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Do you feel conscious in front of the camera? Emily London Miller is a professional photographer and in this video, she joins Nate Woodbury as they discuss some of the things you can do to look better in a video and what the difference is when you’re in a photo versus when you’re on a video.
Welcome back. You saw the title of this video. We’re going to talk about how to look better on video. We’ve got Emily Linda Miller. She’s an amazing portrait photographer. We’re going to compare looking amazing on photos and video and how it applies. This is going to be awesome. I’ve made other tutorial videos that focus more on the equipment side of things. Like how to make a better quality video but now we’re talking about you know the subject or the talent that’s in the video. And how to… How to make them or us look better on video. Let’s let’s kind of go with with hair or with makeup. What are some things that we can do to look… You… We’ll talk about it first from the photography point of view because that’s where you’re really skilled and then we’ll apply that to video. -Okay, cool. So, hair and makeup it’s kind of an interesting thing because I know a lot of your audience is probably men, right? So, when I have a man coming to the studio, we have a hair and makeup artist who’s going to make their hair look awesome. In your case maybe a little powder on the top of your head. What did they do with your makeup? Why is… Did they just do powder and that was it? -It’s changing of skin color. A little bit special around my neck. -A little bronzer. -I think that’s the first time I’ve ever had makeup in my life. -And it wasn’t like they were putting full makeup on or anything like that, yeah. So just little bronzer where you’re really extra fair. But otherwise with men, hair makeup obviously is basically chapstick. Making sure that you have enough moisturizer that you don’t look flaky or anything like that. And you know, hair styling of course can be important with men too. For women, it’s almost like transformational. You become… You can become a very different version of yourself. Some women are very pared down in their hair and makeup normally. And they don’t necessarily want to come across as uber dressed up. Which completely makes sense. But at the same time, even if you’re that woman, you definitely want to have certain… Certain makeup for camera, okay? So, the main things are skin. So, you want your skin to look really even. So, the foundation that your makeup artist or if you’re going to be doing yourself, you’ll want to use a HD foundation. And it has to be like the exact right color. So you want to get support and help with that to make sure that that’s on point. If it’s just a little bit off in color, that’s probably the thing that you hate about makeup and why you don’t wear it at home, right? And then powder is pretty important because, you know, a lot of times with photoshoots that are going to be lights. And the lights get get a little hot. And so, you don’t want to have any shininess especially in areas that aren’t flattering tap shine. And so, powder is important and defining your eye lashes is a pretty big deal. So I always, in my studio, on women put false lashes. And that’s kind of even for the women who are super pared down. That would basically be our main thing. We would have some very beautiful neutral lip gloss, put blush and that’s it. And then… Also, eye browser are a big deal. So, all of those things are the like core things. Then obviously women who wear lots of makeup, we just add more basically eyeshadow or lipstick. Those 2 areas where you can get extra color. But the foundation aspects or the skin evening blush and what types of products you’re using, it’s pretty consistent. -Okay. And as you’re describing that, I don’t think that there’s any difference that there would be form from photography to to video. I mean I will see those principles of playing the same? -Mm-hmm. Well, so one thing that I bet would be a little bit different is for hair. So, with video, obviously we can’t use like a blow-dryer on somebody’s hair to get them to be all fabulous and incredible. And also you don’t necessarily want the hair to be sprayed so that it’s still like a helmet. -Okay. -So you do want to have a little bit of softness to the hairstyle or things like that. Also when in photos, we can maybe create a little extra artistic element. You know when we’ve got the fan blowing it’s also like getting in your face sometimes. And we have the luxury of being able to just sneak somebody’s hand in and you know quickly get the hair out of the eyes or stuff like that. Which you can’t do in video so it has to be low maintenance enough in video that you’re not having to constantly fix the hair or touch the hair, right? So, those things are a little bit different with hair and makeup with hair styling in versus video and photo. But I will say volume is definitely your friend. I know that sometimes people think of big hair as it’s like it’s very southern or something that’s not necessarily their style. But it makes a big difference in camera because the way that 3ds translated into camera flattens things to a point that anything behind gets quite small. And anything close to the camera is larger. And so the hair at the back of your head suddenly visually, on camera looks like it’s completely gone. And so if you don’t have volume in your hair, your head will look really small, And one of the drawbacks of having your head look small in camera is that by default it makes your body look a little bit bigger. So, that’s one of those things that I always say. Just trust me a little bit extra volume in person than what you’re comfortable with will translate really nicely in a camera. -It’s good to know. I won’t be able to play that personally. For everyone watching who does have hair. Okay. So now, let’s talk about lighting. And I’ve gotten a lot of advice from you on lighting. What’s important in lighting for a photography? -Okay. So, one of the things I always hesitate to talk a little bit about lighting because it can get very technical. And the intentions about why you know you’re lighting the shot or what you’re wanting the image to look like all factor into what kind of lighting you’d use. But that said, for just the regular person who is maybe setting up their own cell phone camera to take a video of themself or get a selfie or even to create Facebook live content and things like that in their own business. I would say there’s nothing better than window light. So, I usually say turn off all the lights in the space so that you don’t have any ambient like orange glow from the incandescent lighting. And just get really near to a window so that the window is just living you this beautiful soft diffused look. If you’re working with a videographer or a photographer who knows more about light, they might obviously do things a little bit differently. But I’m going to say, yeah, there’s nothing better than facing a window. If you’re backlit, that doesn’t necessarily work. -Okay, so now talking about the difference between photography and video, you obviously specialize in beauty photography or you know, portraits. In video, you can use lighting for a whole bunch of different things. Whether it’s a scary movie or suspenseful or it’s action or something and the character might not be portrayed as beautiful. You know, that’s… That might not be the intent of the scene. But for those of you watching this video, you’re… You or the product you’re the service, you’re the influencer. So, essentially you want to look your best. You want to be… You want to be beautiful. That’s part of your brand. We’ll have a lot of other episodes that go into the technical aspects of lighting and how to get that good soft lighting. But that’s… That’s definitely a good first place is just face a window even if you’re just doing a selfie video on your phone. I’ve actually done a presentation where I was given a chance to speak for like 20 minutes at a networking event. And I walked into the room and all of the windows were on the side wall. And my presentation was going to be facing, you know, towards this direction from the side windows. And I remember just looking at it saying, “Nope.” And what locked in changed the position of how where I was going to be speaking because all I had in that environment was the natural light. There wasn’t any kind of lighting or stage. And so that gave me a chance to say, “Oh yeah, I want the window light on me so that I can look my best for this presentation.” I don’t want to have side light which kind of can look a little rugged. -So, that’s awesome. Okay. So I cheated and I looked at Emily’s notes about leaning towards the camera. So I mean, we’re doing… We’re not… -Neither of us are very comfortable in our relaxed… -So, why is that important? Why is it important to lean towards the camera? And let’s talk first about photography. -Okay. So, I mean on a psychological level, leaning in is obviously more engaged connected, okay? Leaning back is going to be disconnected. In fact, sometimes gives people the the chance to close off their body language. And so having to lean enforces that body language to to give you that feeling of being engaged. Okay? But also on a an aesthetic level, basically leaning back, you know, I mentioned before the principle of anything further away from the camera gets smaller and everything closer it gets larger. So right now what’s closer to the camera is my chest and if I was a little bit more full figured, my belly, my booty and not my face. My face is getting smaller visually. And the the difference in you know how much that is being affected is quite a bit more significant the closer you are to the camera. Okay? So, if you’re holding a selfie that’s arm’s length away, this is going to be extremely exaggerating it. That’s why you’ll see a lot of women are holding their camera up here. The face is really close, body is really far, right? Okay? So, that’s similar principle rather than you know having to change the angle of everything. We’d be looking at the floor if we had our camera up there, right? Then you want to be able to say this is the angle of the space that I like. And instead of changing the camera angle would change our angle come towards the camera. -Alright. So to talk about this with video, we’re obviously applying that here and that we’re sitting up, we’re leaning forward. We’re attempting to have good posture. There’s probably a little bit more flexibility because with photography, you’re wanting to catch that exact moment. And so you’ve got, you know, you’re perfecting everything tilting the head. You know, making sure you’ve got the right expression with with video if we went frame by frame, there’d be some that’s like, “Okay, that’s good.” Because went the way that our mouth moves on we talked and whatnot. So, there’s a little bit more flexibility I’d say. But in general, you know, leaning in, leaning towards is a good idea.
Alright. And that leads into the next point of kind of how you hold your head, how you hold your neck. Very important in photography. Let’s start there. -Okay. So, this kind of goes into posture a little bit. So, a lot of times if your posture is not awesome, your… The way that your spine is curved forces your head to balance backwards. And so people with not good posture often sitting like this. I know it’s not awesome. And I want to point out a few of the things that are not awesome about it. And then I’m going to teach you how to get out of it. So, first of all, I’m sitting in my relaxed posture. This is also definitely applies. If I’m leaning forward in a comfortable posture is my throat is dominant. So you’ll see, it’s really bright and it’s also just as wide as my face. Okay? So, if I get into the correct position, you’ll see that my throat becomes quite secondary and it’s my face that’s primary and the most important part, okay? Also in this position, you’ll notice that there’s not a ton of definition at the bottom of my face here. And that my eyes are slightly closed. So if I get into the correct position, you’ll see my eyes open right up because now they’re looking straight out of my face instead of down my face, okay? So, the way that we fix it is by you kind of imagine me lengthening the… At the back of your neck. And you did it exactly right. But most people when I say that, they start by bringing the bridge of their nose on the ceiling. So, you don’t bring the bridge of your nose the ceiling. Ghe bridge of your nose stays to the camera. It’s the crown of your head that comes to the ceiling and then you push your face forward. Okay, so you could still have terrible posture and fix that part of your face. So. it’s not all about your spine. But just being in bad posture naturally forces your head back if you’re not thinking about it. -Very cool. Okay, so how do you do that? Let’s say we’re filming a 10 minute episode. You just… Is it practice? -A lot of it is practice. I feel like there are going to definitely be moments where you lapse and you forget and get comfortable and that’s okay. I think it’s more appropriate to be in your natural mannerisms and body language in video. Even if it’s sacrifices a little bit of that perfect head and neck position. Just because that’s what matters. People aren’t going attention to my neck when I’m talking to you. I could just, you know, get into the perfect and then just freeze. Okay, so the last one I wanted to talk about was facial expression and laughing. Now, we’re talking specifically about photography here. When we work together, you would… You would laugh to get me to laugh. What’s that about? -Okay. So when I’m taking a picture of you and I get you in this perfect pose, your head and neck is exactly right. The last thing I need to do is to get you to connect with me and your expression. And if I tell you to just give me a little smile, maybe you’re already really good at giving me fake. You know, not fake. Really engage smiles. And that’s perfect and easy. But most people who come to me are not super comfortable the camera. So they’re not going to be like perfectly smiley. They’re going to have a little… You know, whether it’s like the scared eyes or the tight mouth or whatever it is. And so the best way I found to get people to connect with me through the camera is to tell them, “Just relax your expression and let me engage that smile from you.” So what I do is I provide a visual. Well okay, most people it’s a visual mirror. So when I look at you like this like really connected engaged, you naturally look back at me the same way. And so I teach people that and I say, “This is how I want you to look at me. You’re doing it exactly right.” And it’s a little bit tricky when I hide my face. Just keep that mirror up or to happen. Now that you don’t have that visual mirror, it’s hard to keep the expression up, right? So, what I do is I have my camera up and I give ou an audible mirror. So I just will chuckle a little bit behind the lens. You know? And that is a trick you can actually take and apply to yourself. You don’t need me there to chuckle for yourself. So you can be having anybody take your picture. You could be doing a selfie, a group shot and you just give yourself a little chuckle. And that, even if it’s fake, in the moment you do it, usually translates to really laughing at yourself because you feel a little self-conscious and silly. It also translates if you’re in a group shot. Everybody starting to laugh around you which everyone’s expressions then are going to look so much more connected and real and believable and happy and pleasant and all of that. -Thanks Emily. Appreciate you joining me on this episode on how to look better on camera. If you want more episodes like this, give it a thumbs up. Both on YouTube and on LinkedIn. We’ll see in the next episode.