How to Compose Beautiful Photos Masterclass The Art of Landscape Photography | Edin Chavez | Skillshare
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How to Compose Beautiful Photos Masterclass The Art of Landscape Photography

teacher avatar Edin Chavez, Changing the world one photo at a time.

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      The Art of Landscape Photography Intro

      0:26

    • 2.

      Chapter 1 my Gear

      9:24

    • 3.

      Chapter 2 Rules of Photography and Settings

      9:54

    • 4.

      Chapter 3 Composition

      48:08

    • 5.

      Chapter 4 Shortcut Intro

      8:24

    • 6.

      Chapter 5 Fisherman & Birds

      27:17

    • 7.

      Chapter 6 Settigns

      18:10

    • 8.

      Chapter 7 Long Exposure

      18:55

    • 9.

      Chapter 8 Get the Settigns Right

      13:00

    • 10.

      Chapter 9 Create a Visual Story

      16:29

    • 11.

      Chapter 10 Bonsai Rock

      14:35

    • 12.

      Chapter 11 Distortion and How to Fix It

      12:49

    • 13.

      Chapter 12 Ocean Escapes

      24:30

    • 14.

      Chapter 13 Ocean and Sand

      19:21

    • 15.

      Chapter 14 Treelines

      13:14

    • 16.

      Chapter 15 Feelings and Emotion

      15:07

    • 17.

      Chapter 16 Less is More

      12:11

    • 18.

      Chapter 17 citiscapes

      14:24

    • 19.

      Chapter 18 Profile Corrections

      16:15

    • 20.

      Chapter 19 tint

      22:16

    • 21.

      Chapter 20 Creating Reflections

      8:27

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About This Class

The Art of Landscape Photography

Taking great landscape photographs takes a certain level of natural ability, but that isn’t enough. Landscape photography, like anything, is a skill. It’s an art. With enough repetition and dedication, anyone can create images that take the viewer’s breath away. That is a fact.

In this course, we focus on Composition. As an educator, this is the one topic most photographers struggle with. In the Art of Landscape Photography, I brake down this topic. We also cover the best times to shoot, cityscape photography, and reflections. 

When you take The Art of Landscape Photography course you will learn how to visualize the photo before you take it. You will learn through repetition and practice. You will learn how to see the world differently following the thought process professionals take to create stunning images. People will start to recognize your photos for their signature look… That ‘special something’ that people can’t describe. Love, it is love. 

After taking this course, you will…

  • Know what gear to pack with you and what to leave at home
  • Be able to make split-second camera setting adjustments for optimal exposure
  • Understand the subtle ins-and-outs of effective landscape photo composition
  • Leverage Adobe Lightroom shortcuts that will cut your editing time in half
  • Use veteran tricks of the trade that will make your photography stand out
  • Composition and the thought process behind it

Included in this course are bonus materials such as Lightroom Presets, Lighting Diagrams and also a course of creating stunning reflections. 

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Edin Chavez

Changing the world one photo at a time.

Teacher

I am a Commercial Photographer based out of Miami Beach Florida. Some of my clients include Nikon, National Geographic, Corona, iHeart Radio, Volvo, Curtis Stone, Andrew Zimmern...

I have had the honor and pleasure to work with some incredible people in the industry and my love for the art continues to grow. I teach photography workshops across the glove and share what I know with others. 

Thanks to Skillshare now I can help more people across the glove with one platform.  I will be posting new classes often. Please come back and check them out. 

Ohh yea I also love to hang out of helicopters with my camera on hand to get new perspectives. 

You can look at my Portfolio keep up with my latest photo adventures on my blog. ... See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. The Art of Landscape Photography Intro: What's up, guys eating Chavez here with my latest tutorial, Siri's The Art of Landscape photography. In these videos, I cover everything from camera year to composition, and we'll go through the entire editing process from start to finish have also included all the raw files so you can download right away and start following along. I'm also sharing some of my best cityscape photography techniques, so thanks for watching guys, and I'll see you in the other side. 2. Chapter 1 my Gear: So let's go over a camera here, so I should with a Nikon D 800 this is a really, really nice last game photography camera. It uses a lot of pixels so you can blow up. Your image is really, really large. It's very easy to use, and I just really like how the dials are easy to control over your hand. You can be out there and you don't miss any light, which is really, really important when it comes to landscape photography, because you only have a small window to capture the beautiful colors, the beautiful sky, and you don't want some bulky camera to get in the way of that. So I really, really like this particular camera assed faras. Lance's go. This is a kid, Lance, and it's actually one of my favorite lenses. This is the 24 to 85. It's a 3.5 lens, but I really, really like it. I travel a lot, so I really like the size. It's really compact, and it's got a really nice range. I also like how you can put on a 10 stop and D filter, and I can also carry that in this little tiny box. So I really, really like this lens. Um, super, super affordable. I think it's only $450 on, and it's really, really, really, really sharp and really, lance. In fact, most of the photos you see on my website have been shot with this exact land moving. So don't don't think that just because you don't have the higher, higher and lenses, you're gonna get back photos. That's completely incorrect. So let's move on to our higher unless is so. This is a Nikon 14 to 24 now. This is the best last K photography lets out in the market. In my opinion, this is a 2.8 lens, and it's extremely sharp now. It is also very expensive, but to me, if you're going to get into landscape photography, this is a must have even for canon users, suitors, landscape photographers. They actually put this on their canon camera. It is de best last game photography lens. There is, in my opinion, you can get really, really close to things so you can get those incredible incredible landscapes with the rocks in the front, and you can actually get really, really close to it with this exact lands, one of my favorites by far. So if this is something you are going to be going for a very long time, I suggest you put this in your camera back. Now. Lastly, I have the Nikon 72 200. Now I use this a lot, but I do use it for when I should birds or when I'm trying to compress the sun or the moon , meaning that I'm trying to make it look bigger than it really is into my composition. So I do have this in my repertoire. I don't use it a lot, but I do use it, and it's a really nice months. It's very expensive, not able stop for landscape photographers, but for me, I like it, and I do use it quite often. But if you're going to, uh, spend the money, get the Whiting glance instead. This is a much better lens. You get a lot more use out of it for landscape photography again. If you can't afford this, a kid learns is just fine. All my friends are always like, Why are you using your guys? Lance's I really really like this lens. I actually use it so much. It's crazy. So it's not all about the year, guys. It's most about having the right composition bean at the right place at the right time. Studying the life, studying all your old, your camera said. It's just being one with the camera and one with the environment that will create a much better result than having all this beautiful lenses not knowing how to use them. So it's horse tripods. Will I carry this tiny meaning really right stuff? Tripod. I have this in case of emergencies. So when I don't have my tribe are by normal try. But on me, this is always with me, and he has saved my butt many, many times. This was it was a little bit pricey. You don't need something this pricey. You can buy a really affordable one on Amazon. The wrong eBay, that small in the care of your camera the recently went with really right stuff is because when this huge glances on this camera, you can actually hold it. No problem. Lastly, my other tripod, it is a any photo low throttle, and I left because it's really really sturdy and in full stop so tiny that it faced in my suitcase. So when I travel, I put this in my suitcase on. I don't unpack it till I get to where I'm going, But it's also here when I push it local or when I will beach Super Super easy to pack. Very, very, very cool Little tripod. I love it. I've had all kinds of other tripods haven mall until this came out. I really, really, really like it. And it's super, super affordable. So good investment for any landscape photographer you must have of the tripod. This is a solid, sturdy, very light, affordable, dry plot. So definitely, definitely invest in a dry part. My choses this one. You don't have to go with it. I like it. The last thing that's in my bag it's a shutter release cable. Now when I do my workshops, a lot of people bring the Cordless wants. I don't like the porters once because I like to have control over everything that poor listings fails. We're inside a battery or is not sinking correctly. I am going to miss my shot, so I have a wired one. It hard wires directly to my camera. It takes two seconds to put off like that, and now I'm guaranteed that this will never, ever fail, ever. So I really, really like it. I suggest you get a nicer one. I've purchased the whole entire range from the $6 once in on eBay to the $20 ones on Amazon . I finally won with a Nikon. One was $85 but it's never felt only It's really, really nice. Super small, super light to carry. And that's really all I carried. My bad. I do carry two spare batteries and a bunch of extra as the cars and CF cards, so I packed very, very light. I think one thing about landscape photography when you're starting out, you want to carry all this year with you, but you'll never use it. And I think that's part of growing to learn, do what you like what you use. Usually I leave this behind unless I'm traveling somewhere you can find. This right here is always in my bag, and that's pretty much it. I don't have a cat. Me, I really, really like, Um, I don't even use the camera stop because I never I don't like it. I don't use it. But this is basically what's always in my bad on, of course, my tripod again. You don't have to have the same exact year. You can start off pretty basic pretty light. But as you can see, this is basically yet every single photograph on my website or that you've seen on any of my social media has been shot with this same except here. I don't use anything else but this. I actually have another night long a d 800 eat, but it's currently getting repaired on icon. I broke it somehow. There's a YouTube video about it, So that's it, guys, not a lot of gear pack light. That way you can always go into the coolest places on. Most importantly, better than here is really learning how toward your camera and really being at the right place at the right time. So study the study, the weather study your times. Best time to go out for some rice eyes half on me their half hour before the sun actually raices and best time to be there for sunset. It's half hour after the sun sets those two times, and the times you're going to get the best stranger colors like took me very long time to learn this child in error trial and there. But now I'm always there before half hour before the sun rises and 1/2 hour after the sun sets. Best times, best colors. If you don't get any color, then then you're not going to get any color. So just come back the next day and we shoot it again. So that's a year, guys, that's going to the next chapter. 3. Chapter 2 Rules of Photography and Settings: so I have some basic rules to follow when it comes to landscape photography. So in landscape photography, you want everything in focus. 99% of the time, you're gonna want your entire scene in focus. So what does that mean? That means that you want an F stop off F 11 or above. You can use enough eight in F nine F 10 but I have, ah, basic rule that I follow pretty pretty strongly, and it guarantees that I'll always have an in sharp focus and sharp image every time. And that is shooting at F 11 and above now F sixteens and really, who would have stopped for landscape photography? Everything comes out and focus and then really detailed and really, really sharp as far us focusing. You want your focus, Toby, either under foreground. So if there's a rock or you'll see in the videos, I have a show with a feather. That's where my focus waas if it's just a normal landscape. Um, by that I mean, if there's nothing close to you in front of you, then you just focus on the horizon. If you can't find a focus spot, just put your focus point on infinity and everything should be in focus as long as you're using in F 11 or above. Now you're I s so that should always be at 100 for Landseer Photography were always shooting on a tripod for the most part, S O I s so should always be 100 That will guarantee your cleanest image. Um, that is the native eso to most cameras What that means it's that is using every pixel and everything should be really, really sharp and really, really nice with no grain whatsoever. Now cameras nowadays they're so good and the sensors air so good that you can push your eyes so and you won't really see how much of a difference in a photo, if any at all. On my Nikon, I can shoot. Um, I Yes. So I have a one of my favorite photos since it was shot up. That 3200 eso and you can really tell that it's not grainy. It's actually really, really nice. So that's the I s. So as far as the shutters be, we adjust that accordingly. For landscape photography would like to shoot at slower shutter speeds that way you can get the the water movement, the cloud movement on and also for cityscape photography. That's how you get those light trails by shooting at a slow, um, shutter speed, and that can be also done on a tripod. If you try to do that, handheld, you're going to get a blurry image. So if you're doing a slow shutter speed, always make sure you're on a tripod. Now. One thing to know is that the higher your F stop, such as F 18 of 22 that will give you the starburst effect on the light. I can be in a street light or on the sun in itself. By that I mean it creates this beam so it looks like a star is exploring and you will see that in the next video on on the edits. How I accomplished that and that can be done Like I said at F 18 and F 22 or F 18 and above . Um, wanting to know on those higher F stops is that you will see some of your sensor spots, so keep that in mind when you're in postproduction. When you're editing to remove all those sensor spots. And again we will go over that in the next few videos. When we're editing now, there are three rules that I follow in that I live by and they're not. Rules is just kind of what I created that makes sense for me on that's So when I go out there, I'm looking for light, beautiful light, and I'm looking for a subject. And then I'm looking for leading lions into that subject. So basically, when I'm shooting, I try to find Obviously, I want to get there when it's the light is really nice that that gives me my life. Then I tried to find a subject. So whether it's the sun or a mountain or a tree or something that I can that I want the viewer to see, that's my subject and then the leading lines. That is the most important part of a composition, so you want to create some sort off off guide off walkway for the viewer's eye to invite him into that photo. A lot of people don't do that, and in return you have kind of a boring image. But by creating leading lines, you create a very interesting photo. You created balanced photo and you're creating beautiful photo. So that's on my three rules light, beautiful light, a subject and leading lines. And to me, that's the easiest way to create a good composition. So when you're out there, easy things to remember F 11 and above, um, beautiful light, a subject and leading lions leading lines being the most important because that creates an interesting composition that creates a beautiful photo that created balanced frame, a balanced photo and you will see as we walked through the next videos What I mean exactly by that, especially in the diagrams, you'll see how use water, how you sand, and I use all this other things to us, leading lines to guide me into this beautiful a composition. And that's what creates landscapes so beautiful. When you look at a landscape photograph, you just look at it. You don't think about this stuff, but is your job as a photographer to think all this through so the viewer and yourself can be in this beautiful scene. You want somebody to feel what you're feeling, and you can accomplish that by I'm having a beautiful subject. Beautiful light in a very interesting, leading lines a Sfar as the best times to shoot. You want to be out before the sun rises half hour before the sun rises will get you the most beautiful life after the sunrise is everything. It's pretty bright and kind of boring. So you wanna be there half hour before, maybe an hour before, but half hour before is when you get the most beautiful life. So keep that in mind. Same for the sunset half hour after the sun sets. That's when you want to shoot, because that's when all the colors come together and just go buck wild. So that's when you want to be there. It always drives me crazy when I'm shooting somewhere, and as soon as the sun sets, the photographers leave. Don't do that. As soon as the sun sets, you stay still. You stay put and you capture those beautiful colors. Now, after the sun sets after that, half hour is gone and those colors are gone. Then you entered the blue hour. That's when everything looks really blew, really crisp and really, really beautiful. It's also beautiful time to shoot, but if you want a lot of color then you want to be there half hour after the sun sets. Okay? So don't pack up your stuff and leave. Don't do that. Um, as far as knowing the times when it sets and when it rises, I use an app call called Rice. It's free on the app store R I s e. On and he tells you you type in the date will tell you exactly when that sun is gonna rice and when the sun is gonna set, So always make sure and be there before the light gets crazy and stay till after the sun sets Because I like it's pretty crazy. A swell. So those are my three basic rules guys. As far as a composition, you need a beautiful subject, beautiful light, and you need interesting leading lines. So don't just stand there. Point and shoot. Create. Create an image, Create something, Think about everything you're seeing. So when I'm out there shooting, I'm looking at my clouds. I'm looking at which direction they're moving. You want him to be moving towards your subject that you're creating those leading lines. Same with the water. If you want to capture the water when it's moving towards your subject A lot of the times that means you have to be in the water. But that's how you create the beautiful leading lines. There are a lot of things you must think about when creating this beautiful photos. You also have to move around. Don't just stand still in one spot. I always tell this to people in my workshop. Still, my students don't just stand there. Move around, you know. Take some photos, then move around. Move around. Keep moving. If you just stand there, you're going to get the same photo over and over it yet. And the only way you're going to learn composition is by practicing it and moving around. So always look at your foreground. Always look what you have on the sides. Always look at your your sky at your clouds where the sun is. I don't really follow the rule of thirds too much. I just kind of whatever looks pretty in my mind. That's what I try to put out there. But the rule of thirds is a good rule to go by if you do just starting out. But always, always, always make sure you move around and you look at all your elements. So if there are rocks, if they're staking, there's a tree trunk. If there's a tree, you want to use all these elements as leading lines into your into your photo into your main subject. And, of course, you want to do this during beautiful life. 4. Chapter 3 Composition: the most important aspect of photography is composition. Now people struggle with composition, as I did when I first started. People don't understand composition. It takes a long time to understand it. So I have the signed three simple rules that I go by that helped me with my composition every single time I'm out shooting. Now, what is composition? Composition is how you paint the photograph. How you, um, when you click that shutter, you already have that photograph in your mind. It's how you compose it and put it in that lens into that camera to tell the story you're trying to tell now. My three rules that I go by is light, a main subject and leading lines. So that is light a subject. My were my focal point, where I want my viewers to go to and leading lines to take me there. Now, light photography is light. Is recording light into a device? Um, so once you have the right light, you know whether it's sunrise sunset, whether it's the middle of the day. If the light is right, which you can accomplish by your settings, then you need your other two things, which is your main subject, which here it's my horizon. Usually in landscape photography or horizon is their main subject. And then you need leading lines. You need to invite people into your photograph somehow. How do you accomplish that? Well, you gotta walk around the scene. You got to spend some time looking at the, um would you have in front of you? Because if you framed the image incorrectly, it can be a boring photograph. So composition is absolutely everything and is the one thing that most people struggle with in my workshops. The first thing I asked people is, What do you struggle with? Everybody says composition. They don't know where to point the camera. They don't know what they're seeing. And this is why you need to have a clear vision of what you want to put into that photo you wanna portray. You want to put yourself in that photograph and you want to invite in, guide people into that photograph. So let me explain. So here I I want the horizon to be my focal point, right? My mountains and this beautiful scene off this leg this is Lake Tahoe, and the son hadn't set just yet. It was probably an hour before it was setting. Maybe a little less. Um, but I saw this and I really, really loved it. So I wanted this to be my main subject, but I wanted to use this rocks to invite my people into the photograph. So let's dissect the photo. So I placed my camera to the right in front of this off this main rocks here, Um, I wanted the the I to go to this rocks and then start traveling around and wonder into this beautiful, um, beautiful horizon. So I used this rocks and I also use the movement of the clouds. You cannot only look at one thing. You have to look at multiple things when you are out there. You can't just focus on this big rock, and you can just focus on the clouds or on the horizon. You have to keep thinking and thinking and have a balanced shot. So here I used the clouds to lead the viewer into the eye into the into the horizon, to be to guide the viewer's eye into the horizon. Now, I wanted this to be my start off off the eye off the wondering eye. So when you first look at this photograph, you immediately look at this for this rock. But then your eye immediately wonders off over here. Now, if your eye drops down here, it immediately starts coming back up to the horizon to this rocks. Same here on the on the right hand side. I have this rock that some purpose. I wanted to catch that to balance the photo out. And with this with this particular rock and also this rocks over here, you're balancing the photo out to give it a nice balance. And here you're inviting the eyes toe walk to the horizon. And as you can see my cloud movement now this you have to be precise. I observed the slots for a while, and I made sure that the clouds were going the correct way. They're not a lot of clouds, but there are some and there are lines in the within the clouds. So that's how you composition works. So every time you step into into a scene, first look at it and then imagine. Put your feelings in there. Imagine. Look at what you're seeing and feel. I feel, you know if you're happy if you're sad, um, put that into your photograph. So if it's very colorful scene, um, you know, you're obviously happy you're out there looking at things. You want to put those feelings in the photograph or else people won't understand it. People won't see what you're seeing, and you always need leading lines. People have a really hard time with this, but once you get it, you will always get it. So you always need leading lines to invite the viewer into the photo. If you didn't have leading lines, it is just kind of like a snapshot. Kind of you don't know what you're looking at, so you have to create this leading lines to invite your viewer and yourself into the photograph there. Three simple rules that I use, Um, but they're very, very important again. Is the light your main subject and you're leading lines. If you work with those 33 rules in mind every time, you're always going to get a good photograph. So let's go on to the next one in this next photo. This is a beautiful photo. I really, really like this. When I was very, very happy when I shot this. It's an incredible photo again. I am metering for for the brightest for the brightest, um, spot here where the sun Waas and everything else was really dark. But in post production, we can fix that, and I will go through that on the editing. As far as the composition goes, I used every single one of these rocks place a very key role in the composition. So, as you can see, this is the main rock. This is called the Bonzai Rock in Lake Top. And ah, it was very important for me to capture that rock. But if I zoom in and just captured that rock, it doesn't make any sense. So you want to put you want to start drawing the viewer into the rock by using this other rocks? So I place myself kind of right in front of this rock And I looked around and I looked in my viewfinder and I saw this this rocks or to the side. And that's how I wanted to start my I to come in here. Same with the's, this player off key role in leading your eye into this this bonsai rock same with this mountain right here. When it comes down, that's leading your I into that rock. Um, and then you have your mountain range, so that's also your main subject. But when you first look at this photo, you immediately see this huge rock, which is exactly what I was trying to achieve is the story I was trying to tell to my viewers. So here I used very precisely. I shot this many different times from very many angles. It just didn't look right. It didn't look correct. Correct. It looked unbalanced. He looked up out of proportion. It just didn't look right. Until I started experimenting with this composition. I was actually on top of the rock around, kind of like this one. Very uncomfortable. I was kind of where it was late. It was cold, but I had been shooting all day and and I just wanted to get it right. But if you look at all this for all this rocks, they play a very important role in this composition. This this leading lines creates this photograph. If you just zoom in here, you have nothing. You have a rock that's not photography. Photography is how you compose it? Um, how you paint the light. So you always want to use this cloud. See this class other? They're coming in in this way. I used those as well to lead the eyes into the rock. So again, the three principles it's light, beautiful light. Um, my main subject and my leading lines to this main subject into this beautiful light. So every time you're out there, just think about your composition. You need you need an important, um, an important subject. Something something you want to the ice to go to. And you need some some way off getting the viewer there. So in this case, there this rocks again. Um, every single one of those rocks. I exactly thought of it this way so I could get this exact result. Now, you're gonna fail a lot of the times, but if you keep moving around, you'll get it just right. So as you can see, this rocks kind of follow the lines, The other oval and they're pointing at this main rock that's key to this composition. This rock is kind of out of place, but these these rock and this one, they balance it out and keep keep your eye moving forward. So as you can see, when you first glance that this your eye starts here and then you have this rock to jump to jump you more into the scene. And if you're right, comes down a little bit. You have this one that keeps you going and same with this. Let me change into this. Ah, pen. Here. Same with this. It creates this line, this continuous line that keeps going this way and everywhere. You looking in this scene, you can see that this rocks are kind of aiming among May on my main subject. Same with this rockets. A noble, but it's kind of pointing this way. This this formacion rocks. Now I shot this formacion Iraq's a swell and he didn't look interesting. It was just a information or rocks. But I use them here to kind of guide. See how they create this triangle that helps your I. That helps the viewers. I kind of close in on your own your subject on your main scene. This is exactly what you're trying to achieve with every single photo that you take. So you need it. Step back you need to take your time. And you always need leading lines. Always for every single photo. I'm not sure how they're photographers. Shoot, but I can tell you that without leading lines without some something to invite your eye into the photo, you're not going to create an interesting photo here. You have a lot going on, but it all leads to this particular Bonzai rock. And I think the composition is quite nice. Here you have a beautiful mountain range and here, even the light. See how this clouds are also common in even this. This light right here kind of makes an arrow in. If your eyes starts in the openness here, it kind of goes over here and then it jumps to this rock. So in every in every aspect of this photo, when you're looking at it, you have this leading lines. Same with this water. Here we have a huge triangle, which is this one and this closest in again. It's closing in this bond side rock. So that's composition. That's what you want. That's what you always want. You want this leading leading lines and that's where people struggled the most. It's in composition without the leading lines, You're never gonna get a good photo. So let's go to the next one. Here we have. Ah, the Grand Canyon again. Same exact thing. Um, we have a lot going on here, but we have one main subject, which is the sun. So I want to invite people into the Grand Canyon. But I want him to go to the horizon. To the son. This is a landscape photo. Beautiful skies. And I wanted him to come to the sun. Now I shot this again from many angles, and I couldn't get it just right until I shot it from here. I wanted to get the Colorado River and and I did. And it also helps us a leading line. It starts you off here and he kind of disappears. Goes into nowhere over here. But this helps your I move through the photograph towards your horizon towards your main subject. So again, you have beautiful light. You have a subject and you have leading lines here. I was so able to use the canyons natural lines. I was able to use those to guide the viewer into the photograph. And if you keep even following this lines right here, you can You're gonna end up coming back. This just guides you back into this into this beautiful sunset. So again, you want to use leading lines to carry the viewer into the photograph. So every time you're out there and you I as seen you look at it, you're gonna see a lot, but focus on your main on your main subject on your main composition, and then start working on your leading lines. So here, as you can see, the the race of the sun. This were also very important into catching the eye in immediately putting the I into the horizon. So when you're shooting a landscape, everything is always in focus 90% of the time. Everything is always in focus on this. You're trying to achieve something else. But I always should everything in focus, which will be at f 11 or above. And I want you in that in the, uh, editing videos following this video. But I always have this leading lines. Um, as you can see, everything is perfectly in focus, and that's because I want the I to start walking into the photo. So by this being in focus, you, you glance at it and you're like, Wow, that's that's nice. And then you kind of fall into this river and all these crevices just walk you right into this. This sunset. If your eye starts off right here, you immediately drop into this. Ah, this riches, this lines, this natural canyon lines and again they walk you into the photograph. Now, this photo is not very complex in composition, in the in the fact that you have just a big hole in the ground. But I did have to find some sort off, off off subject, which was the son. And then I had to find a way to invite the viewer into that subject. This photo is very beautiful, is very peaceful. I felt very at peace when I was shooting it. And I think it shows on this photograph. You always wanna put your feeling in that in the photos. As you can see this, these clouds also play a role there kind of moving. Um, the this corner kind of throws you back in and you immediately jump into the sun. So without leading lines, you have nothing. I showed I shot this, um, right after sunset. It's beautiful, but it's not. It's not the same with the with the sun so prominent right here, which makes the photo very, very beautiful. Um, so again, always focus on your leading lines. Um, it's just it makes the photo. Even if you come down here, See these little riches there kind of aiming up and that in that again, you're I immediately wonders into the sun, and that's exactly what I was trying to do. So very, um, very peaceful image. But every single aspect of the image was was thought about and considered, um, again, without composition, you don't have an image, you have a boring image. You want to create an exciting image, and you want to create something that is meaningful to you, and you want to share that with your viewers. So in that, let's go to the next one. So this is a very different photograph in that you don't really have a foreground here. I did. It's just grass, but you don't you don't have Ah, it's harder to compose just because of what we had. So let me told, tell you what I what I used on what I did. So I wanted to get the tree line. That was my focal point. Obviously, my light, my light was beautiful. I wanted this cold tea to come through, but also this heat from the sun That was settings. Kind of like ice. I see hot. But I needed a way to invite the viewer into the photo. So I used this trees. Um, let me change to pen here. So I used his trees and this is 123 I wanted this main tree to be my main focal point in my main leading line. So when you glance at the street, you're immediately in the horizon, in the colors. But with this three trees, you create this triangle, you create one here, and you create one here. So your eye is always bouncing off this main tree into this other two little trees. Your I can escape that, and that was done purposely, Um, again, you can zoom in and get a nice tree line as well, but this one tells more off a story. Here you have a bay tree, two little guys next to it, and then the beautiful image. So It's a very simple image, but in its composition it was it was complex. Teoh make it interesting and supposed to just havin a tree line. Let's go to the next one. So here is the same thing. Same concept. Except I have the sun. Now, of course, the sun makes it much more interesting. And to some, a lot more beautiful. Um, and this is Ah, I really like this image. Um And I compressed the son. I zoomed in and we'll go over the settings in the editing video. Um, so all the setting surround er but here I used all these trees as my leading lines. As you can see all this trees, I placed in my camera as leading lines because I wanted the viewer to immediately just go to the horizon and obviously see the sun. Not that you need much leading lines here because everything's focused around the sun. But you do need a balance. And you do need to invite that viewer in s so he doesn't get lost over here. With nothing here, you could have nothing. Instead, you have this trees that keep you in this horizon so very important toe always have your subject surrounded by the leading lines, which, in this particular case, they're my trees. Um, and I think this was beautifully done. Now I could have cropped the image in the field. I could have cropped this, um, this cloud out this cloud out up here, But I decided to keep it because I think this cloud in this black foreground gives it a really nice balance. So it creates mystery. It creates entry in your main scene, which is again the sun, the horizon and all these tree lines. So when you're composing a photo, you have to think off every single thing that's out there, including your clouds, how they're forming and how they affect your foreground. So always keep that in mind when you're out there again, you don't have a lot going on here as forest leading lines. But it is very important to have ah, very well composed, well balanced shot. And again, I achieved that by using the streets as my main leading lines. And of course, the sun created this beautiful color, which is the beautiful light I was talking about. So I have light on my main subject and I have my leading lines. Let's go to the next one now. This was a very interesting morning. There was about 20 photographers and everybody looked really bored because there was no clouds. Now I wasn't thrilled, but I wasn't. Ah, I wasn't quite as a sadist everybody else seemed to be. I think we still got a beautiful image here and what I did here. I challenged myself to create a beautiful image. Out, off, out, off. You know, not a lot. Um So I I waited for the sun to rise. At this point, most of the photographers were done, but I waited for the sun to rise. And then I used the leading lines in my palm trees. Um, not only in the palm trees, but in the reflection as well. Now, this is very important to have the leading lines in this reflection because this when your eye starts off in this corners, the immediately start walking you into the sun, which is your main subject. Same with appear. If your viewer starts from appear, you immediately get get. Ah, get caught by this trees so your viewer immediately gets drawn into the sun. So no Nobody just glances at the sun real quick. Your I naturally just wonders. That's just how we are just how it works. So here I also used this middle line. So no matter where you're at in this photograph, when your eye drops from the top, you get strong back and buy this lines. So I think it's a very beautiful image. Um, we don't have a lot going on, but we do have a lot same with this. This Ah, this race of the sun here. They also helped the viewer draw the i n. Now this is something that we do we don't think about When we look at the picture, we just kind of look at a picture and then our Istres wondering. But it's your job to keep that I wondering in the right direction and in a balanced way. So again, I thought about my setting so I could get this light rays. This was shot with a very small aperture so I could get this long. Race will go over those settings in the editing photos in the editing videos, but, um eso I thought off everything I thought of the high wanted the sun to reflect. I thought I wanted this. Ah, the reflections on the water to divide me in here. I also wanted my eye not to get lost and confused and board. So I wanted to use this up. This lines a swell. So as soon as you glance at this photo from any direction, you're going to get drawn into the sun, which is my main subject. So again, um, you need light, which is nice and and and, ah, dark here. That's done purposely. You need a main subject, and then you need the lines to invite the viewer into this subject. So not a lot going on, but a complex image in its in its own right. I could have made this completely black that would you didn't see the shadows, But then I think you would lose a lot of this. A lot of the the into the entry, the interesting nous of this particular photograph. So let's move on to the next one. So here, this is one of my favorite photos. Um, again, you have to put yourself into this photograph. Now here is my main subject. Um, immediately, you you're drawn into the beautiful sunset. Um, this is a complex damage because it's it's there's a lot going on here. So once you go once you Once you look at this, uh, once you look at this feather, you immediately get drawn into the sunrise. Um, so when I tell you that you need to put yourself in every single photograph that you do everything that you take, that's exactly what I mean. In this photograph, I I was the feather and the sun represented kind of the world. You know, this huge, massive thing that you have no control over, Um, and this was my walkway to it. I'm kind of walking through life into the world. Um, So I wanted to make sure I got this feather in there by using a slow shutter speed. I was able to blur the water. And what that did is it created this movement. It energized the photo. It created this movement that helps me and the viewer lead him into the sunset into the world. So you're walking into the world here. That's me walking into the world. And this photo has touched a lot of people because they can really feel it and they can understand it. And that makes me really happy there, like Wow, that feather And that scene is just insane. And it is It's cool. Um, now you're I never gets border lost here. It's It's an immediate It's an immediate thing that your ideas. You look at the feather than you look at the sun, period. Um, But when you're ice stars wondering anywhere else all these elements this clouds draw you back in all this beautiful water, it drags you back in so you can bounce back and forth from the water to the sun, and it just you know, that's that's where you're going. Um, here, this water Here's this lines that kind of help you going toothy into the feather, which is very, very important for competition for this particular composition. Um, but as soon as you go into the feather, your eyes go into the sun again. Done intentional. I had a very little time to shoot this photo, but I got it. Um, so once you get your camera settings and then you can really get moments like this. So again, you have to put your feelings and your emotions into this photographs and you have to. You have to have light your subject. Here we have two. It's more. It's a very complex image, and you have to have your leading lines, as you can see, just the foremost leading lines. If you look closely closely, this sand is going up so your eyes never dropped down. They just follow this lines, and as soon as you get here, then you start following the water into the sun and as you can see the sun right here, I also wanted to get some race here. This starts starburst effect, but as you can see, here's this triangle. Here's this beautiful triangle off light, so you're always connected. You're always in the sun, back to the feather, but your eye is always coming into this direction. So when I say you need leading lines for everything, you need leading lines for everything. Whether you're shooting trees or water, you're leading lines are the most important period, and I'm very, very happy with this images is one of my favorite photos have ever taken to this day that's going to the next one. So here, same exact thing. Let me explain this composition This was more of a complex photo, since there wasn't a lot for me to work with, as far as, ah, Focal remain subject. So what I did is, um let me go into the shapes here. So what I did is I used this as my focal point. So your viewer immediately comes here and starts going into this thing. That is my main focal point. But it's also my horizon, which is which is this beautiful, beautiful sunrise with this beautiful colors. But see these little sand lines? Those were key in my composition in that I made sure that they sat how they sat in my frame toe lead my eye into my main into my focal point. So you can look at it one of two ways so you can look at this lines and they kind of create this patterns, and you can just kind off slowly fall into it. And then you fall into the focal point. Now you're I can also look at these lines and they'll guide you right to this rock. Any of one of these lines will lead you right to this rock. If you start here, you'll come here and then to this rock that was done purposely That way your eye has a balance and has something to follow. So once you're once you're here, you're I have somewhere to go Whether you're I see said Like I explained in layers or whether you're right follows this lines into this mainline, you immediately go to the to my focal point to my subject, which is this pattern right here. Now, you also use the cloud movement, Um, to help me in this. I shot this from this side, and it didn't look any interesting at all. Um, that's because the clouds were coming at me. Um, they weren't going anywhere else. So by the Klaus by the clouds coming towards me or into the photo, you can use him to guide the viewer into the photo. Here's this empty emptiness of clouds. It creates a narrow, as you can see, creates a huge arrow, an invisible arrow. And that's some purpose. A place that, purposely your eye has somewhere to go to. Ah, same with this line right here. If your viewer gets stuck in this line, it'll guide him right to the subject. So everything is composition every single thing that I do is very well thought off. I don't just point the hammer and shoot that will never, ever give you a good composition, and I cannot repeat that enough. Um, these leading lines are just extremely important in creating an interesting subject and an interesting topic for the viewer and for yourself again, a very peaceful light. Ah, morning. I was very, very happy. And you can see that in the colors you can. You can feel that it's a beautiful images, just nice and fun and kind of calming and soothing. And I felt very apiece at this moment, and I was I I think I put that in the photograph. So again, think off every single bit of lines that you see all the patterns you see, so find your subject. You know, find your light, but then make sure you always think off every pattern you see and use those to walk the viewer into the photo. It is very, very important in creating all of your compositions. It is the only way you're gonna created composition. Let's go to the next one. So here's another one of my favorite photos as you can see this photo is, um it would have been very boring without the clouds and without this grass in the foreground. So what I did here is I did a very long, um uh, long exposure because I wanted to blur this clouds enough to draw my viewer into the composition. I just wanted to get him to the horizon and get myself to the horizon, because it's just beautiful, right? So I used this pattern off grass, which kind of creates a triangle which points at the horizon. And then I used this clouds to guide my viewer into the into the photo. Um, as you can see, oldest clouds, no matter what angle you look at their pointing that way, if I would have shot this from a different angle, the clouds wouldn't have looked this way. They would have been I headed towards a different direction. So you always have to follow the clouds. And you always gotta find your foreground to match it. Um, you know, to match what your eyes going where you want your viewer to go. So if that if you can, If you can find that you're not gonna get a good a good composition. So by framing this this way and by standing where I was standing, I was able to create this composition and this leading lies lines to invite the viewer into this beautiful horizon. Again, you have light, you have your main subject and you have describe us to draw the viewer. And now this grass also serves as leading lines in a very, very hidden way. This lines are these grass lines are kind of standing up like this, and they're they're pointing in a very subtle way. They're pointing the viewer into the horizon. So not only not only is, um is the the grass a good foreground subject, it's also helping the viewer fall into this horizon, which is exactly what I want to do. I think it's a beautiful image. I am very pleased with it. On a Z, you can see this grass. If you just followed along. He points you to the horizon. So all those keys, all those elements played a key role in creating this beautiful compositions. Let's go to the next one. So here's another very complex photo. Um, this as two elements as well. So you have a rock Here. You have the rock here and then you have your your son here. Now again, I wanted to create this starburst effect to help the viewer fall into the sun a little more . Not that the viewer needs help. You have so much going on. But all my lines are pointing to my scene. So again, beautiful light a subject. Here we have to two subjects a subject and then you're leading lines. So what do you see First, When you walk into this image, you immediately stare at this photo. But then your eye starts wandering into the sun. And that's why I used this water. I used to slow shutter speed to slow down this water so it could come into this year. I can come into this beautiful composition. Same here. Anywhere you look at this water, the movement I created is for your eyes on purposely, for your eye to come into this into this area and start walking towards the sun. So even if you start here off to the side, I used this rocks toe guide you to guide the viewer to guide myself into the beautiful horizon into the composition. Same with this clouds. I I was standing actually on top of this rocks moments before I shot it here on. The composition was just completely wrong because the clouds were going the wrong way. So I had to place myself in front of the clouds, since they were kind of creating this V pattern into the sun. And that's what creates his image. So interesting. It's all these lines that guide you into the sun and though subtle, subtle lines, But they all make sense. And I thought of him all very, very, very carefully. Before I started before I took this photo, I composed this in my head so again, super important that you know what you're looking at and that you invite the viewer into this into your photographs by by using this leading lines Very, very cool photograph and always look at your clouds. A lot of my students always look at me staring at the sky there, like what are you looking at? The clouds are cool, right? I'm like, Yeah, the clouds are cool, but that's not what I'm looking at. I'm looking at the patterns that they're forming in the way which way they're moving because that's gonna invite my viewer into the photograph. So keep that in mind. Cloud movement extremely, extremely important from one to the next one. Here's another complex scene, but I really like this photo. So I wanted my, uh, my main subject to be this guy, the fishermen and kind of this bird. But as you can see, I have leading lines everywhere here, even with the birds, even though they look messy there. I actually shot this a few different times when they were moving to get the right composition. I wanted this bird up here and I wanted to create this movement in the image. That's why they're blurry, I shouted. Kind of fun. A slow shutter speed slow enough to create some blur in the birds. That son on purpose. I didn't want him perfectly frozen because I wanted to create energy and movement in my image. Um, now, how do I invite this? Ah, the viewer into the photo. So I obviously invite him through this leading lines. Here's the shoreline, which I placed there through my viewfinder purposely. Then I saw the water line which guys you right into the but the right into the fishermen right here. And then the birds create this pattern. So if your eye starts up here, you immediately follow these birds down to the fishermen. If your eye starts here, you you bounce back and forth from the birds. But you get to the fishermen. So again, everything I did was thought about well right before while I was taking the photo. So you have beautiful light. You have your subject and you have leading lines. My three keys and my three secrets to creating this photographs. Um, on everything I do, you must have leading lines, guys. You must You must have ah subject. And you must have light. Ah, beautiful light or just any kind of light. Make it work for your scene and put your feelings into it. Now, let's go to my city escapes and go over those. So here you have a beautiful, beautiful skyline shot. Um, this I shot this in Miami. But as you can see, I used this highway as my main leading line into the my main subject. So again, beautiful light and then leading lines and your subject. Right. So let's ah, so let's walk through it. So here, if your eye starts down here in the corner, you're getting walked into the the skyline right away. If your eye starts here in this corner, it's a little dark. But then it falls into this leading line. Seem with this it all it's all it was. I placed it like this. Exactly. So you're I could fall into the Miami skyline, so I wanted people to see that it's a Miami skyline, but I wanted to create a lot of faction in cityscape photography. It's a little bit easier than landscape photography just because you have a lot more going on and you have a lot more to play with. So here I have all this traffic again. You have to wait for the traffic to come to start moving. So without the traffic moving, you're not gonna get this street. This light streaks. So ah, lot of the time you're sitting up there to both directions of cars. This ones were coming. This is the headlights that are moving. These are the tell lights that you see red. So in cities gives you always have a lot more going on, So composition is a little easier. So here I use the streets, the streets, the streets, the streaks and, uh, also my clouds, as you can see, a place myself directly below the clouds where they were headed towards Thea towards the skyline. So if I would have shot this from a different angle the line, the clouds would look completely different. Completely off. Um, not This did take a lot of waiting. I was up here for a couple hours because I wanted to get the streaks and I wanted to get the clouds moving in just right. So again, guys, beautiful light. Um, you have your skyline as your main subject, 5. Chapter 4 Shortcut Intro: in this video, we're going to cover some of the short cuts and the simple tools we use before we actually get to the editing. It is very important to understand these that way it creates your editing process that much easier. So first thing I want to show you guys here in the develop module, we have all of our editing tools. Um, now it's I like to shoot. Used this when they're compressed, it creates a much neater workflow, and that way you don't get overwhelmed with all the settings from all of the's. So in order to do these, all you have to do is right. Click and you're going to check solo mode. So if I own check it, you'll see that all of this will be open the whole entire time. This creates a lot of distractions, and it creates your work for a bit messy. So here I will click on solo mode, and as you can see now, my menu is nice and neat. So by every time I click on one of these, the other one closest and this one opens. So that's our first step into creating an organized workflow. The next thing I want to cover is our local adjustments. So all of these appear our local adjustments. So what does that mean? That means that this disease can be ah, placed on one of your images and they're only going to edit locally. So anywhere in the photo you use this adjustment. That's the only place that this will edit. It's a local adjustment and let me raise that. Now, by doing these, you have a lot more control over your entire image. So this is a graduated filter. This is a radio filter, and this is an adjustment brush. They're all local adjustments, and they can all be used multiple times across an image. Now, let me close out of that. Now, all the rest of these there are global adjustments. What does that mean? Well, let me open my basic panel. So global adjustment means that this is going to adjust everything your image globally, so everything in the image is going to be adjusted. So let me reset that. And same with Thea, the all of this sliders. It simply means that every time you touch them, they're going to be, ah, global adjustment and adjustment throughout the entire image. Every pixel of the image. Um, let me put that bag that was at 32. So we need to understand those very, very well. So global adjustments are all of these local adjustments are appear. Next thing I want to talk about that we won't be using in this tutorial is our tone curb. Now, this is basically the same as our highlights shadows white and black sliders that I have here. And I choose to use thes over the tongue curb because I believe that I have a lot more control with ease. Now, I very seldomly used the, um this tone curve. I do still keep it in my in my menu. If you'd like to get rid of it or you have to do is right, click and check tone Curb. If you want to back right, click and check tone curb again. I don't use it. I believe it's pretty much the same as these four adjustments and I have a lot of control over that right here, so we won't be using a lot of tongue curb. Um, another thing I'd like to discuss is when we are editing and we're move our sliders. A simple way to resettlement start over is to double click on the word off that slider itself. So if you make some sort of mistake or freaking out and you don't know how to reset it, instead of dragging it back and wondering where zero is, you can just double click, and that will reset it. I also do that often throughout the videos. You will see that. So please keep that in mind. Double click on any word and it will reset your slider to zero. Um, so that brings us into history. So here on this panel, you have a history off every single thing you've done to the image. So any time you make a mistake or you've your phone rings and you look over and you click something and something happens and you want to go back to toe earlier from that image, you can just click here. And it has absolutely all of your history from when you started. So all of this is your history, and that is very important to know that what you don't start debated over, and the one of the very top that is your latest adjustment. But sometimes you hear the phone ring or you have to go to the bathroom and you'll accidentally hit something. It's very important to know that your history is right here. Now I keep this close throughout the entire editing process that you'll see in the next videos simply to to get more, um, Philip the screen more to make it easier for everybody to see, including myself. But if you make it a habit to have your history here, that's OK, too. I often use this history many to go back to places. Um, sometimes I'll make an adjustment and I won't like it. So I'll just click the history and that'll take me back. Another very important tool is, um, this toolbar right here and what this does is it allows us to, ah, secrets to zoom in, zoom out. Um, but most importantly, when you press the Waikiki and this will give you a before and after now here you can set up. Set that up. Harvard, you'd like you can have it site side by side. You can have it up and down. You can have it like this. This is my favorite because I can see everything that I've ever done. So this is really important to have and that's pressing your Waikiki to check before and after and you'll see throughout the videos we will be using the Y key often. Now, the next thing I want to cover is the okey. Once we have this local adjustments Ah, that they would create an adjustment here to see what we're doing. We're gonna press the okey, and this will highlight that adjustment in red and this her limit. Draw another one here, and this will just make it easier for you to see what you're doing. So by pressing the okey, you can turn it on and off. And this is very helpful when you're first starting out the middle. Edie's So those air some simple, um, things that we're gonna be using pretty much all the time. Well, we're editing. Ah, and those are very, very important shortcuts. Very important keys to keep your light room organized into start developing some sense of repetition in your workflow that where you can create your own signature style. But this is very, very easy to use, and it simplifies your workflow by 100% 6. Chapter 5 Fisherman & Birds: so let's get right to it. Often in the landscape photography, we have to take more than one picture. Um, let me go to my develop module here so you can see this. So what I did here, I was focusing on this bird's, um, to guide my eye into this fisherman. And you can also do it the other way around Your the fishermen can be your a point of interest on Deacon. Your I can go here and then come out the picture. So either way, we're creating a triangle here. Um, don't worry about this. Ah, this crooked horizon. I know it's crooked, but I was shooting on the fly so often you have to. When I saw this guy going out there to fission of this flock of birds, I just literally dropped my back and ran to the beach to the water to get this photo here, I have another one. So I took probably 15 pictures. Um, I wasn't spraying and praying. I was, uh, kind of moving around a little bit here. I wanted to make sure I got a profile of a bird. Um, and I got this guy kind off working Hey, had just thrown this bucket right here into the water. I think he was cleaning it. He had fishing there something. So when I do this, it's important too, to take multiple photos off multiple things in this within the same scene. So here were used in this line right here to guide her I n and it's very important to have leading lines. So, as you can see, this is our leading line. The horizon in this shoreline almost meet at the fishermen, which is the story you're trying to tell. So we have a good story here. We have a fisherman, we have the ocean and we have the birds. Same here, except this one's a little more calm. Ah, less chaos. Ah, little more peaceful, a little bit more colorful. So you kind of gotta decide what you like best. I like them both, and I'm going to edit both of them so you can see. So let's get started with the editing here. My camera settings. 11 25th of a second F 11. I s 0 500 now. I shot this at F 11 because I wanted everything to be perfectly in focus. As you can see, I went up, I blasted my I s 02 500 that's OK, because I wanted to make sure I didn't get the fishermen blurry. I wanted to get him perfectly. Still another fish. The the birds are okay. If they are blurry, that shows motion. It shows action in your photo. So this is actually really, really good, is what I was trying to get. But here I wanted to get him completely still if I would off, you know, drop my shutter speed. Um, I would have gotten blurry water a little bit more blur on the birds, but he his movement would have also been blurry. And I was not looking for that. So I hope that makes sense. So any camera now you can blast the i s so pretty high, Um, mine. I can go up to 3000 eyes so and still get really, really good quality images. So don't worry about pushing your eyes so pushing the ice, so it's absolutely okay. I do it and I do it often. Okay, so let's get this off. Always shoot. Rob, I always try to shoot raw so we'll get that off. And first thing is first. I'm terrible at this. And you see, with most of my photos, most of my edits I'm just bad getting my horizon light straight. But I always know that that's the first thing I'm going to fix in post production. So I'm going to click here. This is, um, took to correct my horizon. This is my crop tool, and I'm just going to align it with this grid right here, said his line. That's what I'm looking at. So I am looking at this line, and I just want to get it straight. Now. It's got a little bit of work to it, so it's not going to be perfectly straight. So I think that's pretty close. I don't want to crop the image. Maybe I will later. Right now, I do not. So I will click out of that. And as you can see my horizons finally straight. I want to come to my lands corrections and then click on this profile and then I wanna enable profile corrections and that gets the warp a little bit off and always remove your chromatic aberration. Now, chromatic aberration is this line off. We're color you yet? Here. I don't know how to explain it. Um, and the easiest way to explain it is this city's green line of color. Well, you will have that in most of your photos. Maybe green. Maybe some other sort of color about a watch. When you click this, that green goes away. So that's what chromatic aberration does. It cleans that up, and it works really, really well. So now that we did that, we can go back to our basic panel again. This is our most, um, powerful panel in all of flight room. So first thing I want to do is I won't open my my shadows a little bit. Is one of the able to see what I'm working with. I still want him quite dark. Um, let me reset that by clicking shadows toys. You reset that in what I'm thinking right now I want this photo to look, I'm kind of intriguing. And by keeping him dark, it does that. So I'll open up the shadows, maybe right about there, maybe a little less, maybe right about there. All right. I want to come to my contrast, and I'm gonna bring the Contra stop and this will give it a punch. It makes the image punchy. As you can see, her colors came out quite a bit just from bringing the contrast up. Now I want to come to the vibrance. I never, ever touched the saturation. And there's a reason for that. When I first started in photography, I always saw this overly saturated photos. And I didn't want to be a photographer that did that to their photos because they to me and ruined them. It looked terrible, so I just decided not to ever use. The saturation is lighter and I really never do. None of my photos are saturated, Not with this slider. I only use my vibrance slider and I will bring this up just enough. If you're just getting into this and you're just learning your sliders, don't be afraid to push it all the way up. See what it does. Bring it all the way it down, See what that does? Um, so I am usually around the 40. Sometimes I push it to 50 60 if the if the image calls for it, This does not call for that. This cause maybe for, like, a 30 between 30 and 40 is good, because it's got plenty of color and you don't want to overdo it, So I think that looks really nice. Um, so now the highlights. Usually the highlights get rid of your heart spots all throughout, and I don't I don't use my history. A lot of people die of either history, Am I? Don't I try not to use it. And I tell you why. I think your eyes are a much more, um, judge off an image than this thing will ever, ever be. If you start using the history room, you will be so fixated on this fist on this history am you will stop paying attention to your photo. That's why I don't use it. I think my eyes are a much better a judge or calibration off what's happening in the image . And if you train yourself not to use the history, Graham, you will become better at using your camera in the field. You know what settings you want. You know what you're looking for. Instead of relying on that hissed a gram. So try not to use it. Um, some people love it. I never used it. I have no idea what my history Graham looks like. When I shoot or when I bring it in. I never, ever touch it. Okay, so back to the highlights. So we'll bring those down and that all that does is give me a little bit more color here. I don't really even need to do that. And now, if I want, I can bring out my exposure. Just attack, as you can see, makes everything a little bit nicer, a little bit crisper, and that looks really nice. Now let's check before and after serve. You pressured Waikiki. It will always give you before and after, and you can check this during your whole entire process so you can see what's happening. And I think this looks really, really cool. We didn't do much to it. We just did a few sliders and look at the difference already. So, in fact, you could call this a finished image. Um, it's very nice. It's subtle changes. Um, I think it's beautiful now. One thing I always tell my students is the temperature, the white balance. It's just I shoot it automatic, um, out of the camera and is usually really good. But what I try to give my photographs is the feel. When I was there this particular day, I remember it was hot. So if you bring this your temperature to the left it cool. Sit down. If you bring it to the right, it heats it up or warms it up, if you will. So I used one a warm it up just a tad. And as you can see, if I warm it up, it brings out this color's much, much more. So that's really nice. Maybe right about there. That looks really good. So I'm really happy with this photo, except that I still see a little bit of warp on the horizon. So I'm going to come back to my profile. Corrections or Lance Corrections. I'm sorry and went to get a manual and look at this distortion right here. So when you click on it, you can see it get a little better. And if you click the other way, it works even better. That's way too much my computer. It's a little slow today on the thinking, but there you have it right about there. See how that looks perfect. Look at the horizon. What I'm looking at is this, um is this line this this horizon line in comparison to the to the grid? That's perfect. That is absolutely perfect. So I'm very happy when it comes. When it comes to that, I'll click out of that and that's really good. Let's click before and after there's her Waikiki before and after and look at that. We've come a long way. Just doing very simple. Um, very subtle, very simple slider movements. So you don't have to go crazy to make beautiful, colorful, wonderful images. Now, you always like to finish up my images with the details later. So I will bring this sharpening up. Maybe 2 50 and I'm gonna come to my masking and you're gonna hold down. You're option key, and then you're going to bring this up. Now, what's white is being sharpened. What is black stays untouched Here. I use one of focus on this guy on the fishermen, so I think that looks good. Click out of that. That looks really nice. Now, my sensors really clean, so I don't have any sensor spots, but it's always good before you finish up. You want to come to your spot removal tool? Okay. When you hit this spot removal tool, you're going to come down here to visualize spots. You're going to click on that, and now you're going to look for spots here. I don't have any, But when you have ah, when you have sensor spots, you will see these white donut dots looking, um, all over. So you're all old you're gonna do is clean him up by present, like, so that will clean them up. And always make sure you do that because there's nothing worse than having a beautiful photograph full off sensor spots. And I tell you what I do a lot of portfolio reviews, and that is the number one thing that I see. That and Crooked Horizons. It's okay to shoot your horizon, scripted like I do, because I'm just more focused on the composition out there. But make sure you always fix it in light room or whatever you used to it. So I think that's a completed image. I'm very, very, very, very pleased with it. Let's see before and after. Look at that. Perfect. Let's move on to the next one So here I have the same style of photo. Same style thing. Um and let's ah, let's let's edit that. So let me teach you something, so let me bring this up. So here's the photo. We just added it. If it's the same style of photo, the same style of thing, the same photo, if you will, you can command highlight this other one and then you're going to sink the settings. This is going to be under your develop modules Dio you press that and then you're gonna check. All this is all your settings you just made to this photo will press synchronize. And now we have the same settings to this photo. Now, if you like it great, you can just come here your horizon so often going to, ah, to not be the same. So if you like it grade, you have to cool edited photos shot in the same time, the same color palette. Um, if you want to make it a little different, then you can do that also. So let me right click reset. And let's get started on this on a swell. So let's see your settings. Source settings. 1 25th of his second F 11. I s 0 500 Um, it's an F 10. I'm sorry if 11 was the other one. I've 10. We still get everything in focus. Um, and I think this image is really, really nice. I really, really loved this bird. I think it's burning itself. Tells a story. So to me, this speaks to me. Just it could. It speaks about freedom. Um, this fisherman kind of represents me or the viewer. Um, there's this vast, beautiful ocean. And there's this bird of freedom kind of telling you, you conduce whatever you want to go, whatever you wish in the world in the planet at this time. And that's the story you're I was trying to convey, um, again here, the leading lines to the fishermen. Ah, here you stop. You look at this fisherman and your eye continues into this beautiful birds. So it all makes sense in a very subtle way. When you're looking at this photo, you kind of start here and your ID slides down here, goes up here and then comes this way. That's what you want to do. Tell your photos you want to put some sort of pattern that will invite the viewer. And I supposed to just taking a picture of something. Ah, this takes a lot of thought, a lot of practice, but it's doable. And I've learned to do that over the years simply by shooting every single day. So let's get started. So first thing is, first, let's use her crop tool and we're going to strain this rising up again. I'm not the greatest at this in the field, but I know to correct it immediately. So there you don't we have a perfect corrosion. Now, again, it's a little work. So well, come to her lens Corrections here will remove the chromatic aberration as I explain to you what it was before. And here are profile corrections. You don't worked it And that that looks really nice. Come back to my basic panel. And again, I wanna warm this image up because it was a warm, a warm morning. And I remember that clearly. Um and I'm gonna bring on my contrast and look at this. No contrast. Makes a flat image. Give it some contrast and look at that. Just makes it punchy. Gives it that punch. Ah, lot of people don't use this contrast on and it's crazy to me. They're kind. They're trying to make the image look like kind of like hdr. But to me, when you don't use the contrast slider, you're missing out on a ton of ton of detail. So I like to use it and does just how yet it, um to me, the images are much more dramatic that way. So now you can open up your shadows. Um, again, the purpose of this image for me was to let me click this Shadows were twice that reset it . The purpose of this image to me, was to keep this kind of mysterious and really to show the birds and the fishermen. And this tells the story. I don't I don't care about facial expression or any of that. To me, this tells a nice story. So I'm going to keep the shadows just like that. I'm going to bring the highlights down and again. I'm just trying to close some of this highlights and bring out this color just a tad more, and I think that works really well. Now let's see what happens when I bring up the whites, so bring it to taste just right about there. Now here's the quick tip guys, when you click your option key. Ah, people say that the correct amount off white and this works for the black stories when ah, little bit start showing on your screen. So see how that registered its Europe showing up. So supposedly, that's the correct amount. Now again, I like to do everything by mom by I, um And I think right about their looks. Looks right now. Same with the black. They say, When a little bit of black stars showing on your screen, that's the correct amount. Um, again, I'd like to do it by I I think my eyes a much better judge, then. Ah, computer. So I'll keep the blacks right there. Now I'm gonna bring in my vibrance again. I never touched a saturation for the simple reason that I've trained myself not to ever touch it, because when I was starting out, I didn't want to overdo it. So the vibrance, it's really nice right there. I think that looks really good. Um, so now every time I'm doing this, I like to step back, sit back and just observe it for a minute. And here I really love this shadows. I'm really loving all this. I love all this color. Um, but I want to get a little more blue out of this out of this sky. So these up here, our local adjustments Let me click out of this basic Hide it. And this is called a graduated filter. This is a very powerful filter. Now, when you click it click, the effect were twice that will reset. Old your sliders. It often stays from the last time you used it. So make sure you click the effect scored twice. Now what this does you conjoined? So click and drag drug down in the middle is where you'll be fading too. So this is your fate line. Now, this is a trick that I kind off developed. Um, just by tinkering with stuff. Um, So this area is going to change and watch this when I bring down the temperature, It just makes it blower. See how it's turning bluer. Look at that. If you bring it up, will come. It will make it yellow er or warmer, if you will, but I want to make this guy blurry was a blue sky this morning. I remember it clearly. I was so happy I felt so so blessed to be admiring this Incredible um, sunrise. Now here I'll use my saturation slider again. This is a local adjustment. What that means it's on Lee adjusting locally. That means, were you would you have it highlighted? And if you're president, okie this the red shows you what you've been adjusting so you can even bring it up attack if you don't want to come down so much. All right, So let's clean the old he again to get out of that and let's bring out the saturation. And with that, I just want to bring out my Reds a little bit. But that's not working. That's bringing out the blues more. So double click The saturation were that will reset the slider and I'm happy. I simply brought down my temperature, made it blower, and I'm happy with that. So let's click out of that now. Here's another trick. I want to come to my color. HLs hue, saturation. Luminous. This is called. So she will come to my color. All right. And then I'm gonna come to my red, so you click on the red and here we will bring up the red for the saturation. So if you bring it all the way up, you can see how crappy that looks. I just want to bring this out more. So maybe it's not the red. Maybe it's the orange. No, doesn't do anything. So the red does a tad. Not too much, but that's fine. Just subtle changes. Let me do that. And that looks really nice. So let's see before and after there's before and there's after and look at that just made the image pop completely with very subtle changes. So click the Y key to get out of that. Now let's go out tiny bit deeper. So now I'm going to use a local adjustment, which is my adjustment brush. So what this does? It creates a brush and were you click? That's what's going to be adjusted. So here I'll bring out my exposure, and I simply want to bring this up a little bit more. Just bring it out a little bit more. I think this reflections are really, really beautiful, so I want to bring him on. So here you can see how much they come out, and here you can bring it down and dark in a mop. But I just want a little subtle change just like that. Okay, so I'm gonna click on new I'm happy with that. So I'm gonna click on, Knew what this does. This creates a new brush. So see this thought You always have this pressure. When you go back, you can adjust it. This click on new and what I want to do. I want to bring this exposure up quite a bit. And I just want to highlight this water. This waves Look at this. Just very subtle changes. Super subtle. OK, now click the okey. And there you can see what you just did. Now, if that's too much, the reason I went up so high is so I could adjusted later. I just wanted to see what I was doing. Bring it down and its adjusted appropriately. There you can't just a little more bring it down a tad more and there you have it. So let's click done to get out of that. Look at that. That looks beautiful. Wow, It's just really, really nice. Now here are two birds appear in the distance when you zoom, although you can tell that they're birds. That kind of looked like sensor spots, so we're gonna click on the spot removal tool visualized spots. You can see it here with the visually spot. Here. You'll see your sensor spots so that will look kind of like donuts. So be aware of those. But here I'll delete those simply because they look. It looks like it looks dirty. Doesn't live like birds. To me, that looks much better. And look at that. I think that's a completed image. Click the Y key for before and after, and I think that looks really, really nice. Um, again. Top it off with the detail. Bring it up a little bit. Masking option. What's White is sharp. What's Black is left alone. And I think that looks really nice. Guys press the Y key before and after. We're just beautiful. Created this image. Let me bring this up so you can see both of them. So there is one image. There's the other image. As you can see two beautifully done images. You don't really need to do a lot and very subtle changes going very long way 7. Chapter 6 Settigns: So let's talk about camera settings and about depth of field. So in landscape photography you want your entire image to be completely in focus. Why is that? Because you're trying to tell a story via a landscape so you don't want anything to be out of focus. You want everything entirely in focus. So what is depth of field? So depth of field is the distance between the shortest, the closest spot to you to the farthest spot to the viewer and everything in between and how it is in focus. So at F eight and above, you can guarantee that your image will always be in focus. Now my rule of thumb is, and I tell this to all of my students toe always shoot at F 11 or above. Now F 11 or above will guarantee that everything will always be completely in focus. Now look at this rock. For example, this rockets 100% in focus, right? This little rock right here is 100% and focus and that focus carries throughout the entire image all the way to this mountain range. Now that is very, very important in landscape photography, because when you start drawing the I N. You're starting to tell the story off this landscape. You can see through the water here how everything is in focus and that carries throughout the whole entire scene. That's why it's a landscape photograph. You wonder viewer to take it all in, just like you to kidding when you were out there shooting it. So when you're telling a story off this beautiful scene, you want to tell the whole story not just a little bit off a story. You can really tell the whole story by having pieces of it out of focus, at least not with landscape photography that other. That method works in other kinds of photography. But in landscape photography, you want everything to be completely in focus again. Die guarantees that your viewer it's experiencing exactly what you experienced when you were shooting this image. Now our F stop is the only way to control that. You cannot control that with the ISO or with the shutter speed. The only way to control your depth of field is with your F stop or your average. Like I said, F eight or above is a is a good way to measure that into guarantee that everything is in focus now. I would never, ever go below F 11 unless I really, really had to is just a rule of thumb that I have that f 11 and above will guarantee a complete entire focus. Now let's move on to the next image. So, as you can see here, I shot this at a 14 and we'll start with the closest, the closest the spot to the viewer, to myself. And as you can see, that focus carries throughout all these layers. All these layers and all these pillars and that focus carries throughout this, um, this beautiful clouds. So everything is 100% and focus. Why? Because it's shot at F 14 now, everything else you can control with the eyes so and the shutter speed. But the F stop your aperture is the Onley thing to control the depth of field. So we make sure you're always shooting manual. And when you're shooting landscapes, do you want to make sure you're always shooting at F 11 or above? Now there will be cases where you can't such as when your shooting hand health. Then it's OK to able to lower that a little bit. But if you want to have everything in complete focus, you want to make sure you're shooting at at least F 11 or above. Let's go to our next image. So here's the same thing now. I wanted my main focus, Toby, this, um, this feather. But I wanted also the sand and focus and also my horizon and focus. And also my the son in focus. Now this is this water blur is not out of focus. This is created by a slow shutter speed, not by my air stuff. This is has nothing to do with the depth of field this I manipulated by having a slow shutter speed. What that creates is movement in this beautiful water, and that creates the viewer. He invites the viewer a little more into the picture, but by me being a f 22 I made sure that all of my sand and done my feather and down my you know, the waves up here and that my son, my horizon, that all of this was 100% in focus again, we're telling a story of this entire scene, and by doing so, I wanted, and I needed all to being focused. The only way to get all of this and focus is to be at F 11 or above. F eight is safe. F 11 is guaranteed. Anything above F 11 is a certainty. So this I shot at F 22. Now why did I should decide of 22? Well, I wanted to dark in my image so I could have a slower shutter speed so I could slow down this water and click create a little bit of blur. Now with this particular scene, I wanted to make sure that this feather was 100% and focus, since this is telling most of my story. So I focused. My focus point was on the feather, and they carried throughout the entire scene by having my depth of field and by having my F stop out of 22. Let's move on to the next image. Here's another great example. So here I was trying to tell the story again off a beautiful landscape. All of these are landscape, so they're telling the same story. I want everything in focus, but this is the same scenarios last time. Now I used to have 22 I very slow shutter speed. My slow shutter speed created movement in the water. My high f stop made sure that everything here wasn't focused and that I created this starburst effect on the sun. Now, here's the trick. If you want to starburst effect in any sort of light source such as the sun Orosz, a light bulb, you want to be an F 18 and above F 22 is super safe and guaranteed that you will always get a starburst no matter what kind of lens you have, no matter what kind of camera you have. If you shoot at F 22 you will always have a starburst effect on your photos. Now let's look at the depth of field here, the depth of field. My focus point was on this rock because this is telling. This is where I start to tell the story. So by having enough 22 carrying it all the way throughout the scene, it guarantees that everything is in focus. So again, F 11 and above is guaranteed that you will always have your entire scene in focus and that is very important for landscape photography. I can't emphasize that enough there other ways to create movement in the image. But by having ah, good depth of field and a good focus in your entire image, it guarantees that you're telling a great story and you're including every aspect off the image in that shop. So let's move to our next photo. So here is an F eight. Now, this was F eight because I'm shooting hand held. I didn't have time to set up my tripod, but I still wanted everything in focus. Um, and it was still it was it was dark out. It was getting dark, and I was shooting with a 72 200. Now I have to bring up my I S O because I wanted to shoot a fast shutter speed. That way, I didn't get a blurry photo. Every time you shoot anything with a zoom off 200 millimeters, you're going to create a lot of handshake in a lot of shake. So you wanna be anything above 151 1 over 151 200 of a second so you don't get that blurry ? That shake effect on your photos. Now buy me at F eight. I, uh my focus point was on this trees, and I guaranteed that the entire dress to the image was in focus. My wish it would have been at F 11 off above or above now. I didn't I couldn't get it there, so I shuddered at f eight. Still, give me a really good that the field, Everything is still in focus, and everything still looks good school to the next image. So here's the same kind of scenario. I believe this was around the same time we shot the other image. Except this was shot at f 11. The scene was a little bit brighter, so I could shoot it. Um, I could shoot it at a higher f stop, I add also switch lenses. And I was shooting at 52 millimeters. So I was able to bring down my shutter speed without getting any camera shake. Um, so I s 03 20 Still really your eyes. So, um, with my camera, I can shoot up to 3000 years. So and still not really create any major Ah, major noise on my image. 1 1/100 of a second. It's a really fast shutter. Speed doesn't I don't create any camera shake. F 10 guarantees that all of this trees are 100% and focus, Therefore, having an amazing depth of field, let's move on to the next one. So here is a very, very long exposure. Um, this was shot at 81 seconds out of 22. I did not use any sort of filter. Um but again, I wanted to create an incredible depth of field. Now this grass looks blurry simply because I have a very slow shutter speed and the wind was creating this movement on this grass. But my my, um my my focus point started at the beginning of the scene and carried out all the way across the scene. So everything is in focus. If this Ah, straw, this grass wasn't moving. If there was no wind, or if this would have been shuttered a fast shutter speed, this would have been 100% and focus. I wanted us very slow shutter speed so I could create this movement in the clouds and invite the viewer, and not only from down here, but from appearance. Well, We wanted to carry the viewer into the horizon, um, into the tree line to because that's that's our main. How were telling this story? We're at the Everglades National Park. There's this crazy clouds, and that's what we wanted to get across. Now it F 22 guarantees that everything will be in focus. I believe my focus point was in the tree line on this one. Let's move on to the next one. So here's another image. Same sort of scenario. Now this was handheld. I spotted this fisherman from what I was standing. I took my camera off the tripod and I ran down here. As I was running, I brought my eyes so to 500 because I knew I had it in a very, very slow shutter speed. But I wanted to get him in focus and get my entire seeming focus. So as you can see my sand from my sand in my water here, all the way up to the to the horizon is 100% and focus. He's 100% and focus now. The recent these birds are not in focus is because they were moving so fast, and I shot him at 11 25th of a second, so that creates movement. But that's what I wanted. Movement in an image on a living form creates a story. Create some sort of realism in your photo so it doesn't only create an interesting photo body brings life to that photograph. So by me, having a d f stop or the aperture at If 11 I am in focus from down here, although hopes all the way to up here carrying my focus point all the way throughout the image, telling the story about my entire image. He's 100% and focus all my waters and focus here. I have this beautiful water line as leading lines into the photo, and my fishermen here is 100% and focus now again, D I s 0 500 It doesn't create any noise. The sensors on these new cameras air so amazing that really you can shoot at High ISO's and not really worry about anything. Let's move on to the next one. So here's another great example off off the depth of field. So here I wanted to get everything in absolute focus because the what tells the story off this place is this canyon and this son, basically, the whole entire scene is telling you the story. So what I wanted to do is I want, in my focus point to be here in the horizon. But I wanted it all to being focused house. I'd be able to create that by shooting at F 22. So f 22 guaranteed that this rocks weren't focused, that all of this wasn't focused and that everything over the sun was in focus. And I also shed it of 22 so I could get this beautiful star starburst effect in the sun, which made this composition and storytelling a little bit more interesting in a little bit more beautiful. Now this is shot on a tripod and a very, very slow shutter speed by shooting gets out of low shutter speed. I wanted to create a little more more movement in this clouds. The clouds were pretty stagnant, so I didn't get a lot of movement. However, I did get everything in focus and I did get this beautiful starburst effect on my son. So again, the depth of field 100% and focus from the beginning of the photo all the way to the back of the photo. So you can look at it from this perspective from from the corner 100% and focus all the way to the sun 100% and focus same from site to site, 100% and focus, Bring it into the sun 100% and focus. Now, you could have achieved this at F 11 or above. I went with F 22 to make sure that I got the starburst effect in this Ah, in the Sun Smoke tour. Next one. Here's another great example off, Everything being in focus. Now I think this is the best example of thumb all because there's so much going on in this image. Now, My main focal point of this image is this, um, this rock, this is called the Bonzai Rock, and it's in Lake Tahoe in the Nevada side, a very, very famous photography spot. And I've seen some amazing images of this place. Um, and I really like what I came up with here now. I wanted to kill. You have to carry your focal point throughout from the beginning of the image to the back of the image. If you made any of this blurry by having a shallow depth of field meaning a small F stop would be missing out on a lot of storytelling. So here you want to carry your focus throughout, just like with all the other landscapes. And that was achieved by shooting had F 18. Now what did that achieve exactly? Well, everything is in focus, as you can see from the corner while looking through the water while looking through the water. In this photos, all these rocks below the water are 100% and focus this closer. Rocks to me are 100% and focus this road's air 100% and focus. And that focus carries to the next rocks, the next set of rocks, the next set of rocks and finally, my big bonds I rock. So this is a perfect example why a landscape photograph needs to always be in focus. You want to tell that entire story of what's happening. So I was standing here, and as you can see, I used all this rocks to draw my viewer into the main rock and into this beautiful horizon . But in order for me to tell the right story and create this beautiful image was by having everything in focus. And I achieved that by shooting at F 18 I could have done the same thing F 11 e f 12 But F 18 guarantees that everything from the closest rock to me to the farthest point is 100% in focus Now. I was shooting on a tripod, so I was able to shoot half of half off a second on this image on. And I think this is beautifully done. I really, really enjoy this image, and I am very, very placed with it. So again, very good depth of field, everything in focus F 18. 8. Chapter 7 Long Exposure: in this video. I'm going to go over this really long exposure. Now, this is more than 30 seconds. Let me go over the settings with you. So this is 81 seconds F 22 I s 0 100 I didn't use any filters for this. The son had simply said and I wanted to create Ah, feel off movement to feel of, um I don't know, just this Feel off being in the moment in the photo. So what I did is I dropped. Um, my f stop. I hired my ass. Stop and drop my eso tu 100. In that way, I was able to shoot on a bald mode for 81 seconds. Now, in this photo, when you look at my photos, there are very, very dark. And there's a reason for that. I like to expose for my lightest part of the photo. So let me show you an example. So if I was exposing for the trees, I'll bring up the exposure. So there the trees are exposed semi correctly. But as you can see, I would have lost all this detail. So it is a very, very bad to expose for your dark spots. In my opinion, it is always good to expose for the lightest part or the sky as a landscape photographer. So every time I'm shooting a landscape, I'm outside. I'm always looking at the cloud movement. I'm always looking at my lightest spots, and I'm always looking on my foreground, see what I can accomplish with those components. So let's get started on the editing part of this photo. So when I was taking this photo, I knew what I wanted to create. I wanted to invite people in by using the cloud movement and by using the foreground. So first things first, us always. Let's straighten out this horizon. So we'll click here in her crop tool and will strain it out again. I'm looking at this line, so you always want to match this line with your horizon. Now with the crooked. Now with the crooked trees with your actual horizon where the water meets, the land will close out of that. Very good. Now, here, right off the bat, I can see sensor spots, so I'm going to go to my spot correction to I'm going to go down here and click Visualize spots, and here are a lot off sensor spots. Now, when you should at F 22 you're going to know to notice, and you're going to know that you are always going to have sensor spots at that kind of aperture. So with this will clean him up. I always like to press heal up here. You can always go to clone, and it'll clone the spot to the closest thing there is. If you heal, it makes it gives it a little Ah, better, better touch. Better look, at least for landscape photography does. So I got out of that. But I can still see one more spot right here, so I will click that again. Make sure it's on hell. Click on that. And if you if you want to clone it, you can clone it right there. But see, see the difference? That's clone. And then this press back on that hell and there you have it. So what clone does it? It just close the spot. That's that. It thinks it's closest to it. What hell does he heals it? It patches it, so I always like to use. He'll very seldom. Occasions I'll use clone. So now that we got all those small details out of the way, they're small details. But they are very big in the grand scheme of things because you always wanna a beautiful photo. You always want a clean image. You want people to look at your image, and instead of picking it apart, you want him to enjoy it. Often times I find myself looking at a beautiful image from a student. And then all these little details start grabbing me, and I can't help but to start picking it apart. So always cleaned your image up. Always, stranger horizon. Very, very important. So once we got that out of the way, we will open up the shadows. Let's do it all the way. I want to see what I'm working with here. So my whole reason and my purpose behind this photo was to create movement with this clouds . And I also wanted it to look like a painting. Um, I didn't want to paying anything in photo shop. I like to actually take the photograph and do it all in the field as much as I can, So I was able to do this by, um going to 81 seconds on bald mode. And as you can see, I grabbed the corner of this cloud in this corner and that creates a V. But that does its inviting the viewer into the photograph sit same with down here. It's also creating a V, so it's inviting the viewer into this composition into this photograph. Now here, you're gonna notice that your eye immediately goes to the clouds and then comes down here and goes into the horizon and reach it as a beautiful landscape of beautiful sons that somewhere this was shot and at the Everglades. Um, so that's your composition. That's what you want to create. You want to create a pattern to invite somebody in. If I was just took a picture like, let's say, for the sake of this tutorial, um, let me show you here real quick. So let's say I took a picture of that. You know, there's nothing there is just is completely just block. There's really nothing there. Um, let me go back to the history Here. Here you have your history. You can always go back. So I go back before we cropped it. Get out of that. So I see the difference. When you create a beautiful composition, you're able to tell a story. And that's the difference between a beautifully composed photograph and just kind of whatever photograph. And that's what makes photography very challenging, but very, very intriguing to me because you're always looking on how to tell a story a good story. Okay, so once we got once we got that, um, I opened up the shadows. Now, I immediately want to give it some contrast. And by creating this by repeating myself in this steps, I was able to create and develop my own style off editing. And that's how you're able to tell when a photo is mine. A lot of people are Write me A that I saw one of your photos, and I immediately recognized it was yours. So by creating this repetition, I'm able, I took I was able to create my own style. Okay, so now we'll go to the vibrance, and we're gonna bring that up quite a bit because I want this to be dramatic. I wanted to be colorful. I saw this colorful. That looks pretty good. Now here I can do one of two things I can bring my exposure up. But when I do that, I'm going to lose my horizon. Look at this. This is completely gone. So this is where my adjustment local adjustments come into play. Let me get out of basic panel. Click the effect, work twice. You know, I'm going to drag this down to write about their and then I'm going to open this up. Just attack. That looks really good now, President. Okey. And that's the red is what you are actually adjusting. So get out of that. And that looks really nice. Now, see this little button right here. Click it on and off to see the difference before, after before, After. I think it's quite stunning, right? All right, so now we're going to quick, new And now we're gonna drug one from down up and it's the same promise, except I don't want as much. I just want a little tiny bit. So I still want to create Is that curiosity and somebody's head of what's there? I want him to kind of look for what's here. Identify that it's grass and immediately move into this tree line so I don't want this to be my main point. I want this to be my focal point, so I think that looks really nice. Maybe even lower it down. But that may be right about there. That's pretty good. Close out of that. And I can still see that there. This is kind of too bright. So what I want to do is I want to bring my highlights down and look how that changes. Wow, Look at that Immediately. We closed on this highlights and this color came out just beautifully. So I really like that now. The Spurs air y key to go before and after there's before and there's after look at the difference. You could actually be done with this image if you really want it, but we're gonna take it a couple steps or there, As you can see that they're subtle changes. This isn't we're not doing anything crazy. We're not doing blending nothing. We're just simply adjusting this image accordingly. Now let's warm this up a little bit now that is changing. You can always change it up, and if I warm it up, this clouds turned a little bit red, which is the reflection from from this beautiful horizon. And I like that. I think that looks really, really, really nice. So that looks really good. Now let's use another local adjustment. So this is a radio filter. And I really, really like to use this because he gives you the power to control your horizons. So we'll click on that. Now we click and drag, and that gives you the power to create a normal or a circle or whatever you want. Now, here, I want to lay this right over this tree line. I don't want to go too far over here. This is kind of further down, So it's OK if it's black, but I definitely want to open this up just a tad. Nothing too crazy. Now I have my feather here are on 78 I've realised that that that works best for me. So tinker with that. What that means is just what it takes to feather it. And so you're not able to see that patch of you will. Now I'm going to bring this exposure up just a tad right about there. Now you haven't invert mask check box here, you can click it off and it's going to adjust what's outside off the off the oval. If you click check, it is going to adjust what's inside of the oval, which is what we want to accomplish in this particular image. So I think that's really nice. But you can see it also blew up kind of the horizon here. So I want to keep that uniform. So I'm going to bring down the highlights, and that just tones it down a little bit and makes it a little bit nicer. Now let's check it off and on to see the difference off on off on, See the difference. Very subtle, but it makes a big difference. You can see the reflections better. You can see the trees better, and all in all it just cleans up the image a little bit better. So I really like that press done. And there you have it. I think that looks really, really nice. Now let's go to our lens corrections. We're gonna enable profile corrections that gets rid of that warp. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't for this particular image. I really like it. So we'll do that. And now we're gonna remove chromatic aberration And that would be around your trees and around all this stuff always click remove chromatic aberration. And I think that looks really nice. Now, what is bothering me is this lighter little sticks here, So I kind of wanted dark in that up. So I'm going to go to a local adjustment and this is an adjustment brush. I remember local adjustments are up here, and they mean it means that they locally adjust things, meaning that whatever you touched, that's the only spot that's being adjusted or edited. Ah, global adjustments such as your basic panel, just the whole entire area off the image. The whole entire image is being adjusted. So we have a global adjustments and we have local adjustments. So here I'm going to click on my adjustment brush to make quick out of this Lance corrections. So click under adjustment brush and I want a dark in this up. So I'm going to bring the exposure down right there. You can always said justice when you're done, I'm just going to brush this in a little bit and I just want a dark in that up kind of takes away from from the image to me and then just bring it down a little more. And as you can see, it's it's being darkened, maybe right about there. So let's see before and after before, after before, after. And now, if you click the okey, I want to get you in the habit of clicking the OK. You can see what you have brushed in. And do you see this outside ring from the inside circle to the outside circle? That's our fade. So that's what's being faded. So as you can see the Fader on 78 79 it's really, really nice, at least from my personal experience is what works best for me. So feel free to edit that, as you see, fits for your own style of photography and off editing. So let's click out of the okey. That's like the okey out of this moment, and that looks really nice. That's exactly what I wanted to do, except I can still see the stakes that kind of take away from my eye. So I'm going to close out of this, and I'm going to come to my, um, to my spot removal tool here. So click on that and Now I am going to simply draw over that and get rid of it. No, it picks the what it thinks is the best spot to clone from or to to copy from. I'm still using hell you can use. This would be a good place to use clone, but I'm gonna stick to hell because it's working well here. Okay, so now this one is kind of a little bit taking It takes away from the photo pain of this one. Now, this long one on some of this might be tricky. Some of this probably won't work the first time. But just work with it. Just grab it and work around. It is your job to kind of Heidel this little oldest little details, and now we're gonna click on that right there. That looks really good. So, as you can see, we didn't really change the image. We simply took out some of this. I source, if you will. Um, so let me just bring out the exposure. I'm going to bring out the exposure just so you can see what this looks like. So you can see we didn't completely damaged the photo, So just some minor adjustments. And if you really want a match, the branches here, you can you can really work on it. That's a little better job. Um, I think that looks nice, though. We'll close out of that. Um, click this exposure ward twice. 12 And that's where we want it. So, as you can see, we got rid of those sticks. They're no longer. And I saw in this image looks really, really, really nice. I'm very happy with it. Um, let me get out of this basic panel living president Waikiki before and after. What a difference. Um, you know, a few subtle, subtle clicks and you got yourself a fantastic image. Now, I do kind of want to dark in this up just a tad more so let me let me grab another one of this graduated filters, and I'm just going to draw it in this corner just too dark. It I just want the corner attack, you know, a tad bit darker. Let me drug this down right about there. Let me reset the exposure. And now we can do it by tastes, so just bring it up just a tad. Now, by doing this I'm giving it a little bit of in yet, and I'm also making the image a little bit more mysterious. So I I want your eyes. Your eyes are grabbed by this beautiful cloud formation. They draw you into the horizon. And as soon as your eyes slips down here, you have this V down here that draws you back in. So there's a thought to everything we do not only in the field, but also imposed production. I think that's a very, very well done image. I don't think I need to do anything else to it. Um, this President Waikiki one more time. There's before and there's after, and that looks completely amazingly beautiful. 9. Chapter 8 Get the Settigns Right: Here's a photo. That's ah pretty much done right off the camera. Um, you know, when you do your homework and all the elements come together, you can create some stunning images without really needed Teoh needing to do anything to them. Um, let me a show. You this is right out of the camera. Um, I haven't done anything to this image. Let's see the settings. So the settings 1 200 of a second F eight Aiso 322 100 millimeters. So let me explain to you why I have it in such a fast shutter speed and kind off a lower f stop. So in FAA still use me my treason focus on my horizon and focus. Um, I was at 200 millimeters. When you are zooming out, the chances of your lends vibrating or your photo beam fuzzy are very, very high. So you have to always compensate for that and shoot at a very fast shutter speed. Um, I should have actually been higher, but I believe I was in a tripod. So basically, when you're 200 millimeters and more, you will run into issues where some of your images air fuzzy, And that's why the more zoom you have. For some reason, you just get camera shake its's just what it is. The bigger deal ends, the more complicated it gets. So that's why I ran up my S 023 20 Um, my brother, my f stop so I could get at least 1 200 off a second. That's a fast enough shutter speed for me to do not get any any blur, any image blur. So one of the things about landscape photography is you can never control the light. Some days air really, really nice, so more mediocre. And sometimes they're just perfect. Landscape photography is so challenging, and it's one of the only forms of photography where you cannot control your environment. The only thing you can control is your camera settings and yourself. So as you can see, this turned out beautifully. I just know where to go. This is where I take all my students on my, um, every late photography workshops. This is where we're up up today, and in fact they shot this during one of those work jobs, and he turned out just incredible. So let's get started on the editing, So first will come to our basic panel. Now, the mood I wanted to give this photo was just what you see here. I just wanted the streets to be dark, kind of the outline kind of like, um, Africa ish. You know, when you picture even somebody started singing that Africa's hung during this workshop, which was kind of funny because everybody was kind of thinking it on. And then she just started going I forgot goes, You know, they're like that Lion King song. So it was really good, and it made everybody really happy. So, as you can see, I shot this with the sun right in the middle of this cloud. We only had about three seconds to shoot this because the sun literally creeped away immediately and this clouds were being really, really obnoxious. So I capture what I wanted right off the camera. So what we're going to do is we're just going to enhance is just attack. Nothing too crazy. We don't There's not a lot we need to do. So let's get started. First thing I want to do is I want to come to the temperature now. It was hot. It is the Everglades, so I want a warm it up. And as you can see, when I warm this up, this rats this orange, this yellow, they just come up, Um, come out a little better. It's just amazing. It's beautiful. I really like this image. I can just take myself back to the moment when I shot it, and it just brings up a lot of good memories. So once I warm it up that I want to I think my exposure is just right. I'll bring it up just so you guys conceive the foreground. So this is the Everglades. This is soul A swamp. You cannot walk in here unless you want to get really wet and bitten by an alligator or a snake. Um, plus it zits, waist high water. So anyways, so what I wanted to do is I just wanted to get the silhouette of the trees, so I'll click the exposure word twice. Ah, so because I think I exposed it correctly in the field, and I'll bring my contrast up just a tad. So as you can see, when I bring it up, my colors come out a little more in my black skin blacker, which is really nice. It's what I want. Now I'm going to bring my shadows out just a tad, just so you can kind of see this. This sticks. But you can't. I don't want the viewer to make out exactly what's down here. I want to keep it a mystery to me. It's intriguing. It makes the photo. Ah, lot cooler. If all you see, like in the distance is the stick spoken out of the ground. So again, what? I'm thinking my composition, Really? It's the sun and this tree line. So where your eye immediately is going to gravitate to the sun and it is going to wonder around this tree line, and you're immediately going Teoh in your head is gonna process. Your brain is gonna process that image, and then you're gonna start looking for what's there. So to me, this little sticks is little trees. Um, it makes sense to show a little tiny bit of them, but not all of it. So by opening up the shadows right about there, it gives it gives the viewer that that mystery, that intrigue, if you will. So I think that looks really good. Now let's see what our highlights, too. I always bring him down to bring up the color more, but in this case it's not really doing much. So I'm going to click the highlights twice, and that will reset my slider. Now let's try the whites, the whites. I don't think they're going to do much in this image, but as you can see, if I bring him up, it lights up the the top of the trees. Now the Mary said that it's very subtle. You can really see it. So maybe right about there now, this image looks amazing. Immediately, right off the bat, it was almost ready out of camera. So let's see before and after with this. A few sliders. So look at that. We brought up the yellows. We brought up the orange and we created kind of You can see this treat line right here. This trees in a little bit of the foreground, crying kind of creating on intrigue on the viewer's mind. So I think we're doing quite well. So next thing I want to do is I just want to bring up the vibrance a little bit so don't be afraid to bring it all the way up. See what it does not like I say, Just give it subtle changes. I think this looks really nice. Now the clarity slider. This creates that HDR. Look, I don't really like that, so I never really use it. Sometimes I'd like to test out photos, see what? What it does. Um, I don't really like it in this photo, so I'm just going to leave that alone. So click click the word twice and that will reset your slider back to zero. So I think that looks really nice. Guys, Um, I don't think that I need to do anything much more. Um so now will enable the profile corrections. You seem so. It just own works it Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't always remove chromatic aberration. And I think that looks really nice. Um, now here's Ah, let's Dio, here's a trick. Let's do it. Don't split Toning Now here you have all the highlights and here you have the shadows. So let's pick the highlights and we'll pick up Maybe right there. So the media show you what that does So look at her sky it kind of paints it. So there's there's no saturation. So this is a saturation all the way at the bottom and just bring it up a tab and he just paints it a little bit. Do you see that? I don't get too crazy, very subtle, maybe right about there. So that's pretty good. And I think that's a completed image. If you want to sharpen it up, I think that image is just fine. We can bring up the sharpen, maybe a 72 for the tree line option key. Hold it down and you're masking slider just right about there. Now remember, what's white is being sharpened. What's black is being left untouched, and that looks really nice. Always check for sensor spots. If you have any sensor spots, please remove them. Now Here's another thing I want to do real quick. Let me close out of that. See this glow that sun is putting out? We can do one of two things. We can either make the glow come out a little more or hide it completely. So let's start with bringing it out a little more. So open your adjustment brush. That's click the effect work twice. That resets my sliders. Let's create a brush. Maybe about that day. And then let's bring up the exposure. Maybe a plus 40 and then maybe bring that up right there. And now we can see and create. There's just a little bigger. See what that does? Um, no. I can bring this up or down to taste, and I think that looks nice right about there. So let me show you before and after there's before. There's out there just very, very subtle. Aziz, you can see very, very subtle, Um, brush. But it's it's this subtle changes that make a huge difference. You know, when a viewer is looking at this photo, they're going to go down here and they're gonna be like, What is that? You know, it's this tiny little subtle changes and make big differences. So now let's try the other the other way. So we'll open up the brush. I'm going to leave this brush here. I'm not gonna delete it. Um, but I will click the effect you twice will bring this up to Ah, negative 60 and I'll just close this off, all right, that's bringing up more and so that would be without the halo. So either way, you can do one or the other. Um, I I prefer that I think that looks a whole lot cooler. With this little glow on the ground, I think it creates and much nicer image. I think it creates more interest for the viewer. Remember, you're trying to tell a story. You're trying to tell people what's going on where you are. You're trying to pass on that feeling that you had. I'm telling you I felt like I was kind of in Africa in the jungle and and the lying king was going to come out. I really felt that way when I looked at all my students and that somebody started singing that song, I could tell that we all felt that way. So you want to portray that on your photos? You want to tell people what you were feeling. So when somebody looks at this, I want him to be like, Wow, that looks like that movie and that's what you're trying to create. Well, with all of your photographs, you're trying to tell a story. So the spritzer Waikiki before and after there's before, and there's after. And even though this photo was ready right out of the camera with a few tiny tweaks, we created a much nicer image that's ready for print and ready to hang on a wall. 10. Chapter 9 Create a Visual Story: in this video, I want to cover one off landscape photography's little secrets. So it's a landscape photography. We find ourselves going into all this really, really high traffic tourist spots. We often have to do that to get the stunning shots of portfolio shots that we see all over the place. And we really want to capture that as well. So let me show you what I'm talking about. I want to bring in my exposure just to show you. So this is the Grand Canyon, and as you can see, it is full off. People. There was There must have been hundreds off people all around this area. Um, it was really, really packed. It was kind of hard to get front view of this sunset in front of this the line. So people were there early, you know, they had ah, they had snacks. It's it's kind of a challenge. And this is often, ah, the truth. In many, many landscape photography situations, usually the spots like, you know, the Grand Canyon. Ah, like, uh, Anil above canyon, um, like or soup. And they're all get packed with people. You never see any people because it is your job as a photographer to get rid of those people. Um, in the field. I shot this Asan example off. What is there and what? People don't realize that's there in what happens. Um, so it is a job to always get rid of this people usually in the field. If you don't manage to do it in the field, get a good compositions, you can crop him out. So let's talk about this photo before we get into the editing. So, just like with any other photo I wanted to create, um, a visual story. So I wanted to see the Colorado River. Um, I wanted to see the sun, and I wanted to see this majestic Grand Canyon. This was right before the sun set, as you can see, and I wanted to create the story off the Grand Canyon. I used his leading lines toe to lead us into the into the canyon itself and to show us the Colorado River. Um, now, by using this lines, my eyes immediately started the sun. They wander here, they come down and go right into the cholera river. So there's there's some magic that happens. Ah, and your self conscience that you don't really realize, You know, you're right. Do not start here. It doesn't start here. It starts in the sun, as you can see, a put it off center. Um, and your I kind of bounces this way and goes into the river this way. And this makes you kind of go infinite and appreciate What's there? So very thought out. Composition. I did not just sit up and start shooting. I actually thought this through. I moved around to make sure that the color at the river was was in the right position. Um, it took a while. And getting through this people I'm telling you, was a battle. And you being a landscape photographer, I'm sure know this, or if you were starting out, you will eventually start going toe. All this place is to get this winning shots, and they will be completely packed with people. And when you get there, it's really, really crazy. Because do you think Wow, I did. I've seen the show it a 1,000,000 times. I've never seen any people in it. Um, so let's check on my settings. So it's 16 of a second F 22. I s 0 100 Now, let me tell you why I went with F 22 the F 22. Um, let me reset. It is exposure. Do you have 22 creates this star effect in the light in the sun rays. And that's what I wanted to create. That's why one of 20 to 1. Of course I'm on a tripod. It's really getting dark. And that's the only way to shoot this. Um, so let's get started. First thing I want to do, let me get rid of this. Ah, numbers here. Ah, let me bring up the exposure. And I just want to crop it. So basically, I want to crop the people out of this shot. So, Allah, right? Click constrain aspect ratio. And that will keep this. Ah, this rectangle rectangle in the intact number is going to crop the people. And I want to show a little bit of this rock right here, missy. Maybe right about there. And now I will cross. The people are as you can see now you will never have any clue that there was people in this shot. You probably think I'm in the middle which I am in the middle of nowhere, but it was full of people. All right, so now that we did the crop, let's get rid of for exposure. So, as you can see, your son moved a little bit to the center, which is OK, we still have that composition that I was talking about. Your eye lands on the sun. It wonder self to the canyon and wonders in this direction to the Colorado River. So the composition still great? Let me reset that. Um, as I've said before, we always want to expose for the lightest spot on your photograph. Um, you never want expose for this for this rocks, for the simple reason that when you do, you're gonna get rid off all this, all this detail and when you're in the field, I don't look at my back screen. In fact, they have it shut off, because every time you look at that little screen, it's gonna plane play tricks on you. You're gonna be like, Wow, it's so dark. It's so dark. I don't know. I don't know if it's going to come out. Well, trust me, as long as you're exposing for this This is easy to bring out technology and cameras air so good now that you can pull out all this detail as always, you exposed correctly for your sky. That's a landscape photographer. You never, ever, ever want to lose your sky. And this is why. Because it's got old his detail and you wanted in all of your photos. Okay, so we did. We got that out of the way. Now I see some sensor spots right off the bat, so let's get rid of those. So click on the spot removal tool will come down here to visualize spots, and they're really hard to see. Um, but here's one. Here's one. Here's a couple. Um, let's get out of that. I can still see some that I didn't see before. There's one. It's important that you do this, Guys, I could never say that enough. Okay, So once I cleaned that image up, I'm going to open on my shadows. And as you can see immediately immediately, you get all of this back. So in the field, what you would have thought was gone. You get it all back right off the bat, and it looks just amazing. so that looks really nice. Now let's go up to her contracts and give it that punch. Look at that. As soon as you do that, all this detail comes out of the rocks. So let's bring that all the way up. That looks really, really nice. Now, next, I wanna focus on our temperature. Now, this was kind of a cooler. It was hot during the day. But as the sun started hiding, it got cooler and cooler. So let's see what happens when I bring this up. When I bring this up, it actually looks really nice. And when I bring this the other way, it also looks nice. So as you can see, you can go either way. If you make it cooler, you can kind of see the layers a little better in the in the canyon itself. Let me see if it's warmer. Sea when it's warm, Rick, those layers that foggy layer kind of disappears. So you always want to keep those things in mind. I like him both. Really? This is This is totally taste entirely up to you. I really do like in both. I'm going to go with the cooler side of things just because that's what I was feeling. As the sun was setting, I started getting a little a little chilly. Um, I actually have. Somebody took a photo of me and I had a sweater on and you could tell that I was a little bit cool. Now I just found another sensor spot. Let me cleaned out before I forget. So here it is, right on the horizon. I'll click that and it's now gone and let's carry on. So I think that looks really nice. Now I want to bring up my vibrance. Is the next thing again? A like colorful, colorful photos. So maybe a plus 26. That looks really nice. The colorful photo asset is so you don't need to go to crazy on this. So just a few adjustments and let's go to be foreign after. Look at that. You already have. Ah, winning shot. Um, you can actually finished called out of finished shot, printed up and hanging on your wall. It's beautifully done, but let's let's keep going with it. So now I want to turn down the highlights. Some people would do it that way, but that is completely way too much. So I just want to tastefully toned this down and get more color out of my horizon and a little more texture out of this cloud. So let me show you click the highlights tights it resets it. And now watch the clouds, The clouds texture and watch my orange so I'll just bring it down Just a tad See the texture and the clouds coming up. That's perfect. That looks amazing right there. So I think that looks really, really nice. Now let me bring this down. Attack, Maybe to 20. I don't want to over saturate it. I think that looks good. That looks pretty nice. A 22 looks nice. Now let's play with our clarity. I know I never I told you, I never play with this and never I rarely use it. But there are. There's so much texture in this canyon that here it's okay to use so I can just bring it up a tad and see how the the canyon and the sky just comes to live just a little more. And I think that looks really nice. Um, so now we can play with the whites, bring up the whites bring him down. I think these weaken bring up to like a plus eight. He just makes image a little more, uh, more crisp. And then our blocks, we can bring it down. Maybe right about there. Now the trick is again Hold the command. Hold the option key. I'm sorry. Hold the option key. And Tony that and see. And I had it pretty right. So they say as soon as you stare, seemed blacks. That's what you want to do. Same with the whites. Click on as soon as you start seeing whites. It's the right way to do it. So there it is. So I still think that doing it by I it's a lot better option than using, then relying on a on a computer. Ah, program, because the computer program thinks that's the right thing. Your eyes, I cannot lie and a lot of people will argue with with me on this. But at the end of the day, when you look at the finished product, when you look at the photo, I think your eye is the most honest. Um, there is So I think that looks really nice. Now here's this tent slider. I rarely taught touch it, but in this situation, I think it's OK if you want to give it a little tiny bit of purple, you know? So let's press it twice. It resets it to how it was shot. And now let's just give it a tad purple. Maybe right, right about there ended the reason I'm saying this is okay. It's because this rocks are already, um, kind of reddish. So this just gives it a nice little tent. Ah, very subtle tent. Nothing crazy, just very subtle. And here, if you think it might be too blue, it's OK to warm it up a tad, as you can see, just moved it just a tiny bit and he changed the whole thing. So this subtle changes that are very important to do, and it's okay to come back and and retouch sliders as you move as you move along with the photo because the photos obviously constantly going to be changing. So let's presser. Why Keefe? So we can see before and after. Look at that. What an image. It just looks 100 times better, and I think that looks like a really, really close finished product. So one last thing I do want to do is I want to add a little touch to it. And I guess this is personal style. Um, so you can, ah, grab an adjustment brush. And I do this to a lot of my photos just to give it that special touch. Um, and I will bring the exposure up just a little bit. And what we want to do is we just want to draw little touches on this rocks and what that does it just creates little highlights. Um, so you're I kind of dances around them, Um, and you don't have to go crazy. Just little tiny touches. Um, and I want to do this to the foreground because your eye goes to the sun, and then it comes around here and bounces around. So that's why I'm doing it to those drugs. But here I open it up and, as you can see, will press her okey. And that's what I've done. Very light, very subtle brush strokes. But let me show you before and after, let me press the okey to get out of there. And then here's before and after before and after so very subtle touches, Very good touches that create a big difference. And I think this photos pretty close to completed. Now, let me close out of that will come here removed chromatic aberration, as always. Enable profile corrections. That on works the image. Now here we have the effects. Um, defects tab. And I think this could actually the vignette is a tricky tool. Some people love it. Some people hate it. Some people sometimes use it I'm into sometimes use it. I think some images are okay with that. I think some are not okay with it. I think this image you can definitely use it here just a tad. So what vignette does it closest down the image. So your eye focuses on the center a little more. Um, so again, very subtly. Let's bring it down just a tad. And I'm just closing in this corners just so your eyes go this way a little easier. Not a huge deal. Um, but I think that actually looks really nice. Ah, maybe even less. Maybe like a 10 minus 10 minus nine. That looks good. And then again, let's finish it up with our detail. that's sharpen it up. Maybe to like 71. Not that you need to. This image is flawless us. It is now. We'll come to a masking, hold on the option and bring it up. Remember what's being white is sharpened. What's being black stays untouched. And I think this is perfect that go that and look at that. Let's go to our before and after before and after and you got one winning shot. So by looking at this, you would have never known that there was people here and you would have never known what was below the sun. 11. Chapter 10 Bonsai Rock: This is the bonsai rock in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Malik Tahoe is divided into two states, half of Edison, Nevada, and half medicine California. Ah, Bonzai Rock is super super famous and is located in the Nevada side. Now, this is one of my absolute favorite photos off. All times I shot this a sunset, and it was just stunning. I kept coming back to this place for about four days before I actually got a decent sunset . Now I was staying in Reno, Nevada, which probably is, um, I want to say about 40 50 miles from the spot. So for 45 days straight, I drove here every single day for sunset from my hotel just captured this sunset. So it just shows you that when you shoot landscape photography, you sometimes have to stay there. Days I've been to some places where I've stayed weeks and I still didn't get any shots. Now let's go over, um, or camera settings. So this is Ah, half off a second F 18. I s 0 100 Now again, I was trying to ah exposed on the brightest part of the sky. That's the son I believe was right behind this car. It hadn't said yet or he had just said one of the two. I don't recall correctly, but I think I still blew out the highlights a little bit. But I think we can bring him up. We can bring him back. So let's Ah, let's get started. Let me bring this. I'm going to bring the exposure up to explain my composition. So again, we started the corner off a d I. And we use this rocks to lead our eyes into the sunset into the horizon. Here are another rocks, and this creates a triangle. So as you can see, our I kind of starts here and it wanders away through here. Same with decide If your eye starts here, it starts to wonder away coming back to the bonds I rock now we want her horizon and her bonds I rock to be our focal point. Um, so when you are shooting this, you really gotta make sure you have some sort of leading lines that invites the viewer into the photo. And I think I think I nailed it pretty good here. So let me reset the exposure. Um, and let's get started So first things first is always I am going to straighten out my horizon. Um and I think my horizons always crooked because I get so excited off seeing all this stuff and I just jump right in and want to start taking pictures, which is okay. Astrology corrected, imposed. So that looks really straight. That's pretty perfect right there. And now I, um, I spot some sensor spots right off the bat, so let's get those cleaned up right away. So my capacity is going to be 100. My feather. It's around 17. And that just means were the two lines thea outside circle on the inside circle. That's your feather. And then the size weaken. Just correct that accordingly. I'm going to go down to visualize spots. I'll click on that. And as you can see, there are quite a fuel sensor spots here, and you can tell the sensor spots are the ones that look like donuts. Um, most of those were going to be sensor spots. A lot of these lines, a lot of this lines that you see dieser just clouds, but the doughnuts are for sure, 100% sensor spots, and you always want to clean those up. So let's get out of that. And that looks really nice. And I always give it a second go around. That looks really, really good. Ah, the first thing I want to do us always. Let's open up the shadows. See what we have down here. Um, and I think that looks really, really good. It makes me happy looking at this. It brings me back to this day, and I met a couple other photographers that were there that to this day, we're still friends were still keep in touch. And we were all just so happy that this was happening. We couldn't believe it. Um, it was just so, so amazing. So now that another my shadows are opened up. I exposed my foreground, and I think that looks really good. Now what I want to do is I want to see if I can bring back this highlights that I lost. So I'm going to grab the highlights style, um, slider and I'm going to bring this down. And as you can see, we were able to bring him back. So we have color now, and we have the clouds and That looks really good. I think that looks really, really nice. Now I can, since this got dark end up a little bit. I think it can bring my shadows up just a tad more. And I remember this is the style that I used to add it in. By doing this over and over and over again, I kind of developed my own style. So by the process of repetition, if you keep doing this, you will eventually develop your own style, your own color palette, and it'll get easier. You just have to keep practicing and trust that you can do it. So once we do that, I want to give it a little bit of punch right off the bat by even in some contrast. And look at that. So let me reset that. So you can see to bring it up. And it just creates, like, this three dimensional, um, image. And now you can bring the shadows all the way up since it dark end up with Thea contrast. So once we do that, I think the photo looks just killer right off the bat. The Spencer Waikiki there's before, and there's after. Look at that It looks crazy. Looks so good, Right? I really like this image. It was just such good day in the sky was on fire. Everything was crazy. Um, now, let's go up to her temperature. Um, you can bring it down, make it a little, uh, blower. Or you can make it redder, or you can just leave it. That's I was shot. I think if we bring it up just a tad, that looks good right about there. Now. Our highlights. I don't think we need to touch the highlights. I mean, the whites. I'm sorry. I don't think we need to touch him and are blacks. You can bring down the blocks a little bit so you can do it by I which to me, that looks right about right. Or you compress your option key and hold on this lighter and right where I had it seems to be about, Right, So that's pretty good. Now we'll bring our vibrance up attack. Now. This photos really colorful us. It is. So we want to be careful with the virus. But I think a plus 18 that looks really nice. Maybe even a little more. It just depends on your taste. So now that that's done, I want to come down to my lens corrections. I want to remove the chromatic aberration and then I want I want to ah, correct my profile. Corrections enable that so you can see it own words said. It cleans it up, and I can see that my horizon it's a little bit crooked, so we'll just come back here and we'll just straighten it out. That's not a problem. Like it said, As you're editing, you can always go back to all this settings and keep working on them until you keep tweaking him till you get it all correctly to taste. Um, I was telling my students, There's no right or wrong way to do this is entirely how you feel. The photo looks best. It is a reflection of your personality, and you're expressing yourself. So don't worry about whatever you think people might think. Just try to create a good photo. The police is you. No, I just parted another sensor spot right up here, so I'm going to get rid of it. Um, spot he'll to close out of that zoom out, and that looks really nice. Now let's go to before and after, See how far we've come. Look at that. That's quite the difference. It's really, really dramatic difference. Okay, so that I think that looks really good. Um, now would you can do, We can bring, um let me close this lens corrections. Let's pick one off our radio off filters. And then let's highlight this Bonzai Rock. All right? Our exposure. Dallas already up. Click twice to reset it. And I just want to bring it out a little bit more. This is a really, really famous rock. Um, so I want this to be seen. I want the viewer to come here, uh, his side to come, his or her right to come to this rock and look at it. So that's subtle, nice and subtle and nice and good. Let's see before and after before, after before, after I think that's nice. So we'll close out of that. And I think that looks really, really good. Now let's use my other trick with the graduated filter and which is going to draw it from the top down to about right there. I'm going to click the effect word twice and now that will reset this everything. And I want to bring the temperature slider down. Just I can bring some of this blues out. Now we can bring it up and make this guy really, really red. And again, it's entirely a foot up to your taste, which actually looks really good. But I do want to see some of those blues, so I will bring it right about right about there. That looks really good, and I will let see before and after before after. So it just made the blues of tiny but Blore before, After before, after and that looks cool, we'll click done, and that looks really, really nice. I think this looks really, really good. What we can do. We can come to our adjustment brush. It's another local local brush click. The effect work twice. Ah, and we're going to bring it up, bring up the exposure, just attack. And now we're going to do this. Highlights that I talked about before just in some of those rocks, just to bring out the rocks a little bit is just personal. Preference is just personal taste, but it's a nice touch. You mainly want to do it where the son would be hidden it. So now you can bring this bright. Obviously, that's way too. Right now. You can tone it down. Let's see before and after before, after and sieges. Very subtle, but very cool. And we can't even bring up the Contras the tab just to kind of make it more subtle. We'll close out of that. And that looks really, really good. Um, I'm really happy that we were able to bring back our our highlights and we can even bring this down a little more and what that will do. It will bring out a little more color, and it'll bring some of this up. Um, now I think we might be able to use a little bit of this Whites. Let's see what happens. It makes it crisp. It looks nice, but I'm trying not to blow this out again. So I just let's reset it. And I just want to be subtle. Maybe like 12. That looks really good. And I think that looks like a completed image. Um, not don't worry about this. This was formed from the waves, so don't confuse that force for little spots. But I think that looks really nice. Let's see before and after there's before and there's after what a difference? A. So you can see subtle small changes just create a massive difference in this photos. Now we'll finish this up by going to the detail. Slider will sharpen it up, plus 60 Masking key. Hold on your option key. What's white is sharp. What's black stays the same. And I just wanted to the rocks and maybe the clouds a little bit. And that looks pretty good now. As you notice. I never really used the noise reduction. We haven't needed it for any of this landscape photography, and we probably won't use it. But what this does this gets rid of the noise in your photographs on, unless we needed will use it. I rarely use it on my photographs when you're shooting landscape and you have your settings right in your shooting on a tripod. Ah, your photos won't be greeny at all. In fact, sometimes they'll be too sharp so but I think that's a completed image that looks really, really, really nice. I'm extremely happy with it. Like I said, this is one of my favorite images off all times. Let's see before and after again. There's before there's after and we can call this a completed shot. 12. Chapter 11 Distortion and How to Fix It: So here's another photo from lake Towel I shot this had a different time, um, kind of in the same spot, but not really in a different place, but of what I wanted to show you here is really, really important. So as you can see, here's my composition. So we have a beautiful, um, landscape. We have a beautiful scenery. We have the the horizon. Here we have this three patterns of rocks that kind of create the triangle, um, to invite you into the photo so your eye immediately goes into this big rock, then goes into this rock, then kind of goes in the horizon and coming back this way into this rocks, or it also works the other way around. So this rock is very, very important to this composition. So since I have the habit of making, um off creating my photos with a crooked horizon, obviously my eyes are crooked. We're ah, we're not arguing that. So let's straighten it out and let me show you what I mean. So if I straighten this out this horizon out, I'm going to be cutting off some of this rock. And as you can see, the composition looks goofy. When I shot this, obviously I shot it so fast that I didn't really get this. Ah, rock in. And that's gonna happen, You know, from time to time, it just happens. You almost get it, but you don't quite get it. So let me reset the crop and let's let me show you a different way of doing this so you don't cut off this rock. So let me show you the settings. First and foremost, we shall decide 1/80 of a second F nine. I is 100. Um, so f nine, I really wanted to just focus on this rocks. But if nine give us enough depth that we got everything in focus 1/18 of a second, I was in a tripod and the sun was about to set. So I set this down shot, and then I had to run across this hill to catch the sunset. So I think that's what happened. And that's why I didn't properly, um, give enough room for this rock for me to straighten my horizon. Or even if it was straight. This is not enough room for the rock to kind off kind of be with the whole composition, so I will click the out of that information. And now let me show you. So here we're going to lands. Corrections. We're going to remove chromatic aberration and enable profile corrections. But as you see that the rockets cut off even worse. But now I see this manual. Well, let me let me uncheck that. And cities manual Ah, box right here we'll click on that. And now we're going to distort it on distorted manually. And what that does the stretches up the image just enough for me. Ah, a little bit more. Just enough for me to not come. Crop it straightener rice. And now and now I can bring all sides. And now I will get out of this. And look at that Now I still have the room. My horizon is straight, and I still have I now created enough room to create my composition. And now you can even crop that and more if you want. Um which I don't think that it's a bad idea. I actually think it looks really, really nice. Either way works, So you will have a lot of this photos and you won't know, You know, sometimes you almost nailed it, but it's little things. So I'm just telling you that there are ways, um, for you to get creative and save save save today. I like this one. For the sake of the tutorial of the editing, I'm going to leave this big. So now just so you remember, will, um, instead off enabling profile corrections automatically, we go to manual, and then we we distorted by ourselves, and then we can come to Ah, the crop toe. Now, this air quick, easy tips that it's taking me a long time to learn. So they're really good to know. And they're really good to have in your toolbox. Okay, so now we can actually get started on the editing. So first things first will come down to our basic panel, and now we're gonna open up our shadows just a tad. I really loved this greens at this water dis greens and blues that this water has. I'll bring that down a little bit, and I'm going to bring my contrast up just to make it a little punchy. See how when you bring the contrast that he just gives it that punch that extra. Just what? What it's missing. I like to say often, and that looks really nice. Um, now, next thing I want to do is I did blood my my highlights quite a bit. Um, obviously, I didn't mean to do this. I was just in a rush. That's why you should never rush in landscape photography. But, you know, as photographers that we are, we want to catch it all. And we often want to get more than a couple pictures. Um, so there's bring down our highlights, Um, and try to get some of that bad. As you can see, I brought him back all the way and that I brought most of a back out, which is really nice. Um, I think it looks really good. Now. I will bring this vibrance slider up just to bring the blue side and the greens in the water. And I think that looks really, really nice. And now I can mess with my temperature slider since I can see a little bit of the photo a little bit more so you can warm it up, or you can make it cooler, or you can leave it. Let me reset that, Um, so I want to warm it up just a tad since the sun is coming from that way. And I think that looks really nice. Um, now, as you can see on this rock, it's a little bit blown out. So let me bring down Let me just see what that does. Okay? So that could work. Memory said that I don't want to do that. There's use one of our local adjustments, and this is a, uh, a, um, graduated filter. And we're going to draw this in our sky to write about the horizon line. Now, I'm gonna click the exposure twice to reset it or whatever Slider. Or you can simply click the effect word twice. And now we're going to bring the exposure down. And what this is doing, this is, um this is exposing. Give me the sky. A little blower on exposing more of this clouds that I had a blown out when I shot the photo. See, that's why I always like to under expose it to exports for my highlights. I tried here, but obviously it didn't happen to um but I think that looks nice. Maybe bring it up a little bit. And if you press your okey, you can see what you're actually correcting, and that looks really good. It starts to fade off right here, so that looks really nice. We'll close out of that. And, uh, I think that looks really good. Let's hear before and after purser Waikiki. There's before and there's after. As you can see, we brought it up, out too well. Brought her back to life. It's nice and colorful. We can see her water. We can see through the water. Let's keep going with it so we can bring our whites down a little bit or we can bring him up. I just want to see what it doesn't bring the option key down. And then, according to the computer, this would be correct. And now let me reset that. So I still like him off better. So we're not gonna worry about those now. You can bring the blocks down a little bit and and I don't like that either. So I'm going to reset that and just leave that alone. Now. What I can do is I want to bring the clarity up just a tad on this one just to bring Thea the rocks, the texture and the rocks just out a tad more. And I think a plus 10 looks really good. So although daytime photos, they tam daytime landscape photos are not ideal, you can see that you can create some stunning images if you're doing ah, if you're there. If you're at the right place at the right time, delighting is nice. Is lighting up all these rocks correctly? The mystery not this arising just a tad more Be right there. We'll close out of that. And I think that looks good. Now let's bring out this rock a little more and we're going to use, um, this radio filter So we'll click on the radio filter, will click the effect, work twice, and that will draw an oval, um, around these rocks, just like so and I will bring this down just a bit and then we'll do the same here. We'll just click and drive, and I will bring this down a little bit, and I'm just creating a little bit more shadows and just, um, exposing this a little bit better. Now we'll get out of that and I think That looks really nice. Now, here. There's one last thing I would like to do this, and we're going to use another graduated filter. Now, I'm going to draw this from this corner down because this is where the sunlight is coming from. So you can see we have this golden tan with this golden color where the ah, the sunlight is hitting this rocks. So I just want to make that a little bit more golden. So when I draw this graduated filter, I just want to bring my yellows, uh, down my temperature, Yes, towards the yellow a little bit. And don't be afraid to, like, bring it all the way. See, that's too much. But then you can do it right there and check it, see if you like it. So here's before there's after before after, and I like it it You've said that golden tone, um, to the image. So we'll close out of that. This is our basic panel that's close out of that. And I think the photo looks really, really good. Now this is Charlotte F nine. That's right, if nine. So I don't think there's any sensor spots I can't see any. Go ahead and check for some visualize spots right here. Um, I can't see any. I think it looks really, really nice. So now we'll come back to our detail panel Sharp add up about 68. 70 and now clicker masking option key down. And remember, what's white is being sharpened. What's black is being left alone. And here I just want to sharpen up the rocks. That's really Allama after. And I think that looks really good And I think that looks really nice, as you can see. Ah, we, uh this image kind of came a long way. So that's clicker before and after there's before and there's after. So as you can see, we created this beautiful golden tone on the rocks That kind of shows that the sun is setting on the left of the off the photo with strain of the horizon we own worked it and we didn't lose any of her composition. We kept the rocks Ah, rocks. And this rock here gives this one balance so you can keep your it. We were able to keep all this all these rocks and all this composition and ah, I really like it. I'm very, very pleased with this photo 13. Chapter 12 Ocean Escapes: one of the most challenging aspects of landscape photography is photographing ocean scapes . Now ocean escapes can be extremely complicated. For mainly one reason. You basically have a massive ocean, a mass thing, a mass body of water with really, that can really complicate things because you really don't know how to compose it or how to tell a story. So in order for you to really understand how to create a good photograph from an ocean escape, especially one the lax rocks or anything else to me quite difficult. So here what you see is that throughout the years I've learned to use basically everything around me, kind of like everything else. In other kinds of photography, you learn to use your environment, but here, especially because my environment is the photograph. So here I took advantage of this clouds I noticed at first Let me open this up so you can see it. So at first I was standing on top of those rocks and I took a few shots, but there wasn't anything happening, and I wanted to tell a story. I wanted to tell a story of the ocean, and I wanted to create a dramatic um So when I was standing in this rocks kind of taking pictures, kind of analyzing things before the sun came up, I realized that this clouds were shifting and they were coming this way. Um, and I noticed they created a V pattern. Um, and here you had another one in the the far right over here. So I noticed that as soon as I realized that, then I had I had my leading lines. Then I had to come up with some sort off interesting focal point. That's when I jumped over this rocks and came down here. Now the title was low, so I was lucky enough to have some rocks showing. This is really, really rare in Miami Beach. That's where I live. And this is really, really rare. You can only see this a few times a year. Um, and lucky for me, I know where this spot ISS and I I happen to ah, to get lucky. And everything came together. So as you grow in your landscape photography career, you will learn to observe the wind, the wind shift, how it shifts. Because this class we're facing this way at some point we're going to the left, and then they started shifting this way, and that's when all this came to my mind. So you have to really, really get creative, and you have to really create Put yourself in and and kind of give yourself to the Earth to create a good composition eso At this point when I realized that this rock that this clouds were heading this way and I found this Good Rock, then I immediately started messing with water. So let me show you the settings, so it's 1/5 of a second out of 22. So by slowing my shutter speed, I created this movement with the water, and I really wanted to get this rock wrapped with this movement. So I wanted to create this movement around the water, this leading lines into the into the sun and that created this beautiful composition. It's a lot to think about. It's a lot taken, especially when you're out there, and on top of that you have to take in your camera's settings. But once you do it enough, your mind will start doing this automatically. When I'm out there, it becomes automatic to me and even When I'm with my friends, they look at me that like, Oh, man, when you're like on a mission, I'm like, Yeah, but I just It just it just happens. Um, so just think of telling a good story and you have to have a lot of things going on in order to tell that story. So let me get this. Ah, key words out of the way. And I like to leave my photos as I shot him. And believe me, I hang out with a ton of photographers and they they're raw Images are also crooked, you know, nothing is, as you see, it finished. So don't worry, view your horizons crooked. You know, the recent mind, most of the time instructed, is because I'm more focused on catching the light. I don't want this like to disappear because I'm tinkering with a level on my tripod. I throw my tribe or on the ground and immediately start to mess with the settings in order not to miss any of this light. Because this light only last 1 to 2 seconds from tinkering with a level, all these lights gonna be gone. And by the time I level the camera, my composition. It's probably going to be gone. So we'll reset this fully reset. We went over settings. Now let's get started. So first thing is, first, we're gonna straighten out the horizon just like that. And I think that looks really nice. Now I want to come down to the lens corrections right off the bat. Remove chromatic aberration always. And here enabled the profile corrections. And this phone works the image, as you can see, and it kind of opens it up a little bit. Now, having the sun on top of the water kind of makes it look like it's worked. Right? So let's go over the grid. Here, let me Ah, show it, Show the grid. Uh, let me make it. Make it smaller. So as you can see, it's really not worked. I'm looking at the top of the grid here at the top of the line. It might be too small for you to see. Okay, this is better. So see this great right here. So it's still a little bit worked, so you can bring this to manual, and then we can start to own work the image and it's not bad and I will come to re crop it and we will straighten it out just a tad. More and again, I'm looking at this grid across my horizon. Now you're asking yourself how did he get that great on there? So it's right here on your menu. If it's if it's not on there, then you come. Come on. OK, then you come to this era right here, and then you're going to show great overlay. Just check that and this will appear. Okay, so let's get rid of that grid. And I think that looks really nice. Okay, Now we can get to the gin. So another we have all this. Ah, aesthetically balance. Aesthetically good. Let's focus on her point owner, um, on her settings on our colors. So, like I said before your cameras, my camera settings, I'm always exposing for my lightest part that we don't lose any of this detail. OK, so as you can see, I can still see my blue, my sky and this cloud. So I didn't lose any of that. Now if I If I would have fought, if I would have um exposed for this rock or this water I would have lost all of this, and it's pretty impossible to get all of that back. So again, I cannot repeat this enough, Always exposed for your lightest point. Some people have argued with me over this, and I can promise you I shoot every single day and happen for many years. It is better to not lose your your, um, your highlights than to lose him because you won't get him back. I promise you will not get him back, especially when they're really blown out. That will be completely gone. There's no way for you to ever get him back. And your dark spots. You can always get those back. Our technology. Our sensors now are insane. Just about any camera, any pointing shoot even with yourself when you can get most of this back. So okay, so now we're going to come down here to our shadows, will open that up and you can see immediately all this open sob without even doing that much. Um, now we're going. We're going to, ah, come to the contrast and give it some contrast right about there. And remember, we can always come back up and redo this asses we see If it I was really, really hot this morning and again, I'd like to give the fuel in my photos like iwas the time I shot him. So I'm going to bring this up. But that also does. He warms up the photo and it also gives me more orange more color over here. So I think that looks really nice. I want I want to bring my highlight sound and what that does. It also brings out more color and it also exposes, um, the sky a little better. Not always will this work before the most part it can. It can work well in landscape photography. Now, see this star effect I got Let me show you the settings again. That's why I went to F 22. That's the way you create this. This ah starburst effect. Um, any any anything above f 18 you're going to get this starburst effect on there. It's really cool to have. So when you see photos on the Internet or in a magazine that have this starburst effect the worst with lights a swell any source of light eyes because they shouted at F 18 and up um, usually have 22. You're pretty safe to get the starburst effect. So when I was after, I thought out my composition in the settings. Then I had to think that out, too. So all this stuff goes through your head when you're out there taking this photos. That's why it's super important to go out every single day. So your mind can just become one with all this, and you can think this up. Okay. What? Once the sun comes up, I should have 22 to get a starburst. And I also want to slow down my shutter so I can get water movement. And I don't want to miss my clouds. So you're thinking all of this while doing it? It's kind off automatic. Um, and hey, if you can level the camera at the same time, please do so For some reason, I struggle with that. But that's OK. Not a huge deal. If I really wanted to focus on having a level photo every time, I assure you I could. But again, I'm more focused on my life, and I don't ever want to lose that light. Okay, so I just explained the Starburst effect. So let's go back to our editing. So now that we got, um, not that we got this highlight style, then Now let's bring up the vibrance a little bit, as you can see just brings us. It just makes this colors a little bit richer. And this is entirely too tasty to me. This would be way too much oversaturated. No way. So right here looks right about right. That looks really nice. Um, obviously, we still need to work on all this stuff. So this is all a global adjustment, and I want to come to a local adjustment. So here's my graduated filter that because closes basic panel. Here's a graduated filter. And now what? I want to do this. I want to bring this up, maybe to like a 50 54 somewhere on there, and I want to draw it up from the bottom up. Remember, we can always adjust that we just want to get a starting point and look at that. It opens up this foreground, which is very important to the composition, because here, as the sky creates this V into the sons into the sun here you have this other triangle with this wave, this rock. So it's all about forming triangles. Your eye bounces from here to here. Closest here it goes from here to here, to the sun back here. It's It's all about patterns, and your mind doesn't think about this when looking at a photo. But that's what creates a great story in a photograph. I'm telling you, I struggled the most with this ocean scapes because they there's it's you have to get really, really, um, creative toe. Get good compositions. So once we do, Ah, the local adjustment, the graduated filter. I think that looks really nice. In fact, I think I want to go back to it and then I'm going to click on it, and I am going to bring up the contrast, just a tad. Not too much just right about there. So a 10. Very subtle, but But it works, So let me show you before and after there's before there's after before, after I think it looks really nice. It's close out of that. That looks really good, but I'm not quite done. Let's let's see how far we've come with damage expresses the Waikiki. Look at that very a lot of big difference. Big, big difference. I do like the blues in this guy. Ah, a lot. Ah, and we lost him by warming it up. But I'll show you how to get those without losing any of this orange and yellows. So the spurs their white can get out of there and let's go. Let's let's go there right now. So we're gonna press our hue saturation. Luminous. That's what this is. And we're going to go to our saturation and this is on the red. Okay, so we'll click on the color. I'm sorry. So we'll go to the color, we'll pick, pick the blue, and we're gonna come to the saturation and bring up this blue and see how the blue stars to ah starts to blow up a little bit so you can do that right about there. And if you want to bring up the orange is a little bit, you can do that as well. I don't think you need to. I think this is pretty strong. Pretty strong for us. I think it looks good, but that looks really, really nice. Now. When I did this, I started to see a lot off sensor spots. So now let's get rid of this sensor spots before we for yet. So we'll create click on our spot healing, too. Visualize spots, and there is quite a few now. Every time you shoot in the ocean or by the ocean, your lens is going to get really, really dirty, and your sensor is probably going to get dirty. And this is because of the breeze that's always hitting your camera. Um, any ocean in the planet. It happens, I learned, is the hard way. I didn't know where my stuff was so dirty all the time. Yes, what it's because I was shooting in the ocean and not cleaning my lens, Um, all the time, as I should, as I should be. So now I will shoot two or three photos and then, ah, wipe down my lens on. No matter. If it's a calm day, you're still going to get that ocean salty breeze on your lands. I promise you, even if it's a no win, no nothing. If there's salt water, there is going to be, Ah, there's going to end up in your injure lens. So here again, we can see all this sensor spots because we shot it F 22. So it's very important that when you shoot at that kind of f stop that you remember to clean your sensor spots. Okay? And that looks a lot better. Very nice. All right, so I think this looks really good. So now, um, let's finish. Let's finish this up with another local adjustment. We'll click on her adjustment brush, click the effect key twice, bring it up, just attack. And now we can draw. Um, we can draw some highlights on this water. And if you can't see him, don't be afraid to come up quite a bit. You can always tone it down, so and I just want to highlight it just a tad. You know, the subtle touches that people don't notice, but your brain does. That creates just a stunning images. And this will also help you develop your own your own style of photography. It's taken me seven years to do so, and I still I still learn every single day. That's why I love photography so much. So see how? See how this is getting, um, getting a little brighter. A little nicer now Let's President okey to see what I just did. She just very subtle, very subtle, very light brushstrokes. Now, the more you hold down in, the more you paint, the more the lighter it will get. And that you can see this red is really, really mellow. That means they're very subtle brushstrokes the spreads d o to get out of there. I'm gonna tone it down just a tad because I like it more subtle than that. Maybe like a 0.5 point four. That's good. Now let's go to before and after before after before, after they're just super subtle. But I'm telling you, it makes a difference when you're viewing the photo. You don't realize the what you're looking at because there's so much going on. But it's his little subtle hence off niceness that make you go. Wow, that is an insane, insane photo on. You can bring this up just a tad. Maybe a 55. Maybe right there, 53 is good. It's a lot. It's got a before and after. Well, let me click on it. Did I reset it? Okay, reset. So it's fun. We just got a total of 55 And if you make any mistakes, guys along the way, which it will happen to you. Um, you can always go here and you have your history. This is your history Off everything we've done. Everything we've done is here, and, ah, anywhere you go back to it will take you there. So you click on that. It will take me back to the temperature when we're adjusting the temperature. Um, always they don't want that. So I just want to come back here and that that's where we left off. So if at any point you do make any mistakes, your history is always there for you. The blood room is just so beautifully designed that it's it's amazing. That's why I love it so much. Okay, so we'll get out of that now that we give, um, this. Ah, this hence off coolness to their photo. But I'm in cool us in style. Um and I'm not quite done. I still wanna do a couple more things. So I'll grab one of my radio filters and I want to draw around this rock. Maybe not so huge. Maybe, um maybe right about there, and then I want to bring my exposure down and maybe just tap it up a tad. And as you can see, I just want to bring this rock up a little bit, Maybe come down this way, just like that. And I'll click before and after before after before, after. So it's very subtle, but it works well. I works really well, I think. And I think we got were pretty close to wrapping this image up. I'm now here in the back limit. Zoom in. Here are some ships. A lot of people would hate him. A lot of people would like him. I don't mind them. Um, I don't mind them at all to me, they kind of even balance off the composition. Now, if you if you don't like him, you can always take those off. So by clicking, um, when you're a spot removal tool, you'll just make a big circle and then you'll click on it and it should disappear. But the others lines don't match. Well, that's easy to fix. You're gonna grab this other circle and you're going to just bring it up until it matches. That's too much, but make sure it always matches. Take your time this is your masterpiece or take your time and there we have it. Now we'll do the other one. Same exact thing and it doesn't match and have the colors kind of goofy. You can always bring this to this side by holding the mas button down, and I I like that better. So that's good. And then we can also the riddle this thing right here. Okay, so we'll get out of that zoom out and no ships like nothing was ever there. Ah, but I do like him. So I'm going to I'm going to the litos so quick on that circle deleted. I'll click on that circle and I'll delete it to me. Tells part of the story to me tells part off the place where I'm at. Um you know, those ships are always out there. I think they're waiting for the poor to free up so they can go in. I don't know if that's true or not. That's what I think. But they're always out there, so I always see them. So to me, they tell their part of the story and they also balance the photo. You have this rocks here do you have this rock here and it becomes balanced with this ship's back here. Very subtle. They're very subtle, but But to me, it's part of the composition. So let's see how far we've come before and after, or Waikiki before and after. As you can see, we've come a very long way by making very tiny, subtle changes. Um, now let's get out of that. This on this image, I believe you can do a little bit of in yet hopes that's not the right one. So you come to the effects tab and you come to the vignette have and you're gonna go to, like, negative 11 Negative nine and then let's see. Ah, before and after. Uh, that doesn't do anything. It's not for the camera. Yeah, those. So that's for the other tab. So let's see before and after. So that's with Vigna without vignette within. Yet without media. So to me, both of them work. I leave the vineyard on, I can adjust, draws your eye more into the scene. Um and I think that's ah, that's a pretty good completed image. Um, I think we did really good. Now you can throw some accents on this rocks as well. Come here to your adjustment. Brush the local adjustment. So it's only going to adjust. Um, would you brush in and maybe just give it, like, some subtle hints right here and then let me see. Probably right about there. Yeah, that looks a lot better. I think that looks really good. I'm really happy with it. Um, I'm really, really pleased with it. So again, guys, ocean scapes To me, they're the most challenging because you have so much water and not enough stuff going on. Um, my path operas is behind this photo again. Was this clouds used the water movement and completed with this rocks to to have ah, focal point. Um, but I think this is a beautiful photo. Let's go to before and after there's before There's after, and I think that's really, really nice. Now, you can always come back to your white balance. If if that's too warm for you, you can always come back here and cool it off a little bit. Personal taste entirely. How you however you like it? Um I can go either way. I think it's Ah, it turned out really nice 14. Chapter 13 Ocean and Sand: Here's another ocean escape. Um, again, I always find it a challenge to shoot this ocean scapes. There's a lot of water and you got a base, your entire composition on the water in the sky. Um, now I know this there was this would hear this old piece of appear I can only assume at this location. That's why I went here. So that's let me, um, open up my exposure so you can see it. So that's the whole basis, the whole premise of this composition. So basically this this water lines right here from the sand, this will start to ah guider I into this composition. So I used this water lines toe basically guide your I kind of slowly into this. Ah, disappear and appear obviously guides your eye right into the horizon. Um, now, this was a beautiful morning within amazing insane colors, so I got really, really lucky there. But as you can see, I position myself So this sky let me lower the exposure so you can see it. So the sky kind of creates a V, and this clouds are kind of coming towards me. And this in turn, what it creates it creates your eyes to immediately start wandering into the picture from every direction. Um, so every aspect of the composition is very well thought out. Um, I shot it from a couple different angles, and, of course, he didn't look half us as nice as how it does here. Um, this makes the photo really balanced on, and it makes sense for your eye to start wandering around photo it enters through here or through here on slowly guides your your eye into the horizon. And same with this clouds. Now, if you start looking at the photo from up here, you get the same result. It starts coming down here and into the horizon, just making it a very peaceful, very nice image. Um, to look at kind of the kind of, uh, makes you, um you know, it just makes you kind of peaceful. It makes you happy inside. So anyway, so let's check out her settings. So this is 20 seconds at F 14. I s 0 100 Um, and this was with my white angle 14 to 24 millimeter lens. I was fairly close to the ground, maybe about a foot of foot and 1/2 on. And I just wanted again to create this peaceful photo. Another thing about the composition. Um, me Open this up. Was this this water line? So I wanted to make sure that this water line wasn't, um wasn't up higher or wasn't kind off everywhere. I wanted to have it really, really nice and calm. I want this. I wanted this to be a calm photo. So that's why I went with the 20 seconds because I knew that going at 20 seconds, this everything would be kind of kind of nice and soft. I supposed to. When you go a fraction of a second or a couple of seconds, you could see more definition on the water and what it's doing. So that's that's how I got that. And that's the reason behind that. Let me get out of that, he said. My exposure and let's get started. So again, first things first. Hopes that was the whites. Let me go to my shadows and I will open him up all the way and I can see a little more what's happening here immediately. I want to go to my contracts. Contrast slider. I'll bring it up a tad es to give it that extra punch. Now it's still really, really dark, right? Let me give him more contrast right about there. As you can see, when you when you bring up the contrast, this colors just pop. Really, really good. Now I still can't see the bottom. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab a radio. Um, not a radio. I'm sort of graduated filter. I will press on that, and it's a graduated filter. So you're just going to grab it from the bottom up to maybe about halfway up a little bit below the horizon line. Okay, so I'm going to reset the exposure and I can bring it back up. And that looks really nice right about there. You cannot flip this. You can turn it up, you know, make it. Ah. Whichever way you see fit, that's when I want it pretty straight. And a trick to get it more straight is to see when you flip it close to the close to the ball, it it becomes really, really hard. But when you come out here, it becomes easier to control. So it's not all crazy all over the place, and I want a pretty even so right about their looks. Good. I will click out of that and I will close out of it. And that looks really nice. As you can see, we just exposed to offer sand in a little bit of this. Ah, this broken Pierre, this this concrete pillars on. That's exactly what I wanted to do. So now I want to come down and bring my highlights down. And basically I am looking at this spot. This is the hottest spot, meaning the the the spot with the most highlights. So I wanna look right at it and just bring this down and get a little more color out of it instead of a being white. I want a yellow or orange, which that's where the sun was coming up from. Um and that's where all these orange reflections air coming from. So that's what I'm looking at. And that looks really good right about there. I I want to pop my vibrance a little bit and look at that. That just looks of insanely cool. Really, really nice. Now I can see the entire image is still a little dark, which is not bad. But I do want to bring up my my, um, exposure just a tad, just to to make this clear to the viewer. And that looks nice right about there. And now I can tone down my highlights just a tad more since I brought up the exposure. This, um, this highlights opened up a little bit over here, so I just brought it down. Just a tad, remember, just very subtle changes make big differences. Don't worry about the big changes. Those don't do anything but make your photo look ridiculous. So I think that looks really nice. Now I want to come down to my lens corrections, removed chromatic aberration and enable profile corrections. And that also opens up the photograph a little bit. Ah, so I can come back to my basic panel. You can live it as is, Or you can just tone it down just a tad. Maybe, right about maybe right about there. And now we can ah, check for sensor spots. I saw that it was a sensor spot up here. Let me show you. But when I did Thea profile Corrections. See, right here it went away because it don't worked it. So it's stretched it out a little bit, which is great, But I still want to check for sensor spot since I'm already on on this topic. So let's click Thea the healing to the spot removal to and we are going to go on. He'll a positive passage. He always that 100% feather on 17. It's fine. Um, you can bring in a little more and the size you can control with your mouse. So now I'm going to go to visualize spots. And since there's a lot of clouds, it's going to be really hard to see your sensor spots with the visualized spots to on this one. Because all of these look like they would be sensor spots but remembered, the doughnuts are sensor spots. The other stuff is just clouds and birds and other things, so I don't really see any. So now click that off and look with my eye, and I really, really don't see any. And that's because I clean my sensor just about every time off their shoes. Um, so I don't see any, but what I do see, since I want this image to be super peaceful Super NYSE with no distractions. I do want to get rid of this buoys, so I will click on that spot removal tool again, and I will make this rather small and click on there. That looks really good. Click on here. That looks really good. Now I can click out of that zoom out and then assuming on this one, and now I can get rid of this one right here. They just don't make sense in the photo, since it's such a calm, relaxing photo. If there was more business, more action, I would leave him. But they don't make sense on this particular image, and I think that looks a lot better. So all in all, it's a before and after there's before and there's after, As you can see, we opened up the shadows. We still have a great, ah exposure of these shadows over here that are being casted by the light coming from the horizon. So it looks really, really nice. I'm very happy with it. Um, let me get out of here. That's messed with the temperatures lighter a little bit. Let's bring it up now. If we bring it if we warm it up. Remember all your reds and yellows. They're gonna come out. So if you bring it down, older purples and blues are gonna come out. Let's reset that. And I simply want to bring out the Reds just a tad more. So bring it up with I bring it up right about there. That looks really good. Very happy with that. That's your before and after. There's before and there's after Look at that difference. Very, very good. And I remember this is all entirely to taste. Don't worry about what other people are doing. You know it. Trust your I trust your vision. That's what this is all about. Um, and I think this looks really nice. Not to me. This horizon looks a little bit. Ah, a little bit. Ah, worked. Let's see if it's worked. Um, let's put always on this great view. And it is a little tiny, bit warm, not know much. It looks like, um, it looks It looks that way because of this of this line right here. Going across. That's kind off warp in it. But you can fix that a little bit. You're going to go to, ah, Lance Corrections. And then you're going to go to manual. And here, under the store changer, can fix it a little bit if you want, so you can go this way or you can bring it out this way and it looks like coming out. I mean, let Mary said it. I'm not sure that's doing much. No, it is. If it helps a little bit nothing right about there minus six. That looks really good right about there. Let's go back to a basic panel and just bring it. Give it a tiny bit more contrast. The Contras is makes this edges refined and you know the colors come out more, just gives it that extra pop that you want. And I think that looks really nice. Overall, I'm very pleased with the entire thing. Except for one thing. This pillars. I want to bring out this pillars a bit more, so we're gonna use our local adjustments to do that. And here we have some options. We can use the radio filter or the adjustment brush. Um, so let's let's start with the radio filter now. I wanna I'm gonna crank up my exposure a little bit just so I can see what I'm doing. And I'm going to draw around this Ah, around this pillar and I know it's over exposed right now. It's too much, but we'll crank it down here in a minute. I just want to see what I'm drawing. Now. I can come up here and drink it down, okay? I mean, reset it. I just want to crank it up. Very subtle. So that's a 19. And now let me see this. Ah, before and after with the switch right here. See? So it's very subtle, and that works for me. I like it. Now I'm going to do this one same thing, and that's too much. Now, once you draw new one, the settings will be new for the new one. So you don't have to worry about controlling both both ovals, both circles. So I think that looks nice. No, I think it looks good. Maybe I should make it a little tiny bit bigger ride about there. Let me just make it like right there. Plus 28 does nice and subtle and mingle before and after before after. Okay, that's nice and subtle. You can really tell. So that's good. Let me press done. I think these air okay with the shadows. Um, but what I can also do is just open up this sights a little more. I'm going to come to the adjustment brush. I'll click on that. My exposure can be cranked up. That's OK. And now I can draw on this side and just just I just want to show it a little more. Make it more three dimensional. Okay, Now let's president Okey and see what we're doing. There's the okey. Just subtle changes. Very nice. Now let me get out of the okey. Let me crank this dungeon down. Not up. Just a tad. Maybe like a 40. Maybe even less. Maybe Like a like a 32. That looks pretty nice. Yeah, that looks good. Now, the media showed this off, and I'll turn it back on off on off on. Okay, let me crank it up. Just a tad more. Maybe, like 48. That's good. Let me off on. Okay, that's good Was done. Look out of that. And that looks a lot better. See how you can see this. The sites of the pillars. A little better. It's not a huge, huge difference, but this subtle changes Your eye catches when you're looking at this photo graphs. We can also do that to the top of these with the same adjustment brush, and we'll just draw a little tiny bit on it. Nothing too crazy. And now this. I wanted to be very subtle, so I'm going to bring it down to like a 10. And now let's go on enough and you can really tell. So let's bring it. Let's bring it. Ah, maybe like 18 before you can't really tell, huh? That's pretty good. See before the real after just a touch on the top, just so your eye goes to the pillar. Very good. So 34 worked here on the exposure, so we'll close out of that. And I think that looks really, really nice. All in all, I'm very, very happy with the image. We didn't do a lot to it. Just enough to tweak tweak. So, Mom, some colors a little bit. Ah, and I think that looks fantastic. So now let's finish it off with their detail panel. We'll crank up the sharpness. This image is entirely sharp. You don't need to this, but since it's sand, it's very texture you can without getting any noise. So now will come to our masking. Hold on your option key. And remember, what's white is sharp. What's black is left alone. And I just want to basically sharpen up to send a little more, um, and the pillars not It doesn't really need it. I just want to show you how I finish up all my images. Um, it's, you know, doesn't hurt. And that looks really, really nice. So all in all, I'm very, very, very pleased with this image. It looks stunning. It's just such a calming, beautiful photograph. Um, remember, the composition in ocean scapes is very, very complex. You basically have to base it off sand, water in clouds. And when you don't have any clouds, it's gonna be very, very tough to get it composition. Um, but I think it's doable. It's very challenging, and you can get some some stunning results. Um, let me see. I just I just noticed that this radio filter right here might be a little bit overdone, so I'll click back on it, and I am going to crank down this exposure to like a 16. I wanted more subtle. So now we click done, and that's a lot better. Basically, I could see a little halo back here. Um, and I didn't like it. So all I know now it's really, really good. And remember, if you catch anything before you're done, Ah, go over your image one more time just so you can catch all the of the little mistakes. Believe me, people like me are always looking for little little mistakes. And even though your photos might be stunning, um, it would be terrible to print a photo and hanging in a gallery and have a huge sensor spot on it. It's always once you're done, you know, go over it again. Recheck it. It's worth. It's worth a couple minutes of your time. I've made that air. I printed a beautiful image of New York, took it to art Bassel and I have a huge sensor spot on it. I had to take it down and replace it with another image that I had printed, which was sad because at that point I couldn't do anything about it. So anyways, guys before and after there's before there's after. What a difference. Very, very pleased with this image 15. Chapter 14 Treelines: in this image, we're going to make very few adjustments. And I just want to show you how we can, um, create this beautiful shadows of this trees. Basically against the sunset. I shot this at the Everglades, and it was really, really nice Sunset, um, before the sunset became wonderful we have kind of this huge cloud in front of the in front of the the sun so you couldn't really see it. It would just kind of pick through after the sun started to set more tours like down here. This started to fade away, and we got some incredible shots, but I really, really like this shot. I think this tree line is really amazing and this colors are just really, really cool. It's kind of a cool photograph to ah, to see. So that's Ah, let's get with the editing. Let me show you the camera settings. The prints are ah, I keep for information. And this is shotted. Ah, 1 1/100 of a second F 10. I s 03 2024 to 85 millimeter lens. And basically what I wanted to capture here was the tree line. I just wanted to get this tree lines against. This is nice colors. So let me open up the exposure so you can see what's in front of me. I shot this from my truck. There's again. This is a swamp. This is the Everglades, and this is a swamp. You can't walk here like normal. You can if you want to get wet. And you're not afraid of alligators and or snakes. Um, but this was shot from my truck and I was actually standing on the back of it. And I Like I said, I just wanted to get this beautiful tree line against this, uh, this beautiful backdrop so I can see a sensor spot right off the bat. So let me present information key. And let's start with the editing. So the first thing I noticed, of course, was this sensor spot. So let me a raise that we'll click our spot removal tool and ah, get it. Get rid of it. That way, we can actually go back, click visualized spots and look for more again. You're looking for donuts. So these are not spots. Thes are actual clouds. The donuts wants the ones that look like doughnuts are the spots you want, so click out of that another. We have a clean image to work with. Um, we can start the editing process. Now again, this foreground looks really, really nice, as's faras her composition here. It's not a complex one. It's a very pleasing to the eye, and I simply wanted to get the tree line. So I want to show you how simplicity can also create beautiful photos with all my other photographs. I've showed you the triangle. I've showed you the complexity of the thought process that goes into it. I could have done that here with a wide angle lens and I There was some trees which I shot , and I have other images like that. But here I just wanted to show you that sometimes the best photos air created very simply by just, um I don't know, just keeping it very simple without much complexity. I think the most complex part of it here is this tree. You're I will come to this tree first and then start wandering off into the horizon, and that's how you're able to see this colors and this beautiful backdrop. And that's what I was wanting to create just a simple image. I knew. I just wanted to get the get the silhouettes of the streets of this trees when I was shooting it. So I knew what I was going into when I shot this image. I just saw another sense respond right there. Let me get rid of it. Right here is very subtle, but it's there. Okay. All right. Cool. So let me out. Reset the exposure. We're gonna click exposure twice. That resets it. And as you can see, I got it really close to the final product. Since I'm only looking for the tree line. That's all I was looking for when I shot There's nothing else. Just the tree line against this beautiful backdrop. So I'm first thing I'm gonna do right off the bat, I'm going to Ah, bring up my contrast Quite a bit. As you can see, just makes the trees a lot darker and the colors pop a little more. Let me tone it down a tad. That's very good. Um, now it was very hot when I shot this. I remember just sweating profusely at the Everglades. It's a very, very humid place. And during the summer months. It's just really, really hot. Not in only the summer months during every month. It's just really humid really, really hot. And you're walking and kind of working out. So you get ultra ultra wet. So that's the feel I want to give to the photo. So I'm going to bring my temperature up to the warm side, maybe right about there. And as you can see, when I do this, I lose my blues on the clouds. So I don't know if I like that. So maybe I will reset the temperature, bring it down, maybe right there. And I'm going to try different, Ah, different technique. I'm going to go to my, um my ah graduated filter. I'll click on that. Let me close this basic panel, and now I will double click on the exposure or the effect twice. It will reset all your sliders and I'm going to come from this corner, and basically that's what I want orange or yellow. Since this, that's where the sun is. And that's what's hitting all this. All this clouds and turning him orange and yellow. So now I can bring this up. Look at that that glow GIs becomes really, really nice. That's a lot May be right about there. You can maybe, you know, drug it up, drag it down. I think that looks really good, though. That's perfect. So now I'm going to draw No. One so you can click here on the new click on that reset old your sliders and I'm going to come from this corner says it's kind of changing colors. I want this to be very blue. So now I'm going to tone it down to blue right about there, not let me flip this kind of like that. Bring this this way and now put it right about there. So let me Presidio Key so you can see what I'm what I'm doing. So it's kind of blending in right here. Most of the action. Let me move it up. It's happening up here, and it starts to blend right here and fall off right about there. Presidio Key again, and that looks really good. Let's see what this blends and falls off Presidio Key and see it's the most is appear, and it starts to fade off red aroun here and it finish. It finishes off right around here, so that's really good. That's what I'm trying to. That's what I'm trying to look for. Now let me click this before, after before after So you can see we got one side yellow, an orange and one side of blue, which is exactly what I was looking for. Its how the photo was before. But I'm just enhancing the cultures. And I think it looks interesting before after before, after I think it looks killer. Very, very good. I'll click out of that, go back to my basic panel on and now I can bring on my virus is just a tad. I think that looks really, really nice right there. Um, I'm looking at this trees how They're kind of blown out right here. So that is gonna make me want to turn my highlights on just attack. And as you can see, the colors get a little more richer. And I think that looks really good right about there. Now, My shadows. Obviously, I don't care about the foreground on this one. That was not my intent when I was shooting this photo. So I'm going to keep the shadows off if you want to give it a little bit of mystery. A little bit of off. Make the mind wonder What's what's there you can you can open them up just a tad. So the viewers, I kind of looks for something here on wonders what it iss. You can certainly do that. And I think that actually looks really cool. Um, but I think that looks really nice. Look at that. You can kind of see the like. It's cool here and it's hot here. It almost looks fake, but as you can see, it's not that impressive Waikiki. So there's a wide before and after. So, as you can see under before it's blue here. Now, this is a raw file. So it's on a great scale, so you can see this, um, this bluish And here's the oranges. So what we did here was simply enhanced it, and it kind of blend send together in the middle, which I think it creates. Ah ah, cool photo. It creates a cool a cool effect, if you will. Now, my whites and my blacks, um, I don't think I need to do anything again. I don't use the's a lot. You can certainly try it if you want, but I don't. Maybe the whites right about there and you blacks. If you turned him down, they'll just create a little bit more of a contrast E image, which I'm getting that result by coming up to the contrast. So I don't really think you need to do much there. Let's go to our lands. Corrections. Click on profile removed chromatic aberration, which your mainly ah probably find around the trees, if any at all. Um, yeah, not much on this image, but it's still good to keep it quick. Now we're gonna enable the profile corrections, and, as you can see, doesn't really do much in this image. So I'm going to keep it. I could go either way. I'll keep it off. For now. Remember, all this is entirely up to you. It's all taste. Don't worry about what people say or think. This is your vision. Um, it's your photo. Um, you know, you just want to kind of keep it realistic. That's the only thing. You don't want to overdo it, but I think that looks really, really nice. I mean, way went a long way with this with a few simple sliders. Let me president for it after there's before and there's after and I think that looks cool . Um, you know, it's It's exactly what I wanted to do when I was shooting. I just wanted to get the tree line. Um, not nothing complex about the composition, but a very nice image. I was. I was just happy when I saw this, so I wanted to showcase his beautiful trees in the Everglades. There's nice shapes and patterns at the streets, mate. So I think that looks really nice. I don't think there's a lot more you can do with it or I want to do to it. Of course there is. You can do a lot more to it, but I think that looks really good. Um, maybe the temperature you can the tent. You can make it a tad bit purple since it's the sunset, and that looks really nice. Look at that. But I don't want to overdo it, so I'm just going to leave it alone. So I just wanted to show you that you don't always need a complex seen or a complex composition to create a beautiful image here. All I wanted to do was showcased the tree line, the shapes and patterns of the trees. I did choose thes as my main focal point, and I knew that I would immediately fall off here and then carry on to what? To see the tree line. One could even say that the eye goes here then here than here, creating my triangle. But I'm not sure if that's entirely true. So by creating this Ah, but just shooting the tree line against this beautiful backdrop. With this kind of multicolor, you can see that it becomes a very beautiful image. Let me finish it off by the detail. So bring on my detail again. About 60 seventies. What? I usually like to do the masking hold under option key and basically just want to sharpen the trees. So what's white is being sharpened. What's black? It's being left alone and here are the trees. Sharpen. Let it go and look at that to me. That's stunning image to me. I'm very proud of it. I really like it. Let me press the Y key so you can see before and after. And there you have it 16. Chapter 15 Feelings and Emotion: much like the last photo. This was a very complex seem to ah photograph. Now, This morning I showed up to work in a separate project that I was doing. But I got really, really bored and I immediately was drawn to the ocean. So I packed my stuff up and I came and sat by the ocean When immediately I was feeling kind of I had this feeling off nostalgia. I started thinking about life and in all kinds of things. So let me explain what was going on. Uhm, I'm going to open up my exposure, so just so you can see. So a bird flew by me and dropped the feather right next to me. Um, so I immediately thought to use it, um, to my advantage to help me a compose A beautiful photo. Um, Now, I haven't taken any good shots this morning. And what what I was feeling. I was kind of feeling like I was kind of alone in this Ah, big in this planet, facing all kinds of things in the world, you know? And I have to face him by myself. So what I did is I grabbed this feather and I threw it. Ah, and it landed about a foot away from me, and it's sat there. So I said, As I said, my camera I took a photo of the feather in the water and that didn't work out too well. But as the waves kept coming in, they kept moving the feather. At this point, I had forgotten all about the feather. Um, and then the sun creep through this clouds and they kind of lit up the ocean. And as I looked down, this feather was on the ground so immediately snapped the photo. I pressed my, um I pressed the the shutter release and I took about three exposures. But it made so much sense in my head because I kind of was rib eye kind of The feather represents me in this water kind of represents the world and all the things I face and I do . And I'm kind of just walking this path in the world to this. Ah, you know, hopefully light, um that is represented by my life. So it don't make sense. It was such a weird morning, such a weird day, and I just have a vivid memory of how, how, how I was feeling and how this feather just played this huge role in my in this photo and in me I just made perfect sense. It's actually my favorite photo that I've ever taken, Um, my favorite landscape photo, because it means so much to represent so much. It's exactly what I was feeling is exactly what I was experiencing at this moment. Um, you know, sometimes we have cloudy days. You know, sometimes you feel alone facing all this all this world, all this unknowns. And you know that there's a light at the end and you just keep on trucking through. So it's just such a such a meaningful photo for me. Um, and it happened just really oddly miss by mistake. Very weird. Um, which makes it that much better. Um, now, that's not to say I didn't know the settings. I didn't know what I was doing. Of course I knew what I was doing. So of course I knew my settings, but how? Everything just ended up together. It kind of just fell into place. And I was about to leave. I just kind of sat down and I was taking it all in. I threw the feather out there to see if he would work. Didn't work. Um, but then all everything just kind of came to this to this stop for one split off a second. And it made just perfect sense, and I was able to capture it. I got to exposures of this photo. I got this one and I have another one that I already, um, published. Um, so that's the story behind this photo in a lot of my photos, you know, it's not just about making a photo. It's It's a personal story off feeder, a personal struggle or personal success, or simply just ah ah, story of my personal life. And if you look at my photos or any other photographers photos, I think you can see a lot of their personality and them. So that's what I was going through. That's what happened. And it is a very, very cool photograph. So let me reset this exposure. I just wanted to show you the whole composition and let me show you the settings. So the setting is 1/30 of a second F 22. I s 0 31 now. I dropped my eyes so so I could drop my shutter speed. The reason I wanted to drop my shutter speed is so I could slow down this water. Let me open those subs I can show you so I could slow down this water. Um, you know, you create a sense off motion when you stop things when you slow him down, so you create a sense of movement. And that's what I was trying to accomplish. That's why my SOS is so low and my F stop is so high because I wanted to get that starburst . The fact in the sun like I've explained before. So the Mary said that exposure and let me take the information off and let's get started. So again, first things first, straighten out my horizon. It's just a tad crooked, not asparagus. Some are, and that looks really, really nice. Next thing I want to do is I won't open on my shadows accidentally press whites. I'll reset those. I opened up my shadows and you can see you can see a little bit. Not as much as I want to show. So next thing I want to just tone down. This highlights and what I'm looking at is I'm looking at this water right here. See these water? So that's what I'm looking at when I turned down the highlights, Um, I want this water to be exposed correctly, so as you can see if I that blows it out If I bring it down right about there, that looks that looks really nice. Now I want to bring up my temperature because they have this golden tone on it. It was just such a cool It was crazy. I'm telling you, it's such a meaningful photo for me. It was that it was that cool. So I wanted to share it with you guys. Um, so there's a temperature now I'll bring on my contrast to make things pop. And there's my contrast and everything kind of dark end up, but he gave it a nice little nice punch. So now will come down to our vibrance. And as you can see, this is my pattern. Now, now that you've watched a lot of these videos, this is kind of the pattern that I do in all of my photos. But when I started, it took me a long time to develop that pattern. Nobody thought me and nobody. I didn't know how to do it. So I kind of developed it and threw a motive repetition and doing it every single day over and over again. I kind of developed this pattern and that's how you get the locum feel of my photos. And that's what I'm hoping to teach you with this with this videos is to develop your own pattern. You know, you can certainly copy mine eventually, a promise that you're gonna end up having your own style. And that's that's great eso. Now that we are brought up the vibrance, we're gonna grab for a local adjustment So we'll grab a local adjustment. Let me close out of this basic panel will revel local adjustment, which is a graduated filter. And then we're gonna drag it from down up, right, about about 2/3 a little overthrew there's of the way. And now we're gonna open up the exposure because we want to show that feather that means so much in this photograph. And we also want to show those waves or that foam whatever you wanna call it, And that looks really, really nice. So now will press done. And look how how nice that looks. That just looks beautiful. This please press before and after, so you can see there's before and there's after so you can see immediately. Um, we have this beautiful golden tone. You have the sun, here's your leading lines. So here what you would juices, you're leading the lines. This would be your focal point. And then immediately. Here's the triangle. Here are the waves or the foam, so this create the triangle, and this guides you into the sun into the horizon, into the light. And then the light again comes into this clouds, and your eye immediately goes up to this clouds. So as you can see, it's a very, very simple image. But it's a very, very complex photo as well, and I think that looks beautiful. So let's get out of that and, uh, keep going with it. So very subtle changes didn't have to do a lot to it, and it already looks great. So now let's come toward lens. Corrections will come to profile. Get out of the manual now. We will remove the chromatic aberration. Always remove that always, always, always and then we're gonna enable our profile corrections. Let's see what that did. See how it's just a subtle on war, but he works well. I really like it. So I think that looks really good. It looks, um I'm 100 times better. Um, now what I think we can do. We can still warm it up a little bit more and give it some of that gold in a little more cold and tone. I think right about there looks pretty good. It was a hot day. Was a warm morning. I remember, um, so that looks nice. Maybe bring up this vibrance attack, and that looks really good. As you can see, the sand is just so pristine the feathers just beautifully there. Um, And as soon as this form hit it, it vanished. So I was able to take two exposures before the feather completely disappeared into the ocean. It was such a weird thing that happened. So I'm really proud of this. Um, so I think that looks really nice. Eso Let's go. Let's do another Ah, local adjustment. And we're gonna come here to a radio filter. So will come. Let me close this basic panel will come to Radio Filter Click Defect Award twice That resets your sliders. And now let's, um, let's spring down this exposure attack and then we'll warm it up just a tad. And now we're gonna draw something into her ison just right there. And I just want to bring this yellow out from behind this clouds. So let me show you before and after before, after before, after. And that might be a little too much. So, in fact, they want to make this smaller, bring it up a tad, and then I'm a minus point for one. So maybe like minus 10.20 that's good. Let's see before and after before. That's much more subtle. I like that a lot better. Um, and maybe this is that 18. Let's go to maybe like a 10. And that looks that looks better before after before, after it's just very subtle, but it makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? It just looks so good. So we'll close out of that, and this thing is pretty much done. I don't think you need to do a lot more. Maybe if you want to blow up the sky a little more. Um, come here to your color. Click on the blue and bring up the saturation. It doesn't do much. Maybe the luminous. Yeah, that doesn't do much. I would just bring that a tad maybe like a plus 12. Um, TV comptel before? After you can't tell. You really can't tell. Um, so I think only know that's Ah, it's pretty good image. I think we can call that. Complete. Maybe. Here the the light. It's still a little bit blown out. So come back to her basic panel and turned on the highlights just a tad more. I think that looks nice. I was use another local adjustment will juice a brush. Let me click out of the basic so we don't get confused. Click defect word twice that resets everything. And now I'm gonna bring up the exposure just a tad and watch what I do. So this is the sun, right? So I just want to draw a little whiter triangle here. Maybe that's too much. So, President, Okey. I went too much. So presidents erase And what I will do is I'll delete this just like that. And then I'll also delete this just like that. So I just want to kind of widen this up a little bit and let me click the okey and then let's go before and after before after. See, that is very subtle, but it works. It just makes squid click close. He just makes easier. Makes you makes the I kind of slide in here a little bit easier and see this water, the movement we created. It also serves as leading lines into the composition into it's part of your composition, leading lines into the into this beautiful sunrise. Um, now, this image, I do believe you can ah, use a vignette on it. So you come to your effects panel and you can bring this down. Maybe right about there. You don't have to. That's a negative seven. Let's see within without before, after before, after entirely after you. Maybe I'll do like a minus four. And that looks really good. And now let's check out before and after before and after. And there you have it. A beautifully composed photo, beautifully finished, very subtle. Uh, adjustments. Nothing out of this world. And you have an incredible, incredible photograph 17. Chapter 16 Less is More: So in this food, I want to show you how you can take something not as dramatic and not us. Ah, it's crazy life with a lot of clouds and a lot going on and still make it a really interesting, really beautiful photo. So I shot this here in Miami and ah, you know, I was hoping for the most dramatic clouds you could ever imagine. Off course. I did not get that this particular morning. This was the sunrise. And that's very common. When you go out and shoot, you're not always going to get everything you want, so your photos can be just amazing. So you have to work with what you're given, and you have to try to create interesting compositions. Now, this composition let me open up my exposure just so I can explain the composition. So in this composition, I wanted to use not on Lee these palm trees, but also the reflections tow us leading lines to bring the viewer into the photograph. Now, here I have three main leading lines number one number two and number three or vice versa. So by using these three leading lines in each side, I can guide the viewer into the amazing Sunrise and the beautiful sun. And I created the sun. I made it as my main focal point in the horizon. I know there wasn't going to be any clouds. I knew this was gonna be a quite a boring image if I didn't put a subject in front of it, such as the sun before it rose. So I waited till the sun rose, and this is what I came up with. Now let me bring the exposure back to normal. Now again, I always exposed for my lightest part off the photograph. In this case, it was the sun. So I exposed for the sun. And now let me show you the camera's settings. So it's 1 1/100 of a second F 18 I s 0 100 Now, I shot this that if 18 So I could get this starburst effect in the son. That was my main point, because this is my focal point, and I really, really, really wanted to capture that now by exposing um for the sun for my lightest part of the photo. Everything else becomes really dark. And that's okay. Let me get rid of this settings by pressing the ikey and let's get started. So first things first. I want to open up the shadows. And as you can see immediately, I am immediately able to see the reflections in the water. Um, at this point, I want to bring up my contrast. And as you can see, it makes the image drama more dramatic right off the bat. I want to bring up the exposure. Just attach is so I can see a little bit more. But that also brightened up my son. So let me bring in the highlights just a tad, and I think that looks really good. So right off the bat, we opened up the shadows. We lowered the highlights and brought up the exposure a little bit. And as you can see, our palm trees are more defined are leading lines are more defined and orsa, our son, our point of interest are subject is more defined. So I want to come back to my vibrance and I'll just bring it up. So as you can see when I bring this up, everything becomes really colorful and immediately a lot more interesting, which is exactly what I want now. Now that I'm here, let me just get rid of this sensor spots right here does dust thoughts. So click on my, um, spot removal tool right here. I'll make sure its own hell, and I just go over him real quick. Have you have a problem? Trouble seen him? Just click your visualize spots down here, and this will bring up your your sensor spots. As you can see, they're all looked like donuts. And that is ah, sensor spot. So just get rid of that. And that looks really nice. There's a very small one down here and maybe one right there. And now I will click done, and I have a clean image. So that looks really, really nice right off the bat. Didn't have to do a lot to it on. And it already looks a lot better. Um, now let me come down to my profile. Corrections. I'll remove the chromatic aberration, and I will enable my profile corrections. So it didn't really do a lot. It opened it up. It opened up the sights a little bit, and I like it. So I'm going to leave it. I think that works for this image. So right off the bat, I have a really, really cool image, but it's still not quite what I want. Let me press before and after, so we can see there's before and there's after so you can publish it like this and it's It's a beautiful image. It's really nice, but there's a lot more you can do. Let me a click the Y key and get out of there. So first things first. I want to, um, bring the bring out this. Ah, this palm trees a little bit. So I'm going to use the radio filter and I'm going to draw on the palm trees drunk over on the palm trees So I will bring this override over the pond trees and then bring thes exposure up just a tad. And you can drag that down if you want and see what you can even strain it out and bring it out this way and then get a little more, uh, get a little more out of it. So I wanted to the exact same exacting on this side Go right there, and I think that looks good. Maybe Brighton, this side up a tab And remember, we press our okey and will show us what we're lightening up. So I think that looks pretty even. So let me close out of that. Look at that. Quite a difference, right? Well, I'm not quite done just yet. The images dramatic. It looks good, but I want to bring it, bring a little more drama to it. So there. Ah, few things I can do now. This morning, the sun in the sky was very, very blue. Now there's a trick. If you want to make it a little purple, you can bring your magenta just attack And that'll just tended a little bit. Now this looks a little bit darker, a little richer, and it's got a nice little purple Tend to it now you don't have to do that, but I think he makes the image a little more interesting. Um, now again, we wish this was covered in clouds, but it isn't. It's still a really clean image and a beautiful one. So I think that looks really nice. Now. If we bring the temperature up a bit, it will bring out our orange Look at that glow in the orange. I think that looks really, really good. Look at that. So now this click or before and after. Look at that. Quite a difference right off the bat. Now let's get out of there. And now I want to bring my vibrance up just a tad more. I won't exaggerate the colors just a little bit more, but not too much. I think for this particular image it works. And I think that looks good right about there. Um, now I want to do another local adjustment, and that's going to be with my adjustment brush right here because his basic panel So we don't get confused and I'll bring this up just a tad, maybe like a 33 a plus 33. And then I'll just airbrushing in this shadows right here. Now, if that's not doing a lot, you can always adjust it accordingly. And that's too much. Maybe Memory said that. I just want a slightly slightly bring that out. And now what this is going to do. This is going to help the eyes drop in here and follow this leading lines into the sun. Now you don't have to do this, but I think it really helps. It's a very subtle change in helping the viewer inviting him into the photo, and I think that looks really good. Now, close out of that. Now, I think for this particular image, we can come to the effects, Um, Tab, the effects panel and I think Vignette, It's OK for this image. Now what? That's doing it simply closing out the sky and the water and making this horizon dishpan trees and, of course, the sun. Our main focal point. So let me open that up quite a bit right about there. And I think that looks really nice now. I just saw a couple of more, um, sensor spots. So I'm going to take take care of them right away. Here's one right here, and there's one right here, so I'll zoom in. I'll click on my sensor spot removal. Now click on that that you take care of it. Very good and seem, with this one, maybe drawer right on there. That should take care of that. Very good. Now, close out of that. Zoom out. Very nice. Now, it's very important that you always take care of this spots while you see him. Because if you say I'll come back and do it later. You will probably for yet because you'll get side tracked doing some other some other thing . So but all in all, I think this image looks really, really nice, I think Then we achieved what we wanted. So we created something very interesting that off a not very interesting photo, a sky. In fact, the people that were here were kind of disappointed, and they got up and left instead of waiting out. Um, the sunrise. And I think this is a really, really nice image. So always, you know, put your creative ah, creative foot forward and work with what? You haven't tried to make that image interesting again. I made this my focal point, and I made sure to include this palm trees in this reflections in my composition by using them using what was given to me as leading lines into this beautiful sunrise. Now one last thing I want to do, even though I think this is finished, let me just show you before and after there's before and there's after beautiful image. I think it's amazing. Um, let me get out of there. You can come Ah, come down here tour Ah, local adjustment and would use a graduated filter. And we're just going to bring it down here in the sky a little bit, maybe right about there, and I will bring it out a little bit. And now I want to paint it a little more blue. And I will do that by using my temperature dial my temperature slider here and bringing it to the left a little bit. And I think that looks really, really nice. Uh, let me show you before and after what I just did before, after before, after I'll click. Done As you can see, it simply just made this bluer. It made my sky bluer in made it just a little more crisp and a little more nicer and more appealing to the viewer that see before and after one more time. And there you have it a beautiful image created really. Ah, with very little to work with us forest elements go. So remember it's always good to, you know, get creative. Don't leave before before it's really over. I waited out the sunrise and I think this this came out beautiful, very, very pleased with it 18. Chapter 17 citiscapes: Here's another cityscape image. I shut this from the top of the parking garage in Miami Beach, Florida Now, as you can see, there's a lot going on in this photo. Landscape photography and cityscape photography are pretty similar, except cityscape. Photography is a little bit easier to compose Onley because you have so much going on. I have buildings, you have streets, you have, Ah, light streaks. Um and you have obviously the elements. So here, as you can see, I used the street and I also used the cars going by to create my composition. So this your eye immediately comes from the corner and from the bottom in, and it goes into the horizon into this beautiful skyline. Also, I have used the sky and the clouds to create more leading lines into this skyline. So I positioned myself in this side off the bridge. Um, because I wanted to create Ah, the effect that this was coming out of kind of coming out of the corner because I want so you're always wanting ice your eyes or your viewer size to fall into the bottom of the photo. So here I wanted this to coming from this corner and started guiding me in. Same with the bottom. I wanted the ice to fall into this red spot right here and start wandering into the photo. Same with this corner. I wanted the Thea viewer to just go in here and start going into this street into the photo . So all of this was very well thought out. And I did move. I did shoot it from around this angle, and I shuddered from around this single. But nothing composed the photo better than from here. I just really like this bottom line. And I really like how this curve walks you slowly into this photograph. So you're I just slowly goes in here into this dramatic amazing sit escape. Same with DEA. Same with the sky. As you can see, the clouds were coming this way. I shot it from a different angle where it literally the clouds were going sideways. And it just didn't work for me for that reason. So I made sure to match my clouds with my street and my streaks, my light streaks to make sure that home old wandering eyes were coming into this photograph . Let's look at the camera settings. So the camera's settings is 30 seconds. 25 eyes my f stop in my eyes. So is 100. This was shot on a little tripod. Like I said, I was on top of a parking garage. Um, let's get rid of this and let's get started. So I am First things first, the strain on my horizon. I noticed that right off the bat. So I just come to my crop tool over here and I strain it out like that. That looks really nice. I'm happy with that. Perfect. So now my technique for cityscape photography as you signed the last video is also the same as my landscape photography. So by repeating this so much over the years and over time, I developed the this pattern and this style off editing that works for me and gives my photos that signature look. So let's open up our shadows first thing in this photo. Now, instead of my landscapes with this city escapes since their sole it up down here, we're actually opening up the sky because in my silly Marie said that because in my cityscape photos, I'm also exposing for the for the brightest spot in the sky that doesn't change. My exposure is still going to be the same. What does changes all this streetlight? And so with all this streetlight, it's gonna obviously light up your foreground or whatever the composition, maybe in this case is the foreground. So what's now dark is my sky. So by opening of my shadows I'm opening up that sky So as you can see, my shooting is still the same My editing still the same. But what has changed is the lighting off the photo within itself. Due to the street lights in the more cityscapes you do, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. And again, just this pattern a repetition, um, to create your own style and your own visual story. So we opened up the shadows all the way, and I think that looks really good. You can see it immediately changed the photo. I made it kind of golf from kind of Dole toe immediately. Ah, very cool looking with this clouds. Now we're going to bring up their contrast and, as you can see, just gives it a little bit of punch. And this is again This is the same thing I would be doing in my landscape photos. But what changes here is you have all this light, all this Ah, artificial light, which is the cars, The city lights, the sky. You know all this fake lights created by us instead of just the natural light created by the earth. I'm still trying to create, you know, compose official story and kind of give you that field that you were there like you're standing in this busy city in this craziness and you're walking right into it. So after I bring up my contrast, I immediately see that this could be a little a little happier, a little brighter. So I'm going to bring on my vibrance. And I think that looks really nice right about there. Maybe even a little more right about There are blues just became really blue and reds became nice and red, just richer. Um, now let's focus on this orange back here. So what I want to do is bring up my temperature, warm it up a little bit, and look at that orange Looks cool. Right? So let me show you before and after. Let's reset it. There's before and just a little bit there. Southward gives it that I want to give it too much, but it kind off. It brought the orange out a little more. So that's pretty good. Now this thing is bugging me. I don't know if it's a star or what is it? What? It's something. So let's get rid of that. I zoom in with my spot removal tool, and I will calm that out of there. I'm still on the heel, close out of line. That looks really good. I assume out of that. And that looks pretty nice. All right, so right away, I changed the image quite a bit. Now to tone this street lights street, this streaks down a little bit. We're gonna use her highlights. So again, same premise. Assad landscape photography. Except you have the lights here. So did you see what just happen? So you went from from them being really, really bright to just kind of defining those lights. So now you can see the nice pattern off lights individually. So I think that looks really nice. This click or y key to see before and after. So there's before there's off there. So we're just brightening it up a little bit and cleaning it up. It's nothing super dramatic since their settings were really good to begin with. But it looks really nice. So quick out of that. And now what I want to do is I wanna grab a graduated filter. I'm gonna draw it from my sky right about there and now our exposures pretty high. So well, toned that down a little bit. And I think that looks cool. Look at those clouds. I mean, that just changed the whole entire look of this clouds. How cool is that? That looks really, really nice. So now I'm pretty happy. I mean, this could be a completed image. Let's see before and after there's before and there's after. So we're basically just bringing out the colors, redefining the edges a little bit and just making it a little more pleasing to the eye. A little less flat, more dimensional. So that looks really nice. Let's get out of that now. I'm not going to touch the whites or the blacks again. I rarely touch those. If you want, experiment with your own photos with them, please feel free to do so. I don't think you need him every time, But you certainly can. I don't think it's gonna do anything for me in this particular image. But what I do want to do is I want to use another local adjustment. So I will click on this. Let me close my basic panel. I will click on my local adjustment and now I'm going to draw an oval right across my city . My horizon. This exposure was already up to reset it, you press the exposure twice or the effect word twice. And now we're just gonna bring this up just a tad. I just want to brighten up the city a little bit. And I also want a warm it up so that orange comes out a little better so right about there and maybe even bring this out a little bit. So let's see before and after before, after before after. So it's just a very subtle head off orange. I'm putting on this on this on the city because the sunset from there and that's what you're seeing is the glow of the sun that's already said for about 1/2 hour. But you can still see a little bit a lot, and that looks really nice. Now, if you want to sharpen his buildings, you can bring up the sharpness on here. Just attack. I don't think you need it. But for the sake of the tutorial, let's do that. That's close out of that. And I think that looks really good. Now we can come to our lands. Corrections will remove. Chromatic aberration will enable profile corrections. I don't think you need it. There's before after before after, Ah, if I could avoid their way. Let's leave it. Um okay, let's leave it on. That looks good. And now we're going to come to the effects and give it a tiny bit of in. Yet, basically, I'm trying to close out this noise right here, and this car's a little bit so we can do it this way like that. Or let me reset that. If you want to do this manually, you can certainly do that. This closes, effects tapped out. We want to come to her adjustment brush and here will click on that will reset all our sliders and I will bring the exposure down. Let's Ah, maybe my A minus one. Now we're going to draw us our circle right about there. And we can just start drawing on this corners to close this down a little bit and maybe right there and maybe right there Now you just want sold subtle hints. Nothing too crazy. So now we can closes down a little more. And how could the Oki 20 judges did? And so you just want very little hands, Nothing too crazy. The more you draw, the more the more is gonna change. But I just wanted to close on the image Just a tad. Nothing too crazy. And what this does, it helps. The viewer helps the I fall right into the middle. So I'm gonna take the Okie out. Should you? Before and after before, After that looks good. Except I don't like my left corner. I think I made a mistake here, So it raised that I will come in, click on this erase word. And I also don't like this all the rays that Ah, maybe I went over right here too much and maybe just the outside of this, but I think that looks really nice. So I will click close and let's see before and after. So look at that. Not a whole lot of edits, but just enough edits to give this photo just some bright life colors again. Cityscapes to me are a little bit easier to shoot because you got a lot going on. So you have more angles to play with us for its composition. And also you can use this lights and streets to create some stunning, stunning compositions to tell a better story. So now there's click on our detail panel to finish things off, and we will sharpen this to about 60 70. Like I usually like to do now are masking hold down the option key. And we'll just toned that down a little bit. Very good. They go for that, and that's pretty awesome. Um, now, I didn't notice when I was doing that. Some either censor spots or stars. When you dio night photography like this, most likely they're gonna be stars. And they're these little dots and I believe they're stars. You can remove them or you can leave them. Um, either way, your photos still gonna be really, really cool, But you will find that most of the time this are stars and not censor spots. So be careful what you're doing and what you're looking for. Um, but I think that's a completed image, guys. So again, very subtle, subtle at its very little hands of stuff to bring this image to life before and after. And there you have it Very pleased with this photo. 19. Chapter 18 Profile Corrections: Let's take a look at the city escape photograph. So in this photo, I wanted to take a picture off this beautiful ship and this beautiful skyline. This is shot in Miami and its shot at night. Well, after the sun had set. Now, let me show you my settings. President Ikey, here we have 72 seconds. F 22 s a 100. Now. I wanted to get ah very long exposure to get this water as still as possible. That's why I went with the 72 seconds. Um, by getting the water is still a spot, Ausubel. I was able to create perfect reflections of the buildings and off the ship in this water. Let me open up this exposure so you can see what I'm talking about. A little better here, real. So by creating this by making this water is still a spot, Ausubel, with a very long exposure, I was able to create this this perfect reflections of the buildings on the water and also of the ship. Since it's my main composition. Now, since I have the exposure all the way up, let's talk about, um, leading lines. So here I was I wanted to use this curve to guide the I the viewer into the skyline. I also used his buildings toe bring the viewer into the skyline as well. Since the skyline is my main composition. This is my main What's mainly going to tell my story? And I'm using the puddle as an interesting way to bring the viewer into the image. Now, when I I was actually standing over here and I turned around and I saw this huge puddle So I came over here and that I was able to capture. You gotta remember you have to move around and kind of always think of how you can invite the viewer into these great compositions. Um, that's what you're going to be able to tell your story. So I did shoot a few exposures from here. I wasn't really happy with them. I came to this corner and shot this way. I wasn't really happy with it until I turned around. And then I saw the puddle. Then I was like, Wow, that's something. Um, so that's I was able to create this and began Are leading lines. We just this concrete, um, parking lauder, This road to to start bringing the i n this way and this this buildings right here also used this leading lines into the composition. I think the main leading line here is this curved. Now, I shot this with my tiny tripod. Um, and I was right on this curb. Um, and this will bring the eyes right into the composition. Now, by being so low to the water, I was able to decrease, um, this Ah, the width of this road. If I would have shot it higher with my tripod for maybe up here, this would have looked a lot bigger. So the lower you are when you're shooting a reflection, the lesser the, um the gap you're gonna have between your subject and your subject inside that reflection. So keep that in mind. If I would have been dead level with water, I would have actually had to put my tripod in the water. But if I would have done so, this gap would have been completely gone, and the buildings would have been reflecting on top of each other. Now, I did not want to do that. I wanted to create some separation by using by, um by seeing this road. Um and that's why I went on the curb instead of in the water. So that's that. Let me get rid of the settings pressing my ikey. And now let me explain to you guys, um, the importance off your profile corrections and the transform slider here in for cityscapes and architectural photography, I'm going to leave my exposure up high. I am not going to. Other than just yet. I want to start editing this photo with the transform panel. Now, when you're doing architectural photography or any kind of building photography, your buildings are usually going to be leaning. This can be corrected in the field by tilting your camera up or down accordingly. And that will usually fix this now, not every time you're going to be able to do such a thing. So light room has built in this beautiful transform panel here for you to do so manually after you after you take the shot and get back home. So would you want to Do you want to come to your transform panel and watch what happens when I click this auto button right here? Look at that. My buildings immediately gets strained out beautifully, gets strained out. I don't have to do anything else to them now, 90% of the time, this is going to work for all of your for all of your cityscape photos. But the times that don't let me click that off, you condone, Oh, it all manually here. And first you're going to start on the vertical. And basically what I'm looking at is I'm looking at the lines right here that are parallel to move the side off my image and then you're going to go toe Ah, horizontal. Maybe a little bit on some of them, Not all of them. And now you can start rotating. And what I'm looking at their I'm looking at this building in the site in the side of this building. Let me do a little less right here, and maybe, maybe right about there, that looks really, really close. So now we can come up here and crop it accordingly. And now let me click out of that. As you can see, we just did the same exact thing, but we did it all manually. So when this auto button does not work for you, you can do it always manually with all these sliders. It takes a little bit more time. It takes a little bit of thinking and a little bit off creativity, but you can always do it here. Now, I cannot tell you how important this is to architectural and cityscape photography. When you're doing this kind of work for a client and it's a high end client, the first thing they're gonna look at is you're leaning buildings. If you have leaning buildings, I can assure you you're going to be XT out and they're going to go to the next photographer . Um, so now let me reset thes this, uh, sliders. Let me just reset the entire image. I'll come back here, let me open up that exposure again for you, and then I'll come back to transform. We did it manually. Princes, this auto bun work so well, we'll just leave it there automatically. Boom. Done again. Um, it's very, very important in cityscape photography, architectural photography to have your profiles to have it. Everything corrected and everything, um, parallel to each other How it should be. You don't go to Ah, you don't go to the city and and you see leaning buildings. Um, unless you're in Amsterdam, which is actually kind of cool, but, um, this is the best way to do it. Um, and this is what you should be doing always on as you're trying to be artistic and your one does leaning buildings and that's final Swell. But this is Thea the best way to do things. And everything is right here in light room in the transform button. So when I'm doing any kind of city escape with buildings, I immediately come to this panel. So once I do that, let's come to ah, profile lens corrections here. So we'll remove Ah, chromatic aberration and we're gonna enable our profile corrections. This will own warp it and make the image that much more appealing. So those really are the most important things When it comes to this sort of photography, as you can see with then lose our leading lines, Everything still looks really, really good up. And it looks correct now. Looks how it should be. So now we're going to come to our basic panel. I'm going to reset the exposure, and now we can start editing the image. So now first thing I want to do is open up my shadows A so you can see it's still quite dark, and I want to be able to see a little bit more of my photo. So I'm going to come up to my exposure and I'm going to bring the exposure up a little bit . And I think that looks right about maybe a little more. Maybe right about there, that looks really nice. Next thing I want to do is I want to bring up my contrast. I remember My contrast gives it that ah gives it that, um that realistic look, he gives it that punch, he gives it three dimension. It makes it just that much nicer to give it this contrast. Um, as you can see, my image got a little darker once I give a contrast so you can bring up the exposure a tad more. It's all depending. How much of the of these off this road you want to see and how much of this puddle you want to see? I want people to be able to tell that this is a puddle. And I didn't put this in photo shop or anything. So that's what I want to bring it up just a tad more, just so you can see the road here in the end of this puddle. Now, here's my highlights. Uh, slider and I'm going to bring it down. What I'm looking at that are here is I am looking at the inside of this building and also the inside of this little units. I want to be able to tell what's in there. So as you can see, we bring it. It will reset it by clicking the word twice. This is all blown out, right? This air all blown out. Most importantly, this big one is blown out. Also, this little lights are blown out. So I'm looking for definition in our starburst effect here that we created by using the F 22. So when you're r F 22 you're going to create this beautiful starburst effects on your lights. I'll get rid of that. And that's what I'm looking at with my highlights. I'm looking at the inside of this building and my little stars, so I'll start bringing them down. And the building looks pretty good right there. And my stars are more you can see him a lot more now. So I really like that. That looks pretty good. I'm going to leave it there. The next thing I want to do, I'm going to leave my blacks and my whites alone. I don't think I need to do anything. I think our highlights to care of that for us. So now I'm just going to come to my vibrance and I'm going to give this a little more color . I'll bring it right about there. And that looks really, really nice. Now, once I do this, would you can do is come back up to your temperature slider, usually. Ah, night photography and cityscape photography. The white balance is really ah gets thrown around a little bit. Um, so I always should in auto white balance. But here you can either cool it, warm it up a little bit, or cool it down a little bit. Now, if you're if when you cool it down, it turns a little bit purple or two purple for your taste, then would you? Can do is you can use this tent slider and take that purple down a little bit. Now that looks pretty correct. That looks about right. Ah, plus six year. But now, in Miami Ah, the sky always looks purple. It's such a colorful place and all these lives reflecting the ocean and it makes her sky look really, really purple. So I'm actually going toe double click on the tent and reset it. And to me, that looks more accurate than then. Ah, bring it down. But you know, it's entirely up to you how your image looks and the kind of look and feel you want to give that image. Um, so I think that looks really nice. So let's go to her before and after President or Waikiki. And look at that. What a difference. So this is one exposure, one image. And look how much we did, how much we brought out the most important thing being our ah, our ah, our corrections or profile corrections. Look at his leaning buildings. They're not longer, They're no longer leaning, and they actually look realistic. Now, look at this beautiful reflection. You can actually see that it's a reflection. Before, you didn't really know. That's because I was, um, I was exposing for my buildings here. Um oh, how beautiful. That looks just very few. Ah, very few edits here are most important at it. Being are are transformed button here. So always remember, with cityscape, photography are transformed button. It's always going to be the most important. And when that doesn't do it when that doesn't string the buildings out, just do it manually with this sliders. Very, very, very important. Let me presser y key to get out of there and let's finish off this photo by coming into the detail panel, and I just want to sharpen it up till Bob 70. And now masking slider. Hold down the option key and bring it up a little bit. Now what's white is being sharpened and what's black is being left alone. They go that and there you have it, or buildings or sharp everything in sharp. Now, let me address this little dots right here. These air stars and some might be little dead pixels. You can take him off by using your spot removal to visualize spots and just start taking them off. Or you can just leave him to me. Doesn't bother me. It looks like little stars. Maybe get rid of the most the ones you can see that are quite big. Um, entirely taste. Now, if they If there were, um, sensor dust spots, then I would say Remove those to me. Those little stars and those little lights do not bother me. So I think that looks finished beautifully. You can come to the effects and give it a tiny bit of in. Yet I don't think you need to if you want to be subtle about it. Maybe like a minus seven. I won't even say less like a minus four minus five, and that looks really good. I'm very, very happy with that photo, So let's click before and after one last time. There's before and there's after again. Guys, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to get this building's not leaning, and it is something that the amateur doesn't see. But as you train your eye and you start to become a pro, you will start to work and catch this things in the field right away. So now you know how to fix them, and I am very, very, very happy with this image. 20. Chapter 19 tint: this video will explore a little bit off landscape and cityscape photography. So I shot this in San Francisco. This is the Oakland Bridge, the Oakland Bay Bridge. And ah, let me tell you, the hike to get down to this spot was insane. It was really scary. Very tiring. Um, And when the sun had set and when I went back up, it was even more scary because he was super duper dark. And all I had was my cell phone for a light and that run out of batteries. So about halfway up it died. So I kind of had to run up a little bit of in a little bit of a panic. So anyway, so let's see her camera settings. So three seconds of 16 I s a 100. Um, And this photo let me open up the exposure so you can see it. So I shot this in between some rocks. Um, and I just basically wanted to, um to use this rocks to compose the photo. Um, in the way we were, the viewer would get drawn into the city. Kind of like peeking out a window. I remember just sitting there. I'm thinking since there wasn't a lot of clouds. I wanted to use this. Rocks is my main composition. So this is kind of what's gonna lead the viewer into the photo, and it's going to lead the eye into this rocks right here. And then it's gonna follow the bridge all the way down into the skyline. So let me reset the exposure. As you can see, I exposed for the for the lightest spot in the sky and let's start anything in. So let me take off the, um, the settings pressing the I key for information. And the first thing I want to do is obviously straighten out my horizon. As we all know, my eyes are a little bit crooked when it comes to that. So right about there, that looks about right. And then we'll close out of that. That looks pretty good. A Z. You can see this. Ah, this buildings are kind of leaning to the right a little bit. So let me show you how we can fix that. So here, let's corrections. We're going to remove chromatic aberration. This is a good ah good. Seem to show you the chromatic aberration. A swell city. It's a green line against these buildings. There's, like a little green line. Well, if we remove chromatic aberrations that goes away, So that's what that IHS Now we're going to enable profile corrections and that will just once stretch the on warp the photo. So once we do that, we're gonna come to the Transform tab, and now we can ah, use are vertical slider and we will stand it up this way a little bit. And now we're going to come to the horizontal, and then we're going to go this way with it. And now we can come to the vertical and do that a little more. What's the other buildings? Look now see, they're a little bit straighter. Um and you can do that a little bit more. That looks better. And then now you don't want to overdo this either, because it will start destroying your image. But you can do it enough to get to get a correct. That's all the meat pull back from that and let me pull back from that. So I think that looks really nice, will come back up here to a craft to crop it accordingly. and let me just strain it out right about there because the image is gonna change when you start doing all this other adjustments, and then I'll I'll close it up a little bit right there and right there, I think that looks That looks good. Let me close the crop tool or press done. And our Skyland is not a straight. Maybe I can even do a little more like that. That looks really good. I'm happy with that. Now. Everything looks up, looks proportional and looks looks good. So first thing I would like to focus on is this sensor spots. There's, ah lot. Let me close the transform tab. Now there's a lot of sensor spots here. Um, this was shot this a while back. Let me show you the settings again. I shot this in 2014. So that's two years ago. And obviously back then my sensors weren't cleaned every day. Like I clean him now. So we'll click. Let me zoom. And since there's a lot of them, let's zoom in per parts so focused on this left left corner, I'll click on the sensor spot. Um, spot. He'll spot removal toe. I'll click on visualize spots. And here's a large sensor spots. See how they look like donuts? Um, that's what I'm always saying that they look. Sensor spots looked like donuts. So if you see other kind of spots, they're probably a cloud or a bird, and you can also remove them if they bother you but usually censored. Thus spots are donuts. Are these doughnuts or cells coming together? So I did. Ah, this corner and I'm going to drag my uh, image towards the middle, will go through the same thing and then visualize spots, and we'll just keep him cleaning it one here and now. There's also if you put this aero and you can also drug the image up here, just hold down, hold down your mouth and you can drag it and that will go here, hear, hear, and so forth. Here's kind of a tricky one. Just be very careful with this, ones that are close to an edge, that where you don't destroy that edge, and you can even grab a little bit of the edge and and copy it from somewhere else. Now let's bring it down. Since that's part of our sky and we have a spot here. I don't know if that's a sensor or not. You can always click. Visualize spots you with that. It's so it's a cloud. So it's not a big deal, okay? And now will come down to this area. And this is probably the best way to clean your your sensor spots by zoom in and dragging the dragging these, uh, square around your image. That way you don't miss anything, so that looks good. Let me click out of that. Zoom out by just clicking on the mouse and let me I put this Ah away So you have so we can see the screen a little better. So we just did a few basic moves to get the image, uh, in tow, something where we can actually start editing it. Um, so let's get to her actual editing now, instead of just cleaning it up, and now we can start making some beautiful changes. Now, if this colors air kind of monitoring to you, you can always turn the image to black and white. That's entirely up to you. I think this image will actually look really nice and black and white, but let's start with colored. So first thing I want to do is I won't open up the shadows. As you can see immediately. Open up this this beautiful rocks. Um, and I think that looks really awesome, but I don't want him. I don't want to open him that much. Maybe, like, right about there. That looks nice. And I want to bring on my contrast. And as you can see, everything that kind of becomes dramatic a little bit, uh, a little bit cooler, cool, cooler looking. And I'll bring up your color. Or since there's not a lot of color in this photo, you can also bring down the saturation and bring down this vibrance lighter and kind of make it like an eerie looking photo. It's entirely up to you. Totally. Would you think suits the image best, um, also gonna teach you another trick here. Um, let's de saturated. Let's make this a black and white. All right, so now we're gonna bring the highlight sound, and we're basically looking at this hot spot right there. And now we want to bring the highlights on just a tad more, and that looks really good. Um, now I'm Still, I still this is still hard for me to see. So we're gonna highlight a little bit of this, highlight the city and just, uh, make this image pop. So first thing I want to do, I wanna highlight this skyline. So I want to grab my radio filter. Then they closed the basic panel so we don't get distracted. So I wanna grab the radio filter. I'll bring up thea exposure. I can always tone it down later, and I'm going to highlight the actual skyline. Maybe right about there, I'm going to tone down the exposure a little bit. Let me click before and after before after before, after, as you can see just becomes a little more. You can see it a little better. Another highlight. You could even bring these up or down. Maybe right about there. That looks pretty good. We'll close out of that and let's see before and after. So even in color, it looks good. But look at the difference. We have straight buildings. We opened up this rocks and I think that looks really nice. Let's keep a black and white. So now we want this image to be super contrast it since it's black and white. We wanna make u Conn trustee and dramatic, so we'll turn down the contrast or bring it up a little bit. And now let's bring this. Ah, temperatures lighter down. Let's see what that does or up. So it just makes a brighter Okay, so I just wanted to see what it does. A lot of this is, um, it's experimenting. Remember, Guys, I think this looks really good, though. So now let's use our ah local adjustment brush. And with our exposure op attack, which is already there to reset him, click the effect twice, or the exposure key twice. And now we'll just bring this up and let's draw around this rock, which is gonna draw around those rocks. I just want to give it some highlights. See this butts that are already clear, like, ah, clearer than the other ones Or brighter, I should say that's what we want to keep highlighting. Just gentle, gentle strokes. Um, let me, uh, show you the okey. So see, that's what we're doing. Just very, very gentle strokes. Take that. Okey off. Now let me show you before and after before, after before after, and he just creates a little bit more drama and a little bit more more visual stimulation. And then they open up these down here and maybe this little rocks down here. Now I also want to put some accents in this water. Since it's already white, that's exactly what I want to do. And that looks really nice. Let me show you before, after before, after so very subtle. But you can see a big, big difference. Let me show you the Y key for the before and after. So look at that. It's already a very interesting photo immediately becomes very, very inviting. Your I kind of drops in here and wonders around those rocks. It comes up to these rocks and then done the bridge into the skyline. So we're creating a visual story with everything we have, um, in the photograph. So we'll click. Done Desprez the white CLee key Click out of that and that maybe I want Oh, lighten up this water a little bit, So use a radio filter and I'm just going to draw an oval down here. Now let me see what happens if I That's too much so reset the exposure. Click on it twice and I just bring it up just a tad. And now you can flip this around to fit your image. Um, Missy, the ovals Probably best right here and right about there now looks really, really nice. Let's see before and after there's before after I think that looks good. So we'll press done. And I think that looks really awesome. Now let's compute the split toning panel will come to the shadows first. And now let's pick a green, Uh, and we're there. Create this image. I want to make it. Give it like a green tone like are a blue them? Yeah, there was your blue a purple So this split own And you can really change the look of your image The tone off your image. This is what I use this this particular panel for, um so the hue the H is that to 21? Remember that number? Because we're gonna match the highlights, and I like it. The kind off, bluish greenish kind of like bad, manage, like comic, bookish. See, that looks really cool. I really, really like that. Okay. So 2 31 in 31%. So let's close out of that, not click on the highlights, so just type in 2 31 click and then So this is doing the highlights. The other did the shadow. This is doing the highlights, and that's 31% we said. So that would be in even even image. Uh, you don't have to if you don't like it. I think I like it better a little tone down like that, maybe 14%. Maybe like that. And you can even switch this around us well to the eye lights like a green or or a different color. You can get really creative. It's your image. Always remember, it's your image. Get creative. It's your vision. Don't worry if people's there looks nothing like that in real life. Blah, blah, blah. You know it doesn't matter is what you wanted to look like. And for this particular image, I think the composition is great, and I think it looks great to ah, a little bit of tend to it, so I'm going to leave it right about there. About 14% is what I I don't even really need it, but I'll bring it maybe 13 that looks good. So you can see it's kind of like a bad manage. Feel like a Gotham feel it's just good. Just looks cool, so we'll leave it there. Now Let's come to the effects tab here. Um, and I think we can do something yet on this one, and we'll just bring the bring it to like, uh, maybe a 16. It's subtle, but it's but it looks cool. Let me show you before and after up here before, after before, After. And it's entirely up to you. Maybe alternate minus 11 minus 12. Thing looks good. So that looks really good. Now, I just thought of something else. Sealed this rocks. I want to put throw some accents on there. Um, So I am going to come here to my limit. Quick defects off to my adjustment Brushes are local adjustment, and I am going to bring up my exposure. Remember, we can always tone it down, and I'm just gonna drawn this rocks. Little bright spots. And though they are subtle, they'll make a big difference in the final image. Yeah, I'm just highlighting kind of the tops of the rocks. I want to be able to see a little Give it a little more dimension. Okay? Right about there. Maybe a little more down here. Now click the okey. You can see what you're drawing. So maybe right about there, not quick deal key again. Get out of that. Now, let's see before and after before After. I think that looks really cool. Now, I didn't go over on the water here, So all I have to do is click this erase. Ah, word. And then I'm going to delete it here by the water. Though he doesn't look weird. There's, like, a weird halo of you. Leave it. Same with here. All right, We'll close out of that. Zoom out of that. And I think that looks a lot better, don't you? Now, let me highlight it again. So click on that. And we can even tone it down a tad right about there. Look, like before and after before, after before, after. I think that looks awesome. So I think that looks really, really cool. Guys, um, I would consider this of completed image. Um, I do see a sensor spot right here in between this cables. Do you see that? This is gonna be trick to get rid of, but we can certainly get rid of it with a little bit of patients in a little bit of work. So we'll click on our spot removal tool, and now we're going to draw. Um, basically, we want to catch this cables. Okay. Because we're gonna will want to do is to get Thea Light Room to clone this exact spot up here. So we're just basically stealing a spot without a censor spot and cloning cloning it to down here. If I had a match, I think they moved it. Yep, my motives. Okay, so we'll go back. Takes a minute to read it. There we go. It matched the perfect. See how those this lines matched. Perfect. So we're basically clone thes from up here, and I'm still in hell. You can use this. ImClone. This is one of the techniques you can use on clone. So click on clone. But I think I'm gonna use the hell since it's working well and it's got a better fade now. We'll close out of that And look, you can really tell at all some out and you I wouldn't even know where it. Waas. So So if I can see it of your certainly can see it. But I think that looks really nice. Espresso before and after there's before and there's after. And I think all in all it's a really, really cool photo. I'm not a lot of color there. So we turned it into a black and white. We gave it a nice tent that makes it look kind of governments kind of comic, bookish, But the photo still really It's still really, really awesome. It was cool being there. Um, I got a few other expo up exposures that looked really cool, but I'm really, really happy with this before and after a in very, very happy with this image. If you, um, wanna sharpen it up, just certainly can. I just don't think it needs it. Everything is just so sharp. See when it loads, everything's really sharp, but we can finish it off with a sharpening with sharpening. Here, just bring about 60 70 and then we'll grab. Ah are masking option key down and we'll slide it down. Remember, White is sharp black states on touch. She will want to sharpen everything except the sky so this is pretty good right here. Let it go. And there you have it. Now you have an ultra ultra sharp image before and after one last time, and I think that's a completed image. 21. Chapter 20 Creating Reflections: and this video, we're gonna go over hard to, ah, create reflections. So do you see this beautiful reflections here? Um, well, we're gonna make him even better. So here my settings. 13 seconds F 16 I s 0 50 And I shot this really, really wide with my white angle 14 to 24. You know, the the reflections air really, really nice as they are, But we can make him a little bit nicer. And it's really, really easy. People are constantly emailing me asking me how I get those reflections in my photos. Well, it does come from the water, but, um, we do, Ah, cool little trick here in the photo shop. So we're going to Ah, right. Click and then we're going to edit in, and then we're gonna going to go to ah, Adobe photo shop. So once it sends it to photo shop, we can start the editing process. Um, so first things first, we're going to pick, um, this little box and we're going to highlight for Hold your mouse down and we're going to go from the top to the bottom off this bridge. All right? Once we do that, we're going to press command J that will duplicate my layer. And now I'm going to right click free transform right click again and flip vertical. So what that does that flips my image? Ah, upside down. And now I'm going to drag it down, and I'm going to put it at the bottom of the bridge. See? On my right hand side. I'm just going to actually, I can't even go up a little bit. Don't worry about overlapping it. That's not a problem. That's part off my technique I used for this. So we'll put it right about there. That looks really good. Um, and now at this point, I am going to press the check Mark two, place it in there, and I'm going to come to Filter. I'm going to come to Baa, my Blur gallery over here, and I'm going to go to a motion blur now. There are a lot of ways to do this. I like to use motion blur. Um, make sure your angle is 90 degrees negative. 90 um, that make sure their, um their parallel that this match. And here you can Ah, you can do Thea. How much blur you want, so you can do a whole lot or not too much. And I think maybe this is totally up to you. Is your creativity here? So maybe, like 2 20 I like that. Make sure your previous always check so you can see what you're doing. We'll click. OK, and that looks really nice. Now, if you click twice on this, you will have all these blending options here. You control your A pass ity on a 100% is good. Um and then you're you're blending up here. Um, this because you want to fade it in the water a little bit, So maybe a 92. Maybe that's that. Looks good. So click OK, and now we're going. Teoh, add another layer mask. So you're going to come down here and you're going to add another layer mask and now you're gonna click on it. You're going to come to a brush, a brush tool to make sure this is on the black, and now we're going to start taking this off. And don't worry, if you do too much, you can always get it back by simply clicking this little arrow and going to the white. And here you can just do this a little bit, and then we're gonna come down here and get the bottom of that bridge. I think that looks good, but we still want to fade it a little more. So we'll click on that. And we're going to feather it in a little bit. See this feather? So we're gonna bring it up right about there. Okay, Now we close out of that, and now we can ah, go back to black and we can ah, just get rid of everything that's on those buildings. We don't want it on the buildings we just wanted on the water. And it's nice and faded now from feather. And I think that looks really nice. Now, another way to ah, to touch, to finish it up, Click up here. And now you're gonna click this little box. What that does it's going to, ah, you're going to be able to control the exposure off just the bottom of the photo. So now you can, ah, you know, tone it down a little bit, or make it brighter. Maybe right about there and again, this is entirely taste entirely up to you. s Oh, tinker with it. Um, the more you do it, of course, the better you'll become on it. But I think that looks good. So we'll click over that, and that looks really nice. Um, let me, uh maybe we can click back on this Andi missy via maybe like right about there. You wanted to be kind off. Kind of subtle. I mean, there's nothing subtle about it, but you at least want to make it so it looks realistic. I think that looks good. So now you're going to come up here to file and press save, and now this is saving it, as you can see. Now, go back to your light room. Then there is safety in your line room. And now all these settings are reset again, and you can even keep editing it. You can edit it a little more here in light room. Um, you know, entirely up to you up to taste. And that said guys. So super easy way to create, um, to create this beautiful reflections. I do him to most of my, uh, most of my city escapes. After I learned how to do it, it becomes quite addicting because it does look so cool. Um, and often the water, at least here in Miami, is not common off to create disorder. Reflections of your in the in the lake, you can get discard this kind of look straight out of the camera. But here the waves air so so much should have to shoot a very long exposure. So with water shop and this little trick, it makes it quite easy to our create beautiful reflections.