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Know Your Glass

Lesson 7 from: Foundations of a Working Photographer

Zack Arias

Know Your Glass

Lesson 7 from: Foundations of a Working Photographer

Zack Arias

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Lesson Info

7. Know Your Glass

Next Lesson: Know Your Glass Q&A

Lesson Info

Know Your Glass

Lynn choices like the green code of photography like you have to see in focal links all right, we have wide angle lenses we have standard lenses we have telephoto lenses all right um and there's a lot going on when you slap that lens on your camera a lot visually is happening it is your viewpoint to the world and optics can change your viewpoint. All right? So aperture control step to field pretty much everyone gets that you read enough blog's you figure out well if I change my aperture I changed my depth of field if I have a wide open aperture I have a shallow depth of field if I have a closed down aperture I have a greater depth of field all right um we have shallow depth of field in greater depth of field don't ever look at a photo and just go all really love your depth of field what does that mean? Right shallow depths field greater depth still every picture has a depth of field every single one right, so aperture control step to field but that is not the only factor. Aperture is o...

ne of three main factors that control depth of field. Those three factors are aperture, focal length and camera to subject distance. All right and focal length and camera to subject distance at times changes your depth of field mohr than aperture duhs if you have in your head that well I as I change aperture that changes focal length or that changes depth of field and you're not thinking focal length and camera to subject distance you're not getting the entire story of depth of field all right? So as you change focal length as you change lenses focal length that changes your depth of field at any given aperture and as you change distance from camera to subject as I change my distance I am changing depth of field at any given after at two point eight here a two point eight here at two point eight here in two point eight here I am goingto have different amounts of depth of field as I go from a wide angle lens to a telephoto lens, I am going to have a different depth of field even at the same aperture I shoot a wide angle it to eight I shoot a two hundred millimeter it to eight those two have completely different depths of field because of focal length in camera to subject. All right, so take a look at this. Both of these pictures were shot at two point eight this picture on the left was shot at twenty four millimeter and the picture on the right was shot it two hundred millimeter now it's pretty safe to say the picture shot with the two hundred millimeter has a shallower depth of field right I mean that's really evident we look back here in the background and it's just a soft blur at two point eight well this was shot at two point eight but we have depth of field from here just a little bit in front of our subject back a couple feet back behind her both of them are two point eight but one is not a very shallow that we can count the number of branches on these trees back here back here we don't even see that they are trees there's such a blur right? So as I change focal length we're talking about lenses and we're talking about depth of field as I changed focal length I know I'm changing my depth of field problems as I start to go wide angle all right? We have normal or standard and for dslr that's basically a fifty millimeter linds and what I mean by normal are standard for that is that's what are isis if I'm looking at you susan and I a fifty millimeter lens up to my eye and bring it down and bring it back up bring it down you don't really change in magnification perspective it looks the same that's like what the human eye viewpoint is this fifty mil anything under fifty mil way go down here to ten millimeters is wide and anything over let's call it three hundred millimeter or more is telephoto all right so we started normal as we go wide angle um we'll go down and focal links and up in vocal all right and we go six hundred millimeters twelve b n h has a cannon twelve hundred millimeter lens that's like ninety eight thousand dollars or something. Yeah, so yeah, if anyone buys that, let us know let's give that away at our next break come on, be a nature. All right now so uh as I go wide angle I get greater depth of field as I go telephoto I get shallower depth of field at any given aperture to the point where you could shoot a three hundred millimeter at, say f four or five six I'm possibly get a shallower depth the field than if you shot a twenty four millimeter a ten millimeter it to a all right follow along with you we have some examples show now next going up camera to subject distance. All right camera two subject distance picture on the left was shot with a two hundred millimeter lens at two point eight all right and we can see that that's a brick wall back there we can count the number of breaks if we so desire to do so we see her she sharp and the background is starting to go out of focus a bit, but we see it's a brick wall now this picture was shot two hundred millimeter at two point eight but we have we can't even see that that's a brick wall that looks like a solid wall of color behind her because it's so out of focus that all of those lines between the bricks just blur together. All right, so as I get closer to my subject, my step the field gets narrower as I back away from my subject, my depth of field increases all right? I get closer to my subject, my depth of field gets narrow, I back away from my subject my depth of field increases as I go wide angle with my lens, my depth of field increases as I go tell a photo with my lens my depth of field decreases so it's aperture is going to work on whatever lynn's you use, but then it's your focal length and it is your distance from your subject that is going to start having just a cz much of a play on depth of field, so if you get a twenty four millimeter one point four linz and you're standing fifteen feet away from your subject, you wondering why in the world is the background not out? But you know out of focus well, you're fifteen million you're fifteen feet away from your subject with a twenty four millimeter lindsay will be wide open to one for whatever they go to now and you still have a pretty good amount of sharpness. Uh, your death, the field is still pretty great. All right, now you take that twenty four one eight and you get right up in someone's face, then their faces sharp in the background could start to go out. All right, now you have two hundred millimeter lens and get close, and you're shooting a group of three people and there's one person in front to people in the back and you do the people in the back just keep going out of focus, and you're like I'm having to shoot this f eight to get the people in the back out of in focus is because you've got a long lens, and if you're even close to them, you're trying to get a tight shot of three people together. The closer you get with that linds, and the longer that focal length becomes the shallower and shallower and shallower and shallower and left, the field becomes right. I mean, her ears, they're starting to go out of focus at two point eight. Her eyes are sharp, but her ears were starting to go out here. Here I've backed away her whole head is sharp and there's a bit of sharpness going on here with the background. So you the photographer saying I want to shoot this portrait of this person and I want and shallow of depth of field as I can get I have got whatever going on in the background, but I just need that thing to just go blur I don't want to see anything in the background you look in your camera back you've got something kind of wide angle, you've got something kind of telephoto you immediately go to telephoto and you immediately know my distance needs to get closer now I'm shooting family formals at the church altar right after a wedding and I don't have tons of light I might be getting best f four or five six let's just say I've got to shoot twenty people at f four that's not our for it and like you know, that isn't like your landscape photography dream depth of field there you don't have a whole lot of depth to feel that f four, but if I go wide angle and I stay pulled back from that group, I'll have it. I can get everyone an acceptable amount of sharpness of that for so I'm sitting back there shooting with a twenty four to thirty five millimeter lin's fifteen feet away from the subjects at f four confident I have enough depth of field if I go to the back of the church and I'm shooting with two hundred millimeter lens ins at f or I'll get the first line and focus the second line is starting to go out on the third line is you'll recognize him but not really you know, if you know him, you know that you could pick him out all that's grandpa this uncle joe he looks a lot better out of focus, you know, maybe need to do that. Um so I walk into a situation I need that and focus or out of focus most of my lenses air all pretty much to a f two two, two, eight anyways, but I want to make that more out of focus with a longer lens I'm going to make it less out of focus with a wider lens I'm driving around that is cool right over there, but man, that backgrounds got to go out of focus two hundred millimeter lens ooh that's cool over there and I love how all those lines kind of expand out. I want to see that white angle I want I want to see more depth of field I'm going to shoot wide angle on that. I'm going to tell a photo on that because I don't want that I've had people standing ten feet away from a chain link fence shooting with the two hundred millimeter lens it to eight at a pretty close distance and you don't see the chain link fence at all it's so out of focus you just see what's beyond it like the sky had I shot it with a thirty five or fifty millimeter lens than you'd see the sky and you see the chain link fence and you see the person two hundred millimeter just just erased the fence completely out of the shot all right now lens choice you got more going onto it's affecting your depth of field as you change focal length you changed up the field but you're also changing perspective all right, so here's our here's our wide normal telephoto wrote it up here normals fifty wide angle ten millimeter we're talking fish eye appear telephoto two hundred millimeter three hundred millimeter and this this all works with zoom lens is so you have a twenty four to seventy this optically all works the same zoom lenses optically aren't different than prime lin's is all right. So as you zoom from twenty four millimeter to seventy millimeter it's the same thing like if you put a twenty four prime or seventy prime on it same saying ok now uh we have this crappy situation to shoot in here we've got a subject standing here on the sidewalk we've got uh got open shade here we got this bright sun over here we have cars and junk all around and when I walk into a situation like that, I think locally I kind of size up the light is the light ok that I need to do anything to the light do I need to change the light of a blah blah and then it's like focal length focal length locally and the thing I'm thinking about a focal length is perspective the perspective changes uh with your focal leak so here's what I'm going to do I want to keep our subjects standing in the same spot and I'm going to try to compose her in the same spot of the frames so I'm kind of keeping from her hand to her head keep the same composition she stays in the same spot and then I move but with different vocal links so basically I'm gonna go from twenty four millimeter to two hundred millimeter and I'm gonna start up close with twenty four and then we'll start backing off and I wanna go fifty seventy you know hunter whatever to two hundred millimeter and what I want you to do is see the relationship between the subject and the background watch this red wall right here so here's our subject she doesn't move on this wall at all and here's our red wall twenty four millimeter go to fifty millimeter seventy millimeter two hundred millimeter all right, so when we go back here to twenty for here she is in size in the photograph and that red wall is like this in the photograph as I start to zoom in as I start to go from wide angle to telephoto what's happening is my perspective from subject to background is starting to compress as you go into telephoto your perspective is starting to compress as you go wide angle your perspective from subject to background is expanding so with a twenty four millimeter lin's I'm visually making this red wall look further away. My perspective is expanding as I start to go telephoto that redwall visually is getting closer to the point where it's nearly the same size as she is in the photo I've taken that red wall and visually pulled it in alright, I also have a shallow depth of field they were all shot at same aperture right so way have twenty four millimeter it to eight and we have two hundred millimeter at two eight so when I pulled that two hundred millimeter lens out of the bag, what I have to be thinking is I'm gonna have a shallow depth of field and whatever's in the background is going to get closer visually right as I pull a wide angle out of the bag, my depth of field's going to be growing and whatever's in the background is going to get further away following with me so far all right, so way we're up on the roof shooting test shots all right twenty four millimeter and then this monster right three hundred to eight awesome carols that man there speaking of girls we got beer in the house not he was all right so twenty four millimeter now watch this little unknown red white and blue logo in the background all right twenty four millimeter three hundred millimeter alright twenty four and three hundred like here we see the sky we see all of this we see the buildings like and they're both shot at the same aperture I think I shot these f four so this is f or this is f four twenty four millimeter three hundred millimeter right twenty four and three hundred and then look at that little dot there and then how big it is big their head at that point with the three hundred that three hundred millimeter has compressed my perspective I've taken something far away and visually pulled it in closer. All right, so you're out your location scouting this happened so much on location scouting I'm driving around and I'm a mile outside of the city and I go that's an awesome skyline shot from here two hundred millimeter because I'm a mile out from the city and I play someone standing here and I shoot them in the two hundred millimeter that skyline is goingto come right in on it or I love this location but it's got that crappy radio tower or it's got that crappy billboard well, maybe if I come in to shoot twenty four millimeter it might visually dropback enough that it won't love me so much. I'm just going to push those that something in the background back away further visually I wantto I'm goingto diminish it with a wider angle lens I'm going to bring it mohr to your visual senses with a longer lie it's in the background all right ends act that would be increased even more if you had a crop sensor right? I mean no it's again across it's it's kind of a crop. Since I think of a crop sensors like this this is this is crop um versus pretty much this crop versus full friend here is full frame and here's crop right full frame crop full frame crop now crop does if you get down and get real nitty gritty I'm saying because it's more before it would be a four hundred millimeter yeah, but it's not optically a four hundred ok, you're just visually seeing the field the view that a four hundred million that would give you but think about I think if you could take that sensor in the back of your camera and take it out and just simply papa bigger went on you would not be changing the optical dynamics of that lends you would just be able to see further to the edges of it right so here's ah let's say three hundred millimeter lens and here's a four hundred millimeter lens well to get to four hundred millimeters I have toe optically build that thing to get that viewpoint with across with three hundred on a full frame I'm seeing that with a crop I'm seeing visually what of four hundred would see but it's still a three hundred on it no one little thing that changes is when you go to a larger sensor you get a shallower depth field so it to eight on a crop in the two eight on a full sensor some reason the two eight will be a little shallower on a larger sensor than on a smaller sensor but optically it's still a three hundred millimeter lens or a twenty four millimeters lens the same things are happening compression and expansion all of that that's all happening you're just seeing less of it it's confusing it is using that isthe yeah just go full frame forget about right now twenty four millimeter two hundred millimeter notice the size of this damask pattern gets larger also noticed with twenty four millimeter I see off the edges of it with two hundred I have a background from edge to edge in my composition when I have a high uh guest walking back when I have a small little background to deal with and I needed to be edge to edge in my picture I start going telephoto I have this awesome little piece of fabric it'll make a great background it's not very big it's not like twelve feet wide it's just four feet wide and I wanted to be edge to edge in a picture I'm not going to go at that thing with a wide angle because I can't I'm going keep seeing past the edges of it I go telephoto I do something else I get edged edge but the next thing and you're all really seeing this mainly because I'm showing you side by side look at her face twenty four millimeter two hundred millimeter not only are you changing perspective of subject in background and compressing and expanding but it is you approach a subject with a lin's you can change the shape of their face with the limits that you're shooting I'm not getting all wild and crazy twenty four millimeter at an angle on her here I'm pretty coming in pretty straightforward and it along gates her face two hundred millimeter compresses her face her face is two completely different shapes especially when you see them side by side right now wide angles distort by a long gaining tele photos distort as well but my short but compressing it down there are certain I've heard photographers like fashion photographer speak and they have er done model castings based on focal length or the model in front of them determines the focal length of lin's they're going to use because of facial structure and body structure and they're going to approach this model with a three hundred millimeter lens they're going to approach this model with a thirty five millimetre lens because they know what's going to make them look best and I heard one fashion photographer speak one time it was like, you know, I had this model and I didn't know what was going to do with their until I found the right focal length for her and then she was stunning but she only looked good at x focal length because any other focal length was not expanding or compacting enough for him all right so now uh the last I'm sorry twenty four millimeter in on somebody's face like this right? Oh, it just it it's so distorted um if you're looking for a distorted look there you go get right in their face with twenty four millimeter lens you go from twenty four millimeter to seventy totally changes the shape of perfect completely absolutely changes the shape of her face looked at these side by side I mean, you think I went into photoshopping like did some sort of weird, you know, distortion filter right? But it's just linds is if you get up to close in somebody's face with a wide angle lens then you are just distorting things um you're shooting I will say on the subject cal, you're taking photographs of me and you start to go wide angle, and I'm kind of turned to the side and let's say, I got a little I got a little strapless number on or something like that, but I got some bare arm here and you get too close to me with a wide angle lens, my arm is going to start to look huge, everything getting closer to your cameras, getting bigger, everything, going away from your cameras, getting smaller, right? So you've got someone who might be a little heavier set, and you're shooting them at an angle and you start going wide angle with your lin's like like it just couldn't start to distort in ways that you might not necessarily want them to distort where your subject might not want him to start. Um, seventy two one hundred millimeter. Uh, somewhere in there is my favorite kind of just head and shoulder, head shot, focal length a little compression. You know, I'm wondering. I'm wondering what the one thirty five is like as a head shot, linds like that's the tests I want to run my favorite head shot. Linds, for me personally is the one o five. All right, this is a nikon one o five f two this is the old d focus. Control model which had this like change poker or something stupid like I have it taped down to zero so it doesn't change but I want o five f two for headshots head and shoulders just basic kind of portraiture work I love this focal length on a full frame when I was on a crop censor I preferred the eighty five now you should head shots within eighty five and I know people who love the eighty five here's the deal since since the days of film nikon versus cannon mac versus pc republican versus democrat right and eighty five verses one of five are the great debates of qatar there are people who are entrenched in the eighty five millimeter head shot the portrait lens is theeighty five millimeter focal length and others are the no no no no no it's three hundred one hundred five millimeter is the perfect focal length whatever but that eighty five hundred it's just nice this is seventy and it looks good seventy looks good um if I just had a really if I had one lin so one lens only a twenty four to seventy two eight I don't figure it out with that I'd like a little more on the telephoto range we we can talk about nice nice settle insist have so you get wide angle get close to your subject you start distorting like crazy you go telephoto you distort but in a different way all right. Um it doesn't take a whole lot you don't have to go two hundred millimeters quickly change thing look at this white building here a twenty four millimeters and look at it here one hundred or ah one o five so just a little bit of tell one o five isn't a very long winds but it sure changed that perspective really quickly that twenty four pushed it away at one o five brought it right in all right when I was talking about like when you're driving down the street and you see a place you need to think focal length so I, uh some friends of ours and they got engaged they wanted some pictures and like, ok let's go shoot some pictures and um I don't know what I was going I don't know where to go I didn't have the locations picked out and I'm driving down the street and I see this little tuft of, you know, green grass, weeds, whatever in this abandoned lot there's basically this lot was a construction dumping zone there's a construction lot across the street and as they get their junk, they dump it over in this lot and some grass and stuff grew up over that and I saw it and I'm hitting the brakes thinking twenty four millimeters like I just see it twenty four because what I want is I just want to see green grass or whatever and blue sky and I want everything else to go away. I just I want to shoot low. I want a twenty four. I want to put him up. I just want to put them in the blue sky and I just want the green grass that's what I want if I go out it with one hundred five millimeter lin's, I get this window right here. So this window is right there it's all pulled in. I love the one o five it's one of my favorite favorite favorite lenses. I love that, linds. I love it for portrait work, but it's so not the lens I wanted for this. All right, what I wanted was this shot. I wanted to just drop down. I want to see them. I wanted blue sky and the green and just I don't want them to look like they're standing in an abandoned lot. All right? Their perspective is we're standing in an abandoned lot on a pile of rubble. My perspective is if I jump over there laid down with twenty four millimeter lens, I'll look up the green to the blue and I won't see anything else. If I stand there at this height shooting it a one o five lin's, then I get this garbage. And that's just a busy background I don't like it I just want that and I knew is I saw it if I laid on the ground with a twenty four millimeter lin's I'd get that picture I know my lenses how do I know my lenses? Because I shoot them and shoot them and shoot them I swear to you if you're watching television just pick up your camera and take pictures of things around your house shoot them look look at your television, your entertainment system and then look at it with a twenty four millimeter and see how well further away it gets and see how why do you get I get from my kitchen door to pass the fireplace, right? So that when I pull this thing up and take a picture of chest level I should have to my kitchen door to my fireplace I know that angle I know that what that's going to give me and if I pull up my one o five if I'm going to get a quarter of my television screen and that was going to be really hard to aim why? I don't know if you're shooting blind go wide easier to see you shooting a one o five blind spray and pray ok, so no don't so you say exact all I gotta fifty I'm trying to shoot this picture and I want to change my perspective right there but all I have is a fifty millimeter lens that's the on ly linds I own and I can't change my perspective from the subjects the red wall what do I do? What do I do? What I do? You're shooting like this down the wall and then you simply go like this and you just get rid of it altogether, right? I don't have a telephoto I can't compress my perspective okay than just change it, get the get all that out of your shot and just shoot on a simple backward I don't have a wide angle I can't do this thing okay, then just just move six feet left or six feet, right? Just change your angle, change the shot, change the composition right when you understand what lenses do when you understand how the wider they go, they push things out and the longer they get, the more they pull things in and you on ly own this level of lin's, then why you go up to a telephoto? The reason you're moving into this is because you're in situations, new shooting going if I had a two hundred millimeter lens right now hey, my my step field would get saleh where I could get that background kind of pulled in a little more I wish I had a two hundred for this right now right or you on ly khun you only have a thirty five millimetre that's why did you get that you'd love to like expand that perspective a little more you're shooting if I had a thirty five millimeter or a twenty four millimeter I'd get a greater depth of field here right now and I could get this background element pushed further back visually maybe I need to start looking at a wide angle lens. Hmm maybe I need to start looking at a telephoto. All right, why look go ah took up sports illustrator espn something something with pro football pictures in them and look at that quarterback picture of them falling back and look out a out of focus the background is and b how close the other sideline is visually it's pulled in and out of focus because folks are on the sidelines shooting with three hundred four hundred six hundred millimeter lens is they're shooting action way far away at f four but it's still a very shallow depth of field and anything in the background is compressed it. Why? Because they're shooting with monster telephoto lenses all right now how it works out got another loss model dot com picture right here has lost model dot tumbler dot com said funny okay it's like rock n roll confidential dot com for band photos okay, so we have our person standing here and we have this building over here and what I did I had forty eight hours to shoot this story I was given a song um by recording artist out of l a and then I talked to her on the phone and I had to get her story and what the song was about, what her stories about when I had forty eight hours to shoot basically a multimedia slideshow to that track of music and I had to tell this story of this girl on this journey from small town to big city and her like her music career in her life career on dh she talked about house, she kind of just carries her life in a suitcase and on and on so so I have two days to get this whole thing together as I'm shooting the job I don't know like I need to transition our our subject coming out of the rural into the urban but I didn't know how is gonna edit the thing together at the end I didn't know how I wanted to do that is she just coming out of it? But she still has some distance to go or is she like almost right there, right? Is she far away or is she getting close? And I wasn't sure exactly how in the edit I wanted to tell the story so I stood my subject there um and I said, ok, stand here and just look that way and just hold on I got to shoot this a couple different lenses so I'm just going to be back here shooting pictures so I shot at twenty four millimeter and I shot it one hundred five millimeter twenty four millimeter one o five had I had a two hundred or three hundred with me this building would have been the stall all right the longer I went with my lens the more that lindh that that element would have grown in here it changes the story so much to the point where there are some like hard core photojournalists who will never shoot anything wider than thirty five or longer than eighty five imagine a lady crying holding a baby and two blocks down the street or a row of tanks all right and you get up close to that lady she's crying she's holding a baby there's two blocks down the street is a row of tanks rolling in and you shoot that with a seventeen millimeter lens she's sitting there crying but like the tanks are they're like two miles away their way down there she's fine she's safe the tanks are far away you are back there and you shoot her same situation with a three hundred millimeter lens and you're going to open up that newspaper would go oh my god oh my god that lady is about to be run over by tanks because visually, she's hold this baby crying and you've brought those tanks right up on top of her. And focal length has caused just major public outcries and has had either has shown people to be safer than they actually were or to be in much closer peril than they actually were. Ah, a recent thing that happened in san francisco in this last year, there was an air show over the bay and some big boeing seven, forty seven or something came in, banked over the bay on dh near the golden gate and then flew out. There's just this kind of low fly by bank over the bait. And a news crew was out there shooting this and zoomed in long telephoto. All right, you get on youtube and yeah, I think it's something like seven. Forty seven nearly hits golden gate bridge or something. So the news crews out there, they shoot this with a telephoto that think banks and it looks like it nearly clipped the golden gate bridge. And there was a public outcry that was on cnn. It was on fox. It was on all the news channels that when it was this big national story, there were screen captures of it. Newspapers going, you know, this is getting out of hand. You nearly flew a seven freaking forty seven into the golden gate bridge bah blah blah blah blah blah blah and people are just up in arms and then there was the whole debate our air show safe. I remember seeing you on cnn our air show say and I'm watching it going is khun telephoto lens he was a mile away from the bridge he's a mile away from the bridge. He was nowhere near the bridge but the telephoto lens you would think he about near flew right into it. And then someone came out the next day going here's another angle of it and they shot it more off to the side with a wide angle lens and like here's the plane and a mile that way is the freaking bridge but cnn's asking our air shows safe because the focal length so you as a working photographer, you walk into a situation our air shows safe, you know, you can change cnn headlines based on your focal length. All right, I need that background go out of focus. You pulled in and out of focus fifteen minute break. All right, um I need that to happen. Telephoto I'm shooting twenty people at the altar and the best I can get out of this things that four and I got twenty people for deep upon the altar and I got five minutes to shoot and I got to get this thing done I need everybody be pretty much a focus wide angle and he's dropped low shoot up I want to see a vista of sky of this of green and it's all it's all I got is this little hill of nothing to work with but I need to expand it and make it a little more dramatic than what it looks like white angle I need to take this person I need I need that skyline to come in closer telephoto all right now if I shoot you with a fifty millimeter lens and then shoot a syriza portrait of you with the two hundred visually your face is going to change shape so I'm going to shoot fifty fifty millimetre and then I'm gonna backed up and I'm going to shoot like some wide vistas shots and minimize you and the pictures and I wish you some different compositions then come back you with the two hundred that way as you my client are looking through your editor photos you are not seeing the fifty to two hundred right next to each other so you don't see your face going again is your shooting it's your business and your client goes what's going on with my face what did they do to me they don't know so I try not to put those pictures together I separate those with other kind of compositions and shots visually says they're clicking through them on the computer or whatever they don't they don't do this hole look thing I know it's way back there this I don't want those two to ever show up that you know I don't ever want that one to show up right that's just too much but look at that that don't ever deliver that it's technically the same picture it's technically the same exposure it's technically proper exposed but oh my god don't ever give that picture unless you're looking for something overtly cartoony and your client wants that right you're doing the ceo had shot uh no never right you're doing a head shot for an actor and actress absolutely seventy to one hundred millimeter focal lengths gonna be here your headshot lends right there a little longer than fifty little longer little compression um it helps people out now that um yes can I just say because people in people on the internet are absolutely loving this particular leigh moody eaves and out a tweet saying this is the best explanation of how to choose focal length I've ever come across and I could say the same for me. Oh well, you know here's the disservice that's done to us in the photo industry of selling us crap we've all walked into a photo store and we've all seen those those posters where here is the grand canyon vista at fifteen millimeter. You see it all at twenty millimeter? A fifty millimeter. And then they get to the twelve hundred. You see the eagle, you know, eating a field mine mouse. And and you see that? Wow. So what were sold? His wide angle vista. And then, oh, that things really far away. So get this telephoto went oh, your child is about to kick the winning field goal or something in europe here by this linds. Because you need this lin's, because that actions so far away and that's how these air sold to us. You don't ever walk into a camera store and see compression and expansion pictures. Hey, it's hunter millimeters. Going do this to you and twenty four is going to do this. And here's what a face looks like. With twenty four million year lindsay here's. What looks like with two hundred we don't ever see that never explained that way. And to me is a working photographer. That's? What matters I don't care about. Oh, it's far away. I need a telephone.

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Ratings and Reviews

Ivan
 

Outstanding! There are so many gems, any photographer aspiring to venture into business will gain much from this course. There are plenty of technical how-to's with superb examples, from choosing the right lens for a given situation, to learning about reciprocals, expressed in Zack's warm and fun style. He's a joy to watch. But, this class is much more than that. Zack is extremely generous in sharing very personal experiences and insight, on how he began from early days of struggling, to current projects, how he built his portfolio, and looking ahead to the future. And, in the final discussion with his wife Meghan, they open up and share their personal struggles balancing work and family life, and their strong support of each other. We can all relate to this. This class is a great guide on what it takes to start and become a successful pro photographer, and pulls no punches. It's not easy to do, but with some creativity and an insane amount of hard work, is doable and very rewarding!

a Creativelive Student
 

Zack's always been one of my favorite photographers and when I think about why he is, it isn't even his work that comes to mind. Zack's technical knowledge and ability to pull off really stunning images is reason enough to check out this course. While he does a good job at teaching the fundamentals, he even better job at explaining why he makes the choices he does. Anyone can tell you what "rules" to follow and what you should and shouldn't do but Zack does a good job explaining why those guidelines are JUST guidelines and shouldn't be taken as law, which can be limiting. I highly recommended this for anyone who has an interest in becoming a better photographer.

a Creativelive Student
 

I haven't finished the course yet either but I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I love Zacks work I think he is an amazing teacher and a very funny man. I loved one light and I'm looking forward to finishing this and starting the his studio lighting course also.

Student Work

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