes just stand up stand up good girl wish bear uh where is he stand up you can stand up you wanna dance we have some music can you guess the music just so I don't know if you can with your sound but if we could get even a cell phone just turn it on for a second you gonna dance do you know how to dance can page dance already um you want to dance are you ready to dance she speaks really well to have a little oh that's right alright who can sing really well all right can you dance we can't play any music unfortunately it's copyright to one of cannon's twenty where's daddy ready stay right there now music is great for children and she's okay with the bear she could hold the bear we just want to get a dance okay dance can you dance let me see paige dance and music really is the thing that would engage her there so without it it's it's kind of a tough one ready oh what do you have can you dance the seepage dance many khun daddy dance daddy dance she says no let's get a couple standing shots because that's really cute can you give me five again give me fine let me do it again hey that's cute ready did you give me dude again ready give me five oh don't be a good girl did she have a song that she likes to sing what is that ok me paige where's the where's the bear's nose where's the bear's nose a good girl oh where's the bug sir bug ray here let me fix the burial quick fix bear can you hold them right here ready one I was he broken oh no comeere he's broke in oh no can you hold it fix his head hold him oh I'm gonna fix it one oh no what happened it's awesome okay I'm not gonna push her for a smile yet because I want to change her clothing so let's go ahead and we're gonna take her out and do a quick change of clothing we can ask answer questions if we need teo but in a situation like this I know that we're capable of getting her to smile the situation is just you can she keeps looking back and kind of see that she sees people moving airplane first airplane there you go and so this is just really intimidating the one thing that is absolutely not normal is that she stayed in place and that she didn't move I mean she should have been up thirty times so that was kind of nice I'm on the other side of it she's not engaging in the smiling now look when she comes out and she's on her own now she's the boss and she's really happy so she's definitely less interested in where I'm putting her and more interested in exploring the world so we're gonna do a quick change of route and get you some different clothes and then we're gonna go ahead and jump over here so we're gonna switch the continuous light while we're doing changes now keep in mind I'm gonna be doing this switch every single session so there are a few things that have to happen with continuous light we had to change our s o because it's going to require more light so I'm going for my s oh one hundred to what currently I'm guessing it's four hundred I'm gonna head down to five six but I'm betting it's gonna be faa with these extra lights studio lights now there's two ways you can meet her you can meet her with them with a handheld meter which is my preference but I have trained all of my shooters as including myself too meter with let's swing that white around to meet her with a great card which is a good thing to know reading a history ma'am because if you're ever in a situation that you don't have um you know if you don't have a meter with you there's absolutely ways you can read that so we're in a custom white balance mode I'm white balancing two continuous like continuous light is daylight balance so we have to re balance between the two lights so now we're re bounced the exposure happened to be dead on I'm not sure if they can pull up the history ma'am but I'm gonna go ahead and pull it up just so that everybody if they can see it in the audience that they can see kind of what we're looking at here so you can see we're pretty close to dead on our spikes or evenly placed throughout we have the great if we do have it up there good so we have the white the grey and the black spike and that kind of gives you an idea and again there's a lot of volume of light in this room more than you would think more than I would certainly normally have with these lights so we're at s o one hundred excuse me I so four hundred at one hundredth of a second at five point six and we're going to go ahead and start there and let's see what we can get paige to do as soon as she's dressed questions wei have a couple of questions from the last bit and one from daydream photog would you have the bandage on her knee cloned out later what you keep no we would have taken it off we would not have started with the bandit I mean there's I am not a believer and fix it in a photo shop so absolutely not but the problem is I didn't catch it when I first met her and we did have time to get that off we couldn't put water on it um and just slowly removed it while she was in place it wouldn't have been bothersome but to come in here and then rip it off ernie we would have had a huge problem so it's not worth it so honestly I would never do a session with a band aid I would never consider removing it later I mean there's some things like a cast that you can't change band aids most case you can change that but unless mom said it's a deep cotter I don't want to take it there was a reason we wouldn't take it off but I would probably rescheduled before I'd shoot a bandaid because that's to me a lot of retouching that you know wouldn't be necessary uh question from stephanie from south carolina who asked or said they're just wondering how you keep your focus so well with so much movement throwing the teddy bear etcetera with her and that that's the cool thing about the tripod is it's dead on and I'm shooting at f eight I was at the time shooting it f ate so my range of focus is greater than if I was shooting a lot of photographers walk into this industry and we get so excited about that wide open aperture everybody wants that okay and that out of focus but we're gonna teach you about how we choose our apertures later but normally in my studio with one subject I could shoot it you know for o five five point five I could be in in that range and be okay but in this case I want to nail that focus so I'm fine with f eight if I don't have that out of focus okay and here that's okay because I want these to be tack sharp so that's how you control it is your aperture can control that focal point it's as an artist finding what you liked you like that softer look do you like that more crisp look but you know when you're selling thirty by forties forty by fifties fifty by sixties and seventy inch portrait you want that it's worth a little loss of that background softness to get that tax sharp those those eyes crystal clear so that's kind of where we're at if I were a two point eight we'd have a huge problem right there's good great thank you well we have a question from omar gonzalez videla who was in your last bellies and babies class gonna hold for the jets it's because of omar gets such I only esso always question is with babies and bellies your strategy was to jump from one thing uh to another thing that chicken in particular did you find that with these older children that you stay with one thing longer than the baby no older meeting five and six yes anybody under five it's pretty much that same I would say four and under for sure it's pretty much that that rapid movement I mean with her she honestly is an exception she is the first child correct she's first child and so she's going to be a little more confident than say a second or third but she's also and you'll find that a first child is much more articulate you can hear her actually talking to me when I said where is the puppy she was actually answering in gibberish but she was definitely answering that question so that's that whole thing if she understands everything that I'm saying a safari smiles like I said now the pro feel that people are off to the side so you might see that she warms up a little bit more because she can't see that movement and we've got some things blocking us here so we're gonna jump in same set up we have a four lights set up with continuous light at home I typically amounted to light set up because I have windows in my room that gives me the volume of light but we have some extra lights going on here so we're doing pretty good I've already white balanced and I've got my exposure and this is just a test shot just make sure that it looks good for my perspective on a bump it back up all right got a lot of light in here this is actually more light than I would typically use and you know what I can see where part of its from is that kicker eyes really coming and look where the direction is this coming pastor to her feet in her legs were looking for shadow not light so we're gonna push that back and you can see I'm now popped in sunlight but remember there are studio lights that air lighting her as well so I'm not going to get those deep shadows that I typically get in my own work but this has more of a natural I feel I like it it's very soft and light and bright so I'm down because she's down this is just a test uh we're still looking a little light so we're gonna pop up to fate that's what I had originally metered it out at I could also change my I s so if I wanted to it's a little better uh yes okay cool we're at thirty okay good all right good deal all right so we're gonna just finish up here hi are you ready oh you are a q t o can you clap your hands now we have already asked mom if we can have some candy and that was a yes so we're gonna see if we can and we we only have a certain amount of time so as much as I want to fight for the smile I want to let's just do her looking at a flour first because I want to get some remember if I can't get the smiles which is pretty rare but if I can't I want to engage in a lot of activity because now I've got to sell a collection in order to sell this piece I want to make sure I have some things that air that are unique for mom and dad what is that is there a bug is there above tell her there's a ladybug inside where's the bug where's the bug oh where is it oh no is it nice where is it is it inside there it is oh there it is own no is it broken oh good she's over that now let's see if we can get her engaged in the train now at this stage you could bring candy in and it might be the last thing you do what's this what is that do you want a treat do you want to treat you want more do you want more alright yes do you want some trees or some candy she's like one how many do you want do what what to one two to one three three ok then you have to give me five oh god do you want to treat heidi we're going to give you you want to you want teo okay can you clap your hands can you clap your hands do you want a treat let's see helen can you clap for him hey ellen would you like a treat all right one more time can you clap your hands show me how you clap your hands would you like to clap you ready all you want that yeah look at those I okay can you take a bite and she's a little young for this mom said it was okay but honestly this would take her a long time to chew up so we have to see how she does with it don't take a bite take a bite take a bite mom I'm gonna have you jump in here and just bite off a piece of that just to get her engage just take a little piece of that weight giver it I need a little peace if you can take a bite now watch her she may not want it taken away either can mommy have some oh yeah I mean oh good staff do you want some look to earn a bite by page you want a taste yeah me is that good can you eat it she doesn't we'll have to say those two definitely give her one of those will never have you got it did you get it there's another one it's more about more with that can you take a bite if you put a little piece in her mouth if she tastes it she might be more likely to want to eat it uh we're gonna have a little bite and if she doesn't want it again this is that age where you know bribery is actually not usually the norm here so um is that good you girls ready just stay in there give big hugs uh are you gonna do you want more not more here some more do you want more hay oh look what I have to we want more you're comes ready oh where did it go I think you're painting can you clap your hands yeah oh clapping your hands is one of the first things that kids learn how to do and it's a great way to control their arms if they're sticking out even if they won't clap they'll bring them together oh what's this what's this you want more what is that what is that oh she throw it one two I got to do it again once they go to she just engaged I could do it again why too so we threw paint ready one two three I'll say bye bye I got a on what happened is I went back too far on I lost her she engaged and then I went in the dark back here so now we're gonna come back and do that same thing again paige what is this what is this me throw it to oh my god I could do it again do it again ready one two three wait have you not ready gonna give it to helen one to catch hey do it again one two three wait didn't see how she bring your hands together there she's coming are good girl should do it again what teo teo get something out there you go oh she came back to do again one teo uh where did you go she throw it again yeah so big ready one teo always gonna go bye bye to you to do it again ah one too good a copper hands hey wait uh so big now I'm gonna try to take one more time just because now we've got her locked in I'm not gonna put it too much we're really close to a smile in a studio have plenty of time to get that oh going to get helen I'm gonna get her e get page one watch her so she doesn't toddle off ready e oh I got you good you ready here we go again ready where is she won oh no what happened oh no here comes helen way do it again can you get peo that's sweet beautiful here comes one teo oh but bikes we throw it what two page thing go go oh I got to do it again here goes one to say go go I got to do it again what I can get you what you want those toto where is she where's kate where where'd you go where'd she go oh where's paige uh gonna get to you better hide hey oh I'm gonna get you oh were so close one too you better hide I'm gonna get you you were sweet or she's getting tired of being up there ready page oh I'm going to get you you better hide but I got you beautiful oh no she gonna come over here okay wait I'm gonna get you you got it all right hold on by page you ready oh that's beautiful all right we're gonna let her go just because I know we're at time she's so close though we're literally seconds away from smiles just because she's warming up you could see the games that she's most engaged with are the peek a boo and the throwing things paige we're gonna make it go bye bye I'm gonna go bye bye should go bye bye you say bob I should throw away let's just say it's okay to throw it want to throw it when to go again but he went to go good dude again one to go I got a beautiful hall I will end on that note we will call it a day a good girl all right might look now she's smiling this is gonna be one of those that I wish I had ten more minutes you do it again are you I'm gonna push it here helen yeah just no go ahead and let's see she's so close I got one this is one of those where you're supposed to end right now like I said but her eyes were just a little off what's that noise you gotta watch that light ho there she goes you got a page you got her ready my turn my turn ready get out oh god it's we do it again what I get it you got a my guns throw it won to say go go I got it beautiful I will now call it a day that's awesome okay so you can come on out all right so I hate that we have to end because obviously we just got her to come around but now we've created a relationship and we'll bring up hopefully that last image soon and you'll see the reason I pushed it past where I wanted to is that I got a smile her eyes are a little often it was bothering me so when we show up that last shot you're going to see it definitely is much like there's your porter right there and knowing that we're in that we've created a relationship we now have fifteen twenty minutes that we could work but this is actually a great example of what it takes some kids walk in they're good to go you have a twenty minute window and it's over in this case it took a full twenty minutes to get her to engage we had a lock everybody out of her visual and we had to create a relationship so I think we got it I'm very happy with that shot I would not be happy from a sales point of view I would want to keep going but we've got a cute little boy here and we definitely want to do some switcheroo so we're gonna need some questions because we're going to switch backgrounds and I know helen's the boss of backgrounds in which way we're going she's got all this so we're going this way cool oh yeah you guys were good we're on a mission here today so uh one down and four practical question I do have a question for you and you kind of just answer this by saying that you would have kept shooting absolutely but annabelle perez photography from santo domingo in the dominican republic says sandy what do you do if the baby does not smile even if you've tried all everything and the mom wants a smile portrait see that's the thing is honestly I've I really never had a situation where they don't smile it's all this monkey business to find the thing you saw like I know it's going to be one of those techniques sometimes it's do it once and then come back to what you saw we were throwing she kind of liked it we came back we started throwing again and that that was our catch that's what we got away so I don't there are kids that don't smile at all but usually mom knows that I'll say in a situation like this I would have asked mom or dad I would have said she pretty smiling or she pretty serious and if mom said she's serious or she's very thoughtful I wouldn't even tried as hard as I would have I would have probably played some games got her toe relax your facial expressions but I wouldn't go crazy trying to get that smile all right so I think we have a question studio yeah talking about you know they don't get to smile or you know let's say you get that one smile but something's up I just can't get that smile talk about head slaps right now do you find that you're doing mouth swabs or we do and we can but I would I mean you guys know if I I mean I could have taken twenty more minutes with this baby but then I would shortchange another child so all I pushed for that smile was for mom because I know you guys can see she engaged in a soon as that happens I could have got ten fifteen more minutes out of her so I wasn't too worried about that but um definitely if I've I've had mouth swaps and I swabs don't necessarily work if you take a somber face and try to put happy eyes on it it doesn't look normal there's something really freakish you're changing the structure this right here is the mask of a face this is actually who you are is here you khun skinny a woman's cheeks you khun tucker chin up but if you mess with anything within this range here you're actually changing the shape of her face so moving eyes moving lips is actually I think destructive to the shape of the face so we try not to but you know family of fifteen with one little person that this is out of control and can't move ahead and you know I will do it if I have to but it's pretty rare