All language subtitles for 2. Good vs. Great

So as you photograph more and more, you'll

find that it's almost like you'll need more

to impress yourself and your clients.

In other words, your level of sophistication grows.

And there'll be times where, you know, you

do good work, but you want great work.

I mean, let's face it, no one wants

to be mediocre.

We all want a level of sophistication where

people maybe who know what we do or

know about photography will recognize the huge difference

between a simply well-executed photograph and then

something that's either more striking, more impactful or

more meaningful or all of the above, perhaps.

Now, all these shots that you're about to

see are all from one wedding.

I wanna show you several shots that here's

where I started and here's where I ended

up.

Not saying that the first one wasn't important.

They're all saleable shots.

No one's gonna win an award with these

first shots that I'm gonna show you, arguably

even the second ones.

It's purely like these kinds of shots are

brought in by the photographs.

We just have to get these shots.

Are they important?

Yes.

Looking at the camera, smiling?

Yes.

Never believe any bride and or groom that

says to you, we do not want shots

looking in the camera or any posed photographs

because that'll be the death of you.

I've had many people in my career saying,

I just want photojournalism, don't pose me at

all.

And it only took me one or two

weddings to realize that no one means it

because they're gonna say, where's the one with

my mom and dad?

Did you stand with your mom and dad

at the same time?

So just be very, very careful with that.

Now, with this particular shot with the parents,

now, yes, this is an important shot.

Take this photograph, great.

But arguably more meaningful is something like this.

So the parents, as I walk into the

parents' bedroom, I saw the photograph sort of

on the wall of the bride and the

groom and it was actually really, really cute,

really, really beautiful.

And I thought, how cool would it be

to actually get the bride and groom to

actually hold the parents, hold the photograph of

them as an actual couple and have the

groom in the foreground and then it's a

beautiful celebration of their love and it all

comes full circle and pick any metaphor you

basically want.

But there's a big difference right between this

one, this just basically says who I am,

this tells me who they are.

And that's what we need to understand is

the big difference.

And when you start photographing your first wedding,

you will get a groom next to a

window and you'll photograph this portrait.

Now, handsome guy, right?

No problem, easy to photograph, but it does

still take someone to bring out the best

in him.

Now, I'm not gonna say this is an

incredible photograph.

It's not, it's just saleable, it's solid.

But I'm gonna teach you when it comes

to lighting and posing how to quickly go

from this shot and just to change your

angle and perspective to get this image.

Then there's a lot of nuances in this

photograph that you might not recognize.

First of all, I'm photographing him, of course,

profile rather than just front on.

I've also got him to look a little

bit to his left.

So although I'm photographing his profile, his eyeballs

are a little bit to the left.

So right now, for example, I'm looking at

the camera right now.

Let me do it like this.

So if you're looking at me right now,

like I'm the groom right now, you are

probably seeing more white than pupil.

But I said to the groom, okay, keep

your face there, but look to the left.

Now, it feels weird for me, but you

are seeing more color than looking in this

direction.

Not only that, you've got basically defined cheekbones

and jawline.

He's turning his actual body towards the light,

which is quite a masculine thing to do.

We'll cover that in future segments, but big

difference between that and that.

So just know there is going to be

times where each of these are viable and

important.

Like not every shot, and not this is

a hero shot, but not every shot has

to save the world and be award winning.

Just get it done, bread and butter.

I'm telling you now, there are many people

that I know that are geniuses, that they

can get a wow shot, and they can

pluck it out of thin air and go

wow, but their day-to-day bread and

butter photographs are not that great.

Remember, we are not here to impress other

photographers.

We are there to tell a story and

impress our clients.

It's all about them, it's not about us.

So this next shot, the mother of the

groom wanted a photograph coming down the staircase.

Now the lighting was pretty poor.

Now there's many things that I could have

done.

I could have exposed for the light, added

some flash, but I'm running out of time.

What do I do?

Well, they're not gonna critique the lighting, perhaps,

as photographers do.

So I just simply expose to them, let

everything wash out, and they love that and

they're happy with that.

But I need now maybe something to go

with it, or maybe I can create something

completely different in this environment.

So what is the light telling us?

The light, there's sunlight coming through that particular

window over there, as you can see.

So it's coming right down.

Then I'm like, well, what do I do

now?

Well, the light's telling me that the sunlight

is gonna be on the stairs.

So therefore, what do I do?

Well, get the groom to sit down.

I know it might sound really obvious, but

in the heat of the battle, when the

pressure is on, would you have seen that?

Maybe not.

But if I get him to sit down

and expose correctly for it, we get an

exposure like this.

This was literally seconds after that first one.

So I'm saying to you, there'll be bread

and butter shots that you do, and then

there'll be shots that you will, like the

location and the lighting will reveal itself and

say, Jerry, I beg you to do this,

okay?

So of course now we're talking about the

difference between good and great.

Now, this one's just backlit.

The sun's behind him, it's backlit.

His face is a bit washed out.

It's probably a common, I would say, this

is a very common way of shooting.

It's a backlit, it's a safe way of

shooting, but it's not that effective for every

single subject, nor does it suit every single

person.

But all I do is I get a

reflector, reflect the sun off the reflector back

on him, so now we get an off

-camera flash look, but with a simple reflector,

which I'll teach you to do in future

episodes and segments.

So in this case, simple.

The big difference between good and, in my

opinion, great here on this side.

So we have to understand that we've gotta

keep on pushing.

Don't settle for mediocrity.

Just know that there's gonna be bread and

butter shots, that a wedding photography coverage is

somewhat formulaic.

There are certain things you just have to

do.

Can you go to every single wedding and

make every single type of photograph in this

formulaic approach uniquely different?

It's not gonna happen.

Could you at least start and start the

mindset that every single time you go to

a groom's coverage, do one thing differently than

you've done before?

That might be a place to start.

So in other words, go to the groom's

home, do one shot different, either a different

lighting situation, different posing, different cropping, do something

different.

You go to the brides, one photograph different.

Ceremony, location, reception.

Now imagine if you shot 20 weddings a

year and you did a different photograph at

every single type of coverage.

Groom, bride, ceremony, location, reception, and you do

20 weddings.

There's now 100 photographs per year that is

different, and at least for you to be

in your folio, to be on Instagram, your

website, competition, whatever it is that you wanna

do.

Well, now we're talking.

Okay, so this shot, these are out of

camera.

There's no retouching done to these, of course,

so that's why you'll see a little blemish

on her skin and all that kind of

stuff.

They're out of camera.

But this one is nice.

That's a traditional portrait, no problem.

But then all of a sudden I change

it to shooting at 1.4 and everything

else goes soft and dreamy with her dress.

But you would say that they're both pretty,

but this just has a little bit more

punch to it.

It's a little bit more effective.

Now, we've discussed in earlier segments being reactive

and being proactive or capturing magic or creating

magic.

Now, this photograph was photojournalistic.

I actually did not pose this at all.

They just walked down the stairs and that's

what happened.

Now, what's wrong with this picture?

Well, you can see that his legs look

really awkward.

We've caught him between a step.

She's what we call pigeon-toed, like her

toes are pointed in.

There's disconnection.

She's doing something with her lips, like licking

her lips or something like that.

I don't know what it is.

And it didn't work.

But I'm like, well, if only this happened,

if only I caught this moment.

So at the start of my career, whenever

at my in-sit, tell me, Jerry, if

only like if this person turned their face

to the light and they walked forward and

started laughing, well, now I just do it.

Like, yes, I'll wait for that moment, but

if it doesn't happen, I'll get in there

and adjust and direct that to happen.

And it can be authentic because if you

look at this shot, it's a beautiful moment

between husband and wife.

That foot being off the step sort of

makes you feel like it's in motion.

Him being quite stationary, that's fine, because he's

escorting her down the stairs.

They're looking at each other.

They've got a beautiful expression.

Her arms are off her body.

Got a beautiful waistline there.

We can see her legs and her shoes.

And all of a sudden, we've got the

finesse here and arguably not there.

Am I saying that shot left on the

left is terrible?

No, I'm just saying that's better.

Pick one.

Just don't settle.

There will be times where you look at

your coverage after the fact and say, oh,

if only I did this.

Well, just make it up on your next

wedding.

This next shot was done with full sun

and I used a 14 mil lens.

I tried to disguise the distortion of the

lens with her veil and her hand, but

you can see that this looks a little

bit weird.

Her hand looks a little bit big and

even though it's disguised, she just looks a

little bit thicker than she would have unless

I brought her in the middle.

Now do you see how her hand looks

a bit smaller, this a bit softer?

So I kept some negative space on the

corner of the frame and still got the

spire of the church and all of the

clouds and everything like that.

And of course, I tilted her face up

to the sun.

The sun gave me an idea to bring

her face up.

What pose could that help with?

They tilted their upper bodies towards the camera

to correct my perspective.

I cropped the awkwardness out of their lower

part of their bodies and then now we

have that shot.

So you see the big difference between good

and great.

Don't settle.

Now it's funny because the girls in this

particular wedding, they were all holding the dress

and they were sort of walking to the

location and I was saying, hey, go to

that location.

And they all walked the bride to that

location and then they were waiting for a

photograph.

Now it's backlit.

They're all a bit posy.

It looked a bit too obvious.

So what do I do?

I'm like, well, I could take that shot,

which I did.

This ended up being in the reject pile.

I didn't actually end up using it.

Well, what could I do?

Well, the sun is behind them.

If I move them a bit more into

the sun, get the sun reflecting off the

dress.

Now it's a perfect reflector to get light

on the bride.

Then conveniently place the bridesmaids so there's a

little bit of air between them all.

I could literally go from that shot to

that shot in literally in less than a

minute.

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

we need to understand that that is possible

and how to do that.

So right now, of course, guys, we're setting

the foundation in this course to truly get

to the heart of our mindset.

What do we need to do?

How do we have to approach a wedding?

How do we approach the fact that we

are at this skill level, this time on

this wedding day, what do we do?

I'm saying I probably wouldn't have picked up

on those nuances when I first started.

I'm here to actually help you to know

that the next time you have bridesmaids holding

up a dress and it's sunny, what are

you gonna think of?

You're gonna think of that photograph.

So that level of sophistication will happen with

experience.

And I'm telling you that you can actually

also learn from my experience.

It's not like you will not be good

unless you shoot 1,000 weddings.

I've seen people literally go from zero to

hero after one workshop that I've presented because

they know what not to do, they know

what to do, and they practice, and all

of a sudden, they can get to that

destination very quickly.

This shot is backlit.

You can see the sun on his back.

You can see the light sort of filtering

through.

Now, what do I do?

I change my angle a little bit, and

if you can imagine, this is the groom's

face, this is the bride's face.

I angle their faces so that the light

bounces off his cheek back on her face

and have a look at how beautiful that

light is on her face.

Now, could we have achieved that with a

video light, a flash, or whatever?

But probably, but not as quickly as I

just did it.

I even love that little bit of a

flare coming in.

I'm not normally a big fan of flare.

I think it works in this particular perspective.

But that's what I love here, guys, is

that we can simply just change the angle

of a face and use a cheek as

a reflector, whereas at the start of my

career, I would not have known to do

that.

So a big difference between that left shot

and that right shot.

And you'll also soon see that sometimes a

change of angle and perspective can mean a

big difference too.

This already is a nice photograph.

We've got split lighting on the groom, which

we'll discuss in future episodes, but masculine light

on him, soft light on her, backlight with

the sun.

So we're making the environment that pretty much

look like a studio.

Now I change my angle to come on

this perspective, make them laugh, prop nice and

tight, and then all of a sudden we've

got this, but this was just simply using

a reflector, where most people would be doing

this with an off-camera flash.

Guys, I have no problem with on-camera

flash, off-camera flash, reflectors, natural light, daylight,

whatever it is that you like using, but

I do not want you after this course

to pigeonhole yourself into, I'm a natural light

window light photographer.

That is just narrow-minded.

You should be a complete photographer and know

how to do everything.

You could be biased towards one thing, but

there will be a time in your career

that you'll be tested, especially at a wedding

where you would need to know a bit

about everything, and that's important for us to

accept and swell and digest, and then just

know that's a process that we have to

go through.

With this shot, it's composed nicely.

It's shooting through some foliage.

There's a natural sort of vignette going on

here.

There's a nice little delicate hand on his

chest, and the noses are nice and close

together, but there's something missing.

For me, it's the expression, whereas I think

at the start of my career, I would

have just stopped there.

It's aesthetically pleasing, done, I'm great.

I've taken the shot, fantastic, let's move on,

but sometimes you've got to forget about the

back of the camera and stop looking at

your technique and just look at the emotion.

A simple hint of a smile or something

a little suggestive like that could make the

difference between good and great, as we've been

discussing for this segment.

This next location, so there I am.

We've got them hugging.

They're both looking into the light source.

We've got beautiful light on them, but then

all of a sudden, he turns into her.

We widen off the space.

We change our angle and perspective, and then

we have a prettier shot.

We've gone from good to great.

We just need to know, I guess, with

repetition, with experience, with practice.

So remember that acronym, REP, R-E-P,

not R-I-P, R-E-P, Repetition,

Experience and Practice.

With the REP, we will get to that

destination a lot quicker, but you just have

to be in front of enough people, in

front of enough weddings or practice situations that

you know that a simple change of angle

and a wider angle of view can mean

the difference between maybe it's nice or, oh,

isn't that beautiful?

So I was photographing detail at the reception

here, and I sort of liked the idea

of backlighting the couple, but then the light

behind them was different to all the detail

they've got there with the candelabra and so

on.

I'm losing detail, but I look at this

closely and I see the sun on the

cake, and I'm like, wait a second, this

is a natural reflector.

If I simply just get the couple to

go behind the cake, crop into the column,

crop into the tree, then all of a

sudden, I've got this shot.

Beautiful expression added, and then again, we've got

the difference between good and great.

So now that we've set the foundation to

really understand that this is a process that

will happen for the rest of your life

and career, what I wanna do now is

show you and display to you the five

steps to a well-crafted photograph.

So take your time, like let all this

information simmer a little bit.

Now we have that right mindset, let's get

into it.

I can't wait to share with you some

really good, soluble, tangible ideas and things that

you can action straight away.