Skip to main content

Shoot: Wyatt

Lesson 14 from: Children's Portrait Photography

Tamara Lackey

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

14. Shoot: Wyatt

Next Lesson: Shoot: Reilly

Lesson Info

Shoot: Wyatt

Uh pepper you're helping with studio set up thank you. You think that's a good spot or maybe back here timing maybe yeah, I think maybe back here the cool uh maybe here ish awesome. I love your hair. Can we get a shot of her hair? Her hair is fantastic. Wonderful. Okay, okay, so why it is knows we talked beforehand that I'm gonna have to show a bunch of technical and lighting and stuff for the most part not get a chance to really interact with him and he seems okay with that, right? You okay with that? Okay, um, are you sure the okay, so I say sure, I'm gonna need to disrobe a bit and what I mean by that what I mean by that is these boots are so fun, but they're gonna mark up my white seamless and I don't want that so this way see misses a twelve foot across and it is in my studio I have the little bar that you could put it the end you can put it across the edge of the seamless and you can splice it. So you wanna pull now knew seamus spice it, pull it off have new seamus it's clean um ...

I actually hardly ever use that because I can't tell you how often kids trip over it and parents and everybody so what we can do here is just have a little sand bags and as you can see around the studio we have little sand bags everywhere we have him on the lights we have holding on the seamless but when pepper came into the chair she couldn't help but just kind of rip this a little bit I don't care that's at the edge of my frame it's not in my shot so I don't care ma'am, we're gonna light mr wyatt what do you what do you think about that? He has a good idea. Sure, sure. Um these lights there's a light here there's a light back there is the light of their those wouldn't normally be part of my studio that's just what we have for this production so we're gonna kind of ignore them what I have here is a tv five spider light this is basically really cool because so okay, right that it's right on you guys. Yeah, they're from, um yeah, what happened is the scrim the front of this panel that goes in the front didn't make it. We don't know exactly why we're going to figure that out, but what we're going to dio is use and I'm giving a little bit of a preview here, but we're gonna use the uh this uh extra three dollars ninety nine cent curtain I found at a value store that we visited on the design budget challenge that we're going to show you later don't unclip unclip don't clip why? Because you made it so it won't let him fire. Oh, you guys doubled it. Check. All right, all right. Uh, we're gonna use this a little bit to defuse the light, knowing that at any time, the studio is gonna light up on fire. I would not advocate doing this at home is on san, but I don't want this direct blast a light on him, and I would normally just have the panel on the front of the two t five, okay, all right. Did you know that suzuki bats left and throws right? You didn't know that. Why? It's a baseball genius? I'm not so I have no, no, we don't need a killer. Video lights. I'm just explaining how we're working it's nice because it's, even additional challenges I can talk about. We've got multiple points of additional color lighting. And how do we deal with? Um um okay, so the other thing I've got going on here is we were going to show you the design budget challenge first, but because nico is not slept in three days, um we're gonna let him he's I think he's out there editing that right now we're going to show you that at the end of today but you can see where I got a lot of the products that I'm pulling in to the shoot so with that why it sitting in a chair and we've got here two four by eight mon fours to form a fun course that we got at an art store take together with masking tape are packing tape there's like twenty different titles of tape did you know that I knew that I didn't know that I really took a look at tape this weekend when we're buying things and I was kind of stunned by that, but this is packing tape and I'm not gonna tell you how much this costs because that would give away our design budget challenge excitement but I'm gonna show you how to use it so this is a four by eight and what I see right here is the light that I've got is coming in from this big bagel windows there's a lot of light coming in, but it's really defused it's really softened so I'm gonna have to I'm gonna bounce this light back, but I'm gonna recognize it's not a lot of light this eyes is great because it's afore it's four by eight it's tall and it's crazy thin so if his sister runs in and decides to not get over because you know brothers and sisters are having fun and it falls on him he's still alive did you know that suzuki at one hundred ninety two singles in a season I believe I did okay so I'm gonna take this off oh I'm gonna move this inn we're hoping for no fire and basically most all my main light I'm adjusting to this situation this isn't exactly high step in my studio because of a totally different situation at my studio I'm adjusting to this situation and this child with the lighting we have with the lighting we have I want this being my main light behind him and I need extra light on top of that so I'm bringing this in okay uh this is hilarious because we literally pulled the stuff out of the box eight minutes ago we can't find it all so I will uh anybody find the reflector stand arm what we can do is just grab a c stand and clamp it can we grab a c stand clamp? Um can we grab yeah, but welcoming privacy stand do we have an extra c san joy? Do you find us issues dan you won't want to miss the holder for now, huh? Yeah one of you can hold it I just want to show how to do this when you're on your own in a studio um yeah okay hold on one hair at a place huh? I'm using a question from a chap like balance people rest in lights and the two t five and you can do about two or three different lights that you can buy separately to add into the main light but those are the ones that I find that I like the best because they really do resemble daylight it's really soft diffused light great thank you thank you berg did you know that um suzuki's favorite restaurant you know what it is tell italians the sarah food did you know what his favorite restaurant is? His favorite kind of cooking you just click this and if you don't mind his kitchen he says he loves his wife's cooking okay yeah that's just claim that we just helped clemmons all right, so we're shooting tether but that sounds like what he was like you how may is often better that's where executive of course if I'm cooking all right so we're shooting together okay we were shooting raw and jae bok no that's fine uh okay thank you ee oh ee oh no way about ready all right, so look at his face did you see him straight on quiet? You look at them um what am I looking for? I'm looking for is he well lit enough? If he's going to jump around a lot? I'm gonna switch my lighting setup I'll show you in a second I'm gonna make you jump in a little bit, okay? But I want him lit enough so that I don't have any shadows look straight ahead I'm shooting, I'm shooting for expression and my style is I want to see the whole face so I want to catch side to don't see the whole face that's not every shooting style many gorgeous shots I've seen have like half the face lit half the face, not let they've got the butterfly got the rembrandt, they've got everything, whatever you want. I mean, you know, you could have still a bit you have really dramatic, moody portions where there's eyes carved out in darkness. Uh, you could do whatever you want my style. If you look at every shot in my portfolio on my website, you're going to see the camera, the faces are well, evenly lit and I want to focus on expression that's what I'm going for, I don't want to be super flat I want to know that they have features on and I want to see them, but I don't mind I would rather have a little bit of flatness and a lot of expression as opposed to really, really sharp contoured lighting and, um and not so much being able to see the expression that makes sense, okay, um I'm gonna put one of you in anybody will do you that all right. So do you feel comfortable with a reflector? Yeah, nice. Um the one thing I'm thinking is he's pretty well but we're gonna have it be like right up here they're, um is pretty well it but if this were my twenty five I would rip off the front because I want more light because I have a second panel inside we're missing wait do we find the interior panel there's nothing okay way still like westcott way just seem to have a shipping issue um I'm gonna pull this up and then I'm gonna ask him come on is that is that is that okay for you feel different like you staying with it? Do you see how much part of that is that what we just did um but if I were you would I be squinty what? I think too much there's much brighter but I'm not I don't feel like I need to squint do you do you think you have to squint? Okay, I think you're fine because you're not sweating so I think you're okay uh all right, we're going in with the tether I have never in my whole life shot tether so what's uh that looks like it fits in there any second corley like ten seconds it was warming up okay, so I'm sitting in this situation I'm thinking because of the lighting and where we are probably at a three twenty I s o yeah and I want to shoot probably at a three two and what do you think? Why it like a five hundred won five venture I won over five hundred be sure, sure and I'd just be on him and I'm just gonna take a nice clean shot and not worry about much else because I do already see two things I want to change but let me do the shot first and then I'll change him okay it's a nice flat portrait one of the first things I see I was there's delay right? One of the first things I see is you see that dark having lying across the back were that and what is happening is we've got this light here and this light here and this absence of light here it's a big swath of dark light that's really distracting because it's almost like having a branch cut across the back of someone's head or something to me that's a that's, a serious air and so that's where I want to have a sweeping either a hair light or a rim light or a background light that's going to sweep across and get rid of that for me so that didn't come in did it way having something like that all right we're gonna make shift use it can I use this guy don't look at me you know a charger uh all right I'm gonna use this guy I'm gonna need to list um I wanted teo herr light we realize that didn't come in so we want to be able to use a light for fun okay, I wouldn't mind this just taken right off all right I'm gonna take it right off actually if you guys don't have c stands getting at least one for your office your studio is a fantastic investment ok use this okay holy hot this is a very very hot light this is the example the light I would not have in my studio because of kids um nothing against this light brand but uh it's exceptionally hot and very very burn your flesh to the touch so I'd be really careful with that. Okay? So look at the backdrop from before and when you see it now to see how I'm covering that swath of light a little bit more the way you see the difference okay? So I'm not gonna change any of my settings even though that's about a half stops under for me I'm not going to change it to shoot exactly what I shot but now that I've added in that light to combat that swath of doctors behind and I'm gonna shoot again oh he's gonna be so cute okay, so we're doing the exact same shot exact same settings but we just put that light in the background because we didn't want that kind of darkness there you see the difference now, like when I go in and crop on it, so can I go back tomorrow? Will you talk about lights and reflectors as faras glasses? Boring glasses? Yes, I will definitely talk about you see before and then after we take that light out in the back all that is's skimming alight in so that's the only thing we're talking about with studio lighting is that were basically just filling in, adding or subtracting light that's all we're doing with studio light we're setting an app and we're seeing what we need to dio why I can't believe what a great job you're doing sitting there you're really extraordinary and can I say something else that you probably don't know? Do you think there's anything I could tell you about suzuki that you don't already know the chiro chiro I met which you mean uh I met each year oh, you really should have learned more battle. Well, I have something else to tell you. Did you know that he is the only person to have his first name on the back of his baseball? Thanks oh, just smart twitter she's looking a bit okay so uh, we went to a quick break because we're recognizing that between the four by eight reflector and so the lights moving around way were missing, some are shots and you guys won't be able to see everything that we're doing, so we reframed it and we've got cameras in new places and I'm just repeat a couple seconds of what I just did so that that wasn't lost um I'm gonna if you can look here at light room, you can see that we started with this shot, which again, we're about a half stops under exposed it's a little dark, but mostly what I want you to look at one of what you care about is that darkness behind him, that kind of dark line that's really a bit unattractive and it doesn't give me a white give me a grey and then I moved forward and I just by starting to like that and then we're getting a little bit closer to what we want and then I move in and I shoot for him and I see that we're getting closer, so what we want to question that came in was the glasses um as you can see he's wearing glasses and we don't have a reflection in the glasses and the reason why is because I'm not putting the light right in his face I'm not putting it right in the main light right in his glasses. I'm gonna either tilt his head down a little bit or I'm gonna move the light a little bit and that's the way you can control for glasses. But I would prefer to move my main light source, then have him tilt his glasses down. So that's, how you get a reflection free, uh, glass of shots. All right, let's assume that, um and we're dealing a little bit because we're trying to show you this and get the right camera angle. I'm a little less free. Teo, change everything. I want to change to get exact shot I want, but hopefully you're seeing enough of it that you recognize that, ok? You wouldn't have that light there and you wouldn't have that shadow there. All right? What? We're gonna try something different than have you stand up. Um, you know, take a break from this unless you were standing to the internet. I don't have anything to say to you yet. That's a quote from why I don't have anything to say to daytona beach, euro rocks each yura rocks all right, grab that. Um let's take the situation that what is uh I have to do whatever he wants to dio and I can't contain him, so I'm just miss you with the attention that I'm not lighting him in a spot I'm not letting him on a chair I'm not letting him respect to any sort of backed up I just want a general lighting systems so I don't get in trouble so what I'm going to dio is I'm gonna pull this box down uh I'm laughing because this was assembled minutes ago and some of the nobs are in the wrong spot treat this is awesome talk about anything can happen well, people on the internet tim are loving that it's live there saying good improv tamara uh neil callie wants to know if ichiro eats to play I know it's here souffle of gorgeousness we don't know wife makes it I would normally have a panel in front of this life but we can't find it but I would know might have a little bit more diffused and we're going to just do what we can with what we've got right now. All right? Fantastic. Just if you could look at this see mr quick do you see how there's some shadowing right here? I don't want this here but we need to ignore it for the sake of being able to film it yes okay way so we don't see the shadows back there anymore, okay, what would you do to fix him? What would I do to fix those I mean, if you could, um the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna shut these windows because I'm having shadowing issues do I know how to do this? That looks like it's going to open the window with the tree. All right? So in my studio I have wood nose similar to this where there's a bank across and they're really big and really wide and their east facing pressure, which gives me a nice kind of swath of like, you know, any time during the day so I get some great even lighting I have two sets of blinds on top of them, the ones that I have is a blackout shades the second set I have is a diffused kind of similar to some sort of scream, but more of a diffuser, actually and the blackout shades if I want to control my lighting as best as possible, I put the blackout shades up, I knock off the overhead lighting and I completely continues my lights to control the shot. If I have I want some of this light come and I want to come in kind of softly, I lose the blackout shades and I just use the diffuser and that we don't have to worry about combating some of the shadows, what we're dealing with right now if I move this light around in the front to see what's happening that shadow is actually coming from back there behind you guys for a light that we need to set up the shot. So we're just gonna have to make some concessions and understand certain things wouldn't be an issue if we were shooting in a studio without extra lighting, so we're gonna ignore that shadow. Can you all do that with me? Say, we don't see the shadow. What are you talking about? Hot, so weird when you see that shadow uh, this is put inside how to take and it was really awesome piece of a criminal, you can build it in four seconds. When we told you we didn't know how to put it together, we weren't like I said before the break was it was all anthony, okay, something jump up here and fix us who can, who feels really good at fixing this and I think you're the only one that feels really good to it and take it apart again. Alright, westcott lots also fantastic that they don't even need to be assembled correctly to be able to use them and that's what I'm gonna do here today. All right? Why ground already did me a favor. Just sit like criss cross applesauce, right, very good, thank you, sir. Thiss four by eight reflector again since I've changed the main light I need to change the feel like right before the main light was over here we had this coming through here and I had the reflector bouncing it back now I need to adjust if I still want to use some sort of reflective light to be here here's the other able and following your promise here's another great thing about a four by reflector like this is that I can shoot inside here I can adjust the light and shoot inside here if a kid wants to play peekaboo or something silly I can shoot against it with this far in the back drop it becomes basically it gives me the opportunity to have a near three hundred sixty degree lighting set up because I know we will shoot with one here and one here and a white seamless that's kind of lovely all right, I want to show you how if I want to shoot with the reflector and I don't want to carry it and I want to do a nice close up how I could do that in a studio do you do me a favor and hold this? Yep for this side or this side what do you like better? Okay see, I'm not actively reflecting on him because that's gonna be way too harsh but I could again I'm doing similar tip I'm using that little phil flash like a little pop of light. Um, when I told you I use in the front my mets camera that's why dio that's kind of so much what I'm doing. Will you look at me real quick? Good. Do you see how I'm gonna take the shot? I didn't really see it. Um a little heavy for you, honey. Ha ha ni too heavy. What? I'm going for us. I've got adjusted. Main light it's right in front of him. I've got this window at this window light coming in. I've got the reflector. And what I want to do with all this light bouncing around him is still not get reflections in the glass is I still want catch lights in the eyes and I still want him well and evenly lit and somebody needs to write in from the internet with a new factoid about suzuki. I mean, each hero. Uh, guess what tomorrow doesn't know a lot about. Yeah. And also the entire sport of that's, right? Uh, I would love to know a new fact that may be why it doesn't really know, because he knows a lot of this stuff. The trick here and the thing I really want to show you is now that I've moved the main light and have adjusted for this were ripe to have all kinds of new issues with reflections and backlighting all sir stuff and I need to adjust that the other thing I need to adjust with hope hopefully not burning myself is all right try something crazy just take this off is now that I've moved my main light down I've moved my subject out I'm moving my camera down I do need to change the background light a little bit what's anything on fire if I do this can you hold it so flipping hot I wanted to skim across here maybe our next break we can figure out how to bring those westcott lights and so I can show you because the eat this's great cause I get to show you how hard it can be versus how easy it could be the reason this could be very easy as if I had a hair light back there I would just tilt it till this little light towards the backdrop and I would eliminate those shadows and that's it with a continuous light source that's all I have to dio down like this with him on the tv five the nice thing about this I don't know if you can film into this light or if it's too crazy but if you look in this light yeah it's sharp let me show these off so you can look at him okay you see what's going on in here what's going on is I have five lights for very large once and one middle one in the middle that has a little bit of a different power to it and the lovely thing here is I'm not using any sort of ratios I'm not doing any f stops I'm not bumping up or down I'm merely turning on the lights I want and turning off the lights I want to control how much lighting I want I mean how flipping easy is that like ask you bright okay that's better oh that's you right that's better that's what I'm doing here that's how I'm adjusting for my life and that's how I'm keeping it simple but I'm also using really nicely balanced light with my child sir back to here uh I said too squinty how about here now I'm just messing with you all right? So cool I'm bringing the light down I've actually knock this down to about uh two two lights are out I've got this and I'm going to shoot in the direction of assuming there's no shadowing here you get ready and then if I'm shooting I'm a duty shots the first time to show you is where you would have the reflection and the next shot would would not have it and this is a hundred percent me okay, so if I'm shooting like this I love your excellence I'm gonna shoot one shot to show you how easily you can get reflections and glasses that showed up you see it you see the reflections in the glasses and the exact same shot is all that happens is I changed my position and he said the exact same way now I'm gonna lessen those shadows for him those reflections for him well you know what happened you see what happened there? He dropped the reflector do you see the shadowing or that how sharp that is that's not your fault, sweetie. That's mine. Okay, ready let's come back in doing such a great job are you okay? We'll bring the reflector back out so we don't have that lighting right in the front so dark ok do you see how the reflector made a hole? That difference let's look at that real quick because I think that's really important let's start back here so that shot I'm shooting from an angle that is forcing himto have reflections in the glass is so he's not moving my light's not moving I'm moving to get rid of those now they're gone now all I have is these really cool catch lights but he dropped the reflector a little bit totally my fault that's too big for you he dropped the reflector a little bit and I got that shadowing came back and it was too underexposed around his eyes so we pop the reflector back up I adjusted my shutter speed a little bit and I got a better expose and I got this catch flights in and I lost the reflections in the glass is those were gone as well. Does that make sense? Okay, thanks. You sure? Back fix my shirt. Did you guys get your dis positive? Very something way. Have some back to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, for sure. Good idea, actually. Okay, so what we're going to do here is we're going to give quiet a little break. I think we're running long on this longer than we thought and we're gonna come back after lunch. We're gonna come back the two o'clock. What time is it now? One. Thirty. Okay, we're coming back at two o'clock pacific time and we're gonna bring in a mess of kids. We're going to reconfigure this lighting so that we can have a little bit more flexibility and we're going to show you shooting up top. I'm kind of a crazy area with just window light. We're going to show you shooting on the seamus. We're going to show you shooting against brick wall and we're going to show you shooting it's three or four backdrops that we just made up and put together on dh show you how to use that

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

the-whiteboard

Ratings and Reviews

Amy
 

I cannot thank creativeLIVE enough for the opportunity to learn from Tamara in such depth. Not only did we have the chance to see Tamara at work, but she also shared a ton of great business tips as well. I think it is amazing that CreativeLIVE offers photographers such a great opportunity to learn from the best without breaking the bank to do it. Not only is Tamara an inspiring photographer, teacher and businesswoman..she is also an exceptional human being. Her positive energy shines through in everything she does. She reminded me of everything I love about photography and also of how to keep contact with that part of myself. That is a gift that I could not ever put a price on. Thank you so much, creativeLIVE, for the awesome workshop. I am really looking forward to future ones. I highly recommend creativeLIVE!

a Creativelive Student
 

AWESOME! I would (and have already) recommend CreativeLIVE's Tamara Lackey workshop to anyone and everyone. CreativeLIVE has put together a game-changing channel for business owners - the Tamara Lackey workshop not only was fantastic for anyone looking to improve their photography skills - it was a huge eye opener for anyone who is or is considering becoming an entrepreneur. The live audience format was perfect and it was great to have the CreativeLIVE visionaries engaged in the workshop as well. Kudos and thank you!

a Creativelive Student
 

This was a fun, entertaining, insightful, and - no less - highly educational workshop. I really like Tamara's photographic work and was mostly curious to see how she gets to her results. This expectation was fully met by both the on-location and studio sections included in the course. In addition, Tamara is a very good instructor and made the videos a thoroughly enjoyable experience. She is very open and answered honestly and personably to all questions asked. Although I am an amateur photographer, I was intrigued by the business section and could imagine a professional would like to see a deeper dive into the subject. If I were to mention improvements to the course, I think the scope was a bit too wide or, the other way around, the duration was too short: the business section, live shoots, work-life balance part could all have been more in-depth. But they could also be added as stand-alone topics, in my opinion. Overall, I loved this video format and Tamara's presentation. I surely learned a lot and had a good time watching this! Really, really great job!

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES