All language subtitles for Episode 121º Talk about my last photos

Hello friends, how are you?

How are things going?

Here we are, as always, like all of

you, with a thousand open fronts.

And today I want to talk to you

about a few photos that I took at

the last wedding.

They are photos that were taken with flash,

here I have the flash, here I have

the lens with which they were taken, which

is a 20mm.

But before we talk about all that, before

we talk, I would like to simply show

them to you, because I am happy, because

I already have the album with me, in

which we prepare every year, of our son

Leo.

And it is a gift that always goes

for the grandparents, I mean, for my parents

and for my in-laws, and that we

always end up giving away on Christmas Eve.

And here we have it, right?

It is a good memory, well, it is

a great memory, of our son, right?

And it is not just a gift for

the grandparents, but because when I was a

child, I remember that my father, well, who

is not a photographer, but he is a

lover of photography, I remember how both my

brother and I were constantly photographed, and that,

to this day, I still think it has

an incalculable value, and that is where we

are, right?

Whenever I can, I have the camera ready,

and if Leo is doing the Mongolo, if

he is eating, if he is doing the

Zenutrio, well, I always try to photograph him

and take him out in the most Iberosimile

situations, because I trust that in the future

he will see them as I saw them,

or as I see them, and he will

take a good memory, right?

But, well, I do not want to talk

about that today, but, as I was saying,

and we bring this here, at the last

wedding, at the last wedding we had in

Zaragoza, a couple of weeks ago, a couple

of weekends ago, I simply took a few

photos that I find interesting when it comes

to sharing them with you, because they are

not the kind of photos that I usually

take, and in the end, or finally, I

found it a bit difficult to do them,

because, I say difficult, because I had to

feel, not forced, but, in a way, I

felt that I had to do it, right?

Why?

Because the wedding was in a place that

I have visited so many times, or the

hotel where the bride was changing, or was

getting ready, I visited it so many times

that I considered that to get out of

reality, that is, to hide what I had

in front of me and that I had

seen so many times, and that I have

photographed so many times in the same corners,

I am talking about both the hotel and

the farm, okay?

I mean, I thought that when it came

to preparing, like when it came to taking

some portraits, I had to get out of

the bed that I always find, because, don't

forget, I usually work with a 35mm, the

flash, I don't usually use it much, it's

not because I don't know it, it's just

because I go through other editors, and that's

why, I mean, to get something different, I

had to use the 20, which is not

the lens that I use, when I use

it, it's not to document it, I have

many friends, and very good friends, I hope

you don't hear it, that when, well, they

document weddings with 20mm, for me it doesn't

make any sense, I respect it, they are

my friends, or you are my friends, but

to document with a 20mm and everything comes

out, I mean, all the lines, all the

deformed bodies, that escapes my aesthetic standard, it's

just a personal habit, right?

And the flash, as I said, it's not

my, it's not that it's not to my

liking, but there was a time, a stage

in my professional career that I used it

constantly, and now I go through other paths,

right?

But well, you see that I have a

lot of fun, so I'm going to start

by simply showing you the 3 or 4

photos that I find a little attractive, because

the first one I took was this one,

it was during the preparations, I'm sure it

doesn't surprise anyone, I'm sure most of you

already know, or you've seen, sorry, photos like

the one you're seeing now, but just to

emphasize, for those of you who don't know,

I was outside the mere room, on the

terrace, and what, to put it in, that

is, to make the bride be inside the

context, I had to illuminate it with flash,

I mean, the way I worked with it

was simply to put the 35mm as close

as possible to the glass, without me getting

reflected in it, and if I hadn't, for

example, used flash, the only thing I would

have photographed or captured would have been the

building behind me that would have been reflected

in the glass in front of me.

Of course, to win that, I mean, for

the bride to come out, to stand out

above the reflection that I had in front

of me, I had to compensate for the

light, I mean, I had to give enough

light, of power, of flash light, to get

the bride to be above, speaking of luminosity,

the reflection that I had, that I had

in front of me, right in the glass.

And something fundamental is this tool, it's a

beehive, or as it would be commonly called,

in which that helps me redirect the light

and that ultimately only goes directly to what

was the bride, what was the bride's face,

which for me was the important point.

If I hadn't used this, even if I

had corrected the zoom, I mean, even if

I had put a super closed zoom, we

have to take into account the limitations of

a hand flash and that wouldn't have made

sense, so I did use this.

And once I photographed this, I'm sure, and

I hope, that I don't have any mystery

for any of you, since I had this,

I started using that same formula, I even

moved away a lot, I used the 20mm

now, to photograph the entire terrace where I

was and photograph, on the one hand, the

city where I was, Zaragoza, and, on the

other, the window where the bride was.

How did I do it?

The same as the other one.

In this case, or in most of the

cases, or in this particular case, sorry, what

I did was to correctly expose the highest

point of light, that highest point of light

was the sky, and then I sub-exposed

a couple of diaphragms, one or two even,

and then I compensated the flash.

I mean, the flash, as I told you

at the beginning, I gave it more power

than it had the light from the outside.

Why?

To compensate it, to highlight the bride in

front of the environment that was surrounding her.

We continue, or I want to continue, and

I would also like to show you this

image, it's a family photo, you can imagine

that it's also very simple.

The flash was on a foot, and the

flash was above, just above, the bride's head,

I mean, more or less at a height

like this, using this again.

If I didn't use this, as I told

you at the beginning, the flash would have

hit an incredible bomb and would have given

all the light, and I wasn't looking for

that, but I was looking for the parents

and the brothers of the bride, who are

in the background, were completely in silhouette.

What did I do?

I exposed the window that was outside.

Once I exposed it correctly, I under-exposed

a diaphragm, or even, many times, two.

Why?

To enhance that silhouette of the people.

Now I just had to control the power

of the flash, which would go to a

medium, to 1.1, more or less.

In the Profoto flash, I'm sure I was

working at 9 of power, and the flash

was above, just above the bride.

Remembering, as I've said so many times, placing

this makes us lose, I think, a power

diaphragm, at least.

But it helps to redirect the light perfectly,

and that only that light illuminates where I

wanted, which was the face, or the bride's

chest, or the entire upper part of the

bride.

The last picture I want to show you

is this image, and it's a portrait.

It's a portrait that was taken in a

very basic place, in an uninteresting place.

Remembering, as I've said, or as I've explained

at the beginning of this video, in which

the wedding was photographed in a farm, in

a restaurant, that I've visited this year, I

think, three or four times.

For me, it's very difficult to get oil

in places I've visited so many times, because

it goes against my principles to repeat pictures,

I mean, I already know that in that

farm, in a predetermined corner, I have a

nice picture, I have a reflection, I can

play with this, I can play with the

other, but for me, making all the couples

who pass by that farm wear absolutely the

same, that's why I leave the wedding picture,

because I think it would be so boring,

and that's why it's one of the reasons

why I don't usually hire more than two

or three weddings in the same farm every

year, because, in the end, my head explodes,

I mean, I don't know about yours, but

mine doesn't give for more, that's why I

wanted to use first, for this picture, a

20mm, to get out of reality, to deform,

to interpret that reality in a different way,

because, as I've already said, with 35mm, everything

is sometimes too evident, too clear, and in

that place, full of trees, full of stories,

I didn't...

I had to get out, I had to

confuse reality completely, to extract myself from everything

I had in front of me, so a

20mm helps.

Also, the concept of the picture was to

simply ask the grooms to put their hands

together, the bride's hand was here, the groom's

hand was here, the groom's hand was below,

and the groom only had to do this,

a strong tap, so that the rings would

rise just a few centimetres.

By doing it with 20, the mission was

to get the arm I mean, the groom's

hands, to have them so close, so that

the focal distance would seem enormous, so that

the distance between the hand and the groom's

face would seem enormous, I mean, he was

abusing the 20mm, the deformity, the error he

has for the 20mm.

With a 35mm, it could be done, yes,

but it wouldn't have the same effect, and

with a 45mm, even less.

Of course, also, what I did was simply

work with a 16mm diaphragm, 16mm to have

almost everything focused, and above all, the foreground.

The foreground, both his hands and the rings

floating, it was essential that everything was focused,

and for that, nothing better than a 16mm

diaphragm.

Of course, why a 16mm diaphragm?

Because I wanted to have an American night.

What is that, an American night?

Well, to work with daylight and make it

look like it's practically night, why?

Because I wanted to highlight the rings.

If I had exposed everything correctly, the rings

would have been barely seen, if I hadn't

illuminated with flash, the hands wouldn't have had

the definition they have, and the rings much

less, and what did I do?

Not only with one, but I worked with

two.

A flash almost at maximum power, illuminating the

hands, and another flash almost at maximum power,

illuminating the faces of the grooms, about 45

degrees.

And that's it.

Well, and that's it.

I repeated it 5 or 6 times, I

had to remove the American night, put it

on the ground, when I say American, I

mean blazer, put it on the ground so

that when the rings fell, they fell on

this, because there was grass, imagine that it

can happen that the rings end up falling

on the grass and not being found.

So, to avoid problems, to avoid madness, I

simply put the blazer on the ground, they

fell, they repeated, the shadows on the faces

were not at maximum power, but I couldn't

improve it, even though the grooms tried to

direct their faces up, for the flash, but

they didn't understand me well, I couldn't do

it better either, so that was the result.

So that was all for today, I wanted

to show you these images that I captured

in the last wedding and that I found

interesting to share with you, mainly the last

one, the last portrait, because things came together

that I got out of my comfort zone,

first, working with 20mm, which, as you know,

and just to emphasize, I use it just

to take advantage of this deformation error, and

the flash, which is not a tool that

I usually use, but in this case, in

the case of the portrait, well, of the

previous photos, it helped me a lot to

have a very interesting result, that's why it's

always good that we know how to use

this, remember that the biggest enemy of photographers,

in front of the flash, we are ourselves,

we don't know how to handle it, after

all, as I always say, it's a flash,

greater power and less power, trial and error,

that's all, and the 20mm to get out

of the comfort zone.

So, that's all, friends, don't laugh, be good,

see you next time, and keep hiring weddings,

assholes!