Original subtitles

Hi guys, how are you?.

Welcome one more time to this part of:

"How was an image made?"

I will talk about how external inspiration

can inspire us and take us to create something

that motivates us and takes us out to the comfort zone.

Everything we consume each day: books, music, images, social media

we will reflect it when we have a camera in our hands.

Conscious or unconscious we will try to do it our way.

For this image, I have been inspire

for these people for a while now.

This photographer called George Mayer...

I don't work in studio, I feel a bit isolated in studio

-I have to try and explote a little bit more-

but since I saw Mr. George's work

I was amazed with the minimalism of it

because he is not making the illumination obvious

the illumination is not perfect.

And he is playing with -known in film world- with cookies,

cookies are these light cutters

to just focus the light source where we want it to be.

This is an extreme case, like "I just want to show

this part of the face or this part of the body."

I was stunned with his work.

I have been following him for a few months now

and I haven't had the chance to try doing something like this.

But well, I'm a fan of cutting heads,

of cutting faces.

And... In this image, he inspired me.

Another person I follow and she inspires me is Malika Favre,

she is a French illustrator.

All of her illustration is about simple lines and hard light

and direct light.

What I like about these two images

or about these two creators

is that they push the emotion aside.

I really like that,

that the visual strength on their images is not based on:

"Oh, love..." or "Oh, romance...",

it's more like a visual punch that paralyzes you

because of the minimalism on their creation.

So, they inspire me for creating this image, because...

I mean, when we go out to the street

we get saturated with everything around us

but if we look for hard light and simple things

we can focus on creating something.

In this occasion... I will show you the contact sheet.

This image was made in a workshop in Belfast.

We can see here the light source,

it is a hard light, as we can see

I still don't know what am I going to do

I just have the idea that something can be made here,

I'm working beside but I'm not getting there...

I feel this is a dirty image.

So, I get closer to see if this image gets clean

and I feel it is a better representation of what I want

but the texture on the wall is making the place so obvious.

I take a step to the left and I'm in front of them

and I split the couple.

The guy is drawing attention because the light is hitting on him.

The idea...

If I had done better, would be...

that her face would have been cut with this line.

I move him a little, to put him in the shade

so that he is completely in silhouette

and I modify my exposure,

from 1500 I shift to 2000

to underexpose more.

And now I feel it's a cleaner image.

I distance a little more, I put garbage

-this is a distraction and evidences where we are-

I move my camera to the right, just a little

and the image feels cleaner.

That's what I am always looking for.

When I create these -for me- iconic or representative images

about how I see the world, that's the process...

Process of elimination.

This is another image.

But well, you can see how all the process was.

My "Hard Light Radar" always takes me to it.

I start to clean...

I adjust my angle...

I remove distractions...

I add distractions to see later if it works

because sometimes to open up a little can be interesting...

I clean... and I finish.

In the final photo this is the "before",

and this is the "after".

In this case I overexposed to lose the texture on the wall

that is very obvious

and in post-production I removed or overexposed the jeans

which, for me, evidenced too.

What I wanted was to focus the attention on her face.

And if I had been more "picky" -I realize now-

I would have eliminated her hand

so that the image and the eyes would go directly into the people.

But remember, guys, our process is slow.

We have to honor what we are doing

and doing it consciously.

To consume images that captivate us

that remain impressed in the subconscious

and when we have the chance to honor those who we admire

to find and to make a version of our own.

The illustrator does not use couples

she only uses figures.

And George - the studio photographer-

works more with models and nudes.

So I tried to merge those two parts

to create an image with which I was happy about.

I hope you enjoyed this video.

Here I am. Thanks Patreon!

And continue in this life...

¡Éxito!.