Movement: Capturing Adventure-Filled Portraits

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Tabitha. In this photography class, I'm going to show you three ways to add life to your portraits through movement. If you feel like your photos are getting rigid or stale, or they're missing the thrill of action, this class was designed for you. This class is for beginner to intermediate photographers shooting anything between a DSLR and a smartphone. So hopefully you fit somewhere in there. I am going to be showing you camera settings that are helpful and posing tips and inspiration to get your mind going. For your class project, I want you to create and photograph a portrait using these techniques and showing movement and capturing the action or adventure as it happens. My name is Tabitha. I'm a lifestyle photographer, a content creator, and I teach over a dozen classes here on Skillshare. I'm really excited to see what you create for this class. So let's jump right in. 2. Project Description and Pinterest: Thanks so much for joining me. For your class project, we'll be creating wild energy filled portraits. I've structured this class into three different methods that I use in my work and the scenarios and camera settings that you'll need to get there. The three methods will be talking about our hair in midair, feet off of the ground and confetti. Let's jump into my Pinterest board and I will show you what I mean. All right, so here is my Pinterest board that I've made for this class Movement - portraits. This is the hair section. This is a different pictures that I found inspiring as I was coming up with how to help you guys photograph hair in motion. We have people hanging out of cars and we've got wind. We have people throwing their head around to get their hair to move. There's lots of fun ideas in here that I think can help get your mind going and give you some ideas for what you can do for your projects. We also have our feet off the ground section. These are images where people are definitely moving. We have that disconnect between their foot and the Earth, and I think that helps give it this like fleeting moment feel to it and it makes it feel more like special in the moment and rare. We've got anything from people carrying people around, or jumping off of things and running. This is a picture that is significantly blurred. You can tell that they're people because we can see the feet and their hands and maybe the slight silhouette of a face. This picture, even though it's not perfectly crisp, I think it's still conveys the feeling of movement. Really what we're trying to do is get people moving and get this aesthetic, this feel, this excitement captured while it is happening. The third category we have is confetti. In here we have tons of different confetti options, including we have a pillow fight with feathers and we have snow. This one she's like pouring popcorn all over her face. I thought that was super cute. We've got our typical blowing confetti out of the hands. We have throwing. This is like fall kind of picture, throwing leaves. Lots of stuff in here that we can consider this as a popcorn shot, which I think is super fun. Then the last board, my miscellaneous board is just kind of, these pictures are splashing play in the ocean. Then this one, even though their feet aren't off the ground and neither of their hair is moving, it implies movement through the background, which is kind of blurry, so they're pretty sharp than the background where there is blurry. I felt that this picture was still effective despite it not really fitting in any of my other categories. Anyway, feel free to jump in here and get some inspiration if you'd like. Make sure that if you are inspired by a lot of these images that you don't copy them exactly. We want to respect artist's work and make sure that we are creating images that are true to ourselves and not just an obvious rebuff of someone else's work. You can definitely get inspired by the way the lighting is or the background and maybe outfit choices, but try not to copy a photo exactly, and if you do, and if that's helpful to you, just make sure that you give appropriate credit or just not share the images publicly, so that it's more of a learning thing for you and not taking credit for someone else's hard work. That's about it for Pinterest. In the next section, we're going to talk about how to photograph hair in motion. 3. Hair in Midair: To capture hair in motion, you're going to either need to find wind or make wind. If it's a windy day outside, don't be disheartened. A lot of people feel like when they show up to a shoot and it's windy that the pictures aren't going to turn out very good, and the wind is just going to blow their hair everywhere, and it's not going to be as effective as what you would get with a still day. For that, I like to bust those stereotypes, a windy day can be excellent for portraits. You're going to get these real gusts of wind blowing your hair. You're going to look, in the moment, like a model, you know what I mean? Don't be discouraged by wind, use it to your advantage. Obviously, if it's like just torrential and it's just wild and crazy and you've got hair and the lipstick and it's the whole thing, yeah, that's not ideal. But just get in some trees try and block a lot of it and you'd be fun. We like wind, wind can be a positive thing, so try and spin it to your advantage. If you're turning your model's face toward the wind, it'll be out of their face. If you're just having them sway and dance around, shaking their hair, the wind can help assist in that, picking up locks here and there. Another thing that I like to do, if I'm shooting indoors or it's not a windy day at all, you can try and use a fan. Typically, that'll give you a really gentle breeze. Then if you want a harder stronger breeze, you would use a blow-dryer or a leaf blower. You can get pretty intense with these kind of photos. Depending on what you're going for, for your image, they might be perfect, or they might be too much. If you want to create more natural wind, you can take pictures in a car. So if you've got a friend driving and a friend posing and you're in the back seat, you can have them tip their head out the window and let the breeze catch their hair as you drive. Just make sure if you're taking pictures while driving that everybody's responsible wearing seat belts, the driver is not taking pictures or being in pictures and you're just being smart about how you do it, we don't want to have any accidents. Once you've got an idea for your portrait, it's important to consider whether or not you want the hair to be frozen in time or implying movement by being a little bit blurry in the pictures. If you want your hair to be frozen in time, you're going to want to shoot with a pretty quick shutter speed. I would recommend one-two fiftieth of a second or higher to really freeze it. One-five hundredth is a good bet, you're probably going to get really, really sharp hair that way. Then if you want to imply blur, there's two different things you can do, the first is to drop your shutter speed down a little bit. I would do one-one twenty-fifth of a second or somewhere between there and 160th. Once you get below 160th of a second, if you're using a slower shutter speed than that, then your model space is probably not going to be sharply in focus. You need to consider if your wind is strong enough and your model is strong enough to hold still, and the wind is blowing the hair, you'll be fine and you'll be able to capture their face sharply and their hair blowing. But if they're moving their head like this, they're just all going to be a big smear. Really figuring out what it is that you're going for and choosing settings that will help you be successful. If you're shooting with an iPhone, you can't really control how fast or slow your shutter speed is. I know there's probably apps that you can adjust, but keeping in mind the general rule that if you want a really sharp picture, if you want your phone to do a fast shutter speed, you will need to be in a really bright scenario. Outside, when the sun's out, if you have a bright enough scene, your phone will be able to capture you sharply. If you're shooting inside or it's dimmer, it's nighttime, the sun's starting to go down, if you have less light, your phone is going to expose for longer to make your picture the right brightness, and so you will get more blur in that setting. If you want it sharp, shoot when it's bright outside, if you want it blurred, shoot when it's dimmer. I've seen really cool pictures where people are walking down the street, and they just snap a picture of their feet walking and it's blurred and it looks really cool. It can be really effective, it doesn't need to be sharply in focus. Just experiment and see what you can capture with the settings and the camera that you have. Another way to get blur aside from adjusting your shutter speed is using aperture. If you're using an aperture of F/2 or F/1.8, 1.6, if you have it, if you're really just opening up that lens to get a lot of light in, you're reducing how much of your photo is going to be in focus. If you're focused on your model's eyes, the tip of their nose will be a little bit out of focus and so will their hair. If the hair is flying around, anything that's closer to the camera or further away will be a lot blurrier, even if it's sharp, even if your shutter speed's really high. It'll be caught in midair, but it'll be blurry because of the distance between it and the camera. If you're trying to get really sharp photos and your shutter speed's high and you're shooting inside and the hair is not being sharp, it's probably because your focal distance is really narrow. I would increase it to f/4 or f/8 and that will give you more space for the hair to be in the zone that will make it crisply sharp. Let's talk about posing. Everyone always asks, "How do you pose?" "How do you pose?" "How do you get a good real emotion?" I have my friend, and she's just feels awkward and I feel awkward. I don't know what to say to her to get her to feel comfortable. What you need to do is just guide them through a bunch of natural or silly movements and get them out of their head. If they're just so concerned about how their looking on camera, they're not going to give you a true emotion. If you're just, dance a little bit, like I want you to do this dance move or that dance move, or let's have you jump up and down, or let's have you spin and, or I'm just going to want you to shake your head like this. Just play with your hair a little bit, I want you to push it out of your face and laugh, have a good time, do a really crazy laugh, like, "I'm just having such a good time." They'll feel really silly doing it, but that will usually make them laugh naturally, and so it's a win-win. A lot of times if you pretend like you're checking your settings or whatever, they'll naturally do stuff like this between shots, they'll do that stuff. If they're doing that just hurry and snap a picture while they're not paying attention. Usually those are going to be the most real candid shots of the bunch, because when they know you're pointing a camera at them, they're just, "Hello," and they tend to be a little more rigid. If you're working with a model who's less experienced, these are some things that you can tell them. Another thing that I like to do is have the model look away, and then be, hey, so-and-so, and then they'll turn, and sometimes you'll get this little piece of hair that's, hello, here I am. But when you're using a fan, you can blow it straight at their face and their hair will be out. Just make sure that it's not so strong in their eyes, otherwise, you'll get squints and stuff. If you have their hair blowing over their face, you can get a moody, dramatic look that way. Other things that I like to do, if you're working with a couple rather than one person, you can have one give the other a piggyback ride, or you can have them dance, or tour one another. You can have them both do the hair flip where you start with all your hair down, and then you just flip it up and capture it in mid-air. That one tends to be really effective and it almost gives, depending on at what point in this flow you capture the picture, it can either look like a troll, like a treasure troll with the straight up hair, or you can get some combination between here and there. Then one thing to keep in mind, if you're doing those flip up pictures, anyone with glasses, the glasses will likely go up and it won't look as good, and so you can either have them not wear their glasses or flip in a way that it blocks that part of their face. You'll want them to be turned toward the camera and not use crazy facial expressions. You want pleasant looking facial expressions or laughing while they're doing it. These are different things that look better on camera rather than just, [inaudible] really scary face. One thing that you can do while you're capturing movement, if you're having them flip their hair up like that or you're afraid you're going to miss when they do something cool, you can set your camera to continuous mode. If you're holding down the shutter button, it'll take a series of photos, or you can just, if you just shoot really fast, you'll get a variety of images from start to finish to choose from. If you're using an iPhone, you can set it to burst mode. That's basically where you just hold down the shutter button instead of clicking it once, and it will take like 10 in a row. If you have someone who's jumping or whipping their hair really quickly, it'll capture all the way through that motion, and then you can go through and pick which one is the most effective and then delete the ones that aren't. That's one thing that I like to do. If you're using self timer mode, it will also take a burst of photos. Don't be afraid to take your own selfies using self timer mode and it'll take a burst and you don't have to be afraid that you're going to miss the shot because it'll give you 5-10 to choose from. I recommend doing emotions several times and just taking a lot of pictures because you'll look back and be like, oh, that picture is so close, but she's got a piece of hair right here in front of her face and it just looks really weird, that kind of stuff. It's nice to have a lot of extras to choose from so you're not stuck with one that's almost there but not quite. That is some general tips and what I like to do to capture hair. Next, we will dive into our feet off the ground shots. 4. Feet off the Ground: To get really sharp action shots of feet off the ground, you're going to need a really fast shutter speed, for these, I like to aim for around 1/500 of a second or faster. Sometimes you can get away with a little slower. If you go too slow, you'll get your model blurred as they're jumping. So if they're doing a jumping in mid-air shot, they'll be blurred and it might not look as good as if you were able to just really freeze them in time, something to be mindful of when you are taking pictures, is where your subject is in the frame. If you are having a person run across, like running across the space in front of you, there are going to be here, here, here, here, here and there. You need to pay attention to where you're aiming. If you're aiming right here and you take their picture and then they're out of the frame, you're going to miss a bunch of shots and so you ought to do what's called panning. So you basically lock onto them and you take pictures and move as they go past you. That is pretty self-explanatory. If they're moving toward you or further away from you, it's going to be a lot trickier to make sure that they are sharply in focus. Because the second they exit that focal range, they're going to be blurry and so you can change your camera. If you have a DSLR, a lot of them have a setting where you can switch it to continuous focus or focus tracking. Basically, you focus on the person. It will lock on them and then the camera will automatically adjust focus as long as the shutters press down, it will adjust focus as they move in or around the space that you are looking at. This can be tricky to use, but if used well, it can be effective and help your photos so that you don't end up with a ton of blurry pictures of someone running. If you don't have the focus tracking or you just don't want to figure out how to do that, if you just work with a higher aperture, so a close down to like F/8 or F/11. You're going to have a wider space on Earth that's in focus and so they can run x amount of distance and still be in focus. If you're constantly like letting go of your shutter and then pushing it down and letting it go. If you're using autofocus, it will focus and refocus as you're working. That's just a little extra step that you have to do is continuously refocusing so that you're making sure you're getting them sharp as they're going further away from you or getting closer. Then having people run through the same motions again and again, you'll be able to have more opportunities to get the shots that you're looking for. If you're shooting with a smart phone and you want to capture a jump mid air, consider using burst mode because you'll be able to capture where your model is at each point in the jump. Again, shoot outside so it's nice and bright so you don't get a lot of like blurry streaky photos. Then you can go through and pick the best photos from your burst collection. Some things I like to tell my models to get them to do these kind of motions are, I tell them to dance or jump or skip. Sometimes I tell them to run back and forth or jump off of things, jump off a table, jump off a rock. Obviously be careful and make sure you're wearing good shoes and you don't hurt your friends. We'd give it a shot. Something else that you can do, even people just walking down the street, you'll get their feet off the ground not touching and I think it really just helps. The photo seemed like it was taken in the moment. If you're having people stand in front of a fancy wall like everyone's just like here we go, we're taking the picture and those are awesome. But if you really want to mix it up, maybe you have a couple of them, like dance with each other or laugh or like jump or be silly. Adding this little extra element of action. It makes the photo seem a little bit more special, I think because it's like a limited edition kind of picture. You caught a second, a moment in time, rather than just one of the 10 seconds everyone was standing there like this. You know, it's a lot easier to get a photo like that. It's harder to add motion. So adding that little bit of extra something will take your photos to the next level. We want to convey that we are not necessarily setting these kind of shots up. I don't think there's anything wrong with setting up a shot or creating a moment. But if you're actually hanging out with friends, capturing these moments as they are in a candid setting is really, really special. It's a lot trickier though. Sometimes when I'm photographing events or dance parties, I will tell people to do things. I'll be like, Okay, let's have everyone laugh a lot or let's have you guys jump. I'm in a count to three and I lead them through these prompts. But if you've got a photo of someone and they are just dancing their heart out and they whip their head back and they're singing and they're having a good time, those are so much more real and so much more fun. If you can get those, that's awesome. But if you have to create moments, I think that's okay too. I'm all about creating the shot that people are looking for, even if it means asking someone or going out of my way to get it. When I'm working with couples. I like to have one scoop the other one up or tourism around or grab him in the middle and just twist. You want to just basically say like, "Grab her, pick her up and spin her around." Usually when they have a series of tasks that they need to complete, their mind is not on, "Oh, I'm getting my pictures taken. I need to know." Now look awkward. You know, they're performing emotion, they're performing a task and so they're more likely to have that genuine excitement and realness. Even though you're telling someone to do something, you're not capturing a moment as it authentically was made. You're creating this moment. You're creating these opportunities for them to connect with each other and laugh and giggle and have a good time. I think that portraits get a bad rep like family pictures, when those are coming up, everyone's like, "Oh, family picture time, it's going to be so long and so hot. I'm going to wear this T-shirt." It's not going to be fun. I think it's important to reshape this narrative about family portraits. They can be fun. When I do family pictures, I do get a lot of the classic. "All right, everybody smile, perfect shoulders, shoulders down. Perfect. You guys look awesome." Like I'm doing a lot of that stuff. But I'm also like, all right, everybody tickle Charlie and then everyone's kind of like, oh, okay, we're just tickling Charlie right now and they're not focused on making sure that we just looks so good. We're capturing the moment as it happened. When I include those photos in the gallery, they look back and they're like, "Oh my gosh, look at his cute face, it's so typically or whatever." If it's a couple and you got a shot of them like laughing like crazy. They've got their crazy smiles, not there like Instagram smiles or got the crazy smiles and so they're like, "Oh my gosh, I thought you were going to drop me or whatever. " You're photographing is real moments as they're happening. I think that's important. I think it's important to include these shots of people having a good time. Then by leaving them through these things, they are actually having a good time and they'll leave especially big like those actually kind of fun. We had a great time and they'll just have all these positive feelings about the session and they'll see the images and it'll actually be their real selves, doing funny things and amongst other like beautiful post pictures that they'll end up printing out. I don't know those just remember it and have a good time. I think it's important to add these kind of motion field photos to your images. Don't be afraid to tell people what to do and lead them through motion, even if it seems awkward to be like, "Okay, now I'm going to have you randomly do this." You know they'll be fine, just take control. Be confident about what you want. Don't push people's boundaries too much if they feel like they're at, if they seem like what you ask them to do is uncomfortable, you will like, okay, how about this instead, give them options so they don't feel like they're locked into doing a jump shot and they really don't want to do a jump shot in their heels on and they're going to break their legs. So be mindful of the energy and how they're feeling and kind of bounce off of each other and invite them to come up with ideas. Be like, "Hey, if you guys have got any ideas, maybe we'll try this. How do you feel about this? You want to do a jump shot. Do you want to do piggyback?" Usually they'll be like, "Oh, that does sound fun, " or not really. They'll tell you what they're feeling and so just make sure you're listening and paying attention and helping them get the best pictures they can possibly get in your session. Next step we're going to talk about confetti. 5. Confetti: For confetti photos, we will be playing with aperture. We want to make sure our shutter speed is fast enough that it's going to stop the confetti in mid air, we don't want a lot of streaks. We want them to be frozen in time, but a way that we can add movement or add a little extra element to it, is by adjusting our aperture. If you want an image where all the confetti pieces are perfectly sharp, none of them are blurry and they're all frozen in time. You're going to want an aperture that's going to allow you a wider focal distance. If you're confetti is around you, you're going to want a shoe, F4, F8, F11 anything in those higher numbers because that will shrink down your aperture and it will allow for more of the space to be captured sharply. It tends to flatten out the image, so I like to do the opposite when I'm doing confetti photos. If I've got my model glowing confetti and to the camera, I'd want to have a narrower aperture. I want their face to be in focus and the confetti in their hands to be in focus, but the confetti that's between them and me, I want it to be blurry and I wanted to have this experimental bouquets feel. I want it to be everywhere, because if it's everywhere, if some close to me and some further away, it's going to feel more like real life. It's going to be all over the place, exciting and fun. I will lead a model through this several times. We'll have them hold their confetti, blow towards the camera and do tons of pictures because you'll get pieces that float in front of their face. If there's one that's like right in front of their eyes, it's not going to be as effective as an image typically as one where their face is not. The main parts of their face are not concealed by that. Experimenting with that, getting lots of images as you're working is going to give you a higher chance of getting the perfect shot, you know what I mean. One thing I want to mention about confetti, it's important to be responsible with your confetti. What I mean by that is get biodegradable or paper confetti as often as possible. There are so many micro plastics and glitters in the ocean and it's actually a huge deal. I actually didn't know this until recently. I've switched all my confetti related projects to paper instead of plastics that won't biodegrade, that'll stay in the ocean long after I die. If you want to get really good confetti shots get biodegradable glitter or work with tissue paper. One thing I like to use is the shreds that come out of my shredder, like always shredded male. That's what I've done in a few of these pictures. You don't even have to use paper, you can use popcorn. If you've got like a movie scene, people on the couch, like throwing the popcorn in the air or being crazy. You can use feathers, you can use rice, food, just whatever you can, cotton balls, things that will fly in the air when you throw them. It doesn't necessarily need to be hard plastic, glitter confetti. If you do have to use that confetti or if you're using something that isn't going to be good for nature, make sure you bring a dustpan and a broom to your shoes. If you're shooting in a public place, if you're outside. It's super important to sweep up your mess after you go. We don't want to be irresponsible photographers leaving piles of glitter everywhere. Think before you shoot and make sure that you have appropriate ways to clean up if you make any messes. If you're shooting in your house, like make a mess, who cares? Vacuum it up when you're done, but public places, it's really important to be respectful to those places and to the planet whenever possible, rent over. Some posing tricks that I like to use. If you put a lot of confetti in your head and have them blow and they blow too hard. You'll get a chunk of paper like between you in their face. You want to have a medium amount and gentle enough gust of air that it will pick some up, but not all of it. You want to be mindful of what their face looks like when they're doing this. If they're just like, cross size, crazy, puffy cheeks, they're not going to love that picture. Trying to lead them through being like, Okay, I need you to relax your face a little bit, stare right at the pile and then just gently. You can have them glance up, but if they're like blinking while you're taking it, you're going to get blink shot and it's not going to be as good. Trying out different things if they really just have a strange face when they're blowing confetti and you've tried to ask them to do different things, to change it up and it's really just not going the way that you've thought and you can't get them to look normal. Mix it up, instead of having them blow, have him tossed, throw confederate toward the camera or like this motions or you can have them toss it up in the air and let it rain on them. Trying to do different things that'll get the confetti up and moving in between you and them, it's going to make for better pictures even if the classic is not working out for you. Don't be afraid to mix it up and guide people through different motions to get the shots that you want. If you're shooting with a smartphone, distance may affect your depth of field. If you want the shot where you're getting lots of blurred confetti between here in there, you want to be a lot closer to your subject, think like shoulders and head a shot. Then anything that's closer to the camera is going to be blurrier, then they're hopefully going to be in focus for that. If you want a shot where all the confetti is all in focus, you're going to want to get stepped back and get like a full body shot and a lot of the confederate will be unfocused. Phone cameras tend to be, they air on the side of more of the picture and focus and to force it to be less, you're going to need to get closer so that the distances are a lot farther away proportionately. It's a little confusing, but just keep in mind, if you want blurry confetti, get a lot closer to your subject and confetti. If you want everything to be sharply in focus, backups, you've got space to work with. Another thing that you can use, If you have the newest iPhone or if you've got a camera that can do portrait mode, it's going to blur out what's in front of and behind the subject. and that's another way to get that blurry look. If you don't have a phone of portrait mode, Instagram's camera, if you swipe to the live mode, not the live mode, but when you're about to add to your story that camera, you can swipe over to focus and it will add a blur effect around you, behind you, in front of you and that's a way to get around not having portrait mode, but portrait mode is basically narrowing your depth of field so that just your subject isn't focus and then their background is blurry and what's in front of them is blurry. That's why people love portrait mode because it looks so professional. That's basically you're mimicking what a DSLR can do automatically. It gives the photos a more polished and beautiful aesthetic look. That's something to consider if you're shooting with a phone and then same rules apply If you want sharper. You got to have a brighter picture and if you want blurry or you got to have a dimmer picture. That's just some general rules when you're shooting with a smart phone. Now that we've covered hair, jumping and confetti, I want to run you through a couple different edits that I would use for these images. 6. Editing Sequences: All right. This section is all about editing. I will start with a pre-share Instagram edit. Just a couple of basic quick edits that I like to apply to an iPhone photo before I put it onto Instagram. Then, I will lead you through a little more in depth edit on Lightroom CC for the mobile. It's a mobile editing program, it's an app that you download and you can edit your photos there. It's free, it's so powerful and effective. It's intuitive and I love the results that I get from Lightroom CC. Then I will finish with a classic desktop Lightroom edit, which is how I edit about 80 percent of the photos that I take, and you can see my workflow there. Let's start editing. All right. Here I am in the Instagram app, I'm just looking through my camera roll, this is the photo I want to edit today. I'm going to double tab so that it zooms out, so I can see more of the picture and then pick a crop that I like the best. Once I'm happy with that, I hit Next. Then in here, I can choose through some filters. Sometimes a filter looks really good, but it's a little bit strong. I click on the filter I like and then tap it again and I can address the strength. Usually, for these, I'll pull them down a little bit. There's a little bit of a filter there, so kind of a starting point, but it doesn't overwhelm the photo. When I'm happy with where it's at, I hit "Done." Then, I switch over to the "Edit" tab here at the bottom to do more fine tuning. Right off the bat, I want to make the photo brighter, because when I look at the door in the background compared to the white border of the Instagram app, they're quite a bit different in brightness. I hit Brightness. I'm going to pull this up a little bit, maintaining the color and her skin tone so that it's not like way too bright, but it still looks good. Once I'm happy with that, hit Done. Next, we're going to up the contrast. I like a nice contrasted image. There's a lot of dark shadows in her eyes and in her hair. I'm going to scroll over to the Shadows slider and then pull that up a little bit just to give us some more detail there. Next, I want to increase the saturation. I'm going to pull this up a little bit. This will give her more color in her skin. Then, I'm going to go all the way to the end for sharpen. I sharpen about halfway. It's hard to tell. If I long press and then let go, you can see a slight difference. You'll be able to tell more when you're using your own phone. I'm happy with that sharpness. Then lastly, I like to hit this little sign up at the top. This is my Lux slider. I'm not sure exactly what it does. It looks like it adds a lot of contrast or brightens the shadows and darkens the highlights. But sometimes it looks good and sometimes it doesn't. For this photo, I'm just going to add a touch of that. Then I like to take a minute and review where we're at. This is before. I'm long pressing and this is after, before. After we definitely have a sharper brighter photo, but I think it's a little bit yellow. I'm going to go over to my Warmth slider and drag it down just a little bit, so I can get my white's nice and white. Let's see. It's a subtle change, but I think it helped. I'm going to up the contrast a little more, up the brightness a little more. I like to take it really slowly. That way, I can get my photo exactly where I want. I'm going to up the highlights. This will add a little bit more contrast. Then from there, I'm pretty happy with how that looks. Again, this is long press. This is what I had before and this is where I am now. I would just hit Next and go ahead and post. All right. In Lightroom CC, we're going to launch the app and then hit this little picture with a plus sign at the bottom. This will automatically pull up our camera roll. I'm going to tap Camera Roll and scroll till I get to my favorites album. This is where I favorited one or two of the pictures that I wanted to edit. I'm going to start with this picture. I took this picture on a plane obviously. Right now, I can see that it has no edits and I'm just going to start at the bottom. Down here at the bottom I'm going to hit Light. This is going to open my lightened brightness adjustments. I'm going to start off bringing up the exposure a little bit. Bringing up the contrast quite a lot because the picture is quite gray and not really contrasted. I'm going to bring my shadows down, bring my whites up a little bit, and then bring my blacks quite a bit down. This added a lot of contrast I can pull down and then long press to see my before and after. Already in my light adjustments, I've made quite a bit of a difference in this photo. Next up we're going to go to color with the little thermometer. My temperature I feel is a little bit cool, I'm going to bring it up into the warmth. That added a little bit more sunshine to the photo, then the tint, I might just leave where it's at, maybe bring it a little greener. Next up we have Vibrance and Saturation. I'm going to bring both of those up quite a bit. We'll have lots of color in the greens and blues. I'm going to pull down. This is where I started and this is where I am now. At this point, I like to hit the Detail slider and sharpen quite a bit. This will make my image nice increase, especially when it's taken with an iPhone, it's not really as sharp as it could be. Then from there, honestly, this is probably where I would leave that. We have before and after and it's such a significant difference in so little time. I might do a little bit more in the colors, maybe bring them up a little bit. Now, that I'm seeing it, my wing is a little bit warm so I might bring my temperature back down and then see if my tint would look better pinker or greener. I think tint is just good right where it's at zero. Then from this point, you could add some effects. Over in the Effects tab, I can make the picture have more clarity. This will make it nice and crunchy around the edges. I can add a vignette. If I bring it down, it'll add a dark circle around the outer edges of the photo. Pretty much call that good. We're going to swipe down. Again, here's where we're at, and here's where we started. Lightroom CC is so powerful. It's a free app. I love it so much. It's definitely my go-to when I want a lot of intense edits very quickly and effectively. All right. Here we are in Lightroom for the desktop. I've already imported my photos and they're all here. When I first go through, I take a minute to go through each individual photo and then star the ones that are good. It's like this facial expression isn't as nice as this one down here. Then in this picture, doesn't have hardly any confetti blowing in the air, and so I picked this one and I put a little one star to separate it from the rest. Once I've separated all my one-star pictures, I can go down here into the filter and click on the one star. It will separate out only the photos that I have added a single star to. I had already edited these ones, but I went ahead and took off the edits, so I could show you how I do it. I'm going to edit this picture today. Right now, I can see I'm in the Library tab. I want to switch over to the Develop tab and it will pull this up nice and big for me to get started editing. First things first, this picture is quite a bit dark. It's not very contrasted and the color is a little bit murky. I'm going to start with exposure. I'm going to just bring this slider up till I feel like it's nice and bright and airy like I want. Next, I want to bring the contrast up because right now her hair is a little bit in the mid tones and I want them to be quite a bit darker. I'm going to bring the contrast up. It'll make the dark darker and the lights lighter. Next, I'm going to add a little bit of shadows. A little bit of information in the shadow area of the photo just to define her hair and her eyes. Then I'm going to bring the blacks down. This is going to really just lock in that nice sharp contrast. At this point, I like to bring my whites up a little bit just for that extra added punch and then increase the Vibrance and Saturation. For this picture, since there's not a whole lot of color, the biggest area of color is going to be her skin tone. Vibrance and saturation might not be the best move, but sometimes I like to test it and see. Yeah. That definitely meter look kind of orangey. I'm going to go back. This is my history over here. I'm going to go back those two steps so that it takes my vibrance and saturation back down to zero. I can adjust to more in the tone curves, that's just does more on top of what you've already done. Darks up, shadows down. Then, I usually leave the other two where they're at. This picture seems a little bit warm to me. I'm going to drag my temperature down just a little bit. I can pull on the slider or I can hover over the number and then drag it and it's a lot slower of a move, because sometimes when you touch the slider and the move it, it's like boom. All of a sudden we're crazy. I like to hover over the number. You get this little finger that pops up and then you can just drag it gently up and down with your mouse to get it to where you want. I have a lot of blue in here, but I like the feel that it gives it. However, her skin is a little bit purpley to me. That means I need to adjust my tint. I'm going to hover over my tint number and then drag it closer to the green. I know that my walls in my house, which is where this was taken. I know they're a little bit on the green side and so I like to use that as my scale of reference. I know my doors are white and my walls are greenish gray. Right now, I really love where this is going. I would like to do a couple of spot edits just to edit out her skin because I know that she would like to not have any blemishes showing. I like to just go through and clean up any spots that might be distracting. Just clicking on them, it'll automatically sample from a space nearby so that it looks super, super clean and crisp. Then, sometimes I'll even go through and just add a little bit of softening. I've made my own precise. It's basically with soften skin but not as intense. My clarity is negative 30 and my exposure is 0.06 on the positive end. Then, I can adjust my brush size using the scroll wheel. Then I just add a little bit of adjustment in the crease areas of the face, and this will just help make a nice and smooth and clean and crisp. You can see, this was what I had before and this is after. It's super subtle, but it just takes a little bit of the edges off there. Then I love how that looks. I like the tones. I'm going to bring in a little bit of a vignette. I scroll all the way to the bottom here and then bring the Vignette slider down. This will just hone in right on her face. Then last but not least, I want to sharpen. I'm going to drag my sharpening up about halfway and then adjust my masking. The masking, it doesn't look like it's doing anything. But if you've watched any of my other classes, you'll know I like to show this. If I hold down the Option key, it shows reset sharpening, which means it's activated. When I pull up the masking, it shows me anything that's white to get sharpened. If I adjust the mask, things start to turn black. Those are parts of the image that are not going to have the sharpening applied to them. What I want is to pull this down so that there's not much sharpening on her skin, but it will sharpen the edges of her hair and her facial expressions. Then, I let go and I have got my sharpening applied it to just the edges and where I want them. Yeah. That's pretty much it. Then once I'm happy with how the image looks, I go down into this timeline, right-click Export. It brings up my export settings. I'm going to call this Confetti, and I'm going to make it Number 10, because I don't know how many Confetti photos I've put in this folder. I'm going to scroll down my file settings. I leave at JPEG and sRGB. Then I check the box limit file Size 2, and I put it to 1800K. For most of the pictures that I share, I'd share them online and so I like to keep my file sizes small so that I know that they'll always upload. Then for image sizing, I check the resize to fit box, I adjust it or I change it to long edge. Basically, since this is a landscape photo, it's going to be this long edge on the bottom. If it was a portrait, it would be this edge. Basically, the longer edge in the photo is going to be 2,500 pixels, I leave at 240 resolution. This is a good size for sharing on Instagram. Not a great size to print. If you wanted to print it really big, you would not want to resize that, and you wouldn't want to limit the file size. Anyway, I scroll down, leave post-processing and do nothing and then hit Export. It will put it in this sub-folder movement in my pictures folder on my computer for me. That is how I would run through and edit on Lightroom. Some things that I like to do to make it quicker. I've got this picture already edited. I can hit Copy and then hit Enter. Basically, these are all the things that it's going to copy. It's not going to copy local adjustments. It's not going to copy lens corrections, but it will copy the tone and the white balance and the sharpening, blah, blah, blah. I click Copy and then I'm going to hit the Arrow key to go back to this other photo that I liked that I took at the same time. Then I'm going to click Paste. It will just apply the same edits to this photo. I can just really quickly get a lot of pictures done and get them all edited the same way, so they all look the same. Yeah. I love Lightroom. It's a subscription-based program. You can go to Adobe's website and see what options they have for different subscriptions that you can get to start practicing editing all your photos. 7. Final Thoughts: That's everything. Thank you so much for sticking around. I hope that you enjoyed it. If you have any questions or need help, feel free to leave a comment in the discussion community section here in this class and we can totally work through any issue you might be having. Don't forget to post your class project. I really want to see what you create post it here in the project section on Skillshare or if you share on Instagram, just tag me so I can come take a look. My handle is @TABITHAPARK. If you have any suggestions for future content, feel free to leave that too. I'm always open to your ideas and if you want to get an email notification next time I post a new class, just make sure you're following me here on Skillshare. Thank you so much for sticking around and see you next time. [ MUSIC ]