Hi this is Joe McNally for Adorama TV
and I'm gonna talk to you today about how one very simple photograph
can involve numerous photographic lessons. Adorama TV presents
photo on the go with Joe McNally where you'll go behind the scenes to see how great
photos are made
I'm gonna show you a couple pictures
I shot available light in Mexico
of Mexican cowboys who are known down there as Chara's
and you know I'm not really aware this stuff I think
you know a lot of photographers look at pictures later and all of a sudden realize
what happened in the field I mean it's just a natural process
as you're moving and shooting in the field you don't absolutely
overtly think about everything that you're doing
at least I don't anyway but what's involved in these pictures quite obviously is
first and foremost color theory
okay the fact that warm colors resonate well with cool colors
hence the early morning what we refer to as Golden Hour
which occurs in very early morning and very late afternoon in parts to the
scene a very golden warm glow
up front in the foreground but what's in my background a very clean and wonderful
blue sky
so that warmth for the portrait of the cowboy
works well with that cool background also what's going on here
is rule of thirds are old friend
compositionally rule of thirds if you notice in both these photographs
I'm employing rule of thirds and
this is what I say I'm not completely aware of it, it's just the way I've been
schooled
the way I see to kinda dynamically balance or
if you will off balance the frame so in one instance
the Cowboys over in this area rule of thirds
the rest to the area is clean blue sky alright simple
and graphic
in the other picture there's a foreground element and a background
element so there's another photographic lesson
anchor your picture with an item of interest that's way up front in the
picture
but also have an item of interest that's anchoring your background
again though, in this instance. I'll just write right over this
on the rule of thirds again subject or topic
the Cowboys hands are here the out-of-focus
cowboy is back in here so again bouncing back and forth
between rule of thirds composition
foreground background action and also color theory
warm resonating with cool. I've been schooled like this my whole career
because I'm a publications photographer
one of the things that I've always been trained to avoid
especially shooting for magazine like a National Geographic which is a perfect
bound magazine that's kinda
thick. When you open that magazine there's a thing called the gutter
and if you drop an item of interest right in the middle of your photograph
the art director of the magazine will have issues with you why
because when you open that magazine you lose a certain percentage of information
in what's called the fold or the gutter and so I've been trained very
rigorously since the first time I started shooting for newspapers and wire
services
to use the rule of thirds so much so that has just become internalized and I
don't even think about it
but there you go available light picture these were shot minutes apart
okay early morning light warm up front cool in the back
rule of thirds avoidance of the gutter
and foreground background action. Hi Joe McNally here for Adorama
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completing the simplicity of the scene I used a lens that is just your basic
standard lens that we all grew up with or have become familiar as a
quote-unquote normal lens
I shot both these pictures with a 50 this is a very fast 50 it's a f1.4
very very sharp okay and I didn't use the speed of the lens in this
I actually went for more of a middle or kinda close down f stop. I was around
f8 f9 for these pictures because I did want some depth of field
to cover the Cowboys face and I also wanted a bit of depth of field so the
background cowboy in the second picture didn't go to radically out-of-focus
but this is a very simple very affordable lens
and it approximates your normal vision and I
oftentimes just thrown in my bag it's a wonderful thing to have out there
when you're just wondering looking for photographs
This is Joe McNally for Adorama TV
talking to you about simple lessons involved with simple pictures
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