- I can almost 100% bet, but is
she good at landscape photography or
urban street photography, yeah probably
because she's a great photographer, that bleeds
across everything she's going to do, but she's...
...am I out of memory card space?
Oh my God, I think I am, fuck!
(blues music)
(hip-hop music)
♫ I don't think there's more that we can do
♫ How come you think that I still owe you
♫ Anything more than pain
♫ More than the pouring rain
♫ How can there be more to explain
♫ I won't go down the drain
♫ Cause I was there too
♫ Oh it's so true
♫ Oh it's so blind
What's up everybody, Peter McKinnon here
and today we're talking about why
you're not taking better photos.
Interesting title: why you're not taking better photos.
You might be saying to yourself
I take better photos than you,
I take better photos than everybody,
my photos are fine, I'm happy with my photos.
And that's all well and good; you may be
taking better photos than me, you might not be.
That's not the issue, that's nor here nor there.
The purpose of this video is to kind of
bring some issue, some things, to light
that could be preventing you from taking even better photos.
That's the goal here is to shed some
light on some topics that could
ultimately help improve your photo quality.
It might start making you think on a different level.
It might bring some awareness to some things that
you're doing that you had no idea that you're doing,
or it might just enlighten you to some
topics or some issues that make
you think on a whole new level.
So the first thing I wanna talk about is social media.
Social media can be an incredibly powerful tool
to build relationships, to bring awareness to
things that you believe in, to share your work,
to make friends, to create a community and
be a part of a community, it's amazing for that.
But it can also be detrimental to the creative process.
If you follow a lot of these incredible photographers,
and there's tons that I follow that I look up to,
and if you see them traveling to Dubai and they're in
all these exotic places all over the world
and their photos are incredible because
they're seeing these incredible landscapes.
But you might be thinking to yourself
I'm just stuck in this small town,
it's just good sometimes to just take a break, just stop.
Stop scrolling through the photos,
stop looking at the photos, stop refreshing that feed.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
People might look at your feed and think
wow, so clever, so creative with
just the stuff that's around him or her.
So I think the main point of this is
taking a break from social media so you don't feel
inadequate in the photos you're posting
versus the people that you're following.
Okay, next up is digital; the medium itself.
And this kind of stems from something that
I used to do when I was younger.
I used to play a lot of paintball
and we'd play this thing called civil war.
We would take the hoppers off of our paintball guns
that would house the 500 paintballs,
you're gun shoots 16 balls a second,
and we'd take the hoppers off,
tone down the guns so it was just bare bones,
we would all take about five paintballs
and just hold them in your hand.
And we called it civil war because
we'd drop in one paintball, fire,
drop in one paintball, fire, and we only had five.
So the matches were way more interesting
and way more fun because everyone was a lot more tactical.
Everyone was a lot more strategic and not just
running out into the field and blasting off 200 paintballs,
busting a tube off of your back,
filling up that hopper, and still going.
Everyone was a lot more methodical.
It was more fun, it was like the thought process
to everyone's actions was way heightened and amplified
because you've only got five shots.
That's where digital comes in and can influence bad habits.
Now this is a fine line because,
where I agree and think digital is amazing
and it's so nice to be able to fire off
a thousand shots of whatever it is that you're shooting
and pick the best one, but it also kind of
sometimes makes me feel a little bit lazy
or it makes me feel too safe and not adventurous enough
and I don't think enough behind the
photos because it's just digital.
I can just take a shot, look at it,
delete it if I don't like it, fire off a hundred,
pick the one I like, but if you
go back to when we were shooting film,
we used to shoot on a Contax 645,
we used to shoot weddings on Contax 645
with Fujifilm, and I would have
my film sent away to be processed
and scanned with a Frontier scanner
and sent back to me and I would edit my shots that way.
But what I found, what I learned doing that
was that I thought so much harder about every shot
before I pressed that shutter button
because it meant so much more.
I've only got so many picture that
I can use on this roll of film.
I only have this one opportunity to capture this moment.
I can't shoot 16 frames a second, I can shoot one.
So that frame has to count, it has to matter.
And that helped my creativity slow down.
It slowed me down into this methodical, creative,
almost zen like state where I could
really focus in on what mattered
and what I wanted out of my photos.
And that helped me become a better photographer.
That's what I mean when I say digital can
sometimes be a hindrance, it can actually be
a little bit of a hangup in your creative process
because you're just not thinking as clearly.
You're not thinking as meticulously as you would
if you were limited to the amount of shots as you can take,
if you were limited to the amount
of gear that you had, which is my next point.
So my recommendation is shoot less.
Take that time to really compose you shot
and think about what it is that you want.
Maybe use a smaller memory card
that only has X amount of shots, that's just an option.
I'm not saying to do that definitively,
I'm just saying it might actually help you
open up your creative process and come up with
some new ideas that you didn't think about before
because you're taking more time.
You're taking more time to get those good photos.
Over the last few months I've had a lot of friends
and viewers contact me asking me to look at their photos
and if I can recommend anything to make them better.
I'm not the be all and end all to photography.
I don't have all the answers, I'm still learning myself.
And I kind of classify it like I will always be learning.
I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with my skill level.
I always want to be pushing for that next height.
I don't think anyone should be like
boom, nailed it, super happy, I don't need to improve.
Because we all want to take better photos.
We all learn how to take different types of photos
and that's where comfort zones comes in.
Maybe you're just a portrait photographer,
maybe you only shoot landscapes this weekend.
But you're gonna expand your creative process.
You're gonna expand your techniques.
You're gonna learn new ways of thinking,
new ways of shooting if you leave that comfort zone.
Maybe it's not even a shooting style
that you need to change, maybe it's
just your comfort zone in editing.
Maybe try new ways of editing.
Maybe go rent a tilt shift lens for the weekend
and just shoot with that and see what you get
and try a different editing style.
But by exploring new options in creativity
with photography and leaving that comfort zone,
it really opens up the doors to learning
and experiencing new things within photography
and that's what it's all about.
The next point I wanna talk about
that I think could be an issue, which it
definitely has been for me before is too many options.
I think sometimes limiting yourself
to the things that you take with you on a shoot
is a great way to promote creativity.
Maybe you'd normally bring four
lenses, maybe you just bring one.
One lens, one camera, and just see
how far you can push that lens.
Having every tool that you could possibly need
at your disposal all the time,
it's nice to have that, don't get me wrong,
but it makes it easy and sometimes I like the challenge.
I'll purposely leave things at home
if it's not like paid shoot and I'm just going to have fun.
I'll purposely leave things at home
that I would typically always use because
I like to see how I can develop
solutions on the go with no notice,
because that makes me learn, it gives me
new opportunities to say like wow,
I have no idea how I'm gonna, you know what, I can do this.
And then you've got a new, you've just created
a new method of doing something that
you would never have found out otherwise
had you brought everything that you needed with you.
And I think when you limit the amount of gear,
the amount of things you bring with you,
it really kind of lets you get
closer to mastering that one piece of equipment.
As an example, I use the 24mm all the time.
I know that lens inside and out.
I know exactly what it can handle,
what it can't handle, what it's perfect for,
what it's horrible for, but I would never
have known that if I didn't dedicate all of those years
to shooting with that lens the best I can.
And I've got some of the best photos and videos
that I've ever done in my whole career
with that lens because I put the time into
learning it through and through.
Let's say the 35mm is your favorite lens.
You also use the macro every now and then.
You're going on a shoot today with some buddies
and you're like, alright, I'm gonna out these in my bag,
I'm gonna put something else in my bag,
but you know what, maybe take everything
out of your bag, only bring the macro.
And you're like, well how am I gonna shoot landscape?
I dunno, how are you gonna shoot
landscape photos with the macro?
Go figure it out, that's part of the fun.
Now you've got a creative challenge
that you just made for yourself.
You're out there trying to get good
unique photos with a macro lens
with this incredible landscape.
It might suck, but if it does suck you learned something.
You learned different ways to try and make this work
or you learned how it will 100% not work.
And knowing your gear is super important.
But you might also come back and be like,
I just got one shot that I'm so pumped about
and I never would have got that had I just went out
shooting landscapes with a macro lens, it's so backwards.
But it's that kind of discipline that creatively fuels me.
It's like purposely creating a roadblock for yourself
that's going to be a pain in the ass,
but if you should be able to get over that roadblock,
you've learned something new that
you can apply to the rest of your photography career
or the rest of your skillsets in taking photos.
It's a good thing to try out.
Not everybody is gonna have issues like the stuff I listed,
not all of that stuff is gonna apply to everyone.
But there will be some people that it applies to.
And you're the people that I'm
hoping get something out of this.
There's always room for improvement.
Learning new things is always a good thing.
That's it for me today, hope you guys
got something out of that video.
If you liked it, smash that like button, as they say.
YouTube really needs a smash button.
Like, dislike, smash, that would be amazing.
Everyone would be so down with that.
Give this a thumbs up if you got something out of it.
If you enjoyed it, subscribe if you aren't already.
And I will see you, I got something in my eye
it's been bothering me for five minutes.
I will see you in the next video.
Still missing my hat, still missing my hat.
I dunno where it went.
Cheers.
Had to fit the coffee in there somewhere, right?
(synth music)