My favorite modern photographer
Who he is and why I'm following
There are so many great photographers out there. I’ve met only a handful in person and am so inspired by those I follow on Instagram. I might even include a thought flow about those photographers that I love on Instagram but right now I’m going to talk about my favorite modern photographer. He is Pierre Lambert, from France living in the U.S. His YouTube Channel is filled with street photography as he tests out different lenses. I enjoy watching those because the distance he uses to take the pictures with each lens requires a lot of thought. Sometimes he uses a discreet 50 mm lens or an obtrusive 400 mm lens that anyone can see from a mile away, haha. However, the pictures he takes with them are always stunning and inspires me to take candid street photography shots whenever I go out for a walk.
I don’t just like to watch him for his lens unboxing but also for his tutorials. I saw one photographer on Instagram, Mason David @masondavidphoto shoot lots of crisp images and I sent him a DM and asked him how he gets his images to look so sharp.
David said, “I mostly shoot on primes at f1.4- 1.8 and I actually decrease my sharpness on most of my photos”.
*sigh* I don’t have a prime lens but I mostly shoot on an 18-55 mm lens at the lowest aperture. I still get a nice bokeh, but it’s nothing like David’s.
Anyway, I decided to do some research and found Lambert’s video on how to take sharp images here. He gives lots of helpful tips on settings that I didn’t even know my camera has and I noticed a difference in sharpness on my photos.
Focus is definitely a probably I have while taking pictures and Lambert points out how to use Automatic and Manual focus. Manual focus is definitely for those Jedi photographers with a sharp eye but he explains that that Automatic focus is king to helping him find focus on his subjects. He uses single-point focus mode and continuous mode to help find the focus depending on whether his subject is moving or not. Something to take in mind.
He also has another video on shooting the stars at night, which is really impressive. You really need to travel far away from the city where there is a lot of light noise to get a clear shot of the stars. That’s something I’m hoping to do in the future as we are planning a possible trip to North Carolina in the mountains and I might get to try this— fingers crossed.
Finally, I was so inspired by Lambert’s expertise that I bought an editing software that he recommends for photographers to use, Luminar AI. He usually gives a promo code on his videos for viewers who want to buy the product, which usually takes $10 to $20 off the original price. Luminar doesn’t require a subscription like photoshop does. You buy it one time and it’s yours, so I went ahead and used his promo code and bought Luminar AI. The photos I shared in this newsletter are edited with this software and I really like the exposure and saturation of the colors in them. If I ever find a photographers’ presets that I really like I would recommend those too but I’m on a budget and waiting to finish school.
Everything at its time.
But I am so excited to have found Lambert’s photography and am inspired by his work. I hope you are too and if you are you can check out his social media on his Youtube page here. None of this is sponsored, I just really like these people and products.
Yours truly,
Rosa de Saron C.