 Today's episode of The Photographic, I is very proudly brought to you by Pick Drop. How's that, how's that? Does your camera control you or do you control it? A huge issue, certainly where I had when I got started with photography was that often I felt like the camera was doing all the work. Was that I was running around all over the place. I had ideas for photographs up here in my mind's eye but my technique was lacking. Now recently I read a phrase in a book that talked about the way that photographers kind of get things backwards. That we think that technique informs vision. Whereas it's actually better if you think about vision informing technique. I'll just let that sink in for a moment. We don't need to find images that fit in with the techniques that we have currently. We need to take the vision and find the techniques to work on that we might be lacking to allow us to create that vision. Another major issue that I had was I was a child. I was probably eight or nine and then latterly in my teens there wasn't a photography club at school. I don't think there was anybody at school who was really interested in photography from a teacher point of view. So I was an environment of one basically. I didn't have anybody to talk to or get advice from apart from books. This was obviously pre the internet. So I was kind of left to my own devices with no real structure. So as soon as I saw something shiny or sparkly in regards to a technique, I thought I'm going to try that. And I was seduced by the starburst filter. That's not a strict technique. But I think you get my drift. Then latterly, I got accepted to the photo school and I went off and I thought this is going to be the moment. And now I know what an aperture is. I know what shutter speeds are. I've read a couple of tutorials and magazines and things on how to do these aspects. This was going to be the moment. Now they're going to show us all the artistic vision and how to be creative and all this kind of stuff. And what happened was that it was just like my experiences of learning to play football soccer to you Americans, that it was weeks and weeks and weeks and some more weeks of ball skills, endless passing back and forth. Nothing exciting, none of that. Those wow moments. And the photography felt very similar. We weren't really doing exciting things. We were asked to go and take photographs of cars passing by on the street at different shutter speeds of friends in various sort of depths so we could learn about depths of field. I thought, well, this is all very big. Why are we being taught this is basic stuff? And this was a pattern that was repeated throughout the experience of photo school that whenever we started something like going into the studio and being finally allowed to use the bronze color studio heads that the lecture said you can do a portrait with one light. You may only use one light. And then it was, you can use a light on the subject and then you can have a light for the background. Everything was slowly, slowly built up. And again, at the time, it felt frustrating. I was like, oh, why are we keep doing this, man? Because this is what happens when you're learning things that you think that the basic stuff is just that. It's basic. Oh, why am I doing this again? I know quite a few people who have probably watched this video by now have gone, well, I know all this stuff. Why? It doesn't really matter. You know, why should I care about knowing aperture or knowing shutter speeds or how different film speeds affect the image and things of that nature? But that's where I certainly was falling down a hole being making a mistake. Because later on, all that muscle memory that was building up like the practicing at the football pitch, you know, back and forth or the passing and the ball control, it allowed me to do things second nature. And photography was the same. After a while, without kind of knowing about it, I really didn't have to think too much about how the different apertures were going to work and the shutter speeds and things because it was ingrained into my subconsciousness. And it was allowing me to then focus on the part that I originally wanted to, which was the creative aspect. But now I had the basis on which to build the ideas to allow me to create the vision that I had in my head. So we're learning the basics, got all those down. You're gonna need those any kind of shot that you take. Then you have that vision and you know, okay, what do I need to build up to be able to get to that place where I could take that particular photograph? So how do we do this? Pick drop are the sponsors of the last couple of months here on the photographic guide, a huge thank you to them. I have been using Pick Drop in the current cohort that I'm running, specifically for one of their features, which is the ability to create galleries that you can share with people that they don't need to install anything. So I ask the students to upload their photographs into individual galleries so I can then have a look at them, give them some comments, annotate on them using the scribble feedback function. It is a fantastic option to have at my disposal. And thank you to Pick Drop for making something that is so simple and easy to use. Click on the link in the description box or with this little kind of QR code on the screen to get your free trial. There's a photograph that I absolutely adore, which I don't really show really often, probably because at the time some people looked at me and it was a bit rubbish, but I really like it, so whatever. And it is this young lady in a prom dress and I'd photographed her a couple of times, so a family would come in as a family portrait and she agreed to help me do some test shoots and modeling and things of that nature. So my mum had brought her in with this prom dress and I said, do you know what I've seen? I've seen some images recently with lots of natural light coming in, so it's kind of a su-brice sort of feel. And I'd like to do something dramatic with it. Now, there's a couple of things in there. So I've got an idea. I've seen something I want to try and replicate. I know about how to get some natural light in, but I need to figure out, okay, right, where's the balance, what do I need to do to get enough light coming onto the camera to give me an adequate depth of field without going too high in my ISO. All right, so let's start using some very big reflectors. So giant six by four polystyrene boards. So they're bouncing all this light back at this young lady. Then I'm going, all right, but now of course we need a shutter speed to be able to freeze the drapery, you know, in motion. I don't mind it up in motion blur, but we need to freeze it. It can't just be like mush. So there's, you know, I've got the basics, but then I need to practice on really getting to grips and refining the ability of myself to work with that natural light. So I've got that, that I can kind of work on by myself. And then there's another aspect which is in here, which is if I look at my posing of people on photographing back when I got started, because I was so, you know, I was really up here about all the technical bits and bobs, how to use the light and the apertures and whatnot. I wasn't really paying attention to the people posing. It was very much like, can you just do this? Because that's what I'd seen. That I had seen that it was this. That, you know, so it was things like that. So I allowed to be able to work on the posing of things. So that muscle memory, the ability to have the way to learn that I need to work with the natural light and get all the posing and the drapery things, the technical aspects, those were skills that I then built up on top of my basis. Allow me to create an image that sort of suited the vision that I had. So within your own photography, I know that, you know, even if you have just been like new to photography or you're coming back from recently, revisit the basics. Spend a weekend working on shutter speeds, photograph the same thing like we did. I remember sitting out there with a tripod and they said, pan on the street. Pan the cars going past, do it at a thousandth of a second. Do it at a 30th of a second. Then let the cars drive through the frame at the same shutter speeds, you know, 30th and a thousandth. See what happens at different shutter speeds. Revisiting these basics. Same goes with aperture and ISO, what have you. And really getting them down cold is going to help you be in control of the photograph that you end up with rather than being, you know, at the mercy of the camera who decides kind of what it wants to do, especially if you're photographing on program. Each week I send out a newsletter to the photographic eye community who have joined up to talk about various ideas about the more that kind of vision in photography to helpfully inspire people to, you know, go off and create their own photographs. And if you'd like to join this community then click on the link in the comment section that's pinned up at the top. It'd be fantastic to have you join us. Lighting is such an important aspect of photography that if you're really not sure how to see light or all it's worth, check out this video over here. Thank you ever so much for watching and I will see you again soon.