(upbeat music)
- Bonjour, mon ami.
In this video, I want to show you
how you can take boring or classic afternoon photo
and make it into black and white fine art
that's gonna kill it.
(epic music)
(upbeat music)
So one thing I love to do when I do black and white
is to play with the tapered light
with the natural dodge and burn from the leaf.
So I'm gonna try to take a photo this way
and see what happens.
(camera clicks)
One trick is when you want to do black and white,
and you have a day like this where you have some, like,
really nice blue and really nice clouds.
It's very important to shoot the opposite of the sun.
The sun is over there, and I'm gonna shoot this way
because this way,
the blue from the sky is gonna be really deep,
and it's gonna become almost black in the black and white,
and that's what makes the photo incredible, I find.
(camera clicks)
I'm gonna show you a photo which I think is gonna work
really well because the problem is if you're into, like
the Garden of Luxembourg, there's so much people
that it's hard to get a nice foreground element.
(upbeat music)
Look at this clouds.
This is going to be amazing
with the reflection in the water.
Now, the key trick is to go down.
That's the framing I'm gonna go for.
I'm gonna try different focal distances and see.
(camera clicks)
So I'm gonna try to use these flowers
as a foreground element.
Do you see how the sky is gonna really burn this way?
You're not gonna get nice, dramatic clouds,
so you really have to shoot the opposite,
which is what we're gonna do.
Look at this view.
This is going to be good
because we're gonna get some good details,
and I love, you know, the flowers in the foreground.
I mean, maybe this should stay in color,
not black and white.
We'll see, but I love having some flowers
as a foreground element.
(camera clicks)
So I moved a bit so I could be more in the center
and play with these flowers as a foreground element.
I like the statue here on the left,
the Senate in the middle, and the flowers on the right.
(camera clicks)
I like some of the shots.
Let's jump into Lightroom and see how it goes.
So we are back from the Garden of Luxembourg,
and the first thing that I do
when I try to do a fine art photograph
is, of course, go through my different photos,
and any photos that I think has a potential,
I give it a one.
By the way, I'm also giving you some of these roll files
for you to check them out, and so you can follow along.
You can even publish them and just post them on Instagram
and credit me as @photoserge so I can see
if you followed the instructions well, and also, you know,
just create as you want.
This is the first shot that I got.
I'm not sure I really like this one.
Hmm, maybe I'll give it a one.
It has potential to me.
It's just, there's a lot of things going on.
This is a shot I showed you
where I was shooting toward the sun.
You see how the sky is fully washed out,
so I'm not even gonna select it.
This one is kinda cool, but you know,
I basically have different shots with the same view,
so when I have that, what I do is, I select all four shots,
and I press N on my keyboard, and then I press shift+tab,
and that's gonna put me into survey mode.
N for survey mode.
Don't ask me why.
And then I can see.
Okay, I've got four photos, and I can see.
Okay, which one do I want?
You know, this one, the sun, for example, was away.
This one, the sun was here.
So I think I'm gonna select this one.
I'm gonna give it a one.
And all the other ones, I'm not,
so I'm gonna press shift+tab to go back to normal view,
and then I'm gonna do the same thing here.
You see, let's take these four, press shift+tab,
so I'm still in survey mode,
and which one am I gonna select?
'Cause I've been shooting a lot of the same view.
But you know, sometimes the sun is there.
Sometimes it's not.
I think, you know, sometimes I get a bit lower to the water.
Like, this is a bit bright to me.
I think I'm a little wide angle.
Yeah, if I had to pick one...
So one thing you can do is if you're not sure, you can say,
"Okay, this one is too bright to me,
"so I'm not gonna select it, okay?"
So I'm gonna press X, and it disappears,
and then all three becomes bigger,
and it's like High Lender.
There can be only one.
Okay, this one is still too bright to me,
so I'm gonna erase it, and now I've got two left.
So this one, I'm gonna give it a one,
and this one, I'm gonna give it a one.
Shift+tab to go back, and let's see here.
Let's take the next four ones.
I go four by four.
Shift+tab to go in full screen mode,
and well, they're very similar.
This one is kind of original because it's got lots of,
you know, little bit of Senate here.
That's the Senate in Paris and some clouds,
so I'm gonna give it a one.
The other ones, I'm not really gonna touch
because yeah, maybe this one, I'll give it a one,
just a potential one, all right?
So yeah, I love that view, so as you can see, I took a lot.
This one and this one.
This one, I might give it a one.
That's a lot of ones.
One just means it has potential.
Now we come to the flower show
where, you know, the flower was as a foreground element.
I think, yeah, let's use N and survey,
so N for survey mode, shift+tab to go full screen mode,
and let's see here.
Yeah, I think only this one.
I'm gonna give it a one.
It's kind of underexposed, but I did it on purpose
'cause I wanted to get all the blue from the sky.
And then I moved away, so let's see.
There's three, and we have this one, this one.
Oh, I think this one is it.
Yeah, this one is it.
It's brighter.
The sun was on the flower.
The sun was away from the flower.
This is kinda cool.
This is, like, very Instagram,
so I'm gonna give it a one, too.
Shift+tab.
Okay.
And then.
This is yeah, no, it's too much stuff going on.
Look, there's too many people, too many things going on.
Same thing here.
I'm not gonna select this one.
Yeah, I've got much better than that.
I don't like that.
This one might be cool.
I'm gonna give it a one.
The little...
Yes, the little house.
Okay, now we come to this sort of frame in the frame,
and I think, yeah.
This one was underexposed.
Now on this one, just one little trick
is the good way to take that is to take two photos,
one focusing on this and one focusing...
Let me go to Develop mode
because you only see the automated preview.
So but you see this one is kind of blurry,
and this is very sharp, so I focused.
I used the spot focus to focus on that,
and I was at F22 on purpose.
So this is kinda blurry, but it's gonna be okay
for what we're gonna be doing,
so I'm gonna give it a one star.
I think this one is kinda cool.
This one, yeah, has potential.
I'll give it a one star, and then let's see here.
Then there's a whole bunch of other ones
of frame in a frame.
I love frame in a frames.
And let's see.
Which one would I pick?
They're very, very similar.
It's just like different, like, more clouds, less clouds.
I think...
I think the one I like the most is probably...
I don't know.
Probably the first one 'cause it's dark here.
Here it's bright.
The eyes go to the brightest part of the photo,
so the fact that it's kind of a natural vignette,
I think I'm gonna pick up this one
and none of the other ones.
Okay, a lot of good and and a lot of bad photos.
And this one, yeah.
I took this one just because it was the Eiffel Tower,
but there's too many things in the foreground.
Okay, cool, so now, I'm gonna select.
You see, now we have 14 photos out of 41
which have potential.
That doesn't mean that they're gonna end up being it.
They're just...
They have potential.
And so I'm gonna start out with a bang
with one of the photos that I liked from this series.
So I'm gonna go shift+tab again, N for survey mode,
and then I'm gonna pick one which I think is the best one.
And
you know, I think I'm gonna go for this one.
This one, I'm gonna give it a two,
and that's the one I'm gonna work on.
Why?
Because it's a little more wide angle than the other ones,
and I like how it's underexposed.
And now I'm gonna show you.
I'm gonna turn this into, like,
a dramatic fine art black and white, and this photo,
I think I'm actually gonna give it to my gallery for sale.
So it's no joke.
I'm actually really doing it for real here.
So okay the first thing that I do when I go black and white,
the first thing that I do
is I click here to black and white.
Now everything becomes kind of grayish,
and there's a couple of things you can do.
I want to get that sky to be a lot darker.
So there's a couple of things you can do.
The first thing you can do is play around
with the white balance.
See, if you go left or right.
See, if I go right, you see how the sky becomes brighter,
and if I go left, and I add blue,
it becomes a little bit darker.
But just be gentle.
Just do it a little bit, okay?
The next thing you can do is you go here
in the black and white mix, which is only available
because I clicked on black and white.
And on this one, basically the way it works
is, well, let me go straight to the blues,
but it takes anything that it finds in the photo.
You see in this case, it's the blue, and if you go left,
it makes that blue darker so it becomes a darker gray
or a brighter gray.
Now, I want a darker gray,
so I'm just gonna make this smaller.
Now the trick is don't go over minus 30.
If you go too much, like minus 57,
you're gonna get, and in this one, it's not so much visible,
but on a big print, yeah, you can see kinda here.
You're gonna get what we call artifacts
where the pixels are just too much.
You're gonna get strong halo, so a good rule of thumb
is not to go over 30.
So 30 is kinda cool, but there's still a lot to be done
to make this into a fine art, a lot.
That's just a starting point.
The next thing I want to do is
I think I want to make the horizon straight.
So one way you can do that is go to the transform section
and click on auto and pray, and sometimes, that works well.
It's just gonna make it straight,
which I think it did a pretty good job.
And on this one,
I want to make sure the Senate is very straight,
so I can go to vertical
and make the Senate even more straight,
and I think I want to rotate it
to make it really more straight.
So that's kinda cool.
I like that.
And now I'm ready to go into local adjustment
to really make it pop.
So I'm gonna take this gradient here,
and I'm gonna click and drag.
I want to make that sky a lot darker,
so I'm gonna double-click on Effect,
and I'm going to add some darkness to it like this.
And actually a little more.
And usually what I do is, I do one first pass,
and then I go New again, and I do a second pass
for the very top of the photo like this.
Very, very top like this.
Just so that it closes the photo a little bit.
And then I make a third one here at the bottom.
So I want the people to look inside,
and while the Senate is very bright,
so they're definitely gonna look inside.
Okay, so that's kinda cool.
That's the gradient.
The next thing is the Senate somehow is too bright
and just...
You know, the eyes go to the brightest part of the photo,
so yes, people are gonna go to the Senate,
but it's a little too much.
So what I do is I take a little brush,
I double-click on Effect, I make sure that Auto Mask is off
and that the Flow and Density's are on 80,
and then I'm gonna do some lower exposure,
and I'm just gonna paint over the Senate
just to bring, you know, so it doesn't burn the eye too much
so it's not too strong, maybe a little more.
This is 045, 058, yeah, something like this.
And usually what I do is, and that's the trick.
So now the whole thing is a little bit darker,
but now it's the same gray everywhere.
So I want to break that pattern, so what I do
is I hold down the Option key
which is gonna basically become an eraser of what I just did
and I'm gonna erase just partially, a little bit,
on some places what I did so it's not uniformly grayish,
lower grayish.
The next thing I want to do is
I want to make my clouds whiter.
I mean, they were really white.
So I'm gonna take a new brush, double-click on Effect,
and then this time, I'm gonna paint on the clouds here
to make them brighter.
I still want to get the dark sky,
but I want to get the bright, you know,
so I can push my white.
I can maybe open the shadows a bit, boost the exposure.
Yeah, boost the exposure.
That's a good way to do it.
And just make some of this, not everything,
but some of these clouds really pop
because they're kind of the stars.
And you see if you go on the trees,
you can hold down the Option key, make your brush smaller
by using the middle mouse, and then brush that off, kind of.
Yeah, brush that off so that it only goes on the clouds.
So now it's starting to look like something
that I really like.
The next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create a new brush,
but this time for the water.
So for the water, I'm just gonna add
a little bit of exposure here and here like this
so as to make it pop.
Viola, I kind of like that.
And then I'm just gonna open up a little bit the shadows,
bring down a little bit the highlights on this one,
and then I'm gonna do my black point,
so I'm gonna hold down the Option key and do the black point
and then do the white point as like a final.
Now, you can start by doing this,
or you can end by doing this,
so it's just gonna add a lot of contrast.
Look at this.
This is kinda cool.
Let's see.
I think the building is still a little bit too bright
for me.
So.
I can go in here, zoom in a little bit,
and just double-click on Effect, lower the exposure,
take a brush, and just...
I don't know.
I want to make some part a little bit darker.
And you can use the space bar to move around.
Something like that.
Let's move back, and then this is minus 97.
I usually don't go over 0.5.
You know, plus 0.5 or minus 0.5.
You don't want to go too much.
Okay, and you're better off doing layer by layer of brushes
until you have exactly the light like you want them.
So but if you press the Back,
you can see the before and the after.
The before and the after, pretty cool.
Now I'm gonna show you another example,
which is this one, and this time,
I'm going to do the reverse, meaning I'm going to start
by opening up the shadows, bring down the highlights.
I'm gonna do my white point, hold onto the Option key.
I'm gonna make sure I don't have anything burned.
So the way it works if you hold down the Option key
and you move your whites, anything you see here,
the yellow, the blue, all of that is basically pure white.
You know, it means like if you would print,
it wouldn't put any ink.
Okay, and then I'm gonna bring down the blacks.
You want about, yeah, what you see here in yellow and green,
I'm holding onto the Option key, the Alt key
is pure blackness.
Okay, now I'm gonna convert to black and white,
and it's already looking kinda cool.
Now I want to really make a frame in the frame,
so I'm gonna work a lot with the brush.
I mean, dodging and burning is really the art
of black and white, so I'm gonna use a brush,
double-click on Effect to make sure everything's at zero,
bring down my exposure,
and make sure my Flow and Density's in the 70's,
and then actually, in this case, I'm gonna do more.
I want to darken this whole section here
so that it's just like sort of a shadow,
and especially here,
and you can do it with two pass of brush.
It usually works better than just doing one strong pass.
Okay, all right, that's pretty cool.
I'm gonna take...
I want to make this Instagram format,
so I'm gonna go here and then take the crop tool.
Sorry, crop tool, go four by five.
Four by five is the Instagram standard format.
And maybe crop it here so that we see a little more
what's going on, and I love this.
I love this.
Maybe add a bit of texture and lower the clarity
so that we don't have any halos.
And now I'm ready to take a little brush.
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Okay, so on this one,
I'm just gonna add some exposure
here.
Yeah, I'm just gonna make this a little bit brighter.
This is really kinda cool, especially this.
No, that's too much, so remember,
you can hold onto the Option key and erase,
so I'm only erasing on the building.
I like what I did on the sky.
And I can zoom in, too, you know.
This is like a 43 million pixel shot.
Do you see how sharp it is?
It's crazy sharp.
New, and then I want to make some of these clouds
a little bit brighter, so I'm gonna add a bit of exposure
on the clouds here and here and here.
Yeah, and you know, if I really wanted this to be perfect,
I would have taken one photo for this
and another one for that and use focal stacking.
But I didn't have my tripod on me,
and the tripods are not allowed in the Garden of Luxembourg.
So I had no choice but to do it this way,
but I still really enjoy what I did, and viola.
I think I want to fine tune and add a bit more white.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
And maybe, you know, just some more brush, some more brush.
I think I want people to look there.
I think I'm gonna make this whole section a bit darker
so new brush, lower the exposure,
just make this a little tad bit darker.
And again, go past,
yeah, 0.5 max.
You see here is 0.58, max, max, max, not too much,
not more than that.
Otherwise, it's gonna look weird.
Okay.
And this is another sort of fine art photo
of the Garden of Luxembourg.
Now, this is just part one.
In part two, I'm gonna show you some other retouching,
and I'm gonna show you how you can do this
in a couple of clicks with amazing presets.
Coming up next Tuesday.