How to get Your Photos Published as a Wedding PhotographerJoy Michelle Photography

Hi Guys! Welcome back. I'm Joy, I own Joy Michelle Photography, and
today we're going to be talking about getting published and featured as a photographer. So tip #1 for getting your work published
is to do your research on blog publications and magazine subscriptions. So you need to know what these editors are
looking for, and what kind of work they tend to feature.

So you may start to notice patterns that your
work would fit really well on a certain blog, or this magazine looks a lot like work that
you do, so you want to find one that fits stylistically into your genre of work. That way you're not wasting your time submitting
to everybody where they might not be interested in darker moody images, or lighter airy images. Tip number two is to know and read all of
the submission publication rules before you submit and abide by all of them. Every single blog or magazine will have publication
guidelines.

They will have requirements on their website
- and they will tell you how big they want the images, whether or not they like to see
collages, watermarks, certain things, and they will be very very clear, and this is
one area where you do not want to skip or be lazy about in any way. Editors and publishers do not want to have
5 more steps in order to make your images fit into their blog. They have so many submission to begin with
that you want to make sure that you don't get passed over for such a simple and avoidable
reason like a submission guideline requirement. So read those guidelines and take them seriously.

The third tip I have for you today is to shoot
with getting featured in mind. Now, the big part to remember with features
is 70-80% of a feature is detail shots. So your detail shots need to be top notch
and maybe that means you give yourself an extra few minutes at your next wedding. You arrive a little bit early.

Or you practice styling at home. Or you bring some styling aids to the wedding. So like ribbons, vintage stamps, a special
hanger, that kind of thing. I bring a styling kit and I also arrive early
to every wedding so that I know that I can get these detail shots no matter how crazy
the wedding day is.

Because I know that these detail shots are
super important and necessary if I'm going to get featured. So make sure that you keep those detail shots
in mind. Alright- so the next tip that I have for you
guys is to build genuine vendor relationships. Now if you curate your submission, and send
an email to an editor using their first name and putting some genuine comments inside of
that email so that it doesn't look like a template email that you sent 50 other blogs,
I really believe that this helps make your submission stand out from the rest.

Honestly, many times, even when I haven't
been accepted by a blog, the editor will write me back, because they know I'm a real person. They will explain to my why the publication
passed on a submission and they can tell me what they did like and what they didnt like. That gives me so much insight as to what to
do next time. So, be a real person, treat these editors
and bloggers like real people, and be personal with them and build those relationships.

I would not have gotten this magazine cover
or any photos inside of this magazine, if I didn't reach out to the editor and talk
to this person, and say "what can I do for your publication I know you're working on
this magazine"so really be tenacious and get after it but also be personable and realize
that these are people behind desks - just like you. When you send an email, don't put "to whom
it may concern" - write To editor so and so. You know?Really do the research. Go on linkedin.

Go on the website. You can find these people's first names and
figure out who is going to be receiving your submission. IT really makes you sand out from the rest
of the crowd. So two little bonus tips or thoughts that
I want to leave you with is # 1 - features and blogs are a little bit like fashion in
that they're always thinking a season ahead.

So, if you have maybe a winter wedding that
you're hoping to get featured, you want to make sure that you submit that in the fall
so that they have time to get it on their submission calendar and their feature calendar
by the time it really is the winter. So submissions do take a fair bit of time
and I do take a lot of time curating submissions. I really think of this as an investment into
the marketing of my business to have all of these links and you know magazines, linking
back to my work and attributing the work to me, it really has grown my business and helped
me take my business to the next level. So now it's time for YOU to go submit your
work! To help you out, I actually created a submission
checklist for you! You can grab it for free down in the information section.

And it's just a tool to help you keep track
of all the different submissions, when you can expect to hear back from publications,
and make sure that you don't forget any of the little details in between. Be sure to grab that! Give this video a like! Be sure to subscribe! And I'll see you guys next time! Bye!:).

Digital Photography 1 on 1 Episode 28 Metering Part 4 Advance Light Meter

[Intro music] Announcer: Adorama TV presents, "Digital Photography,
One on One, " where we answer your questions. Here's your host, Mark Wallace. Mark Wallace: Hi, everybody, I'm Mark Wallace.
Welcome to this week's episode of "Digital Photography, One on One." A couple of weeks
ago, we talked about some of the basics of metering light using a light meter. This week
we're going to take it a couple of steps further.

So, we're going to get started with a question
from Jeff Young. Jeff wrote, "Could you explain how to use some of the advanced features of
your meter? Do you know any good tricks?" [Background music] That's a great question, Jeff. Now, just a
disclaimer on this episode; this is an advanced episode, so if you're looking for basic light
metering information... We did that a couple of weeks ago...

So, either, go to our You
Tube channel, or just go to a couple episodes back on iTunes, and you'll find that episode. I want to start out by talking about the difference
between incident and reflective metering. Normally, when you use a light meter, you're
using incident metering, which is metering like this, hitting the LumiSphere. Reflective metering is a little bit different.
Reflective metering is when you use what's called a spot meter.

This is a Sekonic L758DR.
It's got a spot meter built in. So, you hold that up to you eye. It's got a little target;
a little circle, that you put it exactly where you want to meter. If I want to meter my hand, I'd put it on
my hand.

The light that's coming and hitting my hand is bouncing off; it's reflecting,
and coming into the light meter, itself. That's reflective metering. The difference is: reflective metering is
looking to average an 18 percent gray. So, you have to know how metering works.

It's
really useful. Reflective metering is really useful in several situations; most notably,
when you're shooting landscapes or scenes where you can't physically go to the area
you're shooting. So, if you're on the south rim of the Grand
Canyon, and you want to shoot the north rim, you can't actually run across and hold this
up to your camera. So, you could use a spot meter to figure out the different values.
Or, for subjects that generate light; neon signs, televisions, or something that's got
a really bright background.

Again, if you use an incident meter, it's
not seeing the light coming from behind. Reflective metering really helps out. Very similar to
that are materials that are highly reflective like chrome. Because, again, there's a lot
of light reflecting, so you could meter that accurately.

My favorite reason to use reflective metering
is when you want to use the zone system. We're going to explain that in just a couple minutes.
So, here are some of my favorite tricks to use with the Sekonic L759DR. We're going to
go into the studio and show those to you right now. One of my favorite features of this meter
is called, Auto-reset cordless flash metering mode.

Simply, what that means is that it gives
you a little bit of extra help in the studio when you don't have an assistant on hand. How this works is; this meter has a standard
quarter 20 threaded socket at the bottom. It will be mounted right on a normal light
stand, or a tripod... It can screw right on there.

I'm going to do that and put this stand
exactly where I want to meter my light. When I'm in the right Auto reset cordless
flash metering mode, what I can do is I can hit my metering button, and my meter is going
to wait up to 90 seconds for a strobe to fire. Once it does, then it will display the correct
aperture value. Then, it's going to wait another 90 seconds.
As long as the strobe fires within those 90 seconds, it will reset, and wait another 90
seconds.

It's a really handy trick. Here's how you use it. I'll go ahead and push this.
My meter is now waiting for a strobe to fire. I'll zip over here to my camera, and I 'm
going to trigger my strobe, using my Pocket Wizard.

As soon as that happens, I'm metering
at 22. I think that's a little bit hot for what I want. So, I can just change my power
on my pack, here. And, when I hit that, it's going to meter
again.

So, it meters at F11. I'll just confirm that. Yep. I metered at F11, and then I can
dial in my camera.

And I can do all that stuff right here without having to worry about having
somebody hold my meter. It's a really useful trick and I use it all the time in the studio. Another really useful feature of the L758DR
is that it has two scales. By default, you have an aperture value scale on your meter,
but you can also have and EV scale.

You can switch by hitting 'mode' and then this 'average'
button. Now, you can see that we have an EV. Scale. This is really, really useful when you're
checking for light ratios, and making sure that your camera is exposed within its dynamic
range.

We're going to talk about that, next. The EV scale is very, very useful when you're
trying to figure out light ratios. This meter makes it very, very simple, using Delta EV
metering. What that means is; sometimes you want to know the difference between one light
and another, so you can set your light ratios appropriately.

If I want to know the difference between this
light and this one, specifically, in the stops; I want to see if this is two stops, or one
stop, or twenty stops different than this one. I can do that with this light meter. Here's how it works. You take the LumiSphere,
and you want to put that down.

Then, point it to the first light you want to meter, usually,
your key light. Then, I'll take a meter reading. Now once I do that, I will push the memory
button, which is over here, and that stores it in memory. You can tell it's in memory
because the indicator used to flash.

Now it's a solid. So it's saying that's in memory. After I have done that, I can push my Average/Delta
EV button. What that allows me to do is either average my values or see the difference in
those values.

And so, I am going to use the second feature which is showing the difference. What I am going to do is, now I am going to
put my lumisphere pointing to the second light. And here's a very important thing. When I
meter I need to push the meter button and hold it.

As ling as I hold it, it's going
to show me the EV difference, in other words how many stops different it is from this light
to this one. So I'll push this and hold it and as long as I'm holding it, it's showing
me that there is negative one point eight stops difference between this light and this
one. Then I can go and I maybe make a change in
my light output. And then I can do that again.

I am going to put my hand here so it will
be a much lower value. [Ding] As long as I. Hold that it is showing now negative three
stops. I can do that again.

[Ding] . It shows me what that difference is. And so I can do
all my adjustments and make sure that my light ratios are perfectly repeatable every single
time. [Sound effect] Now this next section is definitely for the
advanced user.

What we are doing here in this scene is we have a very high contrast image
where we have absolute black all the way to absolute white and we're able to do that employing
the zone system. Now if you don't about the zone system I highly recommend this book.
It's called "Zone System." It's written by Brian Lav. What we are doing here is we have what is
called the calibrated dynamic range scale on the meter. And what that does is I was
able to calibrate my lens and camera body, and to tell exactly what the dynamic range
of that camera was, and then place that inside my light meter.

So I can take readings to
see if the scene actually falls within the capabilities of my camera. So that's really
nice. And I did that using the Sekonic calibration software that comes with this meter. Now what we are going to do here is, we are
going to start using the zone system.

So I. Am going to put my meter in reflective metering
mode by just rotating this dial here. And then I can use spot meter to look through
and take different readings. The first thing I am going to do is I am going
to take a meter reading for zone five which is middle gray.

So I have a grey card to make
sure we get this right. Hold that right there, Don. Great. And I am going to take that.

[Ringing]
And that meter's right at F5. Now what I am going to do is, I am going to
put that in memory and by doing that I am locking in the middle gray on my meter. Now
what I can do is I can start taking different meter readings and it'll start plodding that
on my dynamic range scale. So I am going to take a meter reading of the light points,
put it into memory, take a meter reading of a dark point, put it into memory.

And you
can see that it will start building that on the scale. And then again, I can see if I
can actually capture the image that I see with my eyes. I am going to go ahead and do that. I am going
to take a meter reading here on the shirt.

[Beep] Put that in memory. I am going to take
a meter reading on the dress here, put that in memory. OK. And we can see that I'm just
right at the limits of my camera's dynamic range, which is great.

That's what I want
to do because I want an absolutely high contrast image. Once I do that, I can just repeat that and
take different meter readings on different parts of my scene. I can add flags and reflectors
and things to adjust as necessary. So I can sort of shape the light without even having
to look at my camera.

It's pretty nice. The nice thing is, once you have that you
can adjust the scene to your creative vision by underexposing or overexposing or moving
the middle gray on the scale. So this meter allows you to that at any time. You can take
a reading and say, no, that's what I want my mid tone to be, zone 5, and it'll shift
all those readings up or down.

So it's a very, very powerful tool. What I want to do is, we set middle gray or
zone five at 5, now what I want to do is I. Want to put this back into incident metering
mode. And I'll take another reading.

And this is going to read at... [Ringing] Yeah. So
this reads at F8, which is a totally different value. So what I can do now is -- I am going
to take a couple of different pictures --  I am going to show you the difference between
using the zone system and the advanced reflective metering mode as opposed to the incident metering
mode.

And you can see there's just a big difference of how the image looks. [Music] Well there you have it. There are a few of
my favorite techniques for using the Sekonic L-758DR. This is my favorite meter, the one
I use every day.

I highly recommend it. Well remember, if you have questions about
photography or photography related gear, you can send those to me at askmark@adarama.Com.
And if you're watching us on YouTube please subscribe. We'd love to know how many people
are following us and respond to some of your questions. Well that's it for this week.

I'll see you
next week. [Music and sponsor advertisement].

How to Find Wedding Photography Clients in Your First Year

Hi guys!! Welcome back to my channel. I'm Joy - founder of Joy Michelle Photography-
a fine art wedding and lifestyle photography company here on the East Coast. And today I'm really excited because I'm going
to be sharing with you guys some of my tips for finding your very first wedding photography
clients. In your first year of business.

When I was first starting out, uh- let me
tell you...I didn't have a lot of gear. I didn't have any experience, and I had no
idea what I was doing- especially on the business side of things. My first paid photo session...I actually used
a borrowed lens, you guys. Like I didn't even have a prime lens that
I owned.

I only had the kit lens that came with my
camera. So I was taking a film photography course
at the time, and my professor let me borrow the lens that I wanted for this session. And I used a borrowed lens for my first session. I had no idea what I was doing, but I went
from that (borrowed gear) to being a full time Fine Art wedding photographer.

So I want to give you guys a little insight
into what I did to get here and some things that didn't work as well. So let's dive in! The first tip that I have for you guys is
to simply start putting it out there! And namely, putting it out there before you
are ready. Because I can't tell you how many times I
talk to photographers and they say "Well, I'm working on my website" or "I'm, not quite
there yet..." "I'm still working on things" GUYS, done is
better than perfect. So please - start putting your work out there.

Start sharing it. And start talking about
yourself like a photographer. My first bride- my actual first booked wedding
was a friend of mine from college who was seeing my work on Facebook. And I was sharing
and I thought nobody was seeing what I was sharing.

And she ended up booking me because
I was putting it out there and no body was liking my posts, nobody was commenting, it
was just crickets on the internet. But it worked! And it's why she knew that
I was doing what I was doing. So my first tip for you is- GO- put it out
there and start talking about yourself like a photographer. The second thing I want to share with you
is the value of social media.

I mean, 10-20 years ago, we didn't have any
of the social media platforms that we know today. So we have a huge leg up on what used to be
a slow climb for a lot of businesses. So there are an amazing amount of platforms
out there and I know it can be overwhelming....So I'm going to summarize this into two points. Point number 1, Choose your favorite 3 platforms,
or even 2 , and stick to what you know.

Stick to what you're strengths are honestly. Because if you're better and great at 1 platform,
it's better than just being mediocre at everything. The second tip I have for you guys for social
media is to know your WHAT and your WHY before you even start. Know what you're offering and your story and
why you're offering it and who you hope to connect with BEFORE you start sharing.

Because you may end up doing what I did, Just
copying what a lot of other people were doing when I was first starting out, because I had
no idea what I was about in those first few months, and honestly I was spinning my wheels. I was wasting my time. So the sooner you can find out your story
and your why and who you are, the sooner thats going to shape what content you put out there. I've got 2 words for you - Styled shoots! When I photographed my first styled shoot,
I gained 3 amazing things in my business.

I created valuable connections and friends
within my industry, I grew my portfolio, and I got published. These things are pillars within my business. This is networking, marketing, and advertising. And also, it's all free! So I hope between these three reasons alone,
you understand the value in styled shoots.

The fourth tip that I have for you today is
to second shoot. Now, if you're interested in photographing
weddings and being a wedding photographer, in any capacity, even if you have experience
in other areas of photography...I still strong recommend second shooting. The next tip I have for you guys is to collect
reviews ASAP. Brides love reviews.

Which makes sense. Because they want to make sure they're getting
the best possible product, and also research shows that a client, or prospective client,
is 63% more likely to buy from a website where they can read reviews. Which is phenomenal! So, make reviews a top
priority as soon as you possibly can. One more bonus tip in the whole world or reviews! Once you get some reviews, be sure that you
show them off.

Put them on your website, add them to the
side bar of your blog maybe, make sure that they are somewhere really easy to find and
super visible so that your brides can find them and prospective clients can read them. Alright! We're on our last tip! The very last tip that I have for you guys
today is to make your brand clear. Now, the way I see it, our websites and brand,
are essentially the digital equivalent to a store front. So what used to be somebody walking in front
of your store and kind of seeing what you're about, that's really your website.

So you need to make sure that your brand and
your story and who you are and what you offer is very clear to those who visit your store
- or your website. Maybe you're not sure if your website really
speaks to your brand, or if it's sending the right message. I really suggest - ask a friend or a family
member to go on your website and give them a list of kind of specific questions that
you want to have answered as to what impression you're giving off. So that you can make sure that what you're
putting out there is the same as how you're being perceived.

I also highly recommend hiring a professional
graphic designer to accomplish your website or your blog. Just to make sure that all those colors and
fonts are cohesive and that you're being consistent online. And there you have it! Those are our 6 tips for Finding Wedding photography
clients in your first year of business. If you liked this content and you want to
read more and get more bonuses, and find out ways to implement this into your business
today, I actually wrote a 10 page course on this very topic! It's free! You can grab it in the information
section below and start reading more in-depth about how I grew my Wedding photography business
from the ground up.

So I hope that you enjoyed this video! If
you did, please like it and subscribe, and I'll see you guys next time. Bye!.

Digital Photography 1 on 1 Episode 27 Metering Part 3 Using a light meter

[Title music] Woman 1: Adorama TV presents Digital Photography
one on one. Where we answer your questions. Here's your host, Marc Wallace. [Title music subsides] Marc Wallace: Hey everybody, welcome to this
week's episode of Digital Photography one on one.

I'm Marc Wallace. Well, we're continuing our series where we're
talking about metering. Specifically this week we're going to be talking about the basics
of metering with a light meter like this one. So let's start by looking at our question.

This week, we got a question from our overseas
friends. This one's from Christopher in Poland. And Christopher asks: [background music sets in] "How do you use a light meter to measure continuous
light and strobes?" [Background music ends] Well Christopher, with a light meter like
this one, metering is very simple. Just think of the exposure triangle.

In the exposure
triangle, you have aperture, shutter, and ISO. And those three things work together
to give you the correct exposure. With the light meter, you enter the ISO and
one other part of the exposure triangle, and the meter gives you the third part. For example:
you can enter the ISO and the shutter speed, and when you take a reading, the meter will
give you the correct aperture value.

Or you can enter the ISO and the aperture value,
and the meter will give you the correct shutter speed. Now remember, if you're metering studio strobes,
you'll always enter the ISO and the shutter speed, and the meter will give you the correct
aperture value. Well today, I'm using the Sekonic L-358 to
show you some of the modes that we have. And I highly recommend using Sekonic light meters,
because they're, I think, the best meters on the market.

You can't find one that's better. You'll want to take a look at these modes
here. Now, we have several modes and these are what you'll see at the top of your light
meter. We're going to go through these one by one.

The very first one here looks like
a sunshine. That is called daylight or ambient mode. And that's the mode that you would use
if you're metering anything that has continuous light. Like the sun, or if you have tungsten lights,
or if you have continuous lights in the studio that are always on, this is the mode that
you'll use.

It's a very common on all light meters. In fact all light meters have this.
And that's the one you'd use for constant light. Now, the next one is called... It's got a
little flash here on Sekonic meters...

It's called auto reset cordless flash metering,
or cordless flash mode. It's a mouthful, but really what this does, it allows your meter
to, you push your button and it waits, and it'll wait up to about 90 seconds and it's
waiting for a flash to fire. So it's really nice if you don't have a sync cable or a radio
trigger to use. We're going to actually go over this in one of our upcoming episodes
on advanced metering, using the Sekonic light meter.

Now, there's another one here, it's got a
little "C". And that's for corded flash. And this has been around for years and years and
years. And what that allows you to do, is take your light meter and plug in a cable,
it's called the sync cable.

And that goes to your flash and so when you push the meter
reading button on the side of your meter, your flash will fire. So this is on, again,
all light meters. It's been around for years and years and years. Now, recently companies have come out, most
notably PocketWizard, that allow you to replace that cable with a radio trigger.

And so this
is the mode that we have here. It's called wireless flash radio triggering mode. And
that little radio antenna there, sometimes it looks like a "T", because it's not as big
as our big screen here, but it's actually an antenna. What that allows you to do is,
when you take a meter reading, it triggers your flashes wirelessly.

OK, now that know about the modes, we're going
to show you two of these modes, basic ambient metering and wireless radio triggering. We're
going to show you the basics of both of those modes. So we're going to start with ambient
reading. So let's get going.

All right, so let's first talk about how to
meter ambient light. Erica here is our model. And what we're doing is, I've set my Sekonic
meter here to ambient mode, which is the first little mode right here on the dial. And we
can do here is in ambient mode, we can choose to either shoot in aperture priority or shutter
priority, meaning that I'll tell the meter I know what aperture I want to shoot at, you
tell me what shutter speed to put my camera on, or I can say I know what shutter speed
to shoot at and you tell me what aperture value to set my camera to.

So we're going to start out with our meter
set to aperture priority mode. And so, what I've done is I've set two variables. I've
set my ISO value at 100, which is what my camera's set to, and I've set my aperture
value to 2.8, That's the aperture I want to shoot at. What I don't know is what shutter
speed to use.

So it's very simple. Once I have those two things set, on the side
of the meter here there is a meter button and I can push that. So I'm going to just
put this right under Erica's chin. I'm going to point this right at my camera and then
when I push this, it tells me my shutter speed.

So my shutter speed is 400. So now, I can
just walk back to my camera, set my aperture to 2.8, My shutter to 400 and I can shoot
that and it would be a perfect exposure. Now, let's pretend like I had a certain shutter
speed I want to use. So I'm going to pull a number out of the air, I'm going to say
I want to shoot at a 125th of a second.

Well, I'm going to put this in a different mode.
I'm going to push my mode button, you know, roll it to the left. And now I I've got a
little square around the "T", which is the time value. So I'm going to tell it, I want
to set my shutter speed to 125. I'm doing that by just rolling this and as I roll that
it changes the shutter speed.

So 125, and I need to know what aperture value to use. But I don't actually have to re-meter. It
will just tell me, it knows what my last meter reading is, but we'll verify it. So I'll do
this and I'll click.

And again it just says five, and so now I know that if I put my camera
on 125, I need to set my aperture value to five, and then, I'll get a perfect exposure.
Now, what if I wanted to know what would happen, let's say, if I needed to shoot at ISO 200
or 400? Well I don't even have to re-meter. I can just push this ISO button and I can
roll my dial and let's say I'm going up to ISO 400. It says I need to go to F10. I go
down to 200 it'll tell me, oh, I need to shoot at 7.1.

So the nice thing about a meter is that you
can just meter once then change all the different parameters to see what different exposures
are going to do, so you can make the creatively-correct decision. So I'm going to put my ISO back
down to 100, and I'm going to set my camera to 125 and an aperture value of 5. So let
me go over and do this. Now, I have my camera set to manual mode,
and that's what you want to do when you're using a light meter like this, because you're
not using the built-in meter anymore.

So I've set my camera to manual mode. So I'm going
to set my shutter speed to 125 and my aperture value to 5, and I have my ISO at 100, so everything
matches what my meter was. So, Erica, look right at me. Perfect.

[Camera shutter sound effect] Mark: And I can look on the back here; it's
a perfect exposure. And that's how simple it is to use a light meter on location when
you're metering ambient light. Now we're going to go into the studio and look at how to meter
light in a studio lighting situation. [Transition sound effect] Mark: All right, now that we're in the studio,
let's talk about a couple of different modes that our meter can do.

Again, here we're with
Erica, and what we're going to show you first is there's a mode that allows you to hook
up a sync cable to your meter. Almost every single light meter has that, but we're going
to use a PocketWizard that's built into this, so we don't really need this here. So I'm
going to throw that away. So I'm going to change my mode, and I've got
a mode here that has a little antenna on that, and what that means is I'm going to trigger
my flash wirelessly.

So when I push my metering mode... [Flash fires] Mark: ...My flash fires. And so that's the
way I recommend you set up your meter, is use a Sekonic with a built-in PocketWizard.
That way you don't have to have that nasty sync cable built in. OK.

So, what we do here is: again, we're going
to set two parameters and let the meter solve for the third. But when you're shooting in
a studio, really you have to set two specific parameters; that is the ISO setting and the
shutter speed, and your shutter speed should be set to your camera's sync speed. Now, I've done three or four videos in the
past on sync speed, so we're not going to cover that here, but you can go back into
our Digital Photography One on One videos and see a bunch of videos on sync speed. So
take a look at those.

But, on the camera that I'm shooting with,
the sync speed is two hundredth of a second, so I've set my meter to two hundredth of a
second, and I've set my ISO to 100. And so, again, my ISO is set to 100. Some cameras,
like some of the Nikons, can only go to ISO. 200 As their lowest ISO setting, so if I was
shooting with a Nikon like a D90 or something, I'd set this to ISO 200.

But the point is you want to keep your ISO
as low as possible in the studio so you don't have a lot of noise. So, I'm setting mine
to ISO 100. My camera's sync speed is 200. And then the other thing that I'm going to
get is the aperture value, and really, when you're in a studio, that's really all you're
looking for, is the aperture value.

So a lot of times when you have an assistant
or somebody metering, they're just calling out a number, like seven, or six-five, or
five-four, four-five, something like that. And they're not saying anything else, just
this, like, "Oh, it's metering at four-five" because all you really care about is the aperture
value. So, what I'm going to do here is, this little
lumisphere thing, make sure that it's up when you're metering in the studio, getting general
lighting. Now, there are some reasons why you would have to have this down, and so,
in a few weeks we're going to have some advanced metering techniques, and so we'll talk about
when you need to have this down.

For basics, though, you want to have this up, and you
want to put this as close as possible to your subject. Now, ideally, you want to have your lumisphere
as close to the eyes of a model as possible if you're shooting portraits. Now, I don't
do that because I don't want to jab somebody in the eye. And so, it's really uncomfortable
sticking this in front of somebody's face, so what I do instead is I'll put it right
underneath a person's chin, and that makes sure that this is in line with her eyes so
I'm getting about the exact same distance from the light by putting it under the chin,
and it's a little less intimidating than, "Ah, I'm going to stick you in the eye." OK, so that's why I stick it there.

And then,
the lumisphere needs to point right down the lens of the camera's lens, so right down the
barrel of the lens, I guess. So point this right at your camera. Push the meter button. [Flash fires] Mark: The flash fires, and then I'm looking
here; this says f/11.

That's my aperture value, and I would set my camera to this value, f/11,
take a shot, and I'll have a perfect exposure. So it's very, very simple. Let me go over
it one more time. Set your ISO and your shutter speed exactly the same as your camera, then
meter under the chin, right at the camera, and once you do that, it's going to tell you
what the aperture value is.

Set your camera to that aperture value, and you'll have a
perfect exposure. Now, there's one other thing I need to cover
really, really quickly to make sure that your meter and your camera are set correctly, and
that is: out of the box, a lot of meters move in half-stop increments, and most cameras
move in third-stop increments. So, on a Sekonic meter, you can adjust your meter to either
move in half, full, or third-stop increments, so I suggest you make sure your meter is set
to third-stop increments. And there are different ways to do that, so make sure you check your
user manual, because on different meters there are different ways to do that.

On this one there's some switches on the back,
and if you have this meter, the best way to do it is: the first two switches down, and
then the last two switches up, and that'll get you in the right settings. For other meters,
make sure you check your user manual. OK, now what we're going to do is I'm going
to take a couple of pictures, and just show you what this looks like here at 200, f/11,
ISO 100. So Erica, are you ready? Erica: Mm-hmm.

Mark: Awesome. OK, we're going to take a couple
pictures and show you how that looks. [Musical interlude] Mark: Awesome. Well, those pictures look really
good, and those are the basics of metering.

So please stay tuned for part four of our
series, where we talk about some advanced light-metering tricks with this, the Sekonic
L-758DR. We're going to be talking about how to get light ratios to look right, and dynamic
range, and all kinds of stuff like that. So please stay tuned, and to make sure you don't
miss a single second of our videos, please subscribe. And as usual, if you have questions about
photography or photography-related gear, you can send those to me at askmark@adorama.Com.
Thanks for joining me.

I'll see you next week. [Outro music begins] Woman 1: This episode is brought to you by
Adorama TV. Visit the Adorama Learning Center, where you'll find photography tips and techniques,
links to the gear used in this episode, and related videos. For all the latest photography,
video, and computer gear, visit Adorama.Com.

And the next time you're in New York City,
visit our store, located on 18th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue..

How to edit wedding photos in lightroomFixing challenging & underexposed images

Hey guys! Welcome back. Joy here, this week we are diving into Lightroom together! I've gotten some questions about how I. Edit and how to get consistent photographs...I've just gotten a lot of questions about my style and I thought it'd be fun to walk you guys through how i edit a challenging underexposed and unideal image to look you know fine art and light and airy and romantic. So I.

Think that it's super easy to get images to look beautiful and glowing and soft when the conditions were perfect you know but real life means that sometimes were inside and sometimes we're not able to get a sunset with a beautiful floral background so I want to help you guys out by showing you my process for editing images that maybe were not my most ideal images when I took them but I. Still want to deliver them I still think they're beautiful and I know my clients are going to love them. So before I go ahead and dive into the Edit I just want to explain to you some of the conditions that we were in for this particular day. So the weather was just insane we were outside and it was sunny and within a matter of minutes it was freezing cold super super windy and dark and it started raining it was insane so we retreated indoors and we wanted to go to this grand staircase but there was actually another wedding taking place at the exact same time so that's just gives you guys a little bit of an idea of some of the unideal conditions that we were dealing with.

My  gorgeous couple here just rolled with the punches they were incredible and they just went with it so for this particular image I was really looking for some beautiful architectural elements I love these arch pathways that we're going through this hallway connecting these rooms I love these columns in the corner some of the lights I just felt that it has some really strong details so that's what attracted me to this corner of the room so the first thing I'm going to do when I go ahead and edit this image and I've already cropped this image here let me show you really quick this is what the image looks like originally and this is a crop that I settled with and what I'm doing is I'm actually making this black line at the bottom my horizon line and I pulled the frame up so you kind of had to decide is it going to be up here or is it going to be down here so I pulled it up because I. Wanted more of this arch to be up here I. Really like the shape this crate they feel it really guides your eyes towards the couple and gives a great depth to the photograph. So once you're happy with your crop, you're going to hit enter and I'm going to go ahead and move right now into the basic edits and I would do on this image.

So the first thing I would do is go ahead and increase exposure. It looks about right so I'm adding an entire stop which might sound crazy to some people but I want this image to be bright and glowing and happy just like this couple is and not so much dark hallway with yellow tungsten lighting. At this point I'm going to go ahead and apply my film preset this preset is just a tweaked preset based on some things that I have purchased over the years and I really just made it my own so I'm going to play around just a little bit with the with my white balance here so i went ahead and i adjusted this white balance just a little bit i played around and I'm settling right around 2900 yeah let me go ahead and just type it in sometimes is a little finicky with the sliders so I just type in exactly what I want so from here I'm going to go ahead and increase the contrast a little bit i feel like we're losing some of these sharper points ok so I'm settling there I like that a lot. We're going to pull these highlights down a little bit since we had to pull the exposure up a lot I feel that we need to just soften those highlights just a little bit and get them back to where we want.

Now with the shadows pulling them down let's go ahead yeah that looks great next I'm going to go into the white slider and I'm just going to pull that down a little bit where we settled at minus 41 there really you're just going to have to play around with these and just see what looks good kind of in the thing about Lightroom is that it's a non-destructive editing software so you can go down you can see what that looks like you can go all the way up you can see what that looks like and you haven't degraded any of the image quality so that's the one great thing just play just start to get comfortable in the platform and don't really worry that you might ruin you know your your image in any way because that's just that's not at all how it works ok let's stop around 80 I like that so I like to warm the highlights I. Think that looks really great I'm going to just stay there in our details I. Think I want to go in and try and remove some of this noise so because if you can see up here in the right hand corner my iso was 2000 i'm shooting on the 50 millimeter lens aperture two point O at a hundred and sixty of a second so letting in tons of light with a fairly wide aperture and a fairly low shutter speed and we still were getting a dark image so now you can kind of see how it really was truly very dark in this corner so what I want to do next is pull down some of the noise so as you can see the image itself has a lot of noise going on and normally i would go ahead and add some grain but for this particular image i feel that i want to go ahead and go in and just reduce the noise i'm going to start at 16 16 or 17 and i think when i zoom back out i'm happy with the noise so i'm not i'm not really super against noise but i just want to make sure it doesn't look too grainy ok so we've straightened our image musics not any exposure where we want it the white balance where we want it the next thing that I really want to do is take the brush tool and address some of this warmer tones on these sides I think it's pretty distracting I'm not a huge fan of that so I'm going to go ahead and cool this brush down a little bit the saturation is already down I. Like that a lot I don't care so much about the highlight maybe pull the shadows up a little bit slow looks good a feather looks good with the brush guys it's really just trial and error so I'm going to go in here and I'm going to kind of paint this on and you'll start to see this saturated like yellowy like warmy color gets pulled right out of the image because i think it's distracting i would rather have my couple's skin tones be warmer and not the building itself.

Awesome alright guys so once you're happy with that so i'm going to turn it off you can see the yellow turning it back on and that has reduced it like how crazy is that it just looks like the light was more natural because it has that yellow pulled out of it because that yellow is telltale artificial lighting and we all kind of know you can tell when you see it that it wasn't the best light so that's something that I really like to kind of sneak in there and get rid of okay so I'm happy with this brush I'm going to close it alright so the next thing I. Want to do is pull out just a little bit of these oranges and yellows from what we're seeing in their skin tones I'm going to go ahead and pull down the saturation just a little bit on both the orange and the yellow and right away you can see that it feels more true truly white balanced if you will so I like that a lot that's gorgeous so this is pretty much where I would finish up I. Really like this edit I feel like it's brighter it's creamier it has a more romantic love I can show you guys a before and after alright so here we go this really shows how we pulled the yellow if you look particularly in the side areas this part of this original image was so yellow so saturated and now I feel like my eye immediately goes to my couple I'm immediately drawn to their smiles to her gown and looking at this beautiful architecture but not in a distracting way I feel that it it complements her and so this image is done I'm happy with it and I would go ahead and export it at this point and move on to the next image. So I hope that this was useful for you guys to see a little behind-the-scenes of how I.

Process my imagery let me know if you guys have questions I would be happy to answer them give this video a thumbs up if you learned anything and be sure to subscribe if you don't miss out on future videos all right i'll see you guys next week bye guys.

Digital Photography - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 12 of 12

The technology has been shifting constantly since
1839. We can only expect that it will continue to shift. Everyone is a photographer now.  Everyone carries a camera in their purse or pocket.

We make photographs in a different
way from the way we use to. But we make them for the same reasons. I would argue that a 19th century
Victorian family album has exactly the same purpose as the 200
pictures of your kid that you carry on your phone.  I was working in the apparatus division
research laboratory.

My supervisor came to me one day and said, I want you to look at a new type of imager that
had just become available. Called charged couple device imager and that was the Fairchild CCD 201. I thought if I could build some sort of device that would capture an image, well that is called a
camera. I called it my baby because it made me cry a lot.

I always say that. What I was dealing with was something that could convert a light pattern to a charge pattern. I had to get that charge pattern off the device
really quickly, and store it somewhere. So I was going to try and make a digital
conversion device, and then store it in RAM.

I decided I needed a form of permanent storage
that didnt require batteries. That was easy, actually, because magnetic tape
on cassettes were being used for all kinds of  reasons in the early days of computers. They were storing digital information. People always talk about building the camera.

More than half the effort, probably more than
half the effort, was building the playback unit. To make it suitable for a television signal because that was the only way to electronically look at an
image. This was all digital. Right from the output of the CCD all the way
through to the output to the TV set.

That was all digital everywhere in between. To give you a timeline of digital photography we have Steve Sasson in 1975 building the first
truly digital camera. In 1986 Eastman Kodak Company comes out
with the megapixel sensor. In 1987-88 Jim McGarvey builds tactical camera which evolves into the 1991 Kodak DCS.

It came in a rather hefty suitcase that contained
the camera and the storage device. The next year they are actually able to combine all those parts into one smaller body, the DCS 200. In 1994 the Apple Quicktake 100 is the consumer
camera. The first megapixel consumer camera is the
Kodak DC210 in 1999.

It is a very short timeline here, when you get into
it, maybe 20 years or so. Of course now everyone has either a smart phone
or a tablet with a camera built into it. The first digital camera I ever saw you had to load
a floppy disc into it. My mind was blown when I saw that.

What was this? You can put a picture on a computer now? There are generations of kids now that will never know what film is like, or what leafing through a
shoebox full of 4x6s from Moto Photo. Its things like that. It is just gone. Thats Talbot.

The man that invented the negative. Digital made the negative obsolete, and this is the
way we see images. It can be deleted by accident. It is not a physical thing.

We use to have the possibility that you might run across a photograph of your grandmother when she was eighteen years old, in the back of a
drawer that nobody knew about. Suddenly, you have this picture. That can be found later and interpreted.  When you have a digital image, what is the thing
that you have? You have code or something.

Rarely do people print out their photographs
anymore. When we are seeing things ephemerally on a screen  it becomes very much like everything else
we see on a screen. Our relationship to memory with regard to the
photographic image is changing  and it will be really interesting to see where that
goes. It is surprising to most people when I tell them I
love digital.

I just love digital technology, and they will look at
me and think it is heresy.  Artists have come to a point where many of them  are saying, I feel like the machine is in control  and I want to have my hands in this object. When the finished product is something other than a computer screen, it harkens back to the
day when photography was a craft. It is not just about the image, though image is king.

It is about the object itself, and you made that object..

How to cull wedding photos using photo mechanic

Hey guys, welcome back! Joy here - today we are talking about photo mechanic. This is how I'm able to go through literally hundreds or thousands of images in very little time and just go through and select what I want. So I'm going to give you guys some tips on culling and I'm going to explain the software. Again, we're inside of a photo mechanic right now.

So what you need to know about photo mechanic is that just the way that i views raw files (and it does work with raw files ) is so much faster than light room because lightroom is really just the way that it reads the file it's so much slower so it takes a second to render so as you'll see right here I hit enter ( space bar makes the image larger)and I'm immediately able to see a sharp image of what this photograph looks like. So there's not this buffering waiting not sure what's going on kind of deal. I can go ahead and I can enter and look in and just go through these images so quickly now a lot of these images are upside down so bear with me but you can get the point. So what I would do is I.

Would hit enter and I say okay I like this image I'm going to select it. To select this image, I'm going to hit the T key on the keyboard . And if you see right down here  (lower righthand corner) there is a checkmark now there are ways to star the images, color the images, do all kinds of different things. The way that i'm using it is i'm just selecting the positives.

I'm only going to select the images i liked so I'm not really worried about things I don't like. And I think it's much faster that way! My first tip is to go through your images and think what do I want to keep. Okay so i've decided i'm not a huge fan of that image let's rotate this really quickly okay so this is doable let's go ahead and hit the check mark so if we don't want to see this image so close we can go back to our thumbnail format all right let's get one of these with the emboss or tool i'm able to see this up close so i'm happy with how and focus it is can also zoom in and you can zoom out okay um yeah so this is totally out of focus i don't like that... All right I do like that, that seems pretty cool.Select that.

I'm just able to go through and select things that we like really really quickly so I'm going to really quickly yeah see that's really cool so then I. Selected that alright so once you have made your selections you're happy with the images that you have you're going to go up here to the top and you're just going to say "tagged" that now brings you the only the selections you've made. I. Can do command A (keyboard) and this is just all my images and then it shows me you have six images here.

At this point these are the only images i'm going to import into Lightroom. So I'm only spending the time in Lightroom that I absolutely need to with my selects. This has changed my life you guys, so if your wedding photographer or you shoot thousands of images you need to check out photo mechanic. I hope this video was helpful for you guys and that now you are able to see a little glimpse of what photo mechanic can do and how I specifically use it in my wedding photography business.

If you guys check it out let me know what you think leave me a comment I'm open to questions if you like this video give it a thumbs up and be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss out on future videos! I'll see you guys next time. Bye guys.

How to Bounce Flash Wedding Receptions and Events Breathe Your Passion with Vanessa Joy

Hi this is Vanessa Joy with AdoramaTV, and Breathe Your Passion, and in this episode I'm going to talk about reception shooting with bounce flash. As a budding wedding photographer I was not too keen on shooting with off-camera flash at receptions, and to be honest I. Still don't do a lot of it. The reason being, is that often during the reception, I'm called in to different rooms, or I.

Have to run outside to photograph something, and if I'm shooting with only off-camera flash, I have to scramble to make sure that I bring light with me, or get my other flash to throw it on my camera, to make sure that I can get whatever shot I need, outside of my off-camera flash setup. Because of all of this I use on-camera flash, but bounce it for most of my reception pictures. Now doing this is not that difficult, but there are a few tricks that will help you make sure, that you're bouncing your flash correctly. Number 1.

Bounce it off lightly colored walls. This is not going to work if you are photographing a reception in a barn or somewhere that has dark wood ceilings, or maybe even a color ceiling, or wall that is red or an off color. What happens with the dark surface that you're bouncing off of, is the light just gets absorbed into it. It doesn't reflect off it, just won't work, or worse the light takes on the characteristic of the color of whatever you're bouncing it off on.

So, if you're bouncing it off of a dark brown wood, it tends to bounce back a little bit orange, and not look so great on skin tones. Number 2. When you bounce, bounce in the direction of people's faces, now I know if you're photographing dancing, it can move very quickly, but ideally you want to point your flash at the wall in which your subject is facing. So that when it bounces back, it bounces back on the subjects face rather than on the back of their head.

This will produce a much prettier light pattern on your subjects face. Number 3. You can use TTL but you'll likely have to exposure compensate. I typically shoot on TTL for bouncing my flash in receptions, but I bump up the power by +1 maybe, a little bit more, maybe a little bit less, just depending on how big the room is, and how much power I need.

Number 4. Make sure that your ISO is set a little bit on the high side, while you don't want your ISO set too high, so you see a lot of green and noise in your image, you also are asking a lot of your flash, and will likely be bursting it, on a higher power. In order to help with this, raise your ISO so that it's a little bit higher, and your flash does not have to work as hard. Number 5.

Practice, practice, practice. Learning how to bounce flash in different scenarios can take a little bit of work, and it's a skill just like any other camera skill that you're going to learn. So practice bouncing your flash at your next reception, and a few more after that, until you get the hang of it. Make sure that you hit the subscribe button below and I will see you next time here on Adorama TV..

Digital Photography - Durham College

Mainly you have to be a people person, you
have to be able to make people comfortable, you have to be able to put yourself out there
to get the results that you want. And it's very much the same with photography:
you have to be able to make your subject comfortable in front of the camera, maybe get them out
of their comfort zone. You have to be able to contact people, be
able to write releases, to be able to organize all of your photo shoot. I was mainly a concert photographer in Toronto;
I thought that was going to be my life goal.

Coming into this year, I realized, well no,
that's not really what I want to be doing any more. I want to be doing portraits. I want to be
doing fashion editorials. When I first got my schedule for courses,
I was a little shocked, I got a lighting course, I thought that would be not as interesting
as the photography class, but to my surprise, I found the lighting class to be one of the
most fun and intreesting classes to take.

All the assignments were a blast. It's just a great environment to be in. And the faculty are really helpful. The faculty want you to succeed.

My professors and the assignments they were
giving us really allowed me to push myself, and some of my teachers actually immersed
me. I found my eyes watering when looking at some
of the work they were doing and I wanted to be at their level. I would just say to a student who's coming
to the digital photography program at Durham College, to really take advantage of the people
in your program, you classmates, those are going to be your network when you leave, those
are going to be the people, you keep in contact with if you rent out a studio space. If you're having problems, you borrow each
other's equipment, you help each other out.

Take advantage of your professors with their
experience, ask them questions, ask them if they need second shooters, ask if they need
help on projects. They know where you're coming from, and you
need that experience. Some studios aren't going to let you in the
door without that experience. So if you can take advantage of all the facets
that the College has, the studio time Even if you don't have an assignment, go in
and shoot with your friends, just play around with the lights.

It'll really benefit you and help you out. Durham College has helped me succeed greater
than I expected. I was really nervous about coming to college;
after the first two weeks, I fell in love with the school. It's a great atmosphere here, and it really
promotes success.

The teachers are great, and they are offering
help all the time. No-one wants to see you fail here, and so
everyone wants to help you succeed. Your classmates are going to be your best
models and your best friends during the year, because you're going to have to use them for
so many things. It's just like a great environment to be in..

Yulia Gorbachenko - Fashion and Beauty Photographer

(Pulsing music) - Hello and welcome to
the i3 Lecture Series hosted by the Masters in
Digital Photography program at the School of Visual Arts. We are thrilled to have Yulia Gorbachenko as tonight's guest speaker. Originally from Ukraine, Yulia is a fashion and beauty photographer based in New York City. We are particularly proud
that she's a graduate of our program at SVA.

In just a few short years she has built a really brilliant career
and that's inspiring. Yulia's editorials grace the
pages of magazines worldwide including international
editions of Harper's Bazaar, Elle Magazine, Glamour, L'Officiel, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and InStyle. Her commercial clients include Clinique, Maybelline, Garnier, Guess, L'Oreal, Make Up For Ever, Il
Makiage and Sally Beauty. So please help me
welcome Yulia Gorbachenko to our lecture series.

(Audience clapping) - Thank you so much for coming. I'm very excited to be here because I'm graduate from SVA
Digital Photography program. And it's been for me six
years since I graduated. It's been a long way till now but I'm very proud I was
a part of the program and I'm very proud that I'm speaking now, that I wouldn't imagine
me being here speaking in front of the audience.

I started to doing photography, let's see. I started doing photography
I would say eight years ago. Initially I'm from Ukraine, I did my year Bachelors in Marketing and Advertising and Linguistics, and came to the USA. Because I wanted to
stand out from the crowd, the other people who was doing
marketing and advertising.

So I was thinking, okay,
I'll come to the US, do my internship and then
come back to my own country, and I'll have some advantages over those who just stayed in the Ukraine. I came to the US. I was working in American company and suddenly I was given a camera, it was a Canon Rebel XS I think. And because I was so bored,
I was living in Maryland, I just started taking pictures.

First I took pictures of everything, of the people, nature
like literally everything. And I just got fascinated
by the photography. I would never believe anyone who would tell
me that I would become a fashion or beauty photographer or just photographer, I
would think is a joke. Because I never dreamt
to be a photographer.

And then I started training myself, reading a lot during
the daytime, nighttime, editing just playing around. And I looked at other
photographer's work that I admired. Those photographers were not
fashion photographers at all and I thought that photography
is such a great profession. I wish I could be one.

And then suddenly I thought I was, I was advancing I would say in photography and I thought that it's
really taking me somewhere. So, one day I told my parents, I think I was 20, 21 or 20. I don't really remember. I want to become a photographer.

And I'm very thankful to them that they didn't say, "Hey, are you crazy?" Because I'm from Ukraine, I
think back then in Ukraine there wasn't a profession
like photographer. They encouraged me, say, "Okay, if this is "what you really love to do, then do it." I think it took me a
year to enhance my book, polish my style a little bit as I thought I had a style back then. And I figure out, okay, so photography. I love photography but what
kind of photography will I do? Finally decided I want to do
fashion and beauty photography.

I applied, I built my book and I applied to SVA, and luckily I was accepted
and I moved to New York. I think this is when my journey
started with photography. And this is I think, this
image is very symbolic to me because this is what my
style looked like back then. I found out that there is this
continuous light and flash and I was experimenting a lot.

And I thought back then that this is my style and that's it. I'm doing continuous light
with all these crazy colors and this is going to be
my signature forever. It took me, I don't know, maybe a year. I was doing this, some things
like this for a year at least while I was at school.

And I loved it. I loved it but then after a year I think I got a little bit annoyed
already from all the movement. Maybe I grew up a little bit too, so my character evolved
and changed over time. Then this image I think
won competition at PDN.

And it was published, and one of their big
makeup artist contacted me and said, her agent contacted
me back then and said, "Hey Yulia, will you
be interested in doing "a beauty shoot with our makeup artist?" I looked up her work and her
work was just unbelievable and I was thinking okay,
why would this artist will want to shoot with me at all because she's there and I'm here? So I thought of course,
I would love to do it. I came to the meeting and she asked me if I want to do beauty with her. So of course, I just jumped
on the boat opportunity and we did a few shoots together. I think this image brought
me to the beauty photography because before I was doing mostly fashion.

I started doing beauty with her and we were doing lots of good stuff. This was done in the early
beginning of my beauty career and this image, and these
three images were just the beginning of my beauty journey. And then I realized when I
started doing beauty photography I realized that I'm so good in beauty because in fashion to do
good fashion photography, it takes so much, not
only the said design, it involves also good clothes. I didn't have any
connections to any magazines so it was me, makeup artist.

We'll get a model, a makeup
artist, a hairstylist but I didn't have a strong book. I couldn't get a pull
letter for the magazine. So I decided, okay, I better if I can't use high end clothing so let me do just beauty shots which will be on a good high level instead of doing fashion
shots that are just okay. Maybe my beauty work
will just bring me up.

This is basically what we did all the time for another given a year. I don't remember exactly
how much time it took me but I was getting good models, not as big as I can
get now but good models and concentrating on tight beauty stories, beauty shots even not
beauty stories I would say. And then I thought that
my work progressed a lot so it was makeup-oriented. I was experimenting with makeup.

Then I got to clean beauty which was just taking beautiful girls and getting clean stuff. It's not something crazy but I think that in simplicity because I couldn't get any clothing simplicity, I could get with my work higher. Only when I started doing
some simple things like this and then with cosmetics as well, I was able to get better girls, work with a better makeup
artist and a better hairstylist, and people started to reach out to me that they want to work with me. I thought that with my beauty works, I step up few steps above my fashion work and I loved it.

I think I was... I'm a person who's really detail-oriented, like little details, I care
about nails, about manicure, about just little wrinkles. I don't know, like little
perfections or imperfections. My eyes see it more and I think over time you
just get trained so much because you look so much
into all these details.

This is a start of my beauty journey just simple, beautiful images with a simple light and beautiful girls. And I'm obsessed with hands as well so my rule about the hands,
if they're good hands I would use them for sure. And then also the macro shots. I was doing along with the simple beauty macro photography
as well which I liked.

So my work evolved. Then I'll talk about my creative process, how I got to this. What do I usually do in my everyday life. I follow industry news.

I think Instagram is so fantastic and just all these fashion blogs, so cool because you can go online and everyday you have so many
editorials that are coming out and you can see who is doing what. And just get inspired, see
what other people are doing. And just the more you look,
the more you train your eyes. I follow other photographers,
good photographers but let's not try to copy them because inspiration is one thing and I admire many photographers but I never copy because I
need to develop my own style.

Everyday when I look through like blogs or like industry news, I
gather my inspirations. I have this folder in my computer which is called inspirations. I have, I don't know how
many folders I have there. 50, 70, I don't know.

Every time I see an
image for example of red like a beautiful outfit, red lips or interesting red eyes on the girl, I pull out this image and
put in a folder called red. If there is a wet image, when
her, model's face is shiny and she's all wet, done in interesting way I'll pull it out put in
the folder called wet. Then coming back when I need to pull, to get a mood board for the story that is full of reds or wet, I just go to the folder and I have already like 50 images there that I can just pull instead of just sitting there and going through all photographer's work, and getting ideas together. I think it's also very helpful to pull those inspirations everyday or not everyday, just once a week.

Once you see something it
just doesn't take you time just to get your ideas into the folders. This is what I do everyday, see it. Or now with Instagram on
the phone I do print screens and then go on them on my laptop and find where was it from so I can drag it to my
here, laptop and save. Because then over time you forget but if you have it, you will never forget.

You'll go back for it over time, Then I brainstorm ideas consistently because as it says, don't wait for someone to reach
out to you, do it yourself. When I for example a folder of
this wet images of the girls and I think okay, this
is and then over time, the idea develops in my head
how I would like to do it. I get these mood boards together and I reach out to the
magazines with an idea, so I can send them three mood boards, I can send them five mood boards, I can send them seven
mood boards or even two. Depends on where my mind is but those ideas should be
really formed in your head what exactly you would like
to send out in your own style.

It's very difficult to
put what you have in mind into the mood board but you have to try to do your best just to translate your
ideas into mood board. And when you said mood board it's not that you try to copy it but the editor, they need to see what story they will have in the end. Then I'm very open to criticism, it can be helpful but also
I've received quite a lot of critics from friends and colleagues and just people I know. But also you need to understand that you need to stick to your values, what you think is best for you.

For example, I'm beauty photographer and many people were pushing
me to shoot for fashion and I'm telling them I love fashion but I'm not going, even if
it's for good magazine now, I'm not going to do
it, I'm not feeling it. It's not the thing that I'm obsessed with, that I'm willing to do right now. I'm just loving something else, something tighter, some little details. Maybe it will change over time, maybe it will change in months or maybe it will change in five years.

I don't know but I don't
create something that I'm not obsessed with. I know my strengths, I know
that beauty is my thing so I'm very confident with that, so I don't go anywhere else at the moment. I just polish, polish, polish my style. As I said, set yourself
projects to build your book and polish your own style.

In before the images that
you've seen in clean images or the images with makeup, nobody came to me and said, "Hey Yulia, would you like to do it?" I set up the shoot, I brainstorm ideas, we got with a team together. We did the shoot, we did the retouching and only then I started to
submit it to the magazines. And that's when I got published, started publishing in Marie
Claire or Elle Magazines or Harper's Bazaar. They were in the full stories.

First, there were some
pictures here and there and then only then I was
able to submit the stories. But this is how I started
by submitting the stories that I already have. And then when I had and those images were without the styling. They were just simple images but at least at my book I had already some consistent series.

Then experiment. All my, I can't say career, all my photography light
I try to experiment with my style, with my lighting, with models, with angles. So just don't be afraid and
push yourself to the limits because in the end it's you and your work and it needs to standout, it
needs to speak for itself. After I got the series of images that I could present to the magazine, I started sending the mood boards and I started shooting
these series of images which I think is very
important to understand when you have a clear concept in mind how to do the series that are cohesive and that read together.

And I tried to come up for example, this series were shot for Harper's Bazaar, for Harper's Bazaar. And when I think of this series, for example, this is here
the example of the series that are shot on the neutral background, more for portraiture style. Sometimes I like to zoom in, zoom out, play with different crops. But sometimes when I have
some concept I really like when they say like in a portraiture style.

Here this is more for like geometric and like sleek hair, geometric and I stayed for example here cohesive and consistent with the hands. Once I saw that the model's
hands are fantastic, she's so good at having her hands, and I started to, the thing about the shoot
is think it's the hands, how weirdly she can place them. I think they add so much. I think when I have
three images with hands or four that will be very strange not to have the fifth
image without the hands.

The lesson here if you
started doing the hands and it reads well with the story, you just have to kind of continue with it, and allow how the crops,
it's pretty much the same more for portraiture style here as well. Neutral background, I just
didn't see in this series adding different background
or zooming in, zooming out. I love how images look the same in terms of proportions. For example, in this one I thought okay, having portraits all the time is boring, sometimes it's cool to
zoom in and zoom out.

For example, these were some close ups. Sometimes I love to zoom
out just to have them, to have some interest and
zoom in again into the image. Same here, like three images are close up and then zoom out just for the interest so the viewer can, so the page can read more
interesting in the magazines. But sometimes it works,
sometimes it doesn't.

You just need to think over
all these details before. When I get my mood board
together then I think of okay, when I go to the set I know exactly what light I'll be using. And I know if I'm going
to do all the close ups so I want to zoom out. This is also very important
for the stylist to know how you're going to shoot it because maybe this dress won't look good if I cropped it in.

It would look too simple. Or maybe if I zoom out on that dress it won't be as interesting as well. The stylist you have to get
some idea to the stylist what are you doing. And then after that also now I tried, I'm trying to push myself
to shoot more on location because beauty is so studio and I love studio but when I started out I think I would shoot in a lot on location because I didn't have
so many lights with me and I just loved all these, what unexpected moments
the location will bring.

But then I locked myself in the studio, was doing quite a lot there. I was thinking, okay, that's it, let's and it were some, all the
stories were shot in fall, in the beginning of the fall. I was thinking okay, that's it. I need to use locations
as much as possible.

This one was shot on location. We just came out and this
one was shot also in location even though sometimes it's, you can't tell if this is location or not because it's so close this image but these all was in a couch
in one of the location. And that's so funny because
this one it was the last shot when the sun was going out. So okay, I need to get one
more shot just in case.

We went out, I put the
light against the sky so this image I shot in one, I think it took me two
minutes just to get that shot. It was just so perfect and
I like how the background fits in into the story. It's the same theme which is the lace but the backgrounds are
different which adds the elements and I like it a lot now
to just mix and match. For example, in fashion when
I see fashion photographers doing studio work and combining it with the fashion outside, I really, really like that.

But for beauty, I don't
have usually so many pages, I have like five to six pages and it's not the 15-page story. Sometimes it's tricky to combine both but for some stories it worked just to experiment with backgrounds. Then let's talk about lighting, how I started with my lighting. First, I didn't have any lights.

I was using outside for my shoots a lot and then I got myself two lights which I was taking everywhere I went. It was a beauty dish and one will light I don't know, for lean and just in case, I would
say one or two lights. I think that it's very
important to understand those two lights first, and do your best with those two lights because once you know
how to use two lights, it will be so easy to add
one more and one more. But I think with two lights
I've shot for few years because this is all I had.

I was traveling with those
few lights on subway, just everywhere I went. And I think it played a really big role that now I know those two lights and I can add now and I
know exactly what I'm doing. I also have a folder in my inspirations which is the lighting references. There are like projections.

When I see some fashion,
beauty images with projections which I will do soon I think, so I put them there or
if there is a Picolite which I love as well using. I would put those inspirations with the interesting lighting to the folder. When I'm shooting some story, sometimes I would go to
them lighting references even though sometimes I
know already what I want, but I would go still to
the lighting references and look through like hundred images which has different interesting lighting just to see, just to see
if there is something I could add to the shoot. I would gather a lot
of lighting references that are available in the internet.

Then watching tutorials
and behind the scenes, I think internet is so fantastic now because all these photographers, huge photographers are posing
behind the scenes videos of what they are doing, and sometimes it's just one light or sometimes it's just two lights. And even though the images
look just fantastic. Just watch what other people are doing just to have an idea, educate yourself. I still do, I still go into the internet and watch those tutorials,
behind the scenes.

It's very helpful
especially the photographers are so open with sharing. In almost every shoot myself, I have behind the scenes photographer who shoots behind the
scenes images for myself and then I post them. So you could see what I'm doing
and I'm very open to share because there are no
hidden secrets in lighting. It's just a tool to translate your vision.

And I think that one of, I think it's the best advice I think that I can give to anyone
who wants to do photography. And I think it worked for me very well, it's just practice. Just shoot a lot. I think, well, looking back
even like two years ago I wasn't as good as I'm now or four years ago I'm not, I
wasn't as good as two years because I just think
practicing consistently just you polish your style so much.

You train yourself, you
think with the practice, your style is polished. Not just sit and look in image
or like this or like that, just with real life situations. You learn from the people, you
learn from situations on set of what can happen. I think practice is the best advice if you want to get better.

The more you shoot, the better you become. Besides of course, the talent but for me like practicing
and shooting so much helped tremendously. Okay. With the lighting, what do we have? These images for example were
shot with just one light.

I just want to show you that what kind of stuff
you can do with one light and most of my work is just
one, two, three lights. It's not a lot even
though I can have more out but this is just one light, this is like one light
against the sunset, micro, just simple portrait. It's very easy. And in these ones I was
using the Para from Broncolor which is my go-to tool
for this kind of shots.

This is two lights. Also looks a little
like gels and (mumbles) but it's just two light. You move them around,
you see how they look, if you put them in front it's softer. On top it's hotter and just move, I just move it around and see what works best for the shot.

And this is I think my go-to
lighting is three lights. They're all the same,
pretty much similar set up. What's the difference now that
I put two lights on the back to control the intensity
of the background. This is on the harder, this is the less light on
the back in the middle.

It's the same pretty much setup, just different intensity
on the background. Now I really love to control it, before I was playing with the background by placing the beauty
dish how it will fall. If you're closer to the
background so it will be lighter, if you're further away so its darker. Now since I have the lights, it's so much easier to control it and that's what I do
or just in no lighting, these images were shot with no lighting, just reflectors and nothing else.

Very, very easy. No lighting at all. Once I think, when I just, I didn't even move to New York back then. I wanted to assist one of
the fashion photographers and I showed up to him
with my electronic book, with my book and showed him, there was one model, I
can't even say it's a model.

Okay, it's one model and
she's in 10 different poses same everything, same outfit, kind of different expression. And he looked at my book,
I tried to get internship. He thought, "Yulia, I'll
give you one advice. "Just get better models.

"You're good in photography
but get better models." For me, I thought okay, I understood him and I took that advice seriously but it's very hard to get
good girls in the beginning because you don't have your book. Nobody knows you. With time, I think I took the
girls that were good looking, they were not top girls and I tried to get the best of them. For example, if their
chin was heavy for example I would shoot really tight but my main result, my main goal was to, for them to look beautiful in my book.

And over time I think just getting, getting better, better girls because no matter how good I am, makeup artist, hairstylist,
the whole team, if you don't have a good model, you don't have a strong shoot. But to get to those girls, you need to, well, I had to. I don't know, maybe
someone has bad examples when they were able to jump
into good girls faster, but for me it was just a
long growth of building up and getting better and
better casting for my shoots. Well, this is the best.

Practice I think the best advice and I think the models. Just try to get better models because no model, no shoot. Yes, for me now even if I know I don't have a girl for the
shoot, I better cancel now because I now already
have so much in my book, so if the model is not
going to add to my book, I'm not doing it. Then I, in many of my stories, I try to add unexpected
moments to the shoot, just something that is
these beautiful poses and then something that just breaks, breaks the story in a good way.

This just looks like unexpected moments but at least these two they were expected. I told them to smile but very, but in a very believable way. It took some time, not
long but they did it. Doesn't look staged but
it was pretty much staged but they were so good
and we made them laugh so they laughed.

I love doing this like
smiling, smiling images, just love, love, love that. Then playing with your crop. Having a little bit of
background on the top, cropping half of the face off. Just playing with all these cool crops.

Sometimes it works and it looks cool, sometimes it doesn't. And for me, I know that I need to get that crop in the camera. If I didn't get in the camera, I'm just so bad in cropping
when it's already done. I just don't see it as
much, I don't like to crop.

Like shooting the whole
image then cropping, no, I need to get it in the camera. Most of my images I think, I would say 95% of the crops that I have were done in the camera. Because then when you look
through all these images when you pick the shot, I don't see, immediately you see the final. I don't see it being cropped after.

I need the final in my camera. And if you know me a little bit, you know that I'm crazy about hands. Now when casting I'm just okay, can we get a good girl with good hands and if I have good hands, I can do so much with hands. Around the face, around her body, just I'm obsessed with hands, with manicure, with different hand poses.

I just love to play with it and I think hands add so much
to the beauty photography. Then being creative. I think some of my images
are very clean which I love. I love clean, I like
timeless, I like clean.

I like just timeless images but sometimes I feel like
expressing myself more and it's by doing the things
you think are cool for you. A curtain of the hair and putting on her, just even that it was itchy for her but that's okay, she suffered
a little bit, we got the shot. And then this project that
I have the whole series with the manicure where we colored the fruits in different colors. This was a personal project that makeup artists and I had in our mind.

We got together in the studio. Well, actually my house,
not even the studio but it's a big house I had back then. Got the nail, the
manicurist, the nail model and got the whole series that I just love those series when
we colored all the fruits. This one is for, was for
models that come as well.

We wanted the flowers around the face and I have the whole series of the flowers on her body, on the face, everywhere. Just breaking in. Because I think when you
look at somebody's work and it's all these clean images, I think it can get
pretty boring over time. Sometimes it's good to just cut it and have something
unexpected in your book.

Even when I take my book to see, for the clients to see. First, I have very relevant images if I'm going for the meeting
with a cosmetic company, I would always have like
relevant cosmetic images that will be very relevant in terms of style for the client to see. But in the very end, I will
have something that will say who I am, what I like to do and clients like to see that, that you can express
yourself in different ways. I put this kind of stuff
in the very end of the book and not a lot, just few images so they could see that
what you have in mind besides all these commercial work.

And not the last, but which is extremely, extremely, extremely
important is retouching. I don't retouch myself. I did but I didn't do a
good job, I didn't like it. I didn't do a good job.

I was spending hours
doing it and I hated it-- - [Audience Member] Didn't
like it as student either. - Yes, yes. That's when I retouched, tried to. I will sit in the computer
and just trying to do it.

And in the end, it didn't look good. I wasn't just good at it
and I think you get better. You have to have the taste and you have to do it all the
time to become good at it. I didn't want to waste my time because it's not what I love to do.

First, I used some retouches, now I have few retouches
consistently that I use because with retouching, I
think this is your style also because if you have
this whole amazing story and then retouching doesn't do a good job, it's a bummer for everyone including makeup, hairstylist and now all the people in the industry, they know what the good retouching is. If we have all these amazing results and I then deliver bad images nobody will want to work with me. So it's my job to make sure that retouching looks at its best and everyone expects from
photographer to do it. If you can do it, do it.

Practice, love it, experiment with the
retouching, get better. If you don't do a good job and you don't love it, don't do it. So I don't do it because I did a bad job. But I know, but I know what I want exactly so I know, it's not that
I send out to retouch, to do whatever I want.

No, I stay, I make little comments. Make the nose smaller, make
the nails a little longer, make her neck slimmer. I make all those different comments and I spend hours like commenting, doing through rounds of retouching. And it's good to have your one retouch or two retouches that you like so they know your kind
of style that you like.

So, you have to just mention, now I just mention few little things that my retoucher won't think of. But usually now it's very easy because she knows exactly what I like. So very, very, very important and I think especially
in beauty like coloring and for example, how
we desaturated the skin so the makeup and her
eyes could pop up more. Just all these little details, I think also retoucher got
better over time with me as well.

Then we are going to talk
about the editing the story, how I do it, how I produce it and what do I do on set. We shoot, we started shooting, for example, I know I have to deliver five or six final images to
the magazine or to the client. We start shooting and I'm
a pretty fast shooter. I think I'm fast.

We're shooting and then I stop, I'm shooting then I stop. I look through the images. I see what we got. If I see that I got the shot that I want, so I flick for example
two images that I love or three images that I love.

I tag them and then I pick the best shots. I try to pick the best shot in the end of the look that I'm shooting, that I know exactly what I got. If I didn't get it, I shoot again but I pick the shot in the spot so, I could take an opinion
of the makeup artist, hairstylist, stylist because it's a collaboration. Everyone needs to like the image and sometimes makeup artist or stylist see something that I don't see, for example, there are
wrinkles on the clothing that I won't be able to remove and post, so this doesn't work.

And then I see that wrinkle,
of course it doesn't work. Or there is just hair sticking out. Someway you won't be able
to fix it so we shoot more and sometimes it's the perfect
shot but something is off, so we can stage the
same kind of pose again. Sometimes we're able to do the same, sometimes you shoot,
you try to get the same but it's not the same.

Just trying to get the best shot in the end of each session. Then we were talking about the crop. When I plan the story, I plan okay, they're like portraiture style so everything is going to
be the same kind of crop or is there going to
be like three quarters and then close ups. All of these I try to,
I plan, I don't try.

I just plan it before. Of course I can modify
something along the way, how it goes when I see okay, this clothing just doesn't
work for full body, let's do something closer. But plan as much as you can before but don't get stuck if
something doesn't work. For example, if I was thinking okay, I'm going to do this contrast lighting, this harsh lighting, I get on the set.

I set up everything and
it works on the assistant, the assistant looks good in that lighting but the model comes in, and she just doesn't look
good in that lighting. Be very flexible to modify the lighting based on the clothing, on
the model, on her mood. Just the whole vibe onset. I plan as much as I can but I'm very much open minded on set, on how I can change it depending on how the story flows.

Then if I see that I
have all these closeups and the one three quarters and it's kind of, so sometimes I try to
get two, three quarters so there is not just one shot that is or just plan accordingly. I'm listening to my team, of course I trust my instinct in the end what to pick, which image to pick but I select the people
that I love to work with. I select them based on the
images they have in their book and they have them because of their taste. I trust their taste.

I would listen to makeup
or hair or manicurist on what they have to add to the process of for example, sending inspirations. When I send inspirations
to the makeup artist say, okay, this is the mood board. This is the direction
but don't do the same. This is just idea.

I want you to come up
with something unique that will be you and us, not just don't copy the thing. I trust them in selecting the images. If hairstylist says, "Oh, okay
just I don't love this image, "I'm not going to use it in my book." Try to reach the compromise
of the images that you'd like to see in the end. And I think you pick
the team that you like so your tastes are a little bit I think they are similar taste to you.

For me I think in the end, we come up with the same
kind of image that we like for example, from 50
images we like two images. Those two images are
the same that they like. I think it's not the coincidence, it's just a matter of taste and how you pick your team. I don't usually, we don't usually argue.

When we see the shot,
everyone sees the shot. It's the shot, let's move on. Let's not waste our time on the shot. And don't show anything
that you don't like.

I know sometimes you,
there are five beautiful or three beautiful shots, you don't know what to pick, and sometimes thinking okay, I'm going to show this to
the editor and let them pick. But if I do that I don't send something that I would not like to see in the end because they're going to pick that shot and you'll hate them. Because I think anything, if
something goes wrong on the set it's photographer's responsibility. If makeup artist is bad
or hairstylist is bad or something happened on the set, even if it's not photographer's fault, in the end it's my fault.

This is how it goes always. Same if I pick, if someone picks the shot, edits or picks the shot
that the crew doesn't like, they'll think this is in the end my work, it's my name is going to be there. I just don't send anything
that I don't like. And if we shot something
and the results is just, sometimes it happens,
it doesn't happen often but it does happen that
you are not satisfied.

At this stage of my career, I just don't run it. I just say sorry, this is their situation. This is how it went, I don't want to put just work out there. If we are going to do
it, it needs to be on the higher level or the same
level that we are now.

I just don't retouches,
I don't put it out there. We just kill the story and that's okay and we move on, we make
new beautiful images. Just try with your work to
be very, very consistent and try to push yourself every time. Now what's my favorite
story if you would ask me, it's my last stories because I put so much
effort on the last stories like thinking about it all the time.

Waking up in the middle
of the night thinking, like thinking in the morning,
in the shower, everywhere. The stories that are in
the past I like them but I just got tired of them. So now in my mind something new, my favorite stories are always
the last stories that I did because they're fresh and
I want to share with them, I just got inspired by them. Yes and thank you so much.

(Audience clapping) So, you're welcome to
ask me any questions. I try to explain my way to who I am because now it's easy to say what I do. But I think it's very important to understand how I
came to where I am now. I think there is still
so much more work to do in the future and I'm so excited to see what the future holds.

But I don't believe in luck at all, well, there is some luck but I believe in hard work
and training yourself, in polishing your style,
in meeting new people and just developing yourself as a person because I'm not the same person I was six years ago when I was here. Just develop yourself, build yourself. Just get inspired and just
move forward all the time. - [Man] We have time for a short Q&A, I'll pass around the mic, please use it, it's for the video.

(Snickers) - [Audience Member] Hi,
thank you for sharing with us all of your great work, you know? A lot of us are in the program now and I just want to ask you a question. What was your transition like? When you graduated from the program you said, all right, I'm going to do this, I need to make this work.
- Yes. - [Audience Member] What
was that like for you? What was the process? How'd you feel going
through those moments? - The process I developed,
I shot a lot for myself, just doing simple beauty work. Submitting this beauty
work to the magazines even though it wasn't full beauty story.

Just submitting. You would go to my
website and you see okay, she got published in Elle or she got published in Marie Claire or she published anywhere. It didn't matter the country. I just wanted to be a
published photographer.

And then when I was published photographer and I reached out to the magazines, they were able to give me the pull letter and I was able to pull clothing that you can see now
in a lot of my shoots. But I think what I did,
I just kept on shooting. Kept on generating ideas, kept
on brainstorming those ideas, kept on reaching out to the hairstylist, to the manicurist and
doing my own body of work that will read me, will be classy. And sometimes if I didn't a good model I always think, okay, I
don't have a good face, I would shoot just hands.

Because in the end, your work needs to be just the high level and I think in high level beauty, I was very lucky to love beauty, but I think in beauty to
reach the great image, good quality, even clean
image is much easier than to do this fantastic (sneezes)
high end, bless you, photo shoot, a fashion shoot. For me, it was the most important, even if it's simple but
it needs to be high end. It needs to be classy,
it needs to be beautiful. It needs to stay to the standards.

I didn't want to do
something with the clothes of a known brands that
didn't look like anything but just to have them. I will shoot girls with
no clothing, cut them off but have a just high standard image. And only when I was able
to get pull letters, and get Prada, MioMio,
whatever, all these brands, I would shoot fashion,
include fashion as well. I just kept on shooting, kept
on brainstorming consistently and pushing myself to new ideas, coming up with ideas to
makeup artists, to anyone.

Yes. - [Audience Member] Hi there. - Hello.
- Hello. I'm curious, (mumbles).

It's awesome you really
made the point of shooting a lot of personal work
especially starting out and putting that and
building that book up. At this stage of where you are right now, what's the percentage do you think of jobs that you're getting that are commissioned from publications versus still projects that you're doing with other people in your team, and then you're submitting those stories around where you think they might fit? - Yeah. Now, I think all my work
is based on the magazines. So magazines, I send them out ideas so they come up to me, some magazines do come up to me finally.

It took many years but some
really write to me sometimes. But still I'm pushing myself
to them as well all the time. Now it's mostly all
commissioned by the publications because with publications,
I can get good girls. I can get big girls.

Because if I go to the, and I can get clothing that
even to the beauty shoot they add so much, the styling add so much. Because I can't have styling
without the pull letter and pull letter I can have
only with the magazine. Now mostly it's the work for the magazines but still, all those ideas are my ideas. I submit to the magazine and there they pick one of my idea,
so it's still personal because with the magazines
you can get so much creative, it's still you.

You just have access to big models, great makeup artists and hairstylists. For example, makeup
artist she has a choice to shoot for Harper's
Bazaar or just nothing so she would go for Harper's Bazaar. Because I have with the magazines, you have so much more access
to the things that you can do. Mostly but for example right
now was following one model, she's super young, she just
signed with Yves Saint Laurent and she's from Israel but
now she's in New York.

She doesn't have, she has
just few images in her book but she's just fantastic. She's new, nobody shoots her so I saw in her Instagram
that she's in New York so I messaged to the stylist that I know and then to the makeup,
would you be interested just to shoot her? Even if we don't have the publication will you be interested
because she'll be in a year because she's so young,
she's maybe 16 or 15. But maybe in two years she'll be big, it's one of the most beautiful
girls I've ever seen. I'll do it.

If I see that face, like I'll do it, I'm doing it that next week because she'll be big, I just see it. I've been following her,
I want her, I'll do it. - Hi.
- Hello. - [Audience Member] A question I think could be interesting for us
that are not from New York, how did you start your connection? Like networking, how, I
think that's my question.

(Snickers) Thank you. - That's with people or with
magazines or with anyone? Anyone?
- Mostly, yeah. People, magazine. - I think now Instagram
is such a fantastic tool.

Now everyone follows, like
people follow each other. They follow, we see
each other's work a lot so I can write a message
in Instagram to someone. Even not email, sometimes
I would use email but I think if it's just not the agency, if it's just a creative person, I would just write a message
in Instagram approach and say, "Hey, I love your work." Or I can just comment, hey,
your work is fantastic, I would love to collaborate. Or just shoot in the end message.

And even with some magazine when I have an email which is an email but it happened to me
that with few magazines when I couldn't find the
content in the internet, I just looked and looked, I
couldn't find the beauty ad or editor-in-chief, I just couldn't find. And so, I was okay, I'm going to write. It was I think Instagram. Yes, I wrote to a few people and out of 10 for example that I wrote, maybe one responded but they respond.

Some people respond
only from the internet. But with now I try to find the contact in the internet of some people. There are so many emails
there that you will, would never, you just need to look for it. In Harper's Bazaar something then you go, you see the name of the editor and sometimes there is even an email.

Or if there is no email but
email of the other person, you can kind of guess how you can form the email of the beauty. So they put first name and
last name add blah, blah, blah. I write and there is beauty
editor or someone else that there is just a name. You form the same and it works.

Just research, see it in, see it in, look for contacts because
they are not for everyone but you can find so much
just for researching. And building your team,
just meet with people. Sometimes I go for coffee with people and someone is reaching out to me and say, "Hey, I would love to work with you. "Let's go, let's meet for coffee." I would go for coffee sometimes but I feel when I see the work, I don't even need to go for
coffee with that person.

I feel that if this work, I see already the people
they are by their work. I think even before going to coffee, you know you will want
to work with that person because this is their work or you will not want to
work with that person. I still go for coffee but I know, I know. I know before the coffee happens if it's going to happen or no.

- [Audience Member] Hi. - Hello. - [Man] No, no, no. It's good to hear.

- [Audience Member] Hi,
thanks for showing your work and like, for the photos, how do you shoot exterior photos and as well the, how do you
arrange your photo shoots? - How do I arrange? - [Audience Member] Yeah,
yeah, photo shoot and yeah. - Logistically? - [Audience Member] Like
when you shoot exterior. - Outside? - [Audience Member] Yeah
with lights of course. - One of the shoots I've
shot in the New Jersey there were two buildings.

One is called Hamilton House and another one The Oakman. So I contacted, they're
brand new luxury buildings so I contact the management and say, "Hey, I'm beauty and fashion photographer "shooting this fantastic model "that is just going to blow your mind. "And it's going to be a social
media, it's so strong now. "You have to have your reputation up "so please allow me to use the space.

"It will be nice, we'll will be quiet. "I'll give you credit everywhere." And just contact them. Same for the motel that I had
connection with the stylist and she got connection with the motel. We got in contact with the motel and just asked them if
we could shoot there.

Just reach out to the
managers and ask them if and sometimes there is a no. They say no, sorry guys. Or sometimes, hey, you have to pay $3,000 and you say okay, no.
(Audience laughs) But I think in this kind of business, you just have to push yourself and there are so many no's. With time you get insulted first but then you care but
you don't care as much.

Okay, I'll try more. So same with the editors. I send the messages to so many people and I don't hear back. So what do you do? You don't get upset, you
just continue on trying.

Write again a follow up in six months. Okay, this is my new
work, please take a look. So just explore or if you've seen that some photographer that you know, someone chat there so ask them. Don't hesitate to ask because
I think it's very important when we are photographers just
to be friends to each other.

Just give advices, give
contacts, just share information because we're in the same boat. I don't believe in competition that much. It's you and your work, if you're good, you're going to be paid. You're going to progress and I think it's so fantastic
if we progress together, we become great
photographers all the time.

- [Audience Member] How about
like permits and your research like when you planned,
before you plan to shoot? Your outside photography or whatever.
- How I trained before? - [Audience Member] Like
research development or like think of getting a permit. - I didn't shoot that
much in public spaces, it was more for buildings or the motels. I didn't get any permits
for that, I have insurance just in case if something happens, if some light falls on someone. I think it's not that much money, I think it's maybe $50
a month or something.

But in this country I think
it's better safe than sorry and I've been paying it for many years and I feel okay, maybe
even it's 100 a month, I don't remember but I feel you don't mess up with insurance, you don't and taxes, so don't. Get yourself insurance but permits, I didn't get any because I had
the yes from the management. Yes. - [Audience Member] I'm
curious about the retouching.

- Yes. - [Audience Member] Are
you working with people here in the United States
or is it like international? - I have this retoucher
for four or five years that I've been working a lot. It's 100Berlin Retouching, I love her and I think we started talking together but I think her work was even
better than mine was before, and still it's pretty good. We started out together,
we worked together so much so she helps me out on editorials.

I give her my commercial clients and then I have a few
more retouches as well which I love, which I use sometimes but I have this main core retoucher that I would use for most of my work. Just building the book
together and growing together. - [Audience Member] I actually
did, thank you (mumbles). I did have a question.

- [Audience Member] There you go. - Oh and she's in Berlin. She's Berlin, she expanded
into France so she's overseas. - [Audience Member] You
know, to the international aspect of this, I was really impressed when I was reading through your bio and you shoot for Harper's Bazaar but it's Harper's Bazaar
Ukraine or Harper's Germany and you know, five other
international versions of Bazaar and the same with Elle Magazine and the same with Marie Claire.

It can't be a coincidence. I mean, how do you orchestrate
this international? - I write emails, I reach out. They didn't come to me, I
wrote an email, an introduction and say hey, I would
love to shoot with you. I'm this, look at my work.

Look what I can do for you. This is the mood boards, this is my team, I can get this team. And sometimes if I have
a (mumbles) to cast I can get you this girl. So I approach them, I write to them.

To Ukraine, I'm originally from Ukraine so I wrote to but this wasn't
my first Harper's Bazaar. I think Harper's Bazaar Kazakhstan was my first Harper's Bazaar and they helped me tremendously
to build my book up, to get my book together, to allow me to use their name, to bring great models on set, and to create great stories for them. So, I reached out to them
and say hey, I would love to and they gave me a chance. They love the outcome and I
still continue shooting for them because this is the way
I can express myself through all those beauty
stories that I do to them.

But now some people reach out to me, some but I still do my
whole work all the time. Every few weeks I just
reach out with mood boards and mood boards take a lot of time just to brainstorm ideas, to put them in, and you need to make sure and I'm still learning how to do it, how to impress with your mood boards. Because something can be in my head but it needs to read
well in the mood board. Because before I underestimated, okay, I would just put images together, okay, here you are, look.

No, now you need to
really make it look nice so people would get exactly
what you want to shoot. - [Man] Anybody else? Thank you, Yulia. - Thank you. (Audience clapping).