Original subtitles

And I'm going to share my screen.

Okay, if I'm not coming through loud and

clear, just let me know.

But I'll just get started here.

So you're stuck with me this morning.

Lanny is going to join us later, but

I'm teaching most of today's content anyway, so

I told him he may as well sleep

in as opposed to getting in just to

say hi.

And he's going to step in in the

later section of the course.

This course, this is the third day we've

taught it, and we're clocking in at around

two hours and 15 minutes, so it's not

as big a marathon as some of the

other ones.

Okay, so welcome to episode three.

Okay, so we'll just do a quick recap,

just to bring everybody up to speed.

So we talked about luck, right?

We talked about this idea of luck and

preparing yourself to be lucky and stacking the

cards in your own deck.

That's really paramount to our approach.

We talked about Lanny's Uncle Toby and how

you have to be very intentional about making

your own luck.

And there's a lot of intent and purpose

behind that.

We talked about how we focus on the

real moments and that reality is so much

more interesting than anything that we can make

up.

We talked about our all-in-balls-out

approach, start to finish everything we got to

try and tell that story, shooting the shit

out of it.

Often 20,000 frames per wedding, just trying,

shooting through the entire arc of those moments,

trying to get that sweet spot.

Talked about the idea of getting open, right?

Putting yourself in a position with your camera

to receive the pass, right?

Literally asking where is the best place where

I could be with my camera right now

to fill the frame with this moment, to

simplify the frame down to this moment or

this story that I'm trying to tell, right?

And of course, combined with that is keeping

the sticks on the ice.

So having that camera up, right?

Not down here looking, but up here, stocking,

waiting, ready for that moment, ready to capture

the full potential of that moment, which is

very hard when you have to bring the

camera up because they're fleeting, very fleeting, right?

Those moments are so important though, right?

Those moments I want to really humanize a

photo.

And if we're trying to touch people with

our imagery, our photos have to say something

about what it means to be human.

And so that aspect alone trumps composition and

it trumps light.

And we talked about our gear bag, about

simplifying our choices down to what's really important

and two to three lenses as opposed to

eight lenses, right?

And become masters of those lenses, right?

Masters of two to three lenses as opposed

to okay with eight different lenses.

We talked about our settings and the importance

of back button focus.

And actually many of the photos that I'm

going to deconstruct for you today would literally

not have been possible without this idea of

back button focus.

So if you haven't switched your camera yet

to back button focus, please do.

If you need help figuring out how to,

you can Google it or if you've got

an A9 or a Canon, I can help

you figure out how to do that.

We talked about our order of operations when

shooting natural light, right?

ISO is the first decision we make when

we walk into a new environment and our

aperture, right?

And playing with higher apertures, our default aperture

is around F4 as opposed to wide open.

And then adjusting our shutter speed as we

need to get the exposure that we're looking

for.

We talked about the idea of exposing for

the highlights and we're going to sound again

today like a broken record because it always

comes down to that, right?

All the images that we're going to deconstruct

have this idea of exposing for the highlights.

Okay.

And then you guys had an exercise, light

a subject.

And I just went on Facebook, on the

Facebook group.

Now this is a few days old.

I was on there again this morning and

I love, there's so many amazing photos people

are posting from their exercises they've been given.

I especially love the animal ones.

Even though I'm allergic to animals, I'm definitely

drawn to pictures of animals.

But this is a perfect example of exposing

for the highlights, right?

And the highlights in this frame really give

this animal texture, right?

And the texture behind the cat as well.

And the whole purpose of including this highlight

is to frame this little boy's hand.

I wish there was a little bit more

negative space in there, but of course that's

out of our control.

And I don't know if this is natural

light or flash, but it's really interesting scene,

right?

And it goes back to that three-step

process.

We talked about compositions, about freeing your mind

of compositions having to be correct and composing

visually, instinctively, breaking those rules.

We talked about the idea of getting high,

getting that camera in places where your eyes

aren't accustomed to going, right?

High, low, far, and close.

And then of course we got into off

-camera flash and we talked about that three

-step process, right?

First getting that full ambient exposure, then using

your f-stop to darken the canvas, and

then and only then adding your flash.

We talked about soft light and hard light

and the difference and why hard light gets

a bad rap, but the incredible potential there

is in using hard light because we talked

about broad light and short light and how

we're more drawn to short light than broad

light generally.

And then exercise two was that taking that

three-step process and putting it into a

photograph.

And then we got into the tool mount

toolbox and we first covered silhouettes, right?

And here's some, I think I pulled some

from the Facebook group here.

Yeah, here's a few examples of silhouettes from

the Facebook group from exercise three.

And I believe the exercise was to find

a natural light silhouette and then flash something

within the darkness of the frame.

This guy David here makes a great silhouette

because of his beard, right?

And he's got this negative space in between

his chest and his beard, which is great.

And then he's lit the guitar over here.

This one just cracked me up so I

had to include it because I can't remember

the name of the lady that took this,

but she was obviously practicing making a silhouette

with a bright spot.

It's not exactly the exercise, but she's like,

then she's like, and then I realized my

photo looked like a domestic abuse campaign.

God, it totally does, especially with the look

on her son's face here.

So great job.

And this one just cracked me up.

And then of course we talked about backlight

or rim light, right?

Getting that light in behind our subject and

getting them on a dark background, right?

And then there was that exercise, which we

aptly named rim job.

And here's a few examples of that in

the Facebook group.

Okay.

So this is what we're going to go

through today.

So we're going to go through shadow propulsion,

shoot throughs and layering.

And then Lani is going to come up

and talk about bokeh panoramas, or if he's

still asleep, I'll talk about bokeh panoramas.

Okay.

And again I just want to reiterate that

the way we're going to deconstruct these images

is we're going to go from real simple

examples of using the tool to more complex

examples.

We're going to go from natural light examples

of the tool to off-camera flash examples

of the tool.

And we're going to go from portrait examples

to more documentary style examples of using the

tool.

So we'll start off with shadows.

And this is not a simple shadow.

I'll come back and deconstruct this photo, but

we'll start with natural light, natural light portrait.

Okay.

So it's a controlled scenario.

It's during a portrait session.

We've got time.

We're not rushing.

Well, sometimes we are rushing, but we're looking

for shadows and it's natural light.

Okay.

And you'll notice here in most of the

images now, we're starting to combine tools.

Like it's very rare that these tools are

used in isolation from each other, right?

Just like a carpenter combines his tools.

Very rarely does he or she use those

tools in isolation.

So in this case, we're backlighting, right?

We're backlighting on a dark background.

So we've got that nice rim light around

our couple here.

And the shadows here, just they give this

whole section of the frame, which is a

good, I'd say two thirds of the frame

purpose, right?

They make, they give us leading lines into

the couple.

They essentially use this blank area here as

a canvas for those leading lines.

They also create a more 3D effect in

the image.

They give a layer and they give the

image real depth.

And shadows are not something that I've used

really often, but they're something I'm really excited

about using because I start, once you start

seeing them, you see them everywhere and you

see the potential of them everywhere.

And they can really help solve compositional errors

and they can really help give purpose to

highlights that wouldn't necessarily have a purpose in

your frame.

So now that we've sort of started using

shadows more, I think in the next couple

of years, you'll probably see shadows a lot

more in our work just because we've trained

our eye to notice them more now that

we're starting to see them.

Here's another example.

Pretty much the same as the first example,

except we've cropped out the top of the,

or not framed out the top of the

couple here.

We really struggle when we're shooting in locations

where we can't get our couples on a

bright spot.

So I, and I think it's because when

we first started photographing weddings, we photographed weddings

in the mountains.

And of course, in the mountains, there's lots

of varying different types of terrain.

And it's easy.

It's fairly easy to say, where's the brightest

spot?

And can I put my couple there?

Yeah, just climb up to the top of

that little hill there.

And I can get you on the bright

spot when we shoot places like Amsterdam, or

in this case, this was in, in Malaga,

Spain, where it was just flat.

There was no place to get our couple

on the bright spot.

I remember really struggling on this shoot in

particular, but I still went back to, or

we still went back to the very basics

and asked ourselves, where's the brightest spot?

And the brightest spot is sometimes the ground,

right?

Sometimes the brightest, sometimes we can't get our

couples in the bright spot of the sky.

But if we still simplify the question down

to where's the brightest spot, in this case,

it was on the ground.

The ground was the brightest spot.

And it's the exact same technique, except instead

of using the sky, we're using the ground,

right?

And so here, we just had them walk

through the bright spot and shot that, well,

shot probably 30 or 40 shots as they

walked through that bright spot.

Okay, so any questions before we move into

documentary examples of shadows, Jodi?

There aren't any questions yet, but maybe if

we just see if anything's going to pop

in here, or if you want, we can

keep going.

We'll keep going.

There doesn't tend to be too many questions

yet, which is fine.

And this tool is fairly short.

There's not a lot of explaining to do

with it.

It's more, hopefully, you know, opening you guys

up, opening you guys' eyes up to the

potential of what exists out there with shadows

so that you're seeing it in places where

maybe you haven't seen it before.

There's this phenomenon.

I can't remember what it's called.

If anybody knows what it's called, let me

know.

Maybe it's like the red car phenomenon or

something.

But basically, it's the idea that if you

go and buy, like, I remember the first

car landing I bought, we got this really

cool blue car.

And I remember picking out the color of

the car because I was like, well, nobody

has this color of car that I know.

And it was a beautiful blue.

And then, of course, we drove it out

of the lot, and I started seeing those

blue cars everywhere.

And it's not because more of those blue

cars suddenly existed.

It was because I was more cognizant of

it, right?

And same with when I named Madeline.

Madeline, I was like, oh, that's such a

great name.

It's such an uncommon name.

Nobody knows, like, there's no one I know

that's named Madeline.

And then I named her Madeline.

And then, of course, all these people named

Madeline started popping up into my life.

And it's just because I was more cognizant

of that name.

And so the same thing happens with these

tools, right?

If you become cognizant of them, you start

seeing them in places that you never would

have seen them before.

And it's not because they didn't exist before.

It's just because you've got a new reality,

right?

As your brain changes, your reality changes, which

is a wonderful thing for us to take

advantage of.

Okay, so let's just look at a few

documentary examples.

And they're very similar to the portrait examples,

except they're not staged by us in any

way whatsoever, right?

This was in South Carolina, and this is

Beth and Chad Winstead and their photographers.

So I'm pretty sure I can say with

pretty much 100% certainty that they set

their ceremony up, knowing that if the sun

was out, the sun would be behind them.

Right?

And you can see where I am here.

And I must say, I do make a

pretty, pretty nice silhouette there.

Look at that negative space.

Now, if this had been a cloudy day,

and there was no shadows, there would be

no reason for Lani to frame the photo

this way.

Right?

So the way we frame our photos and

the way we compose our photos is determined

by the light, right?

Because this whole area of the photo, if

it were cloudy, and there were no shadows,

there would not have any purpose.

It would just be a blank part of

the canvas that didn't tell it, didn't provide

any additional information for the viewer, right?

But he decided to include it here for

obvious reasons, right?

Those shadows really give this image depth.

They give it that 3D effect, and they

lead the viewer's eyes exactly where we want

them to go.

Okay, so it's almost like an additional layer

in the frame.

Same thing here.

This is the same ceremony, just them walking

away.

Actually, this is the same wedding as well.

Oh, and this is the wedding that I

gave you guys access to the full gallery

of.

So you can go and look at their

full gallery, and you can see, you know,

for this, let's take this photo as an

example.

They're outside playing football on the beach.

Is this the only photo Lani took of

that?

No.

He was out there for 40 minutes.

This is one of many different compositions he

got.

But the reason he sort of panned down

and took the shadow, and he obviously flipped

the image upside down here, is because it

tells the same story that he was telling

when his camera was up in a less

literal way.

Shadows can be really great for that, right?

They can tell the same story in a

less literal way.

Here, it tells the location, right?

It tells that there's some sort of athletic

event going on, and it's on the beach,

and he's got the same principles of negative

space that we talked about in the silhouettes.

Anything else I was going to say about

this one?

Oh, yes, and he was also solving compositional

errors when he was framing the photo this

way, okay?

So when he was framed more conventionally, let's

say, with his camera pointed up, including the

full bodies, there was a lot of compositional

errors, especially when he was shooting the one

direction, because there was houses in the background,

there was clutter, there was power lines.

When he was shooting towards the ocean, there

was horizon lines going through people's heads.

So this probably came as a result of

trying to solve those compositional errors.

Same thing here.

This was a result of trying to simplify

the frame down to the story that was

happening without including all the clutter that was

preventing the photo from telling the story we

wanted to tell.

So this was in the middle of the

day.

This is the wedding party, and they're practicing

their dance that they're going to be doing

later in the evening, and they're on this

white dance floor.

When the camera was pointed up in a

more conventional sort of composition, there was so

much clutter in the scene, right?

There was the house in the background, there

was the pool in the background, there was

the entire wedding planners team setting up tables

and tablecloths and centerpieces and all that sort

of stuff.

This came as a result of how do

I simplify this frame down to what's interesting

and down to the story I want to

tell, right?

When we had a frame the other way,

you couldn't tell what was going on.

You couldn't tell what was going on, and

you couldn't, that story was lost in the

mix of everything else going on.

Plus, we just couldn't clean up the background.

Okay, here, this is the kids here.

So this is Timmy, and this is Madeline

at our local skate park here, and at

first when I was taking this photo, I

was just trying to line up these two

stories, right?

Timmy and Madeline, and I was trying to

get Timmy in this highlight where he is,

which was tricky because he's moving very fast,

right?

And Madeline was a little bit more stationary,

but I was trying to get her sort

of backlit on this dark background here.

And this highlight here, in most of the

frames, I cropped out or I framed out

because it didn't have a purpose, right?

It didn't have any purpose.

It wasn't telling any additional story.

And you'll remember from the first lesson how

we talked about every highlight in your frame

has to have a purpose.

If it doesn't have a purpose, you need

to compose differently to eliminate it, right?

But I did notice that when a skateboarder

went by or a cyclist went by, their

shadow could give this highlight a purpose, right?

So then I probably sat here for five

or ten minutes shooting as many frames as

I could per second, trying to line up

Timmy in this highlight, Madeline in this dark

spot with a shadow that came through here.

And that was shooting the shit out of

it, you know, probably 70 or 80 shots

trying to get the one to line up

with all three elements.

And it's interesting for the viewer because their

eye bounces around to the different highlights, right?

My eye first goes here and it goes

over here and it goes over here.

And that triangle, having that triangle in our

photos is very visually pleasing.

Okay, any questions before we go on to

flash?

How you can achieve shadows, this idea of

casting shadows or throwing shadows with our flash?

We still don't have any questions.

Perfect.

This is great.

I must be doing just an awesome job

explaining.

Yeah, you are actually doing a really good

job.

I gotta say, this is so much easier

with lighting out here.

Okay, so we'll quickly get into flash examples

of casting shadows.

And I'll give you a little bit of

backstory behind these images as well so you

can sort of understand what led us to

using this tool.

And again, the tool came as a result

of the problem we were trying to solve,

right?

So it's not like we went into this

area and we're like, I'm going to cast

a shadow or it came as a result

of a problem we're trying to solve.

So this is in the Oculus building, which

is in New York City.

It's a big train station.

And it was about two in the morning

here.

It was very late after their wedding reception.

But the couple really wanted to come here

to do portraits because the groom was an

architect and he had helped design this building.

So we went to this Oculus building.

And of course, we took many different photos

on the outside that featured the architecture.

You can go and look at their blog

posts and see all those photos.

But when we went inside, he wanted to

do a few photos inside as well.

It was, holy shit, what are we going

to do in here?

Because it was like, it was like we

were in a big mall, like a big

white mall.

And it was all flooded with light, even

though it was two in the morning, it

was flooded with light, lots of people.

And no light and shadow whatsoever.

No light and shadow.

So that was our first clue that we

were going to have to use flash because

we're going to have to create our own

light and shadow to make this space a

little bit more interesting.

So and I did this big, so I'm

shooting from two balconies up here, and mine

is down in the foyer or the atrium

area.

And it's a really huge cavernous space.

And I thought, well, this is a big

white canvas.

And there wasn't a ton of people there.

Obviously, there was some, it was two in

the morning, and it's a busy train station.

But there wasn't a ton.

But I was like, it's not very often

that we have this huge sort of white

canvas at our disposal.

So I thought, well, we'll try throwing a

shadow and see what that looks like.

So after the first frame, I realized that

the light that Lani was holding wasn't only

casting a shadow, but it was creating a

bright spot.

So I adjusted Lani's position, tasted the salt

a bit, adjusted him accordingly, right, so that

we could get the couple right on this

bright spot.

He backed up again.

And we're combining two tools here, right?

So we've got them silhouetted on this bright

spot.

And then we've got that flash casting the

shadows there.

And then the last thing that I adjusted

was I adjusted our f-stop.

And I went quite high with our f

-stop.

So that because I wanted to include the

flash in the frame, like I have here.

And if I had been a lower f

-stop, which I was initially, that was more

of a flare.

It wasn't a very interesting flare.

It was just like a big, a big

blown out highlight.

But by going to high aperture, I could

get this nice starburst effect.

And it looks like the sun behind them.

So that's it for portraits.

I'm going to go into some documentary examples.

I would say more often than not, I'd

say most of the time, actually, like 95

% of the time that when we cast

a shadow with our flash, it's accidental.

It's never an intentional thing that oh, I'm

going to place my flash here and cast

the shadow of the groom's hand on the

wall.

That being said, once we make that, once

we make that accident, we look at the

back of our cameras, and we can see

the potential in it.

Right.

So this is, Lani's intentionally cast the shadow

here.

But as a result of an accident, right,

as a result of a mistake.

Right.

And again, it just boils down to the

basics, right, of composition, this part of the

frame, this whole half, 50% of the

frame, there would be absolutely no use of

including that, unless there was a shadow there,

unless there was something to give it a

layer or to tell an additional story, or

to tell the same story.

In this case, it's telling the same story,

just mirrored in a different way.

So the cat, the flash is over here,

over camera left, and he's shooting through the

five hole here, through the body part, which

we're going to get into when we get

into shoot throughs.

And he's underexposed, obviously, for the highlights here.

That's what he probably set his exposure on.

And then he matched that exposure with his

flash, which is why now Lani probably required

burning down a little bit, like you might

have been able to see him a little

bit through this hole in the reflection.

But because he doesn't have the light on

him, it would have been very easy to

burn him down.

Or we wouldn't have seen him at all.

And then of course, that same flash that's

sidelighting the groom is also casting a shadow

up on this wall.

Same thing here with this bride.

So this was during bride prep, obviously.

And what I was initially trying to do

was layer the three important people together in

this frame.

So we've got a bridesmaid over here.

And I've got a nice natural highlight that

I know I can use to silhouette.

We've got the bride's sister over here.

And then we've got the bride back, the

bride herself back here.

And I wanted to layer those three stories

together.

And I knew I wanted my ambient exposure

high enough that I could see the detail,

especially in the sister here.

I wanted that ambient exposure high enough that

I could see detail in her face.

So I was probably shooting at a fairly

low shutter speed and high aperture in order

to get that detail there.

But I did want the bride to pop

just a little bit more than her sister

here, just because she's the main player.

So I had a flash over here.

I pointed at the bride on the left

here.

And after the first frame, I realized that

this same flash that was giving that bride

a little pop was also casting a shadow

up on this wall, which I found really

interesting.

And it gives the image another layer that

it wouldn't have otherwise.

So then I started working it much more

intentionally.

And what I was trying to get was

that negative space that we're looking for in

silhouettes, which is harder to get in shadows

actually, just because they're distorted a little bit.

And I just want to teach you guys

a little trick with regards to how to

place your flash in the right spot when

you're trying to do shadows.

Because I remember when we first started doing

shadows, it was almost just trial and error.

If I was trying to cast my shadow

up on this wall up here, I'd try

it here, and then I'd realize it was

too low.

So I'd up it a few inches, and

then I'd realize my shadow was too big.

So I'd move it a little bit further

away.

It was like trial and error, like six

or seven steps just to get my shadow

in the part of the wall that I

was looking for.

So now I simply use the modeling light.

So if you can see that wall behind

me there, this modeling light, I can figure

out exactly where my flash needs to go,

exactly where I need to position it, far

or close.

If you move closer, the shadow gets bigger.

If you move further away, it gets smaller.

And you can figure out exactly where your

flash needs to go to cast that shadow

where you'd like to.

So that's just a little trick that sort

of expedites that whole process of figuring out

the position of your flash.

Okay, this is obviously during the dance.

We've been shooting the dance for three or

four hours at this point, and we were

shooting most of the dance sort of up

in that action, trying to fill the frame

with those dancers, right?

At some point during the dance, Rodney got

bored, and he's like, well, I'm just going

to go and see what it looks like

when I shoot up from this balcony.

So you can see exactly where his flash

is.

It's right here.

And he's shooting from up on a balcony.

And he never thought, oh, I'm going to

shoot up on this balcony.

I'm going to place my flash behind the

bride here, and it's going to cast their

shadows against the floor.

That wasn't his initial vision, obviously.

But he noticed that after his first exposure,

and then he started working it, right?

And when this dance circle happened, it was

the perfect opportunity to work this idea, right?

Especially from an elevated perspective, because it shows

the whole dance party, which is hard to

do.

But with a different lighting setup, this whole

area here, this big lima bean shape right

here would have no purpose, right?

It would just be blank information that didn't

add to the story, right?

Unless there was a focal point in the

middle of it, like a kid dancing or

something to look at, right?

But that shadow, those shadows give that spot

perfect purpose, and they give it texture, and

they give it leading lines, right?

Those shadows exactly to where we want the

eye to go in the photo.

Okay, one more picture here.

Jodi was at this wedding.

I don't know if she was with me

when I took this photo, but I can't

remember.

But this was during the bride prep, and

it was a really ugly room.

It was basically a meeting room, like a

boardroom where people would talk about spreadsheets and

engineering things.

The entire ceiling was fluorescent light, so really

ugly flat lighting.

I think there's also a weight rack right

beside her here.

It wasn't the most, let's just say it

wasn't the most inspiring of rooms to shoot

in.

And I was there for a good six

hours of doing getting ready photos, and so

I had tons of safe shots, tons of

shots where I just sort of exposed for

the skin tones and layered the stories together.

I was getting a little bored.

I decided to try something a little different.

So first thing I did was, I'm like,

well, the light's shitty in here, so I'm

just going to eliminate all the natural light,

with the natural light coming from the fluorescent

lights in the ceiling.

So I went about two stops underexposed, and

then I set my flash up over here,

and the only reason I set it up

there was not because that's where I wanted

it.

It was just to test to get my

settings right.

All I was doing here was trying to

get my settings right, so that I could

shoot flash from different angles, because I would

never normally put a flash here, because I'm

broad lighting the bride, and I've never drawn

to broad broad lighting, right?

So I would never normally put the flash

there.

But after I took my first test shot,

I was like, oh, this is really cool.

The flash casts her shadow up onto the

wall.

So I'm going to work with that a

little bit.

I'm going to experiment and see what we

can do with that.

Then I just literally asked myself, okay, what

else can I incorporate into this frame that

can layer an additional story or make it

a little bit more interesting?

And I was looking around, and they had

a Burning Man-themed wedding.

So that meant, at a certain point in

the day, it was I think about four

or five in the evening, everybody took off

their wedding clothes and put on Burning Man

clothes, which is like feather boas and scarves,

and just think of the most ridiculous outfits

you can think of, and that's what they

put on.

So in this room here, they had all

these boxes of costumes that people were to

put on later.

So I was just sort of rifling through

the box, and I found this scarf.

Actually, I'm just going to grab a little

prop for myself here, so I can show

you exactly what it did.

Not quite the same.

This is a tea towel.

This is opaque.

But this scarf that I grabbed was sheer,

so it was see-through.

It was red, and it had these gold

stars on it.

So I was like, well, I'm just going

to stick this in front of my lens

and see what it looks like if I

shoot through this with the same concept I

was just doing.

So good morning.

You might hear some coffee beans being ground

in the background.

Actually, after we get through this section, we'll

take a little pee break, and then Lina

can grind his coffee beans, because you don't

want him teaching if he hasn't had his

coffee.

Just trust me on that one.

Okay, so I just basically draped this sheer

piece of cloth over my camera and took

another frame.

Nothing changed.

The photo was the exact same as the

previous photo, and I was like, what's going

on?

And then I'm like, oh yeah, I've got

a light on the bride.

I've killed all my ambient lights, so I

need to put a light on the scarf

as well.

If I have a light on the scarf,

it'll show up as a layer.

So then my next frame was, you know,

I had the scarf draped over my camera

just like that, and then I just hand

-held a flash over to the side and

took the shot again.

Then you could see the stars, but they

were quite globular.

They weren't necessarily recognizable as stars, but they

were a layer.

And then I realized the last problem I

had to solve was because I was shooting

with the 35, but because that scarf was

right in front of my lens and I

was focused on the bride, all those stars

were out of focus.

So then the last thing I did is

I upped my f-stop.

I think I'm at f9 or f11.

I can't exactly remember, but I upped my

f-stop way up so that I could

get sharp stars, or at least sharp enough

that you could recognize them as stars and

also be sharp on the bride.

Okay, so that was the last step.

And then you get all these sort of

unpredictable results that you can't even hope for

or plan for, right?

So all the gold stars are the ones

that picked up the light, or the white

stars that you see here.

They get me, Lenny.

And then all the dark stars are the

ones that didn't pick up the light.

So it's just so interesting that all the

stars in this area picked up the light,

and all the stars in this area, the

bright highlight, didn't pick up the light, except

the one in the middle of her head

shadow, which did pick up the light.

So that just worked out perfectly for me.

Okay, so let's answer some questions here before

we get into shooters.

Okay, we do have some questions.

Okay.

I think this is probably going to be

along the lines of photo 60.

Okay.

And the question, I think you may have

answered, you were talking about angle of flash

at one point, but I was helping someone

turn the camera off.

The question is, angle of the flash for

shadow in documentary and portraits?

Like, I think it's the one where it's

the groom.

Yeah, well, it really depends.

I mean, our angle of the flash in

this photo is very different than our angle

of the flash in this photo.

Yeah.

Right.

You can see that it's camera left, but

you can see that it's camera left.

Yeah.

But I think the question might have been,

I assume this is where your nano clubs

are coming in.

Yeah, I think Lenny probably just used a

light stand here.

So basically, we always want the light.

I mean, not in this case, this case,

we're not, we're not photographing skin tones, lights

not falling on our couple, really.

So this, this case, the angle of the

light is dependent on where we want that

bright spot, and where we want those shadows.

And there's no formula to that, right?

That's just tasting the soup and adjusting as

necessary.

Same as in this case, but our starting

point for angle of flash is always going

to be about 45 degrees, right?

So if Lenny's shooting here, through the arms,

right, that's the flash is going to be

coming in.

Can you see my hand?

Right about there?

Right about there, but it's going to come

in elevated, right?

So we don't want it coming in down

here on the groom.

Right?

We want it coming in, but we don't

want to come in here on the groom.

We want it just about right here.

Yeah.

Right.

So just, and that's just a visual thing.

It's not like we're working out mathematical equations

to try and figure out the angle and

where we put it, but it's just a

visual thing.

So, and that's because that's like, you know,

if you, if you have the angle of

flash coming in down here, cast shadows upwards,

it looks a little bit dynamic.

What's that one?

Demonic.

You're close.

You guys get me.

Right.

It's much more flattering to have it come

in from a higher angle.

Totally.

Totally.

How do you get the widespread of flash

in slide 63?

We just simply would have taken the grid

off.

Okay.

There just would have been no grid on

this flash.

And I think we mentioned this in lesson

one, right?

Our flash does have a zoom, right?

We can zoom that light in and we

can zoom that light out.

We always leave our flash completely zoomed out.

And the reason we do that is because

when we, when you have a grid on

your flash, I can't find one right now,

except this one, but when you have a

grid on your flash, it doesn't matter what

your zoom is, right?

Your, your flash is going to be controlled

by that grid.

When we take the grid off the flash,

it's usually because we want that light to

wrap all the way around.

So it's one less thing we have to

think about when we take that grid off

the flash.

But so we leave it.

I think that will also answer a question

that just came in.

Do you use grid for shadow proposing or

air flash?

So you use what air flash?

Well, it depends.

Sometimes we use grid.

It really depends.

It's tasting that soup, right guys?

And that's pretty much my, my question, my

answer to everything, which I feel bad saying,

but it really does depend.

And it's, it's just, it's adjusting on the

fly as needed.

Looking at that, that exposure and seeing what

problems exist and adjusting your flash accordingly.

Okay.

Hold on guys.

I'm just bouncing back to the other side.

So for image 64, so you had two

flashes, not sure where the, where the second

flash, sorry, not sure where the second one

to get the stars.

Okay.

Yeah.

Sorry.

I thought I demonstrated that.

So I had the scarf of the stars

over my camera and I was holding the

flash like this.

It's just handheld in my hand pointed at

the stars with my left hand because I

can't shoot with my, I can't shoot with

my left hand.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Yeah.

With my left hand on the scarf.

Okay.

Bounce it back over to the other side.

What flash did you use for number 60?

Probably not a speed light.

That was a speed light.

It was one a one speed light is

more than strong enough for most of our

needs.

Okay.

Right.

Especially indoors and at night, right?

The only time we need to go to

something bigger like the B10, the B10 we're

hesitant to bring in a lot of cases

is because, because it's big and it literally

has one purpose.

This is to overpower the sun, right?

When it's super bright out midday, we're doing

family formals and we're trying to fill in

those shadows in the face.

This is great.

Or if we're trying to backlight someone in

the middle of the day with a bright

sun, this is great because this, this can,

doesn't overpower the sun, but it matches the

power of the sun at least, right?

This is about five speed lights or five

eight ones.

Wow.

This is because it's night it's indoors.

It is a mall.

But this is more than powerful enough.

Yeah.

Um, when you say zoomed out, do you

mean at its absolute widest or just a

wider zoom, like 35 millimeter ish at its

widest 24?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, I've been asked this question twice.

I'm just gonna, I gonna ask it it's,

uh, for photo number 60, how strong of

a flash would one need all flashes kind

of have similar.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, this, this isn't as strong as

what I don't even know this stuff.

Like I'm so riding are so non-technical.

Like, I don't know how this compares to

other flashes, but I think it's not as

strong as most of the flashes out there.

Yeah.

It's a typical speedway, but it's, um, it's

not the strongest.

It's certainly not the strongest speed light on

the market.

People do get hung up on those numbers

of how strong the speed light is.

It doesn't really matter.

Yeah.

If you didn't indoors and you're shooting at

night, the speed light is more than strong

enough or anything.

Um, that's, uh, I'm, do you, are you

accepting your questions?

Are we trying to stay on topic?

Let's just stay on topic for now.

Okay.

Perfect.

Yeah.

Um, question shadow.

That's a tricky word.

Oh, can we only do it during sunset

hour with natural light, natural light?

Uh, the shadows are just going to be

a different shape.

If you want those long shadows.

Yes.

You can only do that during sunrise or

sunset, but there's, yeah.

Or in Alaska, honestly.

Do you mean like in the, in the

winter season?

This was midday.

Okay.

Midday.

This was about 11 o'clock in the

morning or something like that.

So no, it doesn't have to be, uh,

you need sun, obviously you can't do natural

light.

It's very hard to natural light shadows when

you've got, um, a cloudy day, but, Oh

yeah.

Yeah.

Um, and then the next question I have

is on the dance floor, like photo 63

is the light on the light stand generally

pointing straight straight across, or do you angle

it down a bit?

That's probably that one's angled down a bit.

Right.

So it's hitting sort of right here, but

there's no general, that's what I want to

emphasize here.

There's no generally this generally that, because we

don't like, like just, you know, I love

it when you're dead.

And you let me teach them.

Um, like we never generally throw shadows on

the dance floor.

So there, but this shot, awesome.

This shot we have obviously.

So it would have been at first again,

an accident, and it would have literally been

looking at our camera, seeing how we had

needed to adjust the flash as necessary.

If, and if we needed to adjust it

and make those changes.

Mm-hmm.

That was a very good accident.

I remember when you shared that shot, I

was like, um, question is, Oh, that's an

editing question.

Okay.

Yeah.

We'll get to editing.

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

Okay.

I'll move on.

Okay.

Landy's going to grind some beans.

Uh, you guys have two minutes, two minutes,

go use the washroom, go refill your coffee,

go make a cup of tea.

If you want two minutes, I'm going to

take advantage of this.

Mo wants me to say hi to you

guys.

I'm going to be chatting with her later

today.

Okay.

Has it been two minutes?

Okay.

So yesterday's class, um, someone asked, I got

a little snarky yesterday.

I have to do a public apology.

I think cause someone asked, um, whether I

made the bride laugh in this picture, like

whether I said to her, did you, whether

I said, laugh your head off while you're

sitting there, I'm taking this photo.

And I got like, I was waiting for

that question today as well and try to

keep my blood pressure down.

Cause I was like, did you not hear

everything we've been talking about the past few

days?

Of course I did not ask her to

laugh anyways.

I feel like I'm much more patient today.

And I also became aware yesterday that I

am falling victim to that sort of internet

wall thing where you put a wall of

the internet between you and someone else.

And it almost gives, it's like Facebook warriors,

right?

It almost gives you permission to be rude

or permission to say something you wouldn't normally

say or permission to use a tone that

you wouldn't use if you were in person

with them.

So I'm trying to do a better job

of not doing that today.

Um, so my apologies if I've done that

in the past, but now that I'm aware

of it, I can change it.

Okay.

So, oh yeah.

So exercise for this one, this one's really

fun to play around with and it's really

great when you're stuck indoors, right?

Because this would be really hard to do

with a flash outdoors.

Um, obviously you can see it outdoors when

there's not, there's light out, when the sun

is out, but try casting a shadow with

your flash on a blank canvas, whether that

blank canvas is a wall or a floor

or whatever you want.

Try using your flash to cast that shadow.

There was actually a really good example of

one that's one of our alumni posted in

the group, Carrie, she's actually taken our workshop

in person as well.

And she made this little figurine out of,

uh, out of Amazon boxes and he's all

like sad looking and she, she used a

flash behind him to cast a shadow on

the ground and it's brilliant.

So if you need some inspiration, go look

at that.

Okay.

Now we're going to get into backlighting or

no, sorry, shoot throughs and layering.

Okay.

So shoot throughs and layering.

So this is something I see done all

the time with photographers, especially as I'm judging

contests.

I, we, between Lenny and I, we probably

judged about 10 or 11 contests in the

last year.

And I see so many shoot throughs done

by photographers and some of them are great,

but many of them, like I'm talking a

large percentage of them, I feel are done

without any intent and purpose behind them.

And so we've come up with a list

of about five reasons why we think you

should shoot through something or a reason why

you would shoot something.

And if you're not achieving one or hopefully

multiple of these reasons, you got to really

step back and ask yourself, why am I

shooting through this?

Like, what is the purpose?

Am I just falling into gimmicky camera technique

because it's, it's there or, or is there

some intent and purpose behind this?

Lenny and I fell victim to this for

many years where, you know, we're going to

be getting in, once we get into off

-camera flash, we're going to be showing you

how to shoot through wine glasses.

And we would find ourselves as soon as

speeches started just shooting through wine glasses, but

with no intent and purpose behind it whatsoever.

And we caught ourselves.

We'd be like, why the hell are we

shooting through wine glasses right now?

We do this every wedding at this time

of day, but sometimes there's a good reason,

but many times there's not.

So here's the five reasons why you might

shoot through something.

And if you're not achieving one of these

fives or multiples of these fives, just really

ask yourself.

Okay.

So one would be to give the impression

that you're peeking in on a private moment,

like this example here, right there.

And whenever you're shooting through something, it's, you're

always sort of having that outsider perspective looking

in.

So it doesn't make sense ever.

I mean, of course there's exceptions to every

rule, but I've never seen an example.

It doesn't make sense for the person you're

photographing to be looking at the camera.

If you're shooting through something, like if you're

doing a portrait, like of them smiling and

looking at the camera, it makes absolutely no

sense for you to be shooting through something

in that scenario.

Because when you're shooting through something, you're giving

that impression that you're peeking in.

It's actually really creepy.

It kind of looks like peeping Tom type

stuff.

If they're looking at the camera, there's a

real disconnect there.

So never have them looking at the camera.

Number two would be to frame the subject.

Okay.

Frame the subject.

Number three would be, I think I've got

here, frame the subject.

Number three would be to simplify the frame

down to what's interesting.

That's also what we've done in this photo

here.

Right.

We wanted to simplify that frame down to

the couple and the sunset and the foreground.

That's it.

We didn't want to include all the other

information that was available to us.

Right.

So to simplify the frame down to what's

interesting.

Number four would be to blur out the

ugly.

So to blur out something that's not adding

anything to your frame.

And number five would be, oh, number five,

the most important one would be to layer

multiple stories together into a single frame.

Okay.

So let's go through a few examples here.

And again, we're starting to combine tools here,

right?

This is obviously a silhouette.

This is Jesse and Moira LaPlante.

This was a workshop that we taught in

Hawaii.

And this is my least favorite part of

all the workshops we teach, which is the

part where we get to the demonstration shoot,

where Lenny and I actually go out and

do a demo shoot.

And, you know, we both struggle and our

anxiety tends to go up when we're shooting

portraits.

Then you add 12 photographers on watching you

and it's like a new level of fear.

And so whenever this part of our workshop

is done, I always like have a big,

big relief.

Again, that would have boiled down to the

very basics.

Where's the brightest spot?

Okay, the brightest spot is up on that

hillside over there.

And this is in a neighborhood.

So it's not by the beach.

It's not.

I mean, it's Hawaii, obviously, it's beautiful.

But it's not like there's lots of houses

around and power lines and fences and all

that sort of stuff.

But we noticed that we got them up

on that hillside over there, we could get

them on the bright spot exposed for the

highlights.

Thank you.

Oh, can I have some more milk?

More?

Yeah, that's more some coffee with your milk.

And we know so we got them up

on that, that high spot.

And if we shot from a low angle,

like you often see us down on the

ground, we can get them on that bright

spot and eliminate all the rooftops.

I think there's still a few rooftops here.

You can see one there.

You can see something over here.

But if I was standing up, I would

have been able to I don't think I

was lying down.

I think it was just squatting down.

But if I was standing up, you'd be

able to see much more of that roof

or that house.

Oh, that's better.

Thank you.

Okay, so first, that was the first step.

Okay, guys, just run back and forth along

that ridge, just plain shot, silhouetted exposed for

the highlights, the image is just one big

sky.

Alright, so then it's just okay, what else

can I incorporate into this frame?

What else can I layer in to tell

the story to or to tell the location

or just to frame the subject or make

it more interesting.

So right beside me was a little palm

tree.

Right, so I just I'm going to use

this fern.

I've got a fern right beside me here.

So I'm just going to actually take one

of the branches off the top of the

fern to show you.

Right.

It's essentially the same thing as a palm

tree.

Right.

So I just brought one of the branches

down in front of my lens.

Right.

And shot through that.

Now, there's a few things I did.

One, I upped my f-stop as high

as I could go.

And the reason I did that is because

I knew the frame was simple.

I knew there was only two elements.

I don't have a lot of competing things

for the eye.

I can use a high f-stop without

distracting the eye with other distractions.

Right.

So I used a very high f-stop

because I wanted these leaves to be sharp.

I didn't want them just to be blurry

blobs in front of my lens, because I

really wanted people to be able to recognize

it as a palm leaf.

And I wanted, of course, Jesse and Moira

to be sharp.

Right.

So I would have said, okay, guys, I'm

going to have you guys walk, run across

that ridge, just pulling each other holding hands.

Um, I would have pre-focused on the

ridge with my back focus.

Right.

This was right in front of my lens.

Okay, guys, go for it.

And I would have clicked 20 frames per

second as they ran back and forth along

that ridge.

Now, when I was shooting Canon, I probably

would have stopped and checked two things.

I would have checked my focus, first of

all, because it's Canon.

And I would have checked and made sure

I got a frame where they were perfectly

sort of in that negative space in between

the leaves.

With Sony, I don't even think I bothered

checking because I was 20 frames per second.

Right.

When you're 20 frames per second, you can

pretty much guarantee you're going to nail at

least one photo where they're centered where you

want them.

And then what's giving the leaves this vibrant

color, this vibrant green color is the sun

shining through them, right, because they're translucent.

Right.

That same sun that's backlighting our couple is

backlighting these leaves and giving them that vibrant

color.

And I'm going to show you guys how

you can do the exact same thing as

this with flash on a cloudy day.

Okay.

So what led us down into this spot?

So this was a wedding in Calgary, and

which is big city.

And this was a neighborhood.

We were in the middle of a neighborhood

surrounded by houses, power lines, street signs, street

lights.

Right.

And we were in this little sort of

island in the middle of these houses, like

in the median, basically in the boulevard in

between the streets.

And there was like this little green area,

this little park area.

And what led us down here was we

wanted to simplify the frame down to what

was interesting.

And what was interesting at this time of

year, it was fall, obviously, is that there

was yellow leaves, right?

There was yellow leaves and the sky was

so blue that day.

It was so blue.

So how can we simplify this frame down

to the yellow leaves and the blue sky?

So Lanny's literally like curled up in the

fetal position down on the ground, shooting at

a very low angle.

He's shooting at a low angle and the

couple are standing on the top of this

tiny little hill.

I could barely call it a hill actually,

because it was just a little rise, just

enough to get them up in that sky

if Lanny shot from as low as he

was.

And the leaves are blowing in the wind.

It's really windy.

And so he's trying to frame them with

these leaves that are moving.

And he's trying to simplify that frame down

to the sky and the leaves.

Okay.

Now, because he's shooting from such a low

angle, the couple have to compensate for that,

right?

We talked about this in silhouettes in the

last lesson.

But you know, if Lanny's shooting from a

low angle and the couple are standing like

this, what's the closest thing to the camera?

The closest thing to the camera is their

butts and their shoulders, right?

So that's not going to be a very

interesting silhouette at all.

So we have them very drastically, and I'll

demonstrate and it's no exaggeration.

They were probably leaning over the camera about

that much, right?

In order to compensate for that low perspective

that Lanny's shooting from.

So they're leaning over the camera very drastically.

Of course, you can't see it in the

final image, which is what we want, but

that's what it looked like in real life.

And it's a little bit of a lifeless

silhouette if you ask me.

The only thing that sort of makes this

silhouette is the fact that we got the

man button going on, the man button, which

looks really good.

Here, we're framing the subject, and we're blurring

out the ugly.

But of course, we never want someone to

look at a photo and say, oh, they

shot through that in order to blur out

the ugly, right?

We don't want that, right?

We want that to go without saying.

So again, we've just asked ourselves, where's the

brightest spot?

We had the couple in the highlight.

They're just, you know, adjusting their dress, getting

ready.

And then, Lanny shot with this leaf in

the foreground, and that leaf is blurring out

ugly brown ground that's right in front of

us.

And it's also giving leading lines.

We were just set up here during portraits.

We mentioned during the last session that one

of the things we always look for and

are drawn towards when we're doing portraits, especially

just those more safe, standard ones, is backlight

on a dark background, right?

Backlight on a dark background because our couple

or the person we're shooting really pops in

that dark background, right?

Gives them that perfect rim light that you

can see here.

So as one of us is shooting safe,

sort of close up, filling the frame portraits,

the other one is doing that 360 around,

right?

And they had these umbrellas during their ceremony,

ceremony, because it was a hot day.

By Canadian standards, it was like 28 degrees

Celsius.

And so people had these umbrellas just to

keep them shaded during the ceremony.

And so they're just set up on the

ground in a position in a way that

there's a little hole in the middle, right?

And so we just framed the couple through

that little hole.

And that's it.

And what's giving those umbrellas that vibrant color

is the sun shining through them, right?

Because they're translucent, right?

They're paper umbrellas.

I think this would be really fun to

try with cocktail umbrellas.

I've always said, I wonder if we could

pull off this same shot using cocktail umbrellas.

So if any of you happen to be,

you know, doing your bi-weekly trip to

the cocktail umbrellas, I think it'd be really

fun.

I don't know if it would work, but

it's worth a try.

Okay, this is just backlit foliage, backlit foliage,

that's all.

So what led us down here in the

first place was we were up on top

of this ridge with the couple.

How can we get them on the bright

spot?

How can we eliminate all the clutter that's

behind them?

Oh, if we scramble down this ridge here,

we can silhouette our couple on the bright

spot.

Okay, so that's all we did, scrambled down

this ridge, and all that's in front of

our lens here is foliage.

Now there's a few ingredients that are important

though.

Foliage has to be right up against our

lens, right?

And what makes this foliage extra sparkly, why

the boca is so bocalicious in this particular

photo, is that it was morning.

So it was about 7 30 in the

morning, and so all that foliage had dew

on it.

So every single one of those dew drops

was a crystal that reflected light.

Also, what helped was our incredibly dirty sensor.

So you can see all the dirt in

our sensor, but the dirt on our sensor

really, really helps refract that light as well.

So this was at the 35 at 1

.4. So wide open with the 35.

The next shot I'm going to show you

was an 85 at f8.

Same thing, that foliage is right in front

of our lens.

We've got a couple up in that bright

spot, and that foliage has light coming through

it.

The size of the boca balls is related

to two things.

It's related to your focal length, and it's

also related to your f-stop.

So if we'd shot 85 at 1.2,

the entire image would probably be one big

boca ball, which would be interesting in and

of itself, but it wasn't what we were

going for here.

Same thing here.

It's just foliage, and it's that foliage right

up against the lens with the light coming

through it.

Okay, so this is much easier to achieve

when the light is low in the sky

in the morning or in the evening, when

that light is coming through it from a

low angle.

When the light is hitting it from the

top, like midday, it's not possible to do

this.

People have often asked us whether we bring

a spray bottle on our shoot or whether

we put water droplets on our lens.

We haven't.

We find that when we do that, like

when we bring props and stuff like that,

it pigeonholes us into doing those ideas as

opposed to using the potential that exists naturally

in the scene.

But it's not to say it wouldn't work.

There's lots of photographers I know that spray

their lens.

It gets a really interesting effect.

You might want to try it when you

try this exercise, or they might spray the

foliage that they're shooting through.

But again, it needs to have that light

coming from behind as well.

Okay, here we've done the opposite, right?

Here we've intentionally got wind open to get

those boca balls in the foreground.

Here we've got a really high f-stop.

And again, we've just asked ourselves, where's the

brightest spot?

We've got the couple in the bright spot.

What else can we layer into this frame?

And in this case, we went really high

so that we could have sharpness in the

foreground.

And this one is a rather unfortunate silhouette.

It's something we didn't notice until quite a

few years later.

But where the groom's hand is placed is

not really working for this pose.

Um, those, those little details make all the

difference in a silhouette.

But now it makes me laugh.

So just keep it as is.

Okay, any questions before we move on to

documentary examples?

Jodi?

Yeah.

Um, there were questions at the beginning.

So they're these, they may be answered, but

maybe you can just refresh.

Apart from natural objects, shoot through any particular

tools you carry?

Examples would be like a prism?

No, no.

Yeah.

And and the reason being that it does

pigeonhole us into using those.

Like Lani sometimes brings a makeup mirror to

the shoots.

And even that, like, I'm like, you shouldn't

bring that.

I mean, I remember, I remember him once

bringing a fairly large piece of glass.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And even then I'm like, you know, apparently

he's saying he never brought a large, he

did have this little piece of glass he

was bringing that was this big.

I remember it was something that he had

me like hold for him.

Oh, he might have got it off the

coffee table on the, you know, sometimes in

a hotel room, the coffee tables will have

a sheet of glass on them or something

like that.

Awesome.

I know he was what he was doing,

but yeah.

Yeah.

So, but I find like even when Lani,

and this is just being completely open and

honest with you guys, like even if, you

know, if Lani brings a, I remember this

one engagement session where, and he was able

to do this because I was there shooting

other shots, but he literally reflected everything in

the entire engagement session, which is fine.

And that's, that's his creative process and he

sort of exhausts an idea and works through

it.

And he, he got some really awesome results,

but I find if we bring props, it

just pigeonholes us into doing something that maybe

we shouldn't that like, maybe we should be

more open to what's around us as opposed

to being pigeonholed into doing something that is

just gimmicky.

Right.

So that's what works for us.

But I know a lot of photographers that

do bring things like copper pipes and that

fact is really interesting.

And it's, it really depends on your creative

process and the way you work and what

you want to do.

For me personally, I don't like, I like,

I have no problem sort of picking up,

you know, something out of the environment and

using it, but I don't want to pigeonhole

myself by bringing stuff from home.

If that makes sense.

Totally makes sense.

So question for slide number 76, they're wanting

to know the focus mode or how did

you focus for slide 76?

Back button focus.

As always, the same thing guys.

So I back button focus, I focus, pre

-focus on the ridge, then I don't have

to worry about getting focus ever again.

And actually I think what I did is

I would have, I wouldn't have focused through

the leaf.

I would have lifted the leaf up, focused

on that ridge with my back button, I

focused on that ridge with my back button,

then I would have pulled the leaf down

and then shot.

Perfect.

So I have like, I have a second,

a part B to that question.

How far is the palm tree from the

lens?

Eight to 10 inches, but I can't remember.

Okay.

Photo 83.

What was the reason behind choosing to shoot

it slanted?

Oh yeah, I know this photo is slanted

and in retrospect, yeah, it kind of makes

me go like this.

And if a photo makes you go like

that, it is too slanted.

The only reason we usually try and shoot

slanted is to include or exclude elements that

we want included or exclude elements that we

don't want included.

This one, it's a portrait.

I think we probably should have shot it

at a little bit of a strangle.

Yeah.

He, Lenny's saying by angling it, he was

able to include more of the pine needles

into the frame.

It's also a very old photo.

So we'd probably shoot it differently today.

Okay, perfect.

I have a few questions for Boca.

So you may have already hit them, but

maybe just mention it one more time or

how many questions do you want to take

here?

We'll do two more.

Two more?

Okay.

Yeah.

So question for photo 80.

Yeah.

What is it where what is it where

you are shooting through?

So you've got the Boca.

I already explained that.

I think I want you to know what

you're shooting through.

You mentioned it was foliage.

It was 730 in the morning.

Yeah.

You can go back, rewind and look and

you can, yeah, we'll just pass that question.

In the Boca foliage photos, how far away

is the couple?

They're about probably 40 or 50 meters away.

Okay.

If I remember correctly.

Yeah.

Then the last question is what makes the

Boca, oh it's so sorry, I've just totally

round or round with the corners.

I have no idea.

The sun is round.

That's why it makes it round.

Because when you do Boca in the during

an eclipse, the Boca is like the shape

of the sun.

Boca is the shape of this light source

basically.

Okay.

It's what I think, but I really don't

know.

Yeah.

It doesn't matter.

Yeah.

But I, but I know when I saw

people doing these Boca shots during the solar

eclipse, it was, yeah, the Boca shapes were

whatever shape the light source was.

So it was really interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No doubt.

Yeah.

And then it, it's the, oh, nevermind.

That's someone answering the questions.

Oh, okay.

Cool.

Okay.

I'll move on then.

Thank you, Jodi.

No worries.

Okay.

So we're going to go on to photojournalistic

examples of shooting through.

Okay.

So layering the story, right?

In this case, it's telling the story, layering

multiple stories into one frame and it's framing

the subject, right?

I'm actually over here in the frame and

I'm taking more sort of traditional portraits of

the couple.

I'm, I have the valley of the 10

peaks behind them.

They're in this beautiful landscape.

I'm trying to get them in the landscape.

And those are obviously important photos.

As I'm doing that, Lani's doing a 360

around the couple, right?

And as Lani's shooting, I'm doing a 360

around the couple.

We're always searching and looking for what other

potential exists when the couple stay in that

position.

So as Lani's doing the 360 around the

couple, he's getting this storytelling image, right?

There was a whole bunch of tourists up

there and most of these tourists had better

camera equipment than we did.

And their photo, the bride and groom are

hamming it up for the tourists while I'm

taking these portraits and Lani's getting, getting a

storytelling image that, that actually takes the bride

and groom back to this moment, right?

This is Jess.

Jess, this is just Jess standing by the

window when she was getting her dress done

up.

She was getting her dress done up.

And of course I was taking photos of

her getting her dress done up.

And I noticed when I looked at the

way her hair was draped that I could

see her eyelash frame perfectly through her hair.

And it was like, it's just like, I

could see the potential right there.

The tricky part with this was achieving focus,

right?

Because you can't focus through a hole like

this, especially back then I was shooting Canon,

but you can't focus through a hole like

this.

Your focus would get tripped up by this

strand of hair and this strand of hair.

It's just too small focus area.

So literally what I did demonstrate with my

hair here, and she didn't even notice me

do this.

I asked her afterwards, a few weeks later,

she noticed because I just quickly brought her

hair back, use my back button focus right

on her eyelashes and let her hair back

down.

Okay.

And then my focus is locked on her

eyelashes as long as she doesn't move and

I don't move.

Then I achieved my composition and then I

shot it.

So that's, this would not have been possible

without back button focus.

Another example, okay.

Shooting through body parts.

Often what we do when we're teaching live

workshops is we'll have, you know, 15 photographers

in the room.

And we'll say at this point, I'll say

everybody freeze and everybody freezes.

And I go around the room and show

everybody all the different body parts that we

can shoot through based on the body positions

people are sitting in.

There's another alarm clock going off downstairs.

Can you get it?

Right.

So if someone's sitting like this, there's body

parts here we can shoot through.

If someone's sitting like this, there's body part

here we can shoot through.

Someone's sitting like this or this, right?

There's all sorts of different body parts we

can shoot through.

Now, one of the things people often ask

us when this photo comes up is about

shooting from that low angle, right?

As photographers, we get sort of taught you

never shoot from this low angle because it's

unflattering.

You're shooting up people's nostrils.

But really we put our cameras here out

of necessity, right?

Not out of shooting up people's nostrils.

And it achieves a few things, right?

When people, especially in today's day and age,

people are often looking down, right?

They're often looking down at their phone.

And the only way we can get the

whites of eyes in people's, in the photos

is if we also put the camera down,

right?

If people are tying up their shoes, the

camera goes down.

And the reverse is also true.

If someone's shotgunning a beer, how do we

get the whites of the eyes in there?

We have to put our camera up.

Or if people are limbaling, we have to

put our camera up.

So our camera goes based on where people's

eyes go, right?

So I'm just going to grab this camera

here, right?

So obviously this, let me go this way

so I can see.

Obviously this is a very unflattering angle because

it is right up my nostrils.

But if I just put my head down,

it's not unflattering.

I mean, it is because this is a

wide lens and it's not a flattering lens,

but you can see the difference, right?

If my eyes are down, I don't get

that up the nostril feeling, right?

So our cameras are often down.

The other thing it achieves, sorry, is it

cleans up our backdrops, right?

So when Joseph was here getting his shoe

on, A, it's framing the subject.

Lani is doing a great job framing the

subject here.

He's focused on Joseph's face.

He's getting the whites of his eyes and

it's also cleaning up the background and simplifying

the story, simplifying the frame down to what's

interesting, right?

If Lani had shot this from a more

elevated perspective, there'd be dresses, there'd be windows,

there'd be picture frames, there'd be all sorts

of distracting things in the background that compositionally

would have been really hard to work with.

By taking this low perspective, he's got a

clean canvas in behind Joseph's head, especially when

people are in front of mirrors, right?

And you always know there's going to be

one mirror.

There's one mirror where the guys are doing

their ties up, there's a mirror where they're

shaving, or there's a mirror where the girls

are finishing up the touch-ups of their

makeup, right?

And whenever they're in front of a mirror,

we've got body parts to shoot through, right?

If they're doing their makeup, we can shoot

right through here.

One time I even shot through here.

The hardest part, again, is achieving focus, right?

Which is why we use that back button

focus, focus on what we want to do,

then we get the composition that we're looking

for, right?

Focus and then composition.

This is one of the shots we try

and achieve every wedding and it's probably the

only one, other than family formals, where we

literally like try and get a check mark

on this shot.

It's on our shot list, even though we

try not to have shot lists, right?

But the groom's reaction, shooting through, in this

case, the bride and her dad walking down

the aisle and getting that reaction of the

groom.

Of course, my auntie's up at the front

of the aisle and he's getting the reaction

of Milo, but this reaction has so much

more context when we can layer in what

he's reacting to, right?

So I'm always coming in behind, the bride

and her dad in this case, right?

And I sort of pop up, take a

few shots, pop up, down.

And I usually have a 50 or 35

on.

And I sort of pop up, pretty focused

on the groom, pop up, down, right?

And try to frame that reaction within the

bride and her dad.

If I were to redo this shot, I

wish I had maybe been a little bit

further back or a little bit more right,

right?

No, yeah, right.

So I can include the full face of

Milo's mom here.

Few more examples of this, right?

His reaction is so much more interesting in

the context of this.

Then we've got two videographers here.

See, we deal with videographers too here and

another videographer right there, right?

And then same thing here.

And you can see that's where Lanny is.

Here, we're framing the subject.

We're simplifying the frame down to what's interesting.

And we're able to tell two stories, right?

This is just a really creepy photo of

Timmy falling backwards on the bed through a

window that was all steamed up from bath

time.

It was at a hotel.

And there's all these kids were drawing on

the window.

So it's just layering those two stories together.

Okay, so we're going to get into off

-camera flash examples of the tool.

Any questions before we do that, Jodi?

Nope, we have no questions at this time.

Okay, awesome.

Okay, so let's get into off-camera flash

examples, okay?

And portraits first, obviously.

Okay, so here we're framing the subject and

we're trying to simplify the frame down to

a few elements which are interesting, right?

The snow is snowed on their wedding day,

even though it was like June.

And you get snow any month of the

year here.

And we're trying to tell that story in

addition to the couple.

I think we've done a great job telling

the story of the snow.

We've done an awful job telling the story

of the couple.

This is an older photo.

Nobody sits in a car like that.

That looks like the most awkward position to

sit in a car.

Plus, we've got that broad light coming in

from the side.

If we were to redo this photo, we'd

probably have them sort of more covered up

in the car like you maybe typically see

people and have the light coming in from

a harder angle.

Here, so this is exactly the same as

this, okay?

Except we're using our flash.

It's a cloudy day.

It's rather late in the day.

There's no natural light, but it's still the

same idea.

We're going to expose for the highlights.

We've got the couple up on a little

bit of a ridge there, but there's no

sun, and it's a cloudy day, right?

And we've underexposed here to give it that

sort of blue color as well and probably

accentuated it and posted it a bit.

But it's again the same thing, exposing for

those highlights.

But because we don't have light, these leaves

would normally just be silhouetted, right?

But by popping a flash on them, we

can give them that nice vibrant color and

use them in the foreground.

This is a bundle of Christmas lights.

It's just a big tangled mass of Christmas

lights.

There's a little bit of a hole in

the middle that we're shooting through.

Again, I would say we were too focused

on the technique and the gimmicks, and as

a result, we've got a pretty bad pose

of the couple here.

The closest thing to the camera is his

arm and his back.

The lighting on them is awful.

If we were to redo this one, we'd

probably either backlight them, because this white shirt

is so distracting as well, or we'd have

them go into the backward spoon and come

a lot that way and have the light

coming in harder on the side.

Same thing here, right?

Christmas lights in the foreground, but this is

in downtown Calgary.

It is at nighttime, but it is quite

bright, just like you would be in downtown

Toronto or downtown Amsterdam.

There's lots of street lights.

There's restaurant lights.

It's flooded with light, this area, but we've

asked ourselves, where's the brightest spot?

In this case, there was a big lantern,

big giant lantern outside the restaurant where they

were having the reception, so that was the

bright spot.

Can we place ourselves in a position, and

the couple in a position, where we can

silhouette them on that bright lantern?

Oh, yeah, we can.

If they stand, they stood on a park

bench, and if we just moved our camera

slightly, we could center them on that, or

lighting could center them on that lantern, and

then he framed this image in a way

to include all the Christmas lights in the

foreground, and underexposed quite drastically to do so,

so that everything else was eliminated from the

frame.

This is also in downtown Calgary, but it

was during the day, and it was a

cloudy, overcast day, and there was this statue

about six feet tall, maybe six foot four

around.

It's a statue, and it's this wall about

this big, and it's full of marbles, full

of marbles, except one marble was missing, so

of course, that was just screaming for me

to shoot through, right?

One single marble missing out of this wall,

so first thing, and this is again, one

of those photos that took a lot of

problem solving, and a lot of steps to

solve, so the first thing was, okay, I'm

going to get the other couple, the couple

on the other side of the statue, I'm

going to, I can't, I can't focus through

a hole this big.

How am I going to achieve focus?

Oh, I'll just step aside, get the focus,

okay, now frame them through the hole, and

shoot my shot.

First frame, the couple don't pop at all.

Oh, I know, we can use a reflector.

We've got a reflector in the back of

our car, so we grabbed our reflector, and

we put the reflector behind the couple to

create an area of high contrast where they

would pop, because behind them originally was dark

for us, so now we've got our reflector

in behind them.

Take another shot.

They still don't really pop that much.

The reflector is more gray than white, because

it's a, it's a really cloudy day, so

then we took a flash.

This was the third step.

Let's take a flash, and let's flash the

reflector, so that we create this area of

really super high contrast that the couple can

pop on, so we took a flash, and

we pointed it at the reflector, okay, so

there's a flash on the reflector, so that

reflector is going to be bright white, okay,

so then, okay, now the couple's starting to

pop.

We're good with that.

Now it's cloudy.

We're shooting through glass.

What would really make this foreground sing is

if there's light on it, so then we

took a second flash, and we just pointed

the flash at the marbles from the side

here, pointed the flash at the marbles, and

that's because, because we're shooting through glass, we

want to have that light through them, because

that's what's going to make them vibrant, right,

so we pointed the flash at the marbles.

They're all sparkly, and then the last thing

I think we did is we upped our

f-stop, upped our f-stop quite a

bit, just so we could get that starburst

effect on the marbles, so lots of different

steps in order to problem solve our way

into taking this photo.

As a result, Jason and Diana are a

wonderful couple, but this is really lacking emotion

in my mind, because we were so focused

on the technical aspects, not enough focused on

the couple.

If, if we had them moving through a

pose, or giving them a direction as opposed

to a static pose portrait, I think we

could have got something much more interesting, so,

but we figured out the mechanics of this,

right, we figured out the mechanics of how

to achieve the light, or how to achieve

the focus, how to frame them, all that

sort of stuff, and then when Tonya and

Colin's wedding came, which is here, we were

able to take this shot, which probably would

have been possible if we hadn't figured out

the mechanics here, because this is a documentary

shot, so I don't know why we have

it in portraits, but that's okay.

It's a documentary shot, and they got married

on the banks of this river in Calgary,

and they had about a 20-minute walk

through the forest to this special spot on

the river that they go to often.

They often walk the dogs there, and as

they were, as they were walking along this

trail that they walk a couple times a

week, there's this dead, dead, sorry, there's this

dead tree beside the trail, and this is

a tree that they walk by almost every

day of their lives, and this tree has

a hole missing about the size of a

marble, right, and so it's just the exact

same thing.

I'm achieving focus, focus on the couple, framing

them through the hole, click, click, click, click,

and I can only take two or three

shots before I had to reach the focus,

because they're moving, right, they're walking to their

ceremony, but not an awesome photo, but it's

a great photo for the couple, right, because

it reminds them of this special place that

they walk in every day.

Okay, this is Jared and Michelle, and in

here, we're just pretty much achieving the exact

same thing as what we're doing here.

It's got the exact same ingredients, okay.

We've got something right in front of our

lens, something sparkly right in front of our

lens, and we're at wide open aperture, and

we've got light shining on it.

So, let me walk you through this, this

photo here.

So, what led us here in the first

place?

So, this is basically a table that's full

of wine glasses.

It's right by the bar.

You have right by the bar, a table

that's just stacked full of wine glasses getting

ready for the party, okay, so that's nice

and sparkling.

It's like, oh, we can use that as

a foreground.

So, if we put our camera right down

on the or trying to put his camera

right down on the table, he can shoot

through the stems of the wine glasses, so

we can frame the couple.

So, we had Jared and Michelle stand on

the other side of the wine glasses.

So, first thing, set our shutter speed to

1 200th of a second or slower, okay.

We know we want to go as wide

open as possible, so our ISO is going

to probably be as low as possible as

well, okay, and there's really no highlight here

that we're using to set our ambient exposure.

There's no highlight in the scene, so our

ambient exposure is going to be dark, right,

so we're probably ISO 100, 1.4, and

shutter speed is probably 1 200th of a

second.

That's probably what we are here.

I can't remember exactly, but we would have

adjusted as necessary, okay, and our first ambient

exposure before we even turn on the flash

is going to be fairly dark, okay.

Then, we turn on one flash, okay, one

flash, and we're going to flash Michelle and

Jared first and get that all sorted out.

So, we've got the flash coming in camera

right over here.

It's got a grid on it, and it's

got a warming gel on it, okay, and

it's just over here pointed at Michelle and

Jared.

Oh, too bright, okay.

Turn it down.

Oh, not bright enough.

Turn it up.

Taste the soup.

Figure out the flash settings.

Okay, we got that flash nailed.

Then, and only then, do we turn on

the second flash, okay.

The second flash is for lighting our foreground,

which is, in this case, is the wine

glasses, okay.

So, we turn on our second flash.

We decided to put a blue gel on

it so that we could get those contrasting

warm and cool tones.

I'll explain what these yellow tones are in

a second.

So, we've got a blue gel on it,

and we've got that pointed at the wine

glasses that we're shooting.

Some of the problems that we run into

when we do this type of shot is

sometimes this flash is too bright, and we've

got it turned all the way down, and

it's still too bright.

So, we either back it up, or this

is where this black gel comes in handy,

right.

It's basically an ND filter for your flash,

and it takes a stop or two out

of it, or sometimes our modeling light is

more than strong enough for what we need

for lighting the foreground, or even sometimes the

light on our iPhone, okay.

So, we've got that light on the foreground,

and then we adjust, taste the soup, and

adjust that light as necessary, right.

So, all these blue bokeh balls that you

see are, is the flash with the blue

gel reflecting off the wine glasses.

All the yellow ones that you see is

the pot lights in the ceiling reflecting off

the wine glasses, okay.

And Lani's probably going to show you a

before and after of this picture in the

editing, and of course, those tones have been

accentuated in the post to get those warm,

those contrasting colors that we're looking for, okay.

All right, so any questions, Jodi, and then

I've just got a few more images I'm

going to go through before I pass it

over to Lani.

Just three right now.

Okay.

One more came in.

It's a broad question, and it's about flash

during ceremonies.

If you guys use it, how you use

it.

We cover this in another, no, okay.

So, generally, no, we try to avoid using

flash in the ceremony.

It's something we definitely try to avoid.

If we have to, we're open.

You know, I'm going to ignore this question

for now, just because it's not something we're

covering in this workshop.

It's something we cover in our three-day

workshop, but quick answer is it's generally something

we try and avoid in the work, in

the ceremony, but we have used it in

the ceremony when it's absolutely necessary.

That's all I'll say about it right now.

Yeah.

Totally.

For 97 and 98, how are the Christmas

lights organized?

In other words, did you use them in

their found position or work them into the

cluster you wanted?

Okay, so this one is, yeah, it was

how they were placed on the tree by

the City of Calgary Parks Department.

This one is just a tangled mass.

Like, it's like, you know, from Christmas vacation,

where they, like, he takes out that bundle

of Christmas lights, and it's like this tangled

ball of Christmas lights.

That's pretty much what we had here.

It was in the back of our car.

We're like, oh yeah, they got married right

around Christmas time, and it was just like

this tangled mass, and we might have arranged

them a little bit.

It's certainly more organized, but most important was

that we had that clean hole to shoot

through.

Totally.

Lens choice option for image number 99?

It was something wide.

Yeah, it looks like a 24.

Yeah, it was either, it might have been

a 35, or it might have been a

24.

I think it probably was a 24.

I can't remember though.

One last question, and it's for slide 101.

Yeah.

Which direction is the flash pointed at the

glasses, at the wine glasses?

I can't remember if it was on the

left or the right side, but it's basically

just coming in from the side.

Perfect.

Just like that, just like hand, either I'm

holding it, or an assistant's holding it.

It's just coming in from the side.

Oh, apparently, Lenny was holding it as he

was shooting there in his hand.

Perfect.

Yeah, okay.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you, Jodi.

No worries.

Okay, so I'm going to get into some

examples of using the same technique in photojournalistic

settings, or documentary settings, okay?

Is this during speeches?

Often, Lenny and I are shooting through wine

glasses during speeches, and like I said, it's

something we weren't doing with a lot of

intent and purpose behind it, and we found

ourselves just doing it because it was becoming

formulaic.

We're like, oh, well, it's speeches, it's time

to shoot through wine glasses.

Sometimes it makes sense, but most of the

time it doesn't, and it was pigeonholing us

into something that was limiting, right?

It was distracting us from trying to get

the speaker and the reactor in the same

frame, and it was becoming formulaic, so we've

definitely caught ourselves in that trap.

This is a scenario where it did make

sense to shoot through the foreground, because we

couldn't get the speaker and the reactor in

the same frame, and this was accidental.

It was an interesting foreground bokeh, so the

camera's right down along the edge of the

table here, right down on the same level

as the table.

There's wine glasses, centerpieces, candles, all that sort

of stuff on the table, and that's what's

giving us this nice bokeh, especially the orange

bokeh balls.

Those are all from the candle flames reflecting

off the wine glasses in the tableware, and

this is the part that's accidental.

This flash that's hitting Justine here on the

camera right is also hitting the window behind

her, so they're in front of a window,

and it's dark outside, and you can see

this big flare is the flash reflecting off

that window, so that light that's lighting her

is reflecting off that window and also lighting

up our foreground.

Completely accidental at first until we noticed it,

and then all these white bokeh balls is

that light from the flash reflecting off that

tableware.

This is that idea of shooting through body

parts again.

Lani will know that there's usually an obvious

place in the room where they're going to

be doing up their ties, and they're going

to be doing up their final touches.

There's usually only one full-length mirror in

the room, so he has his one camera

set up for off-camera flash.

It's not like he needs to make sure

he's already got his settings figured out for

when he's using off-camera flash, so he'll

probably have his camera around this mirror.

You know, when Huntington's dad here is doing

up his tie, he's got the flash coming

in the camera right on his reflection on

him, and as a result on his reflection,

and then he's just shooting through this hole

that you see right here.

Because he's underexposed and he's exposed for the

flashlight, he probably could see him.

I can't remember, but I bet you in

the raw file we could see Lani a

bit there, but because the light's not on

him, he was very easy to burn down.

The light that you see up here on

the top of Huntington's dad's hands is the

pot lights on the ceiling.

One more example from Michelle and Jared here,

and this is what I mentioned.

We often get straight jacketed by shooting through

like this, but this is our ultimate goal.

Our ultimate goal is to use that layering

technique to tell those multiple stories in one

frame to get the reaction and what they're

reacting to in the same frame.

That's really important, and problem solving our way

with our lighting techniques and our tools to

figure out how to tell those stories at

once.

We've got Michelle and Jared here.

They're listening to the speech.

They're reacting.

They're laughing.

If we can give the context of what

they're reacting to, we can tell a way

stronger story.

We're exposed for the highlights in the scene,

the lanterns, and the spotlight that's on Michelle's

sister here.

We're exposed pretty much for the light that's

on her arm there.

She's got a spotlight on her because she's

the speaker.

Then we brought in a second flash, and

I just placed it over here so that

it's shining on Michelle and Jared.

Then I brought in a third flash.

No, I'm messing up.

This is my first flash.

I've only got two flashes in this.

Sorry.

First flash here because the light on the

speaker is the spotlight.

Then I brought in a second flash because

I really wanted to incorporate these little girls

that were sitting in the front row as

well.

That would have been a fairly long process.

My first shot was probably just trying to

layer these two together somehow and figuring out

my flash settings and tasting my soup.

Once I was comfortable with that, then I

added my third flash to incorporate the girls

that are on the ground here.

Then I waited.

I waited and I adjusted as necessary because

what I really wanted and what I was

really hoping for was those expressive hand movements.

Because I'm including the back of someone, I'm

including the back of someone.

The back of someone usually doesn't tell a

story.

If I'm just including her back without those

hand movements, this wouldn't be nearly as strong

of a frame.

The hand movements is what shows us that

this is a speech.

It gives this person purpose and it gives

her a story that she's telling.

Waiting for those hand movements and then adjusting

my frame so that Michelle and Jared are

not behind the hand movement.

Hopefully that makes sense.

We'll do one final question and answer before

we move on to the last tool today

which Lani is going to cover after yoga

session.

Right now we just have one question.

It is for image 104.

Is the light on a clamp for image

104 or a light stand?

I'm pretty sure it's probably just on a

light stand, right?

Yeah, it's on a light stand.

Light stands are much easier and quicker to

move than clamps.

The clamps are great for small spaces like

bathrooms and showers.

When you're in the open hotel room, it

just makes more sense to have it on

a light stand because you can adjust it

really quickly.

Putting it on the clamp and attach it

to the mirror by the time you got

it attached, the moment would be over.

Totally, the stand is quicker.

There's more questions coming in.

Question for 105.

Is the spotlight on the speaker your flash

or house flash?

Yeah, it's a spotlight.

It's a venue spotlight.

Perfect.

Maybe just quickly go over where the flash

positions are in that image and then I

think that's basically what they're curious where the

third flash is.

There's no third flash.

There's only two flashes.

Okay, so the flash on the speaker is

from the venue.

It's not a flash.

It's a spotlight on the speaker from the

venue.

Okay, so she's like on a little stage.

She's got like a spotlight on her.

It's a continuous light source.

Okay, the flash on the couple which is

the one I would have incorporated first is

in here behind the speaker and it's pointing

at them in this direction.

I just have to say that shot's magic

by the way.

Beautiful.

Oh, maybe I can't remember honestly.

Yeah, oh yeah the camera.

Yeah, obviously look at the shadows on her

face.

The flash is over here coming in camera

right and then the second flash I incorporated

which was only once I get this figured

out was on the girls here and you

can see it's coming in camera left.

So there's one flash here coming in this

direction and there's one flash here coming in

that direction.

Yeah, the timing of it's perfect.

How do you weigh moment versus flattering lighting

for documentary shots?

We don't really weigh it.

I mean obviously we're trying to get lighting

that looks good and that they're going to

like the way they look in the final

shot and we're going to adjust and as

necessary right like if we feel like the

lighting's too low like in the middle of

speeches I'll often go and make little micro

adjustments to my flash position to get that

lighting in the most flattering angle or lighting

up what I really want to light up

but moment always trumps.

Moment always trumps.

Yeah, perfect.

I think we're good.

Okay, cool.

Okay, so we're due one more assignment which

is that whole idea of bokeh shoot through.

Right, so you've all probably got tableware and

glasses and wine glasses and sparkling things that

you can use in your house or maybe

a leaf or a fern and you can

you can try this idea of shooting through

something that's in front of your lens but

lighting that thing that's in front of your

lens.

Okay, so lighting whatever it is you're shooting

whether it's a human or a bottle or

a cat or whatever lighting that either as

a silhouette or skin tones whatever you want

and then putting something in front of your

lens whether it's a leaf or some wine

bottles or wine glasses or champagne glasses or

whatever and lighting that as well and play

around with different gel colors and just have

some fun with it because it is it

is really fun thing to play around with.

Okay, you are up Lenny with bokeh panels.

All right.

It was great seeing you guys today.

We'll see you next Monday, Saturday.

Oh, Saturday.

Oh, yeah.

We'll see you Saturday downstairs.

Okay, good morning, guys, or good evening, wherever

you are.

Thanks again, guys.

I just want to let you know how

much we appreciate you being here with us

and trusting us with this.

You know, it's a tough time right now.

And we appreciate the sacrifices that you're making

to be here.

And I appreciate you, Jodi.

Thank you for all your work with these

curating all the questions for us.

That question, I just want to share a

fun, funny little tip that we've learned.

Because yeah, lighting ceremonies is a big, huge

topic.

And like Erica said, that if we can

at all avoid it, we will just use

natural light.

But if you, you know, if you are

in a situation where you're in a really

dark indoor venue, where flash would help, and

you'd like to be able to use flash,

but there's no flash photography allowed.

I've learned a couple little tips, because it

doesn't hurt to ask, right?

Because chances are, you're going to be the

only photographer in that venue whose pop up

flash isn't going off, right?

So in that situation, if you wanted to

ask permission, first of all, never use the

word flash, okay?

So use something else like light assist.

Mind if I use a little light assist

or something other than flash?

Flash is a dirty word in the church,

right?

And if they say, well, what's that?

You say, oh, well, let me show you.

And you grab your flash, okay?

And turn it all the way down to

1-128, and then put on a grid

or two grids, and then just start popping

it, okay?

And it's silent.

It's, you know, don't aim it straight towards

them.

They could barely even detect it or notice

it.

And they might just say, oh, yeah, that's

fine.

Okay.

So anyways, just a little couple tips on

that you can try.

So bokeh panels.

Here we go.

This is going to be short.

It's a short tool, guys.

I know some of you have probably experimented

with this, or at least know what it

is.

Some of you have maybe had success.

Some of you haven't yet.

And some of you maybe have never heard

of this, or no idea what it is.

It's also called, in some circles, the Berneiser

method.

So Ryan Berneiser is a photographer in New

York.

Eric and I actually photographed him and Tatiana's

wedding.

And he, I don't know that he invented

this technique, but he certainly popularized it amongst

wedding photographers.

And so I'm just going to give you

guys a quick crash course right now, because

you can just go on YouTube and you

can Google Berneiser method, and you can find

all sorts of little tutorials on how to

do this.

Or you can purchase Ryan's, I think it's

like $10 how-to Berneiser method video.

Okay.

But what I'll do is I'll kind of

explain how and where we've used it and

try to take you through our learning curve,

because we've learned a few tricks to help

increase our success rate.

I think when we first started trying this,

it only worked like 20% of the

time, but we're up to like maybe 80

% of the time now.

Okay.

This is a Ryan Berneiser approved tutorial.

Ryan said, go for it.

You can share all your little, all the

little tricks that you've learned with it.

First of all, what is it?

This photo you're looking at right now is

a bokeh panorama.

Okay.

It's an image stitch.

It's a photograph that would be impossible to

make with a single exposure or any single

lens that is in existence on this planet.

Okay.

What it is, is each frame is essentially

about this big.

See this rectangle?

That's a one frame.

So this is, this is actually about 87

different frames stitched together in a, in a

panorama.

Okay.

And what you're essentially doing is you're making

like a wide, a wide angle image with

a telephoto lens.

So that allows you to use the compression

of a big, long lens in a wide

photograph in a wide, in a wide scene,

because the depth of focus itself is, obviously

it's relative to your aperture, right?

The wider the aperture, the shallower that depth

of focus, but it's also related to the

focal length.

Okay.

So the bigger the lens, the shallower that

depth of focus, for example, on a, you

know, a 35 millimeter lens, even if you're

at one point something and you're wide open,

everything's still kind of recognizable and kind of

in focus-ish, right?

But if you switch over to a big

telephoto lens, like imagine a wildlife 600 millimeter

lens, even at F4, that depth of focus

is super shallow, right?

And you get that compression.

So that's what we're doing.

So to, to illustrate the effect, first of

all, this is not a Berneiser photo.

This is just a normal 35 millimeter shot.

Okay.

And it sucks.

It's an old crappy photo.

You know, this is a perfect example of

that perspective working against us because we're shooting

from below them.

So the closest thing to the camera is

their, is their butts, right?

And then their arms.

So this is where we would want to

counteract that perspective by having them tilt themselves

over our lens.

But it's a good example to see the

effect.

This was at 1.4. So you see

what I mean?

Everything is still kind of in focus-ish.

So then what I've done now, same couple,

same spot.

All I've done is I've taken off the

35 millimeter lens and replaced it with an

85, 1.2, and then stitched together several

frames to make the same kind of, the

same kind of scene here.

Also not a good photo, but that shows

the effect, right?

That creamy kind of dreamy kind of compression

that isn't possible in any lens.

For example, in this one here, if you,

online you can find formulas where you plug

in the lens that you use.

So the focal length, the aperture, and the

number of frames that you stitch together.

And then it will calculate out the hypothetical

equivalent in a lens.

So something like this might be equivalent to

like 35 millimeters at F 0.4 or

something impossible, right?

So this is, it's a tool that has

a pretty narrow scope of application for us.

Really, we've only ever used it in a

portrait scenario.

I think if you were to pull something

like this off in documentary, that would be

next level.

And we've only ever done it within a

natural light scenario.

It'd be pretty tricky with manufactured light.

But in a portrait session, when we're called

to doing it, again, the tool doesn't come

first, right?

The narrative determines the tool.

So if we happen to be making portraits

and we've got some time on our hands,

and we're in a location that where it

makes sense, like a location with lots of

depth, like in a forest where you've got

foreground, background stuff, and you want to kind

of show off that depth, that's where this

tool can really work well.

So what we do is, first thing we

do is figure out where we're going to

do it, right?

Find a nice scene and kind of pre

-visualize the outer edges of the wide frame

we're going to make, right?

Find a place for them to stand, hopefully

in the light, right?

And then we start to have the connection,

okay?

And if you haven't watched the posing, the

little posing session that Eric and I did

in the big workshop, go check that out.

So we would do all the posing stuff,

right?

Try to get some nice emotions, a nice

connection between them, and we'd make a whole

bunch of frames like this one here, okay?

This is one of the few times that

we actually turn our cameras this way, because

it allows us to get a little bit

closer and fill the frame with them, so

that later, once we stitch them together, we

don't have to stitch across their bodies.

Makes it a little bit easier, okay?

And the lenses of choice here are your

big telephoto lenses.

So 85 at 1.2 works really well,

135 1.8 or the 135 2.0.

Your 70 to 200 at 200 millimeters, 2

.8, those are the ones we want to

choose, okay?

And we want that widest possible aperture that

you can use, okay?

So then, they ham it up, they have

their connections, we get a bunch of frames

like that, and we're just properly exposed, right?

For their skin tones.

And then at that point, and through that,

throughout that whole sequence of them connecting, we

have everything locked on our camera.

So once you get the focus on them,

leave the focus.

So back button focus, or just switch it

over to manual focus so it's locked and

doesn't change, okay?

Aperture stays the same, shutter speed stays the

same.

And if you remember, if you're shooting an

auto white balance like us, flip it over

to Calvin and lock the Calvin so that

the white balance doesn't change on you too.

If you forget like we do, you can

usually still figure out how to make the

stitch work, okay?

And so then, all these other frames now,

after we're happy, we've got a bunch of

good ones like this, then we just say,

okay guys, just stay in place for us.

They don't have to hold their breath, they

don't have to stay in the exact same

pose laughing, they just have to stay there

for reference, okay?

You shoot this handheld.

And how you do it is up to

you.

Some photographers go in a spiral, spiral around.

What we like to do is we'll go

one direction first and then come back to

them for reference, and then go in the

other direction.

And either way, you need to be eyeballing

the edge of your frame to make sure

that how far you go, you want to

leave about 20% overlap, like that.

You see how we've intentionally left a little

bit overlap so that it can put the

pieces of the puzzle together for you, okay?

So what it will look like, you know,

they're hamming it up, they're hamming it up,

focus is locked, everything's locked.

Okay guys, stay there.

And then we just kind of go this

way, click, click, click, click, back to them

for reference, click, click, click, click, back.

Okay, and now up, click, click, click.

And you can go pretty fast with that,

because typically you're going to be up at,

because your wide apertures, usually midday, you're going

to be up at really fast shutter speed.

So you can go really quick and not

have to worry about camera movement, okay?

Make sure you're not on 20 frames per

second, or every time you try to make

a click, you're going to accidentally make 12

clicks, okay?

So slow it right down so you can

just get one of each, okay?

Stitch in the whole scene, right?

If you want to do the foreground, you

can do that.

How crazy you go with this is totally

up to you.

You know, we've gone up over 100.

Sam Hurd does this on headshots.

He'll just do one, two, three, right across

a headshot, focused on the eyeball, and then

the earlobes are like blurry and out of

focus, it's really cool.

Or if you want to see somebody who's

like going crazy with bokeh panels, check out

Ollie Sampson out of Australia.

O-L-I-S-A-M-S-O

-N.

He's done some where he's stitched 380 frames

together.

There's one of like a bride sitting in

the forest, and he's literally stitched right across

her dress.

It's just insane.

So but in this case, you can see

we've essentially done, about 30 or 40 frames,

okay?

And then what you want to do is,

oh, another cool tip is before you start

to do this, if you remember, take a

photo of your hand, and then once you're

finished, take a photo of your hand.

Because then when you go into your contact

sheet, you can easily go and find this

batch of photos, okay?

And what you're going to do is you're

going to do a batch edit on them.

So you're going to import them all into

your Lightroom or your ACR or whatever, and

you're going to basically put all the sliders

in the same place for every single frame.

You're going to have a whole bunch of

frames like this, right?

And you're going to pick your favorite one,

okay?

So pick your favorite one, and then all

the other frames are going to be drastically

out of focus.

That's the whole point, right?

And then base your sliders off of the

skin on this one, okay?

And then also, when you export them at

that point, convert them to JPEGs and size

them down to like, you know, if you

have this many frames, I'd go about a

thousand pixels across.

Because if you try to stitch these with

your full res raw files, you're going to

crash your machine, okay?

So that'll help you a lot.

And keep in mind, once you stitch this

together, the resolution is still going to be

like billboard resolution, okay?

So you don't need to make it hundreds

of gigapixels.

And even then, so then what you do

basically is export all those with the global

sliders.

And then, so you can do this in

Lightroom, I think, to a limited capacity.

Or you can get some third-party softwares.

There's one called GigapixelPanomega something or other that

apparently does a really good job.

I've only ever used Photoshop for it.

And in Photoshop, you just go to the

Photoshop drop-down menu, you go down to

automate, and you go over to photo merge,

okay?

And then in there, you basically select the

files and then just click auto.

And then go and have a cup of

coffee, go for a run, come back.

This is a lot of, it's got to

run its algorithms and a lot of processor.

It's heavy on the processor, right?

Takes a while, you get the little circle.

And then if you're lucky, you'll get something

like this when it works.

Stitch them together for you, okay?

And then at that point, now you can

crop in on that.

And now you can treat this as a

single file.

So now you can go in and edit

it.

You can do local adjustments.

You can do your brushwork, do whatever you

want.

Tone it, you can crop it, and go

from there.

Now, the places where this works well are

when you've got that depth.

I sometimes see photographers doing this in locations

where it doesn't make any sense because you've

got, they're out on a field or it's

just a big plain sky.

A, it doesn't really, the effect doesn't, you

can't really appreciate the effect at all in

those locations.

Plus, it rarely works because it's hard to

figure out how to stitch the pieces of

the sky together because there's no leading lines,

right?

And the effect is this sort of ethereal,

it's similar to a tilt shift look, but

it's different.

The tilt shift lens will actually tilt the,

what's the word I'm looking for?

The plane of focus, right?

Whereas this method, the plane of focus stays

the same distance from your lens, it's just

super shallow, okay?

And they kind of have that, they really

kind of pop out within the scene.

So here we would have had them walking

back and forth there several times, right?

Careful to include them within a single frame.

And then we would have just used that

location as the reference point to stitch in

all the rest of the scene.

Now, while you're doing the, while you're stitching

it in, if the sun changes, so if

the sun goes behind a cloud, it's not

going to work.

You'll have to start over in those cases.

Okay, here's now this one, actually Eric is

up on my shoulders because in order to

get the camera high enough to have their

heads, bubbles around their heads and exclude all

of the distracting things that were up here,

we had to get the camera up nice

and high.

This is about 40 frames stitched together.

This one is about 70 frames stitched together.

And that, I'll just kind of break down

that first one that you saw, where we

actually did 103 frames.

And that's how many frames we attempted to

stitch together.

In the end, we cropped it down to

much less.

But what happens is, if it can't figure

out where to put the pieces together, it

just plops them onto a strip here in

Photoshop.

So when it doesn't work, you just get

a big long vertical strip of images like

this, okay.

In this case, it figured out how to

blend most of them together.

And then the missing pieces, it just plops

down here for us.

Okay.

And you can see over here, you've got

all your layers, and it creates the masks

for you.

So it blends them into position.

Okay.

It's crazy.

So at this point, in this case, what

we did is we just dragged these missing

pieces manually into place and painted our own

masks.

So we got those into position.

And then we started cropping.

And right away, we're starting to see where

the money is.

The money is down here.

Because the highlights, always, the bright highlights pull

our eyes.

So the highlights in the sky are pulling

our eyes away from the couple, which is

just them in their white dress and white

suit just popping from within the shadows of

that gnarly tree roots.

So we just started cropping farther and farther

until we eventually cropped the sky out entirely.

Okay.

One more crop and a little content fill

aware down here.

And that's the final version there.

So this is, it's a fun kind of

tool to play around with in a natural

light portrait scenario.

And if nothing else, it gives you something

to talk about, because it's probably something that

Uncle Bob's not doing.

Maybe they've never seen it before.

But especially when you're learning, just let them

know, guys, like this might not work.

But if it does, it could be really

cool.

And then they get excited, right?

And then they'll give you that five or

six minutes that it takes to actually do

it.

Right.

All right, Jodi, any questions coming in?

Hi, Lanny.

I got a couple questions.

I'm sure there'll be more once we get

going.

All right.

I'm with you.

Okay.

When you shoot all of the frames, do

you stay at the same f-stop or

stay unfocused on the other shoots?

Only the couple is focused on?

Exactly.

Yes.

Once you've got that focus on your couple

and you've got your property exposed for them

in their light, everything stays locked.

The aperture, the shutter speed, the white balance,

everything.

So nothing changes.

So then as you start stitching in the

rest of the frame, yes, most of them

are going to be extremely out of focus.

That's where that out of focus bokeh comes

from.

Perfect.

That just answered the second question.

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh, here we go.

Question.

Could this be done slash have you ever

tried with the skyline, i.e. New York

City?

Absolutely.

We haven't tried it.

We've only got to shoot, we got to

shoot on the Brooklyn Bridge once.

So that's the one and only time we

got to shoot with New York skyline.

We didn't do it then and there, but

yeah, you certainly could.

Yeah, that'd be really cool.

I feel like Dan O'Day may have done

one.

Oh, I'm sure he's done.

Yeah.

Well, and Ryan himself lives in New York,

lives in Brooklyn.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah, definitely.

Okay.

I think that's like, that's all we have

for questions right now.

Well guys, so we have done silhouettes.

Now we've done the backlight, rim light, throwing

shadows, shoot throughs and layering, bokeh panels, which

brings us to, this'll be Saturday for you

guys.

When we're going to do reflections and reflections

is going to be a big one.

Okay.

We've got a lot of examples that we

want to break down and a lot of

the little intricacies of reflections and shooting through

glass.

So that's a big one.

And then if we have time, we're going

to do the secret weapon.

Okay.

Our most advanced technique ever.

And then that brings us to episode five.

Okay.

And I have to run something by you

here now.

I'm going to plant the seed.

And then in the Facebook group, we'll just

make sure everybody's on the same page with

this because I've started to sit down and

envision this.

So this is the editing session, the post

-production, which when I, when I do the

full editopia, when I do the full post

-production component of our full workshops, it's a

three to four hour affair.

And the whole idea of this was to

try to do one to two hour sessions,

which we haven't done a good job of.

But so in trying to figure out a

way to, to, you know, do editing in

an hour to two, I've realized I'm not

going to be able to really dig in,

really lean into it beyond just the surface.

And so my proposal is rather than to

do what we can in a one to

two hour session is to give you the

full editopia experience, the full three to four

hours, focus on that quality versus the quantity.

And if I'm going to do that, the

best way to do it without killing myself

and killing my family is to just have

everybody in one place, one time, all three

groups for the full three to four hour

editopia experience.

Okay.

Rather than splitting it up into three separate

one to two hour sessions.

So I just wanted to plant that idea

right here with you guys now and make

sure that you're on board with that.

Okay.

With that, we'll go into the group later.

Jodi, you can let me know if there's

any major objections coming out.

Otherwise, that's the direction I'll take.

And I'll, I'll craft the experience around the

full, knowing that I've got three to four

hours with you.

Everyone's giving you the thumbs up.

Thumbs up?

Yeah.

That's what I want to hear.

Do it, do it, do it.

Totally okay with it.

It's going to be so much better to

not try to like, to, to have the

freedom to really get into it and you

know, not gloss over things too quickly.

Okay.

So if there's no other questions, Jodi, that's

it for today.

Yeah.

I don't see any more new questions coming

in.

Just a lot of, a lot of happy

that you're going to do that.

The long version of the editing course.

Cool.

Well, careful what you wish for.

Post-production is always, it's a, it's a

polarizing one.

Some people absolutely love it.

And it's their favorite part of our workshops

and just eat it up and it's their

highlight.

I'm excited to listen to it again.

Yeah, I am.

I'm looking forward to it.

For some photographers, editing is like, you know,

it's the worst part of what we do.

And it's, you know, so, but anyways, we'll

see you guys in the group, share your

photos.

We love seeing your photos from the exercises

and we will see you guys back here

on Saturday for Reflections, episode four.

Okay.

Awesome.

Signing off.

Thanks Lenny.

Thanks Jodi.

I need to stop the recording.

Pause, stop recording.

Did Erica, did Erica record this one?

Oh yeah, she did.