Powerful Photography: Make More Impact with Your Photography

1. Welcome to Powerful Photography: Hey, friend, in this class, I want to help you have more impact with your photography. You are a photographer that perhaps takes good looking photos already. You share them online, but you want to have more impact on the world with your photography skills. That's what this course is all about. In this course, I break down what makes a photo poised for success to be more impactful, a photo that has great story, great aesthetics, and an immersive quality that instantly creates curiosity for someone who sees your work. I've been teaching photography to students around the world for over ten years now, and we've taught students how to take great looking photos. But I see that there's an urge for students wanting to make more impact with their photography. I like to make all of my courses actionable, so I want you to get ready to take action throughout this course with what I'm calling the My Impact photography project. So throughout the course, you'll see lessons, and when you see these yellow slides, you'll know that this is when it's time to stop. Get out your camera, get out a pen and paper, and actually take action so that you can come away with something that you're proud of. So if there's something that you're passionate about, a cause, a story, something that you can use your photography to help out with, that would be a great project to work on throughout this course. And if you don't have anything right now, that's okay. I'll be giving you some inspiration in the next action exercise lesson at the end of the next section. Whether you want your photography to inspire change for a social cause that you're passionate about, or you just want to be able to share your photos with the people around you and have more impact in your home, this course is going to help you do that. 2. 3 Impactful Photos that Changed the World + Why: This class, you're going to learn what makes a powerful photo and ultimately how you can do this yourself. But first, in this very first lesson, I want to take a look at three photos that have impacted the world in a profound way and pose the question, why did these three photos have more impact than others? Let's take a look at these three photos that you likely have seen because they are three of the most famous photos in history. So here we have this first image credited to Charles Ebbets of the workers taking a lunch break up on the skyscraper that they're working on in New York. Next, we have this photo by Dorothea Lang taken during the Great Depression, likely the most iconic image from the Great Depression in the United States. And then, lastly, we have this image of a man standing in front of tanks at Tiananmen Square. What do these photos have in common? I break down what makes a powerful, impactful photo. There are three main tenets to that story, aesthetics, and immersion. These photos capture and tell a story just by looking at them. They have nice aesthetics. This is what we typically think of in terms of what makes a great photo, nice lighting, nice composition, creative composition. These are things that make up the aesthetics of a photo. Then lastly, there is the immersiveness. This is the June equis of photography that draws us in as a viewer, and there's just something about these photos that keeps our attention. And there are specific things that can lead to a more immersive photo. And with all of these three things, we'll be diving into how we do this throughout this course. Another thing to think about is why does one photo create more impact than another? For example, Dorothea Lang did not just take one photo of this migrant family during the Great Depression. Here you can see a wider shot an image where you can actually see the place this mother was living with her children. Here's another more portrait style shot where you actually see the children's faces. But there's something about the photo on the right where you see the expression on her face, the placement of her hand, even the way that her children are looking back behind. You don't see their faces. It creates a more mysterious photo. Perhaps it's being tighter in on her face that makes it more impactful, more it draws us in as a viewer. And it has an immersiveness that keeps us looking, and you might not notice it at first, but if you look down in the bottom right corner, you see her baby, something that I didn't notice for a while. But as you keep looking at these photos, you pick out more details. You find more elements of the story of this image. It's great to look at these famous photos that have impacted the world that have literally changed people's minds about a particular cause, influence society in some way. But this course is about how you can do this yourself, and I'm excited to dive into it. So if you ever thought, I'll never be able to take photos like this, then you're in the right place. Alright. With that being said, we're going to move on to talking a little bit about gear and whether that has an impact on how impactful your photography is. I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. Does Gear Matter for More Impactful Photography?: Year doesn't impact impact. I truly believe that you can take amazing photos with any camera. We've been teaching that in our courses for years. So whether you are using a smartphone, which has an amazing camera built into it, an older DSLR camera or the latest Mirrors best sensor, best lens out there camera, you can take impactful photos with those cameras. And the truth is that people have been doing this for over 200 years. Photography has been around for that long, and people have been doing it every year with whatever camera technology was available at the time. And you can do this with whatever style of photography you're into. So street portrait, journalistic, wildlife, abstract, you can have more impact with any style of photography. And I note here, the truth is that impactful photos have been created with cameras worse than what is in your pocket. And so the reason I bring this up is because I have a lot of students who wait and say, Oh, if I only have the next camera, if I only have that next lens, that better lens, can I take better photos? And then I will be a good photographer. But that's absolutely not true. A challenge for you is if you ever feel uninspired or held back by your gear, go do a search online for photographers that use your specific camera or photos taken by your specific camera and lens, and you'll see amazing photos that other people are creating with the exact same gear that you have or worse gear than you have. And that's the beauty of this course is that it applies to you, no matter what camera you have. There are times where gear can matter. So when is that true? And what we've always taught in our courses is that there are times where in certain situations, the gear you have might not be the best. If you're a wedding photographer and you're photographing with an older crop sensor camera that doesn't do well in low light, has low speed burst mode, doesn't have good auto focus. These are times where upgrading your gear can truly help you take better photos or capture photos in moments better with that low lighting, being able to focus better. It's not to say that you can't take great photos with any camera in those particular moments, but sometimes gear does give you a little bit of a leg up. But you have to ask yourself and be honest, do you truly feel held back by your gear? I am currently in the middle of wrestling with this question because I've gotten more into bird and wildlife photography, and I'm on a camera, the Fuji film system that is a crop sensor that doesn't have the best auto focus. I'm still capable of taking great photos of birds, of animals. But there are times where I'm missing shots, and I believe it's because the auto focus features aren't as good, because my lens doesn't reach as far as I wish it could, because the sensor isn't as high quality, high resolution. Giving me the ability to potentially crop while editing. So these are things for my specific case. If you're taking photos of birds, for example, using your iPhone isn't going to cut it for most people. And even using a specific mirrorless or DSLR camera might not cut it. And that's a case where upgrading gear could have an impact on your photography. But I'll leave you with this thought that great photographs come from great photographers, not the gear that they use. I truly believe that. With that talk about gear out of the way, we're going to move on to the next section, which will really put us in a position to take better photos by understanding why we are taking photos in the first place. I will see you over there. 4. Student Success Story - Family Portraits + Fundraising for a Cause: This video, I want to showcase a student success story. I posed the question to the photography and friends community, how you impact the world with photography and got some great examples that I think can inspire you, because it's students just like you who are taking action and having an impact in different ways. So this first one is Catherine Parrell who has a couple examples of how she makes an impact with photography. She writes that she loves family photography for that generational impact. She has this photo of her grandpa's uncle who passed away before she was born, yet through that photo, she can understand a little bit more about who that person is and how her own grandfather got his personality, which I think is so cool to be able to do, which I do as well, through these photos where you don't have the words, you don't hear what they're saying. You can't see their movement, but you get so much of that through a photo. And so it's truly like meeting someone in the past, through a photography, through a photo. And this is what we can do and have impact on through our own family photography. Has also used her photography to raise funds for a project in rural India, and she writes that photography has played a key role in helping with fundraising and keeping sponsors connected to the kids. The images have had a tremendous impact on their lives. And I have had a very similar experience. I'm actually going to showcase a project that I did when I was a student. That this really, really reminds me of, and that will be coming up in another I'm calling it a student success story, but you can see that they're actually actively raising money for this organization. And I could say from my experience as well, that images make a profound impact on this kind of thing. So a huge shout out to Catherine for sharing her story. I hope this inspires you to get out there and make an impact in different ways, and I'll be sharing more stories like this throughout the course. See you in the next lesson. 5. Resources to Help with the My Impact Project + Researching Your Project with AI: In this section, I have included all of the resources for the My Impact Photo project. It might be something that you come back to later on, but I wanted to preview a couple of things just so that you're aware of them. In the next lesson, I have a downloadable PDF with instructions for the project, including all of the exercises that you'll be working on throughout the course. So it's a nice little printout or something that you can have handy to refer back to to help you along the journey. I really want this course to have an impact on your photography and your journey as well. And so I wanted to just give you something that can help you out. So go ahead and download this. I also have a checklist at the end that is super crucial. Probably the one thing that can make whatever project you're working on have more impact because it's the project sharing checklist, and it has a ton of ideas for you to go out and do to actually have more of an impact with some easy options, some more advanced ones that take a little bit more time and effort. I also have this checklist separately available as a PDF later on in the sharing section, but it's included here as well. So go ahead and download that and I hope it helps you out. And then in the Less and after that, I have a really great AI prompt. Now, I'm not a huge fan of AI for a number of things, but in terms of research, it's super powerful. And so using whatever tool you want, Chachi PT, Gemini, whatever, you can use this prompt to get a ton of help researching your project. It's a copy and paste sort of fill in the blank prompt. There's the sections here that are italicized and in these brackets. This is where you would want to change the text for whatever project you're working on. But it gives you a lot of different resources. It gives you feedback on your idea. It gives you potential local partners that you can work on this project with. It gives you examples of similar projects that other people have done for you to reference. It gives you a list of local photography contests that you can submit your work to and also a list of local photo galleries, cafes, libraries that might showcase local photographers and might be a good place to actually display your photos. Now, of course, AI isn't going to be perfect. The answers aren't going to be 100% true all of the time. But what I found is it does a pretty darn good job. And of course, you can do this on your own using your own searches and reaching out to people and going in person to places to find out more information. That's always a good idea. But for initial research, I think it's great. An example of this that I wanted to show you is one idea I had for a project is related to making streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. This is something that I'm super passionate about and I think is something that photography can help with because the idea would be to visually show how dangerous our streets are for kids, families, especially or beginner cyclists. And so I just copied and pasted that prompt. I included the title and then more information about the purpose of the project, the location, and just submitted and look at all this very helpful information that it has given me. So it gives me some feedback on the story, how I can make it better, and how I can make the photography more interesting. So there's some ideas for how to actually make the photography more impactful and more engaging to look at. Then it gives me a list of local community organization which is awesome because some of these are ones that are on the top of my head, ones that I would want to work with or at least reach out to. But there are other ideas that I didn't really think of and didn't know. So it's cool that it gave me these. And, of course, you can ask for more specific feedback. So it says, Oh, the local universities colleges, but it might be worth responding and asking for more specifics. It gives me a list of other similar projects. I can take a look at, which is just so cool. See what they've done. Potentially there, I could connect with a photographer to get feedback or ideas, local venues that might actually display some work. And again, you can ask for more specific ideas if it doesn't give you. Like, it says local cafes or co working spaces, but that's not really a good answer, so I'd probably respond and ask for specifics. Photography contest that might be worth checking out and submitting my project to. And then it just gives some bonus ideas. So so much information. So let me just show you how I would just respond to one of these things. So in the partnership section, it says that you can partner with the local colleges. I'm going to ask, are there any specifics that you would recommend reaching out to? And usually these tools are pretty good if you're not typing in the exact right prompt. But here now we have some specific departments or programs that might be interested that I might want to reach out to, which is awesome. And it even has, like, the chair and the people that might be right people to reach out to. You could even search for contact information. Of course, probably good to go to the website and double check to make sure it's good. But so fast and so easy to do some really cool work here. And then, again, I would just say you mentioned local cafes and co working spaces, but can you give me a list of specific ones to look at? Use this prompt as a starting point, but customize it yourself however you want, and follow up. And already, I can see that these are some great places that I know of. And I know that some of these do have photography in it, not all of them, so it's not always going to be perfect, but really good idea to get us started. All right, so that is the My Impact project. I hope that all of these resources help you, but most importantly, I hope you're just enjoying the course and that you're actually going to take action and work on a project. I can't wait to check out what you do. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in another lesson. 6. 3 Elements to a Powerful Photo: And this lesson will cover what makes a powerful photo, the core elements of an impactful photo. One of the basic premises that you need to understand is emotional connection, whether that's something in your photo that you're capturing or how you build a connection with whoever's seen your photo is way more important than technical perfection of having a sharp, composed, highest quality, highest pixel density photo. And that's going to create more impact. The three elements of a powerful photo are story aesthetics and immersiveness. We've briefly covered those in the intro to the course. And I came up with this tripod analogy that I think works really well to help understand this. As a photographer, we, of course, use a tripod for a lot of different things, and each leg of the tripod is one of these elements. And having a well balanced photo that has story aesthetics and immersiveness can create a great, powerful photo. Sometimes, though, you're on sort of unstable ground, and one leg of that tripod might be stronger or higher, and another might be shorter. So sometimes you might capture a photo where the story is so powerful. But you didn't capture it with the most beautiful aesthetics. Or maybe there's great story, great aesthetics, but it's not as immersive as another photo. And right now, I feel like this is very theoretical, but don't worry. In the next sections, we're going to be diving into exactly what this looks like for our photographs. So now that we're on the same page with what makes a powerful photo, there's one question that you can ask yourself that will automatically help improve your photography. That's coming up in the next lesson. 7. One Question to Ask Yourself that Automatically Results in Better Photos: The thing that will automatically help you take better photos is to be more intentional when you take those photos. And this can come back to what your why is. Why are you taking these photos? There isn't one correct why for why you're going out or why you should be a photographer in the first place. Some examples of this might be capturing a memory, showcasing beauty, fighting for justice, simply entertaining or capturing something humorous, or just documenting a moment in time. A couple examples of photographers who had powerful wise. Astronaut William Anders captured the Earthrise photo here. Which went on to be a very powerful image for environmental causes because these photos of Earth, for the first time, let us humans understand that we were on this planet, maybe making it feel smaller or making it feel grander in a sense than we could ever understand before. Similarly, this photo from Justin Hoffman, a more modern take on a photo that went on to be profound and used for environmental causes. This photo of the seahorse with its tail wrapped around this tip has been used to document and educate people about ocean pollution, and it can be a rallying cry for organizations or people who are working towards that cause, towards lowering pollution, towards cleaning up our oceans. That's what photography can do. Before we dive deeper into a more specific question that you can ask to help you out on every shoot that you go on, it's important to acknowledge why you want to be more impactful because doing photography for yourself, for your own enjoyment is good enough. I don't want to make people feel like they have to be using their photography as a form of social justice or for some sort of community outreach or project to be a good photographer. If it's simply just about you taking photos and enjoying it, that is enough. That being said, you're likely here because you want to have more impact in some way with your photography, and there's many ways that you can do this documenting the world around you, fueling support for a cause, shifting public perception in a way or sparking a conversation, things we saw those two photos before were able to do. But on a more personal level, I think there's profound ways we can have impact with our photography by simply preserving a memory, strengthening relationships with our family and friends, the people that we share our photos with, bringing joy to other people with our photography. And, of course, there's the aspect of making a living. Now, I will say that that's not what this course is about. Making a living, making money from your photography can be an impactful way that you want to use your skills. But this is not a course on how to find work with photography. We have a full course on starting a photography business. We cover that a lot in some of our other courses. So the one question that you can ask yourself before you go out and take your next photo to create more impact is, what do I want this photo to say and am I saying it to me or to someone else? So I'll pause there just so you can think about that. Imagine that when you're going out on your next photo adventure, if you're just bringing your camera out, if you're documenting your next trip, you're going on a photo job, if you're doing a family photo session, you're photographing a wedding, think about what do you want these photos to say, and who are you trying to say that to? And when you ask yourself this question, it helps you go beyond just what you see in the visuals. It helps you to think about the purpose, the emotions you're capturing, the mood you're trying to capture, the story you're capturing. And it just makes a more intentional photo. To break it down, asking yourself, what am I trying to say with these photos? Who am I trying to say it to? And how will this photo achieve it are so important because your answers will determine where you go photograph, who or what you photograph, and how you photograph. And that's ultimately what is important and the key takeaway from this lesson is that by asking these questions, it really can change everything about where and what you go photograph. Thank you so much for watching this lesson. And the next one, we're going to tackle when a great photo is not enough. And we'll even touch on AI. So I'll see you over in that lesson. 8. A Great Photo Isn't Enough + Thoughts on AI's Impact on Photography: A great photo isn't enough to have a lot of impact. You can take the most beautiful photo that you've ever taken, but it might not have an impact, depending on how you ultimately share it. And ultimately, if it has those three aspects of our tripod analogy, here you can see a great looking photo of this bird, but does it have a lot of story? Is it immersive? It's technically nice. It's got nice aesthetics. But if I look at a photo like this one here, it has a bit more of a story. It has that universal story of a mother, child, a parent, child relationship, potentially with these two birds. Nice aesthetics. Immersiveness is probably the least strong factor in this photo. But when I combine the story element and the quality in the aesthetics, I think this is a stronger, more impactful potentially photo. The other issue with just being able to take nice looking photos is that it's hard to have impact because there's so many photos out there. There's millions of photographers out there now. Social media, the Internet has allowed us to just be posting images left and right, so millions, billions, trillions of photos are posted each year. So it's hard to stand out. So how can we have impact when we're living in a sea of photos? On top of that, we now have AI, which can just generate a beautiful image from scratch. And so you have to think about how can I compete with that? You might feel like you're just a star in a galaxy or a universe of millions of other stars that it's hard to stand out. It's hard to shine. It can feel overwhelming to try to do that. But I want to reframe this analogy and say, how can you think you're just a star? Every star is a powerful thing. It has a gravitational pull, whether it has planets or not, asteroids, space debris flying around it. And you can do the same. You have the same with your local community, with your family, with your friends. You can have an impact there. Maybe it can be worldwide, and maybe you can be one of the brightest stars in the galaxy. But at least for the people around you, you can still be an amazing star. What does this practically mean for us? Because all of this that I've been talking about seems a little bit theoretical. Well, these questions are important to answer. Who is going to see your photo? Does it matter based on your why? And how will you share your photo with the world and with the world, meaning the world at large, or the world around you? Ultimately this comes back to sharing with intent. And I've created this graph which visualizes this for me, where on the left, we have the ways we share our photos with the least amount of impact and the least amount of intentionality. Posting a photo on a social media platform is probably the least intentional and the least amount of impact right now in the way that social media platforms share our work. Most of our followers won't even see our photos that we post because these platforms are mostly just sharing ads or other things that are algorithmically better for these platforms to show us. Moving to the right, we can have more impact with our photos, and a lot of it is more intimate, as well. So texting a photo, sharing an online album of photos or putting together a website with a portfolio photos can have more impact. Printing out a photo, putting it up on a wall or being able to put it somewhere that someone else can see, gifting a photo album or a print or having a live photo gallery. As you can see, these are just spitballing ideas of how you can share your photos in different ways. But towards the right, I believe you're having more impact on the world around you with your photography by doing it this way. Ultimately, how you share your photography will often create more impact than the photograph itself. You can't just take a great photo with great story, with great aesthetics and immersiveness and expect it to have an impact on the world around you. And that's what the last section of this course is all about, where we have a blueprint for how you can actually get out there and get your photos in front of people having more impact. Now, grab a pen and paper, get out a sheet on your computer because in the next lesson, it's the first power practice exercise. I will see you over there. 9. Exercise: Define Your Why for Your 'My Impact' Project: Welcome to the very first practical exercise for this course for our making Impact project. Right now, I want you to define your why. So some questions to answer are, what do I want this project that you're working on to say? First, we probably should define this project. So think about what you want to do. What do I want it to say? Why does this matter to me and who might need to hear or see this, which will tell us how we might share these photos. So some examples just to get the ball going, get your brain turning of projects you might want to consider or something like this is I want to show what it's like to grow up in a single parent family. I want to capture the effects of climate change in my local wildlife. I want to raise awareness about a mental health struggle. Or I want to document an inspiring person in my community. And I think this last one is probably the easiest for someone to just go do because all of us know someone that is worth highlighting in our community, in our family, in our circle of friends, in some way, or it's easy enough to do a little bit of research, connect with some people, and find someone who might be worth documenting. Go pause the video lessons, write it down so that you have it there tangible, something to refer back to as we work towards taking better photos that have more impact in the next sections. Get to work, and I'll see you in the next video lesson. 10. Case Study: How the Greats of Photography Made an Impact: Come to this case study lesson where we look at the greats of photography and apply what we're learning in these sections to what these great photographers have done. I think it's just a great way to see how what we're learning in this class is actually very practical and applicable to photographers throughout history. So to start off, one of my favorite photographers, Ansel Adams, one of the most famous photographers of all time, if not the most famous, and mostly because of his landscape photography, that you can see here a couple examples were captured in places that weren't documented as much as he was able to document them. Now, there were other photographers who took photos of these same places, but the way that he was able to share, likely through his own privilege of his connections, the way he was able to share his photos, went on to be a rallying call for protection and preservation of these areas. And so many of our national parks and the protected areas in the United States were partly due to seeing photographs of these places and people acknowledging and realizing we should protect them. However, he did not just use his photography skills for landscape photography for environmental work. Because he had these skills, was asked to document other things like here, where he documented the Japanese internment camps during World War two. Thinking back to earlier in the course where we talked about the different powers of photography, one is just simply documenting a moment in time. Here we can see a couple of photos that show just a sense of what life was like. Now, there's lots of other great photos that he took where you can see the people. You can see their faces. You can see the different activities, the emotions that they felt in these internment camps. But I think these two photos are a powerful example of what this looks like, something that should not be forgotten. And I think for many of us, without these photos, wouldn't understand, wouldn't know what these Japanese internment camps look like in history. So having photos simply to document events is important. Maybe more important after the fact years and years later. Louis Hines is another powerful photographer who worked to document child labor and many of his photos, similarly as the photos that inspired environmental action from Ansel Adams, his photos went on to inspire people to get behind child labor laws. So you're going to see several photos of child workers and the working conditions that they were in. And these are kids who were, you know, six, seven, 8-years-old, working in terrible conditions. And he captured them not just with great storytelling abilities, but also very aesthetically pleasing and interesting creating immersive photos. Like this one here, that just put you right into this type of factory, and you see the loneliness of this girl working on this factory. You see how much work it likely was with all of these machines. I think that's thread, maybe making some sort of fabric. Here you can see this child working barefoot. You can see how dirty his outfit is, how poor this child must be. I'm probably seven, 8-years-old, 6-years-old, potentially, but also a very aesthetically interesting photo with the centering of the subject, the symmetry with the two empty pans, the background texture. And then here's the last photo for now from Louis Hines of a girl working in a field. Again, using his skills as a photographer to document an issue that he was passionate about. And these photos are some of the key factors that led people to open their eyes and realize what was going on and what the problems were at the time. Jumping to a completely different story, a different idea that was captured by Ann Rosner, here's a photograph of a child helping out during World War two, during the war effort where they were recycling these newspapers. And so here you have a likely staged image of maybe a mother and a child working together. But the point that everyone can take part in this war effort is clear. The flip side, a totally different side of the war. You see this photo taken by Tory Frisel in some sort of tunnel in London where they have these cots set up, these bunk beds, and a child sleeping. And this was during the London bombings during World War two. And you can just imagine what it would have been like for a child here to be sleeping underground with bombs falling overhead. And again, this photo has nice aesthetic quality, the square image, the rule of thirds balance, the leading lines. The lighting is nice. You have the story of some sort of adult consoling this child a lot that keeps our attention there, creating a very immersive photo. Then just one more example of the importance of documenting an event, the San Francisco earthquakes in the early 1900s and the fire aftermath that destroyed the town. Here we have two photos from Arnold GentheO during the fire and earthquake, and then with the aftermath, we're going to be diving into story in the next section and talking about photos that capture in the middle of a story, the end of a story, the beginning of a story or all three. And here you can see examples of this one just right in the middle and then the aftermath. Just being able to document this having the skills of a photographer to document events. You never know when there's going to be an event around you that would be important to document. So hopefully, looking at these grades of photography will be inspiring, and we'll be looking at them further in the next sections. So head over to the next one where we're going to dive into the first pillar of powerful photography. Storytelling, I will see you there. 11. Student Success Story - Healing Photography: Survivor Series: Welcome back to a student success story today. We are highlighting Maria Carrillo. She has a really cool project that she's working on called Healing Photography Survivor Series, where she photographs people who have PTSD, who are working towards overcoming that. And she posts those photos and a story about that person on her blog that can be shared in their community, and also she shares it on a Facebook group where there's a support community for PTSD. And I really love this as an example and something that you can do yourself where you can take action. You can create a blog. You can create a website. You can go out find people that connect to you in your own story and your own passions and interests. If there's something that you think you can kind of connect with on a personal level, that makes these stories even more impactful. Because you just have a way of connecting with the other people that you're photographing or the story itself in a deeper way. And I just think this is a great example of something very practical that Maria has done and that you can kind of replicate yourself. And the impact she's having can be huge, not only to the group survivors who can see this as an inspirational story, but also to the survivor, to the person herself who she photographed, and just that representation that Maria is helping showcase in the world, I think, is super inspiring and impactful. So a huge shout out to Maria. Thank you for sharing your story, and thank you for sharing the stories of people like Josslyn here in this series. 12. Storytelling in Photography: Now we're getting to the really good stuff in this course on impactful photography. The first pillar, which is storytelling and how our photos can tell stories. We're going to learn how to use images to communicate something deeper than just looking at a pretty picture, but an entire story or a part of a story. And here you can see an example of how two photos of a very similar location tell completely different stories. And just like any other type of storytelling, whether it's verbal, we are writing a story. We're making a film. Photography can capture the three act structure, and understanding the three act structure of storytelling can help us to take photos that tell better stories. So we have the beginning, which is the setup of a story, the middle where there's tension, there's some sort of change to your characters, and then the end, the resolution or the aftermath. Does this look like in a photo? For example, you can be at the start of some sort of adventure, the start of a project, the start of a beautiful day. We'll talk about photo series later on, but sometimes a single photo isn't enough to know whether it's the start or end of a story. Is this the beginning? Is this the middle or the end? We'll see. In the middle of the story, we capture that tension, some sort of change in our subjects. Here we have the tension of these workers who are attempting to save or help this giant giant whale. We don't know how this started. We don't know what the end is, but here we are capturing that moment in the middle. Here's a simple photo that I captured on our trip to Japan. Capturing the middle of this action, this interaction between my wife and the street performer, the ball balanced perfectly on her fingers right in the middle. The tension of decision, which am I going to choose? And here we get a clue for that photo previously, was that the beginning? Because here we see the middle. And the end of the story is where we have the resolution. Did we catch the wave or was it a wipeout or a wipeout in another sense, the reward of a refreshing drink or a beautiful piece of art or spooky. Or the culmination of a long storied career. Like you see here with Babe Ruth, one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. And this photo tells that story in more ways than one. It wasn't a photo of his last at bat. It wasn't a photo of the last out of the game. It was a photo of the respect that he was given by his teammates standing, cheering him on. Sometimes all of this can be captured in one image, the beginning, middle end, or you can have a sense of what the entire story is through one image, like you see here, where we see obviously the end, the aftermath of a volleyball play. But we know what happened before. We know the beginning of this story. We know the middle, and now we see the end. Here's a famous photo of Muhammad Ali, where you see the aftermath of the fight. But based on the storytelling of this moment, we also understand more about the full story. Here's a photo of a woman being tossed in the air. That's a nice story, but there's a bigger story where we can tell based off of the setting, based off of the dress, that it was her wedding day. And here's a fun photo that I thought tells a really great story of a snowy day. And if this figure was not in the foreground, it would just be aesthetically nice photo of a street covered in snow. But because we see the figure hunched over, looking as though they are moving quickly, cold with a beanie and a scarf, hands in their pockets, it tells more of a story. A story I captured during one of my photo dash challenges, which is our YouTube series where we go out and have fun doing photo challenges and make it a little bit of a game. Here's a photo of someone that was ordering donuts. You get the sense that this person was looking up, making a decision, you have the location, telling this story and the setting tells that story because similarly, here's a photo of a person looking up telling a completely different story. If you keep looking at this photo, you see details that tell more of a story of this child who was so fascinated by this sea creature that he dropped his pamphlet, took the moment to admire the natural world here at this aquarium. And then leading into the next lesson about personal versus universal stories, here's a photo that I captured, and I'm curious if you look what you think the story is. If you keep looking, you might see some details that give it away. Is it just an ordinary party? Where are they? Who are they? And this is where the impact that you can have with your photography might be more personal than universal. But this was a photo taken at my sister's wedding. And it was the first time when it was just both sides of the family who got to enjoy this moment at the end of the day in this beautiful place, which was in Ireland. So we have the bride, the groom, the parents of both the bride and the groom, and the conversation and the interaction between the different parties here that I think just makes a very intriguing photo to look at. So as mentioned, in the next lesson, we're going to dive into personal stories versus universal stories and the overlap which can create more impactful photos. I will see you there. 13. Photographing Personal vs. Universal Stories: Another idea to think about as you take photos that capture stories is, is this a personal story or a universal one? Personal stories are intimate. They're subjective, perhaps from your point of view, expressing an opinion you have. And they might be something that only you care about without more context. This goes back to an earlier thought, where photography, if it's completely personal, is good enough. You don't have to try to make an impact with the world around you necessarily. But if you're capturing photos where only you can understand it, it's going to be more difficult to have an impact with others. Universal stories, ones where they capture shared human experiences or relatable journeys, and photos that stand alone without context can have more impact. And there's often an overlap, and these result in the most powerful photos where you are diving deep into a topic or a story or something that you care about and there's going to be other people that can relate to that. The more personal, the more vulnerable you are, the more vulnerable your subjects are, that's going to show in the photo. Here we see a series of just random photos capturing different stories, some personal, but with universal themes as well, like parents who are excited about their expected child. A photo that has very little context of who these people are, but still a universal story of some parent child relationship. Which can also cross lines and species. Here we see a parent with a child and the story, the action that's taking place of the nursing monkey and then the mother looking through and cleaning the fur of the child is a universal one for anyone that has children. Celebration of an important event, no matter the traditions that take place can be a universal one. And then backing away from such a dramatic one day event to just normal everyday experience of a father holding their child is also a universal one, a mother juggling everything that she has to juggle, or perhaps a struggle that someone's going through that we can connect with. This is a great photo example of where we don't have the context for what the story is, but we can imagine what the story is through things like not just the expression on her face, but also the lighting, which was likely a choice made by the photographer to photograph in this specific way where part of her face is in the shadow. We have this dramatic lighting coming in and the way that it was edited, slightly darker, her being in this sort of negative space in the middle. All of those things add to the story, and I'm really excited about the next lessons where we're going to see exactly how the techniques we use as photographers help in telling stories, which I just think comes across really well in this photo. Contrast that with another person in a window telling a completely different story, the start of a new happy day, the end of a long, emotional journey together. Again, back to just normal day everyday experiences on the street that throughout time, have been similar from a lazy day hanging around 50 years ago to something similar happening today, universal stories that we can all relate. If you're trying to take more impactful stories, think about what you're capturing and is this a story that others can relate to without context? And in the next lesson, we're going to be looking at the actual visuals, the visual cues, the symbols, the metaphors that we can capture to further our storytelling with our photography. I'll see you over there. 14. Using Visual Cues, Metaphor and Symbols in Your Photography: Alright, we're getting to the really good stuff. In this lesson, we're going to talk about symbols, metaphors, and visual cues. This is the how of story in photography. So so far we've talked a lot about theory. Now we're actually seeing how we can implement that with photography. Visual cues help a viewer understand the story of a photo without reading any words. Examples of this a clenched fist might mean some sort of tension, some sort of resistance, some sort of negative feeling. However, a clenched fist can also be a positive optimistic one as well. Teamwork, fighting for a cause, collaboration. Open arms is a visual cue that can represent vulnerability, welcomess, compassion, and care and love. The sunset could represent the ending of something or symbolize reflection. Imagine these photos that you're seeing with the opposite or something completely different. For example, instead of a sunset, imagine these photos just in the middle of the day and how that would impact the story these photos tell. A couple of photos that I captured at the end of a long day at sunset that for me encapsulate a long adventure filled day with some of my best friends. Shoes or footsteps can represent a journey, as you can see here, and tied together with a person within that photo, it can change the story. You might see whose footprints those are, what journey they're on. Perhaps it's the footsteps of a mother and child walking through life together hand in hand. Empty chairs can symbolize absence or grief. Here is a photo that I captured after both of my grandparents passed. And I did a series of photos where I just went over to their house and captured the moment, the place because they were about to sort of organize everything, remodel, sell the house. We didn't know at the time, but it was a place that I had been countless times as a kid, and it has such a distinct style and memories that I tried to capture and hear just the empty chairs at the dining table, the empty high chair. It tells a story about what might have happened at this place, and it does have a sense of loss in this photo. Those are some examples of visual cues, and they blur lines between metaphor and symbols that we're going to see here. Metaphor is when one thing visually means something else. So for example, a shadow suggests a dark mood or rain on a window evokes sadness, which when you contrast that with a bright sunset or sunrise, tells a completely different story. When you add a subject to that photo, the story gets more complex and more interesting, and visually the photo just is more intriguing to look at. A colorful flower can mean new life, and the type of flower, whether it's a new bud or a full flower, also tells a different story. Can also tell a story through the metaphors of composition. For example, symmetry in an image can mean balance or harmony. Here we have a photo of the Taj Mahal, which in itself is built with a lot of balance and harmony and the symmetry of it, plus the reflection in this photo creates an even more calm and peaceful scene. Negative space can make a subject feel small, and that can be a negative thing, but negative space can also mean a positive thing, as well. Here's a photo of my daughter in the middle of the Joshua Tree desert, and you can see how small she is in the landscape around her, which helps tell the story of how grand this landscape truly is. Here's an older photo of a dam being built. And you can see, at the very bottom a couple people, maybe workers who are inspecting something, working on something, and it shows how gigantic this dam is, the power that it potentially has. Without those people there, you wouldn't have that context, though. But depending on the other visual cues in the photo, it might tell a different story like this one here where it's negative space with our subject being small, but because of what looks like a sunrise potentially, because of the story you can sense from this image where this person maybe went for a jog or a hike at the start of a day, it tells a different story of a more hopeful, powerful person than feeling small and negative. A crooked angle, which is a compositional technique can give a feeling of just being off. Automatically, it looks off to us. Our brain tries to stream things out, so an intentional crooked angle, canted angle can add to that story element. You can also have metaphor through the style of photography, and I have question marks because I want you to answer this in your head. What does a long exposure mean? Does it mean passing of time? Perhaps. Perhaps a long exposure can capture the business of a scene in a way that a short exposure doesn't. Here are two photos of the same location, one long exposure, one not, and you can see the difference in the story, perhaps. Maybe the one on the right is more aesthetically interesting and maybe it's better. The one on the left, to me, gives us more context for who might be driving home at the end of a long day. Another style that you might edit or photograph is something with high contrast. Does high contrast have more emotion than low contrast? Sometimes low contrast gives more of a vintage vibe, and that vintage film like look can bring up emotions in a different way, as well. Both styles can add emotion to your story. Editing a certain way, whether that's cool or warm can also add a feeling. Again, adding to the story. Here are two chefs, photos taken with different lighting, but also edited in a different way, warm, one cool. Tell different stories, right? So the takeaway is when you're out taking photos for a project, again, we're wanting to have more impact with our photos, and more impact comes from a better story. And a better story is captured when a photo includes things like these symbols, these metaphors, the visual cues in the image, the style of the photo, the style we edit, the style and way we compose an image, all of that can help us tell better stories, which will ultimately help you take more impactful photos. 15. Storytelling through Photo Sequences: In this lesson, we'll cover storytelling through photo sequence. Sometimes one photo isn't enough to tell the entire story. And the three act structure can be more easily seen in a photo sequence, as you see here. Another not as profound three act structure that I captured in my kitchen. And here's an example of a photo that without the sequence, tells a potentially different story or you might not understand the full story without the three photos. This photo here by itself might not have a lot of context, but with these other photos in this sequence, you can tell more of a story. You see that there's two characters in this story. You can see details of who these characters are. And with photo sequences, you have to think about how you're going to share these photos. Sequences lend themselves to photo books, to a gallery of photos. A social media post with several photos is the simplest way to tell a story with multiple photos. However, remember our impact chart on our sharing where social media is very low in how much impact we likely can have. So thinking about what avenues we have to showcase multiple photos is important when you're thinking about telling a story through multiple photos. Think about the magazines you read if you're reading an article about a specific story, oftentimes there will be multiple photos, and that might be a way that you can showcase your photos by working with a news publication, magazine, something like that to get your photos out there. Next up, we're going to be looking at the grates with another case study on storytelling captured from the best photographers throughout time. I'll see you there. 16. Case Study: How the Greats of Photography Told Stories with Their Photos: Welcome to another case study looking at the grades this time in terms of storytelling. So here we have some examples from some of the photographers we saw before. Louis Hines, who did a lot of work on the child labor photography, also war photographer. Here we have a photo of soldiers at the end of a war. You can see the joy in the faces throwing up this fellow soldier, and you can just sense the emotion captured here. And even without knowing the full story of what war this was, who these people were, where they are, you get a sense of the story of this moment. Here you have some kids boxing. And when I talk about storytelling, it doesn't always have to be, like, a profound epic of a story, but in terms of looking at a photo itself, what is happening? What is the story happening right here, and you can see. You got some kids, perhaps practicing boxing. You have these other kids looking along with them, watching, learning, very intrigued at what is happening. Nice composition, though. We got nice balanced symmetry left to right. They're centered. The two main subjects are centered, and our eyes are drawn to them. Another photo from the child labor work that Louis Hines did. Again, we don't know the full story of what's going on. I just looking at this, without any context, I don't know exactly what this factory is, what they're doing. But you get a sense that there's these kids working in bad conditions, and it's unjust. Another photographer we saw earlier Ann Rosner, classic photo of a child taking a bath with looks like a nurse or a nanny, not their mother. And you see that expression of the child, not necessarily a mother child relationship, but more of like a stranger child relationship. The placement of the bath on this table with the crib, just almost a comical photo here. This is a really funny photo, I thought, because a couple went grocery shopping, got the baby in the baby carriage, the mother is attending to it. The father, look at the expression on his face. Not having the most enjoyable moment. What's going through his mind? That's what I want to know. Here's a photo that, given the context of the time it was taken, we know that this was a photo taken during World War two. It was a time where a lot of women joined the workforce doing jobs that were traditionally male dominated jobs to help with the war effort. So this was a photo that represents that. And you can see the type of work that these women were doing. Has several other photos of this time of different types of workers and the work that they do. This photo, I think has a great storytelling element to it because you see it's not a close up on one person and what they're doing. You see the cubicle after cubicle at sort of an angle as well. So it's not balanced. It's not aesthetically balanced, symmetrical at all. So that sort of adds to the emotion of this as well, but you do have this pattern and the repetition of all these people working on something for the war effort. Now, here's a universal story, Laundry. Everyone has to do it. And these couple of photos tell different stories of the same subject. So here we have apartment buildings, all these laundry lines lined up interesting, kind of an aesthetically pleasing photo, maybe more so than this next one, but tells a little bit of a different story of a person, a woman who is doing the laundry. And that, I think, tells a deeper story. There's more of an emotional connection with this lady who's waiting for something to dry, kind of pause compared to the previous one. This photo, as I said, isn't as aesthetically pleasing as this next one, which has a very nice aesthetic quality to it. There's this framing within all of these lines of clothes and the posts that are holding it up. There's this rule of thirds element where the lady is standing there. There's the balance and the symmetry of all these rows of clothes. There's the foreground elements and the background elements that add depth to this image different than the previous one. I think this photo could actually have been taken more aesthetically interesting perhaps if there was another line of clothes behind the photographer that they stepped back and had in the frame, maybe framed the woman within a frame similarly. So adding to the storytelling, we have aesthetics, which we're going to cover in the next section that can make a photo more impactful because, one, it's just the quality of the photo that is pleasing to us. And if a photo is more pleasing, then we're more likely to spend more time with it, and that leads to more impact, right? Now, here's a photo that has one of the most profound story telling elements to it. And if you just look at the photo, what do you think that story is, regardless of your politics, what is going on in this photo? What is the story? Saw this photo, and I automatically thought, Here's a president, the first African American president of the United States of America, and here is an African American child. Seeing a president for the first time that looks like him. And as a kid does, with no shame, asks or requests to feel the president's hair to see if it was the same as his. And I get that from this photo, and I think most people who look at this photo will get that, too. This isn't the most aesthetically pleasing, the most interesting composition. You can see likely the parents on the left, their heads are cut off. You can kind of get a sense of the likely mother, her face, she's smiling, but you don't see the father's face, so you can't get that emotion aspect of it. But you also see them. It's not just tight and cropped in on the boy and the president, which would tell a very similar story, but you kind of get more of the story having the family there on the left side. Now, I looked into this photo and I found the photographer, Pete Susa, who was the White House photographer at the time. And here, I'm going to read what he said about this. So as I read this, sort of scratch everything from your memory, forget that you just saw this photo and listen and try to visualize what is happening. Jacob spoke first. I want to know if my hair is just like yours, he told Mr. Obama, so quietly that the president asked him to speak again. Jacob did, and Mr. Obama replied, Why don't you touch it and see for yourself? He lowered his head level with Jacob who hesitated. Touch it, dude. Mr. Obama said. As Jacob patted the presidential crown, Mr. Souza snapped. So what do you think? Mr. Obama asked? Yes, it does feel the same, Jacob said. Now, that's a pretty profound story, and seeing the photo is exactly what that story tells. But it's a photo that doesn't need those words, right? It's a photo that tells that exact story all by itself. And that's what makes this such a powerful image. Having the context and knowing who these people are adds to that level, knowing that the president of the United States bent down to let a kid feel his head, which is not something you would typically think a president would do, adds to the story of this moment. So just a prime example of the type of story you can capture with just an image. Alright, so we've covered how photos can take stories. Now it's time to put into practice coming up in our power practice lesson next. 17. Exercise: Choose the Story of Your 'My Impact' Photo Project: Welcome to this next exercise in our power practice. What's your story? So this exercise is all about the story of your why. In the last exercise, we broke down why you are taking photos, and you might have gotten a sense of what you want to take photos of, but now is the time to finalize that if you haven't done so already. Think about why you're a photographer. What are the things you care about most? What areas you want to have impact on and come up with an actual plan. Come up with what you're going to go out and photograph, what's the story that you're going to attempt to capture and be intentional about it. This isn't about just sitting back and saying, I'm going to go out on a photography shoot, and hopefully I capture a story. Hopefully I find something interesting. This is you thinking I'm going to go out and capture bird photography, and I want to document what type of birds nest in this area at this time of year, and it will be part of a larger story that will educate the public about birds nesting in their area at this time of year and how they can help. That's just an example. So think about why, think about your story and write it down and start to make a plan for when and how you're going to go out and actually capture that. Because in the next section and exercise, you're going to actually be going out and doing it. All right, get ready for that, and I'll see you in the next section all about aesthetics in photography. 18. Aesthetics in Photography: How Your Photos Look: Welcome to this new section on aesthetics in photography. And for me, this is how to create more impactful photos with how they actually look. In this first lesson, we're going to go back to the basics covering lighting, composition, and subject choice. I will say that photography appreciation is very subjective. I have reviewed many, many, hundreds and thousands of student photos that have been submitted during our weekly challenges or through assignments for our courses. And what I find interesting and more nice to look at is very different than other people. And this comes across very clearly when we do photo competitions, and my co instructors, Will and Sam and I have to sit down and pick our favorite photos. And more often than not, we come together and we have completely different answers. And so, just like any other art, whether it's music or a painting, different people are going to like different photos for different reasons. So here's a photo that I think is very aesthetically interesting. We got this rainbow coming from the sprinkler and my child running through it. Here's another one I think is interesting, mostly because it has this bike and this crazy cyclist going down these stairs. It's balanced with the rule of TRs, nice lines. But people like different types of images. Are some things that I think are generally aesthetically pleasing that will make your photos more interesting and enjoyable to look at. So we can look at this series of photos and say, Okay, well, great colors, great lighting, nice focus, interesting colors often because of the lighting. And we can do this practically by deciding to photograph at a specific time of day. It's one of the easiest ways to improve your photography aesthetically is instead of just going out in the middle of the day, do it at sunrise, do it at sunset. Colors, patterns, gradients. These are all things that if you can capture them, they're nice to look at. Like like this sunset that I captured above a local lake, beautiful gradient in the sky. Sharp focus with super shallow depth of field, something that many people find pleasing. Even if the subject is eating a bug, patterns, again, textures, shapes, repetition, reflection, balance. These are all things that create nice looking images. In particular, with lighting, golden hour light, back lighting, soft focus, and Boca bouquet. These all generally are more aesthetically pleasing. You can see some examples of how I was able to do this in my own photography here. These photos probably wouldn't be as aesthetically beautiful without that lighting, without that focus. And in terms of composition, I don't want to spend too much time on this. I have so many lessons, free videos, tutorials out that can show you how to do these things. But thinking of composing images using the rule of thirds, using leading lines, using symmetry or framing within a frame are all things that can create more aesthetically pleasing photos. Combining these elements, composition and lighting can make it even more impactful. Here's a couple examples of framing within a frame, photos of just the subjects themselves, these people waiting on a train platform or this sort of out building at the Osaka Castle look different, still might look nice, but not as aesthetically interesting as when captured in the frame within a frame method here. And then generally just subjects. Subjects make a more aesthetic, interesting photo. So human faces, movement or action of your subject, having animals or plants in your photos. These are all things that can add to making a more interesting photo. When you look at a photo, think about subtracting that subject. Would it be as interesting? Here's an example of some bedroom, room, living space with this man reading through a magnifying glass, which is an interesting story. If the person wasn't there, this would just not be that interesting of a photo. Here's a photo of a woman relaxing in this pool of water that's next to what looks like a raging ocean, but in this pool, it's very calm. And if she wasn't there, it would still maybe be an interesting photo of what this natural environment looks like. But the fact that there's a person there makes it more interesting to look at. Flowers and plants are just interesting to look at here. I have some examples that I did in a series of photos I captured using artificial lighting of the flowers in our yard. You can really see the contrast and the shapes of the petals and the colors using this method. So these are the basics. You have to have good lighting. You have to have good composition, and then your subject has to be something interesting. And when you have all three of those, you have the groundwork for a nice, aesthetically pleasing image. In the next lesson, we're going to go beyond the basics and see how we can even take it further. Again, this all ties back to having a more impactful photo because if you have better lighting, if you have a better composition, if you have a more interesting subject, it's going to make a more aesthetically pleasing or just interesting photo to look at. And having all of that, along with a story creates two pillars of our tripod for a very impactful photo. I'll see you in the next lesson on beyond the basics. 19. Beyond the Basics: Mood, Tone & Style: This lesson, we're going beyond the basics of photo aesthetics, covering mood, tone and style in our photography. I have a question for you. Have you ever felt something when you look at a photo? If you celebrate Christmas and you look at this photo, you might feel something. You might feel nostalgic. You might feel warm and cozy. You might feel happy. Maybe you feel stressed. But if you can make your audience feel something, that's going to have more impact, right? So how do we do that? How do we create photos that are more pleasing to look at. And I think pleasing is the wrong word. I think the better word is more engaging to look at. We can do that by having some sort of balance and harmony in our images. We've talked about how we do this with symbolism through things like symmetry in our photos, negative space as well. Here's one of my favorite images from Australia, actually, that I captured. And there's just something even though this is a very simple photo, there's just something about the color palette, very cool and the small sailboats in the bottom that it's very pleasing for me to look at. There's not a lot of contrast. There's not a lot of sharp edges or shapes in this photo. It's just very calm and that gives off a feeling versus photos that have contrast in tension. Here we can see contrast with someone about to jump off this rock ledge. Photo sort of similar to the one in the last lesson where there was the lady relaxing in the pool next to the ocean. Here we have people relaxing in some water next to some massive cliffs, and there is a lot of tension here. It makes me feel a little uneasy. There's the diagnal line, the angle in the photo that creates more tension than if this was flat and vertical if you have parallel perpendicular lines in your photo. So that angle and these people that are kind of squished in the edge, there's a lot of tension in this photo. Here's a photo I captured in Japan that has that contrast between the cool and the warmth. So there's different forms of contrast and tension, whether that's the actions taking place in the photo, the subject, and what you're photographing, but also in the style. So here we have the warmth of the lights and then the coolness of the lights that a more interesting photo to look at than if it was just one color or one type of lighting. The warm lights are inviting for someone to come in compared to the cool darkness of the regular street lights. Having a contrast between colors can also just simply make a photo more interesting to look at. Here we have a contrast between nature and man made buildings, but also the colors, the pink and the blue. The wildness of the nature and the tree and the leaves and then the ornate structure and repetition of the tiles on this building in Lisbon, Portugal. A photo of just one of these subjects wouldn't be as interesting necessarily as when you pair it up and photograph it together. And in your photography, do you want them to be minimal or do you want them to be complex? Again, it creates a different story, a different feeling when looking at your images. Here we have a single person out in the ocean that feels rather calm. Here we have several people going into the ocean. You have these steps, the wet rocks, adds a little bit of complexity to the photo. Here we have two sides of Japan represented in photographs that are minimal and complex. What is the feeling you get as a viewer when you look at the minimal calm photo versus the complex one? With the one on the left, this is the same location as the one we saw in the previous lesson with the frame within the frame, but I captured it with that reflection. I cropped it so it was balanced, perfectly centered in the middle so that the reflection and then the building on the top take up the same amount of space. There's not really negative space in this photo. There's just that perfect balance. How does that make you feel? What does this represent compared to the complexity of what is captured on the right? So this is not just in subject matter of minimalism and complexity, but also how you frame your subjects as well. So now we've seen that mood tone and style can give off a very different feeling in our photos. And in the next lesson, we are going to give even more examples and practical ways that you can do it to create more impactful photos. I'll see you there. 20. Your Tools to Develop Mood, Tone & Style in Your Photography: As you're taking more photos and wanting to make more impact with your photography, developing the way that you can create more mood in your photos, having a specific tone or specific style can help with that. The tools that you have as a photographer to do this are here. We have lighting. Lighting can be soft. It can be harsh. It can be warm, it can be cold. Colors can be muted or very saturated. Focus can be dreamy using shallow depth of field or capturing sharp reality with everything in focus. So go back to the questions of what are you photographing? Why are you photographing and how your photography is going to better tell that story. This is how you do it. Thinking about what type of lighting you should use, what way you should edit your photo to tell that story better, what focus you should use. These are things that I don't think many photographers think about intentionally, but it's going to help you have more impact. In terms of style, style is like your personal fingerprint on your photography. As you can see here, a selection of photos from one photographer, Priscilla Duprez different subjects, different moments, different projects she worked on, but very similar style in terms of the way she lights, the way she edits, the color palettes. So this is something you'll work on to develop your style. It's going to be the color preferences that you capture, you edit, the composition tendencies that you use, the subject matter choices, and, of course, through this, the mood and tone of your photos. Here are a bunch of photos from photographer Marco Bianchetti who has a very distinct style. Street photographer, check it out. Very interesting use of all the types of compositional techniques we've learned and talked about. The one on the left, you can see framing with frame negative space, you have these giant structures as well that contrasts with the small subject below. On the right, you have a contrast between the mechanical and the human, right? The way he composed this different than the photo on the left, closer up to the boy in the frame. But also there's some sort of like relation and mimicry of the arm of the machine with the arm of the boy. Harsh shadows, super contrasty, framing with a frame, leading lines that you see here, a choice to frame this photo or crop it without seeing the heads of these people walking by, a very distinct way of composing and editing images, though. 21. Symbolism in Your Photography Aesthetics: The last section, we talked about symbolism in terms of the subject and the story of our photos. You can also have symbolism in your tone, your mood, and your style that we've covered here. For example, black and white photos or editing can mean more emotion, add emotion to your photos. You can see sometimes not just the choice to do it to clean up an image. Maybe exposures not perfect. It might be a way to draw the viewers attention better to the subject, or it could simply just be a way to add emotion to a photo. A photo of a couple walking down an alley in Ireland. This photo just would be different if it was in color. I think the black and white edit gives it a timeless quality and adds a bit of emotion as well. In terms of style, you can have a light and airy style versus dark and contrasty, light and airy, meaning you're overexposing, it's very bright versus something that's a bit more darker. Here on the right, you can see an example of a darker, contrastier image. Here was an experiment that I did through editing that added a lot of contrast and emotion to a self portrait that I took, not just with the positioning of my hand, the look on my face, but through the editing itself. Whether you have vibrant colors or more muted ones can symbolize a feeling. And then, again, that dynamic of complexity versus minimalism can symbolize something in your photo. Here we have a photo of the maybe fishermen in Vietnam, and it's a very complex photo because it's a complex scene. These fishermen in their boats are either in some sort of traffic jam or they're getting set out much different story and vibe than this photo here of a similar type of boat out peacefully going on a little sale. Here's another photo that I captured during our photo Dash. The challenge was to photograph something of food with everything in focus, I believe, was the style. And this was in Chinatown in San Francisco. And instead of just capturing, like, a piece of food, this was a fortune cookie shop. I could have just captured, you know, some cookies close up. I went into this shop and I saw the whole story of this location, you have these workers that are sitting there making these fortune cookies right there. You have the product on the shelf on the left. You have these statues, the signs, the images, the posters on the wall. And I thought that capturing this complex scene told that story in a more interesting way. A way that hasn't been documented as much or that I've seen than just the photo of the food itself. Your photos tell a different story, whether it's a close up or a wide angle. Here we see two photos of the Pantheon, one close up architectural detail of the hole in the center of the roof. You can see very nice abstract type photo much different than the wider shot on the right where you see the people outside. You get a sense of the location and what goes on outside this building. Of the same location here are two photos I captured in Lisbon Portugal, of this bookstore. I believe it was the oldest operating bookshop in the world. You can see that Guinness Book of World War Records record on the left. The one on the left, closer upshot of the sign. Interesting. Alright. But the one on the right was a wider shot of the story of the moment, right? It's the people walking by, the people going in and out, tourists doing their touristy thing. And I think it just tells a better story and is more interesting to look at. Not to say that a close up photo is not the right choice. It's just a different choice in telling a story. And sometimes you can see more of a story with a wider shot. So I'm talking a lot about aesthetics, but aesthetics clearly tie to story. And aesthetics also tie to immersiveness, which we'll cover in the next section. But for now, I think you have a good grasp on what makes an aesthetically pleasing or better word for that interesting photo to look at. And that's really a tool. It's a muscle that you can work on as a photographer. To improve your photos, no matter what the subject is, no matter what story you're trying to capture, you can change the way you photograph it. You can change the way you edit it, and that's what you have control over. And you might feel like right now that you just don't have that eye capture things in the ways in the ways you see the photos I'm showing or the ways that you see photos online that inspire you. And that's something that just takes practice, but it also can take intentionality where you go out and you say, Okay, I'm going to practice framing within a frame. I'm going to practice capturing something with negative space. I'm going to practice finding contrast in a photo, and doing that practice is what's going to help you improve. Next lesson, we're going to again look at a case study, looking at the grates and how these compositional techniques and the aesthetical I don't know if that's a word, quality of photos has stood the test of time, and what we're doing now is very similar to what photographers have done over the years. I'll see you over there. 22. Case Study: How the Greats Mastered Aesthetic Photography: Welcome back to this new case study, looking at the grades. This time, we're looking at the aesthetics of the grades. And I really enjoyed looking through these photographers work because you can see that they're doing the exact same things that we teach in our courses and the things that I practice in my photography to improve. They're using minimalism. They're using negative space. They're using frame within a frame. They're looking at shapes in their photos. And you'll see as we go through how these great photographers did it, and hopefully it will inspire you. So here's a photo of Louis Hines taking a photo of a worker. But just look at this photo. The lighting is beautiful. The shape of this machine is interesting and just the way that this man is prying on this big old nut that's on there. Look at that wrench that he's holding, the lighting, the contrast, you can see the muscles, the details there, and the way that he's bent over and fits within that circle of the machine just creates a really interesting shape to look at. So just a great example of how the position and motion of a subject fitting within the setting can create a dynamic image. Here we have a photo from Ansel Adams, one of his more famous ones, as well, Moon Rise. So we saw Earthrise before. This is Ansel Adams Moonrise photo looking over Hernandez New Mexico. So you have these buildings down below. You have a cemetery. Below. Going into immersiveness, this is a photo that is super immersive because the more you look at it, the more details you see. You see the mountains in the background with the clouds sort of going by. You see the moon up above the negative space of the landscape versus the sky is also interesting. And it's just such an interesting composition for the setting, taken at a very interesting time. We have a photo from Walker Evans with a lot of patterns, repetition. Interesting. Here is Louis Hines again with these photos. Now, a lot of these photographers, back in the day, they weren't cropping their images. And so, even without that, you have the symmetry of this factory row and the leading lines going towards this child. Again, the leading line, something that we talk a lot about in our courses that naturally draws your eye in towards some point in your photo. And if there's a subject in that point, it creates a more dynamic image. This is one that nowadays, you throw it in the light room and you can crop it to perfectly center it out. But still just a really great use of symmetry and leaning lines and centering in the image, too. Here we have some frame within a frame. Photos, Mount Fuji under the gates. Now, I wish that those telephone poles weren't there. This photograph from one of the couple Frank and Frances Carpenter, again, showing that even back in the day, they were taking photos, not just of the subject, but framing it in a certain more interesting way. Another photo from them, some framing within a frame of this archway, but also the silhouetting of light. So you can see the background. You have a sense of the lighting on the subject's face, but still mostly in silhouette. I love this photo from Walker Evans of all of these windows. You're mostly flat. Again, photoshop. I would just strain those out, but at the time, didn't have that. You have this pattern broken up by a single window with a person hanging out and looking out from that window. Here's a photo of Charles Limberg, the aviator who flew from the US to Europe, one of the pioneers in aviation. And this is one where he landed in a field, and all these hundreds and thousands of people came to celebrate the moment with him. And it's just an interesting photo taken from this vantage point, you're not seeing him. Standing on top of his plane, waving to the crowd, smiling. But you see the emotion and the power of this moment because of all the people there. And it's almost this negative space created with all the people versus the positive space of the airplane there, which makes it seem so small. And you contrast those together, you can get a sense for how many people were actually there compared to the size of that airplane. Lots of these photos, just nice lighting, interesting lighting, interesting composition. A bridge being built here. You got a worker up above, nice leading lines, interesting composition rule of thirds. You got the reflection there. Here we have a photo of the Capitol building, but it's not just the Capitol building. We have more. We have the foreground elements of this tree being lit up by this sort of, like, street lamp, and it is somewhat framed within a frame, but it's more just that layering of elements in your photos that puts you in that place more than just a photo of the building. Similarly, these photos by the same photographer of the Washington Monument and then the Capitol Building, again, but framed within a frame of the cherry blossoms, which are a powerful symbol in Washington, DC. Here we have a super interesting negative space photo of this tower amongst the clouds. Here we have an archway creating a frame for this street beyond. Here we have two photos by Edward Curtis who took photos and documented the lives of Native Americans. And these two photos are composed in very different ways, but of the same people. So here we have the second one closer up. You still don't see their faces, but they're on one of their homes, one of their dwellings. If we go back to this one, you can really see the architecture of the buildings. You see a family or people down below as well. You can see how they sort of live. You can see maybe pots that they used in a kitchen. You can see these sticks that are leaning up against the buildings in the background. Who knows? Potentially for assisting in getting up or down from these dwellings. If you look very closely, you see a profile of one of the women up at the top who have these very interesting hairstyles and the clothing that you don't see quite so much in this image. Still an interesting photo, but I prefer this first one. I just for someone who was not at this place, never been there, doesn't know anything about this tribe or this people, it gives me a lot of information to understand more deeply. And then contrast that with a much more recent photo by Andreas Gurski. This 99 cent store photo is one that has won awards, and it showcases the consumerism of our modern time. And it does so by the sheer complexity of the photo, the way it was captured. It was not just the story of one person picking off an item from a shelf, but captured from above at an angle so you can see the entire store, the plethora of items, the mass amount of colors and things that could be purchased at the 99 cent store. And the more you look at it, you see the different people in the different aisles picking up things. In the left top corner, you can see people lined up to pay for the things they're buying. And the choice to photograph from this upper angle, with all that is going on was a conscious one and tells a much deeper story than if it was photographed a different way. So I hope looking at these photographs from some of the greats inspires you to go out and really practice your compositional techniques because that quality of your aesthetics is going to create a more interesting photo that can have more impact. Alright, now it's time to grab your camera because in the next lesson, it's going to be your exercise for this section. I will see you there. 23. Exercise: One Subject, 5 Ways: Welcome to the next Power Practice, capturing your photos. I have a very fun practical exercise for you. What I want you to do, and this can be related to your project, or it doesn't have to be, it's more about just practicing how you photograph a subject and how composing a subject differently can tell a different story. So I want you to pick one subject and then photograph that subject five different ways. So using everything we've covered in this section from composition, whether it's negative space versus extreme close up, if it's lighting, if it's harsh light or soft light, if it's a way you're editing, if you're editing black and white, or if you're using cooler tones or warmer tones, photograph a subject five different ways to practice how your aesthetics can help tell a different story of the same subject. And by practicing this, then you can go back to your original project and decide, Okay, intentionally, how am I best going to be able to tell this story through the aesthetics of my photo? Thank you so much for watching go out and practice, and then I will see you in the next lessons. 24. Immersive Photography: The Last Ingredient of an Impactful Photo: Welcome to this new section on immersiveness in our photography. This is the third leg of our tripod for creating powerful photos. But what does immersiveness mean? This is a term that I use when deciding if a photo is a very powerful, a very good one, a very interesting one, because it's that quality that keeps me there. It keeps my attention. Even if it's me scrolling through social media feeds and looking at photos, it's the type of photo where I pause and look at it. It's not the clearest thing to understand because part of it comes from our other legs, our story and our composition. But there are things that create that instant curiosity in someone viewing your photo, like having an interesting atmosphere in your photography, just the general sense of the scene. Giving the viewer a sense of place as if they are standing right there in that moment. Interesting framing. This goes back to composition, but just coming up with some interesting technique to frame your photo, to frame the subjects in your photo. Having some sort of depth or interaction between people or between different groups of people can make a more interesting photo. A photo that captures details. And I'm not just talking about, you know, slapping on your macro lens and getting a tight shot on that cool texture. I'm talking about a photo that has little things going here and there. And as you keep looking, you start to see, Oh, what's in that bottom right corner? What's up top? What's going on in every spot of this frame. And very importantly, storytelling. Depending on what the story is, there's some that just end up being more compelling and more interesting and grasp my attention. A sense, it is that genes quit of photography, that's the I'm not exactly sure what it is, but there's something about these photos that just grab my attention. And I think that it might be different for you, but I also think that there are some photos that just have that quality that many people will appreciate. So I'm just going to go through a series of photos that I personally find have that sort of sense of immersiveness and some of my photos that I tried to capture that. And then later in this section, we'll be looking at some of the greats doing the same. 25. What Makes an Immersive Photography?: This first photo here is a very typical example of a photo that I find very interesting to look at. It's almost like one of those. Remember the Where's Waldo books where it's got all the people in it, and you zoom in and you look and you see the details of all the different stories and interactions going on. This would be an amazing photo if it was blown up and printed on a big canvas and hung in a gallery so that people can walk up to it and see all of the interactions and details. Not only is it interesting with the edit, it's got that cool, like, split tone with the blues in the bottom and then the sandy beach at top, the complexity at the top with all the interactions of the people, a little bit more of a calmness down below. But this is that atmosphere that just draws my attention. Completely different. Here is another type of photo, black and white, different time. The photographer chose to photograph it at eye level, and it's just a little moment in time, but one that captivates me. And this might not be as interesting to you if you're not into cycling, if you're into something else, maybe if this was a different shop, it might be more interesting to you. But I just find there's these different interactions going. We have the shop owner perhaps renting or selling a bike to this gentleman who's wearing a suit. On the left, you have these two people who are potentially waiting to go in the shop or waiting for a friend. And it just has that sense of place where you're standing there. There's action. There's storytelling in this photo. It's not like the most creative compositionally, but in terms of a good photo, it has that immersiveness and that storytelling quality. This one is a very creative framing and way to display this photo. This is from Marco Bianchtti. We saw him before. And the fact that it's flipped upside down and you're seeing it with this break dancer right side up instantly creates curiosity. It makes your mind say, Whoa, what is going on? And if it was flipped the other way, I just don't think it would be as interesting. So having this setup this way is very, I think, a good, curious way to do it. And it's something to think about. When you are photographing things that might not be the right side up, consider flipping them or doing something creative. But not just the way this is rotated, but the photo itself is very interesting to see not just this break dancer, but all the people in the background as well. A couple photos like this that you'll see that I find very interesting where there's a group of people in some sort of, I'll say, uniform, same type of dress that creates like this pattern that I find just very intriguing to look at. And you see all these kids dressed in these yellow hats. Blue blazers, red shorts, likely going to school or maybe on a field trip or something. And all of the different poses and the way they're looking, the way they have their hands to their mouth, you can see, like, these kids are curious. These kids are waiting. They're pondering. Maybe some are a little shy, worried. You see some parents in the background, the colorful clothes. This one's cropped tight in. You aren't seeing the full picture. There's stuff happening on the right and the left side of the frame. And I think for this photo, that's okay. It's okay to leave some part of the story outside the frame. This is a completely different photo than we've seen before, but I think this is one where the framing of it and the perspective really creates that instant curiosity looking up this staircase and the fact that there's a subject on that staircase walking up helps a lot, as well. If that subject wasn't there, I don't think this would be as interesting of a photo storytelling wise. And you might be saying, Well, Phil, this isn't that interesting of a story. It's someone walking up a staircase. But this is an experience that we all have. And there's just something about this photo the way that the buildings come down, the vignetting on the side of the photo, the framing within a frame of the subject, crawling up those stairs that makes me feel like I'm right there about to take a step and just puts me it gives me that sense of place. I love this photo by Richard Jacobs, and this is one where it takes a little bit of extra work, luck to be in this place in this moment to get this shot. There's a lot of people that I see who go out on Safari, capture images of elephants or great big animals. A lot of time, they're beautiful. They are aesthetically great. But in terms of storytelling quality and immersiveness, they lack. And I think that's the issue that we all have as photographers now is 50 100 years ago, seeing a beautiful photo of an elephant would be like, Wow. I haven't seen an elephant like this before. Now we've all seen an elephant. And so how can you be more creative with your elephant photo? This is an example of that. So you have the layering of all the different elephants, the different sizes of the children and the parents. They're all doing the same thing. They're all drinking. You have this miss kind of fogginess of the water rising. The elephant in the front, though, you can see the sharpness of that water dripping from their trunk. And I just love the repetition of the shape of the elephant going backwards and the different gradient of the elephants. I just think it's such an interesting place. You see the reflection a little bit, too. But again, you have to be in the right time, right place to get this type of photo. Going back to our humans and another bike photo, but I really love this one, too. Again, Marco Bianchtti because you have this collision of two worlds in this photo. It looks like a bike race that's happening in the middle of an old town. Some sort of downhill race. So you have this fast moving mountain biker who's ripping down, flying through the air. And then on the left, you have three people who are just casually looking by. It makes me wonder, who are these people? Are they fans of this race? Is this their shop? Is this their home? Are they just walking in and out and then happen to see this cyclist fly by? Not cheering on the sidelines. And so it's just such an interesting photo, an interesting story captured in this photo. And, of course, the angle, the super wide angle lens is epic. The moment of capturing the cyclist perfectly in that space in between the people. He's not covering the people on the left, but in this space in the air, getting as much air as possible, just a perfect moment captured in this frame. Some photos are more subtle. I really love this photo. It for me, is immersive because not only the framing of it is interesting with the framing within the tree, the framing within the frame, the colors are nice. It's a little bit moodier, darker, but I think that just gives you a sense of the time of day that this is, maybe sunsetting end of the day. But you have these three kids. They're all doing their own thing, playing in the water, playing at the water's edge. And it just makes me curious. It makes me remember times like this in my past where I've done similar things. I've gone, played with a stick in the mud. And that's something that you can try to capture in your photography as well to be more immersive, is to capture moments that put people back that bring us back in our memories and spark that memory. Here's another one with all of these ballerinas that I just think is so interesting behind the stage, waiting to go on, the lighting is very dramatic, so you don't really see their faces, but you see the highlights of their tattoos of their dress, and the shapes and the textures of the tutus just make this really interesting look to this photography. It's a photo that you can't really see a lot going on, but you can sense what it's like there. You can sense the nervousness, the excitement of these dancers about to go onstage. Lastly, here's a few photos that I've taken that I find a bit more immersive. This one puts you gives a little more sense of place. Here, my friend Vince is getting a straight edge razor shave. And this is in India in a small village when we were doing a service project there in college. And it's different than another photo that I captured where it was closer up on his face, more detail. This one I widened out. I took from the opening of this little barbershop and I just love that you can see the barber. You can see the other guys waiting, maybe waiting for a shave, waiting for a customer. You see the equipment, the mirror, the fans, dusty, dirty, gritty, but you get a sense of the full place that this was in. Here's another photo that I captured on a journey of mine this time to Kyoto Japan, and we were walking from one of the temples, and I saw all of these workers, four of them, meticulously trimming these trees and just the way that there were these four guys on ladders standing there working on this tree, it felt like some sort of, like, renaissance painting to me, where you see these workers doing something that has probably been done for hundreds if not thousands of years with the trees here. So I just really love how you have the different men working on the tree at different levels. And that fourth one is hard to see, but that's what I talk about when I'm saying there's details in these photos. If you keep looking, you see and notice the fourth worker sort of right in the center of this image. So this was just me walking by and seeing this story unfolding and trying to capture it. Similarly, in another place in Lisbon, Portugal, this is a photo I captured of the apartments of these beautiful buildings. There's lots of windows and doors that are super interesting for those of us who don't live in Lisbon or don't live in an old place. You look down any alleyway, and you're like, Wow, this door frame is like a piece of art. I need to take a photo of it. These tiles are beautiful. And that's all great. I took a lot of photos like that myself. But if there's a person standing out that window, it instantly makes that photo more immersive to me because you can see a connection. You can build a connection with that person in the photo, in the window. Frame. So here, the story was that below, there was a streetcar and a bunch of cars locked in a traffic jam. There was honking and yelling, and then all these people started looking out their window, wondering, What's going on? The two guys at the top of this photo were kind of laughing and chatting about it. And then the lady below was almost like a musical conductor telling people to go this way and that way. It was just a funny, interesting moment. And you don't get that full story just from this photo, but I think that the way that this photo is framed straight on, you got the four quadrants, very flat straight lines, making it, I think, like, a pleasing composition, and then having the different stories of these three different people. Very interesting moment. And then, lastly, here's a photo that I captured in Sequoia National Park here in California, where I am. And you probably notice that you see Sam, my good friend, there, taking a photo. And the amazing thing about this photo is just seeing how small Sam is compared to these trees. You can see at the bottom what he's taking a photo of, which are the roots. It's like the roots that had been lifted up from the ground because some of these trees toppled over after some fires that we had here. So you can see some of the trees scorched with fire that one on the right that's kind of pointed up, sort of pointy that was completely destroyed by a fire, and you see some burn marks on a lot of the other trees. But you can just get a sense for how massive these trees are just from them being tipped over. That's the width of the trunk is two, three, four times as tall as a human. So I just like this photo because of all the textures, the different colors. Obviously, it's inspiring with the big trees and what power nature has these hundreds almost thousand year old trees that live here. But then with the added element of Sam being there, that small detail builds that instant curiosity within this frame. Those are some of my favorite photos that are display what immersiveness means in photography. In the next lesson, we're going to look at some of the greats of photography to really see some examples in the past what this looks like. And so I'll see you over there. By 26. Case Study: How the Greats Captured Immersive Photos: This lesson we'll be looking at some of the greats of photography and photos that are truly immersive. Remember the aspects of photography that I think create a more immersive photo, creating a sense of interesting atmosphere, a sense of place, interesting framing, having some depth and interaction between the different people or things in your photo, capturing details that keep your attention and ultimately just a photo that tells a better story. Some of the photos in this lesson are a bit difficult to watch just from war. There's nothing like super violent or grotesque, but they do capture suffering. So this first one is the famous photo into the Jaws of Death, I believe it's called by Robert F Sargent. This is a photo captured on D Day as troops from England went over to fight the Nazis. And so you see this moment that you just can't it's hard to even imagine unless you've been there or done something similar, but you have these boats that are taking soldiers over this canal, landing on this beach where you know there's enemy soldiers ready to start firing at you. And the door of that boat opens up. If you've ever seen a movie like Saving Private Ryan, you get somewhat of a sense more than this photo, what that experience could have been like. Obviously, we're never going to know what that feels like or truly is. But you get more of a sense. And again, this is the power of photography to showcase these moments in history because without this photo, of course, we have oral history, we have written history, but nothing compares to being able to see, like, Wow, this is really what it was like. And talk about a sense of place, the camera in this moment, just being there as you see soldiers in front of you taking their first steps in the water towards this beach, an intense photo and an intense moment. And even though there wasn't necessarily timing to compose an interesting framing or anything like that in this shot, just because the cameraman was there in the right place, you have the interesting leading lines of the boat and the framing of the soldiers in the water that make a compelling photo. Another photo from World War two. This is from one of the concentration camps. And I believe this was taken after they were rescued, basically. But it was when the world was becoming aware of the atrocities of what was actually being done. And not only do you see the pain and suffering in these men's faces and their bodies and how skinny they were, so close to death, but you also see just what the living conditions were like, the rows and rows and rows and stacks and stacks and stacks of bodies here alive, but in many places not. So this is a very powerful photo that we have now to see what was going on. And as you keep looking, you see different faces. You see the way they are lying down, the way that, you know, they're sleeping or resting or just being there a bowl a metal bowl as a pillow on a hard piece of wood. Obviously, this was not even close to the worst of what was going on. So a powerful image. Now, we're going to jump to a not so depressing at all photo. So I apologize for that sort of drastic cut. But here is another photo that I just think has a great sense of immersiveness putting you in this place of this old timey farm stand, doing a tradition that is carried on today, going out, picking pumpkins for the Halloween season, for the fall season. So you have these kids out there with their shining glory. There are two pumpkins that they picked. You can see maybe a couple of people, parents in the background or something. But I just like this stand, how it's set up, and then the story of the kids picking the pumpkins, as well. And again, sparking memories within myself of going out picking pumpkins, but also now going out with my kids and picking pumpkins. There's an older photo from Ann Rosner, who we saw doing a lot of photography during the wartime of women in the workplace and children in the war effort at home. And here we see a group of nuns all wearing their habits, looking at this machinery, this technology. I don't know if this is like an airplane turbine or something like that. But I love just the pattern of all these nuns and the all these nuns that you don't typically think of with technology, all looking up, learning about what this is. And who knows? I don't know what this story was. I'm sure there is a story I could read up on it, but just from the photo alone, I'm thinking, Okay, well, maybe these nuns were, like, helping learning actually about how to fix these things or build these things, and then went on to help. An interesting photo from Frank and Francis Carpenter, photographers that couple that went out and traveled the world documenting places that from our perspective, now, a lot of this I share from my American perspective. So if you're from around the world, then your perspective is going to be different. But these were new photographs of places. So just this fishermen up on these stilts, I find super interesting. And the details that you look at this photo long enough, you start to think, Okay, how did this actually work? And you see on the left, there's this one pole with some ladder steps. And this fisherman must have had to climb up that ladder, perhaps, and then cross over to this one because the one that he's standing on is in deeper water. It's just such a different type of work, job, livelihood than I am used to that I find so interesting to look at in this photo. Here's a photo. Again, this is one where you got to be privileged to be there at the right time and place. This is when the Intercontinental Railroad connected where the East met the West across the United States, the teams of people coming together to celebrate this railroad being built. And it's a photo. Again, like one of those Where's Waldo type photos where there's so many people doing so many things, interesting poses. Cheering, toasting each other, shaking hands, and it just keeps you engaged in this photo. And it's a very cool sort of symmetry that they have set up with the people leading up to the two in the middle shaking hands and the trains about to meet in the middle, as well. Now, contrast that with this photo, another one from Louis Hine who did all the work with child labor photography. And this is one different than a lot of the other ones we saw before because the other ones were really we saw a lot of, like, individual kids working in fields and factories. Here you just have a photo of all of these kids and just the way that they're dressed, they're kind of, like, all dressed the same. They all have the dirt and grime on their face from working in whatever factory or mine or whatever they were doing. And the look on their face. But look at their eyes, the way their eyes pop from that dirt and grime. It creates that instant connection, and it almost looks like they're looking into your soul. And you can kind of go one by one, looking at each kid and makes you wonder what was their life like? And it builds that empathy. And a last one of Ansel Adams that I felt felt very similar to my photo in Japan of the men working on the tree. Here's one at the Japanese internment camp of the men, couple of men working on this telephone pole. And I just love the way this is composed. Ansel Adams must have had to get pretty high up to compose it this way, where you're not looking entirely up at these workers, but you're kind of looking straight on. You also see the mountains in the background. You see men down below, one, pulling something up with a rope to help them or to lower it down, one on the left, maybe supervising, who knows? You see the work truck down below as well. And it's just such an interesting story and moment that you don't really see often. And this is what it was like back in the day. And now, in hindsight, it's just I'm curious to see. Okay, so this is how that was done. This is how you repaired telephone poles. But then, of course, this is on the backdrop of the Japanese internment camps. You're wondering, who are these people? What's their story? How long were they there? Did they have families? How long were they in the United States before they were interned? What happened afterwards? So, hopefully, looking at these photos from the greats helps you understand what immersiveness is. In the next lesson, it's a power practice where you're going to be practicing your immersive photography. So I'll see you there for the prompt. 27. Exercise: Level Up Your 'Immersiveness': Welcome to your next power practice exercise. In this lesson, I want you to level up your immersiveness. So for this exercise, I want you to go out on a photo walk, and I want you to go somewhere that you go often, one of your favorite places to go as a photographer, whether that's, you know, the downtown of your city, it's a place in nature that you often go to. But try to think about the things that we've learned in this section about creating a more immersive photo. Try to capture something that has that immersive quality that will build instant curiosity, more so than perhaps what you've done before. How would I go about this? Well, I like taking photos of birds. I like taking photos of plants and flowers and details. Usually, I'm pretty tight in on these things to get those details. But I think what I would do is go to some of those same places I take those photos with a wider lens. And wait, wait and see. Are there maybe people that walk by who are doing the same? Maybe there's a family, maybe there's a group of people, where I could capture them in this setting doing what I typically do. This will require a lot of patience. Maybe I'll go to the downtown where I like to do street photography. And I'll be a little extra patient this time to sit somewhere for a bit longer and wait until some sort of story unfolds that I can capture. So this is going to take a bit more patience, I think, than just going out and trying to find an interesting composition or something interesting to take a photo of. It takes waiting, doing a little bit of extra effort to find some sort of story that you can frame with an interesting framing. So go out, practice because this is going to help you create photos that ultimately have more impact. Alright, see you in the next section. 28. What Sets You Apart? What is Your Photographer's Statement?: Welcome to this new section on sharing your photography, which, as I've mentioned before, is almost more important in making an impact with your photography than the photo itself. So while this is at the end of the course, I felt like it was important to show you the ways that you can actually take and create photos that are poised for success using things like storytelling, aesthetics and immersiveness. Then we move on to actually how do we share it with the world and make that impact. First thing you need to do as a photographer is to find your thing. What is it that sets you apart as a photographer? Is it the specific things that you capture? Is it a very niche topic or subject? Is it the way the aesthetics of your photography that can really tell you apart, or is it how you share your photos? And I think the first two are a bit harder to set yourself apart as because we talked about before, we live in a sea of millions of photographers and trillions of photos being posted throughout our lifetime. So how do we stand out in that? Think that where and how you share your photos is going to be the thing that sets you apart more than the other two. But as you think about all of your photography, answer these questions. What are the patterns that emerge in your style, in the things that you capture? What photos feel most like you as you look back? When I did this myself and I started creating this course, I put together those photos that you saw at the beginning. Those are the photos that I feel represent me the most, the ones where I'm capturing natural elements in very soft, beautiful light. And combined, those tell the story of who I am and give me that look of a photographer. Then think about where you want to go because where you've been in the past as a photographer does not mean that that's what you have to do in the future or how you will stand out as a photographer in the future. And if that's the case, what's different from before to where you want to be? It just that you don't have the exposure? You're not making an impact with the photos, exactly how you take them? Or is there a difference in, oh, I want to hone my skills in editing my photos to have a specific look? Are you working to be a specific type of photographer sports or wedding or event or wildlife or landscape or whatever it is that you need to practice so that you can compose better, you can frame better. You can light better and edit better and get to the place where you want to be? Something that I think would be helpful so that it's actually written down is to develop a photographer's statement. So this is a statement that says, I take photos that, and then you write what you take photos of. And then I want people to feel blank when they see my photos. So for me, my photographer's statement is, I take photos that capture the preciousness of life and nature. I want people to feel inspired by the beauty of nature when they see my photos. That's something that I've come to realize over time is that the way I want to impact the world is to showcase nature. Maybe in the past, it's been more about plants and flowers and natural settings. And in the future, I'm getting more into bird photography and wildlife photography and going that direction. But overall, I want people to be inspired by nature through my photography and want to protect it. So if you didn't guess it yet, next up is the power practice, get a pen and paper out, and you're going to be writing your own photographer's statement. 29. Exercise: Write Your Photographer's Statement: Welcome to your next power practice, your photographer's statement. So go ahead, get that pen and paper out and write using the template that we provide. I take photos that and then fill in the blank, and then I want people to feel blank when they see my photos. After you do that, come back because I'm going to be explaining how to deliver your photos to have the most impact, one of the most important lessons of this class. I'll see you there. 30. Delivering Your Photos: Choosing the Format for Sharing Your Photography: In this lesson, I'm going to break down how to share your photos and deliver them to have the most impact. The first things you need to know are your audience. So who are you going to share your photos with? Saying I'm going to share my photos with the world through social media is not specific enough. So you need to find your specific audience. Who's going to appreciate your photos the most? Because if you deliver photos to people who are going to appreciate your photos, you're going to automatically have more impact. And you do this by understanding your why. Go back to the earlier sections of the course, go back to your photography statement from the exercise previously and understand exactly why you are taking these photos that you want to share. And then once you know that, choose your format. Let's break that down. So you have low commitment wide reach formats like social media, read it, posting on photography forums, photography groups, posting on photography specific platforms like Flicker, Visco, 500 Pick. These are places that you can share your photography, but it's hard to have a lot of impact because it's just low commitment. You're posting it out there, you're hoping people see it, but you're not doing a lot of work. That being said, there's potential for wider reach on these places. It's just harder to get that guaranteed. The next level of impact is more medium commitment, but narrower reach. So posting to a personal website, portfolio, creating some sort of substack or online newsletter where you're sharing your photos with followers, even something like creating a photo book or participating in photo contests in whatever type of photography you do, these are great ways to get out your photos. You have to put a little bit of effort into finding these places to do it, whether that's like a contest, putting in the effort to designing a photo book and figuring out how to print that. And there's going to be narrower reach, but as you can probably sense more impact, if someone's seeing your photos in this format. If you want to take it to the extreme, the highest commitment, the narrowest reach, but also the higher the impact, you can think about putting your photos in a local gallery, doing photo shows at local libraries, cafes or schools, places that often have local artists displaying work, gifting prints to subjects or the community at large, selling prints at a local market. There's photographers that know, I always see at local farmers markets, artists and markets near me that are sharing their work, and usually they have more impact and are more successful at doing that than just selling online because their photography is geared towards our community, something about our community. And there's a few more ways that you can have more impact with narrow reach and high commitment, such as working as a paid photographer, doing wedding or event photography, family portrait, headshot photography, doing journalistic type of photography. Are all ways that you can make money as a photographer, but you are also having a high impact on the people that you are taking photos of or working for. So remember our impact chart of how much impact you can have with your photography going from the least effort, wide reach to narrow reach, higher commitment. It's very similar to what we are talking about now. Just like any relationship, the narrower the reach, the deeper you can go and be more impactful. This is something that I've learned over time. When I was a kid and when I was in school, high school, college, I used to have a lot of friends. I used to pride myself on having lots and lots of friends, but the friendships I had never went that deep. And I came away feeling like, Well, that's great that I have a lot of surface level friends, but I don't have any deep intimate relationships with my friends. And it was through my young adulthood and up until now that I have tried to foster those relationships. So with the people that I befriended as a kid, as a teen to deepen and strengthen those relationships for the long term. And then, of course, with my wife, we have the strongest, deepest, most intimate relationship, and it's very similar to how photography works as well. So now we've talked about formats. I want to hit the nail on the head about how we can actually do this. How can you go out and actually make impact? So this is going to be a little bit of a rant, buckle up. 31. A Call to Action (or Phil's Rant) About How to Make More Impact: You might be thinking, Phil, well, what should I do? What exactly should I do to make more impact? Well, think about what are you doing right now? Are you just posting your photos on social media? If you are, then look, are there photo contests in your area that are about the type of photography you do, whether that's landscape or wildlife or portraits or local town contests. Many places around the world have these types of contests and do the extra effort to apply to them. And don't just apply to them. Do the extra effort to reach out and make a connection with the people that run these contests and see maybe there's other opportunities for you to display your work or showcase your work, whether it's in an online format or in person physical format. Go look at your local town. See, Is there an art gallery? Go ask, how do I get my photography up here? Do you ever do shows where people can put their photography up? I know that in my local town, they have a day at one of the art galleries where everybody, anybody free of cost, can go put their photos or any type of art up on the wall. Start with something like that, a free for all art gallery. Go do the work to find a place where you can display your work. And you never know what's going to come from that. Maybe someone will see your photo and want to purchase it. Boom, Impact. Maybe someone will see your photo and say, Hey, this is actually really good. I actually do this other gallery down the street. Are you interested in doing a photo gallery? It's baby steps, but it also takes extra work. Look at your local mom and pop coffee shops or restaurants. Lot of these places act as brokers where you can put your photography up for sale. Maybe they take a cut of it, but at least, you're putting your photography up, getting it in front of people. People can appreciate it, and maybe you make money from it, or maybe you just have impact by displaying your art and sharing it with the world. So I implore you if you want more impact, you do have to do the extra work in this step of sharing your photos. Alright, that was my rant about that. I want to talk more about inspiring change and having impact that way with our photography coming up next. 32. How to Inspire Change with Your Photography: Photography is a tool that can and has been used to change and to inspire people to take action for a number of causes throughout history. So let's break down how your photography can be used as an advocacy and awareness tool. This doesn't have to mean big grandiose change. This can be small impact where you're just inspiring someone to feel something, to understand something at a deeper level. Maybe it's just inspiring someone to think about something in a different way that might actually end up being better for them. Or this doesn't have to be just making an impact on the viewer of your photography, but also the subjects that you capture. A lot of the most profound and important photography is just about showcasing people's stories that don't often get told. Don't get told through the main media formats and people on that media out there today. So you can use your photography to share those stories for the people, the places around you that don't have a place to share their story. Stories about traditions that have been passed on but are fading. People who have never felt seen animals that are affected by climate change and need someone to give them a voice. That same exact type of photography can also have big impact. It can spark awareness about an issue, preserve a community story, prompt donations for a cause. Photos about the environment and preserving protecting the environment are some of the clearest examples of this. I have these two photos here that show trash in the ocean. This one here tells a better story where you see the fish, juxtaposed next to all of this filth in the water, another one of Seagull trying to eat some cheetos from the cheeto bag. And then juxtaposing this, which is a little bit light with something very deep, depressing and dark in the history of our world, which is this photo taken by Matthew Benjamin Brady of a slave. And the horrifying pain and scars that they had from being whipped as a slave. And it's photos like this that showcased what was happening at this time and pushed people towards the abolitionist movement. And then fast forward to the civil rights movement in the mid 20th century. And these photos capture the people that were a part of this movement, still today fighting for their rights and for an equal seat at the table. Times this is a conscious effort. Sometimes you're there in the right place in the right moment. Sometimes you're not thinking about inspiring big change with your photography, and sometimes all you want to do and can do is start with small change. Your photography can do this. But remember the last episodes where we talk about the format in which you share your photos, it's going to have much different impact based off of that format. The next lesson, I break down a blueprint for you. If you are wanting to have more impact for a specific reason, you got to watch this lesson. I break down everything you need to do to maximize that impact. I'll see you there. 33. A Blueprint for Making More Impact with Your Photography: In this video, I'm going to break down a powerful photo project blueprint. So, you want to make an impact with your photography, start with something you truly care about. It doesn't have to be some grandiose change or big project. Start with what you wish more people understood. What's happening around you that deserves to be seen? Some examples that I just thought of off the top of my head for me are mental health and men, life of a small business owner, nature preservation and everyday beauty in our community that can inspire people to participate in our community more. But to have the most impact for a project like this, we need to narrow our focus. Zoom in. Instead of focusing on just this idea of mental health, focus on the specific topic of loneliness in men and the epidemic that we're having now. Instead of nature preservation, focus on one organization's attempt to reforest land near you or find something else that's happening. Instead of a local business owner, focus on the specific women who started a STEM center for children near you. That's a science tech math center that tries to provide that type of education for people who might not get it in their local schools. So these are just examples of how you can zoom in from a general topic to a specific story. And then once you know that story, you have to choose your format and how you're going to display this work. Examples of this are a photo series, social media post, a photo essay on a blog, a story for a local newspaper, a photo gallery show, a photo book. Maybe it's a story that that organization, that person, that group is able to share on their social media on their website or display in their office somehow, and then go out and do it, go reach out to the people, reach out to the women running that stem center and say, Hey, I want to do a story about you because I am so inspired by your work and what you're doing for the children around me. Can I come take some photos during a class that you can use for your website? I want to have more impact with my photography and my community, and this is how I start. If you end up choosing a lower commitment format of posting on social media, doing a photo series online, narrow the place that you post at. Instead of just posting on your social media page, instead of just posting to the world at large, find a specific community group on Facebook or on other social media platform or whatever social media platform is used in your area and share your photos. In all the cities I've ever lived in, there's been Facebook groups for the neighbors, for the community members in that place very rarely, but it does happen, will people post photos into that group? Oftentimes it's just lovely photos of the location. Maybe it's a beautiful photo, sunrise sunset of the downtown, of the area, of the park, of an animal they saw. And that can be inspiring and impactful. But if you have a project that you're working on, maybe you can take those photos and put it together in a nice post with nice text explaining what it is. That's a very low commitment, but it's going to lead to more impact than just you simply posting on your Instagram account. Reach out to your local newspapers. There's not many of them left perhaps you don't have one, maybe you can start one. Maybe it could be an online publication. But if you do have a local newspaper, most of these places don't have a lot of money to pay a photographer to go out and do a story. If you offer to go out and capture a story, one that you're passionate about, I guarantee that more times than not, you will be accepted, and they would be happy to have you create a story that they can publish. And with that, we come to the end of the course and our last exercise, which I will prompt you in the next lesson. 34. Exercise: Go Share Your Photos: Welcome to our last power practice exercise in our course sharing your photos. So the exercise is to share your photos. Ideally, this is something that you've worked on throughout the course, a story, a cause something that you believe in and that you want to have more impact on with your photography, my challenge to you is to pick a higher commitment way of sharing your photos. As I've talked about in this section, instead of just simply posting photos to social media, do something that takes a little extra effort, but it will have more impact. Narrow the reach but have more impact on those people that will see your photos. The very least, what this can mean is if you can't find a gallery that's going to display photos. If you can't find a newspaper that is willing to have you do a free story, if you don't have a social media group where you can post a series of photos about something happening in your community that you're passionate about, at the very least print your photos. Print out the photos that you take, put it up on your wall so that the next time you have a friend or a family member come to your place, they can see it, and you can share that story with them. And the impact that that photo will have will be 1,000,000 times more impactful than a photo that you simply post on social media. Do it. Take action, share your photography with the world. I can't wait to see the impact that you make. And I truly hope that this course has helped you inspire you to take photos that poised to have more impact, and then you know now how to have more impact with the way you share them. Alright, best of luck, and I'll see you in another video. Bye. 35. A Thank You Message for You: Welcome to the end of this course on making More Impact with your photography. And for you, you just completed watching these lessons. I hope you took action and you did the power practice exercises. And as I filmed this class, I have struggled with, I really want this course to inspire people to do something, to make an impact with their photography. This is my way after so many years of teaching people what an F Stop is and how to increase exposure using light room. This is my way of trying to give back and help other people have more impact. I hope that this course is just the start of a ripple of photographers who watch this and are inspired to take action to share their work in different ways than they've thought before, so that ultimately they can have more impact. And again, as I said at the start of the course, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are taking photos that are changing the world, creating social movements, doing things like that. It could simply be printing out a photo that you put on your wall that builds connection as people come to your place, something that's more intimate than just posting to the Internet. Truly hope you've enjoyed this class. If you haven't done so yet, please leave a rating and a review for the course wherever you're watching this because those truly help other students know if this is the right course for them or not. And of course, if you like the course, it helps this course get in front of more students to expand those ripples of influence on making the world a better place with our photography. Thank you for watching. I hope to see you in another class soon, and with that, have a beautiful day. Bye.