Transcripts
1. Introduction: I really like my photography to defy the expectations of what women are supposed to be. It's really through my poses. I use harsh lighting at times. You can take something that some people don't see as being pretty and really make it into something cool. My name is Jessica Kobeissi. I'm a portrait and fashion photographer from Detroit, Michigan. You may know me from my YouTube channel where I post photography challenges and tutorials. So in today's class, I'm going to be taking my nine years of photography experience and I'm going to be condensing it and breaking it down so that you don't have to spend nine years like I did. You're going to see how I plan my photo shoots. Then we're going to head outside and you're going to see how I photograph and work with a model. Then I'm going to be editing and retouching them. This class is really for any skill level. You could have just bought your first camera or you could have already done a hundred photo shoots. It's all about your creativity as a photographer and not so much your gear, so don't worry if you don't have the most brand new, expensive camera gear. Trust me, when I first started, I had none of that. I hope you leave this class knowing that you can take an unconventional location, make it look beautiful with posing, lighting, and whatever model you have. So follow along, grab a model. It could be your sister. It can be your best friend. Take some photos and then share your final pictures in the gallery below. I'm super excited to start the class. Let's get started.
2. Getting Started: Hi, welcome to my class. I'm super excited that you're taking this course. Let me tell you guys a little bit about myself. I actually started out as a graphic designer and I never thought I would do photography. It's not something that I really thought about. But as a designer, I love to edit and retouch photos. But I knew that if I wanted to continue doing that, then I would have to take my own pictures because I really want to own everything. I want to go out, take a picture and say, this is my entire piece of work. So in doing that, I bought my first camera and I didn't have a lot of help when I was first starting. YouTube wasn't what it was today. There weren't many tutorials or a lot of classes online like this class to help me get started in photography. So I want to make this class something that I wish existed when I first started, and I really hope you guys love it. Here's the plan for today. We're going to plan the photo shoot. I'm going tell you how I do all that; outfits, location, and then we're going to actually be outside shooting. I'm going to be showing you through the use of a professional model, how I pose people, how I work with my photos, and I'm going to show you how I choose the backgrounds for each outfit, how I work with the sunlight, if there is any, and I'm going to be picking my favorites. I'm going to to show you how I choose my favorites, how I handle the selection process, because there's certain things I look for when I'm choosing my final photos. Then from there, I'll do the retouching. I'll show you how I skin retouch and then add my pretty colors to make the photo even nicer. I know a lot of photographers feel like they're not good enough, they don't have nice locations, they don't have professional models, but I literally started with none of that. I want to make this class really approachable, very easy to learn. Don't feel like you need all of the newest gear. Don't feel like you need the entire world of agency models to be able to do what I do. You absolutely do not. My hope is that you put aside all your fear and you really give this class a chance and you give yourself a chance. What you can do as my student in this class is you can watch and take things that you like from my shoot and apply it to your own photo shoot which leads me to my next point, actually going outside and taking pictures. That's the most important thing. I think a lot of us just watch videos online, watch tutorials, and don't actually apply the things that they learned. I want you to take at least one element or one pose that you see and try to recreate it or apply it to your photo shoot. After you finish retouching and editing your photo, share with us in the project gallery. I'm so excited. I cannot wait to see what you guys come up with. With that being said, let's talk about how to plan your next photo shoot.
3. Planning Your Shoot: When it comes to planning, there is a few things that you absolutely need to have planned. Look, I'm all about day of just wing it, but for some photo shoots, going in with the plan is the best course of action. Some things I like to plan for my photo shoots are: location, time, model, and at least one or two outfits. When I'm looking at locations, I'm not looking at the entirety of the location. But the average person would be like, there is a window there or there is a sign. If you're shooting on a 50, something that's more of a portrait prime lens, then you're not going to have to worry about that. It's going to be such a small section. It's not really going to show. So I don't worry about if the whole location is maybe empty or if the entire location is super pretty. I'm really focused on a small section that I can use. Maybe you see a parking lot that has a really nice flower, grab an 85, even a portrait style lens. It's so close, you're not even going to see the cars in the back and then the ordering menu if you want to get Starbucks after. No one is going to see that. The time of day is probably going to determine how your photo shoot goes. I've planned my shoots around the worst time of day not even realizing it because when I first started photography, I wasn't even paying attention to what time it was or how high the sun was. It's something that I never thought about. But now as I'm getting more and more experienced, I'm noticing that the type of light that you shoot in really helps you define your style as a photographer. For instance, if you're shooting high noon, 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM, it's going to be super strong, harsh light. Maybe that's not your style. Maybe you want something softer, so maybe more of a golden hour sunset time would better fit your photography style. Those are some things that I would inquire you guys to think about. What type of light is going to match with this type of photos I want to take. First I've got to say, if it's cloudy, it doesn't matter what time of day you go out there because you're going to get that diffused light and it is what it is in terms of lighting for a cloudy day. If it's a sunny day, then I usually plan my photo shoots either really early in the morning. I'll be waking up at six in the morning to get a picture, which doesn't happen a lot because you guys know I like to sleep, so either super early in the morning or a little bit near sunset time. If the sun sets at 6:00 PM, I would say, show up to the location 4.30, start prepping everything, see where you want to shoot, and then as the sun goes down, then you have time to get those nice, soft light lit photos, which are some of my favorites actually. It's like shooting in studio for free. Really, plan your shoot around sunset time and you will not be disappointed. Let's say you got your location, you got the outfit, but you need a model. This is something that I get asked so often. How do you find your models? I don't live in a place that has an agency. There's no models where I'm at. I've also been there. I started out shooting with people who I just found on Facebook that I thought had really interesting faces, so I would just send them a message and ask them if they would sit in for a portrait and a lot of the times they say yes. A lot of people really do want their photo taken. I think they find it flattering that you want to photograph them. It's a free picture and it allows you to get a lot of good practice in. One pro tip I would give you is if you're going to a place that you don't know anybody in, I've traveled to states where I don't know anybody, so what I usually do is I'll look up the Instagrams of other photographers in that city, and the photographers will have already worked with a bunch of makeup artists, hairstylists. What I'll do is I'll look at who they have tagged in the photo, what models they've worked with, and then it's like a rabbit hole. You just keep going and seeing who other people have worked with, and then you get a sense of the creative community. From there I choose the models that I want to work with, and I will either send them a DM, I'll email them. If you're wondering what I DM them, it's something along the lines of, "Hi, my name is Jessica. I'm a photographer from Detroit. I'm going to be in Seattle for a week and I'd love to work with you. Here's my portfolio. Let me know if you need me to go through your agent. I can also do that. Let me know if we can set something up." One thing I do is when I book a model, I'll go through her Instagram and I'll see if she has on any special type of dresses, if she is wearing a certain type of shoe, I'll screenshot that and I'll send it to her and I'll be like, "Oh, can you bring this for the photo shoot." So this is going to give you a specific look. Maybe she is wearing an outfit that you want to shoot and you think it's really cute or you have something to pair with it. That's also something that I like to do. Then I see how they have their hairstyle in their Instagram photos. Sometimes they'll do their hair curly and I'll send them a screenshot and be like, "Hey, can you do your hair exactly how you did it in this picture?" It gives them an idea on how to style themselves. As far as styling goes, that is something that I've struggled with in photography so much. Just recently, I began working with a stylist for most of my shoots. But usually, I would say 90 percent of the time, I am styling my own photo shoots. I got to know what to put the girls in. A lot of the times the models don't bring anything. They literally come with nothing, which is fine. But you as a photographer, have to come prepared. What I would recommend, having a kit of certain items. What you will need is a plain white top, a button up. You can literally go to any thrift store and get this for $5. They have a bunch of white plain button ups. I would get some shorts, maybe some black trousers, maybe some white trousers. Just a couple of plain black tops, and maybe some bralettes that you can give the girls also, and then what I also have in my kit are accessories. Almost all the models ask me, "Where do you get your earrings from?" I'm always on websites like Zara. I'm always finding cute costume jewelry to put on the girls. I find custom-made things on Etsy to include in my photo shoots so having a kit of just a couple of accessories, necklaces that you can just quickly put on, even though you're using the same items over and over again, it is not a big deal. I know I just said a lot of stuff about the styling and the makeup and the hair styles, you think I did all of this when I first started? No. It's not realistic for a lot of photographers. I totally understand if you're someone who just got their first camera and you want to go out and take pictures and practice as much as possible, that's cool too. You can totally do that. Grab someone who is maybe a friend or maybe your brother or sister and just go out and practice. It took me three years to even build my portfolio up, to be able to work with agency models, so don't feel discouraged if right away you want to start out small. Here's what I got planned for you today. First, we got my friend and model as you see coming in. We're going to start off and our first location it's a textured wall. It's actually somebody's building, and then it's the side of the building. It's totally random. When you see it, you're going to be like, "Oh, okay. This might work." The pictures are going to be awesome. We're starting with that. I paired it with an outfit, like these velvet pants. I think shooting something a little bit more edgy and colorful because the textured wall is white and very plain, I wanted an outfit that is a little bit brighter and bolder to pop off from there. That's the first outfit and location. Also, one thing to note is that I chose the first location to be the textured wall a little bit earlier in the day because we were probably going to get harsher light and I wanted the textured wall to really pop with that bright sunlight and shooting in direct sun and harsh light may not be easy, so I want to show you how I did that. For the second location, we're shooting it during golden hour. I purposely chose the park during golden hour because I want that nice soft light, and the outfit is going to be a beautiful pink dress with some red tones. I feel like the soft light is really going to compliment the dress and also the color of the dress, it having pink and red tones is going to be complimentary to the greenery in the back of the park. Now that you know what I'm going to be doing, I want you to plan your photo shoot concept. But before that, let me pack up my camera bag and show you all the equipment that I'm going to be using.
4. Gathering Your Gear: My go-to camera setup, I use the 5D Mark IV, and then I pair it with a 24-70 lens. This is 2.8. It's an L-series lens. This is one of my favorite lenses to use. It gets me those fashion editorial type shots. I can get really wide and low angles with this fairly well because it captures a lot of that background, and if I want to, I can also zoom in, and then I can get a head shot for the model that I'm working with. So this is super versatile. The only con to this lens is that it is kind of on the heavier side but it's okay. I'll do it. It's worth it. The next lens that I bring with me to almost every photoshoot, this is the lens that I started out with. one of my favorites of all time, it's the 51.4 super lightweight. You can take it with you traveling. It's perfect for portraits. You can also get full body with this one, so definitely I always have these both in my bag. If you're first starting out and you don't have a huge budget like trust me you guys think I have the money to spend on lenses, I didn't. I bought this lens. You can buy it used online for much cheaper. It's super affordable for any photographer. I use these lenses to shoot mostly in natural light. It's my favorite way to shoot. I started out shooting a natural light mostly because I just couldn't afford any type of external lighting. Those stripes can be very expensive. Also just because I wanted to learn how to shoot in all different types of light, I had so much fun going outside, shooting in direct sun, back light, side light, and it truly is a challenge to learn natural lighting because you cannot control your environment and you really learn to work with different textures, you work around people watching you shoot, so you just gain confidence as a photographer by working outside. It's a lot of fun for me. It definitely is a challenge, so I would recommend you definitely start out by shooting in natural light. Learn to really get the best photo while not having too much control. If you do want a little bit more control while shooting outside, you can always introduce a reflector. They're very inexpensive, and they're easy to use. I don't have anyone to help me with this photoshoots, so you're going to see me using this reflector by myself. This huge reflector, if I can hold it, you guys can hold it. You don't need a whole team. You don't need 15 assistants. You, the reflector, the model, you're good to go. You're going to get a nice shot. What I used to hold on my camera gear? I actually have this camera bag. I bought it from Amazon. It did not cost a lot out. Probably under $100 to be honest with you. Probably cheaper than that. The thing I loved most about it is that it zips from the back. This is the main feature that I use when I look for a good camera bag, does it zip from the back. If it's zipping from the front, I'm not going to get it, because I'm not trying to get robbed. This is really safe to hold your camera gear. You just put your camera gear in the back and then you zip it up, and it's not accessible from the front, so someone can just open it up and take it while you're on a stroll if there's something. So it doesn't have to be an expensive camera bag. Now I'm going to pack all this up, literally the two items that I have, and I'll meet you at the photoshoot with Azizi.
5. Shooting: Street Style: Today, we're at this textured wall and I know it looks ugly, but that's the exact reason why we're here. It's about taking something that's unconventionally pretty and making it look beautiful in pictures, using lighting, posing, and a direction as a photographer. Today, we have my beautiful friend and model, Azizi. Hi. She came all the way from LA, and I'm going to show you how I use posing, lighting, and this really ugly wall to get some amazing photos. We're going to be using the usual setup. I have my 5D Mark IV with my 24-70 lens. Now, I'm using this lens in specific because I can get some really wide shots, get a lot of that scenery, the background, and it has a little bit of distortion, which I actually like for this. It gives that nice fashion vibe for this. Then if I want to get a portrait, if I change up my mind, if I wanted to get a head shot for Azizi, which is very common with models. They do want head shots. I can also do that with this lens without having to change it. It's very versatile and we have a lot of options. I'll try to adjust my settings, but you never get your settings right the first time. So I'll try to get my settings right. My ISO right now is at 100. Of course, it's overexposed, no matter how long I've been doing photography. Right, so I'm going to 5.0 right now. Maybe I'll go down a stop again. This looks like really good exposure to me. We're at 5.6 for the aperture, 400 shutter speed, ISO staying at 100, the sun just came out. Let's get some really cool portraits while the sun's out, because I don't think this is going to last. Maybe for this one you can have your hands right here. Yeah. Lift your chin up a little bit. We have some nice sidelight coming in, which is making it super interesting. Can you take a step back? I'm separating her a little bit from the background, just to create a little bit more distance. Hunch your shoulders a little, roll your shoulders forward, like that. Yeah. At first glance you might look at some of these pictures and think they're too dark, but don't worry, it's done purposely because you want to save those details. Now the sun's back out, which means we have to change our settings again. It's a constant process of changing your settings and what you can do is just toggle your F-stop. Make it smaller to compensate for the sun, and I'm doing sidelight because it's very interesting. I actually love sidelight. It gives something different to the photo. We're just starting off with some portraits because Azizi actually needs some portraits for her portfolio. She was saying, "I need new head shots." I'm like, "l will get you a head shot, Azizi." You know what? Let's take this opportunity to use some full body. Show off the models outfit. A lot of models looks to show off their legs and make them look really tall. Let's do something that makes you look super tall, let's have you up against this wall. We want to elongate your legs. Maybe have your leg out towards my lens. What I have the models do is bring their leg out towards my lens, and then I'll get really low. How tall are you, Azizi? 5'8. Okay, today you're going to be six foot. You're going to be six foot. Let's take some, concentrate here. Great job, and let's have an arm up right there, back towards the wall. Let's have you even leaning up against the wall. Yeah. Right there. Actually, what I want to show is bring your leg in towards the [inaudible] , just standing. This is the shot that we get. Let me show you guys. Just standing up against the wall, versus now bring your leg out and bring your arm up a little bit, it makes her look taller, and then also getting that low angle right here. Then let's do some of you sitting, kneeling down, how about we do that. Let's have you right here, in this beautiful area here. Sometimes I'll have the model just toss their hair to the back so we show their neck. The neck creates shape in the photo. Actually, can you show them how it would look like if you had your hair completely to the front. Have it all the way, you lose that shape, especially for a portrait. If you're going to be really close in, which I don't mind a lot of the time, but sometimes they want the neck to show, so just toss that hair to the back. Again, that's creating some shape. Yeah, love that, to the side. These are really great. Can you do that pose one more time? Lift your chin up a little bit. Yeah, those are great. Love this. Again, we're literally shooting in very harsh light right now. A lot of people would not do this, but I honestly hope that you guys will give it a chance because you get some really cool photos. Some of my favorite shots are the walking shots, so we're going to do those. How much do you love doing those? On uneven surfaces. I always tell my models, the sillier that you look the better the photo comes out. For this one, you know my shutter speed is going to be really high because we have a moving object, so my shutter right now is at 640. If I need to, I will just toggle that but as of now we're good, the aperture is at 10, ISO has been the same 100. Would not change it on the sunny day, so let's start. Come a little closer to my lens. Yeah, those are great. Great job. Love that. Yeah, I love the hand in your pocket, come even closer to my lens. Yeah, and I don't even mind [inaudible] the hair is in your face. I love when the hair is in the face, I think it's so editorial and funky. Yes. Love these. Come even closer to my lens. Great job. Now we have some shape. Okay, these are really great. Lift the chin up a little bit. Yeah. That's really great. Yeah. Right there. Keep your hands in the back like that, you're standing right here in the middle. Let me shoot through the leaves. I don't really do that a lot. I don't shoot through stuff. It looks too pretty, you know what I mean? I need it to look uglier. Maybe have one hand in your pocket, and then lean forward even. Yeah. Lean in and your chin is up. Yeah. Just a little bit, very slightly, like this. Yeah. I'll show the model sometimes to show her, "Hey, I love this pose." I love that pose. But maybe you have your hand like this. Your hand is like this, and maybe like down, yeah. Yeah. Maybe on your other knee too. Yeah. Let's do that. Okay. So showing the model the photos also helpful. Do you like seeing your photo? Oh, yeah, for sure. Seeing how you're doing. It helps so much. Right, it does help. The sun has been going in and out today. What a challenge. But luckily I'm using manual settings and I can just adjust. If you're at home and you don't use manual settings, you can also use aperture priority. But I would suggest to learn at least the basics of manual because then you have more control over your image. I started out shooting in auto settings on JPEG, so I just recommend shooting raw, and then shooting manual, because you have more control. Beautiful. Oh, these are so pretty. Now what we're going to do is move on to the last location, and I'm going to show you how I get those sitting down shots to make Azizi really look like she's 6'5. Even though she's not. Okay. So let's head over there. I love this little area here. How I look for locations is I'm looking for textures. I'm looking for weird little items, if you will, like this thing right here, this bar, this little texture, we also have this. So I like this texture here in contrast to this white. So I'm going to have Azizi sit down and we're going to be doing some sitting down shots. I think maybe a lot of people would just take the photo like this. With me I like to make sure the models look elongated and one way you can do that is by shooting a little bit low angle. I have her legs towards the lens. We're going to have actually one leg, so maybe the leg that's closer to my lens, and then I will literally try to be as low as possible. I want you leaning back against the wall. Then I like how you had your leg before, this other leg. Yeah, like that, but in this I want just one leg towards my lens. Yeah, those are great. Then having her in the same pose, I'll just take it overhead, but I'll have her leg out even more. Right there. Love these. Can we create some more shape right there? Yeah, that's beautiful. Great job. Lean back just a little bit. Yeah. I think I prefer Azizi leaning back for these because it helps elongate your body even more. I'm going to stand right in front of you and then do some more shots like that. Sometimes what I'll do is I'll look at what's happening in camera, and I'll literally just point so that I can construct the photo as I see it. I feel like we're at a game of Twister, you know, that Twister board, I'm over here like this. Yeah, right there. I love that. Let's add a little bit of hair, and I don't mind a little bit of hair, in your face a little. Yeah. Again, I'm literally checking every other picture, making sure the exposure's good. Making sure the photo looks right. A mistake people make is they take a bunch of photos and then they're not paying attention to how they come out. Okay, lets look up. One more. Yeah, those are great, stay right there. Lift your chin up just a little bit. I could be here all day taking picture of you to be honest with you. I honestly think that we got it. Azizi's been amazing, we got a variety of photos, we got full body, we got portraits, we got sitting down shots. I think that is so important when doing a photo shoot, especially with a model who's building her book, to make sure you get a variety of photos for both you, and her, and your portfolio. We're all set here and we're going to go to the second location.
6. Shooting: Sunset: For the second location, it's all about magic hour. The sun is actually setting right now. I like to shoot about an hour before sunset. We get the nice light. The light is very soft as the sun is setting. You find yourself in a place like a park where there's a lot of open space and there's no buildings blocking the sun, you get some gorgeous light. Today, we have Azizi in this dress. It's very soft, very pretty, and it's going to go great with this location. I know wherever you are in the world, you have a park. It may not be super fancy. It may only have one swing set, but you got to park where you're at. That's a photo shoot location. I'm going to show you guys how I tackle a location like this and get the best shots possible. When I'm shooting with professional models, I'm looking to shoot three things: a head shot, full body, and then a waist up shot. Let's just start with one of you just standing. Let's do full body. Since I got my 24-70 lens here, we're going to get a nice wide shot. We're going to show the dress off, we're going to show the shoes off. Let's do that. I'm starting off pretty wide. I'm literally shooting at 24-millimeter. Then, as far as my settings go, we're at 2.8, and then my shutter speed is 640. My ISO right now is still at 100. We might have to bump that up sooner or later. It's getting dark and magic hour goes by so fast. It's not golden for long, if you know what I mean. I love that. Very simple. I love the very simple standing ones. Do one where you're just standing and then you're showing the boot off a little bit. Lift their chin up a little. Right there. Love those simple portraits. I love the little wisps on your face. If you can bring them on your face even more. Those are great. Great job. Movement shots. We'll have Azizi maybe walk back and forth. We'll get some of that movement. Sometimes I'll stay in one spot when I'm shooting these, but sometimes I'll actually walk with the model. I'll actually be walking with you today. I'm going to be following you. I'm your paparazzi. Let's show you how I do this. Let's start right here, and then I'm literally just going to follow you as you're walking. I want you to look at me or you can look towards this lake. What I like to do is give the models a certain direction to look at by giving them a certain thing to look at. I see a garbage can right there. Just look at the garbage can as your point of reference. Giving them something specific to look at is probably better than me just saying look over there, right? Yeah. Let's have you walking. I'm going to follow you as you're doing that and looking here. I'm shooting really wide, I'm capturing a lot of this. Let's have you move back. But can you start over here? I want you to turn around and then walk towards me. I'll just walk with the model. I'll have you back up. Looking here and then walk back towards me. Lift your chin up a little. There's no better way to get an action shot than actually moving with the model. We got all of those. Those look awesome. I always take a second to make sure the movement shots come out and there's at least one or two that I really like. I love this one. Let's do that one, but maybe open your lips a little bit. Yeah. For sure. Let's do that. I'm out of breath. Do you see how photography is exercise, which is great. Lift your chin up a little and walk forwards. Looking here, and then walk forwards. Let's do some of you sitting because I want to do a variation for you. For this next shot, we're going to have Azizi, show off the boots, show off the rest of the outfit. She doesn't have to be completely sitting. It can be just her sitting like this. It's creating some really nice shape. Then, we want to make sure that her other knee is not completely covered because then we lose the shape. Something like that. Even just barely. Of course, as I'm taking pictures, I see what's working, what's not. Maybe let's see the other knee, what we can do with that. Bring it on maybe that way. Can you do the? See, this is one thing as a photographer, you have to just refine, make adjustments until you see what you like. Don't just have the model pose and that be the end of it. It's all about giving direction. I love this. See, this is better because now we see the shape of your knee, whereas before it was just like a blob. Actually, I'm going to get an overhead view of this because the background was not that great. We're seeing a lot of the cars in the back. By just moving up, I can change the look of the photo and what is included in the background. Lean back just a little bit. Just your butt. Yeah, like that. Then move forward. Yeah, right there. Let me move back. I'm going to treat this like it's a 70-millimeter lens right now. I'm actually at 60-millimeter. I want a little bit of bokeh in there. These are looking so pretty. Those are great. Good job. We have some nice light. There's a lot of shape, beautiful colors. The nice boots. [inaudible] your elbow In this way. Yes. I love this too. Stay right there. Now, what we're going to do is, I want to go to this tree and we can do some photos with the tree. You can flutter out the dress, have fun with it. Cool. These are going to be full body? Yes. I love this. The light, little bit tricky, might bring in a reflector for this one because I feel like if we bounce back some of that light from the sun that's right behind you, it'll fill some of those dark shadows. We have a couple of different sides. There's a silver side. I also want to try the white side, but let's see how this looks right now. I like the silver actually, it's bringing back a lot of that light. I know you may not have anyone to help you hold the reflector, I sure don't. So I'm going to be holding it by myself, which I usually do. I mean, I don't have an assistant. I really don't. People are like, "Oh, I'll hold your reflector." I'm like, "No, I'd rather suffer alone." So I have a technique on holding a reflector. I do one of these and then I can just shoot with the other arm. So that's what we're going to do today. It brings back a lot of light, as you can see right there, which is going to make a huge difference, and pose. Actually, let me show you guys the difference. I'm going to take a photo with no reflector and then this is a photo with the reflector. Stay right there. I know it gets really heavy, but that's okay because this is what we do to get the shot. So what I would do too, is try to get a really nice portrait with this. So I'm going to set up my shot, and then let's do something in the middle, to the side a little. Yeah, right Right. Perfect. Wow, so pretty. Bring your shoulder in, even more. I'm placing my camera on the reflector too, and then I'll have my foot holding the bottom of the reflector. Look at all this stuff. I didn't get one picture. Bring your head out a little, chin up, chin down now. We just do a couple of variations. I want you to just keep moving here, yeah. Facing me. The last few shots, let's go over there. I want to switch to my 50, 1.4. We'll do a couple of portraits. So let's start out at 1.4 for the f-stop and see what we got, see what we got to work with. Let's have you in there. Let's have you in here, yeah. Then I'll do some right here. If I let it go and then it hits you in the face, we don't want that. Let me have you right here. Let's have you just in-between the leaves, we can set it up like this. Right now my shutter is 800, my f-stop is at 1.4. That's the widest it gets. My ISO, I actually bumped it up to 250 because the sun is setting and it sets pretty fast, doesn't wait for anybody, so always adjust your settings while you're shooting. Then for these portraits, I'm having some leaves in the foreground. I might actually go and shoot in-between them too, depending on what kind of light we get. Maybe I'll actually shoot right here. Yeah, this could be really pretty. How about you looking straight ahead. Have your hand in there. Stay right here, this is beautiful. Stay right here. I want to get more of that outfit in this. Lift your chin up, part your lips. The last one, we're going to maybe go to that tree. So we're switching back to the 24. Let me take a test shot to see how the light is because the sun is going down right now and the light has changed. It's actually a lot darker right now. Okay, we got the right settings here. We're at 3.5, 800 shutter speed and the ISO is at 640. So the ISO's going up. It's increasing right now. Okay, so let's do that. This one will be a little tricky because we're essentially shooting back light right now. So you really want to make sure your settings are focused on exposing for the model's face and some of the sky. You're not going to get the sky fully exposed without an external light or maybe a reflector. Maybe I'll actually bring in a reflector real quick for this one. Let me see. Yeah, this is good. So now I can adjust my settings to the reflector helping me out basically. Okay, right here. Even some of you just standing there, yeah. Then some movement shots. Fluttering the dress out. Like walking up to my lens, walking a little bit closer to the reflector. There we go. Right here is where the reflector's hitting really well. Yeah, right here. Stay in this area. There we go. Yeah, love that pose where you were doing something like that. I love that. Let's stay on that pose. Let's do it again. Looking here. Oh, beautiful. Let's do that pose one more time. So if I really like a pose, I'll have the model stay in it, and I'll take a couple shots of it and then we'll just add in little things to it. I'll show you how I do that. So Azizi, go back to that pose where you're like. Yeah, like that. So this is the pose right now. We've got the reflector. Stay in that pose, don't move. I just want you to take your right arm and then grab your dress, show off your boot a little bit more. Bring your dress up. Pull it up a little bit more, yeah, right there just to show the shoes a little bit more. Then we're going to take the photo again. Still the same pose, but we just added something different to it. Looking here. Walking up to me and walking back. Yeah, love that. Walk back. All right, so we wrapped up the photo shoot. I did a variety of shots. We did portraits. We did full body. We were off in the trees. Azizi almost fell into the pond. Luckily, she didn't. I would say, successful photo shoot. You did an amazing job. Thank you. Always give it up for the models because without the models, we wouldn't have pictures. So, appreciate Azizi being the model for today. Now, we're going to head on over to my computer and then edit these pictures, make them even prettier, and I'll show you exactly how I do that.
7. Making Selects: Now, I already went through and favorited some photos so I want to show you those ones. I'm going to tell you about the things that I look for at least in terms of posing, lighting, what is the best picture? I got my hard drive here with my photos in them. I'm going to upload them to Lightroom so we can take a look. Now, I call my photos, which basically means I go through and then I select my top favorites. What I usually do is I start out by going through each picture. Then what I'll do is if I like a photo, I'll stop and then I'll press a one through a five to basically just rate it. If I really like the photo, I'll give it a five. If I'm not crazy about it, maybe I'll give it a one or two or I just won't rate it at all. What this does is then allow me to filter out at the very end all of my favorite photos so that I'm only looking at my five-star photos. Let me show you guys, this one I love, definitely giving this one. Actually, not that I'm looking at it. At first glance I liked it, but then if I'm zooming in here, you can see her hands are awkwardly placed, not the best placement. I think I can find something better. I'm actually maybe going to do a three rating. A lot of the times what you can do is zoom in and crop these. So I'll get back to this picture. This one has potential, but I can probably find better. Let's go through some more of these. This one I like, the exposure is good. Just a tiny bit dark. I think the sun was coming in a little harsh on this one. Then the hand placement for some of these, I'm not crazy about. Sometimes when you're in the middle of a photo shoot, you really don't pay attention to a small detail like the hand placement and so that's something that you notice when you put them in Lightroom and you're like, did I not notice that she's wearing a hair tie for 2,000 pictures. Yeah, we've all been there, we've all done it. It's okay, guys. Just Photoshop it out. Let me show you some other ones. Let me show you between these two because it's literally the difference of a head tilts. This one, her head is a little bit down. This one her head is up. I chose the one where her chin is up a little bit more just because we see a little bit more light in her eyes because you have that harsh light coming in. Also, if you notice between these two pictures, this sliver of shape in her neck, that stuff counts for me. I like to have the shape in the neck. It adds to the photo. So little things like that, what shapes are showing and what body parts are being covered, basically. Let's go through some more of these. This was nice. I feel like if I cropped it, it could be really pretty as a headshot. Because I am trying to get Azizi a headshot. I'm trying to get her a nice waist upshot and a full body. Those are things that I look for when I'm calling photos. I need at least three of those pictures, basically. Let me show you, this one, I love. I wish her fingers maybe were out a little bit more, maybe like this. The knuckles can look weird and blocky in the photo, but your picture is never going to be perfect. So you got to give yourself some credit also. You just went out, you did a photoshoot. Not every photo is going to be perfect. It's okay. These ones, I love. This one got a five-star. One of my favorites. I honestly find that when the models are doing a pose for the first time, like when we switch up the area that we're shooting and I ask them, okay, can you just stand up against the wall? The first pose or the first photo that I get to them is always amazing. It's killer because it's the first pose. They're not really thinking about it. Then the poses after that are not bad, but I feel like when people aren't overthinking their pose, they do a better job. As easy killed it though. Look at all of these five-star pictures. It's going to take me awhile to get through these. This one is my absolute favorite. I love the shape with the hand being mid-movement. It shows like she was in the middle of doing something. I love that her leg is extended. It's making her look elongated. She has her hand and her pocket. There's movement from the shirt. I mean, the outfit shows, her full body is showing, and it's a little dark, but nothing that we can't fix in postprocessing. Let me move on to the ones of her sitting down. This one, I love. It's a nice side profile. I'm going to have to adjust this one in terms of the perspective, but I really love that it's a complete side profile. Her eyes are looking away. It's very interesting. You don't always have to pick photos that the model is looking at the camera. I chose this one. I four-star this one. I like it, even though, again, it's that harsh light. It's very interesting and this could totally be your style as a photographer. Maybe you like more harsh light in your photos and that's totally fine. This is something that can help you define your style. Let me show you some photos from the pink dress that I chose and ones that they didn't get a rose. Did you guys watch the Bachelor? Let me go through the action shot once because a lot of people don't see those. This is when Azizi was just modeling and I was asking her to give me a variety of poses. This one didn't make the cut because her eyes were closed. Every photographer has 5,000 pictures like this. This one, I love. Her hand placement is so pretty such a soft-looking photo. I don't even mind that the elbows are cut off. In some instances, you can get away with it. It adds interest to the photo. This one is probably going up on the Gram, on Instagram. Then let me show you the ones we took in the tree with the 50, 1.4 lens because that portrait lens, it worked beautifully. These are how the photos look. This one's gorgeous. I wish I would have gotten more of her shoulder included in this one. I gave it four stars for that. This one's also gorgeous. I wish Azizi was just looking at the camera. Let me see if we took any of her looking at the camera. This one. Then her hand is in the shot. You just got to work with what you've got. You're not always going to have a perfect photo shoot. I've had photoshoots where I only liked one or two of the pictures. That's okay. Just consider it practice. You can always find a photo to add to your portfolio. Choosing the final photo is really hard. Between all of these, do I want an action shot? Do I want a waist up? Do I just want a portrait. The way that I was thinking about it is, for this strawberry dress, I really wanted to show the dress because it's so beautiful. So I wanted a shot that show at least 50 or 60 percent of it. So I ended up choosing between this one. Then I had this portrait and this one. So we have the top three. I was considering the hand placement. This one, the hand wasn't showing, so I bumped that one out of the race and then we ended up with this one and then this one. I'll show you how it looks side-by-side. Between these two, I ended up going with photo on the right. I really liked her arm placement. I liked that it showed a little bit more of the dress and more of the water. So that's my final choice for the pink dress. Then let's go on over to the first outfit. For the first outfit, I was picking between a full body shot that showed off the outfit with a lot of shape and then a beautiful portrait. I love portraits, so I really wanted to choose the portrait, but the outfit was really nice, and I love the texture on the wall. So I went with the photo on the left where the whole outfit's showing its low angle. So I just feel like it gave more insight on the environment that it was shot in and it was going to be really nice for Azizi's portfolio. The selection process is never easy. It can take me hours to choose the final photos that I want to retouch and edit and you really want to make sure you take your time and you don't rush choosing your final photos because you have to take it into Photoshop, retouch, edit it. So you want to make sure the photo that you selects represents you as a photographer, represents your style. But we have our final selects for each outfit. So let's get started.
8. Retouching: Street Style: Now we're going to begin retouching. First thing, I have my handy-dandy tablet. This a Wacom Intuos tablet. It's very affordable. I've had this for a few years now, it's beat up. I would definitely recommend this for skin retouching. It's easier to retouch skin using a pen. It's like you're drawing, and as you saw previously, we called and selected our final photos using Lightroom. I'm just going to add a very light preset for my first photo and then bring it into Photoshop, and that's where I'll show you how I skin-retouch and then I add colors. Let's start with the preset that I'm going to use. It's one that I custom-made. It's very simple. I'll show you how it looks. I call them bases for my photo. I don't rely on presets, so I'm not just going to put this preset and that'll be the end of it, I like to just add the base and then bring it into Photoshop and then add everything else. We're going to add this space. Let me show you a before and after. That's before, that's after, and then zoomed in. That's before, that's after, very, very subtle. It pops out as this jacket a little bit more and then it has a bit of contrast, I just added that and I'm going to bring it into Photoshop. I'm going to right-click and then select "Edit in", and then "Edit in Adobe Photoshop 2020" where we're going to get started skin-retouching this photo. I like to use a technique called frequency separation. For those who are not familiar, you've never heard of this before, it's just a way to reach the skin where it basically separates your image into two layers, you have a layer of texture and then you have a layer of colors. The texture stays intact while you are moving the pixels underneath. Let me show you what this looks like. I actually made an action, which you can find in the class resources. Download that and then you can play the action, it will do everything for you. I'm going to go ahead and play the action. We're going to press this little button here. Make sure you have your Actions section for Photoshop. If you don't have it for any reason, go to Window and then make sure the "Actions" is checked, and then it should come up. It's like a big "Play" button basically. Now that we have the frequency separation folder created, let me show you what it looks like, and you'll see two layers, we have high frequency and then low frequency. Let me show you how the high frequency layer looks normal. I switched it to normal, it looks like a great image, but if you zoom in here, you can see it looks like a weird, really bad art project from 1998 or something. This basically is the texture of the image. Then I'm going to put that back from normal to linear light. If we turn the high-frequency layer off, you'll see that the image becomes blurry. That's because we took away the sharpness from the image. Low frequency is responsible for just the color and everything else aside from the texture. We're going to be doing our main retouching on the low frequency layer. Now what I like to do is exactly what I just did, turn off the high frequency layer. Because I find that we can get really confused when we just see the regular image, so turning off high frequency layer. Now all you see is a blurry image. Then what you want to do is go to Command J, and that will just duplicate your low frequency layer. If for any reason you just can't find the button, that's fine, you could drag the low frequency layer, select it, and then go on over to this new layer button and it'll make a new layer for you. There are two ways to do it. You made the new copy of the low frequency layer and then you want to go to the Healing Brush tool right here and you want to make sure that you use legacy. Also, remember to sample from the current layer. If you are experiencing issues and it's looking funky, it's probably because you have all layers on, so you only want it to sample from low frequency. Now let's begin the retouching. You want to hold the Alt, Option key and you want to get a little closer. You don't want to get too close. I use the bracket buttons to go back and forth, make the brush larger and smaller without having to sit there and go back to the size, hardness, and everything. These are my settings by the way. We have the size at 30 pixels and then hardness is at 55 percent, spacing is at 33, angle is negative 11. I literally don't even touch them, I don't touch on any of this stuff. Roundness is at 100 percent, and then we have pen pressure on, which is great again for using a tablet. We're going to start off pretty small. I'm going to hold the Alt or Option key, and as you can see, my cursor has changed now. We're going to sample from a nearby area and then just stamp it. I like to describe the way in which I retouch as like little strokes just like this. It's like you're swimming in the ocean or something, I don't know. Just don't do one of these where it's like one big motion, do small tiny strokes. Let's focus on that, and you want to make sure you're staying in the same color area. I'm not going to take this area, the bronze around her cheek, I'm not going to take this dark area and put it right under her eye where there's a lot of highlight. Try to keep it within the same area. I'll show you guys some places that I clean up. Right away by turning off the high-frequency layer, you can see where you can clean up. Like this area right here, the shadow right here, I can clean that up. Again, very small strokes. I will constantly sample. I'm constantly pressing Alt. It's click and then you do the little painting. It's like you're painting. I'm also going to clean up the bronze area here. Now try to retouch a little slower so that you can see how I'm doing it. Again, I'm just following the natural shape of the blush that she already has on. I'm not trying to smooth it all out to be one color, I want it to be a gradual change. I want it to be smooth, but still realistic. This area right here, I'm going to be careful. Again, we're doing small strokes. The great thing about using a pen is that you can go really light on it, and then it will change the size of the brush automatically. I love pen pressure. It's the best thing ever. Look, it took me months and months of practice to finally get this. If you're at home when you're trying this and it's not working out, don't feel discouraged. You're not going to get this on the first try or maybe even the second try. You just got to keep practicing, but you'll eventually get it. It's all about practice. Halfway through this, what I like to do is see what I've done. Let's turn the high frequency layer back on, this is what we got. Let's see. What I like to do is turn the low frequency layer on and off, and it made such a subtle difference. My favorite part about retouching, it's very subtle, but it definitely counts in the final photo. Now what I'm going to do is go and duplicate the high frequency layer. Command J on the high frequency layer, and as you can see the photo looks super oversharpened. You want to just hide that first layer. I do this just because if I mess up, I have a plan B, I have a backup. Before I do that, I jumped the gun. This is one of the mistakes I make as a photographer. I try to move too fast. What I'm going to do is zoom out and then see what else I'm going to retouch. I can probably go in and clean up her legs just a little bit. I'm moving back to low frequency and then taking my brush making it a little bit bigger and then just going in. I'm using the longer strokes for the leg because there's not too many different shapes here and shadow, so it's a little bit safer. You can probably get away with the longer strokes here. You don't want to get rid of all the dark areas. One mistake I see photographers making is that the image looks flat because they got rid of all of the shadows. Just be careful, take your time retouching and try to keep the original shade of the photo. If there is an area that's really stubborn or you're having a really hard time retouching it. One thing I like to do is, and I don't recommend that you do this a lot, like don't depend on this, but you can use the blur tool. But don't depend on this just for small areas, like if it's not blending for any reason, you can go in on the low frequency layer and then just blurt out to help you smooth it out. If you do need a little bit of assistance, that's your helper, or what you can do is you can grab a paintbrush on a very, very low opacity. I'm just going to show you guys real quick and also make a new layer when you do this. That's Command Shift N. You can make a new layer. By holding Alt, you can sample a color, and then by lowering the opacity to about 11, you can fill it in. Again, this is emergency services, I would say. I've used the paintbrush in some instances when I need help retouching and just need a little bit of help with the smoothing of it. That's an option for you guys. Then I want to show you the hands. Some professional researchers, they can make a hand look like a doll's hand. For some of us, we struggle with retouching. I struggle with retouching still. This is just one of the things that's not going to be perfect, but you can still clean it up. Same with the hand, I'm taking the same colors and keeping them in the same place. I don't do too much retouching on the hands because sometimes I feel like when you get rid of all the veins and all the little bumps, it looks fake. We don't want to go down that road. Lastly, we have the high frequency layer. Let's go to that. Now you want to really be careful using this and retouching on this, because some people can get a little crazy with this. I'm holding Alt option. I'm just stamping in one little area. Here I'm making a mistake, I'm undoing and I want to keep going. We're going to stamp the foo. The high frequency layer or your brush is going to be super tiny. We're just doing tiny little changes here. I'm not going to be doing any large strokes. Again, I just looked for an area like this right here. I'm going to take a clean area, click. We're sampling it and we're just covering it up. This area right here, you can also clean up. One thing I like to do is use the pen pressure to my advantage here, if I don't want it to be a heavy retouch. I can just really be gentle with my pen and not press down the hallway. I see this is a pretty good retouch. You want to go back and make adjustments, you can definitely do that. I would say it's a wrap for the retouching. Let's move on to adding the color to this image to really make it distinctive.
9. Editing: Street Style: Now let's do the color editing. The first thing that I'm going to do is add a gradient map. The first thing I'm going to do is go to Layer, New Adjustment Layer, and then Gradient Map. I always use the same gradient. I just clicked on the gradient and then it opens up to this window here. This is actually a default gradient, so you should already have this. If for any reason you don't, you can just go to this little gear here and then you can also choose from different ones that they have. They have a lot of different ones. I'm going to select "Okay" and these ones are purple to green to orange. You can also make these on your own too. I'm pressing "Okay" and then I'm going from normal to luminosity. I know it looks funky, but that's why we lower the opacity. Then we're getting a little bit of subtle detail back in the skin. I love putting this on all of my pictures. The next layer I'm going to go to is black and white. I'm going to go to Layer, New Adjustment Layer, and then Black and White. Then we're going to go from normal to luminosity yet again, but this time what I want to do is pop out some of the detail in her jacket. I'm going to select the cyans and then I'm bumping it up all the way to 300. As you can see, it went from this dark jacket to now showing a little bit more color. You can play around with the reds, the yellows. It depends on the colors in your photo. The next thing that I'm going to do is make a new fill layer and we're going to select solid colors. We want to use like a brown beige type color. Select "Okay". Then we're going to go from normal to color and then we're going to keep it at a very low opacity. This is just going to make it a little bit more on the warm side. I've been told that my photos have this warmth to them, so I like to add in those types of colors when I can. Now that I added the color fill layer, I'm going to go ahead and add one of my favorite adjustment layers, curves layer. I get carried away with the curves layer. But for this one, what I'm going to do is actually pinpoint the texture on the model's face. What I want to do is actually delete this mask that's currently on the curves layer. You see this little white box right there, we want to drag it into the garbage can and then there's not going to be any white square next to it. What you want to do is make sure you have your channels palette selected, and if you don't have this window, again, just go to Window up here and then go to Channels, make sure it's checked off. Now what you want to do is select the blue channel. Each channel has a different selection. It's the easiest way that I can explain it. This is the blue channel selection, this is the green channel selection. You'll notice that each channel selects different areas on the face, different highlights, different shadows. I like the blue channel, so we're going to be selecting that. You want to hold the Command key while you do this. As you hold the Command key, you'll see this little box shows up with a bunch of dots around it, so you want to select, you're going to click that, and then you'll see all these things are moving. Then what you want to do is select the RGB photo. We're going back. Then it's going to still be selected and then you want to mask it. You want to press this Mask button right here. It's basically going to mask the selection from the blue channel. We're going to add it and now we're done. I'm going to put this back. Now if you want to see what this does, any selection that I do on the curves layer is only going to affect the blue channel selection. What I mean is, if I were to go crazy and pull this curves layer all the way up, as you can see, it's only showing up in parts of the photo. Without this selection, the photo would go crazy. Watch this, if I took this channel selection off, look at what the photo looks like. We have the selection to, again, pinpoint the texture on her skin. What I want to do is add a little bit of texture to her skin. So I am going to add a couple of points to my curves layer. Oh, and then one thing you also want to do, which I forgot, you wan to go from normal to luminosity. That's really the trick to it. Set your layer from normal to the luminosity. As you can see, I'm going to zoom in to edit this face, look how pretty that looks at. It just adds in so much texture. It makes it more contrasted. It makes the photo look more dynamic, I think. You can play around with it and just going to do this. Let me show you how it looks without this. The image looks so flat without this layer. That's before, that's after. It's just a curves layer set to luminosity with a blue channel selection. There you go, it's awesome. Next thing that we want do is go to Layer, Adjustment Layer, and then we're going to go to Hue/Saturation. This is going to add an extra bit of contrast. What you want do is decrease the saturation, and we're going to bump up the lightness just a little bit, so it's going to look really gray and flat. We want to go from normal to soft light, and as you can see, it looks super contrasted, but I'm just going to lower the opacity a bit. It just adds a little bit of contrast, which I like. It's all about subtle adjustment layers. You don't want to go in and just have one curves layer and then go crazy and that's it. You want to add a couple of small adjustment layers and make subtle changes. One of the last things I'm going to do is go to Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Selective Color. You can pinpoint certain colors in your photo and then make adjustments only to those colors. My favorites are neutrals, blacks, and then depending on the colors, sometimes yellows can be really fun. We're actually going to be going to, let's see what the black section will do for our photo. I like to add a little bit of magenta in my photos. If you're seeing this here, it says cyan, magenta, yellow, black. You're basically adding these colors and replacement of the blacks. For instance, I'm on cyan right now. I'm going back and forth. You can see I'm decreasing the cyan in the photo and then I'm increasing it. This is again, only affecting all the blacks in the photo. With this, I'm going to add a little bit of magenta and then a little bit of yellow because again, I want this photo to be a little bit more on the warm side. We are going to be adding a little bit of yellow. Just a little bit. I love this so far. Maybe a little bit of red I want to add. Let me see. What I would do is just toggle the layer on and off to see what you've done. The selective color I really like, I am going to decrease the opacity. I know I said the last layer, but I want to add one more. We're just going to do another curves layer, but this time we're setting it to normal and we're just adding a bit of exposure. Then that's it. We're all done. Let me show you the final before and after. I'm going to group this all and then let me show you. This is the complete before photo. This is with the skin retouching and then this is with the colors. I'm so happy with it. Now that you've watched me retouch and edit my photo, I want you to take a moment to retouch and write your picture and then join me as I edit the second outfit from the second location.
10. Editing: Sunset: The first photo was a little bit more detailed in terms of retouching and editing. This one, we're going to be retouching it, but I'll show you how I edit it in the camera raw window in Photoshop. It's a bit easier. By making adjustments, you can transform the entire picture. This one's a little bit easier if you're in a hurry, you just want to throw on a quick edit and you want it to still look good, I've done this too. I pulled up the photo here, it's the raw photo in camera raw. I just dragged it into Photoshop, it opened up like this. There's my go-to things, I love to toggle the temperature to make the photo a bit warmer. You can do this now, you can do this at the end. I'm just going to add a little bit so I'm not going to do too much. I go overboard with it sometimes and then I love to decrease the contrast. For this photo, I'm envisioning it being very soft, less contrasted than the other photo and then I'm going to bump up the shadows so that we can see even more detail and then we're going to bring down the white so that we see more of that beautiful blue sky. I love a nice blue sky in my edits and then maybe we'll bring up some of the blacks so that we get an even softer photo. Just by doing these little adjustments, you've already transformed the picture. But I'm going to add a bit more. So clarity, I love to add just a little bit probably plus three. For me, it's all about subtle editing. I don't like to do too much in camera row. But again, you can totally adjust colors and transform your image in here. I just like it to be very subtle. We're going to the curves layer now and then I'm going to add a couple of points here because I want this photo to be very airy, very bright. I'm making like a little spoon shape here. It's adding a little bit of contrasts and then, do I want my photo to be more gray? Just a decision you got to think about again, what style you want your photo to be. Maybe we'll keep those highlights in there. We're not going to replace like the pure whites in there. Let's go down to color mixer here. Luminance is a really cool feature. I love this because you can take a color, make it darker or lighter. The reds is a favorite of mine. I love deepening the reds. She's wearing red lipstick, we have the red strawberries. As you can see, if I'm going back and forth, it's either making it super bright, super dark. I love those dark red, so I'm going to deepen the reds just a little bit on the Luminance tab and then saturation. Let's see if we pop out the reds, is it going to look too much? I really just toggle back and forth and see what I like from this. Usually for saturation, I'll probably bring up the sky mostly. I'd like to focus on the sky like the blue sky and look how pretty that is. That's really nice. Then on the hue section, this is pretty. We have to be careful when you change the hue in one of your photos because then you've got to change the hue in all your photos to match. Because this is looking a little bit more magenta now. I like it though. Do we want to go down that route. We'll do a little, we'll just deepen up the reds a little bit more. This is pretty, I love this. We'll just do that and then split toning can be tricky because I don't like to add too much color before taking it into Photoshop. Even though we are going to keep it really simple in Photoshop. So you know what, for this one, let's add a little bit of highlights and shadows in the Split Toning tab. I want to add in some yellow, I love the yellow and blue tones for this. I think it's going to compliment it really well, so pretty. I want it to look very soft like tea party limes. So maybe for shadows. I'm debating, do we want to do blue? Do we want to do pink, red? The trick is to just go full saturation, or not full saturation like 50 percent saturation. Toggle back and forth and see how it looks. If you like how it looks, just decrease the saturation. That's the key to this. This is such a hard decision. I like the warm vibe of this. Let's just decrease it. That's looking so pretty and you know what, I think for the highlight, I want it to be more unlike the pink side. We'll keep it like that and then you can use profile corrections. This basically just corrects the distortion and the vignetting around the lens. Like if you notice on the sides of the picture how there it's like a little bit dark. So we get a little bit of distortion there. You can do that. I'm actually going to check it off for this one. Last thing, we have camera calibration. You can really switch up the entire color story, if you will, of this photo just by going back and forth with the camera calibration. You really want to be careful using this because some of these can change the skin tones in it, you just want to be careful that you're not making somebody look like orange. You want to be careful and watch how skin tones are coming out, you know the clothing is coming out makeup. I'm going back and forth here. When you get familiar using these tools, you'll know exactly what you want to use for each picture you'll be like, I'm adding blue primary. We're doing green primary for this one. So this is pretty. I'm liking this a lot. The green primary, this is looking fantastic. Let's take a look at the before and after. That's before, that's after. This is a nice picture, we did it a job. I'm going to open up in Photoshop, add a single curves layer and show you the final photo. I want to add this layer outside of camera row just in case in the future I want to change it up. Go to layer, a new adjustment layer, and then curves. Then what I'm going to do is, add a little bit on the RGB layer for some brightness and then I'm going to go from RGB to blue. I really want some warm and cool tones in here, some blues, purples, and yellows. There we go. It's looking so pretty, very pretty. You can not even do this step if you want. You could have just stopped at the camera row window and be done with it. But this is just an extra step if you want. Something like this, very soft. Again, you can change it up if you want. You can add another layer on here. You can do the retouching, everything else. I'm just going to adjust the curves layer a little bit more and that's it. Honestly, I would say that this is perfect. If I'm going to add one more, maybe a photo filter for a little bit more warmth there. Once you add the photo filter, it'll default and just put you the warming filter at 25 percent density and you'll be good to go. So adds in that warm filter and you can just decrease the opacity if you really want. But that's how it looks. Give me a second because I'm going to retouch the photo and then I'll show you the final picture. I just finished the skin retouching on this one and I use the same technique as I showed you in the previous edit. This is before and this is after. Just a little bit of a cleanup and then I added that curves layer and then I added a default photo filter. I could add more to this, but I really like the simplicity. I think it turned out amazing. I'm really happy with this edit and I know if I add any more layers, I'm going to over edit it, so I'm going to keep it as is. I'm really happy with how this photo came out. I'm even more excited to see what you came up with. I really want to see your final photo, please share it in the projects gallery so I can take a look.
11. Final Thoughts: So if you made it this far, congratulations. Thank you for watching my class. I really hope you took something away from this, and on your next photo shoot you're feeling a little bit more inspired and creative. We did a little bit of planning. We went over how to find models, accessories, so what kind of camera equipment I use. Remember to post your final photos in the project gallery, and I can't wait to see what you'll create next.
Jessica Kobeissi, Photographer
