Lessons

Lesson Info

Class Introduction

We're gonna have a really, really fun workshop over the next few hours here. We're gonna talk about a lot of different things that should be very, very interesting for everyone. I wanna give you guys a brief overview of what we're gonna talk about so that way you guys know what to expect up front. There's a lot of little things that we're gonna be talking about. And I didn't put that at the beginning of the slide. Those are gonna be kind of like little nuggets that you'll pick up along the way. But these are the main points that I really wanna make sure that everyone that walks away from this workshop that they're comfortable with. So, we're gonna talk about how to easily set up and use your off camera flash to create stunning portraits. Majority of my work is all studio headshot and portrait work. And so I'm gonna show you guys how I was able to learn in a very easy way how to create really awesome portraits using off camera flash. We're gonna talk about how to pose your subjects usin...

g what I playfully call jedi posing. It's basically a way of being able to pose a person without physically having to touch them. So it's something that has helped me out tremendously. And I'm gonna teach you guys how I do that. We're gonna talk about how to get amazing expressions out of your subjects. And, this is kind of the thing that took me the longest to master. From the technical perspective you guys will walk away from this class and you'll know how to set up your lights, you'll know how to fix your lights if the lighting isn't coming out the way you want it to look. But getting expressions is something that took time to be able to refine. And so I wanna do kind of like a quick start, and show you guys what you need to do and what you need to say to be able to get great expressions out of anybody. I don't care how old they are. How young they are. Where they're from. Even if they don't speak your language, you can still get great expressions out of people. We're gonna learn how to set up a mobile portrait studio that you can use in any space. So one of the things that I hear from people around the world anytime I do workshops or classes is that they'll say, "Well Miguel, I've only got this like little corner of my house. Or this corner in my bedroom or in my basement or my garage. Can I make the type of portraits that you talk about in those spaces?" And the answer is yes, you can definitely do that. But rather than telling you that. I'm actually gonna show you. We're gonna have a little mobile portrait studio that we're gonna set up here. And you'll be able to see exactly how to do that. We're gonna talk about the differences between different light modifiers. And this is another thing that is probably the most common question that I get whenever I do lighting workshops and tutorials. They'll say, "Well Miguel, you used an octa, but what would it look like if I used a soft box or a beauty dish or an umbrella or whatever?" We're gonna talk about those differences. And I'm actually gonna show you using those different modifiers. We're gonna talk about the benefits of shooting with a mirrorless camera. And there are many benefits to using a mirrorless camera. I'm not gonna beat you guys over the head. But there's a lot of things that you guys will get to see that over the time of our course here today. You're gonna learn how to edit and retouch your portraits. So from beginning to end, you're gonna see how I set up my shooting space. You're gonna see what cameras I use. You're gonna see what settings. What lenses. Basically everything. And then what we're gonna do later on in the course is we're gonna sit down, and I'm gonna show you guys two different ways to be able to retouch your portraits. Again, from beginning to end. So you'll see kind of a, what I would call, like a simple, very easy to use setup using alien skin exposure. Where you can basically do it from beginning to end. You can retouch your photo. Retouch skin. Clean up stray hairs. Change your colors. Sharpen. Add grain. All of the things that I would normally do to a photo, except you're gonna do it all in alien skin exposure. Then I'm gonna show you a more advanced way, which is basically using capture one. 'Cause the tethering is gonna happen, which we'll talk about that in a bit. But it's gonna happen to capture one. Then we'll go to Photoshop. And I'll show you guys how I retouch the portrait in Photoshop. And then finish off that photograph using alien skin. And then lastly, we're gonna talk about sharing your images on the go. And this is something that, since I started shooting mirrorless it's been a fun thing. How many of you guys right now in the crowd shoot with DSLR? Raise your hand. All right. So the majority of you do. So I used to shoot DSLR for a very long time. Maybe you guys can relate to this. But, I was out doing a photo shoot. And I take a great photo and I immediately wanna share it with the world. And so, was I the only one that would take my cellphone out and take a picture of the back of the camera and post that? (audience laughing) I would hope not. Hopefully I was not the only weirdo that did that. But nowadays using these mirrorless cameras that have wifi built in, I could actually take the actual photograph, retouch it on my phone, and upload that to the internet. And so I'm gonna show you guys how I do that. It's a very fun, very powerful thing to do. All right. So, why me? Why am I here? Why am I teaching this class? Why am I, I think, kind of mentioned I was the first person to shoot mirrorless cameras on CreativeLive completely, why me? Why do I get to do this? So, there's a lot of times where instructors will stand here and they'll tell you, I was just like you guys. Right? I was just like you. I started at one point with a camera and I, you know, at one point didn't know what I was doing. And you kind of hear that. And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but your pictures now are awesome. You know. So I can't picture you being like me. Well, I have an interesting story. Because I was literally just like you. And when I say that I bold, italicize, underline that. I was literally just like you guys. This was back in, I believe it was 2014. Or 2013. I gotta look back on the dates. But this was Aaron Nase's compositing 101 class. And it was the very first time that I actually came from Florida, flew to CreativeLive here in Seattle. And I was a student in his class. And I got the opportunity to model half of my leg. If you see the photo in the, on the TV, that was my leg there. I was like super famous for like a moment. But I got to be in his awesome photograph. And got the opportunity to kind of see CreativeLive and meet everybody and just kind of see how this whole thing works. And so, again, just like you guys, I was sitting there and I was a student in this class. And fast forward a few months. CreativeLive went to Las Vegas and they did modern women's portraiture with, at the time, these were like my favorite photographers that, you know, basically I wanted to emulate their style so desperately. And I'm like, I have to be there. I have to be in the crowd. And I got the opportunity to be there. So I got to meet Sue, and Lou, and Laura Jade, and Emily Soto. These are all people that as I was coming up in the portrait game I just really respected their work. And got the opportunity to be a student there for that. And then, fast forward a little bit more. So, my buddy Jeff Rohas did a class on men's portrait photography, which, if you have not had the opportunity to watch that class. During the class I'm sitting at home, and I'm watching this, and, all of the sudden he starts telling this story of a friend of his that took a photograph of a guy. And he was talking about color management. And he said, "Oh I told my friend that why did you photograph this guy on a pink background?" And as soon as I heard that story, I'm like, hey, I remember him having that conversation with me. And I kind of look up at the screen and I realize he's talking about me on CreativeLive about this photograph, which you could clearly see what not on a pink backdrop. That is totally red. But, it was, it was a very funny thing. I was there in spirit. I wasn't there physically. I was watching from home. But Jeff is a good friend of mine. We do a lot of videos together. We have a series called These Guys I Know. So if you have not watched that, if you go to my Facebook page, MiquelQuilesPhotography or if you go to YouTube, you can actually watch our videos where we basically banter back and forth about photography, and lighting, and business, and really any randomness that hits us seconds before we hit record on the camera. So, with that being said, I'm showing you guys this because I want to be very open and transparent with the fact that I literally was like you guys. Maybe you guys were even better than me the first time you picked up your camera. Because this was my work in 2011. My good friend David Redick, he was a photographer. And he was very gracious that when I bought my very first studio strobe, I said, hey could you come over, 'cause I need to practice. Right? And so you could see in my living room I set up this background. I had no idea what the heck I was doing. No clue whatsoever. Did not know how my lights worked. Didn't know where to put them. Just really didn't have any idea. But what I did do, was I had this work ethic and I had this hustle mentality that if I kept shooting as much as I could every single day that I would eventually figure this thing out. And so, I literally photographed anything. My friend would come over. I would do portraits of him. I did portraits of my dog Sam. Who always had this very worried look on his face anytime I would take his portrait. You know, I'd take pictures of my lens cap on a table and play with depth of field. And play with lighting. I took little figurines for Christmas and put 'em on a table and started to photograph that. And basically, everyday I picked up my camera, I put a different lens on there, changed my settings, and tried to see what I could create. And tried to understand what happens if I have my lighting come from this side. Or if I have a subject that has a certain skin tone, or has long hair, or has no hair. You know, just practicing these different things to try to hone my skills and sharpen my skills a little bit. And so after all those atrocious pictures, I'm happy to say that my work today hopefully looks a little bit better. And, it's something that's happened not by mistake. There wasn't one class or one workshop or one experience that I had that basically took me from those images to the ones that you see on the screen here. It was a journey. It was a progress. And what I try to do, being somebody that was in your chairs at one point, I try to create this class to basically give you a little bit of a cheat. This is like, anybody played Nintendo back in the day and remember Game Geni? Right? This is like your Game Geni cheat code to basically go from shooting wherever you might be in your portrait life to hopefully getting to a point like this, where you can get great expressions out of people, great lighting, in any situation. So that is what we're gonna be going for today.