090: Gurvir Johal – The Secrets Behind Lighting & Posing & Why You Should Enter Awards & Competitions
February 28th, 2022
“Try not to burn the candle at both ends. We aren’t photographers in business, we are business people who happen to be in the field of photography.”
GURVIR JOHAL
Hey everyone! It’s Sally here, from Studio Ninja. Today’s episode is all about Gurvir Johal.
Gurvir is a full time International Wedding Photographer based in Midlands, UK. In a very short space of time, he has won numerous awards and accolades along with earning his titles of Double Master Photographer (WPPI) and Fellowship Photographer (SWPP & BIPP). He is also an ambassador for Fundy Designer, Canson, Infinity, GraphiStudio, Light & Motion, Studio Ninja and a Nikon “Creator”.
With these achievements, Gurvir has travelled the World photographing weddings, teaching many sold out workshops along the way, as well as judging prestigious photography competitions internationally. He refers to his style of photography as fairytale timeless classics with an injection of fashion. His passion and love for photography allows him to use his heart and imagination to produce timeless images for generations.
Check out some of the biggest points from Gurvir’s interview below:
What are the photography basics every photographer should know?
Fundamentally lighting. I know there’s a lot of photographers out there who are, no fault to it, they’re natural light photographers, that’s completely fine. But what do you do when it’s October and you’re doing bridal prep at six, seven in the morning and there’s no light, so you have to incorporate and bring your own light. So I would say photography when you break down the word is actually a derivative of two Greek words, photo and graphy. Photo meaning light and graphy means painting and drawing. So when you break down the world, it is actually painting or drawing with light. So I think photographers fundamentally, they need to understand and grasp lighting, different sources of lighting, the direction of lighting, intensity, with that comes posing.
And posing and lighting are two things that go hand in hand. Lighting may be great but the pose is awful. But then you could have great posing, but the lighting’s awful. And when you have great lighting and great posing, you have a beautiful image. The photo journalistic aspect of the day, everybody’s got a different approach of how they shoot. So me personally, I kind of prefer shooting roundabout waist type, roundabout from the hip. It gives a slightly low perspective, a little bit more of a photo-journalistic perspective, like a child’s point of view.
And I do enjoy that kind of angle and that composition. But I’m moving around and never keeping still. I’m just constantly moving all throughout the day.
How can photographers feel confident in using their skills with their couples?
Really good question. There’s so many different lighting sources now in the market. I think when I started there’s very limited choice in terms of continuous light. And I think everybody owned a nice light like Jerry Ghionis’s brand. And from that a lot of people started using ring lights solely due to the flattering lighting on the skin. You see all these Instagram influencers and making their own little videos for YouTube and are there using ring light. So there’s so many different sources and panels and LEDs and soft boxes that you can use as LEDs. I’ve recently, well not recently, I’ve been with the company working closely with a company called Stella Light and Pro. Light and motion, I’m sorry, they produce these lights, Stella Pro and they have a range of these lights and these are continuous lights, but the power that’s generated from these lights is phenomenal.
How do you make the most of lighting?
It’s one of the things that I teach quite a lot about posing is there’s no to go posing. And a lot of photographers, I think if you have the mindset of going, oh, I’m with bride one in location eight, let’s do pose 16, then I think you’ve got the wrong frame of mind. This bride may not suit that pose or the location may not be ideal and fitting for that person. And I get this question a lot of the time, I mean there’s different scenarios, hey, what do you do if the bride’s taller than the groom? Well, pose it from behind the groom so that will reduce the perspective. Have her leaning on the groom, that will reduce their height. Have them sitting down, that will make their heights a little bit more even. And there’s different body features and noses and eyes and lips and everything [inaudible 00:18:21]. So you got to understand what’s more flattering for one person.
Thank you!
Thanks again to you all for joining us and a huge thanks to Gurvir for joining us on the show!
If you have any suggestions, comments or questions about this episode, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post, and if you liked the episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post!
That’s it for me this week, I hope you all enjoyed this episode.
See you soon,
Sally
About Gurvir Johal
In a very short space of time, he has won numerous awards and accolades along with earning his titles of Double Master Photographer (WPPI) and Fellowship Photographer (SWPP & BIPP). He is also an ambassador for Fundy Designer, Canson, Infinity, GraphiStudio, Light & Motion, Studio Ninja and a Nikon “Creator”.With these achievements, Gurvir has travelled the World photographing weddings, teaching many sold out workshops along the way, as well as judging prestigious photography competitions internationally.
