Street Photography - The Quiet Moments

1. Introduction: My name is Luc Kordas. I'm a street documentary and portrait photographer. I've been doing street photography for over six years, and in this tutorial I'm going to show you how I do street. Thank you. You're welcomed. I'm going to take you to Manhattan, to Coney Island. I'm going to give you some tips which you will hopefully find useful. I'm going to talk about street photography routine and answer the most important question of them all, which is how to approach people. I'm going to talk about shooting candids, and how not to get noticed. I'm also going to show you how I shoot posed portraits in the streets, and what I use for shooting. Finally, we're also going to talk a little bit about retouching. Welcome to the jungle guys. 2. The Beginnings (past work-how I shoot): How I started my street photography back in 2012 was a complete coincidence. I'd been in New York before in 2008 just for a week visiting, took first street shots. I didn't know it was called street photography back then, I was just a tourist with a camera. But when I really started to explore New York City with a camera and taking strictly street photos was in 2012 when I came here for three months. I would just go out every other day and photograph the city borrow after borrow. One of those days, I looked at the map and I saw Williamsburg and I thought, okay, that looks interesting. I took a train to Williamsburg, but I didn't know a lot about Williamsburg. If you live in New York City or if you know anything about New York, you know that Williamsburg has two parts. Basically, if you go on from Manhattan and you turn left, you go to the hipster part. If you go to the right, you have a very large community of Hasidic Jews. Initially I wanted to explore the hipster part, but I took the wrong turn and I ended up in the Hasidic Jews part. That's how the whole thing started because all of a sudden I was transported to a whole different world that I hadn't expected and I started taking pictures of them. Hasidic Jews are not an easy subject to photograph, but I managed to take quite a few good pictures that day, and then I returned the following day and a couple more days and that's how my Hasidic Jews in New York series, or should I say mini series was started. That series was the first series of street photographs that I've ever made and it was the first thing that I did as a street photographer. That little story about Hasidic Jews and how it all started back in 2012 is a perfect example of why I love street. It's that total randomness of it. If you have a camera, it's a good excuse to be someplace, but not necessarily a specific place. There is never a wrong place to be. If you have a camera and if you want to explore your city or any other city, you can just take it for a walk. Each genre of photography that I do has the things that I like and thinks that I don't like. What I love about landscape photography, for example, is that it's like meditation. I'm usually on my own, I don't have any people around. It's very different, it's the other side of the spectrum from street photography. I take it easy and it's very enjoyable. Taking portraits, for example, is engaging with people in the control environment where you and the subject know exactly what's going on and know exactly what's going to happen. Street photography is none of those things. You just go out there and put yourself in the position where literally anything can happen at any given time. It's not like landscape photography where location matters. Location is key in landscape photography and so is the weather. Think about it like if it rains or if it's cloudy and you're hoping for a great sunset, it's just not going to happen for you and you just have to accept it. Likewise, in fashion photography, if things don't come together at a certain time, you will have to repeat the shoot. If it doesn't happen, if the model is not in the right mood, someone's late, whatever, things don't happen for you. None of that happens with street photography. All you need in street photography is a camera and that's it. Regardless of the weather, regardless of the location, regardless of anything else really, even the camera itself is not an important factor. People tend to think that the camera and the gear matters, I can tell you that I myself I'm not a gear head, I don't know much about cameras, to be honest, I just use any camera that's available. In street photography you're totally free. You don't have to worry about models, you don't have to worry about permissions, you don't have to worry about creative directors telling you what to do, where to go with this project, you don't have to worry about delivering on time usually, unless you work for a newspaper. It sounds like a hobby, but it doesn't have to be a hobby. It could be something more. It's a fantastic way to connect with people. If you don't have a camera, if you're in the middle of a street and you start talking to people, that's weird, right? Especially in America, that's not a thing that people would do, in other countries more likely, but not here. But if you do have a camera, that's a whole different thing. It allows you to be places and have access to places that you would normally not have access to, and I use that many times. But it also allows you to get to know cultures like I got to know Hasidic Jews in New York City. If you're traveling around the world, even more, you see people doing things that are not usual. You don't know what they're doing, just go and ask them. You have a camera and you can photograph them and they see that you have a camera and there you go, that's a good excuse. You're never in the wrong place. I also want to tell you how I shoot as a street photographer. Me, as a documentary photographer, I shoot mostly in series obviously, but me as a street photographer, I actually mostly shoot singles and that's pretty normal. I don't go out with an agenda, I don't go out with any plan. The whole beauty of street photography is that you go out and you see what happens. It's not you who decides what to shoot, this street will tell you what to shoot. You just need to put yourself in the position where things happen, wherever that is, and wait and see. Me as a street photographer, I don't shoot series because I've been doing this for so long, virtually 10 years, but maybe more intensively for last six years. When you look back at your own work or when you have other photographers look at your own work, you realize or they realize that there're actually usually certain themes that emerge from your whole body of work. Even though I don't go out and I don't have days when I will go out and say, today I'm only shooting subway. No, I'll obviously take the subway to get somewhere and then if something happens on the subway, I'll shoot it, but then I'll go onto the streets and shoot whatever I can find there, and then maybe I'll go to a restaurant to have a little break and if something happens in that restaurant, you never know, that's the beauty of street photography. But then after years and years of shooting, when you look back at your own work, you might realize that you as a photographer, as a person, you're drawn to certain things. I had this thing happen to me when I went to a portfolio view in Miami last December and I showed my work to another photographer. She had a look at it and she said, you know what, seems like you like shooting lonely people. That was a surprise to me because I didn't see it myself. But I looked at the book I gave her, it was a portfolio, and I realized she was right. She said, "Maybe it's a good idea for you to make a series out of it.", and I did. I listened to her, I thought it was a good idea and that's how my series, Loneliness in New York City started, just because another photographer saw what I hadn't seen myself. Right now I have the Lonely People in New York, I have another series on subway that I really like. Subway is a very difficult topic to photograph, by the way. I have a series called Daydreamers, basically those are photos of people with their eyes shut, usually in the middle of the crowd. Obviously, Coney Island is a big project that I've been doing for the past 2.5 years. I still live in Coney Island and I still shooting Coney Island, and actually one of the major reasons I moved to Coney Island was to do that project, so I still shoot it. At the end of the day, you might realize that you actually have some series within your work that make sense together. There are certain things that you can do to prepare to go out and shoot. Rule number one in any kind of photography that you do, and street photography is no different, is get to know your camera well. You need a simple setting. Most street photographers use aperture priority, set it for whatever you want to set it. I come from a finer background, surprisingly for a lot of people, I use wide apertures. I'm not afraid to shoot 2.8, but that's just me. Some photographers like Aperture F8, and as a matter of fact, I think that's what most street photographers do. Wide-angle, set it for 8 or F-stop, maybe even 16 if it's really sunny, and that's it. The camera will adjust the shutter speed for you. You can also play with ISO, but again, set it for automatic or set it for 400 or 800 if it's fairly bright, and the camera will take care of all the other stuff, and that's it. You, as a photographer, need to focus on taking pictures and observing. Not on what settings of the camera you currently have. If you are a little bit more advanced, maybe you want to try the manual, but there is really no need for that. But again, I do other genres of photography as well, so if I do portraits, I should exclusively manual, there is no other way. Sometimes in the street, I will forget and I will shoot manual and that works for me too, but that's because I've been doing this for a long time and sometimes it works. But generally, just set it for aperture priority and go. Sometimes what I'll do before I go shoot, just to motivate myself, let's just say it's a sunny Sunday in Coney Island, it's the summer and I know there's going to be a lot of people out there and I know it's totally worth to go there, but maybe I feel a little bit under the weather or whatever. I like to go and look at some other street photographers' work, not necessarily from that area, but in general, but also looking at other Coney Island shots from other photographers will definitely work. Or I look in my own archives from the past just to see that, yes, it's totally worth to do this, it's only worth to go out and shoot, and it works. It actually works. Try yourself, it's probably best to look at other photographers' photos, not to copy them, but just to get inspired rather than to look at your own photos. But either way, it works, then you get that feeling that, oh yeah, I want to do this too. Then I go out and shoot and it really works, so try it. 3. Manhattan (the flow - street corner): How are you doing? I'm all good Take pictures? Yeah [inaudible]. Take pictures of me. Sure man Done, very nice. Have a good one men. Guys, the most important, the most popular questions of all times that you have is, what camera do I use to do street? I use two cameras. In the episode in Coney Island, you see me using a DSLR Canon 5D camera. Here in this episode, I'm using a Fujifilm X-T20 with a 27 millimeter pancake lens, which is 42 millimeters on a full-frame camera. I like it because it's small, it's compact, it's quiet, it's fairly quick and above all, you can be virtually invisible with it. Another amazing feature of this camera and a lot of digital cameras these days is that they have this flip screen. Not only you can take more interesting pictures because you can take lower angle shots or high angle shots, but maybe more importantly, when you do this, you don't necessarily look like you're taking a picture, so you're looking at on the screen, it looks like you're checking something on your screen, but you're actually taking a picture and people don't necessarily notice that. The one thing that is the most exciting thing about doing street is at any given time, any day, any second of you being in the street with a camera, you can take the best picture of your life. This is precisely why streets photographers go out and shoot in the street every day or every other day whenever they can, because literally any given time, you can get the best shot of your life, and that's one of the things that drive us out of our apartments, out in the streets, and the most dire conditions sometimes even when we don't feel like it. But that possibility that's out there, that you turn a corner and something amazing happens, and you just happen to be quick enough and prepared to capture that, that possibility makes the street photography so exciting. What I like about street is also the independence that it gives you, where you can go wherever you want. You are never in the wrong place, and you work on your own. You don't have a boss. You can choose to stop anytime you want, and there is no schedule, of course. You can cancel or extend your hours, so you can do whatever you want to do and you can talk to people. It's just whatever goes, really. It's good to treat street photography as an activity, and the streets themselves as your playground. Don't worry too much about not being noticed. This is not a spy game cause then it becomes uncomfortable. Just be easy and flow in the streets like you would float in water. Just let it go, let things happen and keep your eyes open. If you get to the point where you can switch off that other you that tells you that it might be awkward to talk to people in the streets, that it might be awkward to take a picture when you get into the zone. That's when you really start enjoying it. What helps with that is taking pictures often. Just like anything else, it is as much about talent, as it is about just daily practice. Street is an interesting playground, not only because of what you see and what you can show to your audience, but also because of the things that you hear. Of course, that cannot and will not appear on the photograph and there's no way to transmit that feeling. You thought that it was about you, sorry. Yeah It's not about you. It's very special You are special but- You as a photographer, just doing your thing in a street, you enjoy it even more because you also hear what people say. Sometimes people say, very strange things, or funny things, or interesting things. Many times you won't be able to take a picture of something interesting because you're, simply, not fast enough, or because it might be too dangerous. But you as a human, you will still see it and experience it, and you will experience smells and all different kinds of juxtapositions that a camera might not be able to catch, but you see it with your eyes, you smell it, you hear it, so the whole experience for you is much more enjoyable than for anyone that looks at your picture because you're in there with your entire body. Thank you You're welcome. Here's a good way to make your street photography flow more interesting. Instead of being on the move, you can actually stand still. Pick a spot, stand there for 5, 10, 15 minutes and see what happens. Take as many pictures as you can and experience the place. Take it all in. Don't be on the move. Don't rush. Relax. Look around you, so pick a spot. A corner of a street is a perfect location for that because you have 270 degrees view. You can check what's going on to your left. You can check what's going on to your right, and you have the full view of what's going on in front of you, so you have control. Excuse me [inaudible] Where you [inaudible]. [inaudible] In this area, I'm not sure to be honest. Thank you. Sorry. It's okay. Do you do it right here? A lot of street photography is about patients. You have to wait for the moment. You can't rush it. It's going to happen sooner or later. Street photography is about putting in hours, just hours and hours and hours, and it works proportionally. The more hours you put in, the better. The best street photographers are virtually obsessed with photography. They go out and photograph every day or every other day, and that's why they're the best. I don't do that by the way. I don't photograph every other day. We got to hurry up. If you're a beginning street photographer, obviously, Manhattan is the best place to be because a lot of things go down here. That's going to be a good shot. I obviously recommend being here in Manhattan because there's so many people, and it's easy to go unnoticed. However, I do recommend you venture out of Manhattan. After awhile, go to Brooklyn, go to Queens, Bronx, and all those neighborhoods, because there is also interesting stuff over there. Don't stick to Manhattan. I would say most street photographers just do street in Manhattan, but I find a lot of interesting stuff outside of Manhattan, so go to Brooklyn and explore it. You know what's even better than standing still in one spot, it's coming back to the same spot over time. If you live in the same city, comeback to the same spot in different seasons, different days, weekends, working days, in snow, rain, sunshine, that will make your street photography and more interesting. Guys, this is it for today. We've covered some distance in Manhattan, so it's definitely a interesting day. I hope you enjoyed my tips, and I hope it helps you to go out there and do your own work. Next part is in my neighborhood in Coney Island. It's a very different vibe. We're in the middle of Summer right now, people are way more relaxed in Coney Island. People are all about the beach and having fun. You can talk to people more easily. If you don't feel comfortable shooting people in a crowded in Manhattan, maybe Coney Island is a better place for you. I also use a different camera in Coney Island. The camera that I mentioned before, a Canon 5D Mark III. If you think it's too big of a camera to do street, have a look because I do it in Coney Island. 4. Project - Street Corner: Good way to make your street photography flow more interesting, is to actually stand still instead of being on the move. Pick one spot, ideally on a corner of the street because that way you control what's going on to your left and you control what's gone on to your right, you have a 270 degrees viewpoint and this is the perfect spot and a lot of street photographers use this technique. Just stand on a corner, don't move, take the whole place in and let people come to you, instead of chasing people down the street. See what it does for you, maybe you like and maybe you don't but try it out. As a matter of fact, this is my project for you, for this class, do exactly that. Pick a spot in your city, again, ideally a corner, stand there for five, 10, 15 minutes. The longer the better and see what happens. I guarantee that you'll have some interesting situations happening. If it doesn't happen in the first 10 minutes, stand there for another 10 minutes, stand there for another 10 minutes. Wait until it happens. 5. Coney Island (approaching people - posed portraits): Okay, so in Vienna if you are in a space like this in Coney Island, it's easy to take pictures because there's a lot of people. A lot of people have cameras. you are just not a guy with a camera basically. So you're like a tourist. It's easy to just be almost invisible. This is really easy. So in that respect, Coney Island is really good, especially on the weekend where everyone take cares of themselves. No one cares value, but also when it rains where people just don't really care about you. They care about not getting wet. I love rain because rain adds that extra look, aesthetics, and people wear all different kinds of rain coat and [inaudible] like right there. I'll take a picture of that, "Hey." There's going to be a lot of things happening here. A lot of good shots. You just need to be alert and let it go. Let yourself go. Look at that. This is my favorite camera. Again, it's not a street camera. You won't see a lot of street photographers using it. It's a 5D Mark 3 full-frame, beautiful quality images. That's why I love it. But this camera is good because it's fast. I use a 28 millimeter fixed lens and another lens that I like is 50. I also use 85 millimeters sometimes. I usually don't use a strap. I just hold it like that. It's my kind of camera. If you look at my Instagram, the New York chronicles, most of the pictures are taken with this camera or the one that I had before, which is 5D Mark 2. 50 years. 15 or 50? 50. 50. All right. Are you [inaudible] born and raised here? [inaudible]. All right man. I've been here for two years, I think. So another huge topic is approaching people. There's always a discussion that you should candid, are they posed? If you look at my portfolio, I do get a lot of questions about whether or not my photos are posed. I can tell you that easily 95 percent of them are not. I am predominantly a candid shooter. However, there are certain times when I will either talk to people or people will start talking to me. Where do you live now? On the 23rd street. Okay. Well, back then [inaudible] that used to be bungalows. Yeah, I live in one of those. No, a lot of things changed men down the years. We see a lot of people move in, a lot of people move out. See the old life man. Has it changed for good or worse in general? Right now? Yeah. For good. That's why I engage with him. We had a situation here just earlier today, we were walking down the boardwalk and it was this guy who started talking to me. When that happens, I am very happy to talk to people. This guy turned out to be a Loco. He's lived here for 50 years. Not only I am interested in him as a subject to shoot. The light was beautiful and he was a very nice and friendly guy. [inaudible]. Can I take quick photos of you because the light is good right now. If you stand right here, just here. That works. Perfect. All right. So you were saying? But I'm also interested in the story because at the end of the day, that's what street photography is also about. About connecting with people and camera gives you a wonderful excuse to just go and talk to people. It might be weird if you don't have that camera, but people see you with a camera and they'll start talking to you, "Oh, what are you shooting, are you a tourist, do you live here, where are you from and so on? " They open up much easier than you thought. If you know humans of New York, you know what I'm talking about, they will tell you amazing stories. I love Coney island. Yeah, me too. That's why I've been here. I've been in Brooklyn all my life because the beach, it changed too. Yeah. I remember back in the days it would be under the [inaudible]. I know. [inaudible]. I heard that. A lot of things changed. Mostly, there are only two situations when I will take a post portrait. When it's post, it's usually a portrait because what else? Number one, when people start talking to me like you just saw, and then you talk to them, they get easy, they get more relaxed, they get to know you, you smile a lot, you get the good vibe, and then you get the good shot because they trust you and trust is crucial. So that's situation number one. [inaudible] what's your name? Luke. Luke, I'm [inaudible].. Nice to meet you I like meeting people on the board walk. People who are here more relaxed and then what's happening. People are open to talk and they're not freaked out by people who are traveling. [inaudible] man. It's nice meeting you. Let me take another photo. This is even better. Beautiful. All right men. Again, nice meeting you. [inaudible]. Eighteenth on 25th you said? Situation number two, is when I see something really interesting, I know that's going to be a good shot, but I realize they're looking at me and they know I'm coming. In that situation, it's weird, especially if the subject is far and you still have some space to cover. It's weird to just come up to that person, take a candid shot. It's not going to be candid anyway because they're already looking at you and then just walk away, it's weird. So when that happens, I see someone's dressed in a certain way or doing something really interesting. Or I'm simply curious about what they're doing. But I noticed that they'd notice me then I will come and start talking to them. Smiling is super important. Just be nice and be easy. Don't be that weird guy hiding your camera. That's usually doesn't work. It just raises red flags. You don't want to be that guy who's like shooting from the hair but like looking some other way, it's not my style. What I do is when someone notices me most of the time, I'll just come and talk to them, usually it works. You get a good shot, you get a good story, you get a good vibe, and it feels good. That's what makes you happy when you're out there shooting in the streets. That's part of the game, I'm not only after the pictures, I'm also after stories. I actually write some of them down. That's how you get your whole experience, the whole street photography package, if you will. It all depends on what you like. You might be a predominantly candid shooter like me, or you might prefer to come and talk to people if that makes you feel more comfortable with them and easier in general. I know street photographers who mostly do post portraits and that's also street photography. It's no worse than any other type of photography. I prefer to be invisible, fly on the wall, but it's up to you. You can mix it. Like I said, I mostly avoid the portraits or posed shots, but when one of those two situations that I mentioned before occurs, I just go for it because we just have to assess the situation. You can go with whatever you feel is right, simple as that. I almost took a shot. Another good tip is that when I'm using this camera, again, it's a big camera, it's hard not to notice it. A lot of times I will a come with shot when they're not looking at me and they're not aware of me, but right after I do take a shot, they notice and they look at me. Beautiful, thank you. It's mostly positive reaction. They smile because I smile and again, you have to look easy. It has to be natural. You can't force it. You just have to be yourself and be relaxed. It really goes a long way to say something nice. It's good to be honest too. I never say anything that's not honest to people because it's just not me. You take their picture for a reason because they're beautiful, because they are doing something interesting. You can start talking to them as well. Just say something like, you are great, you look beautiful. People like hearing that stuff, and If it's honest, it shows people can hear it. It's genuine. It's legit. You as a street photographer, you're taking their pictures because they are special. Whatever they are doing, it might be their looks, their actions, whatever. Sometimes I tell people that I shot them because there's beautiful life, and not a lot of them get it, they are like what? You can tell them whatever it is that made you take the shot, just tell them you look beautiful, you look great. It's a cool thing to end on a good note and move on. I wouldn't recommend engaging, because if you're in the zone, you want to be on the move and you want to take as many shots as you can, but saying thank you, works. Happy birthday. I'm going to come up real close, and back, do it again. Nice and easy. Let's check the other end. This could be good. 1,2,3. One of my favorite topics and subjects to shoot are kids. If you look at my pictures, you'll see a lot of kids. It's partially because I feel like I am a kid still. Deep inside I also feel like kids are honest and they're not adults yet, meaning that they don't have any masks and they act natural. When I shoot kids that's the only time where I sometimes use that technique that a lot of street photographers use which is shooting from the hip. Shooting from the hip in my case, it doesn't normally work, especially with this camera. For my experience, I've tried it many times and most of the times they're either not sharp or the composition is completely off and they're no good. I don't usually do this. However, I do shoot from the hip when I shoot kids sometimes not because I want to hide myself or anything, but because I want to get to the level of their faces. If a kid is this tall, it's better for you to go down. You can either put the camera to your eye and kneel or you can shoot from the head. Of course, there is a risk that it's not going to be a good shot because the sharpness is not there or the composition is not there, but you can try. You can usually from my experience on out of say ten hip shots, you'll get two that are good. If you're really lucky you'll get this one shot that's sharp and the composition is great and that's it. That's the only time I use shooting from the hip, but it does work sometimes. Try it, play with it, see how it goes for you. I try not to view my photos on a go too much, but when I know that I get a really good shot or I feel like I'm getting a good shot, I will look at the back screen because I get excited, but normally if you have digital camera, don't do this. Don't break your flow. Stop looking at the camera, just be in the zone, do whatever you want to do. Try not to look at it. Look at that. When you're in a place like Coney Island, it's fairly easy to photograph because there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people with cameras. That's a good shot though. Look at that. I was saying if you are in a place like Coney Island. 6. Editing/Retouching: You've made it to the very last chapter of this class, which is editing. I'm going to show you how I do it, it's very straightforward. I don't use any special tricks, it might be disappointing for you, but I actually keep it simple. Lets see. This is my post-processing workflow. What I do right after the shoot is I bring all of my raw files into a photo browser called photo mechanic. Just say you had a good long day and you shot 300 frames. From that when you bring it into photo mechanic, if I had 300 frames, I would try and cut it down to 100 during my first selection, and then I'll go back and make a second selection and try to maybe cut it down to 60 or maybe 50 images from that 300. Let's just say I end up with 50 good images, and that bunch of pictures I bring into further editing in light room. I always look at the images from the last shot of the day and I go backwards towards the first shot of the day, and reason being is that I shoot a lot of sequences. You have a fraction of sequences here, one, two. You have another fraction of a sequence here, one, two, like I say, sometimes I'll shoot five or six images and usually the best shots are the last shots because I'm the closest to the subject. If I added pictures from the last shot and go backwards that way I can spot the good ones faster, mark them and maybe not waste more time on the other images in the sequence. Although I do look at each and every one of them, because it's just the general rule, but you never know. From here I go into full screen mode and I simply tag pictures. If you hit "T" on your keyboard, the picture is tagged. Just say, I like this one. I don't actually like this one, so this one's better, and I like this one already tagged. This one I like tag. Maybe no, not necessarily. Yes, I like that picture. Here you see you have to look at both of them. I like this one better because it's closer and this this isn't as good, I don't think because they both engaged here. This is an interesting shot, but compositions completely off, I could maybe crop it, but I don't really like that sharp that much, so it's okay. This shot I do like. Yeah, it's not perfect, but okay. I guess I'm going to leave this one out. This one's okay. Nice colors, but nothing more than that here. I'm not going to take that and I like this one. See that's a sequence 1, 2, 3. The last one is the best one in this case, I like this one, why not. These are good. We really lacked out during shooting that Coney Island episode. All of a sudden it started raining, but it was also sunny at the same time, just great great shots. Best situation for a street photographer or any photographer really, and so on, and so on. I make the selection, and once I make the selection, you go and just pick the tagged ones. You can see that we have 13 tagged photos and you export those photos onto your hard drives by simply copying the selected photos. You choose all your folders here, and so on. Hit "Copy" and it copies it onto your hard drive. From there, we're just going to take things to Lightroom. So here we are in Lightroom. I brought all of the photos from my first selection to it. Here you can see the final result, what the album looks like after editing, but now I'm going to show you what I do step-by-step. Of course, even though you might have a preset almost all the time and most cases, you'll still have to customize the settings, preset is just your starting point in most cases. But you still need to make sure that that particular picture is tuned in for best results. Let's just say I go for my preset number 3, which is chronicles 3. It's okay, but it needs to be brighter. So I'll just bring that a little bit up, and then bring down the whites, hoping that the sky will get a little bit darker. From here I think we are basically good. Now, you might think that going in and doing selective adjustments is too much hassle, which quite frankly in a lot of cases it is. But there will be some situations where going in and adjusting just certain areas is very beneficial to the photo, and that's exactly what film photographers do in a traditional darkroom. We, digital photographers don't need to know it that much, but we need to know what to do in the digital darkroom, be that Lightroom, Capture 1, Photoshop, or whatever other software you might be using. So you might look at this picture and think, Oh, it's okay and it is okay, but look what happens when we brighten his eyes just a little bit. Obviously, don't go crazy. Eyes are very important. We are doing that, but notice how much better this picture is. When you see the job done, his eyes are already brighter here, and look at the before picture. That makes a difference, and that's why sometimes it pays to be a little bit more detailed and sacrifice a little bit more of time to get a better result. But the question you might have is, how do I get to preset, meaning, how do I normally edit my pictures from scratch? Let's just take this picture here. This is the original imported image. No retouching, no additive banner yet. This picture is obviously not perfect, the first thing that you see right away is that this woman on the left, her face is cutoff, not cool. But there's nothing I can do about it. But even so, I still like the picture, I like the situation. They're really nice people, I just like it. I'm going to leave it at that. There's nothing I can do, but I'm not going to delete it, I'm going to go ahead and see what I can squeeze out of it. First thing I do, if I was to, let's just say edit my images on a different computer when I don't have access to my presets or specifically difficult picture if interference of light or whatever. First thing I do, I hit V to convert it into black and white. From here, I simply try to recognize the issues. So here for me, the first thing that I see is that, well, first of all, this picture is too dark, but second of all, more importantly, this area, a very important area for that photo, his eyes it's too dark and her eyes are too dark too. I only have two ways of approaching it. Either use general settings and you could say heavy or lazy, but it doesn't have to be that you just go with a global adjustment, increase the exposure. Maybe play with contrast, trying to keep that shadow at bay. Maybe just hold back a little bit on the shadows to see what it does. If it helps then do the same with blacks. Unfortunately, it's global adjustment. It does the same thing to the entire picture, and now it looks like it lacks contrast. I'll hold that back. Clarity, I don't use much. That's an Okay picture, so that's one of the ways to dealing with it. Another way would be to actually go in and do adjustments on parts of the photos. So just selected adjustments. You do that hitting K on your keyboard, which is a brush, and from here I'm not going to give you a Lightroom tutorial right now. But from here, you can go in and just make the adjustments. Actually, I wanted to make it brighter, exposure right here, and just address this area, leaving all of the other areas. I'm fast, which is really great. I do that a lot, but very quickly because I don't really like to spend too much time editing. It's not the fun part for me, and then from here, let's just say I did that. Maybe bringing back yeah, let's just say I like it. The final touch for me, you will see in most of my editing is to play with the tone curve, and first of all, make it into a tiny S-curve. Just bring the shadows a little bit up, but more importantly, just bring that down. Just play with it. I also have my Custom Preset curves, I just numbered them from 1-8, and there we go. I like that. That's basically my entire workflow. Step 1, photo mechanic. First and second selection. Step 2, Lightroom, conversion into black and white, and then export them as high as files and as low as files, and that is it. This picture I have to say I like it. This is the picture I could hang on my wall. Because it's actually a poem, and that's nice to have a poem on your wall. This was really lucky. 7. Final Thoughts: Okay guys, you've made it till the very end of this class. Congratulations. I'm glad you watched the entire class. I hope you found it interesting, and I hope you found some interesting tips in it. I just have some final thoughts for you as a photographer. Rule number one that I would say is quite a useful thing to do is to look back at your own photos. The reason being is that; a, you learn from your own mistakes and b, when you look at your own photos with a fresh pair of eyes, you'll see him differently. That happens to me a lot of times that I might not like a picture at first, and then I go back to it a year later, and all of a sudden, I realize this picture is actually better than the other picture that I thought was better. Look back at the pictures not only to learn from your mistakes, because two years from now you'll be a better photographer. That's for sure. You'll be more experienced. You'll have a better understanding of the light and composition. So you go back and you're like okay, I should've turned three centimeters to the right. Also, you really shouldn't get discouraged as a street photographer, this genre of photography is a very specific and peculiar type of photography where you need to get used to the fact that you will take a lot of pictures, hundreds of pictures. But there will be only three good in that 100. That's just street photography for you. So trust me, you won't shoot good pictures every single day. I go out and shoot maybe two times a week. Maybe three times a week, and trust me, if I tell you that, sometimes I will go out and shoot for four hours, I'll go back, look at my pictures and delete all of them, and that's just what it is. It's just a part of the game. You know, it's not a fashion shoot where you have an hour to shoot a model and you need to get those 15 shots, and you will get them because the light is right, because you have a makeup artist, because you have a stylist and because the studio is beautiful or the location is beautiful and you have the best camera and the model is beautiful. So how can you fail? But in street photography, there's literally nothing you can control. You don't control anything except for you on camera. You don't control the crowd, you don't control the light, you don't control the traffic. You don't know what's going to happen. That's the beauty of it. But the downside of it is that you need to be prepared to fail a lot and much more than in any other type of photography, you will fail a lot. Trust me, it's frustrating, but you need to realize and keep that in mind that, that's part of the game. If you want to be a street photographer, be ready to fail a lot. That's what it is. It's unpredictable, but that's the beauty of it. So patience is the key word in street photography. Patience you need to put in time. You need to put an effort. Above all, you need to put in miles or kilometers. Because that's how this genre of photography works. If it doesn't happen on Monday and it doesn't happen on Tuesday and it doesn't happen on Thursday. It will happen on Sunday. Trust me, be patient. Okay.