Lessons

Lesson Info

Shooting, Lighting & Posing

what we want to start today with would be a little bit more shooting and lighting I thought silly me it would be sunny in seattle further articulate like what I'm talking about I actually like overcast days I prefer shooting on overcast days um if I'm not if I can shoot it sunset all the time then I totally will but if I'm not sitting at sunset I actually prefer shooting over gas days I love the light I love what I could do I have so much more latitude on pictures or just I think prettier but to each his own so what I wanted to for starting would be a lot of times people ask is how I find a national reflectors we briefly alluded to this yesterday with such an and he talks about why don't take like a legitimate reflector and on the lunch break when the cameras were off it was sunny in seattle yesterday I mean I think it went from like seventy five and now it's like I don't know thirty and actually I mentioned to the group already this morning I probably will have to go shopping for an o...

utfit tomorrow for the wedding because I brought a sun dress like a sleeveless dress and it's cold so think jd and I are shopping no but so what I want to talk about natural collectors and I think I'm gonna have to give an explanation without being able to fully show how it happens but in this case if these windows so I think the camera crew will have to like can over just a little bit and if I'm out of the camera frame I'm sorry but you guys can just tell me if it works or if it doesn't work so if given the situation if it was bright sunlight I was in field a couple days ago when I came in and it was bright and we had this bright right hot sun coming in through these windows and of course nobody wants to shoot and really hot lighting so what happens is the suddenly comes in through here and illuminates the floor and illuminates usually this concrete outside is not wet it's actually like lighter a writer and what happens is any time that you could put the subject not directly in the light but just one step behind the light what happens you just get this nice natural defused broken puffy loving light that bounces right up onto the client and even though this is not necessarily the best reflecting surface you still do get some pot back further more the best situation I'm getting light from here now if I were to turn my subjects this way what I'm getting now son coming in through here bouncing on this beautiful red wall and I'm not having my steps subject stand too close to the red wall because then their skin tones become very red and pinkish I have them standing right here in fact I I'm a firm believer if not betraying my light source any time that I have ground that's blown out in front of the subjects I place him just behind the light in the shade and then I I cropped out the light within my camera frame so that nobody nobody knows where the light is coming from necessarily if it's natural or artificial reflector so if I had my subjects facing this way I'm getting this nice warm light that's coming in totally reflected as I'm shooting I'm on lee ever looking for a good light I will take good light over ah good location a thousand times toe one um I'm not afraid to shoot in ellie's I'm not afraid to shoot next two dumpsters I love shooting wide open and so we have shot in locations where actually he looked very much like this was an industrial building it was on a bride's wedding day and there were holes in the floor and they were ladders everywhere and they had this mixed lighting and I felt like he was such a cool situation and she walked in her wedding dress and she asked the construction workers can I have my pictures taken here so we're able to have this industrial type feel but when you shoot like anything wider than a two point oh everything in the fallback like their lunchboxes there coolers coat hands anything that was residing in corners became mush like you didn't see it you focus strictly on the subjects and you might get I had her leaning against a ladder and him squatting on the floor and when you have just them and focus everything else doesn't really matter and so I think that walking into this type of building people would easily become intimidated when j d and I pulled up this morning it's gray outside for those who are on the internet it's very very very dark and from outside what we saw inside was pretty much pitch black building with strong lights and I have to say like my stomach just drops because this is not what we shoot in I'm not used to this but again you take what you have to make it work jd of course the granola ever optimist is like if you could shoot in this people should like this all over the country they're not as lucky as we are in california teo never get rain and I'm just like yeah I know thanks but really it does become that it's like hey you don't have an optimal situation we don't have very much space were not working in like literally the cleanest of environments how are we going to make this make it work and look like it's a khokha to our wedding that's going to be our thing today I love working working war changed I love working with natural reflectors to kind of get that feel I don't know if we'll have the luxury of doing it now but we'll do whatever else we can I will still probably um move those boxes and undo cords another thing stylized stylized style a's a lot of times people will leave things in corners when it would literally take five seconds out of your time to move that item and no matter how good you are photoshopped you can never create that environment to look absolutely positively the way that it should have um sometimes I leave junk in the background because I feel he adds to the picture but remove always and I think I'll be explaining this tomorrow during um laura's prep she's getting ready in a really small space and the girls were bringing in their stuff and they're going to shoot listen to me a thousand different things everywhere go in clean out the areas that you want to shoot in advance just move everything over so in the situation I will likely still shoot laura and billy here the first look will likely take please here like I don't have another option um could you just imagine how awful would be like during their first look like and then if you have it outside it starts raining like that's my bad so I'll still have to like do what I can given this space I still do think that there's a little bit of a reflection coming off the floor because it's still there I will be able to pick up for it I will be able to compensate for it and at some point I hope to be able tio pick up the strong lights as ambient lighting so what I'm looking for as I come into this space and unlike craig had mentioned earlier it didn't want teo I wanted to keep the experience is true to possible I didn't want to keep on coming to theo I didn't want to keep on having conversations with daniella because I don't have those conversations on a wedding day I want to come in and I want teo share how I get stressed out how the situation isn't looking the way as it possibly could they were supposed have a cocktail hour and the cocktail hour was going to be tented outside and so after the ceremony all these guests would get up out of the chair that you're sitting in now that walk outside to the tented area where they were syrians cocktail hour they would do a room transformation where they'll change of the chairs in the table's put down the centerpieces then I would have time to shoot everything the way that I normally shoot it well there's no tent and it's going to rain tomorrow so we don't know what will happen this is just what we're dealing with tomorrow as photographers we deal with this and so you know um I scared absolutely how we were able to finish how we're able to get this room empty is that I'm daniella came up with this great idea to ask all the guests to go outside for a large group picture jd I'm just going to say something that you don't even know yet all the guests we're gonna go outside and danielle will say that we're going to do a big group shot this the only way we'll be able to get people outside if there's a threat of rain the group picture will go on outside that gives me a about five minutes to get a large room shot without anybody in it it's going to be a little bit more strategic and a little bit more stressful never betrayed how stressed you are goes back to the rule number four of second shooting smile all the time if you are not in control of the day you will lose control of everybody else I firmly believe and of course I shouldn't talk so loud because danielle is here I think that the photographer is the conductor and I didn't I didn't like the coordinator is like no you're not probably not if actually if actually if actually you're working with a great coordinator um you can switch the rules of conductor at different points of the day that's a really good synergy if you're working with not such a great uh coordinator you're the conductor all day stay in control use the baton teo control of the ebb and the flow of what is going on so that would be um that would be looked talking about natural factors um I don't know if this would be a good space to talk about what I want to talk about next I have this thing that um I like doing and it just came impromptu from a wedding that we shot last october the bride got ready in a beautiful hotel the hotel is gorgeous but it was built like in los angeles packing like the nineteen thirties nineteen forties so the rooms are very small and the light isn't very good and she really liked the architecture indoors but they it was like baroque style architecture's so everything on the bottom floor is dark but there's no windows around the lobby area and so I'm like okay this is kind of a bad situation so we did what we could I was shooting really wide open amateur is really high isos and then thankfully because we got there early I noticed there was this loading alley in the back of the hotel which got amazing light so the minute we felt like we used a little bit of what we could around the hotel I said hey can we go up back here by this allie area and she was okay with it now the alley itself is an alley in los angeles thank goodness there wasn't any graffiti because he was against like the hotel and there's a a business building on the other side but in between both sides of the building which are both light in color I felt like I was like this pretty little light bubble very very much like diffused light all around so all I had was this tiny little area and I kind of feel like I challenge myself because I was stressed out and then like okay if you make this a game it's not gonna be so hard can I get ten poses in a ten by ten square and we're gonna try to do that today with warren billy that's going to be the task for today because if you can get ten poses in a ten by ten square you're not gonna be intimidated to shoot any where else is it hard a little bit does it slightly repetitive maybe but to your client to be able to scroll through buffalo in one particular location and people to get ten different looks I think that's really good and two of the ten looks three of him looks might come from your second shooter but I'm gonna try to shoot it all ten by myself and whatever jd can get on from the shoot it's gonna be bonus to that clients so we'll talk a little bit about that so if we were shooting here which for you will probably be shooting I'll probably have tio remove the boxes and the cords move them all all of to the side how you can get a different book without doing anything at all which is what we brought up yesterday would be to flip your lenses you can keep the couple in the same post so if I put billy and laura with you billy right behind laura here on laura's here if I was able to put on the fifty I could get like a vertical with them this way which is slightly wire and then a horizontal this way both looking at the camera now if I flipped to the eighty five and I stay in the same spot that eighty five gets nice and close on maybe just framing their faces now if I had billy come in and maybe kissed her shoulder he don't move his feet she did move her the dress did not get dirty he kisses her shoulder but I'm shooting eighty five gets a nice and tight and gets in a totally emotional sensitive voyeuristic feel that's an entirely different picture entirely different vibe by simply just changing the lens things like that and it's I mean of course I don't want to like I don't want to say what I'll do because I don't know what I'll do a lot of what I will do depends on the client's how comfortable they are if they're really nervous if she's not happy and there's so much we have to balance between that but as we do as we do this please remind me like the ten by ten and we'll count down the poses ten by ten and we'll see you know if it worked hopefully does well you see uh I kind of see how we do that and in this section as well I want to address some something I get asked quite often which is how do I get my clients to relax and I don't have like a secret to it at all like it's not anything I tried to hide I think that it's best showed in real life but like I said yesterday and I will say again I make a fool of myself all the time I'm actually quite embarrassed thinking about it listen I I was like you're gonna look like a fool you're gonna look like a fool like and just get over it and deal with it because I'm not here to think about how cool I look I'm here to get pictures of laura and billy and if I do this with my clients outside why would I not do this here in front of people who I'm trying to instruct so just deal with that I'm silly I dance I get it I get close I grab arms I pull like I will do whatever I have to and again it depends so much on the couple so last night jd and I had dinner with laura and billy and was the first time we met billy and I don't know what to expect but billy is so awesome like in fact I probably care more than I like laura but I got a joke it's a joke no I mean they're just really awesome and he makes he makes her better how do you know that it's a sign of a good thing so I know have after meeting billy just for a bit I know what I'll be able to make him you know mi do and how malia will be and I don't know how how much walking she's gonna want to do in her dress today all of that changes what we're going to do so just play it by ear but again getting your clients to relax so much relies on your confidence as a photographer if you are not confident you will never get confidence from your client it's if you're not willing to take a risk you will never get your clients to take a risk if you cannot show your client's visibly what you want them to do if you want your your bride to look hot can you show her how to look hot because we're not we're dealing with people who don't do this ever how can you okay um now can you soften your lips and can you send twenty eyebrows and can you tilt your head it's like that would take five times as long show her there's this idea and I don't want to get into it without taking another breath because craig will probably kill me but whatever this idea that I think works very well in tenable of what we're talking about is this notion of actually let's do questions I don't want to get into something else quite yet because what we talked about was a little bit about him technicality but please know in advance that I will be looking like a fool and how I get my clients to relax is due by doing whatever whatever it takes to get them to relax is what I do did you question yeah people on the internet were asking what if you could talk about your favorite poses for company having proposes you just be free yeah it's a free for all so if I had figured poses I think that I would be so lame like I don't want people to go to my block again and again and again into the same thing I think that they see variations of it definitely of course I mean I didn't invent hugging you know it's like I'm hugging will never get old but a lot of time it's environmental what do I have in fact I just posted on my block today and if a queue and part of it was that there was these two random fold out chairs in los angeles like why are these random to fold out chairs sitting on a curb on los angeles I don't know but I worked them into my shoot so I just grabbed the fold out chairs and like okay I had my client sit there like I don't know what they were doing there but a lot of it is environmental a lot of it is how can you push myself a lot of times like I was laying in bed last night which is probably why I couldn't sleep but I was thinking okay what can I do what can I do what can I do and this goes into a notion of previous pre visualization to something I talked about which is something we'll talk about in a minute but thinking in advance but it doesn't mean that I have favorite poses in fact if I've done the polls already and it was really good don't bother doing it again because your second client will never live up to that expectation and a lot of times the best poses come from like or agree nikolay or by mistake too so before we move on to the next idea about posing I wanted to steal a little bit if the questions kind of retain a little bit to what we're talking about now the hashtag would be asked jasmine I'm gonna turn to the screen it's not really pertaining to what we're talking about right now I might pass on that but no offense um brain fart ok brain farts yeah ok I see become a slave to your toothbrush I am so deep but I am so deep oh my god my dad's probably embarrassed it's how I roll really uh people make me some smart zach sounded smart minnesota I'm not bashing on minnesota you know so these air coming up randomly is my understanding not necessarily in the order is okay through okay while you're seeing okay awesome so if anybody wants to ask a question from the asked jasmine hashtag us go right ahead so I have a question from in rottweiler and I don't know if you want to get into some of the technical stuff about lighting you started to talk about but he's wondering about what you used to balance the light when you're shooting in j peg or um are you always on auto white balance yes one hundred percent great more technical stuff are you I'm hearing no no I just look at the back I look at my lcd screen okay you'll meet her at all no I love how did you figure she really I e people waiting sweating like I'm watching right here on my getting shiny I'm not even like sweating this is really great okay very good if you want to take allie you can't you don't come to the wrong place I'm not lying I look at the back of my lcd screen because good actually story a lot I'm turning into my father I repeat stories whatever if you haven't heard this story is probably amazing so jd and david j we're in new york city for for photo plus they were at on the trade show floor and there's this older respected icon of the industry and he goes to jail how's it going so nice to see you it's like you know and the small talk and he says you know that friend that jasmine star girl e thinks she has potential and david so it's like oh great that's awesome and he's like but man if she could just learn how to stop blowing out her skies she might she might get hurt do the job well and all of a sudden david's like um david just like um this is her husband I was standing right there all of a sudden it was like that moment he didn't think anything bad but he might not have said so much like she has potential or if she could just learn a couple things might go somewhere and when did he came back home and recounted that story it kind of thought it was funny but then I was like oh that's not so funny like I know how to not blow out my skies I just choose not to use phil flash and I just choose not to have people face the sun like it's my style get over it like I don't know what I don't know if you don't like it you don't have to hire me my thing is I want people skin toe look good and that's what I tell on the back of this and that's what's on the back of the screen um I used the cannon five d mark to you and if you what okay sorry everyone that internet thinks I'm vain and like no they're telling me to move my hair the hair was in the mike so that was becoming a problem so I lost my train of thought skin skin tones what thank you thank you very much that thank you people thank you ok I should with a five day march to if you push play and then you pushed info info what it'll give you is a history ram really tough situations all bring out my history um and I just want to make sure that on the left side needs the blacks and on the very very right side it reads the white if I'm spiking over here at the whites I need to make sure and change compensate for that little bit ideally what a perfect picture looks like is a bell curve I hardly ever get the bell curve because most probably I'll be airing a little bit on the side if I decide to blow the skies I know that also on the on actually in most uh cannon models if you look at your lcd screen and you see something blinking on the screen that means that you blew out highlight so if that's happening in a large degree you need to compensate for that but I just look at the back of my I look at the back of my screen that's my big fan sory fancy meeting mode I have one more technical yeah no no I was like let's talk about my shoes does anybody want to talk about my jacket and my shoes I'm getting I'm getting just about high so because you had mention yes you know how high you go what you think the highest um well you with okay so I have shot with thirty two hundred s o I'm not afraid of shooting that high I don't prefer it I will keep my eyes a low as low as possible all the time but again in dark churches where flash isn't allowed um oh shoot like that if people want to know one a little bit more specifics if you look at an f q post that I posted two or three q post if you go to the search icon in my on my blogger with a search icon type in f u and it will take you to all my fake posts and they're just very recently probably the first second page I talk about shooting in dark churches and dark recep oceans where a flash isn't available and I list my meditate or my exit data things like that and I'm shooting I'm shooting were on twenty five hundred esso and churches it doesn't really that doesn't really affect me as much