Guys, in this video, I wanna show you one of my most iconic photo ever,
something I really struggled to get. I went there many,
many, many, which is the Hollywood sign. It's really hard
to shoot and I wanna show you the whole process on how I shot it and how I edit it.
It's one of my best selling photos in galleries
and I wanna reveal all the secrets
and I wanna shoot a really cool workflow where you try to use
different software to get the best result of your photo.
So let's do it. So I've been to the Hollywood sign many,
many times and I was never happy with the photo that I got,
you know, the Hollywood sign always look weird. And just it was just not the photo I wanted.
And this photo that I'm about to show you, changed my life forever,
I shot this with a buddy of mine named Tim Shield.
He was one of my students now. He's an amazing teacher.
And we went there together
and we didn't know how to shoot it because the whole Hollywood sign has fence around it.
And you can't really take a photo. And then he had some ideas where he used some duct tape,
but let me show I actually shot a video there. Let me show you how I shot it.
So I'm gonna try different techniques to shoot the Hollywood sign.
It's kinda tricky because there's a fence.
So you can see here my a good friend Tim Shields,
but he did something very clever. He put his camera up and so that he's gonna be able to do panos.
I might do a similar setup with some tapes to have this,
you know, down view. But the main thing is I'm gonna try to have one special framing
and not move and do as the sun comes down,
as it gets darker, different exposure because I wanna get the Hollywood Sign, they are not led.
So when it gets dark, it gets really dark.
So what I wanna do is I wanna take some original photos where,
you know, we can see how they are and then maybe blend them with the night.
That's how I think Peter Lik did his famous photo of the
Hollywood Sign and I wanna try to do something similar.
We'll see. But first, I have to find a way to stick in my camera like Tim did.
Let's give it a shot.
Alright. So let me show you what I got. So first of all,
the sunset was not that great, and I started doing like a pano HDR.
And so I took one photo for the right side.
The good thing is because I was with the camera over the fence,
I did not have the fence.
So I started doing a lot of panorama and the light was really,
really boring. So I waited and waited and waited and then I tried different,
like wide angle shots and really the sky was not that great.
It started to become a bit more red and I'm not gonna show you all the boring photos,
but I was looking for an angle.
What I really want was trying to solve is I wanted to take a photo
where the Hollywood sign was not too distorted.
And it was a nice sunset here on the right side,
but it was really on the right side. I didn't like this.
And so I'm not gonna show you all the photos,
but finally, I waited for the sun to go behind the horizon
and I started getting a bit of a blue hour And then I Let me show I tried so many framing.
I'm not gonna show you everything that I
tried, but I kind of like that framing so I move my camera and I like that framing.
And this is the photo we're gonna get,
something very similar at the end. It's kind of a crazy shot,
but it's one of my best selling photo ever. It's really, honestly,
I look at it now. It's kind of over retouch,
but I wanna show you a process and you can choose if you want it over retouch or not over retouch.
Basically what I'm gonna teach you is something called the Lightroom natural drama.
You can actually get the book
and I can even coach you on your photo if you to I have a
membership that got forty seven dollars a month,
you can get two weeks free
and the book for free the link is under this video how to retouch your photos.
So let me show you what I did.
I actually tried different software. Like, this was like an HDR software.
I tried so many things that didn't work.
But let me show you what kind of work. I think this is the one that I like the most.
Let me show you how I did this. So I went from a very dark photo,
but it actually worked out really well. This is a TIFF.
Yeah. I took this photo because this photo was too bright.
I did an HDR. So I decided to take the under exposed photo
because I wanted to get that blue from the sky.
And the good thing is when you open the shadow and you boost the highlights,
I actually I checked and it was actually pretty clean.
Like, it was actually pretty, there was a bit of noise there.
You know what? On this one, let me try to take this one because this one's actually better.
Yeah. This one is better, but it's it's got very boring light,
but that's fine. I'm gonna cheat on this one a lot.
And the way I do it is first, I try to get the best that I can in Lightroom.
So I'm gonna do? First of all, I'm gonna crop this photo
because I really wanna make it like a very nice pano.
Actually, let me crop it completely. I want very little sky little bit of this.
Yeah. Something like that. That's that's I love that.
It's just the color is awful. So I'm gonna open a bit of shadows,
not so much. I'm gonna bring down the highlights.
I'm gonna do my black. I'm gonna do my white.
I'm gonna add some contrast. Now this one,
I really wanna make the the color pop. I wanna make it, it was the blue hour,
but because I overexposed the photo, it's not really good.
So I'm gonna add a lot of some blue
and a lot of magenta to really get the blue hour to come
back because that's how it looked like, the photo is
so over exposed that you have the feeling it was taken in the daylight,
it's not true. It was really the blue
hour, and then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a profile here
So you know that you can add profiles in Lightroom,
and I like to go with you have different type of profile.
You have the ones provided by Adobe, or you have the one provided by your camera manufacturer.
This was shot with a Sony, so I'm guessing this is a Sony profile.
I'm just gonna use a deep profile. That's good.
It's a little too blue, so I'm gonna add more blue to it.
That's gonna find, but yeah, the good thing is that I got a really cool photo.
Now, I wanna make a big print and this was… I mean,
this is pretty good like eight thousand by three thousand,
but I wanna make a huge print out of this.
So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna use a new feature in Lightroom which I love.
I'm gonna right click. I'm gonna go to enhance
and I'm gonna apply super resolution
What that's gonna do is that it's gonna do it on the raw level.
It's gonna take the photo right now, which is like twenty four million pixel.
It's gonna make it into like a fifty million or even above pixel you'll see.
Be ready for it. Boom. Check this out now.
The resolution is fifteen thousand by seven thousand.
It's crazy. It's over one hundred million pixels.
You better look at this. Look how sharp it is.
It's actually gorgeous. So I'm gonna add a bit of texture and a bit of clarity,
and now I've got this huge one hundred million pixel photo where I mean,
I could make a print as big as a building now.
It's crazy. Now the sky,
the first step of my natural drama is actually exposure,
which is what it. The second step is the colors I think this is way too bright.
The third step is the tint.
You wanna make the tint a bit better,
so I'm gonna go to the hue saturation and I'm just gonna take this tool here.
And I'm gonna click here on the red. And if I go up,
it goes very yellow. If I go down, it goes more red. I'm gonna add more red to it.
And then I think I'm gonna go to saturation
and I'm gonna put more saturation on all the the warm colors
there and then I'm gonna go to luminance.
I'm gonna click here Click on that and I want to darken the sky a little bit.
Yeah. I want to darken the blue. Yeah. Now we're talking because that's how it felt to me.
It was blue and it was very orange there,
but I wanna make that even more.
So you see step number one and you will see if you read my book Step number one is exposure.
Step number two is the white balance and the profile.
Step number three is refining colors, which is what you did,
we just changed the hue a little bit.
Add a bit of more saturation and made luminance.
A lot of people have confusion with luminance. It took me a long time to understand,
but luminance is that a blue can be bright or dark.
And when you make your color darker, it becomes more vivid.
So I kind of start to like this photo,
but I feel it needs some help.
So I could stop here. I kind of like it.
Well, no, I need to do the Dodge and Burn. So Dodge and Burn,
I'm gonna go here and I'm gonna go to linear gradient
and I'm gonna make a big gradient especially on the right side here.
I think it's way too bright. I'm gonna darken this a little bit.
And I'm gonna add some blue, maybe here,
just a tad. Yes. Okay.
I kind of like that. And then I think I wanna make another gradient for the bottom of the photo.
And I kind of messed up the exposure on this one originally.
I'm a much better photographer now. I wish I could go back there
but I don't live in California anymore.
If you get a chance, try to do this,
you know, put your camera on a fence and get it a shot of the Hollywood sign.
You see? So I'm making this a bit darker.
I think I wanna take a little brush here.
A little brush. I would just wanna add a little bit of shininess.
So when you use a brush, make sure that the feather is all the way to one hundred
because if the feather is not, let me show you.
If the feather is all the way to zero,
when you brush it's gonna be very visible. If you put the feather all the way,
it's gonna be a lot less visible, but still visible And if you get the flow in density to go down,
then it's gonna be a lot less visible,
which is what you want. So make sure flow in density is in the seventy,
And all I want to do is add a bit of reflection on the lake here.
Just wanna make that lake come out here a little more.
Maybe add one more brush and make this make this letter really pop,
like add a little bit of exposure just on the letter,
a little bit of warmth maybe on the letter,
something like that, just a little bit. And you know,
every time I retouch a photo, I get a bit a bit of a different result.
Now, at this point, I'm kind of happy with it.
I might add a bit vibrance and saturation just to make it really pop.
And I kind of like that. That's a result that I kind of like.
It's called natural drama. Now,
My galleries wanted this to go crazy.
So I tried two things. What I did is I first went to Photoshop.
So edit Photoshop, I tried to change a sky,
but I didn't like the result. I'll show you what my process was.
So here I am in Photoshop.
And the first thing that I did
when I went to Photoshop this is a hundred million pixel photo.
It's crazy. I went to edit, and I went to Sky replacement.
And I when you go to Sky replacement, I've got a lot of Yeah.
What's happening is the resolution is too big now.
Let's see if it's gonna work. Yeah.
Sometimes you need so much RAM and I have four hundred gigs of RAM And despite that,
it's still crashes. Okay. So I didn’t like the sky replacement.
I tried like different. I have so many skies that I've shot over the years.
You can buy some of them if you want in a description of this video.
Most of my videos have have my Sky.
Like, this is my Florida Sky. And I just didn't like the result Let's see here.
Let's try something crazy like this one.
You know, it's I should make a Blue Hour Sky and,
you know, I just didn't like how it looked,
so I'm gonna cancel that.
What I end up doing is I took one of my Florida Sky here which I have in my library,
I like this sky. And what you can do
when you have this sky in the library or in your finder or your explore,
you can just drag and drop it on Photoshop. And boom,
all I wanted was to add a little bit of cloud.
So how do you do that? And let me push that away.
Let me push that away. Is I basically made this like this.
Right? And then I put the blending mode to multiply.
And all I'm trying to do is get a bit more texture of sky
and find a texture that I kind of like because I felt it was missing.
That's what I did originally in the photo that I sold.
It's kind of weird now. I wouldn't do that now,
but why not? So you find something that you like.
Boom. You press enter. And then you use, you add a mask and then you take a brush,
a big brush, b for brush,
b for brush tool. Make it big.
Oops, sorry. Make it big. D Press d to make sure your color is white
as a foreground and an X you want black as a foreground,
very big brush, and then I just blended this sky really quick.
I just blended a bit the sky. Voila.
Let me move that around. And you can see before all I wanted was just a little bit of
texture in the sky just a little bit of texture.
And that's one idea I had, so I'm gonna save that.
And then the other idea that I have and I always try that.
When I have a photo that I really really really like that.
It was really hard for me to get. I tried different things.
I tried the natural drama formula, which again you can find in the book.
Which I really like. That's the Natural Drama Formula. That's how it looked to me when I was there.
That's the blue hour. I really like that.
But I can also take that.
I can right click and edit into Luminar.
So the other photo is gonna come back to Lightroom.
It's just, you know, this is now a hundred million pixel file,
so it's a bit slow. So let's go to Luminar.
And I love to play around with Luminar. When I have such an iconic photo,
I like to play around and see if I can make it better.
So I'm just gonna go to edit. And the gallery I work with they love photo,
which are like really vibrant and really saturated,
you know, with beautiful clouds. They don't care if you use photoshop,
all they care is making sales. You know, we… actually,
my horizon is not very straight, but what matters is my Hollywood Sign is straight.
So the first thing I want to do is I went to Sky and then I tried some of my Florida sky,
but from Luminar. Luminar has a way to do sky replacement that I find is better in Photoshop.
Don't tell Adobe, I said this, but I really think that Luminar is pretty good.
And if you wanna buy Luminar, use the code PHOTOSERGE
You'll get ten percent off. Don't tell anybody,
but you can get ten percent off. Yeah. That's just really ugly.
And I try different sky in Luminar.
Let's see what I have so many skies that I've been playing around with.
Let's see here. Let's go back.
Oh, yeah. This sky can work because the sunset was there.
Yeah. It's kinda weird because the sun doesn't really match.
Let's see here. You really wanna use a blue hour sky.
Because if you use, you see you have to use the right sky.
This was really the blue hour. It was really getting dark.
So you wanna get something that's really dark.
Yeah. Something like that, but it's something weird here.
Let's see. I'm not sure this is going to be better or maybe this can work.
And maybe this can work?
You wanna get a blue hour sky, something that matches.
Yeah. This is kinda cool. I mean, all of that is kind of nice, I think I kind
of just like the really blue hour ish sky.
So let's try that sky orientation.
Let's move it around. You see,
we have a little gap here. So I'm gonna flip the sky.
I'm gonna put it on the right side and I gotta take care of that little mask here.
So close gap, let's see what closed gap is gonna do.
Closed gap. Global.
Yeah. Global is good. Fixed detail.
Okay. It's kind of okay. I mean, yeah,
you know, it can happen, there is a little bit of a blue line.
Okay. I kind of like that. Scene relighting,
Let's add some scene relighting. Yeah. Maybe not so much.
I kind of like that. So okay. I have changed the sky and now let's go to enhance.
I'm gonna go to accent, which is gonna make the photo a bit brighter,
and sky on a enhancer, which is gonna make the sky a bit darker.
And you have to wait for it to render but it's pretty good.
Usually, at this point, what I do
is then I go to landscape
and I go to Golden Hour and Golden Hour is gonna make the photo of the sky much more red.
But it's a bit too much. What I do is I go about halfway,
then I go to masking, and I go to brush,
and now I'm gonna I'm gonna put the size pretty big
and the strength pretty low
and so I'm gonna brush the effect just a little bit on the sky
and maybe a little bit here on the letters.
So I'm brushing that golden hour effect just here and here.
It's actually pretty nice. And then at this point,
I usually go to super contrast, and I add a bit of highlights,
mid tone and shadows, which really makes the photo pop.
And then because it's too much and I go to color harmony,
And if you use brillance, you're gonna desaturate the photo.
You can make it really black and white or you can really boost it.
So I'm gonna maybe make it a bit darker.
And then I can make it more cold or more warm,
something like that. I kind of like that,
check it out before/after.
Okay. Cool. And then once I've done the natural drama,
once I've done Photoshop, I compare the three and see which one I like the most.
So once I'm back in Lightroom, I select all three photos,
which is the natural drama, the little bit Photoshop and the one from Luminar,
I select all three. I press N to go into survey mode,
shift tab to go in full screen mode and I look,
which one do you like the most? I think the one I like the most is the more natural.
I think the one that will sell the best is this one or this one,
but this one is too dark. So That's the one from Luminar.
It's too dark. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do a little bit of retouching in Lightroom
and just open the shadow a bit Yeah.
Something like that. Maybe it's a little bit too vibrant.
Yeah. So again, this is the natural.
This is how it was. And this is the one from Luminar,
and this is the one just with a little bit of texture in the clouds.
In any case, make sure you get my book
and check out this video that I did on one of my most iconic photos Paris this time of Notre Dame,
I show the whole workflow starting right now.