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Clay Blackmore Interview

lighting is one of those things that everybody does a little bit different. And, ah, so it's really great to hear from these people. The first guy that we're gonna have on with us today is Clay Blackmore. He's one of the most sought after photographers in the industry, with a career that spend more than 30 years on clientele like Larry King, Forest Whitaker. And in addition to his lighting and portraiture work, he also is on the forefront of the HD DSLR film. And I just was talking to him before he went live and he's produced over 300 films. Pretty fantastic number. That's a huge number. So we're really excited. Teoh have him on the program today and I think he's You're right here. How are you doing, Clay? Hey, Drew. Great to be with you. I'm just thrilled Anytime creative live calls, the answer is yes. I love working with you guys. I think you're format. It's fantastic. And I just can't wait to plug in to all the new things you're doing over there. So cool. What? We're really honored ...

to have you back, Aziz. Well, and this is the first time that we've actually met. You've been here before and done a bunch of stuff with Creativelive. And I've hosted a bunch of stuff for creative live. But this is great. Teoh, meet you. Yeah, it's Ah, that was the highlight of my career. To be out with you guys for three or four days. It was just a wonderful experience. And I really poured it out there for, like, 3.5 days of just just everything I could pull out of the little noggin there. But, um, you know, things haven't changed much since I got into the career. I was so lucky to have a great teacher and a mentor. And I'm going to share ideas that I picked up from Monte really 30 years ago and tried to lay them out for you guys today. Fantastic. So I want to dive right into questions because I know there's a lot of people watching right now, and a lot of people want to hear what you have to share, not what I have to talk about. So what? What lights? Teas for your signature. Look. Okay, great. Great question. I'm also gonna pan over here. I got John in the background on my wing This is my my light man assistant and my first my first tip to you guys Don't try to do this alone. You can really fly if you've got a helper And if you're trying to light and photograph the people you're really going to slow yourself But exponentially so I always have a great helper and John's fantastic. He can read my mind and lighting You know, When I got out of college I was lucky to go right into a career with Monty Zucker, who was probably the most preeminent wedding photographer that time. Just fantastic. And we used strobe lighting for everything because drugs were it. With Hasselblad film, you need a lot of light and we love the look and Monte created portfolios that were amazing with two lights and that was it. A main light in a back right, a light behind the subject and a reflector. So that's kind of one I want to talk about is keeping it really simple. Eso I went to strokes when I got out of college and I thought strobes that was the way to go and still behind me. And this is an all set up just for a creative life. You're in my studio. We have a set of pro photos, always live, always ready to go, and my favorite go to is a five light set up. Okay, it really simple. It's a main light on the face, and everything else is just kind of secondary to that. I would definitely my second light when I saved up enough money to buy two lights. I would put one behind the subject because you want to separate them off the background. Yep, today's backgrounds are usually not the old master painted backgrounds. More great paper, white paper, something. You know what you see in the magazines today or on the Internet. So two lights is a great start, a civil reflectors and must. The next night I would do is a hair light because you know everyone needs a little shine on top of the head as long as they have a little hair and my next light would be a fill light. We've put that behind the camera, two stops less than the main light, and the final fifth light is usually something that comes on the edge of the face. Kind of a beauty, like from behind. Okay, fantastic. So for a lot of people just starting out learning toe light, what would be what would be the gear that you can't live without? And you'd recommend somebody just getting into the game and maybe buying their first light or their first little lighting set up. What would you recommend to someone in that position? Well, I'm going to show you a light bulb here. This is Ah, daylight fluorescent. And this has really changed the industry. I felt like Christopher Christopher Columbus. When I started working with this lighting, I found a whole new world. Why don't you just roll this light out and we just take these on location and roll it over here by the window and spend it in See here? There's just a couple of them lit up these air. Just daylight fluorescent in soft boxes. Wow. What you see is what you get. That's perfect, John. You can roll it out. And the reason this is so good is because today's digital cameras are so sensitive. Toe life. I'm a cannon. Explore of light. I shoot Portrait's at four and 800. I so regularly and I could shoot Portrait's that and 3200. The client would never know the difference. So here's what happened. Drew the hassle. Glad the big light, the portrait boom. Beautiful. We went to digital the big light F 16. Everything was too sharp. Yep, the face was sharp. Ears were sharp. The background was a sharp is the face. I didn't look very digital. It looked very artificial. So that's why window light was it was advantageous and keeping the lens wide open so that the backgrounds would melt out of focus. So once we got into our daylight fluorescent from west got. Now we're shooting all of our portrait that F four and F 28 I have an 85 12 and sometimes I'll shoot it. 14 Just sure that the background is gone so of daylight fluorescent and you can travel with him. I'm going out today. I told you I just rushed in for the Skype. You have a tip shoot today, I really do. And I have bags that these go in and we just jump out. And today such a beautiful day here in Maryland and spring is finally here, and I might go to a window. Just find this beautiful window light and just start working with that light and add this in with it. It's daylight. So now I can put a kicker light of background of hair light and just start spring boarding off of that light. Wow, Very cool. So generally do you start. If there's if it's if there's daylight, do you start there and then you It sounds like that's what you would do today. Is that sort of your what you would do every day? Yeah, it's a great point if I'm if I'm tryingto add into the daylight. You know, again a big fan of this life, the speed light that's always in the bag. And now we have the transmitter, so you'll see some slides here in a minute. I think you'll be surprised we're making studio portrait with these little lights. That rival anything I'd ever made in the studio just absolutely great. And we have four or five of these. We have the Westcott rapid boxes. So soft box would go into these companies. You're going to see the sides in a bloody what I'm surprised at the results. So that's that's a good point. The question also came to me. Drew is when am I gonna use flash pro photo on this? And whenever I'm gonna use the daylight fluorescent And I love flash when I need some spark in the picture and some real, you know, like a high key. I want a nice, clean, white background boom F 16 on both sides of the paper. And if I try to do that with these, I'm going to get kind of a great paper kind of a, you know, a yellowish white. So I'm going to say my high key is always done by flash. And I'm gonna say if I'm doing a big group of family group of 20 or more, I'm gonna go boom with the flash because the flash is going to give me that F eight exposure yet more kept a field, and I'm gonna keep these reserved more for the groups of twos and threes. Individual portraiture. Okay. Fantastic. Before we dive in your slide deck, I really want to get into that. Um, one more question. What do you see? The biggest mistake that you see, beginners making that are just getting into the business. Okay? One thing is the first thing they want to do is go straight outside because they just think that that's going to be the easiest place to work for me, Drew the outdoors is the hardest place to work because I've got, like, coming from everywhere. So what I'd like to do is kind of shape the light control it, and I like to take cover. So I have this great studio here, but I've got a garage connected to this. I'm in the garage more than I'm in here when the weather is good, because I have this gigantic 10 foot bank of light just coming in and I can shape it with a reflector. I could scream it with a black cloth and I can kind of shape that light, and the families and the kids love to be outside in the fresh air. So what I'm saying is, don't run outside. That's the biggest make start. Learning to take cover in a garage in a carport underneath the shade and learning how how the light should be shaped in. I think we get a little ahead of ourselves to it. We start thinking about lighting so much that we forget about posing. And you know what? People think that posing is a bad word, and it's not. It's not a bad four letter word pose. It's a great word because you really can't light a portrait until you oppose it. Yeah, and what I mean, because I'm looking for certain shadow patterns that are consistent over and over. And that is the mark of a professional consistency, consistency being able to do it day in and day out. That's what I'm all about. And then have fun once we think we've got the selling the selling photographs in the camera. Yeah, here I'm saying I wanted a temple today. I'm gonna do some form of Portrait's do the mother in the bar mitzvah, and then I'll do with the father than the kids, and I'll make it real formal study. But then I'm gonna have a guy on my wing as a second camera looking frame in between frames, and at that certain point, it's like, Okay, let's have fun, and then I just let it go. Yeah, I knew the the albums were cemented together with a little bit of both of that. Okay? I don't think a guy could go out today and say I'm just going to be a journalist. I'm just gonna find the moment. Um, there is a rare exception. There's some beautiful work being done by Dennis. Reggie Job using. There's a handful Scott Scott Davis, who works with me. These guys were so intense, they work so hard to get those moments. I'm kind of more of ah, proactive photographer. And I walk in and say, OK, you're going to sit here. I'm gonna turn your shoulders here. You're gonna sit up. I'm gonna go in and handle the person, pose like lift, refine and take the portrait. Now you learn that kind of from Monty. Monty was kind of the grandfather of posing like a lot of opposes that we saw, you know, for the past price. Three decades, like he was the guy that came up with a lot of those, right? Is that right? Yeah. Let me let me say this. And it's in Monty's book. The pose is merely a place to rest the face and we're looking at faces. And there's a portrait photographer. So the the reason a lot of people don't like posing is they've seen so much awkward posing. They've seen incorrect posing. Yeah, they've seen people that don't look good. They look at their pictures and they feel twisted or awkward. So that's the problem there is. We just need to learn some simple basic poses, and I only work with two poses, the feminine and the basic. And then we go for expression and you know, that's all that really matters, Drew and people say, Hey, I want my pictures to be natural But you know what they're asking. They're asking for natural expressions. So what we can do? We can save ourselves so much time in trouble by learning a couple of simple poses and learning how to seat people and get him underneath the camera. When I say that, I'd always like the camera to be just a little above eye level on a portrait, but let's say the person's five feet six feet and we're four feet five feet were shooting up at them, and we're showing a lot of bodies, and I guess if I had to say one statement right now, that could boil my whole mantra down is people buy pictures based on two things. How does my body look? Yep. And what's my expression? Yep. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna eliminate the body and I'm gonna go for expression. That's fantastic. Why don't we go to this life that you travel? Yeah. Let's jump in. This is Monty and myself when we were at a wedding. Is it up? Live on skates up? Yes. So we're looking at it. I love that license plate. Ha ha. That van is just such a killer. And yeah, that's the way we traveled. People said, You're the band. We showed up looking like we're gonna play the music. But we brought the studio to the wedding and we people came to us and we made the portrait's, um Now we chase the wedding all day. It's not like the people come to us. We have to run after the wedding entire day, and we're shooting weddings two and three every month, so I understand the change of it. So let's just jump to the next line and talk about Portrait's 123 And this is what it's all about. One lighting pattern. We're talking about lighting today. So, Drew, what I want to share with you is I only work with one lighting pattern. I'm gonna show it to you here, but it's a little modified loop shadow under the nose like that. Okay, so So this is full face. Yeah. Now it's on to the next 1 2/3 and profile. So you know what? The difference between those three pictures were? Nothing. It's the same pose and the same light. You're just looking at him a different angles. Now let's look at this posting card. This this is the scales on the piano. If you're a musician, this is what you should be working with day in and day out to get good. And people say, Well, you know, how do I practice? You know, most people practice on their customers. We should get our friends and neighbors and family and bring them over and take portrait and practice. So we know, like, braille. So we don't have to think about it, because really, um, this this posing is like this, you know, instead of the scales on the piano. But 10,000 hours of practice is what it's gonna take to get to get to be a master, so your class is called perfect lighting in a week. What? We're going to give you a road today, but you need to get out and give it 10,000 hours. And if you want to be Tiger Woods, give it 100,000 hours because you need to practice. Practice. Practice? Yeah, let's look at the next light and see. Um, so this is the Mona Lisa again in an airport. My buddy said, Hey, look, there's that lighting pattern and what it is. It's a little shadow under the nose and it does not touch the lift. If it were to match the lip, it would be Rembrandt lighting. So look, I know Rembrandt. I know. Short lighting, broad lighting, clamshell lighting. I know, uh, glamour, beauty. I know all this lining technique drew, but I don't have the time. Most people are late to the sessions. When I sit him down, they say, How long is this gonna take? Yeah, So I have a boldness of attack. I go right in and say, Let's keep it simple. 1231 Lighting pattern two poses three camera positions. Let's look at this next picture, and you can see the little 600 flash from Canon on a little beauty dish. And let's go to the next slide and you'll see how simple that is. That's what we're talking about. Window light with a little push of flash added in there. And we're just looking for those little light shadows like 321 2 to 1 rate ratios. I don't want something that's really blocked up. So usually a silver reflectors added in there to make that happen like that. Let's see what's coming. So this studio is amazing. This is my friend, and I'm very fortunate to call him a friend. But Al Gilbert out of Toronto, Canada, there is nobody living today with the knowledge and the basically the accolades that that Al carries Google him out. Gilbert. He photographed the pope, and he's just the most incredible gentleman we call him. Uh, you know, he's such a statesman. I love his studio, but let's go to the next wide and look at what we're taking out now. This is to speed lights just like I'm holding here. Put into to two little soft boxes, completely battery operated And if you see the next flight, I'm in the home simply working on a background and somebody says, Why do you work on a background? Sometimes it just removes the distractions. And, you know, all my favorite heroes and photography. Irving Pin, Cecil Beaton. I can't forget Peter Gallon Monte Zucker Results Woman. All these guys worked on background so it would draw your eye to the subject. So the next line, this is an infrared portrait, and this is made with that set up in her living room there, you know, a couple of days before our wedding and those who doesn't just feed lights, you know, just speed lights. That's four speed lights, one behind her, one on the face with the loop shadow. That's the back 2/3 pose Now. I showed you that slide with the statute, but it's coming up again that once you learn that slide one time that pose one time you actually get five different views of the face, and this is the profile view right here. And it's an amazing concept that if I could learn one pose and a feminine pose, I can have five different views. Let's keep going here, and this is something I always say posed white lift refined. I sit her up, look at the next slide and boom. See, as she sits up and again, off camera lighting is crucial. So again, what's one of the best tips I can give you your viewers to take the light off camera? You know, many people have the light on camera, and you know what that's doing, its flattening people out people by pictures based on two things. How does my body look? What's my expression? Well, if you're using flash on camera, you're adding weight to the picture. So this company, I just did their website and they call this back over three times because they're so happy with the look of what we're giving him. Let's go to the next line and you'll see one of the portrait's that's just right there on the Great Wall in there in the front of their office. Let's go to the next line, and now we're working by window light, adding in the strobe to create the next look here. The father and son kind of transferring the business over, and this is Saul Capital, a large banking firm. And you know it's a great great contact on my Rolex. They just keep calling. Hey, we love the work, the problem, they said. I keep giving them too many good photographs to choose from. So let's go to Barcelona. You can see the small, the small white here. Let's keep going to the next line here. We're back in their offices. Let's go a little further. Now let's talk about this. We're gonna bang right through these. This is the full face, the bodies a little bit. 45 to the left. Now we just turn her to a 2/3. Now let's turn again to the profile. Now look at this. She's on a lazy Susan, and as I turn her, the light turned with her. Go to the next, lied to profile and then the next line here and look at what's happening. She's sitting on a spindle like a lazy Susan. I'm down on my knees, and that light is attached to the lazy Susan. So as I turn the lazy Susan, it just shows you a different camera position or a different camera angle. And that's a discipline. And many, many people just don't want to learn it, but here I'm in front of a lot of people working in Barcelona. This is in Budapest, and that's how this slide was created. I exposed for the church, which is a magnificent church in Budapest, and I simply added the bride right there close to the camera. Three lights, one in profile position. So it's way back around the back coming in. Then there's one behind the veil and one is a fill light. So that's three lights on location, all batter, all battery operated, working from that little statue in my mind. Okay, so here's a lot of families. People love Children, and we do a lot here. And look how the lights are coming from behind. And that's one of the best tips I could throw out to you guys. If you show me your portfolio, all your lighting, this frontal, like on camera, it's gonna be amateur. If you get your lights off camera and bring him from behind. Let's look at the next picture. That's how this photograph was made like that. And that's the light. Thank you. It's coming in from behind right there. The little newborn and I think there's a really nice set up of that. It's the lights and profile. And that's how that was created. We're coming down the stretch here. Window light I love this is on our property. We have a nice house, but it's just one light off camera Love to work by window and a reflector You just can't beat it Drew always say God let the whole world with one Like you know, we take five lights and we mess it all up. This is a great example of taking cover. You're looking at our studio now we're over to the right is where I'm sitting and John is holding the reflector and we've got another reflector on a stand. I normally keep the reflector on the stand, but here we're doing the 12 punch. John's grabbing the light outside, getting the nice, bright open sky. Bringing it in is a loop shadow and the reflector under the left is just opening up under the face there and again. Look how the background goes way out of focus. That's F four f 28 Look that I'm going for. And then now we're gonna talk about small light source these air little mini spots and you see this A lot of old Hollywood photographs. Let's go to the next picture and you see it right there. That's that defined really bright and define shadows. Let's look at the next line and you see that a lot of black and white that could be printed down a little deeper. But now I go to the next slide and you'll see that the exact, you know, profile picture of her and she's standing. But look how it just chisels out the front of her face. Yeah, and then the next light shows you again to repeat full face. 2/3 profile. Guess what? I can get a back 2/3 and a back profile out of this, too. So, Drew, if I learned that one, pose the one on the far left. I've got five different pictures here. The back the back 2/3 would be over the camera left. It would be over the shoulder. Few third view. That's how Queen the Queen Mother was photographed by Karsh host, Of course, the greatest portrait photographer of our era. That's how he photographed, and I'm always looking at other people's work because art imitates art. And I'm always looking at how that the true masters did these portrait's and this is what they did, one lighting pattern and in a few simple poses and made it work. So here's a big eight foot soft box. What's the difference? That's going to just give us a huge softbank of light? The next slide will show you that's the difference. That's just one light. We didn't even use a reflector. The light went all over the studio and gave us that soft light for fun. I threw it behind the subject and used a little Q flash like this and that turned out to be the background on the final picture there. So, John, what you hear? Why don't you open up our big umbrella? I'm gonna turn this guy call here, drew okay over to John. And John's gonna pop something out here that you say. What would you never go home without? What would you never leave home without this? This is a scrim. And the reason this scrim works so well, it's seven feet across and you can clamp it onto a light stand so you don't really need to people to hold it. You do need a weight bag of it's windy outside side. You become Mary Poppins. No, that's one of my really secret weapons. And all I do is add this little reflector in with it. Yep. Go outside. We just shaved head, and then we have a little civil reflector in place. Wow, this is on Awesome Unit two. And everybody has probably seen the ice light. Jerry, Jonas. And we've been actually putting two of these together. There's drinking them. The newer version has replaceable batteries. Okay, but you always need to have a little light like this. And it was jailed before we started the program. We have, you know, gels that we cover our lights with. You'll see this light has an 85 b, warns gel. And you mentioned that we're doing films. And guess what? When I'm doing a video, Drew, I cannot mess with color. Later on, I can a little bit. But what I've got to do is be super careful with my color. Yeah, Right now I've got a tungsten light above me. A daylight light above me. A beauty dish over here giving me a tungsten lights I'm mixing it all up this morning like a dog's breakfast. But if I'm on location, I'm really careful with the fight balance like that. I like it so clean. You said something about 10, hours and becoming excellent in $10,000. I want you to talk a little bit more to that concept as a photographer for young photographers. How much? How important is it to actually work on the craft of photography versus just buying the gear and expecting to get great shots? You know, nobody said it better than a recent broadcast. I saw what Tony Robbins and he said, The fundamentals are the mother of mastering the fundamentals. That's great. What are what are the fundamentals? It's It's one lighting pattern. It's the little loop shadow. It doesn't touch the lips. So we've got light in both eyes and we're getting that little shadow. So that's the only thing I'm looking for, one lighting pattern to poses. So I would sit up and take my head like this. I'm in a basic pose. Everyone looks good in this pose. The body, at 45 is gonna actually add depth to the photograph. I see a lot of business portrait like this where they look square in boxing. We want to get that depth going. And then the head is like a T head is perpendicular to the slope of the shoulders. OK, so that's that's the basic pose. That's the feminine pose for the basic. I've got the light over here for the feminine. I've got the light over here. Okay, So you really have to be rigid on these things until you really get it down. 123 Wood has 33 camera positions. Full face, 2/3 profile. So it would almost be like this. Drew this light over here. That John inviting me with earning my body away from the light. Another great rule. Lean forward over the belt buckle. Lean forward. So I'm never leaning back in my pictures. Ever lean forward tipped the top of my head to the light, Turned my face So I'm in full face right now. I'm looking at my little Skype. You so John. Like a statue. I'm gonna rotate. I want you to rotate the light with me. You ready? So it's at 45 degrees right now. Now I went to 2/3 and it went to 90. Now, why don't I go all the way running a profile and you're gonna be over here? Keep coming. So it's really that simple. You know, the 123 Yep. And practice over and over and over. That's called camera position. Okay. You know what we call a camera position, Drew, Because if I were working by a window, guess what? I can't move the window. Yes. So I would pose the model by the window and I would go full face. Then I would move the camera over for 2/3 and move it all the way out and show the window for profile. Okay, that's camera position. Camera hike is how high the cameras. Which a lot of people need help there, too, because so many people are shooting Hi. Camera shooting down on full length, distorting the bottom. So here's the rule there. The camera should be at the naval for the full limp. A little closer for the 3/4 at the chest, head and shoulder at the neck for that close up above eye level. Gonna get him above eye level. That's why we have posing stools to see the subjects. So you never answered your question. Where do we get all these people to practice? Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, you need to get a road. There was that little posing guide I showed earlier, And I think when I when I haven't created by, we made that posing guide available to your viewers. Maybe we could do that again. Totally. What's what's the name of that course for people that are watching the live chat? You remember that? You know, I only did one big show, so I guess if you Google play black, that you're gonna get a pop. Pop? Yeah. Oppose it. Light it. Love it. There you go. There you go. So check that out, and yeah, I would just, you know, I'll just share this with you real quick. And I went around the country and did 40 master classes, and I said that Everybody take your card out. Yeah, and if anyone can do one of these poses in three minutes, I will give you, you know, $20. Yeah, And Arthur, like 10 cities. Nobody had done it. So I raised the stakes and said, you can have four minutes and you can have a helper. And you know what? Nobody did it. Because how all these subtle changes that you need to do with camera hype, tipping the head, bringing your shoulder So it's it's just practice. True. And let me say this to you also. I thought I was such a big shot because Monti took me all over the world doing all these big weddings, and I was lighting his portrait, but I thought I was lighting this portrait. But guess what? I would just get him that loop shadow. Now, if he didn't like my loop shadow, he could move the light without touching it. He was magic. You only show you what he did. How he would say, Clay, turn your nose a little to the left. And as I turned my nose, that shadow got tighter. And then he moved his camera to get that position. So then what's a longer shadow? He would bring his face, bring the face this way. So he was constantly saying, Turn your face to the left. Turn your face of the right. Guess what else he was saying. Bring your chin up a little. Bring your chin down, Little chin up, chin chin up. What was he trying to do? Trying to get the plane of the film on the plane of the face so they match up exactly lyrics in you mention Larry King. He he's always like this. Exactly. Yeah, we did his wedding, and Monty was like chin chin up. And he was like, No, no, no, Just take the picture Because he that's his look, That's his signature. But we usually want to get the plane of the face on the plane of the film. That's fantastic. Chin up, Larry. And he's like, my chin is up. Yeah, that viewers at home should start simple. And really, if you can get a set of spider lights, you know, that's great. Okay, now that I'm doing so much video, yeah, I go out with two l E. D's and I'm just doing my loop Shadow kicker light. Maybe 1/3 light on the hair. I'm doing it with very small, portable things, but I think you need a soft box. You know, the stark boxes. They're hard to work with. My favorites about a inch, maybe a little smaller. The West got products, you know, with with the reflector, the soft box and the bulbs here. You can't minute. It's just a beautiful set up. Well, thanks. Thanks so much, Clay. You're doing a whole bunch of films. I just want to help you promote that. Where can pick Kim? People watch these films? Where can people find your fine? Just. Absolutely. If you goto Kimio dot com. Yep. Forward slash Play black more Or just search me on video. V I m e o. We're stacking up films. 33 a week sometime. Holy cow. And we're really doing it through. We have a real operating studio. We have Portrait's coming and going four and five a week. We've been very lucky to be in the industry. I've been in business 22 years now. I can't believe I'm saying that I did my first wedding, uh, 35 years ago when we did a really nice stuff so fantastic about to slow down. I'm new horizons. I think the future is great out there. Yeah, and the key is just suppose it light it. Love it. That's awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today, Clay. Really appreciate it, man.