Jay: Do you know what the best camera is when you come on a great photograph?
It's the one you have in your hand.
And unfortunately, all of us have a camera on our phone in our hand most of the time.
So, it's crazy not to understand how to take your phone and make it into a better tool,
a better camera than just pointing and shooting.
And we're gonna go through some principles that will teach you how to do that, to give
you some tools to make some better pictures on your iPhone or your smartphone using an
app VSCO or the portrait mode on your iPhone.
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So get over to theslantedlens.com and buy our business downloads.
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today.
Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan.
Today on "The Slanted Lens" we're downtown here at the Disney Concert Hall.
We shot down here a lot.
I've got Jenny here with me.
She's fabulous.
We're gonna take some pictures with her iPhone on a new app called VSCO.
I'm using VSCO because it's a free app, it's a great place to start.
It starts to give you a control of your phone.
It helps turn your phone into a camera not just something you point-and-shoot.
That's what you want, the ability to create better color because you have white balance
capabilities.
You've got a shutter so you can change the shutter so you can blur or you can freeze
a shutter better.
It gives you more control over your image.
Let's look at seven design principles that will really help your images look so much
better using leading lines.
Using the rule of thirds.
Look for natural light.
Use strong negative space.
Use that frame within the frame, good for great color contrast, and last of all, great
texture.
So, let's relate these seven design principles to their app we have on our phone.
I'll use a few shots also in the portrait mode in the actual camera on the iPhone because
I love that because it has a shallow depth of field and I like that look as well.
The reason we chose these seven principles is not because they just relate to the iPhone,
but because your iPhone you're shooting that smaller format and most people shoot very
busy pictures.
We want you to simplify your pictures, make them more design-oriented.
So, let's look at these seven design principles using the app VSCO on our iPhone or your smartphone.
Let's get started see what we can do.
So, leading lines just give you that they lead it into your subject matter or they can
converge on your subject matter.
They just give you a strong design element that makes your image a lot more interesting.
These are simple leading lines we don't want to be very busy we want just be a very simple
line that leads us into our subject matter.
So, I let those lines just kind of come right across your head here so I'm gonna get in
really tight let those lines gonna come right and almost dissect your head.
Even the sidewalk is working really well so look past me here Jenna, like in there.
There you go.
So, those lean lines are supposed to direct the viewer to my subject matter.
I like those leading lines to come in from the camera left side and come up to my viewer
because that's a natural kind of progression.
You look from left to right so those lines kind of sweep in from the left and come to
my view, to my subject matter on the right.
I like that.
You can push against that natural viewing tendency, but I don't think it flows as nicely
to go from right to left, but those leading light should lead us into our subject matter.
It's a strong design concept to get your subject matter to the right or the left of the frame
that's rule of thirds.
Get them in one of those corners.
Don't center your subject matter all the time.
Get them over in the corner.
It's much more interesting.
And those leading lines are gonna push people right back to your subject matter.
That's the kind of thing we want.
Okay.
So, I've got Jenna right in the middle of my frame here.
I've got leading lines all over the place but they're not leading us anywhere when I
center her like this.
But if I push her over the left, I have her look over her right shoulder just out a little
bit.
Not that much, Jenna.
Come back just a little more to me there you go right in there.
Now, I've got those leading lines I've got to hurt my upper right hand corner.
They lead into her face she looks back it pushes us back to the beginning of the viewing
experience once again.
On the app, you can click on it to give you the rule of thirds.
It gives you the cross marks to could help you understand where to put your subject matter,
and to design the frame a little better.
I think that's a great thing to turn on and to use.
So, this is really pretty natural light.
I mean, we got the sun.
It's a little hard on her face but it's starting to get just on that building there so starting
to soften a little bit.
It's also bouncing out of that building the background giving me a rim on her hair, which
looks wonderful.
So, I've got this big sky soft light here natural light.
I want my subject to be looking that direction.
If I turn her around, she's gonna be completely silhouetted in shadow.
I want her looking into that soft light because right now it's soft enough that it gives me
a really beautiful luminosity on her face, but doesn't overpower her, doesn't create
heavy shadows, just really, really pretty.
So, a lot of this is time of day.
The sun is low.
It's just beautiful magic hour, but the reality is, if you look around even at sun straight
up in the sky ,you can find a beautiful pool of light where it's bouncing off from a building,
where in the shade and it's reflecting back in.
You can find natural beautiful light everywhere you go.
So, you can work on that thought natural occurring light is what we're after.
So, we're gonna go on to our next spot.
Negative space is such a strong design principle because it gives you a way to isolate your
subject, gives you a way to put them on a field that makes them so important in the
frame by giving them all this negative space around them.
Or a huge negative space that points our viewer to your single figure.
People always look at people.
So, you can use this large open empty space and then you have a small figure on the horizon,
people look right to that because it becomes a strongest prevalent piece in the image.
This is really a lot of negative space here.
I just learned this kind of...foreground kind of envelops the viewer in the front and then
gives us a nice negative space payoff of her in the background.
They're looking out into that natural light.
I love the focus on this app because I can choose what's in focus and so I'm gonna put
her in focus right at the top of the stairs and it looks great.
Fabulous negative space.
We got all of this great area, just see her little silhouette in the bottom and that gives
us just a wonderful look.
So, it's kind of a frame in a frame in a frame.
I mean I'm framing her in the doorway she's looking at me in the doorway.
So, we got that frame in a frame what that does is it calls attention to the subject
matter.
You create a frame around what you'd like the person to look at.
It's way to direct the viewer.
This is what I want you to see.
So, we're doing a frame in a frame.
It looks really pretty.
So, our next principle is color contrast.
Here, we got a great green carpet.
We've got beautiful natural soft light so it just gives everything I just a really even
kind of look.
But she stands out against that green grass because she's got that caramel sweater on.
She got the orange and just gives her especially her black hair against that green.
Just gives great color contrast makes for a startling image.
Now, it's simple though because you got a big field of green with her against that green,
so it looks really nice.
Texture is really an interesting way to apply a simple background in a complex way.
So why do we use texture?
Texture are patterns.
Patterns that we find everyday in life that are going to give us a contrast to our subject
matter.
Texture can be dangerous if it becomes too overpowering, but if used correctly, it really
gives it a lot of depth and interest of the image and helps stand our subject out from
the background.
So we just got great texture here.
Texture of the whole broad in the background.
It helps her she got the color contrast there as well as the white texture in the background
and she stands out two different ways here.
You got the texture and you got the color contrast.
It's just a beautiful setup here.
And also I took the lines.
I didn't square them up, I put them on an angle so that they're looking off and it kind
of leads out.
You can combine many of these principles to make a great image but our goal is to make
simple images not complicated images.
So combining a lot of them that makes it complicated it's probably the wrong thing to do.
But combine simple principles to give us a beautiful strong designed image as our goal.
When you're using strong design principles, it's pretty easy to tell if your image looks
good, because in that small little thumbnail that you're looking at in the VSCO app, it's
gonna show up and look good in that because strong design principles usually means simple
clean images and you're going to see it almost immediately.
When you blow it up, you can look at them a little further for...or her eyes close or
her eyes open.
But if they look strong and they look good in that little thumbnail, it's probably a
pretty strong image.
So, next in this process is editing on the iPhone.
We're gonna do that as a separate lesson so we can come back and really show you the process
of getting in and editing each of these images, using the presets that are already in the
application or just getting in and in the raw being it'll change the saturation.
Do some of the things will help make your images look stronger.
Editing becomes just about as strong a process as shooting, and in the end, is gonna give
you a much better result.
So, there you have it with that free app from VSCO and with the camera on your phone, there's
no excuse why you can't take great pictures if you apply some good design principles.
So, when you take great pictures with your iPhone, get on our Facebook group, post them
so we can see them.
See what you're doing.
See what apps your are using.
See how they're turning out.
We wanna know.
Also, you can always hashtag us at The Slanted Lens on Instagram.
We want to get those hashtags #Jaypsbananasocks, #keeponclicking #theslantedlens, #hashtagshashtags,
#hashbrownshashtags.
Then we also have Jenna with us.
Jenna: Hey.
Yes, you can follow me on instagram @JennaWalasek.
Jay: So, keep those cameras rolling and keep on clicking.
It's March and we're giving away a camera on 35-millimeter one point lens.
This is an Instagram contest so you got to get over to instagram.
Follow us The Slanted Lens on Instagram and Tamron and that enters you to win.
You could also in the comments tag a friend that'll help you win as well.
You can also do a story saying, "I'm about to win this awesome lens."
And tag Tamron and The Slanted Lens and that'll entry to win as well.
And last of all, you can go to theslantedlens.com and give us your email.
That will help you win as well.
So, get out there tag, follow, email, tag, follow, email, tag, follow, email, and win
this lens.
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