Have you ever looked at images and wondered how they create that editorial look you just can’t seem to recreate? It’s clean, it’s sharp, it can be sharp or glossy… you can’t be sure about it, but whatever “it” is, you want it for your job. Here are a few tricks, from composition to post-production, that will upgrade your images and give you a more professional look.
corner
The first thing to consider that can give your work a big upgrade is your angles. From Under Armor campaigns to the cover of Vogue, if you start paying attention, you’ll notice that the pros think their angle. Corners have the power to help convey your message. Bigger sports legend in real life? Get on the floor and shoot (I’ll supplement with a wide-angle lens). A common mistake photographers make is taking most of their work from what we call “the human perspective,” the way you see things when you’re standing. The problem with that is, we all see it that way. So boring. We already know what it looks like. When I was an art teacher, I told my students that if they were to take something from a “human point of view”, they were also asked to shoot adjacent photos from a “human perspective”. dog” (from below), “a bird’s-eye view”. ” (from above), or through something, (framed). Try different angles and you might be surprised by how interesting your composition becomes.
Dog’s perspective: From fashion portraits to sports shots, once you start paying attention, you’ll notice a lot of shots are taken from below the subject’s eye level, often from the ground, up.
Overlooking: Here the photographer leaves the track, goes to the stands and shoots from above, using shadows as a composition element
framed: In this shot, the photographer added a hand to the foreground. If you shoot nature, try using leaves, branches, snow, or something blurred in the foreground to create layers of depth to your photo.
Lighting
All of our readers photograph different subjects and have different levels of expertise in lighting, so I decided to write a few possible enhancements to try. Find out where you are and see what new techniques you can adopt.
If you are a “natural light photographer” and tend to shoot only in the shade or during golden hours, try full sun portraits with silver or gold reflector. Place your reflector on the opposite side of the sun to reflect the light back on the dark side of the subject. It’s a technique known as cross-lighting.
Full Sun is very editorial if you know how to work with it. Use a silver or gold reflector that reflects more light than white. An important note when shooting in bright light: always expose for highlights. When you blur your highlights, the camera doesn’t have the details and textures to recover. Always explore your image for highlights, and you can lighten shadows if needed.
If you shoot event work and use flash frequently, you can use a variety of techniques to improve your images. If used correctly, flash can lead to beautiful images. You might be surprised to learn these images are illuminated with diffuse flash and nothing else.
Here are a few things you can do to upgrade your flash skills:
1. Shoot with manual flash. This is no wisdom. You definitely want complete control over the amount of light emitted. Change your mode to “M” and you can shoot from full power down to 1/128 power depending on your flash.
2. Use diffuse on your flash. If you shine the flash at the subject without any diffusion, you will see that your skin tones are pale and the background dark. It’s time to try diffusing on your flash, and I’m not talking about an inch bouncing card that pulls up from the top of the flash. I’ve tried dozens or more flash diffusers and by far my favorite is MagMod. It creates a softbox interface. I mentioned it to my assistant recently, and he bought a fake, which works great. Gary Fong also make some great models and there are more competitive models on the market. Using one of these will break up your light and make it shine more softly on your subject and around the room.
3) Learn how to bounce your flash off the wall. When you bounce the flash against the wall, the light spreads and makes the light shine down more evenly. There are many online tutorials on bouncing flash available online. I like to use this technique when shooting in a room or taking a wider angle and I have white or neutral colored walls.
If you shoot with a flash, I can write a novel, and at the same time, I still have novels to read. Strobe lights are my favorite, and in my opinion they are the crème de la crème for lighting. You can absolutely create any kind of light in any space if you really know how to use them. If you shoot a single strobe, try upgrading to a dual flash setup with cross light. The diagonal light creates a nice edge light from the back and a nice wrap light from the front. It looks very professional. Have you mastered that yet? Try flashing two lights in full sun! Using a wardrobe in full sun results in work that looks very editorial. If you’ve never used gel on your wardrobe, try adding color to the mix with the gel. If you’re a product photographer, try using binoculars, shooting through parchment, or shooting bare light bulbs. Each setting will give you a completely different look. If you are a portrait photographer, try adding patterned shadows. i like to use location of Lindsay Adler and Westcott. Wherever you are, try something new. It’s all about learning new techniques and growing.
If you always do what you have always done, you will always be where you have always been. – Henry Ford
(I wrote this on a note later on my desk.)
edit
This is another potential black hole topic, but like we did with light, choose your current level and think about your upgrade. For the Lightroom preset editor: lean towards using local adjustments. Putting a filter on a series of images and exporting them will not allow you to reach the maximum potential of the images. Click on the local adjustment brush and explore your options. Try sharpening or vignetting the focus higher than the rest of the photo to draw attention. Try radial blur. Only work on your highlights or shadows. Work on your skin tones separately from the rest of the image. Open the HSL/Colors tab and edit the blue, green, or yellow color separately from the rest. If you are photographing nature, it would be interesting to selectively use the color slider for blue or green.
If you edit portraits, try learning frequency separation and blending brushes. These two techniques will help you get magazine-like skin. The two editors with whom I learned a lot about these methods are Phlearn and Prince Meyson.
If you edit sports: I like the beautiful and dramatic grunge style. Did you ever learn about sharpening with high pass? If you’re editing products, for me the game changer is learning how to use selective colors and editing with a color saturation layer.
This allows you to edit the hue, saturation, and brightness of a particular part of the image without affecting the rest of the image.
Every angle, lighting and correction gives you a facade so you can step up your work. I still have a long list of techniques that I want to improve. I take a quarterly pause, where I pause anywhere from three to five days for professional development. I take a class or practice a technique that I want to become proficient in. We are fortunate to live in an age where lessons from top experts are easily accessible. What’s on your list? Let us know what’s next for you in the comments below, or any techniques you’ve discovered recently that have upgraded your visual look.
