Transcripts
1. Welcome to the Course: Hi, and welcome to the Skillshare
class, where together, we're going to
learn how to become bitter photographers by looking at our own work critically. My name is Avraham,
and I've been a professional photographer
for over a decade. I've had so many experiences taking pictures in
different situations, and I've found that over time, the best way that
person can improve in their skills is to actually
critically look at their work and understand
what they like about it and what they didn't and where they see they could
become better. So in this class, we're going to go through a number of
photos that I've taken. We'll be analyzing each
photo from a standpoint of the subject, the
composition, lighting, and a host of other things that are important to know
when you're trying to develop a critical eye to appreciate and improve
your photography. So if as begin,
let's get started.
2. Reviewing the photos: Looking at this picture, the subject is clearly defined. We have these flowers,
and I like the colors, how the pinks and greens make the flowers
pop from the background, which is more muted colors. That's very good. All the
flowers are in the frame. There's nothing
that's falling off, so that's also positive. This frame on the side is
a little bit distracting. The big issue in
this picture though is it's really just bland. There's no story going on here. There's no thing that's
really piquing my interest about why is there a photo
here of these flowers? Maybe if we could try to compose
it a little differently. Zoom in a little bit
like here. Let's see. Now we have offset the main subject in the left hand portion
of the frame more, and the way these flowers
are all arranged, they peering off to the right. There's this action
that's happening now. I wonder if I can
get a little more of this purple flower in here. I don't know because I don't
want to be cut off so much. Now we're getting
into the problem of this frame that's over here. It's a good question. Maybe that will be better.
With flower, without flower. I think actually,
I'm going to do with the flower because it as a balance to the
rest of the picture. If I have it without the purply
flower on the right side, so there's a lot of color
and pinks on the left side, and nothing on the right side. I'm going to stick
with this like that. I think this is a better photo. So we can see the
before and the after. I think that's a better picture. Moving on to our next one. This is a completely
different style. Here, we're very much bold
in your face, very abstract. I'm not sure what
we're looking at. The strokes are
very bold and wide, very energetic with
these diagonals as well. I like the variety of shapes, and it's not the photography, but the strokes that are on the paint also adds
to the energy here. That's all very good.
I'm thinking that this photo is a
little bit yellow. There's just so much I think that we should color
corrected somehow. Let's go to our white balance and do some auto white balance. Now that's way to blue. Let's see if we can
let's go back to the original and just move
it around a little bit, let's add a little
more blue in here. There to try to get rid
of some of the yellow. I think that's looking
a little better. M the actual pictured
in some purple maybe. All right. So if we go like that, that's looking
a lot better. However, I do want to
boost the vibrance now. To bring in some
more of that color. Yeah. Hm. Okay. So from this point,
I'm liking this a lot. Again, for the same
reason we had before. I think the color
was ring me off, but now this is looking
a little bit more like a properly exposed or white balanced photo,
so that's better. Um, if I had to say what is still bothering me
about this photo though. We have this spot of
glare on the top left. So that's something
it's a problem for me because it's bright
and attracts the eye. All this here, these colors, this paint is already
dull and equal. There's nothing wrong
necessarily with a bright spot, but why over there? Why do you want to
attract the eye to the top left of the photo? There's nothing happening there. That's one area that is a
little bit disturbing to me. Then besides that,
on the top right, we have this area
that black and white, which is breaking the colors. It's it's not color
like the rest of them. So it's a little bit
distracting in that sense. Also it's a little more active. Everything else are these long, broad strokes, and
the top right, we have this very
just a dab That's also why it's in the corner like that is distracting because it's
drawing my out over there, and it's again, leading
me out of the photo. If I were to crop
it maybe we can do something with this,
Here's a little bit better. Now I've gotten rid
of the activity on the top right and minimize a little bit
the glare on the left. Now, I think this
is a better photo. I can compare like this. This is before and after. That's pretty good.
After. Here we are. Four and the after. I think this is a better photo. Okay. What we have next? Who. This is as opposed to
the previous picture, which is a super close up to
the point of abstraction. This photo is super wide, and there's a lot going on here. I think this photo has
a lot of potential. The The interesting elements
are this area in the front and the circular colors in
an abstract type of pattern. And also we have a complimentary
area on the right, which has also these colors, also some abstraction, and they complement the
21 to the next. I like the interesting flares coming from the lights
all over the place. That's adding an interesting
effect and energy. I don't really like
all the cars here. Uh, not sure there's much
you could do about that. And then also on the far left, we have this bright red box, whatever that is,
something postbox. Anyway, that's a very as opposed to the rest
of the colors here, which are more
muted and yellowy. We have this area
of red over here, and then also where
this one car is lit up, I guess the tail lights
or something is also red, but this one is not as
big of a problem for me. It's more this over here. So what I would do. Also, a feeling that this
is not exactly straight. Let's go see if we
can autocorrect, it's a little straighter now. Here we've just touched
up a little bit. As far as white bounds, we're going to pull down the yellow a little bit
to bring some more blues. Then go back and
add that saturation really t saturation here. Actually, I think I just put the saturation vibrant
in the lower half. Let's go add in the
mask over here. And I'm going to from here, add in our saturation. Okay. Next thing I want
to do is try to remove a desaturate
love of this red area. So let's see if we can do that. I'm going to select this area. Some selection and from here, let us take down the
saturation. Just a little bit. Rule that I learned
once that that was nice is that you
should over adjust, like you go till you can really see it and then come back. So over here, I
think is still looks realistic without
looking at we did any too intense. Okay. It's an interesting picture. I don't know if it's one of
my favorites or anything, but this looks a lot better
than where we started. We had this to here. This picture is very cool. I like the energy,
I like the angle. We are looking at this photo, and I like the fact that you a little bit disoriented when you
look at this picture. So first off the bat, I see nice alignment of
these different shapes. We have it looks like three main The main
pillars at an angle here. We have these clocks one, these three clocks here, and then we have the
butterfly with the flower, and then we have I
guess another butterfly with this rectangular shape. We have and each
of these are like three pillars tilted.
I like that very much. Also we have these
different layers going on here because
the butterfly and flowers are up front and we have the clocks more
reseated in the distance. It's adding these layers that make the photo
a little more interesting that you
can get into it and you can explore
with your eye say, I wonder what's going
over here and there. Uh, I think we can increase
the vibrance a little bit. And if I maybe do
some de haze, right? So before and after here, that was before that's
looking a little nicer. In this picture, I'm not
seeing an actual main subject. It's more just overall feeling of activity and and layering. I think it's pretty
cool. I'm not bothered by the fact that there isn't a particular subject. I like the idea that you
are inviting or this photo is inviting the viewer
to explore this scene, try to make sense of
what's going on here because it's not
shot vertically. Because of that,
also, the viewer hopefully intriguing for the viewer to be
looking around saying, try to understand what they're looking at and make sense of it. I'm noticing here
also, what I really like is that we have
there's a lot of yellows, and I'm noticing here
we have a purple on the top right and a little
purple pink on the left, and then also at the top again. So we have a repeated motif of this color pops
here and there, which also add a
little bit of you. They tie the picture together. So we have all these yellows
throughout in general, and then we have these
other, highlight colors popping in and out. I think it's really good. I like this picture a lot.
It's very unusual. It's not as opposed
to where we start off with the scene of our flowers. This is a nice
picture in a sense, but this other one is a level
up of much more intriguing, something that is not something you normally get a picture of. I like this for
originality also more. This photo is speaking
about originality. I think is a photo that's
trying to be original. I don't know. It's interesting. I like the geometry of it
all and what's happening. We have these different lines breaking up the picture into
the different segments. Almost looks like a letter A. If we rotate it, we could do
that. We have a letter A. This could be in that sense, interesting as
part of a theme of different found
letters in a sense. On its own, It's an kit photo. What do you feel when you
look at this picture? The mood or story. It's very
interesting in the way that these chairs are facing
away from each other. Yes, it's true, there are 21
next together on both sides. However, the story
here seems to be more about the separation, the distance that they are facing away from
each other, really. There's also a symmetry
going on here, which is a nice balance
adding to the photo. I like how the chairs are bright orange
and therefore they are stand out well
from the scene. The elements in the background. Again, these cars a
little bit distracting. I think actually what's
most distracting for me is how this
chair here on the very far left is touching the chair that's that
goes off the frame. And it would have been
probably better to move that other chair
out of the picture so that you have
nothing on the edge, C on the right side. It looks like it's not level, so let's go straight in
that and see what happens. I straight this way. That's what I would
see. Let's see. This. I think it's a little better. I think
it's straighter. Anyway. So that's what I see
about this picture. Next. We actually have
two. I know we have two pictures of this dog, so we can compare them side by side and actually make
them bigger like this. It's definitely hard to take
a picture of an animal. They don't really
stay in one place and they're moving a a lot. What I'm seeing about
this picture in both pluses and mis is
up both these pictures. I like the fact that
the dog is looking at the camera more or less in this first picture
and also the tail. I like how the dog's tail is up, and in that sense, it makes a more interesting
silhouette if we were having the shape of the
dog's body like this. On the negative side though, is that the way the
dog's head is angled, it loses the ear by the body. On this picture on the right, it's very clear where
the dog's head and ear end and the
body continues on, especially because you see here the white of the dog's fur. Frames the dog's ear. It stands up very
well against it. We have good separation. On the left side, we
don't have that so much. For me, the ideal
would be to have the picture on the right
with the tail from the left. If we could put this tail on the left side
instead of curving in the way it is over here and sticking up a
little bit more. I think that would be better if we could put these
two pictures together. It's a tough call between these two pictures and
each one has own merits. Neither is an absolute winner and even putting the two
together like I'm suggesting, I still don't know if I would be totally happy with it
as a final picture. But that's what we
got here. Moving on. This is again, one of these zooming into
abstraction pictures. We have a lot of
angles going on here. Our photo here as it stands
is very interesting. It's an angle
that's very unusual and not really sure
what we're looking at. It looks like some
of pillar maybe and the way that
everything is composed here that there are angles
as a lot of the picture. We have this pillar coming
up here at this angle, and then these lines
coming out here and these beams at this
angle, angle angle angle. Everything there's a lot of good energy here.
I'm liking a lot. Also, I like the
overall feel that there is a sense of movement that this big beam in the middle is leading us in. And then we have
everything out here is like this arc that
I just feel like almost like a pinwheel of
some sort that's going on here in a grotesque manner
that we're looking at. But it's like a
pinwheel that it's everything spitting around
this one central point. And so I get this nice feeling
of movement around here. I also like there's this
black area down here. Which gives pens of
breathing and space because there's a lot of business going on
in this picture. A lot of angles, all these
textures going on here, the triangles lines, the
opposite going on here. So this one area black
gives a sense of respite and a little bit of a pause to all the rest
of the action here. So it's a nice counterpoint. I like this picture a lot. In this picture, I'm
seeing two focal points, both placed in the
rule of thirds. The first one we have is this
bench in the lower left, and then we have this light occupying the line on the right side of
the rule of thirds. We have two points here. There's also a bit
of leading lines I feel because the
way the bench is angling in along with this
area of the pavement, The buildings also
on the side here are leading are leading the eye
down deeper into this photo. The way the picture
is broken down, we have a few different areas. We have the front area
where we have this bench and this bench is part of
this whole lower area. That's the lower
half of the photo. Then we have this building, which is occupying the center. Then the negative space
around the building is also a nice, I
think, complement. It balances off all the different activity
happening down here. We have then this
more trapezoidal angled building over here, and then we have on
top lots of activity. So I'm liking the movement
and the energy going on here. Again, the way these lights are shooting out rays all over the place is a
pretty cool thing. It adds some energy and unexpected motion.
That's pretty cool. Maybe if we had a person,
it would be better. But as it stands, it's a decent picture. It's capturing the scene, maybe this emptiness
of what's going on the emptiness of
this nighttime scene. It works for me, and I'm
pretty happy with it. Speaking about
people. Here we are. Here's a person in this photo. Let's just strain
this out again. Okay. I'm liking
this picture a lot. We have a lot of
interesting division of shapes in the photo, which I think is very cool. We have a lot of
rectangles and squares. We have this square
in the middle, and then we have this
pillar on the left, and this pillar
balancing on the right. We have this strip on the left, and then this strip
on the right. There's a lot of
symmetry going on here with these very
angular shapes. Which brings us to our subject. We have this woman
who's at the ATM, and what's amazing about this is that she's actually
wearing a very bright red, which matches the color scheme
of the brand of this bank. That's pretty cool. I think there's also a bit of
an interest going on here. Let's see if we zoom in. I think we zoom in, we lose out. This actually lose
a lot of the story. I mean, it's just becomes
very traditional in blase. But if we zoom out here. I think the way
this composition, all these elements
work together to make a more interesting composition
than how we zoomed in. Another architectural
type of shot. Let's go and just
straighten it off. It's not straight much
straight a little more. Okay. So there's potential here. What I like about
it is that we have the two men speaking in the
right frame of the window, and the left frame, there's
nothing happening there. If we were to If we were to zoom in on
here, we could see them. But I think what we need
to do is crop to make the scene more about this contrast between
the two of them. Let's actually take off or let's go and really hone in on them. Then we can really
crop it down to exactly the area you want
to focus on and highlight, which is the men on the right versus the emptiness
on the left. This also gets rid of all the distracting chairs in the front, which we're impeding and
blocking us from actually getting into the
scene. That said. These men, at least the guy
on the left side over here, a little bit cut off
by by the wall here. And so that's a little
bit distracting for me. I would have much
preferred if he was totally in the frame the
way that we see this guy. He'd be framed
within this window, perhaps dub and better. Um Also ringing black, and
black doesn't help him stand out so much from the other thing they're
black in the scene, and his hand, which
is raised here, happens to be behind one
of these glass decals. And also there's a lot of energy and emotion that can happen in people's hands and we're
missing that from this scene. That's a little
bit of a problem. The definitely detras
from the picture for me. Um But cropping like this,
I think is a big plus. I think it adds a
lot to where we were as far as trying
to tell the story here, that the photo should be clear to the viewer what the story is, this is a much bigger picture
than if we were over here. That's restraining. If you see the difference been where we started
and we ended up, I think you agree it's a much stronger photo if
we've cropped it like this. Nonetheless, I still
think there are some elements that
detract to a point that probably not a photo that I want to show in an event
or something like that. It's an okay picture. I like the idea that what's
going on here that we have this large object and everything else is blurred
in the background. It doesn't feel like there's
enough of a story here for me that I need to know, what's the motivation
behind this picture? Why would a viewer want
to look at this picture? Right? So there's some
interesting texture here and different shapes and lights
and things going around. I think it's an okay picture. I don't think it's
a wing picture. This is very cool because
it shot backwards. Something also is
interesting for me is that this pole
that's over here in the middle turns the Pepsi logo into almost like a lollipop. That's I'm seeing this here
a line coming through here. It's a very
interesting statement maybe about Pepsi or
something. I don't know. But it is pretty cool.
I like the symmetry. I like how the logo
is a circle with these abstract type of
shapes inside of it, and we have good
color combinations because we have
good color balance, how the blue is over here, and then the red is over there. And in general, I think
this works very nicely. I think it's a very
intriguing photo. I think it's something
that what people would look at and think about about what they're seeing and what's being
communicated here. So I think there's actually
quite a good picture. So for context for
people who aren't aware. In the back here, this flyer is actually announcing that
someone has passed away. So with that context, I think this is a very
interesting photo because we have here, again, a statement about
someone who has died, and over here, these upturned table legs or something like that look like maybe They almost
to me look like candelabras or
there's pieces here that are just ending cut
short or something like that. So there's a shared idea between this sign about
someone's passing and these truncated pieces of the table or this reinforcement piece
of metal over here. So I think it works very well. I was a story or a message. I think there's something
to think about here. Also, I do like how the
table leg is arcing and curving leading the
eye into the photo and towards this other
section of the photo. I also like how this is an arc and it leads
into this very solid wall. Then also down here, we have these parts of the
chairs that you can see, or also these very
angular square shapes. We have this contrast, we have a lot of
an square shapes, and then we have this one arc this one arc that's leading in that contrasts from
everything else here. I would have liked
that this table stand out a little bit more
from the rest of the photo. It gets a little bit lost
and back lighting or a rim lighting of some
sort that could make it stand out a
little better here. In our last photo, we have looks like
this. Very interesting. Okay. So we have again, a piano and more these lights with the lens flare going
all over the place. It reminds me a little
bit of the photo that we had at the restaurant,
this one here. We have a large item
on the lower left, and we have in this case, we have this light street
lamp on the right, which is balancing it off. We have these lights
on the top on the top, say rule of thirds in a sense, we have in this corner the
lights and this lower corner, we have the piano. I like that, how we have this interplay between
the two of them. Also we have light and dark. It's pretty nice. I like how the lens flares are directing the eye down
ang towards the piano. So we have this angle going on between and connecting
between the two subjects. Also, we have some
leading lines from this walkway or this wider
part of the walkway, which leads the eye
down, which is good, and also we have
because of the way the the street light is
over here, lamppost. So we have the shadows are also leading lines
leading us into the photo. So that's all works really well. I think it's an
interesting photo, and I like the way things
are arranged here. There's a little space between the piano and the lamppost. So that we have this room
and even the bend shift, see it's very
carefully done here, that's no overlapping lines. I think that works out
really well for this.
3. Final Selections: Those are the photos.
Just review here. We have all these photos here. Let's go through and think about what we
liked more or less. Okay? So this picture
I thought was okay. This picture, I think
is a better photo. I'm going to give two stars. I would be happy
to show this one. This one is decent, but I'm not so happy with
the cars in the background. As we said, This one also
two stars, definitely. I think there's a
very strong photo, very unusual, very good. This photo, it could work, but we need more to
make it into a theme. We said if we had more s of an alphabet or
something like that, so we could put them together. But as it stands on its own, I wouldn't go with it. This one is interesting. I'm
on the cusp about this one. I'll put it in. I'll say
when I like this one, also. The story behind here,
the strong orange versus everything else. I think this works as a
very powerful picture. The dogs, No. This one, I think. I think
it's a good picture. Interesting, but
boring. I like it, but I don't know if
I like it enough. This one would have worked wonderfully had that
guy been in the middle. But I'm going to pass on it. This one, no. This one, yes. This is a very cool
picture, like a lot. And then these last two are. This is what
we're left with. For these photos over here are my favorites
from the session. I hope that you got a lot out of looking at
those photos with me, trying to understand
we're analyzing them and thinking about what you like about them and what you
don't like about them. Then going over them
again and reviewing and thinking about what
makes this a strong photo? Is it a strong photo? What could make it
a stronger photo? How could you take it better
next time, things like that? I said, the best way of becoming a better photographer
is by looking at your photos and really
looking at them critically, saying, what do you
like about them? What don't you like about them, How could have been done
better? That's the way to get. That's the way to improve
by just getting practice and and, taking more photos.
4. Class Assignment: Thank you so much for joining me in this skill share class. I hope you've gained a
new appreciation that you can admire your
photos and value them, at the same time, see
areas that didn't quite meet your
standards and that you could find room
for improvement. I'd like you to take
this mindset into a class assignment where you
select a few photos that you've taken and
write about what you like and what you ought we be
improved about your photos. And please share that
in the projects and resources section so other students can
learn from it as well. I'm so happy to join
me in this class. I look forward to seeing
you in another one.
Avraham Nacher, Photographer & Procreate Artist
