last day in Tbilisi as I mentioned on yesterday's video which I shot mostly
this morning but I'm filming two episodes today because I kind of want to
get into kind of wrapping this whole Georgia trip up I kind of want to talk
about you know creating a photo story I want to tie it all together because I've
been talking about creating a photo story or a photo essay whatever you want
to call it since day one here in Georgia you know when I started as a travel
photographer I would go to a destination three days maybe seven days and I
wouldn't shoot the heck out of it how is shooting sunrise to sunset sometimes
nightlife because you need to create a whole body of work in travel photography
you here to like landscape photographers and nature photographers often say if
you can create one image a month or even one image a year that you're really
proud of you're doing well but the reality is if you're a travel
photographer or maybe a wedding photographer and you do that you'll end
up broke you cannot just chase one single image as a travel photographer
you have to create a photo story to be able to sell the client clients aren't
interested in buying just hero images yes they sell but if you look at any
NatGeo traveler or basically any travel magazine it's not just hero images
there's not big landscape images it's not big city scapes it's cityscapes it's
hero images and it's landscapes but it's also portraits it's also cultural
details it's also food and I think those things are really important and when
you're at a destination you should be covering all those things and I think
maybe in our social media world we're so caught up in the hero image now because
the hero image gets likes that often we don't even think to shoot anything else
and oftentimes we're so focused on that hero image that we actually just miss
all these great shots around us that would be totally sellable so on today's
episode I want to talk about creating a photo story I want to show you
maybe not my photo story from Georgia but my favorite photos and my favorite
photo locations in Georgia and talk about why they're my favorite photos I
also want to talk about some images that maybe aren't my favorite photos but are
sellable images because I think a lot of you are considering selling
images maybe already are selling images and are may be curious what photos sell
and why so the first half of this video I guess is gonna be just me running
through my favorite ten photos or eleven photos from Georgia the second half
we'll be talking about these sellable images and why they're sellable so I'm
gonna kind of jump over to my screen and just run through these images I don't
have them in like order of preference they're literally just chronological and
I'm a big believer that every destination you should you go to you
should try to have ten images sometimes there's destinations within the
destination you should still try to have ten images so we're here in Georgia
I've been trying to get ten images of Georgia that would be like my Georgia
portfolio it should never be bigger than ten in my opinion but then when I'm in
Tbilisi that's another destination so I should have ten images from Tbilisi
should have ten images from locally I should have ten images from every
destination you go to and the idea behind that is if any editor or any
magazine comes to you and says we're putting together a story about wish
bully or tably Cu or Georgia that you can hand them the ten image portfolio
that has maybe two hero images a couple cityscapes a couple landscapes food
details and people maybe ten images encompassing everything and they can
look at that and go that's perfect and just chuck that into their magazine and
that's the idea behind the photo essay image number one image number one was
shot on the first day you might remember the video where I went out shooting
street photography with a 50 millimeter Sigma F one point for the whole day I
couldn't find an image I loved I couldn't find an image I loved and then
just as we were about to call it a day this seemed was just there and I really
really quickly grabbed it before this girl actually just ran off and went back
to her family and I love the image because it just shows I don't know it's
almost empowering to me the girls sitting there alone on her bench in this
big world but she doesn't look scared she's not crying she's not emotional
she's just kind of like chillin and I love the power of that the next image
was shot the next day this was kind of like the hero image of the trip and it
and on day 2 usually I don't think I get the hero image of a trip until the very
end but just the way things came together and it came together kind of
quickly it just it just works we got Nellie up on the castle wall really nice
blue light the city below and this is the type of image that I could totally
see as like the front page of a Travel Magazine story not like the cover but
like the first page when they do a two-page spread with some text there's
room for text in that blue sky and it just it just shows a big location and it
just works the next image is kind of this detailed
shot that shows the old miss I guess of tbilisi tbilisi is very modern there's a
lot of very modern buildings modern cars but there's also like this tugging of
two worlds that happens here and i love the juxtaposition of the two in tbilisi
and that old flea market we went to where they had these old cameras was the
perfect example of that so this isn't in the image that stands alone i don't
think it tells a story in fact the way you edit this image you can make this
image look like it was shot in 1978 but as a part of the photo story showing to
police you're showing Georgia I think it really works
and it sold cameras I mean how cool are they this is an image I kind of find
funny because I every time I go through my photos I stop and look at this photo
and I can't help myself there's nothing from a composition
standpoint that's correct in this image there's a dude in the background who's
blurry and he's distracting the subjects right in the middle of the frame the
lights good the lights actually pretty good but there's nothing special to it
but for some reason I just keep coming back to this image and I love this photo
and I cannot explain why and I think that's something important for you guys
if you see a photo that's your own and you love it
even if you don't know why be proud of it share it keep it don't chuck it away
so often we're set by the traps of this is a good photo technically err this is
good for this reason that we don't just stop and think do I like this photo too
look cool and if it does keep it this photo of Jodi I love this photo of Jodi
I shot it on the 24 to 70 and the light was perfect the moods perfect Jodi's
looks perfect everything about this image is great and
this is the style of image that a lot of travel magazines are really looking for
right now I think in the early days of travel we were trying to capture the
local people all the time whereas now we're looking for like a little bit of a
mix of both of them you want the local people in your photos but you also want
tourists in your photo because you're trying to promote the idea that any
person could be that person in the photo it's the reason why having a person in
your frame in a landscape photo is so powerful especially if it's not their
face because anybody viewing that image can look at it and go that could be me
the next image is one of my favorites favorite portrait I think ever I just
loved it we were sat in Tbilisi eating and getting poured on and I had my 100
to 400 on and it was like kind of getting a little bit sneaky trying to
get photos of this woman who was sitting out the window looking out at the rain
kind of looking sad that it was raining you can kind of see the rain drizzling
in the background and I don't know it was funny because she kept looking over
at the camera and kind of being a little bit startled by it but then there was
just this moment of peace where she just put her head on her hand and looked out
and it just I just loved it the mood the color everything about this image it's
one of my favorites for months really off to kiss Becky Kass Becky was our
first road trip and this image is I love this image we we went to kiss Becky
because I was like scrolling through I think Instagram trying to find cool
locations in Georgia and I saw a photo of this and I started doing some
research on the location and there were some good photos on this location but I
kept saying there has to be a way to shoot this photo that's epic and I kind
of honestly went up there with a bit of a competitive mind and I am a very
competitive person and I went up there and I was like I want to shoot the
coolest photo of this location that has ever been shot to date and I haven't
obviously seen every photo of Cass Becky or this church but of all the photos
I've seen mine's my favorite and I think that this is a very very rare occasion
because I think that usually I see other people's images and I go I wish I would
have shot that or I wish I would have had that light or I wish I had that
situation I've yet to have seen a photo of this that I like better than my own
photo and that's a really great feeling and I know that at some point
photographers are gonna go there and they're gonna get something special and
it's gonna beat this out beat this out if you will but I'm really proud of this
image and I'm really happy about how this came out the light the mood the low
hanging clouds the movement in the clouds at the top yeah it one of my
favorite photos again of the year um this boat is special to me this was
when Greg and I were in Tbilisi back into Blissey up shooting a sunset
hopefully over to blue sea but got rained out and this family took us in to
keep us out of the rain and they fed us watermelon and tea and they were just
the nicest people ever and this photos a good photo it's got a great like mood to
it it's fun but for me it's more special than anybody else viewing it because
I'll never forget this guy and his kid and his son his son and his daughter I
will never forget them and when I look at this image it's just really special
to me and I think that so often we do get
caught up in this need to get the travel photos then we forget to take images
that are kind of like snapshots that remind us of the locations we've
traveled to and the experiences we've had so this photo though it's maybe not
as good or mind-blowing or as impressive as the last image of Cass Becky to me
this photo is just as valuable um courtesy and I like this image of
Kutaisi and in fact the more I see it the more I like it I struggled in
Kutaisi to find a photo and you might remember we kind of ran all over we were
at a cafe and I was struggling to find a photo and
and I'm really happy with how this photo came out and I think it's the type of
image that promotes the idea that Georgia isn't just about to bleed in the
mountains that there's other cities that are worth shooting and worth
photographing and worth seeing also in Kutaisi
this is an image I was actually going to share in my images that will sell
section because as you'll see in that section photos that sell tend to be
photos that have a lot of dead space or that can almost be used as two images so
this is almost two images on you have the right side which is the tower and
then you have the left side which is the bench in the wall and this wall can be
used for text space I like the image I really do like the image I think it's
one of my favorite Oh skully here this image yeah I think that anybody could
have taken this image because it was just such an incredible place but I am
really proud of myself on this image for the composition you guys might remember
in Patagonia it felt like I had this revolution or after Patagonia that I was
starting to see compositions I was starting to see how the world shapes our
eye and how we need to kind of look at the little details before Patagonia I
think I was just finding cool things and shooting them whereas Patagonia really
forced me to like take one step to my right and it'll be better and this was a
classic case of that we were shooting you know a hundred feet down and we
decided let's walk up to see if we can get a slightly better angle and we came
up with this and as great as the light is in the situation what I love about
this photo is just the way it's shaped together you've got the two kind of mini
Peaks just to the top left of the church tower and to the top right and the
church kind of fits right between the two of them and then has that beautiful
leading line behind it to the mountains so from a composition standpoint I feel
like this is like almost like a proof that I'm starting to get it I'm starting
to take things to a next level again I like this photo because of the situation
and I like this photo about how we use the situation it was Moody it was dark
there was just thundershowers the weather wasn't ideal for photography but
we made it work and I made image that's moody and kind of shows the
feeling of that remote village that we were in Anushka Lee and this is finally
this is an image from this morning at the end of the day 4-minute exposure I
left a lot of dead space in the sky because this is the type of image that
will sell because there's enough room to put text in or to put some sort of other
graphic in the top of and if you're trying to sell images that's really
really important and that's what I'm gonna get into now I love my images from
Georgia I only showed you guys a snapshot of the images I kept a hundred
and eighty images from Georgia and that might seem like very few to some of you
for me that's a lot and that is because I was shooting more Street and more
portrait and more food and stuff like that but I am very very happy with the
images I got in Georgia I'm happy with the way I shot it I'm excited
potentially to come back and find new places because it's just such a
photogenic country let's jump over to these other images and I kind of want to
talk about what sells and why so this first image is a very basic photo shot
into policie of an artist and a guy looking at the artist this is the type
of image for whatever reason editorial loves to buy up magazines love buying up
images like this and I think it's just because it shows the busyness it shows
the artists on the street it shows a person who's obviously a tourist looking
at it and it's just a good filler image then this is never gonna be like a
two-page spread this is never gonna be a hero image but it's a nice image to just
fill in the details to show something other than the big big hero images in a
magazine spread so images like this sell magazine newspaper if there's like a
newspaper article somebody's putting out of the art and to policie they might buy
an image like this this image of Jody holding up her phone on the piece bridge
will sell like crazy and it's good light it's good mood it's a person in the
frame that really could be anybody they're holding up a phone taking a
picture which is what the vast majority of people shoot pictures on I know us
photographers think that photographers only take pictures with big cameras but
most people use their phones these days and there's this dead space this big
open space that they can put text in as a buyer or they can just leave it and
create this big banner image so that image if I ever get around to putting my
images onto the stocks like I'm Way behind on that image will sell it crazy
I'm a food image food images sell like crazy but they don't sell if it's just
the food they kind of have to have some semblance of the person or a story
behind them so when this image Nellie's got her big camera out I think she's at
she's shooting the 5d Mark 3 there so having the food there the typical
Georgian food and then having a person in the background taking a photo
that's a sellable image it tells more of a story than just here's food it's
here's tourists about to enjoy Georgian food and yeah those images sell that
being said the focus is right in the middle of the plate and usually food
buyers tend to prefer the focus to be right on the front but I think it's a
minor detail being cityscapes even though this image is definitely not one
of my favorites it's way too blue it's way too late in the evening it's just
too blue and yellow for me and yeah I'm not a fan this image will sell like
crazy in travel I don't think anything sells better than the big city schemes
and if there's not a lot of cityscape shot of a destination like I don't think
there are of Tbilisi actually I know there aren't because I've scouted
through website stock websites like shutterstock and and tandem stock and
stuff like that to see if there is this image will sell if it goes on there
because there isn't a lot of competition and that's another reason why it's
important not to just keep going back to the same destinations over and over
again or destinations that everybody shoots because it's much easier to sell
images of a destination if people aren't shooting it as well but some of my
highest selling images of all time on stock they're from destinations nobody
else shoots this is another image much like the street art image that will sell
it crazy for editorial for the exact same reasons shows a Street it shows
busyness it's a good photo but not a mind-blowing photo it's just a photo
that would fill space within a magazine article
really really well or a newspaper article really really well
makes image is kind of funny because it's just a it looks like a snapshot
because it really is but it's the type of image that sells like crazy it's just
a photo of a statue with some paintings in the background and it's got a bunch
of dead space that you can put a text box in there but I'm telling you images
like this even if they seem simple and even if they are simple they sell like
crazy like I mentioned about of the big blue cityscape this image of the Peace
Bridge will sell as well in fact I know for a fact if I was to chuck this on
shutterstock right now by the end of the day it would have at least one sale it's
not a great image but there's not a lot of good images of this out there on the
web right now I've searched them I've looked through them there's not that
good so there's not a lot of competition for one and two this is a decent photo
so this image will sell again cityscapes and architecture do much better than you
think this image and kazbegi again you might
look at it and think oh there's way too much empty space dead space on the left
side of the image but if you're selling images you have to think about the buyer
and the buyer in this case is probably going to be either commercial or like a
magazine and they're gonna need to put text somewhere so if you fill the frame
with too much stuff there's no room for the text so by leaving this big space
empty there's room for a text box or some writing or a logo or just something
you have to imagine it from the buyer's perspective if the buyers Georgian
Airways for example which I don't even know if Georgian Airways exists but if
they do and they've want to buy this image they might want to put their logo
here and then the flight deals and flight prices somewhere and that's the
type of image that sells for that if you're a magazine they might want to put
a big white text box somewhere here with the writing over it and then leave the
other side totally open so think about who's buying the images
when you take photos this image this image is a great example again to shoot
just take pictures because this was the time that Greg and I went up to the
castle found out the castle was closed so we went down and I was like we just
have to make up photo and this photo will sell it's very
Georgian looking in that you've got that very typical Cathedral or church tower
and then you've also got like a cafe in the foreground and it kind of just works
there's nothing special to this image but it is the type of image that sells
as long as it's sharp and finally another I guess cityscape this is
actually the composite I shot this morning and I'm not really a massive fan
of it I think it looks a little bit monotone but this image will sell this
could be that same sort of hero image that a magazine would use at the start
of a story about Tbilisi or a story about Georgia or a story about the
Caucasus with the title and all of that again you need blank space somewhere in
your image for people to put text that's the biggest thing if you're trying to
sell images selling images isn't about creating the best photo it's not about
creating the most visually appealing photo is about creating images that the
buyers can actually use so I hope that kind of gives you a bit of an idea of
the difference between creating images that you love for your reasons and
images that you can sell and trying to put the two of them together at the end
of the day I think is always kind of fun that wraps George up I cannot believe it
there will definitely be a tour here in Georgia unless something political
happens in 2020 I think and I'm not gonna announce anything for the Georgia
trip until like 2019 because it's just so far away but there definitely will be
an adventure photography hiking camping trip here in Georgia it's just too cool
of a country not to do as for what's coming next
I guess tune in tomorrow and find out I'll see you there peace
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