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Change Your Viewpoint in Done Photos

Lesson 8 from: Create Stunning Drone Images with Adobe Creative Cloud

Colin Smith

Change Your Viewpoint in Done Photos

Lesson 8 from: Create Stunning Drone Images with Adobe Creative Cloud

Colin Smith

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Lesson Info

8. Change Your Viewpoint in Done Photos

Lesson Info

Change Your Viewpoint in Done Photos

this is This is the big thing. Change of viewpoint. Change of photo. Now as the time you get camera guys gonna hate me. Now, as for target foods, we get the camera and wait on the ground, which you can't even see me. And we're down here shooting worm's eye view. And then you get the person. I'm not gonna climb on the table that get up there on a ladder to get on the table. And, man, what a difference. And in photography, you know, from the person that shoots everything I level if you have done that like you spend the whole life shooting everything I level and then you go for target free classes, you learn. Wow, Go down low, go up high and wow transforms you photography, right? It goes from just ordinary toe. Wow, that's a professional photographer. So imagine if you conduce that 400 feet up or let me give you another example. And pop, This one reckons he can see it when I'm talking about it. So what about your in a hotel room? You've got that and you get the hotel room on a high floor ...

and you get the view. You are like, man, I have got the dream hotel room. I'm not going out tonight and 10 off all the lights and put the curtains behind me. I'm pressing my camera up against that window. I'm shooting all night, right, Because you got the view. Now imagine. Like if you had access to the next room as well, or the next floor or you had the run of the building or you could even get on the roof. What if you could go beyond the roof? That's what you can do it for drama. That's what makes it so amazing. So here's a shot. Three completely different shuts off the same place, and all I changed was the altitude. Nothing else. Just the altitude. Don't tell completely different stories. So if you look at this 1st 1 here, what's this? This is the buildings were talking about. The buildings were flying low with cutting it with the buildings, and it's about boom hotels. If I was gonna do a hotel picture, that's the shot I'm using. Stay in this hotel and you're like, Yeah, I'm gonna stay in that hotel. I want to be towering over the bay and yeah. Then we get another one kind build together. We can see in the distance here. You know the volcano there. We've got some nice kind of stuff there. That this is a nice I like this composition. Actually, this is a really nice especially, you know, more scented, too big Panorama, by the way, is huge, like rights to print. There'd be, like 30 feet long, huge, But anyway, but then we got this one here, and notice is completely different thing. Now we can see the mountains. Notice the mountains of cutting clear. See that those mounts are the subtle wit. It's not an accident that's on purpose Here. The buildings of the silhouette here is a mix illiterate between buildings and mountains. Because now you can actually do that. You can control that. There's another little thing that happens. Like if you notice these reflections and in photography, one of the things you learn in photography is refraction, reflections, angle of reflection or that angle of incidence. You guys familiar with us? Generally we do this. We can avoid reflections like on glasses windows when you're taking a picture. So basically an is like your normal plane. This is the surface with photographing now where every, you know, the sun or whatever This is the incidents. Whatever angle that hits it is the same angle that reflections gonna hit. So you've got that point. If you come in here, it's gonna come up here. If you go down there, it's gonna come in. It's gonna be some medical with their That's how the reflection once it's like playing pool of playing billiards. So typically as a photographer, you're shooting a building. You see the sun, you make sure that you're at a different angle from that normal point. So you don't get the reflection of the sun and the glare Innis and with glasses, things like that basic rule of photography. Now, when you're doing it with drones, you want to get that reflection. You look for that reflection, so sometimes you fly high. Sometimes you fly low. You look for that reflection. So you actually will sack eight that sunrise. I want to be at the same angle. Is that so? I can get the freshest. You can fly up and down and capture those on purpose. So here we got the beautiful sunset. There and people like my man you could have done on the ground, I could have, but I still would have needed a 20 foot ladder and, you know, hold it down there and settle that. Because what? I was sitting on the top with my nice shoes on, sitting on a park bench, relaxing. You know, I see people climb up the mountain again. Let's go take a drone shot. Let's go to the top of the mountain. Like, why are you going to tell the man you get a helicopter while you're climbing down there? Cliff, You know, the other thing is, you just get your camera to place is nice and easy without getting your feet wet. You know I'm lazy. All right, so here we go. Here's another example. Here, this is this is never here. Normally, that little still more to go straight down. This is Laguna Beach, and we had a little bit of a storm and that came there was like, sunrises. Like, I want the sunrise in there. I you know, I go to whenever I wanted because I was able to adjust the altitude and adjust the angle that I'm flying. It to get that reflection. When you're shooting sense, it's fly low. You get that long beam fly how you don't get it. You have things like that. When you start doing it, you'll see that you'll find the other great thing about the sunrises. You know, like everybody is sitting near the cameras, tripods at the ready, waiting for that moment. When the sun just peeks his little head and bursts of rays come out right. Everyone's there waiting for it. I do that like 10 times. I fly really high, I get it. Then I come down and get it again. Come down, get it again. I get 10 sunrises when I go out, because I just my altitude and it If there's another obstacle, like another rock off line around the Rock and I'll get the sun sunrise again. It's just so cool. I know you. I've just sold you during this time of night. I needed affiliate code also. All right, so here's another rule flight lower. Everybody gets in there. It's like the overdone HDR like open up every shadow, open every highlight, push the graininess to the mats and make it look. ATSDR. That's what you do the first time? We don't. How? For high. How high can I go? 400 feet. Okay. When we get 400 feet. Exactly. 3 1999 I want that foot. Get me the 400 feet. You want to get high caste in the ocean from here. And there is the first shot right that you want to get. But then after you've done that two or three times, it's really old. Someone at first that are flying. That was my philosophy. Then I had this epiphany, which is what I'm teaching right now. Machete. There's an example of flying low it. I had this epiphany one day, which was like, Why, um, I flying at three oclock in the afternoon? I don't I wouldn't take a picture of three o'clock in after his harbor light, like you know. So then I just had this epiphany is like, why don't I apply the same rules? I would apply to my normal photography to my darling. Let me flag during good light, use proper rules of composition and stuff. You know what? And then when you do, then people start will start imitating your pictures because now your translator because you letting the technology get out of the way. And now you're focusing once again on the art. And to me, I love the drones, but I don't care about the plastic. I care about the opportunities I have to create beautiful imagery. That's what gets me excited. So here I'm flying low. See the beautiful sun once again see house bursting in through the tree. You get the trail coming through there right onto that rock. So it's illuminating that rock that's on purpose. You can line all that stuff up, you know, you can get other shots that are interesting. You know, basketball was when my earlier ones that's my go pro. Yeah, this is on a beach. There's a beach basketball. They're only gonna you know, no one had had that shot before when I did that, you know, flying low, you can get some great silhouette. You can get some great moments. You can get the clouds and stuff like that, create nice compositions. You know, you wait for the water to burst and then you get the shot once again flying low, you get nice shots. I love cinematic stuff. So you know, to me, this is kind of like cinematic dramatic. It's fun. Next room filled the frame with your subject. If it's a big, wide shot, you ask yourself, what is this picture off? And she doesn't really matter any shot. Ask yourself, what is this picture of? So in this situation here, this is the water up. Close these air earlier. So, you know, some of these, like the image quality, might be a little Lee, because these are the earlier drone. Sometimes the senses get better and I get sharper. Whatever. But I do like kind of creating these kind of things that was flying very, very close is a very treacherous kind of area and is very, very rough rocks. And And you couldn't go in there be, you know, I mean surface. Are they crazy? Some of these surface. You see this stuff there in this surfer between rocks and man? But you couldn't get a boat there. Um, so it would be very difficult to take these pictures, But sometimes I fly in nice and close to a rock or something. Oh, wait for the wave to come over. And sometimes the initial wave exploding and bursting is really dramatic. But other times once subsided and then it comes back and in the water just runs off like here is nicely put. Indie filters shooted. Alosha has been It looks like a wonderful and it's at the beach, you know, like I said before, sometimes you want it when it's exploding. It's like a volcano of water, and that's fun, too. Now, here's a little tip. I should put this top down when you're shooting the ocean. Um and actually, um, that Victoria Beach and I'm gonna show you Before when I was there, I remember I went down there one time. There was a guy who showed up that morning and he was shooting with the, um he was shooting with his drum and I looked at the area and I put my drone up nice and high is that the water comes up, You know, you really gotta watch it and you gotta watch where the currents go. You've also got to be careful that you don't get trapped. So you have, like, um, the tide's You don't want to get trapped with the tide, you know, when it if you if it's low tide. Figure out where it's gonna be a high tide, so you don't get stranded. But the other thing is Look where the water goes. If the area is a wet with water is probably going to go there. They don't get wet on purpose. And I remember is that I put mine up high in the sky, put his camera bag down low, and I'm like, you know, the water comes up here, right? And he's like, Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. And in, like, two minutes later, this wave comes up, boom into his camera, bag soaked it, drove his camera, batteries are flashing it off. Do you think this better? Salvageable? No. And it ruined his gear. So watch that. So when you do go to the beach, watch where the water explodes, causes patterns, the water, the surf breaks when there's something underneath, When the water gets more shallow, toe figure out where those brakes are. Figure out how big the waves gonna come. Don't just wait for a second, wait for a big set to come and figure that out before you fly them. Once I figured that out, then I kept flying I can fly below the surf and have the surf exploding above my drone because I know where it's gonna break. So you've got to kind of figure that out a little bit first, just for safety. Um, next thing, this is a really important one with drones and just photography. And general is four grand interest. Make sure you have something interesting in the foreground, for example Here. You know, I've got the boat coming now. I was shooting this area. Beautiful sunset. God Rays coming down here, you know? Really, really nice scene. But the boat kind of cemented together. It helps tell the story. Adds a foreground interest. Let me give you an example. See this all the time. Right? Beautiful clouds. There we are at the ocean and was shooting this great sunrise with shooting this great sunset. It is boring, like maybe the first time you got. That's great. But when you've seen hundreds of these and gets really, really boring colors a great whatever, but get something in the foreground now it's an interesting shot. You have now made it interesting and now telling a story. So that's one of the things I do Whenever I go and I'm flying, I'm like, What can I put in the foreground? Is the first thing I'm thinking. I'm gonna do a sunset. What's here? If it's just a straight beach with nothing out there, I'm not. I'm not inspired. No, it's just I'm gonna shoot a sunset over the ocean with nothing. I'm looking for Bayer of rock or something on just looked with something to put in. If it's a boat, look for something to get in the foreground. It makes him more interesting, you know, and you get a better composition when you have something in there to help tell that story. Once again, you'll see that you'll see a lot of my pictures. You'll see that light will purposely go between things. If you didn't have a drone, you know how lucky you would have to be to have the son sitting in exactly that spot. You know, so stuff like that, I look for that stuff. Leading lines, another big compositional element in photography. The leading lines brings the eye into the photograph, and it gives it movement drag racing. I mentioned that before I like to do the drag racing leading lines these cars have taken off or get the leading lines. It's drawing the eye into the frame into the shot. He is very simple and very first shot I took with my inspire one when I first got it. I just love the way the highlights were hitting those rails there and on just on the edge of that building there. It's not an overly dramatic shot, but I just love the leading lines on the kind of tells a nice story. Sometimes those leading lines are not so obvious. Sometimes you have to find them like this shot here. How is the park? So it happened the crack in the rock. I was able to line that up with the pot. Now, if I didn't have a drone, I never would have found that shot. Once again. Say, sometimes you're moving around to create your own leading lines, but they're they're they're they're everywhere foreground shots of their everywhere. And he is one of the things I do a lot, and I recommend you do this is find a spot and in just shoot the crap out of it, like one spot I will go to every day Why do I do that? I don't. Second, I know one of my friends like, man, I'm so sick of seeing that spot. Wouldn't you fly somewhere else? And it's because I want to explore it and find the shots. And I want to find a shot I never got before. And you know what? That way you're building your muscles. So if you go to a location now, you're building a repertoire of shots. You know what works and you go to a new location, your there for maybe an hour. You can find the shots. And here's something I learned from my body. Can Skloot. I don't know if you guys know kin I can explore of light. I've learned a lot of the target free stuff from him, and, um, I've gone to the motor racing with him and, um, we're at the drag strip, right? And this is, you know, the doing, the the top fuel dragsters and everything. And it was a very important rule I learned from him. Is was standing there at the start line at the tree. So when you've got the jacket and everything, you can go anywhere in the track you can stand at the tree while you've got to 5000 horsepower cars launching for me the side. That's an experience. I mean, you have hit funds on, but I mean, the ground was shaking. Will you stand by the jet cars when they take off and in three seconds, 300 miles an hour? That's an experience, or you get a car coming at you. Turn miles an hour and it pops the shooting. That's kind of wiggling coming towards you. That's exciting. Um, but one of the things that Cam was telling me is like here we are on the start line. Some of these targets are going to stay on the start line Aled day, and they're gonna get home of one shot move around. So we were. When we get stuck, go the start line, we go to the finish line, we move around. So when you go to our location and you've got a drone, it's so easy to explore sometimes our ticket into sport mode just fly around for a little bit and see where the shot is, like what we got here. And I want to get home for a variety of shots. I don't want to go home like, you know, I see people click, click, click, click, click all day taking the same shot like why you got it If you haven't got it yet, like by one of my DVDs, I need to teach about the target for you know, it's like you know, so So you want to get the shot, move and get another shot. So explores very, very easy to do that with your drone. You can move around real quick. You don't get your feet wet, you know, stop your toes on the rocks. It's easy. Control the background, right. You now have control over the background because altitude, if you have ever noticed when you move from site to site, is a thing called Parallax. Let me describe Parallax. Put your finger in front of your face like that. Everybody in nickel close one eye. Line it up with something in the background. No, open the other eye. See how much that's moved. That's known as parallax, and it was just from these couple of little inches between your nose. You were able to change that same thing with altitude that Parallax also works to your foreground and background elements and get a shift in relationship to each other based on the altitude. So that means when you're taking a photograph and you have a background that give us stood there in the trees and you're in the city and you got that, the buildings maybe have mountain showing through the gaps or whatever some clouds like come through the building, you take the shot. You have no control over that. But the strongest photograph hasn't foreground. Element has a mid ground element and has a background element. I learned that in visual effects. So it is a good thing about art. When I learned one thing, like spent many years as a graphic designer did stuff a satchel, satchel Procter and gamble that stuff, you know, Hollywood. Maybe sites worked if ABC, Disney. All that stuff. All of that applies to photography. Everything you learn with visual lights, whether it be designed for target fee painting at all, works to get us all the same. You just using a different set of tools, so you want to control that background foreground, mid ground background. You can tell a story. You can change the composition, and you can change that silhouette. So, for example, here, Laguna Beach in this is sunrise notice. Like you see that nice silhouette off these palm trees? Let me mention something about this is one of the most photographed spots in the United States. Laguna Beach is very, very popular. This is right there on end of Laguna Beach. This building has been photographed. I don't know how many times, Right? For years. So I did a sunrise. I'm always trying to get them out of there. And I'm shooting the stars. I'm not. You know what? Instead of trying to get the hotel out, why don't I actually just take a shot of the hotel? So it took me a couple of minutes, did that, went home, put to get the panel Rama put her on Facebook, tagged them and said, based on this photograph, would you want to stay there? Not kidding. Within 30 minutes, the marketing director contacted me and license this image. What? I've been out to do that for terrestrial camera. I would have to be really freaking good, But here is something that no one had seen before. And that's what we can do right now. We don't. Here's another one the same morning, bedrock. Just out there a little bit, by the way. You know my bird Rockets white, right? I'll leave that to imagination. A moving on has a house here. I like to call the house on the cliff. Okay, so here's the thing. It's a really interesting house, right? So here's the thing about this composition. We got some sunset going here. We're looking down. We get distractions and stuff here that was seeing this amazing thing in this beach. I can strengthen this composition just by changing altitude and gets what? I'm not going to go higher. I'm gonna go lower. And by doing it, See how it went from her? Yeah. It's a really good picture. Just based on changing the altitude. See that big big thing? OK, and the next one shoot during good light. Gotta have good light, right? So, sunrise, Sunset. You know, it's easy. You get good light. Very, very easy. Once again, position it where you want it to go. Between the pier. I don't wait till the right time of the year. So was the right time to get a drink. Sometimes you get lucky. The marine layer comes, comes in and it looks awesome. I love the West Coast. We give beautiful, beautiful sunsets, you know, Here's the sunrise. The opposite once again. Sunrise, Sunset. Don't matter. He's cursed with stressed I can fly anywhere. One, I can point in any direction. And it is sometimes once again, I get lucky the FARC comes in, and then I get a shot like this, and I make it look like a painting. Yes, there was some photo shop involved, and we're gonna be looking at some of that.

Ratings and Reviews

user-74999c
 

I love this class. I have learned so much, and have already started using some of the techniques to shoot better photos. I just need more practice flying. I'm looking for the FB 360 template. Was it supposed to be in downloads and don't see it.? It's almost sunset so I'm headed out to fly and shoot! Thanks for the class!!

~user-cbe549
 

Really enjoyed this class. After using Photoshop professionally for over 25 years, if I learn a new trick or technique from a class, then I know it's money well spent, so Thank you Colin, I did learn a new technique. Really looking forward to putting more of these ideas into practice.

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