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Did you know there's one thing that you
can do to become a better photographer?
It's simple just get closer, get closer
closer still.
Everybody I'm Mark Wallace
and guess what it is 2018
which means that it has been eight
years since Adorama called me up
on the phone and said; 'hey we want you to start
Adorama TV' and that means
I've created somewhere in the vicinity of a little
bit over 500 videos. Tutorials about lighting and photography and video
editing and all that kind of stuff.
I was talking about this to some of my
photographer friends last night and they
said out of all of the videos what's the
one tip, the one thing that you think
photographers can do to be better?
Well I thought about that
and went look back through a bunch
of the old videos and there's one thing that's consistent,
not just in my videos but in Bryan Peterson
and Tamara Lackey, and Gavin Hoey and Joe McNally
and everybody, something out of
AdoramaTV we all do the same thing
and that is get closer, get closer, that's
right physically get your camera closer
to your subject. It doesn't matter if
you're shooting portraits in a studio
or if you're shooting amazing scenic
photography, street photography,
all of it is better when you get closer.
Now you can do this in several ways.
So you can physically move your camera closer
to your subject and that is great
if you're using a wide-angle lens and that works
with a fancy camera like Leica
or a point-and-shoot camera like this Sony
right here or even an iPhone or Android.
You can physically get closer to your
subject, let me just show you exactly
what I mean. This is a cool mural here.
This is from Chow Kit murals. I'm in Chow Kit,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia right now
and this is the quietest place I could find
in the entire city, so I'm sorry about the noise,
but let's check this out. We have this
really amazing mural here, lots of color.
I could get back and take a picture of
this entire thing and it looked okay
and in fact here is the picture I took
earlier of this mural. Ah it's all right
but if I physically get closer and I'm
going to do this with my Sony,
this is an rx100 version M5,
and so I will get
back here a little bit.
Take a picture of this little dude,
yeah it looks okay but
if I get closer watch what happens.
So I'll get closer just a little bit of him
and the little bubble here, even closer
here just him and his eyes and you can
see that we get better and better
results, different results as we get
closer and closer. Now again I was
thinking back to all of those videos
that I've shot in the past and getting
closer has been essential. When I was
teaching about wide-angle lenses in
Vietnam, when I was thinking about
shooting scenic photos, all of that stuff
is better when you get closer. Now you
can also get closer by getting down,
by lowering your camera. What that is going
to do if you're shooting a scenic photo,
if you have something in the foreground
that's going to create foreground interest,
so just by getting lower you're
taking in that amazing scenic photo
but then you're bringing in something
that's close to the camera
and that's going to bring viewers in
closer to their image.
Here's the key
with the wide-angle lens you need foreground interest.
You need something to pull you into the frame
so I could shoot just like this standing up
and take a picture of here's Table Mountain
Blah that's not so good, because
there's nothing to lead our eye
into the photo so what I should do
is sort of crouch down here like this.
Now we have all these little flowers here and that
is my foreground interest
and that is going to make this a much more
pleasing photo. So let's take a look at the first
photo with me standing up compared to
the second photo with that foreground
interest that leads us into the frame. So
when you're shooting a big panorama like
this make sure with the wide-angle lens
that you find something that will lead
your eye into the frame. The other thing
you can do is if you're in a studio,
you know if you're shooting with a 50mm
Prime like I did when I shot
those really emotional portraits, you can
see that I'm really close
but if you're shooting with a longer lens
it's 70-200mm
which is standard in a studio session,
you get close by zooming in, get
close to those eyes, close to the face.
You might even get so close that you're
doing Peter Hurley style photography
and cropping the top of an image.
It's okay we want to get connected
to our subject, get closer, get closer, get
closer. Now there's one thing that you
can do it's a bonus tip if you want to
do the opposite of getting close.
Getting close helps us to connect with our viewer,
it's an emotional connection it really brings
us in but if we want some distance,
we want to separate ourselves and look at
things from like that top-down God view?
Well we can do just that. We can take our
camera and look down from a high vantage
point, something like a hotel balcony
like I did in Vietnam to get these
images of these cyclists zipping by on
their little scooters, all those families.
It's really sort of interesting to see
those from a distance
or if you have a drone of course
you can get way up in the sky and shoot down.
You can find a perspective that works a ladder across
over a crosswalk on a busy street.
It doesn't matter get up high and shoot
down and you're going to be doing opposite
of getting close so that's my one plus
bonus tip for you to become a better
photographer, get close, get close, get
closer and do you want to do the
opposite? Look down.
Well thank you so
much for joining me for this episode
and the past I don't know 500 episodes
of videos I've done here on AdoramaTV.
It's been really a blast I'm looking
forward to doing many, many more
in the future. It’s going to be great.
Don't forget to subscribe to AdoramaTV.
It's free and that way you don't miss a single episode.
Also check out the Adorama Learning Center
where you can see a bunch of
articles and archives on all kinds of
things categorically. It's really amazing
also free and then also check me out
an Instagram where you can see where I put
my tips into practice in realistic ways.
Thanks again for joining me,
I'll see you
again next time.