Tone Assessment and Tone Theory are the Building Blocks of Great Images

If you have followed me for almost any amount of time, I have probably taught you a few things that you thought were pretty awesome.  What I am going to show you today is the most is, in my opinion, the most important thing I could ever teach you.  Why do I say that?

For the last 9 years, I have critiqued well over 2000 photos.  For the longest time, I could not understand the difference between a phenomenal photo and an okay photo.  You could have two people that record the same exact location, but one image comes out better than the other.  Why is that?  Is it because one person is better than the other?

Not necessarily.

It is because one person knows where they want the viewer to look to interact with the work.  The key to almost anything in life is to think about what you want and then work backward to get there.  If at the end of the day, we want the viewer to interact with our photography, to engage with it, to embrace it, then we need to know what is going to get them there.  It is nearly impossible to get the emotion out of the viewer if you don’t know where they are going to look when they see your work.

Today I will show you a technique I developed to help me see exactly what the viewer sees first to help them navigate throughout the piece.  It’s an effortless technique, and it works EVERY time!  Click here to download the Action for this video.

It's All a Game of Tones

This video is just a small sampling of a much bigger course on Tone Theory.  In my new course  Game of Tones,You Will Learn:

 

► How to Principles of Tone Theory
► An Understanding of Light
► How to Assess tones to navigate the viewer’s eye
► The difference between Dynamic Range and Contrast
► The Blend Modes that encourage Tone control
► Luminosity Mask and Blend If basics
► How to control the viewer’s experience in post-production
► NEW- The ART of TONE Sculpting

 

Blake Rudis
f.64 Academy and f.64 Elite are the brainchildren of Blake Rudis. While he is a landscape photographer, he is most passionate about post-processing images in Photoshop and mentoring others.

For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
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