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9:00 am - Getting Footage Ready

It is my pleasure to welcome to creative life Where a second class job using teaching, wedding photo journalism from start to finish, job using is an amazing photographer. His work is seen around the world. He's transited, and his images are known as fine art to many of his celebrity clients. Please welcome job. You think I'm not sure we're going to do with this clicker. Good morning. How are you, Everybody? Good Hasam. All right, So, um, I guess what I'm gonna do this morning besides entertain your questions here and the audiences questions as well is toe go over some of the footage that was taken yesterday and maybe talk about my mindset in what I was thinking at any time. Whether it's you out there or you in the studio, if you have a question while I'm perusing these clips, feel free to ask a question. All positive. I think, uh, interactive dialogue would be kind of cool toe if you want to, you know, get spot on information here. Okay? So let me see what I can start with getting rea...

dy stuff. Okay, Let's do that. Okay. I think what you'll notice is that I'm using flash. I'm using available light. Um, what I try and do whenever I start the event is I try to get in sync with the moments that I see. So it's really interesting and how this works for me. There's a flow of moments, and initially when I arrive, my mind is reeling because I'm actually thinking what I endeavour to do whenever I go to a wedding is to stop thinking I want to flow with those moments so I will maybe connect with an individual. Well, in this particular case, it was a little girl because I fell in love with her. She was downright awesome. But that stops my brain from thinking about technical things. Thea, Advent of what am I gonna do today? All those things that might come to mind when I first get their anticipation? All these wonderful things. I don't want to do that. I just want to be in the moment. I want to capture the essence of the person in that moment. That's what I set out to do. So, having said that, what I also do as well is prompt moments, and you'll note that probably throughout this the segments in these clips is there are adjustments on my part because not all weddings are created equal. And so sometimes when I feel like I need to snatch it up a little bit, I will actually have a hand in it. So while the primary way of shooting for me is put in a photo journalistic way, I also prompt moments. I create moments as you'll see in the first look. Um, it's it's a full package. It's just I don't have any one thing. That to me is prompting a moment. The minute you put your hand into it, it's no longer photojournalism. The minute you get someone's attention, it's no longer photojournalism. However, without that what I just did, I wouldn't have gotten some of these shots I got of her. What's your name? What was it? And all I tried to do there was to get her to look at me. I saw the light, and then when I got her attention, what was your name again? She looked at me. Boom. Got you. So there are ways to manipulate the scene. It's like I said, it's not photojournalism, but I will get the absolute best out of someone without them knowing. That's the key. Okay, I'm gonna you know, fast forward some of these things and see where we can scoot this thing forward a little bit. Oh, slow down, Joe. It was a little You guys know the little tab that's down here that are? There it is. I see it so detail. Shots love them. Right shoes. See how shoes what you're going to see me do here, too, is how I work. I shoot most everything in program, and I know that freaks a lot of people out. What are you, nuts? Your dumbing down, Joe, you should be shooting an M. Actually, when I shouldn't manual when I shooting manual, what I find myself doing is slowing down. And because I have to think I have to think about my settings. I have to think about after I'm done with the particular shot where I left my settings to make sure I go back to where I was before in case I turned in another direction. And M doesn't work in that direction. So I'm constantly having to think about what I'm doing with respects to my camera. So what? You'll note in a second. Is that what I'll do? You'll see me pointing down. I actually locked my meter. So in the program mode, I can do a scene selection knowing full well that if I shot this dress straight on because of all the light behind, it would be under exposed. And I want a little more of the detail. So what I'll do so appointed somewhere down below, where I'll either select visually and this is by experience. Having done is over and over and over average metering or spot metering further into the ground and locking it coming back up in firing. Okay. And what you'll see and you'll probably see these tomorrow is that these images look like they've been worked in post production. But they're actually shot camera. The least amount of post Aiken do the better for me, okay, I'm a film guy. I used to drop off that baggy on Monday at the lab and say, See on Thursday and I would come back on Thursday and I would have 3.5 by five proofs of everything that were color corrected, density controlled and I would happily go home and edit just Oh, this is out. This is out here to the client. Done. Now you sit in front of computer Rod A J peg well, raw first and then edit down the raws. The edited versions go to J peg do. Ah, batch color correction on everything. Select some images have wow them because I do all these things for the client and I have my wife do this. My wife is my editor and there's a reason for that. I want a woman looking at this stuff. Okay, so she's been adding all my work and even though sometimes I come back in and I look over his shoulder What, you knocking that one out? And she goes, Yeah, it's really bad, but I love that shot. Are you crazy? She says no, no, no, it's out. So I wait till she goes to bed and I sneak that bad boy right back into the pile of goods. I have to do that once in a while. But you know what? I'm gonna say this up front right now. You're on Lee as good as the people that surround you. The people that work for you. If if you don't have good people, you're not gonna be that good. So when you see Rich working out there, when my wife edits or your body does all the album work, I'm on Lee that good because they are. They allow me to freedom to shoot the way that I'm shooting. The way that I'm explaining this to you now without thinking, I try to eliminate as much as possible this whole thinking process. And when I have good people that worked for me. It's less for me to think about, and that's why I trust in my wife Maryland editing. It's why I trust your buddy doing the album consultations with my clients. She knows exactly how I feel about images and how my clients feel about him. In terms of importance, she has a relationship with them. Yes, I jump in. At some point. I jump in and help out. I do Final selects. Maybe I will look at Maryland's edits, and she would have pulled out some wows and I might add to a couple of them. But all of this is because I just don't want to think as much as possible. I don't want to think about what I'm doing. Okay. Um so take a peek at this. This is actually interesting right next to it. Just one you Hey, Red. Did you did you shoot it? Okay, you I got, like, a share out there, but there were something like, Can you get his? We back. So So let me break the other would bring the other one that Okay, details. Very important, but I try to do it as quickly as possible. I didn't wanna hang out too long with the details. Yeah, now, mind you, Kate. Who's assisting me? That's the first time we've worked together. That's pretty awesome. She was. She was amazing. I thank you, Kate, for doing. Speaking of hate. Quite a few people were wondering who she was yesterday. And her name is Kate Ashley. And she's Kate actually photography. And I think they're dropping her link in the chat rooms for you guys. That's awesome. Because she was great, just absolutely wonderful and, you know, for not to have worked with me before. She read my mind because she's a photographer. So she knew exactly what I was looking for when I was looking for it. Or would at least ask me, You know, do you need this right now? It was awesome, Joe. There's questions in the chat room from yesterday. The question that came in about this getting ready part A. Ben San Diego. He says, I love watching you shoot, Uh, what is the slowest shutter speed you use when you're taking pictures of people moving rather quickly in the girl's sweet What's your maximum? I s O setting yield. You bought it, too. And here's where thinking comes in. Okay, I don't think about it. I have no idea. So what I do is if I hear that shutter drag click click, I go by sound. I saw it. I instinctively know that's too slow a shutter. If I start to look into my viewfinder and start the peruse it and where all my settings are. I've lost another moment. So what I might do is Jack up. My eye is so because the shutters going too slow because I'm shooting program mode. It's selecting the shutter speeds according to whatever lens I am on it right, and then the aperture as well. The camera is very smart today. It's brilliant. It actually will help you not have to think about these things. It's pretty smart, given that, like I just explained, that dress shot would have been fooled. The camera would have been fooled by that backlighting under exposed because it would have tried to do a proper exposure for that. So that's when I override it. So I know when that camera will fail me. And by the same token, if I hear that shutter drag, it was scary last night, by the way, during the fireworks, because I was at 6400 I S O and I heard Click, click, click, click. And that was the shutter. And I'm thinking I'm probably hand holding at 1/4 2nd at 2.8 when I'm shooting because I was locking in on them. I had. Kate used my frenzy like to just like him slightly so that my camera could lock on to the focus of them. That's the only reason that light was there. It was pitch dark. And if you can imagine that you have trying to focus when that burst happens and then and then it's gone. You miss it right? Or you start guessing initially where that focus point should be. So I said Kate hit it and she would like them so I could focus. That's all I was doing with that. And then I kept it in program mode because I knew that was gonna drag the shutter. I wanted to make sure that there was going to be enough, and I wanted to drag the fireworks out a little bit. So instead of tax sharpened too fast of a shutter speed where you just have these short little lines, these little bursts because it freezes it. I wanted to drag it out and you'll see tomorrow one of the most incredible images. It's really Picula Slee. It's that good. Yeah, it's fun. So I do take chances in answer to the question online again. I do take chances and risks sometimes, and you'll see even in my portfolio online, there are images where the bride might be slightly out of focus while they're in their first dance. But because the moment it's more important and f eight, I'd rather catch that even softly out of focus kind of a moment, instead of not having it because I'm worried about my technical settings, what we will get more on the technical side. Should as I'm watching you shoot this here That looks like a mixed lighting nightmare. Your own. Are you on auto white balance or you're choosing your white balance on the flash that you're using on seeing your bouncing. That is that T t l or is he just got a good question. Good question. So yes, What? What I tend to do is e T T l on the flash. I like bouncing it. It's auto white balance. I I don't all my settings. I try not to touch any of them. I just want to shoot it and get it as best as I can in camera and then afterwards actually enhance it as much as possible. Right? So the whole thing for me is enhancing the image rather than fixing the image. So that's it. Let's see the mixed lighting you got fluorescents incandescents. You got some daylight coming in and you're an auto white balance, a nightmare for a lot of people, right? For me, it's very simple. It becomes black and white. I add that that's it for me. You know, if it's that ugly and I got green and yellow, and I got all these one. I'm not gonna try and correct the colors. I'm just simply going to convert it to a black one. Quick. Follow on my s. So then you're you're setting that yourself. You're not going out away? Yeah, I said that myself. Because how I adjust my shutter speed or my f stop, my aperture is by my I s o. That's the only thing that I changed myself is I s O. Because I look at it sometimes and I see what I need to do to change it. To get 2.8. I lower the eyes so that kind of thing, you know, and I'll go into depth later about what I used with the buttons for in that front dial. Because I can do selective focusing. I can actually select the aperture or shutter speed while in P mode. You know, people don't think about that. They think they have to be in a V or TV to change all those settings. You don't you don't at all. You can use that front dial really quickly. And Nikon has it too. So it's not just a cannon oriented thing, right? Are there any other questions that you have about this city? Yeah, quite a few people in the chat room yesterday. We're also wondering if you're shooting in J Peg or raw. Yeah, I like shooting raw again, being filmed Guy Ross like shooting and negative. It's like shooting film. You have latitude in it. 45 F stops that you can play with if you're under or overexposed right? A. J pegs like shooting a transparency. If you're off by 1/2 a stop, it's gone. If you've blown out the highlights in a J. Peg, hard to retrieve them. It's not that they're so a raw has all that information in it. So just give me all that information, just like in the negative, and let me work with that. So it's always in raw for me and I with the five d Mark three now, which is what I shoot. It's medium wrong, so my files are about 10 megs each good size. I mean, I can get 30 by forties on the wall for people in that size, so I'm very happy with the raw files that I'm getting out of my five d we good. So now you're seeing a little bit of rich. I know there were questions about rich as well. Oh, yeah. Okay. I see we're killing this. The sound of this, Um What? You'll notice that Rich and I tend to work very seamlessly. Now we know each other very well and it's something way. Do this dance. We read each other's minds. It's taken me a while to find Find someone to work with like that. And he has his own methods. You know, there's no right or wrong, right? I mean, everybody shoots in a different way. I pick on him a lot when he when he goes. Oh my God, I didn't get that, he said. That's because you're shooting in Nikon Rich and he does the same thing with me. Says you didn't get that cause you're on a Canon Joe. So he shoots Nikon. I shoot Canon and we make fun of each other. That's me shooting with the 50 millimeter macro. I don't use it in the auto focus. This is where I manually focus it, and I may hear oftentimes go to actually manual mode. Here's one of those instances where I will do something like that because when I shoot black services or reflective services, the program mode will either under or over exposed the image that I'm after. So I'll control it by by in this case, with what I was reading there I was under needed toe under exposed by 23 F stops. So how I focus, I moved back and forth. I'm the one that's moving, so I'm focusing it myself by just moving the lens back and forth. It's easier because those macro zehr tricky sometimes, right? So I see where it's in focus where it falls out of focus. I think I already shot the dress at this point. Okay, So I'm looking for I think I'm selecting a scene and I'm also looking to clean it up a little. See, this is not PJ anymore right now. I'm just a wedding photographer. Now what you're not seeing here while there's a shot that I'm taking of Shelia having lips put on who I'm really after is the girl in the background. You see her between in the back with a smile on her face. Let me see if it comes in, you know, you missed that. We missed it. But what she was doing was smiling. So what I did was one shot, actually, having make up the next one, zooming in on the girl in the background. So if you put them if they end up in the book, it's the first shots of Shelley attacks Sharp with the other woman out of focus. The 2nd 1 was her smiling in focus. And Shelia out of focus. I do that a lot. Does. It really tells a story. Right? Couple, three images, dip, ticks, trip takes whatever to tell the stories. Wonderful. Wonderful way to tell the story. Let me see if I can find that one spot where I was actually. Yeah. Way. So you Yeah. Okay. I think I just locked it. I just locked up. Go ahead. You God. Okay, so I just locked the meter down a little lower and you'll see on the back of the scene, you saw the first shot, which was straight up, a program shot, which is fine. I didn't. So that's much better to me. I've got more detail in it, and I just simply over it was overriding the program mode by locking the meter somewhere else and selecting a little more of an aperture and opened it up a little more versus the other way. See the difference? I just simply open it up just a hair by locking my meat or somewhere else. Yes, and that was going to actually part of my question because then, once you open that up, does. And when in p mode, the camera chooses how it's going to open it up, correct, whether it be with aperture or with shutters. Yes, so it selects. Based on the lens that you have on the camera, it knows what's on their 70 and where it's racked out to our your 24 millimeter or you in its 70. What's the lighting situation? So if it's at 70 is going to give you a little more stability and go for a higher shutter speed, Then if you were wide open a 24 then it will go for a higher F stop. It's It's a very interesting is it really is very intelligent that I so smart. Yeah, it is very smart. So now let's just say that I locked that meter down below and I came back up and it said 6.3 on it, right? So having a scene selection initially hours, That's a F 11. I dropped down. I locked them. Units at 6.3, right by 12.8. How about if I want to 0.8? Dial that thing down in the front while my thumbs on that back button that front dial will allow me to choose either a shutter speed combination in terms of priority or an aperture So I can go 2.8 or I can go 2/100 of a second. I can move it around to what I'm looking for in that front when I let go of it and fire goes right back to program so it reverts back. So the reason I do that you see that? I'm saying, Let's let's say that I was looking at that window and that door opens up behind me. And I said it the last time I was here at Creative Life. And it is the father of the bride looking at his daughter for the very first time. Um, let me fees and I got his plane. If I'm in P mode. It's very easy for me wanting having done that toe, let go of the buttons, turn around and nailing because it's back in p mode. But if the difference of light that I'm exposing for here versus that back door is 5 to 6 stops and I mean in mode, I'm not gonna have that much time. Not that split second. And I'm only talking about splits. I'm not talking about that. You can't do it in him. You can, especially people that are really good at it, that have been doing it for years, condone that puppy and really, really quickly. But it's just a split second faster. I'm gonna be a split second faster. And for me, it's about the moment between moments. The perfect moment is between other moments. It's a split second, The difference to me. It's literally a split second, and I can you know we can cruise through that tomorrow through some of these images that we've fired off and you'll see the difference on to try and re created this heart. So if you've missed it and you get what, can you do that again? Yeah, but you think it'll look the same. Never. Because if you try and get them, Teoh emote the exact same way you saw. But you weren't fast enough to get. They're not gonna promote the same if you ask him. Can you smile like that again? They'll smile, but they won't smile like that again while you're capturing. What I try to capture is the inner person, and that's camera unaware. And that's boom. It's a fleeting moment that is really fast, because if you do this and wait and they're aware of you now, it changes everything. Because now the individuals camera where and they're gonna put out the camera persona and they're going to smile at the camera, even twist their body because they know they look good this way and everything changes about the mood and who they are. Everything is. We've been taught since kids to smile at the camera. So every time any of us, including me, sees a camera review that thing haven't you ever noticed? When you point also, someone changes their whole body position that art weight and they bring your wife in, you know? Hey, we do that. It's automatic. So the way that I hope to capture. Most of what I do is camera underwear. They don't know the woman in the background while shooting chili. It had no idea I was photographing here. None whatsoever. The smile on her face was brilliant. She was in the moment with watching Julia having makeup put on. It was beautiful and she genuinely had love in her eyes. And you can capture it now. What if I said hey and she looks at me? Changes the whole thing changes immediately because now she's posing for the camp. How we doing? Fantastic. Got any question? I throw one more question. During that same moment, you made an artistic decision about the bridesmaid dress. Could you talk a little bit about that? About we don't let the flower girl? Yeah, yeah, But they had asked about bringing the bridesmaid dress in to the shot and you had said No. Let's I I love this. You get a little bit about that. Sure, sure, sure. And that's exactly what is artistic license. I actually haven't in my contract that you can't pooh pooh my photos based on artistic license. Thank you very. It's true. I felt that was simple. It made a statement, the beautiful white dress and that little girl's purple dress. And to add another element to it was distracting to me. So I said, No, no, no, no, Just leave it out. I like the simplicity of it. I like the balance of it. Beautiful white wedding dress and tiny little purple flower girl dress. It was awesome. And yeah, no, it's It's I make choices like that sometimes, and I try not toe over post things like initially after. Maybe I'll put the shoes in the foreground and maybe we'll add, you know, this or that or the other, and it gets cluttered. So instead I subtracted them and made it simply about the two dresses on the window. Yeah, um, let's see what else we can do here. Then I started doing this. This was fun to actually what I was seeing. I don't know if we'll see it on video or not. You'll see it in my images. So what I saw there It's a juxtaposition. That little dress I put there intentionally next to that drawing slash painting because it was one of a beautiful, scantly class clad girl, but very pretty, very elegant and I said, What a nice juxtaposition. Very beautiful little portrait of a woman and the little flower girls dress. So in my frame, that's all you see from the Post right to that first image to the outside of the frame of that first image next one, right next to the other. I'm gonna scoot past. There's a lot of footage that they asked me to. So here's rich working now. Rich and I've been working about six years together, and, um, you know, he comes into everybody, comes into the world with their own set of eyes, you know, artistically and otherwise. So it's not that I was looking to teach him anything, but maybe by hanging around me, some of me would rub off onto him, which it has. So he's He's learned some things for me and other things. He's just come into the world on his own with, and Window Light is one of my most important things, and I don't know if you noticed it, but what Rich was doing was creating directional lighting. He didn't place the subject in front of the window and stood by the window shooting in where there was flatlining. He placed tests on the side, so that was highlight on the windows side on his face and shadow on the other, which creates the third dimension depth. It adds a lot of character to images when you, when you can create depth in image. When you do flat lighting, it's two dimensional. Okay, it's it's It's flat, right? You have two dimensions easy. Anybody can do it when you create that, their dimensions difficult because it's harder to create those shadows and add highlight of one side. But not as hard as you think, because you just got to look for that one source. I learned something from my dear friend Dennis. Reggie Hey, May points to look at paintings, Dutch old 17th century paintings, 15th century paintings. I'm Dutch. So I was intrigued by how he pulled this one off and he said, Look at her for me. It was it for meal. Yeah, yeah, Vermeer. The Vermeer paintings are always by a window, and the light comes from the side and you've got Highlight and Shadow. And there was always something interesting about a premiere and that it had a lot of character to the portrait's it had a lot of depth to them, and it was because of the sidelining. And so Dennis came up with this idea proofing where you use bounce light, which is what he taught me, which is what I've learned to do when you see me in the tent and my flashes not directly behind me to fill it this way, but off to the side so that the light comes from the side and it creates a highlight in the shadow, much like of Amir. And it's easier to do and control in a portrait setting. Not so easy to do when people are dancing around facing different directions, right, that's harder to do. But I try as best as I can to fill light from the side when I'm facing the audience, the light comes from there or there, not so much from here unless, of course, there. And there's far away. And there's very little strips of white the bounce off that I might go up above me to give me that life. Better that than direct lighting. I try to avoid it. I use it sometimes I don't like saying never, Uh, I use direct lighting sometimes, but as much as possible available light. And when people asked me this before, this is so what do you bring, Joe? What kind of lighting gear? Lights, you know, Do you set up stands? I said, I'm unavailable light shooter, And every once in a while my flash is available. So that's kind of how a Joe from the Internet really quick, Richie is wondering. I understand his style has evolved over the years where you can, where he consents the camera frame, setting through your eyes and your ears. Did you shoot the same way earlier on in your career? Or is this something that you've finally got your formula now? Now I started that way, actually, because if you can think about this for a second, I started shooting film, and even though I shoot film today, I still people still hired me to shoot film, and I just came back from Paris, where I shot the whole wedding on film and I did shoot some digital and Rich and Don were with me and they shot digital. It was an amazing, amazing wedding. It was drop dead gorgeous and also in the ring like yesterday but film. I can't look at the back of the camera. Right? So either I know it. And I have to use my ears and I hear the shutter go off. And I guess to mate where that's at, Uh, because I can't take the time to look at the back. It I've tried. Okay, I shoot today. Sometimes I don't know which camera I'm holding. I'm looking the back of the cameras. My film camera. So where's the image? It's not there. Uh, yeah. So I learned to shoot that way. The way you see me shooting now because I shot film. Um, interestingly enough, not long ago, I started thinking, If I ever got in new second shooter's the first thing they would do with me to find out how they shot is I would hand them a camera. That was just film. I can't go. Shit. Let me see what you can do with a film. Because you know what? That it was a craft back then. You really needed to know your nuts and bolts about photography to be good at it to be paid for today. It's easier. The technical advances has made it so easy that we commonly refer to. Uncle Bob can take up his little cameras little rebel and shoot and come up with an amazing image, and I'll throw it in post and do a while to it. And he's now a photographer. Well, I have to say, though still today, even even with all of that, the people that notice the difference that are willing to pay for the difference will still pick someone that knows what they're doing with the camp and not so much with being done in post what I'm finding today. When I'm learning today, it's while a few years ago was all about the wow factor, the saturate, this if I see another long that had green grass that didn't come from this planet or purple skies that I'm sure we're on Mars somewhere because they weren't on this planet, you know enough. And I think what I'm hearing now from the clients that book me is that they have had enough. They have had enough of oversaturated images over sharpened eyelashes to the point where everything is soft, but the eyelashes are so sharp that they jump off the page, invite you that they're done with that? Because guess what? Everybody's doing it. And when everybody's doing it, it becomes what common? I want you to think about the mindset of a person that has wealth or has artistic taste and wants something different and not necessarily wealth. They just want something different. They don't want anything that's common, that everybody else congee get. They want something that's different that speaks to their heart, right? So they want something riel. And if it becomes like okay, I've seen that. Oh my God, I've seen that over and over and over and they come to one of my images And let's say it's an image that's out of focus and by virtue of our industry in their eyes, it's like a lousy shot, Joe, cause it's not sharp. But the bride that looks at it cries and weeps. Uh, that's probably my bride, and there's a lot of those for everybody. So try not to think about how you can copy somebody, or how how to emulate somebody are how to be the same. Try to figure out how you separate yourself from everybody else, because when you stand out, you will reach that little segment in the population that's looking for something that's different and and they're out there and they're in every city, across this land and in other countries as well. I wanna work for the person that wants something different, that that's that's my goal. And so it's not about better. It's How do I make myself different? So if I'm still shooting film today and people have said this to me over and over, why you still shooting film? Everybody is gone digital. Ah, if everyone has gone, did you? I'm the Onley, more on left shooting film. Who's different? It'll be me. I'm not looking to make a ton of money and shoot hundreds of weddings a year. I want 30 weddings a year. I want to be paid well for them, and typically it's done by someone who wants something completely different because they're over seeing all the same old, same old. We all have access to the same actions, the same filters, all our little Photoshopped techniques, and we're starting to look the same. It's generic. So now how you gonna undo that? I start thinking about it and here's where I say we all start the most important thing about photography is who you are, and I said this year, the last time and I'll say it again. This time, the most important thing is how you affect your own work, how you affect your clients by who you are. And if you hired based on who you are, that's your difference because the person that hires you runs you across the gamut of others that they've met and says, This person speaks to me. This person's different. This person is who I want to be photographed by. And there's your difference. So start thinking about who you aren't and how it affects your work. Why do you shoot the way you shoot? Why do you do like in my case? Why do I need this interaction with my clients? Because I want access to them if they get to know who I am, and I get to know a little bit of who they are before the wedding, it's like old friends meeting one another. It's not like the vendor just shows up all of the sudden, Ah, there's my photographer. It's They know who I am, and I make it a point. I want you to know why I'm there and who I am. I am there. Do we have any other questions? You think? I think we had a question from the in studio shoot. I mean, it's going back to something else now. I personally asking it. I noticed the two cameras on on you, but I was just curious when you were in the getting ready room, because usually they're fairly small. What size lenses were you using in there? So that's a great question. Internet to wants to know. What? Joe, What's that? Equipment? All right, Let me like Let's just get that out of the way. So I'm cheating with 25 D mark threes. Totally. Canon sponsored Explorer Light Love them Love Nikon before that as well. So for me, it's not so much about the gear, even though the cannon speaks to me the best and it's the most uncomfortable in my hand. But it's a 24 70 and okay, so just ah, really just get back down to basics for one second. I have any problems right now, and I need surgery on them. So movement for me. I don't know if you saw in the footage. I'm slowed moving right now, and it's only because I, you know after the surgery will be fine, which is in October. But so I like shooting with primes sometimes, and I'll have a 50 85. 12 51 2 I have to 24 14 I have all those lenses, but what I've been doing lately because the lenses are so good on my cannons is I'm using only zooms 24 seventies like my main go to Linz. That's the one you see me shoot most of time. That's the one that has to flash on it. The 72 202.8 I love that lenses my favor. Outdoor Linds. It's phenomenal, is the one. Actually, I shot the first glance when, when when test turned around That was shot. With that, I believe it was the 7200. I'm not sure I can't vouch for that right now. On. Then I shoot the 16 35 and one of my all time favorites, and people don't think about shooting. This is the 14 millimeter to point a rectilinear. It has the view of a fish eye, but the lines are straight, it's meant for architecture. So when I'm in a room, as a matter of fact, I'm making a point tomorrow to show you in the post that I shot that fireworks shot with the 14 millimeter and there's a reason, and I'll explain it tomorrow. Why did it with the 14? Okay, but yeah, it's it's it's an awesome so pretty much that's what I use. And then in one flash on camera, and I know you guys saw probably the frenzy that I used. I used a little light on top of my camera during the first dance just to add a kiss of life to the subjects while they're dancing. So what I tend to do is flash on camera with the 24 70 go full length bouncing the light, and then I'll take the 72 with the frenzy on it and light them and coming close. I want to see expressions on their faces and coming close and just add a hint of like because that becomes, in my program mode. Available light, right, so and sometimes it's even dragging the shutter into some little movement to it. It's beautiful. It's absolutely stunning, and I control the light. So instead of a harsh flash, even the bounce sometimes can be harsh. Um, a little hint of lights just adding to it. Allow me to shoot in p mode. That's what I cool and I can't quite see from here. Are you also using a battery grip? Yeah, all my cameras have battery grip. And for the sake of not having to swap out something else again, and I'm using my Left Stars cars, they're usually 64 gigs, which is Whoa, hello. I could shoot two weddings on one of those cards, but on and I know people freak out about Oh, my gosh, you know, I only 16 gigs or eight gigs because what if I lose this? I've never had it happen. So, you know, until that day, it's been pretty good for me, and I know in the beginning stages of digital, I was a little concerned about that. But I think they were 256 megabytes cards, or even less than that. If I can remember the very first ones, they were ridiculously, you know? Yeah, I did throw a couple of those in the wash ones with my wedding on it. They survived. So I'm thinking, You know what? I don't want to change cars. I don't want to change batteries. And the other reason there's balance. So when I have that flash on camera and I whip it sideways like that without that grip, that thing kind of Hank's and makes me do this funky grip where I lock it in under my arm somehow the cameras so it doesn't move any further. And after a while I come home and I'm like this, you know, it's no. So the balance is really nice for me. I like it. And being able to use the vertical shutter is awesome. That's there. Is Was there a battery pack for your flash? Yes, there's a dedicated battery pack I know I used to use the quantum's a long time ago until I fried out to my flashes because the recycling time on those air so quick. But they also overpower the capacitors and your flashes. So if you do multiple in a row, eventually you'll fry that capacitor. And in the middle of a wedding, I still carry two flashes just in case. It did happen to me on a job. It's the only flash I had, and I had to think out of the box on how I was gonna like because my flash was gone because I fried it with the quantum. But so the dedicated Nikon has him, too. They just carry an additional eight double A batteries, and they helped the recycle time. They're not as fast at the quantum, but I don't know if you noticed. I kind of measure my shoot. I don't use motor drive at all, always single frame. I want a time it myself. And even if I do multiple click Click, But it might be Click click, Click is that if click click, click, click you know, it's just I don't like motor drives for that reason, and then imagine a motor drive with the flash never works by the 3rd 4th frame. You don't have that flash recycling anymore. You must have the fastest finger around. Is that breakfast? Before you came to introduce, we were talking about how fast your shutter seemed to be going off. We thought we were on power drive. I can't believe you were just going global movement on that finger. And here's the trick to said, Well, how do you do that? Because don't you fear that when you let go But then it has to refocus. No, actually, I learned a really cool trick on these cameras. You depress, it goes off, let you figure up halfway it stays focused. It doesn't move press down again. So I only let my finger up halfway and it never focuses. It's like it's in manual focusing mode so I can do that. By the same token, if I focus and I move over, it's pressed halfway down I move over, I fire. I let it up halfway on fire. It stays there so I can keep it locked in by virtue of where my fingers and that's again practice. Look, everything I'm saying toe all of you today, you conduce. I'm not the only one that could do this. Trust me on this, the gears so good, it is so intuitive. I don't care what you're using. The thing is, is that you have to practice. I gotta ask the six of you and I would like to ask you guys out there how many of you in here and out there. Have read your camera manual from front to back. I see zero hands in here and I see zero hands out there. I don't know one person in Ethiopia. There it ISS read the manuals. They give you so much info on the custom functions of your camera. It's ridiculous. And then practise them. Oh, my gosh. Custom function for in the back Back focusing Brilliant shutter release in the front Focus in the back. I like it. So you know how many people love shooting that way? It's amazing. So you back focused. Move over. Fire, fire, Fire, Fire, Fire Back focused. Let go of it so you can move your camera around and fire without fear in the front of focusing and refocusing and and focusing somewhere you don't want to focus, right? If the demand you'll if you just read that and then practice some of those things that would help you is absolutely brilliant. And then you figure out after you do that a while when the camera will fail you and how to compensate for. That's how I landed on P. I shot manual first, so I'm not a dummy. I'm not gonna tell everybody out here. Go shoot program right away. Don't do that. Learn how the camera functions by shooting manual and controlling your F stop and shutter speeds. Understand the relationship between them. Then try aperture. Priority shutter priority in different instances. You know, dragging the shutter as you using flash. And there's movement panning with it being stationary. Rare curtains sink front curtain sink. All these tools are there for a reason and for certain ways of shooting. Okay, in those moments when you nailed all that stuff down, you'll end up hopefully, some of you anyway in P mode, because it's like, what took me so long? Well, I had to learn the other methods first. I'm not saying Don't try people. I'm saying there are. You have to understand light. Yes. So when people say Well, OK, so that's easy. I'm gonna do that. Well, no, actually, I know the value of that scene selection I'm taking by looking at it, I'm seeing 18%. Graham, I'm looking for average meeting. I'm looking for spot metering. Oh, my gosh, It's not there. Guess what I do. I move all the way over here locked the meter, come back and focus cause I figured out there's my spot metering or maybe on the wall right there. That's my average. And then move over. So you have to understand life. And you do that by shooting and manual. You learned what that camera could do and how you perceive and how the camera perceives the light that you're looking at. It's all about the light or the absence of All right. We go on good stuff. Hey, let's keep going. Yeah, I'm, like, slow on this journey. We got quite Let me see. Is this where she got? I'll have to guess here in the mirror season with or without flush, I think without Yes, yes, I'm always jockeying for position and then I'm off, Right? So I try not. I don't know if you noticed how fast I move, I move constantly. If I see something boom in one corner of my eye, shoot it, then over to the other. I'm always studying feeling these moments out, and I never stay stuck on one thing and then hang out there, find different positions. Look, I'm shooting between her arms right here. I saw these quick little moments where the makeup persons are more moving and I saw Portrait's in the middle of it. So it's one of in the fleeting moments, right? And like I said, I don't want to really stop the action. So it's always on the fly as much as possible. Do any. Yep. See, I wasn't sure. What am I gonna do? We did that whole shoe thing. I remove them. And what else is there to shoot? Now I'm back over here. I hear noises from other rooms. Look, and then this happens. Then I zoom in. I know what this is. I still remember it. Then she's whoever is holding the camera. I'm shooting what I see on the screen in between the heads. See that? The camp. See, I still remember. That's what happens when you shoot moments. When you get home from a wedding, you'll sit down. Oh, my gosh, I remember that moment. Well, I remember that moment on. I can still feel that moment. All that stuff come up. You know what else? When the bride season, she remembers the same thing. That's what this style of shooting will do when my bride opens up her graph e book 20 years later and looks at the images she goes. I remember when I was feeling in this moment I remember what I was thinking in this moment, that it's my job. If I can make them relive their wedding 20 years later like it was yesterday, then I did exactly what I was supposed. I gave him all those memories back. That's what it is for me. When I first started into this industry 18 years ago, I called this lovingly grip and grin photography. It was all about the posed images. Okay, it's shot Hostile blonde. It was posed after pose after a pose, and I would see these wide albums with the little oval windows cut out with the gold trim around it and the bride and groom superimposed in the steeple of the church, looking down at the flock because I knew exactly when I opened that book. It was a book I saw a week before that, the year before that somewhere else in another city, because it was all about who and nothing about what, when, where, and not really nothing to do with what happened at the wedding Okay. So that's why I set out to do what I do now in with 35 millimeter gear in 18 years ago, they blew me off. They said you'll never make it. No one shoots like that. You have to use hostel block. You gotta use stance and lighting gear and power packs. And you got a light up the dance floor. You're gonna do all those things I said, But then it becomes a production. It's no longer a wedding to me. I want to do what percent would have done. Do wanna would have done had he been alive today. And he was shooting weddings. How would he shoot it? He'd be standing back there with a little like range finder, of all things, looking for the straight lines in his viewfinder and nailing a bunch of shots. Maybe 60 maybe in 100 throughout the whole wedding. And every one of them would be amazing because it was studied. It was felt instead of all posed, right? Okay, Like I said, if you guys have any more questions, jump, I do. Oh, good. I chose to come to this class just because of you know, the title The photojournalism. I love that idea. Loved the concept to be able to shoot a wedding in that style. Does your business model, though, allow for you to just take all these shots and try to capture these individual moments? Because it would seem to me that you're not getting the great print photos. I mean, you're capturing the story from beginning Dan, which is, I think, is what our job is to dio. But when it comes time to actually getting paid for what we dio might be more difficult to say, this is going to be agreed. Print. This is gonna be a great print. So on and so forth. Ok, good question. Good question. Um, I got a couple answers for you. Number one, the client that hires me based on who I am and what I show them hires me exactly for them the PJ style stuff. They don't really care for the 40 by 60 print or even the 16 by 20. They might want an 11 by 14 maybe six of them, and they want me to sign him, and that's gonna hang up. The rest is gonna be on their piano. Eight by 10 5 by seven, maybe on their dresser, somewhere in his office, where he's CEO of some corporation on in their book. Okay, that's pretty much it. That's number one. Number two, my style of shooting. And this is developed over time. Initially, I started shooting this all by myself. Then I realized I needed help. So I hired a second shooter and loan. Behold because I was the studio. I was the name and people were hiring me. I was beholding to them in terms of doing all the formal, stable shots, everything Mom wanted cause who was paying for this mother and dad, right? So they wanted all the post stuff, not necessarily the bride. She saw a little bit of the artsy stuff that I was doing and love that, but Mom didn't know, but but and then I would get three pages of shot lists, 150 images that I had to set up, right? Um, and my second shooter's work would come back and I would go, Wait a minute, that's what I want to do. What's up with that? This is what I set out to do is second shooting stuff I'm the artist here. So what I'm done is I've hired Rich who's the primary shoot? I'm the second shooter. Rich will do all the posing. Rich will get that beautiful shot. Light it off. Camera flash. He'll do all that stuff. He's my primary shooter while I run around like an idiot, grabbing these moments that I see. So whenever he's around dictating the image in terms of getting people together, I help out because I want to have a hand in it. And I might set it up initially, loosely or of Rich sets it up first. Very traditional. They still, you know, look, weddings are still about tradition. You gotta have some traditional images, is so rich, will put together a very traditional pose. And then I might loosen him up. I'll say, OK, open up your jackets. Okay, Lina and I do it very festive. Very fun, like and in my personality comes out, I'll even show No, no, no, no. Put your hand your popular lean on this shoulder. Give me some attitude, man. This is a geek. You shoot. So I loosened up a little bit. Then I step back so I shoot a couple frames and Rich comes back in, and so it's done very quickly. I don't know if you noticed how fast we do that. We crank through these things and 15 20 minutes, we're done. So a. Yes, I do get that because I have a primary shooter which allows me and he's a good one, allows me to freedom to shoot the way I want to shoot. The reason I do this is that this is my passion. The last thing I wanted to do is become my job. If I start to do nothing but posing, which is contrary to how I like to shoot, this will be my job. This will be my 9 to 5 that I eventually will burn out from hate and not ever want to do again. So in order for me to stay fresh, I need Teoh get someone else to do this stuff I don't want to do so. I hired someone who's totally cool with doing that, and he or she because I have more than one primary shooter besides Rich, they put their own spin on how they do things on. I allow them that freedom because they're artists at some level, right? But I like people that, like controlling lighting that, like, setting up things because it's contrary to what I like to do. It works out. Do you let your clients know that someone else will be doing those kind of shoots? Or do you just know that question? No, it's a good question. So the portfolio starts with me cause typically, who I have in front of me is the bride and her mother. Okay. All right. And sometimes it's the bride and the groom to be okay. Um, and so the bride falls in love. What I'm doing first is pits just my work. And I do it by virtue of having 11 by 14 prints all hand sign because, you know, once they're signed their art, I'm just suggesting I don't call it art. I'm just signing it. In case you think it is on, Then I'm ask them to 16 by 20 and I tell a story by the fourth image. If that bride in front of me is crying, she's my bride. Okay, then Mom was sitting in This is all lovely, Joe. Chess. I think I clearly see my daughter is just now fallen in love with you. Okay, so but just for me, Because all my girlfriend from high school will be there a table number 15. Do you do table shots? Who it comes, richest work. I will pull out my primary shooters work. Okay. And that's by looking at a graph e book. They'll see a complete wedding, and they'll see all the post images in there as well. And that won't be mine, and I will point it out. So as they flipped through the pages, I'll say, Yeah, these were mine, By the way, this was riches. Or, you know, this was Haley's or whoever it might be, I will point out, And specifically, if the mother of the bride is looking for that, we go right to the foremost the table shots, whatever they might require, and I'll show him their work. So the bride at the end of the day goes, Wait a minute. You don't do those. I go. No, you mean your online, you know? Yeah. Mom goes You mean I got my own shooter? Yeah. You mean I can pull him and drag him around from table? I said, Yeah. Please do that, Please, I beg you. Thank you very much. Yeah, and it's what's great about that. Let's see riches doing these formals, right? He's shooting the formals and and Harry is there, and he sees its rich. I'm in the background with my long lens, and I'm just grabbing shots of the little girl falling out on the side there, you know, with her little poufy dress. It's really cute stuff. Moments. Reception time comes around in Andheri with Uncle Henry's on the dance floor. They've had a couple of glasses of wine and they see is shooting and Harriet goes to Henry Henry, get the photographer going, take our picture. And so Henry sees me. I'm closer and he comes walking over to me and I'm holding my long lens and she screams out. No, Henry, the other one, the real one. Yeah, go to the other way. Thank you. It It's what allows me. This freedom. I surround myself with very good people at what they do so that I could be good if I had to concentrate on doing all of this. Because I never I was able to relinquish some of these very important key elements in what we do to someone else and that I have to do it. I couldn't be this good at what I'm doing. Do you know what I mean? My, The thing that makes my heart sing are these moments and to be right, dancing with these moments and being in the moment with these moments. That is why I do what I do. If I can't and have toe watch. If I can't trust Rich and I have to watch over shoulder what he's doing and freak out about and control him and said, I need you to do this number and do this one. I lost it right. And a lot of us as business owners do that we feel the need to control all of our business. I get that. You know, you're the business, you're you're the owner. If you don't have a handle on it, you lose it. But there's a fine line of where you need to let go and hire good people. Do what you do best and delegate the rest. Well put. Just beautiful, beautiful words. Thank you of them. Love that all about trust. You know it is, you know what I like to dio you were How much you are a psychologist at a wedding. Do you know that all of you are psychology? Just don't have a license? Uh, probably most of you haven't been educated in the world of psychology. But you you are wanted at a wedding. You have to think about it for a second. You play a key role on at some level how this unfolds and how again who you are and how that affects your clients. Right? If you're a diva, how do you think the bride's going to respond to you on the day of your wedding? What if she didn't discover this in the interviewing process? And also, you show up and you have errors about You need to hurry up with the makeup. You know I'm losing my light. And if if you're not out here five minutes, I'm going home. And I've seen that done. By the way, I I saw photographer do that. What do you think that clients gonna think? First of all, she's going toe deflate every time she sees you. So when you take photos now, she's not gonna be happy to see you And that's going to reflect in the photography. And, of course, who's gonna be blamed at the end of the day? And it should be given that circumstance anyway. Yeah, okay. But often your coordinator, because you do have to let him know. Hey, listen, the sun is setting right now. I mean, I know you're still doing your makeup, but how about if we kind of fake it, put on the veil really quickly. Let me grab this. You can help. You can really be play the coordinator psychologist role should the brightest stressing out a little bit. You know that maybe mother in law in the room is really harsh in this moment for her. She can't calm down. And you say You know what? To the mother in law. Could you do me a favor? I need to do a kind of a little private shooting here with her for a second. Could you wait out here for a second and gently ask her to move out of the space? And I guarantee you one thing. The bridal recognize that you did that look up at June, smell and say and then now you have a calm person in front of you because again, ultimately, whose responsibility is it to get great photos of the wedding? You? And if the players aren't playing nicely or if they're elsewhere, who needs to have a hand? What psychologist is there to have a hand in making that happen? You. So this is part of the first look to me is important because a lot of times when what I do, what we don't get an opportunity to do a lot of right is I just shoot a lot of Orthodox Jewish weddings. Jewish weddings, period in California. And they don't have that opportunity to see each other for the first time, walking down the out or where she walks down the out. There's a Khartoum assigning where they signed the Jewish license. So they meet in the board room or they meet in the bedroom somewhere they need elsewhere. And, you know, the groom will be waiting there with the rabbi and the bride will step in through a door. Oh, hi, honey. Oh, that's a great dress. That's not exactly what she was looking for. Yeah, most brides that I've run into. That's not what they're looking for. they're looking. Honey, please say something else. Besides, what a great dress like can you do an O M g? Look for me one. Um so I know that. And if I see that in the interviewing process that that is important my bride I will set up this first look. That is absolutely amazing. Could I? I love doing them, and the psychologist in me will milk it out. In other words, I know what that room is already feeling in his heart of hearts. We're gonna be here any minute as waiting for the bride and groom. And I'm gonna skip over that, because what I want you to see as she's coming out, he's set up outside, so they haven't seen each other yet. Right? So I'm just going to squeeze over and look, Is this photojournalism? Absolutely not. I'm setting this up, okay? I want her to look around the corner. I have a couple of different angles that I want to shoot from. I want to shoot from the front of his face. I want to talk to him when I say OK. Now look at him from out here and see his expression as he started to get antsy and nervous. I know that he's a sweet, beautiful man and he's got a huge heart. And it's so in love with you. See the expression on her face, right? I already know that exists. I'm nailing that shot right of her in the doorway. She's getting ready to look around at him. Right? So I said, Wait one second, right here, and I run around on the other side. And then I asked her to peak while he's in the foreground. And that's my shot. I go back and forth like this in part. What is he doing? He's hearing all this commotion right now, and he's hearing oohs and aahs, and he's hearing all My God, you're beautiful. I I'm just prepping him like crazy, right? I'm tugging at his heart strings, and all he wants to do is turn around now. Okay? No, we're gonna milk it a little longer yet. Stop right there. Okay, it's pouring. Ring that She got this point. Okay. Shelia, I want you right here. Just face him. It was my 7200. You'll see these images. You are my friend, Rich. You're in. Turn around and look at you bright to be my buddy. Walk to him. You stay there. Yeah, that's what it's about. That's what it's about. It's capturing the essence of who they are in the moment where their hearts lie with each other. This is a marriage between two people between two communities. Because more of this goes on at reception time when they meet each other for the first time, and your witness to you're part of it. What an honor. What a blessing. Think about it. We're not just vendors. If you approach it like it's an honor to be invited into their lives on one of the most important days of their lives. Thank you. That's how I walk out of my weddings is Thank you so much for inviting me here. That's when you have access like this. If this is who you are, and this is how they know that you're going to photograph them and capture this, what an amazing story. Not only that, it goes beyond this. Now what happens after this? She'll get pregnant and she'll invite me to shoot the pregnancy shoot. And then she'll sometimes invite photographing the birth. Invite me to come in. I'm Uncle Joe because I'm not allowed in is a non family member in the birthing room. But I am Uncle Joseph that Dad can hold mom's hand and doesn't have to shoot and be there with her at the same time. What an honor. The other most important day of their lives. And so it goes on first birthday party. Heck, yeah, I'm there. Why not? Then it's a family shoot that they can not just a shoot document a whole day in their families Life. I've become part of the family. So my wedding photography business has now grown into something else. I shoot family portrait. It's slash days in the life of sometimes a week in the life of where I come a couple hours a day and then making a graph e book based on every day, a slice of time in and 13 in this family's life, what do you think they're gonna do with that book? It's not changed out like the Wall shop a few years later, because they've grown. Now, the book it's saved. It's handed down generation to generation because now it's become a slice of time in this families life more than a wall photo. It's awesome. It's absolutely amazing. And riches covering other angles. Not only this, and then soon What I see are the people behind the windows right in here. I didn't know what they were there, but look how beautiful that is. Not another word needs to be said. They will do their own thing and let them talk. Let them feel. Don't interrupt. You'll do their own thing. He wants to see her dress all the way around. That's when I see the people in the window. The little boy staring at them with smile on his face. That will be an awesome shot. Questions anybody. You see a little boy? Yeah, that's where I'm at right now. I saw the little boy as he was like watching in awe. So he sharp they are smooching on each other, touching each other out of focus. It's beautiful Just to let you know, Joe, the entire Internet is crying. Yes, you were there. That's the point. Go ahead. I just have a question with regards to I mean, you're obviously shooting like bam, bam, bam! Just lots and lots of shots How many shots do you actually come away with at the end of this day? Yeah, that's Ah, good question. So that's another little thing. Okay, so here's what we do and this, and I'll explain to different things about this ritual shoot. Typically, seven, Our eight hour gig that we do. This is what we normally do. 78 hours, 1500 images. I'll shoot about 1500 images together. 3000. Then my lovely wife, Maryland will come into play and she will take all 3000 images and go, Uh, you now have 700 and she goes to 2222222222 and kills off 2300 images Now, Initially, I used to give my clients a ton. Right? So out of the 3000 they were getting maybe 4500 and do a light edit for them because my clients wanted to see a lot. And what I found is that where did that client go? It was a year two years ago that I shot their wedding and they didn't do their book. I'm still waiting for their graphic book to be done. You know. So I called him up. Says we can't make choices. We're overwhelmed. Really? I thought you wanted almost photos. Well, we thought so, too. But now we can't choose. They're too many good ones. So what was brilliant was mailing came up with the ideas. Now that they're gonna get 100 per hour that you should guys shoot together. 100 images for hours should be enough. So now out of that. The book typically has 150 images in it. So they still have to kill off 550 images out of the 700 good images, 700 images then get taken out a raw into J peg. And now Rich comes to play. He color corrects him. Maryland will pull out some wows. We give 15 20 maybe 30 wows because I want rich to touch those a little more as much as possible. We stay in light room. I don't do a lot of work on him. And I stay away as much as possible from Photoshopped unless Mom says, Listen, I don't like the eyes in this one on me, but I like the eyes. Can you swap my eyes hate swapping eyes. I hate swapping heads. I don't want to replace people. I don't want to subtract people. OK, OK, so I try and stay away as much as possible. So I take the 2030 wows and they go on. What's best for me is pick Taj, um, where they see all the images and then Joe's Favorites folder. Those are the wiles. So now they see color corrected and they see my wiles. And I tell them these right here are what all the images in your book will look like. Said it. I educate. Well, how so? Obviously, it's your wife who's doing the actual Colleen. How long does that take her to cut them down like that? She brutal. I'm telling you right now, Doc, Doc, She's fast. Now she's Yeah, I would say she spends a good portion of the morning and afternoon on one wedding editing. Yeah, so she starts at 9 a.m. Usually and by 23 o'clock she's finished on that wedding. She's done, but she's fast. And now why did I pick her? Not only because she's my wife, but she also has her bachelor's and fine art. And she was the director of a photo gallery. So she knows photography very well. So I get people that really know their stuff in their little areas that I need him in. Right? And so she just so happened that she's has photography background and this constant looking at images. So she knows. No. Messer. Me. I'd be lousy at this. These are all my little babies. So if I have five that look the same, right? Which one do I like? I don't know. I'm like going crazy. I don't know. They Oh, I like this one number, but I like she's just know. No, no, no, no. It makes very quick decisions and decisions as a woman, right? Ah. Who am I speaking to with these images? Mostly the bride. Yeah, it's more important to her in what I found. The groom is important, but he's more of ah, handbag. You know, that day for the bride? Yeah, that's right. So the Brian and so if I have a woman looking at it and that's why your body does the album work, it's another woman that's working out rich technical, right guys, Air geeks. What? We're left brain. Okay, so we're constantly and he's fast. You'll see how fast he is with doing very minimal things that we do to the images. But Hill then go into doing the wiles and boom, boom, Boom is right on. It's all technical stuff. And the women couldn't Wouldn't. They did that. It could care less. You know, they give me the feeling good stuff. Let me talk to the person. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, ma'am. I know you mentioned, like with the black and white. Do you ever have customers asking for the color of your black and whites, or do they just trust your judgment on that? Now they ask for him, and I give it to him. So in other words, there are sometimes where the block and whites are a choice made by Maryland, not based on the color is ugly, because it was 6400 with multiple different lighting scenarios in there. But she'll find something saying why? This reminds me of a forties percent, you know? So I'm gonna switch this the black and white, and then the client said, Do you have that in color? Yep. I do. I can give it to you. And then I get a lot of them saying, Can you make this black and white? So remember what I they hire you on, Not just who you are, but what you show them, right? So if all I show them our my art pieces and I'd say over half of them are black and white images when they hire me, what do you think they wanted to end of the day? Yeah, What? I showed him, right. I want a mix of the black and white and the color. If I showed him all color and they didn't see any black and white and I showed him black and white at the end of it, what they have said What? Yeah, there was no, uh, one color, cause that's what I showed him. So it's really basis. So it would be very careful if you show them slide shows of your stuff. Don't be surprised. At the end of the day that they're gonna ask slide shows from you. Me? I want to sell some product. I want to sell books. Books are more important to me than anything else. Prints are important. OK, so graph e books. That's why. Show them graphic books. I walk away so that they can sit with him. It's It's something that is concrete. Tangible. If they feel that they touch it. It's different from a slide show. I have people ask me before. Listen. How do you do that? How do you sell these prints on the wall? How do you sell these books? Because my clients want slide shows. Okay, so when they come in for the pitch, what you show? Well, I got this big screen TV and I put on music, and I have coffee brewing over here, and and then, you know, I show some full wedding set, the beautiful music, and yeah, okay. What else? Well, then we talked about how much the packages are. Really? So do you show them books? You show them prints, individual single prints, hand signed with the story behind each one? No. And why would they buy it? Why would they ask for it? Why are you surprised that they're asking for slide shows? It's what you showed him. It's why they hire you. I'm not for everybody. There are people that do come in and say, Hey, And by the way, I have a three page shot list. And can you do this slide show in the day off? I hope. Can't I can't. I would do you a disservice. I would do me into service if I said yes simply because I wanted to make the money. I can't do it. One of the things I found because that's how I did start. I would be straight up with all of you. I started out not being that honest to myself. I took every job I could because I had to. I hated him because I kept doing these weddings. In the very beginning, that was all staged, all formal, and I wanted to do the art thing, and I kept wanting to do the art thing. And what ended up happening is that the first few weddings I had a little bit of art stuff and a ton of formals, and then the next client would come in and I would have nothing but these formals and he's anybody art things, and then they would hire me. And what did they ask for the four months? The stuff I didn't want to do? So finally I got brave and I got honest with myself. I'm not going to show him the formals. I'm just going to show him the art thing. And they're either gonna like it, are there? Not if they like it. Yea, that's my bride. If they don't cool. If someone else's bride, it's OK. I don't have to have them all. And loan behold. Once they started booking me for how I wanted to shoot what I love to do what my passion is, man, they were hands off and I could charge more. And then they would say, As much as we're paying you, the last thing we're gonna do is tell you how to shoot. We want exactly what you showed us. We want our data look like that. We want you to see it that way, not someone else. So it took me first being honest with myself about what I wanted to do. Who I waas as a photographer. What I wanted to show what I wanted to sell and what I wanted to sell with me. There's the difference me versus anybody else. And it's not a competition. It's that person that resonates with me in my work. That's why belong with that's all. And there's a lot of rides out there and therefore all of us each one those that hire you don't belong with me. They don't They belong with you.