Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: First Dance and Reception

Welcome to our dreaded reception room. Um, as much as I've been talking about, you know hey, the beams, the ceiling I mean, I rarely do that. I'm now going to have to look at bouncing off of that or maybe off the side of the wall and that's a little shady as faras color. But this is kind of a dark room and we're gonna use a little bit of the video light today and interesting in the left, one of the lovely students in the front here he just showed me something. A piece of paper that he was fashioning a smaller version of it for his flash and and I said, oh, my god, I used to do that when I shot for the papers we would get a piece of paper that had our assignment on it and this was back I got to save fifteen twenty years ago when I was starting to shoot this's how we shot flash would be on camera would be maybe thirty, two hundred ah, maybe it's at five point six or something like that somewhere in there and say it's an eightieth of a second but I would take this and have this I would wa...

lk around and literally and I just probably unplugged myself but that's okay, I would do this and it's absolutely great instead of direct flash I would use this big honking piece of paper that sat in my pocket and pretty much just dragged it out when I needed to and fire and take a look at I don't know if you guys seeing that I don't have the screen in front of me but I'm sure it's tethered and you're seeing some of the stuff but it's actually pretty light it's not bad if you look at the background the painting is in uh I'm shooting at five point six because for the papers wasn't about being artsy it was about getting what I needed to document sometimes I got lazy I brought a piece of rubber bands rubber band at this thing gary don't be envious but this was my little slight bosques my little diffuser this little dude right here for some reason it's for me too tiny it just doesn't quite catch it I have to tilt the flash forward a little bit so that some of that forward light would go on and it's always uneven lighting for me it just isn't very pretty so straight up like that even just one click forward and this big punk and piece of paper that I drag out every so often to grab some quick shots lighting is pretty nice and even the whole background is no shadows really to speak of because this is a big white piece of paper it softens everything it's really nice then I folded back up and we're going in my pocket and drag it back out if I wanted to shoot a little more uh just you know it was a little footnote right little side like little thing for me to discuss thanks for that manual now that that that's manual so if I'm going back to what I was thinking of doing in here les go at that so we have a first dance scenario and typically doing my bridegroom uh I love you guys okay? So here's where I am I'm on my twenty four er one point for now I know this is a big contrary to what I said early in terms of formals but I want you to think about it for a second when you shoot formals and you have edge to edge people on you're using a wide angle the distortion is mainly at the edges those people will distort what I do here shooting a twenty four sometimes fourteen millimeter is the first dance shot scenario where do I place my subjects dead center there's going to be less distortion if any down there okay, you might get a little compression guess what light room has it has that little thing now where you can d stort un distort these images based on the lens it knows you shot it with and say ok, tweak it back for me so if I have you you guys are the background the band is playing here I'm not going to shoot this direction so first dance is always about you guys coming onto the dance floor so come on onto the dance floor and I'm actually going to shoot and they're there there there and I'm doing this thing right now and I'm grabbing these shots and do we have music? We want riel stuff, man come on, e I get up on the dance stage sometimes, but notice my little video light and notice the slow shutter scary, isn't it? I'm shooting and p on the leg on the big one I am and don't you couples always talk when they're dancing drives me nuts why does it drive me nuts? Yeah, their mouths are open most of the time, right? So this is pretty much how I handle it, right? I turn this thing off, I go backto white angle and like I said, I'll dance with him. I'll move in the same direction. And what do you see the light on this bad boy? All right, that was it. Frightening, innit? It's fast there's. Not a whole lot. You got a couple of seconds who's with me on this dance for a shooting videographer, so what do I need to do when he's here stay out of his way, nick make sure that he's not in my shots sometimes difficult here's where sometimes I go completely opposite where he is and I'll go available light I'll drop this little bad boy off there's times I do this my assistant will take this thing from me I'll just take the wiring put it in pocket I'll turn this light off leave it off and if he's on that in lighting them I'm on my knees and I know we have a bigger dance for usually their way out there and I'm not on the stage here but I'm on my knees getting the shot of the rim lighting created by the videographer it's so beautiful it's so beautiful and then if I want the same thing I just come over this way he lights it I just follow him and the reason this ever came onto my cameras because one day the videographer was gone so I said, wow I miss that guy I got to get one and that's why I came up with the video life from my camera like this now I think I showed it to you but for those that just tuned in today this is actually easy little set up and it's kind of my little gizmo initially this wass on here and I like shooting from a distant I didn't want to be that close but if you turn this on now this light that cast a shadow so I said, man, how do I extend it past the lens? So this little video bar here was meant to be on a video camera this way for dual lighting for a photographer videographer tohave dual lights on it wasn't meant for this necessarily, but I saw it as that's perfect for me because now what I'll do sol simply extended past the front of the lens so that I can not have that shadow anymore what's great about this is that while this is happening or the toast is happening, I can actually shoot across the room and absolutely nail shots that are really beautifully lit soft lighting I want you to see this I mean it's not that bad it's just ever so soft is it is not flash it's available light, but I add a little more light that I needed because it just didn't have enough natural light, right? So I wanted to add to it the background is in she's out of focus, which I wanted it's about you and more often than not it's that bride hands on table uses a dreamy eyed look that she has and on my knees and I'm nailing the shot with that light if I want marcus it's further away I crank it up so it's a nice little variable light just as much as I need that's it it's not on all the time I don't want to be too intrusive with it but just for this first dance you'll see some of the images I'll try and get this done by tomorrow you it's it's wonderful to be able to do that cake cutting okay let's do this and I'm gonna ask for an assistant in a second is a matter of fact can I have an assistant all right come on your mind you're my grip for now just hang onto this bad boy please thank you so much there's two ways t do this if you don't mind stand on that s I don't know if there's a knife pretend they're not here they're gonna cut with this okay um I like this because why there's always ah spotlight I try you know to move it so that she's backlit because I've got light falling on her shoulder I got life falling on her hair having said that if I were just to go to p mode it's actually not usually half bad and again I'm I'm in this thing with let me turn it on that helps joe and put it out of focus that's also good um it's not bad if you see this shot it's actually know how you light works know what light means yeah I mean this is to program otis p mode I'm shooting into a light but look how beautiful that lighting is because what I see you want to see it for real right but so if I were to add a little more I now ask him give me a little light into them right there right yeah you don't even give me a little more that's it and she can look at it oh that's it there you go I'm pretty much done now what? You see the difference oh my god okay we're gonna pick up this uh dramatic that first one but I added a little now let's do this this what we all normally do isn't it? We're inem way we got to do this man sorry uh we're going to go to let's say ok, that sounds good that's good ali you know what? I'll lower the ice so just a little bit but so this is now you don't have to give me a light this is what we dio air we go you guys look at each other then you see the flash all right now you want that? Would you rather have that okay, just checking you want that? Do you want that? Do you see how the light shaped her look at the highlights on her shoulders on the jacket on the one side it's beautiful a little rim lining on her hair light on her the light behind him I ducked down low enough so that it's hidden so it doesn't stick out on top of his head all these little things but man that's ugly could you achieve the same thing with, like, not directional flash? But, um if you just bounced, bounced it and without the frizzy yeah, she saw if you want me to I'm going to try and bounce this thing and the only source that I really have is right in here if I wanted to do it so I could do it let's see to me that's a little too dark so that's bounce that's straight and that's my way. Wait me likey too. But that's what he does so it's not always necessary to be on camera I've got to try and figure out I'm trying to balance out that backlighting that's here I want just enoughto light them from the front not over kill it I don't want to kill this either. The flash kills that so if he likes me just like this and just sheds a little light on there and that by the way it was brilliant to how much light you gave me was perfect. It gives me catch lights in their eyes. It does nothing to this cake if you look at it yeah he's above and going down right he's not lying in the front of it because what I like about the cake right now shadow highlight, you see that it's shaped already. Why would I want to kill that with direct flash or anything else? I want to go above it like he did is beautiful there's, catch on when they look at each other is gorgeous and that backlighting man you something like that shoot into its okay, I crop it out. I don't even particularly care for it. I use it, but let's, see, so let's do this. Ah, I'm gonna go back to where we were for second and go say the three point five and goto esso and change that, and I think I was at thirty two hundred, and I think that was there. So if he likes me, I'm definitely overexposed now. So I think where I was before was I was a higher yeah, there we go there, that's, really beautiful, it's, really beautiful. I love it.