0:00 hey welcome back everyone uh today we're going to be looking at how black and white landscape photography can not only save the day but is a real skill that's fun to learn and is satisfying we'll be running ultral light photographing with the Fujifilm xt5 while out on a day trip riding my BMW R1200 GSA motorcycle sounds like the perfect combination of things first off if you ride motorcycles you'll know there's little better than road tripping and making photography while cruising on the motorcycle it presents the world to you in such an immediate way but it's also just a ton of fun there isn't much better than being on two wheels riding around the countryside so listen before I even start I want to appeal to your better self and mention that if you find any of this useful entertaining or just fun
0:48 please hit that thumbs up and please subscribe to the channel these things go without saying but many people don't even think about it I put a ton of work into the channel and helping me out is so simple and let me mention that if you enjoy my content you can even buy me a coffee by hitting the thanks button down below on the right it may be hidden in the three dot menu which is also down on the right and that would go a long way to helping me keep this channel alive and the content flowing okay thanks for listening to that let's go watch the location video and when we get back we'll talk briefly about the trip real fast before we do that though I also want to mention that we will have a useful discussion after the location video I'll provide tips and thoughts on the overall subject so don't leave after the loc location video there's so much more to it than that I noticed when
1:35 looking at analytics people are actually leaving right at the end of the location video and they miss basically everything I put together to support the video so stick around there's more at the end [Music] welcome back everyone today I'm uh out of out on the motorcycle as you see here um running the ultr light kit you saw in the last video and just wandering down the pmid peninsula and I found this little Park that I I didn't even know existed here let's turn so we can see
2:21 it right back there and uh I'm hoping that uh there's something cool to see I am uh I'm shooting black and white today and I am really looking forward to uh getting some shooting done this is the first time I've been out in a while because uh been so busy but as you see here I've got the uh just a shoulder bag ultr light tripod um the Fuji setup and this camera so we'll see what we can capture today uh I'm not even I'm not even trying to get cinematic with this camera I'm not using using any filters I've just got it on Full Auto which means when I do this everything looks weird right my finger everything looks sort of flashy in the
3:07 movement we'll talk about that when uh when I review this camera but let's go see if we can find some amazing photography to take to take we're not taking pictures of Photography are we let's go see if we can find some amazing shots we can [Music] make all right so I was walking around down here and it's really beautiful sort of Waterfront place this is uh the mamic river um I guess I'm in the town of Breman Brean however they say it here and uh I found this interesting composition hanging from the trees here somebody set these up like a little little sculpture [Music]
4:16 notice there some canoes down here that are here for people to use and it's just kind of a it's kind of a cool place [Music] well this quy I found absolutely fantastic I think I'm man to get a
5:02 couple of really nice shots the sunlight is is casting beautiful Shadows uh up onto the Quarry walls and then with this reflection at the bottom pretty fantastic we'll see if any of them come out um I'm seeing something a little more abstract I think than um than what I'm imagining in my mind so I'm going to have to really work to develop these right because frequently you'll see things that are really complex like here let's look at this I'm looking down at these bushes here growing right here in the edge of the water and what I shot here I'll back up so you can see one of the shots I made had this tree and this tree in
5:48 it and the Quarry walls back here and then these trees at the top so and these bushes at the bottom so in the end it made just have been a little more complex then will hold together I always want to say un film uh with a hold together in the image so we'll see it's a beautiful location here though I mean I didn't even know this little quar was here so it's a pretty cool thing to find [Music]
6:52 made it down to pemaquid point going to wander around here and see what there is to see and and uh yeah man I love it here you recall the last time I was here it was a massive storm and it was cold and now I'm in short sleeves and it is uh really really nice so I can't complain about that there I am at the old oil house they've started doing construction on the Bell house we'll go over there in a minute coming right along here pretty excited going to get this place all fixed back up after those storms some of
7:39 the boulders that moved by the way weighed somewhere like 4,000 [Music] tons it's a little uh little uh precarious here well man it's a little bit precarious you don't know what is still in one piece and what isn't some of this stuff is really I mean it was these Boulders were
8:24 literally broken off from where they've been for millions of years and uh that's pretty crazy I can't imagine that kind of force but yeah we're about to go see the one and all of these just broke right off from where they were we're about to go see the big one the mamama JAMA the monster that was knocked right down by the waves God that's just like I said that really just goes to show how powerful how powerful the ocean is look at the size of this thing I don't even know how to describe it maybe I'll go over so you can see how big it
9:13 is I'll go over so you can see how big it is let's see is that the entire thing in the shot man that is just nuts all right man this is Bonkers this huge huge piece of rock was just ripped right off of here um it was behind me about 30 40 ft it was part of the ridge that went down the water here I'll show you that here in a second so [Music]
10:06 so if I'm not mistaken it was broken loose right here where I'm standing and it was sitting right here right here it was [Music] connected and then over there is where that Beast ended up crazy I've tried to shoot this little segment now a bunch of times so these Boulders down here are the boulders that were literally ripped off of this rage each one of these way like I want to say it's like 4,000 tons um I think is what the article told me so they were ripped off I'm actually standing on one of the ones that was ripped off as well and you can see that here under me so I'm trying to do a composition
10:53 where I sort of do a zigzag uh line that draws your eye up the hill so you're going to start here head up to here and then go back across the Boulder and then back zigzag up to the lighthouse in the process on the right hand side will also have a line that runs your eye up to the lighthouse so no matter what your eye always runs up to the lighthouse and it should ride back down on these little finned rocks all over the place and they're going to actually make for a really sort of interesting texture that your eye will we hope want to look at and shooting it in black and white is what's making it really really interesting so let me go ahead and get this shot I actually like the light better now than I did when I first started so I'm going to go ahead and get this shot and here it is
11:40 [Music] all right so just I just set up in the opposite direction if you look here the sun is right my eyes I was just shooting right back there I literally just turned around and now I'm shooting this back here with these fins going down into the water and then I'm I'm trying to catch
12:27 some foam um as well in the process so that it's a little bit Dynamic um I'm using diagonals and sort of uh two major anchor points with diagonals pointing towards them I don't know if it's going to work all that well we'll see but if the shot came out here's the shot [Music]
13:15 I uh I shot this piece by hand so what I did was I had this rock this rock and this series of Boulders up here make a big triangle that points towards the lighthouse and then all the other lines around you can see all these fin finned rocks going up they're all uh pointing towards the lighthouse basically like what you're seeing just a little bit wider [Music]
14:02 uh I really like this shot actually and hopefully hopefully it comes out really really well um yeah I'm going to I'm going to go hop on the motorcycle and get home it's always great coming to pemaquid Hey listen if any of this is useful to you please hit the thumbs up and uh please subscribe and look if you feel like buying me a coffee you can click the thank you button below the thank you button is could be in the three dot menu but um I'm going to go hop on the bike and get home thanks for watching guys I'll see you again next time bye-bye [Music]
14:59 so getting out on the motorcycle is always so much fun I know people think it's dangerous and they're not wrong but if you don't mind the risks it's just such a great way to see the countryside and to travel this trip was no exception I had a blast that day it was sunny and there were some nice Cloud so I knew that shooting under color would be pretty good but I wanted to stretch my photo muscle even further and concentrate on concentrate on finding compositions that would be ideal for black and white my background being in traditional photography I used to shoot almost primarily black and white unless the job called for color so I love shooting black and white black and white has a character and a nature that just feels almost more real when it comes to what you saw in your brain don't get me wrong don't get me wrong you can't just
15:46 take any scene and make it black and white and then expect it to be fine a fine art masterpiece that's not how black and white works and I think that's also why black and white has garnered a reputation as a way to just fix a scene didn't look good in color but nothing could be further from the truth you have to shoot black and white intentionally or you'll never really make good black and white work consistently infinite monkey Theory you just keep shooting you'll make great work but if you practice you will learn to nail down how black and white photography Works what needs to be in the scene to make it a great scene and how to work with all the different elements so when you're learning to shoot black and white you have to take into account so many more things that yes can help contribute to a color
16:33 photograph being good but can also be the thing that ruins a color photograph believe it or not why because color isn't necessarily about form and pattern and repetition and tones those things can help can but color is in fact a lot of color is is in fact primarily about the color if the color is pleasing and in an overall interesting pattern or configuration and that does touch some on what you're also looking for for black and white that can literally make an image black and white isn't so easy when crafting a really good black and white photograph the primary elements are form pattern repetition tonality gradation and overall configuration or composition if you want to massively simplify it the subject itself no matter how compelling won't be that interesting
17:19 unless you pay attention to the aforementioned elements that's what makes black and white photography so hard to excel at I always love reading in the online groups when someone posts a photo in color and in black and white and then asks everyone which is better usually the photograph is mediocre at best and though the subject usually a portrait or an abandoned building or something like that wasn't composed well with attention to all of the elements I mentioned what you see is this person just thinking that converting it to black and white will make it artsy artsy so I think it'll save the image that's a big old nope that is not how black and white Works take taking a color image that isn't working and making it black and white does nothing but take an image that isn't working and make it more of
18:04 an image that isn't working you might get the occasional image that works in black and white that you didn't intend for it to but that's because you either saw and put some of the elements in that make a great black and white image or it just was an accident and you made an image that would be good in black and white yes you can be helped a lot on a bright sunny contrasty day by shooting in black and white but the black and white isn't what's actually helping the light on a contrasty day can more easily be organized in Your Vision to be more effectively captured in black and white in other words it just becomes easier for you to see what's making it appropriate for the black and white medium so all of this said doing some research on composition and pattern form line shape what have you will go really
18:52 really far to you improving your black and white skills start trying to think in black and white when you're out shooting using black and white in your viewfinder may help a little but I think you might miss the point doing that you aren't looking for you aren't looking for the appropriate things when you approach it that way you're just seeing what looks right in the viewfinder in other words instead of crafting an image you're just trying to trying things out to see if it'll work and that takes no critical thinking at all and making true black and white photography is all about critical thinking and assembly if you will I really hope some of this helped in your question quest to create black and white Masterworks no one becomes a master Fine Art black and white photographer overnight it's all about practice in fact photography is just all about practice it's hard work but it's
19:39 also work that we love so having just a few more Tools in our creative tool boxes is key thank you for watching and I'll see you again next week have a great weekend and a great week bye for now [Music]
