here and my name is Nat from Easy Camera Lessons and today we are interviewing this amazing
photographer Zhuo Ya who you can just call Ya. He is from New Zealand and I've seen his work
in a few photography groups and I was just blown away by the quality and the huge setups
and the amount of work that goes into your stuff. So firstly I wanted to ask you , how do you
classify yourself as a photographer? Well I mainly stay in weddings and commercial. I prefer to do some fashion but I'm in Christchurch
so I dont get much fashion work to do.
So mostly 90% of my work is weddings and pre-weddings. Thats 90 % of what I'm doing now. I would like to do other work, other work
coming in. I will just have to put my commercial and
fashion ideas into the wedding and prewedding shoots.
Yeah thats interesting actually. Sort of like a justice, thats probably my
style at the moment I just put a little bit of commercial work into the wedding photography
area. So youve taken the sort of amount of production
that would normally go into a commercial shoot and sort of applied that to a wedding photograph? Um I try to create it easier , simplified
version of commercial photography in the wedding, this is what Im trying to work out at the
moment. So because when we are going out to shoot
normally there will be five or four of us including the bride and groom.
So the amount of labour involved in to this
is small and is much less team than commercial shooting so I just have to figure out what
I can carry and I can put in reality to a shoot. Sometimes there is a little bit of a struggle
, you have to balance it , you may have a good idea but you cant actually put it into
practice because it's too much work. Some of the locations that we go to is not
like park and shoot location so you have got to have a little bit of hiking around. Yeah we are limited by the gear we are picking
and just have to plan really well yeah.
So um you are in New Zealand and youre work
is kind of like seems to be really like involved in the landscapes , did you shoot landscapes
before you shot weddings in New Zealand? I mean how do you find these amazing places
that your photographing in? I think any place in New Zealand is beautiful
you just have to find the right angle to frame it up and also the right lighting for it. Alot of places I shoot is not actually famous
or um you know when you maybe go under a tree and climbing into a tree somehow , there is
a lot of places. I live on a farm and I have got a lot of things
to shoot in my farm so yeah just you know after dinner you got out and have a cup of
coffee and you see the light and its perfect and you light and shoot. And is it cold? I mean I saw one photograph where you had
a bride and she had jeans and sneakers under her dress? So sometimes its a bit cold is it? Yeah it's really cold.
Some places we go are really cold. Especially we fly out to one the Southern
........ And then there is a snow landing , trust me it's not that warm. Is that the one with the helicopter bts.
Yeah often we head of to different destination
so it's quite exciting a lot of places like the locations we just take a guess, we havent
been there so we think ohh that might look nice so let's go have a look. Then we fly out and we have to do a shoot
there because it's always surprising. Your working not just in new Zealand, are
you working in other countries as well? Yeah I do work a lot in China , HongKong and
Australia, Sydney and Melbourne and then I. Do a bit of work in Europe.
Yeah right cool and how does you know like
Hong Kong has beautiful mountains and stuff but its a bit more built up , how do you find
locations when you are going to other countries? We just shoot in the city. In the city in Hong Kong yeah. Thats one thing people ask me on facebook
aswell people say hey I saw you are doing a lot of landscapes I would like to get you
to come over to Paris for a workshop. So I say great , he says but we have to get
you outside of Paris.
I say why?Because you are shooting landscapes. No I said thats because Christchurch has no
city!!! Oh right you dont have a cityscape so you
have to like .. .Yeah well thats cool. In China we shoot a lot of buildings and it's
also beautiful.
You just have to , with environmental photography
I think the key thing is you make your frame and then you find a spot to actually place
the subject into. So your subject wont be lost, get lost in
the large frame. And so you were saying before that you do
a lot of that previsualising , people might ask you because your work is really highly
produced like that you just photoshop it and thats how it looks so amazing but you were
talking about the light and the previsualising. How are you working with light in those situations? Basically I shoot about in New Zealand Im
doing about sixteen to twenty weddings a month so it's a lot.
Woah. Yes it's a lot and um I dont get much time
off. Ive just been shooting for ten days. I shot six couples from all different parts
of the world and then some of them are two days and one day and three days so I basically
just have to shoot everyday and in every weather condition so I've been shooting in strong
wind and strong rain , even once I've been shooting in hail.
In what? In hails , hail. Oh no way really? Yeah . Thats quite fun yeah, I like dramatic
weather I mean dramatic weather makes dramatic pictures. I love the weather changing so , it's hard
work, it's hard work for the bride and the groom but luckily my clients when they come
to me they know it's going to be a hard work but they just so much want the good pictures
so they don't mind.
So yeah so they will just , luckily they trust
me so they if they have to stay in the rain they will stay in the rain yeah, it's really
good. They like know that you are adventure wedding
photographer. Um maybe yes , I'm not that terrible :) So
speaking of gear I noticed you are using a Hasselblad, can you tell us a bit about that
camera? Hasselblad is a great camera , it's got it's
limitations I like to use it just for some clients they , some photos they have a requirement
to print huge pictures so I would use that, in that kind of situation. Hasselblad is an expensive camera, it's perfect
gear for a shoot in studio but taking it out especially over those mountains it's not that
, it doesnt work in the rain like a Nikon does.
So I'm usually using D4 if the weather conditions
arent good, if it's raining or snowing, it will always work, but Hasselblad it needs
a lot more attention and a lot more care. So I do , I use it for some clients who like
large print and the higher requirement. I have a client in HongKong who wants to blow
up his photos into a hundred square metres poster to be hanging outside of his building
so it's gunna be huge, so in that case yeah so I use the Hasselblad to shoot to just make
sure that when it is blown up that maybe it wont be blurry. How big? 200 Square metres? Yeah 100 square metres, it's huge , its like
a billboard , it's just like how you do the billboards advertising on the street.
They are actually printing them out with a
huge printer you know they produce things they can put outside of wedding, thats quite
common in China but not that common here. They might do something here but not 100 square
metres. That is so big that is still a big billboard
though. Yeah it's like ten by ten.
Yeah like the ones on the way to the airport
in BKK they are massive ones. Like really big ones , way bigger than Adelaide. We dont have billboards that big here. The other day when you did the livestream
you did a behind the scenes and you did a livestream with the drone, did you have your
phone on the drone? Like how did you do the livestream from the
drone that was amazing.
Oh yeah my assistant does that . The drone
has got a camera yeah its DGI drone so um yeah you can actually use the drone to straight
go live on Facebook or on Instagram. Your phone actually connects to that to camera
in the drone and then the drone transmits the video into your phone and the phone transmits
the video onto facebook. Yeah I wondered because it went quite high
and I thought if there was , I didnt know you could do that but if there was a signal
between the drone and the phone it seemed quite a long way away to be ...
Yeah it can
go up to six kilometres, it's quite amazing technology. You are bringing in stuff like that all the
time do you you do video with weddings aswell or are you just doing stills? Yep we do video , we do recording and then
ahh we record, because every trip to shoot the wedding photos is adventure as you say. We like to record it. So we have got three , I've got one Gopro
on top of my camera and then we've got a drone in the air and then we've got an Osmo , Osmo
is like a metal stabiliser camera that my makeup artist uses to record the thing so
after that we do an interview of our client and then we sort of like cut them together
so that's the video for them.
I like to give my clients a time capsule that
is like a container thats sealed , so I normally do a video for them and ask them to speak
to themselves in thirty years time . Oh really? SO when they are old they can actually see
when they are young what they thinking of themselves, it's quite amazing because you
know the wedding it's a big thing on the day and it's a life changing time so I like to
record what they want to tell each other and they also imagine life in thirty years when
you are getting old when you are still holding her hand , yeah its, one day you look back
at the video and see wow when you were still young and were just starting the beginning
of the journey with each other, what are you going to tell yourself in thirty years time. I've found that that is really interesting
because it makes me get to know my client more and get to know their story and so it's
very touching after a while when they go back to watch that they say wow not even not thirty
years later even five years later they will feel a lot of difference. And would you have any advice for people getting
started in wedding photography? Well a lot of people say wedding photography
is not art that it's actually recording and they just dont have time to think but I think
yes you dont have time to think when you are doing the photograph but you do have time
to think before.
So planning before you even go there , plan
it like before everything even happens so you know people , they are going to walk over
there , they are gunna stay there , what time are they going to do this what time are they
going to do that , do a lot of planning and thinking about the picture in your head, so
when the picture actually comes into your eyes it looks very familiar and you know everything
. I do check the exposure and the lighting before hand as well so I like to do that so
when the people they are walking in through the carpet I know where is my light and I
know what sort of settings I have to do with my camera to get what I expected of the picture
so I think that's very important. Yeah that's really good advice. You can plan it ahead then you wont be struggling.
Because you dont have time to think a lot
of time , it's turn up and shoot. Yeah for sure you dont want to miss things
with weddings. Yeah exactly and also do communicate with
your client because weddings are really a big day to them so when they have their wedding
they have a lot of guests that are coming from far away so after the ceremony they always
tend to be talking to them and it's very hard to drag them away from their relatives and
friends to do photoshoots , so you just have to communicate and plan really well. Because as a photographer it is your duty
to capture the beautiful moment for them and often your client have no control over the
time.
By the time they realise oh I just finished
talking with that friend oh it's time for the reception. So you just have to communicate with them
really well and manage the time really well and sometimes just you have to balance it
out so you can get the shot. Just remember they are very nervous as well
during the wedding and some of them get really excited and they don't really listen to what
you are saying so you just have to plan really well and give them there relaxing time and
doing the simplest posing the simplest communication and get a result. And what percentage of your clients would
do a pre wedding shoot and a you know how does your business, do you do mainly like
pre wedding shoots and then like lots of like full days aswell? Does one overide the other? Well kind of like pre wedding is a cultural
thing for Asian people , so there is a lot of Asian countries they do have pre wedding
culture so basically this is a part that you plan for your wedding.
This is one of the must haves. So like sometimes a year even six months or
even a year ahead of your wedding you are actually going for prewedding shoots. And it's a custom that you display your prewedding
photos during the wedding so when the guests are coming into the reception and sitting
there waiting for dinner they can watch a big screen and an album is on the table to
see the prewedding photos. Yeah I think its just a different culture
because in the past you dont actually wear a wedding dress on the wedding day in Asia
so but all the brides really want to wear that one , so that do it before.
And then what do they wear on the wedding
day? Oh in a traditional wedding they wear the
traditional wedding dress. Its very fancy yeah more traditional yeah
lots of wedding gown type thing . But down its changing , everything is changing the
custom has been passed on. Thank you very much for talking to us Im sure
everyone will find this really interesting.
Im going to stop the recording now Thank you
very much. Okay. No worries ......
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