In this video
I borrow a classic VW Camper Van for a 15-minute
photo challenge. Adorama TV presents
Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey.
Where you'll learn how to take stunning photos and polish them
in post-production. Hello I'm Gavin Hoey and your watching Adorama TV brought to you by Adorama.
The camera store that has everything for us photographer's, and today
well I've got a VW camper van and where gonna do a fifteen-minute photo challenge.
Now it's a classic, it's a 1979 VW camper van,
bright orange. Yeah there's got to be
some good shots. But what do you do with something like this? Well we're in
a beautiful place. We're in the Ashdown Forest. I reckon the first thing to do
is a nice simple
panorama. So I got my Canon 24-105mm lens on
a Canon 60D. I can't get everything in some data back up a little
bit.
So from back here and get a a pretty good view. Nice wide view, this will be great for
panorama.
Let's start by taking a picture of my hand, so I know the next sequence of pictures
are all connected together
as a panorama, and then in aperture-priority mode.
I'm gonna choose f8 as my aperture, cuz that'll do.
It's one of those ones where the apertures less important. I'll take a meter reading and my
meter is
telling me, well if we meter for a bit of sky as well. 250th of a second.
F8, so I'll change to manual mode. Dial those exact settings in, 250th of a second,
F8, ISO 100. They're locked in so
every picture in my panorama has the same exposure. Okay
does't matter wether you start left or right. Just take a picture.
Make sure they overlap, turn the camera
take the next shot, turn the camera
take the next shot, and around we go trying to stay nice and level
making sure every picture overlaps the last, and we'll go nice and wide.
To really give this a nice feeling,
that it's in the landscape. Now I'm thinking of multiple images. Let's do a
joiner or a montage as well, because I think this will work really well as a montage. Technique is
exactly the same as a panorama,
as is the Photoshop bit, but we'll get to that in a bit. What I'm gonna do is switch to
aperture priority mode, I'll go for F8 again as my aperture,
and we'll take a nice general exposure for the scene, and
if I just get the camper van in with less sky, and the lighting just changed.
My exposer say 320th of a second, F8.
So again manual exposure, lock those numbers in.
320th, F8. I'm gonna zoom in
to about 70 millimetres, and I'll take all the shots at the same zoom settings.
So even the zoom is gonna stay constant this time around.
Okay, and I'm just gonna take lots of little bits of
the camper van. So we're gonna take lots of shots that
overlap. I'm gonna keep twisting the camera around as well.
Make sure we get everything included including the surrounding area.
I think one of the great things about VW campers is the front looks so happy, doesn't it?
It's sort of a smiley face.
Yeah let's see if we can get a few detailed shots of that because I just love this
really
strong orange color that we've got here, with the chrome.
Yeah I think a few close-ups could work well.
So I'm gonna switch back to aperture-priority mode, that's important.
I'm gonna stay with F8 because thats a nice middle-of-the-road depth of field
and shouldn't get my shutter speed to low, 1/60th of a second. I might just
bump up my ISO
to 200. Doubling my ISO doubles my shutter speed.
Give's me a sharper shot. Yeah I just love that simple graphic look and sometimes it's
the simple graphic images
that work well. So let's come around to the side find some more. So things like the
the door handle. Let's grab a shot of that,
that's got nice lovely clean colours. One of the things I often forget is to take
picture's both in
landscape and portrait format. So let's do in both.
We can choose which we prefer later.
More handles. I
love these, am I love these.
Come on it's 1979 they didn't build doors the way we do now but that works
with a bit of a slam.
We got the two door handles here, there's got to be a shot here, a bit of symmetry.
Symmetry is always good. We like a bit of symmetry.
Okay that's great. Okay so
almost out of time, just time to dive inside and do a couple of
inside shots. So let's get this open.
Actually I'll tell you what, there
is a panorama here as well. Yeah hang on a second.
Cup of tea?
This is a brilliant panorama, I'm gonna have to back up to do this. Okay,
there I reckon, maybe even a closer.
It's gonna be one of those fiddly one's, but just here. One other things about shooting a
panorama is the way it bows and twists things.
So let's set up a panorama to distort the shape of this.
Aperture-priority mode, F8.
Take a meter reading, ISO 200 cuz it's dark in there.
320th of a second. Manual exposer , 320 , F8.
Same settings, away we go. Take a pictures of my hand.
And here we go so, overlapping the shots.
Starting there , one , two
three , four , five.
Brilliant okay and that should stitch together and give this beautiful curve
and distortion to the shape of this. Which give that sort of fish eye effect,
without a fish eye, lets go inside.
It's a kinda cozy in here isn't it but it's still rather nice, and this has
been fitted out so it's got new and old stuff in it as well, but
I've been driving is for a little bit. One of the thing's that really caught
my eye and I wanted to photograph
is the fuel gauge, and fuel gauge,
grab the key, has got
a lovely vintage retro feel to it
It come with about six keys for thi. Remember these days when
the cars had six keys to do everything.
Goodness, no not that key. Not that key.
Fifteen minutes juts trying to find the right key. There you go,
That key, and the fuel gauges got a little kinda
pointy finger, just fantastic.
So it's gonna take 15 minutes for the fuel gauge to get
up.
Also trying to get in here without reflections is gonna be a challenge too.
So I'm gonna need to find an angle. Reflections everywhere. I might have to be on the
other seat to do this
Love that little vintage fuel gauge.
Well there we go 15 minutes has come and gone.
Now if you wanna find out more about general photography hints and tips
don't forget to check out the Adorama Learning Center, but what I gotta do is
to get this
camper van back to it owners. However for the purpose of this video,
We're gonna edit my favorite picture in Photoshop right now.
Don't forget to check out Adorama's latest contest and your chance to win
amazing prizes.
That VW camper van was a real experience,
driving experience, a little bit challenging.
Photography wise no problem's at all. Some really great photos.
Now I'm gonna make a joiner image. I'm gonna do it in Photoshop because it's
really straightforward to do.
So first things first I went through the pictures and I picked out
my joyner images. I'll click on the first one
I'll hold hold SHIFT, click on the last one and drag them from Explorer
and drop them all into Photoshop. Now because these are raw files they
open up
in Adobe Camera Raw. I'll press the select
all button and then I'm gonna press the auto button.
Now that will analyze each and every picture and give it all a slight
variation based on, well getting automatically correct.
Now you'll notice that happened because each of these boxes is blank.
If I just go through the individual images one at a time ,you'll see that the exposure
and all of the sliders jus randomly change from picture to picture.
Okay let's click select all though and then we'll click on
open images. Now why would I want that especially considering I went to
all the trouble getting exposure right at the photography stage.
Well if it turned out I actually wanted the exposure right to make it
seamless montage. It's much easier to do that in camera.
Much harder to do it for 14 images in Photoshop.
Photoshop can randomized the exposure slightly and it can do that really
quickly so,
that's what I let Photoshop do because that's what it does best. Okay so there
we are that's
all of the Images open inside Photoshop. So to join them together
I'm gonna go to File, and then I'm gonna choose automate,
and Photo Merge which is just dropped off the bottom of the video ,but trust me
its there. In photo merge I will choose the collage layout,
and most importantly un tick blend
images together. Open the files that are already open, that's the picture's that
make my joiner and then click
ok. And of it goes, so it'll gathers together.
Look for the overlaps and joins them no matter how small,
and then try and line everything up. Now because some of the overlaps and join's are
really small
its actually gonna fail to line things up absolutely perfectly.
But that's all part of the joiner experience.
There we go, so there is my joiner and you can see they are all in
slightly different random positions.
Now of course you can go through each and every layer and randomize it even more
if you want to.
That works fine or you can simply say yep that's okay
and what I'm gonna do is go to layer. Layer style
and we'll add in a stroke for a border on each layer.
I'll change the color for my border to be well white but not quite white. So
let's have the hue as 0,
saturation 0, but the brightness at 96.
So it's just off white. Then I'll change the size so it's about
30 pixels depends on the the size of your images you might need to go bigger
or smaller.
Position is on the outside and then we'll jump down to drop shadow.
I like drop shadow. The reason I like drop shadow is because you can position it
just by clicking on the image
and dragging the shadow around. Which is a really handy feature when you know
it's there.
We want the the shadow to go down there in the bottom right corner.
I'll just increase the size just to blur it out and drop the opacity back slightly.
Then I can click the OK button and that will apply my layer style.
Now I've done that to one image but now I need to. do it to lots of images
There is a really neat shortcut. Come to the word 'EFFECTS'
on the layer. Right click it and choose
copy layer style. Then go down to the very bottom of the layer panel
Find a bottom layer hold the Shift key and click it.
Now they've all become selected, and all I need to do right click on any of them it,
it doesn't matter which one,
and click not on the layer itself but the wording next to it.
And we can find paste layer style,
and it paste's them on. There you go, so there is
my joiner. We could jiggle these around a little bit by selecting
an individual layer, getting the move tool
and just moving them about, or you can also use a bit of free transformed just to
the spin them around and that could be useful just a really mix things up a
little bit.
It doesn't take long to do that can create your joiner your
montage,
and just give it a slight randomness which these things really lend themselves to.
There you go so when your happy all you need to do then it just
add in a brand new background and that is your joiner
picture completed. Now if you've enjoyed this video and you want to see
other videos by the other amazing presenters here on Adorama TV
you know what you got to do. You know what you've got to do, you've got to click on the subscribe button.
I'm Gavin Hoey thanks for watching.
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