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Shooting Las Vegas landscapes

Lesson 32 from: Masters of Photography

Albert Watson

Shooting Las Vegas landscapes

Lesson 32 from: Masters of Photography

Albert Watson

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Lesson Info

32. Shooting Las Vegas landscapes

Albert tells you how he prepared for the Las Vegas project, how he approached and shot his landscapes there. He passes on to you how the difficulties he faced helped him, and will help you, to develop as a photographer.

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Meet your Master

01:26
2

Learn from the journey

15:24
3

Using inspirations

08:43
4

Photography is stopping time

09:27
5

Albert's library of ideas

08:30
6

Tips on preparing for a portrait shoot

12:10
7

Setting up the studio

04:56
8

Understanding studio collaboration

07:35
9

The importance of casting and hair & make-up

08:59
10

Foreground studio set up

08:46
11

Studio session with a model - set up 1

11:23
12

Studio session with a model - set up 2

05:55
13

Studio session with a model - set up 3

08:01
14

Picking the best shot

03:36
15

Working with photoshop

13:14
16

Creating a portrait of Alfred Hitchcock

04:18
17

The gigantic question... Colour or black and white?

07:55
18

One day with Kate Moss

05:06
19

Learn to have your ideas ready

06:14
20

Using Polariods

06:29
21

Creating beautiful photographs of hands

04:45
22

Controlling natural light

05:38
23

Shooting a monkey with a gun

06:27
24

Choosing your format

07:13
25

Composition and lens

04:47
26

Shooting landscapes. The Isle of Skye

15:18
27

Planning and ideas for a landscape shoot

06:32
28

Creating still life images

13:48
29

Photographing the Lost Diary

10:53
30

Shooting album covers

03:09
31

The Strip Search Project

10:28
32

Shooting Las Vegas landscapes

08:24
33

Photographing Breaunna

07:21
34

Balancing daylight, God bless America

03:45
35

Creating the Maroc Project

10:21
36

Creating the Maroc shoot

08:11
37

Photographing sand dunes

04:09
38

Photographing Moroccan children

10:42
39

Advice on making portraits

10:12
40

How to be alert to finding photographs

07:35
41

Making a portrait of Mike Tyson

02:39
42

Creating intense colour in a photograph

03:04
43

Portraits of rap stars and a Golden Boy

08:40
44

Photographing Jack Nicholson

04:20
45

Creating a portrait of David Cronenberg

02:14
46

How to light only using two $10 bulbs

07:29
47

Studio fashion set up 4

10:47
48

Studio session with a model. The geography of a face

13:05
49

Look inside the picture

02:56
50

Creating memorability in an image

02:54
51

Combining nudes and landscapes

04:52
52

A perfect print

07:50
53

The business side of things

06:50
54

Conclusion and farewell

03:55

Lesson Info

Shooting Las Vegas landscapes

(upbeat instrumental music) I'm not really a landscape photographer. But, however, I am a photographer, and I do love doing landscapes. And there's something very nice about that, and I've gone as far as to spend six weeks doing only landscapes. But I have to say, at the end of that six week period doing landscapes, boy was I happy to get a human being in front of the camera again. So I love the landscapes, and most excited about doing landscapes. Now, the landscapes in the Vegas project were obviously a pleasure to do. Vegas, as you probably know, is in the middle of the desert. So essentially I'm working with a desert background. In fact, just to cut away, the reason that I did the sky project, the island off the coast of Scotland, was that it's essentially a water place. So I was very happy to be in a desert place in the project (murmuring), and happy to be in the desert in Las Vegas. So the deserts basically in Las Vegas have a very raw nature to them. And, of course, I love that...

, because I'm Scottish and come from a really green Scottish background. So the desert landscape is something that I absolutely adore. I love the climate. I love the colors of the Earth, and just the endlessness; the scale of it. And going there, I had planned lots of different areas around. I didn't wanna go too far out of Vegas because there's some remarkable places, but I didn't wanna lose that connection with Vegas. So I stayed within about a 15 mile radius of Vegas. And I photographed the landscapes at all different times of the day, and I photographed landscapes sometimes with a 35 millimeter. Sometimes two-and-a-quarter. Sometimes 4x5; not so often. And a lot of times I did quite a lot of 8x10 shots. In fact, the God sign that we were speaking about before, that God sign was done with an 8x10 camera, which I felt was appropriate for that shot. Now sometimes, I mean, at that time, at that time I became obsessed with the pictures having gigantic resolution, gigantic sharpness, you know? I think a lot of photographers go through that. They want their pictures to be sharper, sharper, sharper. The whole of the Vegas project, the strip search project, was done on film. So I was either on 35 millimeter, two-and-a-quarter film, 4x5 film or even 8x10. So the landscape work, with this obsession of sharpness and quality and so on, I began doing these horizontal 8x10s. That's 10 inches across by eight inches high. And if you do the math on that, I would sometimes do three horizontal frames. So that gave me a negative size of 30 inches. Not quite but pretty close to that, by eight inches high. So it was a completely panoramic shot. (upbeat instrumental music) Now, at that point, I did that, but I was never happy totally with the sharpness, believe it or not, even with a negative that now at this point was close to 30 inches by eight inches. So I decided to then, when I do three horizontals, 8x10, 8x10, 8x10 that I decided to also pull the focus. So therefore I had a foreground focus and midground, so that involved every shot I wanted had nine 8x10 frames in it. So the thing got a bit ridiculous and that was a great exercise, and I knew that when I got back to New York that although this was a film job, I'd chosen film, that I could reassemble these things in the computer. And, of course, the files tended to be gigantic, like 50 gigabytes. But the downfall of the whole thing for me in the end why I hit a brick wall in all of this, and I always remember that there was in one of the frames of the landscapes, there was a white dot. Now, when I went into the computer and blew it up, you could tell that the white dot was, in fact, a cement mixer. Now, when we did the print of this shot, this landscape, and it was a large panoramic print, it was approximately something like 18 inches by eight feet, It still looked like a white dot, and you couldn't tell. Of course, if you blew the white dot up, you could tell it was a cement mixer. But at this point the prints couldn't really hold the resolution that I expected. And so the whole thing kind of hit a brick wall in a way. However, I was very proud of it as an exercise, and it really honed our skills in reassembling multiple frames into a computer. And it honed our skills for a later project, which I might speak about, concerning landscapes and nudes. So it was really, in the long term, beneficial. And as a discipline, it was worth doing. But the landscapes, once again, sometimes color, sometimes black and white, sometimes early morning. We always were up at 5-o'clock in the morning. Sometimes late at night. Sometimes even landscapes that were done after dark. So we were shooting the skyline sometime of Vegas well after the sun had gone down. (upbeat instrumental music) So landscapes were done you might almost say 24 hours a day. There was always the chance that we would do a landscape. So compositionally, if you're interested in doing landscapes then, like anybody, you have to do homework. Doing a project like this is a little bit like sitting in exam. So, as you know, that when you do an exam, you have to do homework, because they're gonna ask you things. And that's exactly what really happens. If you don't do your homework, you go to Vegas, and Vegas starts to ask questions of you and you don't know the answers. So preparing, again, is absolutely crucial. And some of it is inspiration. I've mentioned before that even looking at impressionist paintings, it can be an inspiration, to even going to a place like Vegas. People often ask me who my favorite photographer is. To be quite honest, I've got dozens and dozens of them that I think are wonderful photographers, and I draw inspiration from all of them. I'm not a brilliant copier, unfortunately. Sometimes I wish I was. But I've often started out trying to copy someone's landscape or nude or something like that and I always get lost in the middle of it and forget what I'm copying. So it's not a bad thing to go down that road as long as you end up with something that's yours and belongs to you. (upbeat instrumental music)

Ratings and Reviews

Richard A. Heckler
 

"Unless you're Mozart"...this course is an invaluable asset. I'm a pro, humanitarian/documentary photographer, & wilderness...and I've learned much from the 40+ sessions here. This is truly a Master Class...next best thing to being with Albert. And although I could watch studio sessions forever, this course offered a very balanced curriculum of technical information, artistic encouragement and guidance, and a open, generous window into the thinking of a gifted artist and photographer, sifted from decades of first class experience. Kudos to all involved. Excellent!

a Creativelive Student
 

I purchased my first CreativeLive class in 2011 and have continued to purchase many classes over the years. I have learned so much from the many great instructors. This one is not a technical class that will tell you to set your camera at f4, 1/60, ISO 400 and you can get this shot. If you are looking for that, there are many other options. If you have a solid working knowledge of photography, this class is so much more. The way it was filmed is like you are there with him in conversation or in the room with him watching him shoot. To see and understand the how and why he does what he does. Not to take anything away from other classes that have helped to give me a strong understanding of photography, this is my favorite CreativeLive class so far.

Student Work

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