Original subtitles

Welcome back everyone.

We hope you had a fun week experimenting

and playing with off-camera flash.

I'm sure some of you had frustrations and

failures.

Which is totally normal.

We can relate to that and just understand

that that's part of the process.

That's right and basically what we were practicing

this week, what you were practicing this week,

was only about the mechanics of the off

-camera flash.

How to pull it off technically.

In probably situations where it didn't necessarily make

sense.

So we probably had inherently contrived photos.

This wasn't about making award-winning images.

This was about dialing in the mechanics of

those three or two steps so that when

you are in a situation where off-camera

light is screaming out to you like this

is where I want to make my own

light or this is where I have to

make my own light.

We don't have to think about how to

do it.

It's recognizing now's the time and place.

I already know how to do it.

Yeah and I mean if you think about

it the more failures that we experience now

the better.

The better we're equipped to do that problem

solving on the wedding day or on a

shoot.

Any of the struggles that you had this

week or any questions that came up, Eric

and I are going to be in that

Facebook group so that's where to share those

so that we can address them specifically.

Now what we're going to move into this

week essentially stems from this idea that as

photographers we all have three things essentially that

we bring with us to a wedding.

These are the three things that differentiate us

all as photographers.

We've got our gear bag.

All the physical items in our gear bag.

Then we've got our psyche.

Our mental headspace.

Everything that we talked about in those first

two weeks that sort of shapes what we

do.

And finally we bring our toolbox.

This is our repertoire of techniques that we

can draw upon as photographers.

Yeah and when Lani and I look through

all of our work we see these reoccurring

tools that we seem to use consistently wedding

after wedding after wedding and it's not specific

to parts of the day.

It's specific to where it makes sense.

It's not specific to natural light or off

-camera light indoors or outdoors.

No.

They're reoccurring tools.

Yeah so we're going to look at each

of these tools that we've identified and talk

about them and how we use them and

more importantly than how we use them why

we use them.

Right.

And we're going to do this by looking

at a collection of photos in which we've

used the specific tool that we're talking about

and we're going to take you we're going

to deconstruct that image or that photo for

you from the initial vision to the final

execution and I really wish we had behind

the scenes from all the photos that we're

going to show you guys but most of

these were taken long before we even dreamed

of creating our workshop.

We're going to follow these mini tutorials with

in-field demonstrations of the tool usage.

Right.

And this will be sort of be like

a behind the scenes and of course these

will be inherently contrived because we'll just be

demonstrating the mechanics of the tool and how

we pull it off but hopefully when we

get to the full wedding breakdown of the

course you can see how we pull off

these tools in a more organic nature at

an actual wedding.

So the tools we're going to cover over

the next two weeks are silhouettes, rim light,

shadow propulsion, shoot throughs, bokeh panoramas, also known

as burnizers, reflections and the secret weapon.

Okay we're saving the best for last we've

got a super advanced technique up our sleeves

to share with you as the final tool.

Yeah.

Now and with these tools we've kind of

organized them in order from you know the

most kind of simple and straightforward into the

more complex tools.

And we've also organized it in terms of

a natural light example of the tool to

how you can achieve the tool with off

camera flash because all of them can be

achieved with natural light or off camera flash.

Right you're referring to now like each tool

specifically so the tool is essentially simple to

more complex and within each tool simple to

more complex natural light to off camera flash

and portraits examples to more documentary examples as

well.

Right and really the progression of learning on

all of these like the way that Eric

and I cut our teeth on these new

techniques is we'd see something and we try

to like reverse engineer it in our minds

and try to emulate it by essentially just

experimenting with each other.

Okay then we would bring that into like

our engagement sessions where we didn't have the

pressure of the wedding itself we could mess

up right and then as we get more

comfortable we'd bring it into the portrait part

of our weddings and then finally the holy

grail yeah would bring it would be to

bring it into a documentary setting where it

makes sense to use the tool now and

you don't get there right away right like

you don't get comfortable enough to pull it

off in a doc in a in a

photojournalistic manner until you've gone through that whole

progression of learning the mechanics.

Yeah but I do I do want to

warn you guys because and we'll probably say

this a couple times throughout the course to

beware of LRIs lifeless representations of ideas right

because with all of these tools there's a

time and a place to use them where

it makes sense but I I mean Lani

and I are guilty of this all the

time there's times when we're straightjacketed into using

these tools just because it's gimmicky and it's

eye candy but there's no good reason beyond

that and we end up with a lifeless

representation of an idea and I I get

asked to judge a ton of contests and

that's probably the most common thing I see

is people focusing on the tools and not

the people in the moments in the movement

right the photos become photos become about the

technique or about the photographer yeah versus about

the story or about the subject right or

about solving the photographic problem that the tool

was used to solve so just be wary

of that and we will be a constant

reminder of that throughout this course because it's

something we feel really strongly about so with

that in mind let's dive into the two

-man toolbox of tricks