You wanna know how to get great photos just where you live.
Let's get creative. I challenge myself to go to a park,
which I've been a few place to take great landscape photography.
I live in a Tampa Bay area in Florida, which is not an amazing place for landscape,
but I'm gonna challenge myself I'm bored on a Sunday afternoon.
I'm gonna go with some of my gear and I'm gonna try to get incredible photography.
The best that I can in just a very classical Florida garden
so here is a gear that I'm going to bring with me.
I have my Sony A7rIV with my 24-105 mm,
which is what I do 90% of my work with.
I have a G Master 12-24 mm for wide angle shots where I can get very low.
We'll see if we need that. And where I'm going, there's a lot of wildlife.
So I brought a 70-300 mm, which is kind of my longest lens
to see if I can do some wildlife photography.
So let's go and do it. Watch this video if you wanna take amazing landscape just where you live.
Let's go.
Okay. One of idea I have. I always want to take a great photo of
this tree which is really beautiful,
but I haven't worked out how to do it yet.
So I wanna shoot that tree and I'm going to go with a wide angle lens.
I wanna try to get the whole tree really wide angle.
I don't really need a tripod at this point
because the sun is really straight so there's a lot of light,
so let's see. So I'm gonna try a different height of the tree.
I'm gonna try that height
and then I'm gonna try to go really low
and maybe play with like some wood in the foreground to if we can make an interesting foreground.
Let's see. I'm gonna try to go to the other side of the lake to shoot the tree
but from the other side of the lake with the sun here coming through my lens
because I always shoot toward the sun.
So let's try that. Let's go. I'm always super careful
because here I've seen like very big gators like 16 feet long,
but usually they come out only when there is a lot of light,
so I have to still be careful. Okay. Here I am.
And the reason why I picked this site is because of that.
I want the sun in my photo behind trees that always.
Look good. Look at the reflection here. Beautiful.
I just have to be careful because here It says there is gators,
but let's find some cool foreground.
You're not gonna eat me today. This one is very small.
Hello? Hello, little gator.
Okay. There's a gator over there. I'm gonna go see if I can shoot
him with my s70-300 mm.
I want the sun to come down a little bit more. Let's see.
Alright. Somebody told me there was gators over there.
I'm gonna go check them out because I've got the right lens for the gators.
This is another idea of framing, just this tree.
I'm shooting with my 12-24 mm. I'm gonna go HDR and shooting this scene here.
Let's see what's gonna happen. Okay.
I'm on my way. I heard there was some gators over there.
There's a bridge. Let's go check it out. Let's see if there's any gators.
There's a lot of squirrels. Let's see if we have some gators.
Any gators? There is. Wow. Cool.
Oh, yeah. Look at this look at this beast and look at that.
Okay. Let's get the big gun 70-300 mm and shoot it.
The best settings that I have is its long lens to shoot the gators here.
Because I'm almost at 300. I'm at one to a 1/200 of a second f/5.6 and ISO 1250.
And I'm on the self timer, so when I take a photo,
I'm not touching my camera.
I'm done with the gators. I'm gonna go toward the sun.
See if I can find some other photo ideas,
some other nice composition on this bridge. Look at this place, is beautiful.
There's a lot of trees. Sun is getting low. I just need to find like a cool subject,
something that will make sense. Maybe the trees themselves could be nice.
I don't like to take the road. Although it's a leading line,
I don't like how road looks, maybe just a tree and the house.
That could be something maybe here. Alright. Look at that.
The sun, it's beautiful. Having a good light is not enough.
I love the leading lines that we get from the sun rays.
Now I need to find a cool subject
and I'm just gonna walk around this place and see what I can play with to be my foreground element.
I love this trees here and this is Tarpon Lake.
It's a beautiful lake. But I don't think I'm gonna take photos there
because I don't like high frequency stuff.
Maybe that one tree could be a foreground element. Beautiful sunset tonight actually.
I don't like to use the water as a foreground element.
Because honestly, like, you have like a nice rock or nice tree.
This is messy as a foreground, so I'm gonna go back and maybe use one of these trees as a foreground.
Let's see. When I shoot toward the sun, I always make sure that the sun is like this.
It's not right in my camera. It's kind of halfway behind a tree like that.
Know, just stick in a little bit.
It doesn't overpower everything. It could be nicer.
Okay. I'm gonna go back to the other nice trees over there.
Because I think I'm not done with them. I think there's more good composition to do.
Let's let's go fast before the light is gone.
Alright. I have no idea if the photo are gonna be good or not.
It's getting dark I'm gonna go for a last one.
I just loved taking photo like this on a Sunday where you just try stuff,
you know, and I will only know back in Lightroom if I got something.
So let's try one last photos of this beautiful tree over there.
I'm gonna try to make a pano with having that tree here as kind of like my focus point.
Let's try that. And let's go home and retouch these photos.
Okay. So I'm back in my studio. I wanna show some of the best photos I took about 70 photos.
I selected about eleven to show you.
Wait to see the last one. It's crazy.
Okay. So this was the first one that I kind of like of the tree.
I should have done focus stacking. Actually, I'm gonna do another video on focus
stacking because when you have like cool foreground,
it could be really cool. And so the way I actually work is I use my preset,
but gonna I'm gonna show you how we'd do it if I didn't have my preset.
I would open the shadow. I would bring down the highlights like this.
I would do my black points.
So you hold down the option key on the black point
and you hold this until you get about one to two percent amazing
and then you do your white point So you hold on the option key.
You wanna make sure you don't burn that sun out too much.
Okay. And then I'm gonna add some contrast.
I'm gonna make the photo a lot warmer, so I'm gonna go to shade and I'm gonna add some magenta.
But the photo is really lacking of colors
and that's when you go here in the profile and you use like something like landscape.
Boom. Landscape profile from Sony. A profile is basically a little file that's being given by Sony
for your camera that's in Lightroom.
And look at the difference. It's between this and this.
It just makes the the colors, you know,
more saturated. It's kinda cool.
I think I'm gonna open the shadows more. I wanna make the photos straight,
so I'm gonna go here. And I'm gonna go 4x5
and I'm just gonna follow like,
I was really I'm gonna follow the horizon here.
Yeah. Something like this. 4x5 is like the Instagram format.
I wanna put this on the rule of third and boom.
Boom. Maybe add a bit of vibrance.
And voila. Not the best, but I kind of like it.
It's kinda cool. Before, after.
Kind of cool. Like, if I wanted to just go faster,
I would just use my preset. One click,
boom. One click boom and I would have a photo like almost retouch.
If you want, you could get my preset. I updated all my preset with all the feature of Lightroom.
And the link is under the video. You can get an amazing deal.
It really helps this channel also if you wanna support it and you're gonna get all my preset.
Okay. So this one, for example, I kind of like this one.
So I'm gonna use, I'm not gonna use my preset. I'm gonna show you every time I'm gonna show you,
like, how you do it from start and how you do it with a preset.
It's so crazy. So I'm gonna put a shadow. I'm not gonna read on the full highlights.
I'm gonna do my black point. I'm gonna do my white point.
It's the natural drama formula, which is something You first,
you do exposure, then you do white balance.
This one is not that crazy. I don't really like this one.
I still wanna retouch it. And of course,
you know, my eyes goes really there, which is not good,
so I wanna really lower. But you gotta see the last one.
The last one, I've saved two last one for the best.
We have like a panorama and an HDR at the end.
You gotta stick around my friends. You gotta stick around this video.
It's amazing. Okay cool. Bam.
So that's one way of doing it, but,
you know, I can also reset this. I don't really like this one,
but I can use one of my preset, like a golden hour preset.
And you just go through the preset like maybe this one.
Boom. One click and you're done. Isn’t it crazy?
Okay. This one. This one,
I think I'm going to do. This one is kinda cool.
I kind of like when the sun is glowing like this. So I'm doing my black point,
my white point, the white balance is really off.
On this one. I wanna warm things up a lot more add more contrast,
lower a little bit. I'm just It's okay,
but it's not the best. Don't forget to do the profile.
Profile is everything, I like the landscape profile,
and I think I'm gonna add more magenta,
more green. I don't know. But again,
you know, I can do that or I can create a virtual copy like this
and I can go through preset I am so lazy.
I love using preset. Look at this. One click.
Bam. One click and then all you have to do is you you hold on the option key like that or like that.
Having presets, you should build your own preset. It's so cool.
Like, I use them all the time. Okay.
Wildlife. This was crazy. Look at this.
The gator, you can see his eyes and everything is I love this.
So this one, I'm not gonna use a preset. I'm just gonna open the shadow,
bring down the highlights, I wanna do my black.
I wanna make sure I think I overexpose that photo a little bit.
So you wanna get about that much darkness,
maybe boost the white, do some contrast.
Look at that. But the key thing is, what you do is you go here and you take radial gradients,
you make a big gradient It really works well for wildlife around the animal.
You invert it. And are you ready?
Are you ready? And now you lower the exposure.
And it's gonna make everything black except the crocodile.
Okay. On this one, I think I wanna add a bit of clarity to it.
Just to make it pop and a little bit of texture.
And this one I shot at a very high ISO,
so you can see there's a lot of ISO So on this one,
I would go to the sharpening, maybe just do like twenty noise reduction
and about seventy sharpening and masking about fifty.
Something like this. It's not the sharpest photo,
but I kind of like the retouching. And this one is kind of similar.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click on previews. It's gonna copy
what I just did on the other photo,
but it looks very dark because this one I under expose the photo,
that's fine. But all the retouching
is there. So all you have to do is you hold on the option key You
see my black point is way too strong.
You only wanna have that much black point and then check this out.
You do your white point and the photo is gonna reveal itself.
I love the blue of the color of the water.
And same thing here, I can take my mask
and I just have to make sure that my mask is around the gator.
It was I've never seen so much gators in that park. I got really lucky
for the one time I'm doing videos.
Like, it was like six or seven of them. I've never seen anything like it.
And then I'm gonna go back here and there's a lot of sensor dust on this one.
So I kept changing lenses. When you change lenses in the wild,
you get sensor dust. I I think I need to make this one much darker,
even more darker. Like, I really wanna make this little guy pop.
Look at that. Not cool. Isn't that cool backslash key before and after.
And this one, I can try this one's another one.
I can just click on previous. It's gonna copy what I did here,
including taking off the sensor dust. I love using previous.
When you've got something that's going well, I'm just gonna put that over the gator.
And boom. Now are you guys ready for the real tough one?
So this is an HDR. Well, first, I'm gonna show you the non HDR.
So on this one, I'm gonna open a shadow.
I'm gonna bring down the highlights. I'm gonna do my white point.
And I'm gonna do my black point.
Add a little bit of contrast and exposure.
I kind of like this. I love the lights like this,
and then I'm gonna go here. As usual, I'm gonna use landscape as a profile,
the white balance, just make it really warm,
something like this. Maybe you've had a bit of vibrance.
I really wanna make this one pop. But you see here it's everything.
It's kind of burn here. So have an HDR version of this one which is that's the normal exposure,
then -2, really dark, and then +2 really bright.
So what you do is you select all three of your HDR you right click,
You go photo merge HDR.
And when you have a lot of woods, it's very important you use high as the de-ghosting.
De-ghosting amount High. What that's going to do is that if there is anything that's moving,
you know, it's just gonna make sure that you don't get ghosting effect.
Basically what it's doing is that as far anything that's moving,
it's gonna take the under exposure, the normal exposure so that you don't have,
like, ghosting effect around the leaf. Once you have the HDR, I already have it ready here.
I'm gonna copy what I did on this one, command shift c,
and I'm gonna copy that, and I'm gonna take my HDR which is this one.
And then I'm gonna press command V. And so I have two version of this.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm also gonna take the normal exposure
and I'm gonna paste I'm gonna show the difference between the normal exposure and the HDR.
It's not a huge deal. It's very subtle,
but if you were to print this photo, it would make a difference.
So that's my non HDR version.
I'm gonna check my white, my black point.
It's good. And then that's the HDR version.
I'm gonna compare both. I'm gonna select both and press c,
so you can compare. And not a huge deal. So on the left side,
you have the HDR version. On the right side, have the normal version.
Basically, in the highlights, I don't know if you can see it,
but all around the branch, it's just white. It's like there's no more information.
And here we have a little more information.
It's not a huge deal, but it would print a little bit better.
And then in the shadows, in the shadow parts,
yeah, it's it's there's a lot more noise here than here.
Not a huge deal to be honest, but I had the HDR,
so why not do it? You know, if I were to make a big print,
it would be nice. So, okay, this one is gonna cool.
So this one, I'm gonna give it a five star.
And then there's another one I wanna show you is the Panorama.
It's actually the last photo that I took, and it's what I call it east photo.
So it's this photo, like the sun was completely over,
but when you shoot toward this, that's the east.
You sometimes get a bit of Magenta in the sky.
I actually had some of that, so I'm gonna select all three.
Gonna right click, PhotoMerge Panorama. And then on this one,
I'm gonna use this new option which I love called Fill Edge.
Fill Edge is gonna create all the missing pixel That's all I'm gonna do.
I've already done it and here is the result. So that's a huge panorama.
Check this out. Twelve thousand pixel. It's like a hundred million pixel file.
It's crazy. And same thing on this one, I'm just gonna I'm gonna open a shadow.
I'm gonna bring down the highlights. I'm gonna do my black point.
Gonna do my white point. But you see, I'm losing the colors.
So first, I'm gonna go here. I have also had some profile that I use sometimes.
I have some profile like this. Look at that.
Profile that's called color autumn, strong.
You can get some of my profile. I think the link is under this video.
So presets, look at this one. And what these profiles do,
they just make some of the colors pop a little bit.
This one gives it, like, makes all the autumn color pop.
Maybe not so much, but use that a little bit like that.
Boom. And then I'm gonna add some contrast. I kind of like that.
I wanna add a lot of magenta. Look at this.
When you add magenta, the sky starts coming really nice.
Maybe add some vibrance to this photo. I really wanna make it pop.
Let's basically, let's go down here.
Use a linear gradient like this,
exposure. By the way, if you get my preset,
this will do this automatically for you and there's like a whole training on how to install them.
It's really like a ten years old can use a preset.
It's so easy. Like, you should try my preset on some of your old photo.
I got over a thousand email of people thing.
I couldn't believe what the preset did to my old photo. I'm just saying.
Just saying, right now, I'm not using preset. I'm just
what I'm doing is I'm making this a bit darker,
maybe adding a bit more blue in the sky.
And then I think I wanna go here and I wanna bring back,
you know, it's crazy. I love just trying to do great photos around your neighborhood.
You know, this is like fifteen minutes from my house.
This park, the John Chestnut Park in Florida.
Very very close to Tampa, Tarpon Spring,
beautiful area. So I brushed
here and I'm just gonna add a bit of magenta and a bit of yellow here,
maybe not so much yellow, just a little bit of magenta Don't overdo it,
maybe lower a little bit exposure to make it come out.
And there's some big sensor dust there, not a problem.
We go here this one. They are big. Like,
this sensor dust a huge. Yeah.
They kind of, I would finish this off in Photoshop to be good,
but I wanna make this a little darker here.
That's actually my favorite photo. I kept it
for that that was actually the the last one I did this big panorama,
but I really like it, but it does take a bit of processing to really make it pop.
I think I wanna add some more contrast,
make it brighter, and then what I wanna do is I wanna add a little bit more feeling to it.
I'm gonna add some brush. And on the brush,
make sure my flow and density is around 70s.
And, you know, you can rewatch this video if I'm going too fast,
or you can use my preset so you don't have to even watch the video.
And boom. The preset is gonna get like I just wanna make the the leaf a little bit brighter.
I love this shot. It's really kinda cool.
Okay. And now I'm gonna do it in like two clicks.
Let's redo it with my preset. So I'm gonna go here and create a visual copy.
I'm gonna reset this one. I'm just gonna check out my sunset preset and see what it looks like.
You see the preview. Oh, sunset magenta.
I can go to this one.
It's gonna give you a different look, but I think the sunset magenta preset is kinda cool.
I can still go here. And once you use your preset,
can just go here. You can still go here and add on top of it.
One of these crazy, like, a little bit of this one daylight autumn.
Maybe not so much just a little bit. Actually, not this one.
You know what? On this one, I think I'm just gonna use the classic Sony landscape preset.
And then you can just, you know, adjust maybe add a little bit more Magenta,
you know. But you get a pretty damn result with just one click.
That's what's really cool. Like one click give it a shot on your preset.
Yeah. That's without the preset. That's like how I did it and that's with the preset.
It's different, but it's still really cool.
Anyways, I hope you got inspired.
Make sure you like this video if you do, you know,
really helps me to make more videos. Leave me a comment.
Tell me what you wanna learn. I'm playing the game of making two YouTube videos and get my reset,
support this channel, and you will never look back once you get my preset.
I'll see you in another video. Mesdames et Messieurs
Oh, wow