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Camp Lifestyle Selects & Discussion

Can you talk a little bit about from a big picture standpoint? You know, props, styling and sort of your best practices on dh and then sort of leading lines and color, yeah, so we're goingto we actually have some props here today that we're going to go through a couple of those things that we saw in the video and all sort of speak tio how, how I choose those sorts of things leading lines air are really important because, uh, outside of light and sharpness there, the next thing that our eyes they're sort of drawn to and it's to explain what a leading line is, you know, it's it's uh, wrecked, you know, anything that leads you like, for instance, ah, banished or going in and there's somebody standing at the end of it, anything that draws you into a new image think of it is almost like train tracks, you looking down, uh, the train tracks and they're and they're coming together, these air leading lines. These are things I'm always looking for to draw the subject in, you know, and is a photo...

grapher. Our job is to go out and to basically to still down these these things we were walking around and there's just stuff everywhere, right? We're seeing, you know, power lines and we're seeing all these things that were trying to distill it down to this one little frame this one little moment and having it's the intersection of light in the intersection of color the intersection of you know, emotion all these things come together in this one simple little frame which seems like a lot but once you start looking for these things and seeing the way light falls and working again from that background forward it starts becoming you know, process and I keep saying that and I feel like a broken record but it's a process I walk in and I I look at the background and I say that's problematic or that's okay and then I'm choosing a lens based on that background whether I'm using a wide aperture or the background super interesting or I'm compressing or like letting it breathe you know there's all these sorts of things on and that's where we get all of these moods and such but you know, basically it's it's really the only way you can learn is to go out and just to do it and just to practice the craft ah and you know I feel like we're very unfortunate used to be I don't want to date myself here but I did shoot film I was in a dark room one point and we go out and we you know, thirty six exposures and if you didn't take copious notes you didn't and it didn't remember that old phrase it didn't come out you know it didn't work out well now you pull a camera out of a box you know and it takes an amazing shot it's sharp it's well exposed everything is is pretty much perfect is yourjob now to use what's right here between these two figures here to make interesting image on dh two t go out and do it the number one question that I get from young photographers or people that are looking to take that next step is how do I get in the business? How do I break into this business? And you know what? What do I need to do? Um, you know, we are all equal when it comes to the gear that we have access to, you could buy the exact same cameras I can buy we all have access to this technology which is great, but what separates you from the pack it's seeing light seeing leading lines on dh noticing these nuances on dh that's very democratic anybody can do that anybody can learn this because no longer is the thea you know, the price of entries so high that we can't do this so it's a really exciting time ah and I think that, you know, I think people should just go out and embrace it we have much in the front here, I hope I haven't answer I talked a lot as you can see, I might be all talked out, you know? I have a feeling I'm probably repeating myself because it's a basic question, but I really appreciated you walking us through like talking about how it's walking through the process, especially of figuring out the lighting when you have all that natural light because I realized so that's sort of my learning curve right now is when you were in that he was in the hammock and and he you lost the light on him and you had all the dappled light in the background and that was the sharp spot, so I get a little I actually my images get a little lost when that happens one because I don't know maybe I don't have an external light, so I can't use phil like, but also when you were talking about exposing for the brighter spot in the picture, can you go over that one more time with me? Sure. So so if if you are your subject and again whether you're going to take it back to, um shutter speed and aperture priority with all these shots, the first question I ask myself when I walk into that scenario is what's important to me uh is it is the exposure of the background importance or is it the exposure of the subject it's important ah and if it's the subject which generated is ninety times ninety nine percent of the time what do I need to do to make them exposed properly? Do I bring lights in dough? I use a reflector these air these air tools but if we don't have that tool well there in shade and then the sun is behind them we then start going okay well there in the shade the background is much brighter them well we're going to expose for our subject and the easiest way to do that is to taken automatic off of an automatic mode or if you're more comfortable being in an aperture priority or shutter priority mode start using the exposure bias so they're darker right there in the shade when you start exposing them mohr so that become brighter so by changing the exposure bias going plus making them brighter all of a sudden they're going to be start being exposed more. What you need to make sure is that you're holding a shutter speed when you start adding more exposure, you see it's a longer exposure um make sure that shutter speeds all of a sudden you know you can hand hold that still because all of a sudden if if they're in a dark spot all of sudden you're like oh now it's blurry what's going on so just make sure you're add exposure and then if your shutter speed drops too much to add that additional exposure or you can open up your aperture anymore to raise the I s o s oh just figure out again to take it back to being figure out what's important are we exposing for a background or we exposing for our subjects and if we're posing for a subject it just takes a couple shots to be like oh, they're way too dark and then I you know over the years I just go it looks like they're stops for a stop and a half or you know, two stops and then I just do the second one another guess and all of sudden like I'm close and then by step three hopefully I've got it done so you're welcome okay? So before we head to props let's take a look at those selects that you have for this one so um not to my own horn but I think I explained it pretty well in the video so I'm not going to talk a ton here but these are just a couple of images which I thought were nice um but again I want to make sure that you know, I reiterate these points um I really like this shot but then we look at it and there is one glaring error in this image and that's the little flap that is hangover in this uh this uh hammock here and you know a big commercial brands not going to want to see some other brandon this so so that was wrong okay good but not great so this is one of those things where after we've styled this whole thing we've decided we want to rust colored tent we wanna have this you know we've got it all doubt the next thing to do and I know it's hard because they're really excited that we're like okay I got my shutter speed dial I got my average you're dialed I'm ready to start taking pictures and we're taking pictures and all of a sudden you get back so there's just one thing wrong so stop yourself and if you got other eyes you know the more eyes the better say hey everybody what's wrong with this you know seen or is there anything wrong with scene if you've got a friend you got an art director you got eric there you say hey what's wrong with scene in this case just that one sloppy thing all of a sudden takes us from being a pretty good photo to being like well kind of not usable s o we fix it all of a sudden it's much cleaner we actually added an additional prop to give a little bit of balance and then all of a sudden we're back teo you know things being a little bit more workable so it's you know um the difference between a good photo and a great photo is in the details really those little subtleties and that's you know exposure the things you incorporate the you know, the logo's the brands how we style things yes sir question front um do you ever use a great card a color check her passport or anything like that to ensure your color I will use ah color checker on sight especially if it's a commercial shoot where color is very important on dh the way if you're not familiar with color checker it's a little square that has basically you know, all the colors of the spectrum and you have your subject or you know, on sight you basically take a picture of that so when you go in and you're doing your post processing work, you can compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges you know what the true colors are so in commercial work that's very important back in the day we go so far as to bring a color light meter and we'd be actually checking the color temperature in side of factories and things like that with digital technology is a lot easier to be able to take care of that now though, so yeah, I mean like I said, these are just a few images on then the next step so you know he was, you know, just hanging out and you know what way out of the cup and that these subtle things way out of the cup because our subject, if you don't give them something to do with their hands, all of a sudden they go like this, right? And then you're like, ok, do this and also their hands in their pocket, and they don't look natural but giving them something to hold onto a cup or given them a process. So this is what I call a process photo, give them something to do shake out the tent, put the fly on the ten fixed the surfboard fin, you know, give them something to do, and all of a sudden I'm not their their their focus on something else, and it feels a little more natural. Um, you know, if this was if I was going out to do this shoot for a client, there may be five people sitting on this set, and we would literally be going back and forth about okay, how close is the cup to him to move it two inches this way or two inches that way? And it's, you know, a lot of cooks in the kitchen, but, you know, giving your subject some thing to do given them a process really takes the pressure off of them, especially if they're ah, a new model