3 PHOTOGRAPHY SKILLS YOU SHOULD LEARN (and will pay off forever)

a big thanks to squarespace for sponsoring this week's video morning everybody fantastic to see you all again and this is a video that i've been wanting to make for ages actually and um it's about three skills that i think have shaped my photography the most oh perhaps you're okay they're they're they're skills that aren't you know the the general technical skills or you know about exposure or or anything like that there's skills that i think that every photographer should know and should continue to develop forever now obviously there are hundreds of elements to photography so why have i chosen these three skills well i think that they have had the biggest impact on me and my photography and the things that i didn't know and i've learned through various stages of my photography one of which i think i only picked up really and started to really develop over the last sort of three or four maybe five years so what are these skills [Music] so the first one is observation and i have to be honest and say that this isn't something that i used to be particularly good at and i think i only really started observing things properly and stopping just just taking what i see straight away um probably about five years ago i i think um before that i used to just see something that was amazing and then try and find a quick composition and take a photo of it a little bit like this this was in iceland 20 years ago a photograph of the falls here it looks good it's a nice landscape shot um the conditions weren't brilliant but i made the most of them when i went back there um this was two years ago then i just took something that was completely different and whether you like the first one or the second i think you'll agree that the second one is more creative and i remember spending quite a lot of time looking at it and really observing it when i'm on workshops um quite often i'll find a composition and you know we'll spend a bit of time there and i'll find something and then people say to me oh i didn't see that or i i you know how did you find that you've got such a good eye and i don't think it is that i've got such a good eye i've got a trained eye and i think that observation like any type of skill if you do it enough you can train yourself to be good at it and and that is why i think it's one of the skills that you need to learn forever [Music] okay so let's go back to the studio and i can explain to you how you can improve your observation skills give you some techniques that you can use to improve your observation skills and talk about the other two skills that i think everybody every photographer should improve forever so when i learned to juggle it was really difficult it's still really difficult actually but much easier than it was when i learnt and like any skill if you practice at it you get better and observation is something that you need to practice and then when you do practice it you get better and then you'll find compositions so much easier so let's have a look at some tips of how you can practice those skills the first one is is actually just taking your time when you get to a location i've said this so many times before but just sitting down and just looking at the location and just taking it in i usually have an apple i haven't got an apple at the moment so i held a juggling ball instead but you know i i always take an apple with me i sit eat my apple have a coffee or whatever and just take in the surroundings it's amazing what you see if you just sit there and don't have your camera because if you have your camera you're focusing on the settings now don't drop your apple down the slope that's a bad idea because then you lose all inspiration so the next thing to help you observe more is is don't just look at a scene i think wow that's amazing but think why is it amazing what are the things in that scene that are making it such an amazing scene so for instance take this shot um so this is a shot that i i took um investor horn and there are multiple elements in this that i picked out and purposely placed so the first one is is the the way that the mountains are receding in the background they're very triangular so i wanted to try and reflect that in the foreground so i chose um a hump in the foreground which was reflecting the first hump and then the hump behind it reflect the second hump on the mountain there's lots of triangular shapes as well and i purposely placed these grasses with dark behind them so it was really purposeful and and that came about for me just looking at this environment you know looking at everything about this environment and the shapes the textures and everything else so just actually looking at what you're looking at um some people call it vision i don't really like that word so much so don't know what it really means but the way i see it is don't just look at a scene look at the elements within the scene the next thing is looking at textures and shapes and forms and things like that i've just spoke about that in that last image but it's so important so take this shot here which is some ferns and a rock and and the cloud you could walk past this in fact i probably did walk past this because i walked down this path multiple times but it it was the textures and the form and the colour of these ferns against the rock which really attracted to me and then the cloud just sort of anchored the scene together but i feel like it's quite a good image it's quite an interesting image um but it's something you could walk past really easily this shot um which was on the isle of skye i i spent a long time with with a group on on a workshop and we we we went down here and we all ended up sort of trying to find different locations but there was a few of us that took this shot because when we spent a lot of time looking at the scene we found that the water came into this sort of hollow and it created um a nice form and then it was a question of just putting the elements together um making sure that the island in the background was was sort of compensating for the strong element um on the bottom left but what really made this shot was the color so the blue and the orange because they're on opposite sides of the color wheel and i i knew that when we processed this it would make such a good image and you know being able to understand that being able to understand colors and shapes and textures the texture of the water in this case helps bring this image together this is another good example again in sky this is the scene that you know maybe a lot of people would take it's just it's a nice shot of this mountain in the background there's some reads just in in the foreground but by taking more time by observing the scene you could pick out that these reeds created a really nice shape um and this was only available with a 14 millimeter lens and they created this sort of curved shape into the mountains in the background or just having a wide angle and creating a square crop and having the focus of attention these reeds in the foreground again you know those shapes those forms didn't come about just by accident they were through observation so just trying to look for shapes and textures and colours in your scene can make such a big difference and then the other thing is is to remember that a beautiful scene just like i showed there doesn't necessarily create an amazing photograph in fact most often it doesn't you've got to work for it just because the light looks amazing you've got amazing snow-capped mountains it doesn't mean that you're going to create a stunning work of art from that you've got to create that work of art and to do that you've got to observe all the elements and try and put them together and that's probably one of the most important parts of photography is is when you get into that next level is is looking at a scene and thinking how can i make this super special so for instance this is a good example here this is a shot that i i talked as soon as i got to the scene it's just by the side of the road of these mountains in the background and it's a nice snap of the scene but when i tried to compose it and i've shown this shot lots of times before but when i composed it you we ended up with with this shot here which looks so much better you know i've got these amazing grasses in the foreground which just look really really stunning and um i've made this the focus of attention i really like the way that the valleys here run through and and these are just like hills in the background and then the color tonality in this is really good as well we've got these blues and oranges so you know just by spending a little bit more time and just thinking about it think looking at the foreground looking at maybe there's clouds in the sky or they're creating interesting shapes that is what will end up creating an image rather than just taking a photo the other thing that i want to speak about in observation is detail and how important detail is in all my images the the detail is is a big big part of them so what i mean by that is just where things are so my my woodland book that i just published recently still available for pre-order is a good example of that so um a lot of the tree placements and where i've placed the branches are so purposeful and that is really important that detail's really important i always show this shot because i think it's a good example which is um the icelandic church and where i place that spire in in the background and whether you agree or don't agree with that i think being purposeful about little elements like that is what separates really excellent photos from average ones so just think about that just think about where you place things maybe waiting for a cloud to come over just those little details can make such a big difference to to an image okay on to the second point the second skill i think that everybody should continue to improve forever and that is understanding light i think light is the most amazing thing it's what creates the images that we we take it's what we capture on the sensor or on the film in our cameras if you don't understand life you don't understand how light interacts and it's part of observation i suppose but i wanted to separate it out as a second point because it is so so so important just to explain that a little bit more let's jump back to this morning when i was walking pebbles so i'm back in the forest now and i wanted to show you um in a scene how light can massively affect something even when there's no light so it's a flat boring day overcast there's just a bit of sort of diffuse light coming into the woodland here so the first thing to notice is that um you know we've got the water here and that's reflecting the right light differently and you might notice that you might have spotted that but then um what i'd also notice is this area where i'm stood here so all this area here is catching a lot of light because all the predominant light is coming from that direction and this is quite open so this is catching a lot of the light so i'm thinking in my head already if i do take this shot i'll probably darken this down a little bit in the in the edit and then you can see that down here if i just jump into the stream so down here you coming with me peps so down here you can see that this is quite dark here but when i look at it from this direction i just get your phone then it interacts with the light so differently and it's very you can see if i look at it in this direction that it's very bright it's it's a completely different look to it so that's catching the light in it in a different way and and that's because it's reflecting the darkness of the wood behind me then if i go up here you can see that we've got a lot of contrast between the trees here and the light on this bank here so this this bank here that's really light but these trees are dark so they're contrasting really well with with that whereas the trees in the background are sort of all merged into one a little bit which isn't a bad thing but something to be aware of and then the other thing you can notice is because these trees are close to the edge where it's all open they're catching the light a little bit more so you can see on the side of the tree here on the side of this tree here and these trees down here is catching the light a lot more and that is something that you really need to think about with light you need to think about exactly how is it let's jump across that that's going to impact the scene in the hole and once you start looking at light and looking at how light interacts with the environment it will start to improve your photography but you can continue that skill you can continue looking at it whenever you're out without a camera you can look at how light interacts and you'll see that that's how shapes are formed textures are formed and it's the fundamental part of photography [Music] so you can see there that you know that one scene i'll show you the photo here's the photo that i've edited from that scene it's not the best photo ever but it demonstrates that light is important the light on those trees is important how it's interacting with the water and the trees in the background just understanding that helps you understand things like form it helps you understand how the eye might be directed through the image it's so so important i just wanted to give a couple more examples about light because um i think that there's different ways of thinking about it and and i've got a video i'll link it here all about using light in your images but there's one other example i recently was in torn house and lake district on an amazing evening one of those evenings that you just get where the clouds are quite dark the light comes through you think this is amazing and the first shot i took was this one here which i was really pleased with it's this rock in the foreground but it's sort of the obvious shot to take and the light hits the rock you have a wide angle lens on you get everything in focus and that's it but then those special images i'm not saying that's not a good image but those real special images come from just looking at how that light is interacting with the land and so there's a few image here that i want to show you so this is the first one so the light was hitting this tree and then the tree um just fitted into this gap in the reflection of the trees in the in the in the water and i just felt that was a little bit different it's a little bit um it wasn't the obvious shot to take here so i thought that was a good example um the next one was this shot which is the shot that i've shared on social media before which was the probably similar to the rock one but just a little bit different in that i had focused on the foreground how the light was interacting with these grasses on the foreground and then the final one was as the light was receding and it went off a lot of the mid ground but it was still just on the peaks and i think that tells a story just because there's no light on those foreground mountains should doesn't mean that you shouldn't shoot them um it's it's sometimes the absence of light is as good as actually having light on a subject and then just hitting those clouds and those mountains just made something special in this image i think so just think about that think about light it will definitely improve your photography and you should always be looking at light and how it interacts with the land okay the final one is all about editing and making sure that you concentrate on improving your editing skills again and again i feel that 50 of the process of creating an image is editing the image and it's ultimately probably where a bit of your style comes out but don't worry too much about your style your style will just develop and change over over the years so don't try and think i want to be that style because you will become a style and that might seem really odd the the the time you're watching this if you if you're really struggling or you're just new to photography but um you'll probably be influenced by other people and you'll start to develop your own style a little bit mine feels like quite a painterly style i think but i didn't originally go out to do that i was probably influenced a little bit by painters because i like sort of classic painters but i was also influenced by other people on instagram and flickr and other works that i've seen as well so you your style can be really simplistic and you could you know yeah there wasn't a huge amount of editing in this but it was probably i desaturated the colors a little bit and i softened the image a little bit but there was there was a definite edit to this image but it looks almost unedited and my style is quite like that i feel that now i've developed a style i i feel it i edit to make it look unedited which sounds odd um but i do edit quite significantly um sometimes more significantly than others so this is a good example of a big edit on an image so this was the shot that i i took and it's quite a flat raw image so you can't see a lot of the light that was hitting the land but when you apply the edit it just looks completely different and you know by dodging and burning and just showing it takes the eye on a journey it can create something quite magnificent so there's loads of youtube tutorials on editing in lightroom and photoshop i'll link one of my favorite ones that i've done up here but loads of other people do editing tutorials mass peter everson michael shane bloomer two of my favorite um nick paige is really good as well so go and have a look at those i want to thank squarespace that sponsored this week's episode squarespace is an all-in-one platform allows you to set up a domain and build your own website or portfolio or even online store it's absolutely amazing go and check them out at squarespace.com and if you're ready to build a website and go live with it then you can get 10 off by using offer code nigel or forward slash nigel i was thinking i've been sponsored by squarespace for a few years now i'm sure people have set up their websites on squarespace so if you link them in the comments below i'll take a look at them i'd really like to see your squarespace website so link them below and it'll also be great for to share your work with other people as well okay thanks ever so much for watching and until next sunday bye [Music] you

Channel: Nigel Danson

Views: 286,670

Keywords: photography, landscape photography, photography tips, photography tutorial, tutorial, photography skills, learn photography, nigel danson, Nigel Danson photography, lightroom

Id: cIPGg8rhcbk

Length: 20min 0sec (1200 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021