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Roberto's Wedding Evolution

Lesson 9 from: Location, Posing, Execution

Roberto Valenzuela

Roberto's Wedding Evolution

Lesson 9 from: Location, Posing, Execution

Roberto Valenzuela

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Lesson Info

9. Roberto's Wedding Evolution

Summary (Generated from Transcript)

The topic of this lesson is location, posing, and execution in wedding photography.

Q&A:

What are some tips for creating your own poses that always look good? The instructor suggests avoiding having the noses of the subjects facing each other as it can look creepy, and instead, having the subjects turn their faces to one side, which not only makes the pose more flattering but also makes it more believable.

What should be avoided in the background of photos? The instructor advises against introducing any elements in the background that are not part of the desired composition, such as distracting patterns or repetitions.

How can the positioning of hands change the feel of a photo? The instructor recommends avoiding having all the hands in one big mess and instead using the mirroring effect, where one hand is slightly higher than the other, to create a more visually appealing pose.

What is subject emphasis? Subject emphasis is a technique used to draw attention to the main subjects of a photo. It involves focusing light on the subject's face and making it the brightest part of the image, as well as ensuring that the subject stands out from the background.

How can shooting from the apex of a shadow improve the lighting in outdoor photography? By standing in the direction of the shadow, the photographer can ensure that the light falls smoothly on the subject's face and creates a more flattering and even lighting effect.

Lesson Info

Roberto's Wedding Evolution

supposing crazy in his madness what everyone call it uh my goal is not necessarily to teach you how to post a few poses my goal is to teach you how do we oh come up with your own poses that always look good because that's going to give you a lot more options okay so first thing I want to do is ask you guys each and every single one of you do you remember that seven seven seven chart don't even look at it I want you guys to give me one or two off those seven seven seven things that cast it has to do that if you inject this twenty one thing's tow any post whether she's feelings he standing or they're together whatever it's always going to look good or most of the time it's gonna look really good can you think of one friend or to cross between the eyes or the nose is he knows this is a parallel expect the x factor the noses can you explain why come sorry friend can you explain why that getting the nose is not to be facing each other why crossing the nose is it's a good idea can you explai...

n why no you can try um I can look my nerds think about it because of that I remember something about the parallel lines and remember that when they're looking straight at each other looks creepy and it looks creepy doesn't look right correct I can't move it out if you have a person and you're you tell them did you guys go ahead and look you go ahead and look at each other in the ice which happens all the time I see it all the time or look at each other we'll look at each other is good in this distance but it's not good when you're right here coming since you don't look at each other this way so you you turn your face and by the way by turning the nose to one direction one of the faces is going to show better on the camera is not just a complete profile I find that showing somebody's just profile especially with if you're like using a twenty four to seventy or any kind of lens like that is gonna make their cheeks look really big it's just not an attractive wait toe put someone if you have the cameras here and you and the person is here if you have them turn their cheeks just a little towards the camera at least one of them you're featuring that person so it's a perfectly valid photo one of the big one of the two is being featured okay if not both but one of them is at least being featured on when you turn the cheek not only that you cross their nose and it makes the porta more believable just a goal at the end of the whole thing but you also feature someone and it's more flattering on the face because you see part of this and you also see part of the other side of the face right like if I'm looking at uh mallory just turn your cheek that way all the way through like if I just do that it's just a lot off face now if I turned just attack now I can see most of the site and a little bit of the other side is so much more flattering right ok good pepe can you think of one or two things that we talked about about seven seven seven lucky seven one of the main things I come attention was avoiding the ninety degree angles on uh you know just and and also the having their their spinal spinal zach straight straight now the ninety degree angles let me just review real quick that's a challenging one for people I don't say you never you never ever have tohave ninety degree angles ninety degree angles in general are kind of four strong structure but if you want strong structure than ninety the greens are gonna work well for you I say ninety nine ninety five percent of the tender imposing I try to avoid them but there are photos where I purposely do it I purposely have ninety degrees keep I put the girl's arm on the guy depending on the height of the girl told the guy ninety degrees is your only option see what I mean sometimes ninety degrees is the best option but that being said in general those ninety degree angles on the legs and the wrist or like this it's not going to be a successful more for you so whether you have the person sitting down like we did yesterday you could go ahead and have him sit but what I noticed yesterday's when when keisha was sitting she was sitting too far from him so she had to actually slouch her spinal cord started slouching on all I saw was a slouch spinal cord that's what I saw when she was kind of like this it was slouched so that's why I told her to st backup remember that another thing we noticed this we had we introduced a weird background in the back remember that and try not to introduce any elements in the background that are not powder that off what you saw and you saw that the patterns on the repetitions of the grass even though I don't like rats photos it turned out really nice because we did it right you see and by the way I mean I like grass photos I have to take grass photos all the time because people goto location where there is crowned princes everywhere when I photograph weddings and in new england it's like grass galore you don't mean so if you do have to photograph and grass you have to know how to handle it on don't introduce any distracting elements uh nicky do you remember anything opposing the hands both in the house can change the photo completely yeah yeah good morning more specifically don't I don't have all hands in one big mess of hands it was the mirroring effect remember that all right so if the girl is holding the guy I don't have a mirror off her hands have one hand slightly higher than the other even if it's like two inches higher it's good enough if you apply these things tow any post you're going to have a pretty good chance of a very good looking post even the position of the fingers can look more aggressive picnic change the feel of the photo the relaxed er yeah you always have to soft in the fingers right softer so that you don't go like this or that some people like stick out your finger it's gonna wait you know what they go like that you know I mean so just soft in the head when I say reach out to the back of the head remember we talked about our bet right to the army post if you tell him to reach out you tell him reach to his head but a rich to his chin but the way with your helper needs to stay down so she reaches this way okay you don't want to do that right okay yeah the focus light and size okay that's really good that's subject emphasis which was one of the biggest things we talked about yesterday why giuliana why was I saw strict and so element to push subject emphasis well because that's a make it or break it on the picture exactly that you want to make sure you that the elements your subjects really focus on what we're the three light focus and I don't think the size is the size can you explain what when you say light what does that mean light gonna make sure that the face is the most lated thing on the picture who draw focus you want to make sure it's in folk the focus point draw and size it's like the brightest thing on the picture will be the subject and they don't have to be the biggest right but it's one technique for subject emphasis if you have less you if you have a scene on your subjects are like this small but the scene plays a role in the photograph like that's it's like a landscape you waiting for that's ok but when you have somebody small and they're not let separately from the background they're just there it just becomes another last it could just be another car you know I mean if you were to goto photo shop for open the four in photo shop and into a goshen learn really heavy guard schindler if to get rid of all the objects right it just leaves the blur and the colors if you don't see your bride and groom your model your fashion show your senior portrait your baby your child whatever you're photographing if you don't see that stick out when it's all blurry you did not do subject emphasis through light I'm gonna show you the photos we took yesterday and they look really fun because we had a lot of challenges and we solved them you know I mean on it turns out really cool and I'm gonna explain some of that as soon as we finish this valerie go ahead and give me one or two things you remember from seven seven seven mom I really like the invisible plane oh that's single I want that gold and then like creepy hand everything that's bankrolling yes explain the invisible plane um so if you have your camera here and this is an invisible plane coming from the camera you want this plane to hit their eyes first then you always get the best angle what's unacceptable distance if it doesn't hit the ice four inches yeah like between four and six is about what you want to do now that's like ninety degree angle sometimes you can't always achieve that but you try for it you try for it every time if I'm photographing naked from here I don't photograph her from here because I'm gonna hit her knee I photograph I won't even photographed from here because it's still kind of her face is too far back I would definitely come this way and raised the angle and then he will hit her face right away and that's a better angle for her for anybody okay so invisible plane gold subject emphasis today is going to be like the go to think if you take a photo today and I don't see size light or something I'm going to say do it again okay because he has to be clean background on the bride and groom are going to be the bravest person in the photo okay all right david my friend go ahead reason letting sip you gave us about shooting from the apex of the shadow of one shooting outdoors and harsh light and by shooting from the same direction of as a pic of the shadow you're going to get clean light on the faces of the subject right uh there was that and then I like what you taught us about colors in the background trying to make sure the colors that you have in the background are related you don't have red green and blue for instance so color families families are the same in the background on what is the other one shooting from the apex of the shadow right so that the light falls smoothly all right is a subject many of us on many of you watching online have to shoot any kind of photo shoot in midday or two in the afternoon and that's with the photo shoot most of us freak out when we look for the shady spot where is the shade right shade gives you a cold color temperature it's not good lighting shade next to sun like we talked about a tn yesterday can bounce that life from the sun back into the shade gives you the best light right but if you're ever in a situation where you're in the open area and you need to take great photos is a simple as look at the shadow standing the direction of that shadow you don't have to stand it on the shadow sometimes people confuse that if the shadows three feet long you don't stand three feet from your subjects okay you can stand one hundred feet but you're in that direction you're just using the shadow to guide you where the sun is the sun is obviously casting that shadow so the sun is now directly behind and cleans the whole face with the most beautiful light because that son is also wrapping around them doesn't make sense so especially if you use apertures that are pretty shallow like two point oh or something like that it's just going to give you beautiful gold photos but don't forget the background background is key okay

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

RobertoValenzuela_LPE_Charts.pdf
Roberto Valenzuela creativeLIVE Keynote Slides.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Im a freelancer and have studied photo school several years ago and also been working as an assistant for a few years. I think you always have things to learn and keep you from getting stagnant in photography, and i find creative live is a great source for that. Been taking some of Lindseys classes and watched several others from Sue Bryce as well as other classes for equipment and about shooting people in general. I always read what others have said before to avoid any classes that are not informative etc or have a teacher that leave out too much, i was drawn to what people said about Roberto walking the students through the shoots and that he had this great system you could use and take with you when you go forward. I actually never heard of Roberto before but were mainly interested cause of what he was teaching here. I have now watched almost the whole course and first of all let me say i do recommend it a lot. Its a great system to use in my opinion, and i have learned some great stuff to think about that will enhance my own photography, and its a great reference to go back to when you need it. Roberto as a teacher is relaxed, intelligent and has great humor that i can relate to. So you you are not "bored" which is also very important, he keeps it interesting. Some things that i did not like about his way of teaching was that he was a little too impatient at times when the students tried shooting themselves , he reminded me of other photographers i have worked with in past. They were also very impatient sometimes when people around them were moving to slow for the shot to get done etc. I understand during the course the students had limited time to get every shoot done. But many times i was frustrated with that Roberto almost always stepped in too early to "help" them out but instead kind of took over telling them what angle would work best or what light that should be used. It was almost as he wanted his system to show up as flawless and felt as he was scared letting the students try it out on their own because that would somehow show a flaw in his system. I would rather have had him let them try first and later he could come in and suggest the different angles and light. But now many times he would take over and also take his own picture and pointed to the strengths of that picture and why it worked. Still, you learn because he explains at the same time, and walk you through everything. I just find that you would learn even more letting the students fail first or do it right on their own. Also sometimes he would choose a location and say: You can use this wall and these props etc, then when the student would start he would suddenly limit them and instead tell them what to use and how they should crop so that the location itself would not make much difference. Otherwise though, great course. I think i would buy another course from Roberto as well if it was something i needed from it.

a Creativelive Student
 

I have seen many of the creative live workshops, and attended many great workshops by photographers, including Jerry Ghionis. It was Jerry's wife - Meliisa Ghionis who suggested that Roberto's course on creative live should be a must see. This course was by far the best on creative live for improving your photography of couples, it is just brilliant and has improved my photography in leaps and bounds. There are many great photographers, but most do not know how to pass on their knowledge to others - Roberto is the exception I would consider this course a must see for any wedding photographer, no matter what your experience.

user-334342
 

Love Love Love this class!! The way Roberto integrates class participation into his teaching is such an amazing teaching technique! CreativeLIVE has some amazing teachers, I have learned so much from many of them, but Roberto's "hands-on" approach put's the on-line audience in the moment. Very captivating teacher! By far I would say this is one of the, if not the best photography class I have watched!! Thank you!!

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