Life is full of lessons and so is photography. In this video I'm going to show you my first staged photo shoot with Canon EOS R and share some lessons I learned with you. Let's go. All right you're a beautiful person you're a good person and if no one has told you that today let me be the first one to tell you that. I am so excited with the Canon EOS R and the progress I'm making, the things I'm learning and I've been doing food and drink or cocktail photography recently and I just want to share with you some of the lessons I learned on a recent trip to the Forest Street market in Santa Ana where I worked with a restaurant called Mar owned by John who's a friend of mine that I worked with in the past and he set up some assayables and some Pokeballs for me to shoot. Now the cool thing about Forest Street market is it has embedded within it there's a food-beast kitchen where they can do filming or have kind of reserved for private parties and so John reserved that for us to shoot his food and so I was super pumped to be able to use that space and so that leads to lesson number one. Lesson number one has to do with being flexible and always using the best light. So I had in my head it was going to be cool to use this indoor filming area. It's almost like a sound stage they have lights up above and so I went inside I set up a strobe light I had just added a Godox 80 200 to my V8 62c and I was cool I was thinking it'd be cool to use these two flashes or strobe lights in the inside area but the images were just coming out kind of flat a little bit dull and I was frustrated so rather than get stuck and try to force a situation I started to think about my options and I realized outside there's a patio and it was beautiful it was like 5 5 30 it was getting towards golden hour so we moved the Pokeballs outside and it was gorgeous light amazing light so lesson number one always use the best light don't use the light that you think you have to use always use the best light in this situation natural light and I still added some flash for Phil and to give that the image that pop but outside was the best light and that was the best decision. I'm in a recent video I talked about shooting cocktail photography which is really interesting because then glassware that the beverages housed in actually allows for internal light like coming through the beverage or through the subject matter as well as external light and so in contrast to that what I found is the bowl the paper bowl the house the Pokeball was actually kind of an obstruction or produce some limitations for me and so I couldn't shoot through the side like what I found in drink photography is a lot of times the best thing was through the side or up and through the side or I guess from above and through the side but in this context I could really only shoot from above I couldn't shoot through the side since the paper bowl obstructed that and so that produced a challenge because there's about this much space between the lip of the bowl and then the table or the surface the bowl was sitting on and so depth of field and having the subject pop off the background that way produced a challenge for me and so that was one thing I became aware of is in using the principles of contrast isolation and focus that I kind of touted in a previous video about cocktail photography I found that because of the container of the bowl I couldn't shoot through I really had to rethink how to get that depth of field with contrast and isolation being the primary ways I did it with drink photography and that led me to another discovery which seems obvious but color color color color so the color of the food matters and how you dress it or stage it with the area around that really matters so the way I found this out is I went to the patio and started shooting and somebody near me was using some bright yellow paper to dress up an area table that for something she was working on and I paid a compliment about the color and she said oh do you want some and so I rolled that paper out and what I found is the pop of that paper with the colors of the Pokeballs which were you know the pink of the ahi tuna and some of the orange sauces and the green of the lettuce the yellow really landed itself to kind of ascending these colors and it wouldn't work with every type of food like steak maybe or potatoes or actually the acai bowl had cooler colors like the blue the blue berries and the raspberries and so I actually ditched the yellow paper and so you pay attention to the color of the food and what you're gonna put around it as context to bring out those images so always use the best light keep the color of the surrounding area in the context in mind and then composition composition was a huge learning for me on this one and that's in the Canon EOS R electronic viewfinder so when I put up the camera to my eye I found that I was drawn into the photo and this is just with the with the the handiness of the screen on the back sometimes I moved the camera around and I I composed that way but I found when I put it up to my eye it blocks out everything else all the peripheral data and all I see is the composition and I'm drawn into the image the emotion the vitality of it and so I found it's better to compose with the camera up to my eye even though I can use the view finder and yeah sure that's advantageous if you have a high shot and by tilting the screen down you can see a composition you couldn't otherwise or very low shot where you put the camera near the ground and a short of laying on the ground there's no other way to see the composition without the flip-out screen but I found that putting the camera up to my eye it was the best the best approach for me for composing these food photos and then the Canon EOS R really goes to town because you can move the focal point with your thumb while the camera's up to your eye I've mentioned that before and I love that I really really love that it's very handy I'm growing to rely on it as a matter of fact that a recent gay gay was kind of a nightclub scenario it was a literary reading and I had a 5D with me and I was trying to move the focal point with my thumb on the screen I was just wasn't happening yet I'm like oh yeah I'm spoiled by the Canon EOS R so the other thing to remember besides the Canon EOS R's the touch and drag focal point is you are seeing a real-time read of your adjustments for shutter speed and for aperture so as I'm making those adjustments I'm seeing how lighter dark images I'm seeing that the approximate exposure I'm gonna get and I love that I love being able to dial that image in and rely on that through the electronic viewfinder so that's been a boon for me a boon is that a word we say anymore that's been a great advantage for me with the Canon EOS R is being able to use the touch and drag focus on the screen and also the electronic viewfinder giving me those accurate instant reads of the exposure and that's it I love this experience I had a great time John is great I think there are two other people in there Dalia and Glenda they were great and I have to give a huge shout out to my friend my buddy Pablo who was there he's from Buenos dias imagery and he was capturing behind the scene footage so everything you see video wise in this vlog of us shooting was created by him so I thank him for that and that has been awesome so I am looking forward to doing more and I just really value what I'm learning on this journey so glad you're with me so if you like this video if you dig it subscribe click the bell get those instant notifications leave a comment below interact ask questions I'm really excited by the people who are along this journey whether it's with the Canon EOS R or they're just on this journey with photography so I love your comments and just yeah interact and hit me up on Instagram what's crystal photo yeah see you in the next video