Shoot Extra Stock Images

Lesson 59 from: Fine Art Photography: The Complete Guide

Brooke Shaden

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Lesson Info

59. Shoot Extra Stock Images

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Yours is a Story Worth Telling

02:09

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Lesson Info

Shoot Extra Stock Images

Anytime I'm in a new space, no matter if it is near where I live, just down the street, or in a different country, I always try to get stock images of everything, everything possible. But, the two main things that I like to have stock images of no matter what I'm doing are textures and smoke. Those two things come in more handy than anything else possible. So, what I'm going to do right now is photograph textures and smoke. Both of those things are super handy when it comes to adding atmosphere or mood to your images. If you can add a little bit of texture, maybe in the background of an image, it can really bring everything together with cohesion. It can also make an image look even more photographic, like an old picture, or it can make an image look more painterly. I love paintings, personally, that is my favorite medium, though I don't work in it, for whatever reason, and I love to make my photos look like paintings. It's sort of like a little, personal challenge, and textures help m...

e do that. Textures are anything that you can overlay on an image that has texture, which is super simple, and maybe very obvious, but texture can come from anywhere. It can from a floor, a ceiling, a wall, from a rusty can. It doesn't really matter, as long as it is a solid space, so there's no definite pattern happening, as long as it has interesting texture on it. So, I'm going to walk around here and take a look at what textures I can find and just simply see what works and what doesn't work and I'll walk you through a little bit of what I might consider a photographic texture, something that makes the image look like an old photograph, versus a painterly texture that will make the image look more like a painting. So if we look at this door right here, I thought this was just the absolute perfect thing. We've got a door and it has a couple of things going for it. We've got some, sort of, grungy texture, happening right through here. We have all these splatters, that can be really neat for perhaps, looking like drips in a photograph, which could be really interesting. But, there are lots of scratches, lots of little things that will make this look like an old photograph, or at least that's my hope. So, I'm just going to take one little step back here, adjust my camera settings and photograph up close. I'm going to get it in focus, and there, I've got my first texture, just of this little space on the door and it has to be that simple, there's nothing else to it. There just, get up close, frame it how you want, solid color, texture, flat surface, that's all I'm looking for right now. So, I'm going to get a few more textures, specifically down at the bottom here. I think this is really interesting. So I'm just going to frame this up, make sure that it's in focus and I've got the textures. And I'm just moving my camera around as much as possible so that I'm getting textures from all different spaces. I don't want to get the same texture twice. And you never know how these textures are going to work out. What I've noticed is that scratches like this on the door, they're very, if you can imagine old film, let's say, shot maybe 50 years ago, you can imagine scratches on the film and that makes it look like an old photograph. So, this particular spot right here, will be great for that, for overlaying scratches. But, something like down here, has a lot of drips and it's a little bit more muddied. There aren't any, necessarily, scratches going through it or dense, it's very mixed, and it even looks like paint dripping. Which means that this will probably be a good painterly texture. This is what I use on almost every single image of mine, and I often layer together multiple textures to create a different look. So instead of just taking one texture that I've shot. I'll often take anywhere from two to five textures and mix them together to be able to create one really neat texture. The other thing is that you notice that this door has green and teal on it and I'm not concerned with color here. Color is of no importance, even if it's different colors moving through one texture because I use all of my textures in black and white, so after I get these images I will convert them to black and white and then I can overlay them on any image without messing up the nature color of my original photograph. So, if you imagine, maybe I've taken a picture in this room, I have a model in there, I have props in there, later on I overlay my texture. I wouldn't necessarily want a teal texture to go over that image of my model because that's going to color everything in the scene. So turning it black and white is simply going to allow me to not mess up the, sorry, the color of the original image, but to still retain the texture over top of that image. So I'm going to go around, photograph a few different textures, which are available to download if you get the class and I'm also going to photograph the smoke. So let's see what other textures we can find within this space. (camera clicking) I also really like to find cracks. So when I'm moving around I'm particularly looking for spaces that have cracks, such as right through here because that can be used later on. If I photograph a wall for example, I can make that wall more interesting by adding cracks going through the wall. So I'm very interested in finding very small, tiny spaces with cracks and then utilizing that later. So that's something that I'm looking for. I'm also looking for holes in walls, anything that I can shoot from multiple angles, that maybe if I find a hole in the wall, for example, I can make it look like a hole in the floor, like a really big hole in the floor, even, if that's something that I'm going for. Which it is because I'll be photographing a tree in the room though there won't actually be a tree. So, I'm going to have to photograph a hole somewhere in the floor, or the wall, or the ceiling, and then make it look like a tree is bursting through that hole in this big room. I happened to find a really good hole in the floor in this building, so I'm going to definitely photograph that from multiple angles, but aside from getting cracks and holes in the walls, and things like that, everything else I'm going to shoot straight on flat to the surface that I'm photographing. Now we're going to shoot the smoke that I have with me and these are just little, tiny, smoke emitters, that let off smoke for about 45 seconds and they don't shoot flames or anything like that, you just light it and then it starts to smolder and then all of the smoke comes out. So what I'm doing right now is photographing white smoke on dark background. I didn't exactly have a dark background here so we made one up in this barn. So I'm going to photograph the smoke sitting here with the natural light hitting it from the front, with a naturally dark backdrop and I'm going to make sure when I edit these images that the smoke stands out really beautifully so that we can use these smoke images in any picture that we want. We can just add it in as atmosphere. So essentially we'll be cutting the smoke off of the background, putting it in to whatever image we have and then blending it using what blending it using whatever blending mode works for that particular image. So I'm going to photograph this smoke really quickly and I'm just going to pop out the smoke bombs. We've got these, they look just like that, really tiny, and I'm going to light two of them at the same time, just to make a thicker plume of smoke, and I'm just going to hold them together like this, hold the lighter, right there, at the flame, drop them in this cup, and let them billow. First I'm going to get my settings so that I'm totally ready to just drop them and run. So I'm going to take a few steps back, my goal here is to properly light the front, where the smoke is going to be, and let the back fall off into darkness. So I'm going to get about this far back, maybe, get my focus in general, give a test shot, that looks really good, and I think I'm ready. So I'm just going to set my camera there so that I'm totally ready to go and then I'm going to light the smoke bombs. (camera clicking) Okay, it didn't quite go according to plan because there's a little bit too much wind, so I'm going to wait for the wind to die down so the smoke actually comes up in a plume, but that's not to say that these images are usable, they're just going to be better used as a general fog layer, rather than smoke.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Guided Daydream & Writing Exercises Workbook (Lessons 1-11)

Creating an Original Narrative Workbook (Lessons 12-18)

Finding Your Target Audience Workbook (Lessons 19-27)

Planning Your Series Workbook (Lessons 28-34)

Set Design Workbook (Lessons 35-41)

Compositing Workflow Checklist (Lessons 42-49)

Editing Workflow Checklist (Lessons 50-55)

Location Scouting Workbook (Lessons 56-60)

Stock Image Downloads for Practice (Lessons 61-72)

Organizing Your Portfolio Workbook (Lessons 77-81)

Pricing & Editioning Your Work Workbook (Lessons 82-89)

Writing Contracts & Licensing Images Workbook (Lessons 90-98)

Gallery Best Practices (Lessons 99-106)

Pitch Package Workbook (Lessons 107-111)

Writing Your Brand Workbook (Lessons 112-117)

Marketing Workbook (Lessons 118-122)

Social Media Workbook (Lessons 123-127)

Printing Methods Checklist (Lessons 128-133)

Self Critique Workbook (Lessons 134-137)

Bonus Materials Guide

Syllabus

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Brooke Shaden

Brooke explores the darkness and light in people, and her work looks at that juxtaposition. As a self-portrait artist, she photographs herself and becomes the characters of dreams inspired by a childhood of intense imagination and fear.

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topics covered in this class

Fine Art Digital Photography

Ratings and Reviews

April S.

I tuned in for most of Brooke's lessons in this course and watched some of them more than once as they were rebroadcast. First I want to say that Brooke is a very good instructor. Her easy-going, friendly, down-to-earth, somewhat quirky manner cannot be mistaken for unprofessional. She is very prepared, she speaks well (not a bunch of hemming and hawing), she is thoughtful, she is thorough, she is very relatable and at ease, and she is definitely professional in her presentation. I really thought when I first tuned in that it would mostly be background noise while I was at work, sound to keep me company. Not because I didn't like Brooke but I really didn't think I was into fine art photography nor did I think I cared about the business side of things much. Not now anyhow. I was really wrong. Brooke sparked a deep interest in me to delve into fine art photography, to consider creating images for myself, from my imagination. In fact, I realized that this was something I'd been thinking about for a couple of years though I hadn't put a name to it (the idea of creating pre-conceived images based on my own creative goals). I gleaned many little treasures from her about image sizes, working with printers, different types of paper, selling, interacting with galleries, and so much more. I may not need all of what she taught right now because I'm definitely headed in another direction at the moment, but she planted ideas and information in my head that I know will be useful at some point. Things I may not have thought of on my own, but that seed is in my head now so when the time comes, I'll know. I'd really like to buy her course but at the moment, with the holidays right around the corner, it's not in my personal budget. I'm grateful to have caught the live and rebroadcast lessons though, and her course is on my list to own. I think it's a great reference to be consulted over and over again, not watched once and forgotten. Kudos Brooke for really putting together an excellent course.

Angel Ricci

When the title says comprehensive, it means comprehensive! I loved every part of this course. It's inspirational, motivating, and insightful towards creating art work. Even if you are not necessarily considering a fine art specialty, the concepts discussed in this course are applicable to many areas! I find this super useful as a videographer and photographer and look to apply all of these exercises and concepts for my personal and business work moving forward. It is lengthy, but you will not regret a single minute. Brooke Shaden is an amazing artist and educator. I recommend keeping up with her work, presentations, and any future courses that may come in the future.

Ron Landis

I'm retired now, but spent decades in the people and training business. Brooke is extraordinary! Even though this course is extremely well organized and she's left nothing unattended, she moves through it with friendly conversational manners and without a sense of it being stilted. It's as though we are all her friends, not students, as she shares her heart and passion with us. What a joy it is to listen to her. And what a clear, unambiguous command of her subject. Wow! She explains it with such ease using explanations and techniques that won't overwhelm artists just starting their portfolio or the Photoshop-squeamish among us; but despite its simplicity her resulting art is breathtaking and beyond original. I wish more of my professors at school were as engaging. This was by far my best buy at Creative Live yet.

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Shoot Extra Stock Images

Shoot Extra Stock Images

Lesson Info

59. Shoot Extra Stock Images

Lessons

Class Introduction

Storytelling & Ideas

Universal Symbols in Stories

Create Interactive Characters

The Story is in The Details

Giving Your Audience Feelings

Guided Daydream Exercise

Elements of Imagery

The Death Scenario

Associations with Objects

Three Writing Exercises

Connection Through Art

Break Through Imposter Syndrome

Layering Inspiration

Creating an Original Narrative

Analyze an Image

Translate Emotion into Images

Finding Parts in Images

Finding Your Target Audience

Where Do You Want Your Images to Live?

Create a Series That Targets Your Audience

Formatting Your Work

Additional Materials to Attract Clients

Which Social Media Platforms Will be Useful?

How to Make Money from Your Target Audience

Circle of Focus

The Pillars of Branding

Planning Your Photoshoot

Choose Every Element for The Series

Write a Descriptive Paragraph

Sketch Your Ideas

Choose Your Gear

How to Utilize Costumes, Props & Locations

What Tells a Story in a Series?

Set Design Overview

Color Theory

Lighting for the Scene

Props, Wardrobe & Time Period for Set Design

Locations

Subject Within the Scene

Set Design Arrangement

Fine Art Compositing

Plan The Composite Before Shooting

Checklist for Composite Shooting

Analyze Composite Mistakes

Shoot: Black Backdrop for White Clothing

Shoot: Black Backdrop for Color Clothing

Shoot: Black Backdrop for Accessories

Shoot: Miniature Scene

Editing Workflow Overview

Add Fabric to Make a Big Dress

Edit Details of Images

Add Smoke & Texture

Blend Multiple Images Into One Composite

Put Subject Into a Miniature Scenario

Location Scouting & Test Photoshoot

Self Portrait Test Shoots

Shoot for Edit

Shoot Extra Stock Images

Practice the Shoot

Introduction to Shooting Photo Series

Shoot: Vine Image

Shoot: Sand Image

Shoot: End Table Image

Shoot: Bed Image

Shoot: Wall Paper Image

Shoot: Chair Image

Shoot: Mirror Image

Shoot: Moss Image

Shoot: Tree Image

Shoot: Fish Tank Image

Shoot: Feather Image

View Photo Series for Cohesion & Advanced Compositing

Edit Multiple Images to Show Cohesion