This is a primer to my Shadow Hackers workshop. If you have not yet signed up for Shadow Hackers do it HERE.
Photography is all about tone, but not how people think.
In today’s primer video, I’ll use Black and white photography as a reference and we’ll start hunting shadows. This still applies to color because with this you can learn to people’s attention ONLY where you want it.
You can’t just have BLACK but you need black!
I love shooting in black and white to help me see tone better, even if I return to color. That tone-based sight makes you see better. It makes you plan your image to amaze.
My mentor Ken Whitmire died about 5 years ago now but I will never forget one of the most important lessons he taught me. Today we’ll look at some basics and histograms and in Shadow Hackers, we’ll go deeper.
“Tone” Ken said – “It’s the least used and least understood aspect of photography”.
That knowledge has driven me to discover something more. What I learned from that is that tone is complex but also simple Photographers are not using tone because they are afraid of it.
There are histograms, exposure charts, tools for luminosity making and tone, and RAW and actions. I even make some of them like
I realized that a rich tone starts with blacks. Zone 0, Zone 12 for you Ansel Zones Fans. If you stop being afraid of blacks, it changes the way you see and builds photos everywhere because you start seeing that contrast
Shoot shadows a bit and watch what happens…
Take the time to watch this video till the end. If you apply what’s shown here your blacks, your tone and as a result, your entire photography game will level up.
I’ve also been focusing on the latest editing tools I make to make finding shadows easier. Tools like Blackroom and Lumist. completely change how I can manipulate the shadow.
I also uploaded a FREE sampler pack from my Silver 4, the black and white Lightroom presets. Play with those or the Capture One Styles are also included. Watch how blacks are being used to do what we’re seeing in this video. See tones first, regardless of whether you’re photographing in black and white or color.
Don’t miss Shadow Hackers because in it we’ll go deeper and I’ll show you the entire process to master this – Gavin Seim
