Watch the Video: What Makes The Image Work?

Learning to use a camera is only the very first part of this craft. Once you can do that, the rest is learning how photographs work. Last week I began this conversation by showing you one of my photographs, both before and after, and invited you to reverse engineer it. I encouraged you to speculate on the decisions that made the image what it is: what was the focal length? Did the shutter speed or aperture affect the look of the image? What about the position of the camera or the choice of moment, or the exposure value? And then, because I gave you a glimpse at the very uninspiring RAW file, what changes do you think I made in developing that image? Today I want to show you my thinking process on the making of that image. But first, I need to give you some context. A few years ago I created a video series called ImageWork. It was (still is) an 18-episode video course and it was one of the most popular series I’ve ever offered you. Knowing that the video I’m about to show you is part…