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Learn to have your ideas ready

Lesson 19 from: Masters of Photography

Albert Watson

Learn to have your ideas ready

Lesson 19 from: Masters of Photography

Albert Watson

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Lesson Info

19. Learn to have your ideas ready

Albert encourages you to have faith in your own creative instincts and how to always think creativity to persuade a client toward agreeing to your photographic ideas.
Next Lesson: Using Polariods

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Meet your Master

01:26
2

Learn from the journey

15:24
3

Using inspirations

08:43
4

Photography is stopping time

09:27
5

Albert's library of ideas

08:30
6

Tips on preparing for a portrait shoot

12:10
7

Setting up the studio

04:56
8

Understanding studio collaboration

07:35
9

The importance of casting and hair & make-up

08:59
10

Foreground studio set up

08:46
11

Studio session with a model - set up 1

11:23
12

Studio session with a model - set up 2

05:55
13

Studio session with a model - set up 3

08:01
14

Picking the best shot

03:36
15

Working with photoshop

13:14
16

Creating a portrait of Alfred Hitchcock

04:18
17

The gigantic question... Colour or black and white?

07:55
18

One day with Kate Moss

05:06
19

Learn to have your ideas ready

06:14
20

Using Polariods

06:29
21

Creating beautiful photographs of hands

04:45
22

Controlling natural light

05:38
23

Shooting a monkey with a gun

06:27
24

Choosing your format

07:13
25

Composition and lens

04:47
26

Shooting landscapes. The Isle of Skye

15:18
27

Planning and ideas for a landscape shoot

06:32
28

Creating still life images

13:48
29

Photographing the Lost Diary

10:53
30

Shooting album covers

03:09
31

The Strip Search Project

10:28
32

Shooting Las Vegas landscapes

08:24
33

Photographing Breaunna

07:21
34

Balancing daylight, God bless America

03:45
35

Creating the Maroc Project

10:21
36

Creating the Maroc shoot

08:11
37

Photographing sand dunes

04:09
38

Photographing Moroccan children

10:42
39

Advice on making portraits

10:12
40

How to be alert to finding photographs

07:35
41

Making a portrait of Mike Tyson

02:39
42

Creating intense colour in a photograph

03:04
43

Portraits of rap stars and a Golden Boy

08:40
44

Photographing Jack Nicholson

04:20
45

Creating a portrait of David Cronenberg

02:14
46

How to light only using two $10 bulbs

07:29
47

Studio fashion set up 4

10:47
48

Studio session with a model. The geography of a face

13:05
49

Look inside the picture

02:56
50

Creating memorability in an image

02:54
51

Combining nudes and landscapes

04:52
52

A perfect print

07:50
53

The business side of things

06:50
54

Conclusion and farewell

03:55

Lesson Info

Learn to have your ideas ready

(upbeat electronic music) Just to explain sometimes how certain projects that I worked on, how they happened, there was a group of people that flew in from Italy for a project for me for Lavazza coffee. Wonderfully nice people, super people, and they wanted me to do a calendar for Lavazza and they came in to have a meeting with me a week or so before the shooting, and they said we have an idea for you to do it. I said, well, what's the idea? And they said, we'd like to do small tables outside of cafes around New York with kind of, supermodels having a coffee, and they were gonna do 12, 14 of these shots. And I was like, immediately I was very busy at that time and you never want to, it's always nice when somebody wants to give you a job. So, you try and always be nice but I hated the idea. I didn't think it was so strong and I could almost see the thing and I would say it's okay, but it almost looks like, strange kind of People Magazine advertising. It was kind of not what I fancied ...

at all, and I'd already thought of something else that I had a rough idea, and I said to them, I have another idea for you. I said, rather than just getting models and you know, basically sittin' 'em outside, and I said, you've gotta do all the clothing and all of that, what are they wearing? Are you then gonna be very tricky and do the winter months in fur coats and the summer months in bikinis or something? And then, of course, the sad thing was one of the people said, that sounds good. So I think that, I just wasn't keen on it. So I had this idea of scale and several times throughout the years, I've often quite liked this idea that originally came from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who actually was the writer of Sherlock Holmes and the funny think about Arthur Conan Doyle was he believed in fairies. Seriously, he believed in fairies. And for some reason, I always liked this idea of fairies and tiny people and the woods and so on. In fact, there's a project I'm working on now that's that way, and I also mentioned that I once did a shot of Kate Moss that's like that. Anyway, so I had this idea of basically, I said, doing nude girls with gigantic coffee cups, saucers, spoons, and lumps of sugar, and the scale change is huge. The coffee cups can be 15 feet high and I could have somebody make them, and then we just simply have them sitting around the cups and saucers, and they'll look like tiny little elves and little fairies, you know, kind of around coffee cups and sugar lumps, et cetera, and they were kind of shocked, a little bit, and I said, why don't you talk amongst yourself and think about that and I went downstairs and did a print in the dark room. And I came back about 20 minutes later and they said, we love it. And I said well, hold on a second, and I knew a prop guy, cinema prop guy, and I called him up and said, how much to make a cup and saucer and spoon and all of that and he gave a figure and we need it in a week and nine days or something, and he said he could do it. Built of fiber glass. And he built this huge coffee cup, spoon, sugar lumps out of fiber glass and other things, and I got these fabulous models and I basically it was, once I got started, it was not so hard to do and it was a project, that in the end, they loved and the reason I tell this story is how, you know, a photographer sometimes can control his own destiny a little bit by coming up with something that's a strong idea. Now, sometimes, you, I was lucky that the people let me do that. In order words, they would pay several thousand dollars to bring props in to the studio. But in the end, an art director said to me, he said it was cheaper for him to do these coffee cups than it was a pay a location fee for all the cafes. So it worked out very, very well, and the people at Lavazza when they got the stuff back, they loved it. They loved what it was and they loved it as a, you know, the calendar as an object. So, I think it's just, you know, try and find something original. Try and do some homework, so when you walk into a meeting like that, you've got something prepared. I actually have lots of stories like that, by the way, of things that we offered people so if you ever get your foot in the door, the creative door and then force it open, you can actually produce some very good stuff, you know. But planning, once again, and thinking about what you're doing is of course the key issue. (upbeat electronic music)

Ratings and Reviews

Richard A. Heckler
 

"Unless you're Mozart"...this course is an invaluable asset. I'm a pro, humanitarian/documentary photographer, & wilderness...and I've learned much from the 40+ sessions here. This is truly a Master Class...next best thing to being with Albert. And although I could watch studio sessions forever, this course offered a very balanced curriculum of technical information, artistic encouragement and guidance, and a open, generous window into the thinking of a gifted artist and photographer, sifted from decades of first class experience. Kudos to all involved. Excellent!

a Creativelive Student
 

I purchased my first CreativeLive class in 2011 and have continued to purchase many classes over the years. I have learned so much from the many great instructors. This one is not a technical class that will tell you to set your camera at f4, 1/60, ISO 400 and you can get this shot. If you are looking for that, there are many other options. If you have a solid working knowledge of photography, this class is so much more. The way it was filmed is like you are there with him in conversation or in the room with him watching him shoot. To see and understand the how and why he does what he does. Not to take anything away from other classes that have helped to give me a strong understanding of photography, this is my favorite CreativeLive class so far.

Student Work

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