Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: Cake Cutting and Dance

all right so here's what I want to do now uh what I want to do is photograph I want to get to a point you know I don't need to cover the bridal party arriving yes we're going to take those pictures were going to use on camera flash for that so taylor can give me a hand I need an on camera flash I'm not photographing that right now there's no point in doing it here from an instructional perspective we're going back to flash on camera so if you're following along at home get your flash on camera we're going back into manual mode whenever my flashes on camera in manual mode so my settings I'm going right to s o eight hundred six teeth of a second four point five point six those are gonna be my starting settings and what I want to jump to now are not necessarily the details let's do the cake cut so we'll get the bride groom here let's they bailed on us linen chris and what we're gonna do it's time for you guys to cut your cake lin take those glasses off for me all right now for movie magic...

purposes this is not a real cake it's a real fake cake so here's what has to happen are you two hang right there again understanding what we're doing here is very very important my couple has never cut a cake before so they walk in and they don't know what they're supposed to do they don't know where they're supposed to stand that's our job so I'm the trusted adviser I'm going to tell them what to do I always want them opposite me okay I don't want to photograph them here I kind of wanna photograph over this cake I like layers so I want to see the cake and then see them and then c all this light behind them so I don't know if you guys can see the string light behind me but that's ultimately what I want I want to create a layered interesting image so I'm strategically picking right what you don't want to do is if there were a wall right here I don't want to photograph the cake cut this way using flash because in that whole wall is going to be lit up with flash and it doesn't look good so then I'd have them on the side here and maybe I would photograph from this side I need depth right I need fall off I don't want my light toe light up everything maybe I would use video like but for this purpose I'm gonna use flash so you two and I instruct all my clients just so you know I tell them what to do here so pay attention all right you two I'm gonna have you right here you're gonna come over here let perfect all right you're gonna come in here chris all right and what you're gonna do sorry uh is we don't have a knife but we can get a pretend night perfect perfect thanks brother all right and so what we would do they're gonna have the setting here right the cake knife and all that stuff if this is a family heirloom which sometimes it is make sure you get a photograph of that now what we're gonna do is we're gonna tell them and what can we air we got this camera on I tell my couples to cut a wedge right so what trying because they don't know how to cut the cake and so I tell them to cut just a wedge and go straight down put it on your plate feet and the wedge should look like this this is a very healthy piece of cake by the way um israel yes I say good shit your wedding cake is delicious all right but we don't we cut the cake it's probably everybody's like me up online and I'm sure way tell them to cut the cake okay in a wedge bring it down feed each other and then give each other a kiss that's what I tell them to do now I come over here remember they don't know what to do now I come over here I'm here is the primary taylor is my second area and I've lost her she's over here photographing hands an expression and then maybe taking some risk maybe taylor's going to take a shot where the cake is in focus and they're blurry right I can't take that shot as the main photographer I've got to get the must have shot which is them feeding each other okay maybe there having fun with each other smashing in their face or not or right they're being nice to each other exactly we've seen both er and so that's my job to get the master shot my second shooter is always at a complimentary angle so if you're training your second shooters you need to tell them where to be that being said let's get in here okay let me take a test shot you're good lynn okay so what I want you to dio why don't you do is I want you slide this way man we're getting hard light coming in from outside I want to use more flash and anything else so uh come on in here yeah can we kill that that would be awesome and it's night time okay so come on back here thank you so much that was perfect and now what I want you to do is pretend to cut the cake so you're gonna come in there you go yeah grab whatever you want cut that cake and then pretend you put it on the plate feed each other have fun with it and here's my job guys I'm just gonna come in here make sure I'm getting the images I want right maybe if I got some time I'll put this cake and focus make them blurry it's a big piece of cake you'll feed each other not that whole piece of cake you feel an aggressive chris and I'm just letting them be right I'm just letting him have a good time with each other waiting for that moment and you better be nice here you go thank god give me a little peace is any good and no I don't normally eat my bride and groom's cake we sell everybody knows and give each other a kiss guys ok and so that would be where we would go for a cake cut that's it don't overshoot it get a handful of shots get the emotion the emotion is what we're looking for uh there and I don't know if you notice you might be thinking at home like does he talk that much to his bridegroom yes I'm talking to them all day long cracking jokes being silly with him I mean before you cut your wedding cake did you ever know how to cut a wedding cake no right and so they need a little help and you'll be surprised you go to these venues and the venue's air like okay go for it cut your cake and then they're like how the hell do I cut this thing right I'm not a caterer so I just told them how to cut it again reinforcing that I'm the trusted advisor and that is again my job perfect can we clear this table but we want to do now is dance floor pictures now here's remember we're not bothering our guests we've already photographed all the details the establishing shots I'm going to shoot dancing pictures um three different ways ok on dh this is going to cover ah mother daughter mother daughter daughter so holy cow that's right now somebody is dead somebody is dancing all right let me get my voice back all right father daughter mother son dance on of course bridegroom I don't care what's going on we're going to photograph this the same way I need two types of shots I need a wide shot again I'm thinking about the album and so that's going to be my sixteen thirty five and then I need a tighter shot and for that I might go to my fifty millimeter lens and I will be switching lenses whether my bags near me I have an assistant with me or where optic or we're switching on and off with each other so you two were going to come out here to the dance or liked him right the bride and groom to the dance floor for their first dance as husband and wife yes all right so what I want teo just rotate you around this way okay and can I get a camera that's seeing my viewpoint this is perfect and so we're doing is I want you to see what I'm looking for I want ambient light behind them right I don't want it to look like we're photographing them with a flashlight and you see nothing but blackness behind them if you've ever seen images like that or your images look like that that is the first sign of an amateur photographer who doesn't understand they're lighting and all those tips I've been teaching you all week hold true here camera's going on manual mode I s o starts off at eight hundred four point oh sixty eighth of a second right and I'm using my on camera flash which is one option I'm gonna show you multiple options so you two just pretend like you're dancing just hang tight right there you don't have to really dance we don't have any good music in here okay so what what we do have music yeah let's get down get funky you're not supposed to laugh during your first dance lynn all right rotate towards me a little bit just for the these purposes keep rotating their stay there there you go so what I'm looking for here is a mid shot I would get guys boom okay then I would pull back here and I'd be looking for this shot and I love the way they're dancing with each other then I'm going to go vertical okay so these are the shots I'm looking to pull off so there's amid a vertical then I might go and switch up to my fifty millimeter or your second shooters doing this can and what I want to do is same concept but here I might shoot at one point two so I really want this stuff blown out and yeah it's gonna require two you get a little closer that one's a little too hot you guys got rotate for me there you go on and I would not talk to my bride and groom while they're dancing fbi hey can you guys rotate for me that is not what I'm doing this is for the sake of of the show but what I would do is I would not be firing to the back of their head I would just keep waiting until they kept rotating to me and that's when I would be getting my master's shot right and in here with one point two I can probably go toe aperture priority and photograph with no flash whatsoever but I'm blowing out that background questions won't go back to my uh twenty four seven people are saying wow there's music on creative live way got the rights to that means eh excellent so can we go back to the kid cutting teo yeah absolutely wants whatever you want all right we didn't really get to those questions so quite a few people including sarabi and k rice photos had asked two people at the reception ever complain about you blocking their view when I say they're cutting the cake you know such a standing in front of them or getting on the dance floor do people ever complained to you that's ah that's a pretty interesting question no no one ever complains because the deejay most djs who know what they're doing we'll make the announcement uh hey everybody the bridegroom is going to come up and cut their cake please be aware there's a professional photographer up there feel free to take pictures if you like just make sure he can get his shot so most djs where we are know to make that announcement but I've never had anyone complain that were in the way of them for the for the cake cut that would be kind of funny to me so no we don't get a lot of complaints like that at all and don't don't you know don't be turned off because you've got one complaint everything in this world for me is eighty twenty rule right so there's always gonna be that one off you can't make everybody happy in the world you're always going to make someone uh matter upset about something but I'm trying to keep ninety percent of the people happy ninety five percent of the people happy in the world I want to pause here for a second this has nothing to do with lighting let's talk about customer service for two seconds here you know everything I'm trying to teach you guys in a part on you with my system with our processes everything we're doing is about trying to keep your clients happy with that being said do you guys really believe that you could keep one hundred percent of your client's happy I hope nobody out there believes in one hundred percent customer satisfaction it is impossible okay there's two percent of the population that no matter what you do you're going to piss them off someway somehow so what I do is I invest my time and energy into keeping the ninety eight percent of those people happy do not let those one offs that's why we're talking about the eighty twenty or in this case ninety eight to only two percent of the population get you off your game focus on a strategy and try and keep ninety eight percent of your clients happy and you will be going down the right path don't let that one person uh get you off yeah you had mentioned early right in the very beginning about when you shoot when you've noticed may be that the backdrop is dark and that your subject is lit up what would somebody be doing cause I feel like I might be one of those people that what would somebody like me be doing wrong that is getting the back backdrop teo dark yeah you're doing two things you're not dragging your shutter all right meaning getting it down below two hundred of a second right you can't be in auto mode you've got to use this simple technique I'm showing you you can't be an automotive you've got to get that shutter speed dragging toe let in that light back there that's number one number two is you you know make sure that there is light behind them right there are situations where when we're in a like especially when it's like a conference room or something like that there is no there are no lights behind them so what I'm doing is I'm constantly rotating looking for that angle where maybe that's the deejay booth I just need some light behind them and if you're in a catering hall where they turn off all the lights when dancing starts uh do not be a victim of circumstance control your own destiny I will have my second shooter run over and tell them to lift the lights back up not full power just something so I've got some color back behind them that's what we're looking to do you've got to control your own destiny I like that we keep bringing it back to that thank you for that pause and giving perspective on customer service it is frustrating I think as for tarver's his artist we tend to personalise a lot of things and it's not you know I think once you get your mind right and understand that you can't make everyone happy you can sleep a little better at night I'm trying to make everybody happy but let me give you perspective we do we do aa knight you know three hundred four hundred photo shoots a year I would say ninety five percent customer satisfaction is a good number when you all right if ninety five percent customer satisfaction is a good number if that means I'm pissing off five percent of my clients every year while at four hundred photo shoots a year right that means I'm making twenty to twenty five clients upset that's a lot of clients to be upset at us I don't want that many but ninety five percent customer satisfaction rating is a good rating and so that's my perspective guys after being in business for a while so take it to heart and put it in perspective yeah okay so says and dj photo anyone had both asked do you jump right in and get that close father dancing and what I'd like to know is do give them a few minutes to themselves in their dance before you start shooting or you know how much time do you give them to do their thing are you shooting the whole time I start wide and because I'm starting wide I'm further away so I am giving them their time right up front so the first lines I had was a sixteen thirty five and I'm back here photographing okay so I'm giving them this wide perspective and then I'm coming in okay with a fifty millimeter and getting a little bit closer but I'm also reading my client if I get the sense that they don't want me around them I stay away on I'm using maybe a longer lens or again I just take wild shots but I do need that mid level shot in order to get what I need for the receptions are for the album so going back to the customer service laurie newbie photography if that was an interesting question she asked what other faux pause such as the demanded meal on the contract do you see photographers doing that lose professional respect by doing those things other faux pas common folk yeah anything anything around the that even smells or right sniffs of being a diva to me those are mistakes you can make I think if you understand that they're paying you for a job and your job is to perform this whole concept of like having a rider and and you know any sort of writes that you're deserved that starts pushing you into this I don't know diva mode and and that's not us man and we try to be as loamy it's as humanly possible because when taylor and myself got married we didn't want somebody telling it making all these demands on us I'm paying you to perform a service can you imagine if you paid your plumber to come in and fix your toilet and he was like before I fix your toilet I demand a hot meal on I'd like to take a shower in your bathroom I mean it sounds ridiculous because it is and so we are performing a service I don't feel like we're deserved anything except that paycheck we have twenty more minutes should we keep going we're gonna keep going now I've got I think I've got a little treat for you and so what I'm gonna do is show you a setup I have here you may want to explore this you may not know what this is is this is now off camera flash and so what I've got up top here these air rogue light modifiers and so what this is these things are super light super thin ok they bend ok they're very easy to use and they control light this is my six hundred so it's got the radio triggers built into it so now I'm no longer fumbling with triggers and third party adopters to get my flashes to fire the triggers the radio triggers are built in to these cannon six hundred speed lights so this simply attach is here this is my rogue super easy portable right efficient you know my my philosophy there this creates a bigger light source for me now it's softening up that light as a light modifier what I've got here this is a um nano stand firm on fratto and this is model zero zero one b I can tell you they stopped making that model number but if you look up man fratto nano stands I think there are about fifty five sixty bucks and they collapsed to about nineteen inches so they are very very portable now I've got two of these set up so what I would do here typically is I would put one in each corner and what this is going to do is allow me to roam the dance war and of course it's cooked up to a battery pack here so I don't know if you can see that the battery pack is helping recycle this so I'm gonna put this in each corner okay I'm gonna put one here we're gonna pivot towards uh let me bend that down so just tell to tourney keep coming keep coming all right so we just want to bend that down a little bit that's what I like about it we're gonna put this in this corner and what this is now doing is creating an off camera light source for me can I get my seventy two hundred please um I've been using these for the last five or six weeks as an alternate light source and I am in love with these things now because it really gives me some diversity so on camera I have got a uh speed like transmitter here s so I don't have to tie up one of my speed lights and this is the s t e three artie right so this is their transmitter and it controls those flashes the beautiful thing is if I want to overpower under power these flashes I can control them off my camera so I can go can I get a cat can I bring my camera up to this guy can you see the back of my camera so the back of my camera here you can see right there that is my off camera flash and that allows me to control and go plus one minus one on cat on the flashes so I'm able to control my off camera flash right from here I don't have to get anybody else involved and when this becomes important just go back to dancing if you want a photograph with the seventy two hundred let me get a test shot here okay if you want a photograph sorry guys hang tight for me with a seventy two hundred your flash would have to work so hard to fire from your distance now I can actually be further away and rotate and not have to get in their face so you guys asked me what I get that close to my couple if I'm on camera flash I have to if I'm off camera flash I don't have to so you guys keep where were playing music again I love it all right so now I can come all the way back here great guys have fun dance for me and I can really crush this background and give each other a kiss for me lobby guys and so that was being done with all off camera flash and if we can bring up a mi six four six to give you a sense of how we relying that with the seventy two hundred and that took me no time at all to set up super light footprint easy easy to do questions yes so what you did on the back of your camera again yeah so if you come to the back your camera I'll bring it over to you and you hit that little cube info button that brings up this entire menu ing system and almost the entire canon system allows you to adjust flash exposure compensation and now I can go plus one minus one and anywhere in between all right let's do it for the folks at home so let's take a step just you two looking at me let's make this simple just put your arms around each other we'll get super traditional is what everybody does on the dance floor all right so here we are using the flash at zero okay stay there for me now I'm going to go and bump this up right from my camera two plus one you could see a cop ryder let's be remote little bit more ridiculous let's go plus three and I'm taking the shots and all those can you show those three frames for me mike all those three frames are going to be up and you could see the zero plus one plus three I didn't have to go touch my flashes I didn't have to do anything I'm operating real time looking at the back of my camera and in making those adjustments yeah they're set up I don't think I understand with the flashes on the stands where they said are they on their all t ell yes elektronik through the lines right the camera's making the adjustments for me based on the meeting system in here what I'm doing is I'm visually adjusting what I see adding more light as I as I need and why is that important because what could be happening is they could be sitting over here once you guys go sit down on those transforming maybe toaster going on well now they're further away maybe I need more power than the camera's giving me right so let's just say you two were sitting there and and people are toasting you well now I'm going to sit here with this flash set up and because I have it set up this way I don't have to get on top of them right oh somebody said something funny let me get that picture right I don't want to come in there okay I can now stay here and I can photograph from here right and get that now I'm looking at the back of my cameron I think wow you know maybe that needs a little bit more light so now I'm going to just this and just go maybe plus two thirds and now that exposure looks a little bit better and I did that without ever moving from my spot and I can truly be here looking to pick off shots as needed this is my new favorite lighting set up for sure super easy to do using my techniques yeah alright we've got some questions on this from the internet eso a question from rachel's rachel rochelle ans photo are you controlling the fat flash from inside the camera menu because of the transmitter the flash or the camera body what yes yes to all this's account in one dx working with kind and six hundreds on the transmitter and that whole system is allowing me to control it from in camera but the five he does it and a bunch of the other flash is doing talking to each other s o it absolutely could be done from the I'm not a nikon guy but I'm gonna guess nikon can handle that uh is well it's right there on the tribal oh do use car take a few so I have a question this might be a loaded question but this is from uh maria bonita and s e a photography who'd like to know how do you how do you know where you're gonna put your lights on the dance floor um that's an interesting question not sure how to answer it how do we know where to put my lights I'm only remember I'm looking for that ambient light behind them so I'm looking for ever that action is going to occur it's normally somewhere near the deejay booth I'm usually putting it I don't want to have that light in the middle of a dance for if I put that light in the middle of a dance or somebody is gonna knock that over so it's always going to be in a corner protected by something in the deep on either side of the deejay booth is probably the best place to put it so you don't have ah certain thing about distance it's just put it in the corner make sure it's out of everybody's way and the deejay booth is using the best place to do that yeah d j booth is usually the best wayto pull that off so um I mean you know it's very difficult to say put it out of the way it's all relative toe whatever venue you're at so if you're next to the deejay booth you're usually in a safe place ok so I'm not thinking inverse square law were just thinking yeah don't overcomplicate it write inverse square light fall off ratios but a little it's making me crazy give me a headache already okay so that's great because ah several people were asking about aren't you worried don't think things get knocked over they will if I just leave them sitting the way they are right now they absolutely would if you wanted to see a real world scenario if we were in this room where would this be they wouldn't be here in this scenario I would have this here so if I put this right here that's not gonna get knocked over because it's buried in a corner and then I would just adjust this accordingly so that would be fine in a corner like that so without a doubt I'm being conscious conscious of what's in the room and I don't want to like knock things over especially these that's an expensive setup so cup okay photo would like to know if you're near wall would you just reflect off the wall or the ceiling rather than use a modifier absolutely all day long if I were back here and right behind me was a wall I absolutely would bounce off this wall into them that would give amazing light so yes that that is a great question when we're reflecting okay I'm reflecting off the ceiling right now because that's all I have but if I'm in a room I'll reflect I'll reflect off a reflector I don't know if any of you've ever done that I will have an assistant stand behind me and I know I'm having a hard time painting this picture but their assistant would stand behind me not at a reception by the way I wouldn't do that but if we were off doing creatives outside I'd bounce that flashback behind me and create a bigger light source toe light up my subject absolutely got to get you got to get your macgyver on we talked about that I love that I just love that line you got I will reflect off a reflector yes so sally about ten minutes before going to break I got a special treat for everybody ever wondered about long exposure we're going to try and pull this off don't focus on the photograph can we block this door off again don't focus on the photograph itself focus on the technique I'm teaching you a technique that you probably heard about red about scene but I'm gonna show you how easy this is to do so I'm gonna be on a tripod put that away okay you've got to put a tripod here for this and I'm gonna get my camera here and lynn taylor can I get twenty four seventy instead what I'm looking to do if you've ever seen those stroh be lights right where you are creating a harder they're saying I love you I want to show you how easy it is to get this shot and so here I'm just gonna you definitely have to carry a tripod with you and this particular tripod is super easy to work with it's very very light it's by uh oh been again this is from being a jj ah we travel with this all the time okay and what I'm gonna do is I'm looking to get exposure of about five seconds okay again don't this is not beautiful here I would take him outside at night we still have light here so this makes us a little bit more challenging so here's what I need you to do I want you kissing each other and holding still so come on over here taylor let's demonstrate form what we're looking for so what we're gonna have you do because I want to make a heart okay and so you two were gonna be here you have to hold still for five seconds kissing each other and then what you're gonna do is from here hart come back so each of you you just screwed it up just by the way each of you owns half the heart's you're gonna go down back up make me the loop you with me can you pull it off we kiss yes ok what you say okay then we're going to fire you as a bridegroom if you can't make it perfect all right get in there for me now on the camera just like the flash technique I tossed you touch it it's just about simplifying the process so let's get over there here's where I have to have happened I know that I have to have the shutter speed and just for the record this is were going off script a little bit here okay I know I have to have my shutter speed down to about five seconds so I'm immediately gonna goto so low and I'm going to uh I'm going in aperture priority and I'm gonna price spending upto like f eleven and by doing that I immediately see by taking a reading that um in about ten seconds let's go down a fucked six three seven over uh eight eight over at four seconds all right what we got turned the zone there you go you want practice let's see you do it you're kissing each other okay hold on uh chris you're failing already sammy circle go for it make your heart longer chris here's your stinking at this land is kicking your butt all right so let's get the shot let me show you technique you guys looking at each other well down here and all I care about at home is that you get the technique is I've shown pictures like this on my website and everybody always wonders how we did it how did we get the bride and groom to be still make them kiss all right here we go guys one two go alright you are way too slow ah but that's pretty cool just show that guy's image number six fifty four hopefully everybody likes it I have no idea so I think it's pretty cool shot I'm not going to work that any longer you get the gist of what I did you can work this over and over with your bridegroom it didn't take me twenty minutes to get the shot set up it took me ten seconds to get the shot set up I'm looking to slow my shutter speed down to between three and five seconds and then all I did was give them those little video lights they could have sparklers they could have said I heart you ah host of things they could do so this is a painting with light technique a lot of people don't talk about it but hopefully I simplified for because it really is a neat way to end in the album so questions we could go to break two people like that they think it's socks they were like no good sound now I really don't think there's a little delay for now there is a delay you went through really do that fast it's just because I know we don't have time it's a little treat it wasn't part of my initial program but I want to show you guys how to do that because it is a great way toe add that creative shot for the end of the album okay so there was a question from on lee and csu how do you do motion blur with the couples and focus on the people around them are dancing around in semi blur unconscious same thing yeah the couple has to be kissing you're going to need a tripod and then instead of the light being what's moving it's the people moving around them let's do it with our group let's go right here come on girls come on in come on in pads down let's move all right ring around the rosie come on you know like you could just hold your light hold on I'm gonna have to kiss each other we've got go faster faster way all fall down I don't know what we're doing here but it's not it's not photography the picture's still take being taken right let's see we got you almost went you actually went to fast for but that's how you do it and so hopefully that makes sense it's the same technique I shutter speed was too long uh the exposure was too long and because of that they were blurry so I should probably still be around five seconds and that's how you'll end up getting the shot all right super fun good question is there any other time that air using your tripod during now the tripod is just something I have for shots like this where I want like if I met a cool venue I'll go out in the middle of the street set up like a thirty second exposure where cars air going by so all their headlights are streaking it is this technique that I just showed you super super easy to do and again it adds so much uh so many dynamics to the album that your client will say I've never seen anything like that before and that is the motto for our studio we've got to impress them with some of these things