﻿- Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs. So, in this video, I want to show you
how you can get incredible night fog photography,
amazingly looking, with this five really cool trick. And if you stay until the end,
I'll show you the whole retouching process. Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs.
So, last night, I went to bed, and then I looked through the window, and there was tons of fogs,
and so I was like, "Oh, do I get up again?" And I got up again, and I took some of the
most incredible photos that I think I took in the last 15 years. I went downtown Clearwater,
and there is this beautiful Capitol Theatre, that was still lit, and it was just so much fog. It was
really cool, and I wanted to give you five tips in case you want to take, which works for night
photography in general, but even better with night photography with fog. So, tip number one.
Of course, I went there. I had a tripod, I was shooting roll. You want to get the best possible,
you know, file. I was shooting with a Fuji camera, which I really like. And, just, you know, you want
to make sure you don't touch your camera when you take the photo. That's just a base, you know,
for night photography. This way you can shoot at 100 ISO, which is really, really cool. Tip number
two is make sure you set the White Balance on Tungsten on your camera, because if you,
or you can put into Auto White Balance, because if you put it, for example, to Cloudy
or Shade, it's going to look so warm, so warm that you won't be able to appreciate the photo.
And, so, I find that Fluorescent is okay, but Tungsten gives even better results,
and, I find it, you appreciate better at night photos. I always shoot Tungsten at night. Okay,
so let me just walk you through some of the photos. I started, I was looking for, I wanted
to shoot a photo of the Capitol Theatre. This is, so I took two photos. I was maybe hoping to
do a Vertorama, but there was some cars, it was very annoying. So, I was hoping the cars
was going to go, and I, you know, try different framings. The next thing that's very important is
I didn't really know how to expose. So, at first, my photo was very, very bright,
and I find that I got better results when I slightly underexposed my photo like this, you see,
because the eye's going to go to the brightest part of the photo. So, that's my tip number three,
is slightly under expose your night photography. This way, the lights don't just take over
completely. You still want to get some details in the shadows. And so, yeah, that's what I do.
I don't do HDR, I just underexposed a little bit. Check out the difference between this exposure
and that exposure. And I use manual mode, and I just, I bullet, I literally take
a shot. I look at the histogram. I make sure my histogram is kind of in the middle,
and, yeah, basically that's what I do. And, by the way, guys, one thing that helps me lot,
if you can, like this video, that'd be so cool. If you can smash that like button, you know,
it helps the YouTube algorithm to make this video known. That would be very helpful, and if you can
leave a comment and share, I would be your best friend forever. That would really help me, you
know doing all these free videos for you. Okay, so let's carry on. So, I was kind of underexposing. I
was really happy with that framing. One thing I always tried to go for when I do cityscape is
layers, you know, foreground, middle ground, background and leading lines. So, that's really
my tip number four. What I mean by layer is, look at this tree here. I wanted this tree to
be sort of like a foreground element, but I was too close. You will see, I took another photo.
This is kind of my middle ground. And this, like, city light would be my background.
Something, and you know, and the road would be, sort of the leading line, you know?
So, I think that was kind of the, one of the best shot that I got from this view,
but there was still the cars. I was not really happy. So I, you know, I walked around town and,
you know, took some other, different photos. I thought this one was interesting. This was kind of
cool, but the light was a little too strong. So, what I did is I turned around, and then I cut the
light so that, you see the eyes goes to the bright spot of the photo. So, I cut right on this light,
so you only get the shine, but, you don't, it's not like this one where just the only thing you
kind of see is the light. Okay, very important. I moved around. I'm not going to show all the
photos, 'cause I took quite a bit, but, you know, I was just looking for cool moments of lights.
And I think my favorite's got to be this one here. This is, I think that one is my favorite,
and I'll show you also, I read it. So, I'm going to put a three star,
what I did is I put like a three star on my favorite photo, and then the cars actually left,
and, so, I went back and got this photo. I gave a little more space to that tree,
and now I had the perfect shot. But, for some reason, because of the layers of light, I kind of
like that one a little more. So, tip number five is how do you retouch these beautiful shots? Well,
the first thing that I do is I basically hold on the Option key, and I do a Black Point. You see,
when you hold on the Option key on Lightroom, and you go to the left,
what you see here in black and blue is 100% black points, and I kind of liked that.
I use, you know, I like to have about 1%, so, that's kind of cool. Then the white,
you see the whites are already burned. So, I can't really do much about the white.
This slide is fully burned, although, I did underexpose a little bit. I usually open the
shadows a little bit, and I don't bring down the highlights too much, like I do with sunset,
because if you bring down the highlights you're going to get a definite, definite,
sort of, round around the lights, which I find a glow is much nicer. And then,
I'm going to add some contrast, and I make sure I'm using the Tungsten White Balance, and,
usually, what I do is I add a bit of magenta to kill the green, and maybe a little bit of yellow
until I have something that I like. Or, what you can do is, you can take this white picker here,
and find something that's kind of supposed to be grayish, light grayish, boom, like this one, this
one totally erased a green. I kind of like that. That's kind of cool. Add a bit more contrast,
maybe lower slightly a bit the highlights, and, this one, I think I want to make it 16 by 9,
because I can, 16 by 9. I just, I love 16 by 9. It's, for me, this is like a movie shot.
So, something like this. Look at this photo. This is some of my favorite photo
in 15 years. I am so happy I got up, and I did this little, oh, by the way, guys,
I have a new book that just came out called "Photography Essentials". Yes, you can find
it on Amazon as a printed version, if you look for that title "Photography Essentials" by me,
but you can also get it for free, if you watched the MasterClass that goes with it.
I'm going to link a YouTube video where I go more in details like this. But, basically,
this is some of my best photography in the last 15 years. This is really, for me, the
most important things you need to know. Like, I wish I had this book when I started 15 years ago.
I would have economized years and years of trial and error, and not buying the right gear. So,
check out the video. It's, the link is under, must be also above, somewhere, where you can
watch a video, and get more data about this, if you like what I do, and you want to learn from me.
Okay, next, I did a little pano of that same street. So, I took one photo on the left side,
one photo the right side, like this, and then, what I do, is I select them both,
and then I go to Photo Merge, Panorama. So, just a little trick on panoramas. Usually, I always go to
Perspective, you see, that's the last, because when I do cityscape, if you use Cylindrical,
sometimes you get rounded things, and I don't like rounded things. I like them to be straight.
So, I usually use Perspective, and, on this one, you can also use Fill Edges. Fill Edges is a new
feature that came out in Lightroom. It's using the Content-Aware Fill data, and it's going to create
the pixel that's missing. So, it's not going to be very accurate, but when you crop it can be useful.
So, I'm going to use that, and Perspective usually works if you're, like, at 30 millimeter and above,
per my experience. Every time I'm like a 24 or 20 millimeter perspective, does not work. So,
sometimes the Panorama can just be two photos, you know, to get the composition you want to get. So,
I'm going to merge that. Now, one trick I want to give you is, when you have, while this is
happening, when you have something that you like, like I like the white balance, I kind of like the
look, you can press Command + Shift + C, and check all except the crop. I don't want to copy the crop
from one photo to the next. Copy that, and then take, for example, this photo when the cars left,
and press Command + V, and see what happened, command, and boom, and most of it is done. All
you have to do is, maybe, just adjust the white, the Black Spot, maybe adjust the exposure,
but, you know, just a few settings, but you get a, you know, a really cool photo. Okay,
and now let's see here, where did the, so, that's the Panorama, just came back. So, I'm just press
Command + V to just copy and paste what we did. Look at that, it's already, almost retouched. Then
I'm going to crop it. I'm going to crop it. I'm going to crop it. I'm going to put this the little
lock out, so that I could crop it however I please. This is also one of my favorite,
I think I want to crop that out. And when you do Panorama, it enables you to take some really
high resolution. So, usually, what I do is, when I crop, and you can see how this Capitol sign is
going this way, and how this light is going, sort of, this way. So, you want to rotate until both
are tilted about the same, you know, sort of like, same angle here, then same angle there.
Okay, and then, what you can do is, you can go all the way down to Lens, to the Transform. Usually,
when I click on auto, I'm not really happy. Yeah, that's actually not so bad, but I'll show you what
I usually do. I don't use auto. What I do is I, sort of, rotate until I get the same angle
on both, and then I just play around with Vertical a little bit to make it straight, and then
you just play with Vertical and Rotate. It takes a bit of trial and error, but I like, I like it to
be straight. I ain't going to lie. I like it to be straight, and, let's see here, maybe not this way,
maybe this way. Yeah, it's getting there. It's getting there. Maybe a bit more rotate. Voila.
Now, then, I went too much, and you just go back and forth, back and forth, until you have
something that you really like. Okay, that's, I think, it's good enough for me. And the fact that
I shot manually, and I copy and paste from one photo to the next, just helps things to go much
faster. This one, I think I'm just going to lower a little bit, the exposure. You see, this one,
I didn't enough underexpose it? So, that light is a little too much to me. I think my favorite
out of the series is probably going to be this one. Yeah, this one, I think, is really nice,
or this one, which I just copied, but we can also take this one that I showed you,
and press Command + V, and hope for the best. Yeah, it needs a bit of adjustment, but,
remember, you just do, like, the Black Point. You only want 1%, a bit of exposure, voila,
Maybe you bring down a little bit more the highlights, not so much. I don't want the round,
I wanted the glow. It's not my favorite, this one, I'm going to say, it's not my favorite.
This one, I think I like a lot. This one is kind of cool. Yeah, this one is kind of cool. Something
I need to make it much brighter, and then check out my Black Points. Okay, that's kinda cool.
But, at the end of the day, I think this is one of my favorites. So,
next time you see some fog, do like me. Get up, get you camera, and take some amazing photography,
and check out my book, and the MasterClass, it was, I promise you, it's going to change
your life as a photographer. Check out the video where I talk more about it,
and I'll see you in another video. Mesdames et messieurs, au revoir.