How to take pictures that sell - Fine Art Photography

I want to talk to you this week about fine art photography [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so the first question you have to ask yourself is what is fine out photography and it's a very difficult one to answer really it's it's not something that you can pigeonhole and say that is definitely fine out and that is definitely not fine out but it's when documentary photography is changed into a style that the photographer prefers and not how it looks in camera so in other words if you take a picture of a bridge and you think well that's me documenting how that bridge looks but the artistic flair within the photographer decides I don't really like how that looked so I'm going to make some changes for the good or the bad the fact is if he makes changes to that images or to that image then in theory I would consider that probably to be fine out photography obviously it's a very it's a very thin line because it depends on what the photographer was to change but the best way that I can explain what fine art photography is is simply this if you can create an image and then make it sellable by doing whatever you do to the image you make it sellable but you make it sellable to somebody who wouldn't ordinarily like that style or that genre of photography so in other words if you were to make or if you were to take a landscape picture but then make the image sellable to somebody who wouldn't necessarily like landscape pictures then in my opinion that then is more than likely to be classed as fine art photography that's my opinion anyway and it's a it's a very difficult thing to broach but look let me get let me give you an explanation if you look at this picture now then you can see that's just a standard picture that pretty much everybody is likely to take but I don't like how that picture looks because okay I'm documenting it and that's exactly other picture looks right now but that's not me that's not my style of photography so I'm gonna change it and take the picture and in post process the image to make it look like this now again it's all subjective you don't have to like what I've done you might love what I've done but the fact is what I've done there is juice what I consider to be a piece of art and therefore maybe somebody who wouldn't ordinarily like landscape photography might like that image on their office wall - you know when they walk into their office every day - to brighten them up and put a smile on their face they might like it to be in their living room you know you understand what I'm saying the fact is it's all very subjective art is a subjective well it's subjective anyways let's be honest art is very subjective and you either like it or you don't like it but there you go that's my impression of what I consider to be fine art photography [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so let me talk you through my setup now then without stating the obvious Cameron a very sturdy tripod I'm used at 24 millons I'm nice and wide I'm focusing on the shell as well because the shell is pretty much a third of the way into the frame so that's gonna render everything in focus at f11 I'm at a four minute exposure at ISO 50 and that 4 minute exposure again is going to give me a really flat C and of course a blurry sky I've taken a few more pictures as well already with a faster shutter speed which will freeze the the detail in the sky because very often I change them over but today if I'm honest I probably won't the idea of this today's to make it find out and find out as far as I'm concerned is I like to keep it really minimalistic and if it's minimalistic then it tends to look more arty and and that's really it so I've got a 10 stop filter on there point 9 grad and that's it that's my settings and my trusty trigger for minute exposure and let's see how that looks [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so now we're back in the studio let's choose one of these pictures and let's put it into Photoshop and I'll show exactly how i post-process my images okay so i've opened this image up now the first thing you'll notice is I'm not using Lightroom I've been doing this job for just shy 20 years and I've always used Photoshop I'm not a Lightroom fan but don't worry if you are a Lightroom fan everything I'll be doing in the pre Photoshop screen which is called ACR Adobe Camera Raw and that's my camera raw converter all that's Adobe's Camera Raw converter then everything I do here you can replicate in Lightroom because it uses the same engine so if you're a Lightroom fan don't switch off stick around so this is my image now loaded into ACR this is the pre photoshop screen like I said earlier the first thing I'm going to do now is these tabs up here the first thing I'm going to do is click on this tab here and I'm going to click on this button here which will remove my chromatic aberration the chromatic aberration basically is it's almost like if you looked at the peaks of mountains and then zoomed in an awful lot then what you'll actually find is is that you'll get a purple or a very slight blue line on them okay that's that's what chromatic aberration actually is so if you click on that Photoshop does a very good job of removing that and you can also go in and manually do it the soreness a fault but I never really need to do that that does a pretty good job to me and also my lens profile corrector now watch click on that and they always click on that so let's say for instance look at the horizon for instance what this lacks you do now then is any bold that the lens offers the camera will be straightened and will be corrected in Photoshop and it's very very good actually and I always click on that always so now those two is selected let's go back to our very first tab and before I do anything now then all I'm gonna do is hit C for my crop tool you can hit that icon up there and I'm now going to crop the image to suit me I'm going to right mouse click to bring up my ratio options and in this particular image I'm going to choose 9 by 16 which is a favorite of mine anyway 9 by 16 dry that across there I'm going to keep rules of thirds in this instance and you can see my horizons absolutely dead level and the reason why my horizon is dead level in camera is simply because while I take the picture I use I always use the level on the back of the camera and it's pretty accurate so that's why that looks like that and even though I'm using my rules of thirds I'm gonna put the foreground interest or even the main interest in the old image which is that shell I'm going to put that right slap-bang in the middle but you can just basically choose where you want to put your main focal point but I'm going to choose the lower middle because I think that's a nice balance to that image so what I'm gonna do now then is on these tabs on the right hand side I'm gonna make my adjustments if I look up here my histogram is showing a pretty decent lit image it's decently lit nothing is overexposed so there's no spiking on the right hand side and nothing is underexposed there's no spiking on the left-hand side so I'm pretty happy on how that looks and all I'm gonna do now then is it's actually laid out as per your workflow which is really quite handy so I'm gonna set my white balance first of all I'm gonna have play around my white balance I'm pretty happy with how that looks now if you look at my image not my image has a very slight blue hue to it now the reason why it has a very slight blue hue to it is simply because I used a ten stopper so my lead 10 stopper tends to offer my images a very slight blue hue but I'm a fan of it so I'm gonna leave that on there moreover I think this image is better off in black and white so I'm gonna choose black and white so I'm gonna click on this button up here to convert my image to black and white now even though I've converted my image to black and white it's really important for you to ensure that your white balance was correct to begin with and the reason why I say that is because even though the image is in black and white if I changed my white balance now you can very quickly see how awful your image can start to look like if you look at the highlighted areas within the sky if I play around up here which obviously is a little extra but you can see how it will actually make a difference to how your image will eventually look so let's put that back up to where it was okay now once again looking at this histogram the light is perfectly fine but there's no magic formula to this if you want your image brighter than that then make it brighter that's it there's no magic formula just make sure that you keep detail throughout the frame I hate images where detail is lost through parts of the image being overexposed is a massive pet hate of mine so all I'm gonna do now with my exposure move it slightly to the right but just very slightly I'm gonna move my contrast very slightly to the right but not too much I never go above 10 and the reason why I never go above 10 is simply this is because when you push a contrast slider to the right all that happens is is the darks get darker and the whites get whiter but you don't have enough control over the whole image on how that looks so I tend not to use my contrast slider too much and the reason why is because I have a black and white slider down here so I can independently move the whites and independently move the blacks now my highlight slider ordinarily would be pushed way to the left-hand side to klore any detail back in any of the highlighted areas likewise my shadow slider would be pushed to the right to make sure any detail that's in the shadowy areas would would come out okay so I pushed myself my shadow slide it to the right-hand side and now I can add a bit of punch to this image with my black and white sliders I can get my white slider and push it to the right and get my black slider and push it to the left so now I'm making the blacks black hair and the whites whiter just get it so it just looks nice and my clarity slider which is next in line I'm going to push that to the right ever-so-slightly again just be very wary what you do with the clarity slider because the clarity slider will tend to pull out all the nitty bitty details in the frame but the problem is is it's one of the the common mistakes that people do when they first that post-process and they work because they want more detail in their image especially if they're if they're using cheaper camera gear because they think this will fix images that aren't quite maybe a sharp but it doesn't it's that your images will start to look very fast very quickly so please be very careful what you do with your clarity slider don't push it too much okay now I'm not really gonna do anything else with this image I don't need to a bit of a tip for you and this curve slider here the curve slider is fantastic but try and avoid using it in a CR trying to avoid using it in Lightroom as well but your new reason why I'm saying that is because whatever you do to your sliders here will affect the image as a whole so just be very careful with that you don't get much control here where for if you put this image in the Photoshop then using a separate layer using layer mask etc then you get much more control over your curves and your levels so I don't ever touch it here I don't need to sharpen there's no noise reduction needed because the image was shot at ISO 50 and I can change the way the image is converted to color or from colour to black and white here and the reason why or how I can do that is the blue the Blues for instance if I move that blue slider left and right you can see how that will greatly change the image however once again be very careful because it will start looking very false very quickly and look how bitty that image is stand to get so just err on the side of caution and just tickle these sliders but I'm not gonna touch that because that image looks perfectly fine to me okay split toning never use it we've already made adjustments there that's it that's all my settings and I honestly recommend that you don't do any more than what I've done now even if you're using Lightroom don't over process the work okay I'm happy with that now tools up here I love the tools up here the straightening tool don't use things like the spot removal cool because again you get much more control in Photoshop than you will do here if you're used to using your spot removal tools here in Lightroom then fine go ahead and clean this image up because this image definitely needs cleaning up but I would never do this here personally I prefer to do this in Photoshop okay I like these localized adjustment tools this is when it gets a bit more exciting for me so you've got your adjustment brush there you've got your graduated filter there and your radial filter as well and these are fantastic tools but I wouldn't use them at this present moment in time and that's of course I thought the image needed some adjustments which I don't I like the way this image is so in Adobe Camera Raw and in Lightroom what I recommend you do is just simply get your image cropped get your horizon level that's so important and then make sure your lighting is correct nothing anymore than that then go ahead and open the image in the Photoshop okay now the images are opened up in Photoshop is a couple of things that I need to address the first thing I now need to do is to clean my image up and I need to look at these points here clean all this up clean all this up and clean all this up once I clean my image up I've got a dirty patch here that I need to clean up and also this is very annoying I've got something just creeping into the image just here this here is creeping in so I need to get rid of that and also I don't like this area here so if you stick around I'm going to show you now how I'm going to deal with all of these things it's very quickly just undo all that okay so I'm back to my standard black and white let's first of all clean my image up well the first thing I'm going to do is press ctrl + J to create a new layer I wouldn't ordinarily do this but I'm actually gonna type on here clean okay just so you guys can follow along exactly what I'm doing it's just simply press J which is a shortcut for my Spot Healing Brush I'm gonna grab my Spot Healing Brush and I'm going to whip around he's a in parts of the image here now before I go on the one thing I can't stress enough and this is so so important is that you you make sure that you are using your shortcuts because you notice that when you watch me work I'll never ever go into my menus ever because I know the shortcuts so some of the shortcuts here for instance on my mouse there if I hit that scroll button up and down and you'll see it automatically zooms in if I press the spacebar there then I can actually physically move that image around so if I want to clean these bits up clean these bits up I can move it round and then press ctrl + 0 on the keyboard and that resets my image so it's much quicker and easier to do it like this then it would be if you kept going into your menu systems ok so let's go ahead and clean this image press J let's select my Spot Healing Brush to begin with and I'm gonna zoom in come around okay and I'm gonna very quickly pop all these very quickly gonna pop all these on here and clean them all up okay clean clean clean clean so lock move clean okay let's move they're clean clean the reasons why my sensor is filthy by the way is because because I shot this during the day and I needed a 2 3 or a 4 minute exposure I needed to shoot with my aperture close right up and with my aperture close right up and my lead 10 stop filter on there I was able to achieve a 2 minute exposure I think or 4 minute exposure anyway and if you close your aperture up then that's why you see all the offending marks that's a big match let's grab that same big mark there ok very simply I'm still using my Spot Healing Brush I'm just making the actual brush bigger and smaller and I'm whipping there okay there you go okay now you could take your time obviously or the chances are you'll be using a sensor that's not as dirty as mine or the chances are you you will be working on images that wouldn't have been shot at f-22 like I say f-22 that's the reason why you can see every mark that's on your damn sensor okay now there's loads of other different tools I could have used for this I could use my patch my patch brush there okay my packs healing tool s I could have used my healing brush which is that one there so there's loads of different things I could have used to achieve the same results but I like that okay now let's give you a couple of tips now then so this particular one here I'm going to try and get rid of this here again is peeping into the frame if you look at that there it's peeping into the frame and I really really don't like the way it peeps into the frame so I'm going to come here and I'm very quickly gonna try and remove it now again there's so many different ways of removing the offending item let's see what happens for instance if I just use my Spot Healing Brush there now that ain't bad okay but it's not perfect of a lot okay it's not perfect so let's undo that now let's use my patch healing brush so the patch healing tool draw around the offending item and once it's selected drag it to the side to a like-minded piece of image my selections in place or press control into your command and D on the Mac to remove my selection there you go and blend that in just simply by doing that by doing that okay like so and you would never notice a difference now you could take your time with this and the worst case scenario is if you don't manage to do that and you're not happy with it then of course you've got your clone stamp so you can clone this area from here to here or what I'm gonna do now is this particular image I just undo what I've just done there this particular image here for instance what I can actually do is a good little tip I'm going to grab my marquee tool up here is my standard marquee tool my rectangular tool and I'm gonna grab that piece of the horizon there I'm gonna press ctrl + C or command + C on the Mac ctrl + V to paste a copy of it or command + V on the Mac to paste a copy of it and basically I have a separate copy so what I can actually do is bring this across here if I press ctrl + T which is my free transform tool right mouse click and if I flip it horizontally okay so what I've actually done is moved the left-hand side of the horizon to the right-hand side of the horizon and I can move that to the edge of the frame zoom in and make some adjustments there so it's absolutely spot-on but from here of course you can clearly see what I've done of copy and pasted from one side to the other so what I'm gonna do now then is hit my layer mask icon which is that there be for my brush tool make sure it's a nice big soft brush and I'm going to make sure my opacity is at 30% so press 3 on the keyboard and that changes the opacity to 30% if I press 5 it went to 50% and so on so 3 for 30% and make sure because at the moment it's white I want to cut it out so make sure that your brush is black and all I'm gonna do now is paint along the outside right round the edge there take your time until it blends in look at that now I can get away with doing that on this particular image but if I look at that now you would never know that in a million years never okay so now that's done all I want to do now is look at this offending items offending part of the image that are part of the image I want to change that I don't like which is this bit down here now what I'm gonna do with this part of the image now down here is simply this so before before I actually make any adjustments to this part of the image now what I'm gonna do now then is create a new layer to work on now what I'm going to do I'm going to use this particular shortcut that I use all the time and it's ctrl alt shift and E or command alt shift and E I believe on the Mac now what that's actually done is that's now created a fresh layer at 100% it's almost like flatten or merge visible but it merges it merges visible as a top layer so this layer now almost becomes a complete snapshot of where I am within my workflow but it's also at 100% okay now watch this is quite cool I'm gonna grab the same tool appears my marquee tool I'm gonna grab as much of that water as I possibly can which is all of that so you can see my selection here with the running ants and I'm gonna press ctrl + T ctrl + T remember is my free transform tool and all I'm going to do is grab the bottom and drag it down look at that and hit Enter there you go and ctrl + D to deselect it and there you go that's how I get rid of the bottom bit there of course I can do that here it's really easy because there's nothing that's noticeable the would look odd by me stretching the the lower part of the image and and of course that's the advantage when you use flat water shall we say when the water smoothed out that's the advantage that you've actually got and that's it now I love that that's my image pretty much there's more I can do I can add some dodge and burn to bring a little bit more detail into the main focal point here I can exaggerate the shadows down here as well if I want to simply by using dodge and burn by the way sometimes more often than not with a long exposure I do tend to change my skies with a shot that I've taken using a faster shutter speed - kicked it to maintain the detail in the clouds but like I said the particular image that I want to portray here is a very minimalistic image and therefore that's the reason why in this particular black and white image especially over a two three or four minute exposure that we've got so much movement in the sky I think it adds this particular image but if you want to know how how I change my skies over from one image to another image then that is a tutorial that I'm doing next so that'll be out on Sunday or that will be out next Wednesday or Thursday so check back for that and that's it that's my image done that's how much work I do to my images and take a look at the finished results and I'll catch you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so that concludes this week's video find out photography do you agree with my interpretation of what I consider to be fine out photography maybe your interpretation is different if it is more if it isn't just let me know in the description below leave a comment and let me know please and I suppose really the proof is in the pudding because I will be putting these images on my website for sale I mean that is the clear intention of me turning up here tonight it so I could take some pictures I consider to be a find out photography and be sellable and they will be on my website and they will be up for sale I'm not saying this now because I want you guys to go on my website and buy the images I'm just simply telling you that this was my pure intention tonight was to create pictures that a a fine art and be a sellable so that's it if you agree or disagree if you like the pictures or dislike the pictures it's fine this is what we call art just let me know in the comments box below and that's it if you've enjoyed this video give me a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you think the content is worthy of it [Music]

Channel: Gary Gough

Views: 270,170

Keywords: make money online, make money selling photos, make money stock photos, make money stock images, how to make money selling photos, stock photography, make money selling images, sell images, sell images online, apps for selling photos, images selling app, make money, make money from photos, make money from photography, Gary Gough, fine art photography, fine art tips, fine art photography tips, Landscape Photography, fine art, fine art photoshop, fine art photographer

Id: gx0XChPrvcc

Length: 27min 10sec (1630 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 22 2018