Lessons

Lesson Info

Day 1 Pre-Show Banter

Good morning. The Internet. Morning, and welcome to another creativelive event. Ah, we're so excited this weekend to have David Nightingale here with us for his dramatic postproduction three day course. And with me today is not Susan rather. I'm not Susan. I'm Jim Kentucky, and I'll be filling in for us. Isn't this weekend looking forward, Teoh listening to David and, uh, hearing about this amazing artwork? Yes. Awesome. So during this next 20 minutes, we're just doing a little bit of pre show banter, as we always do. Make sure that all our audio and video is working. So if you're in the chat room, can you let us know how we're doing with that? And, um, again, we have about 20 minutes of banter. So did you have something to say? It's also never too early to start sending questions that you might have for David, so feel free to shoot him by. All right, So without further ado, I would love to introduce David Nightingale. Hi. My name is Debbie Nightingale. I'm your instructor this weekend...

. They have three days off dramatic postproduction. Um, obviously got a lot to go through. We're gonna have a quick chat for 20 minutes. Going to say hello mostly probably know who I am a little bit more about myself to go along, but I'd like to introduce my students this weekend. Say hello to them on, get to know them a little bit on. We could get to know each other. We only met up probably about 2025 minutes to go for some of us. So good opportunities say hello. Let's know a bit about yourself and take it from that. Just fight for the microphone. Seattle I've done a lot of my I've been around photography for a long time. My uncle was a photographer, but I'm new to the digital part. So I am just trying to learn as much as I can about a lot of this. I've always liked landscapes, and I want us to get more dramatic landscapes. So that's why I'm here. Good morning. My name is Henry. I'm from Britain, which is this south of Seattle. I've been dealing with digital photography for about 5 to 7 years and looking to get more information and so more technique regarding HDR and some of the post processing to have it really take on another dynamic. Look to it. My name is David Quittner, and from a small island in southwest Japan I've been shooting seriously for four or five last 45 years, just getting more and more serious as I go on. I'm really excited. I've been following your block for the last couple of years, so I can't wait to see what we could do with with our What does this weekend? My name's Nicholas Ray and from Sacramento, California, and I'm excited toe learn more about dramatic postproduction. I've always been kind of a skeptic with HDR, and I'd like to learn how to do it. Well, OK, my name is and Shambhu and I echo next sentiments about the use of HDR make it more realistic and not as Gadi. One of my specific interest in this class is the notion that will be thinking about the postproduction process while shooting in and of itself, and sort of anticipating how we can correct some of things that we do at that stage, which is not something I've done historically. Okay, They will be spending a lot of time thinking through that this morning. Go. Hi. My name's Alona Bors ups. I'm from West Seattle, and I've been in the business of photography, probably for about three years now, and focusing on architectural, industrial and social documentary. And one of the key things I want to get out of this workshop is creating more drama in black and white and because I'm working on a black and white project, so that would really be helpful First, thank you. Can I have you got any questions from a live audience here? Let us look any questions out there yet what we look to do normally is we ask everyone where they're joining us from, and because we, as you know, we have people joining us from all over the world. I wonder if Sebastian is with us today. Sebastian is one of our suit. Regular students who joins us from Antarctica is overwintering, and we just love to give him a shout out because that's pretty darn cool. Um, you know, an early riser is catchy picks from Australia, where it's 3:40 a.m. Wow, I'm impressed. And let's see Seth is joining us from Bulgaria. We will ask her where abouts Seth, because where do you live? right now. I live in Bulgaria. We've been there for about three years. Slumber Hansen. You can but spend most of our time living in central Bulgaria. Uh, enjoying the weather on the cheap beer. So Yeah. Good place to live. And what town? It's a little village. About 250 people in our village called Gantry vets. It's about 20 kilometers from Veliko Turnovo, which is the old cultural capital. It wasn't all kind of 18 70 something. Um, see, I better change from living in England. Absolutely. In country, beautiful town. I, um, travelled there with Susan. Who's our normal other blonde Took the train through and just a beautiful country. This year s Sophia that Seth. And we got people chiming in from Charlotte, North Carolina. Rock Hill, South Carolina, Texas, Costa Rica. Meyer Martinez is joining us from Huntsville, Alabama. Dorian is in Philly, which was a great town as well. Cedar Rapids, Iowa Love land, Colorado. Call me far away from Frankfurt, Germany, and ah, car up from Madrid Espana. Nice, Poland. Greco Patrick. Welcome from Krakow Micro from Quebec City, Canada. Welcome. OK, we've got a question. Excellent question from Gromit wondering how much of the content is relevant with Adobe Light Room three and finish up elements. Nine. I'm quite a lot of one of the things will be talking about in quite a lot of details. How you selectively amend areas of a photograph using adjustment less and masks. Now you could do something similar in light room with brushes, but not to the same degree. The stuff we're talking about today, that kind of the conceptual thinking behind him to create dramatic images, all of that applies. It doesn't matter what using to edit. You know, um, it's kind of about the creative process. It's about thinking about shooting on. It's about thinking about editing your images in a particular way, so the tools you'll see when we get going, but kind of it's not so much the tools, it's the process. It's important. So, yeah, of the software's great awesome. And I just want to say that I love this set that we have here. It's cool. It's really cool. Can you tell us about our go through some of the images? Yeah, kind of a lot of these reasonably recent eso there's a shot down the bottom left there. One of my favorite topics is people have seen the blogger on those kind of beachcombing. So my idea of heaven is strolling along the beach looking for bits of rubbish. It's, uh, yeah, it's kind of It's something I do a lot of them back in the UK So that was a little Children's bike I found buried on the beach. The guy that was shot in. Remember where either Dubai or a man? I think the buy in one of the markets, my favorite HDR images, is there at the top on it's a shot off the bus allusion monument in Bulgaria. Eso that's the image will be working through. You have those files on. People would be able to download the HDR, so we're working through the image. Another shot from Dubai out in the desert. The interesting thing about that was one of first times I've been into the desert, and I was imagining this pristine environment of blue sky and uninterrupted dunes and maybe little wispy bits of sand, and you get out there and everybody's there on the quad, bikes on the four by fours and no camels. A tall on all the walls was tire tracks. So you kind of start off by being disappointed. But then you think, OK, well, what can I do with that? So low to the ground shoot the tire tracks and ended up being one of my favorite shots in the trip. One of my daughters here, it's gonna upset the rest of them. We may discuss what we will be discussing black and white pricing that's in black and white turned image behind. You know the shot from the by another from Dubai, one of my favorite beachcombing shots. And I have to confess for the TV that we did cheat. We did find the TV on the beach, but we moved it down. It was high tide, so it's very gentle water coming in. So we thought, No, we can't We can't miss the opportunity. So we carried it in, or else we got another. Actually, I down here, um, no shot from Dubai on another portrait from that was from a man. Those are beautiful, David. A question. I know a lot of photographers do a lot of pre visualization before they go out and shoot. Do you do a lot of pre visualization directed towards HDR To an extent you have to do because as we'll see on Sunday, when the key things about actually are you tend to be shooting scenes where the dynamic range is so high that you have to be able to imagine when you level that out with tone mapping. How is that gonna look on something? One of the key things you think of as composition because obviously the original scene here is you'll see on Sunday all of this four grams very dark. The sky was very bright, was no detail in the roof. But you have to think through Okay, Well, when I when I shoot this, all this detail along these dark areas is gonna be kind of a key component of the shots. So, yes, If you don't do that, then you end up with unexpected results. Sometimes that works sometimes not. You're very quiet. Guys don't in the audience so remote, so on. So on the each year photos that you like the shot up there, the one that you were talking about, how maney images were you actually using in order to create the final output that 1 it was quite big discrepancy between light and dark, but again will go through. You could have done it with 501 e v spacing for that, but will come to them something. So they all making sense so far. David, do you want it Will probably do this again. But, um, talk through what we're going to be doing today. Yes, I can kind of my script doing my screen up for this all. Okay, So I could bring up in front of me today. We're gonna start off thinking about what makes a dramatic image. So it doesn't make any sense to come along to a dramatic postproduction workshop and no agree what we mean by dramatic. Eso will spend quite a bit of time thinking about What is it we're trying to achieve? What is it we're aiming for? Um, we're gonna look at planning and optimize workflow on kind of mean that in different ways there's a technical way of thinking about that. It is a creative way of thinking about that. I'm going to spend a lot of this morning thinking about the creative process I'm not move onto then is another technical topics of shooting post production. So if you're thinking about the postproduction, you're doing an image. What do you need to do beforehand? How do you need to? How do you need to set your exposure? What? What things you need to think about, Right? Start before you press the shutter. I will take a look at work in camera raw, and then I'm gonna go and shoot in the alley outside, one of things were doing. If if we can make dramatic images out, blend images, there's no way in or blend in the alley outside the credit like studio. Trust me, it's It's not as at least go. It's not exciting, alley, but we have some props. You brought some props along. I blogged a shot last night with flip flop. I founded Fleetwood, and I brought the flip flop. It is now well traveled, says that's a proper can use as well. Eso I'll have a go shooting that. So that's kind of what we doing today. You want to talk about the rest of weekend is welcome. That great. We're going to still have another seven minutes or so of banter. So So Saturday we're gonna kick off by working through some of the images we shot today on, we'll go through the movement finished anyway, kind of after we've gone off there tonight will have a chance to talk about what we'll do tomorrow. And then we're gonna work for a range or folks shop techniques tomorrow. So welcome to curse. Still working in mass adjustment layers, converting just black and white, toning your images on some advanced editing techniques. Now, I've got some ideas for that Sessions. That's kind of round about two o'clock tomorrow afternoon. But I want you to think about anything that you want to cover. So you've obviously got some general ideas about want you If there's anything specific you want to cover, so something you would consider advanced technique. I think about that as we go along, talking about way talk about to go along. But I'd like to cover something there that you specifically want to cover on. The same goes for the live audience if they've got anything in particular. Clearly, we can't cover six names and different topics, but the maybe since off consensus of opinion about what would be good technique then show in town. I'd like to hear what it is you want to learn. On Sunday. We're looking HDR images, so we'll go through kind of why we need them. We'll go through hand to shoot, will go on shoots and grant nearly again on. Then we'll go through processing. So it seems a common thing with the HDR is producing them. Also photo naturalistic image. No, not the gaudy, Um, obviously, actually, on time shop, that kind of makes sense. At this stage of you got any ideas about advanced topics you'd like to cover? You did have. Do you say about Portrait's? Did you say about Black and White Portrait? Yeah, I'm working on a documentary project and I'm doing it in black and white and I'd really like to be able to I can't stop looking at some of the images on the backboard there, and I'd really like to be able to accomplish the drama that's coming out in those images. Excellent. That's kind of what we're covering. Cool. We have a couple of questions that are rolling in. We have one from not sure who it's from, but how long has David been shooting images for HDR postproduction? How long have you been doing that? That's a good question, actually. Normally I'd have my laptop in front of me, and I use my bloggers a reference point, being posting images really regular since about 2003. Beautiful. So what I would do now is go to the gallery of for the HDR images and put up the comments, and it would give me the date on the answers. I'm not entirely sure, but quite a long time. So the several years, um and I kind of went through the stage of I think most people do with HDR that you end up with things that look typically actually aren't start with because it's such an unusual technique. And it's really exciting to be able to go and shoot scenes that you can't shoot using other methods. On certainly a few years, I've kind of changed my approach directly. Arms we'll talk about in some of these sessions. Um, yeah, a while longer or shorter than the beards been growing long, definite longer. I'm going for Zacarias Beard. Dual ah, question from Matthew K. Photo is, how do you stay inspired? I'm Sometimes it's difficult post production. If I find postproduction relaxing I always have. It's kind of like a Zen relaxing, chill out time thing until it goes wrong or until you have to produce an image and none of them work. But generally I find the inspiration from post production. It is something I really enjoy doing, so I don't need any particular inspired shooting is more difficult kind of when you're trying to fit in, shooting in and around everything else. Sometimes it's difficult to be inspired with shooting without what I tend to see if I get stuck is gone and shoot with just one lens or restrict myself to one aperture or one focal length from taking out zoom or decide that I'm going to take pictures facing down towards the ground, so kind of marrying down your opportunities, if you if you if you If you lacking inspiration, don't go out with all your equipment and think right, what can I shoot? Because you just overwhelm itself. But go out when set yourself a specific brief and it can be something really very glad I'm gonna shoot F two point so that that's how I did. But it is difficult to fit in. Sometimes Yeah, that's great advice. Yeah, there's a question asking about Is this class just for HD? Are absolutely not. HDR is the topic of Sunday's session because it is a technique that allows you to create dramatic images, but it's kind off. It is part of what I think is a much bigger story, which is parking, sexual, part, technical on and mostly creative. So we're here to do dramatic postproduction. But for me, post production is a creative process. It's not technical more so. Hopefully that will come clear as we go through this morning. The longer I teach for your shop, the more I realize it's not about the tools. But I don't give away why. I think that it's to do with it. So we were thinking and creativity. It was a technical. It's a technical task. It's a creative prices. So no, definitely not just next year. And a question from Delap is How do you shoot for black and white? Are you generally doing that in camera or in post? I would always convert to black and white post. The problem is shooting in the problem shooting black and white camera. Is that all you're doing is you de saturate the image that's equivalent of, you know, image the century or using a hue saturation tool to the central image, which sometimes is fine. More often than not, though, working in post, you've got a lot a lot more control over the tonal balance, an image based upon the original colors. So when I'm shooting, I never I would never shoot like a mind. Um, you kind of tiny hands behind your back before you start. So as you as you'll see the drama in black and white, is much to do with the actual conversion process as any other stepping in that sequence. So no, don't shoot black, it's not good.