Transcripts
1. Introduction: You Are Creative!: When I was ten years old, I got my first camera. It was cheap plastic. It shot 12 exposure rolls
of black and white film, but I thought it was
the coolest thing ever. I went all over shooting pictures of things that
caught my attention. I was absolutely delighted to capture a moment and
tell a visual story. But I didn't know
that I was capturing a moment and telling
the visual story. What I didn't know
is I was going around taking photos of things that were important
and significant to me. One particular photo was of a colt standing on his
spindly long legs. He was less than an hour old. And that photo was actually the photo that set
me on my photography journey. There were three very important
things about that photo. One, it had purpose. It told a story and it captured a moment that
was important to me, and it had perspective
because it was my story. Number three, is it had passion because it captured an emotion and a story that I could re live and feel every
time I look at that. As we grow from childhood
to teenager to adult, we become conditioned to believe that only talented
photographers, those who studied it, and those who have that
special something, the photographic eye, they're the only ones that can
really take good pictures. Become conditioned
to believe that. I got one word for
that philosophy. Nonsense. Anyone can learn to see through the creative
photographic eye, anyone, me and you. In this class, I will guide
you through techniques and exercises that will help you develop the creative
photographic eye. At the end of this class, you will begin to create a photographic project that
will be as unique as you are. The class project is your
personal photography project. I'm Sheila Focker, owner of
Earth and Sky photography. I'm an event, portrait,
and nature photographer, and I'm very excited
to share with you techniques and skills that I have learned along my
photography journey. This class is for anyone who feels like
they're not creative. It's for the photographer
who feels stuck. And it's also for anyone
who wants to rekindle their passion by creating a project that's important
and significant to you. Any camera will work for this class,
including a smartphone. No experience or special
skills are necessary. Next up, we'll get into the
class project in a minute.
2. Class Project: Your Personal Photo Project: During COVID, I struggled with many things,
including creativity. During this time, I
began a 100 day project inspired by fellow Skillshare
instructor Rich Armstrong. I encourage you to look
him up and follow him. Anyhow, I committed to myself that I would get
out and shoot every day. A photo project is
a visual story. It's told from your perspective and no one can tell it like you. A project can be short or long. It can be great or small. It can take a short amount of
time or it can take years. But it's your story and you're the only one
that can tell it. For me, that 100 days
was just getting out and shooting every
day, giving me a purpose. During that time,
a project within that 100 days emerged that I
call the Ty camera Project. And it was a very
simple project. I used a simple point and shoot camera set to a
setting called Ty camera. The pictures are whimsical, some of them are simple, some
of them are just plain odd. But the important thing was this project got
me out of my funk. During this dark time, it helped me find a
purpose once again. Check out the project and
resources section for more images and the backstory behind my toy camera project. Here is your challenge. Find a project. Here are some ideas for planning your personal
photography project. Your project should be
meaningful and important to you. Have fun and explore. Start with ideas. Make a list of your hobbies and interests. Something from that list
could spark a project. Get out of your head,
don't overthink it. Do not discard or
filter your ideas. Have a theme such
as gratitude, love, sorrow, press and
process emotions. Pick a photography skill or technique that you
would like to improve. Give yourself time in your project and be
patient with yourself. Be flexible because there's
going to be interruptions. Life has a tendency
to get in the way. At first, when you
start the project, it's going to be pretty easy. Your ideas are going
to flow pretty good. Then once you've picked all
the low hanging fruit ideas, then it's going to
become more difficult. Don't give up. Keep
hanging in there. During the times when you're
very critical of yourself, that's when you want to
pay real close attention. At one point during my
toy camera project, during my hundred day project, I became extremely critical of my photos, more so than normal. Matter of fact, I hated
every single photo hated it. Pay close attention
when this happens because you're about to
grow. Trust me on this. When you hate everything, you are about to grow. My hope is that through this photography
project is that we will all inspire and
lift one another. Post your project, your photos
to the project gallery. All right. See you
in a minute. Okay.
3. You Have the Photographic Eye: Everyone who has the gift of sight can train their
eye to see creatively. Now, there's no
hard and fast rules on how to learn to
see creatively. But there are some techniques and some skills that you can learn that can guide you towards learning
to see creatively. My goal is to not only help you identify picture
taking opportunities, but to also get familiar
with the gear that you have. So that you can best utilize
it to get the best pictures. Now, if you have a camera that has interchangeable lenses, each one of those lenses
does something different. This is a zoom lens, so we can see things very far away and bring them
in like a telescope. This one is a wide angle, so it can take in
the entire view, and this one is a 50 millimeter, so it sees more
like my own ideas. If you don't have a camera that has interchangeable lenses, your camera probably
has some settings where you can tell how
far out it's zooming, whether it's a digital zoom or if it's actually physically moving out. You can
see what it's doing. Become familiar what
each one of those does. Within the capabilities of that, you can start to see what the camera is capable of and what you see within
that view finder. Every time you hold the
camera up to the eye, you can see what is in there and what might be a good
picture taking opportunity. You begin to see creatively, the more you practice,
the better you'll get. Try taking the photos from
different perspectives. Get up high, get down low, shoot horizontal,
shoot vertical, get right down on
the ground with that puppy and get
that perspective. Everybody can see the
puppy from the top, but get right down on the
ground with the puppy, you'll see the puppy from a completely different
perspective. How would it look if you
stood on a step ladder and took the picture pointing
down at kids in the pool, these are ideas to have a different perspective
on photograph. And so that can really help you tell a very compelling story. The techniques that
I'm going to help you develop are nothing new. The use of color
lines, texture form. These are all common
design elements in art. And once you begin to see lines and colors
and things like that, your whole world is
going to open and the eyes of your
photographic imagination are going to be way
enhanced and you're just going to see opportunities for photographs everywhere. One of the beauties of digital photography
is instant feedback. It's so easy to learn quickly. The learning curve is flattened out
tremendously because you can look at the back
of the camera and see what you did
and you can learn. That is one of the
neatest things about digital photography. Don't get hung up on rules because there really
aren't rules. They're guidelines, there
are tools that you can use as you learn the
creative process. But don't get hung
up about doing it right because there is no
right, and there is no wrong. This is your project and
photography is an art. Creativity is all about observation and a
sense of wonder. Next up, we'll look
at each one of the design elements and how you can use them to develop your photographic
eye. See in a minute.
4. WOW Photos Have Design and Composition: We've all seen photos
that make us go, Wow. What makes a Ow image? Usually, a WOW image is common objects
composed very simply. Usually there's a very clear subject or
point of interest, and there's an absence
of clutter and any extra distractions
within the frame. All of these things bundled
together is composition, and a composition tells a story. The elements of composition
are the elements of design. Well, you know the
elements of design. They're around us all the time. We've probably studied them in art class and school at some
point, and they are line. Shape, form, texture,
patterns, and color. Lines create order,
lines make up squares, rectangles
and triangles. Curved lines, makeup circles, ovals, and random loops. Fence lines, rows of trees, meandering streams, make lines
that guide the eye through a photo to the subject or a
specific point of interest. Shape is two dimensional
and provides the organization the brain
needs for recognition. For example, from a distance, we can tell the
difference between a horse and a cow by its shape. Form is three dimensional, having depth, height, and width. In photography,
we are expressing a three dimensional world on a two dimensional
plane of a photo. Contrast of light and dark makes shadows and that helps
provide a three D form. Creative use of shadows can also create leading lines to guide
the eye through a photo. Texture is often
a hidden element. Unlike obvious things
like lines or contrast, the texture of a rock, fabric or rushing water often requires a close up view or
a very low angle side light. Texture also adds to a three dimensional
effect of an image. Texture can also help
convey mood and emotion. For example, the very
rough texture of a well worn pair of hiking boots tells a
story of adventure. The scuffed leather and
cracked soles evoke a feeling of satisfaction from
having explored the world. Patterns organize chaos. They can be very predictable
and create a rhythm, but they can also be very random and don't need
to be structured. For example, this group of colored pencils not
only has texture, but also has a pattern
as a design element. Colors can be classified into
two groups, warm and cool. Warm colors are reds, yellows and oranges, and cool colors are blues,
purples and greens. Colors and color
temperature have a strong influence over mood
and emotion of a photograph. Warm tones tend to
feel happy and upbeat, whereas cool tones convey
feelings of moodiness, sadness, maybe even loneliness. Color saturation intensifies the dominance of
individual colors, and this is accomplished in post processing software such as Lightroom, Adobe camera raw. The hue, saturation,
and luminosity sliders, also known as HSL, and the color sliders, give you control over what
colors are dominant so that you can tell your story and express the emotion
of your photograph. Luminance is the control
of bright and dark. You have control over how bright or dark a particular
color might be. In general, a bright image tends to feel happy and hopeful, whereas a dark image conveys a sense of
mystery, moodiness. To take full creative
control of your images, I encourage you to
shoot in raw and use a post processing software such as light room or
others that are available. The American landscape
photographer Ansel Adams said that 50% of the creative process happened in the dark
room in processing. For us, 50% of the
creative process takes place in some digital
post processing software. As you're out and about look for lines and textures
and that sort of thing. I promise your eyes will open and you're going
to see creatively. I created a cheat sheet that you can find
in the resources. You can print it out and
put it in your camera bag. And that'll help you
when you're out in the field and you forget you
can just look at and go, Oh, yeah, I can see textures or whatever it happens to be. The more often you
think about and look for lines and colors and textures and patterns and
all that sort of thing. The more you're going to see it. Pretty soon, you're going to be seeing compositions
everywhere. And when you're doing that, pay attention to your emotions and feelings because that's a big part of photography of capturing
emotions and telling a story. It's a big part of why we even tell stories because
we want to be able to convey what we felt and
saw at a given time. All right. Here's a
few final thoughts on capturing those WOW images. Capture the photo from a
different perspective. We've all seen wedding
photos, for example, the photos just zoomed
right in on the hands and the ring or the bouquet and
the hands on of the bride. Those tell a very
specific story. It's very intimate and
it's very personal. Those are the kinds of stories. Those are the kinds
of photos that tell a story that
make you go wow. And another nice thing about zooming in
tight on a picture. Sometimes you can eliminate distracting features that you don't want in the photograph. Also, consider placing
your subject in the frame so that it
has room to move. If your subject is
looking to the right, make sure that there's
space over here or if there's action and the subject is coming
in from this way, make sure there's plenty of room on this side of the photo, so it has the impression
of being able to move. Also become aware of light. Early morning, late afternoon, known as Golden hour
is when the sun casts that beautiful golden
glow on the entire scene, and you get great shadows
for contrast and textures. Well, we do our best to get it as good as
possible in camera. But I'll tell you that
there's no picture that's wow that is come
straight out of camera. Okay. There's a lot of post
processing that takes place. And as we've said, 50% of the creative process actually happens in processing. I encourage you to take the time to spruce
your photos up, take them from
really good to Wow.
5. Commit to Create: One of the best parts of having a project
is the commitment. This project is for you.
This is your project. This is your commitment to you. What do you want to
your project to be? Are you learning new
photography skills? That's a great project. Commit
to learn those new skills. Are you documenting
the family family as the kids grow?
Another great project. Whatever your motive,
get out and shoot. Commit to create. While you're working
on your project, be aware that not every photo
is going to be a keeper. There's going to be days
when you're going to go out and it's just not
going to happen. The creative juices just
aren't flowing that day, you'll come home with
nothing on your card. That's all right. It
happens to everybody. But just continue to shoot, get out every day or get out as often as you can and to create. Professional photographers
shoot thousands of photos every year, and they may only keep a dozen
or so for the portfolio. Does that mean that all the
other photos are failures? No, doesn't mean that your other photos
are failures either. Every photo is a
step on the journey. Every photo is a
learning process. Every photo you can learn from. No matter how much you
know about photography, you're going to learn every time you take a camera
out of the bag. The photos that you don't
use, don't get rid of them. Look back at your photos
from time to time, and you're going
to see progress. You will see growth
along your journey. When I look back at
some of the photos that I when I first started
my photography journey, I look at some of those photos and some of them are
just plain awful. Some of them were terribly over saturated as I was
learning editing software. Some are cringy and
some were like, Oh my goodness, what was I even thinking when
I took the picture. They are mile markers as I grew these kinds of things are going to be
growth for you as well. I learned and my
creative eye developed. And so will yours.
6. Personal Photo Project Final Thoughts: Thank you for joining
me in this journey. I genuinely
appreciate your time. It is my hope that your eyes are beginning to open to creativity. As you apply the techniques and skills that we've
explored in this class, you will begin to see with
the photographic eye. This is your project.
This is your journey, and you can do it. You can learn to see
with the photographic. I'm looking forward to seeing your projects posted in
the project gallery. As always, I'll do my very best to answer any questions
that you may have. Please like and follow me here on Skillshare
so that you will receive notices of other
classes as they are published. I have a four part series
already here on Skillshare. The new photographer's guide. It's chalked full of
lessons on composition, lighting, camera settings, and
very basic editing skills. If you haven't found it,
please check it out. It's perfect for the new
or beginning photographer. Well, that's it for now. Thank you for joining
me. We'll see you. Okay.
Sheila Foraker, Learn Skills - Make Better Photos
