Lesson Info
30. Case Study: Moody Blues
Lessons
Class Introduction - Three Steps To Creative Photography
03:48 2Firing The Creative Mind - Part 1: The Camera Points Both Ways
03:10 3Firing The Creative Mind - Part 2: Letting Go Of Judgement
06:53 4Firing The Creative Mind - Part 3: Detaching From Outcomes
04:12 5Practicing Mindfulness In Photography
02:43 6Finding The Visual Narrative
02:39 7Behind-the-scenes: Naples
07:52 8Seeing Beneath The Surface Of Things
02:30Finding Inspiration
03:19 10Slowing Down
03:57 11Three Reasons To Shoot RAW
02:29 12Choosing the Right Frame Format
03:52 13Don’t Be Limited By The Shape Of Your Camera
05:07 14WYSIWYG
04:15 15Choosing Lenses
05:02 16Perspective
02:44 17Considering Foreground And Background
03:10 18Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad But Three Into Two Is Better
03:43 19Separate And Isolate
02:32 20The Art Of Creative Exposure
06:38 21Focus On The Story
04:20 22The Passage Of Time
03:00 23Creating A Visual Sense Of Mood
04:24 24Color vs. Black & White
03:09 25The Decisive Moment
03:00 26Using Color As A Cohesive Tools
01:51 27Photography Is A Two-Part Process
06:55 28Case Study: Recreating The Art of Sumi-e
07:04 29Case Study: Making Something Out of Nothing
04:32 30Case Study: Moody Blues
03:29 31Image Reviews
03:02 32Image Review: The “Thinking Man”
01:55 33Image Review: The Golf Course
02:32 34Image Review: Dreamstate
02:38 35Image Review: Gone Fishing
02:24 36Image Review: Promenade
01:47 37Image Review: Sky and Reflections
01:57 38Image Review: Grass and Field
02:20 39Final Word: Show Me What The World Looks Like To You
04:44Lesson Info
Case Study: Moody Blues
This is another image I took at the waterfall, this time to demonstrate how to achieve a moody atmosphere in post processing. Now, for the original image, I altered white balance in camera. For this image, I kept the in camera white balance set to auto to get a neutral raw file, and now I'm going to fine tune the visual narrative in light room. And what I want to achieve is a dramatic presentation of the scene that represents the cold and desolation of winter. Again, I'm going to start at the top with white balance and ease out the neutrality by reducing the color temperature, which adds an underlying called blue tone. And this time I'm going to add a little more magenta into the tint to remove a very slight green cast in the water. The exposure is close, but I'm going to add half a stop to the overall exposure, and now I'm going to get a bit more drastic with texture and clarity. Now I'm doing these first because clarity in particular affects tone. And so I want to create visual prese...
nce and then balance the tone. Now I rarely use a lot of clarity but my vision for this image calls for it, so I'm going to punch it up quite high and to further enhance rough texture, I'm going to punch in a fair amount of texture to and you can see from the red alerts. As I anticipated, some of the patches of highlights in the water have blown, but that's okay because the in camera exposure captured that detail. So I can now go back to the tone controls and recover the lost detail using the highlight slider. I also want to pull back some of the shadows which were affected by the heavy application of clarity, which I can do with the shadow slider that's got the overall look and exposure where I want it. So I'm going to work on color now. The Mosses in this scene are the overwhelming source of color, so I want to emphasize the greens. So I'm going to add a medium amount of vibrance, and I'm using vibrance because saturation will overcook everything. Vibrance is just that bit more subtle, and I also want to add some contrast in the green, so I'm going to open the SL toolbox, click on luminescence and punch in a bit of light. And while I'm here, I'm going to do something similar with the water. And now I'm going to get a bit more creative to really add to my story of foreboding. I'm going to open up the effects toolbox to get at one of my fairy favorite tools, the vignette tool, and I'm going to drag in a pretty hard, dark vignette. This closes everything in and creates a greater sense of claustrophobia, but I see an escape in that light patch of sky at the very top of frame. So I'm going to use the graduated filter to add some visual weight to the top of the frame, which stops the ICT escaping through the trees. And here is my final image, a backdrop for a fantasy movie, perhaps, where a band of intrepid explorers battle with dark forces over the fate of the world
Ratings and Reviews
Gary Hook
Wow, what a wonderful journey. I love the concept of telling a story with one's photos and as I go through past images, I'm seeing them in a much different perspective. That's the good news, The bad? The lost opportunities I never 'saw' before; however that is a good thing. There is so much to internalize with the material so that it can get out of the head and into the 'heart'. I also found the concept really helps me with composition, both in camera and post. Biggest take away, as Chris underscored in his closing, is to slooooow down, take the time and feel it. Don't be so quick to leave one scene as there remain other aspects, yet to be discovered. A great experience that I truly enjoyed Thank you
Glenda
I loved this course - in particular the latter part of it in which he demonstrated how post processing lets you really tell the story of the image. Another fabulous course. Thanks Chris & thanks Creative Live.
Abdullah Alahmari
Thanks a lot to mr. Chris Weston This course is great and It is a 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 course for me. Beside the other course ( mastering photographic composition and visual storytelling) both courses are Complementing to each other and highly recommended.
Student Work
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Fundamentals