Transcripts
1. Introduction: It's all about choosing wisely what you're shooting and having a mindful eye. Don't overdo anything, photography comes to you if you just keep walking. You're going to see something. Hi. What's up? Jamal here. On Instagram I go by J-SKILL. Today we're going to be learning a little black and white photography, and more importantly, we going to learn how to understand aperture in different scenarios. Today in black and white photography, we're going to be focusing on lighting through topography, landscape and then in general understanding aperture and how to use that in different scenarios. This class is for anyone interested in black and white photography, anyone interested in photography generally. I think what I want to see from you guys and everyone participating in this class is using light creatively, going out at the right time of day, picking your source of light appropriately, strategically, and creating photos. It will be awesome to see a combination of architecture, of landscape of the city, the people in the city and then street portraits. All of that is cool because this is all the stuff that I'm interested in. So, I'd love to see what you guys take from my class and applying it to your own everyday practice and everyday strategy.
2. What is Aperture: So, today in understanding aperture, the first and most important thing is understanding the definition of aperture itself, which is an opening through which light passes through and, I guess, in this case, we would refer to that as the camera's lens. So, in the simplest terms, depending on the f-stop you're shooting at or the aperture you're shooting at, you can achieve certain types of effects. If you're shooting at a f-stop, like 1.4 or 2.0, you're probably going to want to use that when you're shooting a subject at or someone moving or point of interest because that person will be in focus or that subject will be in focus while everything else is blurry. Then, there's another option where your shooting eight or above, where you're just trying to capture as much of the scenery or landscape in focus as possible. Generally, the rule of thumb is, based on your aperture, you're going to have to adjust the ISO and your shutter speed. So, when you're shooting at a larger aperture, such as 1.4 for example, what's going to happen there is you're going to have to increase your shutter speed because the lens is wide open and you're just going to have to take a faster photo to compensate for the lighting in that sense and also the ISO too. Ideally, the lower your ISO can be the better unless you are trying to achieve like some sort of grain effect. So, keep the ISO as low as possible. For me while shooting, I'm always previewing or using live mode because it gives me interactive preview of what I'm trying to do, what I'm trying to accomplish. I don't necessarily have to look like I'm taking a photo when I'm actually preparing to take a photo. If I'm shooting on live mode, and I fix my frame, and I'm freehand in, and I can move the camera however I feel necessary., when the time comes I'm already to shoot. I can literally come off of live mode or keep it on depending on situation and take my photo. For me, when I'm picking that type of focus or auto focus I want to be using, of course, AI Servo is super beneficial when capturing moving subjects, things on the go. If I want capture it or focus, I'm probably going to have to move with it. But, if I do have the opportunity or advantage to stay still, and frame, and pick my focus, I often change from Servo to One Shot, so that I know exactly what it is I'm getting in focused. I could focus and then, adjust if I need to. Sometimes people wonder like, "Whoa. How did you get this subject in focus while everything is super blurred out?" Simply put, that's just shooting at a larger aperture from 1.4 to 2.8. Even at 4.0 you could still get a pretty strong blur. It just depends on what you're trying to do. How much of the background you want to focus or the foreground, it could be either or all. So, today when we go outside, there's maybe a couple types of photography that we're looking at while we're trying to incorporate the light in our photos. First type is street photography. For street photography, for me, I like to keep my aperture between 2.0 and 8 and it's truly depending on the situation what I'm trying to accomplish. If I'm shooting live mode or if I'm shooting pre-plan, I might have it at an aperture such as 5.6 or 8, simply because I need room for error. When you're shooting at 5.6 or 8.0, there's more space for the subject to be in focus. But, if you're going to be shooting like 2.0 for example, their focus has to be to the T, it has to be on point and you have to capture it in that perfect moment. So, it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. But, for me, when I'm shooting street photography, I stay in between 2.0 and 8.0. Then, going on to the landscape, I usually start at eight and I can go all the way up to 14, even 16 if I feel like it's necessary. I try to get as much in-focus as possible simply because at that point you're looking at the entire scene. You're trying to take it in for what it is and you're not trying to have a part of the photo be blurry.
3. Types of Lighting, Times of Day: There's a term called the golden hour, which is the period shortly after sunrise or shortly before sunset. It's often referred to a highly timer for in color photography, but it's also important in black and white photography because that's when the light is most prominent, that's when the light is causing or providing the most dramatic effect. So, if you're trying to take black and white photos, being out for golden hour is really important because if you position yourself correctly or if you're lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, you are going to end up with some pretty cool photos. With black and white photography, there's certain points throughout the day, maybe it's the middle of the day, at some point where the light is just very dull, flat, and all the buildings are lit the same way, all the streets are lit the same way. It's kind of tough. So, you just have to be cognizant of that while shooting and if you notice that, don't force it. There's three types of light that I'm always looking out for, and I think it'd be awesome if you guys considered it while shooting, and that's front lighting, side lighting, and back lighting. Front lighting is when it's lighting everything in front of you. Your back is towards a primary light source and everything you're taking a photo of is lit up by what's in front of you. Back lighting is when your camera is towards the light source and it's casting. For example, the silhouette or really contrasts in images with heavy blocks, heavy shadows. Then, there's side lighting that you can use to your advantage where you see fit to like provide texture, emphasize tones, and to just create a super contrast to the effect if you prepare and you plan for it. All right. So, at this point in the class, we're going to go outside and we're going to apply everything I said plus more in the field, shooting street photography, landscape, and street portraits of people walking. We're going to see how aperture plays a role in that. We're going to see the different types of lighting. We're going to see how I adjust to that as we go.
4. Shooting: Street Photography: All right. So, we're here now. It's a bit past sunrise. So, we're about to enter what you call the golden hour. Light is going to be awesome today. It's going to be poking out from the east side, coming this way and I'm excited to get shooting. Let's go. Just being out here in general as we start to get into the busy part of this city. My favorite kind of photography as I mentioned is street photography. So, there's a lot of things I'm looking for. I'm looking for interesting subjects. I'm looking to fill the frame. I'm looking to plan my shots ahead of time. So, the most important thing for me here is to be aware and to be prepared for anything possible. Although it's artificial, this is a great source of sidelight. I've positioned myself perpendicular to it and I can catch the light hitting them on this side. So, I'm just waiting for people to come this way because there is light coming off the building. I can get a pretty cool shadow. With this photo, I've pre-plan and I was waiting for people to come so I took a bunch of shots and what I did while I was taking this shot was, I knew that I wanted the subject to be the main focus so, I shot at a lower F stop, approximately two. Pretty much you grab the focus before the subject came there so that when they came into the photo they were hopefully already in focus. I mean, that's the luck of it but if you do capture it, it's that much better thank trying to capture it after it already happened. This guy is somewhere [inaudible] so I'm going to take a test shot of it. All right. So, from a street photography perspective, sometimes shooting in live mode is your best friend because it doesn't actually look like you're shooting. This is like you're playing with your camera. People don't think to change or the idea of what they're doing. We're in an area now where some of my favorite type of photography to take is incorporating people with the architecture. So, having a lot of the scene and having a lot of the city but still capturing an interesting subject with that. I'm shooting at four because I'm trying to get the subject in focus. But I still want the buildings in the background to be visible. Shallow your depth of field as you blur everything out. If you actually want the foreground or the background I should say in focus, you have to have a depth of field or an aperture that can capture both so you could see both things, both interesting subjects. It's really important in photography to not force anything and that's why when I say shooting with a mindful eye, that's what I mean by that. Don't overdo anything. Let photography come to you. If you just keep walking, you're going to see something. You don't have to stop and stick to one place if you don't feel like it's working for you. You can move and come back to it, or you can just keep moving. Things change and you're not always going to get exactly what you hoped for so it's better to just stay positive and keeping moving. It's all about choosing wisely what you're shooting and having a mindful eye. If you're just going out and just shooting for the sake of shooting, you probably come out with something that you're not that satisfied and so you're not that excited about. So, try to think about what you want to capture before so that when you get there, you already know you're looking for and that just helps you be more prepared and well equipped for the fast changing environment.
5. Shooting: Landscape Photography: I'm searching for the 11 to 24 so that I have some variability. I'm really trying to capture the buildings and the architecture right now. I'm trying to stay in the four to 11 range, so there's no need to be using a prime right now if I don't need it. When I'm shooting landscape, I like to shoot at a higher F-stop why? Because I want more of the full photo and focus there's. So much to see here, beautiful buildings and everything that I want as much of it to be in focus as possible. So this is where I'd have the higher F-stop. What's really cool about right now is that, the sun is behind us but it's hitting this building right here which has light directly coming at me and it's getting a really cool shine off the building and it's also lighting up some of these buildings, we are also keeping some of these buildings darker. I try to focus on the brightest point in the photo because I want to make sure that the exposure is set for that 'cause shadows, blacks, those are a bit more manipulative and you're able to have more room for error with the highlights if they're blown out they're blown out and you're not getting them back. That's a really important feature. I'm going to take my aperture up to eight because I want to capture this building right here with the light. And I use live mode, it's pretty much perfect my exposure and if I want it to be lower or higher I can do that. I can see that the road is in focus, but if I put out the pervy exposure, I don't get as much, so I may and may raise the exposure just a little bit to be able to get everything and then fix it in the post process. So we've been shooting for about two, three hours now, got to see a lot of light and a lot of different situations, so I'm excited to go through what I have now, begin the editing process and show you guys how I edit a black and white.
6. Editing: Dodging & Burning: Now, that we got back inside and I've had the chance to look through some of the photos that I've taken, I'm super excited to showcase some of the tools and methods of editing I use to enhance my black and white photos. We're going to go over to three of them today. When you look at the setting on this photo, as you can see right here, I shot it at 8.0. So, of course, there's going to be less diffraction in this photo than there would 1.4 or 2.0, anything less than eight. So, you may wonder how am I going to accomplish the effect of getting this photo to pop, and the way to do that is to accentuate the lights and accentuate the dark parts of the photo. So, the light parts of the photo needs to be addressed and the dark parts needs to be addressed, and it's just acting on that accordingly. So, I'm going to go to the radio filter tool, and if you press on Custom, there's a whole bunch of options you have right here. So, there's the Burn tool, there's a Dodge tool, and there's a whole bunch of other ones that you can get into. This is for eyes, this is for skin, literally everything is at your disposal here. So, what we're going to is we're going to burn and doge today. We're going to start with burning. So with that, you look at that, the first thing you're going to do is going to press Invert Mask, and you're going to put the feather at 100 because you're working with the inside of a circle. So, you want to make sure that what you're doing is as minimally obvious as possible. So, you're going to delete that. I'm going to delete this just because I'm showning you how to do it. So now, I'm going to look at the photo and I'm going to say, "Okay, what do I want to be darker, and what do I want to be lighter?" So of course, the main point of focus in this entire photo is this building right here. Absolutely, like this light source right here, so I'm going to also up the ante on that at some point. There's a couple of things I don't like about this photo, really quickly, I don't like this lineup here, so I'm going to get rid of it, and I do feel as if this is slanted, ever so slightly. So, I'm just going to go down for a second. I'm just going to rotate it really quickly. Cover all. If you ever rotate anything, make sure you press Constrain Crop because you don't want to leave the edges of the photo untouched. You don't want that white space. I'm going to crop this really quickly, and that's literally just a quick drop. Now, when it comes to dodging and burning, I'm starting off with burning and simply I'm putting out this darkening. So, the first radio filter I'm probably going to do, I'm probably doing to do in this area, and I'm going to do one in this area, and then I may flip the radio filter, taking off and re-masking, darkening everything else but this building right here. So first one, I'm just going to make a radio filter right here, adjust it. So that it's where I want it to be. I'm bringing it here. Darkening, and darkening it until I feel like it makes sense. If I was to put the blocks, you see, I lose the details, so I'm definitely not going to do that, and it's always important to have these on because as you're editing the photo, this could really take away from the quality, and if you're getting rid of the detail on the photo on your on. An easy thing to do to too is you can press Duplicate, and Press Duplicate. You can move the exact same size of the filter over to the other side, pull it down. Stretch if you need to on both fronts, and make it work for that. I've done that. Now, I'm thinking about, where else can I dark in the photo? I'm just looking at dark spots on the photo that I can darken. You can do as many of this as you want. No one is stopping you from taking it as far as you'd like to. All right. Anything I feel like should be darker, I'm going to make it darker. After I feel like I've pretty much darkened what I want to darken, I'm going to move over to a dodging, which is lighting. Same thing, you're going to press Invert Mask at 100. So, whatever you're doing on the inside of the circle is going to light up. If you're ever curious as to what it's working on, just hold your mouse over the circle after you click it in, the red space will show you exactly what it is you're covering with that. So now that I'm working on lighting, I'm going to light up this building. I'm going to touch this light, and I'm going to accentuate a bit of this, a bit of this, and a bit of that. So, 25 maybe good, maybe I need more. Let's start with this light right here. I'll make it a lot brighter, because I think it's really cool. Again, make sure it's on lighting. Because by lighting up the building, I lose a bit of the shadows and blacks. I'm going to accommodate for that. Remember that I just dropped the blacks back down a bit to give the building back its contrast. There's a couple areas that I don't light up. There, there, there. Now, that I've done that, you can see the difference simply just by pressing this. It's a lot flat. Then, you do that and it just makes the image pop, also in this corner. Really cool lighting on the building. So I'm going to light that up as well. I'm trying to put blacks a bit to get this luminous back. Perfect. Yeah. Simply put dodging and burning as accentuating the blacks and the shadows, as well as the whites in the highlights, and you do that as you see fit. The last thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go back to darken, I'm going to take off the Invert Mask, and I'm going to let this go back down to 50, and if I feel like adjusting this, I can do that after, but first, I'm going to check and see what it looks like. I want to darken everything else but this building to make it pop that much more. Now, you have to be careful because you also want it to be realistic. So if I do it like that, I can slowly bring back up the feather on it, because I just have to check and make sure it's not actually affecting this building. So, as long as it's not effecting the building, I can increase the feather to make it less and less obvious. Now, I'm going to darken it until it seems unrealistic. Now, because I was darkening that, some of what I was doing earlier took a hit on the outside. So, I have to bring it back out myself. That's just a quick readjustment. Now, looking over this, what the radio filters has done from point A to Z. Now, I'm going over what the radio filters can do, and as you can see I used a bunch, I used at least 10. You can see the total effect of it by clicking on this, right here, this module, and you can see what it looked like before I used any radio filters, to burning dodge, and what it looked like after. Now, this building is a lot more focused. This light is accentuated. The darks are brought even lower so that it's less of a subject in the photo and the main stay is this. Now, the last thing I'm going to do before I'm finished with this photo is I'm just going to experiment to see what it looks like if I want to center it. If I prefer that or if I don't, because it was off to the side ever so slightly. Now, that that's centered, I'm looking at that, and if you just want to quickly undo something, of course, you can just press Command Z versus that. I think I like this one better. If you think you like the centered one more, I totally understand why. So, going from the beginning of the photo to that, it's pretty cool what burning and dodging can do for the photo. Just a quick look again; with, without it, and with it, and there.
7. Editing: Contrast vs. Clarity: All right. So at the second photo here, it's actually a photo of a lady putting on her bag, getting ready to go to work. This is right by the Grand Central Terminal. So far, what I've done is I pretty much set up the exposure, managed the highlights, the blacks, the shadows, the whites, all of that stuff. Now, we're at the point now where we can see what contrasts will do to the photo versus what clarity would do to the photo. One thing to know about contrast here is, what contrast does is by using it, whether you're decreasing or increasing, what it does primarily is it affects the mid tones to the edges. It looks at that and it enhances it. What clarity does is it looks for edges between dark points and light points and it enhances those. So that could be the outside of the subject or the lines that separate dark from light. So, when doing that, there's clearly a difference between the two. So, contrast affecting the mid tones versus clarity affecting the edges between dark and light. So, I want to show you what they'd look like. Also, keep in mind the histogram as we're going through this and how it changes based on what I do. I'm just going to show you what contrast looks like at a hundred. Like that, and I'll show you what clarity looks like at a hundred. Now, when you see what clarity does automatically, for me at least, I don't like this effect. I feel like it's too dramatic and I feel like it's overdone. I feel like it's unrealistic. So, I'm going to go back to where I started. Naturally, when you use contrast and when you use clarity, that a whole difference it makes kind of darkens the photo ever so slightly. So, I'm just going to leave myself some of the flare and increase the exposure just a bit. So, for me, first what I'm going to do is I'm going to check the contrast and set that up accordingly to where I see fit. Now, I like strong contrasts in photos, so usually the minimum I use is 25. With clarity, there's times when I go backwards with clarity. Obviously, not that far back and there's some times where I go forward and obviously not that far forward. For me, clarity is a minor adjustment. In this case, if I were to raise it, I do like the effect it provides but I just want to decrease the dramatic effect it has by a little to make sure that I'm keeping it as realistic as possible. So, I'm giong to to keep it at right around 10. It goes a long way from the original photo to this. I darkened the dark areas similar to how I mentioned burning and dodging, and lighting the light areas, and I highlighted the subject, put her in focus and cleaned everything up. One thing I also do with clarity, if you want to enhance the depth of field, say for example, if you look here, I shot this at 1.4 and I got lucky that it's clearly in focus but with the outside circle, everything outside of her, I darkened and I also minus the clarity to make the outside of this circle more blurry and to enhance the feature of her as a subject and making her an even stronger point of focus in the photo. Within the circle, if I want to, I can brighten her up a bit more and I can make her pop even more if I just add a slight amount of contrast. One thing, if you want to get the subject sharper, clarity does help with that but you can just be specific and you could sharpen the subject in particular. So that's what I did here and that's how I accomplished this photo. One other thing you can do to enhance the contrast on the photo is work with the tonal curve. So, right here on the tonal curve is blacks, here shadows. Use your exposure. Here's highlights and here's whites. This is the most extreme point on the bright side. This is the most extreme point on the dark side. So the first thing I am going to do is just put my exposure in the optimal setting. I usually raise it to give a bit of room for error or adjustment if I'm going to darken and make it more contrasted. So, here's the shadows. I am going to lower it a little bit. This is the shadow range. I should say actually, because this line is where you can see the shadows so I'm in the range of shadows. With blacks, I can lift or I can move to the side to see if I was to move to the side, it would just make me miss some details. So, I'm just going to leave that there. It's fine and this is the highlight. I could add that a bit and simply, just by doing that, a whole different effect. So, looking over this photo and showing you guys the difference between contrast and clarity, I'm happy with the edit I've come to and I'm excited to apply that to more of the photos I've taken.
8. Editing: Brush Tool: With the last photo, we're working with a specific subject in this case it's a person and I'm going to show you how the brush tool can enhance the photo. I usually shoot underexposed. Why? Because, it gives me more power with my shadows and my blacks and I just feel like it helps me get a more dramatic photo in the post processing. I've taken away the highlights, I bumped up the shadows, I've played with the whites and blacks and I've added a bit of clarity. Here's my tonal curve and I've also gone through the highlights lights on the tone curve as well. So, just doing that, and sharpening, the noise reduction, setting up the, making sure that I was happy with the way it was set up. That versus that, I feel like it's a more realistic perspective. I've constrained crop to make sure there's no edges on it, and last but not the least list I've added vignette. So now, what we're going to do just to enhance this photo ever so slightly is we're going to go to the brush tool. With subjects this could be for portraits, this could be for street photography, this could be for anything. There's a couple things you can do. So, with this I'm going to soften the subject skin to make it look a bit smoother, a bit cleaner. To me 100 is way too unrealistic, so I usually stay in the range of 15 to 40. So, I'm going to play it safe, put it at 20 and I'm going to pull my sharpness at 20. You can on your computer the bracket keys just above the enter sign, you can make your brush bigger or smaller. So, I'm going to use a very small brush in this situation. I'm going to go to 1:1, because I'm solely focused in or her face, and I'm going to move it to where I want to light and what I want to fix. I may even do FILL cause it's a bit closer, but 1:1 works fine. I can just move this as I go. So, I'm going to start right here. Now, that I have that, I also want to brighten it up, because it is the darker side of this. I also may use a new one to darken the other side of her face. So, if I go over this, you can see the effect that it has on the subject. It's really cool, because this isn't just applicable to street photography, it's applicable to any type of portrait. Move it down a bit, get the bottom of her face. Looks like she's scared of me. Yeah. So, I've done that, I'm going to put it to FILL. Show you the difference it makes even though it was ever so slight just bump in 10 on the exposure that and that and see what it does. I'm going to go even closer so you could actually see the difference much clear. I think what I'm going to do also is I'm just going to bump the exposure by 10 more. Because, there is a light source and you want to make it dramatic. So, looking over her now you can see the difference. That versus that, and it's really cool the final result. You can even get super specific and like I said, you can darken the other sides of it, and then you could brighten up more if you want to. So, right now I'm going to darken the other side of her. Just the edges. It's in the half the shadow that are dark part of the photo. You can see how it makes the difference. All that said and done, the last thing I want to do is just make sure I'm happy with the photo. This is before and this is after. Yeah. There you go. Looking over the photo and using the brush tool as an adjustment feature, just enhancing the subject's skin, beautifying it, making her look far much more interesting in the photo. I'm happy with how it looks and yeah. It's not just something you use in street photography. Again, you can use it in portraiture, you can use it in a lot of different situations. I can even give a quick example of how, going back to a previous photo, how you can use the brush in that situation. So, you take the brush and you want just darken. Say you want to sharpen the trees for example. It's really cool, because you get this kind of idea juxtaposition. You get the trees and you get the architecture all in one photo. So, if I want to darken that a bit more, but I also want to sharpen it, I could do that easily. Use the right blacket key, make the brush supper big and I could quickly just make a circle. Do one round and I'm finished. Then to further enhance it I could do a new one. Bringing it up again, add some sharpness and I'm going to make it a bit smaller because the light potions in this is a little less defined, but I could brush that, brush that, brush right here and again left bracket brush this. There you go. The brush tool's super powerful, because you have full creative freedom as to how you use it. You can adjust the size of it throughout the entire process without actually starting a new one. It's just a super helpful, practical, helpful tool if you know how to use. Just looking back at it there's so many options. You can soften skin, you can whiten teeth, you can enhance the eyes, you can even simply have it set it up for you as a burn or dodge tool too, clarity all of it, it helps everything. So, it's a very helpful tool to use while shooting and I think the attention to detail with burning and dodging, the brush tool and contrast versus clarity is not just applicable to black and white photography, but to color photography as well, because it just helps the photo and as long as you're being smart, careful and attentive with it, you can really enhance what you're doing.
9. Conclusion: Thanks again for taking the class. I'm excited you guys watched the entire video. Hope you guys learned something. I'd love to hear feedback if you think there's something I could improve on or if there's questions that were raised during you watching the video that you don't feel like were answered, please do share. Lastly, I think the most important thing to take away from this class is why you're shooting. It's super important to be mindful. One thing that will elevate your photography is just thinking why you're shooting. You can't just go outside and wander aimlessly. I mean, you can to a certain extent, but there's so many things that you have to think about while shooting, because it's going to prepare you, it's going to position you in a better place, and it's going to impact your overall level of photography, what you're capturing, and what you put out at the end of the day. So, just have a mindful eye. Think about what you want to do. Be creative. Think about it. If you think you could capture, try and set it up. Plan ahead. Be out early, and stay excited, stay enthusiastic about what you're shooting. Just go as far as your creativity will take you.
10. Explore Photo Classes on Skillshare:
Jamal Burger, Photographer
