 My name is Steve. How y'all doing? Thanks for coming. I appreciate you being here. How many We're not in my video presentation yesterday. Okay, so a bunch So I have to do that one slide over sorry to the rest of you. I'm Steve. I am from Charlotte, North Carolina I've got a small marketing firm in Charlotte, North Carolina. We do video. We do Photography, but the thing that we've been doing the most most recently is is we're pretty heavy on WordPress design development and Cybersecurity is really really becoming the major crux of our business, but I love love love video and I love love love photography And I'm honored and excited. I actually didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night because I was I was I was excited about this talk So hopefully a I won't fall asleep in the middle of it and be hopefully you'll find it interesting. So Quick a little ditty about me if I can get this thing to work. Oh, yeah, turn it on on Okay Looks like we're gonna go old school on this Yep. All right, so I did the corporate thing for 13 years I started off in finance and I didn't like it So I built a database that took care of all the finance stuff for the company and Got the attention of the IT department and I weaseled my way into the IT department and I never looked back So that's kind of how I ended up in the IT side of things My wife got a really good job in Charlotte back in 2004 Something like that and I dabbled in real estate for a little while and decided that I wanted to go into marketing full-time So I started my own little little bit. It started with video and photography Little outfit called amazing video tours and I was the first one in Charlotte doing professional videography and professional photography within the real estate industry So added website design a couple years later One of my realtor clients asked me to build a website for and I was absolutely terrified and then I got in WordPress 2.4.1 I think is right around the time that I got in for those of you who understand that vernacular so Real estate is kind of my thing. That's I do really more of that I've got more real estate clients than just about anything else Although I don't try to pigeonhole myself into the real estate market That just happens to be where the vast majority of my clients are This crazy thing that you see that if you've ever watched NFL games, you see the guy running around. That's the Steadycam I do a lot of Steadycam stuff. I was again I was one of the very very first people to do Steadycam and walk through videos not only in Charlotte But but I used to go to video conferences and stuff like that There was a time when there were less than five of us in the whole country that do it And now there's thousands and thousands of people that do it. So I'm gonna get into the drone stuff also a very very early adopter of the drone stuff I was doing drone stuff before drone was actually even a word And you know, they were flying drones in Australia long before we kind of caught on here in the United States And I've got a few Australian friends who helped me get up and running with drones before they were even available in stores here so and I've had the Real nice opportunity. I've worked with commercials. I've worked with music videos and I've actually been a part of Cast and crew and a couple of movies. So When I started an amazing video tours, I was 80% video 20% web I'm gonna be 50 next year and carrying those big heavy cameras for 16 hours a day in the hot sun Started to get kind of old I know I won't be able to carry that into my 50s and 60s But I know that I could sit and write code and develop Websites for as long as I need to so I've really transitioned my business a lot more towards the website design development and cybersecurity end and Y'all those of you who were in my video thing know about my little passion for YouTube So there's some examples. This is why I get paid. This is how I feed my kids Basically real estate and architectural photography. I've been doing it for years and years and years You know, I don't like talking about me, but I I Have had the fortune of this I have had my images on covers and magazines and stuff like that So it's it's been a really good ride. I love love love photography my first paid gig ever I was 12 and I had a friend who was aspiring to be in a band he was probably 14 15 and actually ended up doing promos for his band and That that there are a couple people from the band actually made it made it pretty big So it was it was exciting to have an opportunity to get a paid gig as a 12 year old as a photographer So my my passion for photography started very very young I've done a lot of product photography over the years Obviously a faucet company in a fan company this was for a carpenter and Charlotte and He did beautiful work But he didn't have any clients because nobody he would had no way of showing off his his work And he told me that this is he put this image on his website And now he's got more work than he knows what to do with just based on this one image. So That's what I love. I love building marketing tools that help other companies make a lot of money And it's wonderful to get a call from somebody and say hey I made a lot of money because of the tool that you made for me. Okay, I Have the fortune I've been very fortunate to travel and you know do some stuff for golf courses And then there's the aerial stuff, which is an incredible passion of mine Like I said I've been flying longer than probably the vast majority of anybody who Flies drones and I'll kind of take you down my little bit of path But that's a that's actually a 2.2 million dollar house And if you notice the photo quality of this house compared to the next picture The first one was from a helicopter that the owner of the house actually paid us to go up in a helicopter and Shoot the house from a helicopter. That's why so that other one was taken with a professional DSLR This is taken with the GoPro from one of my drones Still passing quality still pretty darn nice picture, but not nearly as nice as is the last one I've done a lot of commercial stuff, too. This is a BMX track in place called Rock Hill, South Carolina they wanted me to do some stuff for them and Any NASCAR fans? We're in Alabama and there's no NASCAR fans. What about Talladega? All right. All right. Well the that house right there is Kurt Busch's house And then the house two doors down is his brother Kyle Busch and rumor has it that Dell Earnhardt Has a house in the neighborhood, too but they wouldn't tell me where he lived because they know how much of an Earnhardt fan I am and They just knew it would probably not be a good idea and then this is a another place It's actually a different lake outside of Charlotte and that big house right there is well The biggest one is the CEO of Bank of America Charlotte and then the one right next to him supposedly is Tony Stewart of NASCAR fame as well. So that was here's another shot that was taken from the helicopter I figured while I was in the air for the one I might as well take a few more too So my evolution of flight and I'm gonna I'm gonna make this quick But I just kind of want to take you down a little path as a photographer and a videographer even back in 2005 I was dying to put a camera on something that flew ever since I got the bug from being in that helicopter that one night I was like I've got to figure this out and then this little company called GoPro came out with the GoPro 1 I was like yes, and This helicopter doesn't exist anymore. This camera doesn't exist anymore. I have no idea where they are It flew away Never found it. I never found it. So I was depressed and I met some people from Australia online on YouTube and stuff like that and I started getting into this whole It's called a quadcopter. It's it's essentially it's a helicopter with four propellers You know now we call them drones, which I still hate that term, but this is my first drone This was the beginning of my first drone. I was like I said, I was building them a long long before This is back in the day when you had to program them yourself so This the first one I ever built Took me 13 months to build it took me 13 seconds to crash it The Wright brothers flew 11 seconds. I got them beat. All right, so that was number one I progressed to this one and then at some point I had a nice stable of drones that were nice and reliable and that's basically the one with the Six rotors is the one where I got the vast majority of those those images from the sky This is Lake Wiley, South Carolina This is my friend Jim Jim has over 2,000 professional dives This is Jim diving for one of my four thousand dollar drones at the bottom of South Lake Wiley Never found the drone 4,000 bucks So I think back to Mickey's talk about the peaks and valleys of business. Well, that was certainly a valley Excuse me. Yeah, the valley two days later I get a call from a guy who's going to be doing a film for Sony Pictures and They need some aerial stuff and Sony was going to help buy a drone for me and I got this monster and I flew that sucker. I flew it once I Being fully insured by Sony Pictures to fly it. I flew it once. I was a nervous wreck But we did what we did for the movie and we got it We got it done and ended up actually Sony basically let me have the drone I ended up selling it because I was afraid to fly it But it was awesome when I was flying it. That's about ten thousand dollars up in the air at once So that's why it just got got got big I have had good fortune. I've gotten a chance to work with a lot of models over the years as well So, you know models are more fun than architecture and a lot less than fun and then architecture for the obvious reasons They're a lot harder to work with but the professional ones are great to work with and the little redhead in the middle That's my daughter. You're gonna see her a lot in this in this presentation The reason why I'm showing you all these pictures is because My goal for you is by the time that we're done here today And I got a big sure I'm staying tracking on time How am I doing on time because I just can't Am I doing on time? All right My goal for you is that There's no picture or no image up here, you know, obviously aside from the aerial stuff I want you to be able to walk out of here with the knowledge of how to take a lot of these shots So I'm gonna share a lot of images with you and I want to whet your appetite I want I want I want to get you excited about photography and I'm gonna teach you how to do it Okay, so that's kind of our structure So I have a theme my theme is capture the moment and You probably knew this was coming Can I capture the moment with my cell phone or do I need a DSLR or even a even a beginning level? DSLR to capture a lot of these images and I'm gonna let you decide. Okay Here's image number one You go to see the Harlem Globetrotters You know the inevitable pale of confetti is coming You just don't realize that it's gonna happen to three rows behind you Would I have captured this image with my cell phone? I might have But I knew that with my DSLR. I Knew I wasn't going to miss the moment. Okay, so I Probably would have caught the image here with my cell phone. It probably wouldn't have been nearly as memorable. Okay So in my opinion right now, it's it's DS DLSR DSLR one cell phone zero Okay, no NASCAR fans in the room. I'm sorry. I'm a huge NASCAR fan These are two of my heroes Jeff Gordon and they all are in her junior. I Was 50 yards from these guys with probably just a thousand people between me and them And I had the I was fortunate enough to get to go down on the track while they were doing driver introductions and Capture this shot with my DSLR what I have caught this one with my cell phone. No way They were way way way too far away, but I was able to capture this I'm gonna teach you how to do all this stuff is is the point keep that in mind So DSR to cell phone zero The big win That little redhead right there is my baby They won the regional championship in basketball. I love these girls that brings oh These girls are just I love these girls my daughter's been playing basketball with these girls since she was four years old They're like they're all like daughters to me. This is taken from the stands What I have captured that moment with my cell phone heck no So DSLR three cell phone zero the big yawn That's my boy Tyson right there. I Probably Might have caught that one for my cell phone, but I don't think it would have come out as good So I think the DSLR is still winning I mean we could throw this one at the cell at the cell phone if you want to but I Still think that I wouldn't have been able to capture this image not nearly as well with my cell phone as my DSLR So here's a shot with my DSLR and the caption obviously reads don't just take a snapshot. There is Nothing memorable about this picture. That's my girl right there with the ball and she did make the shot But who cares? It's such a crappy shot. It's just like I see all the moms of the dads And I don't mean to offend you if you are one of these moms or dads that some of them have iPads at a basketball game I'm gonna tell you something about basketball indoor basketball and Dance recitals and stuff like that. Those are the hardest things to photograph Because you need the most photography skills to do indoor Action type stuff. I'm gonna teach you how to do it. I'm gonna teach you how to get there But this is never gonna suffice. I would never be I would never show this off to somebody. Okay So don't just take a snapshot Capture the emotion This coach again Coach my daughter all through middle school. I love this man. He was so good to those girls He taught them so much and this picture captures You can look at him and you can tell where he is in the moment He was he was cheering his team on, you know, they were down by four There was a few minutes left in the game and he he's got you that was a very you got this moment And I love this picture because I I have so much admiration for him and it captures the moment It's not just a snapshot Once again DSLR. I was probably 50 feet from him when I took that shot Alana she's terrified because she's got to go to the line with one second left to win the game Absolutely terrified. I Was so high up in the stands. There's no way in the world I would have captured this shot without a DSLR. So I don't know what the score is but I think you get my point is worth Carrying around a bigger camera to capture these moments because these moments are They're so fleeting. I mean the girls were 13 or 14 here. These girls are all 17 18 years old now Okay All right get off the emotional thing. Although I got I got a lot more my kids I think that's why I like this one so much is because I got my kids in it I want to teach you how to do some really cool special effects If you take a filter from any any camera and you put it kind of at a book end You get kind of a heart. That's kind of a cool thing So this is kind of my intro into creating special effects once again I'm rambling on and on and on here, but I want to let your appetite because I'm gonna teach you how to do all this stuff Anybody ever seen this before? I Don't recommend you do it unless you're in South Carolina at the beach because it is kind of dangerous But essentially what you do is you put a piece of steel wool in a whisk You set the camera up from a distance and I'm gonna teach you how to do that And you put the whisk on a string you do this and you turn And it captures it's called a spark orb or something like that has a name I don't know what the name is, but I'm gonna teach you how to take a shot like this It's just for fun I just I love photography and these are just some of the fun things that you could do not necessarily with your cell phone But with a real decent camera. I call this one fun with flashlights Boys love this one just if you have like a 12 year old There is another picture the boys were going like this so that you could see kind of the waves coming out of their mouth But I won't show you the other picture where they turned around and showed me their Heinz And demanded that I take the same exact picture that way And then the chair I'm gonna teach you how I did the chair shot just more fun And how to be every kid's hero by teaching them how to do all these little tricks Now man This one was it just happened to be the Amazon or whoever it was came to the door the door was just open a little bit and there was if you can see in The background just a little crack of light I told my daughter to just sit in the crack of light and she jumped in there and ended up being one of my favorite pictures that I've ever taken Just kind of happenstance once again DSLR DSLRs allow you to take images with the shallow depth of field and what a shallow depth of field means is your Primary subject is nice and in focus and you get that blurry hazy background Okay, because when we take when we take images We're telling a story and when you take a snapshot and everything in the entire photo is in focus You it's a it's hard to call attention to what the primary image is So I'm gonna talk about depth of field if you look very carefully at the piano picture The foregrounds blurry the middle ground is in sharp focus and the background is blurry. That's even a More reduced up the field. I'm gonna teach you how to do this. Okay? Whoops back it up back it up This is playing with shutter speed what I did here was I essentially Set the camera to have the shutter open for a long period of time while cars went whizzing by to capture their tail lights I'm gonna teach you how to do this and there's my girl again. This is called panning Basically what I did was I set the camera She's on one of those carnival rides that just goes around and around in a circle So what I did was I followed her with the camera and followed her and followed her and then click the camera as I continue to follow She's an ultra sharp focus, but nothing else in the image is focused giving us, you know Obviously motion and she's what I want you to look at the rest of it is just you know icing on the cake I'm gonna teach you how to do that and then I'm gonna get a little bit of Photoshop fun This might be kind of stretching it a little bit, but there's a concept called multiplicity This is my daughter and her best friend and my daughter and her best friend and my daughter and her best friend and my daughter and her best friend And in the picture is my daughter and her best friend. It's called multiplicity just More fun Photoshop tricks and when I'm in the happiness lounge some of these Photoshop things I can I can teach you about there, but they kind of be on this gop of what I'm trying to talk about here Another one the kids love karate my daughter went all the way I got a black belt my son Well, he's another story. I love him to death, but he's not exactly the Finisher like my daughter is But they got their their red belt it goes red brown black So my daughter got her red and my my son got his orange on the same day and because belts are so important in karate I used Photoshop to basically bring out the color of the belts But think everything else black and white and this is another one of my favorite images that I've ever taken so And I was gonna try to do a Jimmy Stewart impersonation, but I'm just gonna spare you of that But you know, you know, you want the moon Mary? Well, why don't I throw a lasso around it and bring it in to you? That's what this is more Photoshop fun. Okay, the moon is not that big Here is if you look closely in the lens My son is taking a picture of me and that's the picture of me And I'm taking a picture of my son which I photoshopped him in the image inside the camera Just more fun or Photoshop fun Okay, you tired you tired yet. Oh, and then my puppy It's called a pop-up picture another Photoshop trick Fun with cameras. Okay, lots and lots and lots of fun And then of course a lot of people don't realize this but time-lapse is not video sped up It's actually images taken every increment say five seconds ten seconds thirty seconds. What have you? And then all meshed together is what makes for a good time-lapse a lot of people don't realize that Okay You're tired of the the demo now. You want you want to learn some stuff? All right, let's get on a let's get on to learning some stuff I'm gonna hit you with some very very bare-boned basics. You're gonna be like duh But I'll make your head spin a little bit later We got to start with the basics. I See this all the time it drives me absolutely bonkers And my wife has to basically step on my foot to shut me up because I want so badly to just go and tell the Person how to take a real picture This is an example of a bad background good intentions bad background What I did with my son He's standing in the driveway. The cars are there. It's an ugly image. I basically just turned him 40 or 90 degrees to where we would have a better background and my my my thought for you here is keep it You know be cognizant of what's behind whatever you're trying to take a picture of because In about three seconds, we were able to get much better background than the cars and all the other nonsense Okay, just just by repivoting him. Okay, so pay attention to your background. It'll make for a better image Where is the Sun? I think this came up yesterday. Somebody asked me about the Sun well When the Sun is beating down on your subject, it's gonna cause these crazy Shadows and not look not make for a very, you know nice photo I turned the boy like this Where the Sun was at his side and it made for a much much nicer image So kind of be cognizant of where the Sun is in the sky because the Sun is your light source And as you're gonna find out by the time we get done with all this nonsense Light is your best friend when it comes to good photography Okay, all I did was turn him that was it So this is an example of hey, can you take a picture of us and the person took a picture of us? And I hate that picture just you can't see us. That's why a near and dear friend of mine who Actually works for one of the NASCAR teams and and got me down Real close to where I could take a lot of these nice cool NASCAR pictures But after he took the picture I handed the camera to somebody else and I said hey Can you take a picture of us and although the background isn't all that great? We were kind of limited within the confines of where we're at least I got a good a decent picture of me and my buddy and both of these were taken with cell phones by the way Okay, but my point here is where's the Sun if the Sun is behind your subject and you're shooting into the Sun You're never gonna have a good picture The Sun is to the side of the subject or behind you as you're taking an image. You're gonna have a much better picture All right audience participation time. What is wrong with this picture? Okay, yeah, we got some shadows, but there's a bigger problem that I want to convey to you We cut his feet off So from a photography standpoint, you never want to cut off the appendages, okay? If you're taking a picture of an individual you can you can cut them above the knee Okay, but don't cut them below the knee and and don't cut their appendages off because it just makes for a Not very good picture, but you're right. The Sun wasn't the greatest here either, but that's not what I was trying to convey I See this all the time my kids growing up people stand directly over their kids and they take the picture My kid looks like a little mouse Look like a scrawny little mouse Yeah, right back at you sister He doesn't look so scrawny right here When you take pictures of children if you get down low and you take pictures up It's it's just gonna make that much much better of a picture I'll tell you right now my boy loves the picture on the right hates the picture on the left And he's the one who used the term mouse. He's all look like a mouse So keep that in mind when you're taking pictures of children don't stand over them and shoot them So another quick example of that. I'm standing up. I'm six foot one the boy was jumping off of the thing I love making my kids jump off of stuff It tries my mother-in-law and my wife crazy, but my kids have tons and tons of pictures of them in flight That's me standing up But when I sat down on the ground it makes him look like yeah, he's a superhero And if you know anything about it, I guess he was probably around nine or ten here nine or ten year old boys Love to look like superheroes How are we doing so far Good All right, so what's wrong with this one? Yeah, you ever seen somebody take a picture like this That's what you're gonna end up with Don't take a picture like this Bring it straight And you'll have a straight-looking kid Okay, like I said some of these are pretty dull, but yet at the same time I see people do these things every single day Okay, this one's pretty obvious Yeah Focuses the issue here. Okay, what's wrong cut his appendages off? I Learned this in 1984. There's a picture of of now. I'm gonna date myself here the US The women's gymnastics team and the men's gymnastics team did awesome at the LA Olympics There was a picture of Mitch Gaylord on the rings and they cut his Hands off so you couldn't tell it was it was on the front page of the LA Times You couldn't see what he was doing It was the dumbest thing in the world that I've always thought don't cut the appendages off of people because you you have no context of What they're doing so here he was accomplishing this great feat, you know holding himself up in the rings You couldn't even tell it was pathetic and it made the front page If you're wondering about the transitions I teach kids So and they love all the crazy transitions. I know that it's not so great for adults, but it is what it is So there's the boy again. He's standing right smack dab in the middle of the image So I'm gonna ask you does that look nicer Or does it look nicer with him a little bit offset where you can see the background a little bit? Okay, there is a rule of composition. It is rule number one in any photography composition book called the rule of thirds You do just this one thing you change this one thing in your photography people aren't gonna know why your pictures are better They're just gonna Feel like they're better This is called the rule of thirds and it's a tic-tac-toe board So cut your image into a tic-tac-toe board and put your primary image somewhere where it's intersect Intersecting with two lines and you'll have a much nicer image. Okay, that's called the rule of thirds. I think this one's pretty obvious We've all seen over exposed and under exposed pictures We're gonna talk about settings so that you don't make this mistake and you end up with a much better image Okay Put your seatbelts on this is where it gets hard Have I talked to you guys in that at least being interested in in in trying to use a better camera than your than your Cell phones. Okay, so let's take it one step further. I don't care what camera you get I don't care what it's an icon or a cannon or a Sony or a Panasonic or whatever DSLRs now are cheap You don't need one like I use every single day because you you don't do I you're not out in 120 degrees Sweating all over it and all that kind of stuff on some days and some days I'm out in 14 degree weather, you know and the things icing up. You don't need anything like that That's a professional camera is built for the rigors of that type of abuse But you can still get a nice DSLR nowadays for $3.99 and if you really want to be Cost-conscious buy one on eBay for half that people buy cameras. They don't use them and they sell them They're like boats and used cars. You can get a really nice camera on eBay Barely used for really really cheap price Probably surprised you so let's get out of easy mode And as you know one of these dials is a cannon the other one's a Nikon I actually own both and I forgot which one's which I think the Nikon is on the right You've got auto which is the green mode P which is program mode. Okay, which is basically green mode that you can override. We're gonna skip that and A is aperture priority You set the aperture The camera does everything else S is for shutter speed you set the shutter speed the camera does everything else and then M is manual you set everything And we're gonna tackle each of them individually We're gonna start with aperture priority mode because this is the funnest place to start Okay, I highly recommend you start an aperture priority mode on your journey to take better images Because you're gonna pick the aperture and the camera is gonna do the rest of the work for you So we're gonna take baby steps here now Aperture is one of the most Crazy hard to understand concepts in all photography and I think this is what turns most people off So I'm gonna give you the example that helped me get it finally get it after I don't know three or four years of taking pictures I don't think I understood aperture. I started at age 12. I don't think I got this until I was around 16 or 17 When you're asleep at night You wake up in the middle of the night and you open your eyes you can pretty much see what's going on in the room, right? Because your pupil is huge, right? You stumble to the bathroom you flip on that light and you're like wow, right because your pupil is huge You have to wait for your pupil to undialate to be able to digest that light Aperture in your camera works the exact same way Aperture means the camera's pupil is either huge why? to let tons of light in or Really really really small Because you're at a baseball game in the middle of the day and you don't necessarily need to let all that light in okay? So when your camera goes Opens and shuts when the shutter opens and shuts it does two things it well It does one thing it lets light in but the amount of light that it lets in is determined by two factors how much how big is the pupil and How long is that shutter open and shut we're gonna talk about the pupil first But just know that that's the two things that that's the only two things that happen when that shutter opens and closes That shutter can open and shut as fast as one eight thousandth of a second which I can't clap that fast And it can stay open as long as you want it to it could stay open for 30 minutes if you wanted it to okay We'll get to shutter priority in a second. Let's let's digest aperture priority big pupil lots of light Little pupil less light And here is the most confusing thing about cameras is for whatever reason and I don't know the reason The numbers are backwards. It doesn't make any sense and this throws so many people off When it's open huge It's a little number and when it's open just a teeny bit It's a really really big number and I don't know why that is I don't care just If you once you get your head around the fact that 1.8 is really really big And 22 is really really really small You'll be able to start understanding the f-stop or the aperture on your camera settings. Okay The other thing is I have halves and doubles F1.8 it doesn't look like it but f1.8 Let's in twice as much light as f2.8 which lets in twice as much light as a four twice twice twice twice twice okay Conversely if you go the other way it doubles each time Okay, so apertures are halves and doubles and that's I guess where those numbers come from But if you can wrap around your head around the fact that the small number is is the big aperture You'll be well on your way to understanding aperture priority and being able to use a mode on your on your DSLR Everybody get that I explain it right Okay Low light. What kind of aperture do you think I used on this one? First of all, I was not supposed to have a DSLR to rock concert Right. Oh Okay, that was a 2.8 lens. Okay. There's a 2.8 lens Here's another cool thing remember earlier. I was talking about that soft background Okay, aperture mode Determines depth of field. That's how much of the image is going to be in focus And I have a little trick for you to remember this Big aperture big aperture small number. I know it doesn't make sense But a big aperture of 2.8. This is the way I remembered it when I was a kid Whatever I'm focusing on About 2.8 feet in front of them and 2.8 feet behind them is going to be in focus Okay, whereas if I bet f22 Or this in this example f16 You see how all the hats are in focus at f16 So the focus is on the hat in the front, but you can still see that all the other ones are in focus so If you want a real shallow depth of field 2.8 is kind of an easy number to remember because you just think about your subject probably 2.8 feet in front of them 2.8 feet behind them is going to be in focus. Okay, and you get that nice portrait Feel with the milky background and everything like that You were showing me pictures on your phone about with the flower and you didn't know how you were getting that That's all aperture priority She was showing me pictures of flowers on her phone and they were beautiful portraits where the flowers were were in sharp in Sharp focus, but the stuff in the background was was all blurred and I told her I promised her at that today I was going to teach her how that was done. So that's aperture. Okay Okay, pop quiz The Grand Canyon is this f22 or is this f2? Yes, you're listening Yes, absolutely. I can't think of anything larger than the Grand Canyon take a picture of five minutes Okay, okay, so five minutes and then 15 after that. Okay. Yeah, we're good Okay, there she is again. Sorry f22 or f2 Okay Everybody understand aperture priority Now here's the cool thing Go home you put your camera in aperture priority and the camera's gonna still make the decision about the shutter speed for you So you can play an aperture priority and not worry about the shutter speed yet, which is really really cool Like I said baby steps I'm teaching you what took me years and years and years and years to figure out and and you probably remember those film days I Would take like a roll of 12 and get them back a week later and not remember what I was never disciplined enough to write down I knew I should my father was like you should write them down write them down I never did it took me years to figure it out. I really didn't figure things out until digital came out But shutter priority mode now we're talking about how long is that shutter open? Okay? Okay? When you take cityscapes, I recommend you do a few things Do it in winter when the air is cold and dense and crystal clear. It was so cold this night It was probably 18 degrees the other thing I did was take a buddy Last thing you want to do is be out there with your head in a $5,000 piece of gear and no cover, you know and This picture was taken in a part of Charlotte where if I had been alone I might have gone home without the camera that night. Okay, so for night photography. I'm a big advocate to bring a buddy So this picture was actually six months in the making me and my buddy in terms of you know Getting permission from our lives to be able to go out on a Tuesday night in February You know and do this it it was a long time coming together, but it's it's one of my favorite pictures that I've ever taken Shutter priority mode. We wanted the shutter open for a long period of time Because as the cars drove by that's what created the streaks of light now the camera's sitting still on a tripod Not moving at all and that's why the city the city in the background is still sharply in focus. Okay, I Don't remember what the settings were on this one, but I think it's on the next slide. All right, so yeah a minute now To my non-nascar fans in the room when the cars are on pit row They're still going 55 60 miles per hour, so they're still moving pretty good So this picture del juniors car. He was doing about 55 at the time I need a really fast shutter speed like 1 350th of a second to be able to capture that and still make it nice and clear you guys get the difference Okay All right quiz Is this a fast or a slow shutter speed? Fast anybody want to guess say again? Good good guess One one four thousand so that's how that's how much shutter speed you need to be able to capture a bullet going through a pumpkin. I Didn't take that by the way, so faster slow Slow if you look closely you can see kind of a ghostly image of me What I did was I took a little penlight flashlight. I stood by the chair I made sure that I continued to move so that I wouldn't be in the picture And I just kind of lighted around the chair is all I did. I showed my son this picture He and his buddies were doing it for weeks after that. I Couldn't get my cameras back Okay, so fun with kids. I tell you what So yeah 30 full seconds on that one you guys have all seen the water pictures, right? One one thousandth of a fountain is boring Now I'm not a big fan of one one thousandth at all But you've probably seen the waterfall waterfall pictures where the water looks nice and creamy. Okay, that's a longer shutter speed That's one fifteenth of a second Okay, and speaking of waterfalls. Here's the exact look at one eight hundredth of a second That's not going in any magazine anywhere All right, but you slow it down to a third of a second or even one full second you get that nice creamy Thing now remember these are all taken on tripods. You can't hand hold this or you're gonna have a mess Okay, but set that shutter speed one second and your Crappy snapshot turns into something that that might end up in a magazine someday. Okay shutter speed Cool thing about shutter speed you put your camera in the s mode To play with shutter speed and it'll set the aperture for you So you can practice s mode. It'll take care of the a mode and vice versa for you Okay, and we talked about this one. I promise you I was gonna tell you how to do this Okay, you follow the subject and I didn't get this right on the very first one I played with it. I played with different shutter speeds and stuff like that and I decided 160th was the way to go Now that's what turned out the best picture. Okay. We learning Who's asleep? Nobody's asleep. Yes. Nobody's asleep. All right manual mode This is where you make all the decisions and I'm gonna tell you right now indoor sports Is a big deal. Here's the situation Alana's going up for the layup I needed her in crisp focus But yet I also wanted to stop her motion, right? If you look at number three number three is out of focus She's a head. She's in front of Alana and everything else behind her is out of focus I want you to look at it number 12 And it's obvious. I want you looking at number 12. Okay, that's the difference between a really nice shot And and a snapshot because with a snapshot everything's going to be super in focus It's probably going to be a little bit blurry. You're not going to know what to look at. Okay So you guys get how I did this aperture priority Actually I take that back manual mode. I probably had her at probably f4 And a very very fast shutter speed to stop the motion. Okay All right, let's play. How is this shot? Some of y'all at a f stop anybody 2.8 how about a shutter speed? In order to freeze motion you need a shutter speed of 250 250th or faster So if you're doing your kids sports and stuff like that and you want to freeze motion to 250 250th of a second or faster so this one very shallowed up the field And a very fast shutter speed Does that make sense? Am I getting 3d out because I know this is this is not easy and this is why most people are not photographers because this isn't easy But I try to describe it in a way that that it does make it easy Am I am I is it working? Okay This is a little harder because it's more of a middle of the road thing So I'll just kind of give you the answers middle depth of field and moderate shutter speed. Okay I like to take pictures of houses at night and let that shutter just sit open because you get that When you bathe the house in light and then you just let all that light come out If if if I had used the much faster shutter speed, it would look like just kind of a regular boring picture Okay guesses With the buddy same buddy same night good call. Who said that? Very good. I like that. Yes, definitely with the buddy this Dave this is at cpcc's parking lot Uh, yeah, this picture was a pain to take because there was no traffic that night I mean just zero so I was out there sitting there waiting. It's obviously f 22, but that thing was open for five minutes so to capture that little traffic and uh Normally charles got a lot more traffic than that, but uh, yeah, I had to be patient for that one. Okay Sometimes you got to wait out the shot All right white balance. I was talking white balance. Where is he? He's not in here. Okay White balance is this weird color cast that you get on some of your imaging You don't know why and the reason for that is because the white balance isn't set on your camera correctly. Okay cameras see in in in a color cast called Kelvin and that's the color temperature And that's why these little icons. They actually they actually are important Um, the gentleman who was taking pictures of the vent earlier today had his white balance on auto And he was taking pictures out there where nothing but fluorescent lights and his pictures were coming out. Guess how Yeah, exactly Because it wasn't set right the auto mode works great for iso most of the time But this is a very very very fluorescent environment And when I switched him over to fluorescent his his uh, the color accuracy on his pictures, uh, were beautiful Okay, so you can get away with is excuse me A white balance being in in auto mode most of the time But if you're seeing weird casts either yellow or purple Try making that switch. Okay, you don't you don't have to think about all this stuff all the time We're starting to get really really into the weeds in terms of of advanced features and the the most In the weeds furthest furthest one down is this concept of iso Which if you guys remember from the film days film used to come in like 100 200 400 That's just basically light sensitivity Okay, and all I'm going to tell you about iso is you can cheat if you're out in the bright sun Take your iso down you can use auto mode and it'll get it right most of the time um But if it's not getting it right or if you're trying to take a picture of your kid Dance recital or something like that and even with the you've got it stopped down to the biggest aperture You can get and you're trying to work with the fastest shutter speed that you can work with If it's still not working for you, you can cheat it And jack the iso up because that will add artificial light to your image The problem is it'll add fuzz to your image too Okay, so depending on how much fuzz you're willing to deal with in your image if you're just sending it You know to on the internet or something like that You could probably get it all the way up to about 3200 without too too much fuzz But if it's something that you want to blow up to one of those Things that you put on the wall. You probably want to keep it lower than 800. Okay Okay, how much uh, is that mean i'm done 15 minutes before the next well, guess what that's the last. Okay lenses You guys probably all know what 80 to 200 means, right? That's 18 millimeters is is like real wide, okay Like if you can see at the 300 millimeters you see the little red barn that little red barn is actually in millimeter, okay, so this is where we're going from telephoto or from telephoto to wide angle And you can buy lenses that are 18 to 300 That will do all your one-stop shopping now the lens is going to be this big But you only have to buy one lens there's there is a downside to this, okay So that's called focal length everybody get focal length when people buy lenses They're pretty in tune with what focal length means But what in the heck is going on here We got a Nikon afs dx nicore 80 to 200 yada yada yada blah blah blah for 596 and something that looks extremely similar for $2,300 Because of the amount of light that it lets in Okay, when you use this lens And you stop it down you want you're doing basketball, right? So you want as much light as possible you stop that sucker down to 3.5 And then you take you twist the barrel to make it go to 200 because you want to get real tight in on on the kit or whatever You're going to notice that your 3.5 just became 5.6 Do you remember the slide about doubles and halves? Okay, if you're at 200 millimeters on this lens trying to take a picture of your kid going for the layout At 200 millimeters you're at 5.6 on aperture, right? Which means you're not letting as much light in You need a blurry picture That sucker over there is a constant 2.8 all the way through Doesn't matter where you're at. You could be at 200 millimeters. It's at 2.8. Remember halves and doubles So i'll get the math wrong here but 2.8 if you go from 5.6 To 4 to 3.5 To 2.8 and that Haves each time. What is that 1 16th as much light? I don't know what the math is somebody in here probably knows It's it's half half half half Four halves, so I don't know what that ends up being But it's a heck of a lot less light And that's why that lens is a heck of a lot more expensive make sense And super heavy good call on that one. Yeah, all right The need for speed And we just kind of talked about that. I'm going to give you an example if you saw the pictures of me at the at the track I actually had those two lenses This is the best I could do With the $500 lens now these cars my my desk car friends These cars are now on the front stretch. They're doing 180 miles per hour This is from the same position with the other lens crystal clear. They don't even look like they're moving Okay So that's what $2,300 gets you and that's what the $600 lens gets you Okay, and I'm sorry about that. My recommendation is just to have your kids do outside sports Because if they get in a basketball and dance, oh man, you're going to be in deep for lenses if you want to take some good pictures, right? All right, so we're almost done I think So freezing the action in near darkness um That kid's mom Offered me $500 for this image. I gave it to her because I'm not in the business of I was going to use the r-word I just I gave it to her and she was forever and she's got it blown up She's so proud of that picture of her boy Because nobody else was capturing images that night. I was probably like 30 rows back I had my 80 to 200 on full on 200 Okay, it was on 2.8. And I think I was at probably around 250th of a second I was the only one in the audience that caught a decent picture of her son that night and she was forever grateful Okay, she's also the owner of the studio. So uh So it was it was really cool to be able to do that for somebody else And crop factor you guys if you've ever gone camera shopping one thing that really really confuses people is this whole concept of crop factor Cheaper cameras and I don't mean to say cheap I just mean the less expensive cameras are going to have something called a crop factor. They're going to crop out Some of what a old school 35 millimeter camera used to uh, uh, 35 millimeter film is is very wide It it captures quite a lot. Okay, but the the sensors Excuse me on some of the on the cheaper cameras. They just don't capture as much to me Just use your zoom. It's not that big of a deal. I I would not I would not encourage you guys to go out and buy full frame cameras because full frame cameras are super super expensive That's 1200 and up. I want to encourage you guys to go out And buy entry-level DSLRs Throw in an a mode and start taking pictures of your kids or grandkids or whatever Because I got to tell you it is so rewarding Um, I've told some of you this between my mom and my stepdad I'm the youngest of seven There are no pictures of me as a kid Because I'm just that tons of pictures of my older sisters and brothers But squat and I made I made a commitment to myself many many many years ago that my kids were going to have Pictures of bounds and we've got a yearbook. That's probably this thick every single year great pictures of my kids And I love it and it's a great great great thing so Obviously all of this applies to your work. It applies to your blogs. It applies to helping your clients But where I was coming from on this whole thing is it's also an awesome awesome awesome hobby For great great great memories from you your family your friends your kids and you'll become very popular um One more rule of thumb Don't be afraid to take crappy pictures. I'm going to let you in on a little secret For every 100 photos I take I show other people 10 of them and they think I'm awesome They don't see the 90 that are crappy Okay Yeah, forget that but you don't have to share your crappy pictures with people Anytime I take I take pictures of the team and all the girls are at my house. Let me see the pictures No, no, no, no, I got I got I got a photoshop them Now I'm just picking out the ones that I like the most Okay, so don't be afraid to take a gazillion pictures and not show the bad ones to people That's it questions Yes, sir I like those little booths the question was product photos You know a little white booths that you could buy on ebay or amazon dirt cheap And the other thing is a ring light You know i'm talking about uh, if you ever watch csi when they take the pictures of you know the close ups They use that ring light that goes around the barrel that gives a lot of really really nice light to products Okay, yes, ma'am Any entry-level dslr can do that you put it on There's a there's there's also a b mode called bulb Where you can actually sit there and hold that shutter open hold it open hold it open for as long as you want to And i'll give you one more little because you brought that picture up One of the other things that I did when I took that picture when there were no cars or nothing really interesting Was happening I put a baseball cap over the barrel of of the thing so that it was capturing no data at that time And if you want really really really cool firework shots Do the same thing in between the firework just just set that sucker to bulb or whatever and just hold that shutter open And anytime, you know, there's a pause in the fireworks put a little put a baseball cap in front of the thing As soon as you hear that pop of the of the thing going off pull the baseball cap away And and when the image when you go to look at the image It's going to have you know three minutes worth of fireworks and people are going to be like Whoa, that must have been the coolest fireworks show ever. No, no, it's just three minutes worth of fireworks. So Who else yes, ma'am It I probably said it wrong because I'm dyslexic, but it's a dslr It's it stands for digital single lens reflex throw it in a mode and just have a ball Who else yes, ma'am? Yeah, I do. It's not exactly the cheapest, but I am a huge fan of light room. It's an adobe product Lightroom is a godsend If you shoot and and I'll go over some of your heads here for if you shoot raw You know, I'm talking about shooting raw And you use lightroom you can fix just about anything Okay Raw is okay. So with these dslr's you have an option of shooting either jpegs, which we all know jpegs Or shooting something called raw raw basically It's a much it's a huge file size for every single image that you take But it's an uncompressed image So when you pop it in a photoshop or you pop it in the lightroom you have so much data that you can work with You can fix messed up white balance You can fix a lot of bad bad issues in an image Yes, sir I do for sports Your camera will have you know cannons Are awesome. I mean when micons are awesome too, but cannons Will have a a a setting on that dial There are settings somewhere you could either do single shot Sing or multi slow and multi fast So I I don't use it a lot But yeah, I mean you just sit there and put your hammer on it and the canons will go 11 frames per second They'll just go You know and icons aren't as fast as cannons So does that answer your question? Okay. He was this question was about burst mode You hear uh, you go to a uh a professional sports event Especially like a somewhere quiet like a basketball game and you hear all the cameras go You know, that's that's the guys, you know, it's that whole one in ten rule He's he's gonna take a picture of the person doing the layup and he's going to pick the best one If you know that that he that he wants and he's not going to show his friends the rest Who else Thank you all very much. I know you have a choice of where to be and I appreciate that y'all decided hanging out with me Thank you