Lessons
Lesson Info
Selecting the Right Images
And this where I'm gonna give you some rules for the way you look at your images. So, the first thing you have to do is look for a story. Now, in our case, this is a travel photograph, this is a landscape, so the story is the castle in fog. That's the story. So, I've found a story and I've looked at it. In the old days, we'd look at the contact sheet and we'd say, "Okay, I'm looking for a story. "Oh, there's people right there. "I'll look at that one." And if I'd shot... I'm looking for... Here. So, here, and you don't need to necessarily get close but you can see that there's just a bunch of photos and then there's people. So, I'm gonna zone in on these people and I say, "Okay, I'm photographing people here "that are looking at Saint Peters Cathedral." So I'm gonna look at these, I'm gonna bring my contact sheet a little closer and start looking at those and then I see that there's a guard sleeping right here. That's pretty funny so I marked that one and then I see these nuns taking p...
ictures of each other at the cathedral. So, I think that's kinda interesting so I circle. So, now I'm honing in on the ones that are most interesting in the grouping. So, what I've done here is I've looked at this is the story. I'd first found my story. That's the first thing you're looking for is in your grid you're looking for is there a story to be told. Once you hone in on that story, look at all of the images that tell the story and start looking for composition. Which one has a composition that's worthy of showing? Because you are a photographer after all. So, you've found a story, find a composition. You can do that on a global scale. I can look at all of these very easily and start honing in on the correct composition. Like, for instance, if I look at, say, you can see that mine are highlighted as I start highlighting these. So, if I look at just this set of images from here to here. So, I'm just gonna highlight those. So, you can see that there's a slight difference in all the compositions and I think that that one at the bottom has a little bit too much cloud covering the castle. It doesn't quite do it justice. I don't like being too close to the castle. I like to show that canyon a little bit and so, I'm really gravitating towards the one on the middle of the top and the one on the right simply because it gives me a little bit of space in the castle and it gives a little bit of the canyon so I can see it but I find that this one specifically, I don't like the river at the bottom because it kinda distracts from the castle. So, I'm more interested in that one. It was very easy to come to that conclusion because I was looking at multiple images at one time, the same way I would've done if I were looking at on a contact sheet. So, rule number one. Find a story within your contact sheet. Rule number two, look for a composition but look for it comparatively. Always look by comparison, one to another. Don't look at your photos this way. So, I don't want you looking at photos like this. (clicks) Because that doesn't give me a comparison between my options. I can't make good decisions this way. The best way for me to make decisions about photographs and heres another. This is looking at the castle from down below. But if I look at in comparison, I can see how is the fog treating the castle at all times. I can compare that and I can also compare my composition. You can see I was throwing it to the left. I was throwing it over to the right just to kinda get a good feel and I really am liking it when it's over on the right hand side and I like it when there's less of those trees in front of it. So, I'm really liking this one. The second one the best probably. So, I'm gonna look at that one and that's gonna be my selection. So, it's easy to find images if you're looking at them in comparison, one to another.
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