11 Simple Secrets to Better Pictures

so good afternoon everyone all right try it one more time good afternoon all right very good so like Katie said my name is Andre Costantini and I'm a professional photographer and even make movies from time to time but today we're going to go over the 11 simple secrets to better pictures seminar and so you'll get at least 11 and you know maybe maybe 12 we'll see we'll see how it goes the first thing that I wanted to discuss is this idea of creating images with impact and I think no matter what type of pictures that you like to take and and wherever your photography leads it's always your goal to do this whether or not you're conscious or not if that's what your goal is because you know you want to take a picture and then show it to someone and they go wow that's pretty good because then then you know that you've done your job effectively now obviously it's important for all of you to be able to make pictures that you're proud of but there's always something nice about you can make the say well that's exactly what I wanted and then the rest of the world also starts to take a look at that and agrees with you that's that's good so there's there's something nice about that and so it's our goal to be able to understand how to create these images with impact so the first thing I want to discuss is what exactly is the criteria for that so what does that mean okay we can sort of collectively agree that we all want to make pictures that have impact that we like that we're proud of that other people also resonate with but what does that mean so it can mean different things because photography isn't strictly a technical it isn't strictly art it isn't strictly lighting it's not just being creative or style or composition but it's the combination of all these things working together sometimes some are more important than others that come together to be able to create this type of image first thing I want to do is just show you a couple of images now all of these images that I'm showing you now we're all made by photographers presumably just like you because these came in for a photo contest that Tamra ran a couple of years ago called make your mark and so one could interpret that any way that they want and people submitted all these types of great images now you know you might look at some of these pictures and say well I could do a better job than that or I have a better picture than that or you might look at it say wow I wish I could take a picture like that and it really depends where in your skill level and in your career with photography you are now of course there's nothing more frustrating than not being able to get the image you want so when you know that you have this great lens and this great camera and it has all of the capabilities to do exactly what you want and yet you're not able to make it quite work so what I'm going to do today is go over all of these different styles and ways of looking at some of the technical sides of photography and then some of the artistic and lighting sides of photography and hopefully depending on where your skill level is then you'll be able to resonate and walk out of here better photographers because that ultimately is my goal is to empower you with the knowledge to make the pictures that you want to make so the first thing I want to talk about is something very technical by a show of hands how many people use the auto or green box mode of their camera okay you could admit it it's not nothing wrong there's no judgment here at least by me maybe by your peers but okay P or program mode maybe no aperture priority mode shutter priority mode and manual mode okay very good very good all of these different modes are created to do different things now there's nothing wrong with the green box auto mode if it's going to give you the results that you want however often because it's making all the decisions for you it doesn't know what you're thinking and despite the fact it's designed to help you in some cases it may not so for example if you're using the auto mode of your camera or the green box mode and we were to take try to take a picture in here right now and I were to take a picture of this gentleman here I'm sure the first thing that would happen is the flash would pop up now if I didn't want the flash to pop up I put it down I try to take a picture again and the flash would pop up because in the auto mode the camera doesn't think there's enough light for you to be able to successfully handhold and take a picture and the camera may be correct but first of all if I'm on a tripod the camera wouldn't know that and it what it doesn't know what I'm what my vision is it just knows what it's been programmed to do so if you're one of those people that uses the green box auto mode almost exclusively if you move down just to that P or program mode now the default is still going to be very similar to auto except that flash isn't automatically going to pop up and in addition to that you'll be able to start to make some decisions so if you want to add the flash then you push the button and put it and it will pop up if you want to change your aperture you can change that and then the corresponding shutter speed will will match it as well so it gives you some more control if you then move to the aperture priority mode what happens is you're picking the aperture and the camera is picking the shutter speed to give you what it thinks is the correct exposure and most of the time it's right in the shutter priority or time value if you're a cannon shooter what's happening is your camera is allowing you to pick the shutter speed and it's picking a corresponding aperture now the problem with the shutter priority mode is that if you say I would like to shoot this at a 8,000th of a second and there's not enough light you're going to it'll still shoot at a thousandth of a second but you're going to have an underexposed or probably pretty dark picture so if you understand the relationship between the shutter and the aperture which is you know if this if this is a fixed amount of light as you change one the other needs to change as well to keep that amount of light fixed and so the the goal is to really be able to understand that if you use aperture priority mode at the widest aperture that you have you're always going to get the fastest possible shutter speed that there is so for example if you were using this 70 to 200 2.8 lens and you had it wide open at 2.8 then and the fastest shutter speed that you can get is going to be at 2.8 because the most light is coming in and so consequently that will be the fastest shutter and then of course there's the manual mode where it allows you to control both of those things now keep in mind that when you're looking in your camera and even if you have it in the manual mode the cameras meter is always working so it'll tell you what it thinks and it could be right or it could be wrong but if you are apprehensive to use manual mode because you feel like you don't know enough keep in mind that the cameras still always telling you what it thinks so you can use that as a guideline if you you know to give you a little bit more control alright next I want to shift gears a little bit I want to talk about a couple of different concepts one of them has the idea of looking and then if you walk into this room the first thing you do is maybe look around and then maybe something catches your eye and then you start to see something and you really start to focus and seeing is sort of a deeper concept than looking because look is just an awareness of the scene but when you start to see something then there's some element that you take interest in and then as a photographer you try to create something so if you walk into a room and you see something and it catches your attention and you look a little bit further and you have your camera and you want to photograph it then you try to find a way to represent whatever it is you're photographing in some way and you know it may be a function of how you create the composition or it may be a function of the lighting or all these other things but your goal is then to try to recreate or create some something very specific now the question is how do we reconstruct all those elements and how do we take the image of something that we want so it has that power and has that impact that what we're looking for now one of the things to consider is that what you include in the frame is extremely important because if you include something it should really should it should be as some value you know visually in terms of being able to convey information so if you isolate something then you're not showing things so everything that's in the frame is extremely important then there's always the relationship between the backgrounds and foregrounds of your image sometimes light and dark relationships dealing with contrast and and points of where your eye will be directed to there's color and there's also different compositional elements so we're going to start with this this is actually not one of the eleven secrets this is a sidebar creative secret which is creative images impact of viewers imagination so it goes something deeper than what it is I think a great great examples of that I'll start with photojournalism if an image is really impactful it's usually not just because it's illustrating whatever the story is but because there's something deeper that speaks to you know us as human beings so it's more about the condition and and not specifically the event and that's how certain images become iconic and lasts over time so if we think about it this way if an image is a visual representation then if we see something with the imagination then we're looking at it in our mind and I think a lot of times having images that have that power affect our minds and our imagination in some way so we're going to look at this image really quickly and I need to ask all of you what you think of it and anything nothing okay all right very good does it make them feel anything pretty much apathy and indifference is that what I'm getting okay great what about this image oh yeah I saw I heard a little lose and odd so apparently there's some difference between this one and the last image right and what makes one image have more merit than another image is it the composition is it the subject is it the lighting is it a combination of all these things right that that come together so the difference between a good photograph you know the first photograph was properly exposed it was composed I guess okay and it was presented all right so technically maybe there wasn't anything wrong with the photograph it's just that most of you simply didn't care because it didn't grab you in any way but great photographs have those other elements so they have impact in usually feeling and they it's done by understanding how your camera works and bringing your own sort of vision into the mix so let's see we're going to look first at this one so the first secret that we're going to we're going to talk about has to do ironically enough with lens choice because secret one is experiment with your lens now here's an image right that was taken with 18 millimeters 18 millimeter is considered usually a wider angle focal length now interestingly enough if I were to walk up to any one of you I'm just going to use this gentleman as an example because he's closest to me and if I did this right now you can't focus on my hands and you can't focus on my face and the other thing is that you that my hands physically look larger because that's the way that the eye works so now one would think normally that if you wanted things to look normal you would use a 50 millimeter or normal focal length lens but in this case using an 18 millimeter and getting close to your subject visually represents the way that we see much truer so one might not think that but in the case this is that's the way that it works so you can try this at home if you'd like to walk up to people like this is what am i doing what am i doing alright so number one is experiment with your lens and when I say that it's taking whatever lenses that you have and it's working the angle there's a difference between getting close with a wide-angle lens and standing back with a telephoto lens partially because of the optical characteristics of telephoto versus wide-angle but all of these different points of view have an impact on how the image gets constructed so get in close move far back change the subject of the composition provide certain contexts or environments and then select the depth of field to best suit the subject so if we go back just for one second here you'll also notice that she's in focus and her hands are out of focus correct now I could have change the aperture to increase the depth of field to try to get everything in focus but that actually isn't the way that we see so it looks much more natural to have certain things in focus and other things out of focus now just to sort of go through a range here of focal lengths and discuss that aspect so here is a little series of photographs the first one taken at 18 millimeters and then what I did is slowly zoomed in 35 millimeters 75 150 200 and then finally 270 so having a lens in this case the 18 at 270 which has a 15 times optical zoom and for anyone that really cares when somebody talks about the power of a zoom it's basically simple math you take the wide-angle number and you divide it into the telephoto number and whatever number that is is how powerful the zoom is so now you know if all these years I'm sure you've wanted to know that not now you do so 18 goes into 270 15 times so this is a 15 times optical zoom and you have this entire range so this image obviously has a different impact and feel and context than that image so everything you choose to include or if you wanted to take that 270 and focus anywhere else in the scene think about the hundreds of pictures that are possibilities and you're making the decision when you click the shutter what's in the frame and how you frame it up but having the ability to go through this whole range with one lens gives you more options so this big super wide angle lens right and this being super telephoto so here 11 millimeters to 500 millimeters having a different impact and shooting different things and then of course there's also macro now with macro you're really in general close to your subject and with true macro lenses like a 60 millimeter or a 90 or 180 millimeter lens you can get actual one-to-one macro magnification which is pretty cool so take advantage of this macro ability - so the proximity you are to your subject and the focal length you're using now I want to talk briefly about a couple of functions that lens technology can enhance one of them has to do with the angle of view of the actual lens so for example having something that goes from 18 millimeters to 270 millimeters a 15-time zoom in one convenient little package something about the size or so and so having that ability with one lens means a you don't have to change lenses and B you can carry around something convenient in light and you know maybe you're the type of person that likes to take all of your gear with you all the time or if you're like me I prefer that someone else carries it and I just could use what I want anyway then so then you're also dealing with the minimum focusing distance of a lens and the minimum focusing distance of a lens controls how much magnification that it ultimately has so for example many lenses like this lens right here which is the 18 to 270 has a macro feature so if any of you have zoom lenses that say macro on them it means that in general it's going to be at the most telephoto focal length so in this case 270 millimeters and you're going to be at whatever the minimum focusing distance of the lens in this case it's about a foot and a half so once you're at that distance that's going to give you the most macro capability that your lens has now by photo industry standards any lens that gives you one to four magnification or quarter life-size or greater can be called a macro lens and true macro lenses give you one-to-one magnification another technology example is VC that's a Tamron stabilization which is in almost all of their lenses at this point and what stabilization does in any lens allows you to handhold an image at a slower shutter speed than then used to be possible and basically what it does is it detects movement and in detecting the movement it counteracts whatever your action is as the photographer and allows you to be able to get clearer pictures now what what the stabilizer doesn't do is if you have low light and a moving subject it doesn't freeze action any better and what also if you have it on a tripod it can actually create blur so it's recommended by every manufacturer currently that you would turn that switch off which is why they give you an option to turn it off so long exposures on a tripod shut it off other than that you can pretty much leave it on all the time if you have faster shutter speeds it simply won't impact it but it's that marginal somewhere between second and eighth of a second and that range where hand-holding it with this is really valuable an example of that so here I am into Times Square oh you know on the edge of the street not really able to put a tripod down also you know the traffic's moving everything is kind of crazy it's Times Square you've all been there right at least seen it heard of it maybe okay anyway this was with the 28 to 300 millimeter lens at 42 millimeters and it was hand held at 1/6 of a second now the traditional rule is that you take one and you put it over the focal length that you're using that's the slowest shutter speed that you want to use so for example if you have a lens that's 28 to 300 millimeters at 28 millimeters you want to be at about a thirtieth of a second any slower than that the chances of you moving while the pictures being taken and creating blur it starts to get pretty pretty high but as you zoom your lens to say 300 millimeters now you have to be at about a three hundredth of a second or 250th let's say because what happens is as you zoom you magnify and it magnifies everything including your movement I'm sure you've all had this experience before where you know if you look through a telescope or something you know that has a very high magnification the slightest movement can create that shake so the same goes with photography and if you have a stabilizer however it gives you in the case of the Tama on VC about four additional stops so that would mean if you are hand holding this image at let's say at 42 millimeters so we'll say a fortieth of a second that you would be able to go to a twentieth of a sec that would be one stop then a tenth of a second would be another stop and then a fifth of a second would be another stop and then beyond that would be about a half a second so you should be able to handhold between a half a second and a sixth of a second with you know presuming there's no major movement so it can really help on those marginal low light situations all right the next thing I want to discuss has to do with understanding depth of field now depth of field is controlled by several different factors one of the things that that it is controlled the depth of field has to do with the focal length of the lens you're using so for example a 24 millimeter lens has more depth of field than a 300 millimeter lens so that's the first factor the second factor has to do with the actual aperture using apertures that are wider apertures that let more light in have numbers like 3.5 or 2.0 or something like that those are larger they let more light in and the consequence of that is that there's less depth of field so that's the second factor and then the third factor has to do with the distance that you are fit or physically focusing from your subject so for example if I'm using a 300 millimeter lens and I'm really close to my subject and I'm wide open at you know whatever F 5.6 or something on my lens that's going to give me a very narrow depth of field the same lens at infinity even wide open would give you everything in focus so the distance that you're physically focused is one thing the actual f-stop you're using and then the focal length those are the three factors so we'll just give you some examples isolating some of those factors so on the left hand side you can see how the there's more blur in the background right because you're using that lens 2.8 wide open and here at 22 you have more depth of field now sometimes having more depth of field especially for a lot of landscape photography is desirable a lot of times for portraits you know you you want your subject to be sharp but the background to be a little bit softer and so most of the time people are shooting portraits there somewhere in this f/8 f56 f11 aperture wise because they want you want to be able to see the background but you don't want it to be as sharp as the subject this way the subject pops off of the background so if you use even any program mode of your camera if you can put it in portrait mode or or landscape mode or whatever what it's doing is it knows this information and it's trying to bias it towards based on how much light there is all of these factors so in the case of landscape give you more depth of field in the case of portrait give you a little bit less and isolate your subject so give you another example that here's an image taken at f-22 and then F 2.8 so there there's a pretty big difference in terms of the impact of this picture versus the impact of that picture and you know if you're aware of this is how it works then you would make these choices based upon the visual effect that you're trying to create so those wider apertures blur out the background signal significantly more here's another example this is taken with the 28 to 75 millimeter lens wide open at 2.8 aperture and at 75 millimeters and it may be almost the minimum focusing distance so you can see that the depth of field is pretty small like the grass in the front is out of focus then you get like the nose and the eye in focus and then behind that everything else out of focus now sometimes if you put the focus in the right place it can be desirable because if everything's in focus you as the viewer aren't really sure what's the most important thing is here it's pretty clear that what exactly you should be looking at based upon what's physically in focus here's another example also with that same lens where when I took this image I shot first the one with his face in focus but then the foreground just looked a bit odd and in fact this picture was really more about that specific gesture so that's where the focus was on the second one and it's much more successful like clearly there's enough information for you to determine who that character is if you needed to say well you know whether or not you know them you can clearly make out all the features so it's not faceless but the same time to focus being on that gesture in the foreground now to do this from a really extreme angle if you get super super close and you're wide open and especially if you're photographing children because they're smaller physically and that means in order to fill the frame you have to physically get closer and the consequence of that is less depth of field so here this is with the 28 275 at 75 millimeters 2.8 wide open and extremely close to that subject and so literally the entire faces and in focus it's just dies now the other reason is because the way that it works is it's all with respect to this particular plane right this is the plane of where your chip is now your minimum focusing distance is always measured from this little icon here which is a circle with a line and I'm pretty sure every single one of you has this on their camera even if they never knew that it was there so if you look for it now you'll know that's exactly where your chip is and when they measure the minimum focusing distance of your lens it's always measured from that point it's not the front of the lens so with that said if you get really physically close to someone this way and we have a small depth of field if I go if I'm parallel to his face then his eyes and his lips will all be in focus as soon as I change the angle well now the angles here so that's what's happening in this photo so our eyes our focus our chins out if I was parallel to her face then that that's the way that the field works very thin here's another example this is using a macro lens a true one-to-one macro lens in this case it's the 90 macro I actually have this stopped all the way down to f-16 so you would think that that you know it's selectively depth there's it like not a lot of focus there but once you get physically so close to something using a true macro lens even to maintain a little bit of focus sometimes requires you to stop down so that's at f-16 using the true one-to-one macro and then at the other extreme this is a 11 millimeters and here because we're already focused at infinity that you have everything in focus so again using wider angle lenses gives you more depth of field getting really close to your subject gives you less depth of field alright this brings us to number three which is understanding the field of view there are always these relationships in images between things and everything that you choose to put in the frame is actually important information so it may not be something that you cognitively consciously consider when you're composing an image but if you start to think about it or look at it later you might say well well it would've been better if I had this out or this so when you're actually out there taking pictures and you're physically engaging with whatever you're photographing be conscious of what's going in the frame because that's the information that winds up ultimately getting conveyed so you know the image on the left-hand side you know clearly it there's enough information so you realize where that is where a isolated part of it maybe not so much but you can't always tell like for example the sky there is a little bit washed out just because of the day so sometimes you say well rather than try to get everything I'll just isolate and get one specific thing all right here's an example this was with the 70 to 200 2.8 here in New York at Fashion Week a couple years ago this is at 200 millimetres and cropping out everything except for like the you know the dresses and the arms and in the final part of the the the runway show now it would have been possible obviously to use a different focal lens and then be able to you know see all of the models on the runway but somehow by just isolating a specific part sometimes it makes a little bit more impact in the image another example of something like that where you know you're just taking a part of something and represent it representing it for the whole so you don't always have to show everything to get enough information to know what the photograph is of and sometimes the idea of less being more is also a great way to be able to convey stories so because of the mood because of the fog because of this it's it just isolates once simple thing that normally gets crowded by all these other things so it makes it simple in a very clear sort of statement so understanding that field-of-view also has some relationship to the lens that you use so this for example is with the 10 to 24 millimeter at 10 millimeters so you know this is in Brooklyn at the Botanical Gardens cherry blossoms and whatnot so 10 millimeters it starts to you know it's the branches in this case are what sort of break up just this field of flowers where if you focus on a specific one then this becomes more about a specific blossom than the whole tree of blossoms so you get a different mood and a different feel just depending on what you put into the frame another example here for some people that were here earlier before probably know what's coming but here's the 270 millimeter and of the 18 to 270 isolating just a part of the Brooklyn Bridge if that's what you choose to take that's fine but then you wouldn't have thought that there would have been someone standing right in front of you at 18 millimeters so one image you know is taken from the exact same place but think about all of the possibilities of you know 270 millimeter pictures all in just that space so whatever you choose to put in the frame really really matters next we're going to go to secret four and secret four is called understanding tension and creating some sort of visual tension is a device that you can employ in your photography and sometimes can give it a little bit more impact now sometimes it could be done wholly within one frame like in this case because of the placement of the reflections of the people and because the way that the waves are sort of break them down there's this inherent dynamic tension if they were closer together in the center of the frame it wouldn't have existed but because they're closer to the edge of the frame then that negative space is driving this you know driving putting a wedge in between them which is adding this concept of tension now sometimes you can also do it by juxtaposing or putting pictures together in in this case just out of curiosity if I were to ask you what's happening here you would say okay yes the older person is nagging the younger one also top the answers on the board it's her mother-in-law that's it that's that seems to be a top answer on the board as well now yeah in in reality there's the picture on the left and the picture of the right we're taking at two completely separate times and they don't have any relationship to each other other than the fact that I put them together now one of the reasons I put them together was from a visual point of view because the color relationships were similar so I did this thing for a while where I would have you know I basically have a stack of images that were of this tone and the stack this tone innocent and I would just see well because the visually they start to work then how do you start building narratives beyond that and I found it an interesting experiment but it's something to keep in mind that all the information once we put this and that immediately our minds are going to think that there's a reason that there should you know there should be related and we make up these stories based upon the information that's in the image so you can do it all these different types of ways and the opposite of creating tension is to create resolution so you can have something that's simple beautiful calm that also has has a certain power you know that in that and it's just all looking at it for the specific point of view secret number five is understanding composition now there's two basic rules that I'm sure most of you in this room have at least heard of and if not then I'll be glad to introduce you this concept of the rule of thirds now the rule of thirds basically states if you take a frame and you draw two lines vertical and two lines horizontal much like this diagram here you wind up with nine boxes and four points right in the center and wherever these points cross if you put something of information that's interesting or important in your image in general if it's if it falls at one of those points it's going to be a more interesting composition so let's see if this holds water all right so here's the image I for one like a lot of the negative space in it because I think it creates this feeling of suspension which is you know basically what we're doing and if we draw that line right on top you can see where that figure Falls pretty much for one of those points cross so if one of the challenges that maybe you're having it's like I your composition doesn't quite seem to be as strong as it could be experiment with this idea of putting whatever your subject is in that particular point and if you're the type of person that takes maybe you know one picture of something that's going to be the best picture of whatever it is that you have because it's the only one you know if you were to just change one thing as an experiment or for yourselves I would say change the composition so rather than take one picture you know try taking three and the thing that you change every time is that angle or that composition and as you start to do that it's it's it winds up being a valuable process because inevitably if I showed you three pictures of a subject we're probably all collectively going to agree that one is better than the other two almost inevitably and so we may not even know why but if you go through that process to give yourself choices it will definitely improve your photography so here another example of that as you can see especially when things become slightly more abstracted and there's no real point like you can see how the the flower that's pointing right towards us falls on one of those four points but that also means that I can rotate this in any direction and it's going to fall on one of those four points so realistically I don't know if this one's better than that one or maybe they're all pretty much the same but if you work on that concept then you're able to control that composition so that's that's your basic rule of thirds and then you have this idea which is called power quadrants and in power quadrant break the frame into nine boxes you're breaking it into four and then if you concentrate something of interest in one of those it can also create some strong composition so something something else to play with let's go number six number six is understanding point of view now when I say that I don't necessarily mean like you know what's your religious or political affiliation it's more of your the relationship physically that you are to your subject now if you're close to your subject if you're further back you know getting if you know if you if you photograph someone and you're close to them then the image shows that you have that relationship you know if you're shooting with a 500 millimeter lens of someone then you're probably paparazzi or whatever but you know so that it definitely a different type of photograph or a different relationship and so when whatever you're photographing if you move around subjects try different positions low angles high angles different lenses and that really is pretty important so here for example this is taken with a 18 millimeter lens from a really really low angle and these flowers are probably like you know maybe this tall or whatever but you know once you put the lens really low and you exaggerate the perspective with the wide-angle lens well then you start to create this dynamic in this relationship so you can really start to play with this idea of scale with the relationship that you are to your subject when photographing especially children I mean it goes through people in general but if you've ever seen the cover of you know Newsweek or something like that and you know that the title is like nation in crisis then you're going to see someone usually shooting up at whoever this person is you know so like these become interesting the dynamics of the camera physically to the subject you know if I want to make you look like a powerful important executive I'm going to shoot from a lower angle you know if I just want to humanize you as much as possible I'm going to be as straight and so if you want to if you're photographing children and you want to humanize the more you get down to their level because then you're shooting them this way if otherwise it's like your relationship to them shooting down right and so that angle really conveys a lot of information that we may not even be conscious of until you know we really start to analyze it and think about it and this from this is from a super really high point of view and using a long lens this was taken from the top of the Sears Tower of Lake Michigan and all those little white things are moorings for boats but it's winter so there's no boats but from a really high angle and using it this was in this case a 200 millimeter lens at infinity and because I'm at a high angle it compresses everything so you know everything looks really flat it almost looks like a painting you know it doesn't have the same feel as if photograph so all these different angles really impact how the pictures come out all right number seven which is understanding the leading lines now leading lines are something that we can use in our photographs to help guide the viewers eyes through or to put them to bring them to a point of something that's either interesting or important and these can be any types of thing visit the traditional leading line is like I guess just a road that's going in but they can take on all different types of forms in this case it's literally a line and so having that line go straight to the feet then you know exactly everything converges at that point so there's not really any question about what you should like what the subject is and where to go because the line is literally taking you there here's another example because when I look at this image the first thing I see is the girl's face then I follow her arm down follow the rope to the horse and then I go back up to her and so it's creating a pattern and there's a circle in there so despite the fact these are all still images that you're creating rhythm and you're creating movement throughout for your eye to follow and then here's the classic leading line there's your little road you into Kincaid Ville or whatever that might be wanted to just speak for a moment because this had come up by some people and talk about lens hoods now Tamara L Tamron lens is if you purchase this lens it comes with the lens hood and the lens hood is designed to be able to give you the most amount of protection from flare because flare can ruin the contrast of your image and the quality and so basically the way it works is you'll remove this lid here I don't know if you'll be able to see it from where your you're at right now but if you see that light hitting this lens anytime you have that situation that's the potential for flare so having one of these hoods if I take this off entirely and now you're all going to see that there's going to be flare because those lights are right there but if I put this back on and it's not directly pointing towards the light source now it should shield it from flare so it's going to improve the image quality now why are they this flower shaped hood the reason is it gives you the maximum amount of protection without Vinny adding so for example if you inscribed right in here a rectangle it would be the exact same dimensions as your chip so of the chip of your camera so because lenses put out an image circle and the chip is this size it gives you the maximum amount of protection without vignette again yet a ously is if I put the lens hood on incorrectly like this now this is actually blocking some of the area and so I will see a dark part of the corner so all the tamron lenses come with them and it's specifically designed for you know each lens other manufacturers I think many of the Nikon's I believe come with them I think the canons are an option and I think the Sony's come with them as well so it sort of depends but they're all available and it's recommended by most manufacturers to have them for that specific reason all right we're going to go on - I think the eighth secret you all feel in the 8th secret about now all right and is very important it's called look for and understand light now light obviously is an extremely important part of photography but there's one thing to be able to get something well exposed there's another thing to be able to either control light or the relationship that you have to your subject which creates the mood so for example here's an image that was taken at about nine o'clock in the morning and you can see the light is coming from the side because you see a high light side on the boy's face then you see a shadow side and the same thing with the mother so you know that the light is coming in at an angle now a lot of times when you have light that comes in at an angle it creates depth and dimension and that is what is what we're looking to create if you wind up photographing everything with your flash and it's this flash on camera here let's say let's say and this little flash here is going to make really flat light because it's coming from directly the same angle as your lens and so everything is going to be flat now if you were able to take this flash off or if you took another light off then you're going to create dimension so even if we look at these lights here on me it's coming this is coming from the front but it's a little higher than the flash so you're getting some dimension and then as I turn now the light these people over here will see a lot more modeling of the light because it's coming in from the side so the angle of the light to the subject becomes very important on how we perceive things so for example this was taken at 8:00 a.m. I'm sorry about 9:00 a.m. of this subject and in this case I'm letting the light illuminate them well what I did is I walked up the pier and two minutes after I took that picture I took this one now what does this say well the lights the same subjects the same photographer is the same but the angle of the light to the subject and the angle of the photographer to the subject change so anytime you change one of those three things either the the light or the subject or the angle that you are to the subject and everything changes so here this has a completely different tone mood feel even though it's the same subject and the lighting is the same so I would urge all of you if you haven't done this when you start photographing whoever or whatever is take a walk around whatever your subject is and you'll start to notice that oh wait from here the light looks much better because when I started in photography I could sort of I could see expression I could see moods but I wasn't able to really successfully see light and I wouldn't know I could say well yeah this looks pretty good but then I would take a picture like it doesn't look as good as as it looks to me with my you know naked eye and then you start to realize that oh it's because of the lighting and so you know if you can move your subject use walls to bounce lul there's there's all these ways to modify light in the real world I'll give you another example here's an image I took of this boy this was with the 72 I'm sorry 28 to 75 millimeter lens at 2 8 I was happy with the composition more or less that's kind of the picture I wanted to take the only problem actually is the lighting and it's not that it's not well exposed it's just that essentially he's being backlit and the result of that is that we have like you see the lightness and then you see darkness and then you see lightness well I knew that the light wasn't good so I asked this boy if he would turn around 180 degrees and then I took this picture now several things happened here one is that now it goes light dark light dark light so the pattern plays more is more interesting and perhaps even more importantly you can see the catch light in his eye right and our eyes look for points where there's extreme contrast and so where is the most extreme contrast in this entire image is right in his eye so what's that going to do that's going to make us the viewer connect more with this child then with that child even though clearly it's the same child so you know having that point there and this is just by turning them around you know 180 degrees nothing at me again the same photographer lens place all of this stuff so look for an understanding light turns out to be an extremely important thing that as you go out and about in the world and start to become conscious of these things and how it works I can guarantee that your photography will improve now sometimes you can also manipulate the light in different ways in this case you've probably seen those big shiny pop-up reflectors right probably if not they haven't here at B&H I would recommend it if you photograph people they're very handy and they can add light so in this case there's you can see light on the edge of their hair right that's from the Sun so the Sun is behind them and then what I did is I have one of those shiny things and you can see the catch light in their eyes right and that's from the reflection of the light bouncing back to them so I was able to manipulate the light and now it's almost like having two lights one is creating that nice hair light which is a separation and then the second one is returning light to them because realistically the if I could have tried to just expose without that reflector and I probably could have got an okay exposure but then the quality of light would be different and so no no flash on that alright here's another example the light is coming from behind her but in this case it's bouncing into a huge white wall which so to give you the scenario if this was the white wall right here then my subject would be right here and then my back would be to that white wall so you can find this outside on a sunny day it's like in the middle of the day Oh terrible time to photograph but maybe not maybe you can find places where the lighting looks great and it's almost it's it's always there if you know what you're looking for so taking advantage of large reflected light sources that just exist right right all out and about here's another example I was kind of happy with this I like the the the drama to this picture here however his mother would prefer to see him so in this case I added some flash to that and so you can see what we're what we're looking at here is in this second picture there's actually two light sources because the Sun which was making this really dramatic rim light still exists in the second picture so that you know if I had just had the on-camera flash without that Sun it would still be kind of flat but because of that now we're still has a lot more dimension to his face by in this case using two lights one taking advantage of the Sun and the second my on-camera flash secret number nine is also sort of important and it's a I would urge you all to try this if you if you have it before maybe you don't have to actually maybe I can save you the trouble but to understand how your camera works and how the latitude of exposure works because I'm sure you've all experienced taking a picture and you're like that's not the way that I see it well partially it's because the camera doesn't see the way that we see it has the ability to see maybe 10 12 something stops of light which is based on an amount it's a half and you're doubling and our eyes can see maybe 30 so that means we can be in this room and I can be looking out on all of you and despite the fact I have a very bright light in my face I can kind of make out most of you you know because of that case if you ask the camera to do that it would either that would be too bright or you would be too dark because of the contrast the latitude that you're asking it to capture is beyond what it captures so what I did here was a little test that basically goes through over and under exposing the same exact scene to see exactly what it is that the camera sees so for example right now that says f/8 at a 500th of a second this happened to be shot at 100 ISO if anyone really cares but f/8 at a 500th of a second so f/8 is the aperture 500 the second of the shutter speed and next to that is a little zero and this is there because that according to the cameras meter was the correct exposure so I want to take a picture of this the camera says if you said it that way that's what's right okay that's what the camera says so then what I decided to do is I under exposed it by one stop now when I under expose it by one stop you'll notice in this case it went from a 500th of a second to a thousandth so by making the shutter speed twice as quick I've added half as much light and the result is one stop darker and so that's what we get and then I did it one more time so if I was going to do it one more time what would the shutter speed be mm very good I shot it in manual and then I did it one more time let's say what happens if we went for thousandth and just to go totally crazy yeah at 8,000 so that's underexposed by 4 stops from what the meter says but what we'll notice is that in the scene the Sun being the Sun is still overexposed right however everything else got dark I think by about maybe 3 stops or so this this part actually is kind of looking nice if that's what we were you know we were only looking at that particular part you can see how the saturation increases as things get underexposed so if you've experienced photographing sunsets before and they looked washed out well this tells us that if we underexposed from what the camera says then we're going to get more saturation in color so something something good to know and then what I did was the opposite so we started originally at f/8 at a five hundredth of a second so if I wanted to overexpose one stop by manipulating the shutter speed I would go to 250th of a second and so that was one stop overexposed from what the camera said was correct then I went to stops overexposed three and finally four from what the camera said now what we'll notice that four stops overexposed from the cameras meter of the whole scene well this looks about right right so the camera is looking at all these tones and it's making an AB edge based upon the light but if this is the way we want our picture to look our camera would know that it just knows what it sees so this at least then you can understand that throughout this there's all these different tones and exposing for the part of the picture that's most important to you is what's important so here's an example where the cameras meter would do absolutely terrible job because there's so much brightness in the scene it wants to make it darker because it doesn't know that that there's this white that we want white it just is trying to make everything this average tone which in this case is not what we want so that means if you have a lot of light or white in your image and you want it to look the way that you perceive it then what you need to do is overexpose from what the camera's meter says it thinks is correct so in this case if I were to meter this scene in and I and I took the photograph it would be too dark so I have to overexpose it because there's a lot of light in the scene and then it looks the way that I want it then you also have the opposite which is if you have a lot of darkness in the scene the camera wants to make it brighter and so by doing that it would wash out all that red color so in this case we have to under expose it so if there's a lot of dark things in your image usually you have to under expose it a lot of bright things in your image you over expose it and then you'll get the exposure for the part of the image that you're trying to get correctly a little story about this particular image I think for me I don't mind spending time in Lightroom or Photoshop or these type of things but the part that I like the most is usually taking the images that's just be everyone can approach it differently there's no right or wrong way I mean I'm assuming most of you do this because you like doing it so whatever part that you like doing that's the part you should spend most of you time doing so in this case I prefer to get it as best I can in the camera now it's not to say that all of these images you've seen have probably been manipulated or tweaked in some little way and there there wasn't anything major I didn't composite anything on any of these photographs but there was some sort of something done to them the original image to what you just saw whether it was changing the contrast or maybe changing the levels or you know whatever pulling out some detail from the shadows that you wouldn't have seen in the original image things like this and so in this case I I came across this this this was in Kyoto and I came across this scene the night before this image was taken and you know smart people traveled with tripods just remember that I however did not have a tripod so I wanted to take this image and there was no way I could take it because the Sun had already gone down like way too far and so the only way that I would have been able to take it the night before by the time I got there would have been take like two images and one exposed properly for the sky and the other exposed properly for the lanterns the problem is without a tripod trying to take multiple images from the same position is pretty impossible you know as it was I precariously balanced my camera on my bag at a cockeyed angle with using the self-timer and I mean it worked clearly not the best way to do it but but sometimes you know you you invent solutions to problems that you have on the fly so in this case I came back the following night earlier so the Sun had gone down but there's still some glow so you can see like from behind how the clouds are slightly illuminated and there's some blueness to the sky if you got there much later then obviously that light goes away so you know so it looks like night but this detail there as opposed to it being that black black so in this case doing it right in the camera meant going back the next day you can also play with certain things in this case you can see the blur in the background right and there's you know she's relatively sharp compared to the background and in this case if you're willing to get on a tire swing with your camera and have somebody spin you on it then you're very easily able to take this picture because when you think about it like me relative to this girl are not really moving right because we're on a tire spinning together so relative to each other we're not really moving but relative to the rest of the world we are so right at about a thirtieth of a second or a sixtieth of a second we're able to get you know blur the background and keep the foreground sharp now it depends how fast you're going which is the appropriate shutter speed to get this effect but you know if you have someone spinning you at a good speed you you can create blur and have sharpness at the same time just just by that and that also reminds me of the technique of panning is anyone familiar with the technique of panning alright in the technique of panning you take your camera and you're following a moving subject and you're usually tracking it and photographing as you do that and what that does again it reduces the relative speed of whomever or whatever you're photographing to the camera and so you're able to get clearer pictures by doing that and sometimes you're also able to blur the background and have the subject sharp at the same time so it it shows this idea of movement much more effectively sometimes than freezing all the action because if you you know if you photograph a race car on the track at an 8,000 of a second you're going to stop everything and that that car is there but it just looks like it's kind of parked there you know if you see some sort of blur or movement then the implication is that it's moving and so you're able to use those things to be able to make images a little bit better all right we're up to number 11 it's the you factor yes you have to experiment you have to try things that you would normally try and I find a lot of times by making assignments up for yourself however simple they might be at least gives you some direction and it gives you something to focus on because the more that you have options the less likely you are to have focus so I can put it this way when I started out in photography I taught myself a couple of different techniques that just sort of came out of the process of doing it all the time and one of them was I would go through and at the time it was film and I would shoot a roll of film and then I go into the darkroom and develop it and then make a contact sheet and go through all this process and inevitably they'd be a frame in there that I liked that I either didn't remember taking or I didn't think was going to be good and it wound up being better than the one that I thought was going to be good because photography is a process and you know when you're when you were dealing with photography and film it made it even more of a process and now everything is so much quicker but it doesn't mean it's still not a process it just happens quicker so I think being cognizant of that and then you go back and you look at your own images you know even I almost never delete an image right in the camera because I could look at it a week later and have a completely different opinion than the moment that I look at it because the moment I look at it if it's not exactly what I had here die I can't instantaneously translate it I might think it's terrible but in reality with a little bit of perspective you'll understand your own work and your own vision better by reviewing things at different particular points and I think that to me is always a very valuable way of understanding your own work anyway with that said so I would find an image and I'm like I mean oh I guess I was just it was like lucky I guess I got that you know so and I would go back and then I would but it would consistently happen so like when I when I noticed that can the consistency of the luck even though I sent to never remember taking these images I realized there must be something to the whole approach because at the end of the day if I'm always getting a picture that I was happy with on a roll of film that I'm like oh this is great whatever I was doing was working so you just sort of keep doing it so when you find an image that you take that works or maybe you didn't think that works and someone else will say hey that's I like that and you as well it's not what I wanted and maybe it's not but maybe you have a relationship to that and that can help guide your path to your own photography as well all right so here's a couple of images these were all taken on the same day and with uh with a friend of mine who's a musician we were putting together a package for her album a couple years ago all taken with different lenses different lighting time of day but it was just through the course of one day so this with the 18 it was 18 millimeters in the car we drove around probably for half an hour I probably took 74 75 pictures most of them were terrible but that's okay and I and I think that you also should realize that taking risks and making mistakes or not getting exactly what you want is also probably a good thing so you know some people can walk into a scene take one picture and they like it's perfect and walk away but most people that's not the case and you know even with people that are some of the best in the world at whatever their type of photography take you know hundreds sometimes thousands of pictures to get that one picture that they're after so there is something to be said for the math of it as well you know you take one picture it's the best one you have you take 300 one I have to go through 300 pictures right that's terrible but but at least you have options right so again whatever if you're the type of person that takes one picture try taking three if you're the type of person that takes 800 I don't know maybe try three or something you know whatever whatever you do to give yourself a new challenge because that one's have given you some focus so this was taken you know same subject a different place later in the day the Sun had just gone down again I'm not using the cameras meter because it would it wants that background to be dark because it's but I don't I want it to be light and to fade off and then I added flash in the front and this was again this is the light had just set and if the light just set then what's the light on her well that's an off-camera flash which I literally put on the ground just like a little speed light just on the ground with a remote facing up so you know I'm able to because now it gives a little detail there there's dimension there's playing with lighting not even a diffuser just straight just straight on and so play with all of these different things and sometimes whether or not it's just saying well today I'm going to photograph this object this person the subject whether or not you you know walk around the city or or have some other location that gives you some focus and then this was at the end of the day using a couple of different strobe lights inside one is bouncing off of the ground another thing a technique that I came across at some point is sometimes you see great light in a room but the quality of it is fantastic the amounts not enough well you can take your flash and put it like right where the you-know-what underneath that lamp right under the shade and then get that same quality of light but just much brighter with a flash so you know if you see light that you like you can just make it even better sometimes sometimes all right here's another approach to certain things again this was a subject I was I was at the beach and you know it's just spent the week collecting random shells and as I did I would just photograph them all with the macro lens and all at one to one so that means that if this is shot at one to one with the macro lens that shell is like super super small and so I collected a whole bunch of them and then at the end of the week put it all together so I gave myself a little assignment something to do something interesting something to explore and different ways of seeing and so that's one of the things that I think if you do for yourself no matter what your interest is you'll find that you will refine your craft pretty significantly all right let's see ww Tamron it's actually Tamara on - usa.com now they recently changed that and I haven't updated this yet Tamron - usa.com is the Tamron website and there they have videos articles all sorts of great information about photography in addition obviously to information about lenses but because you've attended this and you get the idea you know everything about the lenses so maybe you want to learn more about the photography but it's a really great site they have on there the Tamron Learning Center and it's contributing articles from various texts and professional photographers about all different types of photography and it's a really good resource in addition to tamron's blog which is called angular view so they have lots of updated articles how to's and all types of things on different types of photography as well so if there are no more questions then I guess we can consider the session adjourned but I will be around if you do have any other questions like that thank you very much whether you're a hobbyist or a professional bnh has the answers to your questions experience a world of technology at our New York City superstore connect with us online or give us a call our staff of experts is happy to help

Channel: B&H Photo Video Pro Audio

Views: 548,931

Keywords: B & H Photo Video (Organization), lenses, B&H Event Space, photo secrets, bhvideos, 11 simple secrets, camera, bh photo, composition, photography, learn photography, BH Photo Video, B&H, better photography, BH Photo, Tamron

Id: O33V9-SIPDw

Length: 67min 42sec (4062 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 06 2013