 The difference between a mediocre photograph and a great photograph, one that leaps off the page and grabs the viewer's attention is mood. And if you have struggled to put mood into your photographs, then this is the video for you. How's that, how's that? Putting emotion, putting mood into your photographs is so tricky if you don't know what is actually affecting the way the person who is viewing your image feels about it. So today I'm going to share with you three approaches that you can take to get hold of the mood that you wish to convey within your images. The first of these is almost so obviously simple. It is color, you know, we all kind of know at a basic level that color makes us feel certain ways. You know, reds, reds are exciting and energetic and blues are a little bit more relaxing, you know, greens can be somber, yellows can be vibrant and, you know, attention grabbing. Pete Turner is a very famous photographer who made a career out of using color as a way of conveying feeling in his images. Look at these photographs and see how they make you feel. Some of them are fairly obvious and some of them are less obvious. But at the heart of all of this is how he recognized the impact that color has on the viewer of the photograph. You don't need to have a background in color theory to use color effectively. All you need to do is to tap into your own senses. How do these colors make you feel? If they make you feel a certain way, a certain mood, then it is a guarantee that a majority of people who are seeing your photographs are going to feel a similar way. If you're struggling with putting color together, then think about the predominant colors that are around you when you're photographing. You can use the squint method for this. If you're not sure what the squint method is, I will link to it at the end of this video. Once you see what the predominant colors are, then you can think, well, this is the kind of mood that they would suggest. And then you can take it from there. You can start to build up the photograph with what you have to hand. There is an age old debate, color versus black and white. Now, a lot of people with black and whites and well, black and white is the absence of any color influencing the way that people feel about what's actually going on in the image. And to a degree, I agree with that. Look at these photographs by Sebastião Salgado. They are epic in scale, but they are black and white. The pictures of the miners in these almost hellscapes in the Brazilian rainforest, eking out a miserable existence looking for gold are all the more powerful because they're in black and white. Because when you break away all the color that would have been in there, you're left with these shades of gray. So you cannot understand, you cannot tell where the person ends and the mind begins. Now, I can't tell you if color is right for your photograph or black and white is right for your photograph. You need to go with your gut instinct. You need to have the courage of your convictions that you need to tap into what does this, what do I want this image to convey? The feeling, the mood. And then see which one is right. The heart of great photography is, of course, light. It was light and most importantly, shadow as well. Desiree Dolbrun uses light and shadow to masterful effect, to create a somber, quiet mood in her photographs. Along with the color palette that she has chosen, the greens, the grays. Nothing too exciting, nothing too lavish. All of these combine to create a feeling within you. Think about how you feel about these photographs. What is the mood that they convey within you? And conversely, think about those photographs where the light is coming, streaming through a young lady's hair backlit and she's wearing summer dresses and it's all pastels and yellows and reds and things like that. They make you feel a completely different way, don't they? This is the joy of using color. If you want to create an introspective feeling, then put things into shadow. Don't be afraid of shadows. Shadows are your greatest ally in photography. They can hide things. Or they can bring other things into sharp focus. They can contrast with other aspects within the photograph. To convey a mood, think about images that have used light to make you feel a certain way. Make a mental note to them. If an image makes you feel an emotion, ask yourself, what has the photographer done to convey this emotion? Using light, using color, and there is another aspect that is equally important into making you feel a certain way about a picture. When you were starting off in photography, I think you were told, certainly I was told, to put the subject of your image in the middle of the frame. Now you can do this, of course, and it makes the image feel static, doesn't it? Especially if it's quite symmetrical, like a Wiz Anderson film. But what if you wanted to convey a unsettling feeling? How would you do that? How would you use composition, placement within the photograph, to make the viewer feel disturbed? Well, because one of the ways is just to use my old friend, the Dutch tilt, put the whole image at a wonky angle and you will feel, well, the viewer will feel rather, distorted, bizarre. The phrase Dutch tilt, I believe, comes from actually not Dutch, but Deutsch, like German. And it was about when they would put the camera at an angle to create just that effect in the old Daderist movies, the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and all those sort of things, to throw the viewer off in portrait photography. If you want to create an introspective mood, then have a person off to one side, looking out. If you want to convey mystery, then have the person or the object looking away from the camera. These are all fairly obvious about people because it's easy to convey an emotion with people because we can tell the person who we're photographing, look a certain way, look sad, look happy, look worried. But what do you do to convey a mood and an emotion with an inanimate object? You can change your viewport. You could get down low on something. If you want to create something that was dominating and feeling powerful, shoot it from below, looking upwards. If you want to make the viewer feel all powerful, then photograph something from above, looking down. Changing your viewpoint is such a basic and often overlooked way of creating mood in your photographs. That it's really, it would be so beneficial just to spend an afternoon photographing objects, common objects from unusual perspectives to see what kind of mood they convey. Even a lonely tree can feel very different when it is just the tree or when it is part of a forest. These images and all the photographs that we've looked at within this talk about creating mood and emotion within your photographs are constructed from these three pillars. Now that you understand what is affecting the mood of the viewer when they're looking your photographs, it's time to find those elements. And this method here, the script method, is what you need. Thanks ever so much for watching.