From the course: Photo Tools Weekly

Finding the hero shot

- [Chris] Hello, friends, and welcome to another episode of Photo Tools Weekly. My name is Chris Orwig, and thanks so much for joining me this week. Recently I have been expanding Photo Tools Weekly to cover topics beyond software so we can talk about other photographic issues and tips and techniques and tools which will help us to be a better photographer, and that's exactly what we're gonna do in this week's episode. This week's episode is less of a tutorial and more of a conversation. And I wanna talk about is how we can capture and find that hero shot. I mean the best shot in a mini photo session. How do we do that? And in order to talk about that, I wanna show you some images that I captured recently and tell you a little bit of the story behind them. And I wanna do this as a way to share my own process with you and also to inspire you in your own photographic process. All right, well, here we are in Lightroom. Press F to go to full screen. Let me tell you the story behind this picture. First off, this isn't a great photograph, but what happened was I got up early and I rode my bike up into the mountains, which I love to do. And I was so excited to be 4,000 feet above sea level. I'd just ridden my bike I think about 12 miles, and I was excited, right? I took a picture with my iPhone, but it wasn't very good. And the question is, why? And the reason that it wasn't good is 'cause my experience of being up there was so amazing that I was just so excited, I just pushed the button without really thinking like a photographer. So I decided to try to capture a selfie, (laughs) and the selfie is, it's really bad, right? It's not very good either. So I decided to try another perspective. Still not very good. I decided to zoom in a little bit. It's not very good either. So it really wasn't working at all. I tried maybe a horizontal perspective versus vertical. And photographically, it's really doing nothing for me. I mean, it was great to be up there, but that feeling wasn't being translated into the image. And then next what I did is I looked over to the right and I could see the coastline going down here. This is the ocean below, the marine layer. And if I zoom in on this, I wonder if you'll be able to see this. There's a little picnic table right here. I know it's kinda pixelated, but next to it was an old piano, and I thought, yes, I need to go check that out. This was just about one minute away from me, so I rode my bike down to it. And I'm getting close to this, and I see the piano and think, yes, this is amazing! A piano on top of the mountain. And I took a picture, and still it wasn't very good. And I think this picture doesn't work because the piano kinda blends into this rock right here and you don't really know what's happening as a viewer of the image. As the person taking the picture, I knew what was happening, but my viewer didn't. So then I had to say, okay, Chris, I need to think like a photographer. So what I did is I climbed up on this rock right here, and I took a photograph standing above, looking down. Let me show you that one. And this one I think is the hero shot. And what it did was it showed some of the piano. It showed the coastline down here. It gave the eye kind of a way to travel through the image so we kinda have this almost triangle right here. And this is the image that I ended up posting on Instagram, and it's one of the photographs that has received more likes than any of my other images. And I think that that works or this image works because of the angle and perspective, and I cropped it just about like this, and because it says enough but not too much. It kind of catches you. It makes your imagination kinda start to spin and get interested in what's happening here. And then I decided after taking this one, 'cause I thought, this is kinda cool, I'll try something else, kind of a similar version, and then another one from a different angle. And this image really doesn't work at all. And then that was the end, and I biked back down to my house. If I exit out of full screen for a moment and just pull up kinda some of the images which I think represent a little bit of this process, maybe these right here. I'll press N and then Tab to hide everything else. And if we look at this process, it's like this. You have an experience and you take out your camera, but you have to realize that isn't necessarily going to be the good picture. Then you're gonna see something in that environment or in that moment that attracts you, that you're like, whoa, okay, this is the thing that might be cool. And it was over here. Next, what you have to do is you have to get close to it. I got close right here. But I was so excited to see an old piano, I wanted to try to play it, and I was like, wow, that I still hadn't thought like a photographer until I said, okay, Chris, get up here, climb up, get that angle, and get the shot. And then of course I could try different angles. This one didn't work. But you really have to go for it and try that. Let me go back to full screen so you can see that. And like I said, I cropped it, probably about right here. And I think that process is an incredibly valuable tool to keep in mind so that when you go out shooting next, if you don't get the shot right away, tell yourself, hey, it's okay. (laughs) That's why we take pictures. We're taking to learn, to discover. We're kind of digging deep. We're trying to figure out the scene. And the way that we explore that often is with that camera taking the images. And then we get to the good shot and you find that, what you wanna do is sort of recognize it, experiment a little bit more, and sometimes it means that you won't get anything else beyond that. And then of course when it comes to the post-production work, like with this one, as I mentioned, I ended up cropping it. So when you find the keeper and you're reviewing your images, you want to just work on that image. Ignore all the others. The others are basically, they're like the rough drafts, so to speak. And this is the one where I'm like, yeah, this is cool. This is fun, this is interesting. I love it. And if you love it, there is a greater chance that someone else might as well. All right, well, I hope that these few tips help you as you seek to create better photographs and capture those hero shots that really stand out from the rest. And mostly I just wanna encourage you that if you ever feel like you're shooting and you're getting discouraged, keep at it. Keep working it. Try a different angle, get closer. Try up, down, sideways, whatever it is. And ask yourself, okay, this is exciting to me, but is it photographically exciting? And how can I think and work like a photographer to capture that image? All right, well, that wraps up this week's episode. Thanks for joining me. And also have a wonderful rest of your day. See you next time. Bye for now.

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