Lessons
Class Introduction
01:36 2Fundamentals of Night Portraiture
04:49 3Gear and Preparation
16:50 4Basic Settings
08:15 5Locations
06:15 6Subjects
04:22 7Safety
02:25 8Beating Adversity
01:28Lesson Info
Beating Adversity
The one constant in life is change. Change can take the form of what we call adversity, and in night photography, you have to be ready for absolutely anything to happen. Case in point, we came here to Seattle to start filming for CreativeLive, and we had plans to go elsewhere today instead of where we are right now. But what we did, was we said, "all right, the weather's bad there, but good here." We switched plans. That's one way of doing it. And it's one example of adversity. The weather, it's the most common adversity that you'll encounter in night photography and night portraiture. So what do we do about that? Well, the best thing you can do is adopt an attitude. And what is that attitude? I can overcome this. Yes, it's that simple. Road blocks aren't road blocks, they're just challenges. So you look at it and you say, all right, there's clouds. What do I do? Okay, I'm gonna bring my own light. There's dust. I'm gonna light up the dust. I'm gonna make it part of the feature. Right?
Or, there's people milling around. You know what? I'll take a longer exposure and I'll blur them out and I'll use a flash to arrest the person in the front. No matter what it is, there's always a solution, and you just need to stop and say, all right, how am I gonna fix this, because I can? And that's how we overcome adversity.
Ratings and Reviews
Jan
I learned some techniques in Matt's class, which were helpful, but believe this was for the advanced photographer and i was a little confused at times. i would've liked to know the "how to" with the lights, showing how to program them with more detail. I am just learning how to set my camera for different lighting situations. But a very interesting course and glad i went through it.
Kirk Edwards
Great class! Liked it so much that I booked a trip to Colorado to work with Matt and Lance on one of their National Parks at Night classes. Highly recommend.
Margaret Lovell
While I believe this course is more beneficial for a photographer with better night photography and lighting skills, I learned quite a bit. This class made me think of some interesting ideas, especially using regular light sources such as flashlights or a pixelstick.