Even the pictures that you use as examples of what to avoid look amazing, the the good ones look stunning. I think what puts them over the edge for me is the lighting. I recently got into photography, and I find it's fairly easy to forget to consider the shapes the light make, and the pictures you showed here are just amazing.
Nigel, this is one of "those"clips to me: so full of useful advice and examples that it warrants watching again, and making notes. And the way you explain things makes so much sense. I immediately understood and related to the points you were making. I think taking time at a location is something everyone *can* do. Even me. 😉So thanks so much for this.
You're BEYOND helpful, your photos are so beautiful, absolutely captivating. I am so grateful for your tips, these videos are so encouraging and helpful!
Thanks Nigel, super useful tips! Breaking the cycle with a 'why' question is so important as you say, because talent and flukes can only make so many good photos. This is where I think you need a foundation in theory to be able to evaluate, and you do such a wonderful job presenting theory without making it feel like theory.
I value your opinions on composition very much and learn the most when you hop on your ipad and use the pencil to draw out the elements in the photo and really break it down for us in your videos. Thank you for doing that. I don’t see any other photographers on youtube doing that. Great work, as always.
Review stage definitely a key component to the learning cycle. In the Fire Service, the process was called structured debrief and same principal as photography i.e. what went well, what didn't and what you would do different the next time. Hope you get your MRI soon Nigel and you can embark on your journey of recovery
Taking enough time is the key in creating a compelling art. This includes taking a lot of photos, analysing them, revisiting the same places over again and again, observing and many more.
As a beginner, I think my major issue is that I think many of your "mistake" examples look great. If I can't tell what's good from what's bad, how can I improve at all?
I'm a last year photography student in college. The experience of it showed me how subjective it all is. Different teachers will always have different opinions or give different feedback, some of their tips are even the opposite of what I saw in this video. Neither of them are wrong. Art changes constantly. What he shows works for him, take this video as inspiration, not as a set of rules and find out what works for you. When analysing your photos write down what you like and what you dislike to keep in mind during your next shoot. Do what you think is right as long as you try to accomplish your goals.
Great advice! I should definitely take more time evaluating why some of my images work or don't work. The feeling of being in an incredible landscape but not figuring out a working composition really is a tough one.
Hey, im a new videographer, and im learning in videographer school! And i understand your thinking process about compozition, but it really is proffesionally talked thru it will be really hard to understand to a new photographer! But thanks you gave me new ideas!!!👍
Really useful tips. I really like how you emphasised how you can learn better composition. Just because it doesn't come naturally doesn't mean you can't improve and get better. Good life advice, not just for photography!
Thanks as always Nigel for being the consummate teacher. There are many good points here to consider back in front of my photos in Lightroom. Thank you! One point that stood out for me, near the end, is about taking enough time. Ideally, no question, having a lot of time to size up the environment will help. However, it can be a bit of a geographic luxury. Relatively speaking, the sun rises/sets notably more slowly in England than in the more southerly location where I live. The light is changing much more quickly here, and even when I get to a location well before sunrise/sunset, I often don't have a lot of time to size up a given lighting situation because it's morphing quickly. Getting there early definitely helps, but even then I don't often have the time to sit and have that apple.
Nice one.. It's informative. But would have love you to also include portraits and full body shots of someone not just the landscape. Cos to me, I feel like you cannot leave unnecessary space while taking images of a person either portrait and full body.. For instance you have close shots, headshot, etc.. All these do not need unnecessary space either below, above or side. But all the same thank you for the videos. I am here to learn🙌🔥
Very very helpful guidance. i am an absolute novice hobbyist photographer who has moved away from mobile phone photography, to what i will call proper photography. I am starting from the beginning & the content of Your videos Nigel is very helpful. I have an old Sony NEX 5R mirrorless camera with kit lens & also 200 zoom. The camera is only 16 mega Pixel & I was going to sell it all & look for a more upto date mirrorless, however after watching your recent video I am going to stick with the NEX 5R for a while until my photography has improved. At this stage of my hobby I don't think having more mega pixels & better auto focus etc is going to be noticeable in my photos. Thanks for creating such informative videos
Photography to me is quite a strange subject to try and analyse, more often than not you get images that seem to break all the rules but still somehow work. I honestly have learned more out of my flukes than intentional compositional study.
Nigel, you accomplished something here. I actually picked up some new ways to think about composition. My self-analysis will be better now. Thank you. Oh, and your personality comes across nicely here.
Thanks for this Nigel. Very informative as usual. The rocks at 20:00 are the Rocks at Ribeira da Janela in Madeira. I have almost exactly the same positioning of my shot, even to the point of the waves hitting the rocks at the same time! But I shot it landscape. A portrait view would have been so much more powerful (as yours is).
Excellent lecture. Valid and relevant. I can mention another photographer, not competing with Nigel, as he worked in another domain of photography. If you want to see very clear examples of "light" in the composition-subject-light triangle, then look at the work of Fan Ho and it becomes immediately clear.
thank you. a real pleasure to benefit from your advice. You are explaining very clearly those details wich distinguish good photographies from excellent shots!
What makes an epic photo? Composition, subject, light/weather 1. Give your picture room to breathe 2. Avoid 'dead space' 3. Pay attention to light 4. Connect elements of an image together 5. Pay attention to particular elements of the whole landscape 6. Use the foreground to your advantage 7. Take your time when shooting.
Nigel thanks for these excellent videos, they're the best I've found on improving landscape photography and I really appreciate how they go beyond just the basics. I was wondering if you had any advice or videos on shooting in narrow landscapes such as canyons?
Thank you you are a very good Photographer and you have your own style I can distinguish the above photos from others. Tell me , does the work on mistakes relate to portrait photography ? When you work with people? Health to you
Definitely the hardest part is composition. I have friends who are artistically gifted, and shoot some amazing shots with their phone. They see the world like that. I don't. I think #7, Time is my biggest challenge, as I shoot the most when travelling/sailing. Not always time to give it my best. Great video, looking forward to Antartica shots!
I imagine you sitting on that bleak peak, waiting for the light to arrive, passing your time knitting that excellent Aran. Well done all 'round. Great channel and all the best from a cabin in a swamp in a rain-forest in New Zealand.
Using your own old photos for critique somehow gives me comfort and hope that someday I could tell how my old photos did not work in the future, by then I know I have improved.
Great Video! There is so many to think about and to be honest i am now much more scared about my iceland trip 😅 forgetting some tipps will make the fotos not amazing. I really need to train landscape photography to get used to it
I love photography and I admire a great photo. I know what one looks like. On the other hand, I’m s41t at taking photos. Photography and photographers need people like me, otherwise everyone would be good and it would become mundane.
Thanks for sharing some great advice Nigel, my problem is I find it almost impossible to slow down and concentrate, always want to make sure I get B roll for video, and I tend to snap the shutter right away, even when I tell myself slow down.
Thanks again for a great and informative video Nigel! Always something to learn in your segments. Let me know when you are planning a workshop in Australia so i can come along! :)
Just an idea when showing photos that don’t work. Show us the photo of the exact thing and how you made it look better. And then go back and forth on why it has got better. Really helps in teaching instead of showing totally different photos of good and not good.
TLDW, here are the facts: There are no rules, there are no hard mistakes, every situation is different. You have to develop an instinct and a style to take photos you like and you can only do that with experimenting. It's also very much subjective.
These are some great things to keep an eye out for. My photography coffee table book just launched on Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/artistdreamer/suburban-macro
It's lovely to hear you talk about Negative Space and explain that empty space is different to neg space. It really frustrates me to hear photographers and judges, not understand this. I've come to photography from an Art background and was taught that negative space defines the subject. It is a common exercise to draw something ie a pair of scissors, by drawing the shapes around them. Great video today. For me, composition is King, everything else is secondary.
wow, excellent. Composition in a nutshell - 23 minutes of video consisting of about 23 years of analysis, experience and development in photography. As impressive as it is helpful. Thank you!
I think to have the mindset of "how will that look from different perspectives/angles?" is a good one to carry with you whenever you shoot landscape images. This allows for the creative arrangement of the elements within your shot(s). For those who may struggle with getting good shots, it is often a good idea to actually shoot a bunch of images from these different viewpoints/angles and to then critically analyse them once you get back into your editing software back at home. This gets you into the "Why?" area much quicker and as a matter of course.
Recently watched a video by Chris Perea, and she quoted Ansel Adams - There's nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. Not sure if that's actually something he said, or if it's just attributed to him. Regardless, those words ring true to what you're saying. Taking time to find your best shot is worth it. I think I read that Ansel Adams spent four nights waiting for his best shot for Moonrise Hernandez.
Great presentation, it’s awesome to learn while viewing stunning photos. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise with examples of what to do and not do, much appreciated 🙏
Hi!can u do a tutorial about the use of diff.lighting materials used photography. Because,I'm wondering why photographer use with like aluminum wrapped light in photoshoot wanna know it's uses.
I am very much a beginner in having my photos assessed in competitions. Some interesting comments I have had: - "Exposure well controlled": the judge did not know that the photo was taken in totally automatic mode with a cheap (about £150) camera. - "not enough space around the main subject; feels squashed": I had not realised the "squashed" issue before, but then I decided I liked it! - another judge, about someone else's photo, suggested cropping the foreground, and keeping the "3 trees" in the background. I thought the foreground was the interesting bit, and that "3 trees" was a cliché. I found that the judges, and the long-term photo club members as well, were often appreciative of unusual photos, because long-time were often "stuck in a rut": comments like "I've taken that photo myself" and "at that viewpoint you can see the 3 marks on the ground of previous tripods [maybe be not literally]".
Hello Nigel my name is Rui Joao. I am from Madeira Island, I am also an amateur photographer, I really like photography, and also video, especially in 360 degrees, as well as filming and photos that I do with my Drone here on the island. The photo that has in the background some rocks and stone beach on the sea is in island of Madeira in a place called Ribeira da Janela??
Great tips, thanks! Now, an odd question -- what "Markup" app are you using to walk through your photos? There are a bunch of similarly-named apps out there, with widely differing function sets.
SUGGESTION: show us the images for a short while *before* you tell whether you are using as an example of mistake(s), or of success(es), and even before what aspect you are talking about. I think it is too easy to pre-judge an image based on what one has been told before seeing it. A lot of people are saying how much they agree with you; would that be affected by this change of order of doing things?
sometimes the problem is the perfect Focal length was seen by your EYES, yes, your eyes. And when you decide to take a picture from you DSLR, since the Focal length that you used doesn't match with what you see in real life. there are lots of things that really looks stunning, but it doesn't work every day.
Everyday is a learning day .... If you ever fancy a trip to Dartmoor or the coasts in Devon give me a shout Nigel... Would be great to share tips and tricks and maybe a fresh eye on some of my best shots... Regards Ian @ Foto-Jenik
You critique photographs and do not show how you would have cropped differently!! No end result comparison! Failure in my opinion! I love your videos but this one kinda sucked! Seriously, when you point out all the wrongs then at least show us what you would do now and show us the results! As a minimum. Thanks!
Great video, great points ! Took some things from this video for sure, learned alot. At the end of the day though photography is subjective, personally I feel alot of his photos he was critical on were good. What one may think of as "ok" may be an amazing photo to another :)
Very useful info about needing to know WHY your photos are unsuccessful to be able to improve. one thing I would add, if your struggling to figure out the why, trying comparing the bad photo to one of your good ones. Or someone else's good photo. This way you can look at the differences to identify elements that make an image look good or bad.
Honestly I thought the photos that didn't work were quite good. I think it's a very bad idea to judge things either by yourself or have other professionals look at them only. I think you gotta let ordinary people judge 'em as well. And also, wabi sabi folks.
09:44 This image had my eyes wandering about, which lead me wonder what the photo is *about*. The strong diagonal of the sharp sloping top of the sea stack attracts my eye, but it is so sharp and straight that it looks artificial (even though it is probably not). The sharp point at the top points almost exactly at top of feature in the background, which creates a confusion of whether this is one thing or two. I think a lower viewpoint would be better, to make the sharp point clearly separate from the background feature. The figure on the headland to me looks like something unrelated to the sea stack. I think this photo would be better as two separate photos. 10:43 My eyes scooting about, mainly along the diagonal from bottom right towards upper-left. Also I'm drawn to the sharp and bright grass in the foreground and the mountain in the background. The converging diagonals point to an area of no interest in itself. I think it would be an improvement to crop away the lower half.
One of your best yet in my opinion This video really resonated and deals so well with issues that will be common to so many of us. It takes real discipline to avoid being 'lost' in the experience, slow down, and really think hard about the compositional elements. Great piece of work. 👏
It seems impossible to determine what is and isn't a good composition. There are pictures the he said he liked that had "empty/dead space" similar to pictures he didn't like. It's so subjective that's why photography is a difficult concept to grasp in my opinion. The pictures he's critical of are ones that I genuinely think are great photos.
Shooting in cemeteries can be difficult, just have to allow for a lot of dead space. Sorry Nigel, couldn’t help myself. Great tips as always. Stay safe 🇦🇺
This is my first time watching, experiancing your video. This is wonderful. It works for anyone to see and learn and not only for starters, it is very very good for experienced ones as well. Thank you.
Every time you showed a photo that looked terrible or unpleasing to the eye, you said that was a photo that worked. And some of your bad examples were way better. And I’ve see some cool thick fog type photos, but your fog photos come across as blurry or out of focus and doesn’t give a sense of that morning fog.
