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Wedding Formals Critique

Lesson 42 from: Group Mentorship: Grow Your Wedding Photography Business

Susan Stripling

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Lesson Info

42. Wedding Formals Critique

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Mentorship: Introduction and Overview

20:49
2

Mentorship: Business and Marketing

30:42
3

Mentorship: Shooting & Post Production

15:21
4

Social Media Marketing

13:07
5

Google Analytics

29:16
6

Targeting Your Market with Social Media

25:54
7

Social Media Marketing Q&A

10:21
8

Common Issues and Problems

20:01
9

Student Questions and Critique Part 1

26:18
10

Student Questions and Critique Part 2

20:41

Day 2

11

Month 1, Week 1 (Sept 8-14) - Assignment Video

10:28
12

Month 1, Week 1 (Sept 8-14) - Feedback & Weekly Review

53:10
13

Month 1, Week 2 (Sept 15-21) - Assignment Video

09:43
14

Month 1, Week 2 (Sept 15-21) - Feedback & Weekly Review

43:05
15

Month 1, Week 3 (Sept 22-28) - Assignment Video

07:12
16

Month 1, Week 3 (Sept 22-28) - Feedback & Weekly Review

39:17
17

Month 1, Week 4 (Sept 29-Oct 6) - Assignment Video

06:41

Day 3

18

Office Hours Overview

13:42
19

Name Your Business Review

31:41
20

Where are You Running Your Business Review

09:41
21

Get Set Up Legally Review

16:12
22

Personal and Business Finances Review

26:58
23

Banking and Paying Yourself Review

15:42
24

Pricing Problems and Case Studies

35:12
25

When the World Isn't Perfect Review

23:56
26

Mission Statement and Target Client Review

25:46
27

Shooting: Macro and Getting Ready

17:26
28

Shooting: Portraits of the Bride

14:24
29

Shooting: Formals, Ceremony, and Cocktail Hour

16:30
30

Shooting: Reception and Nighttime Portraits

18:46

Day 4

31

Month 2, Week 1 (Oct 6-12) - Feedback & Weekly Review

57:47
32

Month 2, Week 2 (Oct 13-19) - Feedback & Weekly Review

55:04
33

Month 2, Week 3 (Oct 20-26) - Feedback & Weekly Review

57:13
34

Month 2, Week 4 (Oct 27-Nov 2) - Feedback & Weekly Review

47:48

Day 5

35

Details Critique Part 1

28:49
36

Details Critique Part 2

23:57
37

Getting Ready Critique

29:38
38

Missed Moments Critique

11:44
39

Bride Alone Critique Part 1

12:39
40

Bride Alone Critique Part 2

21:04
41

Ceremony Critique

12:36
42

Wedding Formals Critique

19:18
43

Bride and Groom Formals Critique

24:23
44

Reception Critique

18:33
45

Introductions and Toasts Critique

18:14
46

First Dances and Parent Dances Critique

17:47
47

Reception Party Critique

20:08
48

Night Portraits Critique

15:38
49

Month Three Homework

18:45

Day 6

50

Month 3, Week 1 - "Office Hours" Checkin

43:05
51

Month 3, Week 2 - "Office Hours" Checkin

28:11
52

Month 3, Week 3 - "Office Hours" Checkin

36:06

Day 7

53

Get Organized

30:40
54

Editing Q&A Part 1

28:57
55

Editing Q&A Part 2

32:18
56

Editing Critique Part 1

33:32
57

Editing Critique Part 2

31:48
58

Editing Critique Part 3

28:43
59

Editing Critique Part 4

29:33
60

Editing Critique Part 5

21:51
61

Final Image Critique

36:28
62

Album Design and Final Q&A

21:57

Lesson Info

Wedding Formals Critique

So you know, formals were really tough for people. And this is where, you know, people are starting to kind of start to have a lot of issues with lighting. But there were some people who were doing it right both working with, you know, with what was obvious flash and some people working with what might have been natural, light or flash. You know, if I'm looking at the image and I'm saying this is really well lit, I can't tell how you let it. That means you're doing it right. Working with natural light. That looks really good. Finding really great moments in the formals. Great light, well put together scenes. Goodland selections. You know, it's a wide angle lens 32 millimeters. But the way it was composed, it works, and it works. And it works, you know, doing the best you can. It's formals. Guys, we're not here. Toe make art. This is really well done. Really? Well done. You know, charming. Solid. Very nice. Very nice. Very nice. Very sweet. Yep. Pretty good. My Onley critique here would...

be Try to get your shutter speed down a little bit lower. I can't see it because the exit data was stripped. But if you could get your shutter speed down a little lower, you'll have a little bit more ambient light. Very, very well handled. Difficult situation. Perfect composition. Great. Yep. Good. Oh, rough. Not you guys. But that's a rough situation. Well done. Very well done. Yep, yep. Perfect. Now, one of the problems that I was seeing with a lot of the formals is that all of the faces need toe work. OK, going from right to left. Looking at me, looking at me, looking at me, looking not at me. The girl on the far left is looking at somebody else entirely. You know, the bride looks great. Some of the girls of the left look great. The girl to the right of the bride doesn't look so good. You know, all of the facial expressions need toe work, eyes open, eyes open, eyes open, sort of half kissy face. Not sure what's going on either. Everywhere, all over the place, eyes are everywhere. We've got some closed eyes, like literally two people are looking at me, right. And it's rough, cause I imagine these scenarios you've got a ton of people behind you guessed have cameras. Guests are pointing cameras everywhere. You're doing the absolute best that you can. But at some point in time, you have to say, Hey, guys, listen, everybody else, you've got to put your camera down for a second because nobody is looking at me. You know, we've got eyeballs everywhere. Lynn selection matters. It matters a lot. You know, if you're talking about wide angle and you're shooting one person, imagine if you're shooting a bunch of people, then it starts to become super unflattering. And also, when you're considering your Lind selection for formals, you want to consider what the focal length you're using is doing to your foreground and background relationship. For example, you've obviously got what is a really great rolling hills and everything in the background, but you're shooting it a 28 millimeters, which is making your background look super, super far away from you or your in a church. And you're shooting that 28 millimeters, which is not only unflattering two bodies, but it gives you sort of a wonky for foreground background relationship that makes it hard for you to make a dynamic photograph. You know, 28 millimeters. You start distorting the edges of your pictures. 41 millimeters. You listen. You're not doing anything egregiously wrong. But if you had moved the people way far ahead of you and use the longer lens, the focus would have been more on your subjects. And the element in the background, while prominent, would have been less prominent. You know, it's tough. 35 millimeters. It starts to still get a little frayed around the edges. You know, 38 millimeters. I know exactly where you are right here. I know exactly what room you're in. Um, Philadelphia photographer who is shooting at a hotel that I shot at a bunch of times. I know the room you're in and I know that you can shoot it with a 72 200. You gotta back up. It starts to warp the people on the edges, you know, 50 millimeters. There is nothing overtly wrong with this, but you have no foreground background relationship. You know, it's tough. I would highly suggest for those of you shooting formals at 35 millimeters that you try a longer lens and you try backing up when you're right up on people with a wide angle lens. It makes it hard for to make a flattering photograph. I know where you are here. I know exactly where you are. Here. I know that you come back up. You know it's hard when you're shooting 50 millimeters at 56 the thing that becomes the prominent part of the photograph of the women sitting in the front instead of the bride and you're attempting to go wide and get context of the venue. But a 24 millimeter vertical is just simply unflattering. You could have gotten farther back and used a longer lens while still getting the context of the venue. You know, just a little bit too wide, too wide. You know, you start to see some of the same problems over and over again. A 28 millimeters your you don't get a good foreground background relationship, and it's not necessarily flattering. Two bodies, whether you're indoors or in a church and listen. Sometimes you're in a tight, tough situation, and it's all you can do. I'm not gonna fault you for that, but if you're outside and you have the ability to move back, there's no need to shoot down on people with the 24 or a or even a 35 Like Now, listen, if this is a really tight space and it's really small and all you can do to get it all in and shoot with 35 dudes, that's all you can do, and you've got to do the best you can. But shooting a group like this with 24 millimeters, we're starting to get them. They're starting to look elongated and they're starting to look a little stretched, and it's hard to separate them from their background. You know you're shooting up on them. They're all starting to look a little warped. So you're starting to see kind of shooting formals with the 24 millimeter might not be the most flattering Lynn selection for a group of formals, and I'm seeing this a lot. People really favoring somewhere between the 24 the 50 you know, even at a 50 you can start to see distortion when you're shooting up on people and 36 millimeters shooting down, you start to get big heads and stretched out bodies, so I would strongly, strongly, strongly if you do one thing today to help improve your formals back up. And you, the longer lens. Okay, um, you do improving the light really quickly, and then we're gonna go to lunch. So I know a lot of people like to shoot formals with available light, especially when you're outside. But the problem with light like this is your faces air really under exposed for something like this. You've got them in a great lighting scenario. You've got them in a great spot. You know, you're even working with a good focal length. I strongly suggest including an off camera flash in front of your subjects to illuminate their faces. This will get rid of the dark faces that you're seeing here, and it will brighten the faces up and really make the subjects stand out. Quick question On this particular set up, Bethany's question is when shooting straight into the sun like this so that you have the rim, the sunlight around the couple, I tend to get quite green looking skin. In this situation, it's a reflection from the grass. I noticed that Susan has amazing skin tones in this situation. Any advice on how to reduce that green reflection Or is it a post processing thing? Part of it supposed processing thing? Part of it is just a white balance thing. But if I'm outside, I'm shooting in this situation. I'm going to be using flash if I'm working with ah formal like this, and then I'm going to be on flashlight balance, and that eliminates the green problem altogether. You know, I understand what you're trying to do here, but you're still getting dappled light on the sides of the faces and trying to use off camera flash. But it's coming from such a harsh angle that it's starting to become unflattering and using flash that is straight on. You know you can. You can see when I look at the chandeliers up on the ceiling, the flashes coming at a very vague angle, and so it's not really helping separate the subject from the background. It's just creating more shadow problems. This is getting close. This is off camera flash that is working really well, but you have to be very careful of your subjects. If you look to the far right, the gentleman sort of with a shaved head standing in front of the woman. If you moved him a few steps out, you wouldn't have had the shadow cast on the woman's face. You know, it's it's just flat light. And when you're shooting in situations like this and you're shooting with ambient light and you're not using any additional flash off camera, you know you're getting a very basic exposure. You just are for something like this. You know, whether this is sunlight that is hitting their faces like that or it's off camera flash. You need to move them off of the background so you don't get the shadow fall off in the background. You know, you've got to use flash. You've got to use flash. You know, people trying to make it work outside using natural light, the faces air not exposed well enough. And the backgrounds are not distinctive enough, you know, trying to work with existing light. This just does not work their shadows everywhere, their shadows everywhere. You know, the background is brighter than the faces, Shadows, shadows. You can't even see the background because by the time you exposed for the subject, you've lost the background, you know, getting there. But again, you're still getting shadows, you know, this person wrote in and said that there was a window off to the side and what else could have been done? You know, we're in a hurry. Everything's going really fast. So on and so forth. You can't let the formal session get away from you. You have to stay on top of it. And in this situation, if you had just turned your subjects a little closer to the window, you would have been doing just fine. But most of what I'm seeing here are people trying to use existing light or trying to use flash that is straight on or existing light or dappled existing light, existing light. You've got to add in some form of flash, like for this example, right? You've got a great background. You're making a Goodland selection. You've got great light separating your subject from their background on off camera. Flash aimed at their faces would have helped get rid of those shadows under their eyes. It would have brightened up their faces and it would have eliminated the entire entire scene. You know this is getting close, but again, if you look at the faces, everyone is too close together. The direction of the flash is causing shadows to land on other people. Faces need some flash desperately needs in flash. You know, I can tell that there is flash used here, but your shutter speed is so high at 125th of a second that you're not getting enough ambient light in there. If you're using flash, you can bring your shutter speed down nice and low. Maybe 1/60 of a second, maybe 1/50 of a second. And then you can really start pulling in the ambient light of the room. Terribly dappled light. You really need flash needs and flash again. Picking really good backgrounds, picking good backgrounds. You know, something like this. Which is where we're gonna stop before lunch. Goodland selection. Excellent. Um, F seven. Great. You could have dropped down to 125th of a second and popped in some flash on their faces. And you would have brightened up the scene on your subjects while still retaining the background as we're going through. Especially in these later images. When we're looking at formals more looking at bride and groom, especially when we're looking at reception, the common problems that everyone

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Mentorship Launch and Social Media Keynote.pdf
Susan Stripling - Study Packet Spreadsheets for Numbers.zip
Susan Stripling - Study Packet Spreadsheets for Excel.zip
Susan Stripling - Month 1 Mentorship Assignments 1 - 7.pdf
Susan Stripling - Business and Marketing Workbook.pdf
Susan Stripling - Study Packet Spreadsheets - PDF.zip
Susan Stripling - Month 1 Mentorship Assignments 8 - 14.pdf
Susan Stripling - Month 1 Mentorship Assignments 15 - 21.pdf
Susan Stripling - Month 1 Mentorship Assignments 22 - 28.pdf
Susan Stripling - Month 2 Homework.pdf
Susan Stripling - Month Two Introduction Keynote.pdf
Susan Stripling - Month Three Assignments.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

A couple years ago I attended WPPI and sat in on Susan's class. Out of all the classes I sat in on that year her's was in the top 2 for actual information and not just fluffy feel good hype. So I figured her Group Mentorship course would be a good one and it definitely has! A bit of background on me, I've been running my own wedding photography business for the last 6 years, 5 of those full time. I've taken tons of business courses and have circled back around to taking more classes to improve my craft. Susan's class focuses on both business and improving your craft. The big warning I have for this class is that there is a lot of homework, A LOT!!! But that is not a bad thing at all. I was swamped with weddings as the class started and was late to get to my homework but I'm so glad I didn't skip it because there was a lot of things I learned about my business just in answering her questions. I believe there were homework assignments every single day and while some are quick others will take awhile. So my recommendation is to take this course in your off season and use that down time to really concentrate on doing the homework and putting together questions to ask during the weekly chats. I was not able to do that as much as I wanted because of my schedule and I feel I did myself a disservice by not taking full advantage of what was offered. As another reviewer stated there were a lot of basic questions that were asked like how to get proper exposure in an image, etc. If you aren't sure how to do that then this class is not for you. I believe this class is geared towards those who are past the portfolio building stage and are looking to set their business up for success on the back end while improving their craft. Remember to ask questions, keep a notebook and write them down while doing your homework. Don't focus so much on what she uses for everything but why she uses it, if you understand the why you can apply that better to your business vs just the what. Again I would say to properly allocate time to take this class, treat it like a college class with weekly homework and study required. Don't buy it to watch later as you will lose out on most of what this class is about which is access to Susan for questions and feedback. Do the homework, I found the questions she asked us to answer led to a lot of revelations for myself in my business. Her questions led me to ask my own questions and review a lot of historical data for my business to get a better grasp on where I am. Luckily for me I'm doing way better then I thought ;)! Also I recommend for image critique to not just submit your best images, while we all like a pat on the back that won't make you better. She requested a mix of your best and areas of struggle. The images I submitted that I was struggling with are the ones where her advice will improve my craft.

Carissa
 

Susan, simply amazing photographer, amazing woman, amazing business woman! If you want your but kicked then this the course for you! A kick start for your 'business', awesome .. honest .... brutal.... critique.... don't take it personally.This is a course for beginners and for those been in business for 4 + years. I have been in business for 4 years and this helped me seriously start from the beginning again on the business side of things and fine tune my processes. I learnt so much.... but was also great to know I was on the right track. For those beginning - oh I wish I had this as a guide 4 years ago!!! Enjoy! worth every penny! cheers Carissa www.capture-t-moment.com

a Creativelive Student
 

I found this course helpful - but I also did all (well most) of the homework and I think to get the most out of this class you really need to be prepared to do the homework - which does require a reasonable time commitment. I found the business information (month 1) invaluable, and Susan was very, very active in the Facebook group, constantly answering our questions, which was great. Month 2 was a big image critique and I also found this very helpful. Month 3 was about editing and it was also a critique, which was helpful as well. Susan, Sandra (her assistant), Jen (her post production person) and CL worked very hard for us so we could get the best out of this course and I really feel I did get the most out of it that I could have gotten out of it. It is definitely worth it if you are willing to do the work. All of my questions were answered and I feel like my work is going to improve for the better now. If CL run any more mentorships such as this one, I would highly recommend them as I found I learned a lot more than in a regular class - because of the homework and the feedback (direct from Susan) on the homework. I am so glad that she was honest about my images because now I am seeing them in a new light (no pun intended).

Student Work

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