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Review Images

I wanted to just take a real quick review of some of the images we shot I'm only going to show you like four pictures but I wanted to show you something core concepts that we went over yesterday this is our one of our beautiful beautiful models that we had yesterday and I want you to look at this photograph and then I want you to compare it to the next one which one do you like okay this is a perfect example of using the right tool and the right light for the right subject you see that's why you wanna have a variety of tools in your arsenal and that's why in my opinion you cannot put blinders on your sale itself and say oh I only want to use natural lighter or I on ly want to sit in my studio and I'm only going to use I've got an umbrella that's all I know need you know I've got this one soft box because different people people are different and what works for one person may not work for the others and at the end of the day it's about making a flattering picture of your subject that's ...

what it's all about let's get ah flattering picture and so let's and analyze real quickly why this photograph is not working okay first of all now we've got the catch lights and about the eleven o'clock position in the eye right I mean we didn't we say yesterday that was the important thing to have but the problem is is because of the the way that we have let her face this is making her nose appear very large isn't it and it's not lighting it's not giving her very nice light under the eyes it's just very very it's just very unattractive for her face so now let's move to the other image and see how we corrected for that you see by using this is the glamour lighting look and it absolutely does what glamour lighting does look at the beautiful soft lips and this is with just a single light on the top or using just a big big soft box not a soft box what is it dad yeah the soft lighter or the or pro photo makes a big thing called the octo bank and you put it up above that's where that first catch light is and then the bottom catch light here is just a silly simple reflector that's a one light setup I mean can you think about that that's as easy as it gets I mean that's really pretty moron proof so it's really easy and you can create beautiful beautiful portrait of your subject so when you have the tools I'm not saying to buy lots and lots of tools you don't need every you know all these every light modifier known to man and you don't need to have all the fancy stuff necessarily but my feeling is is that just by one good thing you buy you take baby steps and buy good equipment don't buy the cheap stuff because then you always have to go back and buy more because it's gonna break down and and when you buy really good equipment it lasts for a lifetime and then you don't have to worry about and to me it's like laying a fine foundation for where you want to go with my studio lighting the great thing about it because it's completely portable I can take it to weddings and do my formal pictures using really professional quality equipment so and that to me is really important especially now when everybody's got a good camera these days or they think that's what it's all about his equipment well when they have their little camera they're little tiny point shoot flash on the top of it and I'm I have my beautiful umbrella set up on whatever I can create beautiful pictures that they absolutely cannot create and the great thing about it is it also has a little remote that fits on the top there's a little module that you can get to go on the top of your camera that where you could just dial your lights and control them right from the camera which is fantastic and I love that yes kenna have a question from blue light will claim shall lighting work on the majority of faces that's a good question I find that it works very nicely on most faces I can't think it's too many people that would not benefit from plant clamshell lady what about you what do you think john flat so and more mature face it just fills in works great for head shots so yeah I think just about anyone is going to look good in there I mean it's not a great character thing if you wanted to really emphasize an older gentleman skin or something we're probably not going to go with this but for most faces think it'll do pretty well yeah it's it's a great foundational tool and I'll tell you right now if you're shooting weddings clamshell lighting would be awesome if you were going to do group pictures of the bride with each of her bridesmaids or heard her mother and daddy and you wanted it to look really nice you notice we didn't put a background up we didn't have to use any fancy backwards we just used a blank wall you don't have to get too crazy with your backgrounds keep it simple but just have have beautiful light on your subject if you need teo and you can with your background keep your subject a little bit farther from the background make that background go a little bit softer so it's not you don't want it to be a sharp is the faces any other questions on that yeah uh yes question from rhode island uh diane lundgren is wondering if there is a rule too how many catch lights should appear in your subject sighs great question that is a really good question well ideally you we should have one catch light in the ice because how many you know there's only one sun right one catch light however I have to tell you my twenty five years of photography I've never ever had a client go you know there's two catch lights in my eyes they look at the picture and go wow I like the way I look I think I look pretty good you know so I don't get my panties all in a wad over whether it's like you know oh my god there's more than one catch like however how hard would that be to retouch out oh my lord it could take me literally a whisper of a moment to retouch that bottom catch light out if I chose to do so but that's an excellent question I'm glad that's that's really good okay any other questions we move on um nancy shoe had asked what would you suggest for a first light to start with the first like to start with um let's see I would have to say I'd go with a I'd go with a d one kid myself which would give you your your power source and it plugs right into the wall or you can get a little portable battery with it and then I would get a large soft box or a large light modifier like the octo bank what about you uncle john agree without going into brand specific things large umbrella forty five to sixty inch if you're going to do ooh that oren octa I mean that that's the most forgiving later you saw yesterday we used to umbrellas for most of the day and yeah we got great light I mean they're they're very forgiving you know we don't have time here does it positioning things exactly and were able to get those things set up and done really quickly so I think they're going to start in fact I loved you have kind of a broad that fits on the front of your umbrella over there too doesn't it yeah that's a said yes that's the faux tech soft lighter so it is a sixty inch umbrella with a diffusion screen so you get sort of a double diffuse light it bounces like an umbrella and then goes through the screen so it's double softened and that's what we use for most of these things oh excellent good that's a great question okay well let's move on a little bit to our family that we photographed yesterday we had a blast with this young family that we photographed yesterday and one of the things that I've learned in working with people is I really learned the importance of knowing everybody's name now I didn't know anyone that we that we photographed yesterday never met any of them the bridal party that came yesterday I met them about fifteen minutes before he went on the air on dh this family I met literally as they walked over on set so I didn't know any of them but one of the things that I've learned in my career is the importance of taking a personal interest in each person that they're looking them right in the eye and then finding something that's common that you have that you have a common interest with them you know with kids I want to play with him I want to just be let him just be crazy and let them be kids you notice I'm not trying to over pose these kids and make them try to be you know all you know perfectly posed they to me were the kind of family that could just be leaning up against the wall I wanted to be a bit more random to close that they're wearing fit the scene if it's the experience so to speak and so that's where I'm going to go with them and it was interesting to me because the middle child sage eric when we first started photographing jerrick I was having a bit of difficulty I felt like I was having a hard time getting him and so I just started playing with him and I mean all facade where did that kid come from and we was like he woke up and you know I really understood him because I'm a middle child of three girls and the middle kid I mean and then they're about that we're about the same difference in age the three boys of me and my older sister and my younger sister and when I was in school my parents are all my friends and family they always called me jelly fingers especially my two sisters because I was the one who was always in trouble my older sister was beautiful and she was really talented she was in a major artist and everything and my younger sister was brilliant in school she was very scholastically inclined I want you to know I'm the proud holder of a two point o g p a from hard way high school columbus georgia and I I can proudly say I graduated at the top of the bottom of my class so but you know what it wasn't because I was dumb I wasn't interested I absolutely not interested and I really believe that a lot of photographers are like me and that they know they you know we're not we're not bread that way we're not the kind of people who can learn logically and I hope that one of the things I'd love for you guys to get from this program this weekend is the importance of learning to think out of the box not putting blinders on yourself and getting so hung up on the logic that you lose the magic you see logic is important you need to have that foundation on learning good lighting and posing and composition but that's only the foundation because then you take it and you let it and then you let it out and use that to help you to build something creatively it's like an architect you know an architect goes well what if I did this or that now if they don't follow the rules of of you know of good architecture and of math I don't know anything about mouth just for the record so but if they don't follow the rules then they're building will fall down so you have to start with a good foundation and good basics but then if you use those tools successfully you could take them and you can bend them in a way that it's pleasing artistically to create amazing pictures and the more that you lay that foundation on your education learning about the you know getting a good foundation photographically the more freedom you have and know that you're going to get predictable results it's not about just taking snapshot in snapshots and hoping that you're going to get a good picture it's not about that it's about knowing and getting predictable results and that's what separates on amateur from a pro and so I think that that's really an important thing so with this family I like to interpret people according to what they're wearing and what their personal style is so I just I just brought a couple of pictures I haven't done any retouching so please excuse the fact that it's not perfect I mean I'd go in and clean up that light socket right there and maybe clean up the face is a little bit but what I want you to see most importantly is the relax expression on everybody's face and then it looks believable and then here's the other one right here and I don't even have a clue as to what I said to make these guys laugh but I knew I got him at that point I was I was getting them and when I start with the family I don't necessarily know who they are in here so I just start saying stuff I mean it's about getting a reaction you say I want a reaction from them I want and it's okay if they give me a negative reaction because it tells me we're not to go it tells me we're not to go because you can you can sit there and ask people twenty questions about well you know how you feel about this or that or do you like post pictures or do you like you know do you want all photo journalism at your wedding and people will answer that and would give you a response based upon buzzwords that they've heard they'll give you a response based upon things that you know that they that personal experiences of people oh my sister got married and that photographer spent two hours taken formal pictures no I don't want any formal pictures well you don't have to take two hours that's the problem the two hour window that was the issue it wasn't about taking a formal beautiful post picture because there's not a person in the world that doesn't wanna look better than they look I'm a good testimony to that because that old lady shows up everywhere I go and I know what in fact on my son's wedding I'll just tell you this one story and then I'm gonna move on I spent months looking for the outfit I was gonna wear to my son's wedding I was just this way only have one child okay you have one kid you are gonna have a wedding okay we were gonna have a great wedding so I spent lots of lots of time trying to find perfect outfit everything and I'm and onda was much heavier than I am now and so the day of the wedding rolls around and I'm like who I am looking huh you know just got it going on and then when I saw the pictures I was like holy cow who told you that look good and I understood for the first time why all those old ladies in las vegas where spandex because they thought they looked good in that stuff and I'm here to tell you kids we don't look good in spandex cycle so the moral of the story says that you know sometimes we want something basically who's going to take a flattering picture of us