"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis video is brought to you by Squarespace welcome back everyone in this video we are going to look at some viewer mail that was sent in and I want to start out with this book which is quite exceptional this comes to us from a gentleman named Roman dejon who lives in Germany this is a book called sept if you can see it here it's got a cloth cover sep is in Boston here uh Roman sent me a letter I'm going to share some of this with you and I got an email from him as well with a lot of information and a lot of backstory on this and so sept is a conceptual work it is a collection of black and white portraits that were all shot specifically for this book as a project what's interesting is it shows different characters in a pretty extraordinary setting this was all done over a 14-month period we have different models that are photographed in the same location which was an old abandoned garden shed and I love the lighting in here I think it it has a really interesting effect and I love the fact that we have different characters that kind of come in and out of this and so it's not a theme in variations per se but it's interesting that we have the consistency of setting um and what changes in the variant ends up being the people that are shot also important to note is Roman talks about how music plays a really important role in this work and so if you get the book uh you're going to get this which comes with a little playlist and you can hit the QR code it's on Spotify uh it's really cool and it's very fitting of the kind of Photography that we have in here I'm going to share a little bit of his letter which reads dear Ted I am Roman dejon a German photographer and Coach who is doing portrait work specifically artist portrait work since 2012 since the beginning I am in love with natural light so nearly all of my photos were shot in available light an aperture wide open mostly an 885mm 1.4 Sony G master I'm focused on the human in front of the camera and try to create and build a setting which reflects the atmosphere and the character of the model music plays an important role in my work I do personalize playlists for every shoot which should support the model to express themselves and find the perfect mood I see myself as the Director who just has the task of finding the best cast the best spot stage brief the model emotionalize the model and finally give the person the freedom to to be whatever they want the stage is yours sept is my first book all in all a very personal project for me because with this book I am processing my experiences from time and projecting them into the pictures and models merging them with my pictoral style sept is my most personal work of the last 11 years a book full of Darkness and Light it combines and hides many small surprises and hidden objects obvious things apparently only noticed upon repeat viewing and leaves even for me question marks so a couple observations that I want to make and things that I really like about this first of all I love the way that he does portraits in here uh there's a lot of dramatic influence uh it's almost like a performance art in some ways it's not very conventional in terms of shooting portraits in black and white obviously the lighting is very moody I love the effect of the garden shed has I like the fact that you don't notice uh in other words it's just not in your face that all these were shot in the same location it's more of a subtlety uh the musical component certainly adds a lot to this and I think probably my favorite part about Roman's work is this is one of the things that I love the most about photography when it works really well is that he gets right up on that line between abstraction and reality in terms of the way he's rendering a subject there are pictures in here that you see where it kind of you're taken back and what is it that I'm looking at and then it becomes obvious and I love that blurred line of abstraction reality that's done not with just focus techniques or blurry photos per se or motion it's done with just a really subtle use of composition and the way he uses shape and line and figures and I this is really well done Roman this is absolutely outstanding um I wish that you guys could see this in person and if you are interested and you want to get a copy of this I'll put a link to Roman as well as all the other people that I'm talking about in this video in the show description below so make sure you check it out uh the printing on this is absolutely first class and this is something that's really difficult to do when you start dealing with a lot of really lowend dark tones is that they can get muddy and this book is not it's really well done it's not very conventional in terms of like a blurb quality or something where people are doing one officer shorter runs it's really well done and that probably doesn't pick up as much in a video that I'm going to end up putting on the internet but anyway Roman outstanding job you guys should check this out it is clearly um very different and I think quite amazing so check out the link in the show description Roman thank you for sending this is awesome all right so we're going to move from large format black and white to this smaller color work that came in and I am a big fan of small works like this and I'm going to talk about this as we go through this comes to us from a photographer by the name of Maurice Cunningham this is called Credo Maurice includes a postcard which reads dear Ted I just wanted to say that I'm a huge fan of the show thank you for your unique perspective and for inspiring a generation I made this zene using a collection of photos shot on my iPhone 4S and 6 Plus over the course of 6 years nothing special but I hope you enjoy it Maurice so a couple observations in here I think the color in here is really well done and if he hadn't told me this was all done on phones I would not have guessed he's changed the crop away from the Native aspect ratio but uh they're really well done and they're very cool the work is some street photography there's some architectural stuff in here what I love about this is the pacing in here and you're going to see how he does layout um on various spreads in here and sometimes we're including multiple images these start to get really small in this format and I think this is one of the things that's so cool about it and I've said this over and over again over the years doing this these videos is that one of the things that really attracts me to smaller work is that when it's successful as a way of drawing you in it makes you want to look closer there's something that you're looking at to see in here and on a spread like this we're getting really small in fact these are really thumbnail sized but the reason they work well is that mace has a really good compositional sense and that they still read at that size and I also love the fact that this is just a complete departure you know the trend in photography these days tends to be at least on the digital side of things is high resolution you know how many megapixels can we fit into a sensor and I love the fact that these were done with something simple just two different phones and there was a collection done over a period of time but I love the fact that that is not the emphasis here here it's not zooming in and admiring details that were taken by lens and a camera combination it's more like enjoying the composition and the vision from the photographer anyway Maurice excellent work this is really nicely done I'll link up to his Instagram and if you want to copy this I'll link it up in the show description below thank you for sending got a couple more that I want to share with you I love the graphic on this this is called waiting for the rain and I have another one that is a study of a neighborhood called Hampton Heights in South Carolina but first real quick I want to give a shout out to our sponsor today who are the awesome folks over at Squarespace how easy is it to build an amazing website in a matter of minutes Squarespace has you covered it's dead simple head over to Squarespace hit get started you can start by selecting from an impressive collection of customizable templates or you can do what I do build your own something unique because you know you're not like other websites give your site a name next you can build your homepage we'll start with a few preset layouts just to get us going want to sell products like books or prints well you can feature those on your homepage create a few more sections if you want let's also give it a color palette there's a whole bunch to choose from then just get it started we can change this all later next let's select the typography choices welcome to your website everything is set up and it's already ready for you to customize Squarespace is built on fluid engine the next generation of website design select edit and fluid engine allows you to drag place and resize any element on the page you can snap the to a grid you can make them float on top of one another you can free form however you like you can even preview and adjust how the site looks on either desktop or mobile the layouts are independent of course you'll want a portfolio for your work creating an image gallery is as easy is dropping a folder of images on your web browser once uploaded you can drag to Resort customize the look and Squarespace writes all of the code for you everything just works and it looks fabulous want to sell your own prints books or Z Squarespace has the capabilities to not only set up your online store and collect payments but they also give you all the tools that you're going to need to be successful managing shipping and payment options manage your orders and engage with your customers they even give you the tax tools that you need to keep things organized and stay compliant you should try Squarespace for yourself it's absolutely free no credit card required just go to squarespace.com aop sign up for that free trial if you decide squ SP is right for you I can save you an additional 10% on your order by using offer code aop on checkout that's right the code is aop so stop procrastinating go build your website today and I want to give a special shout out and thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video all right so next up is this book that comes to us from Phoenix Canada this is called waiting for rain I actually really love this this is a little conceptual work uh that's divided into four seasons I'm going to read you a little a little bit of the note that he included by the way his handwriting is quite awesome it reads hi Ted I'm Phoenix cona a photographer based in Northern California thank you for the resources advice and everything else you provide with your YouTube channel I'm a huge fan in this package is my latest photo book waiting for the rain for the past 2 years I've been documenting this region and its Ever Changing Landscapes with each chapter being a season my written word felt necessary to add an extra layer of observation and feelings towards those seasonal changes after almost 10 years of making photos this project feels like my most cohesive body of work yet made this book help preserve the natural beauty of this place I call home so a couple things that I want to say about this Phoenix you've done an excellent job with this it is a very cohesive body of work and I love the fact that the written word here is expressed in poetry I think it really works it's it fits well together the other thing that I want to commend you on is I too live in a landscape that's full of trees that most of the year don't have a lot of leaves on them and they're hard to shoot and I think you've done an exceptionally good job compos positionally this is one of my favorites in here really cool use of geometry and subf framing another thing I love is Phoenix works really well with layers in a lot of these compositions which is really cool the other thing that's worth noting is note the cross in here which is also echoed earlier in the book with uh this image here it's also in this broken Tree in a literal form on the side of a tree and possibly un intended but uh also appears here in this landscape image some thematic symbolism that is carried throughout the other thing that I love about this is it's pretty consistently obviously black and white all the way through but the the moods that are changed between the seasons are really brought out here uh this is a really awesome work Phoenix I really like this a lot I think it's very successful in your approach and what you're trying to do here congratulations you should be very proud of this one all right so next up is this little Zen this comes to us from Zach Parks this is called sidewalks and window panes volume one Hampton Heights Zach also includes a little note which reads hi Ted please enjoy this copy of my latest Zen sidewalks and window panes I'm a long time fan of the channel just a little way of saying thanks for all that you do for the photography Community cheers Zack sidewalks and window panes is very cool this is sort of uh reminds me a lot of William eglon in its approach some of these are kind of dead pan I love the fact that it's a study of a neighborhood and then we get the slight Interruption from here to there with an upside down shopping cart we get cars in the way I think this is actually very quirky and very cool in a lot of ways this actually reminds me of something I heard Keith Carter talk about in a workshop one time and he was saying you know if you want the ultimate challenge for yourself as a photog grapher go out and take 12 photos 13 if you're really feeling adventurous but do it all within half a mile of your house in a small radius and you're forced to compose For Better or Worse what is there and I actually love that and it reminds me of that because that is what this collection is there's only a couple little critical observations that I want to make on this and I think it just comes down to the pacing and this is something that's kind of common with a lot of things and I think that as a photographer you're looking at your work as a collection and how is that paced As you move through and let me give you an example here what I'm talking about so on this spread you have the same house and it's photographed in two different seasons and I like the seasonal approach because we see some snow stuff towards the end of the book and so one thing to think about is I'm not a big fan of doubling up unless there's a reason to do it necessarily and I think the reason needs to be a little stronger than just this is the same place in two different seasons because it's not even quite the same field of view that we're dealing with but I like the idea but how is that paste a little bit differently and how can you express that in something that's a little bit different the other thing that made me think of something is you have this another similar spread where you have two cars that's essentially the same composition it's also the same house in the background and what I like about this is that it starts showing a breakup in the subject matter in other words the car is the emphasis and not necessarily the house because a lot of these are neighborhood shots and I think that's something that could probably be just changed in the pacing of this because a lot of times you're turning the page and you kind of expect you're going to see another house uh in some way shape or form and so that may be a way of breaking that up a little bit I don't know but I think you've got some possibilities here in terms of the way this is paced I think it's pretty good as it is but there's just a couple spots where it's maybe not as obvious to the viewer and either that needs accompanying text in some way shape or form or a title or it just needs a different type of pacing but I think this is a really awesome start and you should be proud of this um it's very cool and like I said It reminds me a lot of William Egleston who I'm a huge fan of so awesome work my man this is good so some great stuff today I want to thank everybody who sent stuff in make sure you support your fellow photographers and check out their websites below and uh buy some books man these there's some really good work here outstanding job I will see you guys in the next video Until then laterthis video is brought to you by Squarespace welcome back everyone in this video we are going to look at some viewer mail that was sent in and I want to start out with this book which is quite exceptional this comes to us from a gentleman named Roman dejon who lives in Germany this is a book called sept if you can see it here it's got a cloth cover sep is in Boston here uh Roman sent me a letter I'm going to share some of this with you and I got an email from him as well with a lot of information and a lot of backstory on this and so sept is a conceptual work it is a collection of black and white portraits that were all shot specifically for this book as a project what's interesting is it shows different characters in a pretty extraordinary setting this was all done over a 14-month period we have different models that are photographed in the same location which was an old abandoned garden shed and I love the lighting in here I think it it has a really interesting effect and I love the fact that we have different characters that kind of come in and out of this and so it's not a theme in variations per se but it's interesting that we have the consistency of setting um and what changes in the variant ends up being the people that are shot also important to note is Roman talks about how music plays a really important role in this work and so if you get the book uh you're going to get this which comes with a little playlist and you can hit the QR code it's on Spotify uh it's really cool and it's very fitting of the kind of Photography that we have in here I'm going to share a little bit of his letter which reads dear Ted I am Roman dejon a German photographer and Coach who is doing portrait work specifically artist portrait work since 2012 since the beginning I am in love with natural light so nearly all of my photos were shot in available light an aperture wide open mostly an 885mm 1.4 Sony G master I'm focused on the human in front of the camera and try to create and build a setting which reflects the atmosphere and the character of the model music plays an important role in my work I do personalize playlists for every shoot which should support the model to express themselves and find the perfect mood I see myself as the Director who just has the task of finding the best cast the best spot stage brief the model emotionalize the model and finally give the person the freedom to to be whatever they want the stage is yours sept is my first book all in all a very personal project for me because with this book I am processing my experiences from time and projecting them into the pictures and models merging them with my pictoral style sept is my most personal work of the last 11 years a book full of Darkness and Light it combines and hides many small surprises and hidden objects obvious things apparently only noticed upon repeat viewing and leaves even for me question marks so a couple observations that I want to make and things that I really like about this first of all I love the way that he does portraits in here uh there's a lot of dramatic influence uh it's almost like a performance art in some ways it's not very conventional in terms of shooting portraits in black and white obviously the lighting is very moody I love the effect of the garden shed has I like the fact that you don't notice uh in other words it's just not in your face that all these were shot in the same location it's more of a subtlety uh the musical component certainly adds a lot to this and I think probably my favorite part about Roman's work is this is one of the things that I love the most about photography when it works really well is that he gets right up on that line between abstraction and reality in terms of the way he's rendering a subject there are pictures in here that you see where it kind of you're taken back and what is it that I'm looking at and then it becomes obvious and I love that blurred line of abstraction reality that's done not with just focus techniques or blurry photos per se or motion it's done with just a really subtle use of composition and the way he uses shape and line and figures and I this is really well done Roman this is absolutely outstanding um I wish that you guys could see this in person and if you are interested and you want to get a copy of this I'll put a link to Roman as well as all the other people that I'm talking about in this video in the show description below so make sure you check it out uh the printing on this is absolutely first class and this is something that's really difficult to do when you start dealing with a lot of really lowend dark tones is that they can get muddy and this book is not it's really well done it's not very conventional in terms of like a blurb quality or something where people are doing one officer shorter runs it's really well done and that probably doesn't pick up as much in a video that I'm going to end up putting on the internet but anyway Roman outstanding job you guys should check this out it is clearly um very different and I think quite amazing so check out the link in the show description Roman thank you for sending this is awesome all right so we're going to move from large format black and white to this smaller color work that came in and I am a big fan of small works like this and I'm going to talk about this as we go through this comes to us from a photographer by the name of Maurice Cunningham this is called Credo Maurice includes a postcard which reads dear Ted I just wanted to say that I'm a huge fan of the show thank you for your unique perspective and for inspiring a generation I made this zene using a collection of photos shot on my iPhone 4S and 6 Plus over the course of 6 years nothing special but I hope you enjoy it Maurice so a couple observations in here I think the color in here is really well done and if he hadn't told me this was all done on phones I would not have guessed he's changed the crop away from the Native aspect ratio but uh they're really well done and they're very cool the work is some street photography there's some architectural stuff in here what I love about this is the pacing in here and you're going to see how he does layout um on various spreads in here and sometimes we're including multiple images these start to get really small in this format and I think this is one of the things that's so cool about it and I've said this over and over again over the years doing this these videos is that one of the things that really attracts me to smaller work is that when it's successful as a way of drawing you in it makes you want to look closer there's something that you're looking at to see in here and on a spread like this we're getting really small in fact these are really thumbnail sized but the reason they work well is that mace has a really good compositional sense and that they still read at that size and I also love the fact that this is just a complete departure you know the trend in photography these days tends to be at least on the digital side of things is high resolution you know how many megapixels can we fit into a sensor and I love the fact that these were done with something simple just two different phones and there was a collection done over a period of time but I love the fact that that is not the emphasis here here it's not zooming in and admiring details that were taken by lens and a camera combination it's more like enjoying the composition and the vision from the photographer anyway Maurice excellent work this is really nicely done I'll link up to his Instagram and if you want to copy this I'll link it up in the show description below thank you for sending got a couple more that I want to share with you I love the graphic on this this is called waiting for the rain and I have another one that is a study of a neighborhood called Hampton Heights in South Carolina but first real quick I want to give a shout out to our sponsor today who are the awesome folks over at Squarespace how easy is it to build an amazing website in a matter of minutes Squarespace has you covered it's dead simple head over to Squarespace hit get started you can start by selecting from an impressive collection of customizable templates or you can do what I do build your own something unique because you know you're not like other websites give your site a name next you can build your homepage we'll start with a few preset layouts just to get us going want to sell products like books or prints well you can feature those on your homepage create a few more sections if you want let's also give it a color palette there's a whole bunch to choose from then just get it started we can change this all later next let's select the typography choices welcome to your website everything is set up and it's already ready for you to customize Squarespace is built on fluid engine the next generation of website design select edit and fluid engine allows you to drag place and resize any element on the page you can snap the to a grid you can make them float on top of one another you can free form however you like you can even preview and adjust how the site looks on either desktop or mobile the layouts are independent of course you'll want a portfolio for your work creating an image gallery is as easy is dropping a folder of images on your web browser once uploaded you can drag to Resort customize the look and Squarespace writes all of the code for you everything just works and it looks fabulous want to sell your own prints books or Z Squarespace has the capabilities to not only set up your online store and collect payments but they also give you all the tools that you're going to need to be successful managing shipping and payment options manage your orders and engage with your customers they even give you the tax tools that you need to keep things organized and stay compliant you should try Squarespace for yourself it's absolutely free no credit card required just go to squarespace.com aop sign up for that free trial if you decide squ SP is right for you I can save you an additional 10% on your order by using offer code aop on checkout that's right the code is aop so stop procrastinating go build your website today and I want to give a special shout out and thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video all right so next up is this book that comes to us from Phoenix Canada this is called waiting for rain I actually really love this this is a little conceptual work uh that's divided into four seasons I'm going to read you a little a little bit of the note that he included by the way his handwriting is quite awesome it reads hi Ted I'm Phoenix cona a photographer based in Northern California thank you for the resources advice and everything else you provide with your YouTube channel I'm a huge fan in this package is my latest photo book waiting for the rain for the past 2 years I've been documenting this region and its Ever Changing Landscapes with each chapter being a season my written word felt necessary to add an extra layer of observation and feelings towards those seasonal changes after almost 10 years of making photos this project feels like my most cohesive body of work yet made this book help preserve the natural beauty of this place I call home so a couple things that I want to say about this Phoenix you've done an excellent job with this it is a very cohesive body of work and I love the fact that the written word here is expressed in poetry I think it really works it's it fits well together the other thing that I want to commend you on is I too live in a landscape that's full of trees that most of the year don't have a lot of leaves on them and they're hard to shoot and I think you've done an exceptionally good job compos positionally this is one of my favorites in here really cool use of geometry and subf framing another thing I love is Phoenix works really well with layers in a lot of these compositions which is really cool the other thing that's worth noting is note the cross in here which is also echoed earlier in the book with uh this image here it's also in this broken Tree in a literal form on the side of a tree and possibly un intended but uh also appears here in this landscape image some thematic symbolism that is carried throughout the other thing that I love about this is it's pretty consistently obviously black and white all the way through but the the moods that are changed between the seasons are really brought out here uh this is a really awesome work Phoenix I really like this a lot I think it's very successful in your approach and what you're trying to do here congratulations you should be very proud of this one all right so next up is this little Zen this comes to us from Zach Parks this is called sidewalks and window panes volume one Hampton Heights Zach also includes a little note which reads hi Ted please enjoy this copy of my latest Zen sidewalks and window panes I'm a long time fan of the channel just a little way of saying thanks for all that you do for the photography Community cheers Zack sidewalks and window panes is very cool this is sort of uh reminds me a lot of William eglon in its approach some of these are kind of dead pan I love the fact that it's a study of a neighborhood and then we get the slight Interruption from here to there with an upside down shopping cart we get cars in the way I think this is actually very quirky and very cool in a lot of ways this actually reminds me of something I heard Keith Carter talk about in a workshop one time and he was saying you know if you want the ultimate challenge for yourself as a photog grapher go out and take 12 photos 13 if you're really feeling adventurous but do it all within half a mile of your house in a small radius and you're forced to compose For Better or Worse what is there and I actually love that and it reminds me of that because that is what this collection is there's only a couple little critical observations that I want to make on this and I think it just comes down to the pacing and this is something that's kind of common with a lot of things and I think that as a photographer you're looking at your work as a collection and how is that paced As you move through and let me give you an example here what I'm talking about so on this spread you have the same house and it's photographed in two different seasons and I like the seasonal approach because we see some snow stuff towards the end of the book and so one thing to think about is I'm not a big fan of doubling up unless there's a reason to do it necessarily and I think the reason needs to be a little stronger than just this is the same place in two different seasons because it's not even quite the same field of view that we're dealing with but I like the idea but how is that paste a little bit differently and how can you express that in something that's a little bit different the other thing that made me think of something is you have this another similar spread where you have two cars that's essentially the same composition it's also the same house in the background and what I like about this is that it starts showing a breakup in the subject matter in other words the car is the emphasis and not necessarily the house because a lot of these are neighborhood shots and I think that's something that could probably be just changed in the pacing of this because a lot of times you're turning the page and you kind of expect you're going to see another house uh in some way shape or form and so that may be a way of breaking that up a little bit I don't know but I think you've got some possibilities here in terms of the way this is paced I think it's pretty good as it is but there's just a couple spots where it's maybe not as obvious to the viewer and either that needs accompanying text in some way shape or form or a title or it just needs a different type of pacing but I think this is a really awesome start and you should be proud of this um it's very cool and like I said It reminds me a lot of William Egleston who I'm a huge fan of so awesome work my man this is good so some great stuff today I want to thank everybody who sent stuff in make sure you support your fellow photographers and check out their websites below and uh buy some books man these there's some really good work here outstanding job I will see you guys in the next video Until then later\n"