Lesson Info
52. What Makes a Great Photograph?
Lessons
Photographic Characteristics
06:36 2Camera Types
02:53 3Shutter System
08:51 4Shutter Speed Basics
10:06 5Camera Settings Overview
16:02 6Camera Settings - Details
06:05 7Sensor Size: Basics
16:26 8Focal Length
11:26Practicing Angle of View
04:49 10Lens Speed
08:53 11Aperture
08:15 12Depth of Field (DOF)
12:32 13Lens Quality
06:56 14Light Meter Basics
08:54 15Histogram
11:38 16Dynamic Range
07:15 17Exposure Bracketing
07:59 18Focusing Basics
12:58 19Manual Focus
07:04 20Digital Focus Assistance
07:25 21Shutter Speeds & Depth of Field (DOF)
05:08 22DOF Preview & Focusing Screens
04:45 23Camera Movement
08:13 24Focus Stacking
07:48 25Lens Adaptors & Cleaning
08:24 26Flash & Lighting
04:37 27Tripods
14:03 28Cases
02:53 29Natural Light: Mixed
04:10 30Sunrise & Sunset Light
17:14 31Silhouette & Starburst: Sunrise & Sunset Light
05:25 32Golden Hour: Sunrise & Sunset Light
07:42 33Light Management
10:06 34Speedlights
04:02 35Built-In & Add-On Flash
10:37 36Editing Assessments & Goals
08:48 37Editing Set-Up
06:49 38Importing Images
03:49 39Culling Images
13:47 40Adjusting Exposure
07:53 41Remove Distractions
03:52 42Cropping Your Images
09:43 43Angle of View
14:25 44Framing Your Shot
07:17 45Foreground & Background & Scale
03:41 46Rule of Odds
04:50 47Visual Drama
12:20 48Elements of Design
09:14 49Texture & Negative Space
03:47 50Black & White & Color
10:23 51The Photographic Process
08:58 52What Makes a Great Photograph?
06:39Lesson Info
What Makes a Great Photograph?
all right when it comes down to looking at your own photographs and really judging them, cause when you get into editing, you got to figure out what do I keep? What do I get rid of what's important. And so for me, a good photograph full to have two overriding themes. One that it's beautiful. And to that it's interesting. And what these have in common is you need a good subject that is both beautiful and interesting. Now I think I said it before, but it's important, so I'll say it again is my definition of beautiful is very wide ranging. I've taken pictures of gum on walls and thought it's beautiful. There's a lot of things that could be beautiful if it is seen in the right light. So what is beautiful? Well, having that good light that we've talked about in the previous lighting section, we had a whole section on composition, things that could be done in the right way, and then finally, the moment. And that's one of things that photographers get to do that is really unlike any other med...
ium art medium. Out there. You can paint pictures and make sculptures and write poetry and novels. But capturing a moment visually. That's the domain of photography. That is really an unusual the way we get to freeze a moment forever. So that's something to really concentrate on what's interesting things that are new. I remember watching a documentary that had National Geographic and one of their editors, and they were trying to get into the editors mine because they're looking through what all their photographers are looking for. It's like, Can you narrow it down? What do you want to see? In a photograph in the next issue of the magazine, she said, I want to see something I haven't seen before. Show me something new and that's hard in this day where there's a lot of photographers and there was a lot of photographs out there, But there are still things that air new out there. You might have to use a different perspective than other people have used in the past, photographing it in a different way. So photographers, they just scatter out and they do all sorts of techniques. They're going to do underwater infrared panoramic photography, you know, just to look at the world in a different way to see what we can see that's different than it's been done before and sometimes not telling the whole story. Just adding a little bit of mystery, not telling the whole story, doing something to conceal everything, just to give us a hint about what's going on. You don't have to tell us the full story, and so that's what I'm looking for, but the one that really wins me over more often than not. Besides, the subject, which is all important, is having the right moment. And so when you get the right moment, there is no comparison with anything else. Now that you've finished with the class, I think you can finally say I'm a photographer. And so when people ask you what you dio, I feel fine saying I'm a photographer and you know what? It doesn't matter if you're a professional or an amateur, because I just say I'm a photographer. It's about just being a photographer. Now, the thing that I have found is that when you tell people I'm a photographer, they suddenly have lots of questions for you. Oh, really? What type of photographer you what do you shoot? What type of camera do you use were the issue. What about this? What about that? And they have lots and lots of questions, and I thought, I really need to have a good response for them because I want to answer them. And so I have. I've prepared, maybe over prepared response, for when they ask, You know, what do you dio They want to know about it? So here's what I say now. Yes, I have a camera, a lens in a tripod. I'm a photographer. I was born in the analog era, but I'm fully digital in dial. There was pure is a 16 bit un compressed raw would have a positive attitude about shooting negative film. You might say I'm a retro styled, hybrid composite, fully integrated image making machine. I love photography, photographs, pictures, portrait's panoramas, images, snapshots, clicks, pick stills, frames grabbed happy Samp's close ups, headshots, even mug shots. But I've just about had it with the selfie. I'm on the sidelines, in the rafters and behind the goal line. I'm a sports photographer. I got a fast camera with fast shutter speeds and fast motor job. Got fast lenses with fast class that focus really, really quickly I got a long lens on a skinny poll on the wedding in the fat security guard with a short fuse. Give me a track, a field, a court in a bunch of sweaty bodies, and I'll give you 1000 images or maybe three that are properly composed. I'm out in the woods, up in the hills and down in the valley. I am a nature photographer. I love high rez, pixel, perfect, super sharp, hyper focal images. I take long walks with wide lenses to tell big stories, a use long lenses on small subjects for a wide variety of reasons. Everybody thinks this job is a walk in the park. Well, I don't know about that. We got snakes and spiders, bees embarrassed. Avalanche, dehydration, hypothermia, heatstroke, lightning strike, frostbite, mosquito bites, snake by bear bite. Wait a minute. Come to think of it, what's not to like? Anybody up for a hike? I'm riding the rails, flying the skies and stamp in the passport. I am a trouble photographer. I carry minimal gear so I could move maximum speeds. Keep it a little profile, but I'm highly tuned in monuments to markets, fairs to festivals, concerts to carnivals. People think I'm living the dream. Trust me one week in my shoes and you will be packing your bags. I'm posting the pic reading the feed and check in my life's I'm a photographer that savvy on social media. Everyone knows that photographers live or die based on whether they're social or shy. So they say you should be posting an update every day, several times a day to the following websites. Facebook Instagram, Pinterest linked in YouTube. SmugMug, Snapchat What's at Google? Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter Flicker and picks. And when you're done with all that, who's got time to go out and shoot photos? I got memory cards, hard drives and storage in the cloud. I'm a photographer that is fully backed up. I got triplicate, hard drives and stacked arrays and multiple locations backed up in a raid Cloud enabled server, which means my images are available. 24 65 2 simultaneous multi data downloads, which means my images are available on my desktop laptop, tablet TV, phone watch and any screen with a wireless Bluetooth connection. Except I can't show you anything right now because I forgot my password I like my lenses coated with Florian and I like my glass made a fluoride. I encourage all of you to become a photographic machine whose every photo is dyno mite just like mine. My name's John Gringo, and I'm a photographer.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase