In this video I go to the woods to capture the colors of Autumn. AdoramaTV
AdoramaTV presents Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey.
Hello, I'm Gavin Hoey and you are watching AdoramaTV
Brought to you by Adorama the camera store that has everything for us Photographers
And today you join me in the woods for an autumnal 15-minute...
...photo challenge.
Well this is a fantastic time of year to come and take pictures, the colors are...
...changing on the trees from summer to autumn, a lovely day, it has a bit of hazy sunshine...
...around, perfect for some photos. Now I'm going to wander around the woods, but before I...
...head out into the woods, there is actually some shots here on the edge of the woods and...
...I've spotted something straight away that I wanted to photograph and it's...
...just little tiny mushroom down here. So I'm working today with my Olympus EM5 MkII...
and with the 12mm - 40mm lens. Now this lens isn't a...
...macro lens, it's kind of an everyday walk around lens.
So you are photographing something fairly small like this might be challenge - Lets see...
...how I do? I'm just going to come down. Now I like to get down to the same level of whatever I'm...
...photographing. So I'm gonna come in here frame up the shot. Now this lens can...
...actually focus quite close, which is really handy because one thing you find...
...with close-up photography the closer you move into your subject, the shallower...
....depth of field becomes, so whatever aperture you think you should use...
...always stop down the lens, use a smaller aperture, get a bit more depth of field.
Right let's see what else I can photograph.
There's lots of fern and bracken around and it's all changing color, and a bit just...
...sticking up here that's just asking to be photographed. I'm really going to try and get...
...in past all the brambles. So there's a couple ways I could shoot this, I could...
...put its symmetrical, through the frame, or I can just tilt the camera slightly, and have it diagonally...
...through the frame. And diagonals tend to be more powerful shapes so...
...potentially that's the best one but of course I'm going to take both and make ...
...that decision back on the computer.
Well it's what Autumn is all about, isn't it? The colors here are fantastic, I'm going to see if...
...I can get a couple of close up pictures of the the leaves. I'm going to shoot...
...this way I think, with the the light coming through the leaves, so they are...
...rear illuminated that really helps to emphasize the colors. I'm looking at the...
...background all the time. What's the background like? Is the background...
complimentary, is it the same color? A different color? Or is it is blown out white?
This looks like a perfect place for a panorama. A nice big wide sweep.
I've only got a 12mm wide angle lens which is 24mm equivalent on a full frame camera.
So it's not desperately wide so let's take a picture of my hand and then...
...lets just working out the exposure, so the exposure here is about a 1/30 sec f5/6.
I'm going to dive into manual mode we're going to go with ISO 640 I think, so...
...once that's dialled in, I can then just take a sweep of pictures...
...plan my route across, ok here we go, starting at one side...
...overlapping the pictures, round I go again then take a pic of my hand keep going.
You don't have to go far, there is a bit of water down here, almost a puddle rather than a stream...
But reflections as photographers reflections...
...are one of our staple things that we look for, and they can give great shots,
...the knack is to actually go in close. So I'm going to fill up the frame with this rather than going wide...
...lovely...
...I like this shot, I've got this lovely scene in front of me with a lovely long
vista of autumn colors coming through, but I want to compress everything down.
I want the background to come a bit closer, I can do that by changing the zoom of my...
...lens and my feet, so at the moment I'm on about 18mm so nearly 35mm...
...equivalent on a full frame camera. If I zoom into 80mm...
...which is 40mm on this lens, I'll need to walk backwards to get the same...
...shot, and that will gives me the compression. If you want to find out more about lens...
...compression check out my previous videoon the Adorama Learning Centre.
Pretty much the same framing an that just helps to compress everything down a little bit...
...and the height at which you shoot makes a difference as well, so if I get down a bit...
...lower. I emphasize the fore-ground a little bit more and if I really get down low by taking the camera...
...off and making use of the flip screen on the Olympus here, well - things start to get...
...very interesting when you come down here.
And if I change the depth of field by adjusting aperture.
That's really good. Now I reckon we're nearly done, we're pretty much out of time for...
...our 15 minute challenge just one thing missing in this shot. So the thing I...
...needed was Sam, who's normally behind the cameras, but I asked her to walk into the...
...scene. Well then I start to get a human interest in this shot and that's the...
...only thing I think I'm missing from this fifteen-minute challenge.
Well that was a really great walk and a wonderful challenge. The colors were fantastic.
Right up until last set of pictures .
Maybe I was a little bit early maybe a week or so early, but the autumn colors just...
...weren't quite there, so that's where Photoshop's going to really come in to help.
Let's have a look. So I've got the picture I want to edit on screen and is the one of them...
...walking away of course as you can see the colours, well they're not as warm as...
...they really want to be. At least not to my taste so I jumped over to the HSL...
...grayscale tab here in Adobe Camera Raw and of course you'll find the same thing...
...in Lightroom 2. I'm gonna work on the Hue tab which allow me to change the...
...colors in this shot. There really is only three colors, there's some greens, some yellows and some...
...oranges. So if I come down to the greens first I can get the green slider and...
...movie either left or right. If I go to the right you'll be able to see exactly...
...what's going to happen, I'm affecting that part of the the image but I want to make...
...them more yellow, so I'm going to bring them to the left, and that's going to really make...
...them feel a little bit later in the season. Same with the yellows, let's...
...get those, again I could go to the right and make them more green but if I go to...
...the left...
...they become more orange. And that is really where I want to be I want those...
...autumn colors, those warm tones to come through like that. Now they were actually...
...some oranges in this shot the police at the front, but they were definitely orange.
If I get the oranges I can move that and they're going to become more red. Now you can...
...figure out what's happening by looking at what's gone on with the colors, the...
...greens have become more yellow, the yellows have become more orange and...
...orange has become red. Basically when you move the sliders to the left you move...
...the colors one layer up. And I love what's going on here but I'm not so keen...
...on this red on the floor. This is looking a little bit too fairytale maybe now, so then...
...let me open up that image, what I'm going to do is to reprocess that exact same...
...raw file a second time, so I go up to file, open recent and it should be the one at the...
...top. I can jump over to the HSL- grayscale and this time I'm just going...
...to change the oranges. Note everything is exactly as it was before, that's one of the...
...joys of raw I'm going to bring oranges down slightly, so the floor is less intense...
...but of course so is the actual leaves and you may prefer that but I actually...
...like this really strong red foliage at the front. So all I need to do now is...
...just to combine these two images together and because it's the same raw...
...file just process twice, it should fit perfectly together when I put one on top...
...of the other. So let's come up to select it and it and copy go back to the main...
...image, edit and paste and that puts the two images on top of each other as...
...layers and if I add a layer mask, layer, layer mask, reveal all, and I got myself...
...a paintbrush here. Paint with black, big black brush here we go I can bring the reds...
...through the leaves but I don't touch the leaves on the floor. Then they'll stay...
...that more muted tone that I chose. There you go, and that gives me the best of both...
...images and what I really like is some lovely rays of light coming through on...
...this misty, end of season morning but I was about a week early for that as well so I...
...missed and rays of light again using Photoshop.
To add them in, I need a new empty layer so let's go to layer, new and layer, and...
...I'm going to use a paintbrush for this lets choose the color of my brush and I'm going to change...
...my foreground color, well it's black at the moment, but if I click on that black and choose a...
...color from in the image and brightening up a little bit, we'll go for a yellowy color like...
...that, and then the actual brushes themselves to make the rays of light I...
...need to download from the Internet.
Now fortunately they're ready to go right here on my website and I'll put a...
...link in the description below, they are completely free, head over download them, away you...
...go. When you download them you will need to unzip them...
...once unzipped they're going to look like that or something similar to that maybe with...
...the word brush on it instead and you just get your unzipped brushes and drag them and...
...drop them into Photoshop, now don't drop them onto the image. Drop them onto the...
...bar above the images that has the titles of your photos and that will load your...
...brand new brushes in so I've got my brushes they should be right here. There they...
...are and I'm going to go with the second one in, and his click in the middle of the...
...image like that so that adds in my brushes but I don't really want them...
...just there, fortunately I have done this on its own layer which means I can use...
...free-transform, Control T, command T on a Mac...
...and I can rotate it around and put it wherever I like, like that and...
...sort of stretch them out, so we have some rays of light, right click inside to...
...distort stretch them up, stretch them down and and so on. So it's pretty good...
...I'm happy with that, I think I want to just blend in a little bit better, so let's...
...just swap out for an ordinary shaped paintbrush and we will put a layer mask on...
...here again just like before and bring the brush down in size and opacity.
Actually let's bring that down cause that really helps and then we will just paint out any edges...
...and some smaller bits in here just to blend this in...
...and this is where it really makes the effect come alive...
...when you just knock out few bits here and there and that just helps to make that...
...whole ray of light effect really work well so there you go there is my Autumn...
...seasonal picture and I think that looks really great!
Well there you go 15 minutes goes by really quickly especially when you're...
...outside on a day like today in conditions like this...
...absolutely great fun doing photography today. Now if you want to see more videos...
...from myself and the other amazing presenters here on the Adorama TV...
...you know what you got to do you got to click on the subscribe button...
I'm Gavin Hoey thanks for watching.
Do you want great looking prints at low costs...
...be sure to visit our easy to use online printing service Adorama pix as professionals to treat...
...your images with the utmost care that you can count on...
...for a quick turnaround on photos cards or albums use Adorama Pix