All language subtitles for 1. Recognizing Creative Triggers

All right, so here I was at a

Chicago, there's a bridge in Chicago and I

think that all of us would agree that

if you look at this particular image and

if you were there, you would look at

all the reflections, okay, but I was looking

at all the reflections and thinking they're very

abstract, I couldn't get a clean reflection, I

think most of us may have laid down

on the ground and shot upwards but it's

all warping, doesn't look that great.

We can get our lens close to the

reflective surface which of course makes the reflection

more vivid but then the faces were warped,

it didn't look right and I'm thinking well

how else can I use this particular texture

and surface?

So I'm thinking well obviously we can just

get someone away from the background and that

beautiful warping could create a beautiful texture in

the background.

So I grabbed my ice light, for those

of you who don't know I actually invented

the ice light, it's a cylindrical base LED

light, it's a glorified lightsaber, I grew up

with Star Wars like most people and loved

that idea but anyway so this was done

with the ice light and I took the

shot, nothing fancy, nothing incredible but you would

say that it has a bit of a

cinematic look and a feel.

So that texture in that environment gave me

the idea that that should be in the

background and not so obvious, not so vivid

but maybe what most of us would not

have done is decide to flick that white

balance to tungsten which turns daylight into blue

which now makes you feel like this could

have been shot, let's say a promo shot

for Blade Runner or something like that.

So that's the idea is that many of

us stick to the standard way of doing

things week after week, we tend to shoot

the same way expecting a different result and

of course if you do the same thing

over and over again expecting a different result,

that's a definition of insanity right?

So we can't be insane, we should look

at an environment and understand how to use

it.

Now I've got to admit when I started

professionally even as a hobbyist, whenever I saw

a great location I would walk up to

it, I would always get my couples against

it.

So now I'm often getting them away from

the actual wall, away from that tree, away

from that fountain and picturing everything out of

focus and the cool thing is you sort

of just squint in your environment and you

get an idea of what it looks like

out of focus.

Then I thought well look let's not waste

the actual moment, whenever I'm photographing let's say

for a wedding, I'll photograph the guy, bring

in the girl, take them as a couple,

bring the guy out, then photograph the girl,

now I've got three, four spreads of a

wedding album.

So then we added the girl and I

thought how cool would it be to get

this strong lighting and split lighting on his

face.

Split lighting is where you illuminate one side

of the face and not the other, often

considered very masculine and then that light bounces

off his face and gives that beautiful glow

here.

So he gets that harsh masculine lighting and

she gets that really soft beautiful lighting as

well and of course I kept that daylight,

the tungsten white balance that turns daylight into

blue and again it gives us this beautiful

look and feel.

Now watch what all I do is in

camera change my crop and how much more

dramatic it actually looks.

Isn't that cool?

Something a little bit different that most of

us perhaps we may not try, we might

always go safe, go wide, go safe.

My suggestion to you is if you're shooting

for a client, do what you have to

do to do what you want to do.

Make the client happy, like let's say make

sure the parents are happy who are traditional

and then you can go play and do

what you want and have some fun afterwards.

So here's Joe illuminating the guys with the

ice light there and that sort of shows

us the behind the scenes.

Then what I thought of, let's do like

a groomsman kind of shot and again this

is using the tungsten white balance and of

course you can do this after the fact,

if you're shooting raw you can change the

white balance after the fact but often when

you rely on that you just don't do

it.

If you do it in camera it prompts

you when you're converting your files from raw

to JPEG and you're correcting them, it actually

prompts you to actually see it straight away.

And again being able to look at that

environment and maybe use your groomsman in a

very different way.

So we're training our mind now to see

the environment and look at bad locations and

work out what to do with them.

Now where do you think I photographed here?

I mean there's an arrow on the ground

telling you where I'm going to photograph.

You can see that skylight above there, this

is an ordinary car park and then you've

got the arrow right there.

Now what I'm looking for, the creative trigger

here was, I'm looking for a little pocket

of light.

So if I see a glow of light

on the ground I'll know that basically if

someone's standing there they're going to get this

beautiful pocket of light on their faces.

So I need an excuse to bring their

face up to the light to actually get

that shot.

So what excuse could I give?

What do you do naturally when you're pointing

your face upwards?

Because after all if we're shooting a wedding

or portrait session or something like that we're

directing our couples most of the time but

my style is I like to direct my

couples in a way that appears natural like

this could have happened on its own.

So what I did was I tilted her

face and chin up and then we ended

up getting this shot in this environment.

So let's say for example your limo driver

just drops you off under a car park

on the way to the reception.

You could squeeze in another spread of a

wedding album by simply photographing on the way

to the reception venue which is only 30

feet away.

And that's what I'm saying is tilt the

face, chin up, we're basically photographing on the

short side of the face often referred to

as the shadow side, the short side, the

narrow side, I call it the sexy side

and we get that shot.

In the same vein I mean again we're

shooting here with a fluorescent light on the

rooftop of a garage and I saw this

girl had this incredible cheekbones and I'm like

well there's no better way to bring out

cheekbones than a light from above.

And of course there were shots where they're

looking up to the light so we've got

catch lights in the eyes but I like

the idea of making it look more mysterious

and having these beautiful shadows on her face

and on her cheekbones.

And then of course again we give her

reasons and excuse to bring her chin up

and I love the fact we kept that

little hint of highlight on her cheek that

just separates her but again the environment told

me what to do.

The light's up above, what excuse can I

have to bring someone's face upwards?

And all I did now for the next

shot was change my angle and again what

do you do?

You put your chin up, maybe the girl's

a little bit shorter, she's kissing, she brings

her face up and then now we get

that kind of a shot.

Pretty cool.

I love what you said earlier about shooting

for the client and then shoot for yourself

because it feeds both needs so if you

feed your clients then that's your business, that's

how you're going to make a living but

then you feed yourself and that's your soul

so you can keep on going, it helps

to prevent burnout and these locations that you're

shooting in like under the bridge where it's

just nothing and especially those last few that

you showed with the garage because isn't it

crazy how these are just ugly locations like

a supermarket parking lot and so a lot

of times your clients are like well where

are we going to do our portraits?

Where are we going to do our portraits?

And Jerry will often say you just have

to trust me, I'm always going to look

for the light so he educates them from

the very beginning to say we're just going

to walk around and I'm going to constantly

be looking for the light so that when

Jerry does show up at these locations to

photograph in a supermarket garage, they don't have

an issue with it and then they trust

him and end up with these beautiful portraits.

Now why do I challenge myself to go

to these locations?

Really it's because they're different.

In other words, if I went to the

same park, the same hotel then it's going

to just be common so often I'll go

to a church and just do a 360

around the church on the same block or

as I'm driving to a potential nominated location,

I might in fact actually stop three times

as I'm driving there so I'll tell a

limo driver, hey follow me on the way

to this location, if I stop, you stop,

that means I want to shoot here and

that's why because I'm photographing in so many

different spots then I'm getting diversity and I'm

allowing the environment to tell me what to

do.

The trigger is there, the creative trigger is

there, all you got to do is pull

it and what I always do when I'm

photographing, I not only photograph in a particular

spot, before I break the scene, I press

the pause button in my mind and I

walk around the subject and I say well

if I was a second photographer now, where

would I shoot from, where would I go?

So I think that that's what we do

as photographers, we photograph one dimensionally, we look

at a subject, we photograph in one way

and we totally forget to press the pause

button, hey guys stay where you are and

just walk all around, as I walk all

around, that texture is really nice, hey wait

a second, what excuse now could we have

for the couple to be in that shot?

Well what do couples do?

They're romantic, okay, maybe they're about to kiss

or kissing, that's perfect because it brings her

face upwards, great, let me change the environment,

bang.

Now so if you were there, I'm sure

you think well how do I use this?

You walk in the streets, I was showing

my students how to photograph at night and

basically using ambient light, using on-camera flash,

off-camera flash, continuous lights and things like

that.

So as we were walking across the road,

I saw the steam coming up and of

course if you've ever back-lipped smoke, you

know it's the best way to actually show

off smoke or whether it's cigars or whatever

it may be.

So I have one of my students over

here with my SB5000, firing the flash a

little bit behind, so what I wanted to

do is actually use this flash not only

to back-light the smoke but to actually

get a little hint of light on the

front of them as well.

So then I thought alright, that was my

creative trigger, the actual smoke, now I need

to give them an excuse to be there

and that's my encouragement guys, if you want

something to look glamorous and natural, you want

to make something look like as if it

happened on its own, then what you need

to do is give them an excuse.

For example, if you see a bride and

groom, there's beautiful light falling on a nice

wall, you stand them there.

Some people will just say, we'll do what

you want and I'll photograph.

What I'm saying is give them a starting

point, give them something to do.

So what could they be doing there?

Maybe the bride's picking up a dress, looking

over her shoulder back at her man and

then maybe she's picking up a dress and

they're interacting and so on.

So she'll pick up a dress, she'll look

back at him, he holds a dress, they

look at each other, don't worry about the

emotion yet, get my exposure, get my technique

right and then I'll nail the expression.

In this case, I thought cool young couple,

mysterious smoke, that gives me the idea for

maybe a bit of mystery.

So I just get them sort of walking

across the street.

So at some points the smoke would come

out quite big, some a little bit small,

something like this and I'll leave it up

to you to work out which one your

favourite is but at one point what I

decided to do is actually have her on

her own just jumping and then we ended

up getting this one.

I sort of wanted her to almost be

surprised as if this is a car headlights

hitting her or something like that, sorry not

hitting her, maybe threatening and I think this

was my favourite in the end because I

quite love the very dynamic sort of run

and that sort of smoke sort of framing

her quite beautifully and that worked out really

well.

It's just fun though, isn't it?

Most of us, we don't get play time

on a wedding day or a shoot because

we don't give ourselves that time.

When was the last time you just went

out and photographed yourself just to play, just

to practice your craft?

So if you only practice what you do

for a living on a paying gig then

how do you expect to be better?

All right, let's look at the next environment.

What do you think the creative trigger here

was?

So maybe from our audience, what do you

think the creative trigger was?

What said to me, oh my God, this

would be a great idea right now?

If you're walking across the street and then

you see the sun hit a building and

blinding your face, then what is the light

telling us?

It's giving us two light sources, right?

Because one's from behind, then one's from the

front.

So what I'm saying to you is whenever

you walk along a street and then you

get blinded by the reflection of a building

or anything, then you know arguably you might

have the sun hitting the back of you

and of course the sun's hitting your face

which means, hey, wait a second, hey couple,

bride, stand where I'm standing, turn around, now

I have what appears to be like a

two light setup.

So the light hitting them was the reflection

of the light of the building and the

light behind them was the sun.

You put a dark background behind them, then

now we've got this beautiful studio setup right

there and to remove distraction, I lay down

and shot upwards and that's how we got

that shot.

All right, let's keep on playing here.

So we're walking the streets again, that same

couple with the smoke and again, what was

a creative trigger?

You know, anything could be a creative trigger.

It can't just hit you in the face,

you have to look for them.

For me, it's often light or it's texture

or it's something as it is with most

of us.

In this case, there was a beautiful glow

of light underneath the actual rail of the

stairs and I'm like, well, obviously no one

just happens to sit underneath the light but

it's obviously a stylized, fashionable, editorial kind of

image so I thought, why not?

So if you can see me, I'm right

up there shooting down, I expose that beautiful

light and then turn her face and then

we get that shot in that environment.

Now like I said, if I always ended

up photographing the predictable shots, then this would

be on a street lamp, this would be

with maybe some Christmas lights in the background

like most of us do but how much

fun would it be to actually do that

kind of a shot, then introduce the groom

or the partner of the girl, that little

hint of the reflection there and now we

have another spread either in a portrait session

album or a wedding album that we wouldn't

have had in the first place, makes sense?

That comment that you said where you need

to press the pause button and then become

your own second photographer, it just means slowing

down which is something we always hear Jerry

say is slowing down.

You know, these photos look great that we're

looking at, how much post-production was done

on them?

Are we looking at like really retouched images

or what's going on there?

So some of these images are retouched and

some of them are not but my retouching

or the retouching that we like to do

is actually very simple.

I like it invisible and I guess that's

the best compliment that we could have because

you didn't even know what we did.

The invisible retouching that I call it is

basically what we call fashion retouching like if

I retouch skin, you can see the pores.

I don't use any action sets, any keys

or any vignettes or anything like that.

It's basically skin retouching and color correction and

that's basically it.

Also, just for those of you who don't

know, we use a company called Lavalu, L

-A-V-A-L-U, MyLavalu.com and

they're great for our business, they do all

our albums and they're fantastic.

You know, because you're showing these images and

you're showing these really great creative crops that

you're doing right in camera, do you visualize

the crop that you take before you take

the shot or do you take a few

different crops all in the same location and

then work out which one you like better

at the end?

I love to crop in camera personally.

When I look at something, I really say

to myself, well, what's the best part about

this image?

Like I could be posing a full-length

image and thinking, you know what, it's not

working but what is really beautiful is right

there.

So I love dissecting things, I love cropping

things and what I like to do is

put two faces together and bodies together like

a puzzle.

Imagine two pieces of a puzzle putting it

together.

So the way I teach posing and I'll

do that in upcoming presentations and live broadcast

for JGPT is I like to understand how

two faces can fit in together like a

puzzle.

If that happens, it's aesthetically pleasing and it

works really, really well.

So I'm very much an in-camera cropping

kind of a guy.

I always keep it two by three.

I don't sell anything other than two by

three ratio to my clients.

So for example, back in the old days,

it'd be five by four, five by seven,

eight by 10, 11, 14.

What do I sell now?

Four by six, five, seven and a half,

eight by 12, 10, 15 and so on

and so on and so on.

So I encourage you to just go for

it as in don't be too safe.

What's the worst that can happen?

I mean, you're there to tell a story.

So when I crop, I crop for so

many different reasons.

Well, let's keep finding these triggers.

Let's see if we can identify them.

How many times have you walked past a

sign and never thought of it as a

light source?

I can't tell you how many people will

walk past a sign like this and that

is a perfect continuous light softbox, the kind

that are illuminating me here right now.

So what I do is I bring my

subjects really close and what do we do?

We crop the crap out and we get

these beautiful shots here.

I mean, you couldn't ask for a better

light source, could you?

All we need to do and for those

of you watching at home who are inexperienced,

you might say, well, what does good light

mean?

What does good posing mean?

Certainly we'll cover that properly in upcoming episodes

of JGPT, but really most of the time

what I do and most people do, we'll

turn a face into a light source until

the eye that's close to the camera, the

complete eye socket gets in light and we

have beautiful catch lights in the eyes.

But good lighting, good posing could be defined

as flattering and or it helps communicate a

message that you are trying to convey to

the viewer as the artist.

But you can see though that how clean

that is and we cropped it and how

much of a feeling that gives us.

Once you start looking at these triggers, you'll

see them everywhere, everywhere.

So I was walking, I think this is

Rodeo Drive at night time and I saw

this sort of translucent glass and a bit

of a glow behind it and I thought,

wait a second, if I grab my, the

model really, really close to the actual wall,

I'll not only illuminate her, I might get

a two or three reflections out of it

as well and that's how we got these

shots.

It's just fun, man.

It's fun to challenge yourself and to try

something a little bit different, something new rather

than always relying on location number 23, pose

number 27.

Then what I did is I thought, let's

not stop there.

My encouragement to you watching at home and

you guys in the room is take that

first shot, then say to yourself, well, what

will go with it in an album?

So I want you to start thinking about

actually shooting for what you're going to sell.

But in this case, she stayed there, we

brought her boyfriend in front, illuminated him and

then we had turns of her looking and

him being suggested and then of course, switching

that role.

Now, wouldn't that make a great spread in

a wedding album?

That took me two shots.

I think many of us, what we would

have done here, we may have photographed say

30 or 40 or 50 to get just

two.

I'd rather you slow down and take maybe

five and you'll sell two rather than take

50 and you'll sell two.

You're wasting your time.

All right.

Now, what happens if you have no trigger?

If there's literally a blank canvas, there's nothing

but a concrete wall and you think, what

the hell am I going to do with

that?

That's just it guys.

Sometimes you just have to create yourself.

The trigger has to be, well, if I

had a blank canvas and I had some

paint, what would I do?

In this case, I'm thinking concrete, very sunny

and I'm thinking, all right, well maybe we

can split light the groom or the guy

and then maybe use a strong shadow on

the concrete and then introduce an element of

the background and then we get this image.

Not that it's an incredible image, an award

-winning image, but perhaps it's pretty fun for

the location that we had to deal with.

Then I literally turn around 180 degrees and

I see this location.

Now, what was the trigger?

Well, it's the beautiful texture of the lights

and the shade going down.

Now, what I want you to do is,

remember this comment, you want to crop, you

want to remove context to improve mystery.

Now, what does that mean?

Context, we're at a garage.

You can see the gap between the pillars.

That's the context.

I don't want that.

If I know where I am, then it's

boring, it's just stupid.

I take a few steps to the right

and let these overlap each other, crop into

it, get my guy right there because I

need now a shot to compliment the previous

one, don't I, if I want to sell

the spread of a wedding album and I

get this.

Make sense?

If I was loose and wide, I would

go to the context that, yes, I might

crop it after the fact but the proofs

that go to the client don't look as

good as what I was expecting with my

vision straight away.

Make sense?

Speaking of masculine sort of shots and things

like that, what was my creative trigger here

is pretty obvious but what would you do

here?

What would some of us do here?

We see the sun, crop shadows and create

beautiful strong lines almost everywhere.

Sometimes when you're so absorbed in your camera

and the event or you're under pressure, we

totally ignore these things.

The trigger was pocket of light, nice shade.

That reminds me, it's strong, it's harsh, there's

a strong line.

That reminds me of masculine energy.

Let me put the groom there.

That's it.

Now, you might say, well, Gerry, how do

I get him to look at the camera

when it's really, really sunny and he's squinting

all day long?

Well, I might get him to look at

a certain spot and he's doing this and

then I just say, all right, just, okay,

so close your eyes.

On a count of three, look at me,

one, two, three, click.

He could squint all day long but I've

got that shot that I want and I'm

fine.

See, guys don't handle the sun nowhere near

as good as girls can.

Guys are a bit soft when it comes

to those kinds of things.

Women tolerate pain a lot more than men.

All right, same location, a different couple.

How many times, when was the last time

you photographed a couple at F22?

Most of us don't do that, do we?

We shoot at shallow depth of field, 2

.8, 1.4, F2, F4 and so on

and so on and so on but most

of us don't think about actually increasing that

aperture to create an unusual effect.

I placed, so the trigger again was there.

I thought, wouldn't it be cool to put

the groom with a shadow behind him and

the girl with a light, so dark and

light and like think of all those metaphors.

So I did this shot.

Now, you would swear that was a composite

or a composite as the Americans would say.

I'm American now, so as we say.

So this shot, they were standing about three,

four feet away from each other but I

shot at F22.

Now, I know it seems obvious but when

was the last time you did that?

Probably never.

So most people would shoot two exposures for

this or HDR or something like that but

I think it's fun to just try some

different things.

Earlier, you talked about slowing down and how

that's such a key because in being able

to see things, actually being able to look

at everything in your environment, the more that

you shoot, the longer that you've been a

photographer, the easier it gets.

So don't get discouraged if you still freak

out when you go to a shoot and

you're at a the fact, it's okay.

Just keep that in your mentality.

Keep that in your mind as you're out

shooting and it will come.

The more you keep trying to practice it,

the more it will happen.

How high are you happy to go with

your ISO in those night shots that we

were showing earlier?

I mean, it was really dark.

Some of them are at midnight and stuff.

So how high are you happy to go

with your camera?

Well, I mean, obviously with the latest cameras,

they're incredible.

You can crank them up ridiculously.

Being a Nikon ambassador, I'm very proud to

be a Nikon ambassador.

I have all the latest, greatest cameras.

The D850 is incredible, the D5, but I

mean, we're talking 12,800 easily.

You know what I mean?

I think many of us freak out, what,

10,000 ISO?

What's a couple going to say?

I think we as photographers overthink the quality

of a high ISO image way more than

couples do.

Has a bride ever said to you, you

know what, I know you're not shooting with

a D5 because I can see people fringing

in the shadow areas and really the noise

levels are terrible.

I mean, no bride's going to say that.

Now, yes, we don't want to provide crap

to our clients, but think about it.

If you're shooting at night, it's probably at

a reception, maybe in a church.

You're probably not going to enlarge those much

anyway.

So just don't overthink it.

Crank the ISO up, find your threshold and

stick with it, but push it a bit

further than you think.

So for me, easily 12,800 and beyond.

Do you scout out the areas for these

triggers, like to find the best areas that

will provide you with these triggers before you

bring a client out for a shoot?

Because I don't know that too many people

will plan their wedding portraits to happen under

a bridge or in a garage.

So do you pre-scout any of that

stuff?

Well, let's talk about just normal locations for

a moment.

So I don't want to go extreme.

So for example, let me re-ask the

question for you perhaps and give you a

more broader answer that might be more appealing

to the broader audience.

Do I scout locations, period?

So if I'm photographing a wedding at this

place or whatever, do I go there beforehand

to look at it?

Well, here's the thing.

Unless I'm photographing the wedding or the portrait

session at the exact same time that I'm

scouting it, there's really no point.

Now yes, I could create the good light

or find the good light and just make

it work, no problem, but I usually like

to use the light that's there.

If I need to add light with a

speed light, a continuous light, a strobe, then

of course I'll do it.

So very rarely will I go to a

location and look around and see what I'm

going to do.

That being said, if you shoot a wedding

that you've never been to before, like a

location and it's a big hotel or it's

a big mansion, then walk around, at least

know the possibilities and know the priorities.

And at least in your mind, you'll say,

all right, okay, if all weather's good and

lighting is good, I will go to here,

here, here and here, and here and here

is a bonus.

But I'm telling you now, I don't know

if many of you at home or you

in the room, guys, that you remember this

photograph that I've taken of that gold staircase,

sort of one of my legacy shots, you'd

call them, it's a bride lying down with

a beautiful gold staircase.

I went to a house overlooking the Harbour

Bridge in Sydney and I get there, the

house was a beautiful house, but it was

dark.

There was nowhere inside the house that actually

looked good, that made the bride shine bright.

And guess where I photographed?

In the front study where they put all

of their crap from the other rooms to

make all the other rooms look beautiful, but

they put it all in the front room.

So I went in the front room and

stacked all the crap out and simply drew

the warm, translucent blind and it gave me

this perfect warm soft box.

And they trusted me and I ended up

doing 90% of my coverage right there.

Look, don't be a hero and never scout

anything, know where you're shooting, go for it,

but unless you're shooting at the exact same

time, it will all change on the day

of the shoot.

All right, let's keep on going, shall we?

What was the trigger here?

What do you think the trigger was here?

Well, we've got a beautiful textured wall, but

whereabouts on the textured wall would be fun

to shoot?

What's begging to be done?

What do you think?

You see that beautiful little arch of that

shadow?

Maybe we can have some negative space.

Now the sun's coming up really, really high

down low, so we need an excuse to

bring their face upwards.

Now remember this, one strong direction of light,

two people interacting, one person suffers.

That's just a fact.

You will never get perfect lighting on two

people with one direction of light when they're

interacting.

The only way you would do it is

with a reflector, but then that's almost two

directions of light.

In this case, then she gets the good

light, the negative space is there and that's

basically it.

Now again, this is not going to win

any awards, but I'm trying to show you

these triggers that help and make you understand

perhaps all the things you've been missing off

all the years.

Now, how many times have you actually walked

into a bedroom and you've seen blinds being

pulled down because it's actually very, very hot

and you see a little glow of light

reflecting off the wall?

Did you think that you could easily just

walk up, pull that up and now all

of a sudden we have this beautiful reflector

and now we get this shot and you

would swear that was probably done in a

studio or with a nice light or something.

So remember, every time you see a blind

like that, bring them back.

This is at a workshop in Turkey.

So you might think, do I have like

300 assistants at a wedding day?

And that's how this was taken.

Now, so many people ask me about the

following shots.

So I will be showing one older one

that you may have seen before, but for

those of you at home who haven't seen

this, for those of you in the room

that haven't seen this, everyone asked me about

it, so I thought I'd actually show you

and it's also a great lesson on finding

and learning from those creative triggers.

So what was my creative trigger here?

Well, the bride was inside the house, I

was with the groom, we're walking outside.

So if you can imagine, so if you

imagine this TV represents the window of the

house.

So I'm basically walking, the groom is between

me and the house and as I was

walking, of course you walk like this, as

I was walking, I saw the reflection of

his silhouette against the overcast sky.

But then as he crossed the bride, I

saw her vividly through that reflection.

I thought, wait a second here, without being

all romantic and lovey-dovey about it all,

but maybe we can actually produce an image

as a metaphor of two becoming one, of

a bride and groom becoming one.

So what I did was, I asked if

they had a ladder, a small little one,

they did, he stood on the ladder, so

I can get him perfectly in that overcast

sky.

So if you can imagine, now I'm seeing

a reflection of his silhouette in the glass.

Then, if she comes now, through that actual

silhouette, now I will see her face merged

into his silhouette and we actually get this

image.

It's actually quite surreal, the more you look

at it, the more you see, like the

fact that his shoulder looks like her shoulder,

almost his hair looks like her hair, like

almost like a modern haircut of a, you

know, almost like your haircut, baby girl.

But that's what I'm trying to say is

that, how cool would it be to recognise

those things but they're not just going to

hit you in the face, you have to

look for them.

Hopefully, after today's presentation, we've not only given

you very tangible ideas that if you see

a blind, you'll do it, if you see

a fluorescent light in the garage, you'll do

it, but that'll give you an idea of

how to use the environment other ways, for

examples that you haven't seen.

Now what do we see here?

Now, this is Bryant Park Library, is that

what it is, baby?

Bryant Park, no, that's the New York City

Library.

Yeah, but it's just next door to Bryant

Park.

Okay, alright, wonderful.

So we're at this location in New York

and I'm sure many of us would use

it as a background, maybe get them on

the steps, maybe use the wall, maybe get

the couple away from the background, things like

that.

And the more I looked at it, I

thought, I saw this particular sort of rail

there and I'm looking at these things, I'm

like, wait a second, if I was to

walk all around there and shoot back that

way, I might get a really, really cool

view.

Now, nothing groundbreaking or anything like that, but

I think many of us, we tend to

see what's obvious first.

There's no creative trigger, it had to hit

us in the face.

Great location, let me just shoot there, whatever.

And then I go down that rail and

shoot up, I think it was basically like

a wheelchair access to get to the library,

and there was too many people going in

and out as I was photographing and there

was too much distraction, so I just got

rid of the distraction.

I just posed my group there and got

rid of them totally.

Now, we got great reactions and things like

that, all is good, but then I wanted

to photograph with my beautiful, juicy 105 millimeter

1.4 lens that makes everything look incredible

in the background.

As you can imagine, the trees in the

background and the lamp in the background and

everything would look incredible.

The problem is, too many people walking in

and out.

Now, I'm not going to sit there and

photograph and just ask my retoucher, can you

get rid of those people?

I'm a purist at heart, certainly I do

what I do afterwards in post-production, but

if I can do it in camera, I

will.

Sure enough, we took about 20 shots, I

had a leg in there, I had a

head in there, and we finally got the

shot that we were looking for in the

beginning.

Now, that beautiful light, we had the sunlight

reflecting off the opposing building coming in this

way.

I wanted a quiet moment between the couple.

Do you notice something here?

The hands are exposing the thinnest part of

her waist.

I think many of us, when we pose

a guy or hugging a girl, it's always

actually covering up the thinnest part of her

waist.

What a waste of a waist.

Bring those back.

We actually bend that knee in a little

bit to create a little bit of separation,

and the leg, beautiful.

You see how the faces fit like a

puzzle as we're discussing, and then those hands

are saying something.

Remember what we said, good lighting, good posing

is either flattering and or it helps communicate

the message that we're trying to convey to

the viewer.

Make sense?

We got that from that.

Kept on walking the streets.

What else do we see here?

What was the trigger?

The Chrysler building, probably my favorite building in

New York City, beautiful building, but then I've

got deep shadow.

I've got strong highlight.

What the hell do I do?

I think most of us would probably have

come to the conclusion that we'll get some

maybe off-camera flash.

We'll expose for the background, get some off

-camera flash, and that's exactly what I did.

This time, though, what I did was I

actually flicked my white balance to shade that

actually makes the flash look like a video

light because I didn't really have a diffuser,

I didn't really have anything with me other

than a bare bulb flash, and then we

ended up getting this shot.

What you probably don't know, for me to

get this perspective, get the hints of the

Chrysler building there and crop the crap out

as we discussed, I had to lie on

the ground and shoot upwards.

Now, here's a very important tip.

Whenever you're lying down on the ground or

squatting down and shooting upwards with a wide

-angle lens, if your couple stays straight like

this, then it's going to look like they're

doing that.

They're going to look really terrible.

What you don't know in this, in fact,

he's leaning forward literally about this much, and

I've cropped the awkwardness out so you don't

see it, but you would swear he was

standing normally.

I have a gap between his arms that

also provide a silhouette for him because most

of us think of the silhouette for the

girl to get her shape, but you don't

want to make him look wide either.

We turn his face into the light source,

and another little tip is this.

Have you ever actually had an off-camera

flash with one of your assistants, illuminating somebody,

and then you have to fire the shot

like three, four times to get the flash

in the right spot?

Here's a tip.

Let's say, Justin, of course, Justin.

If you're there, Justin, and I want to

illuminate you, and I just say to my

assistant, well, stand 45 degrees and just point

it towards Justin, well, it's a hit and

miss.

What I want to do is I want

to create a shadow on the side of

the face that's close to the camera, therefore

creating the short side, the narrow side, the

sexy side, make it look slimmer and sharper.

What I do is I tell my assistant,

when you're holding the flash, I want you

to draw an imaginary line from your eyes,

your face, to the flash, and keep on

going until you can just see the other

eye socket.

Does that make sense?

If you were photographing me, and this was

the flash, you might say to your assistant,

just photograph this way, but draw an imaginary

line between the eyes of the assistant, the

flash, point it towards me, and keep on

going where you just see this eye socket.

Why do I say eye socket?

Because you could have half the eye look

a bit creepy.

Keep on going, fire the flash once, and

guess what?

Perfect shadow, both eyes perfectly lit, and we

get it every single time.

All right, it was muggy as hell, oh

my God, have you ever shot in Florida?

I've in Miami and all that kind of

thing, it's crazy.

Actually, was this Miami?

Where was this, baby girl?

That was, I'm trying to see.

This was at a workshop.

Yes.

Where did we photograph this one again?

It was all muggy and misty and all

that kind of stuff.

Anyway, it was one of those places that

was really muggy.

We're walking past this restaurant, and it was

all foggy.

It reminded me of the Titanic scene when

they were doing it in the thing.

Was it Chicago?

It was all misty.

It got really muggy.

There we go.

I thought, all right, how about we expose

to that background.

Basically, the mist, the fog, the lights in

the background was my trigger.

Then I thought, we'll get them in the

way.

No matter where I put them, there were

spotlights, giving me some really ugly light falling

on their faces.

Now, for me to underexpose the background, there

was still that light in their faces.

I placed my reflector on top of them

to get a clear path.

Then I underexposed the background, and we get

something like this.

Then why wouldn't we, in this kind of

a situation, crop a bit closer?

How cool is it that we can actually

get a shot like this that actually gets

their profile perfectly sharp.

Then that little eyelash on the other side,

some may consider it distracting.

I think it looks really, really cool.

It's also out of focus, but this beautiful

little profile between them, it formed a little

puzzle.

Can you imagine that at the end of

an album and then blending this into black

and a big panorama like this?

How cool would that be?

But something so simple, we have to look

at that environment and recognize those triggers, but

also look for them.

That's the whole idea.

Now, walking past this location, and as you

know, I'm a big fan of any light

source.

If it illuminates, I'll use it.

I'm walking down the stairs, and then I

shoot from above, and I shoot down, and

I take this shot.

I've got to say, it's a boring shot.

It's a well-lit, boring photograph.

I thought, all right, well, wait a second.

Let's explore this location a little bit more.

Then I thought, wait a second, that light

source, if I squat down the stairs and

shoot this way, then I'm actually going to

get the light falling on the couple and

quite a beautiful abstract reflection, so I get

this image.

So there was someone on the other side

illuminating her with an ice light, and then

I'll look at that reflection.

I'm like, that's worth a shot on its

own.

But how cool would that be on a

canvas print as a talking piece on the

wall in your lounge room, for example?

And that's a whole other seminar, guys, but

I sincerely and strongly believe in the power

of print.

All right, guys.

Now, what's my trigger here?

This is a pretty boring shot, but what's

my trigger?

The trigger is that beautiful little silhouette of

the foliage with that beautiful glow from behind,

but I need to isolate that to get

that romance.

So what did I do?

I brought out the ice light, I illuminated

her, and I wanted a quiet little, what

I call a moment between a moment, not

so obvious.

So I get her in light, a little

semi-silhouette of him, and that beautiful glow

behind, that gives us a beautiful sort of

feeling, you know?

Let's keep on going.

Let's just build our creative muscle now about

how to actually really start to see the

world a little bit differently.

Now, many of us probably have seen and

photographed with Christmas lights.

Like at night time, you see Christmas lights,

and we always think of that bokeh effect.

We get someone in the foreground and so

on.

Well, you might only see a few of

them in a tree during the day.

But if you get a couple way, way,

way in the foreground, expose for them and

have that sort of add a focus, it

can add a beautiful little element to a

shot.

Of course, the brightest part of the image

is still this, but that just makes it

interesting to look at.

Does that make sense?

Fun, fun, fun.

All right.

I told you earlier in the presentation that

I'm very proud of Nikon Ambassador, and probably

one of my proudest moments of my career

is last year I was chosen to do

the campaign for the Nikon D850.

And not only did we represent the wedding

genre, but also the fashion genre as well,

which I was really, really excited about.

And this was shot in actually Las Vegas.

I don't know if you guys have been

there before.

This is called the Parisian Palace in Las

Vegas.

An incredible ornate location.

Imagine like Gianni Versace and Roberta Cavalli had

a love child and built a house.

That's what this particular house looks like.

It's incredible.

So anyway, I thought I can photograph the

reflection.

It sort of seemed obvious that if we

were in this location that we would photograph

the reflection.

But then I'm like, well, that's obvious.

I may have done that, but the frame

actually was incredible.

So let me just photograph her there.

Now, you can see that she's standing next

to a window.

So there's a window next to her on

the left-hand side of her, and there's

a little window behind the mirror.

So I thought, this is perfect.

This is just a studio setup.

I can include the gold frame in the

actual shot, illuminate her from the front with

a little tickle of light in her face,

and have a little accent light on her

jaw in the back of her.

The problem was the sun was coming strongly

and vividly on her shoulder, and I just

couldn't get rid of it.

Now, you've got exposing for that kind of

light and the sunlight hitting the shoulder, you're

not going to resurrect that in Photoshop.

It's going to be almost impossible to do

it well.

So Melissa was wearing socks.

I got her to take off her socks,

rolled them up, and I wedged it between

the mirror and the actual wall that blocked

off that spotlight.

After this shot was taken, I got the

guy involved, and we ended up doing this

image.

So this was photographed at 1.4. I

love that plane of focus.

You've got her eyelid there and her lips,

beautifully, perfectly in focus.

And then how important is that little gap

between the nose and the forehead?

If it was joint, it would be okay.

I prefer it overlap properly, because if that

was touching it just like that, it actually

makes his nose look pronounced, hashtag bigger, which

we don't want.

And then how important is that I have

that little gap above his ear, and how

important is that I have a little bit

of separation beyond that corner, and then we

have all those beautiful tones mixing and harmonising

together for a beautiful effect.

Cool, cool.

I talked about Christmas lights, and I'm sure

some of us have done this in the

past.

This is the classic shot that most people

would have done if you photograph weddings or

couples.

So I saw these Christmas lights in my

environment.

I grabbed the couple.

It actually looks like Melissa a little bit,

don't you think?

Quite crazy.

So we had the couple looking at each

other.

My recommendation is this.

So if a couple are facing each other,

have your assistant, whoever's holding the flash, or

whether it's on a stand, about six feet

away from them, never have the flash too

low.

If the flash is too low, it'll hit

light up here, and it'll dwindle off, and

you won't get that beautiful light around their

profile.

So my advice to you is if you've

got a bride here and a groom here,

then the light should be six feet behind

and as high up as possible on the

same level.

And I usually use the groom to hide

the flash.

So what my recommendation is, get yourself a

little monopod, put your flash on it, put

it up, and then that monopod and that

flash is hidden behind the groom.

Turn the flash so it bounces perfectly in

the middle of the couple, bouncing between, getting

that beautiful glow.

In this case, this next shot for the

campaign, I wanted to actually test the high

ISO capability of the D850, hence sort of

emulating a shot that I've popularized over the

years.

But what I did though, I brought the

groom a little bit closer to me so

the flash hits his face and she gets

a bit more prettier light.

Does that make any sense?

Now then, it's funny, I sort of made

them laugh, and at one particular point I

got that, you know that smoke in a

can type thing?

So we got the smoke in a can

that emulates sort of dust and environment and

all that kind of stuff.

So we had this sort of remnants of

the smoke sort of filtering across.

I made them laugh, she moved forward.

The cool thing was the flash hit his

face perfectly now as a perfect reflector back

on her, and we get this shot.

So I love the fact that he's almost

in silhouette, and it almost looks out of

focus, trust me, if you go close to

it, you'll see her eye perfectly sharp there.

So it was a bit of luck that

grabbed the focus there when I was photographing

it as they moved, when I made them

laugh out of that shot.

Alright, let's move on.

This is a really cool location in Melbourne.

I was doing this portrait, and I was

shooting at a very shallow depth of field,

I think it was 1.4, I think

it was the 85 at this point, and

then I thought to myself, alright, this is

great, everything's out of focus, beautiful bokeh effect,

looks all cool, but how cool would it

be to actually maybe bump up the light

on her face, narrow the light down, so

I used the ice light with barn doors,

or barn doors, as you would say, and

narrow it down and underexpose the background.

So I'm using the ice light with the

barn doors, and then we end up getting

a shot like this.

So beautiful quality of light, very, very soft.

You sort of see as well how we've

got the lips parted as well.

If you ever want to make lips that

are small or bigger actually look even softer

and bigger again, is I always ask my

models, my subjects, to just breathe through your

mouth, but not like, that's silly, right?

Like just part the lips enough to breathe

through the mouth.

That reminds the model to relax the lips,

and without pouting, because some people have seen

America's Next Top Model, and then they all

start pouting, and then everyone pouts, and it

just looks ridiculous.

So little things like that can really, really

help you.

Alright, so here I was in a, this

was, where was this?

This was in Melbourne, this was at a

business centre in a hotel, okay?

So what was the trigger?

What am I looking for here?

What was the creative trigger that made me

shoot here?

Well, as I walked into that particular little

alcove there, I saw a translucent sort of

film or sticker, whatever you want to call

it, on that piece of glass.

Straight away I said to myself, silhouette, because

I could place someone in the path, have

a nondescript background, and then all of a

sudden get this perfect little profile.

It didn't stop there.

So I set them up, I exposed, basically

I exposed for the background, which could make

the couple go dark with less detail.

But then, in a business centre, you normally

see computers.

I saw an iMac, so I positioned my

camera, my lens, close to the reflective surface,

and then I ended up doing this shot.

But how cool would that be in the

spread of a wedding album?

Now, you have to build enough trust, of

course, to shoot this kind of thing with

a couple, because they want to photograph next

to that fountain, and here you are in

a business centre, photographing next to a translucent

piece of glass and the reflection of an

iMac, which is quite ridiculous.

But if you build enough trust, and you

take a shot, and you show them, then

they'll do anything for you for the rest

of the time, don't you think?

Cool, cool?

What's the trigger here?

What do you think I did here?

I'm sort of pretty much telling you by

showing you the behind-the-scenes photograph, but

what was the trigger, and how would I

use it?

The answer is not difficult, it's just, that's

the thing.

We tend to overcomplicate an environment where we

don't look at it for what it is.

What is that?

What is that that we all have in

the back of our car, in the trunk

of our car?

What is exactly what you're seeing here?

What is this?

And what kind of reflector is it?

It's a silver one, right?

If it's a silver reflector, does that make

it softer or a bit more contrasty and

sharper?

It's a specular, it's more contrasty, it's sharper,

it's gonna be punchier.

So, all I do is I crop the

crap out, and I get that beautiful little

highlight in the behind her head, and then

we ended up photographing this, and you would

swear that was done in the studio.

Well, really, I made the, the studio was

already there, I just had to find it.

And that's what I'm getting at, is that

many of us don't look at the environment

either like a studio, or we don't recognize

or look for those creative triggers.

And sometimes it can be so obvious, but

sometimes it's the most obvious things you don't

even see, because they're so obvious, it's just

there, you take it for granted.

Make sense?

But pretty cool to be able to get

that shot from that environment.

And I could show you the original image,

and it wasn't too different than what I've

done with it post-production.

All right.

Okay, what do you see here?

What was my creative trigger?

What obviously would I wanna get in this

shot?

The skyline, okay, so it's pretty obvious, we

wanna get the skyline.

So, generally speaking, if you know me, or

if you've been taught by me, you know

that I'll always choose light above location, but

if I find a great location with not

so great light, I will create the good

light or find the good light.

So what's the problem here?

If I expose for that, what's gonna happen

in the foreground?

It's gonna be dark, so what do I

have to do?

Fill light, so maybe an off-camera flash.

So, the environment told me that.

Basically said, Jerry, if you want that city,

and you shooting up above here, there's a

little balcony, then obviously get the couple over

here and shoot down, and have the water

envelop their faces and frame their faces.

That's basically it.

So then what did I do?

I grabbed my off-camera flash.

What did I do?

I drew an imaginary line, my assistant's eye

to the flash to the person's eye, moved

it to a point where we can just

see what's going on.

It illuminates the eye socket closest to the

camera.

I changed my white balance to cloudy to

add a little bit of warmth to make

the flash almost look like video light, a

tungsten video light to a certain extent.

And then we get this shot.

What else is this environment telling us?

I want you to look at the environment.

We've taken the obvious shot.

What else is the environment telling us?

What else is the creative trigger?

Literally screaming and saying, shoot me here.

Let me cut to the chase here.

So, this is a bar table, right?

What do you do at a bar table?

What would a couple be doing?

They're leaning on it.

So, what I'm getting at is, the environment,

the light, the location, the hair, the dress

will tell you what to do.

That's the creative trigger.

And again, it's nothing awe-inspiringly different, but

I guarantee you've walked past these triggers and

totally ignored them.

So, what did I do?

Well, we brought them in the way, tilt

the face, chin up a little bit, even

though the better quality of light was coming

through here, but it was dappled, so I

turned the other way.

It didn't look good.

So, I backlit them, and this was fun.

Then, I'm not a big fan of flare,

but I thought it'd be fun to actually

create a different sequence of shots with a

bit of flare coming in my lens and

crop a little bit closer, and then we

got that.

So, the cool thing was that I ended

up doing two series of shots, one that

was perfectly saturated, like this, just strong saturation,

and then with that bit of flare coming

through and all that kind of stuff.

Cool, cool?

All right, what would we, most of us

do in this situation?

Think about it.

It's pretty obvious, but I want us to

spell it out.

How many people do you know, and that

you've met, and photographers that you've met, and

you may be even one of them, and

I'm not saying this is a bad thing,

but you almost shoot with flash all the

time.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing.

I'm saying that if you use fill flash

or use a big strobe on every single

image, guess what?

Your work all looks the same.

It looks good, but it looks predictably good.

There's no heartbeat.

You know how some people will nominate themselves,

I'm a natural light shooter, I'm a flash

shooter.

I'm just a photographer.

I don't care what it is.

If it illuminates, I'll use it.

So my encouragement to you guys in the

room, for those of you at home, if

you're inexperienced, and it's an easy approach to

say, I'm a natural light shooter, I can

crank the ISO up, I don't need speed

lights, I don't need anything, and I'll just

shoot what's there, that's totally fine, but what

happens if you go to a church that's

too dark?

What happens if you go to a church

when the priest says no flash?

What happens if something happens to one of

your units?

What happens if you can't take your strobe

on that mountain or whatever it may be?

You need to learn to use everything.

Really, you need to be an expert at

what you do, so that anything that's thrown

in front of you, you can actually do.

So my suggestion is that, yes, you can

use flash, and I think many of us,

half of us would have done this kind

of a shot.

We backlight everything, we crop the crap out,

we crop the trees above them, isolate the

shadow, get them walking, having some fun, and

so on and so forth.

But let's look back at that location again.

Do you see how there's a hill going

up, and then I'm going up again?

Now that's making me think of a couple

of shots.

The triggers were my perspective.

I just said, guys, I want you to

go down there, and I want to have

a look at the quality of light.

I saw their long shadows.

That looked good.

Then the next trigger was, let me isolate

the actual shot, and the next trigger was,

when the sun's going down, I'm going to

get them on that hill, and I'm going

to stand where they are and shoot upwards.

So I'm in this situation right now, and

then I need a silhouette.

Now most of us who do a silhouette

will get the couple looking at each other,

like I've showed you a couple times today.

Looking at each other, foreheads touching, all that

kind of thing.

Don't get your couple to kiss when it's

a silhouette.

That's my recommendation.

If you get a couple looking at each

other, kissing, their shadows bleed into each other,

there's no luxury.

The luxury of a forehead, a nose, lips,

and jaw is very beautiful, very sexy, very

sensual.

Let alone two people about to kiss or

something like that.

What I'm getting is a silhouette.

What does that mean?

Shape.

I'm showing a shape.

Show shape.

Give them something to do.

In this case, I just got them walking.

So I took this shot first.

This might be a nice panorama.

Might be great for the wall, something like

that.

But don't you think this has a lot

more soul?

How important is it that I got him

to cross his legs over, which gives him

shape?

See, most of us, we can point the

toe of the bride, bend the knee, shift

the weight back, arch the back.

We get this beautiful shape of a bust,

waist, hips.

Sexy, beautiful.

Make sense?

And now, with him, we often see the

S curve in the bride.

With a groom, I often refer to it

as the V or the C.

A V is broad shoulders.

And if I bring my legs, in other

words, if I stand like this, hang the

body down and then move the body like

this, my shoulders are brought towards the camera.

I put one leg and I just bend

that knee.

I don't do it in a feminine way.

I just bend that knee that's creating more

of a V shape.

And then how important is that little sliver

of light between his arm and his body?

Because, after all, don't we want to know

where our body stops and starts rather than

looking that wide?

Can you imagine looking that wide?

Make sense?

It's just really awesome to hear you talk

about the progression from beginning to end in

these shots, especially in that last series that

you took, because I think a lot of

us, I know I would have probably stopped

at that first one with the shadow in

the foreground.

As a matter of fact, I was shooting

with you at that wedding and I took

a shot like that and I'm done.

I was very happy with my shot.

But it's really helpful to hear you talk

about your thought process as you took that

shot and then progressed to get better and

better and better and end up with that

last one with that silhouette that was mind

-boggling.

So that is, it's really helpful, and a

lot of people have mentioned it as well,

really helpful to hear your thought process, not

just what you do, this is what you

do in this situation, in this pose, and

that kind of thing, but to hear why

you're doing that and how you're thinking that

so that we can think for that on

our own too, which is really helpful.

If you ever get, or if we ever

get feedback from our clients that you're not

really shooting enough of the ambience or the

environment that you're in, I know in this

situation it's a little bit different, but when

you're doing those really close crops or you're

trying to crop out the environment because you're

not in really nice situations, you ever get

clients that will say, you know, well you

didn't really show where my wedding took place

or where we did our portrait session.

And that really comes down to making sure

that you work for your clients and then

also work for yourself.

So you get the images that your clients

need, you get those full-length portraits where

you're showing off the historical nature of what

you're photographing.

Get those first.

You're working for your clients.

But then after you get your bread and

butter, then you can have your dessert and

you can play around and get some of

these more creative crops and have a little

bit more fun with the images.

So that's a really cool idea too.

Awesome, absolutely.

Guys, we are not parents, but we are

a proud uncle and auntie to many people

in the industry.

But from a blood perspective, I have two

nephews and a niece and my younger nephew

and niece, I always tell them, do what

you have to do to do what you

want to do.

Basically, do your homework, pass, then you can

party all you want.

So sometimes you don't want to hear from

your parents.

You need an uncle to come and say

to you, do what you have to do,

do what you want to do.

In other words, like Melissa said, get the

shots that will make them happy, that are

predictable, then now you can play all you

want.

And trust me, you can be as creative

as all you want, but if you don't

get those bread and butter shots, then that's

going to be a huge problem.

All right, guys.

And I can't tell you enough and reiterate

enough about how important it is to slow

down.

Slowing down, I know that's probably the easiest

two words you can put together.

I'm saying to you, though, that as far

as the advice that I have after teaching

now for 18 years and shooting professionally for

25 years, the biggest problem that I see

with most photographers who I know can get

better almost overnight is to take less shots,

slow down, and do them better.

And I'm telling you that will be, that'll

be the, if you have to, print out

a label, a sticker, put the word slow

down, stick it on the back of your

camera.

So when you put your camera to your

eye, it reminds you to slow down.

Trust me, it's the best advice I can

give you.

All right, let's move on.

So this is a recent wedding in Melbourne

that we did.

So what was the trigger here?

Here I am doing my test shot to

basically photograph, to photograph the bridal party walking

in, but I saw this location, I thought,

wait a second, there's a creative trigger.

What am I going to do now?

What do you think I did with this

location when I had five minutes and I

took the couple out of the actual room

and said, hey guys, I've got a great

idea, I want to do this.

What do you think I saw here that

was a trigger?

What I'm thinking is we get a couple

of champagne glasses and what I love about

this is that the actual diffuser, let's call

it a diffuser, actually mutes all the colors,

but the only color that I'll see is

the one that's close enough to the actual

material, so I get this one.

That ended up being the title page of

their wedding album.

Make sense?

Most of us, I guarantee, would be sitting

there, freaking out, waiting to get the right

exposure for the couple to walk in the

reception venue, but you have to be on

the prowl, you have to look, you have

to search, you have to recognize those creative

triggers.

I actually have a question that I'd like

to ask that no one knows to ask

because I was at, I was photographing this

wedding with you and what I learned when

you took this image is actually, I saw

that you were going to take a silhouette

and I just thought to put them behind

there, but can you talk about where you

positioned them to get that sharp of a,

that great of a reflection, if you know

where I'm going with this?

A silhouette?

Yeah, I mean, they were exceptionally close to

the glass because they were, if you went

an inch further away, it would just blend

in and bleed out into nothing, so it's

literally, go as close as you can to

the glass without touching it and that's what

I recommend because sometimes you might get an

abstract face like going really close and then

adding contrast to it, but the minute you

do this on a piece of glass, it

looks really weird, so it's a tough thing.

All right, what about this?

I walk in this bedroom, there's a lot

of mess, a lot of fuss, there's a

beautiful reflection in the mirror, so what do

I do?

I position myself right on the edge, I

turn her around and this is a pretty

obvious trigger, the reflection is pretty obvious, but

what was not so obvious is this.

I thought, okay, I've got so much crap

all around, I want to open up that

door and go nice and tight and get

that beautiful light, that sliver of light tickling

her back there and then we get this

shot.

So sometimes, like I said, it could be

an obvious location that we've used and we've

shot before, but maybe we haven't gone to

that extent.

So let me show you a handful of

spreads of the wedding album that the couple

actually purchased.

So this dappled beautiful sunlight coming through and

we got this, that beautiful tickle of light,

I love that little dappled light on her

face.

So that was the first spread of her

coverage, then that was the second spread, you

love it how it sort of just goes

up and it sort of leads your eye

in and then that was a detail spread,

all just using that beautiful sunlight coming through.

I think many of us would not use

direct sunlight coming through a window for a

bride's coverage, of a bride wearing a white

dress.

Then I'm shooting it very shy to the

field here as well and then that's her

adjusting her veil and that's that as well.

Pretty cool.

All right, let's keep on looking at these

creative triggers.

Where would you shoot here?

What's the creative trigger?

Where would I play here?

I mean obviously it's just a beautiful place.

What I'm seeing, I'm a texture guy by

the way, guys.

I love touching, I love putting my hand

in lentil.

John and Delisa Cooper who are our neighbours,

they wash their dishes with a rubber sponge

and it has these little nipples on it,

I don't know what you call it, I'm

sorry if I want to have better words.

But the sponge had so much texture on

it and I said I would be very

happy if you bought me one as a

present, sure enough, the time that I saw

them the next time and now as I'm

looking at my computer I'm just touching this

sponge.

But anyway, what has that got to do

with this photograph?

I love crunching leaves.

If it's a hot day and the leaves

are all crunchy, I'll step on them but

that's my trigger, right?

So what I did was, this was a

bit too harsh for the kind of soft

photograph that I wanted to produce.

So I grabbed more leaves, put them all

here, stood up on this particular spot and

shot down and I ended up getting this

shot.

Arms off the body, turn the face, beautiful

soft light, beautiful shaped legs and that was

it.

This is a wedding I shot in Greece

last year of one of my best friends

growing up and I said, screw it, I'm

just going to climb up on the church

because the church was really short and I

wanted the view.

Now can you imagine, these guys are literally

about three, four feet away.

Where am I going to stand?

Where am I going to sit to take

the photographs of the ceremony?

And you might think, Jerry, do you wear

shorts at a wedding?

I'm like, if I'm ever going to wear

shorts at a wedding, it's going to be

a 100 degree wedding in Greece where your

best friend's getting married and it's okay that

you wear shorts because some of the guests

are wearing shorts as well so there it

is.

I took this picture.

The sun's going down.

They're getting married just before sunset so I

only had literally maybe 15 minutes of sunlight

but I knew, when I was up on

that church, I thought to myself, the sun's

going down, throughout the ceremony, I'm going to

take some shots with the rocks that I

could see clearly over there and then I

thought, behind the church was a field, I'm

going to wait for the sun to completely

set and get a silhouette of the church.

Let me show the environment.

So can you imagine, this next shot, I

stood about there, shot back this way and

I ended up getting this shot and again,

I need a silhouette.

I need something that separates their body parts

and so on so I can basically see

between them.

Alright, let's have a look at this next

shot.

Now, I see a pocket of light.

It's very strong, it's very harsh, it's very

masculine so I'm like, great, dude, stand there

in that pocket of light but I don't

know about you but it looks awkward.

The gap between his legs, it just doesn't

feel right to me but I thought to

myself, you know what, I'm not really digging

him in that shot yet but let me

just cross his legs a little bit but

let's get the bride in the foreground to

make it look a lot more interesting.

So, tilt the face, chin up, beautiful shadows

in the cheekbones, life is good and then

I thought to myself, wouldn't it be cool

to shoot at F22 like I did that

previous time and you see how much difference

that makes.

That's just too abstract.

It looks a little bit weird there, completely

out of focus.

This one is a lot more interesting.

Let's not waste it.

You know what, there was that beautiful pocket

of light there.

She looks amazing there.

Let me pretend to be a second photographer,

press the pause button, take a few steps

and walk around and then see something different.

So that pocket of light led me there

but as I diagnosed the scene, there were

other creative triggers that I responded to in

a better way.

This actually was also in Greece, this wedding.

This was actually two years ago.

So they were walking, we had some fun

and what do you think is, well, it's

a personal opinion but what do you like

the most about say this shot or them

or what they're wearing or things like that?

What's beautiful to look at right now?

For me, it was her back, that beautiful,

the small of her back, the beautiful texture,

that beautiful little shadow on the back of

her dress on her body, I thought was

beautiful.

So I thought to myself, I want to

photograph her and excuse to photograph her from

behind.

What could she be doing?

Maybe she's adjusting her hair.

That gave me an excuse to do something.

I thought wait a second, alright, I want

to introduce the groom now.

Before I stop and I recreate that pose

for any unknown reason, let me do something.

So I thought to myself, how do I

connect them and build them like a puzzle?

So can you imagine, I'm photographing her from

behind, she's adjusting her hair, I want to

put him into the shot, make it look

like a contemporary sort of editorial kind of

picture.

So I thought great, let me put his

hands in his pockets, he's looking away and

we get this image.

Do you notice how I position him?

This gap and this gap are exactly the

same.

Then I have this beautiful gap mirroring what

he's doing.

This aesthetic composition, which we would say is

pretty boring, but then when you off-center

it, it breaks the monotony and the predictability

of aesthetic composition and that's basically it.

Make sense?

Alright.

Alright, let's move on.

I was doing a boudoir shoot of this

girl and this was quite soft and very

playful.

I thought it'd be nice to open up

the doors, allow the light to flood through,

get a beautiful shot, no problem.

Again, now what was the creative trigger?

What is, obviously she's a gorgeous girl, but

what do you think would be good to

feature in this shot?

I'm loving that beautiful headpiece.

I'm thinking how cool is that?

What I do, obviously I want to be

discreet, so sometimes when I'm more risque, I

still cover up naughty bits, especially for weddings

and things like that.

Sometimes, some brides or boudoir sessions, they want

to be a little bit more risque, no

problem.

In this case, I had the idea of

actually placing that beautiful headpiece over one of

her eyes and get that beautiful little, that

little peer upwards.

Then we just changed our angle and we

got a completely different shot.

Make sense?

Now, we're in Budapest and we're there with

Melissa and she wore this beautiful dress.

I'm like, you know what, baby, I'm going

to photograph you now.

What is the trigger here?

Obviously, it's a great location, no doubt.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work

out that this will be a great place

to photograph, but what was the trigger and

what made me shoot where and why?

The window.

Okay, let's diagnose it.

It's the window.

Now, would she be standing on the stairwell?

What would she be doing?

Where would be good to put her face?

So the trigger is, do you see these

pieces?

The ivy is growing in a way where

it's framing the person.

So I'm thinking, I'm going to put her

head and shoulders somewhere here.

If I expose for her perfectly, everything will

blow out and look ridiculous.

So really, it's a silhouette now.

Because if I darken this exposure, I'll get

the detail that I want but get this

beautiful foliage.

So I thought to myself, let's get her

standing on this area and do a very

dramatic classic pose reminiscent from the old Hollywood

days.

And we ended up getting this image.

Retain the detail.

We got a little of it.

It's a silhouette per se, but she turned

her face to the light so we get

a beautiful detail on her dress.

And quite beautifully is that she had this

beautiful sort of almost like ivy style pattern

in her dress that actually looked incredible and

we used that.

This is also in Budapest.

Beautiful statues.

The sun's from behind.

Well, what the hell do I do?

Well, I'm sure most of us would have

thought to do something like this.

Off camera flash.

I lower my camera angle, shoot upwards and

get that beautiful drama there as well.

This was in a beautiful concert hall, isn't

it right?

Something like that.

Yeah, an opera house in Budapest.

So as you're walking in, we've got this

beautiful shaft of light.

Now, shaft of light, opera house, what do

you think of?

What's the credit trigger now?

What do you think of?

If I say the words opera house, opera,

Broadway, Broadway, what's one of the most famous

shows in the history of mankind?

Opera.

What does that word trigger you?

So you look at this and you think

Phantom of the Opera.

That's what I thought.

So I thought, if you've watched it, you'll

see these dramatic pictures of the girls that

are running away and this beautiful glowing and

that gave me that idea.

I'm not saying it's genius that I thought

of that idea but you have to commit

to something.

You see something, it's an idea, you commit

to it and you go for it.

The difference between good and great is quite

dramatic.

Then I thought, well, how cool would it

be to actually get a dramatic picture of

this guy with sunlight coming through a window

and then a dark background.

This is what you call Rembrandt lighting.

Rembrandt lighting, people just think it's just three

quarter lighting and the shadow on the side

of the face.

Rembrandt lighting is either one eye or both

eyes are in shadow and you usually get

a triangular piece of light in the face.

In this case, it's very masculine.

It's what we consider more Rembrandt lighting.

It's a masculine quality of light.

Now, what Chris did before, he put his

hand over his face emulating the mask that

the phantom wore.

I thought, perfect.

Normally, I would put both the couple in

a pocket of light.

Let me suggest his presence and have him

just there.

Do you see how we can see a

hint of him there?

But the metaphor of that opera gave me

the idea to actually have him there.

It's almost, he's almost wearing a mask of

shadow, don't you think?

It's suggestive.

That's what I love about the idea of

doing these kinds of things.

Hopefully, you're starting to think about photography maybe

in a little bit of a different way.

Hoping that I've given you two perspectives.

One is, the next time you see pockets

of sunlight, you'll treat them differently and look

at them differently.

The next time you walk past a silver

piece of metal reflecting off sun, what are

you going to think of?

Make sense?

The next time you see a glow of

light coming underneath the stair rail, what are

you going to think of?

The next time you walk past a street

with a big sign of a Hollywood movie

poster, but there's floods of light coming through,

what are you going to think of?

The next time you see the sun setting

and you're on a hill, what are you

going to think of?

Not only do I want, hopefully, what we've

taught you today, giving you specific ideas, it's

unlocking the principles behind recognizing triggers in your

environment and maximizing them in a way perhaps

that you've never seen before.

And guess what?

It's a lot of fun and you can

sell a lot of it because you're creating

something incredible.

Hope you enjoyed that, guys.