- Bonjour mesdames and messieurs.
Did it ever happen to you
where you went to an amazing place, you know,
you had your camera out, you took some photos,
and you came home and you were disappointed
by the result that you got?
Well, no more, I'm going to give you
my 10 best rule for shooting epic landscapes.
(dramatic music)
All right guys, a couple of days before,
I was in this amazing beach at Pacific City.
I'm gonna use this as an example to show you
how I apply my 10 rules for having epic landscape.
Here is the 10 rules.
So of course you have to go somewhere awesome.
I as at Pacific City in Oregon.
Find the right composition during the day.
So here I am on the beach, with my iPhone,
and what I do is during the daylight,
I look for rocks, or for leading lines,
you know, where I can see
something is going to be interesting.
Balance the right foreground elements.
Well you see here, I found this amazing puddle of water
that's very smooths.
You want it not too big, not too small.
In this case pretty big,
but it really worked out really well.
Here I'm like looking at this rocks,
if I go down, the rock gets mixed up
with the big rock at the back.
So I go up and it's much better.
That's a leading line, that little pass of water.
You know, this little hole is a great leading line here.
It really is cool, look at that.
And this was the best thing that I could find.
It looked like a waterfall,
because there was a crack between the rocks,
and when the water was going away,
it was giving me an amazing Niagara Fall
kind of waterfall looking, different angles of it.
That's probably the biggest mistake I see people do.
Look at this, it's awful to have sand
with all the footsteps, and all the dirt,
as a foreground image, it's boring, it's awful.
Shooting manually is obvious
because you get the perfect exposure,
you can retouch one photo and synchronize
on all your photos in Lightroom, amazing.
Using a tripod with self timer is the way to go
if you wanna make sure your photo is completely sharp.
Now always focus on the middle ground.
The middle ground here is the rock.
I was always manual focus on the rock, or on the cliff.
Playing with long exposure is an obvious,
especially at sea.
I find that half a second is the best for waves.
Slightly underexpose your photos.
You see how my photo is a little dark,
it's because I wanna get,
it's because I wanna get everything from the sun.
All right, so after the rules,
let me share the final result that I got.
I got this photo which I really like,
you know, with the leading line,
and you know, the foreground.
You know, imagine I had this as the foreground,
it would be awful.
Now I have this nice water with a little pass
to this beautiful rock, you know.
This is some of the early on, as the sun was getting down,
I was really getting this leading lines
into the rock, having the long exposure effect.
The light was still not great,
so then I decided to retouch a different image,
I'm actually gonna show you this full retouch,
if you say until the end.
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But let's get back to this.
So in this one, you know, the sunset was not out yet,
so I got the leading lines,
I got the nice slides, I'm kind of missing some warms,
but I got the long exposure, I really like this one.
The next one is, so for this photo,
I came back to this amazing,
you know, sort of waterfall trail,
and the tide was coming back up,
so the water was getting really higher and higher,
so I had my camera strapped on my neck,
and I was really holding it.
I was really afraid that salt water
would get into the water, so I had to give up.
I couldn't really stay, and there was really, really
a warm and hot, so I did
is I found some other nice foreground on this,
like this one, you know, with the little puddles,
and you see a quiet puddle is always more powerful
than a puddle with wave.
Because a quiet puddle like this
is really nice, it's very calm.
You can see here the, we can see very well
the clouds in the water, it's amazing.
And this is another one, you know,
more for Instagram four by five format,
and this is the last one that I took,
but it was getting a little too dark.
So anyways, foreground, middle ground and background,
leading lines, is everything in epic landscapes.
So let me show you how I retouched,
well first this one, so this is the one that I did,
so if you look at my settings,
I was very blue, I'm just looking at my settings,
to recreate it, I see what I did.
I see what I did, so this is the RAW file,
un-retouched guys.
I open up the shadows, did some whites,
I crushed down the blacks,
I'm gonna all the way my highlights,
and I put a lot of blue into it, and a lot of magenta.
When you add blue and magenta, you get a sort of like
really nice blue that I really like.
Let's see here, sort of purple.
So 5434 and 36, so yeah it was actually warmer.
5434 and 36, okay, I underexpose the photo,
I added a lot of contrast.
On this one I think I did a bit of minus clarity,
I added some vibrance, and saturation.
But of course I use my local settings here,
I click and drag, and I make sure
that I double click on effects
so everything comes down to zero,
and then I lower my exposure.
And now that happens on a gradient.
And what I did there also is I took a brush,
and you have to understand something in photography
is that the eyes goes to the widest part of the photo,
so what do I do?
I take a little brush, I add some exposure,
and I brush here, the leading line.
Now, okay, on this one it was too much
so I'm gonna delete it, I'm gonna go back it down,
flowing into here on 80, and do it again.
You see the difference, when it's flowing into on 80,
it's just much more invisible.
Of course I'm gonna lower this,
so I'm gonna make this brighter.
I want people to look here,
and eventually here, 'cause it's kinda cool.
Way too much, so I usually back it down around 0.50
when I brush, that's kind of like my magic number.
But then, that's not all, I click new,
and I go the other way,
and I'm like oh, I don't want people to look at that,
so I'm gonna make this darker,
and this darker, and maybe this darker,
'cause I think that's kind of not nice, you know.
I'm trying to sort of block the light,
and have people just look where I want them to look,
you know, that's the trick.
Sometime what I do also I add a little circle here,
and I invert it, I boost the exposure,
boost the yellow, a little bit not too much,
and the magenta, but the problem you see,
it's lighting the rock, and it's lighting that cliff here.
If only there was a solution.
It's called luminosity masking.
Luminosity masking in Lightroom is awesome.
All you have to do is you take the range mask off,
go to luminance, and go here on the right,
and it's gonna create a mask,
and it's gonna basically take this whole circle,
and make it go behind the rocks, which is really cool.
So that's roughly how I did,
it's not exactly how I did this one,
but you know, this one, or this one I desaturated a lot.
I went like very contrast, and desaturated,
that's totally possible.
Just lower the vibrance and saturation, not so much.
On this one I added a bit of split toning,
just to give it a look,
because when I don't like colors in photography,
I either give it a local split toning,
or I make it black and white.
I just, I'm obsessed with interesting colors,
so how do we go about this?
Well, you just go here to split toning,
and I basically took some kind of blue,
so you first pick the color,
higher you go, more saturated it's going to be.
And this color goes only in the shadows, the dark places.
So not that saturated, just a little bit of saturation here.
And then usually what I do is take the highlights,
so the brightest part of the photo,
and I add some warms to it.
It's just like a little, and so if you go crazy,
you can go down, and then you can adjust even more here,
you know, if you think it's too saturated,
you can lower the saturation here and there.
And so by desaturating your photo,
by making it almost black and white,
and then giving back some colors with this split toning,
you get that effect.
Now I'm gonna show you how I retouched my nicest photo
which is this one, that's the final result,
and so what I did here,
it's very easy when you truly have lots of nice colors
because the RAW file is just gonna make it blow away.
So I bring on the highlights, I open the shadows,
I do my whites and my blacks.
And on this one, I added a lotta magenta,
and I kept it blue.
But you see right away the colors are coming out,
because it's hidden in the RAW file.
Okay, all I have to do is add contrast,
and maybe a little bit of minus clarity.
Minus clarity, why do I minus clarity?
Because sometime when you open up the shadows,
and bring on the highlights,
you can get some halo effect in your photo.
By minusing the clarity, this goes away,
and you have a much more natural, natural result.
That's the whole idea.
Okay, I am then going to boost the exposure.
I like to boost the exposure, and then remake it dark
with gradients, I don't know, that's just what I do.
So another gradient here,
just to make it like this, and another gradient there.
You know, the idea of gradients is that again,
the eyes goes to the brightest spot in the photo,
so inside the photo, and for that
you need to make some brighter spot.
Okay now, I'm gonna take a little brush,
and I'm just gonna highlight, again, always do it,
it's called dodge and burning,
I'm gonna dodge, so right on dodging,
dodging the line means making it brighter.
It comes from old film practice,
where we were using, basically you were projecting
the negative onto a positive paper,
and the longer you would project,
the more it would burn the paper, make it darker,
more contrasty, and they would take a spoon,
and they would dodge the light.
So the light wouldn't go on the paper,
so wherever they were dodging the light,
it would make it brighter.
That's, and thus, the definition of dodging and burning,
making it brighter and darker.
And that's where you, guy, that is probably the one thing
that I made the most money on, in my life,
is dodge and burning, on intradesign, on portrait,
on landscapes, that's how I got into galleries,
that's how I got so many things
because my photo had this sort of je ne sais quoi,
which came from dodge and burning.
Dodge and burning can go a long way.
But one good rule is try not to go over .5.
So that's roughly what I did on this last one.
So that was amazing, Oregon Pacific City is beautiful.
Now guys, I came up with my best course ever,
ever, and ever, here's a little presentation.
Bonjour mesdames and messieurs,
I'm really happy to announce you
that I have a new course coming here
called the "Fine Art Masterclass Course".
This is seven years in the making,
actually even more if you take into account
when I shot the photos,
but basically the idea of this course
is I'm gonna show you all the best photos
of the six coffee table books that I've published
over the last seven years.
We are gonna start with the "Paris" book, black and white.
I'm gonna show you some of my best shot,
like this Arc de Triomphe photo that I retouched
with Aurora HDR and Lightroom.
This crazy panorama of the Eiffel Tower,
that is my most sold panorama
of the Eiffel Tower in galleries.
Then we're gonna do the "New York" book.
On the "New York" book I'm gonna show you so many project.
This beautiful black and white of Brooklyn,
a metro station in black and white.
I'm gonna shoot the back cover of the book
with this photo of Brooklyn,
and I'm gonna show you color replacement
with black and white of this foggy photo
of the Manhattan Bridge.
Then we're gonna go to the "Venice" book,
and on the "Venice" book,
I'm gonna show you so many projects from carnival shots,
to extreme long exposures,
to some of my most iconic photos of Venice,
before and afters.
Including vertoramas, including long exposure with filters,
everything, so many projects in Venice.
Then we're gonna go to the "Los Angeles" color book,
where I'm gonna show you lots of projects.
Beverly Hills, colorful.
I'm gonna show you how I did the cover of my book,
which is not only the cover of book,
but it's also the cover
of the State of California Magazine.
I'm gonna show you some project from Venice Beach,
some panoramas in downtown,
some photos from the Malibu State Park.
In all, you've got over 25 different projects.
Then we're gonna go to "New York",
an I'm gonna show you how I made the cover
of my new "New York" book, many projects,
Central Park at fall.
I'm gonna show you this amazing photo of Central Park,
how to shoot at night, how to create
really interesting vertoramas, in the city.
Last, but not least, we're gonna do my "Paris" book,
where I'm gonna show you some crazy projects,
including the cover, which was a very hard project,
including my most famous HDR photo of the Eiffel Tower,
including crazy HDR panoramas,
with different kind of colors,
and last but not least, day to night kind of photography.
I'm gonna teach you everything you need to know
in this course, including a business class
on how to get a better exposure in the media,
how to get published in magazines,
how to get book deals, and how to get into galleries.
So if you wanna take your photography to the next level,
if there's only one course you wanna buy from me,
that is the "Fine Art Masterclass Course".
Not knowing how to shoot,
and knowing Lightroom and Photoshop
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I really wanna help you to get to the next level.
This is a perfect course for you.
I'm sure you're gonna love it,
it's gonna take your photography to the next level.