Transcripts
1. Welcome: Hi, I'm Andrew, I'm a photographer, I'm from Ontario. I've been shooting photography for a long time, though it hasn't always been a career. That's only happened in the last couple of years. I started photography as a hobby, and then a little bit along the way, Momo came along. He's my dog and then I've been shooting him and he's been super photogenic and super fun to shoot and a super amazing commonality, or a common theme that I've been able to have along my photo journey, and the adventures that I take. The kind of a way to pull people in, and share my story with them in a different perspective. I really enjoy Instagram because it really empowers you, it really gives you the ability to share your experiences and your adventures with people. That's why I love photography, because it's a nice way to share a moment with people and say, "I was here, and it was beautiful, and you can experience it too to a degree." Today's class is going to be about finding your muse, and using that muse to create a common theme in your photos, and create a quirky photo series that could be thought provoking, that could be funny, or that could just be beautiful. There's something to share with people. We're going to be choosing a subject, choosing a characteristic, and going out on an adventure and finding something beautiful to shoot. It could be in your living room, it could be down your street, or it could be in another city, or it could be out in the woods. We're going to be exploring our surroundings, we're going to be connecting with things around us organically, and we're going to be creating something really, really beautiful. I feel that anyone can take this class and I think that anyone can use this class to create a beautiful project. Steve Jobs said, "Creativity is just connecting things." That if you ask the creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because really, they just saw something that was already there. You'll be taking this class to push your creative boundaries, to explore new places, explore new things. To do that project that you've been waiting to do. You can knock this one out of the park pretty quickly, or you can spend an entire weekend with it, or it could be something that you take away with you. It could be a project that you really like doing, so you can continue doing it indefinitely. That's the beauty about photo series, and the access to cameras that we have these days is that, there's no limit in what we can create. We'll be developing an eye for life, for pattern, for texture, for composition. We'll be practicing our skills, we'll be creating a consistent look and feel throughout our project, we'll be sharing it with a gallery, we'll be editing in Lightroom and then we'll be really proud of something we've created and we call our own. I'm really excited to get out there and shoot some photos and see what everyone can create. So, let's go do this.
2. Choose Your Subject: So in this lesson we're going to choose a subject, and your subject can be literally anything though I recommend you to choose something that you know well enough. It can be an animal or it can be a person or it can be an object that you are familiar with. I'm going to choose one of each to kind of guide you through the process of choosing a subject. You may already know what your subject is, and you may already know what your concept is, but if you want to do this exercise anyways, you may be surprised in what you find. So I'm going to show you some examples of what you may or may not want to use. You're going to choose something relatable, like it could be pizza or could be doughnuts. If you choose a person, it should be someone that you trust, someone that you know, someone who you know their characteristics, their personality. If you choose an animal, make sure it's an animal that you know well enough, and that behaves well enough or that does the thing that you want them to do in the photo, and this is why it's important to kind of work with the subject with whatever the subject is. A relatable thing is good because the people that, the people that you'll be sharing this with will be able to connect to the series a lot easier. That's why things like doughnuts and pizza and cats are very popular I think, is because these are things that everybody loves and everybody's familiar with, animals in particular, and pizza in particular, for some reason. An interesting choice for this one might be to choose a series of people and focus on their passions and what they're passionate about. So that could make itself into a photo series. But while you're working on this and while you're trying to choose your subject, think of the final product, think of what you want to create, think of the message that you want to convey, think about if you want to shoot in the city or if you want to shoot on the wild, do you want to convey an inspirational message, or do you want to just make someone think or make someone laugh? An intention for your photo series will always help you create an amazing final product. So a couple of the subjects that you might want to use. Like I said, you want to use something that's relatable and something that people can connect with. I can give you a couple of ideas that you can go with, if you kind of are stuck or can't think of anything yourself, but look around you, because there's probably something in this room that you can use. You might want to use a doughnut or a pizza or food of some sort that is familiar and has an interesting shape and a shape that you can play with. You might want to use a ball. In my case, I have a dog and he interacts with the ball very well and there's a lot of weird characteristics with a ball that you can use. A hot dog is another type of food that is familiar and people actually love, I think hot dog is the next pizza, so hot dog would be actually a pretty good choice. You could use a hand because you have one attached to your body and you can interact with it in weird ways, and it can make awesome shapes or symbols. You can use a book, you can use a book, a house, a door a city, don't limit yourself to what's around you, don't limit yourself to what you can think of, go beyond that a little bit. You can use anything, but make you use something that you're familiar with and that you have access to and that you can explore indefinitely. If you're not too sure on which subject you want to use, choose a couple and the next lesson is going to help you decide which subject to use for your photo series.
3. Make a List of 10 Characteristics: For this next lesson, we're going to take the subjects that we've figured out and we're going to list out some characteristics from them. So, you might have chosen one subject or you might have chosen a few, if you weren't too sure what to choose. So, I have chosen three, just to guide you through it. I chose a person, my friend Nico, I chose a dog, my dog Momo, and I chose an object, a doughnut, because doughnuts are awesome. Now, when you're listing for an animal, I'm hoping it's an animal that you know very well and you know their characteristics. With the example of find Momo, Momo already was doing the hiding thing. He was already running off and hiding, and that's why that characteristic worked so well and conveyed itself so well in this photo series is because it was something that she was already doing. So, this is a very organic process and this is why this exercise is good, it's because we'll get to explore the objects and we'll get to see what they do naturally. We'll be able to work with those when we're out actually shooting the photos. So, you're going to choose your subjects and you're going to grab a book and a pen, something to write on or you can just use your phone, write some notes on your notes app and you're going to choose 10 characteristics from that. Why are we choosing 10 and not just one or two? Because we're only going to use one, because we're going to push ourselves a little bit and the more we explore with this kind of thing, the better we do. I taught a few classes at a few colleges before and I've taken a lot of classes at colleges. I felt that the best exercises were the ones that I spent more time with and where I found, where I explored the subject a lot more and really, really explored the ideas and push myself to find new ideas. You'll be really surprised at what you find when you push yourself a little bit. So, you're going to explore the subjects' characteristics. You're going to think about what it looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like, what it looks similar to and what it feels similar to and what it sounds similar to. Also, opposites are important. What isn't, what it doesn't look like. You're going to figure out its color, its texture, its purpose, its use, its shape. As you're writing these things out, think about your final idea, think about how you can convey this into a series of photos. Think about if you want close photos, if I'm shooting a doughnut, it's going to be very close photos. So, I'm going to be playing with the texture of the background which could be a floor or a table or a brick wall or a mouth, my mouth. Or if you choose an animal or a person, you need to think about a broader landscape or a cityscape. You're going to want a wider shot. So, it's going to also depend on what your tools are, what your gear looks like. So, as you're going, as you're creating this list, make an asterisk next to the ones that you feel might make a really good photo series, something that you might want to explore. As you review, you may want to add or remove asterisks and that's how we're going to come up with something that's really fun and really goofy or really thought-provoking or just something really, really nice that could become a gift for a friend or a loved one or a dog. In this exercise, there are no wrong answers. You can go anywhere with this. Don't be afraid of feeling goofy or writing something stupid because nobody's looking at this but you. When you're choosing your characteristics for your subject, you want to choose something that's highly relatable to your friends or your followers or whoever's going to be seeing this. You're going to want to choose something that you're passionate about, something that you're excited about and something that you can be, something that you can go back to because you might really like this photo series idea and you might want to continue to do it. So, choose something fun that you can use again and again. Once you've listed out a bunch of characteristics for each of these subjects, and don't be afraid to go over 10; you probably thought of one or two of them that you really like, that you can really imagine. Right away, you can see this being a photo series. So, these are the things that we're going to pull into our next exercise. Don't be afraid to do more than one because it doesn't hurt to do more. Because it's in exploring more things, it's in taking ourselves places that we don't expect that really creates amazing opportunities for us.
4. Get Inspired, Stay Inspired: Okay. In this lesson, we're going to be chatting about inspiration, how to be inspired, how to stay inspired. This is a really important lesson. This is where I feel like most of my ideas come from and most of the stories that I share are just products of what I see around me. I feel like, as people, we get inspired a lot by new things, by changing things. As we have new experiences, we gain new ideas and new perspectives on things, and it's because we're making connections in our heads about the things that we see and the things that we've seen previously. So, I feel like, with that being said, going out and having an adventure, and setting a destination, and going there, you're going to find things along the way that you cannot predict and you cannot plan for, that will be really the heart and the soul of what you create. So, as much as we're choosing a subject and we're choosing a theme, we actually have to be open to that changing along the way and working with it along the way. When I'm feeling a lack of inspiration or a lack of new ideas I have kind of a formula for that. When I get stuck on anything, there are three things that I feel like anyone at anytime can change to a degree, and if that changing these things that brings us new experiences and brings us the inspiration that we're hoping for. So, the three things that we can change is the people, the places, and the things. So, the people relate to the people that we hang out with, the people that we surround ourselves with. We pull a lot of characteristics and a lot of inspiration from these people. So, we make sure that we hang out with the people that inspire us. When you see a quality in someone, it's good to try to emulate that quality to try to find that within yourself, because you noticing that in someone else means that you see that in yourself, and you should explore that and become a better person from the people you hang out with. The places that we are, we can change those all the time. That means the room that you're sitting in right now, to the city that you're living in, to the apartment that you're in, or the house that you're in, or where you spend most of your time. These things are easy to change. You could do it right now by walking outside. In exploring these new places that you go to, you will see new things, you will find new things, you will be inspired by that. It's super important to be open to changing these kinds of things. The things, the people, places and things, the things that you can change, it's anything from the food that you put into your body that gives you energy, to the camera that you use, the gear that you use, and everything that surrounds you. I suppose I drive an older vehicle, because it inspires me. It creates stories and it's a beautiful vehicle, so it's a subject for photography as well. In addition to choosing your subject and choosing its characteristic, we're also going to choose an adventure, and it could be something that you're already doing or it can be something that we plan on doing just for this, and it could be anything from a walk to the store, even if it's the same walk that you do every day. You'll find something new on it, I promise, or a camping trip that you've been planning or a camping trip that you haven't been planning. We choose a destination, and we choose a place to go to, and when we go to that place we find things along the way. We keep our minds open to seeing the things and we prepare ourselves to stop, because it's often the haste of wanting to get to a place that stops us from stopping and enjoying the sights along the way. So, in all that, we'll find inspiration in exploring and seeing new things and changing the things around us, and being inspired by them, and letting them inspire us. But also in repetition and in practicing lots and in taking your time, because time is very important. It's very important to stop and take your time with something. To me, taking your time is one of the most important things, but not only taking your time, but being intentional with the time that you take. For me, love is an expression of time and energy. It's spending time and energy with something, or someone, or with your projects. If you're only spending time with something, it's not quite enough, because you're not present with it. But once you're present with it and spending energy with it, once you're focused on it, and exploring it, then you're spending energy with it. So, love is the product of time and energy. So, with anything that we want to make better in our lives and in this particular case, this photo series, we're going to go out, and we're going to explore, and we're going to have fun and be present and do it.
5. Shoot Prep: Thinking About Lighting & Composition: Before we shoot, we're going to talk about gear and we're going to talk about composition, and lighting and basically we're going to make sure that we got everything ready to go, and we're having fun and we get what we want out of the shoot. So I shoot with my Canon 6D most the time, when I started Instagram I was shooting on my iPhone all the time, as the old adage goes the best camera is the one you have on you and I always felt that to be true because you never know when the moment's going to happen. I shoot mostly with my Canon 6D, my 24 millimeter 1.4 lens is almost always on there, occasionally I put on my 40 millimeter 2.8 pancake lens, I also shoot occasional film with my Canon A-1 and with a Mamiya 645. Shooting a black and white dog as my kind of main subject, as my muse, it has been a really good lesson for me and it's a lesson that I kind of pulled from shooting a couple of weddings way back a couple of years ago. I learned that to shoot a wedding you need to meter your photos for the dress as well as the black suit. Normally it's a black suit and a white dress, and to do that you need to meter for the brights. So Momo being a black and white dog I had to kind of pull similar lessons from that and I'm always brightening my photos afterwards to pull the detail out of the blacks, rather than trying to pull the detail out of the whites because the detail seems to stay a lot more in the darks of the photos. Typically I don't use any other accessories, I like to shoot very simply just with the camera that I have on me. I have a couple of tips for keeping your cameras steady without a tripod that I'll share with you, and tips about lighting and composition that we'll talk about as we go out and shoot. Okay so now this is the fun part, now we get to go out and shoot. So, we have our subject and we chose a characteristic, I have chosen Momo the dog, and the characteristic that I chose is that he's super friendly, and it's kind of a project I've always wanted to play with and I think I could integrate it really well with going out on a walk and exploring the neighborhood. So we're going to go out into the streets and walk up and down the roads, and look for really nice houses and really nice front doors and we're going to keep an eye out for a lot of things, we're going to keep an eye out for color, for composition, for lighting, for patterns, and texture, and we're actually going to go out at a really good time of day, the sun is getting a little bit lower, and it's really nice sky right now and I want you to keep that in mind for when you're going out, early morning when the sun has just come out or late in the evening when the sun is just about to go down, these are the golden hours, these are when you want to go out and shoot and your lighting will be really beautiful and everything will be golden. So you have your subject and your characteristic and you're going to want to play with it a lot. So, having chosen Momo and his friendliness, I'm going to interact with the environment and see how that can go in every day kind of scenes that I find. So the first thing composition, what we're looking for is symmetry or asymmetry, where we're looking for scenes that kind of balance themselves. Were looking for a clean background not too much clutter and specifically we're looking for straight lines, and what I mean by that is when you see a scene or you see something that you like especially if you're shooting in the city, you're looking for those horizontal or the vertical lines to match up with the frame, this is important to me, they may not be as important to you, but I'm very strict about this when I take photos. I think when you shoot a photo or when you see a scene that you like, often you're tempted to just shoot it from where you're standing, but it's important to move your feet to where everything is aligned, everything is straight. Your feet are a great asset in photography, so walk a little bit, make sure it's straight, use the grid on your phone or on your camera or whatever the device you're using, there's a grid feature usually that will show you the straight lines, and you'll be able to make sure that everything is nice and straight so you don't have to do as much afterwards in post. The next thing is lighting. I like to shoot in natural lighting, I don't really like using artificial lighting and it's because Momo doesn't like flashes or studio lighting or anything like that, so natural lighting for me is very important, I like a really bright day, I'd like a bright overcast day kind of like it is right now. So, I'm looking for natural lighting and when I'm metering my shots I'm metering for the highlights most of the time so that I get a lot of the details in the shot. As you go out and explore keep an eye open for any kind of nice light pockets or light wells, a diffused lighting from above is often a really beautiful light and especially when I'm shooting Momo it kind of reflects his eyes back at me and that's when the colors of his eyes really come out. But in shooting anything, really a nice diffused light is going to give you a beautiful picture. So, and you can find this kind of lighting in alleyways or between trees and between a canopy of trees out in the woods and in a clearing and an opening you'll find some really beautiful diffused lighting there. As I said before, if you shoot in early in the morning or if you shoot later in the evening when the sun is low, you're going to get a lot of really beautiful light and especially if you have a nice, if you have a good camera that can pick up low light or good lens that can pick up a little light right before the sun comes up and twilight and right after the sun goes down is also a very beautiful light out depending on how many clouds are in the sky. If you're shooting with your iPhone you can always press and hold the screen on the subject that you want to a meter for and swipe up and down to adjust the brightness, it's a basic tip a couple of tips for shooting in lower lights with your camera because I don't like to use accessories like tripods and stuff like that, I'll often use my camera strap around my neck and I'll pull it down kind of use my use my neck and my stature as a way to sturdy the camera. Also when you're actually pressing the shutter and shooting hold your breath because your breathing will also move your camera and alter the shot and possibly make it a little bit fuzzy. As you're out there shooting, patterns and textures or something you're looking out for personally I look for clean backgrounds or look for, and I don't always find them sometimes the moment comes without a clean background and you have to kind of be willing to balance it out by often a nice clean background or a solid pattern or something or texture is a really beautiful backdrop and can really make your subject pop. Think about the color of the background and think about the color of your subject, think about how they interact with each other, and think about the lighting on the scene, and if there's any debris in the photo, you can feel free to move it out of the way, I often move things out of the way and move them back after.
6. Shooting Your Photo Series: All right. So, in this lesson we are going to shoot. The lighting right now is really beautiful, the sky is a little bit overcast, But the sun is out and it's diffused beautifully. We got lucky here in Vancouver today. So, I notice this house, and it's really really cute, and it's white and it's symmetrical and there's a lot going on. I'm going to knock on the door and see if anyone's home. come say hi. So, Momo has a habit of running to the door of anywhere I go. Sit, Stay. Stay. Stay. There is the door, I'm just going to get photo of Momo wanting to go inside. Stay, are you ready to go? Are you ready to walk? Stay. Stay. This house is absolutely gorgeous. Between the red steps, and the wooden door, and the blue paint, and the white framing, the green grass, everything is just so beautiful and so perfect. Even the wreath on the door, from Christmas. Well then homeowners, normally when I'm taking a picture of a house I'll ask the owner if I can do that, but Momo has eagerly run up the stairs on his own. So, I'm going to just seize the moment and ask him to sit. sit, Momo. Good boy. Are you going go knock on the door? I'm so sorry to bother you, I'm taking photos, and I'm walking by your house and it's absolutely beautiful, and I'm wondering if I can take a photo of my dog just like poking his head out of your door? Yes sure. Is that okay? Yeah. Okay cool. What is his name? His name is Momo. Hey Momo? Momo who's that? How is it going? Okay closer just a bit, closer. Good boy. Stay, stay, stay, stay. Thank you. So, that worked out really well, and that gentleman was very friendly, and I hope he watches the SkillShare video and finds his house. Let's walk that way. Pretty much just going in any direction at this point. Normally I'll have a destination in mind, but this neighborhood who happens to be extremely beautiful and everything is amazing. So, I'm just going to walk in any direction at this point and hope to find some more beautiful front doors. I'm going to be looking at on this side of the street only because this is the side of the street that the sun is shining on. There's something about red doors that I really like, and it's funny early in talking about this project we were talking about red doors a lot. This one's easy because there's some lips where I can put Momo behind and he can pop out, so I don't have to knock on the door, and interrupt anyone. So, I'm just going do that, and I hope we don't get in trouble. Come here, this way. Come over here. Turn around. Stay. Here is your stick, or your frisbee. Stay. So, I know the keywords that makes Momo's ears pop out, and sometimes he comes out entirely. So, as I'm creating the series and seeing how it's coming out, I'm feeling like the theme here is that Momo is indeed super friendly, and that he can be let into any house because he's an awesome dog, and dogs are awesome. What do you think. I think if I stand there, maybe get that frame, the lighting is beautiful, colors of this ports are awesome. I'm very thankful for the friendly people and letting me shoot photos of their front door. I need to respect boundaries, and already you're pushing it by going to people's doors and knocking on them, just funny, these doors are awesome because they're very 70's or 60's or 80's I don't know but they're really cool with that diagonal symmetry. Come over here, this way, look, now, do you want the ball? Stay. Stay. Come say hi. Come here. Stay. Trick or treat. Stay. So, stay. I actually used my wallet to prop the door open, and I hope nobody minds, but it's a really nice house. stay. We've got a lot of photos, and I'm really excited about getting into Lightroom, and editing them and sharing them.
7. Editing in Lightroom: All right. So, we just got back from our little walk around the block and really excited because I think we got some really awesome shots. So, I got a little SD card and I'm going to import the photos and see what we got. I'm really excited about how the shoot turned out. It was actually really fun. I got pretty inspired out there and actually knock on some doors and asked if I can take the photos and that was pretty fun to get permission to do it from strangers, from complete amazing strangers that said absolutely take your photos. So, I took a whole bunch of each shot and usually what I do first of all, I will go through the photos and I will kind of check through them real quickly and whichever ones I really like the most I'll rate them so that they are filtered to the top. So this one, I'm going to rate three, and then I'm going to keep going through the rest of the photos and find the ones that I want. This one I'm going to rate it a three. If I really like it sometimes I rate it a four or five, but normally I just put it as a three so that I can filter them out by rated and not rated. As I'm filtering through these I'm seeing that there are commonalities in some of them that'll work better as a set than others, and some of them he is sitting on the porch, and some of them he sticking out of the door, and I'm feeling like the common theme here is that Momo wants to go inside these houses. And I kind of worked and played with the fact that Momo always wants to go inside of houses and look for things. So now that I've gone through all of my photos and I've rated them, I'm going to sort them by rating and jump in to develop mode. So, I have my presets that I use here, my preferred presets, and depending on the photo, I use different ones. This one's based on VSCO preset and this one's based on Mastin Labs preset. I think I'm going to go for the Mastin on these because they're a little more subtle, but that it really makes that blue pop. So a lot of times they'll give it a slight S curve and let the blacks a little bit up. The curves are going to find that the shadows will make the blacks a little less harsh and the S-curve will make the colors pop a little bit nicer. This is the option here if you can't adjust from the bottom you click this little one, this point curb editability. A lot of times when jumping into Lightroom one of the first things I do is "enable the profile correction," and this will get rid of any lens warping assuming that your profile for your cameras set up properly. Sometimes the auto feature will adjust the lines nicely and make everything nice and square as seeing as this is going on Instagram, I'm going to crop it into a square on here, one by one, and I want the stairs, and I want the blue wall, and I want to make sure it's perfectly square, and I am going to do that by looking at the grid and making sure things line up nicely and they do. So hitting Enter will adjust that and now that I see it in square mode I notice that it's a little bit bottom heavy. So I'm going to go back to this node and adjusted down a little bit, maybe a little too much, and now it's nice and centered and squared. I'm going to bring the shadow is a little bit out in this one because Momo is getting lost and bit into the house, and he's nice and sharp. So, this one's ready to go. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to copy the settings by hitting Shift Command C. I'm not going to copy the crop. I'm going to copy all the other settings and I'm going to paste that into another photo with similar lighting and that made the blues pop, but it dropped in all my other settings like the profile correction, my curves, the shadows being brought up by. I might brighten this one a little bit, but absolutely love the shadow of the tree on the blue wall right here and the fact that Momo's head is framed within the door even with his magic missing patch of fur, he still looks cute. I'm going to see if auto adjust here will automatically make everything balanced and it worked pretty good. So i'm going to crop this into square. You can limit higher, maybe a little lower, and it's pretty good. I'm going to rate this a four just so that it comes to the top when I filter by stars. I'm going to rate this one a four as well. I'm going to find one more to complete my series and maybe it's going to be this one. Let's see how it looks if I paste settings. This was too bright, I'm going to lower that, crop it, rotate it, rate that four. I think that might be my third one. I'm going to sort now by rated by four and zoom out in library mode and see how they kind of look side-by-side. I think they make a really nice series. I think the colors kind of lend themselves to each other. We've got nice greens and nice blues, and the dark colors are really nice. I think these are ready to go.
8. Closing Thoughts: Okay. So, today we went out and we shot something really awesome together. I want you to share with us in the project gallery what you've created and I want to be able to comment on it and see it and be inspired about what you've created. I'm going to sign out with three things. One is that opportunity is out there and it will present itself to you. Two is that failure is important, and three is that you can begin anywhere. So, opportunity is out there and it will reveal itself to you. When you go out there and you do something that is outside of your comfort zone, you do something new, you will meet people along the way that will change your life, and you will discover things along the way that will change the way you do things, and will bring amazing new things to you. Be patient with it. Spend a lot of time with your projects and with things that you love. We're often taught that failure is a bad thing, that failure means that we have not succeeded, but failure is just a form of success. If we pull from our failure the lessons that they teach us, we can learn everything we need to do it better next time. So, there's a John Cage quote that goes, "There is a temptation to do nothing because one doesn't know where to begin.", and his advice here is to begin anywhere, and in anything that we're doing, anything that we're afraid to start, any step you can take to begin is the best step. I'm really looking forward to seeing all of your submissions in this class, this gallery, how it forms itself. Please get out and do something and create something, whether it's in your living room or in your backyard or down the street or out in the wilds. Go take some photos, and share them with people, and show them what you've created, and all of us what you've done. I definitely want to check them out. Thanks so much for taking this class and I'm very much looking forward to your submissions.
9. More Photo Classes on Skillshare:
Andrew Knapp, Photographer, Creator
