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Class Introduction

Lesson 1 from: Fine Art Photography

Brooke Shaden

Class Introduction

Lesson 1 from: Fine Art Photography

Brooke Shaden

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Lesson Info

1. Class Introduction

Meet Brooke Shaden in the first lesson, and learn where the fine art photographer finds her inspiration. Then, gain an overview of the three-day class.
Next Lesson: My Evolving Style

Lesson Info

Class Introduction

so I want to tell you kind of a roundabout story before I get started about being here right now and how I got to be here because I actually just talking to one of the students josh about this I actually really didn't want to do creative live when I before I ever came on I was really scared of it I thought this probably isn't for me I don't know how I'm going to teach for three days straight and I was really really afraid and so recently I had this experience that really amazingly summed up exactly what I love about life I was in st louis missouri and I went to this museum it's called the city museum and it's basically just like a huge gigantic playground for adults so in this city museum they have a slide and it's this ten story slide and so I climbed up ten stories of stairs and when I got to the top I realized that I'm terrified to go down with slide so I went down the first time holding on to the rails and I went one rail by one rail and slid down the whole entire ten stories and t...

hen decided that that was really ridiculous that I did that because I didn't actually face my fear so as I'm going down the slide I hear this voice at one point you'll just do it who said that it was just a cz mysterious echoing voice so I said okay you know what he's right I'm going to do it so I went back up to the top and I sat down at the slide and then that man was there and he was running slide and he said you know you can't just go down like you do you can't just start sliding slowly slowly slowly going down you have to just do it and then you're going toe realize how incredibly amazing and inspirational that is and so I started talking to him and I said well what are your passions what are what are you inspired by he said I really want to make a wig webisodes like funny videos for the internet and I said why don't you do it and he said I don't know I'm scared that nobody will like it and I said oh so you're scared of putting stuff on the internet but I'm scared of going down the slide so if you produce a webisode by monday then I will go down the slide at full speed so he said ok deal and so we exchanged your emails we said okay and then I slid down the slide at full speed and it was so much fun and I felt like I just completely discovered my inner child and it was the most amazing thing and that's how I feel about being here today is it causes fear in I think everybody here right now and the best thing about it though is that we get to face it together and we get to do something that's going to inspire us and that's how I want to live my whole life is just thinking what can I do that makes me afraid what can I do that's going to inspire me down the road and I think that if we're not being constantly inspired then what's the point of living really I mean what's the point if we're not going out in challenging ourselves ls and doing things that make us say whoa I can't believe that I just did that but it was an incredible learning experience so that's where I want to start talking about today now to reiterate I am a fine art photographer my class is called master your craft so how can I teach everybody in the world how to master their craft if I don't do everything in the world well this is kind of simple in my opinion because maybe I'm going to teach some surreal strange maybe creepy pictures while I'm here during this class but that doesn't mean that there isn't more to be learned from that so anything that I talk about whether it's inspiration whether it's posing shooting editing all of that could be translated into something much bigger than what I'm saying much bigger than just the pictures that I happen to be showing you during this class so I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we're going to be talking about over the next three days one of those things is inspiration and I hope that that's something that comes through during everything that I say I never want to stop talking about inspiration because that's that's my passion that's my life a force that's what drives me through and gets me excited about everything and then motivation because I really feel like you can have as much inspiration as you want in the world but if you don't have the motivation to actually do something with that inspiration and there's no point in having it in the first place is so how to be inspired how to be motivated how to turn that into something that you know you can really pick up in move your life forward with it we're going to talk about goal setting risk taking things that I feel push you forward in life that is so important to me of huge on goal setting time really really big on writing lists and then crossing things off that list and rewarding myself with cookies and stuff like that so we're talking about that maybe we can even get some cookies too right board us later on posing we're going to do a lot of that because posing is so incredibly important obviously that's moving away from the inspirational side of things but I think that if you pose somebody in a really inspired way that's going to take your photo a whole new level self portraiture we're going to a little bit of that I truly believe that if you know how to do self portraiture then you khun do everything so much better so if I know how to pose myself and I know how to pose a model and that's what I'm looking for we're gonna be doing critique but I'm not going to be critiquing you I have no interest in telling you how good or bad you are because I don't have a real opinion about that I think that everybody is amazing because they're trying so I'm not the best person to ask for a critique from however I critique myself all the time so we're going to be talking about that how to critique your own photos how to remove yourself from that process in a very emotional way and look at it objectively we're going to be doing storytelling so everything that I do is based around a story every little thing we talk about that in this first segment and story telling to me is is the heart of an image not every single image necessarily lee but if you understand why you took a picture then you understand how that translates to an audience editing that's the next thing that I want to talk about I'm going to be showing my editing process start to finish a couple of different times so we have got so many different photo shoots to do today we're going to be doing I think eight different photo shoot throughout this class on dh I'll be editing a lot of those pictures live and then hopefully finishing the rest for you guys to see later so definitely a lot of editing business which is one of my favorite things in the whole entire world business always makes me feel a little bit weird because it's like I don't do it for the business you know you don't make art for business but at the same time business itself is an art and so I love talking about that on dh then lastly all the shoot is that we're doing I'm going to be shooting indoors and going to be shooting outdoors we're going to be going through everything from how to design a set toe howto at a sky in the background and stuff like that s so it should be really really fun and exciting I hope so let's get into this how does one simply master their craft this is a question that I ask myself a lot how can I do everything in my power to create images that are meaningful to me images that I feel reflect who I really am and images that can actually compete in the market today and not really comes from being original and further than that it comes from being confident so if I do something that comes from within it's something that I feel is truly who I am as a person then I can naturally be confident about that because I know that it's something that I created from within so if that happens and I put that out there it doesn't matter what people say about it because that's me that I'm putting out there and I'm confident in what I'm doing so we're going to talk a lot about that so sometimes people take a lot of pictures sometimes that's how you master your craft you get your first camera you take ten thousand pictures as they say maybe you'll get a good one after that but I don't believe that that has to be the case I believe that if you search within and you understand why you're creating then you're going to create images that you love so that's my core philosophy that if we can understand from day one why we create why were motivated to pick up our camera in the first place then I feel like we're going to create images that are so much more impactful not only for us but for other people who are viewing those pictures so you have to first understand your craft in order to master it so who believes truly that you understand every aspect of why you create you've really thought about exactly what the reasons are who you are why you are that way what you love doing do you think about that I think about that constantly and that's why I feel perhaps not like I have totally mastered my craft but I feel very confident in what I do and I'm not afraid to say that because I love what I do when I do what I love so it could be hard for an artist to understand the reason behind creating and it can be difficult because we create for a lot of different reasons ah lot of us might have clients who are saying create this create that you have to do it by this deadline therefore we produce what we need to produce to make money to provide for our families and I understand that and so that means that you might not be creating exactly what you loved to create but that doesn't mean that you can't create what you love to create so the more that you can make time for those things that you love the more you're going to understand exactly why you do what you d'oh

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Brookes Posing Guide
Self Portraiture
The Art of Self Critique

Ratings and Reviews

renee Akana
 

I love Brooke and the wonderful way that she teaches. She is a gift to us all. Jane, her model, was lovely - a beautiful girl, a wonderful attitude and a real professional.. I could not do what Jane did to help Brooke convey her story.

user-a81eeb
 

Brooke is amazing! I love this course. Brooke is easy to listen to. She has a beautiful insight into creative fine art . Love it! I have learned so much. I especially love that she is so candid about everything.

Kirsteen
 

Brooke says she wants to be inspirational - she has achieved this and so much more during this course. I am so inspired to follow my dream of becoming a fine art photographer and step out of a life as an academic and stop finding excuses. Watching other photographers shoot and edit is always a great way to learn, everyone does things slightly differently and I enjoy Brooke's no fuss techniques. Seeing so many of Brooke's beautiful images through the course has been great and seeing shots from the shoot through to editing really makes them come alive. If you are looking for inspiration or you want to learn techniques or new skills then this course provides all of these things with a big dose of positive thinking thrown in.

Student Work

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