How I RUINED the best photos of my career.

it's something that i always struggle to deal with and there have been times where i've been like dude this photo has like 200 something thousand likes and you're like delete it and i'm like i know okay but the thing is i don't even look at the numbers yeah i don't pay attention it doesn't matter because i i am pete's hardest critic when it comes to his photography but i need and the reason why is because if anything i've learned in photography or anything creative if you're friends you should do this for your friends if your friends don't critique and give you some sort of input on your work you'll never grow you'll never you'll never [Music] develop all right what do we got here today we got a scottish single malt um i can't remember the name exactly the belvin balvini alvini this is a gift alan is his first time at the studio today and he brought this this tasty gift and i figured what a great thing to have and consume during the first series episode little late night chat of something we're going to start doing called photo stories yes i'm super excited do you think it's a good idea hell yeah i mean i'm the first person to start this one yeah episode one alan palinder if you don't palander or polander you still struggle with this because everyone says something different i wish my name was easier peter mckinnon okay palander polander polander yes but you can say calendar you can say calendar you can say plander i mean it depends where i am in the world and who i'm talking to i feel like if you have an accent most people just say palander when i hear someone go plander i'm like i don't know who that is they're like who's that i know alan who's that guy polander okay that's good you know you say someone's name wrong for so long it's like you almost just don't want to say it the proper way now okay i will correct that alan polander i trust that he knew how to say my name from day one don't worry maybe i did yeah uh this dude is my favorite photographer on instagram and that's that's just on instagram on his just instagram not not in real life uh he takes incredible photos they are exceptional if you haven't checked out his profile do so before we even start but the idea for this is to basically share five photos each but the story behind the photo why it was taken what was happening during the time it was taken stuff you didn't know about it maybe they're photos you've seen maybe they're photos you haven't seen and just kind of like a general discussion on photo stories of different things that we've done along our paths as photographers yeah this is exciting yeah there's so many stories so cheers here's to many more stories yeah many more we've got to make more oh that's the thing isn't it sorry i'm sorry here we make eye contact in spain they do this okay and then cheers well cheers see you guys cheers to you guys that's smooth that's real good that's really smooth that's real good tasty okay do you want to start with the first photo or should i i think you should okay i've got the mirror dropped on my phone so i'll show you first then we'll show the audience first of all it was really hard for us to decide on the photos yeah it was okay let's go with um let's go with something easy we'll start with this one yes so i'll show you here we'll pop it up on screen so you can see it better this is a photo of a giant stream of coffee hitting this james coffee mug and spilling out i've seen this photo done before many times it's popular i wanted to recreate my own and i thought this was a great place to do it so we were in iceland i was with maddie and we got to the top of this mountain that i don't even know we just walked to the very top of it it wasn't like a crazy mountain leaf to summit with like cables and and crazy um crampon shoes and all that stuff we walked so you can it wasn't very tall we got to the top and i made coffee with my aeropress and for the sole reason to just pour it into this it looks good yeah and i realized i probably could have just brought like cold brew and done it but i boiled it oh you boil i boiled it and then we poured it right in and you can see that little see that little splash happening on my finger yeah it burned so bad but we got it on the first take you know what is worth it that's a really nice shot yeah it's just a really long stream i was like maddie hold it higher and he's like i'm not that tall i can't that is true yeah i think it should have been the other way around yeah his little finish hand holding so if you're holding it and maddie's pouring it oh wait who's taking the picture no we did we did both he poured it once and i poured it right it was like a big fat big fat mug so the one i just went like this and then another one like he did it and we had it set up so it was it was a finagle that's intense it was probably the only good shot we got out of it but um it was the first so i chose this because it was the first shot of mine that ever hit 100k on instagram yes so that was kind of like a cool milestone and i like it i most likely messaged him saying congratulations yeah i'm sure you did and and it was a and it was the first like the first picture to hit 100k was with coffee that's crazy and i thought well that's that's fitting that's when you know that you belong where you yeah i was like this is working okay this is meant to be so your addiction prevailed yeah yeah it came through somehow so that was my first photo um coffee on the mountain in iceland with maddie first shot to hit 100k oh i like that man yeah impressive story uh mine is not did you just unzip your pocket yeah i had to pull out my phone i didn't realize we were going to be using our phone to illustrate the images but since that's the case um let me show you the picture actually mine is also somewhat of a beverage oh okay uh this image was taken in iraq i'll throw it up bam on the big screen on the big magic of post um i love this photo uh it was such an unusual place because i go to this market uh just a couple times in a week when i'm in iraq i barely go to iraq so when i'm there i'm like i gotta go check out this market and the photos that you have taken from there are exceptional i love i love the photos there there's something about the environment there and just everything else the textures it just works really well with yeah i guess my preset styles but also like you're allen's really good at like photo sets yeah so you're really good at like telling a story through like seven frames he's the only guy you'll find on instagram that posts like seven bangers in one photo set instead of posting seven individual bangers the only reason why is because i'm actually worried that the one picture isn't good enough so i'm always like okay i need a backup image and a backup image of that one that's really interesting though because you never know you're you're going through a lot a lot in one single post well i mean the the problem me and peter always face is that he's always running out of content and i always seem to have a lot of content but i think now i'm kind of catching up towards oh finally having no contact it's only taken like seven years it only took it to make me realize i had no more content a global pandemic global pandemic so that's your favorite market i love that place um it's super busy there's a lot of people everywhere and a chai which is like a tea in our culture um i mean it's not like it's the most crazy thing everyone knows chai is but um i was walking by i took this picture of these these uh couple gentlemen just sitting down having uh and then they're like if you wanna take a picture of us you have to sit down and enjoy a tea with us that's cool and i'm like okay but mind you there's a language barrier because in iraq there's multiple languages so i sat down and i had the tea with them and then afterwards i had the option to take another picture of them so that wasn't actually the first photo i took the first photo was terrible um because it was like oh they looked at me i got it run away yeah but then i had a i had a tea with them we had an amazing conversation that's cool and i got a cool photo at the end a friend of mine always says like he his favorite part about photography gabriel and you guys have seen him on the channel and stuff and he says his favorite part about photography isn't necessarily the gear or the photos but it's the story of how he got the photos absolutely the gear and the people that he's met along the way gabriel you're a wise man but i think that that's probably like the same for a lot of people yeah right like it's fun to get lenses and gear and take dope shots and when it looks good and you hit all the marks it's exciting but it's it's like you and i are now friends through photography yeah like the first time we ever met i dm'd you on instagram he slid in my dm i slid in this dude's dms he was on the explore page oh was that you were on the explorer pages like recommended people to follow and then i saw that you were from toronto the first shot i ever actually saw from you was you on a waterfall in uh niagara falls oh yeah oh that was completely legal yeah completely legal actually that would have been no it was legal illegal at the time it was legal at the time of the photo yeah it could have been legal they didn't really have any regulations yeah but yeah no that was a neat photo because i actually like went beyond what you should get a photo and i remember thinking like where is that and when i saw it was niagara falls how like that doesn't even make sense and you had a cool beanie anyways auto shop okay that was the first time i saw a photo from you so let's move on to um let's go with this one this is a deep story so you know who that is yes i do so one and only i'll show chris ramsay chris ramsay i guess you would would you call him a professional puzzle solver now i think he's just like a professional in all aspects of life yeah he's got dope merch a dope style with his merch check out first.shop if you haven't seen it uh puzzle solver magician honestly this dude is one of the most humble yeah for sure a super nice guy he's a sweetheart but he's one of the most creative people i've ever met and whenever i get in a creative rut and i can't figure a video out or i need help or i need insight he's the first person i go to always and he always comes through with incredible ideas yeah eight camera hacks in 90 seconds damn was his idea really yeah chris you're yeah pete's success it was his idea for me to even start a channel oh yeah he pushed me to do it yeah so that photo of chris there in the desert was when we took a trip from san diego to las vegas to go to a magic convention wow so we drove through the desert and i always joked that the desert that drive is like driving through a pair of khaki pants everything is just beige everything and we stopped along the way and because we saw this like abandoned hut i was like let's go take photos over there instagram he's like yeah and we saw these holes in the ground and we were like do you think there's snakes out here and then we got freaked out and ran back to the car and left but you'll notice he's wearing a turquoise ring in that shot similar to the one i'm similar to these uh these new turquoise rings available at uh the link below seriously check them out but there's like a history to these rings so like we both bought turquoise rings on the same day i remember we were in san diego filming a project both just kind of thinking like what do we do with our lives what's the next step and i didn't know and we were trying to just work it out and he said to me well i've got a youtube channel and i've got 30 000 subscribers on my channel from like fans and magicians yeah i was like well what do you do with that he's like i don't know i think i might just try to figure it out and i remember thinking well i don't have a channel what should i do he's like start a channel that's why i was like well i have a vimeo page he said get out of here with that it's not gonna do anything so that night we kind of decided like all right when we come back from this trip because we both live in canada yeah when we come back from this trip let's just like kind of make a pack to like moving forward try to figure out what's going to make us happy and and start the course for that to come to life whatever that is yeah the next morning we were at james coffee and they had a little shop inside there and there was two turquoise rings just two one of them fit me and one of them fit him and they were both like beyond our budgets at the time i just was like 300 bucks and i was like i i have no money to buy this but i'm gonna max my visa and put it on like it's already maxed i think i can squeeze a little like 300 more dollars and i bought this ring and he bought this ring it was kind of like a a symbol of just like a new mindset moving forward once we got home and then he wore that ring in all his videos i wore it in all my videos you can still see it in his videos when he does his puzzles you'll see it in the bucket shot it's everywhere so that photo kind of symbolizes that trip of like deciding to really make a go at making a career like for myself by myself that's kind of what that photo symbolizes and that's what those rings symbolize and you can see he's wearing it in that photo so it's just kind of like a cool so you guys aren't just getting a ring you're getting this incredible story yeah new beginnings yeah and it's kind of like an inspiring that's why every day i wear it i think about like the leap like that leap of faith that you have to take if you want to you know take a shot at doing what you love that is full time hi it's uh it's time to thank our sponsor for this video storyblocks hang on have you used it have you actually gone to the website and checked it out because there's it's it's great there's a reason everybody you watch advertises for storyblocks because it's a service that will actually benefit you you're someone that makes things online videos specifically and you need assets and let me clarify assets we're talking drone footage as you can't normally get because it's illegal to fly drones in a lot of places after effects templates stuff for intros outros client work heck you can even type in something like isolated snow so you can get shots like this which is a drone shot in the mountains which was not actually snowing i put that snow in or you can even freeze frame those isolated frames snap some screenshots of it and use it on your photos there's an abundance it's all royalty free you can use your content anywhere especially on youtube free for commercial use and personal use huge win massive win they're always adding content unlimited access plans and that's all access to like over a million different assets a million who even has a million why that's so many things it's a lot you'll never go through it all music illustrations sound effects and more so the best part is it's affordable so that you can stay on budget you have to blow your budget to get high quality assets because this stuff is usually really really expensive and way far out of range to make it feasible for any type of project back in the day you'd be spending hundreds and hundreds for a single clip that's just not practical this this is practical and again i want to echo there's a reason everyone advertises for these guys because they are good at what they do so with that being said before we continue the links are in the description below i urge you as a creator to check them out link below click on that off to the races one more tool in the toolbox you ever notice i talk with my hands abundantly try doing an ad read like this would just be so uncomfortable for all of us storyblocks thank you and guys back to our scheduled programming i actually chose this next picture um not because i mean i do love this feature but i think pete likes it way more than i do um it's this one right here yeah this shot dude this shot right here is it got me a lot of buzz i won't lie like it's one of my favorite photos you've ever taken i have this obsession with cars but i also have an obsession with like taking pictures of cars that people don't necessarily see all the time okay and so it was really hard to recreate an image i feel like with especially with product shots it's like with a you know with a ring or something small you can kind of maneuver it but with a car it's how you park it one way or the other where do you put it right so my sister and i we did this crazy road trip from germany through italy and like austria and all bunch of different countries we did in nine days we did six countries in nine days and you did it in the fall by the of it in the fall we had this amazing amg gt like this car was a beast everywhere we went i looked like double o seven it was insane uh but we went to this one location and we got there and the leaves were just starting to change color and i want to put some leaves on the on the top of the car of the hood so what made you think to do that because like a lot of people wouldn't would just wouldn't put like leaves on a card they'd be like yeah why would i i didn't but i think that's what actually drew me to the photo yeah was seeing the leaves i was like oh my goodness that looks so good so right next to this this location there was like a pastry shop or like some bakery so we stopped to get some food and i saw leaves on the hood of the car but not we're not talking about like just a crazy amount like just a few and then we went like i think we were in the area still and the guy's like oh you should wait until all the leaves fall i was like what do you mean all the leaves like he's like they will all fall and i'm like because i was putting some on the car trying to take a picture but it didn't turn out nice so we had to come back to the location three times okay so we went once when we stayed in austria and we drove back to get the shot and it wasn't ready and then we drove out of austria went to italy and then came back again to try to get the show in nine days and in within nine days and that made the difference and made the ultimate difference wow so we got the shot i put all the leaves on the hood of the car and people thought we were crazy because we were like why are you scratching up this yeah but you don't scratch an amg with leaves just no and if even if it does i mean mercedes-benz is just gonna get another car it's not the best yeah they gave you that for the purpose of taking photos like that i did way more damage to that car than than just putting leaves on it but we won't talk about it but yeah i mean it turned out really captivating it actually helped me develop another style of my editing as well because it gave me i don't know i think when you're working with within different seasons of different photos and taking pictures in different seasons you start to realize that you can't edit your images all the same no and so that really pushed me to be like okay how am i going to recreate this image but still make sure that it works and it's somewhat consistent with the rest of my style and it made me adapt a little bit and realize okay i need more color i need to include more color into my photos because a lot of people think my photos are sometimes black and white yeah they're not you're very a very dark and contrasty style i think i do too yeah but i think mine might be like on the a little more of the airy side i think you go through more experimental i struggle a lot no you don't struggle okay if you guys read our messages it sounds like this guy's struggling with every aspect of his photography but that's not the case explain that when i get a message so peter explain from the beginning like we go deep into conversations via imessage uh about mostly my profile both and my struggles of the grid yeah both our grids i just constantly find it hard i found it hard from the very beginning of our friendship from the very beginning of instagram i found it hard it's hard it's hard to maintain consistency consistency because i love taking photos of so many different things it's the the specific thing that's hard is the balance within the frame so too much sky not enough sky too much detail in these six shots too much open concept in these six shots they're all the same style they all look the same the colors are the same but the balance is off yeah and that's where i really lean on you a lot of the time i think that to help you curate it to get it back to a cohesive balance yes and balance is very important because a you have to look at your feed as a whole and sometimes people isolate the image and they'll post one picture and they'll be like oh that picture is great and it works perfect and it gets 200 000 likes and i mean it's 200 000 likes but then amongst the rest of your images it doesn't there's no like there's no relationship yeah and so i think that is where i pay a lot of attention to and i've always pre-developed my feed and because of that i do have an abundance of content i think i'm able to do that but p and i will go back and forward it's really odd messages like for days on end about how to like master our feed but i think that's also why we do such a good job and i think that's why a lot of people enjoy looking at our content is because we take to think about the conversation we have do you think people actually sit down they're like alan is that too much sky i should remove this photo it's way too and then you'll send me a markup of the grid i'll send a markup back you'll send it back i'll try something i'll move posts around and it's an hour just to get like two rows dialed yeah but yeah it ultimately ends with like removing way too many photos of maddie on your feed you're like you have seven pictures of madness there's way too many photos oh i'm kidding i love maddie maddie we love you but sometimes pete posted you way too much he just looks so good he does he's very photogenic what an attractive guy matty those people in finland i don't know what you guys are drinking or eating seriously you guys have the perfect hair the perfect beard and like it's absurd it's just crazy it's absurd he's laughing right now i know he is no he's great but it's it's it's something that i always struggle to deal with and there have been times where i've been like dude this photo has like 200 something thousand likes and you're like delete it and i'm like i know okay but the thing is i don't even look at the numbers yeah i don't pay attention it doesn't matter because i i am pete's hardest critic when it comes to his photography but i need and the reason why is because if anything i've learned in photography or anything creative if you're friends you should do this for your friends if your friends don't critique and give you some sort of input on your work you'll never grow you'll never you'll never develop yeah and he gives me critiques sometimes um and i give him a lot of critiques yeah yeah it doesn't mean that the the content you're producing isn't good it's amazing it's just i think what you represent as a photographer is much greater than some of the images that you might share right yeah i think you've definitely pushed me more than any of my other friends with photography you've also given me a lot of good tips like i remember once you were like dude stop centering everything yeah you put everything in the center always but then i have issues with that because i'm like well that's kind of a bit of my style is to just center things always so how do you balance your what you think might be your style with um maybe just not experiment experimenting as much with like your creative framing yeah i mean it's it is a challenging aspect i think it ultimately comes down to like what is your goal with your feed right if your feed is to create this consistent story of like your time and like your timeline of your life or whatever experiences you have which is i think what both of you both me and you like kind of go like we strive for like this consistent style so that if you're looking through our feed you're almost like looking into pages of our lives yeah ultimately yeah as they progress through the seasons through the years through like my hair turning from brown to white yeah yeah mine too short long shot i got mine for this video so that you guys don't actually see my my white hairs um or my gray hairs i always say white hair do you say why hair gray hair gray hair right guys i say white you say i see white yeah that's weird yeah yeah so my gray hairs his white hairs um but yeah i mean that's how it's like a book i want the book whenever i get rid of instagram is going to be the the end of that book yeah that's it and then i think with your youtube videos it's similar right your thumbnails they they have some sort of consistency to them i try to keep them kind of like the grid like yeah i don't follow many guidelines with youtube thumbnails or i just do what i the photographer in me thinks looks good yeah and i'm like what would i enjoy clicking on isn't that cool with youtube that you can be good at photography and film at the same time because it's like the perfect challenge of both and it's difficult it's a hard balance man kudos to you guys for like doing this youtube video but you do it too this guy too rarely like sometimes i'm trying to be more consistent but it is a lot more um work but it's exactly that consistency right like you have been doing instagram consistently as long as i've known you but you haven't been doing youtube unless consistently i tried and which one is doing better well youtube was starting to really pick up that one because then i stopped you were being consistent i was stopped yeah all right what's next okay let's go this this photo here i broke this one i love it it might be one of my favorite shots but it broke my heart so this one you have actually framed i have it framed in the studio downstairs so we'll show you guys here put that up on the screen this is an ice cave underneath an ice cap in uh vancouver bc so it's underneath a glacier that's in vancouver yeah it's called pemberton ice cap it's underneath a glacier it's like close to whistler and i got there by brad friesen flew me there in his helicopter you can only access by helicopter or like sled damn and we camped on top of that glacier and then hiked through like a little opening it's like a little mouth and you'd go through and there's this crazy ice cave the ice is so thick water running underneath it incredible i got those insane shots flying back home i couldn't wait to edit them i was you know you're just too excited you're like i gotta i gotta do this now i don't care where i am yeah on the plane i open them up looking for the raw photos and i'm like okay i got these jpegs where i can't find the raw photos anywhere i can't even find a large jpeg anywhere i shot them all in small jpeg oh my god and you know when you get like pulled over by a police officer and your heart is had a heart complication right but you know when your heart sinks a bit like you see the sirens behind you and you're like oh no is that for me like it is and you're you kind of like that feeling came over me dude i almost felt like i wanted to start crying i would have cried it was so disheartening because i remember thinking in the cave looking at the back of my lcd thinking to myself this these are some of the best images i've ever taken and there's and this is one of the best places i've ever been but you know what it doesn't look that bad blowing oh and it looks fine dude it's blowing up what like like like large 24 by 36 oh at least at least and it looks fine and it's small jpeg it looks really good and i edit it through lightroom process it everything sent it over print you would never know yeah i got called out the other day by editing jpeg images on my youtube video and i was like oh my god see i shouldn't even do youtube videos i get called out for trying to help you guys edit welcome to youtube um but yeah that photo one of my favorites it's just so it's just such such an exceptional representation of the variety of landscapes you see in canada no that's amazing i didn't know that's in vancouver i'm gonna definitely check it out and i'm gonna hit up your boy bradley oh he'll take you out for sure i've been seeing this guy's work everywhere he's the one with the dog right yeah yeah yeah i remember we still when i went to visit brad he took me up in a helicopter and he was like point to a peak and i'll take you to it and i pointed to one and he landed his chopper on it and we were throwing snowballs with his dog and i was flying the drone baller alert it was so cool take me to any peak and just land the yeah you want to go to an ice cave and i was like oh come on yeah of course i do all right what do you got i got um interesting photo jordan ooh this one was uh done i always wanted to go there yeah oh no you can't go if you go to georgia without me i will i would never know i will destroy your studio i know i don't care i know everything about you now no jordan is one of those places that takes you back like history it's just beautiful it's such a rich culture the landscape is phenomenal it looks insane petra which is like this archaeological site that's like historical and like beautiful so many people go there just to see these these kind of structures they're all built there's like these i don't even know what they are they're like it's like an entire city built in within the mountainstone yeah kirk was there like a year ago really yeah you got insane photos oh nice of course this looks so good yeah um but yeah so this photo was interesting because i had the worst experience of my life and nearly died i don't know if i told you about my my near-death experience so prior to taking this photo we were in wadi rum which is like a canyon yep like a canyon filled up with water and that has water it goes up and down right so we were in it and the water was about like waist high at the time and it could gradually go up all the way to above your head and we have our gear and we're putting it on top of our head and our bags and stuff like that but we got to a certain point in the actual candy maybe that would have been a better photo but we got to a point where they came up yeah i should have showed you guys that photo but we got to a spot in the canyon where um it was just like you could dive in and have fun and so all the guys were just like oh finally yeah and i was like oh this would be sweet if someone took a picture of us from the top of the canyon but i was like okay let me go try and get up there i'll be that guy and i'll be that guy and it's all brittle sandstone and of course the the idiot in me goes up and i get to a certain elevation i realize i can't do this this is like starting to break and it looks it was super scary looking i was just like i'm not going to do this and i'm making my way down and my buddy taylor was like i wouldn't say he's a professional rock climber but he's definitely climbed way more than me in my entire life he's like i almost do this you can do this so we start going up and we get to the same elevation where i had stopped and he's like i'm gonna go right and i'm like i'm not gonna go right i'm gonna go left because i have pretty wide is that is that where everything went wrong everything went wrong so i literally went right yeah left or right and i chose left and i literally went around what i thought was gonna be an easy boulder and i like held one arm onto one end and then i swung my body around and i put my arm this deep into a wasp nest oh we're about like i think 100 like 20 if not 150 meters in the air and i literally did not know what's happening but you guys know that scene in 300 where like they shoot the arrows in the sky and there's like millions of arrows coming down at you is that what it looked like it literally with milliseconds was like [Music] thousands of wasps attacked me thousands did you get stung i got destroyed i was strong well i got stung over 100 100 times easily no 100 times yeah and then as i'm making my way down my friend taylor's like alan you're gonna die because it was a cliff and i'm like throwing my body around because i'm like hell no i'm not gonna die on this cliff because i've lost blood a hundred times how does that pain feel like i i can't even describe it i've been stung once but take this this is the most unusual part of the story so i'm falling he catches me and i'm like hell no i keep falling i fi i jump into the water i literally chao because i hit my head on something i'm pulling being pulled out of the water and then next you know like i'm going in our consciousness and my friends are like holy you're gonna die and i'm like i know and i'm like i don't want to die like this so they start picking me up and taking me out of the canyon but we've already like trekked a good 45 minutes into it tell me why are all the days possible two guys with their massive jeeps decide to drive into the canyon with their cars like snorkeling and they threw me yeah they like basically snorkel they threw me into the the trunk and they drove me to the hospital they pumped me with antihistamines steroids i was in the hospital for like three days my parents still don't know about this so i hope mom and dad you don't watch this video but he's fine now mom and dad i'm fine i turned into like wasp man super like superhero superman powers kind of do you have any photos of what you looked like when you were i used to i maybe i'll find someone else i'll share them with you if you don't see them here he didn't find them but yeah if i didn't yeah exactly wow that's gnarly it's crazy how does that relate to the kid on the donkey so that was literally three days afterwards oh okay and that was all like every time any picture that comes up from jordan i'm like like lost story but we got to this part of the canyon and this is another moment where i was like oh maybe you're pushing someone too far or pushing yourself too far because we saw this kid in this like isolated area and i was like can you bring you and your donkey into this cave and the donkey was like going crazy in the cave because we were throwing like dust in the air oh you were like kicking it up to get those those rays raised and the donkey was just like not having it and this poor like 13 year old child just like when is this gonna end but i was like i need that photo he was a good sport about it though yeah it was awesome it turned out great i survived did you did you show him after you were snapping it i gave him a lot of money that's all i remember oh okay cool that was nice i remember i did something like that i was in bali once i hired a driver like a local driver to like take me around all these cool sites and there was these dudes this family like washing their clothing in like a river oh wow so i'm like can you ask them if i can take their photo so he went out and like spoke the language so he went out and asked him if i could take the photo and he was like maybe you should just give me some money in case like exactly just like a compensation for you doing that like they're washing their clothes in a river they don't want to bother them so i gave him some money and he went over and asked them and they like agreed they were like they like called me over and i went over and snapped photos of them like it was just the coolest thing dude the side of a mountain this little river stream this family washing their clothes absolutely one of those moments where you're like i just i'll never see this again like this is so cool and i think it's that's the nice thing that you did that gesture is like you know i mean if you're gonna snap a picture of someone without their permission you might as well like ask them and then be nice enough to cut them out a little bit yeah i mean because they're just there just doing their thing they're doing their thing that's cool that's that's shot i remember seeing that and seeing those rays and just thinking what yeah i mean it also tells you like not everything is real but yeah they just walk into that cave like oh there's a kid on a donkey and these rays look insane snap let's do it yeah you got to be visionary yeah and a lot of times stuff does take setup and then beyond setup photoshop sometimes photoshop is our best friend what's your thought on like i know your thought because you do the same thing i do but like a lot of people get real mad i know about a sky replacement or a moon or stars or rain or anything i think you have to do it tastefully yeah if that's the right way to put it yeah don't overdo it i i'm not a big fan of like really almost like star trek looking type of images i can appreciate them but i don't think that to me they're like as realistic yeah but there's a there's a fine line between making a photo look a little bit better exceptionally better and then versus just a little bit better and i think it's always nice to have that balance i understand both sides of the of the argument when people are like that's not photography anymore i'm like no you're probably right like there was so much post-production probably more so than the actual creation of the photo in camera that you're right but you have to understand we're already manipulating the image yeah by editing it adding color adding contrast all these different layers to it and so like you're already doing half of the work i'm okay though if people admit yeah it's not like i'm trying to say like no i didn't do any of those things and i did like if they're fake stars and you ask if they're fake stars the other fake stars or six stars i don't care but look how amazing to look look how amazing this like this this piece of art now that i've created yeah i mean it's the line of work that you do if you're someone who's like photo documentary and you're trying to get into like national geographic you better not fake a polar bear in like the middle of the job that's just not bad that's not cool it's not gonna work i mean for us i think our our line of work is a little bit more creative and open minded to that stuff so don't be so critical guys relax um okay next for me on the topic of that ice cave this was this is a shot of a tent here yeah this is above the ice cave so below that tent is the ice cave so that's where we camped oh wow yeah so this was the first real attempt at a star trail that i did now that was only about 10 hours of your life i think that was that was like a 30 minute exposure or a 40 minute exposure but the interesting thing about this shot is i didn't know i had noise reduction on in camera i didn't even know that was a thing yeah because the photo took three hours to process so you know when you take a shot and that little light is on and it's reading to card it took three hours before that light went off and the photo was done because it was doing noise reduction in camera for like a 40 minute exposure wow so it took three hours to process i was like um it was a 1dx mark ii yeah it took three hours and i remember waiting inside brad was asleep most people were sleeping it was like two in the morning and i waited inside his helicopter because it was warm because it was so cold at night and i didn't want to sleep because i wanted to know when it was going to be done so i could shoot another photo also in case your battery died in case my battery died but it lasted miraculously um i had two bodies with me so i was able to keep shooting smaller experiment shots and stuff while that one was processing i was just hoping so i guess just please be good and it was also small jpeg yeah i don't know i don't know if these are good stories anymore oh man at some point it happened and the light inside so that it didn't blow out before brad went to bed because this took so long to process he was inside that tent and i started the exposures on bulb mode i started the exposure he just on off the light just flicked it on and off and that's how much light it produced wow with just uh yeah i guess it's like pitch there's nothing because if i know there's no noise nothing right light around that nothing so if i had left that on for for like 40 minutes it would have been over exposed the whole photo and that would have been 30 minutes of your life and the light in the background i think is vancouver like way way in the distance and you can even see the milky way here um through the star trail incredible photo and she's just lovely do you have that one frame that's not framing i was deciding between that and the cave and i want the cave yeah his boss i just i just love taking photos so that's uh that's my number four yeah by the way i gotta say like the place right now the studio looks absolutely incredible should i do a studio tour oh you have to should i do it you have to do a studio tour do you guys want to see a studio let me know comment below if you want to see like a really like i would i would have to put a lot of work into it because i put a lot of work into this place so i feel like i'd have to do it justice absolutely man everything every every aspect of this place is like beautifully designed thanks man it's nice matt thanks i'm proud of you are you on now i need a studio yeah you do mine's not gonna look anything like this it's gonna be like one room that's it well you just moved you should create get your new spot into it yeah seriously okay next photo oh guess who that is look at this damn hello so this photo i really liked um hey not because it's just a view but we had a really we had a lot of fun that day that was early morning early morning unusual circumstances both happen to be in new york both happen to be in new york i mean it's the reason i like that picture a lot is because it shows how unusual our lives have been in the last like five years and since we've met i think all the circumstances of us meeting becoming friends doing videos together whatever it might be everything was just like a random occasion or circumstance and so this one day i was like pete tomorrow me and you are gonna do sunrise and you're like oh sunrise you're like uh i don't know about that i'm like wake up i remember texting you i'm in casey's office right now and it's like it's like midnight i'm like wake up 5am we're going to do this video i'm in new york you're in new york what are the chances that both of us are in new york let's get this video done and then of course it rained it rained and it mobbed it it was like remember i was holding i said i had my puff jacket open i had my camera inside my puff coat yeah it was cold and it was damp and but it gave us a lot of ideas like let's do a rain photography kind of video and yeah i remember you got to the hotel i was staying at and you brought an umbrella and i was like are you sure man you're like let's just do it we're going to do a rain photo shoot and we're going to make it work might as well i mean we're here all right i guess here we go yeah i mean that yeah i like that picture because it's just like you know one of those things that you just got to go with the flow yeah go with the flow yeah i mean i got my last photo is kind of the same it's a shot from uh one of the shoots that we did our first time kind of really hanging out um since everything and it was this shot uh that we took when we went to niagara falls and i remember you were crossing the street and you actually just dipped your camera down and take a photo real quick uh that's front right that's front and no no it's not from friends yeah yeah and you got the city hall old city hall right at the end and it looks so good you were walking across the street the snow was mobbing we were going to be done because we just shot at niagara falls all day and we made a video all day and we got back and those fat flakes were falling and we were like man we were exhausted let's do a photo let's go out and shoot this like this looks insane and i've never shot the city in the snow the first time ever i did it and you were crossing the street and you just snapped that photo i was like wait wait wait wait go back and hold that and you were wearing a glove and no one's ever wearing nice gloves like that your hand just looks so good the bokeh in the background in that shot just what do the kids say these days slapped for me online for me online dude it did so well and it's just one of my favorite photos and it was just a good memory because that was kind of like the first time uh we really got out to do what we both love yeah that was the day that you did your night photography video as well no no no no i did that all year round afterwards yeah i gave you inspired you to do yeah for sure because like i started editing these photos and was like wow i got to get out and shoot at night more because this looks so good i think that's why it did so well on my account is because no one ever gets to see shots from me at night it was one of the first they saw so people were psyched yeah night photography is always challenging because it's like what do i where do i share it yeah what do i do with it yeah this is my next one um i just really like this one this was in arizona and it's of i was doing a lexus campaign we were shooting some content for lexus and i we were staying in this weird tent next to this body of water i can't remember the exact location but i really wanted a shot of the car going by with me inside the tent taking the picture but of course not possible like we're talking about like 20 attempts come clean alan 20 attempts come clean so i had to do some compositing there but for some reason that photo went viral in the world of lexus and like it was really like loved by a lot of people and that was a great photo but everyone thought it was like actually taken with the car going by how did you time that i mean i felt bad but at the same time you know it's one of those things i had the idea we attempted it it just you know it didn't fall together as i thought it was going to so you had to come together and make it work yeah and it's one of those things you know i mean sometimes you'll just have to do that and as a photographer this is some of the challenges that we do face yeah and blown out sky needs to go exactly i'm sorry yeah that's it no other choice i need the moon in here yeah the moon the stars and some cars going by really fast i need some more light streaks on this so i'm gonna go on to story blocks right here and just get some light streaks fell off the chair uh these chairs are really different oh by the way just so you can see these stools have round bottoms yeah so you kind of are constantly you guys think i'm hugging the table i'm actually trying to just keep my balance you're just trying not to the rest of my body is like moving and there's no spot for your feet no there's no spot they're supposed to keep you like moving and active but i guess they're not really good for kind of like a longer form podcast style video yeah i'd get some other ones just as backup yeah it's episode one yeah okay we're learning here we're learning but my abs right now are like right you're gonna get you're gonna get a core workout so uh that's it yes check out allen's profile i've linked his instagram below check out his youtube too show him some love get on his profile and drop an emoji of a race car because he loves cars exactly those cars so drop one emoji ferrari only okay mercedes give him some love tell him i sent you and and thanks for watching uh keep your stick on the ice and don't get covent yeah stay safe guys peace peace [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Peter McKinnon

Views: 884,697

Keywords: Peter McKinnon, Peter McKinnon photography, Peter McKinnon Tutorials, Photography, Cinematography, Learn Cameras, Learn Photography, Learn Video, Video tutorials, Camera basics, Alen Palander, Instagram, Peter McKinnon Instagram, Alen Palander Instagram, Small JPEG Photos, Shooting Raw Photos, Peter McKinnon Podcast, Podcast Peter McKinnon, How to edit like Alen Palander, Lightroom like Alen Palander, photo Stories, Peter McKinnon Photo Series

Id: kCCycHz50gg

Length: 43min 8sec (2588 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020