How to Improve Your Photography Instantly

[Music] thank you for for everybody for coming and again thanks to the bnh folks for having me back I was here last month did a class on headshots and we're going to be doing another another add on to that one on advanced headshots I think and coming up in July I think July 12th so doing something right they keep having me back so anyway but that's again thanks for coming this class today is is I think one of my favorites because we get to really dive in and look at imagery and you know I will I will preface everything that I'm going to say with that this that almost all of this is my own work so whether you like it or you don't like it that's what's great that's what makes everything everybody has their own opinion of what makes a great photograph I'm not sitting here and telling you that any of these photographs are great photographs that's that's up for you to decide but I have studied with and with an enormous amount of tremendously talented photographers and image makers throughout the world and I've learned a thing or two in the last 30 years of doing this so whether it's right or wrong again is irrelevant but I will share with you some of the tips that have been tried and tested throughout the years to really I think make an impact that's what really we want when you look at a photograph what makes you continue to look at it and then when you're done looking at you can't keep your eyes off of it impact if it keeps you there I think the job of that photograph or that image whatever it is a painting has done its job so that's the number one thing so for me this class is how to improve your photography and I think again the impact is really where it's at a lot of this is going to be on compositional techniques things like that we're going to go over some things like you've probably heard the rule of thirds and things like that if you haven't this is a good place for you to be but there's a lot of other things that go into making whether it's a good photograph a great photograph or a bad photograph someone may look at a photograph and say I don't like that and some only say oh my gosh I loved that photograph again that's what makes us all different so alright so just to give you already mentioned the word composition and and when I and I didn't title this class composition because it I don't want it to sound boring for you guys and when you say I'm going to a class on composition it will probably turn a lot of you off I want to make this more exciting more visually appealing and not go over boring textbook kind of things so hopefully we'll do that but to understand composition I think is huge who thinks they have a really good eye good fit you know idea on what composition is all about anybody in the room okay I don't even know if I do because we're constantly changing what we like and what we don't like you mean what you liked 15 years ago may be completely different from how you feel about something today so to implement the composition I think is the most important thing because it's one thing to understand it but if you can't do it then what's the point you could tell somebody else how to do it but if you can't do it then therein lie some of the problems we're going to go over some basic rules and of course those basic rules are just very much guidelines they're not necessarily a hard and fast rule the one thing that I've learned as I learn those rules quote-unquote and I will forget those rules there's no rule that says you have to do it a certain way and rules are meant to be broken okay a lot of is about artistic vision and again that's what makes every one of us different on how we look and what our opinions are of a particular photograph or or painting or whatever it may be whether it's a graphic image or what-have-you so all right and then applying these techniques once you once you start learning these again quote-unquote rules hi I know she's back and then being able to just have them like you know it's like riding a bike once you know it you pretty much don't forget it and then it'll instantly start as soon as you pick the camera and you're looking in the viewfinder you're looking for something in fact you probably are even finding something that's even more appealing without having the camera up to your eye your pre visualizing what the scene will look like before you even get your camera up to your eye and that's what I find myself doing constantly especially when I when I was starting to learn natural light really really well I was always looking for lighting direction and how it played with shadows and contrasts in the scene so all those things I kept looking do you guys find yourselves doing this when you're looking around town or wherever you live you're looking for things that oh wow that would make a great photograph I do it constantly and maybe it's just me but ultimately some of these rules and then when you break these rules will make you a better image maker so those are kind of some important things so okay we're going to go over just a couple of things here overview from what we're going to cover today rules of composition I've already covered that already pre-visualization is something that I find we were just talking about it that's kind of key to finding great photographs within a scene and they're there sometimes you may I taught a class for an organization in Las Vegas this past winter and the idea this class was to pick the worst possible location and let's make a great photograph there and I left it up to the class to pick the absolute worst possible location they could find and they challenged me and I beat them so those kind of things happen all the time we've got something here it may be horrible but let's make something out of it that's going to important lens selection plays a key role in a lot of how you compose your photograph you know optics are a huge part of photography physics within the optics play a big role when I say that I mean you know do you have you know wide-angle lenses typically have a lot more depth of field inherently built into them than they do with like a telephoto lens so using those tools and knowing when you look at a scene what lens you may want to use will help figure out the overall composition of what you're trying to accomplish we'll look at a lot of good examples we'll look at some bad examples and did anybody in the room bring I know it was written on the on the the description did anybody bring any images for us to look at okay cool we got one person awesome anybody else okay so what will did you bring a lot of thumb drive okay I don't need them just yet but well if we have time at the end I'm glad you brought them are you brave enough too all right awesome I love that because it's a learning environment we're supposed to all of us are smarter than one of us so I think you know if we put images out there and we go to look at them I think I love doing that I love looking at other people's images I sometimes get tired looking at my own stuff so I'm great I'm glad you brought something okay so we'll do some image review and critique I'm glad you brought some stuff all right now where does your eye go in this photograph anyone socks it goes to the sock that's awesome yeah it very well could and and so you said socks anybody else where's your eye go there's way too much space available so your eye goes over to the left side of the frame okay see how different it is you know and there's no right or wrong here it's just everybody's different opinion who else anybody else yes sir hat and clothes at the same time yeah so generally most people and I'm not calling you that I'm not calling you out saying you're wrong because you're everybody's an individual most people's eye when you're when you're giving a scene like this your eye has nowhere else to go in most cases when there's a repeating pattern if there's a whatever breaks that pattern is usually where your eye will go and in this case most of you probably went and looked somewhere on the gentleman standing on the steps here this incidentally was a few years ago when Obama was president the prime minister of Ireland came over to have a drink on st. Patty's Day and I had a friend of mine who was a capital state police captain and he got me special access to photographs in there and when you've got Secret Service up on rooftops with sniper rifles on you when you're holding a big lens like this it's kind of a humbling moment but anyway they were waiting for Obama and the Prime Minister to show up and they were walking up the steps there was kind of an interesting time but composition defined is the act of combining parts or elements to form a whole boring right that's the way I looked it up that was the definition that was written so composition I think that this for me is is even stronger when I when we say composition is the strongest way of seeing somebody I don't know who quoted who coined the phrase but I think it speaks a lot to me so alright let's look at some images because I know you want to you want to see some stuff we'll look at some good images and maybe not so good images and again it's going to vary depending on what's there so when I was in Washington doing that last image this was another one that we did it was during the Cherry Blossom Festival down in Washington DC and so have you ever heard of foreground middle-ground and background kind of an important now not every photograph can accomplish those three things but when I can it speaks loudly to me and if you can differentiate the foreground and the middle ground and the background I think those are important things but you know where does your I go on this photograph it may be different areas go ahead the building okay that's I think that's a Jefferson Memorial there the other one is is obviously the Washington Monument but having whenever you have a sky that may not be particularly interesting I think up in the upper third of this image it I love to fill it with something and if it's just a plain blue sky now this was just after a storm rolled through and what I did was I took my camera there after that storm came through I took my camera and I laid it right down in front of a puddle that's not a lake there that's literally a puddle that's about four feet wide and this was in the the tidal basin the energy down there and all I did it was with the the 16 to 35 L Series lens I just I didn't put it in the water but I laid it right in front of the water and I saw this beautiful reflection and I thought wow how interesting with that they rather than have because this is a I think a jogging path or you know something there and when I just tipped the camera up the cherry blossoms came now you can't see any detail in the cherry blossoms they're silhouetted but I still think it it blends in with the frame nicely so interesting now the original image I had because I the camera was not level it was ticked up you got this just bowing like that with a horizon line there had a bow to it because of distortion so that's pretty easy just to clean up it looked distracting I could have probably put you know like the 14 to 24 rectilinear correction lens on there or a tilt shift lens and maybe a correction there but you know it's very easy to just straighten that out and it wasn't a major correction okay what about this image where does your I go so the lighthouse anybody know why leading lines awesome you guys want to get up here and teach okay so the gentleman in the front row said in the last image the clouds and the puddle also made leading lines you're talking about this here and yeah it leads you right to the Jefferson Memorial good point so but leading lines are a huge part of forcing the viewers eye to go where you want it to what's some of the other ones now don't those of you who are in my headshot class I'm pointing to you over here don't yell it out but your eye goes to two main areas when you look at an image it can anyone tell me where those two places are brightest thing highlights the shadows you're on you're like you're there but just give me another word sharpest okay sharpest focus yes that's one of them and then area so let's go with he's got one sharpest focus and you you're there I'm just going to put in a different word area of greatest contrast so when you say area brightest or the brightest area you're right you're there you're like you're just there but what if the whole image is bright and then you've got one dark thing in the image so if you have a you know you have a white background with a with a bride that's got a white dress and your eye goes to the area of greatest contrast which would probably be the skin in that point or maybe something another prop or something in the image so yes so those areas are really a big thing when it comes to figuring out where your eye where the viewers eye is going to go in the image area great contrast but bleeding lines are a huge huge thing that you want to try to incorporate into your your images this is my lovely wife and this was interesting so we've got a lot of negative space here and but it kind of all ties together and my opinion with the fall colors and the the color of her of our jacket so I you know there's there's another thing about framing if you look at the the the what's that call the columns but the whole thing is called a gazebo thank you I should get back from Yellowstone I'm still bride from that but framing out parts of your subject will also be a good thing to to implement into your photography I'm not saying it's right or wrong and the answer to everything in photography is it depends so if it works for you it works for it probably works for somebody else okay talking about leading lines again another great thing about composition is using color in a very monochrome type environment this my eye goes right to her face and the bow that she's wearing and then I go into the red of her outfit and it's the strongest color in the image - perhaps maybe the green but it's not the green in that's growing on the the siding isn't an overwhelming piece that draws my attention but you've got the slats there from the from the siding that are leading you into the little girl here so that's something I said then you add a block at the end typically in this country we read from left to right so typically I will use so that as a compositional aide from left to right you do especially when we're talking about leading lines all it meanders through the photograph and then eventually you'll get to your subject and then I usually will put a block to keep you from exiting one thing I won't do is or rarely do it sometimes you can't avoid it is have a leading line go right out of the photograph it just it there's nothing to block you there and I have a good example that I'll show you later from Yellowstone okay framing this again is a really great opportunity for framing and it moments like this happened so quickly that you have to be ready for this is at a New Jersey balloon festival several years ago and you've got all these balloons that are taking off at the same time and to be able to see you know just you're photographing left and right things very very quickly and then this pops up and it's like I've got to get this so you've got to have your focus in a in a position maybe on one point where you can get to the thing you want to be focused on very quickly without having to change you know if you have all focusing points active the way the photo focus work is it focuses on the closest thing it sees with reliable detail which is this right here so the folks there in the background in the basket in the other balloon would have been out of focus or at least if I had if I had a limb my lens close down they'd probably be slightly out of focus with depth of field but nonetheless having being ready for something like that is critical because it only lasts for a brief amount of time now this this scene things aren't moving very quickly here obviously but where does your eye go talking about color my eye goes to the flower and then you have these repeating lines again repeating lines are generally a very strong thing and when you can interrupt those lines with color or another object that becomes a strong compositional aid now when you talk about graphic stuff this was photographed from very very high this is a cycling race in Philadelphia that happens yearly and this was photographed with the 400 millimeter lens from a very high angle up on a cliff photographing down this was a crosswalk that you would see in the road and then so just being able to get in there very tight and use those graphic lines as a you know an element to the photograph makes it pretty strong in my opinion you may feel differently about it but I like it okay now so basic rule stuff we talked about color your I generally would probably go to the flower here because it's fairly fairly monochromatic setting but we're going to talk here about the rule of thirds and if you're not familiar with it generally if you take a tic-tac-toe board and you put it in your frame you divided up the horizontal thirds with two lines and the vertical thirds with two lines and wherever those lines intersect those are generally strong compositional areas now that's not to say that you should use them all the time but and there's always reasons to Center your photograph or center your subject within your frame but try to avoid it unless you're intentionally doing that in other words if something graphically appears that really begs to be centered in the frame sure go ahead and do it but you'll find that if you are looking into the canvas which is your frame if there's reasons to offset things on the thirds let's try to do that again there's always rules that can be broken so those those areas again strong intersections are kind of important areas now you could put subjects on you know whether it's a vertical subject on the right third you could you know whether you're using both thirds or one of the thirds at the same time those are those are kind of nice but in this example here we've got leading lines and the rule of thirds all in one it's on those on the right third we've got leading lines from the wake from the mallard and your eye goes right up to the the mallards head which incidentally is on the upper right third so there's your leading lines so some basic rules of composition again getting into this use of color is is kind of nice when you I love I love working with red you'll probably notice that a lot in my work red is just it it comes it speaks to me and it draws my eye in soft colors also work very well in the exact opposite of that last image you've got a lot of very soft images here like like in a foggy environment same thing your eye goes to that area of greatest contrast so in this case this stuff in Bar Harbor Maine and your eye goes right to that book and it helps having the the the fog there to take all those distracting elements out of the back of the image so so interruptions we talked about this interruptions in a repeating pattern so this again is another good example now to your question when I mean I there's a lot of negative space on here right I mean he this guy shoved all the way down here now he's not on the rule of thirds right and it's okay to break those rules if it works and it may not work for some of you who worked for me this is not my image but this is a colleague of mine Rudy Winston but I love what's going on here and it forces your eyes to move around now once you get to the subject you may wander around and that's great you know I love looking at the columns in the building and how that lights playing with them that's kind of fun this image here again repeating patterns and I goes right to her but then I wander around a little bit but I always end up back at the subject okay subject isolation we talked about this one already this is a really good example of subject isolation because you you know for it's just framing your wherever you can use a natural element to frame out your subject it's going to help now there's a lot of things that can pull your attention away here balloons are typically very colorful but I think when you've got the predominant you know frame covered in a lot of different bright colors your eye tends to go to the opposite area which is in the background there okay now here's that exact image I was going to tell you about again not the rule of thirds but I've pushed this building all the way over to the right of the frame and your eye has nowhere else to go because I loved the gradient that was happening with that Sun setting behind the building there is it a great photograph I think it's an OK photograph it's not it's going to win any awards I don't think but it does speak to composition negative space so if there's is there too much negative space like I said perhaps maybe but maybe not it's all open to interpretation and there's no right or wrong because you're the artist right so there's your negative space balance is a tough thing how much do I need negative space to really achieve a proper balance in the photograph I don't know I guess it depends on the photograph what the elements in that image but don't be afraid to push the limits try different variations of the same image and if your eye gets drawn away like if I were to incorporate if I were to go back and put more of this building or you know maybe this I'm going off the edge of the building and there's something else taking my attention over here in between the buildings your your I would would go here and then it would get lost over here a little bit with other buildings and it doesn't block you this building blocks you from going anywhere else the expense okay okay rule of odds has anybody ever heard this we've heard the rule of thirds rule of odds I'm a big fan of photographing things in threes my wife was an art student in Syracuse and she turned me on to the rule of odds and I use it now constantly so when I first look at this image I've got I could argue that there's more than three things to look at here but typically one two three and it just speaks to me and it makes sense fill the frame anyway I heard this all right there are we've given you a lot of resolution in your cameras speaking to the digital folks in the room I know there's the one caning ae-1 who had that that you right here I love that you brought the candidate one it's awesome I wish I could go back to photographing with film I just sometimes I do with four by five but I it brings me back to a day but still the frame so when you have it with giving you the resolution use that resolution appropriately and fill your frame as best you can I you know for years you know company name kodak had pretty much given us a set number of sizes we had four by six we had five by seven we had eight by ten eleven by fourteen and those were the sizes when you would go and get your prints made they dictated the size and I hate that because every image that you take doesn't necessarily conform to those preset sizes and it shouldn't so that's why I have a large format printer I have a 44 inch printer and I can make I can make a 44 inch by 4 inch print if I want if it came down to that so I have that whole canvas to use or very little of it to use and if the image is appropriate for that size that's the size I'm going to make it or the or the crop that I'm going to make it or the dimensions I'm going to make it I don't want any company to dictate to me what size I need to make an image so if I'm photographing this the the skyline of New York from Weehawken and I do a panoramic image it's going to be a very slender long print and I can't do that on an 11 by 14 without having a lot of sky and water in the top and bottom of the frame so yes you could trim that image but I like making it the way I artistically saw it in my head the first time so you have that blank canvas use it here's another example this is in my town down in South Jersey yeah it's okay right it's a nice sunset we see them let's talk about pre visualizing now I had somebody with me that presented themselves and where do I put the minute in this image let me ask you there's the person there you can barely see them right you have to work to find them so what's better this or that yeah I like this one better because now she's so awaited in the frame I again getting back to the area of greatest contrast yeah sure there's a lot of contrast over here and up here but I end up looking down here every time so I'll go back there to get this here she gets getting lost there in the water versus that and all it took was you know hey can you get up and back up ten feet pretty simple so anyway don't be afraid to to push the limit tell you ask your subject if you see a highlighter something like that tell them to move a little bit or you move whatever if you know if it's somebody you're doing street photography it's difficult to say to somebody hey can you move back 10 feet you know that's big I mean you could do it but you might you know oftentimes street photography you don't want people to know you're taking the picture so here's that scene and then what what this girl did was she has a she had a Indian headdress and she had put this on this is a very old traditional headdress I think and so what we ended up doing was when we did this class I said look let's put her right in the Sun reflection and these clouds you know we're the Sun peeked through the clouds therefore the light was flat and then the Sun was setting it peeked through the clouds and then we ended up with this you know if that Sun was directly in the in the frame it would have ruined it so we just use her as a block or whoever the subject is and you know it this tells a story and that's another great element of composition does it tell a story that can you get into it and read a bit you know read into what's in the image here's another great one one of the one of the great things about my job is I get to travel around a lot and teach and that at the end of the class we usually find ourselves in a bar somewhere and while I was drinking this glass of wine I found these tea lights on all the tables and I thought that's going to be interesting let's this is when the 100 millimeter L Series macro first came out and we had just gotten and I said let's let's try messing around this this will be kind of fun and I said restaurant here but it was actually the bar but this happened so and the only thing I did was I put the camera laid it down on the table and I put my wallet to suspend the lens up so it would be without falling down and looking at the granite on the table or whatever that is but it didn't that's all it was it wasn't taken in a studio I mean you're looking at it it's got visual impact so but rather interesting how things present themselves and this is again a situation where centering your subject can work so you know you could argue that these are on the rule or close to the rule of thirds on the vertical side but not quite but I love just the color how it played so you've got blue over here which is reflecting in the right side of the stem and that wine glass and the exact opposite with with the green I played with the red green and blue because that's what makes up white light red green and blue RGB okay here's another one this is down in Norfolk Virginia I hope I said that right Norfolk this is the USS Wisconsin and yeah it's been docked for some time but there are pictures within this picture can anybody see where you might go with maybe if you put a telephoto lens on where what could happen here take a look this is what I love doing about this so there are there are lots of photographs in here if you just I'm a big telephoto guy I love getting into certain areas of an image and then this is what happened so cutting out all the stuff you know obviously on the one of the photograph on the left there you can see that you know the docking ropes or chains whatever they are there's a lot of distracting stuff there you've got condominiums on the right side but just taking a 70 to 200 millimeter lens and zooming it out and getting small portions of the ship with the graphic again centering the subject here it works on this particular one so work the scene until you find those gems because they are there okay some techniques you saw this picture already most people spend their lives photographing at their height level and it's just because naturally it's the way we are we you know oh man I got to get down here to get this photograph it's it takes some work and as I get older I don't really I was photographing a bike race on Sunday I'm I thought man of perspective would be fantastic if I was really really low to the ground but it's going to take a lot of effort to get there and do I want to do this you know ultimately I mean my knees have suffered because I photograph a lot of kids too so I'm always down on their level so my knees are just shot but you do what you do for the love of what you do and it takes well it took me a little longer to get up you do it but finding again finding those gems this is down in Cape May New Jersey the edge of the earth but finding okay I'm just walking along this dispense line and I saw one of the pickets was gone how cool would it be if I just framed out the White House in in that frame I sold a lot of these photographs so but get down low get up high angle try to find those not so traditional Heights level 5 foot 8 to 6 foot 2 area or where how we're tall you are you'll find there's a lot more out there than right here again repeating lines or shapes I love this photograph it's you know you're seeing depth in it but you're also you go you go to you wander around a little bit but you end up for me I end up at the same place and this is one of those images where I'm sitting on the ground in a low camera angle okay so again changing your perspective you know one thing like when you're wandering around we're so busy looking out here we're not looking up here and you're not looking down here you just it's natural because you're you're generally walking in the direction you're looking and you're looking on a horizontal plane not so much on a vertical there's a lot of really cool graphic things especially in an urban environment like New York City that you could look up and see some really interesting photographs again looking down your gills I mean is that interesting I don't know but using visual stimulus to talking about leading lines it all comes together in certain images and this is one of those okay or more gas pumps I have a thing with gas pumps I think I'm driving again i when I took the photograph of the USS Wisconsin I'm driving back from Norfolk Virginia and I'm on the Delmarva Peninsula which is like by the Chesapeake Bay and I'm driving along and I look and there's this old gas station house looking thing and I drove for another mile or two and I kept thinking about it and I'm like I got to go back because I mean I'm glad I did because the next time I went down there several months later this building was knocked over so you've got it you know if you see something and you keep thinking about it there's probably a reason why you keep thinking about it you should go and take the picture because you don't know when these things are going to go and this was a little gem that I found and I just loved it it's very monochromatic and then your your eye goes right to the color and again that's use of color in composition and it's not an eleven by fourteen I cut a lot of the top of the building off I cut the roof off because it just didn't it was drawing my eye away from what I wanted the attention to be on which was the gas pumps you saw this one before same thing now obviously there's multiple stories in here not just the color but there's a deeper way deeper story in this image and you know we're all thinking about it right here's another story my son and one of his friends years ago but here kid go sit on a log and tell me what you see and then the boy on the left of my son's friend II he saw a goose or something out in the water and pointers and and cam that's a shot that if he didn't put his hand up there it would be a different story this is nothing more than window light and a reflector so there's a story in there too and the story for me there's you know two stories in their dad's this rough and tough kind of guy's got a tattoo and then you've got this precious little baby with innocence and all that I mean that you could go into eye contact I think is really what sells this for me okay so watch out for distractions what distracts you in this photograph the speed limit sign absolutely and all this and if you if you just take that yellow line and use the right side of that photograph way better isn't an award-winning photograph probably not but I bet the I bet she would like it I bet her parents would like it what about here I mean there's multiple problems with this photograph right so we've got you know all kinds of stuff if you just crop it's better you know you could you could come in here the railings still a little distracting but it's not terrible you could even cut that off here and just do you know a little tighter composition so there's a story here and I think for me the biggest story is that it's not level make your horizon lines level or the appearance of your horizon lines level look at this did anybody see that when they first when the image first came around yeah and we all do it I have I had this thing that whenever I'm photographing I typically and tipping my camera this way for some reason and I have to correct for it later so that's why I turn the grid on in my viewfinder so I can I've got horizontal lines and I can try to line up my horizon you know if I have the time to account for that I'm going to correct myself and that's what's great thing about having those grid lines that you can turn on or often in your camera depending on the camera have it helps me correct for whatever I'm headed to drink my v8 or whatever I don't know what's gone but you know that's the way better image so it doesn't take yeah you could you could crop it in Photoshop or your image editing software but you're going to lose some of the image in the crop so another thing is I try to avoid putting my horizon lines right in the middle of the frame because you're basically splitting the horizon line in a picture in two and the other thing that bothers me about this is that I the horizon lines are going right through there hit or at least two of their heads and the third though the girl yeah these guys are triplets and so they've got a very you know as triplets do that at the same age at this at this you know they're they're like 10 here I think you know they get very they're kids and they're all the same age fighting for the same stuff but these guys this just killed it and so if I if I could have gotten lower or higher I would have preferred probably get higher so that their head is encompassed within the water but if you can't do that I mean I want to be John have a ladder so maybe find something you can stand on or whatever a safe place to put a horizon line is that the hips if you can do it and that's going to require you to get low typically that's one of the better places to put horizon line or have it go above their head if at all possible so that that's a no-no for me not for everybody so this we've got some leading lines and I'm not like I love this part of it and this is a this is all soft here but look where the leading lines take you right out of the photograph so while my wife loved this picture of our you know our new kid it's not that there's anything wrong with it but we're you know if you're I if you follow that leading line it does take you out of the image so I would have probably loved like this is getting pretty soft up on the horizon line because again it's sunset there's a lot of mist in the air from the wave action it gets very soft the lower that Sun goes in the horizon the softer that leg gets this would probably fall off into nothing if I had maybe chosen an aperture of like 2.8 or something small like that it would have just gone to fuzz and you wouldn't see it as much but as it is I think that was around f4 v 6 and you're getting more detail on the background there so little things like that to look out for but the horizon line is better placed here than it is going right through the middle if there's not much interesting stuff in the sky cut it out there's no need for it no so you've already heard me mention about working the scene don't just take one picture try different angles to circle the subject and photograph it from different points of view you may not have a great shot on everything but if you at least if you give it the old college try and move around and change your position vertically and horizontally and also surround it if at all possible you may get that better shot here's what I start off you saw me the original photograph of this series up real high and this is what it looked like I mean okay I saw this originally and I'm like there's something there but I can't find it so I ended up moving way to my left and then trying things okay they're going a different way here's I've got yellow in there it's still not working I love that she's encompassed within there and then when I saw this image I'm like okay so here's what I'm going to do I'm going to increase my focal length to 400 millimeters and I'm going to really hone in on those lines because I like what's happening with the lines so this was all an experiment and then okay so now I got that I like what's going on there but I need more focal lengths and then I ended up with something like this and all I needed to do was just crop the top portion of that out and now I have the graphic image that I was after and I didn't even know it initially that this was going to happen but you find these you know things that when you look at an image you're like okay there's something there but I'm not quite sure what it is let's just keep after the keep after the the issue and let's get that great photograph so it takes time and you don't always like I said you don't always hit a homerun okay so there's there's the winning shot that I got though and I also have another one of these where I've got a group of riders which I think I actually end up liking more because it shows more of a story about you know the storyline is there about the competition and things like that so oh there it is I did I didn't realize to put that in there there's the shot I think I like that better now what I would end up probably doing it just for just for fun I'd probably end up taking these guys out and I'd probably take that wheel out up in the top and I'd have you know this diagonal diagonals are huge if you can never incorporate a diagonal in your imagery do it so we've got diagonals going this way we have diagonals going this way you've got the diagonals from the the bike down tube there's all kinds of cool stuff in there just have to find it so when to break the rules I mean you can break it whatever you want but they're meant to be broken and but I'm a big fan of learning those rules first and then knowing when to break them and do it with intent rather than you know where the expression spray-and-pray where you're just shooting everything and then hope that you know something comes that looks good I mean you throw it up against the wall something's going to stick eventually but if you if you go into it with intent then you're going to have more success with it so this was one of those times but again Center composition bull's eye composition works does it improve the image then from the full scene I think so okay bull's eye composition I have another one of this that I cut the car in two in half vertically and I think I like that one better than this one but again for me this this speaks to the rule of odds now for me I see this this and that now you could say you got this this this this and that's four but for me the main areas that grab my attention are here here and there for me it works but again I like the other one better where I just split this down the middle this half was the was the image that I ended up going with I think four but they both have their their strengths this is kind of interesting you've got this little criss cross diagonal thing going on again the sky the clouds are interesting so leave them in and you'll notice that the frame that the horizon line is slightly low it's not quite centered but it's just slightly below center there was enough happening down in the lower part here with these leading lines that I wanted to you know that needs to be in there I think and these the clouds are because of the wide-angle lens the clouds look like they're coming down on a diagonal that's again another another thing that helps that image focus again we talked about focusing there's a lot in here that you could really struggle with if you're focusing is set wrong so this image you need one focusing point to bypass all those flags in the foreground if that's what you're after so you guys are familiar with this this has been done a bazillion times I think but again very graphic interesting hard to get nobody on the bridge so if you're there at sunrise or something that's probably your better bet and then I think they recently had a lot of in the last few years have been a lot of construction on the Brooklyn Bridge right so that's made it even harder we've been through this already but again just throwing these out these little moments happen and just having that you know the creative juices flowing all the time and you're going to see things that nobody else will see is anybody into macro photography here okay that's a whole other world of really interesting stuff I took a picture for an article I'm doing right now on on macro extreme macro photographer so that we make a lens called the NP e65 which is a you can get five times life-size on this lens and I specifically ramped it all the way out to 5x and I was out photographing basically ants and I ran across this little itty-bitty flower but you have no point of reference as to how a little that flower is until I I'm like I need something with some perspective to show you the difference and what I did was I'm like what can I do so I stuck a ballpoint pen right next to the flower and the flower is about 1/8 of the size of the tip of the ballpoint pen but if you didn't see it you would have no idea how big that flower is so it is you know good things come in small packages and that was you know perspective not saying that the pen added a great compositional aide but for the article I was writing it worked but it's if you get into macro photography there's there's a whole other world there where you know that's literally like right here in this little candy dish there's all kinds of cool pictures right there with one macro lens you know they're there you just have to find them it well is hard to focus well sure it could be depending when you're up close like that everything that their depth of field is tissue-thin even at f-16 it can be tissue-thin so you have to work with with the issue and some of the things that we're doing now require multiple exposures so you can you know focus stack those are things that we really didn't have in the film days you know so it it's just another tool in the toolbox so elements of a great photograph right good subject we have a good subject yeah I think so in this one but this is not just limited to this picture but ask yourself is what's in front of me and what I'm photographing is it a good subject that you may not know it's good until later so maybe something happens shadows and highlights I mean the contrast does it play well with the subject it's hard to see on this particular image but when you when you have it on the monitor like on my computer monitor you can see there's a lot of detail in here and there's just you know little streaks of sunlight coming in to illuminate her face and they're not blown out it just you know highlights and shadows and sometimes you'll I told her to move her face just slightly back and forth and it ended up working real well because that one little bit of Sun that was hitting her face and on it from when it when I had it she was leaned more to her right which means it was illuminating her nose which made her look like Rudolph so I said just slightly move back and it took care of the problem okay contours we've seen this photograph before it works with with her and the shape of her hair in her body and everything with those archways in the background it just mimics itself patterns again I'm going to kill I'm going to take these pictures some of these pictures out of here I'm killing this one to death but but whenever there's a pattern you know use it reflections take a look at this I think this one I got really lucky on I was using an 800 millimeter lens on this image and at the right time did the thing that I loved about this is the the not only the little wake from the ripples there but but also I the bird was moving this way the blue heron and right when the peak of that head in the reflection got to that point of the the tree reflection in the background was when I took the shot so I was shot probably 80 or 90 pictures during this this series as the bird was walking through the scene and that that was the winner texture look at this I mean this thing screams with texture I would love I would have loved for there to be somebody riding a bike with either a yellow or a red jacket didn't happen right you know just carry those things around with you and just say hey go all the way down and just give them ten boxes yeah I mean it's like you know where was this photograph I can't remember I can't remember thank you okay depth of field plays a big role in where you want your eye your users your the the image viewers I to go and in this particular image you know this is just a field and I didn't want all those distractions of different you know foliage and stuff in the background so I just ramped the lens completely wide open this was with a 400 millimeter do diffractive optics lens and all that stuff just goes creamy smooth in the background if I close the lens down here and start seeing more of those little details from the grasses and things like that there in the background but and you wait for stuff like this to happen I waited for the mouse to be open for the bird to be for the bluebird to be singing and you know but on the place on the upper right third right in the original image there's you could see there's some spiderwebs that are hanging from the grass or the twig there or whatever that is they were distracting to me so I just quick that them out it was very simple I didn't do much to it that one you saw already again complementary colors what's the opposite of blue yellow this works well together and then I mean you could even go so far as to say playing with color I mean yeah you go to the lighthouse but you also go to the Red Roof down there at the end it keeps your eye there I would have also liked to have seen a lower camera angle on this just to have a different thing in the in the you know what to choose from but this works great this is not my photograph but and you'll even see I think I just saw I thought I saw a rainbow in there but I could be wrong I'm not sure if that's not sure what that is but it's a very powerful photograph a photographer named Rick Burke took this photograph so it's really nice framing we talked about framing already all right I think I've driven that message home to you this is considered framing I mean just filling that frame and then using other you know natural or unnatural pieces to take your eye away from what you don't want to look at and then balance this has balance she's in the lower third you know you've got a lot here playing and waiting for the right time of day to so that light is balanced between what's back here and then the light striking her face is works well there okay so how lenses affect the scene have you ever had an idea of a photograph and you're thinking about it and it's sitting there in front of you but you don't know okay what what is this photograph going to say to it what about what do I want this photograph to say and sometimes you can create that through composition but think about that before you take the photograph what's the end result going to be where do you want to go with this photograph instead of just taking it let's start dissecting how you want this to speak to the viewers eye then you can start thinking about what are the tools I'm going to need to accomplish that and lenses are going to be a huge part of those choices you know anything okay is it going to be a graphic image where I want a wide-angle approach where everything is going to be in focus but now I have to use the you know the depth of field as my main source of image you know drawing that user through the the viewer through the eye through the through the picture like Ansel Adams right we've all heard of Ansel Adams yes we laugh but some people want to talk to the younger audiences now and they're like gentle who and it's okay it's just not in their repertoire like I get it but Ansel Adams photographs are typically sharp from foreground to background right you've heard me say this so Ansel was left with with one of those things and we talked about area of greatest contrast and area of sharpest focus well if everything is in sharp focus you're only left with one item to draw your viewers eye through the image and that's what contrast so he was a master at controlling contrast and bringing your viewers eye through the image through contrast and leading lines and I mean all the stuff we're talking about if you haven't studied his work you really are missing out so knowing what lens to use and that's again again come through a lot of practice and just trying different things experimenting that's what this is all about you know in the digital age we can experiment a lot it doesn't cost us anything so depth of field do you want a lot or a little again pre visualizing what that image is going to look like and you may not be sure what it's going to look like so let's try rolling through all the aperture settings and then at least you've got something to choose from later that you can you can work with but often times that's why I shoot in aperture priority most of the time because I know when I look at it at a scene I'm pre visualizing that do I want it the background soft or do I want to sharp what's the subject matter if it's a person typically you want the focus to be on them unless they're likening like a an element in a greater picture but typically if I'm doing a portrait of somebody I'll want their face to be sharp and everything else to be kind of really soft in the background it draws your eye right to the area of greatest focus or the great sharpest focus which is the face so in that case I know I'm going to go to a wide aperture and always focus on the eyes if at all possible if the eyes are out of focus unless there's a creative reason to do it otherwise your foot your portrait is pretty much ruined and if you've got a lens like the 85 1.2 where the you know or the 135 2.0 or something where the you know you've got the person's head turned and one eye is in focus in one eyes out that's acceptable but make sure that the eye is closest to the camera is sharp again there's always reason to break the rules and somebody online is probably saying yeah yeah but but there's a creative reason to do it the other way and there is but general I'm going to speak in generalities here close the sides of the camera really should be sharp okay compression who can tell me what compression is nothing right now go for it okay so yeah you're on the right clue so so typically when you have a wide-angle lens a lot of things are sharp and everything in the background tends to look much smaller if you have a telephoto lens compression makes those image those those items in the background tend to look larger even though they're out of focus a lot a lot of times they will look larger so I think I have an example here of that so distortion you again with that image of the tidal basin down in Washington DC the original image had a bow in the horizon line which was very easily corrected but distortion can help and it can also hurt your image I felt in that case it was hurting it so I just straightened it out okay if you can shoot on a tripod it's not always you know a must-have but you're going to end up with sharper photographs typically especially when you're working with slower shutter speeds for sure it's a pain in the butt to take out I know and I typically don't like to use a tripod but I have to force myself to do it sometimes so how a lens affects the scene again we asked this earlier when you're when you're picturing what this thing's going to look like in your mind what do you want to say and a lot of times that will will dictate what you do next in other words what lens I'm going to choose what angle I'm going to choose in this particular picture here all I did was have I had a speedlight on top of the camera and I put my camera down in the dirt in the midst of all these I think they're tulips and it just worked if I didn't have the speed light all this would be silhouetted and it would have ruined the image for me yes so I know looking at this picture of looking at the Sun I can tell it was a very small aperture because that son has a starburst to it and you don't get that when you're shooting wide open yeah so there's a little tidbit that I will tell you is that when you have a lens with odd and odd number of aperture blades you will get into if the sun's in the picture or another you know like a light of some sort where you're going to get some sort of starburst you get twice as many starburst beams with an odd number of aperture blades than you will with an even number of actor plays so if you want a lot of that look at how many aperture blades are on your lens and you'll see that okay more cycling what do you want it to say this is just slow panning at like fifteenth of a second with moving objects and eventually through a lot of trial and error you're going to get something sharp that really comes out pretty cool when you're doing that I photograph a lot of bike racing and this is something that I love even though there's I can looking right now and I see dirt on my sensor something you have to get cleaned but again you can easily spot it out but the overall image is pretty cool when you've got a lot of blur in one one guy sharp and it's it almost happens by accident because you just never know what you're going to get when you're when you're painting with your subject so like I said we just photographed a bike race Sunday and just culled through all my images and found like five or seven really really great ones out of about 60 gigs worth of data so it's a lot of delete delete delete delete delete oh that could be interesting and then you know you just keep deleting so this is that same child that you saw on the log with my son what does the picture say now for me I know a little bit more the backstory here this child has a little muscular issue and he's struggled a lot and so knowing that you know his legs are very small and you know compared to his head and but it's it's just an amazing for me an amazing photograph not because I took it but the eye contact that this child has with the camera is just amazing and yeah he's centered but his head's on the upper third or close to it and it just screened black and white so do you guys shoot raw or JPEG raw okay and not that there's anything wrong with shooting JPEG but the ability to change your mind is kind of a big thing and if you shoot with JPEG you have to be very sure of how you want that picture to look so you set your camera in the monochrome picture style because once you go if you're just shooting JPEG if you set your mut your your picture style to monochrome or black and white you're stuck with that you can't change it back in in this instance I shot I shoot everything in color and then I I can tell later whether I want to go to black and when turning but this image just screen to me that we work fantastic in black and white he's got red hair so there was you know there's more strawberry blonde than the rabbit is still on the ready hue but it just worked and even though there's there's those steps those slates landing are going through his head I think it's secondary to the impact that the eyes have so whenever you can get something like this shoot a lot you know it's just an amazing thing and talking about macro notice that the butterfly's eyes are sharp but just beyond that out of focus so when you're working up close like this you have to be really critical with your focus and it's going to you're going to have a lot of throw aways but when you get it you get it and it pays off okay discovery right I photograph a lot of kids and stuff like this I can't tell a kid like this to do like oh I have a hand it's interesting you know she's forgetting all this other stuff but the leading lines in there are nice the one thing that's interesting about this we talked about leading lines going out of the frame this leading line here goes up to his face but it also ends before it goes out of the frame do you see what I mean that's something that I tend to try to do whenever possible is not always possible but a big thing okay so can you guys tell me and I mean these general terms what what kind of lens was used to photograph this telephoto anybody else have a different opinion it could be a wide-angle lens but how can you be so close to them okay so wide-angle probably yeah okay look at so let's just look at let's just look at what's in the photograph what's what's happening in the background here with regards to focus it's pretty sharp right do do you see any of the mountains in the background there do they look kind of like they're they're blurry and a little closer like that remember we talked about compression okay so that kind of tells me that this is not a telephoto lens this is probably something on the wide-angle side maybe not extreme wide-angle but it's going to be probably as you said in that 24 to 70 range I'm thinking probably around 20 you know 35 somewhere around there but the wide-angle lens on this is kind of telling you or the actual sharpness of this is telling you and there's no compression really in there that that's a wide-angle lens you have a deeper depth of field of wiring the lenses inherent now this image right telephoto lenses how can we tell look at the look at the bokeh look at the compression I mean some people call it bouquet some people call it bokeh I call it bokeh I just think it's nice when you have that kind of control over the background here's a really good example of thin depth of field and you can see it I mean it literally this this much space and this is a telephoto lens this is for 70 to 200 one of my go-to lenses for a lot of stuff that I do at wide open aperture at 200 millimeter lens at 200 millimeter on the focal length and I think this is a Junko but he's completely sharp and you can tell just by looking at the Brix how shallow that depth of field is so you just have to be careful when you're working with wider apertures and telephoto lenses where that depth of field is going to end so that's why it's critical that you get those eyes folk focus and deep you know real sharp focused did you have a question you're good okay all right all right what about this wide-angle tilt-shift I don't boy man I I would not want to use it tilt shift for this this is a tough one right how far away are those balloons right this is kind of tricky this was with the 70 to 200 but these balloons are further away there you know and so that inherent depth of field is going to you know cover me I thought probably at f/11 or 16 here but if these balloons were closer to me I would I would have said yeah there's a wide-angle lens there but there's virtually no distortion in this image and one other thing the clouds back there look closer if I had a wide angle lens those clouds would be much smaller so that's kind of it's it's a tough it it's hard to really get there if you didn't know what I shot with but it could be a tricky one okay so how lenses affect the scene depth of field we've been mentioning this a little bit but a little bit 2.8 look what's sharp look what's not sharp where's your eye go face exactly plus the leading lines that are even though they're soft the eye goes to the face wide-angle f-22 everything's sharp somewhere in between you know where you want a little bit sharp and you know if you look at those columns in the background there they're not as sharp as as if we were to close the lens down more you know that's all you have to do is kind of figure out where you want your viewers eye to go and if you're photographing a group of people where you want and you've got people at different distances in a group that's where things become tricky and you have to really be mindful of the aperture selection because you could have the front row sharp and just somebody right behind them could be out of focus and if you they're out of focus the picture is ruined so you could make a small picture and they won't look as out-of-focus but if you make it big forget about it all right okay so compression what I talked about this I'm going to show you something that will kind of in a visual way explain what it is a compression I use in all the time in portraiture a lot you'll see it in wildlife as well this is an example it's a 50 millimeter lens which is K normal focal length lens closest to what your eye is used to seeing there's no distortion on it it's okay nothing wrong with it but take a look once you just take a look at the background and visually remember what those bricks look like at this particular point I'm going to put them side-by-side so you can see the difference but look that's the 70-200 at 140 millimeters and look at the background how much closer it looks to her that's compression plus it's softer and these were both photographed at the same aperture so this is becomes a very powerful tool with portraits or wildlife in particular where you're focusing right on the face or the eyes and everything else using white up wide apertures like f 2.8 or f/4 somewhere in that neighborhood will really draw that attention into the face of your of your subject okay Distortion is it helping or hurting you know again that's a subjective question again characteristics of wide-angle lenses the wider that lens is the broader that depth of field is going to be even at wide open apertures like if you have a 14 millimeter F 2.8 lens you're going to have a whole heck of a lot of depth in that photograph and the only way you're going to be able to get a shallower depth of field is by moving very close to your subject that's the only way you're going to get it so you don't necessarily need the you know apertures of like f-22 or 32 on a lens like the 14 millimeter because a lot of it's already built in and what are you photographing a lot of people that are photographing you know landscape scene that's typically you know not always but typically you see a lot of landscape photographs where everything is sharp but not always you can use a telephoto lens for landscape photography as well and you know we've used that at Yellowstone this past week we were using 400 millimeters to bring everything closer but you get that compression and you create a different overall look linear distortions anybody know what this is okay so have you ever seen lenses like the 14 millimeter or the 11 to 24 where the front lens element is this bulbous looking glass those types of lenses well fisheye is a little different fisheye is done to give you extra distortion where like the lens like the 14 millimeter or the 11 to 24 have that that round front there's a lot of call it rectilinear just distortion or correction I should say and what that does is as long as the camera is leveled there you're not going to see any bowing in straight lines vertically or horizontally as soon as you start tipping that lens forward or backward then you'll start seeing it but as long as you're level you won't see that okay you pay for that but that's yeah so here you can see the distortion do you see the converting converging lines so when you look at when you look at this it were actually here's a really good example here how it goes up toward the center pointing towards the side of the frame in architecture photography this is kind of a no-no that's why the tilt shift lenses exist because you want these these horizontal or the I'm sorry these vertical lines to be parallel to the side of the frame and that's what those those lenses do to correct with those not that it's wrong it's just the right tool for the job if that's what you're doing if you're photographing for an architectural magazine and you give them that they're going to laugh at you so you know looking up here again but you can use this distortion to your advantage in certain images again not that it's wrong it just depends on what your final output is or what you know what it's for again here's that Jefferson Memorial up close you can see the the columns and everything just kind of distorts in but in this in this image it kind of works you know this is inside the Capitol building in DC this is with a fisheye this is with the 8 to 15 and you know what I did was I laid the camera on the ground with just a slight tilt and now this lens is really going to bow everything you squint at squint at this picture and tell me what you see you see an eye so there's I didn't even see that when I did it I know when I'm looking at it later I go wow that's kind of cool it looks like an eye and if you turn it upside down the little pillars there look like eyelashes you know okay so what about this what are we looking at here what kind of technique was used Stalin yeah that we technique that we use like leading lines yes okay I'm pushing you along okay what about this somebody in here said oh I don't know I didn't photograph that Lenin yeah yeah I'm going to defer to you because it wasn't my father I was not there what technique was used on this there's a couple here look the rule of thirds okay what about the what about the aperture setting when we looking at maybe wide aperture yeah okay rule of thirds was a typically one that I want one for there what about this as far as composition goes what what was used here what would would you employ to get this picture color yes color absolutely rule of thirds you know all right but color was really what I was going for here since we just covered the rule of thirds what about this I'm gonna push you a little more here on this one framing dude you're on it perfect yeah look at this I mean just frame the subject great what about this technique yeah you're right I can't argue with you there negative space yes good what about here what'd you say leading lines yes from the from the the light the green light yeah she's all the way to the right okay so I can't say the rule of thirds here but what about color yeah I mean it's did you saw me say color then hearing it but yeah absolutely color yeah I mean this is multiple things in this image that are going for it so what about this this is yellow stone this again sharpness so we have foreground middle ground background right we've got leading lines look at this yeah I wouldn't say use of color but contrast right where's your I go I mean there's lots of places your I can go but I do end up here because of the leading lines I had to help it along a little bit with the leading lines to end up where this photographer was but you know and then at the end here there's your block keeps you from exiting the frame again is it right or wrong I don't know but it works for me my wife just for full disclosure my wife is holding on to its feet okay this is a covered bridge down near where I live but but okay so what technique was used here maybe negative space framing I mean gives a lot of different things here all right pattern interruption pattern is interruptions pattern is interruptus yeah lots of stuff now I'm about 250 feet up higher than she is I'm in Philadelphia I'm on the Ben Franklin Bridge photographing into a park underneath the bridge with a 300 millimeter lens she didn't even know it took this picture but she just did that and I'm like Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam you know so but I love the graphic nature of this image would I have loved somebody with a little different outfit maybe perhaps but she just she was pulling her hair back and it just worked so there she is she's famous now kind of interruption there's all kinds of different things you got the diagonal lines you know that just it for me it was kind of cool yeah this was last week in Yellowstone we drove by this and I drove another mile down the road and I said my colleague drew was with me in the car as we were heading to this workshop and I said did you see what I saw back there he said yeah I didn't want to say anything so we were kind of on a timeline and I said we need to go back down he said yeah so we went back and fortunately they were they stood there for a good half an hour as we went all up and down this hillside photographing it at different angles and I thought it was really kind of cool you don't see that every day so there's a lot of cool have any of you guys been to the Canon digital Learning Center before okay the this is the website it's completely free there's tons of great opportunities to to learn their whose is ringing anyway USA canon comm is the main website learn usa.com I know it's a lot of dots but just if you don't write this down you can just google Canon Digital Learning Center and there's tons of cool stuff up there it's all free articles get updated regularly there's all kinds of cool product previews of new products there's a blog there's articles on just about anything from high-speed sync on your speed lights to composition stuff like that or how to get even sharper photographs there's all kinds of great stuff there that the tremendous resource for you there's also that's that was that one's free these this here on the other website for the main domain website the shop usa.com there's some other more intensive workshops that we filmed for you those are a little more on the pay side of things not real heavy on the dollar but there some there and some cool stuff you should check out lots of different subject matter if you want to contact us up top there is on our Canon Digital Learning Center you can get a message to me if you'd like if you want to do something on Instagram there's my Instagram I'm not going to get crazy with anything Facebook because I like to generally keep that just my local friends but but if you want to reach me either those two ways would be a good way to do it listen thanks for spending a couple hours with me today then again thanks to being H cannon we were huge into education so again check out the cannon digital learning center there's lots of cool stuff there and enjoy the rest of your day

Channel: B&H Photo Video Pro Audio

Views: 215,019

Keywords: b and h, b&h, bh, photo, B&H Photo, Video, BH Photo, video, bhvideos, bh photo, how, to, improve, your, photography, instantly, canon, canon usa, usa

Id: om48KWxKurY

Length: 89min 22sec (5362 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 26 2017