The Importance of Test Shoots

Yvonne: Hi! I’m Yvonne. John Ricard: So why are you here, Yvonne? Yvonne: For testing the in lighting and the camera, hoping to get some good shots out of this, I need to build for portfolios. John Ricard: Right. Now, where did I find you? How did I meet you first? Yvonne: Artistic Curves is my management. Steve actually put me on to this shoot. John Ricard: Right. And Steve is good. I’ve worked with him a bunch of time. Yvonne: He is great. John Ricard: Right. Always through for me, right? Now, how many times have you shot in the past so far? Yvonne: About three times. John Ricard: Three times, right. You have some pictures you’re going to show us, right? Yvonne: Yes. John Ricard: Let’s see this, so for photographers, a lot of times, if you want to test something, if you want to test some lighting or something like that, you find a model that has not done too much stuff. She definitely needs pictures and I’m not charging her anything for today. So we’re just going to benefit us both, I’ll make sure, she gets what she needs and I’ll get what I need as well. So this is some stuff that she has done in the past. Yvonne: This is actually by a friend called Charlie, sky images. This is with Frank Antonia. He does more sexy pictures, a couple of pictures he did. John Ricard: What do you like so far about modeling as you have been done that so far? Yvonne: I just—it’s that rush you get and like the gentleman is taking some taking a picture of you. Even just when I’m walking down the street and someone is looking at me. I get that burst like energy and I feel like--they get motivations in me so love the whole industry I mean it’s a fashion. So that’s important to me too. John Ricard: All right, if you look around the studio now, you’ll see that there’s a lot of different lights here. These are about five different lights and there’s a variety of different light modifiers. Then we keep the studio as a beauty dish there then portfolio head there and there’s the umbrella, another umbrella. So don’t get actually get by which is one light which is what we’re going to show now. Only one light and we’re about to begin. [Demonstration] John Ricard: So now, we even note ourselves with Yvonne. And now she’s still on the one light except the difference now between what you saw a few seconds ago. She is directly on the paper. She is only about six inches away from the paper and it’s still just being lit with one bite away from here. So when you’re testing, what you want to do is just make little changes. In this case, I just back her up about three feet from where she had been, I just close it to the paper, and that’s going to give me a different effect in terms of how the background looks. So one of the things you want to do with test shooting obviously is to stop and take a look at what you’re getting just to get some idea of how you’re doing, how the different position of the light is affecting the lighting on the model. Although for me, I really like to look at it and home is where I can really tell. In the 24-inch monitor, I can really see what I’m doing better. But sometimes it’s good to get little feet back while you’re working. So what about for you Yvonne, how is it going so far? When you look at the pictures, what goes to your head? Yvonne: I like them. I definitely have some very good portfolio shots. It definitely have some great action shots and its fine. I have a great time today, had the music going some dancing. John Ricard: We get it some good stuff, right? So the next I’m going to do is I’m going to add a second light to Ms. Yvonne and we’re going to see what result that produces is. So here’s our two-light set up, what we did was, we kept the same original light that we had before which is the umbrella and reducing that is the main light. And what we’ve added now is this light which is another portfolio head and this time it has a 5 degree grid and we’re trying to find ways to light at top of our head with that light without spilling on to here nose and about spilling on to the shoulders. But the point is when we’re testing, what we want to do is keep one thing constant which is this light. We shot a lot of test pictures using this light. And then after we did about four, five different set ups with just the one light, we added the second light so we can really see what this second light bring to a table when we do it. Here we are with the JAY-Z at BETA performing. It’s going to be freeze and cold because it’s going to be outside but we’re inside now. Here’s the life exciting photographers who cover all these events. A lot are standing around waiting for something to happen lot of cameras, a lot of absolutely nothing going on. This is Jay-Z on the stage while far away. Should have let the 70-200 and the Teleconverter is on the lens to give a little extra reach. Now, we’ve just finished JAY-Z and we’ve got Johnny Nunier is here for New Buzz photo. He got his camera in. There’s Gary does some hard drive work. We’ve got Rey who shoots for Gary images and the Crusade.net. And then we’ve got Gary Lee over here from AP who is actually sitting right here on the street. The man is going to turn around the images immediately. But this is the life of a photojournalist. There’s no time to waste. You’ve got to turn the stuff around immediately and that’s how it goes. Man: And as Jam McCart, independent photograph but all contributes a full magic. [Demonstration] John Ricards: How’s your shoot I mean? Florida: It was great. I was kind of nervous. So I thought I hurt somebody, you’ve got what it is but you get analyze sometimes. John Ricard: They’re running stuff. Florida: You know what it is, Florida in the middle Sunday so we have to do a little photo shoot. Thanks to the guys who took the photos. John Ricard: Then want to come up with the poses and stuff away? Florida: Oh very much because I don’t be like a million poses before. I want to get to the way over and over. John Ricard: You did a good job though. Florida: Be safe. John Ricard: Thank you, good luck. Florida: Cut the tip.