Video for Photographer

[Brock Burwell]

To gain some experience, I contacted my photographer cousin to ask her if I could do a video for her business. She told me that she would love it if I did that (and actually ended up buying me a Blackbird to pay me for it so that's nice to have). I met with her yesterday and we have a few dates picked out of times to go and be at her sessions and film. She doesn’t want to do an interview setting. She would prefer if the video was more about the photography than her.

She wants to use the song below or at least use a song with a similar feel. She does child photography but does not want it to be a happy upbeat video with happy music. She said she wants it to be more emotional and to capture what its like, from a parents perspective, to be a child again in hoping that they will want to preseve these memories for their children and hire her to get their photos done. So it seems as though this will be a pretty slow moving video. I don’t know though. What do you think?

Any of you do anything similar to that? Any videos for photographers? Any suggestions for me in making this video?

Simple Love ~ Alison Krauss ~ Lyrics - YouTube

[Robert Benda]

Tell your cousin to license her darn music, first of all.

2nd, you don't need to show the interview, but you should at least sit with her and get her talking about why she shoots, what she likes about it, what her style is. This should yield at least a few moments of good audio to use for voice over, and could be humanizing, and help any watchers connect with her. Very important.

Basically, she should be able to tell you how she sells herself - why should people hire her? THen you construct a video around that.

Here is an example of someone else's work:

Meg Borders on Vimeo

[Brock Burwell]

I actually completely agree with you as I think an interview, even off camera, could produce some really neat results but she was very adamant about not wanting to do an interview and not wanting to use her voice in the video. That gives me only 1 option, which is to basically just do music over footage.

Also, what do you mean by "license her music."

She wants to use that song, but hasn't gotten approval from them yet. If we don't, we won't plan to use it.

[Kyle Root]

Here's one I did about a month ago for a local photographer to highlight her high school senior session.

It was a hectic 10+ hour day with 18 girls, 3 make up artists, 3 hair stylists and several on hand assistants.

Maria Moore Photography 2015 senior models behind the scenes video - YouTube

You'll want to use a site like The Music Bed or Premium Beat.com etc to get music from if you're going to put it online. Personally, I use The Music Bed. The photographer picked out this music from Premium Beat as that's the one she wanted to use.

I also made 18 short instagram videos - as instagram seems to be the "new Facebook" for kids and is a good way to get your name out there with something like this.

Anyways, going back she wished she would have done some voice overs but maybe we'll do that next year. I did another highlight reel for a different photographer a couple weeks after this one, and she narrated it a short intro and it came out nicely.

Focus on Autism 2014 on Vimeo

[Brock Burwell]

That's a really interesting idea Kyle about short Instagram videos. Very smart thinking

How did you convert it to that aspect ratio so it fit as an instragram video?

[Kyle Root]

For the instagram, I just made a base template in Premiere Pro CC... I think it was 640 x 640.

I had to scale all the footage by 60% to make it fit, and then use the motion controls L, R, U, or D to position it so what I wanted to be viewable.

Yeah, fewer and fewer "kids" are using FB.

Aside - I was doing some work in Phoenix last week and on my flight home there were 2 kids (on was around 4 and the other 6 or 7) flying alone from there to ATL that sat right beside me. The older kid already had an Instagram account on his iPhone.

Times are changing! For social media it takes a lot of work to keep up with the latest trend.

[Brock Burwell]

Now did you edit those separately or did you take short clips from the main video?

[Kyle Root]

Each 10 second video was it's own creation. I tried not to use shots I used in the main highlight reel so each was unique.

On average I counted I was spending 15-20 minutes on each 10 second video start to finish.

That included going through some 300 clips searching for content for each girl.

[Brock Burwell]

Looks like I have as much time on this as I want. We are going to start shooting in Augusts and probably end in October.

I think the video below is fantastic. Any suggestions on how to match what did they below.


Hulahoop Photography - Award winning Cambridge, Ontario Photographer

[Noa Put]

Any suggestions on how to match what did they below.

All you need is a full frame camera, a set of fast lenses, a monopod, a slider, a steadicam, enough experience to set your exposure and focus and whitebalance right,some talent and a creative eye for framing and off you go :)

[Brock Burwell]

HAHAHAHA

Is that all? Piece of cake LOL

[Noa Put]

Seriously, there are a few preplanned shots in there, but mostly the photog is followed during her job and a position is taken from the point where she takes the shot. Most difficult part is to make the people in front of the camera feel comfortable and to act natural but there probably the photog has been giving instructions as well to get them ready for the kind of shot she wants.