Original subtitles

There we go.

Okay, oh, wait, no, we're gonna go.

Sorry, guys, we're still sort of figuring out

keynote here.

Yeah, then we're gonna go here.

Press play.

Okay, so you should see a ridiculous photo

of me and Erica right now, full screen,

and then our little webcam, we should be

up in the upper right-hand corner.

Yes.

Okay, that's working.

We're good.

Right, and we're good?

Yes, we're good.

Our mics are muted.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you for joining us for tea and

coffee this morning.

Thank you for trusting us.

Or cocktails.

Or cocktails, maybe.

Thank you for trusting us on this journey.

We know it's been a shitty few weeks,

or a shitty, I think it's almost been

a month now for all of us.

And we know the sacrifices you guys have

made to be here.

So thank you.

And our mission during these next couple sessions

is to- Five sessions.

Five sessions, yes, is to honor that trust,

right?

So we're gonna give you as much as

we can in these five sessions.

Now, I am gonna warn you, and I

mentioned this in the email that I sent

out yesterday, this is gonna be the longest

of the five sessions.

The past two days, we went for three

and a half hours on each day.

We'll try and keep it under that today.

What are you doing?

Trying to get this, because we're recording.

So we don't need all of these, right?

We just want- No, but you-

I can't do it right now.

I have to do it when we're not

screen sharing.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna do.

I was gonna- Okay, I'll do it

now.

I was gonna stop screen sharing.

If you do that stuff as I'm talking,

it's really distracting.

Okay?

Otherwise, the rewatch of the follow is up

there.

Um, hold on.

Lenny needs to have things perfect before I

can start talking here.

Perfection.

Okay.

But now they can't see us in the

recording.

In the recording, they can't right now.

So I think it would be better-

We can't have it with just us?

No, I haven't figured out how to do

that.

All of us.

Okay, then let's put, yeah, then let's put

all of us.

Okay, so let's go back to the way

I had it.

No, I thought we could have it so

it was just us up there.

No, we discovered that yesterday, remember?

No.

Okay, we're good.

Seven in the morning here.

So anyways, thank you.

We're gonna give you all that we can

in these next five sessions.

Yeah, so welcome to Two Man Deconstructed, where

we are going to do everything we can,

as best we can, to try and deconstruct

for you the way that we see, the

way that we shoot, the way that we

light, and the way that we edit.

But, and this is important, not just the

how, okay?

A lot of photographers get really hung up

on just the how, how to do it,

how, how, how, okay?

We're gonna show you how and describe how

as best we can, but also pay attention

to the when and the where, okay?

And most importantly, the why.

The why is, yeah, the why is definitely

the most important.

If we can't, you know, if we don't

understand the why, we can't pull off the

how.

Yeah, so it's not so much about learning

new ways to use your cameras or new

ways to use your flashes, although that's definitely

gonna be a part of this workshop, but

it's about discovering new ways to see and

experience the world.

And the way to see the world differently

is actually, stems from experiencing the world differently.

So hopefully we can give you a little

shift in perspective and make you guys see

and experience the world in a way that

maybe you never thought of before, and that's

gonna transfer to your photos in ways that

you can't even predict, right?

So our clients think that they hire us

because we know how to use our cameras,

and that's obviously an important part of our

job, but they're really hiring us for the

way that we see the world, right?

And the way we see the world, like

I said, is the way that we experience

the world.

Okay, so I want you guys to ask

yourselves, are you ready?

Okay, are you doing this or are you

doing this?

Okay, we want you to, we're gonna give

you everything we can, and we want you

to soak up as much as possible.

So here's a few tips just before we

get started to help you maximize what you

take from this experience.

The first one is tune in, tune out,

okay?

Be here present for these workshops as best

you can.

Yeah, so as like hold this three hours

in the next couple of sessions, closer to

two hours, sacred time, okay?

Notify your family, set aside the time in

your calendar, not that we're going places these

days, but we're also very distracted these days.

We're, I don't know, we always have Facebook

open, we always have Messenger open, we always

have the New York Times open, whatever, choose

your drug of choice, right?

Close down Lightroom.

Close down Lightroom.

Close down Photo Mechanic.

Close down Photo Mechanic, close down Facebook, okay?

Yes, you, close it, close it down.

Close it down.

If you're gonna get the most of this

course, you can't be multitasking with that sort

of stuff because you'll be having these great

epiphanies here, perhaps, hopefully, and then you'll go

on Facebook and see one person's stupid post

and it'll completely ruin the entire experience for

you.

So just really commit, commit to tuning in

and tuning out.

And hang on.

If you haven't yet, grab yourself a notepad

and a pen because we want you to

write shit down, okay?

There's gonna be, just the physical act of

writing something down helps embed it into your

memory.

And I know myself, I'll hear something and

I'll feel like, oh, I'll never forget that,

but the next day it's out the other

side of my brain.

So, and- Speech.

You know, they've done studies that find that

when, when, what was the study it was?

Well, the studies are basically that when people,

like with their cell phones, when they take

photos of things, and I'm talking from a

very snapshot perspective, when people take photos of

things, it gives their brain permission to forget

it.

And Randy and I really hummed and hawed

about whether to offer these as live sessions

versus recordings, which we are, and as a

result, we're actually doing both, but we aren't

keeping the recordings up for indefinitely because inevitably

what happens is people think, oh, I don't

have to write this down.

I don't have to remember this now because

I can go back and watch it whenever

I want.

But the truth is 99% of you

aren't gonna go back and watch it.

And so pretend this is the first and

the only time you're gonna see this, even

if it's- It is the first, that's

right.

But the last.

Pretend this is the last time you're ever

gonna see this.

So really try and take in the information

as if we're live together right now and

you don't have to record it.

Yeah, and plus that notebook then will be

a resource for you going forward, one year,

two years from now when the world's much

different, when you'll be in a different place

as a photographer, you'll be a different person.

You can refer back to those notes as

a refresher, but also you'll probably take something

entirely different from it.

So write stuff down.

Okay, and commit.

Yes, commit to this.

Because you can't change unless you're ready to

change.

We can't grow and develop unless we're ready

to grow and develop.

And commitment really has two enemies.

One of them is complacency.

You guys are here with us, which means

you're not complacent, which is awesome.

Check.

The other one is fear.

And if you think about it, what's the

biggest fear for a lot of us?

But yeah, even if it's not your biggest

fear, it's gonna be a fear that exists

somewhere, unless you're a psychopath in which case

maybe it won't, but failure, right?

We all fear failure.

Now, you may be trying a lot of

new stuff in this course that you haven't

attempted before, or listening to some new ideas

that might be brand new to you.

And hopefully practicing what we talk about.

And there is gonna be a lot of

failure in this practice process.

But so just embrace that as part of

the process and see it as a necessary

part, actually.

It's not just part of the process for

some of us, it's part of the process

for all of us.

So embrace that fact.

And don't think- It's failing forward towards

success.

Yeah.

And don't think of it as creating an

end result of anything.

Like, so when you're practicing these techniques, simply

label it as doing, okay?

You're not making anything, you're not winning, you're

not losing, all you're doing is doing, okay?

My dad always says, like, my dad and

I run together and we both have our

history of competitive running.

And he says, he only labels a good

run as a run that you've done, all

right?

So just whatever you do is doing, okay?

And whatever you're doing, it's good, as long

as you're doing it.

I'm totally- You're basically saying just do

it.

That's Nike's, I don't know what you're trying

to say.

I don't know either, just, I'm gonna shut

up because- Don't worry about judging yourself

as failing or succeeding.

It's just experimenting, putting in the time.

And what better time to do that than

right now?

Yeah.

So embrace that, it's part of the struggle.

And lastly, this is an important one.

Don't should on me, okay?

Eric and I are gonna try not to

use the word should.

But we will.

But we will, we'll probably even tell you

how you should think.

But just think of everything in this whole

course as a smorgasbord of ideas, okay?

It's like a big idea buffet and you

can pick and choose what resonates with you

and apply it to your photography and your

business, however it makes sense, fits into who

you are, okay?

Because there's no one way, there's no right

way, there's no wrong way, there's no best

way.

We're gonna be sharing what we do and

why and why it works for us.

But just take it all with a grain

of salt.

And it's the only thing we can teach,

right?

It's from authentically, the only thing we can

teach is what we do.

And some of it works for other people,

some of it doesn't.

So just take everything with a grain of

salt.

What about you?

Okay, so overview of the next couple days.

So today, we're gonna be talking about all

the fundamentals.

And we usually spend an entire day on

this in our in-person workshops, our fundamentals.

So we're trying to distill that down to

the fundamentals of the fundamentals today for you.

But it's really the bedrock on which everything

else is built upon.

So it's really important that we do it

first, okay?

Then, in the next three sessions, we're gonna

go into our toolbox deconstruction, which is where

we take images, some of them you've seen,

some of them not, from our website, where

we use specific tools and we deconstruct them

from the very beginning, our initial vision, to

the final execution and how we achieved it.

And what sort of thought processes got us

there, okay?

Words, struggling with words.

Seven in the morning, you're struggling with bad

coffee breath.

And when you laugh, it's like the whole

air fills with this awful coffee breath that

smells like a teacher's staff room.

Okay, and then the last day, April 21st,

did you shave?

Oh, these are all off by a day.

Oh, nope, I didn't do that this morning.

Okay, sorry, guys, I apologize.

These are all off by one day, because

this is from yesterday.

It's the eighth.

So today's the eighth.

The following sections will be the 11th, 15th,

18th, and the last section will be on

the 22nd.

That's group two there.

That's group two, yeah.

We are group three here now.

And then the last day, we'll be diving

into, well, this is your baby.

Editing.

Editing.

Okay, so throughout today, we're gonna have this

slide come up, questions and answers, okay?

Because you guys are gonna have questions and

comments and things that we can't even see

the chat thread.

And that's important because in order for us

to deliver the content, we can't be distracted

by the comments coming in.

So we have- Jody, can you unmute

yourself and turn your video on?

Our friend Jody is the gatekeeper of questions

and comments today.

If you talk, I think you'll, you're-

Hello!

That's her.

Can you hear her?

Why can't we see you?

Can't see me?

Just turn your video on.

It is on.

Where are you?

Oh, there you are.

Oh, shoot.

She said, there you are.

There you are.

There's Jody.

So this is, no, no, leave your video

on and your microphone on.

I have two computers operating, one so that

I can copy and paste comments.

This might be why, so I'll turn on

the laptop one because that appears to be

the one that's working.

Okay.

Anyways, guys, Jody is gonna be, thank you,

there she is.

Jody, thanks for getting up early.

Jody's gonna be keeping an eye on the

chat for us and writing all the questions.

We obviously won't be able to get to

all the questions and we're gonna try and

just get to the questions that are on

the topic of what we're talking about.

Relevant.

So for example, if we're talking about gear

and somebody asks us how we get the

groom in the shower, which has happened on

multiple occasions, we're gonna save that question for

another time.

For example, when we're deconstructing a photo of

a groom in the shower and we're explaining

everything about it, part of that will be

how we got the groom in the shower.

Yeah.

So just because the comment thread does get

bogged down with lots of different comments and

people hopping each other out, which is awesome.

We want that to be used for that.

If you have a question, start your comment

with a big capital Q.

And that way when Jody goes back and

she looks at all the comments, she can

easily find the questions.

Yeah, so when we break for that slide

that comes up questions and answers, that's when

we'll bring Jody in and she can basically

present us the curated version of all the

questions and the common themes that are coming

up and then we can address them then.

Yes.

So any questions right now, Jody?

Or should we just get right in?

There's no questions.

Oh God.

Okay, you're gonna have to mute one of

your computers because you're like feedback.

You're like out of Star Wars.

Yeah, so because you have two computers right

now.

Can you hear me now?

Yeah, that's better.

That's better, yeah.

I'm gonna have to do a screen on

the laptop and voice into the main computer.

That works.

And also just check in with you, Jody.

Technically, we're coming through loud and clear.

Everything's working.

Yeah, you're coming through great.

Okay, cool.

Okay, no questions at this point?

There's no questions at this point.

Just a whole lot of hellos and thank

yous.

Beautiful.

Okay, so we're gonna go back to screen

sharing then.

See if I can remove.

No, I don't wanna remove that.

See if I can remove these people.

Yeah.

Nope.

They all come up.

What if we drag this up?

No, it doesn't work.

Okay, okay, well, we'll just minimize it when

it's important.

Okay.

Okay.

Sorry, guys.

Just getting the remote set up here.

Okay, so what are we doing today?

Well, basically, the whole objective of today is

get us to this, all right?

We're gonna set ourselves up so that we

can show you our whole toolbox, our whole

repertoire of techniques that we draw upon at

weddings.

No, as photographers.

As photographers, yeah.

Regardless of if it's a wedding, yeah.

But in order to get there, we have

to do a whole bunch of things first

to set the context.

Yeah, so before we get into the toolbox,

we gotta go into off-camera flash.

But before we get into off-camera flash,

we have to talk about natural light.

Before we talk about natural light, we gotta

talk about composition.

Before that, we gotta talk about our camera

settings.

Before that, we gotta talk about gear.

But before all of that.

Before all of that.

We gotta start with the foundation, okay?

Basically, some of the key things, the most

instrumental parts of our whole approach to weddings

and photography, okay?

What everything is built upon, really.

Now, before we get into the foundation, I

just wanna burst a few bubbles out there

for you.

One of them, there's two things I wanna

tell you, basically, before we get into the

meat, is one of them you've probably already

figured out.

And that is that Lanny and I are

a highly dysfunctional team.

Okay, highly, highly dysfunctional.

We are certainly not what you would consider

- Functionally dysfunctional.

Well, I don't even know.

Honestly.

We're functioning.

Barely.

We're barely functioning.

Okay.

Anyways, so I wanted to burst that bubble

right away because a lot of the messages

that we get from people around the world

who see us at Facebook and see us

on Instagram, they think that's the entirety of

our story, right?

They think that's us.

They're like, how do you guys balance it

all?

How do you maintain a healthy marriage and

homeschool the kids and- It's all unicorns

and rainbows.

It is.

Okay.

So there, we've burst that bubble.

We're a highly dysfunctional team.

Yeah, if we can get- I'll help

you out here.

If we can get through a wedding without

telling each other to fuck off, then we

consider that a success.

Thankfully, though, we have a pretty...

We recover fast.

We do recover fast.

But the struggle is real, okay?

Just to let you know.

I mean, Eric and I, obviously, we photograph

weddings together.

We run this business together.

There's no primary, secondary shooter.

We are both in it fully together.

We live together.

We raise kids together.

We travel together, right?

So- We both got egos.

The struggle is real.

Yeah, the struggle is real.

Massive egos.

Yeah, you especially.

Okay, so that's the first important thing you

need to know about us.

The second important thing you need to know

about us is that we take spectacularly awful

photos at every wedding that we shoot.

Like, look at some of this shit.

It's just awful.

Culling our work is like sifting for gold

through a sea of shit.

It is.

So we take spectacularly bad photos.

We just don't show them to you.

And we don't show them to anybody else

as well.

But we just do.

A couple.

A couple.

But, which kind of leads into one of

the other kind of fundamentals for us is

this idea of capitalizing on luck.

It's like, if you suck, rely on luck,

okay?

And that's kind of a big part of,

it's at the root of a lot of

things that we do in our photography.

And actually, my uncle Toby, so Toby was

a religious man, and he would pray to

God.

He prayed to God religiously every day, and

he prayed to God to win the lottery.

God, please help me win the lottery.

And he did this day in and day

out, and it never happened.

But finally, after 27 years of praying every

day, the clouds parted, and this voice boomed

down from above.

It was like, Toby, throw me a bone.

Buy a fucking ticket.

Getting lucky in photography is not about praying

to the photography gods, okay?

It's about buying tickets.

Lots of them.

Your probability of hitting a home run improves

dramatically when you actually step up to the

plate and swing for the fence.

And you could show us any compelling photograph,

and I could show you how the photographer

sought after and capitalized on luck, okay?

And this is not about hoping for accidental

luck, okay?

This is about consciously pursuing luck intentionally, okay?

And it's an art that we exploit every

time that we pick up our cameras.

Mm-hmm, yeah, it is definitely an art.

And this is actually a really good time

just to talk about our approach on a

wedding day, and again, for some bubbles maybe

that exist out there.

So Lani and I take a very documentary

approach when we shoot weddings.

So we're not photojournalists by any stretch of

the imagination.

We move things, we open windows, we turn

lights on and off, but our approach is

very documenting, meaning we don't, what do you

mean?

Meaning we don't stage or direct anything, okay?

And there's a few reasons why we take

this approach.

One is it allows all of our mental

bandwidth to go into observing what is, okay?

As opposed to our mental bandwidth going into

having to direct or make something up ourselves.

Lani and I don't consider ourselves very creative

people, but if our entire mental bandwidth is

going into observing, we can see the creativity

that exists around us, as opposed to have

to pull something out of here, right?

And it exists everywhere in these soft little

moments and touches and camera perspectives and different

angles.

Things that we wouldn't even see or notice

if we were too wrapped up in thinking

about- What to direct and how to

place them and have the bride do her

dress up in the perfect light for the

third time in a row, that takes up

a lot of energy and mental bandwidth.

And then the result of that approach for

us is, A, we make better work, okay?

We get more unique photos because we haven't

tried to make the photos look the way

we think they should look.

We haven't tried to have their wedding-

Fit into a wedding box.

Exactly, we haven't tried to make sure that

everything that's supposed to happen at a wedding

happens beside perfect window side light, right?

So as a result, the photos are inevitably

unique from all the other wedding photos we've

made.

And the photos that we give to our

clients when they see them and experience them,

they're reminded of what actually happened or what

they were actually feeling versus- Oh, that's

- Sorry, you wanna- No, just go

for it.

Versus, oh yeah, that's when Lani told me

to stand in a perfect light and put

on my shirt for the sixth time, right?

So yeah, and really, it boils down to

the fact that reality is really interesting if

we are open to seeing it, right?

That doesn't mean it's easy.

It doesn't mean we show up and we're

inspired by everything we see.

We have to look for it and observe

it and try to find it and all

that sort of stuff.

But it's really interesting.

And reality is way more interesting than anything

I can certainly make up.

And- And it's also a key ingredient

for us in having our clients forget about

us and not think about photography.

Yeah.

It's like we're all trained since birth that

the world stops when a camera comes out,

right?

We have to smile, we have to look

at the camera, we have to say cheese.

And so we go out of our way

to break that down so they're not looking

to us for direction.

It's not a photo shoot, it's their wedding.

Just imagine photography hasn't been invented yet, okay?

And do that.

Yeah, and for anybody that has questions on

this, because this is usually an area where

a lot of questions pop up, what I'd

recommend you do is go to our Facebook

page, The Two Man Workshops.

We posted a free tutorial in there.

It's called Gaining Your Client's Trust.

You can find it under Units.

And it's all about how we gain this,

how we educate our clients on this approach,

how we gain- Before they even hire

us.

Yeah, before they even hire us, how we

gain their trust and how we plant the

right seeds.

So go take a look at that.

Now, and again, just, I don't know if

we made this clear.

This is not portraits.

Portraits, of course, we're directing and working with

them and that's like 5% of the

day.

The rest of the day, everything you see

actually happened.

We haven't told anybody to do anything for

us or told anybody not to do anything

for us, okay?

All right.

Okay, so that's a documentary approach, okay?

And pretty much how we shoot can be

summed up right here.

All in, balls out, start to finish, every

wedding.

Now, and keep in mind, Erica and I

shoot 10 to 15 weddings a year, okay?

So as a result of that, we're able

to pour all of ourselves into each of

them.

Each wedding, our heart and soul goes into

it fully.

It's like a creative art project.

And so we only have the one package,

which is me and Erica for your whole

day.

Whether that's 12 hours or 16 hours, we're

there to tell the whole story.

Or 21.

We're all looking at our watches, okay?

So we're all in, balls out, in it

to win it, start to finish.

And one of the reasons for that is,

again, this idea of luck.

It's like sometimes just being there buys you

a ticket.

Okay, it's like if we're playing the full

18 holes, it multiplies our stats, it multiplies

our chances.

And a lot of things like this, right?

He's showering.

If I'm at, you know, it's, or he's

shaving here.

If I mess up every single shaving shot,

who cares?

I don't have to go safe, right?

A lot of this stuff can be a

total creative playground with no consequences.

You don't have to go safe.

And just to add something in here, you

know, one of the questions that we have

people answer when they enter the workshop group

is, what are you struggling most with as

a photographer?

And I'd say at least 50% of

the people that answer that question are saying

creativity.

But there's so many people that leave that

creativity puzzle piece up to chance, right?

And it takes just as much attention and

intention to be creative.

Creativity isn't something that's left up to chance.

If we show up and we just have

like half an hour of getting ready, that

would be leaving our creativity up to chance.

I wouldn't, I would be consulting the shot

list.

I would be checking all the boxes as

opposed to trying to be creative.

So this is why we take this approach

of the full day start to finish, because

it gives us that time to be creative

and not leave that creativity up to chance.

Yeah, so like, here's an example of a

photo that we're gonna deconstruct for you guys

when we get into reflections.

But really, the missing ingredient for a lot

of photographers is just not being there, A,

and B, swing for the fence and playing

the jackpot lottery, like trying something that might

totally suck and might not work out.

And again, this is our approach, right?

Obviously, if you're shooting 50 weddings a year,

you know, shooting 50 hour weddings would lead

to complete burnout.

So, but if you wanna be more creative,

you have to give yourself the space to

be more creative.

So maybe do it for, you know, one

wedding a month.

And this is just one way that we

can stack the cards in the deck, right?

We're gonna talk about all the kinds of

different ways that we prepare to be lucky,

essentially, okay?

And, you know, another benefit to being there

early is while they're getting ready for the

main event, right?

You know, we're able to tell these stories

of all the things that happen outside of

the scripted, predictable timeline of a wedding.

But while they're getting ready for the main

event, we're building trust, okay?

Acclimatizing them to our presence.

And as a documentary photographer, we want them

to forget about us, okay?

So that we can, you know, we would

feel like the best way to become invisible

is to always be there.

Yeah, is to always be there.

Sorry, I'm just contributing.

Yeah, our friend Sergio says it really well.

Anybody that knows Sergio Lopez can imagine him

saying this, actually.

And he says, you will basically wanna be

like a bad fart.

And at first, you know, people notice you.

They're like, oh my God, what's that smell?

Or man, they're like paparazzi.

But then after five minutes, everybody gets used

to your smell.

Everybody gets used to you being there.

And you sort of just blend in.

That only works so if we're not directing,

right?

If we're orchestrating and coordinating things and asking

people to do things or not do things,

then they're not gonna be able to take

their attention off us at all.

It's a photo shoot now, right?

But if we're just letting that reality happen

however it is, with no intervention from us,

it only takes five or 10 minutes for

them to just totally tune us out and

experience their way.

Yeah, exactly.

And so we shoot, like I said, start

to finish.

And I would say, you know, our worst

enemies at the end of the day are

not necessarily fatigue.

It's boredom and complacency, right?

The technical challenges become secondary to the mental

ones at the end of a wedding day.

It's having the mental fitness to keep on

going, to keep on pushing, to keep on

looking, to keep on observing, to keep on

finding interest in something that might not be

very interesting.

Is this where we talk about the exhaustion?

I just can't remember if I talked about

this later on.

I would say Lanny and I, at the

end of a wedding day, are more exhausted

than any mountain we've ever climbed or marathon

we've ever run.

And it's not so much because we've done

several hundred deep knee squats or been running

around and standing for 16 hours straight.

It's what's most exhausting, but also most rewarding

is that we can't stop thinking, right, we're

being paid to think.

But that's where the exhaustion comes from.

It's also no secret out there that Eric

and I shoot a lot.

So when we say shoot the shit out

of it, we mean shoot a lot.

And if you want some, grab a bag

of popcorn and want to be entertaining.

I actually don't do it.

Just pop into some of the photography forums,

especially the old school ones.

And there are people who are righteously offended

by the number of frames that we'll make

at a wedding.

We'll make, between the two of us at

a typical wedding, whatever that means, 15 to

25,000 frames.

Between the two of us.

And we're talking sometimes 15 to 20 hours

of shooting.

And when we get into post-production, we'll

talk about how that gets whittled down and

how many we deliver, how many we blog,

et cetera.

But we shoot a lot.

And the reason for that is...

Oh yes.

You're on it today.

Sorry.

Come on.

You're here.

Tune in, tune out.

I am in here.

Tune in, tune out.

I am.

Oh, I just got a stretch, guys.

The reason we shoot a lot, we shoot

a lot, but we shoot with intent and

purpose.

And it's because we don't have the control

over the tiny little variations that turn a

photo from a good photo to a great

photo.

Right?

What turns a photo from a good photo

to a great photo is never anything within

our control other than our composition.

Right?

But like this placement of a hand in

the photo up on the screen, right?

We don't have...

And the placement of the hand on our

eye, we don't have control over that.

But by shooting the shit out of it,

we can aim to try and get these

unpredictable moments.

Right?

And those are the things that make all

the difference in a photo, those undefinable features,

the ones that you can't direct.

So...

Or predict.

Or predict.

So shooting through the arc of those moments.

Yeah.

And getting lucky.

This whole idea of getting lucky that Lani's

been talking about means taking chances.

Right?

So give yourself that chance of catching that

split second where every foreground, midground, and background

element line up in a way that you

couldn't have even predicted or hoped for.

You know, give yourself the chance of telling

multiple stories in one frame.

So for example, in this photo, I was

obviously taking the photos of the bride having

a shower.

Which we will talk about.

Which we will talk about.

But instead of, you know, getting my photo

and getting out of there, I stayed there

for the entire shower, which gave me the

chance of getting this moment when her son

came in and said, Mom, where's my toothbrush?

Because anybody who's a mom knows that they

can never have a shower in peace once

they have kids.

Right?

I couldn't have directed this.

This is something I had to, you know,

prepare to be lucky.

Sit there for the entire shower.

Maybe something will happen.

You know, give yourself that chance of catching

something completely unpredictable.

You know, we can't make this shit up.

Lani and I aren't creative enough to make

something like this up.

Or give yourself the chance of everyone's arms

being up in the air and everyone's feet

being off the ground at the exact same

moment your flash fires.

Shouldn't we have our webcam up for the

recording?

Well, it depends on the photo that's up.

Yeah, but let's keep it up for the

most part.

And then if it's in the way, we'll

just show it.

Your timing was perfect on that.

I was just about to.

Sorry.

Yes.

Talk back into it.

Yeah, the chance of, you know, catching this

moment where everyone's hands are in the air

and everyone's feet are off the ground at

the exact moment your flash fires.

Right?

That's luck.

It really boils down to luck in the

end.

But the fact that Lani stayed out there

for this entire song, this entire song, and

he wasn't afraid to shoot 150 shots to

get this one.

That's making his own luck.

Buying tickets.

Buying tickets.

If he had gone out there and taken

20 or 30 shots, that's hoping for luck.

Right?

That's hoping for luck.

But because he stayed out there and was

committed to it for a whole song and...

Why are you knocking my knee?

I'm trying to get this point across.

Can you just stop?

It's a cross.

It's a cross.

Fine.

Go.

Sorry.

I'm just...

Yeah.

I'm just trying to keep it so it's

not too...

Listen.

I'm not the one that rambles.

Wait till we get five camera flashes.

Let me ramble here.

Okay.

This idea of shooting the shit out of

it is not the same as spraying and

praying.

Okay.

And sometimes people get confused on that idea.

Kirsten Lewis actually has a great little way

of explaining it.

It's like, shoot more, less often.

Okay.

Shooting a lot doesn't mean you're like a

crime scene photographer where you come in and

it's like, click, click, click.

A shot of everything.

It's picking and choosing the time.

Right?

Like if you were to look at our

contact sheet, you'd see a few photos exploring,

and then you might see 50 to 100

frames of the same moment, right?

Or the same concept.

Okay.

So it's knowing when to, you know, step

on the gas, but then when to come

off and observe and be curious and find

the next lottery where you're going to buy

a bunch of tickets.

Okay.

And there's a lot of art and strategy

at play with that.

And we kind of have a couple little,

we kind of have, sorry, yes, I got

to move.

A couple little, can they see that?

No.

Oh, man.

So just, just keep going in all.

Do they see all of those?

Yes.

They see a whole strip.

Listen, this is what I'll do.

So instead of you interrupting me and me

interrupting you, if we see this come up,

I will go in and switch it while

you're still talking.

When we talk to Joe and get questions,

I'm going to confirm that they actually see

this whole thing.

They do.

So a couple of little kind of mental

cues that we think about that help us

kind of see and anticipate moments and opportunities.

Okay.

They're both sports analogies.

Okay.

One of them is this idea of get

open.

Okay.

Which is sort of like in football when

the quarterback gets the ball or in hockey

when the star player gets the puck, what

do you do?

You get open, right?

All often, like if I'm feeling overwhelmed in

a situation and there's so much action, I'm

not sure what to focus on, what to

shoot, what to do.

I'll just tell myself in my mind, just

get open, Lang.

Get open.

And sometimes I'll actually kind of mentally envision

the whole scene.

Things are happening too fast around me.

I'll just envision it happening in slow motion,

right down to like matrix style, where it's

like, if I were to like freeze frame

everything right now, where would I put my

camera?

If I could move my camera anywhere right

now.

And often there'll be an obvious, some obvious

place.

It might be a scary place, but you'll

know.

So it's like, where's the interesting light?

Where are the interesting people?

And then move the camera there.

Move the camera there.

Okay.

And wait for the moment.

So this idea of get open to receive

the pass, to receive the moment.

Okay.

And then once you're open, once you have

your camera where it needs to be, keep

your stick on the ice.

That's a hockey analogy.

Kids, the first time a young hockey player

picks up a hockey stick, it's ingrained in

their memories.

Keep your stick on the ice.

Because you can't score goals.

You can't receive the pass.

When your stick comes off the ice, you

miss the moment.

So that just means, camera's up.

Keep your stick.

Or at least here.

Yeah.

We don't always, especially with our LCD displays

now, we don't always have our camera right

on our eyeball.

But if we are, it's close.

Right?

Because this movement is much less obvious and

noticeable than having to go and reach all

the way down to your camera.

Right?

Yeah.

So it's keeping that stick on the ice.

Versus.

I know.

Often it's as simple as that.

Just keep your camera up.

Okay.

And another area where Eric and I still,

but especially early on, we noticed where we

were missing moments, is not in the sense

that we were not photographing them, but we

were catching the instant right before the moment.

And we were catching the instant right after

the moment.

But we were missing the sweet spot right

in the midst of the moment.

Because we were unconsciously watching, or even participating

in the actual moment.

And often the real moment, that sort of

sweet spot that Liane's talking about, isn't in

the middle.

Sometimes it's near the end.

Like often it's in the rebound.

Right?

It's in the release of the moment that

sort of happens after the moment.

So keep your stick on the ice to

catch the rebound.

Yeah.

So catch those rebounds.

And even when posing, you know, for portraits,

we'll make, you know, 10 or 20, you

know, once they think we're done shooting, we'll

make another 10 or 20 frames for that

unpredictable money shot.

Okay.

And that's often when, it's often in the

transitions when the best opportunities arise for something

unexpected.

It's always in the transitions where it's something

unexpected.

Because anything that we can direct and pose

them into is expected.

Authentic movement is almost always so much more

compelling than a static posed portrait.

And so these were all made in the

moments between the portraits, when they're making their

way to or from the next portrait, or

wherever Eric and I have asked them to

go for us.

Yeah.

And we're going to talk about our approach

to posing in one of the following modules

as well.

So save all your questions with regards to

posing for them.

Yeah.

Okay.

Which brings us to one of, another really

core fundamental aspect of what we do at

weddings and what we're looking for.

What we're looking for.

And that's the moment trumps everything.

We try not to use that word, trump.

But we are today in a different context,

right?

Moment trumps everything.

So it trumps composition.

It trumps shitty lighting, always.

Without a motion or motion or human form

in a photo, it just falls flat, right?

It fails to deliver.

And it's the hardest of the three to

achieve, right?

As photographers, we've got light, we've got composition,

and we've got moment.

We can control our light, right?

If the light is shitty, we can bring

in our flashes.

We can certainly control our composition.

We can decide which lenses to use.

We can decide where to put our lens.

The one thing that we have the least

control over is the moment, right?

But it's the most important of those three

elements.

It's that something special.

It's that something special.

It's the missing ingredient in a lot of

photos.

Yes, it totally is.

Because if we are trying to touch humans

with our imagery, with our photos, then our

photos have to say something about what it

means to be human.

That last quote is a perfect example.

Even something really small, right?

Yeah, this is a good example.

So this was during the ceremony, and I

had the wrong lens on my camera.

I wish I had a 35, and I

think I had a 50 here.

And the boy's hands are cut off, and

it drives me nuts, because I have this

thing about cut off hands, because hands show

so much emotion, right?

And I really wish I had his hands

in this photo, but really, it doesn't matter,

because the photo is more about the moment

than anything else, right?

We wanna make you think and feel something

at the times.

Just telling simple, unexpected emotional stories.

And these moments of connection are so brief,

especially with certain clientele, right?

We all know the clients that are hard

to break, the ones that don't give us

a lot of emotion, right?

They're still there.

It's just that they're more fleeting.

They're way more fleeting, right?

But these are the images that feed our

soul.

So it's our job during the chaos of

a wedding day to go and find and

document these moments.

And actually, I find it quite easy when

the wedding is chaotic, when they're running behind,

when things are going wrong, when emotions are

running high, when everybody's stressed out.

I actually find it quite easy to go

and find and document these moments, because it's

a moment-rich environment, right?

When shit goes wrong at a wedding, then

I get super excited, because all of a

sudden there's a real story to tell.

What I find harder is when the wedding's

boring, which is more often than not.

Weddings are boring.

Because weddings, on the surface, are scripted events

that follow a predictable timeline, right?

And weddings, especially in North America, can be

super boring.

That is the hardest time, as a photographer,

to maintain that interest and to maintain that

curiosity and to maintain that meditation of going

and finding and searching out these moments, right?

When Lani and I first started our career,

we were very good at creating interest in

our photos using flashy camera techniques.

That's what we excelled at at the beginning

of our career.

That's how we compensated for our lack of

interest in- In the people.

In the weddings.

It was like, well, we can just reflect

this.

Well, we can just, you know, stick a

flash on this, right?

So we have, and many of us get

into photography because we're interested in photography, right?

We've got an interest in cameras and lenses

and flash techniques.

And not necessarily weddings, right?

I mean, Eric and I think weddings are

silly.

Yeah.

You know, we don't have a genuine interest

in weddings.

Yeah.

So we get into photography because we've got

an interest in photography.

But that's only a first step, right?

That's like your first step.

And an interest in photography will only take

you so far.

Not very far at all, actually.

Photography was invented to express an interest in

something else.

And so that's where you can get, that's

where you can go so much further with

your photography.

If you have an interest in what you're

actually shooting, that's gonna come through in your

photos.

And that doesn't come easily, especially for us

at weddings because we're not interested in weddings.

We're not interested in, we didn't even have

a wedding photographer.

We think weddings are kind of silly, right?

But we have an interest in people.

We have an interest in kids.

We have an interest in family dramas.

We have an interest in relationships.

You know, we have an interest in all

these other things that are inevitably a part

of weddings, but aren't necessarily defined as weddings.

When we first started, you know, trying to

be a wedding photographer, we were, you know,

we had the blinders on and we were

stuck up on the surface of these weddings

on the pageantry, right?

And then once we learned to, you know,

to see down beneath that pageantry, that's where

we found all this stuff that we do

find interesting, right?

And that's when our photography went beyond just

lifeless representations of ideas.

And we were starting to be able to

achieve meaningful moments and, you know.

And this is an important piece to keep

in mind through the entirety of this course,

is you have to find an interest in

what you're shooting in, not an interest in

photography.

And that does not come easily.

It's very easy for me to sit here

and say, and say that, and say, that's

what you should do.

It's very hard to put into practice.

And in fact, it's never somewhere you get

to.

It's not like, okay, I've finally got an

interest in weddings so I can do this

job well now.

It's a lifelong journey.

And it keeps on changing and morphing because

you change as a person and your interest

changes as a person.

So it's a lifelong journey.

So expect it to be a struggle throughout.

Okay, so let's exit out of here.

And we'll go back to Zoom.

That was kind of a quick crash course

on my- Hold on.

How do I get back to the full

screen here?

You can just drag it.

No, that's not- Why did you sleep

like that?

Because they can't see us.

Can you guys see us, Jodi?

Oh yeah, we can see you.

Yeah, we can see you.

Yeah, but in the recording, they won't be

able to.

Oh.

Where is it then?

It's gonna be one of these.

No, that just strips it.

Can you guys hear me okay?

Yes, yes.

So you can go ahead and ask the

questions.

I'll try and- Is this going to

be open?

Yeah, I guess that's going to be open.

I kind of logged questions from the beginning.

There aren't too, too many.

So I'll just keep watching the comment side.

But the first question came from Maren S.

What about when couples have a specific list

of photos that they would like to have

taken on the day?

You guys ever dealt with that?

So the best way for us to answer

that question is to go into the units

in the Facebook group and watch that Gaining

Your Client's Trust video where we literally put

you into our client's shoes and you see,

there we go, and you see exactly how

we educate our clients before they even hire

us.

So we're not gonna get those shot lists

at the wedding because we've already addressed that

before they even hire us.

Yes, and we've addressed that with what we

show on our website as well and what

we show on our Instagram account.

But if someone sends us a shot list

before their wedding, I would get on the

phone with them and talk to them about,

they're basically gonna end up with a shittier

version of someone else's photos.

From someone else's wedding.

From someone else's wedding.

And you will be hiring us for what

we do.

But all of that stuff, I mean, that

happens to photographers who haven't educated their clients

before hiring them to the point that they

understand that they're on the same page because

often it's just a communication thing.

Often it's just a, like once we explain

why that isn't in their interest, they're like,

oh yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, you're right, let's do that.

But we do cover that quite extensively in

that Gaining Your Client's Trust tutorial.

So take a look at that.

Perfect.

The next question came from, Paul, forgive me

if I don't say the name correct, Dumit.

He asked about your approach that you're describing

as far as the creativity during the wedding

days.

Can it be done as a solo photographer?

Definitely, definitely.

I mean, the first half of the day,

Lani and I work as solo photographers.

Lani does groom prep alone and I do

bride prep alone.

So, and actually I find that's when I

work my best.

And same with Lani.

It allows us to have that time as

solo photographers and just sort of work with

our own ideas.

You still, you're gonna have to balance definitely

that element of getting the first kiss shot

in a safe way.

But safe doesn't have to mean boring, right?

You can still get a safe shot that's

a more interesting composition.

I think where you place yourself on the

spectrum, right?

There's like a, there's a wedding photography approach

spectrum.

On the one extreme, you've got somebody like

a Jerry Gionis who directs everything, right?

And he does that really well.

He's amazing at that.

His clients hire him for that.

And then on the other end of the

spectrum, you've got somebody like a Tyler Workin

who won't even move a water bottle or

turn on or off a light switch, right?

And we're all somewhere in the middle of

that spectrum.

It's totally up to you.

There's no rules.

You can put yourself wherever you want.

But where you put yourself doesn't matter if

you're a solo photographer or you've got a

second shooter or you've got an assistant or

a whole team of assistants.

Really where you put yourself depends on other

things like the experience you're trying to create

for your clients and the photos you're trying

to create.

And not to be super completely naive, it

does help that Leia and I shoot together.

There is no doubt about that.

It helps that we shoot together, especially during

portraits and other sections of the day where

we can rely on each other to get

certain shots if the other person's taking more

of a risk.

Yeah, when we dissect some photos, we'll talk

about in which cases we did them entirely

on our own or in which cases we

were working together as a team and how

you would, as a solo photographer, how you

could actually do the same thing without an

assistant.

Perfect.

The next question came from Payal Kumar and

it is Indian weddings last for three days

with the wedding day usually the last day.

How does one sustain themselves with your full

-day approach?

Okay, well, okay.

We should clarify, Payal.

Yes, we've shot in India before.

We don't take the same full-day approach

in India.

It's an hourly approach in India.

Well, in terms of we still take the

same approach, but in terms of quoting on

the wedding and the way that we charge

hourly.

Yes.

So we break it down that way.

Yes, because no, we wouldn't survive three 18

-hour days in a row.

For the same price.

Yeah.

I have a question.

I just, how do you protect your flashes

when you're doing that in the shower?

Let's save that for when we deconstruct shower

shots.

Flashes are water resistant.

They're good.

Lanny, this was during when you were concerned

of whether or not we could see your

full screen.

We could see your full screen just fine.

Questions.

Do you say anything to your couples to

get them to maintain connection during those transition

moments?

When they think you're done photographing them, they

still stay connected to one another.

That was from Alyssa.

Oh, in portraits.

Well, one of the things we'll, and we'll

go through this in our posing talk, but

if we're doing a portrait session, we'll just

tell them at the beginning of the session,

at all points, whether you think we're photographing

you or not photographing you, make sure both

hands are on each other at all times.

Yeah.

That's it.

And that's all we'll say during the transition,

transition sections.

Or maybe, oh, Paul, make sure you help

Katherine with her dress there up the hill

because it's dragging on the ground.

Well, we will have, we'll coach them and

tell them.

During portraits, but not during.

Portraits is a totally different game for us.

We play two games at weddings.

We play documentary game, which is 90, 95

% of the day.

And then portraits, we are full on directing

everything, right?

And when Erica says the posing module, that's

gonna be a free session that we're gonna

do in the group.

I do a little one at the beginning.

Well, what you guys are gonna see is

when we deconstruct the photos, any portrait example,

we're literally gonna explain what we told them

to do.

Right?

Yeah.

Anything, any other common themes coming up there,

Jodi?

I'm just copying questions as they go.

Trying to listen to you guys and copy

at the same time.

So just give me one sec.

Talking about shooting alone, brides and grooms, do

you use more natural light at the time

or still lots of off-camera flash?

Let's wait till we get into light.

Yeah.

And it really depends.

It depends.

Everything depends.

All our answers to every question.

It depends.

It depends.

Okay.

Just give me one sec.

Full day, does it end when you're done

or when the couple go to bed?

It ends when we feel like we've told

the whole story.

So sometimes it's like, yeah, maybe the dance

floor is still going.

It's dwindling off.

We know that we've already gotten told the

whole story.

We'll have our hugs, say our goodbyes.

Sometimes that's midnight.

Sometimes that's two in the morning.

Honestly, usually by the time we actually go

and give our clients a hug goodbye, they're

surprised we're still there.

We don't follow them up to their bedroom.

No.

Unless they've requested, which actually happened once.

They're like, we've saved ourselves for marriage.

And we'd like to have it documented.

And we're like, yeah.

Okay.

So we're not worried.

And we've just done our evaluation.

Okay.

Let's move on, Jody.

Yeah.

If you see any other common themes of

questions that are coming up that are relevant,

then we'll dive into those at the next

one.

And for those of you who we didn't

get to your questions, when I post this

video in the student portal, there's a comment

section there where you can ask questions.

And I will make sure I go in

there and answer every question that gets asked,

okay?

It's a guarantee.

Unless it's like a completely unrelated question.

You do that, I'll do this.

Okay.

Okay.

Thanks, Jody.

All right.

We'll see you in a bit.

Let's dive back in.

Okay, so I was able to, but that

only works that one time.

Hold on.

I don't get that.

You're all.

See, now it's saying- We can just

move to the next slide, then I can

start.

But it's saying, can you guys see us

on the screen there?

Jody, let us know.

Sorry, I'll start again.

Can you see us?

Yes, I can still see you.

Okay.

Okay, but the recording is not gonna see

us.

Okay, so turn off your camera now, Jody.

See if it's also with us.

No, that's what I'm saying is sometimes it

shows us up there, sometimes it doesn't.

Okay, then go to the one where it

shows us.

Sorry, guys.

Oh, there.

Okay, there.

Okay.

Okay, perfect.

Okay.

Don't touch it.

And actually, I think we can drag this

screen.

No, no, just leave it, just leave it.

Okay, so here we go.

Now, for all the gearheads out there, most

common question that we all receive regarding a

photo is, what camera?

What lens?

And most of you can relate, and most

of you understand that that is one of

the most irrelevant questions.

So in a way right now, what we're

gonna do is we're going from what we

feel is the most important fundamental stuff to

what's on the opposite end in terms of

how relevant and important it is.

Obviously, we need gear, right?

We need cameras and lenses to achieve the

why, right?

I need to go to the, I need

to have a keynote there.

See, when I go there, it goes Jody.

So I don't know.

So just leave it there, okay?

No, there.

Okay, so because what we're gonna do next

is we're gonna dive into the gear bag,

okay?

I'm gonna show you guys, talk about everything

that's in our gear bag and why.

But just remember that it's not what's in

the gear bag, of course, it's what we're

doing with it.

It's not which camera, it's where we're putting

the cameras.

It's like a Canon camera up in the

action is going to beat a Nikon camera

at the back row any day, okay?

An iPhone up here is gonna beat a

big fancy SLR that's hanging down around your

waist, okay?

So it's what we're doing with our gear

that really matters.

And it doesn't matter what's in your gear

bag, really.

What matters in our mind are two things,

okay?

Simplify.

So whatever's in your camera bag, it better

be in there for a good reason or

multiple reasons.

Otherwise, it's just extra stuff that's bogging you

down physically and mentally.

So we've tried to simplify our equipment choices

as much as possible, okay?

And so simplify and practice.

So if it's in your bag, you better

know how to use it, right?

Otherwise, again, it's just bogging you down.

It has to become a muscle memory thing,

okay?

So with that said, let's look at what's

in our gear bag cameras, okay?

We use the Sony A9 camera, okay?

So we have four of them, two each,

okay?

Two for Erica, two for me.

We used to use Canon.

The reason we switched just this within the

last year and a half from Canon to

Sony is not because we wanted to go

from Canon to Sony, it's because we wanted

to go from SLR to mirrorless.

We've been shooting mirrorless cameras for a few

years for just our family travel work.

And when we got this Sony A9, it

was the first time we realized, oh man,

this could change the game for us at

weddings, okay?

I'll just quickly touch on the reasons that

it's a game changer for us.

Again, not that it's Sony, it's the mirrorless

technology.

It allows for a much smaller, lighter camera,

obviously, which is great for being discreet, great

for being light and mobile and fast.

Not amazing for ergonomics, honestly.

This feels like I'm playing a video game

a little bit more than operating a camera,

but hopefully that'll improve.

The other reasons that this is amazing for

us is while 20 frames per second is

pretty awesome, even though we almost never use

that, we're usually down around five frames per

second, unless some really fast action is happening.

The flip screen is awesome because it allows

us to make interesting compositions without having to

contort our bodies into ridiculous positions.

The silent shutter is, with the electronic shutter,

is great for those intimate moments, quiet ceremonies,

being discreet.

But the real game changers are two, focus,

compared to our Canons, the focusing on this

A9 is incredible.

After I talk about the gear here, Erica's

gonna come in and talk about our camera

settings, so she'll talk about focus specifically then.

And then the other real game changer is

the EVF, so the electronic viewfinder, which basically

allows, whether I'm looking at the screen, which

we sometimes do, or I'm looking right through

the viewfinder, I can visually see the exposure

in real time as I'm adjusting my settings.

With the SLRs, even though we weren't chimping,

we were missing stuff because we would have

to check exposure.

So now we literally never have to kick

the camera off our eyeballs, which is pretty

incredible.

So those are the cameras.

For straps, we just use normal, little fashion

camera straps.

None of the two camera holster setups really

allow us to shoot the way we like

to shoot, which is often rolling around on

the ground.

And honestly, even though we shoot with four

cameras, two each, we're usually only one camera

at a time.

As often as possible, we're one camera, one

lens.

The other camera is nearby somewhere in the

bag or it's on the bed so that

we can grab it.

The only time that we actually have all

four cameras and play at the same time

is during ceremonies.

And in those situations, we just deal with

having a little bit of crisscross with our

straps.

So those are the cameras.

And we're gonna break for Q&A after

the gear talk.

Let me get through all the gear.

Let's talk about the lenses next.

And I've actually got a list of them

right here for you.

These are the lenses that we use.

And one of the first things you'll notice

is that we're mostly prime lenses.

We've only got that one 16 to 35

zoom, which I will talk about.

The reason we have moved away from zoom

lenses, which is where we started, to primes,

it's not because it's sharper glass.

It's not because it's faster.

It's not because it's wider apertures.

It's simply because it's simple.

It's simplified our options.

And in a way, it's counterintuitive because you'd

think, well, a zoom lens kind of covers

all your options with fewer things, right?

You can cover all my bases with one

or two lenses.

But the thing with a zoom lens psychologically

for me, it's like if I've got one

or two zooms, it's like having every single

lens around my hip belt at any one

time.

I've got infinite possibilities, okay?

And creativity really stems from limiting possibilities, right?

Constraint is really where creativity shines.

And with the zooms, we were like, jack

of all trades, master of none.

Now with the primes, we go from infinite

possibilities on a zoom lens to one possibility.

If I've got my 35 millimeter lens on,

there's one best place for me to go

to fill the frame with that moment or

that story.

And we learn those focal lengths like the

back of our hand.

Like that 35, I know exactly where I

need to go.

And I don't even have to put it

to my eye.

I can almost frame it and get the

composition where I need it without even looking

through the viewfinder because we know that focal

length like the back of our hand.

Okay?

So now we zoom with our feet and

it's just much simpler in our minds.

One camera, one lens, one focal length, one

option.

So let's go through these lenses.

16 to 35, let's start there, the widest.

That's our only zoom that we're using now.

But we rarely use it as a zoom

lens.

We usually use it locked at 16 millimeter,

honestly.

So basically treat it like a prime 16

millimeter lens.

And that's our dance floor lens, okay?

16, super wide.

We will also use it if we're using

our 35 and that's not wide enough, we

will move to this one which gives us

a wider focal length, okay?

It's the 2.8. Then we've got this

28 2.0 lens, okay?

This is one of my favorites.

It's a small little pancake lens.

It's super small and light.

It's F 2.0. It's not F 1

.0 or anything like that because that lens

is so much bigger and heavier which might

be nice in portraits.

We'll talk about that.

But what Erica's gonna talk about with our

camera settings when it gets to aperture, for

documentary storytelling we're almost never wider than 2

.8 anyways.

We're usually shooting moving moments, right?

And or layering multiple stories where we have

higher apertures anyways.

So we'd much rather have a much smaller,

lighter, faster lens on our camera.

So this is our 28.

So that 16 to 35 and the 28

would be the two lenses that we use

when we wanna go wider than 35.

So usually Erica will have this one with

her in the morning and I'll have this

one with me in the morning, okay?

The 35 is the only lens that we

have two of, okay?

We've doubled up on that one because otherwise

we would be fighting over it.

So we each get a 35.

We've got the 1.8, okay?

And we've got this little 2.8, okay?

This one would be our preference for portraits,

obviously.

And this one would be our preference for

storytelling.

But one would be with Erica, one would

be with me in the morning.

The reason we've doubled up on that one

is it seems to be the way that

Erica and I both see the world, especially

when we're in documentary mode.

It seems to be that sweet spot.

And when 35 is not wide enough, we

wanna get even closer or we're in a

really tight space, we'll switch over to either

the 28 or the 16 and 35, okay?

And then the rest of the lenses there,

guys, the 50, the 85, the 135, honestly,

those are portrait lenses for us.

Those really aren't our storytelling lenses.

Other than a few rare exceptions where maybe

Erica's focusing in on the eyelashes during makeup

or something like that, she might use the

50.

But for the most part, when we're telling

stories, documenting layers, we're using our 35 or

wider, okay?

So the 50, the 85 and the 135,

those are all the 1.4 or 1

.8 lenses because they're mostly our portrait lenses.

And in a portrait situation, sometimes we are

wanting to go one point something because we're

trying to isolate them and we have the

ability to make sure we've got focus correct.

The other time we will use those telephoto

lenses is occasionally during speeches and during ceremonies.

So for a ceremony, we'll each have a

wide lens and a telephoto lens, okay?

And we used to use the 70 to

200.

We've kind of switched over to the 135

in place of it because it's just smaller

and lighter, okay?

With all of those lenses, you'd notice that

none of them have any lens hoods on

them.

We've taken off all that extra plastic because

just extra stuff takes up more space, makes

us bigger.

And when we can deconstruct a lot of

photos, you'll see we've put our lens up

physically close to something.

And those lens hoods prevent us from being

able to do that.

Plus they don't really do a good job

of shading the lens when you need it

to.

We find it's a much better option to

just do this, basically shade the lens with

our hand.

That way we can be more accurate with

it, does a better job and we can

even be creative and let some light in

or out, okay?

The only time that those lens hoods do

come in handy is if it's raining because

it would keep the water off of the

lenses, okay?

We don't use any filters, no filters on

the lenses other than just a straightforward normal

UV filter just to protect the glass, okay?

All right, let's talk about the flashes now.

So the flashes that we use are these

ones here, okay?

This is the Profoto A1X.

We had the Profoto A1s and then we

got these A1Xs which is just a smoother,

better design really.

Functionally, it's the same flash though.

Before these, we shot with the Canon 600s,

which were great.

They had some limitations, certainly nothing like this.

Once we started playing around with this, we

realized we couldn't go back, okay?

And the reason for that, honestly, is this

piece right here, the lithium battery, okay?

With those Canons, with the AAs, those AAs

would die a long, slow death and the

refresh rate would get longer and longer.

Whereas with the lithium one, the refresh rate

is much faster and it works until it

doesn't.

So once the battery dies, it just stops,

you switch the battery, okay?

That's the biggest game changer with this one.

I'm gonna talk about the flashes and the

transmitters in more detail when we get into

the off-camera flash, into the nuts and

bolts of that.

You're probably one of the best alternatives to

this right now are Godox flashes because Godox

flashes also use lithium batteries, okay?

So you get those benefits.

A lot of our friends use Godox.

They're a lot more affordable, okay?

Some of our friends love it, love the

Godox, have never had any issues.

Some of our friends hate them and pulling

their hair out and had nothing but problems.

And I think the reason for that is

just the quality control is probably not gonna

be the same and you might just get

a lemon with a Godox, in which case,

and for that price, maybe you can afford

to go through a few, right?

And then the other thing with this is

it's super reliable.

It always links.

It's never not linked and we're able to

fire our flashes like from three blocks away,

okay?

And it's very simple.

There's no death by menus here.

There's two very simple, straightforward menu items.

Those would be the main differences between the

Profoto and the Godox.

This round head, whatever.

In our minds, it doesn't matter.

It just happens to be round.

You don't really notice a big difference in

terms of the quality of light coming off

of it, okay?

So we have four of these, two each,

all right?

And grids and gels, okay?

I'll talk about grids and gels and why

we use them and where we use them

in a second when we get to off

-camera flash, but just for now, know that

we each carry a couple grids and a

couple gel carriers.

With the A1, because it has a magnetized

head, you can put these circular grids right

on there like that.

If you have a rectangular flash head, then

your best option would be the MagMons, okay?

So it's just a magnetized mag grip that

you stretch onto your flash and it allows

you to stack these modular grids and gels,

which we'll talk about, okay?

Okay, light stands.

We carry two light stands with us, one

each, all right?

And the one that we use, I should

mention, Eric is gonna post in the group

for you guys, in the student portal, a

gear list for you.

So all of the make and model of

what we're actually using, she'll have the links

in there so you guys know.

But this one's the Manfrotto Nano light stand.

It's like one of the smallest, lightest ones

you can get.

And that's what we want.

We wanna be as fast as possible.

And if we're gonna be making our own

light in a documentary scenario where we're not

controlling things to line up where we want

them to, we have to be light and

fast, okay?

And we see photographers all the time struggling

with these big, heavy, cumbersome light stands for

a small, little speed light.

You don't need all that size, okay?

And you don't need it to go very

high.

Let's see.

Okay, so that's about seven feet.

Okay, so six to eight feet is more

than high enough.

And I'll talk about why when we get

into positioning of flashes.

The most critical thing with your light stands

is, Erika, I need them to see me

bigger here.

I'm gonna try to get this.

I can't see my mouse, so it's hard

to escape.

See this X?

X there, and then?

Stop screen share, and then I'll take you

to there.

Can they see me full screen now?

Okay, I should be full screen?

Okay, so this little piece that goes up

on the top of the light stand, okay?

Because often we'll see photographers with big, clunky

adapters up here for the hot shoot that

only move in like one plane of direction

at a time.

And so they can't get it aimed precisely

where they want quite, and it's super cumbersome

and slow, and it requires two hands sort

of thing.

This little piece, we put this on each

of our light stands, it's the NovaFlex ball

head, okay?

And there's a couple other versions of this

out there as well.

And what it is, is basically just your

hot shoe, okay?

Yeah, there it is, NovaFlex ball head.

And you screw it on, get the right

adapter, you screw it on to the top

of your light stand.

And it's a 360 degree ball head, okay?

So, put my flash on here, lock it

in place.

Now I can move my flash 360 degrees

with one hand, okay?

So, for example, if I come up to

my flash, it's not quite aimed in the

right spot, with one hand, I can quickly

re-aim it and let go.

Okay, it's super fast.

And so this is a key piece, okay?

And then play.

Oh, all right, I gotta push 12 different

buttons before I can get you back into

it.

Share the screen, no option for that up

here.

Zoom, zoom, bottom share screen, there it is.

Click the keynote, there we go.

Press play, there we go.

Close this.

Where's the mouse?

Okay.

And he can work his way around Photoshop

like you wouldn't believe, but he's bad with

any other type of technology whatsoever.

You didn't press share.

You have to press share in order to

share the screen.

Okay, and then there, and then play.

Okay, I did forget to show you one

other thing there on the light sensors, okay?

This is the Manfrotto Nano Clamp, okay?

And we each carry one of them with

us.

So we have two of these and this

is what it looks like, okay?

And basically what it allows you to do

is clamp your flash to anything within about

a one and a half inch diameter, okay?

And in conjunction with that, we place the

ball head, the same NovaFlex ball head, which

goes 360 degrees for you, okay?

And so this allows us to, if we're

in a tight bathroom where we can't quite

get the light stand in between the bathtub

and the toilet, we can clamp this to

the light fixture or the shower rod, or

the back of a chair or something.

So it's a nice alternative to a light

stand when that's not an option for you,

okay?

And the other thing that we bring with

us is a small, light little monopod that

extends about six feet in length.

And the only time we use it is

for on the dance floor, which we'll talk

about.

It's basically so that we can put a

light on a stick and we can maneuver

our light source around on the dance floor

without having to physically hold our arm up

super high to avoid the shadows.

And we'll talk about that, okay?

So that's it for the light stands, clamps,

monopods.

Begs, what do we carry at all?

Hi, Lani.

Jodi?

Yeah, no, I couldn't see you, but now

I can.

I missed out on the last monopod, but

I couldn't see anything.

Okay, you couldn't see my video?

Yeah, it wasn't visible, now I can, but

I missed out on what you were trying

to show in the monopod.

Okay, all I was, I don't have it

here.

It's just a monopod that is about this

long, okay?

And it stretches.

Okay.

So the bags, what do we put?

Okay, so we'll just wait for, as long

as we're good now, we'll just wait for

the Q&As, okay?

So what do we put all the gear

in?

Eric and I each have a personal shoulder

bag that we bring with us.

So when Eric goes to the girls, I

go to the guys, we each have one

little bag and our one light stand, okay?

The bag that we use is the Think

Tank Retrospective, and it's just big enough for

us to carry our two small cameras, a

couple lenses, our two flashes, our grids and

our gels, and our transmitter, okay?

That's all we need.

We don't wanna have any extra stuff with

us in the morning because it slows us

down and bogs us down, okay?

So then all of the other stuff, anything

else that we want to have with us

at the reception that night, goes in the

Think Tank air porter, okay?

And we call that base camp.

It's basically, once we get to the reception,

we'll need to establish a base camp where

we can have all our lenses and keep

all our gear organized.

So one of us will have that Think

Tank, unless we happen to have an assistant

with us, in which case that would go

with the assistant, okay?

So let's break here now, and we'll do

all the questions related to gear.

Just give me a minute to push this

sequence of 12 buttons.

Escape, X, X, okay, hang on, and then

stop share.

Okay, Jodi, you with me?

There wasn't a ton of questions.

Oh, here we go.

Now they're starting to come in.

What was the brand of the ball head

adapter by David Truong?

NovaFlex.

NovaFlex.

Erica's gonna post the gear list in the

group for you all.

Perfect.

Some of them I'm just gonna read because

I'm not entirely sure what they're asking, so

there's not a ton of questions.

This part was pretty easy on the questions

front for right now.

I know you get wild with your flashes.

How do you constantly shit yourself that you're

going to smash them?

Ha ha, with Godox?

I can't deal with it.

Profoto, I'd cry.

Oh, like worrying about our flash, somebody knocking

over our flashes, and we don't worry about

it.

We do what we have to do to

make the best light we can in whatever

the situation is, and it is what it

is, but we've never had a flash smash.

We've had it knocked over a couple times.

If you use MagMod, that rubber acts as

a good buffer.

It cushions the fall, but yeah, with Godox,

you know, not such a big deal.

With a Profoto light, yeah, you gotta think

about it a little bit.

We'll talk specifically about the dance floor and

how we work together with our lights when

we get to those photos.

Okay.

Couple more, going back and forth between the

two.

Do you still shoot lots of frames to

catch moments in a situation like perhaps when

you're using a flash from Ali?

Yeah, no difference.

Doesn't matter if we're using flash or not.

We shoot the same.

Are you in silent mode all day?

That's from Yaron Toranos.

Erica's about to get into our camera settings

and how we set up our cameras and

why, so we'll talk about that then, but

just quickly, as much as possible, we're in

silent shutter unless we're off camera flash, in

which case we have to go into mechanical

shutter, which I'll talk about, or if you're

experiencing banding, sometimes with some cameras, not so

much with the A9, but I know the

Sony A7 apparently has banding issues sometimes, and

that's an electronic shutter thing, so if that's

an issue, you would switch over to mechanical

shutter.

Would primes ever cause you to miss moments

like changing the lenses?

We're rarely changing lenses other than portraits.

Obviously, in portraits, we're switching lenses back and

forth and switching cameras back and forth, but

when we're documenting, we've set ourselves up to

have the right lenses on for the situation,

and keep in mind, we've got the two

cameras, so we usually have two options, right?

So we might have a 35 on one

camera and a 50 on another, so for

the most part, no, we're rarely ever switching

our lenses anywhere.

Other than portraits.

Are you taking any questions with regards to

memory cards?

Yeah, sure, that's related to gear.

We use the 128 gig cards, okay?

And Erica's gonna talk about what we write

to the different slots, et cetera, but we

use those nice big cards because that allows

us to get through the bulk of the

wedding before we have to worry about changing

lenses, or sorry, changing memory cards and taking

them in and out of cameras and card

readers, and that's when the memory is most

vulnerable, so that's why we use those big

cards.

Do you guys use Profoto Beat 10?

Yeah, sorry, I should've mentioned that.

That's brand new for us just this year.

We started to use this in very limited

situations.

First of all, mostly only local weddings when

we don't have to travel with and carry

all the gear, but for local weddings, we'll

bring one or two of these now.

So basically, up until this year, still, 95

% of all the flashlight photos we've ever

made have been made with Speedlight alone, and

often just one Speedlight, okay?

But this does now open up some more

possibilities to us because it's as strong as

five Speedlights, which allows us to overpower the

sun, essentially.

So our Speedlights, though, are more than powerful

enough for anything indoors and anything outside at

night or during dusk and beyond, okay?

So midday, bright sun, we would only ever

use natural light, but now we do have

the option.

So in portraits outdoors with the sun, we're

mostly gonna be using natural light, but we

do have the option now of playing around

with off-camera flash, and that's where we

bring in this Beat 10.

Perfect.

What are your feelings on a tilt-shift

lens for weddings or portraits?

We've never used them.

Why not?

Yeah, I know a lot of photographers use

them, rock them, love them, but nothing against

them.

It's just nothing we've ever really experimented with.

Perfect.

The Manfrotto Nano goes up to 6.2.

Do you use that for reception halls also

or higher?

No, that's more than high enough.

Yeah, that's more than high enough for anything

that we use in situations where we need

to get it higher, i.e. on a

dance floor with shadows from arms in the

air, we've got other options where we use

our monopod.

And I'm gonna talk about direct, we're gonna,

when we get into the nuts and bolts

of off-camera flash, we're gonna talk about

positioning of the light and why six feet

is usually more than high enough.

Ours goes, I think ours goes a little

bit more than that.

I feel like it's more like seven feet.

Does the A9 give bending when shooting in

silent mode?

Very little.

We've only, almost never had any issues with

it.

Most of the photographers I know who shoot

Sony who have issues with it are using

the A7 or the A7R or whatever the

A7 models are.

This is more of a, do you anticipate

ever moving back to Canon with them coming

out with their brand new mirrorless or are

you feeling like you're gonna stick with Sony?

We're open to it.

Because at this point, we haven't fully transitioned.

We're still in the process of replacing our

lenses, et cetera, et cetera.

The choice was pretty obvious until now the

rumors are that something else is coming out

from Canon that looks like it's gonna be

on the same playing field as the Sony.

So it's just a matter of what makes

sense for us in terms of investment.

Susan just wants to know what was the

model, what's the model pro photo you use

again?

She might've missed the name.

It's the A1, but again, guys, anything with

specific model names, Eric is gonna post the

links for you guys.

Hang on, I'm just reading through.

Yes, they're gonna cover light receptions, right?

You're gonna go through how you light receptions?

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, I think that's getting into a question

thread.

There's one I'll ask that doesn't have to

do exactly with gear, but I'll just ask

it.

Do you use assistants during weddings?

No, rarely.

It's usually just Eric and I.

We divide and conquer in the morning.

And then when we come together from the

ceremony or whatever, from that point on, we

work together as a team, just the two

of us.

Once in a while, we might have an

alumni join us at a wedding, but it's

never a shooting role.

It's usually, you know, helping us carry our

gear, honestly, so that we can keep our

sticks on the ice through all the transitions

and not have to worry about all our

gear and stuff.

And keeping the peace.

And keeping the peace, yes.

Couples counsellor, that's the role of our assistants.

Jodi's assistant.

Is the two lights per person all that

you use and no extra light stands?

Right, that's all that we use.

That's all you use.

What accessories with the A1 do you guys

use with the soft bounce card?

I'm getting to that.

We're getting into off-camera flash right away.

So it sounds like we're now getting off

topic, so let's dive back in to the

content, okay?

So I'm gonna push 12, sequence of 12

buttons.

I'm gonna ask one more question just because

it's been asked twice.

Would a 24 by 70 be a decent

wide lens if you don't have a 16

by 35?

I say yes, but.

We'd use that.

Thanks, everyone.

Appreciate your patience.

I apologize if I didn't mention all your

names with the questions.

Okay, I'm going, bye.

Bye.

Okay, so now it's working, which is good.

Okay, great.

Okay, so we're gonna get into our settings

very, very briefly now.

And this again is just so that you,

obviously our settings change throughout the day, but

you can know our order of operations and

you can know our starting point for all

the photos that we're gonna be deconstructing later,

okay?

Some of these are gonna be pretty basic.

So we shoot raw.

I'm sure all of you shoot raw.

So we've got two card slots in this

camera, which is one of the reasons we

are with Sony is because none of the

other mirrorless cameras have two card slots.

So we shoot raw to the main card

slot, spot one, number one.

And then we shoot JPEG.

What are you doing?

I'm gonna try to extend this so that

the recording viewers can see a little larger.

You can't.

I can, there's a little, I just have

to drag that.

The problem is I can't see the mouse.

Can you just, I'm good.

There.

Okay.

So I shoot raw to the first card

slot and I shoot JPEGs backups to the

second card slot.

So large JPEGs, the largest we can go.

Okay.

Now, the reason that I don't, we don't

shoot raw raw is because this allows us

to have multiple weddings backed up onto that

second JPEG card slot.

So I can have three or four weddings

on that card slot before I have to

reformat that memory card.

So it's essentially another backup of our work.

So, and it's really important for us because

we shoot a lot of destination weddings where

we don't have the opportunity to back up

on multiple hard drives before we get home.

So if we back it up on an

external hard drive, we don't format the memory

cards and we've got the JPEG backup, we

can split those all up between 99 and

we've got the wedding backed up in three

locations before we get, before we even get

home.

So that's the reason we do that.

I know a lot of people shoot raw

raw.

There's nothing wrong with that either.

We have had to use those JPEGs to

deliver the clients, to deliver to the clients

before when some of the raw files were

recut, were corrupt.

I can't talk this morning when the raw

files were corrupt, but the client never knows

any difference whatsoever.

The only people that know the difference are

Lani and I, and we only know when

we're doing the editing because the editing is

a little bit more tricky when we're not

working with the full raw file.

Okay, time syncing the cameras.

Obviously everyone has heard to time sync your

cameras.

It's an important element.

I find no matter how precise Lani and

I line up all four of our cameras,

I'm trying time sync them together by the

end of the day, they're all off by

a couple of seconds and it drives me

nuts.

So I've learned a little trick, which I'm

gonna show you, but I left my phone

over there and I need to grab my

phone to show you the trick.

Hold on.

Okay, this really helps because we're also shooting

in multiple time zones.

We're often shooting in different countries and different

continents and instead of having to go and

change the date and the settings on our

camera every time, this is a really great...

Someone's calling me, so I can't show you

the app that I'm gonna use.

Remind me.

In an hour.

Okay.

So instead of time syncing our cameras, at

the beginning of each wedding day, I've got

this app on my phone.

It's called Clocks.

And as you can see, it shows the

exact time to the second.

So instead of changing the time on my

camera, the beginning of each wedding day, I

just take a picture with all four cameras

of this screen and it shows me the

exact time and the exact date.

And then when I go to download the

photos in Photo Mechanic the next day or

the following day, I time sync all the

photos from that memory card to that time

that I took on the phone.

Okay, and that seems to work way better

than time syncing the cameras beside each other

and trying to get them at the exact

right time.

Okay, so hopefully that makes sense.

Okay, so we shoot manual for everything.

We know a lot of really, really great

photographers that we admire and do amazing work

that shoot in aperture priority.

This is one of those things that's...

Definitely, it's personal preference.

It's whatever works best for you.

We used to shoot aperture priority.

I found when we switched to manual, it

caused us to respond to light differently and

the muscle memory of changing our camera settings

became a lot more intuitive because instead of

the camera compensating for the changing in lighting

conditions, we had to compensate for the changing

in lighting conditions.

So we became a lot more aware of

light and what it did.

And as a result, our muscle memory with

our settings became a lot easier as well.

With aperture priority, it just got confusing because

it's almost like we had to compensate for

what the camera was compensating for.

So it was almost like two steps within

the brain as opposed to manual, it was

complete and utter predictability.

If we shot it at a certain setting,

we could predict what the results would be.

That's one of the best things that came

to the experience.

And I was just gonna get to that.

Yeah, you can just go have your breakfast.

I'm good.

I got this, I got this.

I got this handled.

And it's one less thing we have to

change when we shoot to flash or when

we switch to flash, right?

We always have to go into manual when

we're shooting flash and that's one less thing

we have to change.

So it sort of simplifies our thinking as

well.

But this is one of those things that

we're not like you have to shoot manual

if you want to shoot this way.

It's not like that at all.

But there's some other things coming up where

I feel differently, but I'll let you know.

Auto white balance.

We shoot raw anyways, so our white balance

really doesn't matter.

And it's one less thing that we have

to think about on the wedding day.

So it simplifies our thinking.

So we just keep it in auto white

balance all the time.

Okay, who knows what this is?

I can't see your comments because I'm sharing

the screen right now, but hopefully you guys

can guess what this is.

Back button focus.

Okay, now here.

So this is one of the things that

will change your photography game forever.

And this is one of the things that

I'm pretty, very adamant that you have to

switch in order to become a better photographer.

It's a really, really important aspect of the

way that Liani and I shoot.

And most really good photojournalists and documentary photographers

use back button focus.

So most of you probably use it already

and some of you know what it is.

But for those of you that don't, and

this is the first time you've heard of

it, basically what back button focus is, is

it takes your shutter and turns your shutter

only into releasing the lens.

Okay, so your shutter button no longer achieves

focus when you press it halfway down.

All it does is it clicks the shutter,

okay?

Then it takes your back finger, your thumb

usually, and it turns one of these buttons

into focusing.

Okay, so then this finger only has one

job, one job.

So it simplifies the role of this finger.

And instead of this finger having to achieve

focus and shoot the photo, now this finger

only has to shoot the photo.

Okay, it's your moment finger.

This is your moment finger.

And then this finger only has one job.

And this finger's job is to achieve focus.

And this goes hand in hand with something

else I'm gonna talk about.

I'm gonna skip forward a little bit, which

is center point recompose.

Okay, 90% of our shots are taken

on center point recompose with back button focus,

okay?

So we use our thumb, we focus on

what we wanna focus on, and then we

recompose, then we let go, or with the

Sony you can hold it down for continuous

focus, but you can focus, let go, recompose.

It stays focused on what you originally focused

on, and then you take the shot.

Okay, this has done a few different things

for our work.

Mostly what it's done is it's cleaned up

our compositions.

Okay, so before when we were using either

the shutter focus or we were using that

toggle point, what would happen is we would

compose the photo, we'd get the toggle point

to where we wanted it to go, to

where we wanted it to focus on, and

then we'd take the shot.

So we'd compose, and then focus, and then

take the shot.

And inevitably, when your composition is coming before

your focus, your composition is gonna suffer, okay?

Now what we do is we achieve our

focus, we've got our focus all set, now

we're gonna put 100% of that mental

bandwidth and that attention into composing the image,

because we've got focus out of the equation.

So we focus, then we can put 100

% of our mental bandwidth into composing, and

our compositions become a lot more intentional as

a result.

We're watching those edges of the frames, we're

keeping our eye on lining up the backgrounds

where we want them, as opposed to our

mind being wrapped up with achieving focus, like

moving the toggle or whatever you might be

doing.

Okay, so this is, plus, it allows you

to focus, recompose, and then you can shoot

through the entirety of that moment without having

to regain focus.

Okay, so that's a really important part of

the process in terms of the way that

Annie and I shoot.

If you're new to back button focus, it

will definitely take you a few days to

get used to the process.

It'll take you a few days, but it

is so worth it.

It is so worth it.

This is one of those things where if

you don't change it, your photography will suffer.

So this is a very important thing.

Now, of course, there's always exceptions to this

rule, okay?

So now I'm gonna go back.

Yeah, and when we deconstruct a lot of

the photo examples, you'll see we'll explain exactly

why we couldn't have pulled it off without

back button focus.

Okay, so a few exceptions to the rule.

Actually, before we get into that, we always

use one-shot focus as well, okay?

And then with the Sony, we've always got

it on continuous, which is right here, AF

continuous.

So that means if we hold that button

down, like if we hold the button, we

center point focus, and then we hold that

down, that focus point will stay locked and

track whatever we originally focused on.

So if that person even moves forward or

backwards, or if we move further away or

closer to the subject, as long as we

hold that button down, it'll continually focus on

that object.

Yeah, that's something that can only be done

with the Sony right now.

I'm not sure about the other mirrorless cameras.

I'm sure it can be done with them

as well, but it can't be done with

our Canon SLRs.

Okay, so exceptions to the center point focus

rule and the back button focus when we're

on the dance floor.

Okay, so when we're on the dance floor,

we do change the focusing up a little

bit because if there's any time that we're

spraying and praying, it's on the dance floor

because there's so many elements out of our

control there.

There's flailing arms, there's flailing limbs, there's movement,

there's all sorts of different things going on.

We just want it to grab focus and

shoot as quick as possible, multiplying our stats

of getting a decent dance shot.

So there's two things that we change.

A, we change it back to shutter focus.

Okay, so we turn it off, back button,

and shoot it back to better shutter focus.

We're also shooting 16 to 35 at this

point, usually at 16.

So we are okay with it being center

focused.

We're okay with the focus point being in

the center of our frame.

We usually don't want it towards the edge

of the frames because there's more distortion out

there.

So we change it back to shutter focus.

And as you can see with the slide

I've got up right now, we open it

up from single point to a larger area.

It's still center weighted, but we open it

up to that larger area.

So it just grabs focus on whatever it

can and shoots as quick as possible.

Okay, this is something we've just started using

since switching to the Sonys.

The Sonys have definitely changed the way we

shoot a little bit and they've changed our

process, right?

So how I have my Sony set up

is I've got this button set up for

the back button focus, just like I just

described.

And then I've got this button set up

for eye detect or face detect, okay?

So that's gonna grab onto, sometimes you can't

predict whose face it's gonna grab onto or

whose eyes it's gonna grab onto, but it's

gonna grab onto someone's eyes and lock focus

on that.

If you've got it on continuous focus, it'll

maintain focus on those eyes, even if you're

moving and even if your subject is moving,

as long as you hold that button down.

So this is really good for sections of

the day or portraits where I have the

couple walking towards me, like maybe for the

processional, and I can just press my eye

focus down and I can just walk backwards

like this and it's gonna stay locked on

their eyes the entire time.

One other thing I was gonna say about

that.

Oh yes, there is a way with Sony

as well where you can make it prioritize

certain faces.

So at the beginning of the day, you

can file the bride's face and the groom's

face or the bride's parents face or whoever's

face you want it to give priority to

in terms of, like if you've got six

faces in the frame, it'll give priority to

the bride's face if you've logged it.

And I think you can log up to

14 faces in there.

We don't use that feature, but I know

a lot of photographers that do.

Okay, let's focus in.

Metering mode.

Okay, so what do we have our metering

mode set to?

Who cares?

Basically, we don't pay attention to our meter

hardly at all, especially with the mirrorless.

But even when we were shooting Canon, we

never paid attention to the meter.

Our meter was always our LCD display.

That was always our meter, right?

Because we're often under and overexposing to extremes,

that meter would throw us off anyways.

I don't even know what metering mode is.

Same with histogram.

It's something we very rarely pay attention to.

If people were to judge our photos based

on our histograms, we would fail photography class

for sure.

Because we're often finding those shadows really dark

and wanting those bright parts blown out.

So the only time we will use the

histogram is if we're shooting in really dark

conditions or really bright conditions.

And that's just to make sure that the

LCD display isn't throwing us off.

Because if you're shooting at night and it's

really dark, sometimes that LCD display, because it's

so bright compared to the surroundings, throws you

off a little bit.

It will show you an image that looks

correctly exposed, but then you get it back

to the camera, get it back downloaded to

your computer and you realize you were underexposed.

So we will use the histogram in those

cases just to make sure we're not being

thrown off.

Okay, so let's get into the order of

operations of our settings and what we choose

in what order.

So the first decision we always make when

we walk into a room is the ISO.

And this is the first decision we make.

And then we really don't touch our ISO

until we change lighting environments completely.

Okay, so until we walk outside, until we

go into a different room, until the lighting

conditions change drastically.

So if I walked into this room here,

let's see, I would probably set my ISO

for that dark corner over there.

Okay, so I set my ISO for the

darkest part of the room.

Even though my ISO could be different in

this window light versus back there, I always

set it for the darkest part of the

room because that is one less thing I

have to think about with regards to changing

my settings.

And we can get away with really high

ISOs right now with these new cameras.

So don't be afraid to push it.

So I probably automatically in this room set

my ISO to either 800 or 1600.

And then I just leave it until we

change lighting conditions completely, until we go outside

or go into a different room.

We can't do this with the Sony yet,

but we could do it with the Canon.

And I would highly recommend this if you

shoot SLR.

And that is to change your settings in

your camera so that you only use full

stop ISOs.

So by full stop, I mean 100, 200,

400, 800, 16, 32, 64, so on.

And there's a few reasons for this.

A, it's way easier and way fewer clicks

to switch from 800 to 3200 when you're

just using full stops as opposed to all

the intermediate ones.

Plus you just get to know those ISOs

really well.

So you become a master of those ISOs.

So you can walk into a room and

you can be like, yeah, this is a

3200 room as opposed to all those intermediate

ones, which they really don't reduce the noise.

Actually, studies show that the full stop ISOs

have less noise than those other ones.

Can you just stop?

Yes, you ramble on more than I do.

Okay, so ISO, that's the first decision we

make.

The next decision we make is our aperture.

Okay, so our aperture is our storytelling device.

When we first started photographing, we would default

to wide open.

If we had a 1.8 lens, we

would be shooting 1.8 all the time

regardless of the situation.

Just because we paid for 1.8, we're

gonna use 1.8. And there was no

rhyme or reason behind it other than that

we were just lazy and we thought that's

what photographers did.

But there is a whole big wide world

beyond 2.8 and there's so much opportunity

in it.

So I'd say our default now, our default

aperture is somewhere around F4.

That's where we default to and we either

move up from there if we wanna layer

more stories together or we move down from

there if we wanna isolate.

But you'll see in lots of the images

that we're deconstructing, we're trying to layer multiple

stories together.

So we're often pushing those apertures up to

F9, F11 and stuff like that.

If you want someone's work to look at

who shoots at high apertures a lot and

is a wonderful inspiration for us, Susanna Barbera.

Her work is amazing and she's often shooting

at F11 layering.

And you'll notice when you're shooting at those

apertures, you have to be super intentional with

your compositions.

You have to be super intentional because you're

not using that bokeh to make up for

sloppy compositions.

You have to clean up your backgrounds, you

have to watch and make sure that things

are lined up properly.

So experiment with those higher apertures so you

can layer those multiple stories together.

Bonnie likes to call it effing it up.

So use those higher apertures.

Okay, and then the last decision we make

is our shutter speed.

And obviously I'm talking about natural light here.

This is our order of operations when we're

shooting natural light.

ISO, aperture, and then shutter speed is what

we're adjusting on the fly to get the

exposure that we're looking for.

All right, that's just the simple exposure triangle

there.

I'd say 99% of the time, our

aperture is more of a priority than our

shutter speed.

The only time that would flip is if

we're trying to get some sort of motion

blur in our photos, which is very rare,

okay?

Okay, so let's go to question and answers

here.

And we'll keep these questions regarding camera settings.

Okay, just let me stop sharing.

There we go, okay.

Hi, okay, I'm just gonna, I've been copying

and pasting questions.

So I'm gonna look over on this side

to get this list and then I'll make

my way back to the questions on the

other side as they come in.

Okay.

Darcy first asked, could you please add the

clock app list to your gear list that

you're gonna send out?

Yeah, I can.

It's just called clocks.

But yes, I can.

Can you grab that?

I'm just gonna, that's where 10% is.

I'm just gonna turn it off, it's not

charging.

When you transitioned to manual from AP, did

you end up missing things while you got

used to it because you were doing that

extra bit of thinking from Klekski Smith?

Probably initially for a little bit, maybe at

certain parts of the day, but there was

a transition where we literally just, there was

a time I remember where we just literally

committed to shooting manual all the time.

We're like from this point forward, we're gonna

shoot manual and probably for the first wedding

or two, we might've missed a few little

moments here and there.

Yeah, but now that we're used to it,

no.

There is a time where I will switch

to aperture priority and that is if we're

in a ceremony and the sun is in

and out of different cloud layers like thick

clouds and thin clouds, then if the lighting

conditions are changing every couple of seconds, then

we will switch to aperture priority then because

yeah, we probably would miss some moments.

What focus mode do you find best when

shooting through falling snow?

I had to use manual because yesterday, but

wondering if you had any luck with the

AF modes.

I also shoot Sony, Allison, forgive me.

Sorry, when shooting through what?

Falling snow.

Falling snow, oh yeah, that does get tricky.

Well, back button, obviously.

I'm assuming if she has a stationary subject,

I would just try, I mean, like I

said, we're not shooting wide open.

So if we're shooting at 2.8 with

a 35, I would just try and focus

on the area of highest contrast.

Maybe it's their shoulder, maybe it's the top

of their head.

And then if you're shooting at 2.8,

you've got that little bit of forgiveness.

And then you don't have to reach focus

because you've achieved it with your back button

and then your shutter isn't gonna throw it

off with those falling snowflakes in front of

their faces.

Okay, metering mode to use with aperture priority.

ISO auto by Ruben Parra.

Well, we don't shoot aperture priority.

So I don't know, if you're shooting aperture

priority, there's a, I will try and share

it in the group.

There's an alumni of ours called Jason Beeson

and he's got completely different settings and a

completely different process that he follows to us.

And he shoots aperture priority auto ISO.

And it's just not the way my brain

works.

Yes, it is charging.

He does a great job at it.

So I can, he's made a video where

he shows his camera settings and I can

share that with you.

But because we don't shoot aperture priority, I

don't know what our metering mode would be

on it.

If you are always recomposing from your center

focus, are you keeping a relatively large DOF?

Aperture priority throughout the day from Amanda.

So yeah, so if we're shooting at 1

.2, obviously if we're center recomposing, it might

not maintain focus because we've got that really

low depth of field.

The only ever time we would be doing

that is if we're shooting portraits.

That's literally the only time we're gonna wanna

isolate our subjects at 1.2. And in

that case, we might either move to manual

focus or we might move to a toggle

point, right?

Because it's a portrait scenario and we've got

that time and we're not necessarily as rushed

as we are when we're shooting more documentary

stuff.

Perfect.

When you used Canon, how high would you

go with your ISO from Marisa?

The highest we would normally go is around

3200, but we wouldn't be afraid to push

it to 6400 for certain moments, right?

So on the dance floor, it would be

around 3200.

But if there was something in a dark

corner of a room that otherwise we just

wouldn't get if we didn't push our ISO

up to 6400 or higher, we'd push it

up just to get that moment because again,

moment trumps, right?

And sometimes you can add a little bit

of artistic flair.

On the same lines of ISO questions is

what is the highest acceptable ISO with the

Sony from Alison?

Now I'm over to the other side.

I haven't found it yet.

I mean, I've pushed our ISO up well

over 10,000 with the Sony and had

no problems with it.

So I haven't pushed it to a limit

that I feel is unacceptable yet.

Maybe 256,000.

I would be completely comfortable pushing the ISO

on the Sony up as high as I

needed to.

How do you set full stop ISOs on

Sony?

I can't see it in the menu anyway.

You can't do it on a Sony.

And that was for Katie.

How many batteries do you change during a

whole wedding with Sonys?

That was from Alberto.

I don't know.

Five?

It depends on the camera.

If it's our primary camera, probably about five.

Yeah.

So this one's from Jumping Souls.

Shutter speed.

What's that?

Oh, sorry.

Shutter speed, what's the least you go to

as to avoid camera shake and not get

any motion from Jumping Souls?

Yeah, probably about one over 100.

If the subject is stationary, if the subject

is moving, about one over 200.

Now, I will say this is an important

distinction to make between the mirrorless cameras and

the SLRs because when we were shooting Canon,

we would always be very aware of what

our settings were.

Like, you could stop me at any point

during the day and say, Erica, what are

your settings right now?

And I'd be like, oh, I'm 1600 ISO,

2.8, 1400th of a second.

I'd know those like the back of my

hand.

Because with the mirrorless, you've got the electronic

viewfinder, it's almost like that's taking your attention

as opposed to the numbers.

And so I have often found myself shooting

at a lower shutter speed without realizing it

because I'm more looking at my exposure through

the EVF as opposed to paying attention to

the numbers.

So just know that that's a bit of

a learning curve with the mirrorless camera.

You can set a minimum shutter speed if

you're an aperture priority, but if you're in

manual, you can't.

Okay, perfect.

This question is from Amina.

Can you explain why you sync your times

on your cameras?

Because, I mean, if we're shooting four different

cameras on a wedding day, and when I

go and download all those photos I want

those photos to be in order of the

order they're taken.

Whereas if they're all mixed up at different

times, it's very hard for me to order

them in the gallery for the clients.

So you can sync them by time capture.

Yeah.

Easily that way.

Yeah.

Okay, the next question is- Okay, we'll

make this the last one and then-

Yeah, or just quickly scan, Jodi, and see

if there's anything really important.

Yeah, I need a minute then.

Just give me a sec.

I'm just gonna pick one.

Is the back button focus combined with continuous

mode during processions or recessions available on the

Canon as well?

I think it's called something else on the

Canon.

It's called AF Servo or something like that,

but I'm not sure.

Yeah, but with the Canon we wouldn't use

the AI Servo or any of those modes.

We would always just use the one shot

we compose and make sure that our aperture

allowed enough of a buffer with the depth

of focus that we wouldn't be missing.

Sorry, am I supposed to answer?

No, you're supposed to answer.

It's just that you come and take over

in my session.

Like, it's okay, I got this.

I can handle it, babes.

We don't, probably didn't use the Canon focusing

system to the full extent of what it

was capable of because a lot of the

times we didn't trust it.

We didn't trust it enough.

We only trusted that center point recompose with

the Canon.

That's the one that we had the best

luck with.

Now, the new Canon that's coming out, I'm

not sure, but I just have to, you'd

have to research that on your own.

All right.

Yep, I'll save the rest of the questions.

Thank you, Jody.

No worries.

I'm gonna screen share here and share.

And just let me get the remote set

up here, guys.

Oh, okay.

So quickly, before we get into lighting, we're

gonna talk briefly about composition.

So our best advice with composition is to

take all those rules, learn them, learn why

they exist, and then you have the freedom

to break them.

It is important to know why they exist

in the first place in order to break

them.

It's almost like once you learn them, you

have the freedom to break them.

Right, because really what we're striving to do

with our compositions is create frames that draw

our audience into them.

In order to do that, they have to

be in some way either extreme and or

unexpected.

And so if our goal is to create

unexpected ways of viewing the world, then why

would we be adhering to rules of conformity?

Yeah, exactly.

Like the rule of thirds, for example.

Cool, why not try the rule of nines?

Why not push it to extremes, try something

different, give them something unexpected.

And once you free your mind about photography

compositions being correct, then that opens up a

whole new world of possibilities.

Yeah, so just compose visually, not in accordance

to rules.

And never let the truth get in the

way of a good story.

We often think our photos have to tell

the full, literal truth of what's happening, right?

But we can frame our photos that leave,

frame our photos in a way that leave

a little bit of mystery.

So in this photo that we've got up

on the screen now, literally right on the

bottom edge, just framed out is the horizon

line.

And right on the top edge is the

kite surf, right?

So leave some mystery.

If you leave some mystery, it tells the

same story, but it tells it in a

more engaging way, right?

And the most important thing about your compositions

is that it simplifies the frame down to

the story that you're trying to tell, or

multiple stories that you're trying to tell.

And often, that's what composition is.

It's about simplifying the frame down to the

stories you're trying to tell.

And reflections, when used with purpose, and we're

gonna spend a whole unit on reflections, and

we'll go into great detail, but reflections when

used with purpose can layer those multiple stories

into one frame.

So the best advice we've ever received about

making these more extreme and unexpected compositions is

to get your camera in a place where

you're not used to viewing the world, right?

And it's a really simple concept, right?

I view the world from five foot six,

Lani views the world from six foot four.

So that's sort of an expected place to

view the world.

And sometimes- And from about two to

three meters away from our subject.

Two to three meters away.

We call that the dead zone, right?

If the moment is the most killer amazing

moment, we can get away with that dead

zone.

But if we're trying to give- It's

still boring.

Not if it's an amazing moment.

Moment trumps.

Yeah, moment trumps, right?

So get your camera in places where your

eyes don't go.

Get your camera high, get your camera low,

right?

Nobody gets to experience someone putting their shoes

on from this angle.

They experience it from standing angle or sitting

angle.

So get your camera in places where your

eyes don't go.

Get far and get close.

High, low, close, far.

High, low, close, far.

Actually, I'm gonna talk a little bit more

about getting close, because this one I feel

is probably the most important of them, right?

And the best way to- Getting close

is powerful.

It gives you powerful imagery.

It makes your viewers feel like they were

there because you were actually there.

And I'm gonna show you two photos that

describe the power of getting close.

So this is a typical wildlife photo.

It's the lion, obviously, and it's probably taken

with a, I don't know, 600 millimeter lens,

let's just say, from far away.

So the photographer is very far away in

this shot.

You can understand why.

You can see that lion, but I want

you to notice the difference between your reaction

to this photo and the next photo.

This photo is taken of the same creature,

a lion, but up close with a wide

lens, right?

This photo, you can see the, this, go

back.

This photo, you can see the lion.

This photo, you can feel the lion.

You can smell it.

You can smell it.

I can feel the breath on my face.

Like this photo gives me a physical reaction,

and that's the power of getting close.

So be that GoPro in that lion's den.

Put yourself in the action.

As photographers, we often stand on the outside

in a passive position, and we photograph at

the action.

We wanna be in the action, right?

Get in there with your 24 or your

16, or God forbid, your fisheye.

Basically, the drunker they get, the wider your

lenses can get.

So you can capture those moments up close

in all their glory, and you've got the

surroundings filling in the periphery of the frame,

and that way, the viewers will feel like

they were there because you were there, right?

You have to be there.

Yeah, and not just on the dance floor,

obviously.

Getting close is a powerful thing when it

comes to capturing emotion, which is what we

are paid to do.

Often, the best way for us to do

that, beyond just what it looks like into

what it actually feels like is to get

in there physically close.

This is obviously during a ceremony.

We're gonna deconstruct all kinds of photos, some

of them from ceremonies, and in those situations,

we'll talk about ceremony specifically, right, and how

we got the cameras there and why, but

we're close here.

They don't notice us, okay?

They're in their moment.

Now, in an image like this, we haven't

come in there close to their space.

A, we've been close all day, so we've

become invisible by always being there, and B,

they've come into our space.

We set ourselves up to be here with

a wide lens when this happens, as we're

discreetly making our way out, but with ceremonies,

they're not all created equal, right?

You know, there's a big difference between an

outdoor, barefoot, hippie wedding on the side of

a mountain versus a wedding in a church

with very strict rules.

We have to know what those rules are,

play by those rules, but if we have

the freedom and opportunity to get close with

our cameras, and our clients have hired us

to be there close with our cameras, I'm

not gonna let the fear of what Aunt

Thelma thinks back in row 12 about whether

or not I belong there.

I'm reminding myself that I'm shooting this for

my couple and for their future kids.

Their future children are viewing their ceremony through

my lens, okay?

That's a big responsibility, and often, when I

ask myself where would they want their kids

present during their wedding, where would I want

them to experience their wedding, it's close, it's

not far away, it's not shooting from the

outside at, it's shooting in the action, okay?

We'll talk about ceremonies more specifically when we

get into specific ceremony photos that we're deconstructing,

okay?

So the power of getting close.

There's a big difference between filling the frame

with a 70 to 200 lens versus filling

the frame with a 35 millimeter lens, okay?

And also with a wide lens, like a

35 or a 24, I can solve compositional

problems easily.

Like if I've got distracting backgrounds or if

I've got, you know, I don't have clean

and simple edges, I can move my camera

a couple inches left, right, up, or down,

which totally changes the background and the framing,

right?

Whereas if I'm stuck with a big telephoto

lens on my camera, I have to physically

move my camera several meters in order to

change the background and the composition.

So those wide lenses really allow us to

perfect our composition.

Yeah, like with this 28, if I'm here

versus here, that's a huge difference in my

composition.

Changes everything, right?

Whereas if I have the 85 on, it

wouldn't really do a darn thing.

Yeah, okay.

So let's now kind of like look at

the opposite, talk about the opposite of getting

close, which is because often there's a time

to get far.

Like maybe it's backing up out of the

room to tell, you know, to layer multiple

stories or to show the context of the

chaotic scene, right?

Or pulling back to reveal the scale and

enormity of the bigger scene.

And with these kinds of photos, like we

realize they've become cliche, like tiny little people

and big, you know, tiny little silhouettes in

big world, those kinds of photos, you know,

they're done so often now and not often

well.

You know, we've got great composition, we've got

amazing light, but we've got zero moment, zero

emotion, no motion or emotion.

And so they often fall flat, they don't

resonate with us, especially within our circles, right?

We see it done so often, but our

clients eat this shit up.

Okay, it's become cliche for a reason.

Human beings, like we are natural organisms with

this deep connection to nature.

And when you think about, you know, many

of our clients, when they're planning their weddings,

what's the first decision they often make before

the photographer, before the wedding, sometimes even before

who they're actually going to marry.

Location matters.

Where have they always dreamed about having their

wedding?

A lot of our clients will choose the

setting, the backdrop for their weddings based on

important connections that they feel, often to the

landscape itself.

And so one of the things that we

try to achieve when we're making portraits is

really we're trying to check three boxes when

we're making portraits.

One of them is to back up and

show them in their environment, whatever it is,

on a mountainside, on a beach, in grandma's

basement, whatever.

We want to show them in their environment,

their scene.

And then we want to get in close

and show what they actually look like together

connecting.

And then the third one, we always have

to remember this one, one for grandma's mantelpiece,

smiling full length, looking at the camera.

And when we make portraits, just focusing on

quality over quantity, just do a really good

job of those three portraits, will invariably end

up making a lot of other variety for

them.

But it takes that pressure, that weight of

having to create so much variety, right?

Focus on quality.

Yeah, and the last thing I want to

say about the setting is that the setting

is almost like another character in the story

when you think about it, right?

Setting gives mood.

Especially, like think about all the books you've

read.

Like some of my most favorite books is

the setting that gives the book the mood,

right?

So it becomes an additional character.

So think of that setting as a character

and incorporate it with that in mind, as

opposed to just, yeah.

And before we jump into Q&A here,

just let you know, of course, we're going

to be deconstructing all kinds of environmental portraits

like that.

And that's the time where we'll talk about

the lenses and how far we are in

the technical stuff, okay?

So with that in mind, let's check in

with Jodi for relevant questions now regarding composition,

general composition issues right now.

So first question came from Dim Sum.

Would you consider using something like a 12

millimeter ever?

What type of situation?

A 12 millimeter?

Millimeter.

12 millimeter, yeah.

Oh.

It's essentially a fisheye without the distortion.

Yeah.

On the dance floor, perhaps.

I think that's probably the only time I'd

consider using it.

I mean, it's not to say that we're

against using it, but it goes back to

what Lanny said, right?

To having a set of lenses that's limited

in choice is going to help us.

I remember one of the first weddings we

shot, we went to the camera store and

rented a whole bunch of lenses that we

thought we needed.

I think Lanny rented eight lenses.

Eight lenses.

We thought that we would want.

Eight lenses.

And so we had all this choice and

it really took away the strength of just

the one lens.

Plus one or two lenses, right?

I also mentioned the importance that everything in

the camera bag needs to have multiple purposes,

hopefully.

So our 35, we can use that for

storytelling, getting ready, ceremonies, portraits, speeches.

All of our lenses have multiple purposes.

Something like a tilt shift or a 12

millimeter, fisheye, any of those lenses that really

only have one very narrow scope of where

it can be useful for us.

It's probably better to just not have that

with us.

Perfect.

Next question is, do couples or guests get

annoyed when you get close?

I feel like I always try to stay

in the shadow so no one is focusing

on me as I don't want to ruin

the moments.

That came from Corey.

Okay, so the first place to start, if

you haven't yet, Corey, is to go and

watch that gaining your clients' trust thing.

So you will know actually what our clients,

what they've learned about us and our approach

before they've even chosen to hire us, right?

So if they've chosen to hire us, A,

they've seen our work.

B, we've explained our approach and process and

part of that being how we don't stage

indirect, how we get close.

We're not the most discreet photographers in the

world.

We're not trying to hide in the shadows.

We are a part of the day.

They've hired us to be their part of

the day and we become invisible by always

being there, not by hiding in the shadows.

Not necessarily to the guests.

And yeah, there's gonna be some guests that

might be annoyed by us, but we weren't

hired by the guests, right?

So, but we, it's not like we're trucking

along like we're kings of the world and

we can do whatever we want.

We do try and stay discreet.

We try and stay very low.

During the ceremony, only one of us gets

close.

You know, I tend to stay very close

in the ceremony in that sort of core

area right at the front.

Lenny sort of goes around the periphery because

he's taller, more hairy.

He just takes up more physical space than

I do.

So I feel like he's a lot more

noticeable as well.

I'm massive.

And your hair.

So but then, and it all boils down

to that thing that Lenny talked about, about

us being close but not busy, right?

So if I'm photographing Lenny.

I didn't talk about that.

Oh you didn't?

So there's a big difference between being close

and busy.

So for example, if I'm here and I'm

photographing Lenny, let's say he's writing a letter

to the bride or whatever, to the bride,

that would be me, by the way.

You know, if I'm here, I can be

really close.

Really close.

Try to have a private volunteer.

But I'm still, and watch the difference between

that versus me just coming in to get

the shot and being more, quote unquote, discreet.

Whoa.

Right, watch is more noticeable.

Right, it's way less noticeable just to be

in that space the whole time.

So a busy photographer is more distracting than

a close photographer.

And the other thing is, yes, the guests

sometimes, they might notice us, of course.

But once you have your clients, your couple's

trust, everybody else sees that.

They can read it.

And then they feel comfortable.

You gain their trust by seeing the trust

that you have with your couple.

So that's why we do everything we can

leading up to the wedding and the way

that we conduct ourselves at the wedding to

have that trust and access, to let them

fully transparent about our approach and why we

believe in it.

And then the way that we conduct ourselves

as friends with cameras.

We're not there trying to be somebody else.

We're not there trying to be the hired

help.

Okay, we're friends with cameras.

And by setting that vibe, it doesn't take

long for us to sort of have the

trust and we get welcomed in by everybody

to do what we've been paid to do.

Perfect.

This is a really good question from Katie.

Do you see your shooting style changing given

the social distancing will affect life for the

foreseeable future?

No, because no.

We're not shooting.

We're not shooting.

No, I'll come back to it.

I don't feel like it's gonna change the

way we shoot weddings.

I mean, if people are having a wedding,

then the social distancing parameters are, they're not

gonna have a wedding if we still have

social distancing parameters.

Yeah.

And if they do, we're not gonna shoot

it.

Obviously, if people aren't allowed to get physically

close to each other, there's not gonna be

dance floors.

There's not gonna be all kinds of things.

So invariably, the stories that we're hired to

photograph are different stories.

But I mean, we're living through history right

now.

Nobody knows what the world's gonna look like

in a few months.

That came from Katie Faircloth.

There was just a- Oh, hi, Katie.

Thanks, Katie.

Next question.

This one is also in ties with the

closeness.

When working with videographers, are you also always

this close, especially during the ceremony, or does

workflow change?

No, I mean, we're definitely, we're not assholes.

We're not gonna be like stepping in front

of their lenses and pretending they're not existing

or anything, but we're still definitely as close.

Sometimes we have to get closer because they're

where we wanna be.

But we definitely stay low.

We're definitely low.

The feedback we've received from videographers is that

we're easy to work with.

I'm sure some would argue that we're not,

but we work with Parfait Productions quite a

lot.

You know them, Jodi.

And they said that we're actually quite easy

to work with because we stay low.

And often, like sometimes when working with videographers,

I say we work with videographers in maybe

50% of our weddings.

And when we do, some of them follow

a similar approach that we do, we don't

stage and direct, but some of them don't.

Some of them have an entirely different approach

where they do direct things and set things

up and mic them up and put them

by the windows.

And that's fine, right?

They've been hired to do their job and

we let them do their thing.

And we document that.

But we try, and we document that, right?

I mean, what other day do you have

a video team following you around?

Exactly.

But we always try to be on the

same team with them.

We're working together.

We're both trying to make the best products

we can for our couples.

And sometimes there's compromises.

Often there's one best place for a camera.

And if their camera is already there, I

have to find the next best place.

And sometimes that means going low.

Or sometimes- Because by going low, I

can get close and not be blocking their

shot.

Or sometimes you find a better place as

a result of not being able to go

to what you thought was the best place.

And with regards to ceremonies, the more cameras

they have, the happier we are.

Because they can cut to another angle and

we don't have to stress about blocking their

one angle.

So we just try to work together as

best we can.

Awesome.

I've just switched over to the other side

now.

So there might be, I might have to

- Dark side.

Yeah.

Okay, we'll do like two more questions and

then we'll get going again.

And as a request- We can ask

questions in the student portal after and I'll

make sure to answer them.

Perfect.

Can you repeat the portrait rules, please?

There's a couple people requesting.

The portrait, you mean the three portraits that

we're aiming for?

The three portraits we aim for?

Yeah, there's like location, setting.

Yeah, so basically one is them within the

environment.

Them up close and personal into each other.

And then them smiling and looking at the

camera for grandma's mantelpiece, right?

So that's what we aim for is three.

We inevitably get more, but portraits can be

so overwhelming because you think you have to

just go out and get this huge variety.

And inevitably we get more variety because when

they're standing in one location for the environmental

shot, one of us sees something else that

we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

And yeah, a lot will be revealed when

we start deconstructing portraits where we explain exactly

how we achieve that shot and what we're

talking to do.

Plus we just announced on Friday, guys, we're

doing a free session in the group.

We announced today that on Friday- On

Friday we are doing, yeah, you spelled it

wrong though.

Our approach to posing on Friday.

So tune in for that.

We're basically gonna show you exactly how we

do that.

I can never, ever, and I mean this

with all sincerity, I can never do a

Facebook post or announcement without a typo.

It's just, no matter how many times I

check it over, it always has a typo.

Guys, we are an hour, we are two

and a half, almost two and a half

hours in.

So let's do a pee break.

Oh yeah, one more break.

I've got one more.

Should I answer one more question?

One more question.

We'll answer it when they come back.

I just, sorry.

I just wanna give everybody a chance now

without feeling like they're gonna miss anything to

go refill your beverage, get a cup of

coffee, another cocktail, go take a bath-

I'll do a countdown timer here for you

guys.

And once we get to the end of

the timer, we'll be back.

So now's the time.

And Jodi, in that time, we can figure

out which questions we'll answer when they come

back.

I've got two I've picked up that I

think are- Cool.

And for those who are still sitting here,

so what is it, three minutes?

For those still sitting here, we'll share our

view with ya because the sun's now come

up.

There's the scene out front.

There's the three sisters.

Backwards.

It's backwards.

It's so weird seeing it backwards.

Yeah.

Okay, guys, you got two minutes.

This is backwards, but hopefully you can rebalance.

Yeah, so Jodi, you can share the questions

with us now.

We can write them down.

No, let's just go take a bathroom break

and then we'll come back.

All right.

Here, just, it's fine.

It's all good, bitch.

I've got the two chosen.

Cool.

They better be good.

No pressure.

I don't know how to get this within

the screen, guys.

Sorry.

You got two minutes.

Two minutes.

Okay, why don't you go take a break.

Bye-bye.

Brush your teeth and brush your hair.

What?

Oh, right, you're next.

Yeah, you, you'll have to take a missile

airtight bag.

Sorry.

It is.

But you know how when you teach your

section, I know you are, but it's, when

you teach your section, I just let you

do it and I sit back there and

trust.

I trust you, bitch.

Trust me, just trust me that I got

this handled.

90 seconds.

Like you're a mansplainer.

You are a mansplainer.

I'm a mansplainer.

I can give you some things to do

while I'm teaching.

If you need a distraction, I'm gonna sit

in the chair and tell you to hurry

up.

You're gonna do your- 60 seconds.

Oh yeah, you need to put that.

You're gonna do your class, guys, at two.

So, you're gonna borrow mom's computer when that

happens.

So, you're out of time, okay?

Do you wanna do your math before that?

Why don't you do your math before that

here?

I'll give it to you.

Yeah, because you should be doing school right

now.

Here, I got it all right after you.

Here we go.

I'm gonna finish this for you, okay?

So, remember- All

right, we're back.

We're back.

We have a Julie.

This question is from Kristen Borelli.

I find when I focus and recompose, pushing

the subjects to the bottom side or top

of my composition, while shooting far away shots,

my focus isn't very great.

Is it just me or do you lose

sharpness yourself?

Well, I mean, that depends on a variety

of things.

It depends on if you have a telephoto

lens or if you have a 35 or

something wider, and it depends on your f

-stop.

And like we said, if you're in a

portrait scenario and you're putting that at the

edge of your lens and you've got more

telephoto lens, that's the one time we might

use the toggle or- Or just zoom

in and check focus.

Zoom in and check focus.

With documentary though, generally speaking, we always are

using a wider lens, like a 35 or

a 60 to 35 or a 24.

And in those cases, and we usually up

it around F4.

So in those cases, no, we don't struggle

with the sharpness.

Yeah, and if you are, then you probably

need to F it up.

This question comes from Payal.

Payal, do you have a couple where the

groom is camera shy and uncomfortable?

He tells you that in your messages, I

think that's that word, in that case, does

getting too close work?

So the majority of our clients, the majority

of humans are uncomfortable around cameras.

Like we talked about, they're trained since birth.

When a camera comes out, world stops, right?

And so they have to smile and say

cheese.

And so they're shy and they're self-conscious

around cameras because whenever there's a camera out,

they're having their photo taken.

And so life stops.

The documentary approach kills that because it's not

a photo shoot, okay?

So portraits is another thing I'll talk about

in a second.

But with regards to documentary, as soon as

we stop telling them what to do and

making it about us and our cameras and

the photos we're making for them, that goes

away.

The self-consciousness goes away because nothing's happening

for the camera.

Yeah, and they are gonna be uncomfortable for

the first five or 10 minutes.

And that's okay.

Everybody is.

That's okay.

They're gonna be uncomfortable, but just know that

- And we'll literally explain it to them

just like that in a client video chat

before they hire us.

If that concern comes up, that's how we'll

address it.

That's how we'll put their minds at ease.

Listen guys, it's not a photo shoot.

Yeah, we're just bringing the table, so.

Portraits is another thing.

And you'll see that when we talk about

the posing, the things that we do to

make them comfortable, because, yeah, for portraits, everybody

at first is gonna be self-conscious.

And so we've got a lot, a number

of little tricks and a bit of a

strategy that we follow that helps us make

that self-consciousness go away and bring them

into a state of remembrance and connection versus

posing for us and our cameras.

Including maybe some help with some alcohol sometimes.

One more question, just real quick.

I think you guys can answer this one

real quick.

It's from Hwang.

At getting ready, have you ever asked your

bride and groom to change their positions to

get into nicer, lighter, good compositions?

As a general rule, no.

That's not a rule.

But it's not a rule.

But no, we hold ourselves to the standard

where we don't ask them to move.

Does that mean we never do it?

Of course, there's occasions where it just makes

sense to do it.

But literally, I'll say to myself, am I

gonna impact the moment if I ask them

to move into better light?

And I'll give you an example.

Well, one of the last weddings I shot

last year, the bride had a beautiful moment

with her grandmother.

Her grandmother came into the room and saw

her for the first time.

And they just had this moment where they

connected and they leaned their foreheads together.

And it happened by the door in the

darkest part of the hotel room.

Shittiest light imaginable.

The shittiest light imaginable.

But if I had stepped in and said,

hey, can you guys do that by the

window light?

That moment wouldn't have been nearly as authentic.

It wouldn't have been nearly as authentic because

they would have been more camera aware and

they would have been realizing they were doing

it for me as opposed to doing it

for the humanity of the moment.

The grainy real moment is so much more

powerful than anything that we could have tried

to orchestrate or line up in better light.

If for example, she's putting on her garter

by herself and she's in the darkest part

of the room and I see an opportunity

where there's a chair right by the window

and there's no moments happening organically with her

bridesmaids or whatever, then yeah, I can say,

oh, you know what?

Let's do this by the window right here.

But generally I would say no, we don't

ask them, but there's exceptions.

Yeah, but I'll never forget this one video

and I can't remember who showed it.

Tyler.

Was it Tyler?

It's a video, some wedding videographers footage and

you're watching it and you see the bride's

just got her dress on and all the

bridesmaids are around.

Her mom is there, you can see her

mom.

And you can see, if you watch mom,

she is starting to lose it.

She's starting to get emotion.

You can see it's welling up, it's building.

She's about to like have this big moment.

And then what do you hear?

You hear the photographer say, okay, can I

get everybody over here by the window?

And mom just snapped right out of it,

right back into there and the moment didn't

happen.

So I'll never forget that.

And we realized like nine times out of

10, if we would just let reality play

out, it's gonna be far more interesting than

anything that we can try to orchestrate.

And it frees up all of our attention

and mental bandwidth to just reacting to that

actual reality instead of thinking about, okay, what

do I have to tell him to do

now?

Yeah, exactly.

So, okay, so we're gonna get started again.

Thank you, Jody.

No worries, one more quick question.

Okay.

If there's any questions that haven't been answered

in the thread, will you guys answer at

some point?

Yes, so where this video will get posted,

the recording of this video is in your

student portal.

I'll send you guys all an email once

it's live.

You can post questions in the comments section

there and I will go in and answer

every question that gets asked.

Yeah, but we're intentionally between the three of

us with Jody, identifying the questions that we

know we're going to address in depth at

the right time with the right photo example.

Yeah.

Okay, so let's go here, let's go share.

Let's go here and click play.

It was there and then you pushed something.

No, I didn't, it disappeared.

Well, whatever, we can just play here, right?

Oh, there we go, play.

Okay, okay, can you move over?

And we've got this section and you're doing

off-camera flash, right?

Yep.

Yes.

Okay, so now we get into the fun

stuff and it's really fun stuff.

So we're gonna first talk, first I'm gonna

talk about natural light and then Lani's gonna

go into our approach to off-camera flash.

And the two are very intertwined and related.

So it's really important that we talk about

this natural light first.

Okay, and what we're basically gonna spend the

next little bit doing is trying to learn

to see the world the way that our

cameras see the world.

And we've been trained since birth to see

the, rightfully so, we've been trained since birth

to see the world as subjects and scenes,

right?

So when I look out my window, I

see three mountains and I see trees, I

see a cup, right?

We see the world as subjects and scenes.

Our cameras, however, do not see the world

as subjects and scenes.

Our cameras only see the world as light

and shadow, right?

And this just boils back to the very

basics of what photography is.

Like what photography, how it was invented with

light-sensitive paper.

It was the recording of light and shadow.

So that's how our cameras see the world,

as light and shadow.

And as photographers, we wanna train ourselves to

also be able to see the world as

light and shadow.

And many people, I've had conversations with many

people about this, and they say that that

is a bit of the curse.

They're like, yeah, but I wanna be able

to turn it on and off.

Like when I'm hanging out with my family,

I just, I don't wanna be a photographer.

I just wanna be present with my family.

But I honestly feel like this is like,

it's almost like as photographers, we can have

this sixth sense layered on top of all

our other five senses, the sixth sense of

light.

And when we layer this sixth sense of

light on top of all our other senses,

the world becomes one sixth more beautiful as

a result.

So don't view this as a curse.

View this as a blessing.

It's a beautiful way to see and experience

the world as light and shadow.

Okay, so a little bit of difference between

how our eyes see light and shadow and

how our cameras see light and shadow, right?

Obviously our eyes are way more, what's the

word, developed, I suppose.

And they see across many different stops of

dynamic range.

So if I'm looking over at Lanny here,

he's sitting in the shade, I can see

his face properly exposed, but I can also

see the mountains and the sunlight as well.

Our eyes can see across 20 some stops

of dynamic range.

Our cameras, on the other hand, can't see

across that many stops of dynamic range, right?

If I expose for the mountains, Lanny's in

darkness, if I expose for Lanny, the mountains

are blown out, okay?

And this is actually a wonderful opportunity for

us as photographers.

And I really hope camera technology doesn't improve

too much because we love taking advantage of

the fact that the cameras see across a

smaller amount of dynamic range than our eyes

do, okay?

We can take advantage of this and we

can shoot for it with it in mind.

I'm just taking a look at my notes

to make sure I've hit everything here.

Go to the next slide, the notes are

there too.

Okay, so what we're doing when we see

the world this way is we're looking for

the brightest spots, right?

And then we're exposing for those bright spots

and letting everything else fall into darkness.

So we'll sound like a broken record throughout

the next few weeks.

We're gonna constantly be talking about exposing for

the highlights, whether we're natural light or flash,

we're gonna always be talking about exposing to

the highlights.

And what we mean by this is exposing

for the brightest part of the scene, okay?

So in this case, this is Dave and

Quinn of DQ Studios.

We're exposed for that flare in behind Quinn's

head, right?

Obviously, when we were looking at this scene

with our head, with our eyes, we could

see the detail in Dave and Quinn's face.

But just by exposing for that highlight, that

brightest part of the scene, everything else falls

into darkness.

And it turns from what it looked like

into what it felt like, right?

So I'm gonna show you a bunch of

natural light examples here of exposing for the

highlights.

Okay, so the highlight, what's the highlight in

this photo?

The highlight in this photo is the sky,

is the brightest part of the image, right?

And often when Lani and I go outside,

that's the first thing we do, is we

set our exposure for the brightest spot.

It's either where the sun is hitting the

ground or it's the sky.

And in this case, it's the sky, and

then we're set up for silhouettes.

You can see Madeline, she's in the foreground,

silhouetted.

And then if the sun is hitting our

subject, we're set up for skin tones.

Again, not the way the eye saw it.

But by exposing for that bright spot, we

can add that dimension to our image, that

dimension of light and shadow.

And the tricky part is not photographing it.

The tricky part is seeing it, right?

We have to see the world this way,

we have to see and experience the world

this way before we can photograph it this

way, okay?

And this is part of being a photographer

is not just when you have a camera

in your hands, right?

But by seeing the world in light and

shadow, by adding that sixth sense into your

repertoire, it means you can be practicing the

art of photography all the time, right?

So here, in this case, it was seeing

that subtle shaft of light.

It didn't look as dramatic as it looks

right here, right?

It was just a subtle difference in light

over the one eye.

Seeing it's the easy part, then photographing it.

Oh, sorry, no.

Seeing it's the hard part, photographing it and

exposing for that highlight is the easier part.

Okay, same thing here, just some light coming

into the car.

And the absence of highlights is just as

important as the presence of highlights.

And we often forget that as photographers, we

often think about quantity of light, like as

much light as possible.

But those, the dark part of the photos

are just as important as the bright part

of the photos, where the highlights are.

So keep that in mind.

And I'm gonna show you a few examples

coming up as well.

Every highlight in your photo has to have

a purpose.

It has to have something, has to tell

an additional story or, because basically when a

viewer looks at your photo, their eyes are

gonna be drawn to two things.

One, they're gonna be drawn to the brightest

spot, right?

The highlight, the areas of highest contrast, and

they're gonna be drawn to what's in focus.

So if you've got multiple highlights in your

frame, it's a good thing if all of

those highlights tell an additional part of the

story.

It's an okay thing for the eyes to

bounce around the photo.

But if you've got highlights that don't have

any purpose in the frame, the eyes are

still gonna bounce to those highlights, but they're

not gonna fulfill any storytelling desire for the

viewer.

Okay, so keep in mind that you have

to have, every highlight in your frame has

to have a purpose.

And that's where composition comes in, which we've

already talked about, right?

But we're often, often our composition is just

problem solving, including the highlights we wanna include

and more importantly, excluding the highlights you don't

want to include.

Like this highlight behind me, it keeps on

coming up every time I shift my body

weight, right?

I don't want that included in the frame,

kind of drives me nuts, but whatever.

Okay, and we always are looking to put

our shadows on our highlight and our highlight

on our shadows, because that's what makes them

pop, right?

We want that contrast.

So in this case, Lani's silhouetted, he's a

shadow, but what makes him pop is that

he's on a highlight, right?

He's silhouetted on the bright sky behind him.

Madeline is a highlight, but she pops because

she's on a shadow.

So she's a highlight on a shadow, Lani

is a shadow on a highlight.

And that's what we're always trying to achieve.

This is a situation we run into fairly

often, lots of wedding photographers do, especially with

outdoor ceremonies, where the couple are standing in

a position, in this case, the groom was

casting a shadow on the bride for the

entire ceremony.

So I was up front in front of,

to the camera left of this photo, shooting

straight into the, on the shadow side of

the bride and groom.

And I was either silhouetting or exposed for

the skin tones and blowing out the background.

Lani literally stayed here probably for five or

10 minutes and just waited for those moments

where the groom would shift his weight slightly

or the bride would shift her weight slightly

so that there was sun, there was a

highlight on her face.

So he just sort of waited for those

moments.

And then because he was back button focused,

he could wait, wait, wait.

And for those milliseconds of the moment where

they would come into the light, he would

be able to shoot it.

And he- Sure.

Because obviously while I was there, I was

also making lots of exposures when she was

in the shade, exposed for those skin tones

and blowing up the rest.

And those were okay and deliverable, but nowhere

near as interesting, as compelling as those moments

where she shifted her weight into the highlight

and I was exposed for those highlights.

And sometimes photographers will view this idea of

exposing for highlights.

Right, yeah.

And now it's gonna get- Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

This is the perfect frame to talk about

that.

So often those, all those highlights within the

frame match, right?

They're all within the same dynamic range of

each other.

Right?

And as Lani was just about to say,

people often say, well, this isn't my style.

I'm a light and airy photographer or I'm

a...

But really, I don't feel like this has

anything to do with style.

This has to do with what the basics

of good photography are, right?

Exposing for the highlights, highlight on shadow, shadow

on highlight.

And you actually, even before photography was invented,

we went to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam last

year when we were there.

And Renaissance painters, right?

Look at the great Dutch masters.

They understood exposing for highlights well before photography

was even invented.

They understood exposing for highlights.

They understood the concept of eliminating highlights.

They understood the concept of short light, directional

light, all those things before photography was even

invented.

So keep that in mind.

This is not a style of photography.

It's just the basics of what photography is.

This photo here is pure luck, pure luck.

The fact that the sun is hitting that

ridge is, you know, and we were in

this place at the right time, was pure

luck.

But I put this photo in because it

shows, it demonstrates how important the absence of

highlights are, right?

The fact that the sun is hitting the

ridge is amazing.

But the fact the sun is hitting the

ridge but not hitting the mountain in behind

is what makes them pop, right?

If the sun were hitting the mountain in

behind, they wouldn't have that shadow behind them,

right?

So it's that highlight on that shadow.

This is the same thing, same sort of

concept here.

We've got her face is a shadow on

a highlight, it's silhouetted on the sky.

And then her hand with the ring on

it is a highlight on a shadow.

So this was driving with the bride to

where she was getting ready in the morning.

She'd just gone for a morning run.

I'm sitting next to her in the car.

I always have my camera up.

I'm always looking for interesting compositions, even if

it's a boring part of the day.

Often there's opportunity in those.

And I noticed as she was driving, when

she went through the cross streets, the sun

would be coming into the car.

So that was the first step.

The first step was noticing that as she

drove, because it was really early in the

morning, so the sun was low in the

sky.

But as she went through the cross streets,

the sun would come into the car.

First step noticing.

Second step was exposing for the highlight.

In this case, it's the sky, right?

Because the sky is the same highlight as

the highlight on her nose there.

And the sky is the same exposure as

the highlight on her hand, right?

So that's the second step.

The third step would be achieving focus.

So again, I've got my back button focused

and I'm just sitting beside her.

And I believe I just focused right on

her nose, right?

And then the third step, or the fourth

step, I should say, was shooting through those

cross streets.

So every cross street we went through, I

would shoot through, it was probably a second

and a half of each cross street.

And I would shoot through that moment.

And this is the one that lined up

with her hand.

I didn't direct this, but this is her

talking.

So as we're driving, I've got my camera

up.

I'm still conversing with her quite a lot.

She's really talkative and I'm really talkative.

And this is the one where her hand

gesture was in a way that it was

highlighted in the darkness.

Again, hardest part is noticing it.

Once you notice it, it's much easier to

photograph.

Okay, in this case, the highlight is the

ground.

So Lanny set his exposure up for the

bright grass and then he set up for

silhouettes and he set up for shadows.

And these are all natural light.

Yeah, these are all natural light.

Yeah, I did mention that at the beginning.

These are all natural light examples.

Just noticing, again, noticing that little sliver of

light coming in on their faces as they

peek through the curtains.

It's the noticing it.

It's not the photographing it, it's the noticing

it.

Noticing the texture.

This is just midday and light filtering through

a tree onto a boardwalk.

And then making sure that highlight's in the

right spot where you want it.

So when she was getting her dress on

here, the highlight's very obvious, right?

It's the bright window.

I wish there was a sheer curtain because

it's almost too bright.

That highlight is almost a little bit too

overexposed there.

If there was a sheer curtain, it would

have been much easier.

But when I'm photographing a moment like this,

I don't stand still, I'm constantly adjusting, trying

to get that highlight.

And these little adjustments when you have a

wider lens make all the difference.

Trying to get that highlight where it belongs,

right?

And it belongs behind the head of the

bride.

Right, and just to clarify here, because this

is a couple points.

Yes, there's a big, bright highlight in this

frame, in which case Erica's trying to expose

for it and line it up properly.

But if she felt, I mean, she wouldn't

in this case because the bride's nude and

we don't want to expose her skin tones.

But if we did want to expose her

skin tones and that highlight was a distraction,

right?

Then we would move to exclude that highlight

so that the highlight is the skin tones

and still exposing for the highlights.

So I would always, yeah.

I'd still be exposing for the highlights if

I moved around to the other side and

exposed for the light coming in on her

face.

Right, in this case, I'm using the highlight

as a canvas to silhouette the bride's face.

And this is just to reiterate the fact

that every highlight on your frame has to

have a purpose, right?

So we've got the bride on the right

-hand side of the frame getting her veil

put on, right?

We're exposed for the, here's the sheer curtains

that I'm talking about.

You can see sheer curtains are like God's

gift to photographers.

Highlight in the center is her dress.

It gives that context or silhouetting her dress.

The highlight on the left actually had no

purpose in the frame until the videographer stepped

in there.

When the videographer stepped in, it gave that

highlight a purpose, right?

Until she stepped in, I had this image

or this photo framed completely differently only to

include the highlights that had a purpose.

When she stepped in, she gave that highlight

purpose.

And actually this is the exact same room

as the previous photo.

And obviously this is a setup shot.

This is a portrait.

But all I've done here is I've taken

all the curtains that you see here, it's

a different bride though.

I've closed all three curtains, but I left

the left one, the one that the videographer

is standing in front of open just about

two inches.

So I've eliminated all the other highlights.

And then that's the highlight that's coming in

on her.

It's just that sliver of light from the

window and her veils picking it up.

And I wish I turned off those lamps.

I turned them on just to give some

sort of detail in the blackness of the

black background.

But in retrospect, I wish I turned them

off.

Okay, so we're gonna give you guys a

little exercise and you don't have to do

this now, but you're gonna do it between

now and Saturday's lesson.

So basically what we want you to do

is we want you to turn off your

brain's tendency to view the world as subjects

and scenes, at least temporarily.

So turn off your brain's tendency to view

the world as subjects and scenes and try

and turn on your brain's ability to see

the world as light and shadow, okay?

So what you're gonna do, and at first,

you're not even gonna take a camera, but

eventually you're gonna have a camera and I

don't even care if it's your cell phone

or an SLR or a mirrorless.

It doesn't really matter.

But first, just your eyes.

Yeah, first just your eyes.

So you're gonna go and you're gonna look

for light, okay?

You're not gonna look for light on a

subject, just gonna look for light, okay?

So shards of light, textures of light, transitions

of light to shadow, hard light, soft light.

You know, if I'm looking at the wall

behind me here, I can see the difference

in light between this wall and this wall,

right?

So that's a transition of light there.

Textures of light, slivers of light, colored light.

And it's not so much the quantity of

light.

Like we don't want you to go like

a moth to a flame.

We want you to look for those subtle

shifts of light and shadow.

And the first step is noticing them, right?

First step is noticing them.

And then the second step would be to

photograph them.

Photographing them, exposing for, hopefully you guessed this

right, exposing for the highlight in the frame,

right?

And this is just gonna turn on that

ability to get that sixth sense of light,

which we all need as photographers.

And a great analogy for this is kind

of like when you look at those magic

eye posters with those crazy designs, right?

And you can't see anything in it until

you shift your focus.

And then once you do, a three-dimensional

object pops out at you.

And once you see it, you can't not

see it.

That's sort of like this, learning to notice

that subtle interplay between light and shadow beyond

just the objects and scenes.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so we're gonna do a quick question

and answer, and then you guys pretty much

got lightning for the rest of the time

teaching you guys off-camera flash.

Okay, so let's go to question and answer.

I'll stop the sharing here.

Okay, Jodi.

First question came from David Fay.

Do you use zebras to expose for the

highlights?

No, no.

It's, that is, it's like the alert, right?

I think that's what it is.

The alert thing, where it like- I

just thought I'd just ask him.

Yeah, I think what you're talking about is

like the highlight alert that you get in

your photos.

No, I find that just kind of annoying

and distracting.

How far are you willing to process to

show the contrast?

Very frequently, we find ourselves in the flattest,

blandest light.

This came from Klusky Smith.

Are we talking about post-production here?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, so we're gonna spend a whole session

on post-production specifically, so we'll save that

for then.

But even when it's cloudy, and Lani's gonna

get into this quite a bit in the

next little bit, but there's still that idea

of exposing for the highlights.

You can still find light and shadow even

when it's cloudy.

There's still light and shadow in this room

right now, even though there's no direct sun

coming right in.

This one came from Tim Campanin.

If you notice great light, but the moment

is gone as soon as you notice it,

will you ever ask the subject to repeat

whatever they were just doing?

If it's portraits, yeah, for sure.

Definitely if it's portraits.

If it's something else, not really.

Not for us.

Not for us.

And I mean, the truth is, Tim, we

got a lot more freedom when we realized

that no matter how hard we work, we're

gonna miss 95% of the wedding day,

right?

No matter how hard Lani and I work

and how many moments we try and get,

we are gonna miss 95% of the

wedding day.

We're gonna always miss way more than we

get, and that's okay.

And for us, we realize that it's usually

not worth it because, well, A, we're not

gonna, if it was a real, natural, authentic

moment, they're not gonna be able to recreate

that and have that magic in the nice

light.

And B, we're setting that precedent that we're

gonna give them direction, and so we're not

training them to forget about us.

And so then they look to us for

direction throughout the day, and we get gripping

grins all night long, right?

So we're trying to like, even though we're

tempted to just, nope, we are not gonna

intervene here.

This question is from Carla.

I don't have a last name.

When you're posing for the highlights, do you

also consider?

A highly different way of thinking about it.

And in order to deconstruct a lot of

the examples, it's kind of important that we're

all up to speed light.

We're all up to on kind of the

same page as to how we're thinking about

the process of off-camera lighting, okay?

So we're gonna start right at the basics

and the nuts and bolts, okay?

And so we'll start with the gear, okay?

We'll talk about what we need in order

to do this, and then we'll get into

how to synchronize it with your shutter, and

then where and how to position that light,

how to modify the quality and the shape

of the light, how to manipulate the color

with gels, and then how to tweak the

balance of exposure between your ambient light and

your flashlight, okay?

Now, for us, with pretty much anything photography

related, but especially off-camera flash, there's very

little technical bullshit, okay?

There's no math.

There's almost no numbers involved at the way

that we think about it, okay?

You know, I remember I was sitting at

a photography conference and a photographer was explaining

to me their lighting setup, and they were

like, you know, I put an F8 over

here and I have a 5.6 here,

and it's just straight over my head.

I didn't even know what language they're speaking.

For us, lighting is like cooking, and we

taste the soup.

Does it need more salt?

Does it need more light?

We turn it up, we turn it down.

It's very simple, as simple as possible, because

we wanna be able to do this in

real time, in fast action, without directing, and

in order to do that, it has to

be as simple and easy as possible, so

no technical bullshit.

Okay, let's start with the gear.

What we need to get our flash off

of our camera, out into the wild, where

it belongs.

What do we need?

First of all, get this off of here,

we need a flash, okay?

The only thing, the most important thing with

the flash, the only thing that we care

about is that it's able to work in

manual mode.

It has to be able to work in

manual mode, and it has to be able

to do so at various powers, so full

power, half power, quarter power.

We need to be able to control that,

okay?

With our flashes, that's essentially the only control

that we think about or care about, okay?

The only thing that we can control is

the flash power, the amount of light that's

coming out of this thing when it fires,

and there's three ways of calculating that power,

okay?

In auto mode, the flash decides for you,

okay?

In ETTL, or TTL, or whatever TL mode

you have, the flash and the camera decide

together for you, okay?

And the results are unpredictable and unrepeatable because

we've got so many different, so many changing

variables like white wedding dresses and black tuxedos

and DJ lights, et cetera, et cetera.

There's no way for us to have predictable,

reliable results.

So manual mode is what we want.

In manual mode, you decide, okay?

That's what we want, always, so that you

know whatever you tell the flash power to

be, it's always gonna put out that amount

of power each and every time, so your

results are predictable and repeatable, okay?

So let's move into synchronizing.

I am trying to increase the size of

my, okay, there we go, screen here, so

that, nope.

Erika, how did you get the screen to

go bigger?

You have to exit out.

They're gonna wanna see, I just want, I

wanna stretch that bigger.

There we go, there we go, okay.

So, oh, no, we gotta go back to

synchronizing, okay?

So how do we, you know, once we

get this flash off of our cameras out

into the wild where it belongs, how do

we trigger it?

How do we synchronize it to our shutter?

And really all that's happening there mechanically is

basically what we're doing is the shutter is

telling the flash to fire, and in order

to synchronize it, it's as simple as connecting

this hot shoe to this hot shoe.

Obviously, on-camera flash, that's a straightforward physical

connection, okay?

When we go off-camera, we still have

to make that connection, okay?

But we have to use some sort of

a transmitter to relay the signal, okay?

So here's my transmitter.

This is the Profoto Air Remote.

A lot of our flashes now have built

-in transmitters, so you can actually, if you

have two flashes, you can have one on

your camera triggering, acting as a trigger, okay?

It's just triggering the off-camera flash.

We'll show you some examples where we've done

that for important reasons, but whenever possible, we'd

rather just use a transmitter to do that

because it's much smaller and lighter, okay?

And all that's happening is when you push

the shutter, it sends a signal up to

your transmitter that it sends a fire pulse,

and so the transmitter then sends that radio

signal through the air, and then your flash

has a receiver, and the receiver sees that

radio pulse signal and says, oh, I'm supposed

to fire, and it pops, and that all

happens almost speed of light, not quite, okay?

That's all that's happening when you synchronize our

flashes.

The transmitters today, there are lots of good

options now.

I remember when Eric and I were first

learning, our only real option at that time

was pocket wizards, and it sucked because our

learning curve was super slow because if it

didn't work, we didn't know if it's because

we were messing up or that equipment just

wasn't working.

So when it comes to transmitters, there are

two kinds, essentially, crappy ones and reliable ones.

You just want something that's reliable, something that's

actually gonna connect wirelessly off-camera and do

what it's supposed to do for you, and

the other nice thing is to be able

to control your flash power from your camera

right on the transmitter, okay?

To not have to go physically do it

on the flash itself or yell at each

other, okay?

That's another critical piece when it comes to

the remotes.

Okay, so let's get into, let's talk about

positioning, where and how we put the light

source where we do.

First, let's talk about how, okay?

Or sorry, not how, where.

If we're going off-camera with our flash,

let's go way off-camera.

There's no point going off-camera and having

the angle of light coming from essentially the

same area as on-camera, okay?

Eric and I sort of envision a force

field around our camera.

So if I'm photographing you, if you're my

subject, here's my camera, from you out in

a big arc around my camera, I'm envisioning

that force field.

I have to get the flash outside the

force field, okay?

And that angle, like if you imagine the

angle from my shooting angle from me to

you, the subject, and then if I were

to bounce an angle off over to where

the flash is positioned, that angle as a

starting point for Eric and I is somewhere

in between 45 degrees and 90 degrees, usually

closer to 90 degrees as a starting point.

And we taste the soup.

That feels too hard and edgy, we might

bring it back closer to 45.

That's not edgy and dramatic enough.

We might go, we might push it past

90 degrees, right?

And then when we bring it all the

way in behind, 180 degrees is where we

get into a rim light scenario, which we'll

talk about later, okay?

So that's angle-wise.

How far away from the subject is usually

determined by the space that we're working in,

wherever there's room for us to position our

light stand, essentially.

Usually, if we have the option to, we'll

usually position ours somewhere in the three meters

to six meters range, but we might have

to go farther or closer depending on the

space, and we can adjust from there, okay?

How high does it need to be?

It doesn't need to be high.

If I'm the subject, I don't want my

flash coming from super high.

I want my flash to be coming from

just slightly above, okay?

I don't want it to be coming from

below, that's not natural, but just slightly above.

That's why our light stands don't really ever

have to go higher than eight feet tops,

okay?

That's more than enough in almost every situation,

okay?

And with where we position the light, another

thing that would be worth talking about right

now is broad light versus short light, okay?

So if I'm photographing you from here, and

you're my subject, I can choose to bring

my light over that way, 45 to 90

degrees, or I can position it over there.

What determines that is this idea of broad

light or short light.

So if you are delivering a speech, let's

say, and your audience is over there, so

you're gonna be looking that way.

I'm not gonna go this way with my

flash.

I'm gonna go that way with my flash

because I can short light you.

The best way to describe the difference between

broad light and short light is in this

example here.

We've lit two brides with two separate lights.

The bride on the left is broad lit,

okay?

So the light is coming across the broad

side of her face, which isn't the most

flattering or interesting angle.

The bride on the right is short lit.

So the light is coming across from the

short side of her face relative to the

camera, and we get that interesting short light.

If you watch documentaries or Disney movies or

anything where the director has had a choice,

almost always they choose to short light because

it's more flattering and more interesting, okay?

So we're gonna try to short light whenever

possible.

Okay, let's get back to the positioning of

the light.

So that's where we want the light source.

Next, let's talk about how we put it

there.

Obviously, the most versatile option would be a

voice-activated light stand, right?

Because they can move in accordance to the

action.

That's almost never an option for us.

We're usually working by ourselves.

So usually it's the light stand.

That's our best option.

And we talked about the importance of having

something vast, one-handed here, 360 degrees, so

you can position exactly where you want, and

you can move this light stand into position

quickly.

We also talked about the clamps.

The nano clamp is a great option for

clamping in places where you can't get your

light stand.

And then your flashes also come with a

foot stand, okay?

We buy these in bulk at the beginning

of the year because we lose them.

But honestly, they're not very versatile or useful

because you end up having to set your

flash down on a table or a shelf.

And so the light ends up coming from

a low angle, which is unflattering and unnatural.

So when we're making off-camera light, we're

essentially trying to achieve one of two objectives.

One would be you're going for some sort

of an obvious stylized look, okay?

Or more often, you're trying to mimic natural

light.

You're trying to make it look like it

could have been lit naturally with the ambient

light, okay?

And so if that's the goal, we want

the light to be coming from natural angles

and light naturally comes from above.

It comes from the ceiling and it comes

from the sky, right?

But at the same time, we don't love

it when the light's coming from straight above,

right?

So we just want it just slightly higher

than our subjects.

Okay, so that's almost it for gear.

We've got the manual flash.

It's synchronized to our camera via the transmitter.

We've got it positioned on the light stand,

right?

45 to 90 degrees.

The last remaining problem at this point now

is the flash is still naked, okay?

There's nothing on this flash to modify the

shape of the light coming off of it.

So let's move into all the different ways

that we can modify and shape the light

coming off of our flash, okay?

So for that to make sense, let's just

quickly talk about soft light and hard light.

You guys understand, you guys know that the

larger the light source, the softer the light.

And the best way to, you know, the

best analogy for that is to just think

about the sun.

The sun is obviously an enormous light source.

But on a blue sky day, on a

sunny day, that light source relative to our

subjects is teeny tiny.

So it's a super small light source, so

it's hard light, okay?

Soft light, right, so that same sun, on

an overcast day now, the entire sky essentially

becomes a giant soft box.

So that's soft light, okay?

Safe and pretty light, because light goes everywhere,

right?

There's not, there's very subtle difference between the

light and the shadow.

And photographers will often crave an overcast day,

especially for, you know, a high noon ceremony,

because, not because it's good light, because it's

easy light, okay?

It's easy to get the exposures.

Everything's within the same exposure.

The light is everywhere, okay?

The reason that hard light gets a bad

rap is not because of the quality of

the light, it's because of the direction of

the light.

So at high noon, obviously, you know, it's

super challenging and, you know, for ceremonies, it's

like, we all hate it, it's the raccoon

eyes, right?

It's the, it's not the quality of the

light, it's the direction coming from straight above,

you know?

Same with our hard light coming off our

flash.

If we've got our flash positioned right on

our camera, it looks like shit, not because

of the quality of the light, but because

of the direction.

When that high noon sun, when that hard

light source comes down onto the horizon, now

we all love it, now it's magic hour.

So it's not the quality of the light,

it's the direction.

Hard light, when used with intense and, when

used with intent and purpose, when used well,

can help us create really compelling, dramatic, edgy

images, okay?

So when we're modifying the shape of the

light coming off of our flashes, we're actually

never trying to soften it.

There's a few cases where we would be,

and in those cases, we're usually bouncing it

off a wall or a ceiling, but we're

not carrying soft boxes or umbrellas with us

because, well, A, they're heavy, they're cumbersome, they

slow us down, and B, when we're making

light, we're usually trying to harden it, not

soften it, okay?

So, and a big reason for that is,

what Eric, I think, already mentioned, is what

really makes a photo sing is not just

where the light is, but where the light

is not.

And when we use hard light, we can

put light, we can isolate the light to

only where we want it and keep it

off of the areas of the frame where

we don't want it.

With soft light, the light goes everywhere, right?

So how can we harden the light coming

off of our flashes?

I did lie, I said there was one

control that we care about on the flash,

and that's the flash power itself.

That's really the only one that matters.

Only other thing we can adjust on our

flashes is the zoom, okay?

We can zoom the flash head, the cone

of light coming off, we can zoom it

in and out, okay?

On the Profoto, you can just do it

like this, on other ones, you just dial

it up, so you can zoom it all

the way out to 24 or all the

way in to 200, okay?

But the thing is, even when you zoom

it all the way in, if you have

ceilings or walls or floors around you, so

basically if you're indoors, that light is still

gonna bounce off all those surfaces and go

everywhere and become soft light, okay?

So we can't isolate.

So for that reason, that's where the grids

come in.

And Erica, this is where there was a

request to switch to the full screen for

me, right?

Okay, I'm gonna see if I can pull

this off.

I'm gonna go X, I'm gonna go stop

share, right?

Okay, okay, so you should be able to

see me full screen here.

These are the grids.

This changed the game for us when it

came to lighting, because before grids, we couldn't

light the way we wanted to light, because

it just, it went everywhere.

The grids allowed us to control the light

the way we wanted to control it.

Before the Profoto grids, we were using the

MagMod grids, before the MagMod, we were using

the Rogue grids, which were essentially a Velcro

piece that would go on your flash, and

then you could pop in these honeycomb grids,

okay?

So if you have a rectangular head like

most of us, then MagMod is your best

bet.

The MagMod is basically just a stretchable magnetized

thing that goes onto the head of your

flash, and then you can stack these modular

grids and gel holders.

The Profoto has a magnetized head, so I

can pop it in like that.

So we use this grid to funnel that

light.

So what it does is it essentially takes

the cone of light, it takes your flash

from being like a spray paint to a

fine-tipped paintbrush.

So now I can paint with light just

where I want it and keep it off

of the other areas.

With the MagMods, with the Profotos, they're modular,

so you can stack them.

If that's not tight enough, you can stack

a second grid, okay?

But I would say 95% of the

time, when we grid, we're just using the

one single grid, okay?

So essentially, the best way to think of

this is like if you go into a

room and you see like a shaft of

light coming in from the window, like just

that one shard of light, that's essentially what

this gives you the power to do, to

create that shard of light anywhere, anytime, anywhere

you want it, okay?

When we control it with a grid, okay?

Okay, let me just, okay, all right.

So then let's go to, well, let's go

to, I gotta play, oh, sorry, I gotta

share the screen.

Share the screen, share the screen.

Zoom, share the screen, here,

share, okay.

I'm learning, guys, and play.

Okay, what's next?

Gels, okay?

So, where's my gel?

Here's the gel holder, okay?

And it comes with the Profotos, what pops

on there with MagMods, you've got your gel

holder, okay?

And the gel that we use, the one

that's in here, the one that's in here,

this is the quarter-cut CTO gel.

It's the most subtle warming gel that comes

with your gel sets.

And what it does is it balances the

skin, the color temperature on the skin.

So this is what we keep on our

flash almost always when we're lighting skin.

Again, though, we just eyeball it, okay?

We taste the soup, we look at the

back of the camera, and if our subjects,

if our humans look like Oompa Loompas, then

we take off the warming gel, okay?

If they look like Smurfs, then we switch

to a warmer gel, like a half-cut

or a full-cut.

If they're sitting around a campfire, there's fire

spinners, then we might have to switch to

a super warm gel to balance it, okay?

But this quarter-cut CTO does a really

good job for the most part of balancing

most skin tones in most indoor environments with

the ambient light coming from lamps and chandeliers

and candles, et cetera, okay?

All those other gels, the funky, creative gels,

turquoise and pinks and purples, those ones for

us, we never use those when we're lighting

skin, or rarely ever.

When we use those ones is when we're

lighting something in the foreground or something in

the background, okay?

So we'll look at some examples of that.

And it doesn't matter whether or not you

put your gel on first and then your

grid or your grid and then your gel,

but we usually put the gel first and

then the grid because there are some situations

where we will take the grid off, but

we almost always leave the gel on.

So this allows us to do that.

When we take the grid off is generally

only ever outside because there's no walls or

ceilings, or when we bring the flash in

behind our subjects, because when we do that,

you'll see lots of examples where what we're

trying to do is we want the light

to wrap around our subjects for the rim

light, and with the grid, it doesn't wrap

all the way around, so we take the

grid off.

So for that reason, we keep our flash

head zoomed all the way out, always, because

when we have the grid on, that controls

it into a super tight funnel for us.

When we take the grid off, it's because

we want the light to wrap around.

So we just keep it zoomed out.

Erica, can we close the door, turn that

down a little bit?

Okay, so that's gelling.

That's it for gear, okay?

We've got the gear, synchronizing, positioning, shaping, gelling,

okay.

Now the tricky part and the magic part,

okay?

Balancing the ambient light with the flashlight, okay?

This is the way that we think about

it in our head.

We follow the same three-step process every

time we make off-camera lighting, okay?

And I'll break each of these steps down

for you guys, because there's a few asterisks

and a few caveats, but basically all we

do is we just get a full ambient

exposure, just like any other natural light photograph,

properly exposed.

Then we go dark.

So then we underexpose that scene, or we

expose for the highlights in that scene, mid

-tones fall away.

So we go dark, underexpose, and that's the

canvas.

That becomes the canvas, first two steps.

And then last step, add the flash, so

that we paint on that canvas, okay?

So I'm gonna break that down for you

here, step-by-step.

Let's just go back and refresh our memory.

Erica already talked about our order of operations

when we shoot natural light, okay?

We take care of the ISO first, figure

out, okay, this is whatever, this is a

3200 ISO room, set it and leave it

until we change lighting environments.

Then our aperture is our storytelling device, so

we determine how much depth of focus we

need, depending on how many stories we're layering.

And then the shutter speed is what we

roll on the fly to get our exposure

in the right place, okay?

That's our order of operations when we shoot

natural light.

When we go to shooting off-camera flash,

a few things change, okay?

First of all, we have to be working

in manual when we shoot off-camera flash,

right?

So that's key.

And if you shoot mirrorless, you need to

be a mechanical shutter.

So if you were shooting an electronic shutter

for silent shutter for natural light, the minute

you decide to go off-camera flash, we've

got it set so we can really quickly

switch to mechanical shutter, okay?

And the other thing we have to do

in a Sony is we have to turn

off-camera flash on, okay?

So then our order of operations changes slightly.

We still take care of the ISO first,

because I don't want to think about ISO,

I want to get it out of the

equation just like always.

The only difference really between ambient or off

-camera flash with ISO is we'll usually choose

a lower ISO for off-camera flash.

What ISO?

I don't know, it depends on what we're

doing, but if I'm shooting natural light in

a dark room and I'm up at 6400

ISO, if I switch to making off-camera

light, I know I don't have to shoot

at 6400 ISO now because I'm making off

-camera light.

So I could probably choose like 400 ISO.

So I'll pick a lower ISO, but then

I don't think about it, okay?

So ISO is out of the equation now,

again, just like natural light, ISO first.

But then we got to do our shutter

speed next, okay?

So shutter speed and then aperture.

You see how that's flipped?

It used to be aperture then shutter speed,

that's what we always do for natural light.

When we make our own light, we take

care of the shutter speed first, then the

aperture.

And the reason for that, three scary words,

flash sync speed.

You don't have to know what flash sync

speed is or what it's doing, you just

have to know that if your shutter speed

is too fast, if it's faster than your

flash sync speed, then your shutter won't be

able to synchronize to the flashlight in time.

And you'll get these weird exposures where it's

half exposed.

And when that happens, you remember, ah, I

forgot about flash sync speed.

With most cameras and flashes, it's about 1

200th of a second.

Some setups are 1 250th, just know what

it is.

For us it's 1 200th of a second,

okay?

So that's why we got to take care

of shutter speed first.

Got to make sure I'm at 1 200th

of a second or slower.

Any faster and it won't work, unless I'm

using high speed sync, which we don't use.

Okay, so don't complicate matters with that.

We only just started experimenting with that honestly

this year now because we've got the extra

power of the B10.

With high speed sync, you lose power and

it's less predictable results.

So 99% of any flashlight photo you've

ever seen from us has not used flash

sync speed.

So we set the shutter speed at 1

200th of a second or slower.

Then we use our aperture to get the

exposure where we want it.

And then, only then, last step is we

add the flash and change the flash power,

okay?

So that's our order of operations for natural

light and off camera flash.

So let's go back to those three steps

here and break that down now with those

asterisks.

Get a full ambient exposure with the shutter

speed at 1 200th of a second or

slower, okay?

Beautiful.

Property exposed natural light photograph, 1 200th of

a second.

Then go dark.

Underexpose that scene by effing it up, right?

Because I've already set, ISO is done.

Shutter speed is now set.

So next I'm gonna use aperture.

So to underexpose that scene or to expose

for the highlights in that scene, I'm gonna

increase my aperture, eff it up.

Now while I do that, the scene is

gonna drop down in exposure.

One stop, maybe two stops.

How much is up to you?

Taste the soup, eyeball it.

How much drama do you wanna add to

the scene here?

As you go dark, those mid-tones are

gonna fall away into darkness and you're eyeballing

it how dark you wanna go, okay?

That's your canvas.

So we're laying down the canvas first, okay?

Your underexposed canvas.

And then you turn on your flash.

Once you've got that canvas all set, then

you paint with light.

We turn on the flash and then we

control the flash power.

Now, this is critical that we do it

in this order because we're essentially controlling two

exposures.

Every time you make a flashlight photo, you're

essentially making two exposures, one photo, sorry, one

photo, but two exposures simultaneously, okay?

You're essentially making an exposure of the ambient

light, just like any other natural light photo

you've ever done.

Plus you're also doing an exposure of the

flash's light, okay?

Whether or not you think of it like

that or not, that's what's actually happening every

time you make a flashlight photo.

So you can kind of think of it

like two overlaid exposures, okay?

You've got a slow shutter speed ambient exposure.

And by slow shutter speed, I mean one

200th of a second or slower, mixed with

a frozen instantaneous flash exposure.

This photo is a perfect example of that,

okay?

From the groom up, that whole upper corner

of the frame, that's your ambient exposure, okay?

That's your slow shutter speed ambient exposure, one

200th of a second or slower, okay?

What you see in the bottom left-hand

corner is the flash's exposure, okay?

So if we dial this back to the

three steps, what we did is one 200th

of a second to start with, then we

F'd it up to expose for the highlights

in the sky.

This was not this dark and dramatic, this

is midday.

But we increased the aperture until we're exposed

for the highlights in the sky and all

the mid-tones fall away into darkness, okay?

So before we turn the flash on, this

is what we saw minus all that warm

light down in the corner, that's the ambient

exposure.

Then we positioned the flash behind the bride,

obviously with a warm gel, and we turned

the flash on.

And at that point, we knew, we already

had our canvas in place, and we knew

that no part of this frame is gonna

get any darker, right?

We're only gonna add light.

We're gonna add the paint on top of

this canvas, okay?

And then we eyeball it, and we look

at that flash exposure.

And if the flash is too bright, we

turn it down.

If the flash is not bright enough, we

turn it up, okay?

Simple as that.

Those two exposures, controlling them one at a

time and independently, okay, separate, not both at

the same time, really simplifies things and makes

your results predictable and repeatable, okay?

Especially in the chaos of a hectic wedding

where you're trying to make this happen without

too much to think about.

Just break it down to those three steps

and control those two exposures one at a

time.

First, the ambient exposure, then the flash exposure,

okay?

Get that ambient exposure dialed in first.

So again, we've taken ISO out of the

equation, so we're not touching ISO, don't worry

about that.

Those two exposures, now, with ISO out of

the equation, the ambient exposure, as you guys

know, shooting natural light, the aperture and the

shutter speed will both change your ambient exposure,

right?

If you change the aperture speed or the

shutter speed, the ambient exposure will change.

But remember, we've set our shutter speed at

1,200th of a second or slower, and

then we've used our aperture to control that

ambient canvas for us, right?

We get that in the right place.

When we look over at our flash exposure,

though, flash exposure doesn't give a rat's ass

about shutter speed.

You can do whatever you want with shutter

speed as long as it's 1,200th of

a second or slower.

You could leave that shutter open for an

hour if you want, and it won't change

the flash exposure.

Obviously, we'll change the ambient exposure, but the

flash exposure is always speed of light, okay?

So shutter speed doesn't impact the flash exposure.

The only things that impact the flash exposure

now at this point are the aperture and

the flash power.

But we don't wanna change the aperture, because

remember, we've already laid down the ambient canvas

the way we want it, and we want

it not to change.

So when we add the flash, the only

thing we wanna adjust at that point is

the flash power itself.

Turn it up or turn it down.

Or your other option would be to move

the flash closer to your subject or pull

it further away.

You taste the soup, okay?

So let's look at these three steps and

break it down one more time.

We get a full ambient exposure, properly exposed

with the shutter speed of 1,200th of

a second, and then we go dark by

effing it up until we've got that ambient

canvas looking nice and dramatic the way we

want, and then we turn on our flash.

Position it, shape it, eyeball it, turn it

up or turn it down, okay?

I'm gonna deconstruct a couple real-world examples

of this three-step process at play in

the real world.

So at this wedding, the cake cutting, which

is one of the most boring things that

happens at any wedding, but for whatever reason,

it's the time when it's like, okay, Mr.

Photographer, where's the photographer?

They're cutting the cake, they're cutting the cake.

In this case, though, they were cutting the

cake right beside a window, and we knew

that it was the blue hour outside.

It was nice dusk light, and there was

actually three of us.

It was me and Erica working together, and

we had our friend John Mould there assisting

us.

So one of us decided to go get

the safe shot, but why not swing for

the fence?

So I handed my flash to John with

a grid and a gel and said, just

point it at the couple, okay?

And I ran outside to see if I

could try to get a shot from outside

through the window, okay?

As I'm running out there, the first thing

I'm doing is, okay, ISO, well, it wasn't

this dark and dramatic.

I knew I was gonna be under exposure.

So I picked a low ISO, probably one

or 200, okay?

And then I'm running into position, trying to

find the composition, and I'm changing my shutter

speed before I even get there.

I'm putting my shutter speed at one 200th

of a second, okay?

Set, get into position, plant my feet, find

the composition, make a frame, okay.

Now what I saw in my frame was

properly exposed.

What I saw, like I could see all

the detail in the venue.

Then I started effing it up, right?

5.6, F7.1, F8, until I had

this drama, until I was exposed for the

highlights in the sky and the highlights in

those windows.

And then it was dark and dramatic like

this.

That's the ambient exposure.

That's my canvas.

But remember, I can see them plain as

day right through the window.

I can focus on them, no problem, okay?

Then I turned on the flash.

Actually, John, of course, was already inside with

the flash turned on.

So I just made sure that I had

my transmitter turned off so that I could

get that ambient canvas dialed in first.

Then when I was ready to start firing

the flash, I turned the transmitter on.

I couldn't even tell you what the flash

power was at.

I don't care.

I just pop it, I look at it.

Whoa, too bright.

Dial it down.

Oh, I'm close.

And then just try to get it in,

into place.

Three-step process.

A couple more examples.

This is not a documentary shot.

This was filming a commercial for MagMod, but

it's a good example of the three-step

process at play.

Abby's in front of a highlight.

Dave's in a dark shower, right?

Well, normal, not that dark, obviously.

What I've done is I've put my shutter

speed at 1 2 hundredth of a second,

and then effed it up until I'm exposed

for the highlights behind Abby, and all the

mid-tones where Dave is fall away into

the background.

Into darkness, okay?

Then, turn on the flash, and dial that

flash up or down.

It's the same three-step process if you're

firing multiple flashes, only in that case, in

this case, we have three exposures to consider.

We've got the ambient exposure, which is basically

all the cool, dark stones in this step

well.

And then you've got two separate flash exposures

to consider, right?

But it's the same three-step process.

1 2 hundredth of a second, and then

eff it up to darken the scene down

and bring out the drama in that step

well.

Then position the lights.

The easiest way is to do them one

at a time, and then turn the light

on, eyeball it, turn those flashes independently up

and down to get the exposure in the

place.

Last example.

Stepping outside the room, out into the bright

daylight outside.

1 2 hundredth of a second, okay?

Obviously, I've got two flashes already on light

stands inside, aimed at the two brides separately,

okay?

1 2 hundredth of a second, and then

effing it way up to expose just for

the highlights on the wall, those bright shards

of sunlight.

Those are properly exposed, but all the mid

-tones fall away into darkness, including everything inside.

I can't see anything inside anymore.

And then turn the flash on.

The flash is controlled with the grids onto

the two brides, and then dial those flashes

up and down independently, controlling those exposures one

at a time.

Okay, so this would be a good time.

We're gonna leave you guys with an exercise.

This is the second exercise homework, but for

now, I just wanna make sure there's nothing

pressing for questions.

Bear with me, I need to stop share.

There are questions, Lanny, but did you wanna

explain the exercise first?

No, I'll make sure everybody understands this three

-step process before I give you the exercise.

Okay, so you want me to go into

questions?

Yeah, yeah.

So some were answered kind of throughout the

discussion, so I've just been keeping track of

them on the side here, so forgive the

people watching if there's some repetitive.

Right, and at this point now, if there's

something that's still, at this point, still confusing

or needs clarification, just throw that question in

there now for Joey so that she can

see it.

So the first one is from Ruben Parra,

and his question is connect or air, and

then it was answered that you use, I

think, air.

And he said, my question is the connect

or less intrusive, why not use it for

the air?

Is that the Profoto Connect that he's?

I don't know, we've never used it.

I don't know what it does, what it

doesn't do.

As far as I know, it's, I think

it's mainly intended for use with like smartphones,

but I, something different?

I don't know, it's a little bit smaller

than this.

It's a round little thing.

I don't know what, I honestly don't know

what it is.

We haven't experimented with it yet.

We don't know how it works.

Don't know how it works.

Okay.

There was a question for you to clarify

broad versus short light again.

Not sure if that question is still there,

but maybe if you just want to touch

on it quickly.

And it was from Saltine Photography.

Yep, so Erica's going to put the modeling

light on here.

I don't think it's bright enough.

It's probably not going to be, no, it's

going to be red.

Short light, I don't want the battery.

Broad light, can we cover up the window?

You can take the, it's a tiny bit

of drag with the internet.

When you guys move, there's, it's just a

little bit slow, but maybe just show it

one more time.

It works.

You're able to, I was able to see

your light, Erica.

So turn to me, broad light.

Hold it there, hold it there.

Broad light, when the light is closest to

the camera.

Yep.

Remember, if you just turn a little bit

light.

And if I were to light this side

of the face, because this is the side

of the face that's furthest away from the

camera, that's short light.

Perfect.

Okay, next question comes from Klekski Smith.

Is there a feature on the NovaFlex that

means you can move it once it's fixed?

Or is it just that you leave the

tightening bolt a little loose?

No, we crank the tightening bolt up, but

even once it's tightened in place, you're able

to move it with one hand and then

let go and it stays.

Sometimes you just have to make sure it's

tightened up enough, but even once it's fully

tightened on and it's secure, you're able to

move it.

It's got enough freedom to reposition.

Perfect.

Do you guys ever use sandbags on your

light tripod so they don't fall?

No, we don't.

No, we don't.

No, so if, I mean, if we happen

to be outside in a windy situation, we're

probably not making our own light.

We're probably using natural sunlight.

Otherwise, we just hold the light ourselves.

And then other than that, you'll see the

way that we light receptions is we're moving

our lights around all the time, depending on

what we're lighting, where's the speaker, where's the

reaction.

So we'll go and we'll pick up our

light stand and we'll walk it over and

put it in some other, reposition it.

And sandbags will just slow us down and

make that all the more cumbersome.

And then you'll see that on the dance

floor, we're often holding each other's light for

each other.

And so sandbags obviously are non-relevant there

too.

Okay.

We don't stress out about our light stands

getting knocked over or- The nice thing

about MagMods is actually- I already talked

about it.

Oh, you did.

Okay, the next question is from Manojit.

Forgive me if I'm not saying this correct.

But to show you.

So I guess you are using only one

flash, which is one off-camera flash.

Are you using the second flash with camera

or the second flash as the second off

-camera flash also?

The answer to that is depends.

So what we'll do is when we deconstruct

photos, we will tell you if it's one

flash, two flashes, where they are, if there's

an on-camera flash.

I would say 90% of our photos

are made with one, our flashlight photos are

made with one speed light off-camera, but

there are situations obviously where we use more

than one off-camera and sometimes when we're

also triggering an on-camera flash.

Do you ever use modifiers for your portraits?

Other than the grids?

No.

Would you use a grid with the zoom

function in general or different every time?

That's from Jennifer Nelson.

And that last question was, sorry, from Fireflies.

Right, so basically the zoom function, you already

explained that, right?

We leave this- I already said that.

Well, she doesn't.

We don't have to say it again.

No, so we always leave it like that.

We always leave it fully zoomed out.

And then when we take the grid off,

it wraps around like when we want, and

then when we put the grid on, it

doesn't matter.

Now, of course, if we've taken off the

grid and we've tasted the soup and now

it's too wide, yeah, we could zoom it

from there.

But that's basically the way we keep it.

That's a lot of questions.

I'm going to try to speed up a

little bit if you guys want to try

and go quickly.

Or just, yeah, if you have to skip

a few.

Or anything that looks like it's not something

we already explained.

Oh boy.

You know, you got a hard day.

We'll do five more minutes of questions.

So do you ever use HSS from Darcy?

I already talked about that.

Okay.

Oh Jesus.

Which gel to use to balance twilight?

Safe ISO to get those twilight sky clean

of noise.

Ruben Parra.

So we use the, yeah, so for lighting

the skin, we use the quarter cut CTO.

Unless they look too orange, then we take

it off.

If they still look too blue, we switch

to a warmer one.

But remember, we keep our white balance in

auto, auto white balance.

And then tweak the color temperature with our

sliders in post afterwards.

Okay, this one's from Jumping Souls.

How do you focus when the subject midtones

are completely dead?

So keep in mind, when your exposure, as

long as you can see them with your

eye, your focus can lock onto them.

Just because you're underexposing it doesn't make it

any more difficult for your focus to focus

on them.

So just like always, right?

Underexposing it doesn't make it any more challenging

to focus.

Your camera can still focus on it just

because you're underexposed.

As long as there's enough light to see

them, your focus can focus.

And then we'll talk more about focusing through

reflections and stuff like that and the reflection

module.

Do you use different grids or just the

one?

That one's from Allie.

The one.

Just the one.

How do you deal with smaller apps?

Usually the 10.

Yeah.

Let me see.

Oh, it's the 20.

Sorry, it's the 20 grid.

So there's the 10 one, which is thicker.

We use the 20.

Yeah, and the MagMonster is a one-size

-fits-all.

We just use one of them and 95

% of the time, once in a while,

if our light maybe is really far away

from the subject, we might stack a second

one on there.

Does anybody else see this awesome highlight here?

Why?

I'm trying to sit so that it's perfectly

lined up.

Expose for that.

Expose for that!

In the darkness.

I don't want to take out my camera

right now.

It's just the sun reflecting off this.

So why don't we introduce the second exercise

homework now?

And then if any glaring questions come up

that's something we need to address that we

haven't explained or that we won't be explaining,

we'll do one more Q&A.

Okay, so.

Can I turn mine on?

So I'm telling you guys, with these exercises,

if you choose to practice this, start with

the first exercise.

That's critical.

Seeing highlights and shadows and learning to expose

for those highlights is the first part.

This would be the follow-up exercise.

Yes, exactly.

So this one we call paint on canvas.

Okay, and basically all you're doing is you're

gonna be trying that three-step process that

Lani explained.

Or process.

Or process.

So you're getting that, you're turning your shutter

speed to 1 200th of a second.

You're getting a properly exposed, and I'm gonna

show you an example of where I've done

this.

You're getting a properly exposed photo.

Then you're using your F-stop to drop

that exposure down and add some drama.

And expose for the highlights.

And only then are you gonna turn on

your flash.

So I would recommend trying to find a

place to do this where there's a natural

highlight.

A chandelier, a window, maybe a room where

there's only one highlight.

Just to make it easier for yourself.

So in this room, it would be very

tricky because there's highlights on both sides of

the room.

So maybe a room where there's just one

window on one side.

Or a room in the evening or at

dusk where you can just turn on a

lamp and that lamp is your highlight.

Okay, so I'm gonna show you an example

of this three-step process.

And I'll just add to that.

Then include that highlight in part of your

frame.

But leave a good chunk of your composition

open for the mid-tones.

So that when you drop the exposure down

and expose for those highlights, you have an

area of darkness within the canvas.

And then what we want you to do

is paint light there.

So then use your flash and add light

into that darkness.

Add a highlight into that darkness.

Add your own highlight.

So there's gonna be two highlights in your

frame.

One is the natural one, whether it's a

lamp or a window or a chandelier.

And then one is when you paint with

your flash.

And it's gonna make more sense when I

show this example.

And I just, this is by no means

a good photo.

Erica did it last night.

I did it last night just to give

you guys an example.

So here's the first photo.

So my shutter speed, and then it's shirtless,

again, as usual.

So my shutter speed is 1 200th of

a second.

I'm ISO 800 and my f-stop's 2

.8. Okay?

And don't overthink the ISO here.

It doesn't really matter.

But when you go off camera flash, just

know that you can typically get away with,

you know, 100 to 400, 800-ish range.

Something low, because you're gonna make your own

light.

So that's all I've done here.

Properly exposed photograph at 200th of a second.

Okay?

The obvious highlight in the frame here is

those lamps.

Okay?

So this is f 2.8. This next

one, all I've done is the settings are

the exact same.

ISO 800, shutter speed 1 200th of a

second.

Now I'm at f 10.

So all I've done is adjusted my shutter

speed and bring that exposure down to the

exposure of the highlights in those lamps.

Okay?

So I've got all that set up.

Now and only now do I turn on

my flash.

I've turned on my flash.

I've got a grid on it.

I'm probably about one half power.

I can't remember, but it doesn't matter because

you just adjust as needed.

I put it off to the side and

it's lighting Lani up.

And that's it.

That's the three step process, right?

If I were to critique this photo, it

would not pass.

It's an awful photo.

And the light is hitting too much of

the cupboards in behind Lani.

But that's not the point.

The point is this is just the process

of going through that three steps.

Right.

And for you, especially if this is new

to you and you're learning is keep that

in mind.

This isn't about creating an epic image or

an award winning image.

This is just about understanding the mechanics.

Yeah, exactly.

Of that three step process.

Especially if it's new to you.

So that's it for today.

Hang on, we're, yeah, sorry.

That's it for today in terms of the

content we're covering.

We are, I'm gonna just go briefly about

what to expect for the next couple of

days.

This is what we're gonna be going through.

We're gonna apply all this knowledge, all this

foundation that was really important today.

And then we're gonna apply it to our

toolbox.

So the toolbox sessions are gonna be quite

a bit shorter.

Yeah, theoretically at least.

They're gonna be quite a bit shorter, but

we're just gonna be going through each tool

separately and it's deconstructing those images for you.

So the tools we're gonna go through are

silhouettes, backlight and or rim light.

Those are the same thing.

That's what we'll do next lesson actually is

those two.

Shadow propulsion, that'll be the following one along

with shoot throughs, which we also call layering.

Bokeh panoramas, which are also called Berneiser method.

Reflections, which is a really fun one.

This will be the fourth module.

The fourth module.

Yeah, and then we've got a secret weapon,

which is our most advanced of all the

tools.

Only if we have time.

If we have time.

If we get to it.

If we get to it.

And then of course we get into the

post production.

So I'm gonna.

But before we dive into all that guys,

it was critical that we started with these

fundamentals today.

Because it provides, and before you know.

Well, I guess if you're watching this now,

you're watching it.

But it's key that you watch this before

we get into those deconstructions because it provides

the context for everything that's gonna come.

Yeah, I just wanted to say it again.

Say it again in your own words.

Okay, so we'll do one final Q and

A.

But just know if we don't get to.

We'll just do five minutes here.

If we don't get to your question, I'm

gonna upload this video to the student portal.

I'll send you an email once it's up

there.

Feel free to post your questions in there

and I will be sure to get to

them.

And also to share your results if you

want.

Yes, yeah, totally.

Yeah, share your results there.

I'm gonna stop the share.

And this is perfect timing because we're getting

this ugly light in our face right now.

Okay.

Okay.

So this one comes from Klusky Smith.

How do you deal with smaller apertures and

focusing with Sonys on the dance floor?

Let's talk about that when we deconstruct photos

from the dance floor.

No post-processing either?

Sorry?

No, it's a post-production question.

Yeah, we're doing a whole session on post

-production so that's when we'll talk about that.

Forgive me if this is a repetitive question

but what about the air remote?

How do you figure out what power it

is on?

As we cannot see the power on the

air remote.

Yeah, it drives me nuts.

Yeah, we never know what power it's on.

And my client, he said, it doesn't really

matter because our first flash exposure is always

just whatever our flash was set up the

last time we used it.

Then we look, oh, way too bright.

Oh, way too dark.

Turn up or down.

But I feel your pain.

Whoever asked that question, Profoto, if you're listening,

Profoto, if you're listening, tell us what the

flash power is on the actual transmitter.

You can only go up by ratios, like

one third.

But the trick is we are never aware

of our flash power.

I like to eyeball it and know if

I've still got more room to go up

or down.

So it's a stupid little thing about Profoto

air remote.

In outdoor situations, do you always directly light

the subject or do you use balanced light

using a soft balance?

In outdoor situations, I'd say if it's daylight,

most of the time we're just using natural

light.

We've never balanced to create soft light.

No, we usually always use direct flash.

Now, if I'm finding that flash is too

harsh, sometimes what we'll do, especially with the

B10, is we won't point it directly at

the subject.

I've got it pointed directly at Lanny right

now.

But if I have it up here, you

can see it's not pointed at him, but

that spill of light is gonna still hit

him.

And that spill of light is a lot

softer than the direct light that comes off

the flash.

So often we'll just use the spill of

light as opposed to the direct light.

Fluff of the edge.

Fluff of the edge, yeah, that's a very

precise term.

But honestly, when we're shooting outdoors, 99%

of the time we're using natural light.

And if we are making our own light,

it's usually at dusk or the evening.

Perfect.

That question was from Jumping Souls.

Again, another question from Jumping Souls is, do

you ever use on-camera flash?

Yes, and we'll deconstruct examples of where we

have.

It's rare.

It's very rare.

I'd say like once a year.

Yeah, but we'll talk about that.

You just answered this because you say you

mostly use natural light.

The next question was, how do you light

groups?

We don't unless we're indoors where it's at

night.

Well, sometimes we do with family formals.

We'll just put one light on either side.

Just for a little bit of fill.

Yeah, and we'll make one slightly stronger than

the other so that there's a little bit

of, so it's not super flat.

Right.

Hold on, I'm just scrolling down now to

see if there's any new questions that have

come in.

Will you be covering dance floor lighting techniques?

We're gonna be constructing lots of photos from

the dance floor.

When we deconstruct photos, we explain everything from

the lighting technique to the posing.

And obviously guys, just because we're doing five

modules and normally our workshops are three days,

we're not gonna be able to hit everything

you guys want.

There'll probably be an opportunity for that in

the future though.

I think that one might be, I encourage.

There's a question about how you deal with

wedding parties during the day.

Maybe send them back to that original, how

you set the expectations for your clients.

Yeah, and it's not something we're covering in

this workshop.

So there's so many different tangents we can

go on guys and literally we struggle to

fit all our material in three days, which

is what our workshop normally is.

So there's just some things we won't be

covering.

Bridal party is one of them.

Perfect.

Yes.

There is a question that I, it's in

the shot you just made of Lenny in

the kitchen.

How would you have stopped the light from

spilling onto the cupboards?

I might've had it come in a little

bit harder.

So if I'd moved the flash a little

bit more to the side, cause I think

the first shot I took, I actually had,

there was the light was, the cupboards were

picking up even more light.

And then I moved the flash a little

bit more to a harder angle.

And I wish I'd moved it a little

bit more to a harder angle.

Yeah, and if Erica had been shooting and

I was holding light for her, if we

noticed that, I just would have flagged it

with my hand.

Even just flag it with the hand, yeah.

I just would have used my hand to

flag the light so it's not spilling that

way.

Yeah, it has a grid on it.

I mean, you could also just burn that

down.

Like we can burn that down.

It's an easy burn in my room there.

There's a lot of comments.

So I just, I remember this question.

Someone asked if you could just like summarize

the very first exercise one more time, just

to like.

The very first one?

The first one is light a subject.

Yeah, so light a subject is, yeah, just

go look for light.

Don't look for subjects.

Don't look for cups.

Don't look for faces.

Don't look for tables.

Turn off your brain's tendency to see scenes.

But you can also just go back to

that part in the video once I post

it in the group, because I just don't

want to be repetitive for people there.

I think we'll cut it off there, Jody.

Again, if you have any questions, post them

in the group and I'll get to it.

And I'm going to stop this video now.

Thank you guys so much.

And stop recording so we can get that

uploaded ASAP for you guys, so.

Thank you so much for hanging in there

with us for four hours.

Thank you for your patience.

We know it was a long four hours.

And we will see you in three days.

We'll see you on Saturday.

Right, Merilee?

Another coffee date.

Bye, Courtney.

Thanks, Allie.

Bye.

Bye, everybody.

See you soon.

Stop.