Lesson Info
21. Arctic Drone Flight Image Review
Lessons
Introduction
01:41 2Minimalism - A Few Words to Start
01:31 3The Power of Negative Space
12:08 4Learn to See Visual Clutter
08:40 5Isolating Your Anchor
05:47 6Composing for Better Minimalist Photographs
09:27 7Choosing Gear to Create Minimalist Photographs
13:16 8Black and White the Classic Approach
08:41Working With Color
09:06 10Location Session - Apex Beach
11:50 11Apex Beach - Wrap Up
02:24 12Timing and Weather
08:24 13Common Traps and How to Avoid Them
10:29 14Post-Processing - When I Use it and Why?
17:41 15Print Your Work and Harness the Power of Minimalism
02:13 16Three Easy Exercises to Kick Start Your Journey into Minimalism
02:55 17Location Session - Sled Dog Portrait
04:05 18Sled Dog Portrait Image Review
07:34 19Sled Dog Portrait Key Takeaway
03:33 20Location Session - Arctic Drone Flight
05:14 21Arctic Drone Flight Image Review
06:36 22Arctic Drone Flight Key Takeaways
03:31 23Snowkiting In the Canadian Arctic - Location Session
06:07 24Snowkiting Image Review
08:32 25Snowkiting Key Takeaways
02:52 26Summary
03:08 27Wrap-up
01:18Lesson Info
Arctic Drone Flight Image Review
I want to go over some of the drone footage, the shots that I took while I was out there and why I, why I wanted to do these shots in the first place and what I was looking for a while. I was out there. I've opened up four images here in Photoshop for this drone shoot, two in color too in black and white. I want to go over the collar ones first and then we'll talk about the black and white. Why ultimately decided that I like the black and white more. So this first shot was taking, taking pretty early on. I've got Torsten and his team over here and I've got this fun little ice feature up to the top left and I think that this has some of the elements of what I was going for. It has a bunch of negative space. It has good direction. I feel like it has good energy and it feels balanced with the visual, wait here in the visual wait here and then just letting the rest of the frame be filled with negative space. The color for me is it's not oversaturated, it's not too intense. So it's not that...
much of a distraction, but it is a little bit off. I was using a filter, an nd filter on my lens on the drone and so I think there was a bit of a color cast, like a magenta, almost teal in some places and the way that the light at that time of day being so low and it was bouncing in and out of that. The filter off the lens, I think we got some weird color play, which ultimately was one of the reasons why I went with black and white. Here's another shot from a little later. Son was a little lower. You can see that the Shadows are a little softer. It's not taken from the top down. Uh, I also wanted to make sure while I was out there that I got a few shots that weren't exactly, completely 90° down and a little more birds II guess. And that was one of these. I just wanted to highlight tourist and his team a little more against the vast empty arctic and I really, I actually enjoy this one in color because it feels a little bit warm. I think that without the color, if it was black and white, it would feel more isolating more desolate, colder and that's not really how the evening felt. It felt warm and friendly and inviting. So I actually like this one in color. The fact that it's not completely top down and there's some context. You can see like mountains and things like that on the horizon really help with that as well. And almost giving like the image a sense of destination, compare that to the black and whites. Here's one of the first black and white. So this is a complete top down and this actually this and the next one. We're almost exactly what I had in mind when I was going out. So I'm really, really happy with these. I want it 90° straight down. I wanted to be black and white stark, just this classic minimal photograph of the dogs and Torsten and I've taken lots of photos of dog teams and dogs and I haven't had a chance to take much with the drone. So I was really, really excited. We had to wait quite a while to get the right night, the, you know, the right light, low wind and all that stuff and the team and everybody's availability to go out and pull this off. And to be honest, when I drew this on a piece of paper and explained it to my friends what it was I was looking for. This is pretty close. It's pretty bang on. I've got really nice long shadows. Uh I think that Torsten and his team being the central piece are super obvious. Uh It's center frame. You know that that's what I want you to look at. I love that they're so small. I love all this negative space. I love that. The lines are kind of offset from the direction of travel. And all this pattern and shape and form is just beautiful. It really looks like a northern shot. It looks like exactly what I had in mind. Just like the second shot in black and white. Again, it's very similar except I've placed him in a different position. It's not centered, it's further or higher, higher up, so I'm further away, so he's much smaller in the frame. It's it's very graphic and I think that the placement here with this much space works incredibly well and I'm gonna be super happy to print this guy up and put them on the wall. I will likely end up printing the first black and white as well, but this is the one that I really am excited to to put up and I love that he's placed in the lower bottom, right, and you've got all of this like sort of lead into the direction of travel. One of the final things that I wanted to mention was how I wanted the dogs direction of travel and where they were going to be very obvious, and it's not always super easy to figure all that out, especially if you've got a drone up in the air and you're dealing with dogs and you're working with somebody on the sled and you're, you know, kilometre away flying a drone. So it was really important to have our plans, sort of, our game plan worked out ahead of time towards them. And I talked about the route that we were going to take a lot of the paths and trails up there are there put in early in the season, snowmobiles, dog teams, skiers. Um, and so everyone kind of uses the same trail systems and so it's very obvious once you're out there, the top down, you can't really tell it sort of blends in. But when you're out there, you know where the trails are. And uh, so we picked the trail that we wanted. Uh, I knew that would have sort of the clean ice I was looking for. It was important to get a certain distance away from the local airport, so we didn't want any other snowmobiles, any other dog teams, nothing that was going to interfere. So we worked all that out in advance and made sure that when we got out there, uh Torsten just had to basically stay on the trail, We stopped maybe three or four times. Just had a little back and forth. I told him what worked, maybe what didn't work if he had to go faster or slower. And then it was basically just up to me to get in position, get ahead of him and usually have the drone up as he passed and then follow with the drone, pass him by, turn around, wait for him to come back into frame and just do a couple passes till the batteries died and repeat that as many times as we could before the sun went down. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm.
Ratings and Reviews
user-3b9448
This is a brilliant course which I can highly recommend. I have done some Minimalist photography but still found the lessons very interesting. I enjoyed the discussion on colour vs. B&W. My favourite part was to learn how long it takes to plan a shoot, wait for the right conditions, even change the subject if the initial idea doesn't work and see the other images taken during the shoot before (or after) the final image. The presentation is excellent - love the cat :-).
Deb Williams
Great class, good length and easy to follow along. A fantastic way to challenge yourself to look at composition differently and a course full of useful tips to try out.
Bradley Wari
Great Job! Great course! loved the bloopers, had a few laughs. I really enjoyed how he showed a little of how he worked the scene of a few of his images. showing multiple images and how he got to THE shot.
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