we've fallen into a trap as travel photographers where we're always seeking
out that hero image. But travel photography isn't a hero image its food
it's culture its architecture it's the people travel photography is a photo
story that defines a destination my goal is really to find the hero image it's to
go out and photograph a mood of a destination and if that mood turns epic?
Well, then I shoot it!
First of all you're not allowed to make fun of the beard
game going on right now I know it needs to be shaved really badly second of all
we're getting into like a really good routine I think here in tbilisi snell
is up there Jodie's here and we've spent all day working and working out at
the gym and yeah basically have a really nice routine now it's about 6:30 two
hours until sunset we're gonna go grab some food and then shoot some
photography
the problem with being photographers is that you rarely eat dinner and it's just
because you get distracted by things we've walked past this area that has
some graffiti on it like three times now into play see and every time I thought
if we get a little bit of light I'm gonna take a picture there and just now
for a split second there was a little bit of light hitting the graffiti so I
got Jodie to pose in there and with the 24-70mm grab the shot that I think is
pretty good nothing mind-blowing it's simple but
it's pretty nice and in general the graffiti in here is really cool
okay so what we have is traditional Georgian starter and this is spinach
sort of molded with the walnut paste this one is beetroot with walnut paste
is eggplant with some sort of walnut paste in the middle and red pepper also
with walnut this looks good so what we've learned is they they like their
walnut paste so I'm a massive fan of dumplings of any kind and here in
Georgia they have this which is called Kinkali the way tertullus you have to
eat it with paper you can't use a fork a knife to eat it we have meat ones but
also on the menu there was mushroom and cheese so it's not necessarily meat
thing and yeah it kind of looks like a pierogi
mixed with a Chinese dumpling it's hot and it's probably straight out of the
boiling water he's gonna burn me one it's really good and to the kind of
tastes almost identical to the dumplings you get in Mongolia. In Mongolia is
usually goats meat this is beet and yeah I lived on these in Mongolia so yeah
thumbs up and lights already dying so we got to eat fast so one of the things
about having three weeks somewhere is you kind of lose your urgency because
you know you always have tomorrow so we went had dinner, and dinner was fantastic
so far the food in Georgia has just been next level but we need to have maybe a
little bit more urgency because we were eating there having a good time enjoying
things and then we realized that it's probably like 30 minutes until sunset
and we still going to go fly in the cable car pay for the cable car and go
up so we're gonna make moves or we're gonna miss sunset
we're back on the peace bridge where we were last night
this is eventually gonna be a location I shoot I think I'm going to need to come
at sunrise though when it's less busy so maybe over the next week we'll be back
here I think it'll be really cool spot lots of angles lots of ways to shoot
this spot
we're about to get into the gondola and the funniest thing ever is that on the
door it says no smoking no something else and then no she shuts no hookahs
which is a shame because the four of us were saying that we were just gonna
bring our shisha in to take it off and now we can't do that so let's just go up
normal
Okay we made it to the top that was fun the views up here are crazy
crazy good but we we didn't miss sunset that just didn't happen
there was just no light right now but we do think that once the blue light sets
in it might be cool I mean the views up here just rad so you're gonna walk
around to the very top the views are obviously good but it's one of those
things that the best view isn't always the best photo and it's kind of hard up
here because everything's kind of melded down in with the city all the cathedrals
the mosques and everything that really stand out from the bottom that kind of
just gets sucked into the landscape here so we're gonna keep walking around and
keep looking but I'm not sure there's the shot that I'm looking for here but
there is people like up on these pillars these old wall pillars so we're going to
see if we can climb up one of these things
I mentioned earlier kind of the downside of having too much time is that you
don't have any sense of urgency but one of the upsides is if you mess up you can
always go back tomorrow we saw the top we asked how to get up
there some guy told us there was like a little hole or a door to go through but
we didn't find it so now we've walked basically all the way down to the bottom
and no shot so we're gonna keep looking have hope that we find something to take
a photo of but it's not looking good right now we found our way onto the wall
and it's cool in here well, it's not cool it's still hot it's
like 36 degrees and we're still dying from heat but I think that actually that
composition and the view works from here because you can see down the valley a
little bit down the river a bit you can see that lit in the background yeah I
think this might it's not great photo but I think it at least works
yo bro I'm on top of this sh*t was gonna shoot a time lapse but BvS is one step ahead
BvS is always a step ahead.. especially when you're slow
Greg's working for free and I'm still harassing him I'm setting up the 24-70mm
and this is actually the first time I've ever shot this lens looks like
pretty even light I might put on a 6 stop ND to get some motion in the car some light
trails maybe a to stop grad to get a little bit more color in the sky
pretty simple shot
so we're all set up here and I like this spot because of the winding river and
the church and it just really balances but you know that I love my foreground
and I can see up there at the top there's a viewpoint that we could climb
to that would have the same view I think but have a castle wall in the foreground
and I think that's gonna be ideal but I'm not gonna shoot that tonight because
like I said we got three weeks here so maybe you come back another time and
shoot that maybe it's sunrise but it's a little quieter up here but yeah we're
taking this all in snapping it off simple photo 30 seconds f11 ISO 100
a nice overview photo yesterday we talked about street photography a little bit this is
like trying to get that city overview if you spend a lot of time in a city what
you're trying to do is create a photo story you're not just trying to create
one hero image or one epic image. Yes you want that you want one epic hero image
but ideally you want that epic hero image to be supported by a whole body of
work that includes the people includes the food includes the landscapes the
buildings the architecture the details a little bit of everything so today
we're just working on that big open shot that cityscape shot and I think it's
coming out pretty cool
wasn't planning on shooting that hero image but Nellie decided to be super
brave and she climbed out on this where the bell tower is and from the opposite
side I could shoot straight out and it really
gives this massive perspective to the image it is the hero image I was hoping
for at some point on this trip I loved it there was a challenge you can see
there's these lights and these lights below they create a ton of lens flare
and people ask me all the time why I wear a hat and one I like the Hat but
photographers use hats a lot to hold back lens flare whether it's the Sun or
in this case the light coming up on the castle if I didn't have the Hat to hold
in front of the light to bring it down it would have been totally lens flared
and it would have ruined the photo so the Hat saved the day and yeah I'm
stoked with how that came out
so that's now two days in a row where I thought I wasn't gonna get a photo and
then the end of the day something just clicked and it's one of these things
with photography where you almost have to just let it happen you can't force
things have you forced things you end up taking pictures that aren't great if you
sit and wait and you explore and you take your time with it you might not get
the photo every time but when you do get it it'll be a banger so I'm happy with
the way today went happy with the way George is going in general and we'll be
back at it tomorrow see you there peace