Photographie & Composition au Dallas Arboretum - Conseils photo paysage et jardin.mkv

Hello everyone. Today's video is not in France, I'm in Texas, I'm in Dallas, and I'm taking you to visit a Tamalm Arboretum. And then, well, we're going to take some photos in probably a bit harsh sunlight conditions. So it's going to be interesting to see how we're going to be able to adjust the settings and create the compositions. Now, as you might have guessed, I don't have all the equipment, so I'm going to talk to you about the settings a lot. You won't see it behind the camera, but in any case, I'm going to explain everything to you, and then I'm going to show you around the place while I'm discovering it since it's my first time here. So, my goal today isn't necessarily to look at the settings, but I'm going to work a lot on the composition. The advantage of coming to a place like this, an arboretum, is that you're sure to find lots of flowers and interesting things to take pictures of. And for me, the important thing here will be, of course, to visit and discover the place, but also, in my compositions, to try to find things that are a little different from what I can do in the forest, because that will help me later, when I go into the forest, to find compositions and probably to frame my compositions a little more, since as you know, I always tend to take a little bit of a wide angle and so, suddenly, the fact of being able to work here and have fun with the compositions, so, in fact, that's what will be interesting. So here, precisely, there is a small waterfall. So, here is the composition that I am creating. So here, you see it with the 16mm. That's what I'm going to try, is to really tidy on these leaves here and keep the waterfall, the leaves, something like this to have the waterfall behind, so as a net and then really focus on the leaves. So obviously, to get it to shoot fast, I'm going to have to get my shutter speeds down relatively low. So I'm probably going to go for something around 1.50, which is going to be quite complicated in these conditions since I don't have my ND filters. So now, we're going to see what it looks like with my aperture open and my ISO 64, but I think it's going to be very hard to find a low shutter speed. So I'm probably going to take another image from behind this time with the aperture relatively closed to lower my shutter speed and I'm going to compose all that later in Photoshop. Okay, I'm going to take the two images. So, what I did just before, I don't know if the photo will work, but it's simply called shutter speed bracketing. I combined two images with two different shutter speeds. Is it really bracketing? I don't know, but in any case, that's what I called it. But in any case, you get the idea, I actually combined two images, one with a slow shutter speed, one with a fast shutter speed. All this to maintain my shallow depth of field that inspired me in the first image. So, other things that can be inspiring in this type of garden, well, you see, it's this type of row. So, here, there's not much in particular to photograph behind, but I think we'll find things like this. And so, we're going to try to make this type of image that will be much simpler because this time, it's going to be just focused shots. And then there you have it, some little things too, probably bracketing. We're going to do that too because I have some really strong points against this first image with something solid and I'm not sure that the image is super super. But what interested me in the process here was really trying to create something a little different than what I would have usually done with a much wider, much wider shot. Okay, let's continue visiting. Here, we have the perfect sequence. So, as you can see. So here, I'm going to go for the 24mm. We're going to try to focus on the foreground that I'm going to have in front of me with an F1. And then, well, we're going to go for the right speed. I'm going to be able to remove myself. But that's what's interesting. So I'm going to have this path that's going to guide me through the image. And here's something relatively simple. But what's really nice here is all this color contrast. So, I'll admit that with this sun, I'm thinking that if there's one filter I'm missing, it's probably not the ND filter like I was saying in the previous image, but probably more my polarizing filter, because there's still a lot of reflections on the foliage, and I think I'm going to have trouble bringing out the colors in the photos, especially the greens, without having too many reflections. So, before I take my image, as you can see, lots of people are arriving, so I won't be able to really do my focus stack right now. But you see, it's going to be more or less this kind of composition, probably a little tighter like this where I'm going to put my focus on the first bench here on the right. The second one on the second bench over there, I'm going to take F11 and I'm going to go about a second at ISO 100. So that's basically my composition. Now, I'll let you look at the image once I've taken it and face, well, I'm in the shade because I'm under the trees, and that provides good coverage, and in the background, hop, in the background, you have this, this fountain here that is flowing, and so it's the little noise that you hear behind, which falls on a, a small ball there, and it makes, it makes crackling sounds. So we have something relatively overexposed in the background while I'm in the shade. So here, I wanted to look to do some bracketing and then finally, I made my adjustment. So what I did was I went up to ISO 400 and then I went for a shutter speed of F1 and a shutter speed of F11. And I looked, I almost went for something like two thirds. I have a five stop difference but in any case, my highlights aren't blown out and I can still open up the shadows on the upper part of the weapons. So I'm going to have just one image. So of course, as a precaution, I'm going to take two images in case I miss it because I might not be able to come back here anytime soon as I always tell you. But with just one image, I think it'll be enough. I'll let you watch it on the screen but before I let you watch it on the screen, I'll show you a little bit of what I wanted to do in terms of composition. I don't want to do something like this. Very wide, but I'm really going to tidy it up a lot more and then I'm going to move up a little bit to still have some trees somewhere and then this diagram. I think that's going really, really well because as you can see, I'm moving from left to right. I just have to correctly so that this fountain finally matches very well with the arch on top. So it's somewhere here the central point. So that's basically what the image will look like So some as you can see are a little more in the light and I think there's something quite nice to do. What I'm going to do is I'm going to really get close to do something tight on the planes. You'll probably see something like this. I think it's super interesting and I think these textures and shapes could look quite nice in the image. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to probably use an aperture of F1. I'm going to increase my sensitivity because I'm going to have very slow shutter speeds and then I'm going to do several frames because it's going to be hard to know I was a little afraid of seeing something like Las Vegas. I mean, here, we're in Texas and in my head, I thought that water problems were something quite significant and quite crucial here in Texas. But here in Dallas, there are a lot of water reserves and you can see one right behind me. And so in fact it's this water reserve that is used precisely to water and supply the garden. So in a way, the management of resources, as they say, is quite well done. We're not draining a body of water somewhere to create this garden like you can see in Vegas. But there really is a good water reserve behind it. So you can see it, I don't know if you can see it in the little hole here, but the level has dropped quite a bit. It's almost the beginning of September now, so obviously we've drawn quite a bit during the summer, but in any case there's still water in the basin that allows us to supply this garden and water it. So I felt a little better when I came here. In fact, if you look at the map of Dallas, the entire northeast part of Dallas, there are a lot of water reserves, some natural, some artificial like this one. And in fact, when there are heavy rains that occur, because here it is somewhat tropical, heavy rains often occur, especially just at the end of winter, and well, it allows you to fill your ponds. As you can see here, it is a photographer's paradise, so I have a bit of competition. I was talking to you about water management in the lake, and here, there is a small panel that explains, in fact, there is an intelligent irrigation system, and for each of the plants, it will provide the necessary and sufficient quantity of water for the life of the plant, but also how to water it. Some need to have watering on the ground, others need to have watering on the leaves, and so in fact, all of this is managed to optimize the use of water and avoid wasting water. And right here, there are plants with water droplets on them, so I'm going to have fun photographing that. So, in fact, what I'm going to do is take different photos, probably with f4 first, with a relatively shallow depth of field to really highlight the little water droplets right on the leaf, and then another one with probably f8 this time to capture more, a little more, the texture of the leaf, which I also find relatively interesting. And then, well, listen, I don't know what image I'm going to keep, but in any case, what I know is that you're going to see it right now on the screen. So there you have it, we were looking for this beautiful perspective, this beautiful length of the garden. So here we have it. So, we're going to take an image. I'm going to set it to portrait mode and then, well, to not mess up this image, to be sure that my perspectives, all my perspective lines meet at a single point and that there's no real bias on my lines, well, in fact, I'm going to use the grid on my camera and I'm going to align everything with the, the first jet, the middle of the fountain, to really have a, a good line and not try to turn my camera to adjust the sides of the pool, but really move from left to right to align myself with the pool to take the image. Okay, after that, it's just classic settings. We're going to take a depth of field, focus on the water jet and then it should be sharp all the way to infinity. Well, listen, there's probably still a lot of things to see in this garden, but we'll stop there. It's starting to get really hot. I've been walking around this garden for three hours now. We took quite a few photos. I don't know how long the video will be, but probably a little while. And then, right here, there's this little spot with a waterfall and this tree, which clearly represents all that is native to the Dallas area. So, we'll end with this image here. We'll end with a landscape image like we usually take somewhere in the forest, except that we're in this garden. And as usual, what I'm going to do, or maybe not as usual, I'm going to really try once again to focus on framing and tightening my image and my composition. So really, instead of taking something wide with the sky, I'm going to really tighten up, reduce the sky and focus only on the trunk since that's what interests me, the texture of the trunk and then this little waterfall and this stream in the background. So there you have it. Well, listen, I hope you enjoyed this all as well. If that's the case, well, you know the drill. Feel free to comment on this video, give it a thumbs up, share it, and then all that's left for me to do is wish you a good week and see you next week for new photographic experiences. Have a good week. Goodbye.