Product & Food Photography: Lighting, Gear, Styling, Editing & More

1. Introduction: I'm Tabtha, a product and food photographer in Portland, Oregon. I've been taking pictures professionally for the last ten years. Photographing everything from weddings and portraits to chocolate and coffee. This course is a design for anyone who wants to take their product and food photography to the next level, I'm going to share with you the gear that I use, the tips and tricks that I've learned along the way. Basically, everything I wish I knew when I was making the transition from photographing people to photographing product and food. All you're gonna need is a dedicated camera and an editing program like Adobe Lightroom. I can't wait to hang out online together and help you reach your photography goals. Let's jump in. What is your favorite thing about your job? I love that I get to work from home in my pajamas with my cat. That's our favorite thing. 2. Exposure Primer: Let's talk about exposure. Exposure is the amount of light that reaches the camera's sensor, or how bright or dark an image is. We want to aim for properly exposed, which means that the image is effectively captured. It's not overexposed too bright, it's not underexposed too dark, It's right there in the sweet spot. There are three main settings for adjusting your exposure, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Aperture is the opening on the lens, and it decides how much light can go through it to hit the sensor. A large opening lets a lot of light in, and a small opening lets only a little bit of light in. The aperture also controls the depth of field, so how much in the scene is in focus? A wide aperture is a large opening, and it has a small number like 1.8 or F four, and that means only a little bit of the scene is in focus. You have all that creamy background blur. A tight or small aperture makes the whole scene in focus. Next we have shutter speed. This measures the amount of time the aperture is open, letting light in. Shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second. For example, 1/160 or one, one 60th of a second. That's a very common shutter speed. That's the one that I'll be using a lot throughout this class. It's just fast enough to freeze the scene if we're holding the camera in our hands, but it's slow enough to let quite a lot of light in. If we're shooting indoors with a window, if you're trying to capture motion, you're freezing action. A really fast shutter speed is needed. And if you want to document the passing of time, a really slow shutter speed is needed. We don't really use a whole lot of slow shutter speed in food and product photography, but a prime example would be if you were capturing the stars. Letting your camera be open for a long period of time in a very, very dark place, means only the light from the stars is recorded on the sensor. And that is how you would do astrophotography. Fun fact. Then lastly, ISO, this is what measures the camera's sensitivity to light. Turning up the ISO makes your photo brighter at the cost of image quality, higher ISO images have more noise and graininess. This shows up as fuzzy, or grainy, or noisy looking pixels in your image. A good rule of thumb is to just keep your ISO as low as possible for the highest quality image, and only raise it if you absolutely need to. I usually set my aperture, then my shutter speed, then my ISO, for example. If I'm taking a really artistic shot where I want a lot of blur, background blur, and I only want just a little bit in focus, I'm going to pick a really wide aperture, as wide as I can go. Then I'm going to set my shutter speed usually around that 10160 sweet spot. And then I'm going to hope that my ISO can be as low as possible, around 100 or 200. If you want your photo to be brighter, make your aperture larger, make your shutter speed slower, or make your ISO more sensitive, which is a higher number. Keep in mind, you can always set your camera to auto when you're learning and see what your camera thinks is best settings. Copy those settings and play with the dials to get it to tune into your personal tastes. And I think that covered it. 3. Natural Light: Let's talk about natural light. The majority of my work has been taken using natural light. It is my favorite kind of light to work with. It's always my first choice and it's what I'm most comfortable with. Let's get into different angles of light. The one that I think is most common, that you're going to find yourself using the most is side lighting. It's really easy to produce. It creates a lot of depth in your image and it helps define the shape of your subject. An example of this, for instance, if you would have a flat lay set up, it might look like this. And you'll have your window anywhere in this range. This is going to, again, show you the shape of these objects. For a straight on shot, your set up might look like this, and you would want to position your window on either side like this to add a little bit of sparkle and drama to your images. Try using back lighting. Back lighting is where you put your light behind your subject and it pulls the shadows toward the viewer. It adds a lot of contrast and can be a really cool way to light up glass or other shiny things in your image. Back lighting is easiest to accomplish at a 45 degree angle with a long backdrop. It is probably the most simple way to achieve it without running into any issues. You could also go for some subtle back lighting. If you have your classic L shaped backdrop set up, you know, putting it sort of off to the side behind your subject will give you a little bit of back light. And then you can go full back lighting by creating a silhouette style image where you put your subject in front of the light, using the light as your backdrop. But I would say probably use that one the least out of those options. The last remaining light angle I want to talk about is front light, or what I like to call flat lighting. Front lighting your image is actually a little tricky to do because you are in the way you block the light that hits your subject, so you would be casting a big shadow. So I think it's pretty easy to be like, oh, this isn't working? And then most people would kind of correct themselves. So with a front lit image, it tends to flatten out your scene. You may have seen people attach their light to their camera and the light hits them and it smooths out any shape or definition in their face, creating a really flat overall look. It can be great for like beauty applications, but nine times out of ten for food and product, it's just not as useful as these other angles. Flat lighting in a flat lay looks like this. It's very even across the scene, like if your light is right above your set up, but it doesn't create the definition and shape of the objects like side lighting wood. Now that we've tackled angles, let's talk about quality. The three main styles of natural light that I want to talk about are soft, hard, and mixed for soft light. That's what you're going to use most of the time. That is diffused light. Think about the light you get on a cloudy day. It is gentle. The shadows are very light and very, very smooth. There's not a harsh, crisp line. Soft light can be achieved using a diffuser or a piece of white tracing paper, a white curtain. Anything that's going to basically block those harsh rays and break them up into little pieces. A cloudy day and indirect window are also great options. Hard lighting has that crisp line. It is what you would get on a sunny day. The sun creates these deep, rich shadows with a crisp line on the edges. Hard light has very hard contrast and it can be a little trickier to work with. But when you get a really good image using hard light, it can help your work stand out. It can help you improve the look of your portfolio by having a lot of variety of differently lit photos. You can achieve hard lighting by going outside on a sunny day. Or if you have a window where sun comes directly through it and creates a hot beam of light. That is the way that you can use this kind of light inside your home. And then lastly, we got to talk about mixed lighting. It can be really tempting when you are first starting out to feel like your images are coming out dark. And you want to turn on all the lights in the room so that there's lots of light. But it actually makes your photo very hard to edit because oftentimes different sources of light, whether it's a window or a lamp or the overhead lights, they're going to have different colors, they're going to cast different kinds of light. And so editing images that have been taken under a mixed lighting situation is super tricky. For example, in this image we have natural light and overhead light. And if I white balance the image to the natural light, cast all these orange colors from the lights overhead. And then vice versa if I white balance for the overhead lights, the orange lights, my shadow area and everything on this side of the image looks blue. And so it's really hard to find a good balance where this image looks great. But if we turn the overhead lights off and then just use the window, we get a slightly more dramatic looking image and the colors feel better. Speaking of white balance, we should talk about that. I use auto white balance most of the time. It's one less setting that I have to think about on my camera. I just let it be on auto and I know that I'm going to look at the images later in light room in Photoshop. I'm going to be editing the colors, and so that's when I'm doing my white balance adjustments. It is really important to know though, when you are setting your camera, learning how your camera works, to know how to change your white balance settings so that you can when you need to. So in most camera menus, it's going to either show it in Kelvin or it's going to have little pictures. It's going to have, you know, cloudy setting, sunny setting. Whatever the setting, it's a great idea to go through it, pick the setting that's most similar to where you are or flip through them just to get an idea for what the white balance looks like in camera. But again, I just use autos so that covers it for the natural light basics. 4. Light Modifiers: Let's talk about light modifiers. A light modifier is anything that you use to shape the light in your scene. The three main ones I'm going to talk about are diffusers, reflectors, and flags. A diffuser is basically a cloud. It is going to break up any direct light that falls into your scene and give you those really soft, beautiful, flattering shadows to diffuse. Most of the time I am using tracing paper. I get my tracing paper on a roll and I use it so many different ways. It's probably my number one recommended photography prop because I'm using it to break up harsh light. I'm using it as parchment paper. Sometimes I crinkle it to add a little bit of texture to my backdrop. I find it very, very useful. You can buy professional diffusers that you can kind of fold them up and use those. I have one and I don't use it very often. It's nice to have it if you are going on scene and you want to look really professional. But yeah, I'm shooting from home most of the time and nobody really cares what I use to get my pictures to look good. So I don't worry about it. But there are professional solutions for these tools. The next thing I want to touch on is reflectors. You're probably familiar with a reflector, but here is a little 62nd crash course. This is a reflector, is this, this, this, and this. Everything is a reflector. Why do we care? Well, we can use reflectors to improve our images by adding light into the shadow areas of the photo. And we can even out the look of our backdrops to put one to you. Simply position it opposite of your light source so that when the light comes in, it hits it and brings light into those shadow areas. If you want a lot of light, consider using a big reflector, like a piece of white phone core. And if you want just a little bit of highlight on something small, you can fold an index card in half and use that. Lastly, consider that you are a reflector. The only difference between these two images is one red sweater. If you're wearing a lot of bright colors and light hits you, it will bounce off and create a color cast in your image that is super hard to edit out. So don't forget to wear neutrals when you are taking pictures. Next, I want to cover a flag. A flag will basically block the light. They are also called gobo, which stands for go. Goes between the light and the subject, so it basically blocks light out. This is helpful for really tuning in a shot or to create slightly more dramatic texture in your scene. And I will show you how those are in action as we shoot together. Here's a shot of a picture before I put a flag in it, and then after, you can see that it really pulled in the shadow areas and kind of gave this photo a natural vignette. The last thing I want to touch on is color cast. Aside from what you are wearing, like the red sweater, it can also be the room that you're in. So if you have like an accent wall that's throwing green or red or whatever color light into your scene. Or if you have a wooden ceiling like me in the kitchen area that tends to throw some weird colors into my scene. Either find a way to block it out, or remove those items from your shooting scene so that your image can be nice and clean. 5. Equivalent Exposure: Let's talk about equivalent exposure. When I first learned about equivalent exposure, it blew my mind. It's basically this idea that you can get the same exposure in an image, the same kind of brightness with many different setting combinations. This relationship between aperture and shutter speed work together. And turning one down and turning another up, it can affect the way that the image looks. For example, here are three images that are visually similar, all with different settings. And you can see that some have more depth of field, some have less. They're a little bit different. But you can basically fine tune your image using different settings and get a similar result. There's not one right answer for getting your exposure tuned in, and there can be a lot of great ways to get an effective image. One thing to keep in mind when you are working on your exposure is your histogram. So your camera will show you a histogram preview. That's basically this mountain range. It's the way your photo looks in the form of data, I think. And there's one side where it's mostly the light colors and one side where there's the dark colors or your whites and you're blacks. Basically, wherever your histogram sits is going to give you an idea for what your photo might look like. In the end, it might be a little frustrating or confusing to try and look at your histogram, but one great way to use it is to make sure that you're not blowing out your highlights or clipping your shadows, essentially. So when I'm looking at a histogram, I like to make sure that it's about in the middle. Obviously, every scenario is going to be different. The histogram for this particular scene looks like this. I would normally aim for something in the middle, but if we were to tune it to the middle, it would blow out my skin because there's a lot of contrast in the scene. Most of the scene here is dark and so most of my data is sitting in the darker side of the. Histograms are super important to understand, you don't have to know exactly how it works, but it's a great way to kind of double check to make sure that what you're seeing is what you're going to get. There isn't truly a lot of hard and fast rules with a histogram. Knowing what it looks like when your whites are blown out, when this mountain basically runs into the edge of your histogram, that's a good indicator for something in your image is completely gone, there's no information, there's no pixels. If you were to print it out, it would be blank paper in that spot. That's not necessarily a bad thing, in my opinion. If you are photographing a really bright image and there are some highlights on glass that would be completely blown out, Doing the work to bring those back to preserve them might make your image overall a little bit too dark for your liking anyway. And so I think it's okay to have a few little blown out highlighted spots. But just understanding what the histogram is showing you and how it applies to your work is important. 6. Artificial Light: Let's talk about artificial light. The artificial light that I'm using to light up my scene is a single source. It is a aperture, 120 D continuous light with a light dome diffuser on it to help break up the light and make it look very flattering. And even this type of light is what I use when I am working in the studio after dark. I'm taking pictures and I need the light. I'm going to use this. It's nice because I get a live preview of what the light's going to look like because it doesn't flash or anything. I can see what I have. I can bring it closer, I can take off the diffuser and work with different accessories to get it to do what I want. But it's primarily for recording video. And so I love that I can do dual purpose, but if you're just doing photography, this may be overkill. This is a higher end solution. You can use a speed light, you can use a strobe. There's a lot of different solutions for this type of light. But a strobe is going to basically pop a flash. It's going to give you a very quick, very bright source of light, which is a great way to freeze action. You'll notice that your images are a bit sharper because you're not relying on your camera shutter speed to capture motion. You're relying on this like hot burst of light in your scene. The last kind of light that I wanted to talk about is more of a DIY solution. You may have a lamp around your house like a reading light. I've got these lights that clip onto the edge of a table and they produce a very soft, continuous light. They're very affordable. You can put together your own DIY, artificial light set up without spending hundreds of dollars on a system. And so really it just depends on your unique scenario. But I went ahead and put together a list of gear recommendations, either lights that I've used personally or systems that I've heard other photographers use. Ideally, there's something in there for you in your price range that helps you out. Especially if you are not able to use the windows in your space or shoot at a time of day when natural lighting is effective for you. 7. Camera Bodies: Let's talk about camera bodies. Before we dive into specific features, let's cover DSLR versus miles. I personally use both. This is my DSLR here. Both of these cameras are mirrorless, but DSLRs are actually becoming less and less common. Sony is no longer selling their own DSLRs. They're completely mirrorless. Now, this graph shows how many new DSLRs have been released versus mirrorless in the past couple years. It shows a pretty clear trend as far as one versus the other. Mirrorless cameras are typically smaller because they don't need a mirror and a prism inside to direct the light to the viewfinder. Instead, they use an electronic viewfinder, which is just a tiny little screen displaying what the sensor is seeing. An added benefit to this is what you see is what you get. If you're new to photography, it might be easier to start with a mirror list. My husband just started getting into photography within the last year, and he said that learning on a mirror list is way easier than trying to learn on a DSLR because he can look down and know if his photo is going to be overexposed or underexposed because the viewfinder shows live what the picture is going to happen. He definitely prefers mirror lists and he's kind of gotten me into the mirror list mode as well. They are much smaller, more compact. They're very powerful, very impressive machines. If I were buying a brand new camera today, I would certainly consider a mirrorless body. That being said, my DSLR, my Nikon B 750 is from 2014, and I still absolutely love it. If I'm going to take a picture more often than not, I'm going to grab this camera. I'm very comfortable with it. I love the way that it feels in my hands. I've been using it for a lot of years and so it's easier for me to just grab my Nikon and start taking pictures. Is having more megapixels better? Honestly, it depends. The biggest question is, where will your photos end up? For me, the majority of my work ends up on Instagram, on the Internet, on Youtube, not really printed in galleries. And so for me, having a lot of megapixels isn't really a big selling factor. My husband, however, loves photographing birds and having a lot of megapixels means that he can crop in his photo and still get very high quality images for him. He cares a lot about it for me, I don't really, I think if you are in the world of printing, maybe making your own cookbook or giant fill boards, that's definitely something to consider. But again, that's a personal preference. Another quick note to keep in mind is more megapixels generally means larger file size. I hate having to move files from my computer to my long term storage to have enough space to edit. And so for me, shooting with the camera with less megapixels means I can have more photos on my 500 gigabyte hard drive before it fills up. Let's talk about full frame versus crop sensors. Full frame sensors are typically higher resolution. They have better low light performance and a wider maximum field of view. They're physically larger than a crop sensor. They're also more expensive. This camera has a full frame sensor, but it's got a setting I can turn on that makes it behave like a crop sensor. This is great because then I can show you the difference between a full frame and a crop using the same lens. In these images, you can see that the crop sensor makes an image feel more zoomed in. So in order to get the same framing with a crop sensor, I had to zoom the lens out. Ultimately, if money is no object, I recommend getting a full frame sensor. But if you already have a camera with a crop sensor or you need to save the money, it's important to know what that means with your final image. So when I say I took this picture with a 35 millimeter lens, if you also use a 35 millimeter lens, you're going to get a slightly different look to your image. Another thing to think about is how do you want to see your work while you're shooting? Most modern cameras have a big screen on the back of viewfinder live view. You can see what photos you're composing using the screen. Some of them have a screen that tips out. So for example, my Nikon has a tip out screen. It's just a little 90 degree articulating screen. That's as far as it goes. So if I'm shooting a flat lay, I can see my flat lay while my camera is on a tripod or I can hold it up and take a picture. I love having a screen that articulates one of my Sony's has a screen that articulates all the way out and flipped so I can actually see my face while I'm recording, which is super helpful for a video. It's also nice because if I've got the camera on an overhead tripod, I can turn the screen so that I can comfortably view it if the camera is physically higher than I am in my session. If you don't have an articulating screen or you're more comfortable using a laptop for tethering, I'm actually tethering right now. I'm going to be very gentle so I don't mess anything up. But you can see right now I have my Macbook and I've got both of my cameras, camera and camera B plugged into it so that I can see myself on my screen while I'm recording to make sure that I am in frame. So if you are filming something, obviously that's awesome. But this is super helpful for when you are taking pictures as well. Because you can see it big. You can see whether it's in focus the way that you want it to. You can see it from across the room. You can be in the shot and know that you're in the shot in focus. When you're tethering, I'm currently tethering using my lightning to USB cable that came with the cameras. But a lot of cameras also have, at a very minimum, an HDMI out, which you could plug into a monitor and be able to see your images that way. There's a few different tethering programs, I'm only familiar with the one that I'm using. It's definitely worth a Google search for your specific camera type if this is something that you are interested in. The next thing I want to talk about is video functionality. Obviously for me that's really important because a lot of what I do is teaching. I'm making videos. I've also had a lot more interest in video content the past couple of years. From brands that I've been working with, I get more requests like, oh, hey, you do photos. Can you also make a real, can you also do a Youtube video? And so I'm noticing that brands are wanting more of this video content, especially with how explosive Tiktok has been and Instagram reels in general. And so being able to offer video content if that's something that interests you, is certainly a plus to have. So making sure that when you're shopping for a camera it has four K video, that's definitely something that you want to keep in mind. You might want to consider how many card slots and what type of memory card your camera takes. For example, mine. My Nikon has two SD card slots and I actually use them so like it fills up the first one and when the first one's fold, then it fills up the second one. You can set your camera so that it does them in tandem so there are copies of each other, which is great if you're photographing a wedding and you want to make sure if one of your cards fails, you still have all the pictures of the wedding. I've never used my camera in that way. I always just, you know, load up the first card and then the second card. All of my cameras use SD cards. I used to have the Nikon Z six mirror list camera. I got it because I already was shooting Nikon. I could use the same lenses with an adapter, but the card that came with that camera was an XQ D card. I like that all my cameras use SD cards. I like that. It means I can plug it right into my computer. I don't need a special reader for it. It's not going to make or break my decision. Obviously, I had a Nikon Mirror list with a different kind of card. It wasn't that annoying to have to use a card reader, but if it's something where you're trying to decide between two, and that's the thing that tips the scales. There you go next, let's talk lens mount. Every camera body that you get is going to be compatible with a certain line of lenses. So the Sony mirror less bodies are going to take the Sony mirror less lenses. And they're also going to take any third party lens that is meant for the Sony mount. This Nikon camera takes Nikon DSLR lenses or any third party lens with the Nikon mount. At the end of the day, you are buying into an ecosystem. There are adapters you can buy that, you can use other brand lenses on your camera with the adapter. But in my experience, every time I've used an adapter, it hasn't been a very seamless experience. They tend to be a little noisier, They're just not very pleasant to use. And so if you can, I would avoid them and pretty much just try and get by with the lenses available for the line of camera that you have. When I am researching gear, a lot of times I have my husband help me. But there are a few Youtube creators out there that we really, really value in terms of making camera and lens comparisons. So I just wanted to give a shout out to those really quick. The first one is Gerald Undone. He makes videos on Youtube. His videos are very high production and they're short. And to the point, he has packed them with a ton of information that I find super helpful. And when I'm trying to decide between two lenses, he's pretty much the first person I go to. Jason Vong on Youtube also has a lot of really helpful videos and comparisons. You can see photos that he's taken with the equipment so you can get a feel for what you might like. And then lastly, I can't get this far without shouting out Ken Rockwell. Ken Rockwell has been putting out guides online for camera bodies and lenses for as long as I can remember. Every single camera upgrade I've made, I've referenced Ken Rockwell's website and made sure that I knew exactly what I was getting. There is so many content creators out there making review videos on Youtube. You can search any two lenses and there's probably a comparison video for them where somebody goes in depth. You can help you make the best decision for you renting and buying gear. I am a huge proponent of supporting local companies. The nice thing about being able to go into your local photography shop is that there is always someone there who is so knowledgeable about cameras and lenses. You have the opportunity to hold the bodies and lenses in your hands. Oftentimes, they'll put lenses on the camera for you. You can look through it, you can hear the shutter sound. You can navigate the menu. You can really get a feel for if this is the camera you want. There are also a lot of camera shops that rent equipment. So if you are trying to decide if this lens is going to be good for you, you can oftentimes rent the lens, try it out for the weekend, and a lot of times the camera shop will apply your rental toward the purchase of the gear if you end up loving it and you want to buy it so it doesn't end up being an extra expense, it's just part of the purchase. At the end of the day, the camera that you enjoy shooting with is the one you're going to actually use. And so it's really important to pick a camera or find a camera that you are excited to take pictures from. One that feels good in your hands, one that you feel confident using, that you're excited to master. And that's the camera that's going to get you the furthest. 8. Lenses: Let's talk about lenses. The first thing we're going to dive into is focal length. This basically just describes how much the particular lens length is going to capture in the scene. So a smaller number, like 18 millimeters or even 10 millimeters, that's going to be your super, super wide. And then all the way down to the other end where you've got 200400600. Those are going to be super telephoto pictures of mountain lions way, way, way out there. So for food and product photography, we want to be somewhere in the middle. I tend to shoot around 355075. Sometimes I'll go up to like one 20. It really just depends on what I am shooting. So thinking about that 35, 85 zone, that's probably where you're going to spend the most time. Focal link also affects compression, and this one is important because we are going to be shooting a small scene most of the time doing product and food photography. And the compression is something that you actually can change in your photo. So if you are shooting with a wider angle lens, like an 18 millimeter and you're trying to shoot a small scene, you're going to see a lot more than you want to see. You'll see all the edges of the backdrops. You're object is going to be really, really up close to your camera. And the background is going to be super far away from the subject. And it's going to feel like the distance between your subject and the background is greater. Whereas if you throw an 85 millimeter lens or like a one 20 millimeter lens, it's going to pull the backdrop a lot closer to the subject. It's going to compress the scene in a way that makes it feel like the subject is closer to the background. So the way that I like to use it is if I'm working on a smaller kind of backdrop, If I step back and use a longer lens, I can bring my backdrop effectively, closer or larger to my camera in relation to my subject. It's kind of like magic, but this is relevant if you find that you are constantly running into the problem, not having big enough backdrops or feeling like you're getting too much distortion. Try a longer focal length lens and stand on the other side of the kitchen when you're taking the picture and see if that helps. There are several different types of lenses. A kit lens is a type of zoom lens. Typically, that's the lens that's going to come with your camera when you buy a camera bundle, you know. And it comes with the lens. A kit lens is a great walk around lens. It's a great starter lens. It often takes amazing pictures. That's why they put it in the set with the cameras. They want you to be successful. They're going to give you a lens that's going to offer you a nice range of focal lengths. Typically, a kit lens is like 18 to 55, or 24, 70, and so that's a great place to start. Kit lenses tend to be more affordable, so oftentimes they can't go as wide open as some other lenses, so maybe the most wide open aperture you can have on your kit lens is like an F four. Or if it's a zoom, sometimes at the widest angle it can go down to like 3.5 But you're not going to see those 1.8 or F two type apertures on this style lens. You're typically not going to see it on a nicer higher end zoom lens either. That's just the nature of zoom type lenses with a dedicated zoom lens. That's like what I have for my Nicon. This is the Nicon 24 to one 20. At its widest I've got 24 which is wider than I typically like to shoot, and then at its most telephoto it's one 20. And so this is great for product photography. I bought it because one of my clients prefers a lot of their images to be in focus, so I'm not really getting to play with a lot of background blur and bouquet. And so for me, it's way easier to not even have the temptation and just use this lens. It's also nice when you are setting up a scene, you don't have to move around as much with a zoom lens. Because your lens does the moving. It's much easier to set up a variety of different compositions. So I can, I can be shooting at the 35 side, I can be shooting at the 50. I can shoot all the way at 1:20 And so I can get a lot of different looks with one lens. It's very flexible. It just comes at the cost of not being able to go as wide open, which is what brings me to our prime lenses. I think it's wonderful to have a dedicated prime. Prime lenses are typically going to offer you those big wide apertures. They're going to be better in lower light situations. So, if you're shooting indoors and you find that you are constantly cranking your ISO to get your photos bright enough, consider putting a prime lens on there and seeing if that helps you get that much more light through your lens. The obvious downside to a prime lens is it doesn't zoom. So you're going to have to move around a lot more. You're limited to the fixed focal length that the lens has. And so you're more limited on your compositions and being able to utilize different focal lengths because you only have the fixed focal length that it's at. So that leads us into our specialty style lenses. The first one I want to talk about is macro. I have a macro lens, it's the nicon one oh five. It is fixed at one oh five. So it is technically a prime lens. But it's a macro lens because it allows me to get really close to my subject and make it larger than life, essentially. So it has a minimum focal distance that is very, very short. A lot of times when you're taking pictures and you get too close to your scene, your camera can't focus when it's that close and you need to back up. That's that minimum focal distance at play. And with a macro lens, I mean, I can be like very, very close to my subject with its still being able to focus. The two other specialty type lenses I want to talk about our wide angle and telephoto. A wide angle is going to be, you know, your 18 millimeter, 24 millimeter, ten. It's going to show you a large part of your scene. It's less common in food and product photography in my experience just because I'm working on a fixed size background and if my lens is showing you everything, you're going to see that it's a disaster around me. That's not what I want. The telephoto lenses, this is what you would use for photographing wildlife birds up in a tree far away. Obviously also not great for product and food because you'd have to be clear across the house to get a picture of your scene, but they take really, really good bird pictures. So another fun splurge, if that's something that you are also into as a hobby, My recommendation for the best lens for product and food photography, I would get a zoom lens, a dedicated zoom lens that nice walk around range anywhere 24-85 something that gives you flexibility in the studio. And a fun prime lens that's going to offer you those wide apertures so you can get that beautiful, creamy background blur and separation in your work. A fun splurge would be a macro lens. I personally love macro photography, so that is something that I would be super excited about. 9. Camera Settings: Let's talk about camera settings. All right, we got to talk about Raw versus Jpeg. Most cameras will let you choose one or the other, or it will shoot both at the same time. So a raw file with a Jpeg copy, what it comes down to for me is I'm always going to edit my photos, I'm always going to want a raw, and I'm rarely ever going to want a Jpeg. So I will always set my camera to raw and I highly recommend you do the same, especially for this course, because we're going to be diving into a lot of editing techniques and you're going to find a lot more flexibility when you're editing a raw image over a J peg. It does take up more space on your memory card and it can only be read by certain programs. But it is worth the switch, I promise. Auto focus versus manual focus. I set my camera to auto focus all the time. I'm never hand pulling or manually focusing unless I'm in the picture. And I set my manual focus to be the chair so that it doesn't focus on anything else or I'm doing a coffee pour. I will set the manual focus to the center of the glass so that it's in focus. And I don't have to think about doing that while I'm also hitting the shutter. But like that is only if I'm in the picture. The rest of the time I'm going to be setting my camera to audit focus. And that's not to say that I'm letting my camera do all of the auto focusing. I'm picking a certain focus mode for my camera. So I'm basically saying, hey, I want you to focus, but I'm going to choose where you're going to focus. And so with my Nikon, I typically set it to small area focus. And I move my little focus point around so that it's focusing right on where I want it to focus on. And then with my Sony lenses, depending on what I'm shooting, maybe I have a wide area focus or a center fixed spot. It just depends on the situation. So I'd recommend being familiar with your different focus modes and setting it to the one that feels most appropriate to you in regards to your camera's shooting display. You can turn on a grid. I recommend a grid, it helps with composition and it's just nice to be able to know if my horizon is straight. You can also activate, oftentimes your cameras on screen level. If you're using live view, it'll tell you if your camera is level. My Sony's have an option to turn on like a zebra display or peaking display. This basically turns on this like zigzag that shows up when my scene is either way too bright, like overexposed, or it shows what part of the photo is in focus. So if something is moving, I can tell if it's like tracking and keeping it in focus, that's fun to have on as like a little fail safe or kind of an assistant in regards to white balance. I'm going to be honest with you, I always shoot on auto white balance. I've been taking pictures for long enough that I am super comfortable adjusting my white balance in the editing portion of my workflow. But if you are not getting the color of image that you like with the auto white balance settings, then I recommend toggling through them and seeing if there's a better setting for your scene. A lot of them are really intuitive. It'll say like cloudy day or daylight. Sometimes it's in Kelvin and so you know, 5,000 Kelvin, that's going to be closest to daylight. And you can adjust it manually till you can look at your view finder and look at the scene and know if they feel quite right. The last thing I wanted to talk about is drive mode with my Nikon. I've got a little dial that lets me adjust the drive mode. So this is deciding whether it's going to take one picture or it's going to continuously shoot. It's also where you would set up interval shooting, like if you were doing self timer mode and it's going to take a series of photos one after the other. So you're basically deciding how many photos at what interval my husband likes to take pictures of birds and he has it set to continuous because a lot can happen in a few seconds when you're photographing birds, and he doesn't want to miss it. But for me, photographing a pile of doughnuts, they're not really going anywhere. So I don't really need to have it on continuous. The other thing too, to keep in mind is when you're doing product in food, you want to only take as many pictures as you need. You don't want to overshoot your scene because you're going to have to look at those pictures later. And if you've got 30 pictures of the exact same set up, it's going to be really overwhelming. So I recommend get the picture. Make sure take an extra if you really feel like it, but move on to the next shot and you're going to have a lot less headache in post when you get there. 10. Accessories: Let's talk about accessories. Tripod is the obvious first one that comes to mind. I have two different types of tripods, one that is just an everyday tripod. These are the photo tripods. They're lightweight, they're easy to use. I'm very comfortable using them, so they're always going to be the one that I grab. I also have a specialty tripod for overhead photos. This is the Vanguard Alta two. It has an overhead mount so that I can do flat lace hands free. We also use it a lot for filming top down. I do wish mine was a little bit taller because we kind of have to extend it all the way out to get the height that we want. But using flexible lenses or a shorter table would also do the job there. Tripod mounts are another thing to keep in mind when you are shopping for a tripod. If you are planning on using multiple tripods or you have multiple cameras, keeping in mind the mount on the tripod and if it's going to be compatible with everything in a perfect world, I could leave the tripod mounts on my cameras and they would hook up to any of my tripods. But there is a little bit of a swapping game that has to happen when we swap the mounts for the photo tripods versus the Vanguard tripod and the gimble. It's a whole thing, but just a little thing to keep in mind. There's also, so this kind of tripod mount screws into the bottom of the camera. Some of them require a key or an allen wrench to tighten, and they're more annoying to use, I think, than the ones that have a little D ring that you can grab onto with your fingers and tighten it. I wouldn't say that a tripod mount is the thing that's going to make or break your decision on a tripod, but it is something to consider if you're trying to choose between two. Both of my tripods have the ball head mount so I can rotate it all the way around as needed. I switch between doing horizontal and vertical shots, so having that accessible to me is a must battery grip. This is a little bit of a specialty item. It basically gives your camera extra battery life, so it clips into the bottom, into the battery chamber. It also makes your camera larger, so if you have larger hands and you find that your pinky is always slipping off the bottom of the camera body, having the battery grip on there is super nice. It's also great because it gives you a second shut. So instead of having to hold your camera like this, you can move your hands to the side and then use the trigger that way. So you're doing vertical shots without doing this arm stretch thing. I personally do not use grips on my cameras. I don't shoot for long enough to justify the need for extra battery life. I will say though, my husband likes having the grip on the camera when he's shooting with a really long heavy lens because it gives you more to hold onto, to balance it. Straps and bags. How are you planning on carrying your camera? I personally would not use a camera without a strap on it. Whether a neck strap or a wrist strap, it just makes me nervous. We do take the straps off when we put our cameras on tripods or on a gimbal. So it's nice to have a system where it's easy to detach the straps. So this strap company makes wrist straps and neck straps that all connect to each other. So we just have to attach the little attachment piece to the camera and that's what stays on there and then we can swap between straps. I also have a hand made wrist strap. Is a leather wrist strap that a friend made for me. I used to just use the next strap that came with the camera, and then just like wrap it around my wrist a bunch of times. And that totally works too. That's when I started to realize maybe a wrist strap was better for me than a next strap. Either way, there's tons of options out there and you can find one that suits your personal taste. We have two main camera bags that we use, one that is cute and fits under the seat in front of you on an airplane, and the other is very durable and nice to have for traveling. It goes in an overhead compartment really well and it fits all the lenses that we could need if we are traveling. I don't travel a ton for the kind of work that I do, but I probably travel two to three times a year. So having a bag that I know will protect my gear and keep everything tidy for me is a must. If you plan on doing those super shooting from home and you don't intend on traveling, a bag may be something that you want to wait to purchase until you know you need it. A fun alternative is those neoprene sleeves or a padded wrap that just wraps around your entire camera and lens. Then you can slip it into a bag you already have and take it on the go. So there's a lot of storage solutions from multiple hard drives to the cloud and so the one that I use is called a network attached storage or a mass. It is a physical object in my house that has hard drives in it that's connected over my network, my home network. So I can just drag and drop folders from light room to the Nas and it will just transfer my files over there. This is nice to have because I like having access to all my photos, but I don't want them to jam up my computer. And so my computer is a 500 gigabyte Mac. And so it fills up really quickly, especially if I'm taking pictures with the Sonys, which are bigger files. So I need to dump photos over to the as frequently when I am done with a session. And so having that is really great. I'm lucky that Taylor helped set it up for me, so I have no idea how to do that, but he is great at it. I also know there's probably tutorials all over Youtube for a more DIY approach or you can pay for cloud storage, there's a lot of options, memory cards, so all three of my cameras take SD cards, which is super nice because I don't have to have any proprietary. The SD card will fit into the card reader that we have for the laptop or right into the back of my imac. When you were buying SD cards, it's important to look for one that has a high right speed and a high read speed. For me, I tend to look for something that says class ten. Typically, these cards are going to be a little bit more expensive because they are better. So when you are considering a high right speed, that's how fast the photos can be written to the card. So if you're going to be shooting a lot of continuous like photos one after another, you're trying to capture a splash or you're working with a subject that moves around a lot. Your camera is going to be able to take x number of photos in a row before it starts to slow down. And so one thing that can slow your camera down, aside from its own internal memory, is the card that you put in, if you put in a really cheap SD card, it's not going to be able to write your photos to it as quickly. So it will slow down and you won't be able to get as many photos, one right after the other. And then on the other side of things, having a fast read speed, that's how fast your photos will transfer from the card to your computer. And so if you have a really slow read speed, it's going to take a long time to transfer a couple hundred photos, whereas a faster read speed, it's going to go quicker. I don't typically use any card smaller than 64 gig. I have a few 32 gig cards laying around, but they obviously don't hold as many photos and I have to swap them out more often. Lastly, filters for your lenses. They're important to have. I have a UV filter at the very minimum on every single one of my lenses just to protect the glass. The investment that you make, you want to make sure that you are putting a little extra layer between, especially right when you first get it, because that's when it's going to be nice and clean and it's just going to protect your equipment. 11. My Setup: What is my set up? That is the question I get all the time. So I figured I would just let you know what I have and what I like. Using my main camera body is still my Nikon D 750. My DSLR. It was released in 2014, so it is pretty outdated, but it still does everything I needed to do. I have a lot of experience using it, I'm super comfortable with it, and I don't really feel like I'm outgrowing it yet. And so it still works great for me and I love using it. I love the photos that I get from it. If you were to buy a camera today, I probably wouldn't recommend one that old. I would recommend a newer model because they're going to be better and faster. All that to say that if the camera that you already use is still serving you really well and you love it, then don't upgrade if you don't have to. My favorite lens for my Nikon is the sigma art 3,051.4 This lens, it's S prime lens, it's amazing. It lets me go way, way, way wide open, so I get that ultra creamy blur. It's very fun to use. 35 millimeter is probably my favorite focal length, and that lens is amazing. A lot of the product work I do though means that I need a little bit more flexibility. And so I actually use my Nikon 24 to one 20 zoom. Hit lens a lot. It lets me be really flexible when I'm working. As long as I don't need extra light like the sigma would give me, I would just use that. It's really, really flexible. It's a little less fun to use, but it's very practical. And then the last lens that I wanted to touch on is my Nikon one oh five. It's a macro lens, it's another prime. I've had this one since I got started. It was a gift. So I've had it for about ten years. I don't know that I ever would have splurged for it at the time, but I loved having it because it lets me do those fun, artsy macro style photos. Getting to use that lens is always a joy. I have two Sony mirrorless cameras. I have the Sony seven S three and the Sony seven R three. The S three we got primarily for filming. It does beautiful four K video and it has less megapixels. It's really nice to use. I'm more comfortable, I think using that camera, the screen flips out and rotates all the way around, which is really nice when I am trying to work with a tripod hands free, I can pretty much rotate the screen and see anything I'm working on as I go. It also has a really responsive touch screen, which is enjoyable for me to use. And it just, it's snappy and fun obviously. The only drawback is that sometimes if I need to crop in, the photos are just a lot smaller, which is where the R three comes in. The R three has a ton of mega pixels and it produces really, really beautiful quality photos. I absolutely love working with it. The screen doesn't tilt out all the way around, which is kind of a bummer, but I feel like it makes up for it in image quality, so I won't be too mad about it. Taylor also likes using that one for bird photos because you can zoom in really, really far and the photo still looks really, really great. My favorite lens for these two would be the Sony 35 millimeter, 1.8 35. I love 35. I will say I have my eye on a macro lens for my Sony set up. And I also want to get a better kit lens. The kit lens that is on the R three right now is just a 24, 70 entry level lens. It can only go to F five. We, it's set up right now. If we had something more dedicated, it would be able to go wider open. My background would be a little blurrier. It would just be a little nicer. Those are two lenses that I would be considering picking up. I edit on an Imac computer. I also have a Macbook Pro, which is great for this kind of set up. I also have an ipad Pro which has my notes on it. I also do a lot of my shoot planning on my ipad. The other piece of gear people ask about is my studio light set up. So I have a C stand, it's a black C stand. It gets way tall, way taller than I'll ever need. It has an aperture one 20, D two with a light dome two on it. I always have the diffusion panel up and that's what I've been filming with this whole time. I really like my continuous light set up. It means that I can take pictures any time of day and I can see what the light looks like on my scene. While I'm working, I don't have to wait for the flash to go off and see what it looked like when the flash was going off. I don't know that I would have splurged on this particular piece if I weren't also using it for video. But it's what I use and I absolutely love it. 12. Composition: Let's talk about composition. Composition helps make an image more aesthetically pleasing. It gives your eyes something to look at, and it is also a great place to tell a story. The three main composition angles that are a great starting point are flat lay, straight on, and 45 degrees. With a flat lay, that's anything that is from above overhead shot. That's going to be your top down classic flat lay. You will want to keep in mind your focal length. I try to make sure that I'm not shooting with too wide of an angle lens because you can get some distortion around the edges. The things in the bottom of the image sometimes can start to look upside down. And so I try to shoot at 35 or more just so that it feels nice and flat. You also want to make sure that the glass on your lens is parallel to your scene. And if you can't get it exactly parallel, it's better to be slightly like this. A little bit more from a 45 degree then like a backwards 45 degree because that will make your scene look upside down. It's going to cause a lot of tension and feel awkward for a straight on shot. This is the image at eye level, you can get a slightly stronger composition by keeping your horizon perfectly straight. This helps the photo not feel crooked. It's also great to keep your objects in the photo, you know, perpendicular to the crop edge, just so that they don't feel like they're tipping over. Another thing to help with that is if you are using a wide angle lens, keeping your objects closer to the center, they'll have less distortion happening. And then for a 45 degree photo, I would say just keep in mind your focus. The focal plane, the section of the photo that's going to be in focus is at an angle. And being strategic about how you place your objects if certain things need to be in focus, like logos, is something to keep in mind. For that, I would say the straight horizon is not a huge deal for a 45 degree shot because you might not be shooting directly on the backdrop. You'll be shooting at an angle. And so it's a little more flexible. And obviously with these three angles is 1 million angles to shoot a photo from. This is just the place where I like to start. I like to make sure I'm getting an angle of the scene in each of these perspectives. 13. Compositional "Rules": Let's talk about the composition rules. You've probably heard these classic photography terms. Rule of thirds, leading lines, repetition. We're going to talk about those three. So jumping into the first one, the rule of thirds, this is where you have the tick takt grid on your shot and you try to keep the important things in the crosshairs. I had a professor in college that liked to call this the suggestion of thirds. And I like that all of these are suggestions. It's great to know the rule and it's also great to use your own judgment and break the rule if it makes sense. The Rule of Thirds does give you a great opportunity to practice some asymmetrical balance. Putting your object on a third line instead of dead center is going to give you possibly a more dynamic look. Overall, I like to turn on the roll of third grid on my camera. That way I can line up my horizon. The bottom third is a great place to put your horizon and keep all your information above that feels really natural to the eye. So that is a great starting point. Jumping into leading lines, these are any lines or objects in the frame that are going to lead your eyes. This might be a piece of ribbon swirled around. It might be a spoon pointing toward a dish. It might be the natural perspective lines if you're shooting on an angle. The idea here is that you want your lines to keep the viewer's eye in the image, either going around and really taking the whole shot in or leading the eye directly to the subject. Using lines is a great way to make your picture better. Repetition, that's where you have the same item over and over, or the same shape repeated throughout your image. So for example, you could have a face cream, and instead of having just one in the shot, you could stack a few on top of each other. And that's going to make it seem larger in the photo. It's also going to convey this feeling of family. There's many. There's enough for everyone. So as far as shapes go, if you're setting up like a table scape, and you have circular plates with circular chargers underneath them, with circular coasters and circular wine glasses, there's going to be a lot of circles in the frame and they're all going to go together and feel like they're contributing to a whole. If you had square plates with circle cups, with rectangular trays and like triang like, if you had too many shapes going on, it might feel a little bit chaotic in the scene. So repeating shapes or repeating objects, that is a way to help strengthen your shot. Another thing I like to think about is like if I take a bite of a doughnut and set it down, it's not gonna produce just one crumb. It's going to produce a little trail of crumbs. I'm gonna repeat the crumbs and it's gonna feel like, oh, crumbs, I know what that is. You know, who wants just one doughnut? You got to have many doughnuts. Thats. That's it for repetition. 14. Visual Weight & Layering: Let's talk about visual weight and layering. This is how the objects in the frame take up space. If you think about negative space in an image that's like a blank spot, the visual weight of that is quite low. That's going to be very light, and you're going to want to balance it with a lot of heavy objects in the other parts of the frame so that the image altogether feels balanced. Let me show you some examples. I like to go for an image that feels bottom heavy. I think that that's a naturally weighted image. It sort of mimics nature in that we've got lots of trees and hills down here, and then we've got a big, open blue sky up above. There might be one tree that's tall or a telephone pole, but for the most part, it generally bottom heavy. You can also break this rule. I don't do it very often, but here's an example of that Feels like it is vines coming down. It's the subject in the center and that negative space takes up the bottom parts of a photo. I wouldn't say that this photo feels upside down or wrong or bad. I actually love how this turned out, but this is kind of an exception to the rule. Layering can be stacking objects up to give it like a visual hierarchy. I like to think about like a gold medalist. You know, you've got like gold and then you've got silver, and then you've got copper, bronze, bronze, bronze. The gold is higher up. That's what you're going to look at first. And so if you're trying to emphasize something in your scene, boosting it up, the coaster effect. So putting a drink on a coaster or putting an item up a little bit higher so that it feels more prominent and special in a frame. So that's a way to kind of layer your scene. Thinking about a flat lay or like a 45 degree angle shot, I like to use layering when it comes to my props in the scene. So for example, this is a shot of pumpkin bread that I took, and the pumpkin bread is this beautiful orange color. And my cutting board was bamboo, so it was also kind of a warm color. And I wanted to use that bamboo cutting board because it had the natural sort of feel. This is vegan, pumpkin bread. So I wanted to go natural rather than, you know, a dark slate board. So in order to use both, I had to separate it using a piece of white parchment paper or tracing paper as it is in the shot. But what this did is it gave a visual separation between the two objects, which tend to highlight the one. Right? If I were to remove the tracing paper, this loaf of bread on top of the cutting board, that would visually be one blob in the photo. And so having that little layer in there adds enough visual separation. So when you're layering in your shot, think dark, light, dark or textured, Smooth, textured. I try not to put two textured things right on top of each other. If the texture is really loud or visually heavy, I will like to separate it with something smooth. This is not a hard and fast rule. It's just something to think about. If you look at your scene and you're like something feels off, think about the layers. Is there enough layers? Are there too many layers? Are your layers not contrasted enough or are they too contrasted? So doing the little bit of troubleshooting there tends to help. 15. Tangents, Crop, and Framing: Let's talk about tangents, crop and framing. This is the knitted, gritty stuff. I am a huge stickler about tangents. A tangent is when items in a frame touch or cross, creating a point of interest. This is drawing your eye into the spot. This is great if you want to draw the eye in, but a lot of tangents are accidental. This is where you have a round object in a scene, and it's right up against the crop edge, and they're either almost touching or they're touching. And it creates a spot that your eyes just naturally are drawn to. It can really draw your eye away from the point of the shot. And so we want to reduce these tangents as much as possible. One classic tangent to look out for is any line that goes directly out the corner of your crop. This is just a visual speedway for the viewer's eye to just go right off of your image. Anywhere else you want to keep your viewer's eye on your shot as long as possible. Incorporating nice even movement that really helps someone take it all in rather than just right off. I also consider if my objects are touching each other. So I like to give things breathing space, just a little bit of room. I don't want things to just barely touch because that's going to create a little bit of tension that I don't want. If I do take a picture and the line goes directly at the corner, that's easy to fix with cropping. Tangents also apply to a portrait. It's this idea that you don't want to chop someone at their elbow or at their knee, or right at their neck. It's just, it feels weird. It's better to chop right between, you know, chop here so that you have part of a shoulder but not at the elbow. Don't cut right at the finger. If you happen to put your hand in the shot, you don't cut right at the wrist. Cut. A little bit further down, how we apply this to product and food. If you're photographing a mug and the mug needs to be prominent in the shot, don't cut the mug handle off. You want to be really intentional with what is getting trimmed on the edges of your shot. Mind the crop or plan for the crop. So when I'm shooting, I know where the photos are going to end up potentially. So I'm planning for that if they're going to be on Instagram, I'm planning for a tall four x five crop. If it's a Youtube cover photo, I'm planning for a wide. If I know it's going to be a banner, I make sure that the important stuff is happening in that area and then I'm getting a photo that will cover it. So that when I go to edit later and I'm cropping the image, it will actually work for its intended destination. In my experience, brands tend to want all angles. They want a vertical and a horizontal of every set up so that they have flexibility across a wide variety of places. The photo could end up on the Internet or in the baking aisle, on the little ad or wherever these photos end up. So giving them lots of options to work with has always been better than, you know, only delivering a few and having them be like, do you have a wide version of this? And you either have to reset it up or you have to try and be funny when you go into cropping, create some backgrounds, which we'll talk about in the Photoshop section because it happens. But yeah, I also use cropping too. Tighten my compositions to make them stronger. If I've got a tangent line that leads directly out the corner, I'm going to crop it so it doesn't anymore. I'm going to either give things more space or less. So if I have an object that's touching the edge of the frame, a tangent, I just take out more space. I commit to cropping it. I chop it rather than barely get a little hair. Sometimes when I am shooting, I intend to crop later. So if I'm using a wider angle lens and I'm trying to get a flat lay, I will get outside of my shooting scene, I will get shots at the table of the cat, whatever's in the room on the edges. Because I know that when I fix the distortion in post, it's going to eat some of the edges of the frame. And I don't want to get too close to my set up. I need to make sure that I have space to work with around the edges for flexibility. So sometimes I take a shot knowing I'm going to crop it in later. Let's jump into framing. You may have heard frame within a frame. This is a common photography technique where you are like in an old brick building and you take a picture of the outside through the window. So it's like a frame within the frame. And it's this very cool visual effect. It's a little trickier to do in product and food in that sense. But I do think that framing in general, this idea that you are putting objects around the edges of the frame, help an image have a natural vignette or a stronger composition that way. So what I like to do is do some visual layering to add depth. So I will have a plant in the foreground close to me, and I'll kind of shoot through the plant. And often that'll get some like green, blurry foliage on the edges. And it'll help kind of create a natural frame in my shot and bring the eye into the subject in the center. This is also a great time for storytelling items. If you're doing a flat way and it's Christmas themed, it might be a great time to stick in like a pine bough or some type of green Christmas foliage on the edges. Just the corners to kind of suggest this wintery feeling. If you were doing a baking scene, throw in a tea towel or some type of cloth that, that'll just add a little bit of something to the edges so it's not just like a blank. It's giving you a glimpse of real life which feels like a lie because you put it there. But it gives you a little lifestyle glimpse and it feels like part of a greater scene. These are just a few of my favorite composition tips and tricks. Something to get your mind going. I definitely recommend as you are working through a scene, changing it up, and trying different things to see what feels right for your scene and for your own personal style. 16. Props: Let's talk about props and backdrops. There are an endless number of props that you can use for your photos. I just wanted to list off a few common ones that I like to have around to improve my composition and for flexibility. The first is trays and boards, charcuterie boards, cupboards, coasters, anything that's going to contain objects separately or help boost them up, add a visual layer. A lot of the work that I do, it's either coffee and a mug which would have a coaster, or it is a charcuteri board or, you know, there's tons of uses for this. Just adding a little bit, an extra layer in your shot, it's going to come in handy a ton, for a little bit of complexity in your scene. So I like to have slate boards, marble boards, wood cut boards, different textures for different feels. The wood feels warm, the marble feels cold and clean. The slate is going to give you that dark and moody look. I have three and different options. I like to have wood slices for rustic feel, so I wouldn't necessarily go out and collect a bunch of things. I try to collect my objects quite slowly so that I know, okay, I'm running into an issue where I need this type of object, that's what I'm going to go look for shop for. Or if I see something when I'm out and about and I'd be like, how would be perfect for this use what you already have. So if you have beautiful, plain, clean looking coffee mugs, those make great props in a photo. If you have plain white dishware, that's not distracting or has any patterns on it, that's going to work really well for food photography. If you are looking to purchase dishware for photography, think about things that are not going to be ultra shiny. You want something that's going to be matt so that you avoid lots of glare. Handmade ceramics are awesome for this because they give that unique handmade fields to an image. They can often look a little too distinct, though. If you're re using your props, you might be like, oh man, I use this little milk pour in every single shot and you can tell 'cause it's in all of them or whatever. So having a little bit of a variety or more neutral looking basics is a great option as far as flatware goes, I recommend brushed metal. I have very, very shiny silverware for forks, that doesn't really matter, but a spoon, every time I photograph one of my spoons, I see my little face and my little camera. And I'd be like, oh, hello, tab. Have fun editing me out later because there's my little face. Anyway, so having a brush set of silverware or kitchen tools that are not going to cause reflections. If you're shooting a shaker tin for like a cocktail, not something mirrored, your camera's going to see anything reflected back at you. So for glassware you want clean, high quality glassware, there's a lot of really cheap glassware that does not photograph well. It has like ripples in it. It doesn't look as good as a nice clean piece of glassware. If you're photographing cocktails or drinks or a table scape, it's important to use the right kind of glassware for the scene. Obviously, we're not going to be pouring wine into a tumbler, we're not going to be pouring beer into a wine glass. So having the right glass for the application is key. I have a whole selection of different cocktail glasses that I use in my home bar, but also for photos of drinks. I have a collection of really crazy mugs that I would never photograph because they're a little too much. And then I have a collection of very simple, clean, plain, ordinary, usual looking mugs that vary from having no texture to having lots of texture, homemade looking to clear, clear's great for seeing a coffee squirrel in there. I always recommend having a clear mug of some kind for that style of shot, if that's what you're into. Ikea sells two different kinds of clear mugs. I have both and I love them. You may want to start a collection of holiday or themed props. So think ribbon and wrapping paper and bows for Christmas style photos, foliage, whether artificial or real. Having home style house looking objects around like candles, books, house plants. House plants are huge. I very frequently put a house plant in my images for that little touch of greenery, that bit of life, it's easy because like I have house plants everywhere. I'm just gonna put them in my shot. I'm gonna put them in my shot. Might be nice to have some twinkle lights on hand for that out of focus, kind of sparkly Christmas feel, you might want to consider food props. If you're photographing food, obviously your food is going to be in the scene. But let's say it's a strawberry cheesecake, having fresh strawberries on hand to help tell that story, putting them in the scene, that's really going to make your composition better. If you have a specific niche in mind, you're going to want related props. For example, if you're going to be shooting cocktails, you are going to want a shaker set, a strainer, a muddler, a bar spoon. That kind of stuff for posing and styling. It's nice to have the idea of, you know, I made this and here's the tools that I used to make it and a little bit of drip on the table. It feels like, oh, I just set this up really quick and took a picture. It's that lifestyle look I love. If you are photographing coffee, maybe a chemics set up or the coffee set up that you have at home. If it's aesthetic, I have a chemics part of the reason I bought it, aside from me thinking it would make the best coffee I've ever had, Which it does. It's beautiful. It's so beautiful. It looks good. I photograph it all the time when I stand there in my kitchen making coffee, and the light shines through the steam and it looks all picturesque. I'm just like, this is it. This is it. That's my shot right there. Having beautiful things gets you excited to take pictures of them. If you are photographing jewelry, maybe handmade clay earrings or handmade silver rings. Think about like a ring sizer or pliers, cutters, rollers. The tools that you use to make it, if you're telling the story that these are handmade, include that in the photos of the product. If you're photographing skin care or makeup, think about brushes or using textures that are going to resemble maybe a bather counter or a vanity set up. Maybe you have some interesting small mirrors to help kind of layer and add a different look to the scene, but possibilities are endless. Basically, when I am layering props in a scene, I'm making sure that it's really intentional. I don't want to put too much in the scene that gets a little bit chaotic and you're not sure what to look at because there's a lot going on and it's stressful. I try to make sure that I'm only adding things that are helping contribute to the story. Whether that is just a beautiful element or truly like this is a pen, because I'm photographing a journal. And they go together. So it's definitely related. Does that make sense? Simplifying is always something that I like to go for. But also don't be afraid to try new things and throw stuff in if you feel like it's going to help tell that story or make your composition stronger. 17. Backdrops: Let's talk about backdrops. There are so many different kinds, I'm going to start with the ones that I use more often and then lead into all the other options. So the ones that I use the most are flat board styled backdrops. These are typically melamine boards that I got at the hardware store, and I paint them with matt paint in different looks. That way I have a variety of different backdrops to choose from. I like the flexibility I get to create my own backdrops. And I also like getting crafty, so that's like fun for me. But if making your own backdrop is not what you want to do, you want to just buy a professional pre made backdrop. There are tons of options available. I started looking into it and now I get lots of Instagram ads for different brands that offer products like these. I'll share links to a bunch of different products that I've heard of. If you're not into painting, but you still want to try and save some money and make one yourself. You can buy contact paper on a roll and then stick it to a melamine board or any similar kind of flat board and create your own. I've got one just like that, made with marble contact paper. And it works great if you are looking for a seamless backdrop, something that's more flexible that you can roll up and travel with. There are a bunch of different options there. I've got some canvas rolls that I painted. The canvas is just drop cloth, like painters drop cloth that I got from the hardware store and I cut it up and I painted it and I roll it up and it works great. You can also use rolls of paper for this. You can get paper on a roll in pretty much any color. You can imagine paper is nice because if it gets crinkled or messed up, you can just cut it off and start fresh, compost it. The last kind of flexible style background is going to be made of vinyl. So vinyl backdrops are really affordable. They're easy to wipe clean. They come in pretty much every print you can imagine. It's essentially taking a photograph of a texture and then printing on a vinyl surface. If you want a real tile backdrop, you can go to the hardware store and buy a piece of tile. I've purchased 1 Ft by two foot size tiles and use those. I have one that's really large and works great for a large format charcuterie spread. They tend to be a little bit small for a lot of product and food style shots, but they will act as a great layer in between stuff. So if you've got a nice table, you can set that on top. And it can help extend your backdrop a little bit if you like the look of subway tiles, like in a kitchen style set up, but you don't want to redo your whole kitchen. You can attach tiles to a board and just have that as your backdrop, your back splash in a shot per se, if you don't want to have to mess with dealing with grout. They have peel and stick tile that works great as well. And then they also have again, that printed vinyl tile look for a wood texture backdrop. You can get a wood veneer and stain it any color you want and then use that as your backdrop. It can look like a large wood surface or you can buy planks of wood and stain those for more of like a picnic table look. Or you can get slats, wood slats. That's what I have, which is like tongue and groove boards that I've stained the front and back. Two different stains. And then I can slot them together. It's nice because they're easy to travel with, They stack really well. And then I can spread them all out, connect them all together, and use that as a wood backdrop. Wood also comes as a painted vinyl style backdrop. I would say though, if you're going to get wood, a wood print on something that's flexible, I just wouldn't use it as a seamless backdrop because you wouldn't really naturally see wood like bending like that. It might not look super realistic in the final shot. And so if you're using a wood or tile for that matter, I would make sure that it's just a flat wall or laid flat on a surface rather than bending. You can also use fabric as a backdrop. When I was doing a lot of newborn photography, that's when I collected a lot of faux fur and fuzzy fabrics and stuff like that. And I still find myself reaching for them. When I'm wanting something that looks kind of glam or ethereal and dreamy, I will go with like a white fa, fur. So that can be kind of nice to have just in the off chance that it might come in handy. Or if it's specific to your niche. If you do a lot of table scapes or food photography might be nice to have a collection of nice tablecloths. You can also get a large duvet cover. I use that for newborn photography too, but now I use it for like a breakfast in bed style photo or anything that's like sort of fluffy. You've got my coffee first thing in the morning. It just reflects a lot of beautiful light back in the scene. It ends up being a great backdrop. And then lastly, I would say a sheet would be like a last resort. You can absolutely use a bed sheet. I would just say that you should iron it first because a wrinkly bedsheet makes for a really tough editing session later. The only other thing to cover in backdrops is the accessories to go along with them. For most of the flat backdrops that I use, the rigid boards, I've got two L shaped metal brackets and a series of spring clamps to help hold everything down. This works really well for me. If you have a really heavy backdrop, you might want to get two sets of that situation just to make sure that it won't fall on your scene while you are working. A lot of the pre made backdrop companies also have their own proprietary like backdrop corner pieces. Which can be nice because then you can just slip it in and it's like all together and it's not as DI Y as the clamp in the bracket looks and feels. You can also have, if you have two light stands with some clamps on them, you can string a PVC pipe across it and then attach your backdrop to the PVC pipe. I've done that a lot with a lot more of my flexible backdrops. Yeah, just get crafty and see what you can come up with. La. 18. Styling Tips: Let's talk about styling tips. Some tricks and things that I've learned along the way while I am working, if you're photographing round objects and you find that they keep rolling around, you can add just a pinch of table salt underneath them, and having that little bit of grit will keep them in place. And if you only use a little bit, it shouldn't show up in the final photo either. It's nice to have a spray bottle around, you can use it to miss down your scene. This is great for conveying a fresh feeling if you're using fresh fruits and veg. Or maybe you are serving up a drink and you want it to look really condensation and dewey, on the edge of the glass. I like having a spray bottle there. I also use it to wipe up messes along with a wet rag. It's nice to have that nearby. That way when you're working, if you make a mess, I'm tempted to just leave it and edit it out later. But it's way easier to just wipe it down while you're working than to edit it out 25 photos later. Trust me, it can be handy to have a pair of tweezers around, especially if you are trying to plate a dish and you need something to be very, very particular and you're worried that your hands might mess things up. A pair of tweezers is awesome for that. Having tape around is great. You never know when you need to hold something in place or when you need to kind of create a little wad of tape to help boost something up. I usually just grab whatever is around me while I am shooting. If I need to add some lift or fill in some space. For example, I usually have a lens cap lying around. And if I'm trying to photograph a scene and I'm getting a lot of reflections on an object, because it's flat, I will often boost it up with an item underneath. And that's enough to like, reduce the glare on the object. But you wouldn't really notice looking at the photo, that there was anything underneath it. So it's a little sneaky. Sometimes you have to, you know, have a little secrets while you're shooting. It might not necessarily be 100% honest, but the end result is absolutely worth it. Sometimes if I don't have enough substance, I will fill the center of the jar with other things. I've like stuffed a shot glass in the middle of a jar once and then surrounded the outside that way I had enough volume to make it look full so it didn't look half full. There's all sorts of little tricks that you will learn along the way and getting crappy with it is a huge plus. If you have the ability to work on your feet is going to serve you very well. I will say though, when it comes to trickery, I don't like to use things. I don't do the motor oil thing, like have you seen that on the Internet where you use motor oil instead of syrup and it makes it look like great pancake syrup. It's like, oh, for me I want to use real syrup. I want to eat those pancakes. When I've done shooting them, I try really hard to avoid a lot of waste. I really want to make sure that my photos are as real as they can be and where it makes sense and not make something toxic in my kitchen. But that's just me. You're welcome to do your photography journey how you would like to. 19. Style & Reading Images: Let's talk about style. There's a lot of choices when it comes to the artistic treatment of an image. You may be familiar with the term dark and moody, light and airy. These are just ways that we describe a certain body of work based on the way that it looks. Figuring out the style that you want to create or make your own starts with figuring out what kind of images you are drawn to. When you're able to define your style and create images that reflect that aesthetic, your body of work becomes stronger as a whole and your portfolio or feed will look more consistent or intentional. The best way that I can help you hone this specific skill is teaching you how to read images. I learned the importance of this technique in college and it has completely transformed the way that I look at images. Being able to study another artist's work and gain insight from it helps us improve our own work through stronger compositions, mindfully crafted lighting and edits. With a goal in mind, there's a handful of elements that I'm looking for when I'm analyzing an image. What are the shadows telling me? Are they long or short? Deep or soft? How are the highlights? Are they blown out or tiny and widespread? How's the contrast overall in this image? Are there a lot of colors or just a few? Are they very vibrant or muted? What's the focal deck telling me? Did we have a wide aperture or a shallow aperture? All of this to say that there are a ton of things that you can think about when you're looking at an image. And don't worry, I put all of these questions and guiding info into a handout for you, a PDF that will help you as you start learning how to do this. But first, let's try a few photos together, shall we? All right, so here we are on my ipad, Pro in procreate. This is the reading, an image handout that I referenced and it will hopefully be a guide for you to use as you go through looking at images and trying to figure out how they were made. Let's dive into the first image. This one is beautiful. I love the shot for its very shallow depth of field. You can see that just the candle is in focus and it's just a really beautiful artistic look. Overall, I love that they captured the match being lit. I think that's really, really beautiful and it helps tell the story of, you know, lighting a candle. I feel like I'll hear the crackle, I'll smell the match. It's just, it's very lovely. I also like that they have a very muted color palette overall. I think that's super effective as far as our lighting goes. Let's take a peek at our shadows. I'm seeing a shadow underneath this linen as well as right here. And then on this tube, we've got a shadow side and a high light side. And then we also have some shadows in the person's hand. This is making me think that our light is off to the side and slightly behind the subject. Since these shadows are falling toward the viewer, there is a really bright highlight on this person's manicure, and you can see that that helps support the assumption that our light is up and over here. I'm guessing that it's either a cloudy day or they have a large diffuser on there. Then I would say if they have a fill, it's pretty small because I'm not seeing a huge fill in the shadow side of the candle. But there is a slight light happening in the shadow side of this like reflective label. So mostly I am seeing the reflection from the linen towel. What I love about this lighting style is it offers sort of like a mysterious feel to it. It's very warm and cozy and moody, but having the light sort of behind the subject, throwing those shadows toward the viewer, it gives it some nice mood. Let's jump into the next one. This is a completely different shot. This one is a flat lay. We are looking down on this spread of ingredients. What I really like about this shot is there's a lot of movement throughout. Like my eyes are just going around and around and around. Looking at all the beautiful elements in this shot. Things that I think are really, really strong is the way that the spoon points toward the center of the image. This little sieve points toward the center of the image. We have a lot of circles and circles. The color scheme here that's happening is very like fresh. We've got green, we've got gold, we've got a little bit of blue to kind of contrast with that. And then overall, we've got a lovely, lovely kind of light. I'm seeing sort of longer shadows, but they're more filled, so I'm thinking that this means our light is lower, it's not quite as high, it's not spilling over the top, it's really creating a lot of Texture and raking light. So this is a lower light source and it is shining over our subject, and then I think that it's sort of diffused. What I mean by that is possibly a little bit of clouds in the sky or a slightly permeable diffusion. It's not a super strong diffusion because we still have a lot of like very bright over exposed areas where they're being hit by the light pretty strongly. But we have very filled in shadows, so I'm thinking that we have a giant reflector basically filling in those shadows so that we have an overall bright and airy look, but we still have the drama. In contrast, that having a slightly less diffused light source would give you so very lovely image. The way that the light scrapes across the surface of this leaf is very beautiful. That's that raking light at play, so very, very pleasing. Next we have this sprinkle shot. I love action shots. You'll just see that very big fan. I love that they chose to set this against a dark backdrop. This shot isn't a true 45 degree or a true straight on, it's somewhere in between. And you can see that it is still very, very effective. I like that the depth, the natural depth in the shot just brings my eyes in to the scene. Overall, the crumbs aren't perfectly frozen. They're dragging just a little bit, which leads me to believe that they didn't use the fastest shutter speed available to them. I would guess that they're shooting at a minimum of 1/250 possibly even 1/500 If you're shooting at 1/1000 and higher, typically everything is going to be perfectly frozen and perfectly sharp. I like the implied movement, the slight snow we feel of this crumb trail, which is really fun. As far as the lighting goes, we can see these shadows fall toward the viewer. They're a little bit soft, they're not filled in at all. So I'm thinking that we have a big diffused light source to the side and behind our scene. And next up we have this image. I love the way this picture is lit. There's just this gorgeous beam of light shining through it. When I went to look up who took this picture, I was pleasantly surprised to see it was Sean Dalton's. Sean Dalton is a fellow top teacher here on skill share. So it was very exciting that I just randomly stumbled across an image that was his. But anyway, let's talk about it. This shot is overall pretty dark and moody. We have a very deep kind of shadowy room and then we've got this drink that's right in the center. And it's lit up with this beam of light that's kind of striking right through it. That's such a good way to add separation to the image overall. And I absolutely love that we also have this natural trail as the sauce kind of pours over this beverage. They were able to get that drip right in that bright spot as well, so the light goes right through it. And it's just super effective. You also get these fun high light shadow combinations going through the glass on this shot. I also like that you can sort of suggestively see, you know, Hendricks in the background, you're like, oh, it's a cocktail, there's some gin, right? That's a really cool context clue. It looks like the depth of field is not super shallow. I would guess that this was probably shot at four just because there's quite a bit in the scene that's in focus before it falls off. And then the stuff that's out of focus isn't so out of focus that you can't tell what it is. This is eucalyptus. This is a curtain. I'm guessing we have a window here and a window on this side. This one's got a curtain over it. And then I'm thinking, this one probably they've opened the curtain just a little so that we only have that beam of light coming through. Very, very effective image overall. Next up we have this shot, which is completely different from the others. This one makes me think about like a late summer afternoon. We have this dappled light shining through the trees. We've got a blanket laid out and we're just enjoying some lovely drinks. I would guess that they probably did shoot this one outside, and then they've got this little front that they put in front of the camera to add some depth to it. This is out of focus in the foreground. And overall, this image feels full, it feels balanced, but it doesn't have a lot going on necessarily. We've got three drinks, true. But because they're on a board, they act as one. And I think that that's a super effective way to kind of bring them in and tie them together and tell the story of togetherness or, you know, enjoying these with someone else, which is kind of fun. Again, we have this fun mix of direct light and diffuse sort of open shade style. And that's, I think, really lovely. So I'm thinking the sun is probably up this direction and shining down through the trees. It's late enough in the day that we're casting longer shadows. I think overall, this image is super effective. Lastly, we have this shot. I absolutely love this. I feel like I can smell this image because there's so many botanicals and fragrance ingredient keys that I think make it a really, really lovely image overall, I also like that they didn't put the product in the very center. It's like just part of the ingredients, which I think is really cool. I love this out of focus, greenery. It doesn't necessarily need to be part of the recipe per se, but it does add this sort of like peeking in feel you're getting a slight glimpse into the story behind this bottle of gin. And I think that's really, really effective. The shadows here are really interesting because they're quite deep and they're pretty soft, but still quite pronounced. We have some deep defined shadows, which is leading me to believe that our light source is a little bit smaller but pretty close up. The reason I think that is because the sun in the sky is technically a small light source, even though it's massive, It's a small light source because it's this little circle in the sky. And it's so far away, but it's so bright. And so it creates very, very harsh lines. Direct sun creates harsh shadows. And so it's somewhere between the kind of light that I have in this scene, in this space, this filming space, and direct sun. And so I'm thinking it's a smaller light than I have, and it's further away but brighter. So yeah, that is what I'm guessing they've got going on here. And it creates a ton of that beautiful texture. In contrast, we also have some fun highlights shining through the bottle, which I think adds that little bit of sparkle to this image. Oh my gosh. Okay, I didn't notice this bar spoon before. There is a really, really shiny reflective bar spoon and it's giving me a clue about what's in the room. It actually looks like they're set up on the floor next to like a back door window. So that's really fun. If you ever shoot with something that is very, very reflective, keep in mind that your short shorts and your baseball cap, they're going to be in there. That's going to be in the big Ure. And you're gonna have to Photoshop it out later like I do. So brushed metal is your best friend. But yeah, hopefully this was helpful to kind of get an idea of what I'm looking for when I'm looking through images. And hopefully this will help you as you are trying to figure out how a certain photo was lit and how you can incorporate those elements in your own work. 20. More Examples: Reading Images: If you want a few more examples. I have included a snippet from a previous skillshare class where I read a whole bunch of other images so that you can get even more examples. For the first image, I wanted to just dive right in here. I picked this image because it's a very clean and classic style. It's really, really beautiful. And I set all of these images on a white backdrop so that we can tell if there's anything that is like 100% pure blown out white. So before we look into that, let's identify the shadows. I'm going to zoom in so we can see what we're dealing with here. We've got some shadows falling from this little floral piece here. Some shadows from the scissors. Some shadows here, here, and a little bit right there. This is leading me to believe that our primary light source is on this side, and it is shining this direction. If we only had this one window lighting the scene, this would appear to be the brightest spot in the photo. And this would be quite a bit darker because it would be in the shadow area. But because what would be the shadow area is actually pretty lit up. That leads me to believe that we have a reflector or another bright surface that the light is coming in hitting and then bouncing off of to fill in that shadow area. The other reason that I'm guessing that they've got a reflector going on is because the tone of this background here and here is pretty similar. If this was significantly brighter on this end and a lot darker on this end, that would help indicate that there was one definitely stronger light that is affecting that super evenly lit photo overall. Let's talk about the highlights. The brightest spot of this image. I'm just going to grab my color picker. The brightest spot of this image is right along this edge of the cake. Let's see if that is pure white. Okay, so this little dot is not exactly in the corner, which means that instead of blowing out the whites, we brought them back, we preserved them just a little bit so that we have information in those bright highlight spots that is probably achieved in the editing portion, and we'll talk more about that when we get there. The color palette that we have here is very simple. We have yellow and green and a little bit of tan in the cake. It's very simple, but the colors appear true to life. Nothing is like overly vibrant or muted at all. Okay, next let's look at this image. The first thing that I notice is our background. So the tone here versus here is quite a bit different. It's a lot brighter on this end than that end. If you also look at the shadows that are falling from this little edge, they're falling in this direction. These shadows are falling in that direction. Same with that. And then if you look at the hand, we have a shadow side here and a high light side here. So all of these things support the assumption that our light source is here. Let's look at our highlights a little bit. I'm going to zoom into this bottle. In this bottle, you can pretty much see a whole reflection of the room. I can see that we have a really bright highlight right along this edge. We've got a highlighted side of this metal mug. So anything that is metal or glass, anything reflective is going to help give you a hint into kind of how the photo was lit. So I would say they probably have a pretty big window over here that is shining light in kind of like a side and above angle. If it was just side lit, the shadows would be a lot longer. And so that's why I think that it's partly above as well. Let's look at the white balance here. So I'm just going to grab a sample of the background and then take a look at what the source color is. So this is telling me that the background has a little bit of hint of blue in it, which means that our image is overall pretty cool. Cool. So there's a cool tone in this background. And I think that it is a balanced photo despite being a little bit cooler in the background because all of our subjects are quite warm. And so this helps give a little bit of color contrast and make the photo seem properly balanced. I think if the background had been like pure gray, these things would have appeared a little bit too brown and orange. And so the photographer who put this together probably did that for that reason. One more thing I wanted to talk about in this, and I didn't really cover it in my guide, is just something compositionally that I'm noticing. So if we split this into thirds, what we have is this bottle pretty much aligning with this third line. We have this little drip of milk that is pretty close to the third, and then we have the hand on the top third, and then the tops of the glasses on the bottom third. Just compositionally, this image is very, very balanced and I really, really like it. Okay, let's look at the next image. This is a darker moodier shot. I want to look at these shadows. Here we have the big shadow side of the cake. We've got a little bit of a shadow falling from the plate and a shadow from the bowl. This is making me think that the light source is on this side. We've got a high light right here on the top of the cake. And that is making me think that our light is a little higher because if it was lower. None of the light would spill onto that. Our light is coming at this kind of an angle. Our shadows are nice and diffused. There's not any harsh lines, which means that we're probably shooting on a cloudy day or through an indirect window, or with a bit of a diffuser between our light source and our subject. Let's take a look at what we've got going on in the shadows. How dark are these shadows? Okay, that is pretty close to pure black. What about our highlights? It's like the brightest spot right there. Okay, our highlights are pretty close to pure white. I bet we can find a pure white closer, maybe in there. Okay, so we have a lot of contrast. We've got this bright white contrasting with this deep dark shadow. One thing that I want to point out as far as the composition goes, they chose a black plate and they have a really dark rich cake. If they had just put this cake right on this plate, it probably would have sort of disappeared in the image. The use of this piece of parchment or tracing paper really helped separate the cake from the plate. And I think that that was a really effective way of layering the image so that the subject really stands out. This image has great depth of field. So I'm looking at, let's see, we've got our backdrop. And it's pretty much in focus from here to actually right here. The knife starts to get out of focus. Our focal range is right in here. But because we're shooting from above, we're shooting at an angle. We have this whole area of the cake. So right here in the frosting, all the way to the edge of this plate, that's in focus. And then everything after that falls off. And so it's a little bit more out of focus. That being said, we do have a nice plan of focus, despite how close we are. And so I would guess that our F stop here is probably four or 5.6, A little bit more of the frame is in focus, but we are closer. Typically, when you get closer, more of the image gets blurry. So I wouldn't even be surprised if they have F six in here instead, really effective image, very balanced, white balance here. That's really beautiful. All right, next we have this shot. This is a totally different look than what we've seen so far. This one is a flat lay and it has a ton of negative space. This negative space is a great tool if you wanted to add some text later and then use it as a graphical element right there. It also can help break up a really monotonous feed. Maybe your feed has a ton of detail and it's just kind of getting cluttered. It's nice to add a photo like this because it will help give your feed a little more balance and a place for your eyes to relax. Let's look at our shadows. This one's a little trickier. We've got kind of some interesting shadows here. We've got these right here, these shadows here. We have a shadow right there. And then in between all these apples, I'm not exactly sure where the shadows are coming from here. So let's look at the highlights. We've got some highlight on this side of the apple and on this side, so I'm thinking they have to either two light sources, or one light and one reflector. So I wouldn't be surprised if they've got kind of a bright window that's shining down across the subject, and then they've got a reflector or another window on this side. And then since the lights coming in like this, that would support that this whole side is shadowed because the light's not quite hitting it yet. That's kind of more like this angle. So this apple is a perfect example. So the light comes in this way and this way, and then our shadow area becomes that. Let's take a sample of the background and try and figure out the white balance. It seems a little cooler to me based on this next to my white. But yeah, it's just a little bit cooler. And that's probably just to kind of make it appear cleaner and stark, the color palette that we've got. We've got some red, we have some green, a little bit of gold, and that is pretty much it. It's really, really beautiful. The colors, I would say the reds are probably a little bit over saturated. Yeah, I don't, maybe those are pretty true to life. It does have a nice pop effect to it. It makes the image stand out and become really, really striking. One other thing I wanted to point out in this shot, if you zoom in really close, and this could be how I saved it or how it was uploaded, but I'm getting a little bit of noise in kind of these shadow areas. It just seems kind of grainy, almost like the ISO is a little bit too high, so it introduced a little bit of noise. Typically, this happens when you are not using enough light or when you're photographing things like this with a phone. So I actually would not be surprised if this photo was taken with a phone, which is totally, totally okay. Shoot with the camera that you have that you feel comfortable with and see, this is a very effective image even if it is taken with a phone. So don't discount your phone if you don't feel like. They make good enough pictures because this is very effective. All right, next up, we have this shot. I chose this one because I wanted to show you this grain kind of film scratch look. So if we zoom in here, we can see there's a lot of these little kind of like hairs, these little scrapes on the image, and that gives it this really like vintage feel. It also has a really warm tone to it. If we pick up colors in here, they're all going to be kind of on this sort of cream colored spectrum. That's a really, really beautiful, effective cozy looking shot, I think, supported by those warm tones in there. The color scheme that we have, I mean, we've got a little bit of like orangy browns in that leaf, and then everything else is creamy, creamy. Let's look at our shadows. So it looks like we've got a little bit of a shadow underneath this leaf. We have a little bit of a shadow underneath this sweater and coming off of this mug, this is the whole shadow side of the mug. We've got a kind of a dead giveaway in this shod. This is the window right here, So I'm guessing that this is exactly what it looks like. The window is shining light in this direction and creating a shadow side toward the viewer. So this is semi backlet. If it were true back, the window would be right behind it. But it still gives it that kind of sparking effect that typically backlit photos will do something else that I wanted to show you. If you zoom into this little bell jar, you can see what looks like a perfect reflection of a window. This looks like maybe a roof line, and this looks like a tree. So I would say that is definitely naturally lit from this window based on everything that we can see in this image so far. Another thing I wanted to point out, so I'm looking at this book trying to determine what our aperture probably is. And I can see that the whole sweater is in focus from all the way back here to all the way right here. And then I can also see that these acorns are in focus, but the wall is out of focus. Our focal range could be from the edge of the sweater to the front of this book, But this book also has some blurry elements to it. I'm guessing that they probably took this picture. This is probably another one taken with a phone. And the reason I think this is because the whole image is pretty much in focus. But there has been some sections that have been marked out or have been like hand edited to reduce the focus or give it this kind of glowy out of focus feel. And so we've got kind of a section here that looks like it's been softened. And a section here probably so that the text wasn't so glaring. So that it was just kind of a supporting element rather than a main focus. Because the way that a lens focuses it wouldn't have this part out of focus and this part in focus. So this is something that you can tell that has been adjusted after the fact, and there is nothing wrong with that. This is totally a stylistic choice. I just wanted to point it out so that you can start looking for things like this in your image. If this is an image that is super inspiring to you, we need to break it down so you can figure out how to approach it and why it is effective to you in that way. Next up we have this shot. So we are going to dive into our shadows here. This image is really, really striking. It has very deep, harsh, dark shadows. They're very long. Look how long these shadows are. This indicates that our window is coming from a lower perspective. If it were higher up, the shadows would be a lot shorter and it wouldn't be as dramatic of a shot. What it looks like to me is we have a window with these like window panes. And then we have some plants sitting on the edge of the window. And those are casting these interesting shadows in the top part of the frame. The reason that I wanted to show you this picture is because of these deep dark shadows. This makes me think that we have one window and no reflectors. I think because if we look at the next photo, we have very similar harsh, sharp shadows. But instead of being really deep and dark, they're actually a middle gray. That makes me think that we have a window on this side, a big window. It's a lot higher than the previous window because our shadows are not as long and dramatic. And I think we've got some sort of fill or reflector on this side that's helping bring a little bit of extra light into those shadows, which would have been very dark and black and maybe made the photo a little bit harder to tell what was happening. This image has a really, really muted color palette. There's this bright orange brown, and that's it, super effective. Next up, I wanted to show you something a little bit different. I picked this image because it has this very like Instagrammy feel to it. But let's look at the shadows. I'm going to point out we've got a shadow from the bowl right here, and we've got a shadow from the spoon right here, and from their hand right there. These shadows indicate that our light source is right here, shining in like this. But let's loop into these shadows and take a closer look. If I grab my color picker and put it in the shadow area, everything I'm picking up. Is blue. So this shadow is blue. And it could be because we have a big blue board on this side that the light is hitting and bouncing and filling in those shadow areas. But more likely than not, the shadows that are blue here have been changed after the fact. So this is what split toning looks like. If you look at the shadow areas and we pull a color, let's pull a color from the shadow right in there. And then we will put that down here. So this is our shadow color. Let's look at our highlights. So we've got some highlights in the milk, but the milk has a color of its own. So I'm going to try and pick something that's a lot more neutral. Let's grab a highlight down here in this bright spot and then take a look. So this is pulling slightly redder, so I'm going to put this color down here. And you can see that we've got our shadow area has this little bit of blue in it, and the highlight area has a slight warm tone. If I were to saturate this just a little more or if I were to grab a little bit. Yeah, like right in here, this tone is slightly orangy. So these are complimentary colors, blue and orange. And so they're going to help balance the photo, but still give it that stylistic filtered look. This looks like a filter to me. Let's look at this little ceramic cup in here. You can see the reflection of our dish, that's our bowl full of granola. You can also see the edge of the bottle right here. And then there's something right here which looks to me like maybe like a casserole dish probably full of more of this granola stuff. This was probably a shot for a recipe, but there's also this tiny high light back here. And so spatially, that would mean that the high light is coming from over here or maybe even behind our person. And so I wouldn't be surprised if the window actually extends behind them. And it's just the light is just coming around and wrapping in the shot here, really, really beautiful. Okay, next up we have this shot. Very similar composition as the previous one, but the lighting is a bit different. So in here, we can see that we have really strong highlights. Right here, we have really strong shadows right here. The same goes for this bowl. Bulls are nice because they're round. So you can see there's a definite high light side and a definite shadow side. And so that leads me to think that we have a window right here. How long are our shadows? Our shadows aren't super long, so I would say that our window might be a little bit taller, so it's letting light in at this kind of a direction. The colors here are very, very muted. We've got tiny bits of green in this plant, but overall, this is a pretty gray scale neutral image. The brightest color in this photo is here in the almonds, which is interesting because almonds traditionally aren't very vibrant and saturated. But I think this was an intentional choice to make them the most vibrant thing in the picture so that they stand out because that's the subject, that's what we're drawn to. There's a lot of contrast here. There's a definite high light side and a definite shadow side. And so they really, really stand out, especially against this bright white dress. This is a very beautiful picture. All right, next up we have something a little bit different. This is just a bunch of florals on a table. I picked this photo because we have incredibly vibrant colors. If you look at the color that I just picked out of here, it is so close to this top 100% saturation, but the image doesn't really appear overdone. And so I would say that this was probably an intentional choice to choose these really bright colors, because our background is very muted overall. There's a lot of neutrals and whites. And so it's a really effective choice there. If we zoom in, we can see that these front little white and yellow flowers are out of focus. The front of these petals are in focus, but the back of the petals on the same flower are out of focus. This leads us to deduce that we have a very narrow depth of field. So this is all blurry, blurry blur. Blur to here, and then we've got in focus and then we've got blurry again. So I would say that based on how close they are to these flowers, I'm guessing that they're using an aperture like F 1.8 We've got really dramatic blur and it's very, very beautiful that way. Okay. Almost done. So this picture I chose because it has a really beautiful beam of light. Our high light spot right here draws your eye through the frame, just like this. So I am guessing that there are light sources back here, and it's just out of frame so that we don't have any overexposed blown out highlights right there. It looks like they've got an object like a bowl or something there, and this looks like kind of a copper mug there. These are used to block the light, so that really what we're getting is this narrow narrow beam that is lighting up just the important elements of the photo. This has a lot of drama. I'm also guessing that the light is the window or the window light is pretty low. And this gets our light kind of scraping across the surface so that we can really define that beautiful, crunchy texture. Our deepest shadows are almost black, and our brightest highlights are almost pure white. So it looks like they've preserved them on both sides, but the blacks appear a little more matt to me in this particular shot. Okay, lastly, I wanted to show you this image. This one, it looks like we've got a window in the background. So this is a back lit photo, which would mean that what we see in the foreground is our shadow area. It is a little bit darker, but we're still able to get really good exposure here. So I think that we've got some sort of reflector or fill that the light is bouncing off of and lighting up those areas. They could have also taken up the light in the shadows as well. Okay, I wanted to show you. So if we take a sample from our light source back here and look at it, it is 100% white. That means if you were to print this photo out, you would have paper showing through right there. That's not a bad thing. That just means that they are blown out or clipped. So a lot of people try to avoid this by bringing their high light slider in just a little bit so that there is some information there. But honestly, I don't think it really matters. Decide what you like and stick with it. And as long as you understand what's happening, that's what's important here. If we look closely, I wanted to show you. So we have a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of shadow right in here on her shoulder. It's shadow from her dress, the edge of this lace. And that makes me think that we've got a light coming in like this, which is interesting because this light is coming in like this, which means that it's not from this light. And that makes me think that maybe we have some overhead lights that are throwing light down and casting this little shadow. Typically the light that's coming from the window is going to be sunlight and that's about 5,000 Kelvin. It's a little bit blue, bluer than what we would typically put indoors, which would be from like your typical incandescent bulb. That would be 2,700 Kelvin. The reason I bring this up is because if you look at the color of her skin tone closest to the window, it seems a little cool. And then if you look at her shoulder, the closest here to the camera, it is quite a bit more orange. And so I would think that probably they have a little bit of mixed lighting happening. This light is casting not only this little tiny, barely noticeable shadow, but also a little bit of a color cast there. And so I am thinking that there's probably a little bit of mixed lighting there, but because the light in the background is so bright, it doesn't really affect the overall image. And so that is just something else to look for. That's kind of how I can tell if people are using mixed lighting in their shots is because I'm looking so closely that it's just, it's ridiculous. Nobody, most people don't look that close to a photo, so don't panic over something like that if that happens to you. I just wanted to point out so that you can see that it is something you can read from a photo. And then lastly, let's talk about these colors. They are so, so saturated, but they don't really look overdone. They don't seem too bright because they are the main subject in this photo. That's what the artist wanted your eyes to be drawn to. If she wanted your eyes to be drawn to the subject, she might have included the subject's face. But because the subject's face is not in the picture, it forces you to decide what the new subject is, which I'm guessing is these beautiful, vibrant florals. So that is all my examples for how I typically approach reading an image. Hopefully this was helpful to you and you can now approach reading images in a new way. I wanted to also note that the reason we do this is not so that we can copy a photo exactly. We definitely want to respect artists work. You can use their lighting as a stepping stone to getting more toward that particular style. But certainly don't set up a shot exactly like they have it and rip off their photo, because that's just not cool. We want to respect other artists work and we want to give them credit where credit is due. 21. Finding Your Style: Let's talk about finding our style. Now that we know what to look for in a photo, let's start defining our style. In the very beginning of this course, I recommended that you create a Pinterest board and start saving all the photos that you find. Inspiring photos that you hope to be able to take some day or would be proud to say that were yours. This is still an exercise that I do. I have a little pinboard called magic where I post photos that feel like magic to me. What is it about these photos that I'm drawn to? And how can I start incorporating some of these elements in my own work to make my photos more of the kind of stuff that I'm in love with from your pin board. I want you to pull your favorite nine to 12 images, get them onto your phone, and download the layout app from Instagram. This is how I like to create an inspiration grid from this app. I can easily select nine photos, pick the grid layout, turn on white borders, and you basically have a little mini Instagram feed. You can also hold and drag photos to reorder them, pinch and zoom to adjust or swap alternate images in and out until it feels right. And once you have your grid looking good, export it and share it in slack in the inspiration grid channel. I love making these inspiration grids. It really helps me hone in on a specific look and I can't wait to see yours too. It's also really fun to see your approach. I want to see the photos that you're drawn to, all put together in ways that you are taking steps to making your photos more like that. So don't forget to share and comment on other people's grids over in slack. Now that we have an inspiration grid, let's define it. This is my six part style web and I've also got a grid sheet that goes with it that shows different inspiration grids that I put together from photos I found on Pinterest that meet this general vibe so that you can get a better idea of like where you fit in these six different looks. The style web also has a ton of descriptor words, things that come to mind when I'm looking at these images. So that maybe if you don't fit in any one of these specific categories, you can make up your own category or figure out what feels right for you. 22. Photographic Style Tips: Let's talk about style tips. Something that I think is really important is making sure that you're incorporating variety in your feed. So think about your compositions in terms of minimal or maximal. Are you incorporating minimal compositions with very simple number of things, lots of negative space, and also images that are more dense. They've got a lot more things in them. There's more texture, there's more body and a lot more going on because having both is going to make your feed look more dynamic overall if you have a lot of very, very busy images altogether in a feed. When people visit your Instagram page or your portfolio on your website, they're going to be kind of bombarded by a lot of information. So it's actually really nice to have simpler compositions that are more straightforward and easy on the eyes because it'll help break up a busy looking feed. A great way to find your niche when it comes to figuring out what it is that you want to photograph is to start with things that you love. If you absolutely love coffee, photograph coffee. I recommend photographing things that you have an interest in or brands that you support, that you love, that have a mission that you stand for. Products that you already use in your everyday life. Maybe you have a family member or friend with a small business that they sell products that you love or that you find beautiful. You can ask them if maybe they would want to have a little trade product for photos. And that would give you some experience working with a brand to showcase your skills that way. It can be overwhelming to feel like there's a lot of people already doing this. There is this idea that you want to stand out. When I am looking for ways to stand out, sometimes I will set up a composition and I will take the obvious shot. Go ahead, take it. You already set it up. Take the picture that classic cookies and milk photo. Take it then think about how you can approach this angle from another perspective. Get down low, get in nice and close. Try something that maybe seems a little different or risky. And if it works out, then cool. Now you've made it your own, and if it doesn't, no one has to know, no one has to see that picture. So just finding ways to experiment with your work, You never know when you are going to stumble upon your next favorite image. By experimenting with your compositions and angles, you can also add your own creative spin to your body of work. Is there something that you're constantly drawn to when you're browsing Pinterest? Maybe you pin a lot of splash photos like I do, or pouring shots, find ways to incorporate more of that kind of movement in your work, if that's what you're drawn to. And that will kind of help you stand out by taking that extra step to add a little bit more magic to your photos. 23. Lightroom Basics: Let's talk about light room basics. If you are already familiar with light room, you've been using it for a while and you're not really looking for a refresher, you can skip the section and go straight into my workflow. If you're brand new to light room, welcome. I'm thinking that you probably got the Adobe Creative Cloud photography Plan that was recommended in this course. That's the one that has Lightroom, Photoshop, and Lightroom Classic. Here in my bottom menu, you can see all three. Lrc is Lightroom Classic. That's the one that we're going to be using the most in this class. We've got Photoshop and then we've got Adobe Lightroom. I'll be referring to this one as Lightroom CC, Creative Cloud, because it wasn't available until Creative Cloud was a thing. It's a cloud based photo service that lets you sync your photos across all your devices, edit from your ipad, from your phone, from your computer, and you're editing from the cloud. The editing capability is a little lower, it's more streamlined and simplified. So for what we're going to be doing, editing raw photos, doing a lot of in depth edits, we will be using Lightroom Classic. Light Room Classic is a powerful editing program and file management system for desktop. It's great for organizing large batches of photos, editing whole sessions, editing raw files, exporting them all that good stuff. Light Room Classic doesn't technically store your photos, it just knows where to find them on your computer. When you are editing a Lightroom Classic, you are editing non destructively, so we are not changing the original file. We are creating a roadmap basically that tells the photo what to look like and then when you export it, stitches them together and that is your final edited photo. Light room lets you manage your photos in catalog. So rather than showing you every photo you've ever taken in your entire career, you can decide, okay, it's time to start a new catalog. You can start fresh and then have only the photos. For example, maybe you have one catalog for 2021, catalog for 20211, catalog for 2022, and so forth. Maybe you have one catalog for two years or for six months. You would decide basically how much you want to have in your catalog, and then your catalogs are stored in your photos folder. So I just actually started a brand new catalog for this demonstration. It's my 2022 cat, that's what I called it. This is the library view. When you first open light room, you won't have any photos in here, so you'll need to hit the Import button. And then in this left hand menu, it should pop up your memory card where you want to pull the photos from and then it'll load them up in here. You can choose which ones and then hit Import. Once they are imported, it sorts it by date. By default I like this. I don't mind clicking through trying to figure out when I took what picture. It's a great way for me to stay organized. It's got all my photos by date over here, and I can just click between particular sessions and it will pull them up. Typically the library shows you the grid view that's down here For the grid, you can also click Loop View, which is right next to it, which shows you one photo at time. This is great for culling, which is going through and picking just the photos that you want to edit. It's a lot faster than if you are in the developed tab and you are tapping through because it just takes longer for the photos to load. So make sure when you're calling or in the library section. So once we're in library section, we want to go through and decide what photos are the best and then mark them. I like to mark them with a one star. You could do a five star or a color just hitting 1234 or five on the keyboard or right click and setting a color label or a rating. I like to filter them by rating, so it just shows me the ones that I think are worthy of editing. And then we tap over into the developed menu. This is where we get all of our editing done. So just a quick look around, This navigator shows you your photo as well as the zoom options. This is the preset menu. This is where any presets that you've downloaded from the Internet or created yourself will show up. After that, we have the snapshots and history section, which basically just shows you everything you've done in the past to this particular photo. If you haven't edited at all, it will only show you, just import basically. And then anytime you make an edit it will add it to the history and you can tap between to see like before. And on the right hand side we have our histogram at the top. This changes as we edit. After that, we have our camera settings. This will tell you what your camera was set to when you took the picture. These are specialized adjustment tools including crop cloning and masking. And then we have our basic drawer. We're going to do the bulk of our color and contrast and exposure edits in the basic menu. After that, we have tone curve menu, HSL, color menu, color grading. Detail lens corrections to transform effects and calibration. So there's a lot of choices to edit your photos to get started, the first thing that I like to do is adjust my exposure so this photo overall is very dark. You can see my histogram is really heavy on the shadow side. If I hover over this little triangle, it'll show me anything that's blue, is pure black. My shadows are getting absolutely clipped, so we definitely want to bring the exposure. Uh, that looks great. This bag is now a little bit too bright, so I'm going to bring my highlights down to help bring those back. Next, I want to bring my shadows up just a little bit and then my blacks down already. This photo is much better than it was when I started. And you could call it pretty much from there if you'd like. But we're going to go a little bit further. I like to make adjustments in the tone curve, freeing the darks up and the shadows down. This just adds a little more contrast. Before we go any further, let's crop our photo. We will open the crop menu here. And I'd like to click Original and bring it down to 4x54 Instagram. This locks the crop to this ratio. And then you can click inside the picture to move the photo, to grab and adjust the photo. And then you can click outside the photo to adjust the angle. So let's go ahead and bring this up. I don't want this little countertop edge in my shot because I think that, that draws the away. So I'm just going to bring it up so that, that gets cropped off. The important parts are in the photo, you can see I line this up on the rule of thirds. It's nice and bottom weighted. That's very good. Let's go ahead and adjust the horizon line a little bit, and then once I'm happy with my crop, I click on the box to close it. And then we will jump into the next step From here, let's do some sharpening. So I'm going to skip over all of these color changes and dive right into this sharpening slider in the detail menu. So for sharpening, I like to bring my slider up pretty much halfway. That's going to make the picture look a little bit crunchy. But then I want to go through and make adjustments on the mask. If you drag the mask slider, it doesn't really look like anything's happening, But if you hold down the Alt option key and then drag the mask slider, it'll show you everything in the image that's having a mask applied to it in white. And you can drag it up until only the edges are white. That means that the background will stay smooth and the edges will stay sharp. Then if you have noise in your photo like I do, I took this picture at ISO 1,000 with my Nikon D 750. So, I've got some noise in the background here. You can adjust it using the noise reduction slider. It's going to be a little bit hard to see, so I'm going to overdo it so you can see what it's doing on a grand scale. If I bring my noise reduction slider all the way up, you can see that everything that was pixie is now very, very smooth. It almost looks a little too smooth, it kind of painterly. So I'm going to bring this back down to noise reduction normal for my eyes and then call it good. I'm going to click on the photo to zoom out and I feel like we are so so close. This picture looks awesome. Before we export, I wanted to show you in the lens corrections drawer. You can check this box enable profile corrections and it will apply a profile correction based on the lens and camera that you used when you took the picture. So if I disable it, you can see there's a little bit of a vignette around the edge and the photo has a slight distortion. And then if I enable it, it fixes that a little bit. Sometimes I like the photo better with the little bit of an Et around the edge. So I will leave that unchecked. It's totally up to you. Once you are happy with the photo, you can copy these edits and paste them on the other photos that were taken at the same time. So we just hit copy. Make sure everything we want to copy is checked or unchecked. We don't want masking spot removal or crop to be checked. Everything else is probably good. Hit Copy, now it's ready to paste. You can click on the next photo and then hit Paste. And it will apply all of those same edits that you just did. This makes editing a lot quicker. If you want to make it even faster, you can hold down Shift and select all the photos that were taken at the same time or in the same settings, and then hit Sync over here on the right. And that will synchronize the photos basically. As long as you have one that's edited, that's selected, it'll match it up with all the rest. So if we hit synchronize, it goes boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and edits all these photos in this timeline. So now let's go back to our original image that we love. We're going to right click on it. Go down to Export. Do this brings up our export menu. From here, we can choose where it exports. I made a folder just for Instagram pictures to export two, this is my custom name, Andino pour over, we'll call it number two. And then I have my file settings to J peg SRGB. I don't change the color space, make sure it's set to SRGB so that you don't have any weird color problems when you export. I like to limit my file size to 1,800 k. This size is small enough for the skillshare project uploader. So that's just an old habit. I like to just leave it like that. And then image size, I reese to fit the short edge at 2,400 pixels at a resolution of two 40. These numbers are a little bit arbitrary, but they work really well for me, so I'm sticking with it. For output sharpening, I check that I sharpen for screen in the standard amount. I include all my metadata, and then for post processing, I just hit Show and Finder unless I need to make Photoshop edits. And then after that I can click Export. It will apply the edits that I made to a copy of the raw photo and then show up in my Instagram folder. So then if I click on it, here's my finished photo and the raw photo is still raw over in my pictures folder in the date of this. So you can edit your photos as many times as you want and create new copies and different copies. And it is non destructive, which is super awesome. So that pretty much covers it. That's your light room basics. I'm going to share more of my personal workflow next. 24. My Workflow: Let's talk about my light room workflow. All right, so I am over here using Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Classic 11.1 There are some changes that I'm very excited about. Once I have my photos in here, by default it shows the grid view. I learned pretty recently that if you switch it to the Loop view and coal in library, it's a lot faster than if you co develop which loads every photo individually. I think I could have saved myself a lot of time. It's fine. I'm not mad for culling specifically. I just tap through the photos and then I hit the one for one star on any photo that I think has editing potential. A few of these have already been edited, but I'm going to go ahead and sort them by one star. So you can see that once I'm here then I like to tap through. If I have too many, then I'll sort just the ones that I like and give those a two star. And then, you know, two star, all the ones that I like a whole lot. And then from here I can filter it to just the two stars. And so it reduces how many photos I need to edit, which can make it seem less overwhelming. So once I have the photos that I want to work with, I tap over into the develop menu for my workflow. I like to start with my exposure. I'm going to pick a photo that needs a little more help than this one though. Let's go with this beautiful macro image. This one is overall very dark. You can see I was shooting at 1,600 O with my macro lens. Let's go ahead and bring up the exposure here. When I bring up the exposure, I notice that some of the highlights feel a little too hot, too bright. I like to bring the highlights slider down to help bring them back. And then from here, I like to add a lot more contrast, bringing the black slider down. And then bring back some light in the shadows. Bring the shadow slider up. I do this most of the time. This is very, very normal for my editing to look like this. And then if I feel like it needs more contrast, I'll pull up the contrast lighter. This is very high contrast edit here, it's got a lot of mood to it, which is very fun. I then adjust the white balance if needed. Sometimes I'll take this little color picker and bring it in. If there's any gray in the image, I'll click on that. We added a lot of magenta overall, which I don't love. So I'm going to actually go back and then maybe just take the temperature down and make it a little bluer overall. Just a little. And then from here, I can't stop looking at the speckle. I'm sure it's just a reflection of the dripping coffee in there, but it's bugging me. So I'm going to hit the little band aid and make my clone stamp adjustment. I have heel selected and I increase using the scroll wheel on my mouse so that it's the right size. Click on it, it'll sample. And that is much better. While I'm here, I should check and see if there's any other distracting elements in my shot. Anything that's going to draw the eye in and take it away from the coffee pot, which is what I'm trying to communicate. I could spend hours clone stamping dust out of an image anyway. Cool, Then we close that menu. I think that's nice and clean. I've got some like smudges here on the wood. I think we can get rid of that. There we go. Perfect. Okay, now I want to fix my crop before I go any further, because if this crops not going to work for the end result, then I shouldn't keep on editing it. So I'm going to open up the crop menu. Go down to four by five, which is my Instagram crop. I think this actually helps because it cuts off the second tassel in a nice way. If it were to cut here, I feel like that would be so, so distracting your eye goes right to this knot and then it's like off the page, basically, that is a very healthy crop here. If I come down right here, then there's not enough space up here and this one gets cut. I think this is actually a very nice compromise. Plus check it out. It puts the bead, the tie right on that third line. This one's on this third line. What a compositionally sound image. This picture is close enough that there's not really a horizon here. So we will accept the crop and then move forward. I'm actually, for the first time noticing there's quite a lot of grain in this photo. So let's go ahead and edit that. I'm going to scroll all the way down to the detail drawer. I like to sharpen and do noise reduction at the same time. I usually crank up sharpening halfway. And then while I'm holding down the Alt option key, I bring up the masking. Anything that's white is the mask. And that's what gets sharpened. I don't want to sharpen the grain, so I bring it up until it's not on the grain anymore. There's a lot of grain in this photo, so we have to compromise a little bit. All the edges are white and that's what's important. Then we're going to go down to the noise reduction. I usually bring this up 25% Just enough that it starts to reduce the noise, but not so much that it starts to look fake and painterly. See how if I bring it all the way up it, it looks smudgy a bit. It's a little not noisy enough. Yeah, I bring that somewhere 25-50 depending on how grainy the photo is. And then I'm going to double check my sharpening mask because I think, yeah, so there's a lot less noise now for it to sharpen. So that adjustment is very nice and clean. What is that? There is like this perfect little dust mark that I didn't notice until I saw my mask. It's like, here it is. So let's let's take that little dust mark out. Yeah, how funny. Okay, goodbye M And there's another little speck on the glass right here. That's distracting M. Yeah, that looks great. Now I like to check the lens corrections to see if it's something that I want to apply. This basically just removes vignettes and flattens the image. Actually, I think it helps this image, it adds a little more balance of light and dark. And then let's make it a little bit grungy. I'm going to bring up the clarity ever so slightly. I don't like to overdo the clarity. Sometimes just a kiss of it is good though. Sometimes I bring up the texture as well that one can be fun to play with. Let's add a little more contrast in the tone curve. I like to bring the blacks slider up and the shadow slider down. I'm going to bring the black slider up just a little bit more, and I think that looks really, really good. Let me show you before the tone curve and then after. It just really adds a little bit of punch, which is my thing. If I did not like this green here, I can remove it using the saturation menu. If you click on the little target, this target adjustment, and then click where the color is that you want to get rid of. It'll highlight it. Over in this menu, you can see the highlight dancing around as I move the cursor across the image. So if I hover over the screen, click on it and drag it down, it'll pull down just the color in that spot so I can really get rid of the greens. Get rid of these yellow tones, really just tone out the image overall. I don't think this is the look that I'm going for, but that's a fun tool that you can use if you need. Let's chat really quick about the color grading menu. This basically replaces the split tone menu. So we have like a color grading overall if you want to do an overall adjustment to the image. Or you can adjust the shadows in the highlights individually. For example, let's add some blue to our shadows a little bit. I'm going to drag this circle down to the blue section and tune it in until I feel like it looks pretty good. Then I feel like it added a pinkness to the photo. The opposite of pink is green. Let's try and add a little bit of green in here and see if that will help normalize that a little bit. I think that's okay. This is a very stylized feel. Not usually what I go for, but really fun to play with if you're looking for that film feel overall. So I'm just going to back those ones out. And then next, let's go all the way to the top to chat about the all new masking menu. So usually there's a little paint brush up here and a gradient, Radial gradient, and a circular gradient. But now it's its own little mask menu. So if you click on this, you can add a new mask. This is a really cool thing. So let me show you in a different photo. Here is how the Select Subject mask works. So if you hit Select Subject, it's going to try to detect what it thinks in your photo is the subject which it picked the coffee. And the front of the bag of coffee, which is exactly right, so it has a mask. It's basically saying, okay, we're going to edit just this part of the photo, so now I can make any adjustment I want. Let's say I felt like my subject was too dark and I wanted to brighten it up, which I do a lot. I can just drag my exposure up so that it puts emphasis on that. Because the brightest thing in the photo is what your eye is going to be drawn to first. And so making sure that if you want it to be the main subject that's prominent and bright, that that is what has the emphasis. You can also make other adjustments, like maybe I'm kicking up the contrast, bringing the blacks down, increasing the shadow so that you can really see that subject stand out. Maybe boost in some clarity, some sharpness. So if I close this mask and then do it before and after, you can see the difference. This is before that mask and after. I think we're bordering unrealistic at this point. But it looks pretty damn good. This is very, very exciting. In the mask menu, you can also create a mask where it selects the sky. It works mostly for outdoor photos, but it tries to select the sky. You can bring it back if it's overexposed, which is pretty cool. And then you've got your classic brush. If you click on new mask and then have brush, this works the same as the adjustment brush previously. If I felt like the front of this bag of coffee was a little too overexposed, I can hand select just that and then make adjustments from there, just affecting that one mask. If I want to create another mask like a linear gradient, let's click on that one. These cupboards are a little bit bright, so I'm going to click and drag. My linear gradient works much the same as it did before. And then I would bring my exposure in, bring my high lights in a little bit, add a little bit of shadows, and that should be, that helps tone that in just a little bit more. The cool thing about this is you can click between your masks and edit them. You don't have to look for the little bubbles like you used to. And you can add gradients to one single mask, stacking them. If I wanted to do a color range gradient, this is where I'm just adding the color range of a particular color in an image. I'm going to click on that. It says click anywhere to sample colors. So if I sample green, let's sample this screen. It will mask just the things that are green. So right now they look a little crazy because they've got a red mask on them. But let's say I wanted to increase the saturation on those, it's just going to boost the saturation there. Let's see if we can make that more visible. Maybe I'll increase the shadows and the exposure on my plants contrast. So that just helped brighten them up a little bit. So here is before that mask and here is after. So that one didn't look super realistic, but in, in some cases it might be really effective to have that kind of a mask in there. So tons of fun stuff to play with in there. But yeah, overall, I love how this is coming out. Let's go ahead and do a little bit more cloning. Oh wait, I wasn't editing this picture before. I love the steam. That's good. That's good. Let's go back to our first photo and pick up where we left off. So for this shot, as far as masking goes, I'm thinking I want to add a linear gradient to the side and just kind of brighten it up just so that I have a very clear bright side and dark side of my image. So I'm just going to click up the exposure a little bit, increase the contrast. Bring up the shadows. I also don't like the kind of overall muddy tones in the background. I like the green, but I don't like the muddy. So I'm going to try to do a color range here. If I select just this, it's probably going to select the whole coffee pot. But we'll see. Sure did, but okay, let's go to subtract. We are going to subtract from mask with the brush. So now I have the subtract tool and I'm just going to remove all the parts of this mask that I don't want, so it's just selecting those strange colors in the background next to my green plants. I'm just going to fine tune in just a little. Okay, cool. So this is just the selection. What's fun about this selection is if you look over here in the mask, it looks like smoke, like it's got a lot of dimension. I don't know that I could have drawn that with the paint brush pretty neat. But yeah, I'm going to adjust the color here. I'm actually going to make it slightly glue and then I'm going to bring the saturation down just to here. I'm even going to add in some color, open up this little color menu. We're just going to add some green in there. There we go. And then it looks like there's a spot back here that I want to add to it. So I'm going to hit Spacebar to zoom in Spacebar and click. And then I'm going to add another brush to this adjustment. This is mask two. This is the same adjustment, but I'm adding an additional layer to it, which is kind of fun. So I'm just going to hand paint this in right here. This will apply the same edits and let's see if that helped Walla Vla. This looks great. So I have a speckle right here that I need to edit. Great, love that. Okay, beautifully done. I think this is pretty close to what we want. I'm going to just increase the contrast a little more, maybe kick up the whites. I kind of go back and forth just adding little adjustments here and there, and making changes as the photo takes shape. Sometimes I kick up the vibrants for fun. But overall, I feel like this image is effective and I am ready to export. Click Export menu, and here is my settings. I always export to my pictures folder. For this, I put in the subfolder Instagram. I like to rename my file. I do custom name sequence for this. I typed Andino pour over. This will be the third one that I export from this series. For my file settings, I always set it to J peg SRGB. If you're sending to a printer and they recommend that you use these other ones, then I would do that. But for everything else, I would always just do SRGB that will prevent any weird color space issues. Limit file size to 1,800 K. This is the maximum file size for skill share, project uploaders, then image sizing I like to do, resize to fit short edge at 2,400 pixels with 240 resolution. This might be a little bit arbitrary. I just kind of, I didn't randomly pick these numbers. They work really well for me. Sometimes I adjust them, but if it's not broken, we're going to keep it. Next up we have output sharpening. I sharpen for screen in the standard amount. It's always nice to sharpen your photos one extra time, because as you save it and resave it and transfer it and E mail it, it can lose quality. So adding extra sharpening just for fun. I also sharpen on Instagram right before I post as well. So I include the metadata, I don't include watermarks. And then for post processing, I just show it in finder. We're going to hit export. And there it goes. Now that I'm looking at, I'm like, oh, it's too green. I'll have to go back and edit it and make it not green. Here is our photo all done. And from here I would air drop it to my phone and post it on Instagram. Before we wrap, I wanted to talk about deleting files. So if I have a session where I absolutely know that the photos should be deleted, like this whole session, I don't know what this was. If you right click on a photo and then hit Remove, you get this menu. Oh, should we remove it from light room or deleted from the disc? If I never want to see this again, it is out of here. Delete from disc. It goes right into my trash bin for a whole folder. We are going to select all of these photos and remove them. Delete from disc. So those are gone. I never want to see those again. Now the folder is still here and it says it has zero images in it. Right click remove. That's gone. We don't need that anymore. Now I can clean it up a little bit. Let's say I wanted to keep some and delete others when I get to the end of a session. If I know I like all the one star photos and I love all the two star photos, I keep both. So what I'll do is I'll uncheck and then I'll change this little greater than or equal to two rating is equal to, and now it's showing anything that has zero stars. So what I'll do is I'll select the first one and then scroll to the end. Hold down shift, select all of them. Right click, Delete. I delete them. And then all I have left is what is my one stars and my two stars, which would be 18 photos. This would say 18 after I deleted them. I'm not ready to delete these yet. And then I would drag them into my long term storage from here. So that is basically the session is over. It's nice to keep the one stars because sometimes people will come back and they'll be like, hey, is there any chance you have a slightly different crop for this? And sometimes I do, and so that is nice. But yeah, if I know the photos, crap, it's out. It's goodbye. I'm never going to look at that again. Then you make sure to empty your recycle bin so that your number can go down. I look at this number all the time. 82 out of 500 gigs, I'm doing pretty good with my four sessions. So anyway, that pretty much covers it for my workflow. 25. Photoshop: Let's talk about Photoshop. Having access to Photoshop gives me flexibility. I'm able to fix mistakes in a pinch. My most common use case for bringing an image into Photoshop is when I took the picture a little too close and I need a little bit more background around the edges. So this is what I like to call inventing a backdrop. Here is a prime example in light room. I absolutely love the shot and I edit it so it looks really great. But then when I go to crop it for Instagram, the four Y five, I have to make some tough calls. I can either chop off the flowers or I can chop off this beautiful little ice situation here. I can try and scooch this down. But I really, really like the roses in this shot. This particular product has a rose sort of tea flavor to it. And so those are important to me. I really want to keep them if I can. So if I prioritize the roses, then we get rid of this little ice cube, which this is fine. This is an okay crop. But keep in mind, when it's on my grid, it's going to be a one by one. So it's going to cut off the edge of the glass. It's going to cut off the roses. It's just not what I want. So I'm going to bring this into Photoshop and see if I can fix it. Let's reset the crop Totally right Click on the photo edit in Adobe Photoshop. Okay, so here is my image in Photoshop. I've got my history window open and then my layers window open as well. To get started, let's convert this background layer to a regular layer. I double click and hit, okay, now it is called layer zero. We want to add more canvas here. So I'm going to go into image canvas size. And from here I can increase the canvas size by whatever arbitrary amount I feel like. So it's 16.7 ". I'm going to say 18 " wide. And for the height, we can just leave it as it is. And then hit. Okay, Make sure that the little dot is in the center so it's growing on both sides. We're going to hit. Okay, awesome. So this gave us two checkerboard bars on either side of our shot. Now, before we continue, I want to make sure I have enough canvas space to work with. So I'm going to open up my crop tool and set it to four by five, or eight by ten. From here, I'll click in and adjust my crop, making sure that it's including the elements that I want it to include and it looks like it will. So we'll step out of the crop because we don't want to crop yet. We are going to hit M for marquee tool and then select this entire checkerboard bar. We'll start with the right side. In that selection, I'm going to right click Fill, and I'm going to make sure it's highlighted on Content Aware at 100% opacity. Hit okay, this is going to automatically generate a background and it might look good. All right, command D to D select here is the background it generated. If you didn't know that you were looking for an automatically generated background, you might not notice it. We've got some weird leaf stuff happening here, but I think we can fix it. Let's tackle the other side. M for marquee tool, click and drag. Right click inside and hit Phil, there is a content aware fill menu, its own menu. Let's look into that really quick. This will allow you more flexibility in what the computer is going to sample and give you a live preview of it. So if there's parts that it's sampling from that you don't want it to use, you can mask those in or out. This preview shows that it looks pretty good. So I'm going to hit okay, awesome command D to deselect. Now I kind of want to tweak those edges, especially this leaf. So I'm going to hit Alt and zoom in and we will pull up our patch tool. The patch tool is great because you can make a weird shaped selection and then click and drag to another spot. It works a lot like the healing brush in light room, so I'm going to click and drag to this leaf and it will blend those selections command to deselect honestly that looks pretty good for an out of focus leaf. I'm going to do the same thing to this top leaf. Okay, so now that that's patched up, let's tackle this little spot of what should be shadow underneath the plant. I am going to activate my clone stamp tool and make it a lot smaller using the left bracket key. I'm going to hit Alt to sample this shadow here. And then I will click, click, click, Paste it in just a little bit, I want to make sure my clone stamp tool is set to 50% opacity or less. I'm at 47 and I just layer in. Shadows right there. Awesome. And I think that looks super believable. Let's go over to this leaf and fix this dark patch. I'm going to long press the patch tool and go into the spot healing brush tool. I'm going to increase the size and then draw over this spot and see if it can heal it up for me. I'm going to need a little work on the edges here. I also want to fix anything that looks like it's a repeated shape that makes it look obviously Photoshopped. And then we can pull in that clone stamp, take a sample, clone it in, so it's just nice and smooth. Awesome. Okay, so now that we've given ourselves more room on the edges, let's try that crop again. Hit the crop tool and click inside to make your adjustments. I like that I'm able to get a little bit of room above those flowers. I'm going to slowly scoot it down so it feels a little bit more balanced my life and then enter to accept. Now I have a little bit more breathing room above the roses. My edges are nice, that give me a little more breathing room around the vanilla bean and room between the ice cube and the crop. It did, however, create a crop line right across these two pieces of. So I'm going to remove them. We'll grab our little band aid, our spot healing brush, and draw in right there. And it should take them right out. Perfect. While we're here, we can click out any other little spots we might have missed. And I think that turned out pretty nice. So let me show you where we started and where we are now. Before and after another adjustment that I like to make in Photoshop that you can't really do very easily in light room is to rotate objects in a frame. One single object. I'm going to rotate this little cardamom pod. As an example, I'm going to long press on the Band Aid tool and go down to the Content Aware Move Tool. I'm going to zoom in and select just the object that I want to rotate, including its shadow and highlights around it. Now that I have this selection, I'm going to make sure that my mode is set to move. And then I'm going to drag it ever so slightly. This will create a transform box around the object. And I can hover outside the box to adjust the angle. Let's adjust this angle this direction. I don't want to go all the way around because then my shadows aren't cohesive throughout the frame. So if I'm making an adjustment in this shot, I could go a little this way or a little that way, but anymore and it's not going to look realistic. Once I like the angle that it is set to, I'm going to hit Enter and it's going to calculate the difference between those two angles. And then command D to D select and it did a really good job. You can see here is before and here is after. This is a really subtle change, but if you are dealing with something in your scene that is off and it is driving you crazy, that's an option for you and I find it very effective. Photoshop is also great. If you are going to be adding text to an image, to an area of negative space, maybe you are creating banners for a brand or you need to clone out a massive distracting piece from your image. It's also quicker for doing like little clone stamping throughout it, samples a lot faster and can be quicker than in light room. There are so many additional tools in this program and it's absolutely worth taking some time to learn it and see how it can benefit you. 26. Lightroom CC: Let's talk about the cloud based light room. Light room CC is a much more condensed and streamlined version of light room Classic. You can still do a lot of editing and organizing, but it's all stored in the cloud and there is a few less features. One nice thing about having your photos in the cloud, however, is that it syncs across all your devices. So if you want to do your editing from the couch on your ipad or using your phone on the Go, you are totally able to do that. That being said, whenever I launch light room, it shows me all the photos of my camera and it's a little bit overwhelming. So here we are in the program. This is a picture that I edited on my computer and sent to my phone, which is why it's here. But you can see this timeline down in the bottom has just a bunch of random pictures that I took with my phone. Just to do a quick little editing overview, I'm going to select a photo and then pull open the editing menu. In here you can see you have your lighting edits, your color edits, color grading. You've got a detailed drawer, It's got a lot of the same features that light Room Classic has. You can adjust your crop from this menu. You can use healing brushes and masks in this menu. I'm going to be honest, I don't use this program on desktop. I pretty much only use it on my phone when I'm on the go. It's nice to have, but it's not a crucial part of my work flow. I do however, know photographers who swear by it, they love editing from their ipad, on their couch, all the photos that they take on their camera and have a great time with it. It is very intuitive if you hover over any of these adjustment bars, it'll tell you what it's going to do. So from a beginner standpoint, this would be really, really helpful. If this interests you, just know that you do have access to it through your Adobe Creative cloud photography plan. And we'll just throw some edits on here really fast for fun in, in case that's fun to look at as a fun little sample. Here's a preview of what I can do really quickly. Clicking around on this photo I took with my phone here is before and after. Not too bad. 27. Working with Clients & Planning a Session : Let's talk about working with clients and planning a session. When it comes to managing inquiries, I like to have a series of questions that I ask the client. Series of questions I ask myself, and then a list of expectations I hope to set as far as questions that I ask potential clients. Usually it's from people who've reached out to me and they're like, hey, we'd love to work together. I have this product, what do you think? And I always like to ask, what's your timeline? What's your budget? Where will these photos end up? And what look and feel are we going for? Sometimes look and feel. I save for the second e mail, but I really need to know how much are they hoping to spend after they get back to me and we kind of have a better idea of like pricing and the scope of the project. I like to ask myself a few questions. Is this work I'm passionate about? Is this a good opportunity or good money if it's not necessarily work that I'm passionate about? Is this work that I'd love to have in my portfolio? Do I have the time to meet their deadline and do this project? And do I have the skills to complete the project or am I close enough to the skill set that I would love to learn along the way and get the experience doing that. If after I self reflect and I do still think it's a good fit, I will, you know, kind of go back and forth and figure out what kind of pricing and timeline and all that looks best for us. And then we can kind of move forward talking about specific look and feel, nail down specifics. Where will these photos end up? Do they need to be tall for Instagram or wide for the banner? It's really important to make sure that you are taking the right photos for the end result because it's super frustrating to have to go back and be like, oh yeah, sorry. Hey, we actually need this in banner format, Can you just like reshoot? Oh, yes, of course, I'd love to reshoot. I wish I'd asked that question before. Most brands love when their logo is Tech Sharp, but some don't mind if it's out of focus in the background, if it means it's a better composition, it's a really good idea to ask, you know, do you care? Does your logo have to be sharp? Because you wouldn't want to shoot a whole session with the logo kind of casually in the background and then find out later that they're like, we can't use any of these, you know. So you want to make sure, you know, is this something that's important and it's a great time to ask them or is there any other considerations you have? Do you have like a style guide? Do you have colors that you always recommend that photographers use when they're shooting? Do you have a general looking field? Do you like bright and airy? Do you like dark and moody? Do you like photos to be raw and like show some real life or do you want them to be super polished in the studio? This is a great time to ask what of my photos were you attracted to that made you reach out to me and see and think that I would be the right match for this project. And so then you can kind of get an idea. Okay, they liked these photos that I did, so I'm going to start there and create something similar. It's really important when you're working with a client to set expectations. You want them to know when the next time they will hear from you is. So I would never want my client to be like I haven't heard from Tapva, no idea when I will hear from her, I want them to know. Okay. She said that it would be Monday that she would have the finished photos into the gallery. It is Friday, so we'll give her the weekend. And then on Monday, you know, I'll usually be in their inbox. Hey, your photos are done. Here is the link to the gallery. La, La. La. I just want to make sure that I am meeting expectations and that they know what those expectations are. When it comes to planning a session, the first step that I'd like to do is gain inspiration. I spend a lot of time on Pinterest saving photos that I love, whether it's the lighting or the composition, or just the overall mood that the photo creates. I like to save photos when I am planning a session for a specific client. So if they communicate the style of photo that they're hoping for and the mood that they're going for, I'll search like similar things. For example, I did a shot with egg. It was made with barley milk. And so I searched egg on pinterest and searched through till I found really beautiful photos of eggnog that I felt were in the same theme as the eggnog that I would be shooting. And I was gaining ideas for props and posing and what kind of glassware to consider and how to style it to make it look it's best, do I use cinnamon sticks or cinnamon sprinkle? So I'm just basically collecting a lot of other ideas that other people have done and choosing what feels right for me and what feels like my style, and then putting that all together. Oftentimes if I am putting together a full session where I'm covering more than just one main shot or one recipe. If I'm photographing a whole series or season, I will put together a mood for it so that I know, okay, I want to convey this gift giving mood. And I want to convey this togetherness mood. And I want to convey, so I list out all the feelings that I'm hoping to share. And Requirements in the session. And that way I can kind of see all at a glance. I do a lot of this on my ipad. I can see at a glance what I'm hoping to gain, the feelings that I'm hoping to capture. And it helps me kind of stay focused in on the project. It's also a great place because I'm going to come up with more ideas along the way. I can also jot those down as I go, and it's sort of a living template for my workflow. You can also sketch out rough compositions. I used to do this a ton when I was planning out sessions. I don't do it as much anymore, I think, because it's easier for me to work on the go. But when I was really just kind of diving into this, I was putting compositions down on paper and trying to figure out like how much space each of the items would take in the frame. And it was really helpful for me, really important to determine is your shooting order. So for example, if I'm photographing chocolate, it's important for me to get all the shots of the wrapped bar before I open it up and then work with the chocolate inside. How are you going to deal with contracts, invoices, and releases for me, I tackle all of those things using shoot proof. It's tricky for me to manage all of the paperwork altogether, and so it's such a good solution to just have a system that does all that for me. With portraits, I was sending a lot more print releases than I send. Now typically when I'm giving photos out, their printer doesn't need a print release to be able to print the photos because it's all in house. I'm working directly with the brand, so that's less common. But yeah, as far as contracts go, sometimes clients will have their own contracts that they'll want you to sign or NDAs, that kind of thing. And so just know that that's a thing that could come up if you want to be protected by a contract, that's something that you might consider drafting up for yourself. And there are a lot of companies out there that will help you along the way when it comes to delivering Ras. You're going to get asked questions like, oh, you know, can I have the ras? And that's going to be a personal choice for me. I never deliver my Ras. Part of what I'm delivering is the final photo and the editing is a huge component of that. And so for me to feel like it's still my work, it needs to be the finished photo from me. So I just say no, I don't deliver raw photos. I'm willing to re edit if needed. Happy to. In fact, I want to make sure the client is happy with the photos that I make for them, but the edits are part of the photo, it's the whole thing. As far as watermarking goes, I never deliver watermarked photos, but all the photos that are available for purchase in the gallery are watermarked. So then the client couldn't just like right click save as you know, they see watermarked versions and then after they purchase it, the files that are delivered are not watermarked. There have been a few cases where a brand wants to see if the photo fits the right dimensions for a specific project. And they'll ask for specifically a watermarked version so that they can test it out. And in that case, I would deliver a watermarked version of the photo. But in most cases, it's just going to be, they'll purchase the photo and they get the unwatermarked version. After we have to talk about pricing, I was going to avoid talking about it, but you probably want to know everything that I can share about pricing. Obviously, pricing is an art form. It's going to be completely different for everybody, and it's going to vary based on your location and your skill level, and your potential clients. There's so many factors to consider that I can't just be like price your work like this. But I can tell you how I price my work and how I adjust my price to best meet my needs and my client's needs. Let's talk about what your time is worth. This one is nebulous, It's hard to decide what your time is worth. If you're lucky, your potential client comes to you and says, I want to pay you this amount, will you do it? And if it's a good amount, you'll say yes, and you'll do it and feel happy. And if it's too low, you'll do it and you'll feel like, man, I sure wish I got paid more for that project. This is a great working point because then you'll know, okay, that number was too low or that number felt right or I really don't think I delivered for the amount that they paid me. That's probably rare. I don't think that happens very often. But you can be flexible with your pricing because you are the boss essentially. Right when I got started, I didn't feel like I could charge full price because I was making the transition from portrait photography to product and food. And I wasn't really even sure how to price for my work with portraits. I charge a sitting fee. They pay for the session right after I take the pictures and then I deliver the photos. So I get paid whether they like the pictures or not. I mean, if they don't like them, they'll get a refund or a reshoot, like we'll work it out. But that's kind of the trade off there. And I have a price for a session, and if I choose to take more pictures or choose to spend more time there, it's going to be the same price. Whereas with product and food, I tend to price it per image. That's just what has been most common and most comfortable for me. So I will do a whole session and edit the best photos, upload them to a gallery with watermarks. And then the client will go through and pick their favorite photos and only purchase the ones that they want to buy. This is a riskier way to do it because if you End up showing the client the pictures. And they don't like any of them. If they don't want to buy any of them, you made no money and you still did all that work. And so some photographers I know charge a creative fee. So basically this is an upfront fee. They get paid for their time, whether you buy pictures or not. And I feel like this is probably a safer way to do it. But for me, I feel most comfortable just charging for the work if they like it. So I am willing to take that risk because I want to make sure that the client feels like they will get what they pay. I don't always price per photo. Sometimes I price per project or per day. So I've charged a day rate in the past before, so it's basically every photo that I can take in that day. That's good. That gets edited, gets thrown into a gallery, and then the client has full access to all of those images. This is great for just getting a lot of content. Like for social media, sometimes clients only are looking for one or two photos for like a recipe card or product promo on their website. And so they don't really want a whole bunch of photos of the same thing. They are more interested in getting that one hero shot. And so it really is flexible based on the project. And I think that that's helpful when someone asks for your pricing to be able to say, okay, I've got a couple different pricing models. Let's figure out what fits best for this particular project and go from there. When I'm working with a new client, I like to have sort of a trial, so we do an initial trial session together and they commit to paying for at least three photos. I've got a three photo minimum. If we feel like it's a good working relationship, then we can move forward together. But I don't want to commit to being able to offer certain pricing for a product I've never photographed before. It might have tricky elements to it that I couldn't properly anticipate ahead of time. So I want to make sure that I'm covering my basis and making sure that it is still a good opportunity for them as well. When it comes to setting your own prices, you have the opportunity to be as flexible or as rigid as you want to be. For example, if I'm working with a large national brand, they might have a larger budget to be able to spend on photos. And if I'm working with a small local company that's just getting started, they might not have as flexible of a budget. So I like to be flexible and be able to offer maybe a more competitive rate for a local brand that I really, really care deeply about and would love the opportunity to work with. So I'm willing to flex a little on pricing. Maybe charge them a lower rate and also get paid partially in product, which is a fun trade if you're just getting started. You might love just trading photos for product, and that's a good way to kind of get yourself established and build rapport with a potential client in the future. If they love your photos that you took and they love working with you, they might be more inclined to actually pay you for future work rather than just in product trades. Occasionally, there will be a company that's like, we love what you're doing. We've got this product, please take pictures of these dog biscuits. And you'd be like, okay, you're thinking like, okay, I have a friend with a dog. I could probably do a dog biscuit thing. And you're, you know, kind of planning it out, but if it doesn't feel like the right fit, like there's nothing wrong with being like, yeah, you know, that's not really my deal. If it was cat biscuits, you bet a small cat would be. I'm like cover up every bag of biscuits. But dog biscuits, I don't know, that's not really relevant to me. So it's okay to pass up on that. Being able to say no to projects that don't interest you is empowering. It's great to be able to say, that's not what I want to do. That's not the kind of work that I want to get into, because it gives you more time and space to pursue the sort of work that you absolutely love. And obviously, if you need the money, if you need the gig, take the gig. This is your business. You're allowed to be as flexible as you want to be with the kind of gigs that you're getting. 28. Portfolio and Social Media: Fill your portfolio with the kind of photos you hope to get paid to take. If you have a dream of photographing coffee, go buy some coffee. Take a picture of it, post it on social media. If you love the picture added to your portfolio, that's a great way to establish yourself as that kind of photographer. When I first got a job taking pictures of chocolate, it was because I was teaching a class on skill share about how to photograph in a dark and moody style. And chocolate was my subject. I loved it. I could go to the store and buy the most expensive bars of chocolate on the shelf for my skillshare class project. And I took pictures of a bunch of chocolate tagged a bunch of brands. And a couple of them actually reached out to me and we're wondering about getting some pictures taken. And that's not every time, but when it happens, it feels awesome when you are posting pictures of people's products and tagging them. Occasionally they'll give alike or say love this. Sometimes they'll share your photo, tag you in the description. I've heard people get upset about this, they're like, I want to get paid. And that's totally valid for me though. I see that as a really great opportunity for a new handful of eyes to get to see my image. This is actually how I landed a gig with a local company. I took a picture of some doughnuts that I was eating from a small doughnut shop here in Portland, and I posted them on Instagram. And that brand reshared my photo and tagged me in the description. And this other brand saw it. And they were like, we want photos like that. We'd love to work with you. And so I never expected to get to get a job out of this doughnut picture. I actually took it for fun. I told my sibling, I was like, if I take a picture of these donuts, I can write them off You know, I was joking. It was not I wasn't intending to really write off the doughnut, but I liked it the way the picture came out and I posted it on Instagram. And I feel like I've structured my Instagram in a way that allows me to share photos of things that I love, photos of things in my life, pictures that I'm happy with. The other obvious place that I receive inquiries is through the contact page on my website. My website is very minimal. It's got a portfolio page that shows off the work that I can do. It has a short about page that talks about me. And then it's got a contact form. Here's how to reach out to me if you want to work together. So occasionally I'll get inquiries through my contact page and then I can decide from there, you know, if we're a good fit. I have a Facebook technically, but I don't use it. I don't really use Facebook, So that's okay. It's okay to have a Facebook and not use it, but if you do that, just set up those little message things so that if someone messages you on Facebook, it says, hey, I don't check my Facebook. Send me a message on my website and then you'll get the message on your website. If you want to establish yourself as a light and airy photographer, that's the kind of work that you should be showcasing and honing in. Get tons of experience doing that, working through it on your own. Because you're going to build your skill set. You're going to have a better portfolio, and you're going to attract the kind of clients that you want to have. That being said, if you don't want to limit yourself to only one kind of photography, I think it's okay to share lots of different kinds of photography. There's this idea that you have to specialize, you have to hone in your style, and you have to be one thing. But I don't think that's necessarily true, at least not for me. For me, I have dark and moody photos and light and airy photos on my feet. I kind of checkerboard them on Instagram. And it gives me the freedom to do the kind of work that I want to do because I like both. And that's okay. It just means that when I am setting up expectations with my clients, I need to make sure that I know are you wanting lighter photos or darker photos or both? It's also a good idea to show off the kind of lighting styles that you're comfortable working with. Show off that beautiful, soft, dreamy, glowy light. But also show off how you can work with hard light. If you're not afraid to work with shadows or direct light, things that are more edgy and kind of like high fashion, show off that you can do a very effective, beautifully lit, minimal composition. Show off that you can do a maximal composition with lots of things, lots of depth in the frame, and a lot going on, and a lot of storytelling elements show that you have experience working with and without people. For me, a lot of times that just is like a hand in the side of the photo or a hand pouring some coffee. It's just a little bit of people, if you're comfortable working with models, show that in your portfolio. Because some brands are going to want that in their feed. Show off that variety of angles. You know, if all you do is flat laced, that's going to limit the amount of potential work that you can offer. And then don't be afraid to fill your portfolio with images that were not paid, photos that you took just for you just to boost your portfolio. I think that sometimes we get this idea that a portfolio has to be our best paid work. But it doesn't, it can be the work that you're the most proud of. Mine has random pictures of mushrooms that I took because I wanted to show off that I have a macro lens and that I love using it. And that it can create a really captivating looking image because I've got a lot of variety. It doesn't get stale, it doesn't feel like the same thing over and over on my feet. I love that variety, and I love that I have the freedom to do lots of different kinds of photos. 29. Magic: Let's talk about magic. This is the fun stuff. The kind of images that stop you in your scroll that make you say, wow, how did they take that? The kind of photos that you're pinning to your inspiration board, the ones that you hope to take someday. I've noticed a few themes come up in my hope to capture someday inspiration board. And most of them are just taking that little extra step to elevate your work. Let's talk about how to add sparkle to an image. The best way I know how is shooting back let through glass. Getting light to shine through glass makes it glow. It sparkles. It adds that magic to the shot that I absolutely love. I keep finding myself pinning images and the way that light goes through a drink and creates a beautiful color splash on the table. It just feels special. You can also incorporate sparkle using really shiny glaze, maybe like chocolate. Using a large window to help add a lot of highlights to your image, that really helps elevate a particular shot. Another way is by shooting in a beam of light. This is a really, really cool technique to implement, but it can be tricky to set up. If you have a space where you get direct light through a window, and it's generally a little bit dim around it. You can set up your scene right in the middle and utilize this sort of special kind of in the moment look of a beam of light in a photo. Let's talk about freezing action. Having photos that incorporate movement and motion can make a stagnant feed, feel more alive, more dynamic, more in the moment. I like to freeze action utilizing splash photos and a fast shutter speed. You can also make sure that you appropriately capture your splash. Putting your camera on first mode. Here's a shot that I captured and the settings that I used to get it. This shot is partially backlit and I absolutely love the way that it turned out. This adds a very gorgeous specialist to my work. This approach makes everything in your shot absolutely captured perfectly. But you can play around with shutter sweets and get things blurred in the photo, like that snowfall effect. This is the shot where we have sugar swirling through the air. We've got a slower shutter speet. We have that implied movement. We're freezing action. We're capturing this moment in time, but it doesn't have that like, super sharp feel to it. It's got more of like a dream like whimsy, I should say. There's tons of ways to just play with your shutter speeds and change the look of your photos completely by freezing or slowing down movement. Let's talk about story. We can lean into this idea of storytelling through implementing relevant props and incorporating things that have a smell so that you look at the image and you can feel like you can smell it a little bit. Activating the senses in this way really adds to the story of the shot. Some easy ways to add story are using a little bit of a crumb trail. Maybe you're take a bite out of your doughnut and set it down. That's telling the story that somebody was here and they left their trail of crumbs in the shot. It adds some personality, some of that lived in feel, you could leave some drips. Maybe you're doing a poor shot and a little bit dripped on the table. If you leave that there, it invites the viewer to kind of glimpse into this imperfect, natural, raw perspective of someone's day to day life. Maybe you squeeze a little bit of citrus and then leave the tired rind of the citrus on the boards. You can tell it's been squeezed. You can tell someone used it. You can imagine that you could smell lemon if you were really there. Having the food ingredients prepped in in the shot is a huge factor, especially in doing food photography. If you want to tell someone that this chocolate cake has a strawberry filling, you can have a little bit of the strawberry filling oozing out or incorporate fresh strawberries in the edges of the photo to just help people come to that conclusion without reading any text. The photo is telling the story for you. Let's say you want to go a little further, maybe some slightly trickier ways. Putting a hand in the shot. Your hand, it can be your friend's hand, someone around. But adding that little bit of human touch is just enough story or just enough complexity to separate you from a shot that just had a whole scene in it. You know, adding that little bit of hand in there adds that extra level of depth and complexity. Maybe you are showing the product in use. Imagine you're photographing a bar of handmade soap. But instead of just photographing it perfectly as is, it's in someone's hands and it's getting sudsy. We're seeing the bubbles. We're feeling like we can smell it or feel it in our hands. Throwing a lit candle in there for a subtle accent of warmth. Maybe adding a mirror to add an extra layer of complexity in the shot. Maybe it's reflecting a part of the room you wouldn't normally see, or it's just adding sort of overall color to the shot. Working with mirrors is tricky, but when done well, it looks really, really good. You can try capturing steam or smoke by shooting an object in light against a dark backdrop. You've probably seen this happen when you're pouring your mooring cup of coffee or tea or whatever, and you're seeing the steam and you're like, wow, look at that steam. It looks amazing. You can also incorporate extra layers through shadows. Like shapes of shadows, this is like using a small light source, Putting a palm frond in front of it, and casting these like leafy shadows in your image. It's a fun nod without adding an element in the shot. But like painting with light and shadow in the image, there's tons of ways you can experiment with this like storytelling element. And the possibilities are endless. Let's talk about depth in your photos. I am personally drawn to really shallow depth of field style photos, this artistic blur where just a little bits in focus and it's that perspective, like you're there in the moment, it feels real. I am very near sighted. I have terrible vision. I don't see very well. And so without my glasses, the world that I see is one where only this is in focus and everything else is a blur. And so I think I have this natural inclination to be drawn to that style because that's naturally how my eyes work. And so I don't know, maybe it's cool, maybe it's arts. My husband says the pictures that are more in focus are more what he likes. But anywhere that you fall, adding depth in your shot through shallow depth of field or through texture. I would add depth through texture using a macro lens and raking light. Raking light is this beautiful side light that scrapes across the surface, creating mountains and valleys of highlights and shadows. It's a great way to show the viewer that there is a lot of deep dark crevices, maybe a mushroom or some spices. Something that's going to really captivate and be more of an artistic piece and less of a very obvious, straightforward style shot. We're just creating art through movement and depth and texture. 30. Composites: Let's talk about composites. A composite is digital magic. It is useful for blending the best parts of two different images to make one, make it image for when the perfect shot isn't easy or for when you want to double the number of objects in your frame without having to buy twice as many. Some important keys to making a good composite. Use a tripod. It would be so hard to do this without one. Just use a tripod. Keep the same lighting, the same set up throughout so that when you're editing you can just copy and paste edits and they match up beautifully. And then bring them into Photoshop in separate layers for blending, which I will show you how to do. All right, so here we are in Photoshop, We have this beautiful splash shot where I chucked a chunk of chocolate into this glass of milk and created a huge splash. And then we have this shot where I had dunked a cookie, getting a tiny little splash. I'm hoping I can blend the big splash with the little splash so that it looks like I just slam dunked this cookie. So let's give it a go. I think rather than masking in all of these speckles, it's going to be easier to put my hand into that splash shot. So to start out I want to double click on my background layer, Hit Enter, this makes it a nice workable layer. I'm going to try to use the object selection tool and see if it will select my hand. I'm going to click on it, let it do its computer brain smart stuff. Hey, not too shabby. Okay. Let's adjust our sampling ever so slightly to include my watch. I'm just going to grab the quick selection tool, hold down shift, and add the rest of my watch in there. I'm also going to add my fingernail and make sure that cookie is fully selected. Oh, okay. We're going to select the whole glass and edit that out in a minute. So we've got a selection, it's my whole hand and the glass of milk, all of that. We are going to right click layer via copy. This creates a copy of that on its own layer. Now I'm going to hit for move tool. I'm going to grab that hand and drag it over to the other file and throw it on top. Next, I'm going to line it up and toda we're done. Just kidding. It's pretty damn close though. Not too bad. I'm going to change my opacity to 50% so that I can really fine tune this, making sure that that glass of milk is lined up perfectly. I'm using the arrow keys to dial this in. I think that's pretty damn good. We're going to bring the opacity back up. I'm going to scroll out and let's assess. I honestly think this is pretty believable, but we want to blend those two together just so that it looks a little bit better. So this is going to be a series of masks. So let's go into the Layer menu. And there is a little mask button. It's a rectangle with a circle. You click on that and it adds a layer mask. Now I can use the paint brush tool and make sure we're set to a nice smooth brush. Maybe even like 85% opacity. Just so that we're acting gentler. I'm going to increase the size using the right square bracket key, and then paint in on this mask. The way that this brushing works is when I'm drawing with the black pen, it masks my layer out. And if I hit X, it will switch to white and it masks this layer back in. You can do a series of masking in and out to get it to look the way that you want. Let's fine tune this mask around the edges and find the perfect blend between our milk splashes. I'm going to make my brush size larger and more opaque or less opaque. Okay, so I am the cup, but when I get too close to the cookie, I need to o in and make sure that I am not masking the cookie out. So we're going to shrink this, hit X to go back and draw this back in. This takes a little bit of patience, but the end result is absolutely worth it. Okay, so I feel like we are looking pretty good in here. Let's just see if there's any obvious things we need to adjust. I actually. Okay, so as far as my mask goes, I think it's super believable. I'm kind of impressed by how perfectly it selected my hand that made my job way easy. There is a little bit of something here that I want to it out. Great, Then I think I can go ahead and blend these masks really quickly. I want to make sure that there's no elements in the front of the milk that I prefer. I actually really like this droplet right here, so let's bring that back in. And I might be able to mask out some of this chocolate too. Okay, awesome. I love that. So at this point, I want to blend my layers. So we will select both and hit Merge Layers, and now they are one. And at this point I can edit out the chocolate that is in the milk using our spot healing brush tool. So I'm just going to click away any of these blemishes to clean it up so it is a nice clean glass of milk. I may need to switch to my patch tool to get this out of here. And then I'm going to finish with the clone stamp tool to try and tone out those dark shadow areas. Right. Okay, I think that looks good. Let's go ahead and fix my manicure really quick while we're at it. And that looks pretty flawless. What do you think? I'm so excited with how this picture turned out here is before we put my hand in it and after I feel like this is pretty believable and I'm really happy with the results. Composites are magic. 31. Final Thoughts: I wanted to leave you with some personal anecdotes and some inspirational techniques that I like to use. There's going to be times when you experience a creative block, or when you're having a hard time working through how to solve a photographic problem, or maybe you're having a hard time getting inspiration. I had to learn this the hard way. Last year, I spent a lot of time wishing that I felt like doing my job. Wishing that I felt like taking pictures. And there was a morning where all I wanted to do was spin. I have a spinning wheel. I make yarn from wool, and I just set out my spinning wheel. And I sat on the couch and I spun. And I didn't do anything else. There was no music. Nobody else was awake. It was just me spinning. And in this exercise, I was finally able to feel inspired again, I was able to work through this like kind of creative block that I had been dealing with for months. And I just finally felt like that was sort of the key. I was putting so much emphasis in being productive, only that I wasn't taking the time to rest my creative mind. Doing this kind of work is a lot, it's a taxing thing on a creative brain. And making sure that you are incorporating non work related creative hobbies. Something outside of photography that you do just for you is super, super important. It's really easy to just be like, oh, I need a break, Let's go on Instagram. Let's scroll Tiktok, Let's just sit and consume content. But I find that when I'm disconnected from a screen, I'm not listening to an audio book or a podcast. I'm just sitting there in a quiet room doing something simple with my hands. It lets my brain kind of unload all the things that it's been putting in cube basically for me to think about. And it's such a powerful tool that I've used to help me through these tricky creative blocks. So take up knitting, learn to spin, do some more gami or water color, anything that comes naturally to you. It's so important to give yourself a rest when you need rest. If you're tired, take a nap. If you are pacing around shaking your hands because you're not sure how to solve a problem, go for a walk. Your body is telling you it's okay to rest. Creating balance in your creative work is so important. It's the best way to stay inspired and to stay excited and continue to love what you do. You are not a creativity machine. You are a human and you are allowed to be human. And your worth is not determined by how productive you are, how much content you create. Finding that balance is a thing you will work at forever, but it's absolutely worth it. And that pretty much covers it. I'm so proud of you for committing this whole month to working on your craft with me. Thank you so much for your time and your trust. I so look forward to watching you hone your skills and make the photos you've always dream of. Thanks so much for watching.