Become a Better Photographer Part I: Tips & Tricks For Taking Amazing Photos With Any Camera

2. Top Shade, the professional's portrait lighting secret: In this film, I'm going to show you a terrific tip that's really going to help you improve your portraits. Your family and friends are not going to believe how great they look in the photos. You're really kind to flatter them and they're going to wonder how you did it. This tip is one of my all-time favorite because it's so simple to do. You don't have to change any settings on the camera and you get absolutely fantastic results. Professional photographers call this top shade or sometimes open shade. Now when you're taking a portrait and you want it to look a cut above a standard kind of snapshot. The most important thing is that you want nice light on the subject's face. A nice, soft even light. Now you may have seen in previous films had a son can moon, what would have otherwise been a lovely photo? The sun can create harsh shadows on people's faces, shiny bits on their cheeks and fathers and make them squint. Even on a lovely day like today, where we've got cloud cover and it absolutely perfect for portraits. There's still a problem. God gave us these things called eye sockets. Fantastic for protecting allies. But unfortunately they make allies look a little bit darker if the light is coming directly from overhead. And I can also create slight shadows underneath the eyes. The eyes are the most important thing when you're taking a portrait, especially for close-ups. You want the ice to have color in them and to look sparkly and maybe to have a little catch light in them. And top shade gets around this problem. Now as you can see, my eyes are practically no color in them. And that's because the light is coming directly from overhead. And my eye sockets, I'll make MI has got a little bit darker. Now top shade gets over this problem. And the idea is that you hide some of the light coming from above, so the only light is coming in from the side. Now to do this, we use some kind of canopy or owning, or it could even be a porch of a house, or maybe just even opening the front door of your house and having the subjects Dan, just inside the front door, anything that protects the light coming from above. So hey, we've got an old pavilion. It's a perfect example of top shade. Now, Okay, It might not be the most attractive structure in the world, but quite often for portraits, that's not really necessary. You only need a small area behind the, behind the subject. Now, I'm going to walk underneath the pavilion and you should see a marked difference in the quality of the light on my face. Because the light is only coming from the front here. There's no light coming from above. Let's see how it looks. Now that we've got a close up, you can see the lovely quantity of light on my face. And this is due to the light coming from in front rather than from above. And you should be able to see the color of my eyes now and the little catch lights in my eyes. So this is going to make all the difference to a portrait. Let's go and try it in practice now with a model. So we're going to use a pavilion now to take a picture of lava. And the light is covering, the roof is covering the light coming down. So let's see how this looks when you use a compact camera for this. That's really nice. We've also got the shutters as a background, which looks nice. Okay, Here's another example of top shy. They're just so easy to find, it's really easy to do. So here I've asked lava just a step underneath that low roof there. We're going to see how the light looks again. Just going to use a compact cameras. So no fancy settings on anything. That's great. We've got a nice red background now as well, which helps. That's beautiful. Okay, so here's another example of top shade. Very simple. Just open your front door and stand your subject inside a porch. Flower comes forward. You'll see that a one-point is gonna be to say the sounds come out and it's gonna be too bright. But even if the sun wasn't shine and that's still too far out, we need to go back in. Also, if she went too far back in. So let's go we'll go a few feet back lower, you can say as she goes back in the light, reduces on her face. So you mustn't be too far in either. So it's just about two or 3 ft. I said just, let's try this again, just using a compact camera. That was great, Beautiful. Okay, here we've got another example. Top side, we've got this tree with the branches coming over his face. Now you don't wanna be too far underneath the tree, just on the very edge of it. Otherwise the subject will go too dark. The sunshine and so boo, I've also made sure that there's no speckled highlights on her face. Let's try taking a short now see how it looks. Brilliant. This time it's a children's area in the park. Now, one of the problems with top choices, depending on your location, the background can go dark. Doesn't really hate to you any favors. If the subjects got dark hair, if they've got lighter here, then it's not so bad. But this time I've chosen an area where I know there's a lighter background. Let's see how this looks. Nice Now smile lava, come on. Fantastic. You had a lighter background, definitely helps, but you can't always get that with top shade. It depends on where you are. So don't forget top shade. Caveolae are a note for locations where you can use it. That's all for now. 3. Dealing with the sun when taking a portrait: Today we're in a park. We're gonna be taking some portraits. Now, the sun shining, but it's going in and out. The clouds are going across. Now the sunshine can actually make it more difficult to take photos because the sun creates hard shadows and especially for portraiture. It can move in the look on people's faces. I know sometimes I'm not a wedding. And a couple of say to me, I lucky they are to have a nice sunny day, especially here in the UK without weather. But then I say that it's going to make it easier for me to take the photos when in fact, it's just the reverse, it can actually make it more difficult. So it's not how bright the light is, it's the quality of life, and that's what we need to look at. Look at today. What you need to understand is different types of light are better for different types of photography. The sunshine is not great for portraits, but it's better for landscapes. Now, I'm not suggesting for 1 min that you walk around with some elaborate scientific instrument to measure the liar, who you need to do is be aware of the light and make a few simple adjustments before actually pressing the shutter. Sometimes you'll need to move your subject or just move over a few feet, especially when the sun's going in and out. And don't need to have the confidence to do that with your subjects as well. Don't be afraid just to ask them to move over a few feet before you actually take the photo. So let's give this a try. The sun's coming out. We're going to take some portraits. Okay, Let's take a picture then with the sun behind me. Now, when I was young, I was always told to keep the sun behind me. I think it was even in the Kodak manuals. He said he said but let's just see what happens when we do that. Yeah, So we've got a nice sharp is properly exposed, but just look at the shadows around lavas Ayers, and they shine on her cheeks. It's not a great look. So let's see what happens now. If we go into the shite. Just step out into this a little bit. Now you can see. But I want that to happen. She just got a little bit of sun on her face and that can't happen. We don't, we don't want that. So now come back into the shade law. Hello, scribe has been blown around in the wind just as minus as well. Telling you fight for me just this way, slightly more, this way. That's it. Even a bit more. That's great, lovely. Well, that seems like we've gotten into a darker place. We've actually got a nice and light and love his face. So let's have a look at this photo. You can see it's a lot nicer. The light is a lot more even on her face. That's great. So the point I'm trying to make in this film is it a light is the most important thing? It's even more important than the background. So forget pretty flowers, forget fountains. It's the light is, it should be your main concern. The background can come next. The other thing I forgot to mention here was that when you do go into the shade and the sunshine is that you sometimes get this toppled lion. And you might have to say on my face now, the light is coming through the trees and causing a dashboard effect on my face. You want to try and avoid that, especially on people's faces. It's not too bad when it happens on the clothing, but you want to avoid it on the faces. Okay. That's all for now. See you in the next film. 4. Understand the direction of light and the effect it has on your photos: Yes, I'm on holiday. So if I'm a bit dark in this film, I'm shooting against the sky. It's a lovely sunny day and I'm gonna be talking about the light. Now. I think it's fair to say that a good understanding and use of light will improve your photography far more than a whole bag full of cameras and accessors. Light can add form and shape and texture to an image and also provide a feeling of depth. Now, there are various aspects of light which affect your photos. Now there's the quality of life and I've touched upon this before. The hard light of the sun, a soft light of a large light source like a large window. Then there's a color of light, e.g. yellow light from a Tungsten bulb compared to a nice colder light from the sunshine. But there's also the direction of light. And that's what I want to talk about today. Now when the sun is shining and you're about to take a photo, you can have front light when the sun is behind you and in front of your subject. You can have sidelight when the sun is off to the side. And then there's backlight when you're shooting into the sun and the subject. The sun is behind the subject. And then you can have top light when the sun is directly overhead. Now the sun is quite low in the sky over there, and it's shining out to see if I was taking a photo from here, that would be front light. Now front light gives you a really nice colors. So e.g. the sky would be really blue as you would have seen in another film. But it's great for taking photos of say, through or flowers or clothing, e.g. but it's not too good for taking photos of buildings. Because depending on how high or low the sun is in the sky, you might not get good shadows. And it's the shadows and create the texture. So if you're taking a photo of a building, it may look a little bit dull and uninteresting. So front light is not the best light for taking photos of buildings. I'll be talking more on that subject later on when I spill. I'm gonna be taking a photon out to sea and we'll compare it with a photo taken later on in a day. Now when you're shooting towards the sun and the light is coming from behind your subject. That's called back lighting. Backlighting can produce some really great effects. You might see my other film on backlighting, but that really dealt with portrayed this one. I'm going to be talking about landscapes and see Skype. Now, one of the, one of the problems about chitin is that the colors couldn't look a little bit washed out, but you can still get some great dramatic effects. Sunset, e.g. is backlit and we all know how great dialogue lighting can also bring out the best in reflective surfaces, like shiny rocks and sand. Foliage also takes on a kind of translucent effect when it's backlit. Also if the sun is just peeping through some trees or maybe from the edge of a building, you can sometimes get a starburst effect. You can also get some great silhouettes using backlighting. And I want to try that now. Now actually the light is actually darker than what you're seeing at the moment. I've lightened up this film so you can see my face. I had intended to take a picture out to sea and silhouetted the people on the pontoon. But they've all come in now. So here's a photo I took a couple of days ago. And as you can see, we've got some lovely silhouettes against the sky. Looks great, doesn't it? Here's a shot I took earlier on in the film when I was discussing front lighting. Admittedly, it's not that exciting, but compare it to the one using backlighting and you'll see that the colors are a lot stronger. And that's all down to the use of front light. Now, as I said earlier, backlighting foliage can give you a wonderful kind of translucent effect. So why take a photo like this? When you can take a photo like this instead? Because the difference in those two photos, incredible, isn't it? By the way, I had the camera in the macro mode there. That's the setting with a little flower on it. The sun is off to the side now and it's getting quite low in the sky. This gives us a sidelight. Sidelight in emphasizes form and texture. And it can really emphasize the three-dimensional shape of a structure or building. Side lighting is best early in the morning or later on in the afternoon, early evening. That's why we've come out here about five o'clock. I'm going to try and use these branches here to flame the church. Let's see how it looks. Lovely, blue sky. Now I'm using a compact camera. No special settings. I'm also going to hold the camera quite high to reduce the converging verticals that you sometimes see in photos. And I'll talk about that in another film. Now that looks great. Compare that to the shot I took a little while ago where the sun was in a completely different position. There's no comparison between the two images. This side light gives us a really beautiful, lovely light. Now, as I said, side lighting can add texture to your subjects. But this wall is more or less facing the sun. So there's not a lot of texture in it. If I come over to this one. Now, this is actually facing a slightly different angle and straightaway because this is sadly, you can see far more texture in the wall. I'm going to take a picture of both of them so we can compare them. You can really see the difference just because one is sadly and one is front lit. Side lighting has another trick up its sleeve, especially early in the morning and late in the evening. It gives us these lovely long shadows and you can make use of those to add impact to your photos. Let's try a couple of things. You can see the shadow is going across there. So let's try one, Let's try those. But I have another idea to use the shadows. I'm going to come on this side. I don't want to backlight the headstones and use and incorporate the shadows. That's really given us some drama. So look out for these shadows, light in the evening or early in the morning and try to make use of them in your images. A few more examples of side lighting then this is a simple shot I might order more powerful by the strong shadows. These apples and oranges are lit by a window off to the side. Look at the light and shadow, especially on the oranges and the great texture on the orange skin is one of my wedding photos. I was struck by the great shadows on the lawn and on the pavement. So I asked the bride and groom to sit on the bench. Now it is part of why how they're positioned on a third. And finally, in this side lit shot, we've obviously got some shadows on the ground, but notice the light and shadow on the pillars, which add a little bit of drama to the image. It's also important to try and use sidelight in when you're taking a photo of a building with bright or white walls, if you just use a front light, what will happen is the white wall will just look like a total white mess and you won't see any texture in it. So that's about it for the direction of light. You may have noticed, I haven't mentioned top line. That is when the sun is shining around midday. And that's because this type of light doesn't really do anything for your photos. My advice is to sit down and have some lunch. That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this film. I'll just leave you with a quick summary. Bye for now. 5. Get nice blue skies in your photos and avoid white skies: Blue skies with or without fluffy clouds can really add color to a scene and improves the photo. Now, a few years back, we were on holiday in Paris and we're on a boat trip, gotten along the river Seine. And if you've ever been on one of these trips, you'll know that as you go past famous landmarks, people get up to take photos. Now, on this occasion it was a nice sunny day. We're just gone. Pass or not, you're dumb. And sure enough, a woman in front of me got up to take a picture of a building on the right. I just wanted a grabber and tinnitus to wait a few seconds before taking a photo. But of course, I didn't want to get a slap. So instead, I took a photo of her tag in a photo. So why should she have waited a few seconds before taking a photo? Well, it's because the sun was more or less in front of us. And I knew that a sky would be almost white. Photo. Here's the one I talk. She would have got a similar picture to this one. And as you can see, the sky is bleached out and looks white. Now here's a short I haven't just took once we had gone past the building and she was photographing her, she had waited about thirty-seconds until the river boat had gone past is building. The sun would have been behind her and a photo would have had a nice blue sky. To illustrate the point further, take a look at this. It's about four o'clock in the afternoon and the sun is off to the side behind me. You can see that we've got a lovely shot of the church, complete with blue sky and fluffy clouds. But now compare this with a film I took about nine o'clock this morning. The sun is behind me and the sky a nice blue. But watch what happens when I pan around slowly towards the sun and the church. Actually, okay, I was hoping for clear blue skies. We've got a few more clouds. But you can still see that the sky is turning, lights are in line. So once our position, the church in the flame, the sky turns completely white. Okay, here's the two photos side-by-side. There's just no comparison is. But apart from the color of the sky, look at the light falling on the actual church itself and how much better it looks in the first photo. I'll be covering this in a forthcoming film and showing you how it's achieved. So the moral of the story is if you want blue skies, keep the sun behind you off to the side. Here's a final example of a local pub by canal. Now the sun is behind me and as I pan around, you can see the sky is blue and we've got nice-looking fluffy clouds in the picture. But if I move over to the other side, I'll now have the sign in front of me. And as I pan around, you can see apart from a couple of storm clouds, The sky is completely white with no color in it. This video camera uses the same type of exposure and metering system as other canvas. So it doesn't matter whether you're using an SLR or compact camera, the same thing will happen. That is, if you're facing towards the Sun and you're not actually taking a picture of the sky, the camera has to adjust the exposure to light in the photo. Otherwise, the subject is just going to be silhouetted. And that's why you can end up with white scars. I'll be doing a complete film on how the position of the sun can affect your photos. So stay tuned. That's all for now. 6. How to retain the ambient light of a nicely lit room: Sometimes you can find yourself in a really nice room with beautiful light coming in from a window or a door. You might be in a pub or a bar or cafe. This is the listen tree pub. Enlightened bothered. Well, you may just be with friends and family at home. And you think to yourself, This is a beautiful setting. It can make a terrific picture. So you get your camera up. So you take the opportunities, just take a photo and you think to yourself, this is going to be a beautiful photo. So lovely scene, great light. Let's see how it turns out. And you look at a photo and well, not exactly a disaster, but really it's just a snapshot. It's nothing like how the room actually looks. Sorry you think to yourself, well, maybe it's time for a new camera. But now what actually happened was I left the camera in the auto mode. The flash went off and it killed all of the lovely ambient light in the room. In this film, I'm going to show you how to stop that happening and how to capture the lovely warmth of a nicely lit room. The first thing you need to do is to turn the flash off on the camera. That's really important. Then you need to change the ISO, move it up to about 400, 800, or even 1,600. If, if the room is quite dark. If you've got a better spec cam, compact camera or an SLR, and it has an a mode or an AV mode, that's aperture priority. Then use that setting and set the aperture to the lowest number. That's the widest possible setting. I'm going to change the camera to those settings and let's try that again. So now turned into flesh off, good. I'm changing your ISO to about 100. In this room. If you're not sure about how to turn the flash off ISO and setting apertures. There are other films on that subject and the links are lower down on this page. So let's give this a try now. Yeah, that's so much better, isn't it? A beautiful photo? And I've captured the ambient light and shown somebody atmosphere of the room. Let's take a look and compare these two photos. Now, when you first look at them side-by-side, it seems that there's not too much different. And in fact, the first shot is not too bad for a simple snapshot. But take a closer look and it's clear that the second photo is better. Remember that the main object of the photo I was to capture the beautiful light in the room coming from the window. The bookcase behind jane see how in the first photo or the shadow area has been lost. Also the flashes calls the books themselves to become shiny. What about the green wall and the white panel behind Jane? There also too bright and I've lost all his shadow detail. And finally, Jane's face has a much nicer lie. In the second photo, you've got a soft light and shadow on her face compared to the stark light caused by the flash. By the way, these moody atmospheric type photos are great candidates for conversion into black and white. See how great this same shot looks now in black and white. Beautiful. Let's take a look at a few more examples. This one's also in a pub by a window. And you can see I've used flash because the light is very flat and there's a shadow just behind the lady who knows. Now compare that when I turn the flash off, there's really a dramatic difference between those two photos. You can see this shot shows the lovely light in the room. And when you put them side-by-side, There's no comparison. In this shot again, you can see the flash has been used. There's a shadow behind Jane's face and is a very flat look to the light. Compare that to this one where I've turned the flash off. You can see light and shadow on the sofa. And again, not on our face. A much better photo has the two together. Now this is a favorite family photo of mine, of a youngster blowing out his birthday candles. You can see the lovely warm light given off, but a candles and had I used a flash, I would completely ruin the photo. Anyway, that's all for now. Hope you enjoyed the film. 7. Better indoor portraits using window light - pt 1 of 2: Most people, when I take photos indoors, will typically just leave the camera on the auto setting and the flash will go off. And what happens then is you just get a snapshot. The light on the person's face won't be very good. You might get shadows on the background, on shiny bits on the person's cheek or their nose. So all you're really getting is a snapshot. I won't be a very creative portray a much better way, a much better way of doing it indoors, especially on a nice bright day, is to use window light. Now, windows are much larger light source. And the larger the light source, the softer the light. That's why you see, when you see films of photographic studios, they're using these huge, great lights. Take the photos or too far, Autolite the subjects. Because the larger the light source, the softer the light. So how do you take a picture by wind, by a window? Well, the first thing you need to do as far as the settings are concerned on the camera is to take the camera of the auto mode and turn the flash off. Now that's important because you don't want the flash going off, as well as using the natural light from a window. The next thing you have to do is to increase the sensitivity by upping the ISO to probably about 400, maybe 100. Now there were films about ISO and using flash elsewhere on the site. So take a look at them. If you're not sure. In this particular film, we're going to be shooting in parallel to the window. So the subject is going to be the same distance from the window as the camera position. And that's just one way of taking the photo by window. And that's what we're going to give a try. There's a few things you need to remember. Don't put the subject too close to the window, because otherwise one side of the face is going to be very bright and the other side is going to be very dark. There'll be too much contrast in the image. So again, the subject a few feet away. The other thing needs, you need to remember is not to have the sun streaming in through the window causing shadows on the person's face that would completely ruin a photo. So weiter the Psalms moved around or use a north-facing window. You can also try closing the blinds or shades a little bit on the window if that helps. Another important point to remember is to have the subject slightly lower than the, than the way the light is coming from. Because obviously light comes from above. Typically light comes from above, and that's the angle we want the light to come from. So if you're taking a picture of somebody who's quite tall, get them to sit down. And that way you have a better angle of light coming in through the window. The first thing we're going to do is take a picture where we're just using the auto setting and will keep the flash on. And then we'll compare that to the photo we take using window light. We've got totally tomato for us today. I've shot the blinds to show what a typical shot would be like indoors when it's not too bright with a flash on. So let's give it a try. That's quite a typical flash drive or photo. A very harsh light on her face, maybe a bit of a shadow behind her. And this one's not too bad, but sometimes you get shiny bits on the forwards and on the cheek. So now we're going to try that again. I've taken the camera out of the auto setting on the flash off and the ISO is set to about 800. Nothing told me If you come forward a little bit to get a first because he's a bike windows, we can get a little bit further away from the window. Now one important thing is you'll notice that the light on one side of her face is still much brighter than the other side. So it's going to be better if she looks out the window slightly. So you're going to look maybe about over here. That's it. That's great. Chin down a little bit. Now, look at the difference between the first photo taken with a flash and a second one just using the window light. The light on her face looks beautiful and it looks much more professional, even use a compact camera. We've got great results. One problem that can happen is if the light is just a little bit too bright or the subject just a little bit too close to the window and this side of her face will just be slightly to buy it. If that happens, either move this object further away from the window or use exposure compensation and dial it down to about minus one or -0.7 because this is the side of the face that you want to expose properly. So you can see now the advantages of using window light over flashing doors. You can get a much nicer portray, but it does take a bit of practice to get it, to get it right. So here's a few basic tips. Turn the flash off, That's very important. Bump the ISO up to maybe 400, 800. You'd need to take the camera of the auto setting to do that. If you don't change the ISO, then what will happen is the camera will automatically use a slower shutter speed. And the chances are you'll get a blurry photo from the movement. Turn the subject's face slightly towards the window. It's not. A complete profile, is just slight looking slightly off camera, perhaps towards the edge, the edge of the window. Don't put a person to close the window, keep it a few feet away. In fact, I would have preferred to move a little bit further into the room for this video. But the sofa, the sofa was in Hawaii. We couldn't do that. If your subject is wearing something bright like a white shirt or a white dress, the chances are the light from the window could be a little bit too bright for it, and it might just blow out and you'll lose the detail in the shirt or the jawed address. So what you can do here is turn the person inside of them that actually then turn their face out towards the window. And you can see how I've used this technique in some of my wedding images. It's also a good idea if you can avoid getting too much or in fact any of the window in at all. I couldn't really avoid it in this film because of the position of the furniture. And in actual fact, because I've got these nice black and white lines, I didn't mind it too much. But generally, you don't want to see a big expanse of y on one side of the photo. So I moved to subject a little tiny, a little bit further. Perhaps take a picture in a portrait orientation and avoid getting too much of the window in. One final thing to remember is that this type of lighting isn't always perfect for everybody. It's great for youngsters and people with great complexion. But when you get to my age, this type of light does tend to show up the wrinkles and lines on a person's face. But that can not great for an elderly gentleman. Anyway, that's all for now. Hope you enjoyed the film. 8. Better indoor portraits using window light - pt 2 of 2: In the previous film I showed you a minute or better. Steven Spielberg doesn't have this problem. In the previous film, I showed you how to take a nice photo using window light. And in that film we had the subject parallel to the window. This time we're going to use window light again, but I'm going to have the window behind me. Now, just as in the first film, I wanted to turn the flash off. I want to raise your ISO and open up the aperture. And there's films to those techniques and you'll find the links to them lower down on this page. So I'm going to have to subject about five or 6 ft in front of the window and I'm going to stand with a window behind me. Now, the window is a large light source, as I said in the first film. That gives us a nice soft light. And this is a great way of taking photos when you're inside with family and friends, maybe at a party, have modeled and go into the worm and leaving the camera on auto with a flash going off. It's a great way of taking a photo. It's a very flattering light as well on the subjects faces. So James positioned on the sofa. She's about probably 10 ft in from the window. I'd prefer if she's a little bit closer, but we can't really start moving or furniture around. Let's see how this looks with her a little bit further away. So I've turned the flash off, but because she's quite a distance from the window, I've had to go to about 1,600 ISO, which is just about the limit with today's technology. With these type of cameras, Saudi image may be a little bit noisy, but it will still be better than using a flash. Let's see how this looks now. I smile giant, come on. Yeah, that looks pretty good. A lovely soft light on Jane's face. Also one of the side effects of using a high ISO 1,600 in this case, is that the cameras picked up the light in the background. If I'd used the flash and the auto mode, the background would have been much darker because the flesh only reaches about 10 ft or so. See what I mean in this comparison. For this shot, I bought Jane closer to the window, so she's now about five or 6 ft away. And this should illustrate the really nice quality of light you can get from a large window behind you. Now because she's closer to the light, I've been able to change the ISO down to about 100. Let's see how this looks now this is going to be a close-up shot. Good idea if we switch the camera on. Okay. Give me that a small Jan come on. Yeah, that's a great photo. Beautiful soft light on a lovely face. Because we've got the large window that gives us a nice soft light source. Perfect. I use this technique quite often at weddings, generally after the blood has got ready and I wanted to take a photo with her and her bridesmaids or with their parents, or just ask them a few feet in front of the window. I also use it sometimes if it's raining outside, I find a nice large window and put the guests a few feet in front of it. Anyway, that's all for now. Hope you enjoyed the film. 9. Create a great look using backlighting: As a youngster to popular belief when taking portraits outside and the sun was to keep this arm behind you. Now that was good advice because the exposure would normally be good and the colors would look great as well. The problem is, as it is now with the sudden behind my camera man there and the sunshine on my face, you get the harsh shadows on her face. And also the chances are your subjects got to be squinting. Now, in the first film that you might have seen of dealing with the sun, you saw how I move this object into the shade. There's actually a better way. And this can give you fantastic results. Now this is called backlighting. It's when you have the sun in front of you instead of behind you. So there's, the sun is now behind the subject. Let's see what happens now. If I move around the sun behind me and in front of the camera man. Now you should be able to say that I've got this lovely light around my shoulders on the top of my hair. Now this type of lighting is called rim lighting, caused by the bright sun behind me or just, just above. And it can really elevate a portrait. Now, when you're using this technique, you have to be careful. You don't really want this the background to be tube-like. That's why I'm, I'm in a low position if I now come up. And so the sky is behind my hair, you can see how you lose the rim lighting effect. The other thing is you want this won't really work very well with somebody who's say, publicly challenged a bit bored because the top of their head will completely disappear into the background. We're going to try taking a nice portrait now using this rim lighting backlighting effect, let's see how it can work. Now, I'm going to be shooting with the sunlight towards me and this can cause problems. The sun can enter the lens and create a kind of milky wishy washy tape. A look lacking contrast. To get around this, you really need a lens hood on the lens. If you don't have a lens auto using a compact camera, you can just shade the lens with your hand. Alternatively, you could get somebody just to to hold something over the lens, just to shade the lens. Or you can just stand in the shade. That's easiest thing if there is any around. So let's try this now, see how it looks. Okay, you can look up now. As I suspected, it's come out a little bit dark and that's because there's so much light coming in from behind Jane that is followed the camera's metering system. There's more on this subject in a film called exposure compensation, and there's a link to that on this page. So how can we compensate? Well, the easiest way of doing it is to adjust the exposure using the exposure compensation button to make it about plus one. And let's do that and try again. You can see that the exposure is a lot better. It will have the effect of making the background a little bit brighter. And the sky will sometimes go a little bit Wyatt. Another way of compensating is to use spot metering. Now, many SLRs have various methods of metering and they're usually evaluative, which takes in the whole scene. There's center weighted and there's also spot metering. And spot metering gives you a little.in the center of the screen, it will meet her on that particular spot. So in this case, we could have used spot metering and put the spot on Jane's face. Another, It's very simple way of changing exposure. Great for compact cameras is to point the camera, angle the camera down, so you're not bringing any light into the, into the lens at all. So you're pointing the camera down, half, click the shutter. So now you're focusing on say, the lower half of your subject. Keeping your finger on the shutter, then recompose. That will also lighten up the whole scene. I've just been loaned this really old come from said my friendly cameraman. Now this is one of the very early digital cameras. It's probably got antique value. So we're going to try that same technique again to show you how easily it can be done even with a camera like this. It's quite all bees around, so we'll have to be careful. Now the first thing is, I'm going to shade the lens with my hand so that the sun doesn't come into the lens. And then I'm going to, I am lava so that I don't get any sky in. This will ensure that the exposure is spot on. I'm half pressing and now I'm recomposing China is looking gold just there. Look it up. And that just shows you what great results you can get. Even with a really old, antique type of digital camera, half a megapixel. So as you just saw, backlighting can work terrifically well. It can really elevate or portray. But backlighting can also be used for buildings, for landscapes, e.g. or sunset is also a back-lit scene, isn't it? And also for fragile objects like flowers and foliage, it can give, give those types of objects are kind of translucent effect. If you backlight them deliberately on a nice bright sunny day, get out there, give it a try, see how you get on. That's all for now. See you in the next film. 10. How to improve your natural light portraits using a reflector: We're here in a park again, and this time we've got the lovely story here to model for us. It's a beautiful sunny day. And the problem is, when you try and take portraits in this kind of lie, it does create problems. You can see on his face we've got very harsh shadows coming off her nose and my cheek and allies look quite dark, and my face to look quite shadowy. And even though I don't look particularly handsome in the glare of the sun. And in fact, I think it's made me look a little bit kind of an average looking. Now, have a look at this though. We're going to try something. Look carefully. It's always face. You see how the shadows assigned to fill in. Now that's back to normal. Now, it's got a better light on the face. Quite a significant difference between the types of light. Now how am I doing that? Well, what I have here is a piece of white bold. This is kinda mount board that you can buy from craft shops. So it's something you can make yourself very, very cheaply. Totally is tied her hair back now because it was striking a little bit too much shadow on her face. I'm going to leave my hair as it is. Now. The closer you put the reflector to the face, the more effective the change in alliance. So when you put it really close, you get a really nice light on the face. But I still wouldn't put my subject in the full glare of the sun reflector. Reflector. I'll do one of two things. I'd even move into the shade or possibly turn around so that the sun was behind her. The other thing you could do is to take the board and just cover up the face and prevent the sun permitting a face. Let's try a couple of photos and see what happens. So here's the first shot taken in a full glare of the sun. The face looks really terrible with all those shadows. And here's the next shot, just covering up a face with that bold. It looks completely different and I'm much better light on her face. Beautiful shot. We've got a nice typical English seen here and they're playing croquet in the background. So what I've done is I've turned around, so we've now gotten the sun behind us. Now you'll probably find that face is a little bit too dark. And that's pretty typical of what happens when you have a bright light behind you. But you can see Tom has got a nice lighting around the hair and that's called rim lighting. There's a film about that called backlighting. Now, you can, instead of just using a piece of cardboard, you can actually use a purpose-built reflector and ask God what I'm going to use here because I'm just taking the photos on my own. I don't have anybody else to how they reflect the forming. So I'm going to use a purpose-built reflect that this is one made by a company called last alight. Now, these reflect this typically have different colors on different sides, are different type of services on different sides. Now, once on this particular reflector, one side has silver and the other side has Wyatt. Now what you'd find is the silver side would be too powerful when it's very bright, sunny like today. So if I were to shine this interface, you'll see are blind or blind to, that would be awful. So today I'm going to use the white side. Typically I'd use the silver side on a cloudy or an overcast day. So if I come on this side, we should see the difference on his face now. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to try it. I'm going to take a before and after photo to show you the difference in effect they can make. Let's put this down for a moment. This is a typical shot without the reflector. This is a first shot in a normal kind of all TO type settings. And you can see your face is a little bit too dark, but we've got a perfectly exposed background. Now I'm going to overexpose the photo. We still got two people playing croquet and a background, but I don't mind about that. Now you can see her face is quiet. It's got quite a nice lights on it. But unfortunately the background is now overexposed. So now I'm going to try shot with the reflector. Now, this particular reflector has a nice handle on it, which means I can use it on my own rather than have an assistant. The problem we've got now is it, It's a little bit windy. It's got to be difficult. You hold the bottom of it for me, That's it. Just turn towards me with your feet. I'd say keep it there. And what we're gonna do, we're going to lift this reflective up so now. So now we're putting the light back on her face. So here we've got a great light on her face and the background looks were exposed as well. You can also see the nice catch lights that they reflect it was made and the other thing you have to be careful of is where to actually position, reflect that. You don't even know if she's got a shadow on one side of her face. So she may have shadow Monsanto face. You don't let it go. You obviously have to be careful because I catch the wind. So even if she's got shadow on one side of the face, you don't really want to hold it. Just to lighten up one side of the face. You really need to position the reflector underneath and just just twisted slightly. So we get the answer. We get the light border into. These reflectors come in all shapes and sizes. This is kind of a medium, one which is great for portraits, but you can get the much larger if you wanted to take a full length photo or maybe a photo of a couple, you can get different types of surfaces on these reflectors. This is silver and white. They're all gold reflectors, which will give you a much warmer light on the person's face. I knew as a kind of a semi gold as well, which is silver and gold stripes. And that warms up the face, but it's not too pronounced. The effect. If I can find an area with top shape, then I would prefer to use that rather than mess around with the reflector. Reflectors are great if you can't find that kind of life. So why not make yourself a cheap reflector? Go out and give it a try and see the great difference it can make to your portraits. Bye for now. 11. Use the rule of thirds for improved composition: Good composition can really help you to improve your photography. The composition sets the mood of the photo and helps to tell the story of the picture. Now, there are various rules and guidelines associated with the composition. And this one called the borders of rule of thirds is really a very fundamental one. And it's one that you should really understand and put into practice. Filmmakers and artists and photographers have been using these guidelines for years. Now, when we look at the world and we look at a subject, we tend to put this object in the middle of our view, in the middle of our viewing area. That's the natural thing to do, but that doesn't translate so well when it comes to looking at photos. Quite often we don't want to put the subject smack bang in the middle of the photo. Now, the rule of thirds tells us if we drew a line down one side of the frame and another line down the other side of the frame. Another line at the top and another line at the bottom. Each of these lines being on a third, where they intersect is where you need to place your subject or points of interests. And studies have shown that the view is I will automatically go to one of those points of interests when looking at a photo. So it becomes much more natural way of viewing an image. Now. Got a windmill behind me. That should be in the middle of the frame now. Am I correct? Said it's in the middle of the flame. Now, if I move away from the picture, said just keep the video camera on the, on the on the windmill. Now, if we move to video camera, soda, the moot windmill is now on a third. You can see straight away, that looks a little bit better. We've moved to moving when we haven't moved the windmill, obviously, we've moved the camera over just to put the women on a third. Now, another thing we can do, He's dropped the camera angle so that the windmill is now in the top third on one of the intersecting lines. You can see now that that's, that looks a lot better. So let's compare those two. Well, as you can see, the rule of thirds is a great technique and is very effective in making your images more dramatic. And as I said before, it's used by filmmakers the world over. And whenever you watch something on a TV, drama or film or you're in a cinema, just notice how the subjects are quite often placed to one side. And you don't have to take a photo of a windmill. It's not compulsory. This technique can be used for portraits, for buildings or for landscapes. So let's see how the rule of thirds can work for us when we're taking portraits. We've got a young model here, Sophie. Have you stand up, maybe just stand against the door frame now. Now I'm using an SLR now for no particular reason, just like to swap and change cameras. And I'm going to take this photo in a portrait orientation. So the camera is gonna be this way. Okay. First of all, I'm going to flame it so that she's in right smack bang in the middle of the shot. Now I'm going to change the framing so that she's on one of the intersections. I think you'll agree that second photo looks a lot more interested in, bit more dramatic. I'm just going to try something else. Now I'm going to shoot in the landscape orientation, leaving quite a bit of space in front of her face now for this one, so he's gonna look just to the side of me. Look a little bit more to the side. Excellent. They'll smile gone. One more. Lovely. Now these types of shots look great. When there's not much clutter in the background. A nice simple background will give you a great shot like this. And remember to leave the space in front of the subject's face. So like many of the laws and guidelines that I'll be showing you, the rule of thirds is not a hard and fast rule. You don't have to use it every time. You won't have the rule of thirds police coming knocking on your door one day if you don't use it. Sometimes a bit of symmetry works well, putting the subject smack in the middle of the flame. Couldn't, couldn't look nice. So it depends on the scenario, but it's worth trying to rule of thirds. And using, I'm placing the subject in the middle and comparing it to and see how it looks. So that's all for now. I hope you've enjoyed the film. See you in the next one. 12. Better composition using diagonal lines: Using diagonal lines is a great compositional trick to add drama to an image. I can suggest action, movement and being depth to a photo. They can also lead the viewer's eye through the frame towards an object and make a standard type of shot a lot more interesting. Now, as I can align can be a real object like this plank here running through the flame. Or it can be an implied diagonal line, e.g. you could have an object inside the top left-hand corner of the frame at another object in the bottom left hand, in the bottom right-hand corner of the frame to create an imaginary line. Or you could have, say, long horizontal lines running through the photo. But you can then change the angle of the camera to turn those into diagonal lines. Or you could maybe move over a few feet to bring in other objects into the frame and then position and align the camera to make them into an imaginary line. The other thing you can do is pose people in such a way as to create a diagonal line. And more of this in the films on posing. Now, once you become aware of diagonal lines, you'll start seeing them everywhere on the TV, in films, and in professional photos in magazines. So keep your eye out for them. Let's take a look at a few examples. I picked out a set of about a dozen photos here which illustrate the point, hopefully about diagonal lines. Some of these are taken on holiday like this one. Now, in this shot, waited until the surf came across the scene before actually pressing the shutter. And you can see how that diagonal line adds a little bit more interests to the scene. Also, you can see I've put Jane on a third. In this short, taken up from Norway and Norway, I've lowered the camera angle to exaggerate the lines of the train is going in towards the center. That's Jane walking away in the middle there. This was taken off a cruise ship in a place called fastened in Norway. The villagers all came, came out and air speed boats to wave goodbye. And I waited until the speed boats went across the scene before pressing the shutter to create an imaginary diagonal line. I think that gives it a little bit more impact. There's no mistake in the diagonal line in this shot. I could have easily have stood in front of the beach shot, taken a straight on picture of Jane, but it gives it much more impacted. Go over to the side and create a diagonal line from the beach huts. Here's one taken inside the hotel. This is said my camera man. Now I've used a lower camera angle to pick up the lines from the floor, but also the converging lines from the walls. And notice our place it right smack bang in the centre so that the lines are going towards them. By the way, the diagonal lines work a lot better if they go from the corners of the frame. Now has a terrific comparison of two shots, only one of which uses strong diagonal lines. These were taken on holiday in a little wooden train. The first shot is just a snapshot. Everybody else was taken the same type of photo from the same position. But what I've done now is I've got down lower to pick up the lines from the flight window frames. As an added bonus, I've got the lines from the ceiling really gives the image a lot more impact. I was asked recently to take some photos of local firefighters, and I've given them a strong pose with their arms folded. But look how to use the helmets to create strong diagonal lines. Really adds impact. Another one inside the fire station. I started really close to the wall here to create great lines leading towards the firefighters. This technique is explained in one of the quick tips, and here's a link to it on this page. Another holiday shot taken inside a shop. Now, I could have just stood in front of the jars and taking a picture from there. But I get much more impact. But going around to the side and creating a diagonal, diagonal lines are several diagonal lines from these jars. Here's a picture of the guard outside the Parliament Buildings taken in Athens on holiday. You can see I've used a low camera angle to accentuate the lines of the paving. Another one of Jane on holiday, who does she hates being a model? Notice how I've put off to the side of the image almost on a third, and I've brought in the curved lines of the ship to create a diagonal. Another holiday image, this time the beautiful Greek island of Santorini. Notice how I've got down low and close to that wall on the left to create another diagonal. Now, in this holiday image of a tender boat leaving a cruise ship, I've tried to create an implied diagonal line. That's why I put the cruise ship in the top right-hand corner to create an imaginary diagonal. Now, you may remember seeing me take this photo in the introduction. It was very easy to do because of those have lavender already created great lines. All I had to do was get down a little bit lower and made sure I had a diagonal coming from the bottom right-hand corner. Also noticed the converging diagonal created but offense on the left. He said, my camera man and a lovely Julia. You can also create implied diagonal lines when posing people. Now, okay, this is not exactly an award-winning image, but you can see the diagonal line created by the heads does make the pose look a lot better. For our final example, look how much better these potluck when instead of placing them side-by-side, we place them diagonally to create an imaginary line. That's much better. So now let's see how this can work in practice. With this as a typical British scene. We've got a pub by canal. It looks lovely. If we just wanted to take a picture of the path. We can just zoom in. Take a shot that looks okay, but it's a little bit dull and ordinary and uninteresting. What we can do is make use of the canal and the bank of the canal to create a diagonal line leading into the pub. Not to do that, I'm going to have to get to a lower angle. Let's give that a try. See how it looks. Yeah, there's so much more interesting picture. Let's try something else. Another short Potter canal could be a barge as popped up. Let's try taking a shot of it. Can't get the whole thing in. Unfortunately. Let's try it from there. But the other thing we could try this issue alongside the barge to create a diagonal line. Let's have a go doing that. Yeah, look at that and that's a lot more dramatic. Just by moving over a few feet, changing your position, changing your angle, you can get a much more, much better shot. Let's try something else. Even something simple, like these flower pots can benefit if we tried to create a diagonal from them. First of all, let's try taking one from the font. Now I'm going to come down to the side and try to create a diagonal. Well, admittedly, that is a completely different type of picture altogether, but it does look a little bit more dramatic. This has been a slightly longer film. I can almost hear you saying Enough already with the diagonals. But using them in your compositions can make an incredible difference to your photography. Go out, give them a try and have a practice. That's all for now. 13. Use 'Leading Lines' to create more dramatic images: In one of the previous films I talked about using diagonal lines in your photos and how they can make images a little bit more interesting and dramatic. There is another great little compositional trick called leading lines. And these leading lines lead your viewers eye through the image to reach a certain point. It's like taking a little journey through the photo to reach that point. It's a great little compositional trick lot by photographers these days. Now, the pitch tone, windmill again, and this looks what caught a nice shot. We've got the windmill on a third. If I'm just move out of the way. This looks quite a nice little saying. The trouble is this area here to the left of the windmill, the empty area is not really doing that much for, much for us. So we're going to try and use leading lines to improve the picture. What I'm going to do is change the angle of the camera and pick up. You can just about see it as there's a track here along with the grass, grass area. And we're going to pick area up to use as a leading line. I'm going to change the angle of the camera now, see how it looks. So we're really framing the photo to put the windmill on the left, still on a third. Now you can see it's picking up that plow truck on the right-hand side and it kinda leads you into the windmill. I might just actually zoom out a little bit just to pick up even more of the truck. But you can see that's quite a big difference. I made the shot a little bit more interested in leading lines at depths of photos, I make the images looked far more interesting. Now quite often leading lines are found on the ground like in this case, but really they're everywhere. You just have to look for them. Now, if the leading line is on the ground or are quite close to the bottom of the frame, you can usually accentuate the leading line by just changing the angle of the camera just by lowering it. So if I was taking a photo normally here, I would come down much lower like this and pick up the leading line this way. Now, if you've got a compact camera, it's much easier to do that because you can see the screen on the back of the camera with an SLR, you quite often have to use the live mode to see the screen on the back of the camera. It's a bit difficult looking through the viewfinder when you just slow. We do it now. Why I just not getting down, it's getting back up again. So let's reframe the sharp, use it with the, with a much lower camera angle and see how that looks. We've taken the camera off the tripod and we find the short to take in more of the grass, so it's a little bit shaky. I'm just going to love it now. I'm not picking up that leading line. You can say this is giving us a much more interesting picture. Here's a comparison of the three images. The first without a leading lines, then picking up the lines with the camera eye level. And now the one with the camera held much lover. You can see that they do get progressively more dramatic looking. I know what I've done is move a few feet and change the angle without changing any settings on the camera. And just thinking about my composition. I've ended up with a much improved photo. Leading lines look their best when there's something at the end of the line to bring the viewer's eye through the photo to that point. There's really not much point in having a leading line. Doesn't actually lead anywhere. And you don't have to just use leading lines for scenes and landscapes. You can use leading lines in portraiture and wearing e.g. taking pictures of buildings, Let's take a look at those objects. You can use leading lines for portraits as well. Here we are in a park and you wouldn't think it'd be that many opportunities for using leading lines, but they are there. You just have to find them and look for them. Here we've got a low fence that we can use for a portrait of Ben, and we'll all come up alongside the fence and try taking a shot from there. Let's see how that looks. I'm getting very low down on close to the fence. That's going to accentuate the line. You can see how the line of defense draws you into the subject. Delights, not perfect on his face, but we're not really worried about that in a moment. Pause this for a whole. Another great idea for leading lines is brickwork, where you've got the pointing in-between. The bricks can be used as the lines leading into your subject. We've got a pretty good wall here. Unfortunately, it's not a very long wall, so we've got sky at the end of it, which I prefer to avoid. But let's give it a try and see, I began on I'm going to get really close to the wall as I can to try and avoid too much of the sky in the background. How about to put bend right on the very edge of the picture. But it still looks really nice with those. Leading lines into his face. You see in this scenario before we use the shutters this time. And these have great lines which we can use to lead into the subject. One of the problems you got with this type of shot is that you want the subject really on a third or towards the edge of the frame. And to do that, you need to use a half press of the shutter and recompose, and you can find information about that in another film. So let's give this a try. We've also got some lovely light here because we're under the pavilion again. Yeah, that looks great. Those lines really add drama to the image and make it just look a little bit more creative. Remember whatever leading lines you're using, the closer you get to them, the more impact it will have. That's why I got really close the shutters. Another quick simple idea for leading lines is a park bench. I've got Ben to the back of the bench on one of the arms to get him higher up. And I'm going to use the back of the bench as a lion leading into Ben. I'm going to come down quite low bed looking over this way because as he looks towards me, the sun is going to hit his face and he won. Good luck. Yeah, that looks nice. The line of the bench leaning into band. Notice how also have avoided putting his head against a tree because it's quite a dark background. I thought it looked better against the blue sky. Leading lines are also great for buildings and architecture, as well as leading the viewer's eye through the image to the building. They also tend to add a little bit of drama to the photo. This is All Saints Church in late and buzzards, a beautiful church. My daughter got married here a couple of years ago and also photographed if you went into I'm going to take a couple of shots. First of all, just a standard type of image. And then I'll get lower and pick up this track leading into the lens of the church and we'll compare them at the end. First of all, just a straight shot of the church. I'm not even going to attempt to get in the spiral of the church because we're just too close. Now I'm going to get lower and pick up this path into the church to get down very, very low. Yes, quiet dramatic difference between those two shots. We've also got a benefit in this particular case, the brick work on the ground and also the curb stone on the edge of the glass pipette. Really nice. Unfortunately, looking back at this film afterwards, I realized that it's quite similar star of the film with a windmill. So here's a few more examples of buildings and architecture with leading lines. Look how to assign fencing leads your eye into this reservoir tower. The lines look even better when they emerged from the corners of your frame. Is an interior shot of the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington. Lines coming in from all directions, from the ceiling and from the sides. Another interior shot, this time inside a church. Note the lines formed by the edge of the pews and then repeating arches. So that's about it. I hope you found this film useful. Now get out there in practice. It's really the best way of getting these techniques to really sink in. Bye for now. 14. Use repeating patterns for more impact: We're in a hotel corridor which has a lot of quiet hold in every looking windows along the outside wall. But we're not doing the camera around to a different angle. The windows now form what photographers call a repeating pattern. You often see repeating patterns with archways, pillars or Windows, plus lots of other objects. To making use of these repeating patterns can really add drama to a photo and give it, give the image a great feeling of depth. Also for this particular shot, it's going to give us a great diagonal line. I'm going to use a compact camera is quite dark in here, so the camera is set to about 1,600 ISO. Let's see how it can look. Switch on the camera always helps. Yeah, that looks great. Here's another one this time with Jane and a photo. Note the way she's looking out the window to put a better light on her face. So it's still in the hotel. We've got some nice pillars here, which can also give us a great opportunity for repeating patterns. You can see that as the camera pans around, we get a lovely perspective and a great feeling of depth. I liked the fact that we've got pillars both sides as well. Here's a shot of giant walking down the middle. You can see straight away how to pin is add a bit of drama telephoto. Also notice how the lights above a head VP as well. So here's a few more examples. This one is of an Italian building, and you can see how the balconies repeat. And notice how the side light and has created these great repeating shadows. Inside Chester cathedral. You can see how the arches repeat, and also the pews and the structure of the ceiling. The seats inside Jessica Faisal, repeat as well. Notice how the back of the seats are picked out by the backlighting. Now this one is similar to my holiday photo with Jane. He said, my camera man walking down the middle of a hotel corridor. I've just been done my local shop to buy these colored jewel pieces. I thought I may make a nice abstract type image. You can see how the chalk pieces make a nice repeated pattern. By the way, I've also used a wide aperture on the lens to ensure that only the first couple of short pieces are in-focus. This is a park or the commercial in Lisbon. And as soon as I saw these arches, I knew that would make great repeating patterns. I came around to the other side and I had to wait till a few of the tourists disappeared and then took this shot. Anyway. That's all I'm repeating patterns. I hope you enjoyed this tip. Bye for now. 15. Improve your composition using the 'frame within a frame' trick: Here's a very quick compositional type tip, which works really well sometimes for portraits, I call it frame within a frame. Now the idea is to have your subject within some kind of framework architecture. It could be a doorway or window, and you need to put them right smack bang in the middle of that framework. There are some windows behind me. I'm going to try and use those and take a picture of Jane in that framework. That's nice. I like that. A couple of points. So about the posing. Notice how her arms are spread out creating a nice body shape and position of arms, Mike, diagonal lines. Also, there's no Lord States. People have to look directly at the camera. Here. It looks like she's not aware of the camera and that makes the whole shot look a little more natural. There's another area we can use is just a beach bar not being used at the moment. And I'm going to flame Jane, between the bar itself and this kind of thatched roof. See how it looks. Not a bad photo. Quite nice light on Jane's face created by the top shade. But it doesn't really illustrate the point very well. I had to crop off the bottom of the bar because it was a little bit too light for my liking. There's a little beach ball we can use. I can get J and I'm one of those seats looking towards me, trimer between those white poles and see how that looks. Yeah, that looks pretty good. She's within the framework. She's got a roof above and Paul's below and to the right of a also, it doesn't matter that she only represents a relatively small proportion of the frame. It's what you might call an environmental photo where it shows you in a holiday context. If I just took a close up, it could have been taken anywhere. Obviously, there was a little bit restricted on holiday with so many people around. So let's take a look at a few other examples. Here's one in a doorway, put giant over to the side, and this one because I didn't want the center of the door sticking out the top of her head. Another one in a doorway, which gives us a nice stream. Also because they're just inside the door. We've got the benefit of top shade. Let's take a look at a few wedding shots. I deliberately put this pride within that frame that was on the wall. Notice also the position of arms. Yeah. I've always loved this shot. The little girl looking up admiring the blood. I did ask her to go and stand between the curtains and in front of the window to create the frame within a frame effect. But then I got really lucky when a little flower girl came over and started talking to her. And this is quite an interesting one because it's almost a frame within a frame within another frame. By the way, when you're shooting through a secondary type of frame. Now this, It's almost like you're spying on a subject. You see this technique used a lot in films when, you know the subject is almost certainly about to be attacked or murdered. Here's another holiday shot that I like with Jane framed between the geometric lines and shapes of the outside hotel wall. And finally, in this shot, I've used the arch of the bridge behind the couple and the long grass in front of them to try and create a frame. So I remember a frame within a frame, very easy to do, requires no special settings on the camera. You can use your combat camera or SLR. Really quick and easy to do. Give it a try, go out and practice. That's all for now. 16. Blur the background for more impact (DSLRs): Have you ever noticed how some subjects can pop out of the image and look fantastic? This can be achieved by great composition or light or with great use of color. But by far the most popular way of doing it is to keep the subject really sharp and to blur the background. Now, although it's quite a simple thing to do to explain every aspect of it would bug me down and technicalities, which I don't want to do, I'm going to keep it quite simple. Now, this film is aimed at SLR users or people with the new mirrorless type cameras. And to be honest, it's a much easier effect to achieve using those hyper cameras due to the physical size of the sensor being a little bit larger, I don't really understand the physics of it. But those cameras, with those cameras, it's a little bit more easy to achieve. Thankfully, we've got away from those pound signs springing up behind me. We've got lava here and behind that we've got these canopies. Now, first of all, I'm going to take a picture just keeping everything in focus. Let's see how this looks. Okay, That's quite nice. Bridging see the background is a little bit distracting. So I'm gonna change my settings now. And I'll show you how to do that in a moment. And let's see if we can blur the background. Let's try that again. Yeah, that looks a lot better. You can see she kinda comes right out of the image much more. So how did I do that? The most important setting is the aperture. Here. It's set to F4. Now, although there's primarily controls the exposure by controlling the amount of light entering the lens. It also controls the depth of field. Depth of field is a technical term used to indicate how much of the image is in focus in front of the subject and behind the subject. There's a whole film on this. You'll find the link to it on this page. But keeping it simple for the time being, your camera to aperture priority mode. Now, on this nick on camera, that's indicated with the letter Ada, some cameras have a control knob on the top. Let's have a look at one of those. This isn't an SLR obviously, but it's a similar set-up. There's a dial here and you can see the letter a indicating aperture priority. The other letters are things like shutter speed priority, and manual mode that we want to set it to the a mode. Some cameras, notably cannons, call it AV mode, and that's the one you want to use. Now I'm guessing that most people watching this film will have a zoom lens that came with the camera. These are usually referred to as kit lenses, and they'd look a little bit similar to this. If that's the case, just use the lowest aperture number possible on this particular lens, that's 3.5. But just to confuse things, as you zoom in and out, the actual aperture will increase. So it may start off with 3.5, but as you zoom in, it will move up the scale to F4 or 4.5. That's just a restriction on these type of lenses. Some of the more expensive zoom lenses allow wider apertures. And that's why they're more expensive. This one starts at 2.8. If you have a lens like this or you have a prime lens are similar to the one I was using. Set the aperture to about 2.8 or maybe F4. Now we move on to focal length, that is the amount of Zoom. This also has a big impact on debt fulfilled. For kit lenses like this, where the aperture doesn't open that wide, zoom in to at least 100 millimeter, but preferably more if the lens will allow it. For these slightly more expensive lenses, where the aperture opens quite wide, tomb to at least 75 or 85 millimeter. The maximum on this particular lens is only 75. The next thing we need to do is keep the subject quite a long distance from the background. Obviously, if Florida had been standing what they're building their, it'd be much more difficult to blur the background. So you need to get a subject from the background. Give blurring the background and try and go out and practice it. You should see a big difference in the type of photos that you get. That's all for now. See you in the next film. 17. Blur the background to isolate your subject (Compact Cameras): Have you ever noticed how some subjects can pop out of the image and look fantastic? This can be achieved by great composition or light or with great use of color. But by far the most popular way of doing it is to keep the subject really sharp and to blur the background. Now, although it's quite a simple thing to do to explain every aspect of it would bug me down and technicalities, which I don't want to do. So I'm going to keep it quite simple. I prepared two versions of this film because the technique is slightly different, whether you're using an SLR or compact camera. Now we're going to try it with a, with a compact. Now with these type of canvas and also the bridge type cameras, which are quite akin to the compact cameras. It's a lot more difficult to blur the background. And that's due to the physical size, the small size of the sensor, and its close proximity to the lens. I don't really understand the physics of it, but I do know that it's quite difficult to blur the background using one of these cameras, but it is possible. So about the fountains behind me, I hope you can hear me. Okay. So first of all, I'm going to take a picture on an, on a standard setting and we should see that everything is in focus. Now that's quite a nice sharp, but let's see if we can improve it by blurring the background. Now I just need to change a couple of settings, which I'll talk about in a moment. Okay, let's try it out again. You can see now that does look slightly better. We can't get the background to blurred because of the limitations of the camera, but you can still see it's a lot better. So how did I achieve that? Okay, let's take a look at the actual set engineered. If you have a slightly better spec combat camera or possibly a bridge Canada, then use the aperture priority mode. Now, this is sometimes a dial on the top of the camera, or maybe you can find it on the menus, but you need to use the a mode. And then you need to set the aperture to its wider setting. That is, you use the lowest number possible. Alternatively, if aperture priority means nothing to you, forget that completely and find your Canvas scene modes. You might have to refer to the manual for this, but quite often there is a dial on the top which just says SCN, or maybe it's hidden away in the menus. Set the scene motor portray, this is normally a woman's head, sometimes with a hat on. Doing this will tell the camera to use the widest aperture possible. The next step is to zoom in as much as you can, but avoid the digital zoom to keep this object quite a long distance from the background. Obviously, if Florida had been standing right there, the building there, it'd be much more difficult to blur the background. So you need to get the subject away from the background. So good blurring the background to try and go out and practice it. You should see a big difference in the type of photos that you get. That's all for now. See you in the next film. 18. Don't let cluttered backgrounds ruin your portraits: Assuming you've got some nice light on the subject's face, the next thing to consider as a background. This is a very simple tip, but a very obvious one, and it is very important. You must try to avoid cluttered backgrounds. The last thing you want is a lamppost sticking out of somebody's head or telegraph pole or a tree. They can really turn the photo into a nice portray, into a snapshot. All you need to do is just move over a few feet are also subject to move over. You just need to be aware of it and they quite often just doesn't occur to people, but they can move your community who are in the photo. Now, we're going to try and take a nice portrait of young Catherine here sitting on a table. Now, this could lead to a very cluttered background if we weren't thinking about what we're doing, we've got the we've got the fence behind her, we've got the house, we've got wheelie bins, and we've got trees were branches sticking out of them. So a lot of people would just come along, see a nice, a nice setting with Catherine said on a table, and just come along and take a snap. Let's try taking one. See how it looks. Now. That looks absolutely rubbish. Not only have we got the really cluttered background, but we've also got the sun on Catherine's face and that's we can't have that that's covered in another video when I'm talking about the lighting. So we can ignore that for the moment. So where do we find a better background? It's not difficult just to move around a few feet. I'd look around, see what's available. So we've got the sum blossom behind here. So let's try. Let's try. She's going to stay where she is and I'm going to just move around. This is looking much better now, let's give this a try. Yeah, already, that looks so much better than the previous previous shot. Where else can we take a photo with a nice red daughter? Let's see if we can give that a try. Great. Let's try one this way. I'm going to try one into portrait mode. Looks really nice. Notice how I've tried to avoid the green part of the door as well. If I take another one, I've got a bit of green and doesn't look quite as good. But those two photos look a lot better than the first one. And it's just so easy to do. Just move them out a little bit, look up, look behind a subject, try and find something a little bit simpler, a little bit cleaner. You a great Catherine. Come on. I'm going to take another Sharp Katharine, this looks fantastic. It's gonna be brilliant. I seem to have a wheelie bin behind a fence and advanced sticking out of the back of her head. How did that happen? So what I'm doing, I've just moved about a foot and now I've moved around a bit as well. Let's see the difference in this. She's looking great. She's looking bored. So we're try another one. That's incredible. The difference in those two photos, just by stepping down just a couple of feet. Come on, let's try something else. 19. Improve your portraits using unusual backgrounds: We're gonna park surrounded by trees and trees can make a nice background. The problem is, once you've taken one or two, they start looking a little bit same way. Also, because of the tonal values, the subject can quite often blend into the background. And that's especially true if you take, if you convert the photo to black and white. See what I mean. So I like to look around to find something a little bit more unusual, a different type of background. Something may be industrial or grungy or kind of funky looking. Obviously in a rural environment, they're harder to find, but they all everywhere you look and don't forget, you only need a small area behind somebody. So we're going to look around in the park to see if we can find a grungy type of background. I know there are some. So let's go and find them. Worst possible place to take your picture. But by a gents toilet is high then this isn't it. Most people would just walk past this without giving it a second look unless I wanted to use the loop obviously. But let's try. Well, we've got a nice red door here. Maybe we can get a nice shot with a funky background cut coming over here and stand on this step. I'm going to come down this side. That's great. It turns to the side a little bit. With your feet. That's it. Okay. Look, I said, What's he doing? Great. The red door looks really nice. And if you increase the contrast a little bit on your computer, it's going to make it look even better. When you do have these kind of funky backgrounds. It's great if you can make the subject laugh, because it kind of goes with the environment and goes with the background, looks a lot better. What can we try? Now? Let's have a look. Okay, say we've got a grotty old container. Now, again, you wouldn't give this a second thought normally. But let's see how it looks as a background. Okay, I can't jump up in the air for me, hey, look at a fantastic. And as I say, the fun ones look really nice against these types of backgrounds. And almost forgot to show you this. Here's one we made earlier with lava. We've got another, what you could call a grim looking background, just a brick wall with graffiti on it. But is it grim? Don't forget, we only need a small area to take a picture. We can avoid the drain pipes. We can even avoid the graffiti if you wanted to. Although sometimes that can give a nice kind of grungy look to the picture. So let's try taking a photo now. Take a look. I said, What's he doing? Excellent. Yeah, that looks great. And if you make people laugh, it really adds to the motion of the picture. And again, it kind of goes with the background. But come Catherine, I think we finished yesterday. There's kind of something to eat. 20. Improve your portraits using nature's own abstract backgrounds: In a previous video, I showed you that instead of just taking photos against pretty flowers, trees, and shrubbery, that you could also make use of slightly more unconventional backgrounds. In fact, I even took a portray against the door of a gents toilet. But of course, trees, sharp V and lovely blossom can look great too. Well. It's summer here in the UK. You might not know it from the cold temperature. But in our garden we've got some great colors that I can use for portrayed backgrounds. But rather than have these colors are straight backgrounds, I prefer to use them as a kind of pattern or texture background. I'll show you what I mean. So first of all, I'm going to take a picture of Jane against this beautiful the Burnham tree. Now the camera is set to PMO to settings are not really anything special. I've got an aperture of f Phi. I've put the flash on a camera because I'm going to use a little bit of fill flash. We have, the light is nice, but we don't really have any benefit of kind of top shade. So this just with this fill flash will just give a little sparkle to the eye. There's a whole film coming up soon on using fill flash. So here we go, move over this way a little bit, Jane, I'd say copy further back. Actually come up with this. Why again, I said, excuse me that a guy that's shot looks quite nice, doesn't it? But really it's nothing special. And in fact, O'Donnell, a burnt umber, beautiful colors. Actually a little bit distracting. What I'm aiming for is to try and get a patterned textured background. So I'm going to open up the aperture to F2, which will give me a shallow depth of field. And I'm going to ask Jane to step away from another Burnham to give me, give me a better chance of blurring the background. Wow, that looks much better, doesn't it? The Burnham has just changed to a kind of abstract pattern. And out-of-focus is definitely on Jane's gorgeous face. A lover for this shot against the brightly colored shrub to get Jane lava to make sure your head is positioned against it. That's why she's sitting down. Give me a lovely little smile, Jane, period, a whole another one. Yeah, I like that as well. The colors look even brighter and a little Burnham. But you can experiment, find different colors. Autumn colors look fantastic. To. Finally, we'll take one more shot against this territory. Unfortunately, it's not quite a cherry colored as it was about a week ago. But you'll get the general idea. Chinese standing quite away from it, probably about 7 ft from the tree. I'm still at F2 and I've got a shutter speed of 1600s of a second, still using the fill flash, because as I said, the sun is shining a little bit slightly. There's no there's no top shade that will just brighten up her eyes a little bit and smooth out some of the shadows. Sorry, just give that a try. Yeah, I think these are great. I hope you agree. It's so easy to do, isn't it? Just find yourself some lovely colors and a garden or a park? Use a wide aperture to get a shallow depth of field and put your subject a few feet away from your background. You'll get some beautiful portrait with that elusive wow factor. Bye for now. 21. Flatter your individual subject with these full length posing tips: When taking pictures of people, obviously you want them to look good and I want to look their best as well. But when it comes to posing, it's not so easy just to say, Okay, go and stand over there. You need to make them look relaxed and make a nice poses. Are the portrait looks as good as possible. Now, we're going to take some full length pictures of Emma here. First of all, Emma just said either to decide about that, that's fine. Now when you ask people just to stand over there, that's the first thing they'll do is they'll just stand straight onto the camera, might be looking a little bit flat-footed and has possibly the worst kind of pose. Because if, especially if somebody has a little bit overweight, unlike Emma is nice and slim and myself with body. We have an audience. We want to, everybody wants to look a little bit slimmer. And so the first thing we want to do is turn people to decide. So I might just turn to the side slightly. Now when you ask people to do that, typically, they'll just turn from the waist and we don't want that. It all starts with the feet early, so we want to turn with the fee. So Emma, turn towards me with the feet about 45 degrees about there. Now you might not be able to see this from that camera angle, but she does now straight away look a little bit slimmer. I'm going to take a picture just to show that compare with the first one. Now we can refine this, so it might look a little bit more relaxed and a little bit more casual. Now this is what I call the model pose. And you'll see this in magazines everywhere. And models adopt this pose whenever somebody pointing the camera at them. The first thing we asked the subjects to do is to put their weight on the leg furthest from the furthest from the camera? Exactly. And you can see straight away she's got a nicer and nicer shape. Now just pointing the front foot slightly for, slightly forward for me. You can see that looks a lot more relaxed now. Maybe just put one hand in the pocket, the other one on the, on your thigh. Let's take a picture now and compare that to the first one. Look at the difference in those two photos. And what we can do now to refine the post further, is to ask your subject to actually push their bomb out towards the back a little bit just to exaggerate the effect. Lovely, and also just tilt your head this way slightly. Now you can see that's created a kind of an S shape. This S-shape is known to fashion photographers and you'll see all the time in magazines. And it's driven men wild throughout the ages. So let's take another shot and compare this again. Tell us great, it looks a lot better than the first shot. And it's really accentuated our lovely shape. Another great full length pose for a woman which works terrific if they're quite slim, is this one okay, I'm going to just put your legs further apart about shoulder height. Now, swivel one hip over to the side. Put one hand on the hip. Okay. And the other hand the other hand on your thigh? Let's try that. Exaggerated even more with the hip. That's great. Okay, now we're going to try fall and post Furman. Now, generally speaking, the more you show if somebody's body, the harder it is to get a good pose. So full length shots are a little bit more tricky. It's worth taking a little bit more time to prepare. Now straight away, I've asked Ben to sustain there and he's gotten into a flat footed strike on top of log. Let's take a picture now, just to compare to the one at the end. Now, what you can do is just awesome to maybe move the legs further apart or feet further apart, I should say. And that's a great Immediately, That's a great pose. And that's terrific as well for, for teenagers to show a little bit of attitude. Let's try it out. Now. Generally speaking, men like to lean on things. So Ben, Let's go. But before you do that then how about the zoo lambda pose? Men like to lean on things and it makes them look a little bit more relaxed. Then have a lien against that to get a lamppost. Say maybe just cross the legs over and straight away. You can see that does look a lot better, a lot more relaxed. Let's try that one. Compare that to the first shot and is hardly any comparison. Another one motor guys lean in is to turn them down. So maybe have you back to the post, maybe put one leg up on the post. You can see it looks nice and relaxed. A great looking pose, a great looking guy. Was it cheesy? So there's a few full length poses. Go up and give it a try and have a little practice. It's fun. That's all for now. 22. Family or small group poses - Pt I Standing poses: In this video, I'm going to give you some tips on posing. Now, generally speaking, when you look around on the web or in magazines for posing tips, quite often, you'll see that the images are mainly of individuals. Yeah, that might be models or a couple. It's not often. You'll actually see tips on posing family groups. So that's what we're going to do today. We've got gray and Jain and terminology here. And we're going to try out some, some, some policy. We're going to start off a standing poses. I find those a little bit more difficult to be honest. And if you're not careful, they can look a little bit more or a little bit too formal. So you have to be careful to try and make the pose and look good. It makes all the difference in a picture. If you do get a nice natural pose, it can just change the whole shape of the image all altogether. You probably won't remember all the steps. I say they're gonna be a lot of quick fire tips. And as I said, you probably won't remember them all. So just pick out your three or four favorites. At the end of the video, I've got a little freebie for you, which you can download, and that should help you to remember some of these sits. So let's get started. For the first one, we're just going to try a simple standing in a row pose. Now, you don't really want them standing flat-footed like that. The best thing to do is, first of all put the boys we put the boys in the middle, turn to turn inwards towards each other guys. That's it. Legs apart, my big giant, you stand. You do the modal pose now. So you're standing on your leg furthest away from the camera. Perfect. Right. You come in nice and close. Just might be put your hands in your pockets on everybody was just about to put your hand on his shoulder. And if you do that again, like what tends to happen is that hand looks like it's coming from nowhere. And photographer sometimes Kodos, alien hands. So the best thing to do is just take your hands off. So let's try this shot as the first one. Now if somebody were to small, that would make a great picture. Notice I've put them in the shade and I've tried to avoid that white sky behind them. So you've got the trees behind them. Let's try another simple one with the parents standing behind. So if you go right behind there to stand behind or later, you come in class. Now you have to be careful when you do something like this, because obviously now you can't see very well, right? Can you come in, come into the middle. Also? You don't really want people's heads directly above another head. That's another little tip there. Giant come down this way, a tiny Birch. I knew you'd come in. But light turn towards me a little bit more. Good with being blown around here. I hope you can hear me with all this wind. Tom, you turn towards me, but put your legs apart, sharpener that bit of attitudes that we have the cat the other way because the cap is the cap is in front of his face, but only point to you come towards me now with your feet. That's it. That's better. Give that a try right coming into the middle bit more. I could of course have taken this shot and the previous one as full and photos, maybe in the portrait orientation. But I just decided to go for more close-up shots. Another little trick you can do is to stagger people rather than have them all close together. So let's try that. Well, you go back a tiny bit. Ali, come over this way. I've been told me you come towards me now. Tom is going to be the star in this picture. You're a bit two bit too far away from each other, come in a bit closer. I said you just put your hands in your pockets, maybe something, no, that's good. One thing about this type of posing is it doesn't have that family friendly. It's great for bands, e.g. when I say D cargo for a corporate type of shock. But it kinda good for families as well if they liked that type of image. Just to quickly demonstrate variations on this pose. Here's a couple of my studio photos. This pose works very well if the people at the back lean against the wall. And also if everybody adopts a different position and faces a different way. In fact, you can see the staggered effect a little bit more clearly in these shots than in the one I just took. Another good, very relaxed type of pose is when a family is just walking along together. When I do this sharp, I normally get them to look at each other rather than the camera as it looks a little bit more natural. Focusing can be a little bit tricky. I use a burst, a burst mode with a continuous focusing. But if your camera doesn't have that, just point the camera to a certain part of the ground and a certain part of the gum before them, and puff versus shorter and white and then ask them to walk and then click the shutter when I get to that point that you focused on. So let's give it a try. This is very much a trial and error type of pose, which is why I just took several photos hoping that at least one of them will have some great expressions. And I thought this one turned out pretty well. If you've got a nearby wall or a tree, that, that can really help standing up houses because people tend to like to lean on things, especially men. So I leaned against the tray. Notice how he's got his legs his legs clause. That's how we might stand if it was just waiting for the bus or just waiting for some firms rather than just flat footed, it's a bit more comfortable. And James adopted the model pose. Tom's got his legs crossed as well. And all he's got one leg up on, one leg up that come quite often look quite relaxed as well. Just maybe lean back a tiny bit. That's better. That looks good. Let's give that a try. It always helps if you can keep people relaxed by chatting to them, making them laugh. And it doesn't matter if you, even if you look a little bit silly yourself. As long as you get the picture. A couple of other small points. Notice giant hand flat on race chest. Now that can only obviously work if the man is standing, facing the woman, shows a little tenderness. Also, they're all standing differently again, which looks kind of cool. I think I'm one very important point and I've forgotten to mention so far. Notice that they all have their weight on one leg or the other. That makes the pose look much more natural and relaxed. By the way, I could have just as easily make this into a square photo. But generally speaking, if there's a nice clean looking background, my own personal preference is to show it off. You don't have to agree with me. You might prefer to square one. Another good old favor is to piggy back. So we'll get Tom on Jane's back and Ali on my back. Okay. Guys, jump on. But when you're on getting nice and safe and what I want you to do, I can't say, Yeah, that's great, but you have to get people quite close together. And you also have to make sure the person on the back so you can see them. Thanks guys. So that's the end of the standing poses. I hope you found them useful. Next time you out with family or group of friends. Have a go, give it, give it a try. I haven't practiced and see how you get on a couple of really important points to remember. Don't have people standing flat-footed in front of you. Get them to put their weight on one leg or the other. It just looks a lot more relaxed. Also. Everybody wants to look a little bit slimmer. So for most people, unless they're super slim already, most people you want to turn, turn them to the side and that will slim them down. If they're slightly overweight or maybe have a bit of a pot belly, just tuck them in behind another member of the group. And that way your flatter them, they'll look a lot better. Elsewhere on this page, you'll find a link to a file which you can download, which is a crib sheet. It has the photos at a description of each pose underneath the photo. And hopefully you'll be able to print that off and take it out with you and it should help. Bye for now. 23. Family or small group poses - Pt II Seated poses: Generally speaking, I find seating pose is a lot easier to do. And one of the reasons for that is that the image is locked best if people's heads are at different heights. And that's more difficult to do when a standing up, obviously, it depends are tall people are and where their heads are in relation to each other. But when I say it is, It's easier to get their heads at different heights. It does look more interesting. So let's try another pose and we also want to get their heads quite close together. Another little trick that I use quite often. So Jane, jane is almost in the right position here. Join if you just type back, keep that leg tuck London, push that leg out a little bit further out. That's it. You come in closer and just tuck your legs. Tuck your leg behind you like that. That's it. Now, you can say guy's head is just slightly higher than James. If it was a lot shorter and I was in the studio, I might put a little cushion underneath him to raise him up a little bit. Now, that's my Giants made a nice lab there. And if you've got a child or we'll youngster, they can sit there, but Tom's books will fit in. There are things that you can say, I'm a mom. Now, if he said, if he has his legs out, why his face is going to cover about giants, especially if he's legs this way and he's bought is over there, that keeps his face away. And only if you can come in now and just come over the top here from the back near the end. Excellent. Why not? You can say if Tom would look forward about a second, you can see we've got this great kind of diagonal line. If the faeces, and we've got different Shakespeare made by the heads, and that makes the picture look a bit more interesting. So let's take a shot. Told me her Ali has gone up your eyes a little bit there. I have that trouble sometimes herself. Oh, yeah, that looks pretty nice. But actually now that I look back at it, I'm not so sure about the position of Tom's legs. Maybe he was a little too big, just sit on his mom's lap. It may have looked better. I think if he was sitting up a little or maybe stretching in one of his legs out a bit. But generally speaking, that's a great pose to use. Well, you come around the front now and maybe sit over here next to Tom. Just said a bomb in there. I can sit with your legs your legs over the other side. I am like I am. Sometimes it's easier to show people rather than just tell them. That's it. Now looks good, except that you're not completely covering up Tom. So I will just shift over this way. I'm bringing you bring your leg up. We don't really want a leg sticking out. Anything sticking out the front of the picture is going to look a lot larger. But just hide your arm. I'll leave it on the back. Let's see how this looks. Notice in this pose how everyone is turned to the side. That's generally part of my philosophy when posing, but also their turn so that the heads are close together. E.g. if all he had stayed in this position, he's head would have been too far away with a big gap between him and Tom. Also with Ryan, all his legs turn outwards. I can crop the image into more of a letterbox shape, which adds a bit of interest. There's another fun one we can try not appropriate for every family, but some people might like them. If they're up for it. You're going to lie down on your F1 with your arms folded. You guy next to him. Told me, Tom, you jump on his back and he got really close. That's it. You're going to like completely flat on his back. And you're going to rely on an iceberg. You need to bring your head will come out to where my hand is. That's it. And only you need to lift yourself up, fold your arms and lift yourself up. Now, we've got Jane and Tom's had directly above rise and knowledge. So we don't want I want a heads together. I think for you know, just giant and top we had together. Yeah, this is quite a fun pose and kinda look great. But as I said, it's not suitable for families that have to be out for a couple of points about this pose, put the heaviest or strongest people on the bottom for obvious reasons. Have their arms folded, lifting their heads, and put them very close so that the people on the top don't fall through the middle. People on the top should also put their heads close together and forward. If there's five people in the group, put three on the bottom and two on the top. Right is kind of low, sitting down but he's rolled onto his hip. He's got his leg up when his arm over change line on F1 and I hadn't shoulders that through his arm and she has to come quite a bit forward. Not every family is up for this type of photo booth. Ryan, Jane and audience Alma taught and you're going to come on. She's made a nice lab for youngster to sit in. So you're sitting there, Tom. I might show you his legs face this way so that his head is he said It's not covering up by then. All the listing was only can you see my big cross legged in front of that slack there? He could come around the back like we did before. So that's another option and maybe we'll give that a try in a minute. Just sit cross-legged, become more into into there. That's it. Let's see how this looks terrible. Ali, put your legs out loud. It's like I'm doing now. Once one side and then lean into Tom because he's head was a bit far, far away from top, that's better. And then lean into him. That's perfect. We could also try again with Ali, might be around the back or do you come on back? And let's try a variation. Join if you swing your legs around to where my theta. So you say, well you stay on if one just swivel round. That's it. A bit more. If you don't mind me touching your feet, I'm going to lift your legs up and cross them over here coming down from the back. That's good. That's a very feminine type of pose, ******. When drawing this pose position, a dad or a man first, make sure it's rolled onto his head rather than sitting flat on his bum. Otherwise, the whole thing tends to fall apart and his body will be facing to the side and you won't be able to get the woman in under his arm. You'll probably have to lift his arm up to letter through anyway. The person at the back, in this case, Ali, should have come in close and lean right in. As with all of these poses on the ground, the camera position needs to be very low. Don't make the mistake of remaining standing. Part of why you might be wondering why I have to flash on my camera is because the light was fading a little when I wanted the family to look nice and bright photos. It's called fill-in flash. And I'll be doing a film about his shortly. For this pose, we're using this vow and quite often not like to use a chair or a low store of some kind. But this is about all we've got for the moment. So all is sitting on a vowel. Notice that James just kinda sat, sat down and just leaning on, leaning on Ali. And we've got all the heads are different heights. Heights again, I'd say Tom, come down and put your head in front of all his leg because that's the hardest leg. This one looks okay but to be honest, it hasn't quite worked where I wanted it. What bothers me is a position of James arm. It looks a bit awkward. Maybe the vowel was a little bit too high. This pose is based around the man or husband sitting on a low chair or stall and a woman seated sideways leaning on one of his legs. Other members of the family can be positioned around them at different heights. Now, here's a couple of studio examples which show what I was actually trying to achieve. Both women's positions here look good. But notice the way the woman at the top is sitting rolled onto her hip. Not that it matters in this case, but sitting like that can reduce the bump flattening out and looking larger than it is. No one wants that. By the way, if there's no baby or child in front of the man, get into close his legs a little, turn to the side and put 1 ft in front of the other. Otherwise there's a danger. You're going to be peering into his nether regions. Benches provide good opportunities is proposing to. But quite often when people do the pose friends or family group on a bench, they'll just sit him down like this. But there's much better ways you can do things. So let's try, right? You sit up, stand up, and sit on the arm of the bench facing me and put your feet on the bench. Okay. Tom, you get up. Stein up there, giant Newton come around and told me you're going to sit on the back. That's a giant perfect. Put one leg in front of the other. That normally it looks a little bit better as well. And you're going to sit this way with your feet up and your legs up. You Charles has a very tight so you need to pull them up. Now, the light is not very good here and I'm shooting against the sky. I wouldn't normally take a shot from this position, but we're talking about opposing here and not the lighting. So let's give it a try. Yeah, I like that. When using a bench gets someone to sit on the arm with another person seated slightly sideways on the bench, like Jane is here. People can sit on the back of the bench to maybe somebody else sideways like Ali, if there's room, taller people can go behind to by positioning people on different levels, it's much easier to get their heads at different heights. Try not to get one head directly above another if you can help it. Another thing you can do is have some people standing and some people who sit in all close together. And that can work well as long as you get, you get the heights right. So we've got railing against the tree. China sitting on her hip in-between, rise legs, leaning on his knee. Come bit louder. Jane. Lean into him. That's it. Well, I always in the back but it's quite far forward. Tom looks good, but he's nice to put maybe put your leg up on the other leg because you're covering up that. We've also got this leaf in a way which will pull it out. Come on the font a bit more than Thompson, because you're going to cover that up. That's it. That's it. That looks quite relaxed and natural. Join coming even lower. So I want to get your head even, even louder than it is now. So approachable. I'm out this way. That's it. Yeah. Right. And only come in a bit closer. Oh, yeah, I really love that one. You sort of why I've built up the bot so I won't go through it again. But what you didn't see was the fact that for each of these poses, I took four or five shots. So I can then choose the one with the best expressions. It's important you don't just take one photon. Quite often somebody blinks or it looks away. So give yourself the best chance of getting a great image. Also take one or two photos with a family are looking at each other rather than a camera that can also look great. So that's about it. I hope you enjoyed this film and found no sips. Useful. Posing can be quite difficult to remember. So it's probably best if you just take a few of your favorites and go out and practice those. I've also put together a set of images are some thumbnails that you can print off and take out with you wherever you go. And you'll find that link lower down on the page. So that's all for now. See you in the next film. 24. Individual natural and relaxed female poses: In this film, I want to demonstrate some relaxed and natural poses for women. One I wanted to try and avoid is the typical model. Model poses that you see in magazines, things like, things like this. A little bit too exaggerated. This film is going to be nice and relaxed photos that you can take your girlfriend or your mom or sister, or mem members of your family. Now, typically if you're just standing straight onto the camera, it doesn't really do much for you, for your subject. They're a bit flat-footed. Most of the time you want to turn people to the side. So that's what we're gonna do in this first pose. Lobbies got to lobby. Toby has a weight on the leg furthest away from the camera and she's bought her other leg in front of it. She's got her hands in their back pockets and so arms are behind it. Let's take a shot this way and see how it looks. Quite an elegant pose. This one, the hands in the back pocket is throws the shoulders back and puts the pasta, makes sure that the front leg comes across the other one. A slight variation on that pose standing in more or less the same position, put one hand on the hip and when the other hand when the hand food through the hair, I like to do that with my hair sometimes, but it doesn't quite have the same effect. Let's try this sharp. Turn slightly to the side, hand on the hip and hand through the hair. Make sure she doesn't throw the head too far back as a hand goes through her hair. In this next one is going to turn to the side a little bit of weight on the leg furthest away from the camera, actually on a folder arms. When when a woman has a weight on the leg furthest away from the camera, they can exaggerate it a little bit if A1, by pushing their bomb back. Not quite as much as that. Ignoring the popular belief that body language rules say they're crossing the arms is putting up a barrier. I think this pose looks quite good. Now, the turn sideways and crossed legs, which will help to slim down a subject. Now, despite what I said earlier on, in this pose, Toby is going to stand straight onto the camera. Not something you want to do for everybody, but it can work well sometimes. But you don't really want the model to be standing flat-footed. So she's put her hands in our pockets there. If you put your legs a little bit apart and then just move the hip over to one side. And then that creates a nice kind of photographers called an S shape, especially if she's just tilt your head that way you can see it's made a nice kind of shape. Let's take a picture of this. Actually, I just made a mistake there to create the S-shape. The head should be tilted slightly in the same direction as the hip, like in this photo. Makes sure that the legs are about shoulder length apart and try exaggerating the hip movement, but not too much. This pose is also great for teenagers who like to show a bit of attitude. For this next pose, we're going to turn Toyota way round. So she's got all my score back to us, kind of standing about 45 degrees away from the camera. And then looking back into the camera position, Let's give that a try. Don't turn their body too far around. Just about 30, 45 degrees. Otherwise you'll be craning your neck. It also helps here the toys hair to cover any increases in the neck that occur when turning their head around so far. So watch out for those. Remember that a subject wants to look good. Well, don't we all? Let's take a look at some sitting down poses. Toby is kind of old, rolled onto her hip, got one leg behind the other one. And she's got her arm over ni Let's take a shot here, see how it looks. Like she's got a croquet players behind it. If you can. You do need to have the Koch a plaza in the background. It's important that your subject roles onto her hip rather than sitting flat on her bum. Actually, I made a slight mistake here and allow me to Tucker front leg. So now it looks just like a stump. I should have asked her to swing the leg around a little so that we can see a foot in this pose TO is sitting down. He's more or less price in the camera. She's got one leg tuck behind a nation, you're gonna bring the other leg up. I put her arms around and then it's almost like giving myself a little cuddle. And I think it will look better if you tilt your head to one side. Let's take a shot there, see how it looks. It's only really had lower body that's turned to one side. She's twisted so that her head and shoulders are facing the camera. By the way, notice how I get down to eye level to take the seated poses. In this poem, he's told me it's turned completely to the side. And she's got one leg up. The nearest leg is brought up quite a bit higher than the other one. Arm out to the side. Now, I don't really like this hand here, so I think I'll ask her to just run it through the hair. As I say, as I take the shot, Let's see how that looks. This pose Definitely it looks better if one leg is always higher than the other. The hand through the hair doesn't matter. They look more of a model type pose. So just ask your subject to harder handle a lab it. If you're not so keen on that style, There's a nice feminine pose I like to use in the studio, but it's great for youngsters. He, a young female lying on nephron, the feet up at the back and cross them over. And rather than have the hands out to the front, just bring the hands up to the side of the face. Possibly even fold the arms. But I think if you bring your hands up to the side of the face, so it's quite nice. Make sure that like here, your subject is lying at an angle rather than straight. This pose works really well with young girls. But I feel to be honest, that toe, his boots is pointing this image slightly. The pose does look better with bare feet or at least much lighter footwear. Unfortunately, we run out of time in the park, lovers modelling first for the rest of the film. Now, we're going to try a few more poses. It's great if you can lean against something as well. It helps you to relax and put you into a relaxed kind of stance. So like love if you just lean against the post. He also understood if you maybe put your leg up on the wall or post or just cross your legs over. Probably easier. That's it. Maybe just fold your arms. Tellico lake palace, nice. Let's try that. This is a nice, easy, relaxed pose. Definitely looks better with one leg up on the wall or post or just crossed over like in this photo. So let's try another pose on a bench, rather than just sitting straight onto the camera. It can look good if you just if you just turn to the side and put your feet up on the bench, Let's try that. Hello, scrape. Notice our legs are different, different heights as well. Actually just bring your foot up slightly, but the hand should really look. The hand will probably feel better inside, inside your lab. I think you guys get a little bit so I can't see it from underneath. I could've asked larva to place her right arm along the length of the back of the bench. I think that would have looked good to bench has arms on the sides. You can try sitting. Just object on one of them. Again, turn to the side with a feet up on the bench, legs at different levels. I finally, for our last pose, a nice simple one looking straight on to the camera. Especially if your subject is quite slim when you do this. Because generally speaking, you normally turn, turn them to decide, but low as beautiful and slim. So I will give it a try. So that was just being one hand across. The other hand can come up maybe to the side and just tilt your head slightly the other way. That's quite nice, nice and relaxed. Let's give that a try. A final pose is another relax looking one. Variation on this would be, would have been to use the upper arm to maybe fiddle with her hair or necklace. So that's it on female posing. I hope you enjoyed those tips and found them useful. There's a crib sheet which has got every single pose which I've shown you lower down on the page. And you can download the PDF file and take it out with you and use it to practice. Bye for now. 25. Ideas for photographing children, 4-6 months old: Taking pictures with children isn't that difficult, but it can be quite hard to get photos. A lot of really great. There's all different types of problems. E.g. toddlers who won't stay still for a minute, or moody teenagers who have decided is uncalled to have their photo taken. Elizabeth here is six months old. And what I want to do is try and take some photos which are nice and simple. Nice light on her face at a nice, uncluttered background. Yes. Many parents put the child on their laptop if I just taken and because it's so close, it causes a cluttered type of background. I'm going to show you two or three ways. I've taken a specific type of shot. Now, one of the problems are going to have is once I put Elizabeth down, I want to work really quickly before she gets to fed up. As you can see, she's getting a little bit grumpy now. She didn't probably needs a feed, so I'm going to hand it back to her mom and explain the steps to you separately. Here we go. Come on in. Fatima me. Now this is a very specific type of shot, but it normally works great as long as they behave isn't a reasonable mood. The most important thing is where is the location? Where do we actually put the baby? It's no good putting her in the middle of the room because we need some nice light. Now, we could take her outside, but the sky is quite bright and she's been lying on our back and it could cause a discomfort looking up at the sky. So I like to use a window. Now the best type of window to use is a patio doors or French window that goes all the way down to the ground because we're going to be laying the baby on her back on the ground. If you haven't got this type of window, then just use a standard window but maybe raise the baby up a little bit, otherwise, their face will be a little bit too dark. Next you need to find a blanket, a nice cozy, warm type of leasee blanket, because the baby will be lying on this. Um, especially if you use a light color as well, that works best. Guide to undress the baby down to a nap Johnson the nappy. So she's got a bear a bear top that will normally look, look great. This is very important. We're going to lay it down on the blanket on her back. So she's going to be facing upwards, but a head is going to be towards the window and our feet are pointing into the room. That's very important because the light, we want the light to come from above if if we turn it the other way so her feet are towards the window, the light will be coming from underneath and that causes strain shadows on the face. Next, I'm going to take the blanket and just pull it over her nappy just to hide the nappy and make the picture look better. Now babies love this position. They can kick and move around and they're looking up at you and they're normally reasonably happy. I'm gonna be taking a picture from above. So I'm going to stand on a chair. Stay safely is obviously really important here. You have to make sure you've got a good strong chair or stall to stand on and keep your balance so that you make sure you don't fall. That's obviously really important. Now we come to the camera and its settings. And for this type of photo, it really doesn't matter whether you use a compact camera or an SLR. I'm going to be using a compact camera just to prove to you that it can be done. Now the first thing you want to do is to turn the flash off. That's because we want to use a natural light coming in from the window. Next you want to move the ISO up to about 400, maybe 100. Next you want to zoom in at all so you don't get the ground outside of the blanket inside the frame. You'll also want a half press the shutter, are waiting for the baby's great expression. Now, if you're not sure about any of those topics, ISO flash or half pressing the shutter. There are films on those subjects and there's a link to the films on this page. I'm gonna be taking quite a few photos. There's no point in just taking one shot and hoping for the best, take about a dozen photos and just wait for that great expression. Now, if all of this seems like a lot of messing around, it really is easy to do and you can get fantastic results. So let's give it a go. There she is. She's lying on the blanket. It's great if you can have a little toy next year to make a laugh. Or maybe the mom, she is, hello. Here's a birth. I see. Elizabeth. That's gorgeous. Look at that. That is a lovely photo and a baby's got a wonderful expression. Her mom absolutely loves it. Notice how I'm zoomed in slightly, so that's all I didn't get the ground outside of them blanket in the frame. One other thing, remember how I said about having a camera in landscape orientation? That's because quite often the babies put their arms out and if you have the camera the other way round, you're in danger of chopping off the arms or the hands and you don't want to do that. And now on to the next photo. And just like before, I'm going to be looking for the best possible light. There's no point in putting the baby in the middle of the room somewhere and just turn in a flash on. You'll just end up with a snapshot. So this time I'm going to open the back doors and use topside. And there's a link to a film on top shade lower down on this page. It's a great technique and will give us a beautiful light on the baby's face. We're going to lay the blanket down again, but this time put a couple of pillows underneath and the baby is going to be lying on a fun leaning on the pillows. Now, she needs to be right up to the front of the blanket so the head is raised up. And this is suitable for children from about four months old as soon as they can hold their head up. As far as the camera's concerned, you can use either a compact camera or an SLR. But I'm going to be using an SLR with a wide aperture to blur the background a little bit. Also, if you're using a light blanket like I've been doing, then you'll probably need to lighten up the photo and you can use exposure compensation for this, there's a link to that. Subjects are lower down on this page. In fact, that applies to the first film as well. Don't forget to turn your flash off. You need to get down quite low to about the baby's eye level, maybe just slightly higher. And just take loads of photos. Don't just take one shot. You're looking for the best photo with a great expression. Keep your finger on the shutter and wait, and wait until you see a great expression from the baby. Another good tip is to have the parent or parents next to you talking to the baby, trying to make me laugh. Okay. Let's see how we get on Isabelle. Yeah, I see. You have to take quite a lot of photons until you get a nice expression. Yeah. People. Yeah, that's a great photo. I love that, as does our mom. Notice how I've raised the camera angle a little bit in that final shot just to encompass a baby's head within the blanket and it separates her hair from the background. Anyway, that's all for now. I hope you enjoyed the tips more to come on taking pictures of children in future films. 26. Ideas for photographing children, 9-12 months old: In the previous film on taking pictures of children, showed you some tips for taking a couple of specific types of photos. This film is going to be a more general one. We just some various tips and tricks for taking great photos of children when they're sitting up or calling around. Here's Elizabeth again now. She's nine months old now. It isn't she gorgeous? She's actually a model for George Asda. That's the clothing launcher of Asda is one of our photos. Now, my priority is to get great light on her face and to have a nice uncluttered background and to get some great expressions bomber. So first of all, let's just talk about the light. We could go out in the garden. It's a little bit cold, so I'll try and take some indoors, I think. Now, especially if I can use the equivalent of top shade by just putting a by a window, maybe opening a dog and you get great light on her face. It's no good just to put her in the middle of a room and use flash. The next thing we want is an uncluttered background. And you don't want the baby on somebody else's lap where the distraction. So you also don't want, say the TV in the background or dirty plates are low, the toys scattered around. So we're looking for a nice, clean background and that will allow the photo to be a little bit more creative and not like a snapshot. Yes, we will. Going to talk about now this the settings of the camera. So let's just put this down for a moment. How by what settings I'm going to use on the camera? Well, first of all, I'm going to choose a medium type of lens. I don't want to use a wide angle as that will distort the baby's features a little bit. And I don't really want to use a large telephoto because that's gonna be hard to keep it, to keep the camera still and not shake it so to reduce movement blur. So I'm just, this is actually a nice simple prime lens. It doesn't even Zoom. And this is about 50, 50 millimeter lens. The next thing I'm gonna do is use aperture priority and keep the aperture to about F4. If she starts moving around a little bit, I'll keep it at F4. But if she's nice and still, I may change the aperture to F2, 0.8 to get more of a blurred background. If you're using a compact camera, then I suggest you use the portrait setting. And that will give you a wider aperture and allow the background to go a little bit blurry. Also, as we're gonna be shooting inside, I'm going to use an ISO of about four to 600 as well by window. That should be okay. So let's give it a go. Okay, Tessa, get some great lie. All I've done is I've just opened the door and Elizabeth is going to call about in this area here. Now, one very important point is to get down to the same level as the baby. You don't really want to be taken a photo from too far above the eye level. So let's have a go now. Okay. Far away. It's going to probably be calling towards me. She comes and she stopped. The great thing about this is she's got a lovely expression as she's coached coming towards me. And her dad is actually taken the film. And so she's, she's looking at him and feeling happy, Lovely expressions. The other thing we can try is taking Elizabeth in a high chair. And the advantage of this is we've got a nice background here. And so we can get rid of any distracting backgrounds. Now, the windows over there, so I'm going to turn it towards a lie. You can see you can watch, see the light change on a face. As I turn around. And I'm gonna go just over here and try getting a shot of her birth. That's nice. That's a nice look at the light on her face and notice how I've got nice catch lights in them. They're nice and sparkly. Another idea is to get a baby quite high up, maybe on a sofa, on a, on a table. But obviously you have to be really careful that she's not going to fall off. So you need somebody close by just in case. We've chosen a table here by window. So we've got some really lovely light and a nice clear background. One thing I forgot to mention before is that to get some really nice expressions in a baby, It's great to have a parent behind you or nearby, just trying to make them laugh. And we've got a mom down here All ready to make a laugh. Okay, Let's give it a try. Hopefully as your core towards these toys here. Okay. That was beautiful and mom was down there making a laugh and you can see the great expression. Let's hope I got that. One other thing I've been doing to get some of these great expressions is to half press the shutter and hold my finger there and wait for the lovely smile to materialize. Now there's more information about the half pressing the shutter lower down on this page, you'll find a link to the film. So what we're going to try now is to put Elizabeth on her dad's back, on his shoulders. Um, and it should make a laugh and we shouldn't get some great shots. Let's give that a try. Lawrence put on her shoulders and we got his worth points up and down a belongs. We've got a little arch of the back here and I'll just mute changing the angle so the arches around the head. And that will give us a nice frame within a frame. Elizabeth. She's not looking this way, but I'm waiting. Now. We've got our hand in her mouth and I usually prefer it when the baby doesn't have the hand in the mouth. So I'm going to take it out here. Probably start screaming. Who? Got a lovely smile. So that's about it. You'll notice I did take a lot of photos, but you do need to do that to get one or two really great photos. Also, I did vary the angle slightly to try and vary the shots as well. Some close ups, some of her whole body while she was crawling. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the film. That's all for now.