Much like the last photo, this was a very complex scene to photograph. Now, this morning, I showed up to work on a separate project that I was doing, but I got really, really bored. And I immediately was drawn to the ocean. So I packed my stuff up and I came and sat by the ocean when immediately I was feeling kind of I had this feeling of nostalgia. I started thinking about life and, and all kinds of things. So let me explain what's going on.

I'm going to open up my exposure. So just so you can see. So a bird flew by me and dropped the feather right next to me. So I immediately thought to use it too much. advantage to help me compose a beautiful photo. Now, I hadn't taken any good shots this morning.

And when what I was feeling I was kind of feeling like I was kind of alone in this big in this planet facing all kinds of things in the world, you know, and I have to face them by myself. So what I did is I grabbed this feather and I threw it in it landed about a foot away from me, and it sat there. So I said, as I set my camera up, I took a photo of the feather in the water and that didn't work out too well. But as the waves kept coming in, they kept moving the feather. At this point, I had forgotten all about the feather. And then the sun creeped through this clouds and they kind of lit up the ocean.

And as I look down This feather was on the ground. So immediately snap the photo I pressed my I pressed the shutter release. And I took about three exposures. But it made so much sense in my head because I kind of was kind of the feather represents me in this water kind of represents the world and all the things I face. And I do and I'm kind of just walking this path in the world to this, you know, hopefully light that is represented by my life. So it all make sense.

It was such a weird morning such a weird day. And I just have a vivid memory of how how it was feeling and how this feather just played this huge role in my in this field. Otto and in me, I just made perfect sense. It's actually my favorite photo that I've ever taken. My favorite landscape photo because it means so much represents so much. It's exactly what I was feeling is exactly what I was experiencing at this moment.

You know, sometimes we have cloudy days, you know, sometimes you feel alone facing all this, all this world, all this unknowns, and you know that there's a light at the end, and you just keep on trucking through. So it's just such a such a meaningful photo for me. And it happened just really, oddly, must by mistake, very weird. Which makes it that much better. Now, that's not to say didn't know the settings I didn't know what I was doing. Of course, I knew what I was doing.

So of course, I knew my settings, but how everything just ended up together. Kind of just fell into place. And I was about to leave, I just kind of sat down and I was taking it all in, I threw the feather out there to see if it would work, it didn't work. But then all everything just kind of came to this to this stop for one split of a second, and it made perfect sense. And I was able to capture it. I got two exposures of this photo, I got this one and I have another one that I already published.

So that's the story behind this photo. In a lot of my photos, you know, it's not just about making a photo, it's a personal story of of either a personal struggle or a personal success, or simply just a story of my personal life. And if you look at my photos, or any other photographers photos, I think you can see a lot of their personality. And so that's what I was going through. That's what happened. And it is a very, very cool photograph.

So let me reset this exposure, I just wanted to show you the whole composition. And let me show you the settings. So the setting is one 30th of a second f 22, ISO 31. Now I dropped my ISO so I could drop my shutter speed. The reason I wanted to drop my shutter speed is so I could slow down this water. Let me open those up so I can show you so I could slow down this water.

You know, you create a sense of motion when you stop things when you slow them down. So you create a sense of movement. And that's what I was trying to accomplish. That's why my SOS is so low. And my f stop is so high because I wanted to get that Starburst effect in the sun, like I've explained before. So let me reset that exposure.

And let me take the information off, and let's get started. So again, first things first, strain on my horizon. just a tad crooked, not as bad as some are and that looks really really nice. Next thing I want to do is I want to open up my shadows accidentally press white or reset those I opened up my shadows and so you can see you can see a little bit not as much as I want to show. So next thing I want to just tone down this highlights and what I'm looking at is I'm looking at this water right here. See this water so that's what I'm looking at when I turned on the highlights.

I want this water to be exposed correctly. So as you can see if I double blow that out if I bring it down right about there that looks that looks really nice. Now I want to bring up my temperature because this they have this golden tone on it. It was just such a cool, it was crazy. I'm telling you it's such a meaningful photo for me. It was that it was that cool.

So I will to share it with you guys. So there's the temperature. Now I'll bring up my contrast to make things pop. And there's my contrast and everything kind of darkened up, but he gave it a nice little nice punch. So now we'll come down to our vibrance. And as you can see, this is my pattern.

Now, now that you've watched a lot of his videos, this is kind of the pattern that I do in all of my photos. But when I started, it took me a long time to develop that pattern. Nobody taught me it, nobody, I didn't know how to do it. So I kind of developed it into a mode of repetition, and doing it every single day over and over again, I kind of developed this pattern, and that's how I get the look and feel of my photos. And that's what I'm hoping to teach you with this with this videos is to develop your own pattern. You know, you can certainly copy mine, eventually I promise you, you're gonna end up having your own style and that's that's great.

So now that we brought up the vibrance, we're going to cover a local adjustment. So we'll grab a local adjustment, let me close out of this basic panel, we'll run a local adjustment, which is a graduated filter, and then we're going to drag it from down up, right about about two thirds a little over two thirds of the way. In now we're gonna open up the exposure because we want to show that feather that means so much in this photograph, and we also want to show those waves or that phone, whatever you want to call it. And that looks really really nice. So now we'll, we'll press Done. And look how nice that looks.

That just looks beautiful. Display. Press before and after. So you can see there's before and there's after so you can see immediately. We have this beautiful golden tone, you have the sun, here's your leading lines. So here what you would use as your leading The lines, this would be your focal point.

And then immediately here's the triangle here are the waves or the form. So this create the triangle. And this guides you into the sun into the horizon into the light. And then the light again comes into this clouds, and your eye immediately goes up to this clouds. So as you can see, it's a very, very simple image, but it's a very, very complex photo as well. And I think that looks beautiful.

So let's get out of that and keep going with it. So very subtle changes didn't have to do a lot to it, and it already looks great. So now let's come to our lens corrections. We'll come to profile, get out of the manual. Now we will remove the chromatic aberration always remove that always, always always, and then we're going to enable our profile corrections. Let's see what that did.

See how it says the subtle and work any works well I really like it. So I think that looks really good. It looks 100 times better. Now what I think we can do, we can still warm it up a little bit more and give it some of that golden. A little more golden tone. I think right about there looks pretty good.

It was a hot day was a warm morning, I remember. So that looks nice. Maybe bring up this vibrance a tad. And that looks really good. As you can see the sand is just so pristine, the feathers just beautifully there. And as soon as this foam hit it, it vanished.

So I was able to take two exposures before the feather completely disappeared into the ocean. It was such a weird thing that happened. So I'm really proud of this. So I think that looks really nice. So let's go let's do another a local adjustment and we're going to come here to a Radial Filter. So we'll come Let me close this basic panel.

We'll come Radial Filter, click the effect word twice. That resets your sliders. And now let's, let's bring down this exposure tab. And then we'll warm it up just a tad. And now we're gonna draw something in our horizon, just right there. And I just want to bring this yellow out from behind this clouds.

So let me show you before and after. Before, after, before, after, and that might be a little too much. So in fact, I want to make this smaller. Bring it up. And then I'm a minus point four one, so maybe like minus point 20. That's good.

Let's see before and after. Before, that's much more subtle. I like that a lot better. And maybe this is at 18. Let's go to maybe like a 10. And that looks that looks better before After before, after is just very subtle, but it makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

It just looks so good. So we'll close out of that and this thing is pretty much done. I don't think you need to do a lot more. Maybe if you want to blue up the sky a little more. Come here to your color. Click on the blue and bring up the saturation.

It doesn't do much. Maybe the luminance. Yeah, that doesn't do much. I would just bring that a tad maybe like a plus 12 Let's see if you can tell before. After you can't tell you really can't tell. So I think only known that's a pretty good image.

I think we can call that complete. Maybe hear the the light. It's still a little bit blown out. So come back to our basic panel and tone down the highlights just a tad more. I think that looks nice. Now let's use another local adjustment, we'll use a brush.

Let me click out of the basic, so we don't get confused. Click the effect word twice. That resets everything. And now I'm going to bring up the exposure just a tad and watch what I do. So this is the sun, right, so I just want to draw a little wider triangle here. Maybe that's too much.

So press the O key. I went too much. So I'll press this erase. And what I will do is I'll delete this, just like that. And then I'll also delete this just like that. So I just want to kind of widen this up a little bit.

And the knee, click the O key. And then let's go before and after. Before, after see that it's very subtle, but it works. It just makes split click Close. Just makes easier makes you makes the I kind of slide in here a little bit easier. And see this water the movement we created, it also serves as leading lines into the composition into it's part of your composition leading lines into the, into this beautiful sunrise.

Now this image, I do believe you can use a vignette on it. So you come to your effects panel, and you can bring this down. Maybe right about there, you don't have to, that's a negative seven. Let's see within without before, after before, after entirely up to you. Maybe I'll do like a minus four. And that looks really good.

Now let's check out before and after. before and after. And there you have it. A beautifully composed photo, beautifully finished. Very subtle adjustments, nothing out of this world and you You have an incredible, incredible photograph.