In this video, we're going to take you behind the scenes of our new DIY photo shoot at home
for our new podcast: Content Jefe! We're going to be using photos from the shoot for our
podcast, cover art for our podcast, website, and for promotional social media graphics
and for promotional videos. We're going to cover set up lighting and camera tips.
And at the end of the video Studio Steve is going to show you how we professionally touch
up our photos using Lightroom. We're also going to create the brand new cover art for
our podcast in Canva Pro. We've got a lot of fun to get to. We better get started.
Hey, welcome to the Pod Sound School, where we're obsessed with all things, content creation,
and every week we post really helpful videos to help you take your online content to the
next level. So if you haven't yet considered subscribing and come hang out with us every
week, photo shoots are unimportant.
Part of any content creator strategy. There are a great way. Badge create a lot of content
that you can use for months to come, especially when it comes to a podcast and while hiring
a professional makeup artist, a wardrobe person and a professional photographer would be ideal
and an amazing experience.
Their reality is that many of us need to figure it out a way to DIY our photo shoot at home.
We're lucky enough at the pods. Pretty fancy equipment, but a lot of what we're going to
be covering in this video, you can accomplish with really inexpensive equipment or even
your smartphone. Okay. So let's start by talking about setup.
So when we're talking about set up, we're really talking about where your photo shoot
is going to take place with the background is what proximity. Things like that. So this
depends on the concept that you have for your photo shoot and for your brand. Maybe it's
something you want to do outside, but if you do it indoors, it's going to be a lot easier
on you.
There'll be less headache. And something that we commonly recommend to people is to use
a solid colored background. That way you can remove the background later in your editing.
And that makes for some really cool podcast cover art. And for our example, for this photo
shoot, we're going to be using a black backdrop.
And that goes with this concept that we have for content. The concept that we have for
this photo shoot, because the name that we chose for our podcast is content cafe, half
a is boss and Spanish. So content. And the concept that we have for the podcast is better
content, more money. And I came up with the idea of dressing up like mafia.
Uh I dunno what my ideas are crazy, but, um, we're going to be wearing hats and we're going
to be wearing chains and cigars and some kind of like, okay, This is why we decided to go
with this background because we wanted something dramatic and black, and you're going to OCS
getting in our customs and putting makeup on, and it's going to be super fun and that's
pretty much it for setup.
That's what's going to be in your background. What props you're gonna need, what costumes
you're gonna need? Are you going to need makeup? Are you gonna do indoors or out? And now we
can move on to number two, lighting lighting is really, really fun and it can be a little
complicated and it can take some serious experimentation.
And the good news about lighting is there's a lot of lighting available now through Amazon
and other places. With led technology that makes lighting very affordable for a lot of
us. So it's really easy to pick up. Either ring lights are very popular, but for a photo
shoot, and it's fun to get kind of a strong diffused light or a light that you can broadcast
over a large space.
So we really love these newer, smart metal led lights. You can adjust the color temperature,
and you can also adjust the power or the intensity of the light. And you can also order with
is called the panel soft box or. Yeah, a panel, a soft box panel. And this is really cool
because it creates a box that encases the whole newer light.
It makes a nice soft diffused light. And this helps to eliminate like harsh lighting and
harsh. Unless that's what you're going for. So we like these Emma we're going to do for
this setup is we're going to use two of these so that both Veronica and I can have a strong
of light to really just kind of make a nice look of your face.
So we're going to be using these and there's one other light we're going to be using. Let's
go to. This one is the aperture one 20 D the light store. And this one's really cool with
this panel here. This actually gets pretty hot, but you can also increase or decrease
the intensity of the light. It's also really cool technology.
And then we got this cage style soft box from newer, and we'll leave the links for all of
these lights in the description where you're watching this video below, but this creates.
Big diffused light. And this is a really fun light for a large fill light when you just
need to fill your scene with a lot of light, but it can also be cool if you want just one
big dramatic light and we're going to be getting to that.
And that's actually what we need to talk about right now. So with lighting, there's a lot
of different techniques that you can put to use. We're going to actually use two different
kinds of basic techniques. You can say, which is one we're going to have a very flat light.
So we want to limit the amount of shots.
The, this kind of flat lighting is kind of, um, was my favorite. Yeah. And the flat lighting
is her favorite for a reason. And so many people love the flat light look because it
reduces shadows, which can also hide signs of aging and kind of just make you look a
little more flattering. That's why people love ring lights.
Cause ring lights are directly on the center of your face and they just blast out all the
shadows. So that's what we're going to go for for the first half of our photo shoot.
And then since content heavy. Bosses and almost like these drug Lords or pimps or something
that, uh, we're going to go with a really dramatic lighting to, and to achieve dramatic
lighting is to have one strong light source that, uh, approaches your face from one side
or the other, or just one strong key light with no other light.
And then you'll get dramatic shadows. And so we may have him play around with some black
and white photos, just so we have a lot of. Those are our two basic concepts with lighting.
Now, if you don't have any lighting at all, one thing you can do is to stand in front
of a window, but you don't want the sunlight coming directly in from the window.
That would be direct light and direct sunlight is going to be way too harsh to get good photos.
You want it to be indirect light coming in from the window. And that will look really
nice. And you just face the window. And you'll have some good photos that way too. Yeah.
Covering the, the window. That's beautiful for us.
Those are really classy curtains. And also leave the link for those description right.
Where you're watching. No, please. And lastly, before we get to it and start taking pictures,
when you talk about one other thing, and that is interval. What is that? Oh, I was supposed
to ask you, what is that studio, Steve?
Well, I'm glad you asked Veronica interval shooting is allowing, um, oh, and I don't
have an app on the phone yet for that. Yeah. But interval shooting is basically just programming
your camera to take a picture at intervals. So like every one second or every three seconds.
And this can be really helpful when you're just two dudes.
Or just one person. Creating a photo-shoot instead of running to the camera every time
you can just have tons of pictures, because we're going to take hundreds of pictures,
because we know that out of hundreds of pictures, there's going to be a small handful of good
ones. The other alternative you can look for is our camera remotes.
And there's some really cheap, like $3 camera remotes that you can get many of them that
come with a ring lights that you purchased that will actually work through Bluetooth.
With your smartphone. So that's the way you can also do by yourself with a camera remote
and also some relax, come with remotes that you can connect to your phone via Bluetooth
to, uh, those would be good.
I get option two. And I just said that. Yeah, she just repeated what I just said. Oh, well
you didn't say their ring. Like I did. I said they commonly come with the ring. Oh, And
I have it on camera to prove.
So to quickly illustrate that this is the Sony, a seven mark three, it's a favorite
camera of ours. It's a really good idea to use a DSLR camera, especially the kind that
allows you to attach different lenses, because you can spend a little extra money and get
some really professional lenses, specifically lenses that are prime lenses are going to
get some real.
Amazing looking shots that do a really good job of blurring out the background and just
having that cinematic look that you don't really get with your phone. So any of the
Sony mirrorless cameras are really awesome and popular right now. Also the cannon is
a popular one here on YouTube. You see a lot of people using that.
We also have one of those and we love that a lot too. The one that Veronica is using.
Right now that you see me on is the Sony Z V one. That's also a way more affordable camera
than this one, but let me illustrate with this camera, how you can actually set it up
for interval shooting. So from the menu button that you press here from the first page, you
can just scroll over throughout all these pages.
See how they're showing you the page that you're in right there. You can scroll over
until you see interval shooting right there. So interval shooting function, and you click
into that menu and then you can turn the interval shooting. And once the interval shootings
on, you can tell it when to start. So you can say after five seconds, I'm going to start
the interval shooting, and then you can tell it, take a, take a picture every, and we'll
do every three seconds.
And then number of shots, we can change this to a hundred before actually, or 130 right
now, but we'll just change it to a hundred. So it'll take a hundred pictures. Before it
will stop the whole interval shooting sequence. So this is also how you can use a DSLR camera
to get extremely high quality time-lapse photography.
It's the same idea, basically. It's just, and you can just basically have it, take a
picture every one second. And that's actually what we're going to be doing with another
Sony Z V one over here. Wow, we do our photo shoot. We're going to get some time-lapse
photography with that same interval shooting only.
I'm going to have this set to take a picture every one second as this track, very slowly
moves as you see. So we'll have a nice moving time lapse. That's going to get some behind
the scenes video of Veronica and I doing this photo shoot. And that might be a fun video
that we can use as like a website banner for our podcast website, after all it is a podcast,
all about content creation and being content with.
So we got to have as many possible cameras as we can and lights and all the fancy bells
and whistles because we are content heavy. Um, there are using their smartphones. Is
there a setting that you would record? There are also apps that you can get on your phone
that will allow you to do interval shooting.
This one photo timer plus is a good one. Here. You can see it's the same basic thing you
can delay when the photo. Uh, interval shooting will start. You can say the number of pictures
you want it to take right here. So you can take, you know, 40, that goes all the way
up to 50. So you can take 50 pictures at once the interval here, you can say every three
seconds, every five seconds.
And then it also has a sound that will play every time. It takes a picture that can be
really helpful because, you know, knowing the pictures of being. And then you can upgrade
obviously to remove the abs and other reasons they wanted to upgrade, but there is a free
version of this app. And then yeah, you just say, take photos that accesses the camera
and it has a gallery and you can download your photos that way.
And then you can pull your photos that you take from your phone into light room. Like
we're going to do at the end of this video too, and touch them up even more. And then
you can use Canva pro to make some really incredible social media graphics and podcast
covers. So we better just get. Veronica. Yeah, let's get ready.
Okay. So let's get in our costumes. Uh, we'll do a photo shoot and you can see us make fools
of ourselves. And then we'll edit that. And let's get through. Let's go get puts on makeup
on what am I makeup on and getting ready for my videos or in this case, a photo shoot is
one of the moments that I enjoyed the most before.
Uh, I getting from the camera. I get to be with myself and I get to get into kind of
like the mindset and get pumped for what's to come. I usually play. Uh, the USA or some
over dirty island, 30 public. But in this case we can, because this video has been going
on. So why we're going to do is I'm not a makeup artist.
I'm just going to do something simple, maybe some dark eye shadows, because, uh, we're
just going through. Um, or that vies and, um, that will be in if makeup will make you
feel more confident and will make you feel more beautiful, then go ahead and do it. If
it doesn't, then just discard it. Just show up as your beautiful.
You can see that we're all dressed up and ready for our photo. Shoot. I don't know how
this is going to turn out. It was my idea. I think it's going to turn out pretty good.
I feel pretty good about it. Okay. Let's take a few pics. I'll throw it on here. Oh, it's
shooting already.
Okay, good. Here we go.
no, it's fine. It's their choice cigars.
Do you see what she did to my son? Did you see? Okay, well that was a lot of fun. Let's
take a look at all of these photos that we captured by pulling them in to. Okay. And
here are all of our photos in Lightroom, and this is just the library where you can look
through all of the photos. And we actually did, as we went to the develop tab here and
Veronica and I looked through every photo and when we found one, we liked, we rated
it, uh, with one star to start with, and then we would review our one-star ratings and give
it three stars.
And then. Basically narrow it down between one or two different poses that we'd liked
for our cover. And once you do that here in Lightroom, you can come up to where it says
filters off and go to rated. And from rated, you can choose one star or you can choose
three stars. And these are our three star pictures.
These are the final ones that we chose that we would. For our podcast cover. And then
after that, I went through two phases in Lightroom that I go through to touch up our photos.
And the first one is to just give it the basic touch-up in light room. And then I also like
to use a third party application.
Portraiture, which is a really great application that really just kind of softens our skin
complexion. And, uh, it makes us look more youthful and vibrant. And I really like it.
And I use it for most of our photos. So let's look at this photo for example, and you can
see if I press reset. That's what it looked like initially.
So if I press command Z, you can see the settings that I put on it, where I just sort of balanced
the color, temperature out a little. Put it a little more in the blue area, gave it a
little bit more contrast. And I brought up the shadows because I felt like the picture
was a little underexposed in the shadows, added a little more clarity to it and a little
more vibrant suit to give it more color.
And then what I did is I control clicked on this picture and I said, okay, In portraiture
three and he make a copy of the edited version that you're going to create in portrait church
three. And I'll show you how that works. It's pretty fun. Then when you come here and you
can just basically toggle portraiture on and off, it's a very simple plugin and you can
see how it basically makes ourselves.
Look a lot more youthful. And then if we come over here, you can see the portraiture version
of this picture and you can see it's got all the Lightroom enhancements and yet it's got
all of these. So now this picture is ready to be taken into Canva. And actually it was
this pose right here. That we wound up choosing for the pose of our cover.
The only issue with this pose once I got in CAMBA is that Veronica and I were a little
too spread out. And so the next thing I did is I actually went into Photoshop and in Photoshop,
this was the original photo right here. I took, it took some time, but with the eraser
tool, I went and copied this picture twice.
And. Uh, Veronica's picture or her layer. Basically, I took the eraser and I erased
me out of this completely so that I could just isolate Veronica. And then I did the
same thing with me. And so there's two different layers here, and that allows me to send both
of these layers to canvas separately and move me and Veronica around in this post.
In a way on the podcast cover until it fits just, right. So it went from us being a little
too far away for a square image of a podcast cover to now being able to manipulate our
size and scale with each other on the podcast cover. So that's pretty cool how you can do
that in Photoshop, and then you move on to canvas to do all of the other magic as well.
So I think when you combine the power of Photoshop and the power of Lightroom with Canva, that's
when you really start to get some more. Professional results with your graphics. And then this
is the cover. This is what we have decided on for the cover. We actually did many different
variations. So when I worked through Canva, but I'll start with one, you see there's many
copies.
So here actually started with different poses in Canva to see what we liked. And I put the
different poses and the basic different concepts. I added different filters to the photos to
see what filters would look good. I played with. Backgrounds and just made a lot of variations.
And then with these variations, I sent them to Veronica and we reviewed the variations
and it was this one that we liked the best from this variation.
So what I did is I duplicated this, here's the copy of that variation. You can see, we
worked with different combinations that we create. Um, just this pose with fonts and
colors and different styles of fonts. And then from here, we chose our favorite three
and then we shared those on Instagram and had people vote of what their favorite was.
And the cover winner was this one that you see right here. That's it. I hope you really
enjoyed this video. This isn't meant to be a full-blown Canva tutorial. I just wanted
to show you once again, the completed podcast covered the completed project that came from
a whole day of work. Of us creating a new podcast cover.
We hope you found that really helpful. If you haven't yet, please subscribe to our channel.
We post really helpful videos for content creation, podcasting here every week and come
check out our podcast content believe the link for that in the description below. It's
a brand new podcast. So we're hoping to release the trailer for this brand new podcast in
a couple of days.
So come check out, see if the trailer's there yet. And until next time happy casting.