Lessons

Lesson Info

Figure out your why

You have to figure out your wife. Um, so figuring out your why there's a few ways of doing that one is shoot a lot. Um, just keep shooting normally, I would show a louis ck clip, but there's no way I would be able to get that past creative life. Uh, yeah. So because there's a lot of imperial create jokes in it, but essentially the clip he talks about its at the a memorial of george carlin and he's talking about george carlin. And when he was a comedian he's talking about himself, he's ok about being the comedian for something like eighteen years and he hated his work and like, nobody was really laughing at it, but he didn't know what to do. And he was doing the same thing for that long. And he was listening to george carlin talk about he kept putting out a special of the year, and so it was listening to this interview with them, and they asked him, how do you do that? And he was so excited cause you want no, he said, well, I just throw out all my old material and start over again. And ...

louis ck couldn't figure out how he did that like he's like I've been doing the same bad material for all these years but that's what he started doing looking louisa caylee's case probably the biggest comedian in the world right now because he does he just throws up the old material and starts again um the other thing is you do have to shoot for yourself clients do tend to dictate mediocre work they will give you a pinterest photo or a pinterest board of inspiration that they want and they'll say wouldn't be cute if we did this there's nothing cute about my work or our work s o they if they could do what you can do then they would do it they're hiring for a reason see me to stand by us take back your work and stand behind it like I said before you need to see yourself as more than just a service now I'm not saying that you shouldn't care about your clients we care about every single one of our clients are why is very strong as we've pointed out and because of that the only way that we can provide that for our clients though is to shoot it the way we know how to shoot it I can't provide that for a client if they're wearing a santa claus ofit christmas time or they have I don't know what yeah we had somebody come in who had an outfit picked sorts came in for a meeting wanting to have an outfit for all twelve months of the year. So she had a leper con outfit. And then she had a bunny rabbit ofit and santa claus and a pumpkin and the whole thing and it's just not well, that's not what we're here. I wouldn't even know what to do with that, to be honest. And, yeah, we get it. And it's actually in our contract that we will not shoot with props, eyes even to the point that we won't shoot with a men's dress shirt anymore because we consider it a prop. We really want to be able to get down to what boudoir is about for us and figure and showing our y and our clients come to us for that. And the only way we can do that is just stick tio, how we shoot and it's okay to say no. For some reason, somewhere along the line, photographers got told that they weren't allowed to say no to their clients. It is ok to say no to your clients. Your clients will actually respect you more for it. And they will treat you better you're doing your client's a great disservice if you just take the job and shoot whatever they want and hate shooting it because you're not going to put your heart into it and you're just going to provide them with a mediocre product so it hurt it hurts your business because there's a mediocre product out there that everybody's seen and then maybe you're having shoot that over and over again and it's hurts the client because they're not getting what they should be getting from you um and like I said before our clients you know the argument back to us sometimes is well your clients know what they're getting into and everything like that look at how much work you show and they know they're going to be naked and so on and so forth but like I said before our clients are coming from a large group of people mom's teachers, doctors, lawyers they're not one hundred percent comfortable when they come in they are shaking sometimes there are few that would go very blotchy and I have to give them a shot of vodka to take the blotch away so they they do still need the encouragement they need thio yes sorry there's questions so when they contact you in regards to getting these photos then do you guys do like a consultation talk about what are you comfortable with or do you just like are they comfortable? Are you ok with doing nudes and I'm like no, I don't want any news I only want to have like a cute outfit on during the session you kind of so suggestive nudity is a given without work s o that is yes in the consultation they are told you will be naked you don't have to show nipple you don't we don't show crotch you've seen our work we you shadow we have them turn things like that so they do you don't have to show nipple but they will be naked at some point getting into for the most part and when they come in for the consultation we have lots of work on the table it's a very casual living room style that we say I sit in witham and I can pull out book someone I'm talking about suggested nudity I can say um not this shot but look at this shot where she's actually nude but I don't see anything because of the shadows so we all talked about before hands they know what to expect going in, but I will also say two people were going to push you outside of your comfort zone we're never going to push you to a point that you're uncomfortable with, but the whole point of this is to discover something inside yourself that maybe you've forgotten or don't know is there thank you uh the other thing was that to get around that as well if they have an objection to suggestive nudity is showing them a picture of someone lying on their stomach there's no difference of them wearing a string thong or them not having the bottoms on so that really gets through to them really quickly on also a quick, easy just tip to do it if you're thinking you're not going to get your client to do that, um put them in a dress for their first outfit with no underwear and then asked them to have them land their stomach and asked them to pull their dress up and reveal their butt right the minute that they do that, they're comfortable ity jumps hugely really quickly, so we're all different as photographers eso this again going back to the idea of senior work, his art we all have different personalities, we have different perspectives on life. Our work should all looked different then, so to do that, you really need to look inward. You need to throw away all the safe things thatyou d'oh. If you have a list of photos that you always do with every client, don't do those anymore push yourself you know, if you're not brave enough to do that, throw them all out at least give yourself time to try new things every time tried new things to push yourself and you really have to look at what do you want to say about your work? What is your work say about you? How does it present represent you? Your work is the biggest part of your brand. So what does that say about you as a person then once you do that, it starts to really give your work intention and really guides you um we're sharing with our clients how we see the world, how we experience relationships, how we see love, how we see everything so our client should see through us how we see the world and how we see that's why are why you look at our work and you cr y you know what we're doing and what our intention is it's really important in our clients get that and they want that so the thing that um really you can see through our work is us and seize our list of uh I should add unapologetic to that but the's air list of things that were very easily any of my friends would describe me as so blunt I'm a very blunt person sometimes to a fault um I don't really like small talk very much I want to talk about something serious I think life's way too short to spend a last time talking about whether, um and so you look at our work our work is blunt it is not. It doesn't hide it's right in your face. We want you to be uncomfortable. Uh, we sort of just slam it right there in your face on duh. And so, yeah, you really see that in our work that part of a personality passionate again, we're very passionate about a lot of things. Um, if you get me drinking and we start talking politics, I may start screaming at one point, and I have been known to do that. Actually, I was talking politics up with one of the makeup artist's earlier today and it's just yeah, we for us when we do something, we fully commit to it this north, our friends make fun of me because there's no soda halfway with me, it's all either all or nothing. And so again, with the work, you see that you see the bluntness, you see the passion about behind it. You see the passion behind our wine and why we're doing what we're doing uh political. Like I said, it's just talking politics upstairs, we're both very political people actually have a tattoo my wrist that says, vote dammit and it's on my risk for a reason, because when you shake my hand, I want you to see it again, going back to the blunt part and so our work is political we are are making a big statement with our work you open facebook at any time and there are million articles from huff post and super right wing posts about women's sexuality and how they should express it and free them a bull and what is that about and beyonce and her videos and bill o'reilly being very against, um, because those expressions sexuality? So we're very much in that realm of making a political statement with our work and making a statement of saying that it is okay and people should be able to express that, um, feminist, we do not consider feminist to be a bad word in anyway, I've worked with women for eleven years now I spend most of my time with women, I have two daughters, and so for us being a friend, this is just the idea of the social, economic and sexual equality of women does it? And so for us, yeah, we've become huge feminists brand actually jokes that I'm a bigger feminist than her, um and yeah, it's you for us. Our work is part of that is in the realm of that it's in the realm of saying that women can own their sexuality and that is part of who they are and that they should be seen as sexual beings and not seen as sexual objects liberal and a liberal kind of a bad word down here in the states it isn't where we're from wear both very liberal way sit on the left side of things bernie sanders would seem even kind of right to us and so our work is very liberal you would not say you would not look at our work and ever sail this is really considered it work s o you see that in our work we're very liberal um as well honest there's nothing we're trying to hide through our work like he said it slams you in the face we want you to think about sex we want our why right out there and right in your face so we're very honest about that and defiant uh brian and I even though we came from families that divorced two, remarried and divorced and remarried our fans are wedding alone with forty five people just made up our parents step parents and siblings because of how much marriage remarriage there wass eso but we both also grew up in super religious super conservative families um so the defiant target now, obviously the defiant part is that this is a little bit about this is kind of uh you two that toe are operating um and so yeah, that makes up our you really see all of these points and unapologetic is we are we're very unapologetic about what we do we know we have haters we know we have people that do not like what we do and we're not sorry about that. We never apologized for what we're doing. I have a question here I have so many questions, but I'll start with one you talked a little bit about your vision back in the beginning of the presentation so how do you come up with your inspiration? How to come up with a vision? Do you plan ahead or do you just goingto get inspired as you talk to the person and like what's my inspiration? Yeah, my inspiration actually is not isn't photography I talk a lot about it in our workshops eames is a huge inspiration for me the way they approach designed charles bukowski is a huge inspiration for me because if you've ever read because he's work it is very blunt it's very straight to the point there's no metaphors it's just what it is. Who else? Ralph steadman, who did the art for hunter s thompson is huge prints inspiration for me because he uses his work to try and change the world and if you really like yes, we have a very complicated why on its very big but it really is we're just trying to change the world the best way we know how and this is how we know how to do that so in terms of having that vision, it came from talking to our clients. It came from hearing these stories, hearing mothers talk about, well, I, you know, society tells mothers that that's what your mom, you're no longer sexy. You're done on dh. Then these stories of these women who were told by their parents to stay pure, and that just sort of put it all on them. And so we really became that became our inspiration. That was our inspiration, was trying to get that message out, to say, you know what? This isn't right the way we're viewing this, and we need to combat this view, and then we can maybe do a better job for the next generation.