Hey guys. So I'm very excited today because we are in Montmartre
The oldest part of Paris it’s up on a hill.
We have to walk a lot of stairs but it's my favorite area.
This place, you can get so many good photos per square feet.
So I'm gonna start by shooting with my two Leicas the M6 from 1984
an old film camera, and Leica Q2
which is a really cool camera
It's a 1.7 lens
That is a 27 mm so it's pretty wide angle
Just love to use it in an automatic and it gives me incredible contrast and incredible photos
And when it gets a bit dark and you wanna do long exposure of my Sony A7R5
Today is more about finding the right composition.
The only problem is that Paris is packed after COVID.
I've never seen anything like it. It looks like,
all the tourists who didn't come for three years came this month.
I've never seen something like this in forty five years.
So finding a cool composition is gonna be hard.
Remember, composition is about telling a story.
So what you want to do is you want to take out anything that does not help your story
and you want to put in anything that helps telling your story.
But you wanna tell a story.
Why now we're just at the beginning of the golden hour,
and we're gonna shoot all the way down to the end of the blue hour.
So let's do it follow me in Montmartre.
And let's see if we can get some good compositions.
So the stairs we were walking on is actually my favorite photo
I've ever took in the last seventeen years.
Shot this photo about ten years ago.
It's actually the view from above,
and it's gonna be impossible to shoot tonight
because there's too much people.
Look at this view. We're gonna see if there is a moment where there's less people.
If you have a lot of people all the way down, it's okay.
The way I shot it was at the blue hour.
This is not the blue hour
and maybe they did fix them.
We'll come back and see.
Okay. Let's move a little further. I see a nice light there.
Maybe there's a photo.
My Leica was taking really blurry photos,
but because I had like on central focus, I like to use a spot focus
where I can really guide with the little,
you know, arrows there where I want to focus
so much people,
so much people but I have a couple of ideas follow me
So I'm shooting with both.
Gives different style.
This is film - Portra 400
and this is digital. I'm making a book about Paris only in film.
We'll see how it comes out. It's a nice project
and I love this one because it does really,
really nice black and white and color,
and it's very fast. I don't like to use the tripod.
I only use the tripod At night.
So right now it's too early and,
I'm looking for framing I might come back
and get this one at the blue hour because right now it looks okay,
but it doesn't look great when the blue hour is on.
Let's go.
So that's the famous John Wick stairs.
It's funny how a movie can change the name of the stairs,
like it's been a John Week's stairs for two months.
I've been here for forty five years.
Never heard about John Week.
But now it's John Wick stears.
I wanna see if I can go down to the garden and frame with some plants,
the Sacré-Coeur without too much people. Let's check it out.
So this is one photo. I have an idea.
But, there might be too much people.
Right now, I'm failing at most of my photos.
It's all the way down, going up,
but I'm gonna have to go down the stairs and go back up the stairs.
It's gonna be a good exercise.
So I'm just waiting for moments where there's nobody.
I love the leading line. I got it on film.
Now I'm gonna try to do the same thing in digital.
There are moments where there's nobody. I don't mind some people far away,
but nobody very close to me is better.
Yeah. Right now, there's a big flow of people, but sometimes there's no flow.
And it's like one or two seconds. You have to be there. I got it with,
with the M6 from 1984
I was fourteen years old when this camera was created
fourteen years old.
I'm fifty three a week ago.
So on this film, I'm not used to it.
So sometimes I'm taking a normal exposure,
an under exposure, and an over exposure
because I'm trying to learn that Portra 400 for my book.
Wow, I like the other.
Okay.
This is gonna be the final shot
little trick because I'm, gonna do a pano
and so I put my camera at 800 ISO,
1/20 second at 1.7
I'm gonna take a whole bunch of photos and I'm gonna stitch them in Lightroom,
plus I'm gonna try to shoot with film, but I think it's too dark.
Oh, also I'm using a two second timer, so I'm not touching my camera.
Okay. So I just wanna show you a really quick retouch of this photo.
That I just took using my book,
the Five Steps to Natural Drama, you can actually get a copy of the book.
If you click under this video,
and you're gonna get also two weeks of free coaching
with me if you're interested
So the first thing that I do, step number one of this five steps to
reach Natural Drama is open the shadows,
bring down the highlights, meaning doing the exposure
Open your shadows and bring down the highlights
you get a very faded low contrasty photo,
but then the next step is to the black point.
If you hold the option key and you click on the blacks,
what you see here in yellow and black is one hundred percent black.
There's no more information. Is pure blackness.
So the photo looks kinda weird, but now you reveal it with the white.
Check this out. Boom. I'm revealing with the white.
So now I got a correct exposure. You can see this is the before and this is the after.
So now let's tackle the white balance.
On this one, I kind of like the white balance. I think,
if I go to auto, yeah, kind of like auto.
Auto is basically the white balance from,
Lightroom, and then as shot is the white balance from Leica.
Maybe I like the Leica a little more. I'm just gonna add a bit more magenta.
Just a tad, maybe bring down a little bit blue,
but that's kinda cool. But I do wanna make the colors a little bit better.
I'm gonna do step number three of my Natural Drama Formula which is covered in my book
and I'm gonna go to the Hue Saturation and Luminance
and I'm gonna go to the Hue first and take this called the targeted tool.
I'm gonna click on that.
Click on the yellow part here and if you go up it becomes,
oh, I'm in the wrong section. Sorry.
I'm on Luminance
I have to go on Hue
If you go Hue and you click it,
you go up, It becomes very green.
If you go down,
it becomes very red.
But if you go down a little bit,
that yellow becomes a bit more interesting, bit more
then I'm gonna go to saturation.
Now usually on saturation, I just take the three warm colors,
which is red orange and yellow, and I boost them.
And Luminance, what I usually do is I take this tool here
Now, you have to understand that the color can be vivid
or not vivid that saturation or it can be bright or dark and that's Luminance.
So now if I click here on the sky and I go up,
the sky is brighter and if I go down, it's a bit darker.
I want to make it a bit darker. Okay.
Now check it out. You see that eyes here,
it's gonna show before and after the HSL
Not a huge change, but it's sometime especially on sunset.
It's very important, but you'll see that in my book.
Step number four is the most important of all
dodge and burn,
but before I dodge and burn, I always do my cropping.
And before I do my cropping, I always make the photo straight.
So I'm gonna go to the transform panel which is here,
and I'm gonna click on auto to make it straight,
and then I'm gonna go here to the crop tool,
and I'm going to make the 16x9
because I love 16x9
It's the resolution of my screen, and I think I wanna zoom in slightly more and boom.
Like that. Yeah. That's kinda cool.
I love that photo. Look at that rain. I got rained down like I never got rained on in my life.
It was absolutely crazy. Anyway,
so now what we're gonna do is a dodge and burn.
So I take this and I'm gonna go to linear gradient I wanna make
that sky just slightly a bit darker on top.
On the very top, I wanna make that darker because
I want people to look inside of the photo here.
But the problem when you do that, is that this becomes dark and this becomes dark.
What if there was a solution? Yes. There is.
It's incredible. What you do is you take the three dots,
you click here, go to intersect mask with select sky.
Three dots intersect mask with select sky and boom.
What that's gonna do is gonna make things brighter.
And now that mask is only on the sky.
Check it out. It's kinda cool. Now what I'm gonna do is my eyes go here.
See, the eyes goes to the brighter spot of the photo.
So I wanna make this darker, way darker.
So I'm gonna go here. And this photo,
when you take night photos, they don't need much retouching.
Just but, you know, I'm just gonna make this a bit darker
so that my eyes goes in the middle.
And then the last step I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go here take a Radial Gradient,
make a big gradient in the middle,
and maybe add a little bit of light just a little bit and maybe a little little bit.
Un petit peu
A little bit of minus clarity to make things glow.
I love minus clarity because around light it makes things glow.
Small thing. So check it out. Before the dodge and burn,
after the dodge and burn, I totally changed the way of,
you know, the lightning on the photo.
And, step number five is just the sharpening,
which I'll not gonna do on this photo.
You'll see it in the book if you get a chance to see a book,
but basically this is the before,
and this is the after.
I've been wanting to take this photo for seventeen years.
This is the first time I'm here.
This is a Place Du Tertre
One of the most visited place in Paris
because in heavy rain,
there's nobody, all the lights are on,
and I get this restaurant and the Sacre Coeur
it's incredible.
Perfect. Okay. Do something romantic. Yeah.
Rock and roll.