Lessons
Chapter 1: Introduction
1Class Project
00:55 2Equipment
05:44 3Chapter 1: Quiz
Chapter 2: The Basics
4Camera and Phone Settings
06:07 5Anatomy Of a Good Photo Of Art
10:41 6Example Images - A Breakdown
08:18Inspiration
03:28 8Chapter 2: Quiz
Chapter 3: Shooting
9Shooting in Studio
15:24 10Shooting Outside
05:13 11Chapter 3: Quiz
Chapter 4: Editing
12Basic Edits and Making Mockups in Photoshop
20:04 13Smartphone Editing
04:45 14Chapter 4: Quiz
Chapter 5: Conclusion
15Conclusion
01:57Final Quiz
16Final Quiz
Lesson Info
Equipment
Alright guys, so now I want to take a few minutes to talk about equipment and I think this discussion can kind of bring up anxiety and some people, they think, oh, I don't have a good camera to shoot with. All I have is my smartphone. Well, that's totally fine. In fact, we're gonna be shooting every image in this course with both an iphone and my main camera body, the Sony A 73. So if you don't have a main camera, a big camera, that's totally fine, just use your smartphone, it's gonna be perfectly fine for this course. However, those that do want to use a DSLR or a mere Lys camera, we're gonna cover that as well. So my main camera body is the Sony A 73. It's a full frame Sony mere lys camera and it's a very good camera. I'm shooting on it now, that's why I'm not holding it in my hand. So I'm gonna be shooting the chorus on that camera and I'm gonna be shooting with a 35 millimeter F 1. prime lens. Now, if all of that makes no sense to you, that's totally fine. The only thing you really...
need to focus on when you're shooting with a DSLR or a wireless camera is the focal length of your lens when you're shooting a flat lay, you don't want to have a big zoom lens on your camera because then you're not gonna be able to just stand above the artwork. You're gonna have to like fly up in the air and somehow zoom in on the artwork. It's just not practical. So having a somewhat wide angle lens is going to be your best bet for shooting flat lays for shooting detailed shots and for shooting the straight up shots, which we're gonna talk about later in this course. So I recommend anything between a 24 millimeter and a millimeter lens for those shots. And actually the iphone, which really popularized the flat like photograph is a 28 millimeter lens which is right in the middle between 24 35. So it's absolutely perfect. So any leads within that focal length is fine. If you have a newer starter camera and it has a 18 to 55 millimeter lens on the front. That's great. That's all you need. So moving on from cameras, one of the things that you might want is a tripod tripods are really helpful, especially when you're shooting alone. I'm not gonna be using a tripod today because I have charlie with me and I'm gonna be kind of shooting the work and moving around. I like to kind of change the compositions up a little bit. But if it's just you and you really are alone and you want to focus on styling everything and making sure it looks really good. I totally recommend a tripod. It's even better if you can get a tripod that has a bar that kind of sticks out. Um, and then you can hang your camera to look upside down. I don't have that, but like I said, I'm not using a tripod today, so that's totally fine, you can pick up super cheap tripods on amazon or on ebay, honestly doesn't matter. Yeah, you can buy a really expensive tripod but it's not gonna make that big of a difference, any cheap tripod is totally fine and also you can even get a small tripod for your phone, I have this little one from Man photo which I love and then it has a little phone clip and it's great for vlogging or for shooting things on your phone, like still life or like these flat light shots we're doing here today, another really cool tool is this little clamp thing that charlie has and she actually films some of her work on here for social media, it clamps to the end of the desk and then you can just hang your phone and it's really good for flat layers or just recording yourself. This one's pretty cheap, it's not the best, but you can get some really good ones on amazon or ebay, like I said, so highly recommend something like this if you're shooting alone, if not not too much to worry about and certainly not necessary. Now, the next few pieces of gear I'm going to talk about are all related to lighting and as we're going to get into later in this course, lighting is super super important and don't worry, we're gonna be shooting everything in this course with natural light. But there are some tools that you can use to help shape that natural light to make it even softer. Make it even better and just make it look better for your photographs. So the first thing I recommend and I recommend this for pretty much everybody because they're super cheap. They're compact and they're really good. It's a five in one reflector set which are everywhere. Most camera stores will have them and you can get them online, they're super cheap and they're awesome for both diffusing light. So when the sunlight is like entering your studio and it's just way too bright. You can use the white reflector to help soften that light or if you don't have enough light you can put it on the other side and help reflect some of that light coming into the room, back onto your artwork. And it's a really, really good tool. Now, what's so great about diffusers is you don't actually need one of these to get the job done. You can diffuse sunlight with something like a white sheet. So a sheet from your bed that's white, that's transparent, The light's gonna hit it and it's going to actually make that light source bigger. And one of the bigger the light source, the softer that light source is gonna be. So a sheet from the bed which you can hang in front of the window or if you have curtains, white curtains in front of your windows that are transparent, that's absolutely perfect. If you don't have that, you can actually tape some printer paper to your window. Um So that will help diffuse the light before it hits your little scene. And then another thing I recommend is a white poster board and these are awesome reflectors. They're really gonna help bounce that light around and help you create a nice little well lit scene. So those are some of the things that I would recommend for your lighting set up. I'm gonna show you guys how I would use these in the shooting section of this course but I just wanted to bring them up now because those are some of the things that you might want to use. But in terms of actually just getting this course done, all you really need is a camera, an iphone or a camera and some artwork and the desire to capture something awesome. Okay, but that's gear out of the way guys, let's move on to some of the settings, some of the camera settings or smartphone settings that you can use to capture some of these images