So, we're gonna have a look at some basic principles for couples with focusing on portraits or single portraits, but wanting to include a note section for couples as well just to help you get going. Now, the important thing to remember is when you've learned to pose a subject, and you've learned the full face and the two thirds view, and the profile, when you bring two couples together, you're essentially posing those two as individuals with those principles, but you're putting them in the frame together and getting close and getting them interacting. Things we need to think about is couples can block each other's light and it's a real issue when you're doing a couple shots and quite challenge we're going to show you some different lighting setups to alleviate that you never get rid of it completely, but we can alleviate it and create some interesting lighting situations.

They're gonna bring the best of the couples now want to remember there's different variations of either direction. So we can have the couples shooting with them looking at the camera looking away from the camera. And one of the things is really important. If you want to create eye contact, we want to create touch. So let's kind of have a look at some couple portraits and how we might set that up. So this is what we would call the couple's standard pose.

Normally, I probably have the guy at the back reaching his hand resting it on the subject shoulder. The bodies are 45 degrees away from the camera. The faces are turning back fully into the camera, the female subject is sitting and the male subject is at the back. Let's just have a quick look at the lighting for that. So here's a standard lighting setup. We've got two flashes shooting for umbrellas and they're lighting the subject faces.

And we've also got two reflective umbrellas just putting a little bit of light on the background for us to brighten up. Now one of the things I want to show you on this is if I zoom in a bit, I get the controls for the camera I want you to see, not actually, when the light disappears, that means I'm lighting on his face. I'm pushing the lighting behind his face. And on this one, I'm pushing the lighting behind his face on this side. And there's a reason for that. Why am I not lighting her face?

Or why am I lighting them this way? Well, this is what's called PR number lighting. That's p e NUMBR. a PR number. Now what that means is we're not using the center of the umbrella where the lights are hottest. We're using the outside of the umbrella to light the subject.

And the other thing is as well she's closer than he is And this is a problem because if we like them evenly, she's going to get all the light and he's going to be in shadow. So because he's at the back, we're going to light him with the Penumbra. So the lights going to catch him here, and it's going to catch him here at the edge. And then we're going to light her with the fall off of the light. And what that's going to do is even out the light pattern, and pin number lighting is a really really good technique. To learn.

It's a little bit more advanced than the usual point your lights at the subject, but that light around the edge of any softbox any light source and particularly works very well with soft not so much with hard light sources but you can still use it. But with soft boxes, you want to just soften the light a little bit. Yes, use the Penumbra edge of the lighting so that would be the the number of the umbrella lighting the number of the softbox lighting that light on the edges is soft. And rats much more beautiful. So hopefully that sort of made some sense to you. Why we would use Penumbra in the first place want to soften the edges a bit, and also why we're lighting just past him because we don't want her to receive too much light and him to receive none.

So that's a simple technique for the standard portrait shot. Now this is the standard couples upright so the variation as we've stood the subject up and I just want to make a quick note about posing here we want to wrap the bodies in together. So in this instance, the quite close together and the female is opening up the side of her body by opening up our elbow which is going to slim the body help you to see the curve of her side and her back. But the elbow then is now going into the subject and wrapping again we've got the bodies facing 45 degrees away and the face is coming back. But really all we've done is stood the subject Now this is creating an issue when it comes to the lighting on the neck here because she is casting a shadow on his neck and this is where couples portrait lighting can get difficult.

So let's just have a look at how we sorted that out with some fill lights. So in this scenario, the two lights are lighting the same as in the previous section. But now what we've got is we've got some Phil, which is on him and we're using Penumbra lighting to light him on the edge. And then on this side let's just bring this in with Amy aiming this light into his neck. So we're trying to make sure that he gets most of the heavy light from this Now, obviously we're using a reflective umbrella here. We could use a softbox which be a little bit more directional, maybe get a little bit more light on him rather than her We could also use a flag, maybe to block a little bit of light off her.

But that's some of the things we need to consider when we are lighting couples. So again, the same situation, it's a slight variation, except for this time, all we've done is we've asked the couples to look forward and create a slightly different look. Now, we've changed the position again, this time we've turned the female subject into a near profile, the male subject hasn't really moved, but his face is slightly off, I'd probably bring his face back to a two thirds view, and then have hers as a profile. And now we're creating, you know, a standard upright sharp and they're they're facing each other, probably like this to be over two thirds view or a profile on the male model normally, but just for illustration Because of the limitations of the 3d models that I'm using in this rendered software, I can't always get exactly the head that I want and get the hands showing as well.

But one of the things we can do to create intimacy is bring hands into the shop. As soon as you see hands and hands touching and hands connecting with people, that implies intimacy. So although this poses a little bit clumsy, because this is what the software will actually supply, I will probably have the hand maybe touching the chin or her hand on his waist. So when you bring the hands in, bring them in, but bring them in with connection. And another little tip when you shoot an open hand like this guy has gotten in this image. You don't shoot open like it is here.

You want to turn it to the situs and profile. The reason you don't want to do that is because that's a big circle that's gonna draw the eye. It's gonna catch the light and you're gonna To find your eyes drawn to that, so is your subject. So when you're shooting hands in a sharp, always try and profile them where possible, slim them down because hands are bigger than you realize. And especially when the closer to the camera than the face, they can almost be the same size as someone's face, especially male hands. And then that's going to draw the attention.

So we want to create intimacy want the hands in the shop, but we don't want the hands to dominate. So try different things, different little touches. Now, when you start doing this with couples, don't worry too much about posing this. Just ask them to just gently touch each other, you know, touch each other's face, how they would normally touch each other and you'll find they will start to touch in a certain way. It's quite intimate. And they will communicate where they're comfortable and what they actually would normally do.

And then what you want to do is you want to catch the moments in between. So yes, we're sitting there, they'll be posing for the camera. They'll be little moments when they giggle because now we're having to touch and feel be embarrassed to be watched. And then those little moments where you can find the magic. So just a little tip there. And if you sense that they're not comfortable displaying that sort of intimacy, don't push them.

But if they are, just encourage them just to bring the hands in and touch each other. And then this is a standard headshot straight on but I wanted to show you now the bodies are straight on faces a straight arm. We haven't changed the lighting, the lighting has been the same for all of these shots because we just want nice even lighting, try and get some more light on to him to not hurt he has actually got darker skin than her. So with this model, he's always going to look a little bit darker anyway. Again, we've got this shadow issue here. We've softened it by bringing a bit of light into the background and trying to keep that light off at the same time.

But what I want to show you here is just a simple posing tip. see we've got a triangle here. So it's a triangle composition is arm leads up and then We've got another arm comes down triangles are very appealing when it comes to composition