5 Techniques to Transform Basic Photos into Bangers

hello there in today's video we're going to look at five techniques we can use to turn our basic photos into banners come with me firstly if you missed it i just wanted to let you know that my first book is now available for pre-order i put my heart and soul into this thing and it's gonna be so much more than just your normal coffee table photo book i have put loads of stories in there from my time in the police things that i experienced that's allowed me to develop this kind of life philosophy that i now pour into my work so that's those stories and the pictures combined will create this final book which is called illumination uh so hit the link down below to check it out and your support in pre-ordering one would mean the world to me and yeah that's just something that i think you're gonna love so please do check it out right so we are talking today about techniques we can use to turn basic photos into bangers but specifically talking about images that are taken out and about in the field on days where just not everything is going according to plan particularly with the weather we all dream of those beautiful sunsets and beautiful days when the conditions are just perfect the reality is that most days are not like that and i'm one that just loves going out in all conditions because there's so many different things to experience and it also makes us better photographers and better landscape photographers but there are a few things i do which i want to share with you that i think will just push your photos up to the next level now we have three editing tips and then i'll come back and there'll be a couple of tips towards the end which we can actually use in the field when we are forming our compositions [Music] so because we're talking about shooting in bad weather or when the light is flat or on gray days i don't necessarily feel that grayness on those days i'm excited about being out and i'm excited about the colors that do exist so the first tip is to introduce a tone into the image one that you've felt there or you've seen a little bit of at the scene but doesn't it come across in your images particularly if you're shooting raw where you might have been in auto white balance so the camera might have produced a white balance different to what you were seeing and that's the case with this image and i don't think i've ever looked at water and thought it was gray so there's a few things we can do to introduce a tone so just by using the white balance and correcting that to what we saw at the time and just going a little bit towards the blue look at that just instantly lifts that image to something more exciting the water now looks like a more natural watercolor i do don't want to add to that blue anymore so i'm going to come down to the saturation down here increase the hues in the in the oranges and the yellows to pull those autumn colors out i'm going to tone it back a little bit on there and i think that just instantly looks better than having that gray look to it now let's just take that white balance off there because there's another way we can do this now we can come down to the color grading and just pick up the highlights there because it is quite highlighted and we can add the tone in here specifically just controlling the highlight so it could go to something blue like i've just done like that but you're so free to add any tone you want keep it keeping it subtle will be better usually but as you can see it's such a powerful tool and just adds a new element to your image just to take that bit of gray off that you may have seen but you might not have felt i mean this one was actually quite blue anyway but i've just allowed that blue to become part of the image it's monotone this image there isn't any color other than the blue so there's a blue and a white it's monotone image but it's it's with the blue instead of being black and white and i think that works really really nicely i think that one is a banger so the next tip when you're editing is to use presets and i like this preset particularly you can get all of my presets if you sign up to the raw room which you get too much access if you pre-order my book but look at this so we go over to that click that and don't you just love that i think that now is full of drama on what was a grey day with rain battering in my face when i took this just hit that bad weather and it becomes it has the drama now that i was feeling at the time let's go and have a look at another one where i've used that let's just have a look at what we've got going on though with this filter so i've driven the contrast up crushing the blacks pushing those whites quite far as well and then i've raised the shadows i've brought the shadows down to create that contrast yeah a bit of clarity bit of dehaze but vibrance mid-tones saturation everything so i've desaturated everything and then just push the mid-tone back up and in here absolutely look at the color i'm bringing those yellows down so making those greens look less green into that more orange type look which i like because i'm not a massive fan of green in my images i then control the saturation brought those aquas and the greens down as well and then i've added a blue tone in the shadows there and in the highlights as well i think that just adds to the whole dramatic feeling you almost end up with that almost like an orange and teal look to the image i think from the starting point that we have quite gray and dull i think that is now a banger so next tip is just to make it black and white i'm not going to go into details about my transforming of an image into black and white today but if we look at this image what i like with my black and whites is to really drive that contrast i love a nice contrasty black and white so i push the whites and the blacks the other way to create that really strong contrast you can see that here blacks down white up and then boost the contrast and then put a medium contrast curve down here as well and just crush those black crush that contrast that's the look i like you might like a little bit less contrast but that's what i like i also with my black and whites like to darken the sky off so normally in any scene the foreground will be darker than the sky but with my black and whites i do quite like spinning that luminance round so we get this really dark dramatic area at the top of the image and then have a much brighter area down below and it just i think for a black and white picture because black and white immediately makes us think if we then flip that luminance around as well i just find that adds an element of interest to my black and whites again it might not be for you i like it i think it works well i think that image is a banger from what was otherwise a very gray and dull day but have a look at this one so going back to my presets i've got a black and white one it's called mono to the max because that's how i like it let's just hit mono to the max here bang look at that i absolutely love that that is now the background image for my website as well i love it i love that high level of contrast but now let's go and have a look a few things we can then do when we're in the field to make the most of these days when the weather isn't so good or it's overcast or the light is flat and we what we some things we can do to make a banger in the field you may have noticed that a few of those pictures were taken with long exposures and that is one of the best things or the best techniques we can use i think to really set our gray day bad weather bad light flat light whatever you want to call it images above all others because it just works so well and it creates that beautiful ethereal feel of the contrast between something static in our image and then capturing the movements in water and clouds i just love it as a technique look at this image here this is a gray old day but i love this tree i've got a little relationship going with this tree that i've talked about before and i turned it from looking like this into this and i just think it's i mean i've got it on the wall there i love this picture i think it's a banger i've done loads of videos about how to do long exposure photography so check those out but long exposure give it a try so next one is the often on gray days we don't have that much detail in the sky it might be an absolute white out or the clouds just aren't that interesting we don't have that big color that we all love so much what we can do on days like that though is just not even include the sky get yourself into a position to be able to compose a shot where we don't even have the sky in it so we're pointing our cameras we're getting a little bit higher and a higher perspective and then pointing our camera down so we don't even have the sky in it and that can just create so many different opportunities have a look at this one it's that tree again i told you i i told you i loved that tree but i've just got to a bit of more of a race position here and shot down at it so the whole background of that image is now the water again i've used a long exposure to smooth it all out and i think this works really well i even like that little bit of movement that you can see in the leaves here's another example of these barns just getting up higher and shooting down the point is with images like this though is that because it's more of a simplistic image maybe we want to have a really strong subject something that can stand alone like the tree or the barns but then we do have the option to create something more abstract you can zoom in on a waterfall or you can shoot straight down always look down because there are interesting things to be found there waterfalls are also a great subject for this and you can it's usually better in overcast gray weather anyway because waterfalls don't often work if you've got high contrast all over the place so those nice soft days that nice soft light you can create images like this which will just form a nice sort of portrait of a waterfall but check the book out on the link down below i'd really appreciate your support in pre-ordering and i'll see you again very very soon bye

Channel: First Man Photography

Views: 16,189

Rating: 4.9161968 out of 5

Keywords: photography, landscape photography, bad weather photography, grey day photography, gray day photography, photo editing, photography tips, photography tutorial, landscape photography tutorial, photography for beginners, lightroom tutorial, photo editing tutorial, photography inspiration, photo editing techniques, long exposure photography, photo hacks, photo ideas, first man photography, rain photography, how to take great pictures

Id: -XLAFROAhm8

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021