Name: STREET PHOTOGRAPHY Behind the Scenes | The Perfectionist Trap
Uploaded: 2020-06-17T16:59:41.000Z
Duration: 12 min 37 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hey YouTube I hope you have a good one. Today we are going to do something...different!

A few weeks ago at Vidcon Australia I met Liam,  aka 7th Era, a great

photographer and creator on YouTube. He came to my house recently, he wanted me to

Adverbs of manner

show him how to use After Effects to animate his photos and we talked a lot

about his creative process and it really inspired me and made me think about the

type of content I want to offer you here on this channel. You see, with my first

series of video I really wanted to create a kind of masterclass so that

everyone can learn photography, even if you don't know anything about it at all.

And I spent a lot of time trying to make it visual, fun, creating a lot of

animation, 3d stuff, makes it fun! But in the end it remains a very academic way

of learning and I think the way we learn today as change. My goal here is to teach

you what I know; I like the idea that my videos can help

you create and in the same time entertain you. And if there is something

I really believe in it is that you learn more by watching someone doing something,

by being immersed in their creative process, in their way of thinking, than by

just watching a lecture course that bombards you with a lot of information. On

my fifth video I mounted my GoPro on my camera to show you some practical cases;

so here's what we are going to do. Today without really predefined idea, we're

going to do the same thing again. Just walk around Melbourne, take a few

Okay, first stop the train station close to my place. This kind of station is

quite suitable for photography because it's an easy way to find leading lines

for composing great images. Well obviously, in that case nothing good in

these first pictures, it's difficult to get something interesting without

adding a human element. Here I spotted this young girl reading alone... Okay, that

sentence sounds a little bit "predator who's hunting" but well, you know what I

mean. To add a little depth to the leading lines, I will use the fence to

get a foreground in the blur. To make it a little more dynamic I'm finally going to

break the horizon, which is a little bit flat, by using diagonal instead.

The ramp seemed interesting to me to use to direct the eye towards the subject in the

background, the guy who recharges his Myki card. But obviously, he is in the shade,

the metal ramp reflects the sun, you got me, it's very difficult to get the

right exposure in a few seconds. Come on let's go look elsewhere. Here is an

opportunity to use a frame in a frame with this metal beam, we won't let it

pass. It gives a nice composition especially with this young lady waiting

in the background in the first third of the image, I just wished my main subject

had a little more life in his position than the usual zombie absorbed by his phone.

Hop, a train leaving the station, we quickly switch to speed priority mode to

be able to have a slightly longer exposure time, 1/4s.

Nothing crazy, but at least, there's movement. I feel a little bit rusty so

what I like to do is, photography is like sport you know, you need to warm up a

little bit so just take pictures. The first picture, the first thing you see

tchak tchak tchak, no worries if it's bad, you don't care

about that. Just start to train your eyes to be: "okay, now I need to think about

Okay here we are on the CBD - oh wow it's almost Christmas already - we're in the

city center so there's going to be a lot of people there. Hop, quick picture of this

young lady for an image without any interest actually. We're going to go to

this little alley where there's a very good Italian restaurant hiding by the

way and I ran into this guy all along eating his pizza. I don't really like the

first angle I have so I'm going to go completely the other way. A little wink

with him to make sure I can take the picture because it spotted me and he

offers me this rather interesting and lively pose. The picture is quite nice,

but unfortunately, my focus has missed the face just a little. It's still usable

but his eyes are slightly blurry. Too bad.

Okay, a street artist like there are absolutely everywhere in Melbourne, which

is totally cool, that's one of the reason I love this city.

Here I will use people's shoulders to frame my image to get this immersive

feeling. See you at Centre Place. So yes, it's very touristy, but it's also very

graphic, especially since the street empties pretty fast in the evening and you

can get very good pictures here. The light is great like in that other

shooting I did a few months ago. I spotted these two people eating on their

balconies and try to find the best possible angle. As a result, a photo

that is quite original in terms of its angle but which does not present such a

great interest, impossible to identify a face. Okay, one of my big obsessions:

photographing people eating in restaurants or having coffee. Don't ask

me why, is just that I like these moments of life. But again our subject is

absorbed by her phone rather than by the idea of enjoying her coffee, argh... and yet I

waited 10 minutes for her to move even a little bit and in the end I thought

maybe she was a wax statue, and that's the only picture I could get.

I walked in front of these large columns with this  mirror-like ceiling and that's all

it takes to test the small self-portrait. Wow;,such a handsome guy... I like the

distortion in this image and the bluish treatment of shadows, this should please

7th Era who likes to give a blue tone to his photos.

And the funny thing is that Liam's mantra is: "don't think, just do". Guess what was written on

my business card when I started freelancing ten years ago: "stop thinking,

start doing". And the truth is, I got away from that, that's my biggest problem:

overthinking everything. You see that's a real blockage concerning the motivation

to realize but especially to finish projects and it's a big fear that I have:

the trap of perfectionism. By wanting to do too well, we do nothing. And it seems

counter-intuitive, but I think perfectionism is not about quality.

Ah sh**t, so much flies... Welcome in Australia!

Every time I do something I like to push my limits, try

to be better than the previous time you know, just always go the extra mile. But

perfectionism is not that; the danger of perfectionism is the expectation of

results, of a particular outcome. Never consider something as complete until it

is considered "perfect". And that's where the problem comes from, as an artist it

is literally impossible to look at one of your creation and say "wow nobody can

do better than that". If that's your case mate, you have a real ego problem! You can

be proud of one of your works, love what you have done, but telling yourself that

it's impossible to improve it... It's something I feel so much every time and

I'm sure you see what I'm talking about. Or believe me, if you're just starting

out it's something you're going to feel if you want to become a creative person.

Perfectionism is just an excuse to not finish a project and ultimately not to

Come on it's time to change location a little. Hop, a little picture of the tram

by the way. It's a street photography classic but all trams always offer

interesting colors and textures. A second picture from a more dramatic point of

view, kneeling near the ground and using the widest angle at my disposal, here

only 28 millimeter. The photo would have had more strength and impact with a very