- Bonjour mesdames et messieurs.
In this episode I wanna show you how I got this photo
in Montreal and finding the right light
and finding the right composition.
But, before we get started, I wanna show you
the winner of my little challenge
that I did back a few weeks ago.
The challenge was that I gave a photo
with a sky to be replaced.
And the winner is my friend, mc4photography from Morocco.
You will find the link of his Instagram below this video.
He has 2,429 followers on Instagram.
He's from Morocco.
Future auditor, photographer, buying a camera
doesn't make you a photographer.
Check out his work, it's really cool
and I love what he did with my photo.
I gave him a raw file, it had some sky.
He did a very dark dramatic look but it looks so good.
So good that he was really the one that I picked.
So very well done for mc4photography.
All right, now back on today's topic.
I'm here in Lightroom and that's the photo
that I have picked, but before I came to this,
let me tell you a little story
of my little photo walk and maybe it will inspire you
for finding the right composition.
So here I am in Lightroom.
I'm gonna show you from the start what I did.
And I started off...
I usually start my photo walks around, I wanna say,
the sunset was around 9:00 so around 8:00.
So I started off at Candelon Rage in Montreal
and I thought, wow, just doing some location scouting
about an hour before sunset, so it was not the right light.
But first I'm looking for ideas to shoot.
This could be cool, great framing, there's a lot of people,
maybe with the right light it can be cool.
I walked all around.
First of all what I do is I try to take some photos
of boring light to see how it's gonna go.
And trying to find the right composition,
it started to rain so I had a big raindrop here.
I thought I love the sun there but then
the rest of the rest of the composition was boring;
cars, a bit of a building, nothing special to show.
So then I moved on, I went back to
that little place here on Candelon Rage.
It really reminds me of the Institute of France
in Paris, a beautiful building.
And there was a lot of people so I had this idea
of well maybe if I underexpose the photo,
let me put it up here so you could see,
and if I underexpose the photo,
I'm gonna boost it wide so you can see a little bit more
what's going on here, and bring down the highlights.
All right, I said, why not this but I can try
getting rid of all the people in Photoshop.
I took multiple shots of the photo;
and there is tutorials that I did
on the subject How to Get Rid of Tourists
where you take multiple shots.
Check it out, I'm gonna put the link below the video.
I tried different framing with little panos.
You see how much I underexpose, because really,
I love the drama look and I really wanna make sure
that I get all this clouds there, and get really
the details of the cloud.
That's really what I'm going for.
But again the light was kind of boring
so I said okay, I would never publish
a photo like this just because the light
is really boring and there's too much people.
So then I found a rooftop.
I went into the walking street that was there
and I found a rooftop and I'm like,
"Oh, this I so cool, a rooftop."
And let me retouch this photo really quick,
open up the shadows, open up the wide
so you see a little bit more what's going on.
The blacks...
And I would definitely lower the sky here
with exposure, maybe add some magenta a bit
in the sky, I don't know why.
I love magenta.
And it's kind of nice but I'm like,
"Oh, the light here is nice
but the bottom is kind of boring."
So all right, I'm gonna hang around
on the rooftop and wait.
And then I discovered that
behind the rooftop was a cool view.
Oh no, that's the back view I have from the rooftop.
Anyway so what I did then, I waited for the light,
and I said I'm gonna try different panoramas.
So I started doing little panoramas
but the clouds were kind of all right
but the light was not that cool.
It was not that cool because the sunset was not there.
Then I realized, and I looked back
and I saw this view, that's the back view.
I'm like, "Ooh! I like this view."
Right now it's very dark but maybe it's gonna
be more interesting when the light comes on.
So anyways, while I was waiting I was taking
different panoramas of this view from the rooftop,
waiting for the light, trying to see if there is
some cool panos that I can make.
I was even testing the panorama
possibilities of the Sony a7S,
you can do panoramas directly in camera.
And now I'm like, "Yeah, it's a jpeg.
"It makes a jpeg, I don't like jpegs."
So I'm not gonna use that option.
And then it started to get really dark.
So when it gets dark, I said, "Okay, I need
to wait for the city lights to come on."
So let me reset this one.
So now the city lights starts coming on.
So I kind of like that, okay, open up
the shadows, boost the whites, add some contrast,
some vibrance, some saturation, and change
the white balance to shade, add a bit of magenta.
That's too much magenta, let's lower this
'cause there's a lot of magenta around sunset.
And maybe add even...
Maybe a little bit of clarity
and a little bit more vibrance,
and lower the sky, the sky is too bright.
And I'm like, "Yeah, why not, it's kind of cool."
It's not a bad photo but it's, I don't know.
It just doesn't bring emotion to me.
It doesn't do justice me.
So I tried with the same retouching to go
into portrait mode a little bit later on.
And it's all right, it's a decent photo,
but again, I was not blown away.
And then I just kept on shooting this,
waiting for the light to go darker, darker.
And by the way, I was shooting by hand
so look at my settings.
I always try to go at 1/30th per second
with a two second timer.
So I press on, it goes one, two (two finger snaps)
and then 1/30th of a second, usually
with a five axis stabilizer in Sony
I get a very sharp photo, I know that.
So then I was at 6.3 ISO 400
and the ISO in this camera is pretty good.
So then I just waited for the light to come down.
I even started doing HDR while I was waiting.
I was starting HDR of that view there
and let me show you some of the photos that I got.
For this one, the light really started coming on.
And it's an okay view but, I don't know,
I was not really blown away.
I was not really blown away by that view.
I didn't like the idea of this rooftop here.
I like the walking street makes a leading line,
but, I don't know.
I was not completely satisfied.
This is probably one of the best view,
and not even because there's too much
rooftop here as a foreground element.
So then I zoomed in a lot.
So that's kind of better.
So I went at 45mm, I kind of zoomed in.
I was at 1/15th of a second F4 ISO 500.
And look at it, it is sharp.
Because again of the subsidization in the Sony.
And you will see that 500 is not such a big deal.
And again, I'm just showing you a little bit
of what the photo looks like.
Boom, boom, boom.
Why not, it could be an okay shot.
I like that better, there's less rooftop there.
Maybe let's add a bit of thing,
and let's go maybe add a little bit of magenta.
I don't know why, I have no idea why I'm doing this.
And yeah, this one is kinda cool.
That's probably one of the best shot that I got;
the walking street.
The photo's not straight so you know what?
I'm gonna make it straight, I'm actually
gonna crop here so that we have less
of that rooftop here.
That's kind of annoying.
And I cropped it wrong, of course.
You know whenever you do live video things happens.
Okay, that's pretty much straight.
And all right, that's kind of like
the best shot that I got.
But the clouds are gone now so the light
is kind of cool from the bottom.
I like, the composition is all right.
So anyways, I kept on shooting this,
shooting this, and here's a couple of more
that I did retouched that night with more contrast.
Get more, as you get into the night you get more contrast.
Now look at the setting on this one.
This one was my final settings, I believe.
1/30th of a second, I went back to 1/30th
of a second because 1/15 I had a few
blurry shot at F4 ISO 100.
Now I'm shooting this with a Sony a7S.
Sony a7S because I broke my Sony 7r2
which is on repair and so it's not,
it doesn't have a lot of pixel.
But look at 1000 ISO, you can hardly see any noise.
It's actually pretty crazy what you get.
Let me see, maybe I did some noise reduction on this one.
I didn't even do noise reduction and I'm 1000 ISO
and I don't see any noise.
Pretty crazy for a camera.
Sony a7S is the best noise camera on the planet.
Finally, so I wanted to go back home
and I turn around and I find a little pass
down the stairs and I come to this.
And I'm like, "Oh my gosh!"
This view, that's how it looked like,
now that's the retouched photo, and let me show you,
that's the non-retouched photo.
Actually not, it's not.
I'm gonna right click, I'm gonna create a virtual copy
of this one and I'm gonna reset it.
So I'll show you how I did that.
So I tried many things.
I loved the view because there was
blue hour, there were some clouds up there.
Shot this at 1/30th second F4 ISO 200.
This time ISO 200 so there's a probably bit of noise.
But let's check this out.
Check this out!
So I think what I did is I put up a shadows,
and you see how underexposed the photo is?
But you open the shadows and you boost the white
and you don't get that much noise.
I did a bit of black, a little bit of contrast,
I believe, and the highlights, I think
the highlights may be...
Let me see, I can always take my reference photo
and I see, so I boost the exposure,
add a lot of contrast, didn't touch
the highlights, shadows, black and minus clarity.
Wow!
Okay, so highlights, I did about this.
And I boosted a little bit.
And then let me see, what was the white balance that I did?
729251, so it's 7292...
It's probably around shade, no shade
and a little bit of magenta, something like this.
Okay, but to really make the photos
go to the next level, first of all,
I'm gonna lower the exposure of the sky here,
by lowering the exposure, not that much,
just a little bit.
And what I did also is probably...
Yeah, I took a brush, I like that,
I took a brush and on this brush
I added an exposure and a bit of yellow,
and I just bring back even more light here.
Here, and I'm kind of overdoing it.
But here, here, and here, and here
adding some yellow, maybe a little bit
of magenta, a bit of clarity.
And not so much clarity and not so much exposure.
But just bring it back a little bit.
The glow from the city can do a long...
Something pretty good.
Then I added a lot of contrast, a bit
of vibrance and saturation.
And I love this photo!
You know what it reminds me?
It reminds me the comic books from...
I was reading, in the 80s I was reading a lot of Spiderman.
The view from Spiderman in New York.
You can see that he's gonna jump from the buildings.
It just reminds me, this sort of comic book look.
Let's see in here if I did something different.
Yeah, I cropped the photo a bit more,
and I did minus clarity.
So I did an overall minus clarity
do give it a more natural result
and I cropped a little bit of the rooftop here,
I think, a little it of the rooftop.
Something to make it a little bit more panorama,
something like that, yeah.
And I also made this part
of the rooftop a little bit darker.
See that part here?
You can go to exposure, it's gonna put
everything after zero a little darker.
And it's funny, at the end of the day,
that was really my favorite photo.
Actually gonna give you this photo
as part of the wall file so you can compare on.
Please do not set it, just play around
with it so you can see.
But now let's look at the noise
because it was shot by hand at 2000 ISO
so you can hardly see any noise here even at 2000 ISO.
This Sony a7S is crazy.
But it has a bit of noise.
So what I usually do when there is noise like this,
I go around 20,
30 on noise reduction.
And then I put my sharper around 70,
so 70 plus 30 makes 100.
I always make sure that my noise
and my sharpening adds up to 100.
Then I'm gonna do my masking.
I'm gonna hold on it, masking.
And I'm gonna do my masking, anything
which is not gonna get sharpened.
I don't wanna sharpen anything from the sky
so I just wanna sharpen the edge.
So now I got noise reduction
and you can hardly see any noise.
And it's a pretty cool shot.
I really like it.
So that was my best photo of the day.
Yeah, that was my best photo of the day.
At the end of the day that's really
the one that I liked the most.
And it's funny, you go for shooting
the walking street, you end up
taking a photo from the back of the building.
But voila, that was my adventure here in Montreal.
I'm gonna do a little photo op tonight on the Fourth of July
at 8:00 at the Hotel de Ville.
All right, so I want to also to make a little game with you.
I'm gonna give you the raw photo of this.
You saw how I retouched it, this is the original raw file.
This is how I retouched it.
And I'm gonna give you the raw file,
you can download it with the link under this video.
And then all you have to do
is retouch it like you want,
post it on, you can place on Facebook
or Instagram and just tag @photoserge
in the photo so that I can see it,
I can see your retouching.
Then, please write follow@photoserge to see
if my photo wins #photosergemontreal.
So this way other people can follow me
but also if you use the #photosergemontreal
you can see what everybody else is doing
with the same photo.
And the winner, mesdames et messieurs,
is gonna be in my newsletter, which is
what mc4photography is gonna be into,
he's gonna be in my newsletter and is going to be...
Which is going to a lot of people
and all over my social media.
So you can potentially reach hundreds
of thousands people with your Instagram account
or your website if you win, 'cause I will
also promote your website if you want to.
So voila, just download the raw file,
you do your own retouching, post it on Instagram,
don't forget the little instruction here.
Tag me @photoserge, follow @photoserge to see
if my photo wins, #photosergemontreal so you can see
what everybody else is doing and I will see you
in another video, mesdames et messieurs.