The Secret to Great Photography – From 0 – 60 in 12 Simple Steps

hello everyone my name is juan londono and welcome to my first youtube video this is what i hope the beginning of a beautiful relationship um i have so many ideas of stuff i want to do on youtube regarding you know the topic of photography um it comes from 30 plus years of experience really so i'm self-taught um so i hope that the knowledge that i share with you is is practical um not only from the stuff i've read and from the stuff i've learned from other photographers but the stuff that i learned the hard way just by you know doing it and getting it wrong and getting it right right um so you know i hope that this is practical knowledge that you can put to use immediately um the plan is to do a video a week at least for now and we'll see if that grows but um i'm gonna keep that consistent so you guys can rely on that and come frequently to check out stuff please subscribe i know i don't have a website yet it's actually in the making it'll be ready for no later than beginning of uh i'm hoping uh 2021 uh maybe january no later than that anyway so once that website comes up it'll open up doors as well i do sell photography black and white landscapes all kinds of stuff so that'll be on there as well links to that website will be of course on my youtube channel and on my videos so anyway without further ado further ado hello i'd like to get started with this video today's topic is the secret to great photography now let's see how we approach this because there's many ways of sharing the secret to great photography right um let's try whispering at first and see if you can get it okay did you get that i didn't either it's too soft i think right but okay that's all right if you didn't get that i'm gonna share um what i did was i developed a language my own language and it took like two years to develop and i want to share it to you uh share it with you in this language so here we go did you get it see now here's the problem with this language that i developed i was the key you know it tells you what word is what in english and um so i actually can't tell you what that means because um because i don't know myself but i did write it down so that's cool right but here's the thing when i wrote it down this two is an encrypted language and that's the secret of photography right there but i lost the key to that as well so i'm going to get a drink of water because i don't have alcohol here much needed so um i i feel terrible because the secret to great photography is kind of you know lost right now but let me tell you a story real quick when i joined wing chun kung fu which i still practice by the way many many many years ago um i missed the class early on in the uh you know in my studies and when i got to the school i said you know what did i miss last last time right what did i miss on tuesday basically and this the uh students that were around said what you missed the class oh my god you missed tuesday's class that was the class where sifu sifu is sifu not the kind of seafood you eat uh that's cantonese for master sifu taught the secret to wing chun and i thought oh my god how did i miss the secret to wing chun well they were joking around with me because the truth is for any of you that study martial arts if there's ever anybody that tells you there's a secret to your style or a secret to your art they are pulling your leg and that's the nice way of saying it um they're bullshitting you basically so there is no secret the secret is you have to train hard you have to be consistent you have to show up right you have to do stuff on your own homework you have to go work out hard at the class right so it's kind of the same thing with photography guys um there is no one secret but i will share with you a bunch of things that are critically important to great photography so let's begin so the secret to great photography starts with something as simple as weather now why do i say weather right we can't control the weather that's absolutely true but if your customer if the person you're shooting and what by the way when i say shooting you know you know i'm not talking about pistols here or whatever so if your customer your client the person you're shooting photographing whatever um decides that they want a sunny day and you guys head outside and it's cloudy and overcast that day that's going to be something probably that they're not going to be happy about right uh so you're gonna do your best you may use some lighting to you know pretend you got some sun out there whatever but you're gonna be really you know shooting against the odds right uh so that's that's something that will affect your photography um and vice versa you know if you're looking for a really uh oh um you know cloudy skies right um that gives you even lighting as a photographer that's great um but if it's sunny and the sun's right on top because that's the only time of the day you can shoot well then weather and time of day does does make a difference and it will affect your photography okay so the other thing that's very important is lighting right if you are shooting in a relatively dark place and you didn't take any lights or you weren't told it was dark or you were told that it was going to be bright and it's not and you didn't take lights just in case that might be a problem if you are shooting in an incredibly bright sun and you don't have believe it or not you need lights there too because when you use flash photography in bright sun it takes away some of those harsh shadows that the sun creates right uh and we'll talk about all this stuff later on um so you know lighting is incredibly important right ambient lighting light that comes in through windows um if that's sufficient that may be great sometimes that's not enough sometimes that's not the light that you need right you need different types of light to create different shadows so lighting is incredibly incredibly important so the other thing and i think we all know about this but there's a story behind this is equipment right now i i'm very sensitive with this topic um and i'll tell you why i'll tell you a little story actually it's more of a question um why is it that when a photographer takes a really good picture and shows people why is it that people ask us or actually people tell us wow you must have an amazing camera well i do i have an amazing camera but that's not the reason those pictures came out that way i mean it helps it makes it easier right but it's not the reason uh the only reason let's say um i used to shoot pretty good pictures in the days of film i shall film for 19 years that's when you take a picture you have no back of the camera to look at you better know what you're doing and the lights changing by the way and you're shooting in manual you're adjusting the settings you better know what you're doing and let me tell you in in i think the last two years of my 19 years with film i got a light meter i was i wasn't using a light meter before it was just knowledge of light learn learning how film works and how you can push it and blah blah all that stuff right so um equipment's important but it's not everything right you never go to somebody's house when they cook you an amazing meal eat the meal and go oh my gosh that was so yummy you must have an amazing oven that would be like the biggest insult in the world to somebody right i mean i don't even you don't go to a carpenter that just made a table for you that looks priceless that you paid like a grand for and you go oh how did you do this let me look at your hammer you must have an incredible hammer right yeah a good hammer makes a difference right i'm sure but it's not going to make everything right so this is where i'm headed right uh it's it's it's something like a pet peeve of mine um and i don't really have peeps but you know that's one that bothers me right but equipment is important right if your equipment is falling apart if it's failing if your lenses have you know uh fungus growing in them i mean all this stuff is important right if it's your equipment's outdated and just can't keep up with the times if you don't have enough megapixels if you have too many megapixels to me that's almost worse but anyway if you don't need them but of course they let you crop and stuff like that so equipment is very important it's easier to be good with a good tool then it is easier to be good with the bad tool so same with you know if your camera is the you know state of the art and you have great lenses with i shoot canon for example and i use l series lenses where i can and if i have great lenses and a great camera and and i have decent lighting or the lighting is good when i'm where i'm shooting um it's a lot easier to take a good picture you know obviously right so that's equipment for you the other thing is knowledge how much do you actually know right now many people today will buy a professional camera and voila they're professional photographers that's how they sell themselves and i've seen the work and you know what cameras are pretty good these days they'll do a lot even phones are good um you can take a decent picture with a camera just by putting it on automatic but you are so limited it's not even funny there are things you're not going to be able to do if you keep it on automatic right you can't make a waterfall look like it's like it's all dreamy and flowing uh in automatic probably uh depth of field you can't control that where you take a picture of a person and everything behind them is blurry right or really focused if you need um you lose all that in automatic right and you lose so many other things right forget about creating bokeh and all that stuff uh and we'll talk about what all this means in other videos um so you know knowledge is important now does it mean you have to go to school no it doesn't mean that it means you can watch youtube videos like these it means you can you know read uh find a couple of good books on photography um you know that's that's one of the main things right knowledge so it's not just what you know it's how much do you practice right i've taught this class to people that have actually learned it well and um the whole goal of the class i teach is to take people from beginner where some people haven't even touched the camera they only know how to use phones uh to take pictures and they'll walk out of a 12 week course shooting a manual and that's a wonderful feeling as a as a photographer and as a teacher to see somebody do that and enjoy it but guess what they don't practice right so i talked to them a year later and they're like oh my gosh i haven't picked up the camera in a year um you know i was playing around with uh playing around with it the other day and i i you know i wasn't sure what i was doing so i just shot a couple pictures in automatic i'm like ah so you gotta practice right you gotta practice what you learn um it's that's true in everything martial arts and painting and whatever you do whatever crafting hobby you're studying right um anyway so that's a big and then somebody um there are people that might even tell you it's not even you know what you know or how much you practice it's how much do you love it um let me tell you i was passionate about photography i started at the age of 11 and by 18 i had my first professional camera um i was so passionate everything i read i just soaked up right i mean it just went right into my brain and i could argue with people that have been shooting for years and years and years about certain things uh that were to me at this point were common sense because i hadn't read about them so much and practiced them um so anyway you know that takes you a long way you've got to be passionate about what you're doing if this is something you're doing as a pastime just to kind of chill and relax that's okay there's nothing wrong with that but uh you're going to grow to a certain point right if you want to turn this into a career if you want to make money off of this and you're just doing it for the money oh boy let me warn you it's going to be tough because like any other job it's gonna be a job you're not gonna do it because you're not gonna do it because you love it you're gonna do it because it brings you money there's potential there's nothing wrong with that but just keep in mind it will be a job okay now if you're passionate about photography if you just love photography and all the things you can do with it from you know taking the pictures to you know editing um then this is for you this is absolutely for you and stick around because there's gonna be a lot of information coming your way okay so the other factor that's important here is location right if you're looking for kind of a rundown location and you happen to be in a city where everything around you is new you know you're not going to be able to get the effect you need right uh unless you put a green screen and you create all that stuff you know later right in post-production um but if you want to take the pictures that way it'll be tough right or vice versa right if you're looking for you know buildings and you're in farmland well then you're really gonna have to create that green screen because you have no choice um so or travel travel to the nearest city right um so location is very important time of day is critical if you want some harsh shadows and you want that sun to be right over you creating nasty shadows sometimes you need that sometimes you want it uh fantastic most of the time for me probably ninety percent of the time when i shoot i want the sun to be either early morning or late afternoon early morning will give you kind of blue hues right you know colors uh so you may want to attach a filter or change the white balance if you want to give it warmth if you want to make it look like it's early morning that's fantastic then you leave it that way but the sun is low no harsh shadows right when the sun starts climbing going through the trees that gives you nice hair highlights and stuff like that that's beautiful um same in the afternoon when the sun's coming down it's gonna be a little more orangey and red then you're gonna need blue filters to kind of soften that redness out uh unless you want that look as well which many times you do um so time of day is critical and we talked about that a little earlier right so it depends on your subject as well if you're shooting models for example then you want to pay a little extra to get a model that's really attractive that's going to call um you know attention to your pictures right if you're shooting unless you're doing it for them so and by subject i don't mean just models and people i mean cars right if you're looking for vintage cars then you know it's going to be tough if you can't get your hands on one right if you're looking for exotic cars and it's going to be tough if you can't get your hands up so you got to be creative about how you're going to do this stuff right but your subjects will influence your your output as well right do you need to print your pictures really big because then you're going to need some high pixels right is this just for the web where that doesn't really matter you can get away with the lower megapixel camera all these things are things to consider that will get you the picture you need right and the picture is going to be uh because you really want to pop right you want a wow factor right so you all these things are questions you ask yourself even before you plan your photo shoot for example if you're printing on canvas you know uh extra sharpness will be great but it's not important because the canvas is going to give it kind of a grainy feel uh so you know you can get away with a lower megapixel camera even if you are enlarging um but if you're printing on like metallic you know aluminum sheets or acrylic on glass oh my gosh you want those pictures to be ultra sharp right so you need good lenses you need good lighting you need a good camera good editing software right that's important too so that brings us to our next topic editing software what are you using to edit right are you using something free that you know kind of gets you by are you paying a little uh you have to pay a lot but maybe buy a one-time software package that costs 100 bucks that you can use for years and years to come that's pretty decent you know there's a lightroom there's photoshop photoshop you know you used to have to pay like 1200 and then you pay like 400 every year for upgrades i got expensive now it's you know 29 bucks a month 19 bucks a month depending on what you need uh 39 bucks a month depending on what you need um and you don't feel it that bad right of course it's a subscription so you're gonna be paying for the rest of your life but the nice thing is if you sign up for example i think i have the 29 one um it comes out of my paycheck i mean out of my you know checking account automatically i don't worry about that stuff anymore you know it just comes out i use it heavily i use it all the time so it's just nice to know that it's always upgraded you're always getting the latest version right that's the nice thing about subscription subscription services let me not swallow my time because then i won't be able to you know give you the rest of the video and of course you know your materials if if you're decorating somebody's home they tell you they want pictures for their home if they want bright colors then you know don't show them black and whites right if somebody wants black and white then you know you might want to show them the color stuff at the end so that kind of stuff is important too it's not just how to take a good picture it's how to sell a good picture right and you have to be in tune to what your customer wants right so that's very important so there's one factor we don't talk about much here and it's murphy ever ever heard of murphy's law yeah i think we all have when anything can go wrong it usually does and and like to to the nth degree right um that day that you have to whatever give some presentation is the day that it's pouring and it takes you an extra half hour to get to work and it's the day you wet your shoes now you're uncomfortable and your socks are wet and it's the day that blah blah blah so many things can happen small accident right that's murphy and that's murphy's law in action well i have it in photography too and if you've taken pictures long enough and i have you're gonna have a story to tell and i'll leave that for another video disastrous but well maybe i'll tell you real quick i was doing a wedding my camera was attached to a cable because it was a battery pack that was attached to my belt i put the camera on a countertop at a church it was a wedding and when i pulled away to go get something i dragged my camera now let me tell you seeing the camera on the floor wasn't what broke really my my my everything right my my heart and and made my my body cringe it was as i'm walking away i hear the camera sliding and that's when i turned back and this thing was like a spring effect so i turned back but the camera already had reached momentum and i couldn't save it camera hit the ground with the l series lens on it and it was just so that stuff happens unfortunately you have to have backups right when you do these jobs have backups don't sign up to do a wedding unless you have backups that's very dangerous i did my first weddings without backups and let me tell you you know thank you thank you thank you um but you don't want to take those chances right cameras do stop working lenses stop working uh they jam they don't focus right so you need backups right uh things explode i don't know a camera can explode it has a battery i guess right might explode it but when i hit the ground so just be careful so these are the main things you want to think about when you're looking for that secret to a great photograph or to great photography there is no one thing right it's all of these things put together right it's even your your outlook that day when you woke up if you woke up with a shitty outlook on the day and uh and you pick up that camera you know it's gonna be hard to take a good picture i've had i have days like that where i look at my pictures and i'm just not happy nothing is coming out right and then there are days that no matter what you touch it turns to gold it's like oh my gosh you know you take a picture of a stick on the floor and you're like oh look at the highlights look at the oh look at the shadows i mean the sharpness everything just you know you can take a picture of dog poop and it looks artistic right those are very special days and a very special person that can pull that off but um the point here is you know these are the the main things i may have missed a couple feel free to comment and let me know if there's anything you feel that's really important that i missed um you know i love to read that stuff guys so please don't don't leave that out but the bottom line is that there is no one thing there is no secret right it's it's a passion right it's dedication uh being consistent picking up that camera every day or every couple days and using it it's uh staying on top of things learning right pulling up youtube video youtube videos um they're the programs that you get right whether it's a lightroom or you know if you're doing film editing filmora whatever you use it doesn't matter they all have education you know you can open up a link and they have videos on how to do things like really easy and then you can go to youtube of course and you can find out extra stuff from really really talented people that use it every day so stay educated stay passionate uh save up some money and get yourself some decent equipment because it helps it makes your life a lot easier but don't ever count on it being you know the miracle that's going to save your photograph buying the latest camera when i got my first professional camera it was film days i was depressed for the first year because everything was manual at that point the camera i had shot before then was slightly automatic and i get my first manual camera and everything i had to do on this thing was manual and my pictures weren't coming out that great and it was an expensive camera that my parents had bought me and a gift for my high school graduation and um i couldn't get pictures to come out the way i wanted them you know i was so sad so i could have given up everything at that point but i'm stubborn and i'm passionate about photography so i kept going and i kept going and i kept going and i kept wasting film and paying for development until those pictures started to come out awesome and then i realized what i was doing and then then i took off once i realized what i was doing wrong oh my gosh you make those corrections and you fly so that's the beauty of photography once you figure it out right but here's the beauty of photography too it's not just artistic it's it's mental right it's logical you have to understand how electronics works how camera works and glass and light and optics so so it's cool because you can be artistic and creative and then you also have that piece right so anyway i leave you with this um i hope you enjoyed the video i hope it was useful um if you did please give it a like it goes a long way especially to somebody that's new subscribe if you're looking for more content i want to put so much cool stuff on here um i hope you guys love this um you know stick around and please let me know how i did i i'd love to read your feedback it's going to mean a lot to me it'll help me put out better videos in the future okay with that said thank you very much have a wonderful rest of your day or evening depending on where you are around the world and i'll see you next time [Music] ciao [Music] [Music] you

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