Smartphone Photography for Modern Makers: Learn the Basics

1. Trailer: Hi, I'm Marin. Water maker was photography and I started, it was literally vine during the pandemic. However, here I'm your teacher. I created those class for all of you. Modern makers would love to share your handmade items online. Needed a little help with photography. You will learn everything you need to know about light, perspective, composition. We will work through your house and find the best places to shoot. I look at all your items and decide what feels best for you. There are several lessons that will help you with troubleshooting. What did you and looks too boring. What do you do and look through chaotic? What is Carolyn checklist? Before you take your shot? By the end of this class, you will feel confident and inspire tissue due on next. I cannot wait to get started. Let's get started and see you in class. 2. Class Project: Welcome to the class. I'm super happy you decided to watch this one. Thank you. Alright, for your class project, I want you to capture your own mix. I'm super excited to see what do you do. Share them in the class project gallery, make a project. Tell us a bit about what went well, what you would like to improve next time. I happily give you some feedback and some tips how to improve. Another thing I would love to see from you, if share the love spreads. I think we grow as a community sharing was carrying and especially giving constructive feedback to other students will help you train your own eye. That's really important part of the process. Alright, let's get started with the first lesson. 3. Introduction To Photography Genres: So when I started with photography, I go find a cloud like this, piece together, all kinds of information from other fields of photography. And in this lesson, I wanted to give you a brief introduction into the genres that are helpful for his Maker is also present you with opportunities to find inspirational sources outside of the maker community. Let's have a look. In this class, we will focus on lifestyle. Photography is all about capturing your everyday life, your stories, the people in it. And you often see families in front or also inside their homes photographs where you have this daily activities like making a cup of coffee, but also baking a cake, things like that. I personally love this quiet moments that feel for the pet owner. Very extraordinary, calm and peaceful. I believe that we as makers love this kind of photographs and we crave for it. It's about taking your time for yourself, for your hobby, having a look at a magazine, but also knitting or sewing, crocheting or whatever you do. So this is what I want to teach you today. And I believe this kind of genre is really important to learn and look at as a maker because it will help you to tell your own story and capture those extra ordinary moments of your everyday life. And I believe making your own clothes, or generally making and crafting a personal journey. And it's not only about finishing an item. Another genre that might be important for you is product photography. The first thing that always comes to mind, product on a white background. And we know this from our online stores and also from print catalogs and things like that. Nevertheless, those pictures are also allowed, especially on platforms like Etsy. You can have a textured background. You can have some prompts that elevates the pig to explain about what it's all about. So this is probably made of natural ingredients only. And that's kind of what they wanted to tell you with those stress with grains. Of course, you can also show the product in its natural environment, like this bike need on a wall, or even show it in action. What I want to point out is that as long as you cite this product photography category, you always see the logo of the company and all the things that are necessary to be able to sell the product because that is what it's all about. This genre is important to look at. If you are maker who wants to sell their own items, doesn't matter. It's your handmade items or the patterns for it. It's markers or Shaw curves are also your hand dyed fibers or Yan's great genre for you to learn from other creators. Earn money was taking photos for big brands and things like that. Fashion photography is kind of obvious nevertheless, let me say this too. It's not that different to product photography, just this products are all closes, so you will still have the white backgrounds often enough it's a bit more extra ligand because fashion likes to be extravagant. But the most important thing about fashion photography is that you, as a potential buyer, once you see how the closest fit on a body and how they actually would fit on your body too. So you will see pictures like that where the clauses are modeled. One thing I want to point out here is that the model is usually don't look into the camera. And if I can turn into arrogant boy, facial expression. And that's because the brand wants to say the closest. They don't want you to connect with the model and become friends. They want you to buy the closed sets. However, new kid on the block. And it's those fashion bloggers and influencers and will have different role inside the fashion photography years older because they want you to connect. They want to become your best friend and tell you what they like to wear and earn their money with those recommendations. So here you see pictures that are, again, a lot like classic lifestyle photography. They take you on a box with city, show you their kids and their surroundings, how they live. I believe fashion photography can be very beneficial for us may curious to learn how to quotes, because often enough we don't know how to say it in front of the camera, where to put our hands, all those kind of things. And those people do that professionally, it's probably do have a look at and learn from them how the opposite is portrayed photography or the best-case scenario. And then you don't remember the people were wearing. It's not about the closes. It's about the people and whatever they where she just elevate their character and make it a bit more authentic. It can be minimalistic portrait, I like this probably made in the studio, but also done outside. And often enough it's about beauty, but it's also about character and telling a hardship personal story. As always, if you do this at home, tell story about your everyday life like your partner made a more or less funny joke, you end up in lifestyle photography again, what I photography is great for makers because every now and then you should on your social media, but also on your website, blog, whatever, whatever you do, wherever you would like to show up. Having meet the maker, post, again, introduce yourself, will help you to connect with your audience. And for this, It's great to have authentic portray. Alright, so in this lesson you learned about the different photography genres that are helpful and can work for you as an inspirational sites. The next lesson, I'm going to give you some tips how to get started. Let's jump over there. 4. How To Get Started: Let's talk about how to get started because I know it's the hardest thing in my mind. There's three ways to get the ball rolling. The first one is creating a mood board. And I will show you in a moment whether it's the second one is pick one picture, make it your master and really copy it. You will learn a lot. And I know there are discussions about this cow saying if you should approach this, but quite honestly, as a beginner, it is important to get stored somewhere. And I think it's a very legit way to do it. One that gives you a bit of security that you will end up with a good picture. There's cern we're in is really brief one that is learning all the basics which you will do in this class. That playing and experimenting, see what happens. Kept your word you like whatever you choose, whatever way you pick. They all good. Let's have a look at a mood board. This is a mood board. It's a collection of photos in my case, but you could also sample colors, textures, materials, Whatever helps you to form a visual idea. What I want you to look for is a general and wipe on this mood board. Some pictures I more moody and calming, and others are a bit more inspiring or uplifting. Those kind of qualities to look for and decide what you want to create on your own. Try to investigate the light. What kind of a light helps to create? What kind of atmosphere? E.g. their picture in the middle is probably the darkest picture of all of them. And for me that one feels a bit moody, but also go with into a mysterious direction. Why the one in the right corner, the lower one, stack of magazines with a coffee mug on top of it. That's a classic moody picture. And this picture, the light is clearly coming from the right side. You can see it in the highlights and the shadows. Have a look at the calories. Are we talking about neutrophils? Are there contrasts like the complimentary contrasts of the yellow and purple yarn? Or is it more harmonious like yellow and green which are next to each other? What do you want to work with? Do you want to make your colors pop? Or I'm looking for neutral, soothing, atmosphere. Think about the story. For me. All of these pictures can tell. It's Sunday, there's time for myself, time to craft, time to get inspired, read a book, but also some rounds or rows. However, they're different items. Some of them are hands on like this, the theories and the knitting needles and others. More about this Sunday atmosphere. The finished knit and the reading glasses, coffee mug, the book, things like that. I think it's also important to understand that a system can be built by just some items and be very minimal. Like the purple yarn cake on them, small coffee table with knitting needles in it and some beautiful small flowers. Or they seems I'm more packed like the ones where the coffee mark dried flowers, but candles and magazines and all kinds of things. Last but not least point of all this pictures we're looking from above some more clear fled lays some eye as if you walk to these scenes and look a bit on the floor. All of these scenes close up. Some have a bit of a peekaboo effect, like the green yarn from wall and the gang, but also the other urine with a teacup and it others don't have that effect. But still, it feels like you could grab that coffee mug. Alright, I hope that helps you to understand what to look for and find the pictures for yourself. To get inspired and decide on a visual idea for your food you're shooting. Is the idea of a moodboard is a bit too much for you at the moment. Don't worry, just pick one picture you really like and start by copying it. I hope this example shows you that your personal items will already give it a twist to it. So don't worry too much about it. Just get started, learn from it and the next time it will get easier. I can promise you. Alright, I hope this lesson gave you a good idea how to get started. Just take 11 way. Let's head over to the next lesson where we will have a walk around my home. But you always to you and find a good place to shoot. 5. Find Your Magical Place: I want to say one thing at the beginning of this lesson, and that is, in my experience, maker is generally shy. People don't like to be the center of the attention and have really high time to get in front of the camera. So I would highly recommend to find a good place at home. Star. They are shooting with the stuff you already have. Fine. You are magical place. The one way you can feel at ease can relax where you have your time for your family if you have one, no husband, no kids, no partners. Note, pads are sometimes really cool. Darkness, just lying there. Some points. We will talk about what's necessary to get great pictures. But a few of the most important thing is for you to feel good in this place. Let's have worked in my fled and see what places I like to use. And give you an idea. What do you could look for it at your own home? First of all, I want to apologize for the bumpy ride. I wanted to do a live walk-through our flat, but I know I have some kind of shaky hands, so it's really bumpy. You will see me issued in three rooms. You already know this one. It's our bedroom with my little home office in the corner. When the sun rises, it hits this room first. Quite honestly, it's great to work in here. But taking pictures is a challenge. As you can see, I can only build up scenes on the bed, does not matter. Wiggle room around it. And it's a bit too far away from the window. I'm also super happy was blue warm? I prefer to have a more neutral environment. Also, this blue is still on the K side, but why it would be better? Coming up next is our kitchen. And usually I get amazing light in here from mornings to midday. But as you can see today is a really rainy and dark day and a half to put on the lights to shoot this movie. However, I hope this explains to you why It's necessary to shut down those artificial lights and only shoot with natural light. One thing you really need to accept is that you probably have to move your furniture. I'll do the same. That table always needs to be closer to the window. So let's move it. My personal magical place in this flat is our living room. It's where I craft and relax and where the light comes in a bit later in the day. I do have these curtains to control the light. First layer, It's more like bit transparent or translucent. And the second one is a whole lot thicker, is still it's white and both are very helpful. I also love that yellow chair and the dark wall. You probably have seen that as a background. I definitely use this coffee table a lot. And just like as in the kitchen, it has to move closer to the window too. All right. Let's sum it up for you. I want you to ask these questions yourself. First one is, where can you relax at home? I still believe it's very important. Which room has a big window and maybe already Cretans in place to control the light. But obviously, you could put those on a little later. If you now have a room in mind. Is that if neutral surrounding, put one picture here in just to give you an idea of a worst-case scenario, would be really good if your room is more on the neutral side because every color that surrounds your scene will reflect on it. Last but not least, if you now have room in mind, take note when the light hits place will help you a lot to plan your shootings. Also maybe kick out your family or whoever is going to dystopian. So I hope you found your magical place. Now it's time to gather some things together. You can actually shoot and learn how to style in an authentic way. Let's head to the next lesson. 6. Style Authentically: I believe the best way to style authentically is to use, since you already have, they are part of your life. They are great fit for yourself. And I believe you can see that in the pictures on top of it. I have to say if you fall in love with photography, you will go down a rabbit hole. I can promise you at one point, whenever you go shopping, you go on a market. You will find things you want to integrate into your photos and cow getter radar like this, we'll maybe look good. So let it grow organically. Now we are going to look at the thing that might make sense and you probably already have it on. Let's do it. A lot of things I use for shooting. I believe we all have a nice routing table. May not have this one in my kitchen and another one in my living room. And both are great to use as reference. So besides, you look at what it is you have gathered together and use surveys is nice. Nice, and don't show any funding. That how has an interesting texture, because the way you can do is create a background. Suicide has to buy that. And I feel like, you know, they send these ones are totally great, cheap ones. Okay. So go visit your store and get some boys. And these nice cool. This one was one of the TTAC looks like copied on one side. And this one is texture refund work with because they are found really helpful to learn a bunch of things together and still make it look great. Boat. You learn anyway, but everything else you are looking on every interior design store. And other students. You probably do things like play with those who are not like this. The flexion reading, Fahrenheit, lossy. There isn't the only lasts. A few. You can write the short run if you wanted to. Work. She's place. Maybe you play like this wasn't grids. It's a really nice job. You can lay out. Yeah, Yeah, they've got different widths. And the last thing that's really nice way for me while you can brushes in bad stories. Next thing. And maybe also how you really miss my materials and new tools as well is special. But you can also have a schema already. Similarly, Jaron, yeah. I think there are great tools. Awesome I USE. All too is if you work with, so this is one way you can measure yourself. But of those meals you may have for sale or if you do something else like embroidery. Head, looks more like this does came with it. Especially because they were Chinese name until you can add them to see or I think they're very free. As touch and nice texture. Year will the time I finished, I assume. But it's also nice to talk about which is the same that are switched over the years is the block is Sue and also new products. Still on mute. I still work in progress. I'm forgetting to take the next category are books. Layering can highly recommend to use though, is that your cost? Because we can see one that you exhaust you. I believe it's, in that case, super cool to do a lifestyle. Hello, nice and easy to draw. But also really isn't working for us. It's such a pretty lives and his client pages like this. I also really good neutral background. I feel like knitting is a lot about this whoa, slow living lifestyle with that really cold areas, Eugen. I think we'd all love them. It's my favorite as special use combination. It was easier to sue. Those that don't reflect. Keep that in mind. Lastly, I wanted to talk about in a little detail, but the little personal stuff. Let's say you are on holiday or you may see ocean. You get the fancy stuff. Can tell you when you son loves to connect zones. Maybe some houses was like How cool? Last but not least. I think we all run slowly. They always end of this year. I miss the spring force. The spring is good. The stylish. These days. Everybody loves this. Best of all. Isn't really small petals. I think it was cold. Maybe read in English. And whatever we do, dry them. Can use a much longer. They are dried up really good and they keep the car. Those were white. But also he loved that drives you this the greens and then my wages. But by now, you should have a place to shoot and everything together. You want to catch you in your photos. Now it's time to look at the urine gear. Let's do it in the next lesson. 7. Get Your Gear: So in this lesson, I'm going to talk about equipment, basically about smartphones at some additional gear. That's very helpful and I would sink is great for you. As another next step to get, Let's have a look. In all honesty, I shoot all my photos with my iPhone. So as you can see, I have the normal version was only two lenses. The pro version has three lenses. So there's some things I want you to check before you start shooting. The first one is, do you have enough power? It really sucks, having a great flow. And then comes the pop out window and tells you there are only whatever your five per cent left, only with stress you out, you won't be able to take another good shot at that moment. The other thing is make sure you have enough data space. I can promise you that's a problem. All professional photographers have to. Then every seems to be enough data space. So maybe you have to clean up a bit, make sure there's enough left. One thing that's super important before you start shooting is to clean your lens. Where the smartphone in our hands all the time in our bags. They are definitely fingerprints on it and they make your picture is blurry and smudging. My favorite toy for this is a very normal micro class. You usually clean your bathroom, mirror them if they achieved, you can buy them at every grocery store. And they are amazing. They actually clean up better than any professional stuff. I ever tried. Some additional gear I would like to recommend, first of all, tripod. And I'm going to show you one in a minute. But be aware that if you want to use a smartphone with a regular tripod, you need an adapter like this. Just click US smartphone in, squid on your tripod, and then you can start shooting. Another thing. That's really great as a remote control. It will help you to keep your hands free. And you can also use it to shoot yourself without a timer, which is, trust me, less trustful. So this is my favorite tripod. And here you can see how it looks like when the adapter with a smartphone is on. You can easily adjust the height here. Through this. What I really love about this tripod is less. And now you can shoot fled lays perfectly. Not every tripod can do this. But I promise you this one was really affordable and you don't need for shooting with a smartphone to super inexpensive ones. The expensive ones are for the heavy DSLRs. You can go for whatever works in your budget. Alright, cool. Let's have a look at the camera app. So the first thing I want you to do is go into your settings. Click on the camera. I can honestly here you can change all kinds of stuff. The one thing that's really important is the Grit. Want to put on the grid. The other things, I don't think we need much of this. I would go here in the formats for most compatible. The high efficiency format is pretty new and it will give you trouble if you are outside of this Apple universe. So keep most compatible. That's actually a JPEG and you're good to go. Forgot the other stuff, okay, It's not important. Instead, we are now going to look at the whole camera app, open that one. So here on top you have some of the lichens. Quite honestly, they often change that into a face. What I find important to you, and then you click off the flesh. You can do that easily. And the same goes here in the other corner. And that is true in life off life make some little snippet videos, and we don't want to do video, we want to do photos in this course, so only use one lens. The other 10.5 is one Enscape. So you can see the grid is on. It will help you tons to create a decent composition. And then you have this little X in the middle. And then one helps you and show you if your smartphone is parallel to the table or the floor. And it's really cool and really helpful for creating fled lays. Okay, I have this awesome Yan cone here, so it might be nice to photograph and help us. So you will see me doing this later on in the compositions Lesson. Anyway. So you have here the several Modi you can work with that video, especially video and other things. We only want to work with photo. And maybe try the portrait mode. That can be fun. Don't work here, but there might be, might be an opportunity to use it. This little window shows you the last photo you took and you can click on it and then it opens up. And that's your shutter button. If you hold the shutter button, you can create a video. So just as we don't want to make videos, just click once. This one, this icon is to change the lens. So if I would click on it, it will, would use this really teeny tiny lens. And that one is quite often, you should never use it. Okay? Never. Alright. We have a secret toy here, that little arrow. It gives you more opportunities. So the first one is again the flesh. I want you to take the flesh off. It's on auto and you need to use it. You don't have enough light. So I'm going to put that off. It not helpful doesn't help you to take decent photos. Then one is exposure. You can keep that on auto. It's fine. This is quite new. It's some kind of filter already in it. Honestly. I don't want you to use it. So this one can be interesting for 23 years. Irregular digital mode noise. If you want to post on Instagram still in the square mode, this would be your opportunity to have directly a look at your finished photo. I often use this one actually this is six into nine is suddenly a format for reals, but also on YouTube. It's Council. It's just a video format after all. But often enough, you need a cover photo. And for that one, this is really good. The next one is exposure. And here you can play with it and create a dark and moody picture. Or also brighten it up a bit. If you feel like that not enough daylight, you need to track the camera. I'm generally I would recommend to keep it on zero. This one is a self timer. If you have shaky hands, this might be helpful. If you want to take pictures from yourself. That's definitely come in handy. This one takes 3 s until it hits. And they all no one does ten. Yeah, and here are some filters. Please don't do that. Okay. All right. That's it. I hope you guys prepped. We will start learning about the basics in the next lesson. The first probably important one is not. See you there. 8. Light: By now you have everything together to get started with shooting. It's time to learn about the fundamentals. And the first one that's really truly essential is light. Photography means drawing with light. So as it's already in the name, can guess, it's really, it's really important. There are several things to look at. What time of the day it is actually where you live. Not only what day, but although one months, what season you are in right now, then where the light is coming from, front side, back. So we will focus about only the light from the sun, no artificial light at all. So let's learn about where I knew best friend. Chances are high. You already heard some stuff around the topic of light in photography. One is only shoot with natural light, and I'm totally, completely in sync with that one. I want you to shoot only during the day when the sun is up and use our beautiful natural light to capture your mix. However, that light changes quite a lot during the day, during the seasons, and so on and so forth. So what I want you to do is really dig deep into it and explore what helps us and or doesn't. The first step you probably heard is shoot during the golden hour. And during that time of the day, our world gets filled up with this beautiful warm light and lifts up our landscapes and makes us people look wonderful, but it's also very yellow. And if you look at the calories in this picture, you might get an idea what happens if you shoot your own materials you work with, they probably will get a bit too yellowish. And I know that's the thing that's really important for you to stay true to the colors, this picture, even from the middle leader in the day. I think this is sundown where the backlight, we see this person as a super fun, adventurous silhouette. There's no texture, no detail. You've no idea what the jacket or the head there's woman is wearing. I guess it's a woman white. Next point made off. And of course we want to show that, right? We want to show what we're working with. This is cloudy, rainy, even miss the day. Another one you might have heard about how do you feel about those moments where the mist is actually rolling over the trees? There's not much left of the Beautiful Levy textures, right? What about the color? I think the green is very desaturated. So on a day like that, your color is probably won't pop. The other thing that happens is that the light is so soft, then you don't get much highlights, not much shadows. And that also means not much texture. Have a look at her face. There's not one pore or a wrinkle inside and yes, she's young, she's fresh, but the light really helps to make him look like a bad. Now, look at oh, it's wetter, same, right? And you want to see texture on your mix. In all honesty, this picture has another thing going on and that is the low aperture. And this book effect that makes her just only her faith in hyperfocus and everything else is blurred quite a bit. Alright, what do we want? Well, I'll just show our textures are handmade textures and we want to stay true to the colors. How can we do this? Let's dig into it. So the first thing I want you to get into your mind is that your location matters. Where you live in the world, changes a few things drastically. It doesn't matter if you live in the northern hemisphere and get this northern lights or if you live in the desert next to the equator. And I know we all don't live in this harsh environments. So let's, let me talk about my city and my location. You can go along and think about your own. Okay, so I live in Cologne. It's one of the big cities in Germany. Germany is in the northern part of Europe. We get four seasons. Yeah, So the difference between winter and summer is quite a lot. So in summer or sunrises and son downs and not only an hour, they take hours, lot of time to take pictures. Our days are generally very long. Rnas are very short. In winter that changes up completely, I believe on the darkest days, the sun rises around nine or maybe even 10:00 in the morning and it goes down around three or four in the afternoon. So there are not many hours in the day to take a picture. And on top of it, those days tend to be gray. And the light is not very bright. Quite a challenge to get good photos here in winter, alright. 9. Perspective: In this lesson, we're going to talk about perspective. The best angles for shooting your mic. A little spoiler alert. I think that you grade ones. And I quite honestly struggle a bit with myself. So let's have a look at that one. The first perspective I want to show you is a worm's eye view. As very easy to understand, just imagine you are a warm, you lie on the pavement, you'll look high up into the sky. That's the point of view. We also call this perspective child's perspective because you know the kid, you experience a world from a lower point of view and look up to your parents and look up to everything else too. I want you to keep this point of view in mind because it also explains to you the feelings this perspective can evoke. One is the feeling of wonder and the other one is a people appear cool but also like experts and also a bit aloof sometimes. So far as makers, well, you might have a pattern lounge and want to evoke those feelings. Can be nice, can be fun. Generally, I feel like this is not a great perspective for us. The second perspective is called bird's eye view. And of course, the total opposite. You fly above the world and look down. As a human being, you can imagine to stand high up on a building and look down on your setting. And then you get this feeling of plan, but also strategy. It's kind of neutral, maybe even cool. But also if you look into the distance, It's still bird's eye view because you are above the things. If you don't look straight down, you will get this torsion into your lines. For us make is fled lays or grade. I think we all love them. They're easy to shoot. And you don't get any distortions into your mix. I think that's one of my favorite things about it. And of course, there's a variant that can work well for in lifestyle photography. Last but not least, comes the eye level of prospective. And we'd say that's a perspective, how we experience our world in general, and how people feel authentic and approachable to us. Have again, a look at the lines here. You get this depths. But still all lines are very clear and straight. There's no distortion in this picture depending on how you take the picture. It can also look very flat. This perspective is perfect for us to model our makes. Doesn't matter if it's a small soirees or if you want to show off your garments. Oh, your phone, your favorite for interviews with, in this lesson. The next one, we're going to have a look at composition. 10. Composition: In this lesson, I'm going to teach you about compositions that will help you to arrange your mix and an appealing way. Let's that playing. First of all, let's turn on our grid as it will help us immensely to understand this composition lesson. First composition you can do is center ui star right in the middle. We humans really love it. Do you have stuff in the middle? All empty space is the same space. The other one is role of circuits. And I hope this one makes you understand why you should turn on the grid. So we divide our picture frame into nine boxes, are, and then draw lines. At the intersections of those lines, we place our stereotypes and off-center composition helps you to gain and natural balance and you can play it at any of those four intersections. Okay, Next one is have one-star. Keep it clear and simple. And yes, you can layer that one has additional items, but really just tell the story of one. The other one is the magic of three. By the way, our brain loves odd number is, you could also do this with five items. I want to show you is you still have one star, could put that at the intersections. And it gives your composition a great flow, which also brings us to another one. Help the eyes to explore your picture. And this case, it's even great to have a fourth one. The small one. Yes, that is an S curve. Now we have another classic composition. See that flow. Amazing, right? Really nice composition. As we are already talking about letter compositions. Here's another one. This is a C curve compensation, where you leave negative space around your item and your item is kind of cutoff at one edge. And yes, of course you can play with the item again. I'm not sure if this is helpful. Again, talking about the negative space, because this space also gives you the opportunity to add graphics on your picture later on. Remember you're often have something to tell, right? Okay. Next one, fill the frame. This is great to show kind of ingredients like yeah, and it's more like a micro composition way. A lot of items that are accountants same and make sure you cut those items at the edges. That's very important to get this grid look. Last but not least, let me say there's rules are just rules. They are meant to be broken at one time. I think the most important part for you is actually to play and maybe combine some of those and find your own style, your own composition. So how did you like the less than I know it's a bit special. It's quite a lot to take in. I hope you had fun with it. And on the next one we're getting a bit more practical and it might be great to do less than that called, what do you do? If it looks too boring? Let's take into it. 11. Troubleshooting: Too Boring: May I introduce the star of this lesson? This head? Let's pretend it's not mine, it's yours. And you want to take a picture of it. However, just plain white background, it looks very boring. This lesson, we will add to the drummer. I will show you a step-by-step what you can do. It looks too boring. Let's do it. All right, let's start with the white background. And as promised, it's very boring. That's not do that. Instead, at the background, giving a sense of place and atmosphere. However, I don't like the yellow would want to try this one. My DIY background. That's the concrete side. I think that's very nice, super harmonious. But today, I want to work with color. There's no better background than black to make your colors pop. So that's nice. But I feel like we could do more. Sort a bit boring. So the free thing you can do is layer up. It will especially give you a flat lays some depths. And I get the chance with this magazines and books to add in some color contrasts. In this case, I'm going for the big, okay? I'm going to work in the complimentary calories to my green hat. And yet it always takes a bit of time until everything is where it looks good. So next tip is add some sprinkles. They will give you more texture and visual interests. And you can use this little flowers. I really like them. But you could also use stitch mark is, or even salt and pepper if you want to. Just have those teeny tiny little add-ons to make it look good. And I feel like this already looks good. However, with those flowers, you can do even more. You can add a foreground. Blurry foreground gives us peekaboo effect. Add more depth with it, and even frame using, I think that's plain lovely. Last but not least, we have a very central hobby and it's personal. So do add those, give it a personal touch and show you people how much you love your texture if you made. So one more. Why not tell a story with it? Bring your tools and add some action. And how people, yeah, I'm ready. It's done. But I still have to do in those threats. I think we all yeah, but it's nice. It's nice. Everybody will react to a photo like this telling you is I love it or not, and it will be a really nice picture. So I took the liberty to take some pictures without you, just to show you what you can do with a scene like this. And I think they turn out great. I also did edit them. Okay. Those are not straight out off the iPhone. Yeah. All right. I hope you are inspired and have a good idea. What did you next time? You're wondering, what did you do? It looks too boring. On the next lesson we're going to do is upset because you may get into the other trouble of putting together a little bit to match. It looks a bit too chaotic and you don't know what to do. So we're going to talk about this on the next one. 12. Troubleshooting: Too Chaotic: So this lesson is all about what did you wear? It looks too chaotic. Let's imagine. You can find the perfect place in your lightest, amazing, beautiful, perfect. You gather all the stuff together to tell the epic story of your Sunday and it's all in their composition is kind of you tried to get it. Alright, rule officers and whatnot. Still. It feels like it's a Sunday dinner mess and not something that's worth capturing a picture. I'm looking for it. You talk about what might have gone wrong. Let's do it. All right, Here we go is I'll add pixie. The first thing I want to say is, I really hate candles. Next 2 min. So this one has to go first. And now a lot of people like having this kind of coziness. Men. Now let me nervous first things first, let's check our story. Is it about this green hat and finishing it up? Or is it about the white unit that's still in the making and not, I would say, skips the green hat, let's say with white one here. The next thing I always find a bit odd is that people can read books and look into magazines. And that's kind of okay. But also read enrollment in some kind of, you know, what every story it is. And listen to audiobooks that's released yet. Let's just keep going with knitting, knitting books and knitting magazines. Fine. Let's stay with those. That's really enough for his name, right? I mean, I do understand that if you are still in the making, of course you thinking about should I count off close mine using with this? And it'll be really beautiful. Buttons or maybe with something like this. But honestly, finish it up first. Let's talk about one thing is this. Garamond is not admitted with this young. Make sure it's not art because we can make us, we're not stupid. We know that these two didn't fit together. You don't want to talk about a new cast on you want to finish this first? Okay. It's kind of getting better. Riots. I'm not sure we need the flow ECM them later on again. And now we are I feel like we're kind of getting better. But what I also want to say is this is kind of one. This is kind of one. This is one. But also the book Staples, also one. So you have kind of forcings. What do we like a bit more is three. I would like to try and get rid of the books table for a moment. Let's see what happens. In this case. We keep this really fun. I like it. Maybe change it up a bit. You might want to add ligase again. Now it's kind of again, the boring riot could use a bit of spruce up. So where are you? Good? Are we good? I think we're good. Let's take some pictures. So I hope you had a whole lot of fun in this lesson. I know I did. It was quite a party. On the next lesson, I want to talk about wood. What do check the last sentence before taking a shot. 13. Take The Shot: So this lesson is a bit like last minute checklist. I want to show you what to check and what did you shortly before you take your shots. Let's do it. First of all, clean up your scene. You're closes. Also the items you want to photograph. If your hands are in the pictures, your finger on yourself. And last but not least, your camera lens. Honestly, I'm not a clean freak in my real life, but totally sucks if you take a great picture. But then you have to edit. I'm kind of stuff out and think I even really hard to edit. So don't do that to yourself. Clean up properly. You can see quite a lot of things lying around here. And what I want to do during this lesson is to show you that with a little tweaks, you can change up, set-up quite a lot and give it a different characteristics. Alright, let's continue with our checklist and talk about light. For this question is, did you click out all of your artificial lights? Is the lighter out? How about the bedside lamp? Remember, we don't want to have that ugly yellow light, it's not helpful. Next question is, is Useem evenly lit? Quite honestly, it's already getting a bit too dark here. If I would like to have this more evenly lit, I would need to put up a white foreign board on the right side. Look at your shadows are your darkest part in your picture. You can see here, this black wooden board will give me trouble. It's super dark and definitely a bit washed out. Now look at your lightest points and the picture. Are your highlights washed out? Do you have inflammation in your very right moments? I don't have to worry about that part here because the light is really dark. Special tip for you. If you want to have coffee infinitely thin mixture where the composition is alright, and then brew it in the last minute, it will start looking disgusting very soon. Always look through your lens, or in our case, check with the camera app on your screen. If everything is alright, if your composition is what you wanted it to be, good, it looks very different than when you just experienced the scene with your normal life. So this first conversation with nice black and whites in very neutral, I feel a bit like art directors finest. And I think before I explain to you the camera up even more, I would like to have a little change in scene. Let's do it. I want to change too much this time, but go for a more natural look and get rid of the lake when Boyd for sure. So we're going to work with the complimentary contrast, red and green. Definitely one has some stylish items like the kinfolk magazine and the IQR loved us. And we could also try peekaboo effect. Let's see how that turns out. This is how you do peekaboo effect. You hold something like flowers. I think flowers with more petals are actually the easiest. Very close to your lens. You want to have those NOT IN for queries but blurry. Now click on your screen where you want the camera to focus on and hold a little bit longer so it can lock in. We have that. It's very easy to take a decent shot. Alright, let's change up again. This time I want to go for an autumn feeling at some little sprinkles in it and stuff like an acorn. We will also try to do peekaboo effect with smaller petals to show you that it's really easier than was a big, nice. Remember to forgo with before you take a shot. Just click with your finger on the screen when you want to have the four groups, you will see this yellow square. And that's it. You don't have to lock it in every time. Check if everything important is still in view with this peekaboo effect, we sometimes tend to overlay things we actually wanted to show. So be mindful about that one. I wouldn't like to give you US Navy advice to even count your smaller ones. It somehow works wonders. Alright, change in C this time from autumn to spring. A little mindset reminder here for you guys. Honestly, it often takes a while and you really need to be patient with yourself and your theme. Just trust. With time. You're getting better. You're getting faster. A good day. If they're bad days, it's okay. It's a process. For the last scene, I wanted to try something completely different. And at some seashells, I go for maritime feeling. Now it's your turn. Build a theme and start shooting. Remember to work your scene from different angles and perspectives. I think you've seen me here doing this all the time and have fun. Alright, now, it's time for you to take your shot. We really talked about everything you need to know. Why don't you take a little break here and come back with your final favorite pictures on the next lesson. Because then we're going to talk about the final touch, editing. 14. Edit To Make Textures Pop: In this last lesson, I want to teach you about editing, the final touch for the photography progress. And I feel like you really shouldn't skip it. It gives you the possibility to get your pictures from 0 to a lot of great classes on Skillshare for editing. I personally have been missing as a maker is somebody who teaches me how to make the textures pop. And that's what we will focus on in this lesson. I do all my edits in the Adobe Lightroom mobile app on my iPhone. It's a free app if you have the Creative Cloud or pay for it. In other words, you will get some additional features, but quite honestly is a free poets are already awesome, so get that app. So here are my three tips on how to make your textures pop. When you open up the app, hits a little light and then scroll down to the shadows. Now watch what happens with a dark net in the background while I'm playing with a slider. I highly recommend starting here and trying this edit first. Next up is an effect called textures. So pretty obvious that one should help us. Unless it's really cool. Just be careful that you don't slide it up too much because it tends to over crisp at a certain point. Last one hit on the detail I can and get into the classic sharpening tool, sharp them up. And now I want you to slide the Masking slider and also hit on your screen. This will give you this black and white view and much easier to adjust and see that you only shop map the texture and the outer lines. Round of applause for yourself. That's really cool. I have some final call to actions for you on the next one. 15. Final CTA: Innovated. I'm super proud of you. Thank you for watching this class. By now, I really hope you feel inspired and confident to shoot your own mics. Please add a project to the gallery. Fill on your favorite photos, talk a bit about it. What went well, what would you like to change maybe next time? You have concrete questions, please don't be shy to ask away. I'm super happy to help. Well, I will definitely give you some feedback. I would also like to ask you to cheer each other on, don't forget, this is the creative community. It's where we can grow and help each other out. Last but not least, I would really appreciate some feedback and comments on this class. And I hope we chip.