Forum Takeover with Jess Santos!

[alpha-jessica-a]

Creator Jess Santos @Missjessbess calls herself a wanderer, adventurer and stargazer. The Sony Alpha Ambassador loves to get out and explore, and she has a unique way of capturing the scenes she comes across. Her imagery maximizes foreground elements to give landscapes and astroscapes an almost otherworldly depth.

It’s our pleasure to announce that Jess will be participating in a text based Forum Takeover from August 19th to August 23rd!

If you’d like to ask a question, post it in this thread and Jess will answer it during her takeover. 

You’ll have a week to chat with and learn from Jess. The takeover will also be saved and available to view after the week ends! 

[nodav]

This is awesome, I'm so excited to learn from Jess!

My question is what inspired you to start capturing landscapes and astroscapes?

[EJohnson]

Hi Jess! 

I would love to know the one piece of advice you’d give to someone starting with astrophotography using Sony Alpha cameras?

[avmil]

Hi Jess! Thank you for answering questions! I have one for you: What tips do you have for marketing your work on social media/ building a social media following around your work?

[Missjessbess]

On 8/17/2024 at 1:46 AM, nodav said:

My question is what inspired you to start capturing landscapes and astroscapes?

Hey there! To make a long story a little shorter, I worked as a wedding photo retoucher for many years, and one of the photographers there showed me a photo of just the Milky Way that he took (ironically a sony camera 🙂 ) and I was in awe that you could capture that with a camera and did not need a telescope. So I immediately begged him to show me how he did it and we went to Death Valley. Then I just got hooked. Now a days, I've been inspired by the adventure of it as well as creating these robust fantasy stories and worlds when I'm out in the wild. 

[Missjessbess]

On 8/18/2024 at 2:35 PM, EJohnson said:

Hi Jess! 

I would love to know the one piece of advice you’d give to someone starting with astrophotography using Sony Alpha cameras?

Specific to Sony cameras is the bright monitoring feature, which boosts the gain and acts like night vision goggles for your camera, this is especially helpful at night for composing in darkness, so that you don't have to take million test shots. You can literally see the Milky Way on your live view display. 

Bonus tip for night photography is learning how to use the live display, focus magnification  and focus peaking to quickly get a sharp focus on your stars. These three in combination make it really quick and easy to focus on stars. Set your focus peaking to red and mid and set a custom button to easily access your focus magnifier (having it on a custom button also allows you to punch in all the way). Then when you go to focus on stars they will turn into red pin points when they are in focus.

Hope this helps!

[Missjessbess]

7 hours ago, avmil said:

Hi Jess! Thank you for answering questions! I have one for you: What tips do you have for marketing your work on social media/ building a social media following around your work?

Hey There! The best thing I have found is engage, social platforms are meant to be social, so the more you genuinely engage with fellow creators on the app the more you are building a community. I have had followers turn friends that still regularly pop up in my messages or on my posts, people that have been on this whole journey with me since I started, and that brings me so much happiness and its amazing to see where their journey has led to also. Like, share and/or comment on posts that you genuinely love.

Secondly, share quality work, quality is greater than quantity here. You will see advice out there that says "post x amount of times per day" and yes this may get more eyes on your work, but it is more important to have meaningful engagement. Of course art is subjective, but by posting work you love and are proud of you will retain consistent growth and engagement. Never post for the sake of posting.

Lastly, If you don't already, let your audience get to know you (the person behind the lens) you can do this through short form video content (reels, shorts, tiktok, etc.), stories (probably the best way) or static posts. No matter how you choose to do this, we can all admit we really love getting to know the artist, it makes their artwork all the more special.

[download]

Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with us, Jess!

I'm wondering what role does spontaneity play in your photography? Do you prefer planned shoots or spontaneous adventures?

[emism]

What is one thing you wish you knew when you started photography?

[SRodriguez]

Hi Jess!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of capturing and sharing your images with the world?

[apurcell]

How do you go about finding interesting foreground subjects? Do you use an app or just field scouting?

Which do you tend to utilize more for your Milky Way tracking or stacking?

 

[Marcus_Gray]

Can you describe your workflow for editing a complex landscape or night sky shot? I'd love to learn more about your process. 

[EJohnson]

On 8/20/2024 at 3:03 PM, Missjessbess said:

Specific to Sony cameras is the bright monitoring feature, which boosts the gain and acts like night vision goggles for your camera, this is especially helpful at night for composing in darkness, so that you don't have to take million test shots. You can literally see the Milky Way on your live view display. 

Bonus tip for night photography is learning how to use the live display, focus magnification  and focus peaking to quickly get a sharp focus on your stars. These three in combination make it really quick and easy to focus on stars. Set your focus peaking to red and mid and set a custom button to easily access your focus magnifier (having it on a custom button also allows you to punch in all the way). Then when you go to focus on stars they will turn into red pin points when they are in focus.

Hope this helps!

Super helpful, thank you! 

[Missjessbess]

On 8/19/2024 at 11:11 PM, download said:

I'm wondering what role does spontaneity play in your photography? Do you prefer planned shoots or spontaneous adventures?

Great Question! The adventurer in me prefers spontaneous adventures and just getting out and exploring, but if I am trying to create a portfolio worthy piece there is a lot of planning, scouting and preparation that goes into it. So purely from my photography standpoint when I pre-plan I get better more complete and thought out images. And this is mainly because of the way I capture and edit my photos.

[Missjessbess]

On 8/20/2024 at 12:10 AM, emism said:

What is one thing you wish you knew when you started photography?

How focal length plays an important role in artistic vision. I didn't understand that focal length made such an impact on how different subjects looked, I mainly used focal length as a tool to "zoom in" or "zoom out". Once I really started understanding how to use a wide angle lens and the distortion this gave, or how a longer focal length like 200mm plus compresses the foreground and background, this gave me a lot of artistic stylization that I just wasn't utilizing when I started.

[Missjessbess]

On 8/20/2024 at 12:17 PM, SRodriguez said:

What’s the most rewarding aspect of capturing and sharing your images with the world?

I love creating. Creating art in any form, my hobbies are also artistic endeavors that don't include photography as a medium. So the first thing I would say is the most rewarding is just the ability to create art. Secondly sharing stories and experiences with others that I would have never met had it not been for photography, and I absolutely love hearing other's stories of their adventures or what it took them to get that particular image from an experience level not a technical level. I just think it's so special to be able to be a part of such a cool community of people through our art. 

[Missjessbess]

20 hours ago, apurcell said:

How do you go about finding interesting foreground subjects? Do you use an app or just field scouting?

It's usually just field scouting, but if I'm exploring a place I have never been before, I will do research online to see what areas of that place I want to visit, this is usually via google images, by just typing in the place and seeing what looks cool. You can also do this via google earth. Pinterest is also one of my favorites to use if I am visiting a National Park for the first time, to see what hikes, landmarks, etc. look interesting (All Trails is also good for this). And honestly it can also be a lot of driving down a random dirt road to see what it looks like because it looked interesting on google maps satellite view lol.

But, the most important aspect to in-field scouting is getting to know your location. My process looks like this: Arrive at an area well before (we're talking hours before) I plan to shoot. Then I just take a sit and just look, for a minimum of 15 minutes. By just sitting and observing we notice a lot more than we would by trying to find "the composition". Then I will just walk around with my phone looking at different options and finding the story that I want to tell and using my phone to "scout" composition until I find something I am happy with and want to explore further and fine tune. Then and only then will I take out my camera. 

[Missjessbess]

21 hours ago, apurcell said:

Which do you tend to utilize more for your Milky Way tracking or stacking?

 

I am lazy 🙂 , so stacking would be the answer to this one, for sure. I don't often set up a tracker because it takes more time and an extra piece of gear, and to be honest for me and my artwork the difference is negligible. I usually only setup a tracker when I am camping in a spot for a couple days and have a clear view of the night sky or when I am teaching workshops, I will often setup a tracker for the clients to use so they can get different types of shots.

[Maggie_Roberts]

I'm curious, how do you manage and adapt your gear in extreme or remote locations?

[oljon]

Hi Jess!

What was your biggest resource that got you started (mentor, course, book)?

Edited August 22 by oljon

[alpha-jessica-a]

What's your favorite place for photography?

And what's something unusual or unexpected that you keep in your gear bag?

[NoahBrown]

Are there any common editing mistakes that you see beginners making in landscape photography?

[download]

On 8/22/2024 at 8:13 AM, Missjessbess said:

Great Question! The adventurer in me prefers spontaneous adventures and just getting out and exploring, but if I am trying to create a portfolio worthy piece there is a lot of planning, scouting and preparation that goes into it. So purely from my photography standpoint when I pre-plan I get better more complete and thought out images. And this is mainly because of the way I capture and edit my photos.

Do you have a specific program or app you use to pre-plan your adventures and shoots? 

[Missjessbess]

On 8/20/2024 at 9:54 PM, Marcus_Gray said:

Can you describe your workflow for editing a complex landscape or night sky shot? I'd love to learn more about your process. 

It sometimes varies from image to image, but the routine I have gotten into goes like this:

1. Global Edits in Lightroom, if there are pieces that I plan to assemble I make sure all of these are basically edited and then move them over as a smart object to photoshop

2. Assemble all the pieces (if necessary) in Photoshop then move onto local adjustments

3. Here I start with dodging (using luminosity masks), selective color adjustment layer(s) and any other small adjustments like cleaning up edges or removing distracting elements

4. Apply the orton glow effect and move onto visual pathway

5. Visual pathway is where I use a series of linear and radial gradient masks in adobe camera raw filter (photoshop) to darken and bright areas to shape where I want the viewers eye to go. 

That's a brief overview of the steps. hope this helps!

[Missjessbess]

On 8/22/2024 at 11:56 AM, Maggie_Roberts said:

I'm curious, how do you manage and adapt your gear in extreme or remote locations?

Quite honesty I haven't ever had the need to. The only times I have had to use something specifically for the environment I am in is a rain cover, which i use for obviously rain, but also sand and snow as well. If I am in an extremely cold climate I have extra batteries that I keep on hand in my pockets (to keep them wam) so that I can easily pop in a new one, as cold tends to drain batteries quicker.

If I am hiking a long distance I pair down the gear I bring which is usually my A7R4 and my 12-24mm GM and thats it.