Lessons

Lesson Info

Audience Q&A

I definitely want to take time tio answer online questions and also studio questions because I know that nate had a question that I didn't want him to ask until we were online because it probably will be a really great question I'm just getting no pressure name but we'll take a few people online first so I don't know do I turn to you guys or do I just turned to the screen or how does that work well you can start with that one it was one that I was perhaps going to ask you okay and now it's gone okay did you ever think you'd get this big this fast how do you keep yourself grounded and that was from raven mathis um to be quite honest I don't think I'm this big and I don't think that it happened that fast to be honest I feel like uh to be this big is is so oh no it's so so uh subjective like I just think that I'm just jasmine ah girl who's still following her dream and who's lucky enough to share it with other people in seattle what I am doing here is what I do every weekend I'm shooting ...

a wedding and what I've done is invite people by do you like that I like high roll like I put this all on this production it was all me whatever what happened was created life and chase service have enabled me to share what I do with other people but it's still just me doing me like so I don't you know people that don't know my name so it's fine like I don't ever think when you when your checker knows who you are by name in your big time and until that happens I will become big time so it's no the answer is I'm just doing what a view so but I like it I love it my mom thinks I'm cool which is a total of did you tell the ladies at church have you seen my daughter's website and I'm like mom cut about do you think I'm cool um and we have to have a kind of motion okay create this kind of making me a little okay in the audience well susan do you want to start with the chapman yeah I have a question that came up in the smash chat room and I really wanted to ask this as well because I've seen a lot of wedding photographers that used you know for the family photos they use the fisheye or they're doing some tilt shift stuff in photo shop or they're using a lens baby and I don't know if if clients they want the really conservative photos or they're not interested in having a family porter that is a fish eye lens but there's kind of this seems to be in the wedding industry there's a lot of people that are you know doing really alternative type of photography and I don't know how that parlays into weddings if you think that that's appropriate um well you're probably asking the wrong person because I I think that I kind of do look a twist on very traditional photography like that you can look through um my blogged or my own line portfolio and my pictures um looked very similar slight differences but quite similar to what they looked like two years ago I was never a fan of textures and if you do textures that's awesome rocket out that's totally you I've never been a fan of like a lot of filter is in a lot of photo shop because I do do you think that you know back in like nineteen eighty four ish it was really cool to have your kid on a black background with one head looking this way and one head looking this way of the same child have you guys know what I'm talking about like that was really cool like of two floating heads looking in different directions and somebody in the world said that's really cool and we look back that were like that is the funkiest thing we've ever seen two me I look at my grandparent's wedding photo that my mother still has for him to this day that my sister who's getting married in two weeks will be taken to her wedding and I think it is just a traditional portrait of two people who I hope we're in love in puerto rico and I feel like those are timeless so no I wouldn't ever shoot um a family formal with um a fisheye or a lens baby what a family really wants simply is a photo of the family they're good answer cool like silence way disagree I have a question from twitter laura bracewell asked do you always scope out and pick the shooting spots at the wedding venue reception before the wedding day forever on the fly that's florey krystle I know her okay she came in my workshop I'm sorry I'll see you in d c in a couple weeks of the w p a roadshow okay um she asked if I go on my scope out the venue right or do you ever do it on the fly I'm sometimes sometimes it's a mix I do arrive to the wedding then you early so that I could scope the grounds and even if I have shot there already I tried to go back and view the venue as if I'm doing it for the first time because I'm not shooting at the exact same time of year and at the exact same time of day the light changes depending on the year specifically in southern california a lot during the time of year and the time of day so I always arrived to the venue early to see what the day is doing it if it's like a cloudy light if it's full sun what's happening on that day and do I sometimes choose locations on the fly yes but for the most part I do have a plan in mind so last saturday's wedding jamie and I got there a half hour early which is what we do and the property is massive and I I was like oh my gosh and she's getting ready in a villa on the opposite side of the venue so I'm like hoof in it like I went to her room I dropped my bags and I didn't necessarily star I like to start ten minutes early so michael kay I'll be right back and he had to go and find out at least at minimum three locations of where I was going to take the clients ahead of time because you can't just get there I'd be like all right let's just shoot it's like no you have a big property you have so much um at your hands you need to be in control of that from the beginning audience question uh well the question I was just referring to before was in terms of your show it plus sites how's that worked you make websites that are designed specifically for your client like their website they can point people to facebook they can put stuff up there or there's something that you design and you pushed back towards your website so you can actually do both things so I have created a plus sight or it's uni directional so I put it up and then the clients can share it and then there's other photographers who actually use the plus side as like um a a wedding website for their client so the clients have access to update information so they could use it as a traditional wedding website so come see john and james website they could put it there are svp information the photographer can upload a gallery of his or her engagement photos in the session so sometimes and you see these like wedding websites it's like they put up like snapshots of them in college and that's fine but sometimes to have really nice showcasing ofyour photos is really great so you could actually brand the website underneath your own name which was totally works for google juice right you want that type of thing you want people searching if their wedding is at the montage in laguna beach you know um anytime somebody searches for montage laguna beach is gonna have nate parks name associated with that so that's wonderful for google do so you have both options when creating a plus say I did notice on twitter during the lunch break people were asking what specifically a plus I is I have jasmine dashed our dotcom and a plus site for me would be jasmine dash star dot com backslash whatever my clients names are that so I have attributed to it so my clients theoretically own a piece of the jazz and start girl and I'm really proud for them to have that so what's good they like it it works for them cool so jasmine how do you put people at ease in front of the camera people that camera shy this is great this is a perfect question because I will also be dealing with this tomorrow but I feel like I need to say it again and again and again okay this's part of actually why I was so nervous about the shoot um I have seen myself on camera um shooting people and I am absolutely ridiculous positively phenomenally ridiculous I do whatever I possibly can to make people comfortable and a lot of times it's at the cost of my dignity e I'm okay with that I have now known that me being my ridiculous self um gets people to be where they need to be I love challenges and when I get a couple who's never been in front of the camera professionally to make them look and feel like models because I've worked with models and there is a sense of gratification to say okay and there's just like boom though boom they could they know what to do with their bodies they know how to be beautiful so it kind of takes like the art of the chase and so for me if I have two people who just are a little bit uncomfortable and then allowing them empowering them to be really really beautiful and confident there's something so gratifying that I get out of that so how I approach somebody how I make them feel beautiful is um bring out that inner person and I know that sounds so like deep and esoteric I can only show people how I do it by doing it and I think a lot of it comes by listening between um the lines what they're saying how their communication the way that they talk under their breasts you can you please hold him that means she's uncomfortable she's not feeling like herself so if I heard this under the mouth thing please homely hip it's okay now billy can you please bring your body into laura's and behold her hip anything like that to make her feel as if her idea was completely organic and something that I saw on my own is going to make them automatically um more malleable there like two pieces of clay if I could just work them in a lot of times I show people what I want um I get close to my groom's it probably makes him uncomfortable whatever it takes I have twenty five minutes thirty minutes on the wedding day to get all the wedding photos that I need I'm not gonna you know sit there like no move here one senator this wait till tonight do this it's like no no no come here like jd is with me I always save the groom listen my husband sending for their I love him so much I'm just gonna creep right in next to billy I will say this very think him j d's here I love him so much but I'm gonna get nice and close to you billy because I want to show you what I wanted to do I'm gonna show her and sometimes I feel uncomfortable because I make these weird faces to show my clients what I wanted him to you I feel so stupid you know it's like how do you be cute on on command that's hard but we want that from our clients yet we won't show them we won't show them want me because you think I'm dumb who cares like show them to get and then by you showing them you're giving them permission to feel really beautiful I think that has only come from experience and I'll talk and show a little bit about money tomorrow but it's really embarrassing like I say stuff and then I looked back at it in video and I'm like who is that person you know it's like oh my god but whatever it is what it is but what if I make clients are happy and they feel beautiful than perfect you know it's it's the cost of who I am not way um no I'm fine the core volume is good medical student whatever it is what it is well I think it's great that you said that you would just show them because I mean people are visual their visual learners a lot of time so it's gonna that they'll get it if you show that also okay so polly will do like two more questions that's a great question sort of name vein just in terms of when you're doing group formals and group shots how do you mix it up toe always have something a little different without having sort of a firing squad line up picture you wearing spot yeah I feel like you'll see tomorrow work going to talk about that in a bit okay so uh the fire squad is just easy pose and it makes him really happy it's it's a fail safe pose you got you don't have to do it but I do it because it's one easy to time sensitive and then three you know it gives me an option so I'll talk about that little bit more but remind me about the fire I've never uses a firing squad because it seems so it just getting um one more question I have a question from cassandra emcee on twitter she says how did you connect with other local photographers when you started that cassandra mcdaniel and she went to my works up to hey way works up people I love that like I've had lissy I started doing workshops about a year and a half ago and I think we've had j d how many have we had public between eight and ten yeah between eight eight workshops ten workshops and every love you yes they do and I don't know why they spend a day with me they still like me yeah but I love them they're amazing so what was the question sorry the question was about other how to connect with other local photographers when you got started so you talked about peace yes there any great you did great question um I actually when I first started and I felt like I didn't have any friends I um that's what is so pathetic I don't have any friends not really you know I uh stopped working part time when I decided I wanted to go full time deep thoughts and uh I was kind of myself a lot five five days at home and you're just me and polo and I was just like okay I need to get out and so what I did was um a lot of the times a top tier photographers won't give newbies time today which I totally understand time is precious so it didn't necessarily behoove them you know this rain in person to say like okay let's go to lunch so what I did was I looked around other photographers who I found inspiring who were um around have been shooting around the same time I've been shooting whose prices were around my prices and who's like a visibility and business was around mine and I reached out to three girls specifically and I said hey I know that we're super busy but it would be really nice if we grab some lunch and all three of them responded in the affirmative we met and had just a great lunch and it was somebody just lose somebody just to be like where your prices at like is it frustrating look what do you do here and then because we had created such a good relationship whenever I was booked I know how much they cared about their client and he took care of their clients so I would send them you know weddings if I was booked and it worked vice versa so just going out on a limb and asking people and if somebody doesn't wanna have lunch with you no worries you will find somebody else so it's good that you can I ask one more question yes of course uh when you first started what is one thing that you wish someone would have told you a ce faras a tip a trick or something is there one thing that stands out in your mind will two things one I wish somebody would've told me to have fun I was really really really worried um it's just my personality I'm I worry about worrying if somebody would have said take a step back and have fun with what life is throwing you um I was really really really worried coming here and jd sir that you're going to be so worried that you're gonna miss what is happening and he was so right so as part jd knowledge like have fun what is going on you're gonna be frustrated but that's part of the journey um another thing was to take bigger risks I I think that I slowed myself down I did I didn't believe in myself enough to go out and say you are going to succeed and I wish somebody would have said take bigger risks because the rewards will be bigger well you must've been saying that yourself because you manifested it um in a way in a way I think that it was I think I said it later in the game and I just think back tio god had I not just said that before what what could have been I believe in perfect timing in divine timing but at the same time if there's somebody out there who's just um not allowing themselves to believe then just like let it go take a step back and give yourself room to fail because you can't live your life you know you don't want to be sixty eight years old looking back at that one time that you really wished she took a rest to become a photographer you should be sixty eight years old looking back and saying I took a risk to be a photographer and it really didn't work out but man I had some really nice photo greer