Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: [MUSIC] When I first started
learning photography, I remember feeling
so overwhelmed by just the sheer amount of
information that was online. Since then, I've taken hundreds of thousands of
images across the world, and doing so has really
helped me understand that the only way you
can really grow as a photographer is to
grab your camera, head outside, and just take as many photos as
you possibly can. Hey, guys what's up. My
name is Sean Dalton and I'm a Travel Photographer
based in Bali, Indonesia. I've been shooting
professionally for about eight years now. I've also helped over
200,000 photographers improve their photography skills through my online workshops. In this course, we're
going to be covering what I believed to be the 10 best exercises that you could do to take better photos. These are things that you can
do at home on your own with little to no experience
and each one will get you engaging with a different aspect of the photo-making process. We're going to be
covering topics like composition,
lighting, color, and also a few more
technical things as well, like how to capture or freeze
motion using shutter speed, and how to achieve depth in
your scene using aperture. We'll also do some more
grounded activities that really allow us
to think critically and draw creative
connections between different aspects of the
photo-making process. Lastly, we're going to
finish off with one of my favorite activities and that is shooting your
own self-portrait. This course was made
to be a practical one. It's really not over theoretical and not
overly technical either, rather, it was made with
a simple goal of just getting you outside
and taking photos. It's my hope that
at the very least, this course will
help you do that. Whether you're somebody
who's just starting their photography
journey or maybe you haven't picked up your
camera in a while, and you're looking for a
little bit of inspiration, this class will
help you solidify the foundations of
photography and set the groundwork for you to create beautiful
images in the future. With that said guys,
if you are ready to get started, I certainly am, let's start the first lesson
off with the class project, and then we'll dive into the
first of our 10 activities.
2. Class Project & Pacing: Because this is an
activity-based class, of course, there's
a project involved, and the class project for
this class is to go out and complete one of the activities from one of the lessons
here in the course. Just choose one of
the 10 activities that we'll cover, complete it, come back here to the
course and then post your results in the class
project section below. When you're sharing
your results, go ahead and just tell us a little bit about
your experience. How did it go? What were some of the
things that you were doing? What you were looking for? Just write a little bit about your experience
and then also share some of the
images that you captured on the activity. I can't wait to see Number 1, which activity you choose, and also the results
that you come up with. If you wanted to do
more than one activity, that is totally fine. I think there is a lot of overlap between some
of the activities and you can go out and complete multiple within
just a few hours. Of course, that's
the best way to become a better
photographer anyways, so I definitely recommend doing that if you think you can. But with the class project
out of the way, guys, I just want to make
one more quick note on the timing of the class. Of course, there
are 10 activities in this class that you
can go out and complete. But realistically, I
don't know if you're going to be able to
do it all on one day, you might, but I think
something good to do is to dedicate one
day per exercise. On Day 1, you do a composition
exercise, then Day 2, you do the lighting exercise, Day 3, etc, and so on. Or you could split
it into weeks. You can have one week
focus on composition, one week focus on lighting, one week focus on color, etc. It really is just a
personal preference. You can paste this course, however, you think
is best for you, you can watch it all
straight through, take notes on the activities, and go do them later. Or you can watch one lesson, complete the activity, and then move on to the
second lesson, etc. It really is whatever
is best for you, I just wanted to make
a note about that because there is no right or
wrong as to how to do this. It's whatever you feel
most comfortable with. But with that housekeeping
business out of the way, guys, let's move on
to the next lesson.
3. Equipment and Overall Class Approach: Hey guys, I just wanted
to add a quick lesson to touch on equipment
a little bit. Equipment is of
course important, we're photographers and
we're using cameras. But most of this
class honestly can be completed with something
as simple as an iPhone. Now there are a few
lessons that will require a more robust camera
with manual settings, and I'll let you
know when that's the case before I get going. But for the most part, a lot
of this course is focused on the stylistic side
of photography and an iPhone is
totally fine for that. Now, I personally have a lot of professional photography
gear because I'm a professional photographer, but I'm going to
be shooting with a lot of different cameras
throughout this course. In fact, for most
of this course, I'm going to be shooting
with my Fuji X100V. This is an amazing
camera and it strikes a great balance
between something like an iPhone that's very
simple to use and a more professional
DSLR camera like this. Each of these cameras serve a different purpose in my life. I have a ton of cameras that
I use probably equally. But I really do like this
Fuji because it's simple, but it still has manual settings and it takes amazing photos. I also do want to touch
briefly on camera settings. Now, camera settings really aren't the focus of this class. In most of the lessons
in this class, you can honestly shoot
in full auto modes or in half auto modes like aperture priority or
shutter priority. I'll talk about those in each of the lessons where
those are applicable. Now, you're more than
welcome to shoot in manual mode if you have
the skills to do so, or if you're just
looking to improve your technical
photography skills. But in general, camera settings aren't the main focus
of this course. Let me briefly explain why. I've always broken down photography into two
different spheres. There's the technical side of photography and the stylistic
side of photography. There is a ton of
overlap between these two spheres of photography but for the purposes
of this course, let's just look at
them separately. The technical side of
photography basically has everything to do with camera
settings and numbers, and aperture and
shutter speed and ISO, and anything related
to math or numbers. That's the technical
side of photography. Basically, anything
that has to do with your camera or any of the
gear that you might have. The stylistic set of
photography, on the other hand, is much more subjective
and has a lot to do with the artistic
side of photography. Things like composition and lighting and subject
matter choice, color, things like that. Like I said before, yes, these things can
certainly be technical, but they're also highly subjective and these
things must be honed over time through
action and reflection, and not just sitting
in a classroom. In this course, I really
want this side of photography to be
the main focus, the stylistic side
of photography. The technical side of
photography is important, of course, don't get me wrong, but more importantly is your understanding of
light and subject matter, and composition and color, and all of the subjective stylistic components
of photography. These are the things that make great photographers and these should be your
guiding principles when learning photography. Some people will say that
the technical side of photography is equally
as important and maybe that's true but I think
that the technical side of photography just naturally
develops over time. I promise, one day it's just going to click and
you're going to get it. We're going to touch
on the technical side of photography in
this course but my photography essentials
class here on Skillshare goes much more in-depth
into the technical side. I definitely recommend checking that out if you haven't already. It's actually one of the highest-rated
photography classes here on Skillshare. But with that disclaimer
out of the way, guys, let's jump into the
first exercise of this class and talk about one of my favorite topics
of photography, and that is composition.
4. Mastering Composition: Well, as you can tell by
the name of this lesson, I think you already
know what we're going to be talking about, and that is composition. But before we do so, I just
want to briefly break down how these activity lessons
are going to be structured. In the first part
of these videos, I'm going to introduce
the topic that we're going to be focusing
on in the activity, and then I'm going to
explain it a little bit and give you a
solid foundation of understanding before we actually jump into the activity at hand. Once we get to the activity, I'm going to walk you through that exercise and explain a
few different things about it and also share my
experience with each of these exercises to give you a solid example for
how you can do yours. I've made each of these lessons as easy to follow as possible, but feel free to pause
the video and add a quick note in the timeline
down below if you need to. But now let's go
back to composition. Composition is hands down one of the most fundamental pieces of photography or any art
form for that matter. In photography terms, composition
is essentially how you arrange the subject matter in your scene within your frame, so where you orient things in your frame and
how you capture it. There are so many
different types of compositions and you
might've heard of concepts like rule of thirds,
framing, depth, etc. All of these things are great, but I believe the most
important factor of composition is the
idea of perspective. Now, this is something
I actually mentioned in almost all of my
photography courses because I do think it's one of the most foundational pieces
of photography as a whole. Now perspective is essentially
how you orient yourself to your subject or where you're standing in accordance
to your subject. Shifting your perspective
is going to greatly change the outcome
of your image. Now you can change
your perspective by physically moving
around your subject, so getting closer to your
subject, getting further away, moving to the left, to
the right, up and down, and also zooming in and out with your lens can actually shift
your perspective as well. Now, one of the
best ways to master this idea of perspective is to force yourself to adopt new perspectives while you're
photographing a subject. For this exercise,
I want you guys to grab your camera
and head outside, or you can actually do
this at home as well and find an object
to photograph. Then I want you to capture 50 unique photos of
that one single object. You can choose any
object for this. It could be a shoe, it could be a mailbox, a car, or water bottle, or even a camera would work. The smaller the object, the more difficult
this is going to be, and also the more
simple the object, the more difficult
this is going to be. So if you choose a basketball, it's going to be pretty
difficult whereas if you choose something
a little bit more complex and a little bit bigger, it's going to be easier
to do this exercise. Now for my project, I actually ended up choosing a surfboard that we
have here in our villa. It's simple, it's
not too glamorous. It's my roommate's surfboard, and I think it just
looks really cool, I like the colors as well. I thought it'd be good
for this exercise. The point of this
exercise really isn't necessarily to capture a
bunch of beautiful photos, but it's rather to just stretch our minds and gain a better
understanding of how perspective ultimately changes
the outcome of each image. I went upstairs, I
grabbed the surfboard from the surf rack outside
my roommate's room. I set it up in our garden and I proceeded to take 50
different photos of it, so I shot it wide, I shot it up close, I shot it from either side, from the top, from the bottom. As you can see here, this is just me just working
around the surfboard and just trying to be creative and trying to come up with
new perspectives. I'm constantly
shifting where I am standing in accordance
to the surfboard. I'm even getting up really
close and focusing on some of the details as well. Overall, I think the photos
came out really nicely. I was actually surprised. I think part of the
reason why is because the color just looked really
nice against the green. Those are actually
complimentary colors. We're going to touch on
that a little bit in the color section
of this course. But overall, I think I got a really wide range of
compositions here and I really like repeating
this exercise once every 3-4 months or so because it does force me to constantly have
that mindset of like, okay, I need to find a
different perspective. I need to shift my perspective because when I'm not shooting, I'm on a project, I'm shooting for a brand. This comes in clutch every
single time because almost always I run out
of creative ideas. I'm like, oh, I'm not exactly sure how I should approach
shooting the scene. I just fall back into this initial exercise
and I just start deconstructing my
scene and capturing as many different perspectives
as I possibly can. I almost always walk away
with photos that I would not have captured if I
didn't think this way. Now I shot this exercise
with the Fuji X100V, like I said before, I love this camera and I just shot
it in aperture priority. I've mostly just set my
aperture at fl5.6 and then I left it
there and I'll let the camera do everything else. Now once again, you can
shoot this however you want. An iPhone is totally
fine for this lesson. Just whatever you feel
most comfortable with. But overall, I really
love this exercise. Now, this is actually
the same exercise from the class project in my
photography essentials class. In that class, I do
touch on some of the more concrete
principles of composition. That's not what this class
is about like I said, we're not talking about
the technical side, we're talking about
the stylistic side. I just want you guys to
get out there and shoot. But if you do want
to learn more about the technical side and then I'd definitely recommend
checking out that class. But that's our first exercise, guys, I love this one. I can't wait to see
your class project if you choose this to
be your class project. But with that said,
let's move on to another core foundation
of photography. We talked about composition. Now let's move on to lighting, which is arguably even more
important than composition, which is already so incredibly fundamental to
making great photos.
5. The Key to Understanding Light: Lighting is one of the most important concepts
for photography, simply because cameras
capture light. That's how they work. The light enters
through the lens, goes into the camera
and it's recorded on a little sensor
inside that camera. But light also has so many
other impacts on an image. It changes the composition, it changes the
emotion, the color, and it just overall
shapes the mood and the emotion of
your photograph. Now I've always felt
that one of the things that separates a great
photographer from an intermediate
photographer is just having an intricate understanding
of light and how it affects all
aspects of their image. I think any photographer with a degree of talent will tell
you the exact same thing. Now speaking of
great photographers, this next exercise
was actually taught to me by somebody
who I consider to be a great photographer and
somebody who has photographed some pretty amazing people
around the world and has influenced me in
many different ways. Now he told me that
one of the best ways to understand how
light works and how cameras capture light is to completely eliminate color
while we're shooting. In other words, this basically means shooting in
black and white. In the old days, this meant basically shooting in
black and white film. But nowadays, we can change our cameras to shoot
in black and white. Shooting in black and
white is a technique that many other photographers
swear by as well. I've heard this from so
many different people. I personally know several
very talented photographers who credit their deep
understanding of light and tone to
shooting black and white when they
were first starting out on their
photography journey. That's exactly what
we're going to be doing in this exercise. We're going to be shooting
in black and white, which in my opinion is
timeless and beautiful. I mean, it's really
going to help us understand light to
a better degree. Now, don't get me wrong,
color is amazing. If you've seen my Instagram, you know that most
of my current work is heavily focused around color, on the emotions related to color and color harmony and
things like that. We are going to
talk about all of those things in another
lesson here in this class. But we really want to focus on light as
well because light, like I said, is really is what's going to set
your photo apart. Shooting in black and white
forces us to focus on light, so that's what we're
going to be doing today. For this exercise,
the very first thing we're going to do is take our cameras and set it to
shoot in black and white. This is really easy to do
on the iPhone, for example, you just swipe up and
go to Filters and then you can choose the
black and white one. You can do this on
most other cameras as well, even DSLRs. I mean, if you aren't
sure how to do this, you can easily just Google your specific camera model with the words black and white
in the search terms, and you should be able to
figure it out quite easily. Once you've set your
camera to black and white, head outside and take a short photowalk to
a local park or down the street or anywhere
you think that just looks interesting or might have
some interesting light. Once you're there, look for scenes that have just
really interesting or dynamic light and take
some photos of those scenes. The actual subject
matter really doesn't matter here I think the focus is purely on light and contrast or the difference between the light in the dark areas of an image. Notice how the light
hits objects and changes the way they look in their shape, in
their appearance. Also notice how light changes the composition of
an image as well. This is especially true in
high-contrast seeing were the shadows can create strong
lines through an image. One photographer who
I think did this incredibly well was a
photographer by the name of Paul Strand who shot in black and white
and it was purely focused on lights and how it shapes and forms different
objects or scenes. He's an absolute
photography legend. They teach him in a lot
of photography classes in college and things like that. I mean, his work
definitely inspired my project for this lesson. Now you can do this exercise at any time throughout
the day or night, as long as there's light
sources available to you. If you want to take this
exercise a step further, you can actually shoot
the same location at different times
throughout the day. If possible, shoot
the same place at midday and at sunset, or even at sunset and nighttime. This is really going
to help you understand how light changes
throughout the day and also how it changes
the overall look and feel of your image. Now as a landscape photographer, I'm usually out shooting
during sunrise and sunset because at that time
the light is very soft and often very golden. But when I shoot in
black and white, I actually love to
shoot in the middle of the day when the sun is
a bit higher in the sky. That's because the
light is much harder and we get much more interesting
shadows in our scenes, and overall the light is just
more complex and contrasty which I think looks really cool in black and white photos. That's exactly what I
did for this lesson. I went to the beach on
a bright sunny day, it was actually incredibly
hot here in Bali. But I wanted to get those
strong contrast and also I like it
because there wasn't a whole lot of
people on the beach. But overall, I love how
the photos came out. I captured so many images
on that short photowalk. My favorites were the beach
capes where you could see that there was a person and they appeared very dark next
to the beach around them, which was much brighter. Some of the shots
were misty as well. I also liked the
photos of the sky. The sky was looking so
cool on these photos. This particular photo with the palm tree and
the sky behind it, and there's actually a
little kite back there as well looked
really interesting. It's just so interesting to
see how the camera renders brightness levels in the
different colors as well. I also love this photo so much of these farmers drying
their rice on the beach. I think it came out so well. I really liked these photos. I think I'm going to be
posting this online. Also this photo of
the beach where you can see the water had
receded and there was a line of light reflecting from the sun that
was splitting the beach in half and creating a really
interesting leaning line up the beach to this really
dark rock in the background. But yeah, this is a really
great exercise and if you guys do decide to do
this for your class project, I'm super pumped to see some of your black
and white photos.
6. The 3 Aspects of Color: In the last lesson, we
eliminated color in order to really focus on light, but now it's time
to flip that on its head and focus on color. Now, in photography, we actually break
down color into three different factors, hue, saturation, and luminance. Hue is the actual
color itself, so blue, red, green, orange,
purple, yellow, etc. Saturation is the
purity of that color. A more saturated color is a
more pure form of that color. Another way to describe it is basically a more vivid color. A desaturated color
is starting to lose that purity and it's
moving closer to gray. Now, lastly is luminance. Luminance is essentially
the brightness of a color, thick dark blue versus
light blue, for example. They're the same hue,
they're both blue, but they have different
brightness levels, ultimately making them
different colors. Now, what does this
mean for photography? Well, it has actually a greater impact on editing
because when we're editing, we can actually control all
three of these factors. But understanding
these three aspects of color also helps us better understand color while we're
out taking photos as well. For this activity, I want
you guys to venture back outside and choose one
color to focus on. This can be any color at all, as long as it's present
in your environment. The more abundant the color, the better and the easier
this activity is going to be. Then I want you to
try to photograph that color in different ways. Pay attention to the
different aspects of color we discussed, hue, saturation, and luminance, and
take note as to how colors render
within your camera. Also, try to see how
many different shades of color that you can capture
of that specific shade. So if you're shooting blue, see how many different colors
of blue you can photograph, whether it's dark blue, or light blue,
greenish-blue, etc. I'm in Bali, Indonesia
so of course, the color I chose was green. You might be able to tell
it's my favorite color, my wall is actually green and
I painted that wall green. But we're actually surrounded
by green out here, pretty much everywhere you look, you can see green and if
you go onto a rooftop, you'll see pretty
immediately that we're actually
surrounded by green. I chose the color green
for this exercise. Now my original plan for this
exercise was to actually go to a nearby village and photographs of the
greenery there. But while we're shooting
the composition lesson here at home, I just realized
how much greenery actually exists in our house. I never really took
the time to look at each plant and evaluate all the different shades of green that we have here at home. But there really
is so much here, so I decided to just spend time shooting in
the garden here. I actually spent about
an hour photographing all the plants and the trees
that we have in our garden. I didn't realize that we have so many different shades of
green just here at home, there's dark green, light green, yellow-green,
blue-green, even greens that shift slightly
towards purple. All of these colors can
be categorized as green, but they're all still very
different from one another. I didn't realize that
until I really spent the time looking at it and
evaluating these colors. Now, if you want to take this
exercise a step further, and I would totally
recommend doing so, try to find a color that's complementary to the color that you choose
for this activity, and try to photograph
those two colors together. Complimentary colors
are colors that sit opposite from each other
on the color wheel, which is just a nice little
diagram that helps us look at different colors and the relationships
between each other. When paired together,
complementary colors create what we call a harmonious
color relationship. In other words, they just
look great together. Common complementary
color combinations that you might see well, that's a mouthful [LAUGHTER]
that you might see out in nature are blue and orange, red and green like the surfboard and the
greenery we showed earlier. Yellow and purple. I'm sure you can
find them all over nature if you know
where to look. Even this plant that I photographed has
complementary colors, the red, purple hues, and the green look really
nice next to each other. Recognizing
complementary colors is a great skill for photographers, not only for finding
complementary colors in a natural environment
but also being able to choose the right
outfits or props for a shoot to create color
harmony in that photo. I'll mention this later on in the course
because we're going to be executing a
photography brief later on. But just know that having an awareness of
complementary colors is a great skill to
have as a photographer. Now, a great way
to experiment with different complementary
colors is to use this awesome tool
at color.adobe.com. You can see all the different
color combinations as well as several other types
of color relationships. I definitely recommend just go in there and playing
around with it, clicking the different
combinations, and just getting a feel for it, because this will help your
understanding of color. But overall, like I said, having a good understanding of color is important
as a photographer because we often need to
make sure we're accounting for all of the different
colors in our scene, no matter how muted or vibrant
those colors might be. A photo can be ruined by one-off putting
color in our photo, so it's important to really pay attention to all the colors
that we have in our scene. But just to quickly
recap this exercise, I want you guys to head outside go into a little photo walk, and photograph one color. The emphasis is on one color,
so whether that's blue, green, yellow, or whatever, whatever your favorite color is. If you would like, and I would definitely recommend doing so, look for complementary colors
to that color you selected and see if you can find them together and photograph
those two together. You might not be able
to and that's okay, but just be on the
lookout for it. But with our color
activity out of the way, guys, in the next lesson, we're going to move
on to a slightly more technical lesson, but I promise it's
not that hard to get. We're going to be
chatting about aperture, so if you guys are
ready to get started, let's move on to
that lesson now.
7. Achieving Depth with Aperture: Now, I want to move on to a slightly more technical topic, but I promise it's not
that bad so bear with me. In this lesson, I want to
talk about how you can create depth in your scene
using aperture. This is pretty fundamental
to photography. I think it's really important to learn how aperture works and how it affects the way
your image comes out. But before we dive into
the actual exercise, there are a few things
that you should know about aperture first, so let's just chat
about that first. Now, aperture is one of the
three main camera settings that composes what we call
the exposure triangle. The other two settings being
ISO and shutter speed. Now, the exposure triangle is just a handy little
diagram that shows us all the camera
settings that regulate the amount of light
entering our camera, which ultimately dictates
the exposure of our image or basically how bright or
how dark our photo appears. That you may or may
not be well versed in the exposure triangle
yet, but that's okay. You don't need to
be for this lesson, I focused on the
exposure triangle quite heavily in my photography
essentials class. I highly recommend
you checking that out if you want to better
understand this. But in short, aperture is the little hole on our lens
that opens and closes to regulate the amount of light
entering our camera before that light is recorded on a little sensor inside
the camera body. Aperture, also known as
the f-stop of a camera, is denoted by a number which
you can find on your lens. Each lens is different, but common apertures
range anywhere from f/1.4 all the way to f/22. Now, a smaller aperture, a larger number, allows less light into the
camera than a wider aperture, which is a smaller number and this allows more
light into the camera. Now, I know this can be
a bit confusing because a small aperture is
a larger number, while a wider aperture
is a smaller number. But I promise you will get
the hang of it in time, so don't get too hung
up on this right now. From an exposure standpoint, aperture is actually
pretty easy to understand. A small hole lets in less
light than a big hole. But like all three of our main camera settings
of the exposure triangle, aperture has its own
unique creative effect on our image beyond just simply regulating how much
light enters our camera. This should be your main
consideration with aperture. The creative effect of
aperture is its ability to control the depth of
field in our scene, or essentially the
range of focus between objects close to our camera
and further from our camera. A smaller aperture, which is a larger number like f/8, f/11, or even f/22, will result in a much
larger depth of field. Meaning you have focus
all the way from the foreground to the
background of your image. Landscape photographers
often like to shoot with smaller apertures to
ensure that they get everything in there
scene in focus. Now, a wide or a large
aperture on the other hand, which is a smaller
number like f/1.4, f/1.8 or f/2.8 will result in a much
shallower depth of field. This means that if you want to take a photo with your subject, like a model is nice and sharp, and you want the background
to be nice and blurry, you wouldn't want to use a
wider aperture to do this. Portrait photographers,
for example, they like to shoot with
water apertures to get nice separation between their
model and the background. Now, I think the best way to understand how aperture
affects the depth of field of your image is to capture photos at all the different
apertures of your lens. For this exercise, you're going to want to find a subject. It can be anything
at all as long as that subject doesn't have
something directly behind it. Once you've done that
stand a few feet away from your
subject and capture one photo at all the
different apertures that your lens can do. Starting at the
maximum aperture of your lens or the smaller number. This is often going to
fall anywhere between f/1.8 or f/4 depending
on your lens. Then once you take
a photo there, slowly close your aperture, taking photos after every
adjustment that you make. Once you get to f/16
or f/22, you can stop. For this exercise,
what you're going to do is set your camera to aperture priority or the little API or AV mode on your camera, depending on your manufacturer. What this camera mode
means is that you choose the aperture of the camera
and everything else is auto. The camera selects the
shutter speed and the ISO, so you don't need to
worry about exposure. The only thing you're
setting is the aperture. Now, if you're using an iPhone, you can actually still follow
along as the iPhone has a simulated aperture while in portrait mode.
That's pretty cool. Also, try to do
this during the day as you might run
into issues shooting with a smaller aperture
if you're shooting at night or in low light. I went out and photographed a little temple in
the rice fields near my village and I selected this place
because the background, as you can see, is
nice and far away. As you do this,
notice how the depth of field in your scene changes. My lens can go from f/1.4
all the way to f/16. You can see a huge
difference in these photos. The photo that shot at f/1.4 is nice and blurry
in the background. We have nice subject
separation, isolation, and this is what we call
a shallow depth of field, whereas the shauna
f/16 is much more sharp and in focus
throughout the whole frame. But oftentimes this can be
a little bit distracting, like I think it is here. Now, the reason why I think this activity is so good
is because aperture is almost always the
first setting that I think about when
I'm taking a photo. That's simply
because the depth in our scene is very important. Doing this exercise
will really help you understand how
aperture affects the depth in your scene and
ultimately will just give you so much more creative control
over your photography. I promised this
activity is going to help you learn aperture quicker, but with our understanding of aperture and how it affects
step out of the way, let's move on to another lesson where we're
going to talk about shutter speed and its
unique creative effect, which has to do with
motion and motion blur.
8. Capturing Motion with Shutter Speed: Now that we've covered aperture, let's move on and talk
about shutter speed and shutter speed is one of the other main camera settings
in the exposure triangle. The other two being
aperture and ISO. Now, the shutter of a camera is the little flop
inside of your camera that opens and closes to allow light into the camera body. The light enters through the
lens, through the aperture, and then it goes through
the opening shutter, and then it is recorded on the little sensor
inside the camera. The click that you hear
when you take a photo is actually the shutter
opening and closing. The time between the
shutter opening and closing is your shutter speed. Shutter speed is also
denoted by a number, so one second, two seconds, one-twentieth of a second, one-one hundredth of a second, one-five thousandths
of a second, which is quite fast, etc. A faster shutter speed allows
less light into the camera, while a longer shutter speed allows more light
into the camera. Once again, just like aperture from an exposure standpoint, shutter speed is quite
easy to understand. But just like aperture, shutter speed has its own unique creative
effect on our image, and that's its ability to freeze or blur motion in our scene. A faster shutter speed like one-two thousandths
of a second, one-five thousandths of
a second freezes motion, while a slower shutter
speed blurs motion. One second, two second, if something's moving
in your scene, you might get a lot of
blur in that photo. For example, you can see this
in sports photographers. They're often photographing
fast-moving subjects, so they need to shoot
at shutter speeds like one-twenty-five
hundredth of a second, 1/5,000th of a second, sometimes 1/8,000th of a second, which is very fast. Whereas on the
flip side of that, some landscape photographers who want to show blurry
water in their scene, or they want to get
star trails in the sky. They'll shoot at one
to even 30-second exposures to get that really
nice soft-looking image. But generally
speaking, if you shoot faster than 1/500th of a second, you shouldn't get that
much motion blur in your scene unless your
subject is moving fast. But if you shoot slower
than 1/100th of a second, you may or may not get
some motion blur in your scene if something
is moving in that photo. I think the best
way to understand this is just to go outside once again and photograph
a moving subject. A road is usually good
for this or you can ask a friend to run around
in front of your camera. Basically anything
that's moving. Now, photograph
that moving subject with a wide range
of shutter speeds. You can take photos
at one second, 1/50th of a second,
1/100th of a second, and then even
1/1,000th of a second, all the way up to the fastest shutter speed that
your camera can do, which should be around 1/4,000th of a second or
1/8,000th of a second. Notice how a faster
shutter speed freezes that motion so there is no motion blur in the shot. Whereas if you use a
slower shutter speed, the moving subject might
appear a bit blurry. Now, you might be thinking
to yourself, Well, why wouldn't I just use a fast shutter speed
all the time then? Because I don't want my
photos to be blurry. Well, the thing is
about shutter speed is that this motion
blur can actually be used creatively to a
really cool creative effect. Mastering this will
allow you to get some really interesting
creative shots. The reason for this
is because adding motion blur into your
photos shows dynamism. It shows movement and they
can make a photo feel alive. I experimented with
slow shutter speeds in another course that I
posted here on Skillshare, creative portrait photography, where me and my friend Kelsey, we went out to the
beach and we shot a really fun portrait scene. I shot a lot of those photos
at fast shutter speeds, but I also shot a lot of
photos at slow shutter speeds, like 1/30th of a second, 1/40th of a second. Some of my favorite
shots from that course, where when we use a slow shutter speed
that really emphasized the movements of her running
through the water and just being active
because she was active, she was running around
and I wanted to capture that in those photos. These shots, for example, these were shot at
about 1/30th of a second and we're both moving. This is a pretty
slow shutter speed for movement in the scene. You can see a lot of
the frame is blurry, but there are parts of the frame that are
nice and in focus because they stayed the same
distance away from the lens. I think these photos came out really cool and there's a lot of other photographers that use
this creatively as well. Now going off of this, something that you can do
with a slow shutter speed. You can do what's
called a tracking shot, where you use a slower
shutter speed and you move your camera along with the subject so you pan your
camera with a subject. The subject is actually not changing its location
in your camera, but the background is because the background is not moving. You can do this with cars, anything that's moving quickly. In this photo, for example, you can see our
subject here is in focus while the background
is nice and blurry. I actually captured this photo
in Bangkok while filming my night photography
class here on Skillshare and I shot this
with a shutter speed of, I think it was 1/30th
of a second as well. The background is nice and
blurry because it's moving. But our subject is nice
and crisp because he stayed in the center
of our frame. Once again, the exercise for this lesson is to go
outside and photograph a moving subject and
try to photograph that subject at
different focal lengths. If you can do this at night,
that'll be really cool because you can get some really
interesting light trails, especially if a car
is driving fast. You can get the headlights to create long streaks
across your photo, which does look
really interesting. But overall, this exercise
is really going to help you understand how shutter speed affects the motion
of your scene. Just like how the
creative effect of aperture is important
on our photo, shutter speed is just as
important and understanding how shutter speed affects
movement and motion in your photo is pivotal
for photography. The sooner you grasp
it, the better. But before we move on, I just want to make a quick
note about ISO because I didn't add a specific
exercise for ISO, but I did for aperture
and shutter speed. The thing about ISO is it's
creative effect is not as impactful as the
creative effects of shutter speed and aperture. I didn't think it's
a pivotal lesson to include in this course. Don't get me wrong.
ISO is important. But I just didn't want
to focus on this course because like I said before, we're focusing on more of the stylistic things in this course. ISO just really doesn't
have that same impact on a photo like aperture
or shutter speed does. But with these two
technical lessons out of the way, guys, let's move on and talk about something a little
bit less technical. A little bit easier
to understand, and come back to these solid stylistic roots
of photography.
9. Recreating Your Favorite Photo: All right guys. Well,
for this next exercise, we aren't going
to be focusing on anything super technical
and anything that we really needed to go in-depth about before we do the exercise. That's because we're
just going to be recreating a photo
that we really like. Recreating a photo is actually a really fundamental
exercise and I think almost every
photographer should try this exercise when they're
first starting out. The reason why I think
it's so effective for improving your
photography is because it forces you to account for all of the factors involved
in a photograph. Many of those things that we've discussed in this course so far. Composition, lighting, color, subject matter,
depth, and so on. For this exercise, I think
it's pretty straightforward. I just want you to
go out and find a photo that inspires you in some way and a photo
that you think you could realistically
recreate. They do have to be
somewhat realistic here. Obviously, you
can't just recreate any photo that you see. Some photos, it's just
not realistic to do that. But we also aren't
going for like a one-to-one re-creation
of this photo either. Just find a photo that
you think you could feasibly recreate
to some degree. Once you find your photo, go ahead and sit
down and write out a few notes about that image. The main things you want
to focus on are, number 1, the overall mood or the emotion is that photo is giving off. Number 2, of course, the subject matter or the
actual physical objects or persons in that scene, their expressions, how
they're positioned, what they're wearing, if there's any props using the scene, etc. Next, of course, we want to pay very close attention to the
composition of the photo. What was the photographer's
perspective to the subject? Where were they standing? How did they
photograph that scene? Also what lens were they using? Is the shot really zoomed in? Is it compressed or was it
shot with a wider angle lens? You can just see more of
the scene as a whole. Those are things to
think about as well. Of course, we need to pay very close attention to the lighting in that scene as well. And whether that light is
hard light or soft light, the color of that light, whether it's warm or cool. Lastly, and most importantly, is the positioning
of that light. Where is that light spilling
into the frame from? Is it coming in from
the top, from the side? Is it coming from the bottom? Is that the sun? Is it natural light source or is it a man-made
light source? What is that main light source? See if you can identify that. Now, once you write
down all these notes, go ahead and try
to set up a scene, re-creating the
photo-based off of all the things that
you identified. Now, like I said before, this really doesn't
need to be perfect. I think it's impossible to make a perfect re-creation unless you have all the same
subject matter, and the same location,
all that stuff. For example, if
there's a table in your reference photo and you just don't have the right table, maybe it's a different
color, a different shape, whatever, just use any old table that you
might have at home. The purpose of this exercise
is to just help you deconstruct a photograph and
identify how it was shot. By doing this, and then re-creating your
own similar photo, you're going to gain
so much insight into the original artist's mind and their artistic
process as well. I actually got my start in
photography by basically recreating photos
from a photographer that I really looked up to. I was living in Thailand
at the time and I was incredibly inspired by this
photographer named Tor, his Instagram is torthanit. I'll link that down below. He was capturing these
amazing photos of coffee and food around Chiang
Mai in Northern Thailand. We actually started
shooting together quite a bit shortly after
I moved there. In the beginning, my style was basically identical to his. I mimicked the way
he used light, the way he composed
his shots and I even chose the same
subject matter as well. I was massively inspired by him. I just wanted to take photos that were as beautiful as his. I paid really close attention
to all the details, all the small details in
his photo and the light, and basically everything
that I saw in those images, I accounted for. It just taught me so much about his workflow and how he created
these beautiful photos. All I was really doing
was just breaking down those images of his into functioning parts and
then trying to put those pieces together
into my own work. I think it was pretty
effective at doing so. The cool thing about this is once you get good at doing this, you're going to be able
to tell so much about the artistic process behind
any photo that you see. It really is a
powerful exercise. I think this is what helped me become the photographer
I am today, one of the most
important exercises that's helped me become the
photographer I am today. I really am excited to see the recreations
that you guys do. You know what's funny
is actually when I was writing this
lesson yesterday, somebody actually recreated one of my images on Instagram. One of my old coffee photos
that are shot in New Zealand, I think in 2018. But instead of re-creating
it through a photo, they recreated it
in a 3D rendering. It's actually crazy
how close that this artist got to
my original photo. But with that said he
did make some changes. I just want to make a quick note about copying before we move on. Because I think this is a touchy subject for a lot of people, especially in the
artistic community. I think copying or
mimicking is really a central part of the
photography learning process. But what I don't think is cool, is copying someone's photo and then taking all the
artistic credit for it. I think art evolves through artists mimicking
each other's work. But if you're going to take credit for a piece of artwork, then you should always be adding some creative adaptation to that work before you
take credit for it. When you're a complete beginner, I really don't think
this is a huge deal, but once you start
improving your skills, I think it's important to put
your own artistic touch on your work and slowly start developing your
own unique style. This is what happened
when I was shooting with Tor in Thailand,
for example. Both of our styles evolved over time and now we have completely different
styles of photography. We both came from that
same place of shooting coffee and food and that
very moody type of vibe. But now we shoot completely
different things. But with that said, I
really loved this activity. Like I said, I
think it's just so important to be
able to deconstruct a photograph and you'd learned so much during this process. I'm super excited to see you
guys this class projects. If you decide to use this one in your class
project, I hope you do. I hope somebody does because I really do like this exercise. But now let's move on
to the next exercise.
10. Image Reflection in 25 Words: A recurring theme that
you guys have probably heard me say throughout
this course several times now is just this idea of slowing down and
really analyzing a photo and evaluating all the different aspects of the image that we've
discussed so far, so things like lighting, composition, color, subject
matter, all of those things. But with that said, a photo is also so much
more than those things. It's so much more than just
the way it physically looks. What makes a photo great is ultimately the story
that it tells, and the emotions that it
elicits among its viewers. In this lesson, I want you
guys to take a look at one or two photos that
you just absolutely love, photos that get you inspired, you think they're beautiful, you think they mean something
and then I want you to just to stare at those photos
for five to 10 minutes. As you're staring
at those photos, go ahead and write down 20 to 25 words that come to
mind when you see that photo. These words can honestly
be anything at all. They can be emotions that you feel when you see the photo, or just random thoughts about things that you
see in the image, or even notes about
the technical side of the photo and the
composition and the lighting, whatever you want to write. I think the best way to explain this exercise is just
to show you guys. This is a photo that
I captured in Vermont in autumn and it probably is one of my favorite
photos I've ever taken. Just the way it looks and
the vibes and the colors, everything just does it for me. The colors, in particular, I think in the composition as well with the house
in the middle, just looks really nice. But more importantly,
I think the reason why this photo stands
out to me so much is because it has the
story of this lonely, yet beautiful house on this
gorgeous lake surrounded by some of the most
beautiful colors I've ever seen in nature. There might be a fire and the fire pit and it's
maybe a little bit chilly outside and overall it's just a very cozy scene
and I love that. I think it's really
easy to picture yourself in that little house on a crisp autumn morning and
I think that's why this is ultimately one of my favorite photos
that I've ever taken. I sat down and I wrote down 25 words to describe this photo. Here are some of the
words that I came up with; warm, cozy, comforting, peaceful,
inviting, calm, tranquil. All of those things
are just relating to the emotions that I'm feeling when I'm
looking at that image and it's like this peaceful, inviting, and warm environment. I also wrote down, smooth, grand, crisp, so physical
things in the photo, the smoothness of the water, the grandness of the building, and just the
crispiness of the air maybe or the smoke coming
out of the chimney. I also wrote down,
book and fire. I wrote book because I think I associate books with coziness, like autumn, chilly,
rainy weather, so I thought that fit that theme quite well and I also
wrote down fire, fire for a few reasons, the fire in the leaves, the fire in the chimney. I think fire just popped
into my mind quite quickly. I also used a few
other words like lonely and isolated and somber. Because I think even though
this is warm and inviting, there is something a little bit isolating about it because
there's this house, it's alone, there's
no road to get there and what if there's a
storm and you get trapped? I don't know. There is an ominous vibe
to it to some degree, so I think those words came to my mind once I started
thinking in that direction. Then I wrote down
some words related to the composition and just the way that it looks and those were symmetrical
and balanced. Then I wrote a few
other random words as well that just
popped into my mind, austere, vibrant, muted. I think it's vibrant
because of all the colors, but I think it's also muted at the same time
because it's a bit simple and there's not
a whole lot happening, so it's muted in that sense
and then I also wrote ordinary, magical, fairy tale, poetic and trusting and
these are also just words that popped into my mind that I thought fit this
image really well. As you can see, there's
a wide range of words and some are certainly
contradicting to each other. But overall, these are
just things that I felt when I was
looking at this photo. I've done this with plenty of
other of my images as well. It helps me reflect on my work and see some of
the things that I've done and pinpoint some of
the things that I don't like about the
photos that I've taken or maybe things that
I would change in the future if I got
the opportunity to photograph that thing again. Now the cool thing
about this activity as well is you could do
this with any photo. You don't have to
use your photo. In fact, I would urge you to
use somebody else's photo. I think that'd be a great
opportunity to really deconstruct somebody
else's work. You can even use one of
my photos if you want. You can just go to my Instagram, screenshot that and
sit down and write some random words
and I'd actually love that if you guys did
that for the class project. Just breakdown some of my work. You don't have to, but it
would be cool to see it. That's an idea for
your class project. But yeah, I think this
is just a great exercise for looking at a photo beyond its face value and being able to explain why a photo
is beautiful, instead of just looking
at it and saying, yeah, that's a great photo. Let's look at another one. It's spending more time on it, diving into it a
little bit deeper, and really figuring out what makes that
photo speak to you. I honestly do think that this translates into your own work as well and if you're
doing this often, maybe every week or every day, you're going to see a massive improvement in your
own photography. But now that we've talked
about this idea of reflection, let's move on and talk about executing a photography brief, which is great if
you're looking to become a professional
photographer or you really have shots in mind that you really
want to capture. Let's move on to
that lesson now.
11. Planning and Executing a Photoshoot: Another exercise that
I've found that's really improved my photography
skills over the year is this idea of carrying out a photography concept
from start to finish, starting with the process
of actually sitting down, thinking of an idea and then
writing it out, planning it, and then finally going out and executing it and coming
away with the photos. So instead of just having a really rough idea and
scrambling to go shoot it, this is more about really taking the time to
write out our thoughts and write down a plan and plan out every aspect of our shoot. A lot of those amazing
commercial photos that you see in advertisements online or any photos from
your favorite big brands. I guarantee that there's
multiple talented people, tens of hours, and thousands of
dollars that go into creating those photos
and that's because every single little
detail about the shoots are planned out and
scripted beforehand. In this exercise, we're going to try and do
something similar. For this exercise,
I want you guys to think of a photoshoot idea. You can always look and find some inspiration
before you do this. I like to do that on Instagram. I like to find some
photos that inspire me and save them to a mood board and they should all be revolving around
the same theme. Maybe it's a certain
type of portrait. Maybe it's a nighttime
portrait or a sunset portrait, or maybe it's a
still-life photo, or maybe it's even
a landscape photo. Putting together this
visual mood board is a really good first step
in something that I always do with my clients before we start planning
the actual shoot. But once we've got
those things down, now we really want to write out some detailed notes based on some of the following things. Number 1, the overall mood or the overall vibe of the photos. What do you want to
portray in those images? What emotions do
you want to elicit? Once you've locked in that fundamental idea
of the overall vibe, the overall move, then we
can move on to some of the fundamental things
that we've been talking about through
this course so far. Things like the location, the lighting slash time of day, the models, the subject matter of the props, the colors, etc. This is very similar to the lesson where we're
recreating a photo, but the difference here
is that you're using your own creative ideas and making something
that's uniquely yours. We're not recreating
anything here. We're making something
truly unique. A good example for this exercise is basically just any
commercial shoot. I did this shoot last year with this really awesome
travel where brand called Boesen and we did
all the shooting here in Bali, all
around the island. We had models, makeup artists, drivers, assistants, etc. and there was so much planning
that went into that shoot. But when we started planning, the first thing we asked was, what's the emotion and what's the vibe you guys
want to go for with this? Let's share some images and talk broadly about what you
guys are looking for. Once we lock that in, we selected the location
based on that, we selected the lighting
to match that mood, we found models that were fitting the look
that they wanted, and we also chose some
colors that they wanted. Of course, they wanted
green, so perfect, for here in Bali we had
lots of green available. They also wanted blues as well. Also great because we
live on the beach. We created a really
detailed plan based on all those things we selected the best time
of day to go shoot. We organize the drivers and all that stuff and
with that plan, we went out and we
actually executed the shoot and it was awesome. The photos came out really well. I'm super pumped with them. We all got paid. Everyone
was happy and we also had a ton of fun
as well because we had a solid plan in place and we weren't scrambling to get
certain things done. Of course, you're not
going to be able to always control every factor and
one of the biggest things you're going to come
up against with shooting in natural
light is the weather, the weather is super
unpredictable here in Bali, sometimes it just starts
storming out of nowhere. Luckily, we got really lucky
with the weather that day, so we didn't have to worry
about rain or anything. But overall, the shoot just
went really, really well. But in short, the purpose
of this exercise is to get you guys engaged with the planning side of
photography a little bit, and then ultimately turning
that plan into a real photo. I think just the act of sitting and planning
something before going out and shooting is a great learning
experience in general. Great photographers
do take the time to research and plan
their photoshoots. But then once
they're on the site, they also have that
creative ability to find new compositions and
try new things and think outside the box and
create something really cool. Photography is all about striking a balance
between those two things, planning and knowing
went to break the rules, and that's a skill that does
take mastering over time. Okay, guys, we are almost
done with this class. We just have two more exercises left to go over and I really
liked these exercises. One of them is one
that I do all the time almost every day and one of
them is one that I think every artist should do no
matter what medium they are creating on and I'm super excited to
talk about that one. With that said, guys, let's
move on to the next lesson.
12. Creative Photo Walk: Guys, welcome to the second to the exercise in this class, and this is one of my favorites. It's not my favorite, but
it's one of my favorites. It's actually one that
we've already been doing throughout this course, and that of course
is the photo walk. Now, a photo walk is essentially just going outside on a walk somewhere nice and taking photos of some of the
things that you see. We've already done this on the lighting exercise
for example, in the color exercises as well, I asked you guys to go outside and photograph a specific theme. For the color, it was finding a specific color and
for the lighting, it was to look for
interesting light and shoot in black and white. But for this lesson, I want you to go on your own
photo walk and photograph whatever you want to
photograph on that walk. If you see something
that looks interesting, you can photograph that, if you see some interesting
color, photograph that, or maybe you just feel
like you want to take a picture of something and
you can't really explain why, go right ahead, take as
many photos as you can. While you're doing
so, you need to think about some of the
concepts that we've discussed in this class
so far and see if you can apply some of the principles
to your own photography. I recommend doing this somewhere that you
think is pretty, somewhere you think is nice or somewhere you
think is interesting. If you're traveling,
that's probably the best-case scenario for
you to go on a photo walk. One of the first
things I do when I travel is I go to my hotel, I check-in, put my stuff down, grab my camera, and
I go for a walk. I think on my first
day in Japan, I walked like 45,000 steps, my legs were a mess, I just was so tired
and exhausted, but I was so interested in everything that I
was seeing and I was taking so many photos and
actually did that for like a week straight
and I captured so many amazing photos and
it's such a great time. But if you're not
traveling, that's fine, you can go on a photo
walk in a nearby town, in a city, in a park. I go on photo walks here
all the time near my house. I just like to be
outside taking pictures. I think it's a really
great creative activity, and I actually made a mini
class here on Skillshare, talking about some of the
benefits of creative photo walking and how you can do it to improve
your photography. I definitely recommend checking
that out if you guys are interested in diving into the photo walk a
little bit more. I go on photo walks all
the time here in Bali, and one of the places
I like to go to is this little beach town
on the southern part of the island called Uluwatu. They have these big cliffs
spilling down onto the ocean, and there's a lot of
little surf shacks and villas and coffee shops, and it's just a great
vibe and I think it's such a nice
place to take photos, so I go there often, I explore and I photograph
some other things that I see. I've captured some really
amazing photos there, and it's also just
a great time and it was really helpful
for me specifically during the pandemic when
I just had a massive lack of creativity and I needed to do something to
break out of that, the photo walk really
helped me do that. But this was an exercise I definitely had to
include in this class and I really am
excited to see what you guys do on your photo walks. It's one of the most
fundamental beginner types of photographic
activities that you can do when you're
first starting out, because it just gets you outside taking images
of things that you see. It helps you look as well, helps you be more mindful, more present, observe
some of the things in your environment, and overall, it just helps you hone in your photographer's
eye and helps you become better at identifying things that would
make a great photo. This image back
behind me actually on my monitor screen is one of
my favorite photos that I captured on a photo walk in California on my most
recent trip home. I was actually shooting
a film and I was walking through San
Francisco for a day and then I also walked along
the California coast in Monterey and some
of the little towns over there and I captured
some really nice photos. Those were all just
on a photo walk in the middle of the day, so you can do this at
anytime of the day. If you want to go
in the morning, in the evening, in the middle of the day, it doesn't
really matter. The whole purpose
of this activity is just to get you outside taking images in a place
that you find beautiful. I really look forward to seeing the world through your
eyes on your photo walks, so I hope you guys enjoy this activity as much as
I do, but with that said, let's move on to the
last exercise in this class which
personally, is my favorite.
13. Self Portrait: Welcome to the last official exercise in this class guys, you've made it this far and I've definitely saved
the best for last. This is my favorite activity out of all the things that
we've done so far simply because I had a great
experience shooting my project for this
class and this is actually the exercise
I'm selecting for my class project here in
the class and of course, I'm talking about
the self-portrait. Shooting a self-portrait is
a really intimate activity. It's just you and a camera and your creativity and a sense
of vulnerability as well, being able to surrender
yourself to the camera and depict yourself in a way that
you want to be depicted. This can be very difficult, setting up a camera
and dealing with the technical side as well
as trying to look good and fulfilling this whole creative vision that you've made for yourself but ultimately
it is a great experience, it's a lot of fun, and it's
so helpful when mastering all these different
facets of photography that we've talked about
so far in this course. For this exercise, I want you guys to photograph
your own self-portrait. When you do this I
want you to first think about how you want to be depicted
in this photograph, sit down, write
some notes out like we did in the
lesson when we were planning out our photoshoot. Get a general idea
of what you want to capture in your self-portrait and how you want
to be portrayed. Do you want to look cool? Do you want to look sexy? Do you want to look interesting? Or do you just want it to be a realistic depiction of who you are at this point in your life? Write those notes then
grab your camera, put it on a tripod, iPhones work great
for this as well. In fact, it's much easier
I think to shoot with an iPhone but grab your camera, set it on a tripod and snap
a few photos of yourself. This is an activity I have done a few times over the years
and one that I would like to do more especially after
completing it for this class but I remember one of my first photography
classes in college, one of our assignments for
that class was to photograph a self-portrait of
ourselves and I remember sitting in my dorm
room setting up my tripod and capturing myself on a couch and I was
big at the time, I was playing American football, so it's really
heavy and muscular and I just remember this photo and I don't
think I'll ever forget it. I'll see if I can find it
for you guys but I depicted myself like that because when I wasn't practicing or studying, that's what I was doing, I
was sitting on the couch. It was realistic depiction of me and I wasn't trying
to portray that I was great or anything and not to say that there's
anything wrong with that, you can portray yourself however you want
to be portrayed, there's really no right
or wrong here but after looking at that
photo and then realizing, I just recently turned
30 and I don't have any really nice
realistic portraits of myself that I've taken
in the last few years. For this assignment,
I really wanted to capture something intimate and just a realistic depiction of who I am at this
point in my life, having just turned 30
years old and including all the flaws that I might have but some of my strong
suits as well. I set up the tripod in my room
and I just sat on the bed. I really liked the
lighting in there, that's one of the reasons why I chose it and I like the color of the wall on the
back of the room, it's this nice dark gray. I just looked into the camera and I really wanted
to focus on my eyes. I wanted to capture a close-up image of my eyes
because I feel like I have these really deep blue eyes
but a lot of the time they don't shine through unless there's direct sunlight on them, then you can really
see how blue they are simply because
they're so dark and I definitely think I
achieved that with some of these images and
also I just wanted a stoic expression but I also got some laughing
photos as well because sometimes I think I
don't look great when I laugh or whatever but I
think that's ridiculous, I should embrace who I am and I wanted to do that with
these photographs. I'm really happy with
how they came out, I almost shared with
some of my friends, they're pumped too and I hope
you guys have just as good of an experience as me while you're doing
this assignment. Just to touch on the
technical side a little bit, this can get pretty tricky especially when you're trying to focus with your camera
when there's nobody there. It's pretty easy to
actually take the photo. You can just set your camera to a self-timer mode or for three, five or ten seconds but the focus part is what I
found to be a bit difficult. What I did was I
actually sat pretty close to the camera and then I manual-focused on my face
at first and made sure it was nice and sharp but then I discovered a setting called DMF, Direct Manual Focus, and basically what that did was it allowed me to autofocus on my face first
then I could hit the shutter and take the photo. This is even easier
if your camera has Wi-Fi and you can connect
it to your phone. Unfortunately, my
camera is brand new and there's not
firmware for it to do that yet so I
couldn't do that but for previous self-portraits
I've taken in the past, I have used the
iPhone app where I just hit the shutter and
I can take photos of myself or you can purchase a separate remote shutter
where you can actually click it with your thumb
and the photo will capture. This is a really fun one guys. I hope you decide to use this
one for your class project. If I could have an
ideal situation, you guys could do
multiple of these for your class project
because I think they all show a different aspect
of creativity and some of you might be really good at doing a self-portrait, some of you might be
really good at capturing different compositions
are really great at shooting
black and white. I think we all have our own
strong suits in photography. I think that's a natural
thing but ultimately, if this is the activity
you choose for your class project I'm
certainly pumped to see it.
14. A Final Note & Next Steps: All right guys, we have made
it to the end of the class and I really hope that it has been helpful for
you guys so far. Before we go, I just want
to mention a few things and leave you with some things
to think about as well. The first of those being one of the first things I actually
said in this class. In fact, the first
thing I said in the introduction of
this class, I said, the only way you can
really improve as a photographer is
just to get outside, take photos, make mistakes,
make connections, and just engage with the
photography process. Ultimately, that is what's going to make you a
great photographer, because that is what's
going to teach you all of the different aspects of photography that
you need to learn, all the different
stylistic things, all the technical things, and just slowly more few
into a great photographer. This is certainly
the case for me and so many other photographers
that I know as well. They're great because
they stay true to the craft and they
practice and they continually get better and they always have that
growth mindset where they're constantly
learning and they're constantly trying to improve. These 10 exercises
that we've discussed in this class will
certainly get you on that path and they'll
get you outside taking photos in a range of
different scenarios, all of which will
teach you something different about the
photographic process. I hope you guys go outside and complete some of
these activities. I also hope to see some of your results in the class
project section of this class. If you guys want to
keep learning with me, I have a ton of classes
here on Skillshare. I think the natural
progression in photography, once you've engaged with
the photo making process, is to dive into the editing
side of photography. This is almost equally
as important as the photographic process because great photographers
edit their images. They always have even the
best film photographers from back in the day. If you guys want to learn more about how to edit your images, I recommend checking out
my Adobe Lightroom class where we talk about how to find your own style and how to use Adobe Lightroom
from top to bottom, all the different sliders and all the different things
you need to know. I'll make it easy for
you guys to understand, but I have a ton
of other classes on Skillshare here as well, so you guys can check
those out on my profile. I also make free
photography content for YouTube, so you guys
can check that out. I'll put a link in the
description of this class. If you guys just
want to support me, you can buy me a coffee.com. I'll leave a link down
there and you could just leave a little message.
I love reading those. Those are sort of my
favorite things to see. If you do decide to do
that, thank you so much. I appreciate all of your
support that you guys give me. With that said, once again, thank you so much for sticking around to the end of this class. I really do hope it's
been helpful for you. I hope to see you in some of
my other classes as well. Don't be shy. Feel free to reach out as well on social media. I hope to see you very soon.