I've been Shooting professionally for 12 years and seeing so many young photographers, new be photographers coming through my doors and renting my studio, and I'm just chatting with them.
And asking what them literally, none of them know the answer to this question. So, I'm going to just pose it to you guys right now.
“Do you guys know the actual meaning of Photography, okay? Like the actual etymology?”
Photo means “light”
Graphy means “writing”
Okay, so you are literally writing with the light or what I like to say, “writing a story with light.”
So every single thing that you do is determine by what kind of story you want to portray.
If you want edgy, contrasty, Punchy dramatic, you want? Lots of Shadows. Okay, you want to take down that light? You want to make it very edgy, lots of Deep Shadows, lots of Darkness. You want to take away light
if you want Want more light, bright light more childish, more Whimsical, more magical, you want to add light. You want to put bigger light sources, more diffuse light, you want to change the color of the light? The direction, the light you want to make it big. You want to make it soft, okay?
It's not rocket science and I'm going to show you some of my photos right here of what I mean by all these things and comment below if you're like mind blown.
And this is a really, really big- Big deal because when I first started out back in 2009, 2010 I didn't know this and I really, really thought it was like oh I need to buy a better camera that's going to be make.
Make me a better photographer. “Oh, none of my photos are turning out well. So I need to buy a better lens.”
And so, I spent about twenty thousand dollars in my first couple years of shooting thinking, that's going to make me better photographer-
but I didn't know how to shape and train light and look for light everywhere.
Where my house and where the Sun is setting in my house, where it's beautiful and certain light, what the color is certain day.
And so every single assignment that I give to my students, my first assignment to them is walk around your house and just study the light pattern, study the temperature study how it looks and then you can tell me you need a new camera.
Alright, peace out. ya’ll