All language subtitles for 5.10 - Shoot Throughs and Layering

All right, okay, so now we're going to

dive into shoot throughs or we also call

this layering sometimes, right?

And you'll see shooting through something or something

between you and what you're shooting or what

you're focused on, yeah.

And you'll see now that very rarely do

we use these tools in isolation from one

another.

We're usually using a combination of tools, right?

This is a perfect example.

We've got silhouettes, we're exposed for the highlights

in the sky, and we have the couple

running back and forth along this ridgetop.

There's a rooftop right there.

If I were standing up, you'd be able

to see houses, but because I'm squatted down,

I've eliminated the houses.

And then I've just put a palm leaf

in front of my lens and cranked my

f-stop up to, I don't even know,

f11 or higher, and then I pre-focused

on that ridge and just had them run

back and forth and then shot the shit

out of it, 20 frames per second, and

hope that one would line up with them

in between the leaves there.

That's Jesse and Moira LaPlante.

This was at a workshop in Kauai, but

anyways, Jay LaPlante Photography, they're great friends and

awesome photographers.

So if you're gonna shoot through something, you

have to have a reason to shoot through

it.

So we have sort of distilled five good

reasons to shoot through something or layer.

And if it doesn't achieve one of these

five reasons or multiple reasons, then you gotta

ask yourself, why am I doing this?

So the first would be to give the

impression that you're peeking in on a private

moment, like this.

We're peeking in, we're not really supposed to

be there, but we can see this private

moment and we're witnessing it as an outsider.

We're shooting through backlit foliage here.

So it doesn't really make sense, and I

see this all the time, especially when I

judge contests, where photographers have shot through something,

whether it's a branch or a doorway or

anything for that matter, where the subjects, the

humans are looking at your camera lens.

It doesn't make sense.

There's a disconnect because we want to give

that impression that we're peeking in on this

moment, and if they're looking at your camera

lens, then it just gives this sort of

really creepy, boiler-stick look to the photo.

Okay?

So that's number one, peeking in on a

private moment.

The second reason would be to frame your

subject.

Okay, that's a good example here, right?

We're framing the subject with what we're shooting

through.

The third reason would be to simplify the

frame down to what's interesting.

Okay?

It's also what we've done here.

We've simplified the frame down to what's interesting,

which is the sky, the leaves, and the

couple.

Okay?

Number four would be to layer multiple stories

together, and then number five, to blur out

the ugly.

So that's never actually a good enough reason

on its own.

You don't want someone to look at a

photo and say, oh, they shot through this

because they want to blur out something ugly,

but it can come in handy.

Ugly or distracting or something that's in your

way.

Yeah, or distracting highlights or whatnot.

So we're going to go through a few

examples here.

Yeah, and it's important that's not the only

reason because the viewer doesn't know that.

The viewer doesn't realize, oh, there was something

distracting there, so they've got this blurry blob

there instead.

Yeah.

It's one potential purpose.

Yes.

So here we're framing the subject.

We're simplifying the frame down to what's interesting.

Did you mention on that one, sorry, did

you mention the light?

Where the light is coming from at all?

It's a common question on this one is

what's the light?

The light is out of frame, but low

in the sky.

So it's just out of frame up here,

I believe, because it's behind our subjects, right?

Because they're silhouetted, but it's also what's giving

the vibrancy to these leaves because they're semi

-translucent.

And so the light coming in from behind

them is giving them that really bright color.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this is a great example of where

movement really elevates an image.

This image would really fall flat and be

a lot more lifeless if they were just

standing there in that forehead-to-forehead penguin

pose.

But by having them move, run, frolic back

and forth across the scene adds that dynamic

element.

Yeah.

And they make really good silhouettes.

Okay.

So here we're peeking in on a private

moment.

Here we are framing the subject, right?

And we're layering multiple stories together.

So this is at Marine Lake, which is

a very big tourist destination here in Canada.

And I was over on this side taking

really safe but pretty portraits of the bride

and groom with the Valley of the Ten

Peaks in behind them.

So it was just the bride and groom

and the mountains.

And while I was doing that, Lani was

doing...

And this is the approach we'll always take.

If one of us is doing a portrait,

the other one of us is doing a

360 around to see what other perspectives we

can get.

And so Lani was...

Because often there's many cool angles that you

could get without having to have them constantly

moving from one location to another.

So always scout out that 360.

Yeah.

So Lani's doing a 360 and he got

the better photo for sure because this tells

way more of a story.

So they're hamming it up for the tourists

here.

These tourists, some of these tourists have better

cameras than we do.

And...

Well, bigger cameras and better maybe.

Better, yeah.

Okay.

So here Lani's shooting through a big...

What would you call this?

Palm leaf, I suppose.

And it's doing a few things.

First of all, it's blurring out the ugly.

You probably didn't know that.

We don't want you to know that.

But there's a big picnic site right here.

So there's a lot of dirt on the

ground.

I believe there's a picnic table as well.

So he's framed the picture so that that

palm leaf is taking up most of the

frame.

It's also giving really nice leading lines for

our couple there.

And a triangle.

Where?

Framing them off a triangle.

Oh yeah, a little bit.

So basically it's just basically took the stem

of the leaf and bent it into a...

Kind of pulled it down into a position

where it was blocking where I needed to.

And I had them just in that little

triangular pocket at the top of the frame.

Okay.

So this is simplifying the frame down to

what's interesting.

And that's what led us down here in

the first place.

Because it was fall.

This is an inner city park in Calgary.

So we're in the middle of the neighborhood.

But we noticed the beautiful vibrant yellow leaves

and the blue sky.

And yellow and blue are on opposite sides

of the color wheel.

So they complement each other really nicely.

So we wanted to simplify the frame down

to those elements.

It's also framing the subject.

So we have the couple standing on the

top of this little hillside.

Very little hill.

It's only probably six feet tall in total.

And then Lanny's down at the bottom of

the hill.

And he's curled in the fetal position.

In a tree well basically.

And he's positioned himself low so that he

can simplify the frame down to the yellow

leaves and the blue sky.

Okay.

One of the things we have to take

into account when we're shooting low and our

couple is up high is perspective.

Right.

So if we're shooting low and our couple's

up high, often what's closest to the camera

is their shoulder or their hips.

Right.

And that doesn't work very well.

Especially for a silhouette.

Because it distorts their body.

It looks very unflattering.

So if the couple is higher than we

are, we'll just have them if they're sent

here stand up with me like Penguin Poe

style.

Might be too tall for this.

Okay.

I'll go like this.

Oh this is awkward.

So if they're standing like this and the

camera's down there, we'll literally have them lean

over the camera like this.

And it feels awkward but it looks good.

And it makes it so that the closest

thing to the camera is their heads.

Not their shoulders or their hips.

Yeah.

We're trying for a perpendicular shooting angle.

Yeah.

So that's what we have.

You probably can't tell.

Hopefully you can't tell.

But they're very exaggerated leaning over the camera

in this photo to account for that perspective

shift.

Okay.

Well essentially what we've done here is tried

to replicate the same kind of thing that

was happening here with natural light.

Here we had the backlight on our side.

It's backlighting them and it's backlighting the leaves

which are blowing in the wind.

And so that backlight is lighting them up.

In this case, we're shooting through these leaves

again.

Same sort of thing.

They're up on a hillside.

Exposed for the highlights in the sky.

Going dark for the dramatic silhouette.

But there's no sunlight in this area where

these leaves were.

So we had lots of frames with just,

you know, cool framing of all the leaves

and silhouette as well.

But then we brought in our own light

source.

So we basically created our own backlight on

the leaves by holding a speed light just

kind of up coming from, coming from, what's

the left?

We're backlighting the leaves.

Yeah.

Kind of, kind of backlighting from the side.

Okay.

That's it.

All right.

So similar thing here.

This is a natural light example.

And these were just umbrellas.

We noticed they had these umbrellas in their

ceremony.

It was a really hot day.

So they've given all their guests these umbrellas

to shade themselves with.

Although I would really like to try and

recreate this shot with cocktail umbrellas.

Those little cocktail umbrellas to see if we

could make it work.

But these are big umbrellas.

Big, big parasols.

Right.

And we were just doing some safe, pretty

nice portraits with them backlit on a dark

background.

And then we just decided to set the

umbrellas up so that the light that was

backlighting them was also backlighting the umbrellas, which

are tissue basically.

So they've got, they're semi-transparent, which makes

them so vibrant.

Yeah.

They're basically just balanced for them in a

way that we left a little peak hole

there.

A little peak hole.

And then we just shot through.

Okay.

So this is backlit foliage essentially.

And the reason we've got so much vocalicious

foreground here is because this is about seven

o'clock in the morning and we've got

all these dew drops on the foliage in

front of us.

So each one of those little dew drops

is essentially like a crystal that reflects the

light.

Okay.

So I've got two examples here and they're

both from the same position, but with different

lenses.

So this one is with the 35 wide

open.

So 35 millimeter lens at one point, we

had the 1.4 then, right?

1.4, right?

And the reason we went down there is

because, again, we always ask ourselves, where's the

brightest spot?

And can I get my couple there?

And we're always looking for that bright spot.

So in this case, the only way to

get them into that bright spot was to

bushwhack our way down this slope and then

use that foliage to film that foreground.

And that foliage is literally sort of right

up against our lens, as close to our

lens as possible.

And you can tell our sensor is very

dirty as well, which actually...

I think it might be the lens.

It's wide open, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

So that's 35 wide open.

And here's 85 at f8.

Okay.

So those bokeh balls, the size of those

bokeh balls are relative to your f-stop,

but they're also relative to your lens choice.

So if we had done 85 wide open,

85 at 1.2, this image, this photograph

would probably be one entire bokeh ball, right?

But we went f8 and it made the

bokeh ball smaller.

With really no rhyme or reason at the

time.

We're just playing around.

Just playing around.

Trying different things.

Yeah.

And we'll often do that.

We'll try it with a variety of lenses.

We'll try it at a variety of f

-stops, just to see how it looks differently.

We don't bring spray bottles on the shoot

with us.

People often ask that.

They think we bring spray bottles and spray

the foliage and spray our lens.

We just try and work with what's there.

With the limitations of what's in front of

us, right?

And in this case, we had all this

magical dew.

But what really makes it sparkle is the

light coming in from behind.

That's the important part.

Okay.

Here we've done the opposite.

Okay.

So we've gone wide open in these shots.

Well, not wide open, but we've intentionally got

this, you know, out of focus foreground with

all these bokeh balls.

And here we've done the opposite.

Okay.

So now, instead of going wide open, we've

intentionally left that foreground really sharp.

So we've cranked our f-stop up very

high.

We've again asked ourselves, where's the brightest spot?

We've put our couple there.

Our first shot was probably just the couple

up on the ridge, silhouetted with the mountain

in behind.

But then we'll ask yourself, is there anything

else I can do?

Let's try shooting through this.

Let's go behind this tree and try framing

them through these needles.

And so Lani here cranked the f-stop

up so that we could get that sharp

foreground, but kept them in the bright spot.

Yeah.

Just problem solving along the way.

We realized, oh, they're, you know, the pine

needles are just blobs.

Let's try epping it up.

And this is a very unfortunate part of

this silhouette that we didn't realize until someone

pointed it out like two years later.

Yeah.

You can't not see it now.

There's a very unfortunate part of this silhouette

right there.

But now we can't get rid of it.

And if we just flash back to, you

know, we went opposite to, obviously these are

wide open apertures.

And then if we go ahead, we've effed

it up so that the foreground is in

focus.

And of course, there's also no light on

what we're shooting through.

Also no light.

Yes.

So often we've kind of learned that if

what we're shooting through is lit, especially if

it's back lit and there's like moisture in

there, it's really nice to go wide open,

have that vocaliciousness.

But if it's in the shade, it's much

better to eff it up and have what

you're shooting through sharper.

So it gives shape.

Silhouetted.

Yeah.

Okay.

Where's the bright spot?

Right.

The bright spot here is the lake.

And we're just shooting through another pine tree

in the foreground.

Right.

We found this little pocket in which to

stick the couple.

What's the name of that lake?

It's in Switzerland.

It's on the border of Switzerland and France.

I can't remember.

No, not Geneva.

So it's with an L.

This is a natural light portrait.

So well, natural light, I guess it's artificial

light, but we haven't created any of this

light.

It's all there at their venue.

This is Teatro's restaurant in Calgary.

And behind the venue, they've got this big,

like glowing orb, this ornamental orb thing.

And by having a lantern, a lantern, a

big spherical lantern.

And we realized that also at the park,

the neighboring park, this was around Christmas time.

There were Christmas lights on all the trees.

So we realized that we could find a

shooting angle if we tucked ourselves in behind

the branches of one of the trees.

And if they stood up on a picnic

table, it lined up so we could have

their silhouette on the bright spot orb thingy.

And then it was as simple as that.

Just basically focusing on them, exposing for the

highlights in that orb.

And then obviously the highlights in all the

Christmas lights, and probably experimented with different apertures

and settled on this one.

Okay, so now we're going to show you

how you can achieve this effect without dew

drops and without foliage and without sunlight, and

how you can do it with your with

your own equipment, your flash, and a few

little props.

Okay, so here's an example here.

So in this case, we've used wine glasses.

Okay, so this is a table that's set

up right beside the bar, and it's right

before the reception, and there's a whole stack

of wine glasses.

So Lanny has set himself out up on

the other side of the table, and he's

basically shooting through the stems of wine glasses,

right?

So you can use anything.

You can use wine glasses, Gatorade bottles, centerpieces,

basically anything that has some sparkle to it.

But you need that, and you need light

on it.

The light is what's going to give you

these these bokeh balls, just like those dew

drops.

And it needs to be right in front

of your glass, and it needs to be

right in front of your lens, your glass.

The glass needs to be right in front

of your glass, or your lens, okay?

And it needs to be extremely out of

focus, right?

So a wide open aperture.

Yeah, so in this case, yeah, the couple

are standing over on the other side of

the wine glasses.

There's a a flash on them with a

nice warm gel lighting them up, and then

we've got a second flash on the wine

glasses.

And the flash on the wine glasses has

a blue gel on it, and that's what's

giving all these nice blue bokeh balls.

The yellow bokeh balls are from the lights

in the ceiling.

The lights in the ceiling are also reflecting

off the top of the wine glasses.

Yeah, this isn't great.

We didn't have a great position with them.

The position of the light isn't great.

We should have worked this.

Honestly, behind the scenes story here, this could

have been a lot better.

But my teammate, my teammate abandoned me.

It's lifeless.

I had this idea for this shot, this

portrait to do this.

Got excited about it.

Erica's like, and we were tired at this

point.

But Erica's like, no, that's gimmicky.

I'm not, I'm not helping you with that.

So I had to find somebody to hold

the light for me.

It could have been a lot better.

It is gimmicky.

But it is.

I mean, it's like, it's lifeless.

It's you know, I really think it's hard

to get a photo that's not a lifeless

representation of an idea if you really have

to fit them in that many pixels.

Like how are you going to get a

moment that you can really feel if you

have to?

We could have done this a lot better.

But we could have.

But learning how to again, learning how to

do this in a, you know, a stage

directed scenario with where you can control everything

makes it that much easier for you to

pull it off in a documentary style.

So the next example here is more of

a documentary example of the tool.

Okay.

So it's the exact same thing.

We've got centerpieces, wine glasses, candles, basically in

the front of our lens here.

And we've got the bride and the groom

doing the speech.

And in this case, and this was a

happy accident, but it was a happy accident

that we noticed and then took advantage of.

We've got the flash coming in camera, right?

The flash is coming in camera, right?

It's lighting the bride.

It's lighting a bit of the groom.

And then it's bouncing off the window behind

them, giving them this nice little rim light

and then lighting up our foreground.

So that flash is essentially achieving three things

for us.

And as I said, an accident at first.

But when you look at the back of

your camera and you notice this, you can

take advantage of it and work with it

once you realize what you've got.

Yeah.

And in reception spaces at most weddings, we've

got the interaction of glass, wine glasses with

chandeliers, candlelight.

And so there's lots of opportunities for this.

And I mean, it's easy to get sucked

into these things.

We kind of did.

When we first discovered this cool technique of

shooting through wine glasses, we sort of straight

jacked ourselves into always doing it.

Especially with speeches.

We're like, oh, it's speech time.

Let's find some wine glasses to shoot through.

And then all of a sudden we're like,

why?

Why have we become this formulaic machine?

It doesn't always make sense.

There's a time and a place, right?

So learning that.

And that's as simple as just asking yourself,

okay, why am I doing this right now?

There may be a good reason.

And there often is like, oh, it's because,

you know, what happened to be in this

kind of like...

I'm blurring out that ugly room divider.

Exactly.

Right.

Or I'm trying to isolate it down and

frame them and create something that's visually interesting.

But often there's not a good reason.

And then you snap out of it and

go and find something that's worth your time.

Okay.

But that said, sometimes this does call out

for it.

It's like, okay, the best thing to do

right now might be to go and fill

the frame with something.

And often the best place to do that

is whosever speech it is.

That's like a vacant spot at that table

now.

And if you've got a shooting line, you

can go and sort of tuck yourself in

there.

Right.

Just quietly, discreetly the side of the table.

And usually the guests will just, you know,

cheat themselves over a little bit and let

you do your thing.

And we're just sort of quietly composing.

And, you know, we're not afraid to like

cheat one of the wine glasses this way

just a little bit to try to get

things to line up and play around with

it.

Yeah.

This is a great example of an LRI,

first of all.

Totally lifeless here.

And I think one of the reasons it's

so lifeless is because we had to solve

so many problems in order to get this

final image.

There were so many technical variables in the

way.

The technical side of the energy triangle sucked

up everything.

Yeah.

So and they were a difficult couple to

pose as well.

Like it was we had to work hard

to get that real connection from them.

And we could get it.

But not if our mind was sucked up

on that technical side of the triangle.

So this is a statue.

It's in downtown Calgary.

It's a place called Princess Island Park.

And it's basically a big wall of marbles.

And there's one marble missing out of the

wall.

So there's like a hole about yay big.

And of course, we walk by the statue.

And I'm like, well, we got to shoot

through that hole.

There's a there's a marble missing for a

reason.

So that was the first decision.

We got to shoot through the hole.

So we put the couple on the other

side of the statue.

And I was on this side of the

statue and I could barely get myself up

to reach that hole.

And I took the first frame first frame.

Yeah, this doesn't look good.

They don't pop at all.

It was an overcast day.

There was no contrast between them and their

background because there was a forest behind them.

So for some reason, this was back in

the days when we carried a reflector that

we never used, but we just carried it

because we thought photographers carry reflectors.

It made us look cool.

So this is like the one and only

time we've ever used a reflector.

So we popped open our reflector and we

put it behind them.

It was still not enough contrast.

If you look closely, you can actually see

the fingers holding the.

Yeah.

So just kind of crouched behind them holding

up the reflector.

Yeah.

Still not enough contrast because like I said,

it was a gray sort of cloudy day.

So then we took a flash and we

flashed the reflector.

We flashed the white reflector so that it

was really high key white and they would

really pop against that background.

And then the last thing that we did

is we took a second flash because like

I said, it was a cloudy day and

we've got these beautiful glass marbles, which would

look so much better if there was light

shining through them.

So we took a second flash, have it

up over here on camera, right?

And we flashed the marbles.

At some point along the way, we realized

we had to go a high f-stop.

Yes.

In order for the marbles to be somewhat

recognizable.

Yeah.

That also helped with these crisp specular.

Yeah.

And it's very hard to achieve focus through

a hole about this big, right?

So that's also why we had a higher

f-stop.

So I'd step to the side, achieve focus

with my camera.

Back button.

Back button focus, then come in, frame them

in the hole and then shoot.

And then the last final problem is that

that little hole just happened to be just

a little bit too high for Erica's tippy

toes.

So for the award.

Yes.

To the rescue.

For the award.

Now, I don't usually get better about this

stuff, but you didn't just win an award

with this shot.

You got fearless photographer of the year.

Not for this shot.

Yeah, you did.

No, not for one shot.

Because this was the last round.

It was the last round of the year

and you beat me by one photo.

Yeah, but it wasn't this photo.

Yes, it was.

No, it was one of the other ones.

No.

Anyways.

Moving on.

It took me a while to get over.

But we'll talk about contests later.

Because I have some strong opinions on that.

Anyways.

Okay.

So next.

Oh, yes.

So this, this is the same concept, except

here we're shooting through a dead tree on

the side of a trail.

And so even though this is lifeless, and

there's not a lot of emotion here, and

it doesn't necessarily make me feel anything.

It allowed us to figure out the mechanics

of how to pull this off, of how

to focus through a hole that's, that's too

small to focus through.

And we were able to pull it off

in this scenario, where this is the couple

walking to their ceremony.

They had this 20 minute hike through the

woods through Fish Creek Park to get to

their ceremony site on the river.

And there was this dead log beside the

trail with a little hole about that big

missing through it.

So we were able to pull it off

in a scenario that that maybe meant something

more to the bride and groom.

Okay, this is our favorite reason to shoot

through is to layer stories together to layer

multiple moments together, right that to divide the

frame into different pieces in different stories.

Right?

It would be one thing to just fill

the frame with the bride and her dad

here, but Lani chose to stand back and

include the entire bridal party in a layered

scene, which is much more interesting.

If you were to do this again, would

you do it a little differently?

I might choose a higher aperture.

Yeah, that's what I would say.

Yeah.

And I was probably honestly bouncing focus back

and forth, not sure who to focus on.

So I probably tried a few different things.

So this is obviously the frame where things

lined up the best compositionally, but also with

in terms of the light, because this was

sort of speckled highlights, you know, midday.

So there was highlight and shadow of obviously

exposed for the highlights.

But there were many frames when some of

these characters were in the wrong spot at

the wrong time in terms of the light.

But in this case, they've lined up.

They've lined up great.

Yeah, the only thing I'd say is a

higher F stop.

You're probably like, if this was bad, this

was early on, this was early on when

we shot everything wide open.

Because we, yeah, we paid for 1.4.

We're shooting at 1.4 all day long.

Well, I don't think it's 1.4. But

if you shot this at like, F, F

seven, it'd be an even stronger image.

Yeah.

This is in a church.

And again, it's just shooting through foliage and

simplifying the frame down to what's interesting.

And it's barring out a lot of ugly

things.

It's just ambient light too.

That church was lit up for us quite

well.

But tucking back and using some of the

plants and things that they had in the

aisle allowed us to frame things.

Yeah.

Just a few more examples.

This is a shoot through or a layered

image that we, there's very few photos that

we, you know, try to check off at

every wedding.

This is one of them though.

One of the, we feel like getting the

groom's reaction through whoever's walking down the aisle

is so much more impactful than just getting

a mugshot of the groom's face, right?

Because it gives his face context.

Right.

So in this, this is, I always come

in behind the bride and her dad or

the groom and his dad or whoever's walking

down the aisle and make sure I get

this, this reaction shot.

Meanwhile, I'm up at the front, tucked down

low shooting the processional as they're coming towards

me.

You'll be able to see them in a

few shots.

Same there.

There's a videographer and there as well.

Two videographers up there.

And then same here.

Right.

And there you can see Lanny.

Lanny's all curly hair sticking out right there.

So when I'm down there, if I hear

a sniffle and the groom's having a moment,

I can get, I can get, we will.

Okay.

We're talking about shoot throughs now.

I know.

But just the strategy behind being there allows

us to get that shot of the reaction.

But this is always the one that that's

the better, stronger image because it has that

scope.

Yeah.

And we choose for me to go back

there as opposed to Lanny because I'm smaller.

I'm less hairy.

I'm easier to Photoshop out.

I'm small enough to hide behind the, behind

the bride and her dad or whoever's walking

down the aisle.

I can make myself really small.

Getting ahead of ourselves.

We're getting there.

Remember?

Yeah.

That's told me.

And we love shooting through body parts.

Body parts are awesome to frame the subject.

So if we see, you know, just sit

how, you know, so if I, if I'm,

if, if I'm at the bride prep or

the groom prep and there's someone sitting like

this, we got multiple body parts we can

shoot through here.

We can shoot through the legs, right up

the crotch there.

You can shoot through here.

Sometimes we can shoot through there if they're

writing vows, right?

So just keep your eye open.

If a bride's doing her hair, you know,

when she's got her hands up, you can

shoot through her arms, especially if she's in

a reflection.

The other thing in this case, often we

talked about going low.

One of the things that'll drive us down

with our cameras to a low perspective is

when our subjects are looking down.

And often like, especially with smartphones today, often

our subjects are looking down and that's, that's

our, that's our cue to like, all right,

get the camera down.

Because if we're have any hope of featuring

the whites of their eyes, that's our only

option.

And so in this case, I mean, he's

basically giving me that perspective.

So go down and get his eyes and

shoot up through his hands.

But the other thing that happens when you

do that is ceilings are almost always much

less distracting than walls.

We don't have picture frames and, and exercise

and all those distractions that we have on

walls.

We often have a nice blank canvas on

the ceiling.

So it helps solve a number of problems.

This is just natural window light coming in

from the side.

This is Joseph Radek.

He's like, he's the, he's one of the

most famous white photographers in the world, I

guess.

But he's, he's based in India.

Okay.

So lots of pictures shooting through, through body

parts here, right?

Through legs.

It simplifies the frame.

It frames the subject, right?

Just these little pockets.

Whenever they're standing in front of a mirror,

which is often in prep, that's the time

to get right in behind them.

Because not only can you potentially frame your

image through them, but you can catch their

reflection framed through the foreground.

A number of examples of that here.

This, this one is obviously off camera flash.

It's just the speed light coming in from

the right on a light stand.

And then most of the highlights like this

highlight up here is from a pot light

above him.

Same thing in both of these cases.

Like, I've probably had to burn my, burn

myself down.

So the camera's literally right here in the

reflection.

And there's a flash in that case, mounted

probably onto the, onto the towel rack over

here on the side of the bathroom coming

in from the, is that right?

Yeah.

Coming in from the left.

Okay.

This one's just natural light on the other

hand.

So bride was standing in front of the

window, getting her dress done up.

Um, and I was taking a wider shot

of that, but then I noticed her eyelashes

be perfectly framed by her hair here.

So as she was getting her dress done,

I just very discreetly, cause I couldn't focus

through her hair.

Like I couldn't focus in between strands of

hair.

Uh, I could have manually focused actually, which

would have been much easier with, with the

Sony than with the Canon.

I was using the Canon at this point,

but I really just sort of discreetly pulled

her hair back, achieved focus, let go of

her hair and then took this.

And she actually doesn't even remember me doing

that.

Right.

Shooting through just to layer the stories together,

right?

This is, this is the bride.

This is her daughter sitting probably about seven

feet away.

We've got nice window light on the bride's

face as she's getting her makeup done.

And then I just brought a flash on

her daughter to bring her up to the

same exposure and worked really hard to try

and frame her within, within this space right

here as that makeup brush was coming in

and the makeup brush was coming out.

Which is a lot of waiting and hoping

and willing it to line up, but you

can see how Erica's exposed for the ambient

light outside.

Right.

And so everything in all the ambient light

inside is just, yeah.

I've also chosen quite a high up stop,

uh, probably somewhere between seven and 11 so

that this is recognizable, right?

If I was wide open, this would not

be recognizable as the bride getting her makeup

done.

Shooting through doorways to frame the subject and

then waiting for someone's silhouette to walk by.

Exact same wedding where you've just now moved

yourself outside.

Yeah.

And I set my exposure for the highlight

right for the sky and then brought a

flash in on the bride to match that.

Shooting through body parts again, right?

Just to give this and this context, right?

It gives you, no, I think there's a

spotlight on her, right?

I'm just, I mean, for here and here.

Yes, I think we did.

We've got two light sources coming in from

the side, so it must've been two flashes.

Yeah.

Shooting through feet from the dance bar, getting

low.

This is, this is, these are Milo's feet.

Milo had the best custom sequined socks.

Custom designed MJ socks.

Yeah.

They were just unbelievable.

So any opportunity to shoot through those socks.

Again, just layering our favorite way to use

a favorite reason for shooting through things is

to layer multiple stories together.

And these don't line up instantly, right?

I probably parked myself here for 20 minutes

waiting for this to line up with this

to line up with the bride's makeup getting

done.

And then she came in.

Right.

Now when Erica says park herself here for

20 minutes, that doesn't necessarily mean Erica parks

herself there for 20 minutes.

It means she's got this sort of idea

in mind that she repeatedly kind of comes

back to throughout the morning as these visual

elements tend to line up because she might,

you know, work something here and then there's

a moment somewhere else and she goes and

works something, something different and then comes back

to this when things line up again.

Okay.

Controlled scenario again.

This was a, for a Profoto B10 commercial

we did in India, actually.

And we had like 20 minutes in this

area to get portraits of them, of this

couple, Davika and Joseph.

And all these different layers came in the

scene as we were doing this shoot.

And it wasn't intentional and it wasn't, um,

what's the word?

It wasn't premeditated at all.

But as these people came into the scene

to come and watch, it was this incredible

opportunity to layer so many more stories into

this, into this portrait.

Right.

And so we had this guy up here.

So we chose a water lens.

And I remember actually he, at one point

he realized, or he started to think he

was in the shot.

So I could see he was going to,

he was trying to move out of our,

of our shot.

I said, no, no, no, no.

You're good.

Just stay, just stay.

You're good.

Because he's like a critical piece.

I think this guy's the best, his body

position.

And then this, this boy here was just

walking by and this is the frame and,

and I had a light.

There's this, there's another light set up here,

illuminating the bike.

Um, and this just happened to be the

lucky frame where this little, this boy walked

by as we were taking this photo.

There's a scene in the commercial.

There's a scene in the commercial.

If you watch it where you can, literally

that moment when it happened, we're like, keep

shooting, keep shooting, keep shooting the boys walking

through.

Yeah.

Because you were shooting, I think, I don't

know if you could see him coming through

the scene.

Yeah, I could.

I remember.

Yeah.

So in terms of the light, this is

something we never would have never could have

done with our A1s because at this time

of day, this brightness, we would have only

been using the natural highlights and probably trying

to find the highlights to put them in.

But in this case, we realized we had

the extra power of that P10.

So we actually tried to do something that

we never would normally do is to put

them in the shade and then, right.

So they're framed by that triangular shadow and

then we've used the B10 to light them

up.

And we basically just went to what we

always ask ourselves, which is, where's the brightest

spot?

Right.

We got the brightest spots, pretty obvious.

But where's the darkest spot?

And the darkest spot was this area of

shade.

And can we light them within that dark

canvas?

And that's exactly what we did.

We saw this beautiful triangle of shade.

We use the B10, we use high speed

sync, we use what's that that cone to

extend?

What's that cone?

That cone.

We call it that cone thing.

It's a technical term for it.

It's like a dog collar.

It's like a dog collar for your B10.

It makes it strongest because we needed everything

we can get to get as much light

as possible to match that really, really harsh

sunlight in the scene.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that is layering and shoot throughs.

So now we're going to go out into

the field and we're going to actually show

you what this looks like on a portrait

session.