Love shooting with props, guys props, you know, when you're just taking portraits props can add so much to a scene and you can give props practically anywhere. One of my favorite places to get props is just, well, any type of what do they call them secondhand stores, I don't know what they technically are called secondhand stores just go to second store. It could be the DI it could be the Salvation Army can be wherever you want, but secondhand stores make for the best, especially vintage props and so forth. They add a lot to the scene. So what we're gonna do is a Whitney you're not a photographer, right? We're gonna pretend like you are, okay?

You try to be I try to be to step over this way a little bit. I'm gonna move her around just a little bit cuz I want to get a tiny kiss of light just on her hair. So what we have to do is I'm gonna actually move you back so step back into the grass a little bit. Yeah, let's go back onto the hill. Just a tiny tiny bit. Uh huh.

That's perfect. actually go back a little bit more just so we get you off the hill and onto the grass part. There you go. Perfect. Okay, now you can see as you see this beautiful hair. Light honor which is absolutely amazing and it works really nicely and making it pop off the background.

Okay, so now bring in this fill light right next to her and Whitney, we're just gonna kind of have like a little photographer duel. Okay, so you're going to be shooting me I'm going to be shooting you. I want you to kind of joke around play a little bit with the camera. You know how to use that guy's just a classical Polaroid vintage rules, right? All right, perfect. Bring the camera to the side.

Give me a smile. Hold right there and then move it a tiny bit. There's a little reflection on it. There you go. Perfect. Beautiful.

That's so cute. Okay, bring off the side and smile like right to the side of your like kind of off to the like, hold it with two hands and kind of bring it off to the side. Just give me like a smile. Just goof around a little bit. Give me a little play what I think of Vanna White. Not like you're presenting it like a nice gift that I can win but alright, bring it back at me lower the fill light a little bit.

There you go. Beautiful. Got this gorgeous little wind coming through. I love that the wind blowing hair look looks amazing. Those are super cute. How to Be really careful with anything that's reflective like the silver on this will cast little pieces of light everywhere, which is kind of what we're seeing in some of the shots, they're easy to clone out.

But again, if we can avoid it in, you know in the shot itself then obviously it saves us a little bit of photoshopping later on. Okay, so, let's go with the camera. I'm going to go let's set down the camera fast and let's grab a couple quick portraits so you can set it down right next to you. Don't worry actually doesn't even work. It's just for show. Alright, so we got this perfect light on your hair.

Let's brush the hair back down a little bit on the backside living maybe can help with that real quick. Perfect, I'm gonna see if I like this better. Okay, my dear, I'm gonna be turned towards me a little bit. There you go. And let's have you stand a little bit over this way. Okay, perfect, just like that.

Let's check it out. Love it. Okay, so what I'm doing now is I'm turning this a little bit, I'm gonna shoot her against this kind of like darker backdrop. So against the grasses, great, that's one look. But one thing that we can do also is when we have this hair light, we can place her against a darker background, we get this beautiful kind of pop off the background look. Okay, so let's do this.

I'm gonna have you bring the model out. She's actually done some modeling before. So I could say that and she would actually just randomly do things. I'm just kidding. Let me give you some better direction than just bring out the model. Okay, so let's go like this.

Let's go. Let's kind of do a little a necklace play. Okay, so bring the hands up to the necklace. On a one hand on necklace one hand on like the hair. Let's get a little bit of Yeah, whoo. I love that.

It's kind of like pulling on it a little bit. Let's make that kind of a feature the shot Okay. Perfect. I'm gonna move a little bit just to get a little bit darker background. That's gorgeous. Perfect right there, hold that.

Hold that right there. I love that windblown hair. Okay, and hold it down for once I bring that hands up to the hair and kind of give me that same. Let's go one hand up to the hair, one hand, kind of relax more. There you go right there. Hold that.

Perfect eyes at me. Beautiful. We have this beautiful light coming through these trees. I'm going to try and use it for a little flare. Now this adds a lot to a scene when you can use flare. Well kind of to add to the artistry.

Okay, intentionally use flare can create a beautiful look. It's the unintentional flare that we do want to avoid with that flare coming in is going to create a nice soft look. We're gonna get a little bit that light streak coming through. It's going to be a really nice bright and airy type look for the shot. I'm on a 34 millimeter and we're gonna get Whitney kind of walking through. This is the instructions when you say I want you to go like this, I want you to walk over toe, this like this, and then I'm gonna have you bring the hand up, play with the hair a little bit like this kind of stuff.

Okay? So like really girly things. Don't do that though, because that was terrible, but she's laughing. So if I had someone actually taking a picture of that, that'd be nice. What I'm going to do is get down low so that we can kind of shoot bottom up we get some of the trees, we get this beautiful look. We've already dialed in our settings.

So we're at one 500 of a second and f2 for this shot, I have Olivia right here, she's might add a little bit of light when she gets closer, but for right now, we're gonna be totally fine because we have a lot of that fill light coming in directly from the sun. So we should be good, especially since we're shooting a little bit further back. These kind of shots I've loved because there's really only a small window and we have basically about an hour where the sun is right in this position where we can shoot this kind of a shot through these trees want to take advantage of it. So I'm going to stop talking. Let's go ahead and get the shooting. Remember with that spot metering, we basically dialed in a setting of one 500 a second f To an ISO 100, which was correct for her skin, and that's what I want to meet her for in this shot.

All right, so let's go ahead and get started. Let me get into my position. Okay, so you can see that the sun is coming directly through and hitting me That's perfect. That's where I want it because it's going to come right through the lens at that point. Okay, I just want to make sure it's not too much. So remember that the sunlight when it flares, it is going to brighten the scene quite a bit and it does do it here.

So we're going to shoot a few with it. We're going to shoot a few without it and we're going to do kind of just a nice little mixture. So when you kind of walk over to this side, just kind of slowly off to this little path right here. Okay, and go ahead, my dear when you start when you're ready. Perfect. With flares, it's kind of like Life is like a box of chocolates.

You never really know what you're going to get So shoot a bunch of shots, we know that we're going to get beautiful looking, I love some of these, these are amazing. We got these bright, beautiful looks in the shot has a very these are the exact kind of images that I would apply filmic type presets and effects to in post production because it has this beautiful filmic look to it. Let's run it by one more time. Give me more hands and more play. And more. More this.

I'm saying people gonna think I'm an idiot. All right, well, they might be right on that. Okay. Let's run it back again. One thing to Oh, sorry, one sec. Remember, a flare does a couple different things.

Not only does it wash out contrast and washes out some of the color which is great. That's the effect that we're going for here. It also makes it more difficult for the camera to focus. Why because well, the camera relies on certain things like contrast, and relies on basically the overall well color in the scene. At least that's one of the ways that it detects a f when that's being washed out with a flare. You're only essentially While you're telling the camera, I'm only going to use part of your autofocus system to focus and that makes it more difficult for the camera to do his job.

So shoot extra shots. That's what I'm saying. Alright, go ahead and let's observe. Okay, now go ahead. When she does something I love I tell her to threes go back one more time. I'm gonna have you step through that light, that light right there in the middle is so beautiful because it really makes you pop.

So step back a little bit more. And then a tiny bit more. Sorry. He's like, Where do I need to go back. I'm gonna get your hair right there we go. Perfect.

See that hair light up like that. Okay, now what I want you to do right there is we're going to go so take one step and go. Let's go your left over your right, so go left over the right, and then drop that left foot back. There you go. And I want you to kind of give me a little bend to the side. So kind of bend to the side.

There you go. A little bit more Bring one of the hands up. So bring a hand up right side. There you go. And then I want you to look down into your left side. Okay?

Down more, turn the head. Don't turn the chin into that. There you go. Perfect. Get my focus. There we go.

Okay, now start coming at me. Okay, yeah, cross one foot and as you take a step, cross a foot, and then pause, and then play around a little bit and kind of move, play with the different facial expressions. Then take another step and pause. Okay, so go for it. Beautiful. Gorgeous.

Go hands behind the back. Look down. One thing when you're shooting for flares, remember that your best friend is that center AF point because your center point is always going to be the strongest. So if you're having trouble with the flares that strong, you can switch back to the center AF point, it'll do a much better job. Beautiful, bring the hands up to the hair, give me a little play a little bit of whimsical, kind of looking, there you go. Perfect.

Look off to the left side, your left side. Beautiful. That's perfect, and then come a little bit closer. Actually, you know, what we'll do is we'll go I'm gonna go with her into the light. So basically, what I want to do is I'm gonna step back with her a little bit, get a couple of close up shots while we're in that little patch of sunlight that's coming through before we lose it. We're going to lose it in just a couple of minutes.

So I'm going to go in, I'm going to keep my camera the exact same settings. Okay. Right there. That's beautiful. So right there. I want you to go do that thing with the hands kind of behind the back a little bit.

Take a step in front of the other. Hands behind the back. Yeah, go Give me a quick look leaned down and from the hip more, there you go right there. Okay, now what we're going to do is just add a little bit of silver. So let me bring the silver in. Now with a silver, what we're gonna do is let's do it from.

Let's see. Let's see if we got like a little bit too bright. Okay, so let's go from here, I'm gonna have you go direct light. And because we're shooting because I'm having to lean in to me, it's not going to be bottom up lighting, essentially, because you're leaning down. So you're going to go right about here. Okay, now what I'm doing here is I'm adding in this silver.

Now the silver. Generally we always say don't like bottom up, but the thing is that I'm shooting from low down here, and she's also leaning into me from the hip so it's not going to look like it's bottom up lighting. It's just going to come in and fill the face with a nice, very warm, kind of harder light. So I Do you need to meet her off of her skin tones again, so let me just go ahead and dial that in. I'm going to go about one 1,000th of a second, which should be about right. We're still at f2 and get a little bit more light on her.

There you go. Check that out. That's great. Okay, perfect right there. There we go. Give me a little bit of lean and then kind of give me a little bit of play.

Okay, so bring the hands up. There we go.