Lessons

Lesson Info

Shooting: Portraits of the Bride

The next thing we're gonna shoot is Portrait of the bride. All right, which is very similar to portrait of the groom. But not so when I'm shooting a bride. Just one person by herself. What lenses do I favor the 85 millimeter 14 and the 72 200 to 8. Now, to be clear, I have to 72 to hundreds. I have the 28 and the F four. Usually when I'm shooting a bride by herself, I'll have the 72 200 to 8 because I can shoot one person at 28 So if you see me, you know, in some of these other ones down here, all list off different, like 72 200. That is because I have two of them. One of them is just very heavy, and one of them is much easier to hold at the end of a long day. How am I using light? Almost always 100%. Well, almost always. It always depends on the day. Sometimes it is natural light. Sometimes it is video light. Sometimes it is flash for what we're doing with this mentor ship on sticking to natural light. How am I instructing my subjects? I'm a bit more hands on than during the getting r...

eady, but I'm still very free flowing and very imposed. I'm not the photographer for you. If you want. This hand goes here. This hand goes here. This hip turns here. It's not that fine tuned, opposed. It's much more natural. It's much more motion based. And how am I being creative? I'm being created with my lighting with my composition, with my storytelling and with the gesture of my client. I want natural movement and national natural reactions and interactions with my clients when I'm photographing them more than I want some sort of disaffected, overdone, over lit fashion portrait. That's not the type of work I dio. So, for example, different types of lighting scenarios and things that I dio. This is the same lighting scenario in both pictures, even though it's in completely different rooms in completely different settings. What's going on in both of these is I have a dark background, and I have one singular light source coming from directly in front of the bride in the image. On the left, she's standing in an open doorway right in front of her is a field A driveway. Behind her is the open door going down the hallway with those lights above her head. Dark background. One singular light source in the image on the right. She's sitting on the floor in the bedroom, in front of that same window we were looking at before. Same thing. Dark background. One singular light source right in front of her. The image on the left is with the 72 200 because I wanted the lens compression of the 72 200 at 200 to really compress those lanterns hanging above her head. The image on the right is the 85 14 at 14 because I wanted her eyelashes and only her eyelashes in focus. So when I'm choosing a lens, it's not just how close to the subject can I sand or my favorite photographer told me they liked this lens. It's how much compression do I want. And what final look will that lens help me create in the image? Same thing with the F stop that I'm choosing. The one on the left left was shot at F four because I wanted all of it and focus. I wanted her whole body and focus. The one on the right was shot at 14 because I only wanted her eyelashes in focus. So it's the same lighting scenario in two different spaces with two different lenses, two different looks to different F stops. Conversely, if you took that light safe, she's standing here. You've got that light coming straight on on her face and those other images if the light is still straight on on her face, following me here like this. But then, instead of shooting from over there looking this way, I shoot over there looking this way. This light coming here turns into this light right here, right? It's still one light source from one direction. It's just coming from the side instead of directly in front of her same thing. One light source coming from one direction on Lee. Now it's behind her, so I'm toying with a singular light source, just changing how I'm moving myself and my subject in relation to that light source Image on the left Dark background. One light source directly in front of the client. The window image on the right, one light source directly off to the side of my client, lighting her face from the side. So if this is my light source, I can put my client in front of it. I can put my client next to it. I can turn my client into it. I can have them at an angle of it, but it's all just one light source, be it the sun or the window. Same thing, one light source just stronger than before. One light source just softer, then before one light source with a super strong light and a super dark background. So therefore, the shadow and highlight relationship are very different than they are in an image like this, where everything is softer. So I want you to take a single person, male, female animal, whatever photographed them with different lenses at different F stops in different lighting scenarios and start finding what resonates with you more right. We're gonna break in about eight minutes, but I want to talk to you about Portrait's of the bride and groom very quickly and then take some questions because this is very similar to photographing the bride alone, and it's the same sort of principle. The lenses that I favour when I've got two people in the shop are my 72 200 to 8 or my 72 200 f four nowadays, more on that. More often than not, it's my 7200 f four because I'm not gonna shoot two people together at 28 because I want them both to be in focus. Yes, And you and you generally shoot it for Yes, thank you for a bride alone somewhere between 284 for two people together, almost always for you, especially when the lenses long you wouldn't go higher than that for like a formal portrait. I would definitely go higher than that. But we're not a formal border. Thank you. Sometimes I have my 24 to 1 24 and I'll use that if I want to go wider. But usually that's just the candle ends on my other camera that I have my assistant hold It doesn't get a whole lot of playtime during the portrait session. How am I using light in every single way that I can natural, artificial, natural and artificial natural and three different types of artificial I'm using light in a 1,000,000 different ways. And how am I instructing my subject? Same is with the bridal portrait. I wanted to be very natural, and I want the focus to be on emotion and interaction. And how am I being creative? Same with the bridal portrait. But I'm not trying to be creative. I'm trying to document them together. Naturally, this to me is my ideal of what this is. My favorite way to use light is as a back light with a dark background. So if this is the son, if this screen right here is the fun coming this way, I'm gonna have my clients here and I'm gonna be over there. It is a straight line from subject from Sun to subject to me, right? And the dramatic nest of the aura of light around the clients. The dramatic net of the highlight and shadow relationship is going to depend on time of year in time of day. Right? Same thing. This is very classic son. Subject me all in one line. Same thing, Just wider angle. Same thing, son. Subject me straight line walking straight into the sun. We've seen this lighting pattern before instead of having it behind them. They're walking straight into it or facing straight into it. This is a silhouette with the sun directly behind them sun directly behind them, but more what a wider angle sun directly behind them. But this shows the difference between what happens when you have a bright background. What happens? You have a dark background. When you have a bright background. They are a silhouette. When they have a dark background, they're still. They can still be a silhouette, but that's when you see that rim of light. This guy here has a rim of light around him to you just can't see it because the background is bright. You can see the rim of light around her the second it crosses across any dark background. So when you take your couple or your friends that you coerced into getting in front of your camera or your Barbie dolls that you put out in your yard, use the sun to hit them in a variety of different angles and from a variety of different angles with a variety of different lenses, with a variety of different F stops and start finding what feels true to you pick your three best and send them in. We have four minutes before we're going to take a break. I understand that this instruction is ah, little vague, right? But most people have seen the 30 days. Hopefully, that will be helpful. And if you haven't were simply starting with the basic principles and starting to find your way. So what can I help you guys with for the next four minutes before we take a break? All right, So you guys in the thing about it in here, Tara Brown would like to know quite often, my grooms are less comfortable in front of the camera that my bride's Well, I also tried to get the natural looks. What are some of the words that you're saying to help guide them? Sometimes the guys look awkward. See, that's the thing it is not. There are a lot of photographers out there who will try to impose a certain look on their clients who will try to elicit a certain type of reaction who will try to make people laugh or be romantic, or be a certain way in front of the camera. If someone is awkward, If someone is a little more stoic If someone is less comfortable showing affection, I'm not going to try to get them to do sexy, racy things, right. If they're stuck and they're being awkward, the majority of what I'm going to do is to give them a laundry list of things that they can't possibly complete, right. I want you guys to walk out to that light pole, and then when you get there, I want you to stop and switch sides and then give her a kiss. And then I want you to hold hands and walk back towards me on when you're about halfway towards me. Stop and give her another kiss. They're never going to remember that, and I don't care if they remember that. What I want is the moment that they forget what I told them to do. When they're like Wait, what do we do now? I don't know what we do now, and that usually leads into some sort of interaction between the two of them, which is usually very genuine to their relationship. So I know a lot of people will have tips and tricks to get people to laugh or tips and tricks to get people to be sexy. But I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna take a read off of the clients. And if they're awkward, if they're a little more stoic, if they're a little quieter in front of the camera, I'm going to respond in kind to them. Great. Uh, D J D. Jones would like to know Post shots. Do you have an arsenal opposes? Not at all. I always start out with the instruction of you know what? You guys, I want you guys right here. Just get really close together. Snuggle up. However, you're comfortable. I'm gonna get back there. I'll let you know if it looks weird and they're usually like Okay, well, we feel really stupid. And I'm like, run with that. And then I just get back and I sit down and I start watching them through 72 200. And sometimes, you know, a couple seconds will go by, and they're like, we don't know what to Dio. And I'm like, I can barely hear you. Just talk about whatever you want to talk about. And if you don't have anything to talk about, just trying make each other laugh and there's usually an incredibly awkward 30 seconds where they have absolutely no idea what to do, and then they just start interacting with each other. However, they're naturally going to interact. But I don't really have Arsenal opposes or any like repertoire that I run through, because then I'm trying to make them look like what I think they should look like rather than letting them find their way to be how they are together. Tony core Bell ones told me a story here, probably a very wise from core bell. He was either him or he knew a photographer who would do it, his sitting portrait's and he would put the people in the most uncomfortable chair in their studio, and then they'd sit there and just talk with them until they found yeah, how to be comfortable in a comfortable chair, and then they would start shooting. That was really good. It's a lot like what you just just here. It's very much like that, and I wouldn't want people to look back and be like, Well, these a really romantic pictures, but they don't really don't look anything like how we interact with each other or you know these air. Very like we're laughing the whole time, But we don't normally laugh. They don't look like us, right? I want to put people in a place where they can feel like themselves and usually just giving them time and not being up in their faces. Like if I was shooting them with a 50 or 35 how natural are they gonna be when I'm up in their faces like that? I've got my 72 200 racked all the way out at 200 I am way the heck back. I'm not even up in their safe at all. And what's your surprise? No one's asked this yet. What's your magic time that you request that you love toe have for doing this is after the wedding, right? Usually, I mean my magic hour, whether it's before or after the ceremony is about an hour before sunset. But as far as the time that you want to spend with the brain group for these for these shots, if you get your druthers, I tell people in our But I know that that really means I'm gonna get about half an hour like there's usually an hour in the schedule for it. And things are always gonna run late. I'm going to get about half an hour. In my ideal world, I'd only have about 20 minutes. OK? I just don't want that much time. I'm not. Yeah, I don't love it. That's my least favorite part of the day. Is the bridegroom alone? Okay, I actually like shooting family formals more than I like shooting the bridegroom alone. I think I'll shoot the formal way, go outside and I'm like, Oh, God, here we go. Like it's just the two of them there staring right at me. They want me to make them something great. I've got 90 minutes. Like what we gonna do with them for 90 minutes, Right? Like it? That's not my thing. I would rather have 20 beautiful minutes and beautiful sunlight to just bang it out and then get back in and keep on keeping on