Photographing the World: Japan

Buy PTW Japan and Get Another PTW Free!

With the launch of his new tutorial, Photographing the World Japan, Elia Locardi wants to help elevate your landscape and cityscape photography to the next level with an incredible offer. If you buy Photographing the World Japan, you will get a second Photographing the World tutorial for FREE! Add this tutorial to your cart, and then add any of Elia's previous Photographing the World tutorials to redeem this two for one deal!

PTW JAPAN OFFER

With the release of Photographing the World Japan, Fstoppers and Elia Locardi are including a free 6 month copy of Radiant Photo ($90 value) with every purchase of this tutorial. This powerful software has become an important part of Elia's workflow and we want you to enjoy it with no additional cost with the purchase of your tutorial. As with every tutorial in the Photographing the World series, Elia teaches you how to edit each image with minimal plugins and additional software, but he also shares the actual workflow he uses personally. If you want to follow along and incorporate Radiant Photo into your own workflow, we are excited to give you this powerful software for 6 full months no strings attached!

*Once you purchase the tutorial you will be sent an email with a link to your free software license.  

Welcome to Photographing the World - Japan!

Landscape photographer and long-time digital nomad Elia Locardi continues capturing the most beautiful locations in the world with his latest series installment: Photographing the World - Japan.  Part educational photography tutorial video and part cultural adventure, Photographing the World showcases some of Elia's most popular shooting and photo editing techniques. It lets you experience the life of a full-time photographer who has made an incredible career out of travel and landscape photography. After the pandemic had prohibited most international travel, Elia now returns to one of his most cherished locations to share his latest capturing techniques and photo post-processing workflow.  Fstoppers is excited to bring you along for the ride as we travel throughout the island of Japan and capture some of the best locations this beautiful country has to offer.

Meet Your Instructor - Elia Locardi

Elia Locardi is a world-renowned travel photographer, keynote speaker, and experienced educator. His style of photography has been recognized and widely circulated in significant publications, including National Geographic, Elle, and Travel + Leisure. His work is frequently displayed in fine art galleries and venues worldwide.

Elia is passionate about photography and education, and his love for both has led him to work in over 70 countries and collaborate with major companies, countries, and tourism organizations worldwide. With over 20 years of experience in photography, production, and education, Elia has given more than 200 keynotes and lectures. This has led him to speak at venues such as Photokina, Photo Plus Expo, InterBee, Visual Storytellers Conference, NAB, Post-production World, Adobe Max, B&H Optic, Fujifilm Festival, Gulf Photo Plus, HIPA Dubai, National Geographic Aveiro Fest, and Xposure International Photography Festival. Additionally, he has worked with clients, including Instagram, Google, Fujifilm, Nikon, Adobe, Skylum, Wacom, CNet, and DJI Global.

FREE LESSON

Want to watch a free lesson from this tutorial before purchasing?  Sign up for a free profile on Fstoppers and instantly stream Lesson 1 - Kitano Tenmangu Bridge now!

Want to watch a free lesson from this tutorial before purchasing?  Sign up for a free profile on Fstoppers and instantly stream Lesson 1 - Kitano Tenmangu Bridge now below!

What's Included in this Digital Download

• 12 unique video lessons (4K high def videos files that you can stream on any device)
• Accompanying RAW files and companion software catalogs to practice your own edits
• An overview of Elia's Latest Gear
• Elia's "How to Plan a Project" Travel Guide
• Access to Elia's private Photographing the World Facebook Group
• 6-month License of Radiant Photo Software 
• 6 Behind the Scenes Episodes of the Making of PTW Japan
• Access to discounts on many of Elia's favorite editing software, tools, and services.

14+ Hours of Brand New Education

What sets the Photographing the World series apart from other photography tutorials is you get to experience everything Elia faces out on location. This means you will see the good, the bad, the less-than-ideal, and even the disasters!  Each location presents its unique challenges, rewards, and moments of spontaneity. This allows you to watch Elia work through his entire process, start to finish, to get the best photograph possible. His goal is to show you picture-perfect conditions and give you a realistic view of the challenges you might face if you find yourself in similar situations. At the end of this 14+ hour masterclass, Elia will inspire you to be a better landscape photographer and make the most out of every situation that comes your way.

Learn Elia's Latest On-Location Shooting Tips and Tricks

While it's no secret that many technical settings that capture incredible landscapes remain reasonably consistent from location to location, absolute mastery comes with understanding how all the other variables factor together to change an ordinary photo into a spectacular one. This includes timing your travels to the perfect season, setting up the most robust composition, understanding leading lines and exploiting foreground elements, predicting unpredictable weather, and anticipating the sun's position to add maximum illumination to your scene.

In many lessons, like the one below, Elia revisits the exact location multiple times to show how different a sunrise can look compared to a sunset. If you are a gear-head at heart, don't worry; Elia still has plenty of helpful tools and tricks to help the novice and seasoned landscape photographer learn something.

Continue Learning in the Studio

Capturing each image on location is only half the challenge when making a great landscape photo. After each lesson wraps up out in the field, Elia transitions into his home post-production studio to show you step-by-step how he edits each of these photographs. Every lesson comes with the necessary RAW files and companion software catalogs so you can follow along at your own pace.

As with all of Photographing the World tutorials, Elia starts with relatively simple edits so that you can master the basic fundamental techniques he uses day in and day out. However, with the completion of each lesson, the post-production ramps up in complexity, and Elia dives into more advanced editing techniques and introduces some of his favorite plugins and companion software. While 90% of Elia's workflow revolves around Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, this tutorial gives you a comprehensive look into Elia's favorite supplemental software used in creating his final polished images.

Some of the many topics covered in this tutorial include:

• Capturing the "blue hour."
• Merging photos to improve focus
• Enhancing fall colors
• Luminosity masking and selective dodging/burning in Adobe Lightroom Classic
• Compound masking in Adobe Lightroom Classic and Adobe Photoshop
• Using camera profiles and LUTs
• Four-point perspective correction
• Combining day and night images
• Replacing and blending a sky manually into a photo
• Complex focus stacking techniques
• Finding the perfect long-exposure compositing and settings
• Time blending and advanced layer stacking modes
• Smart Objects and using various modes and statistics
• Merging a sequence of images to simulate long exposures
• Complex object removal using Median stacking modes
• Combining multiple camera angles into a single photograph
• Using 3rd Party Software: Luminar, Radiant Photo, DxO Pure Raw, Helicon Focus, etc

Capturing the blue hour and adding in artificial light back into a scene is a fundamental part of Elia's process. In the image above Elia walks you through capturing the base image with early evening light, adding additional landscape lighting, and finally manually adding texture and color to both the sky and reflected water. 

Some images, like the Sata Pass Overlook seen above, combine a bunch of techniques including time blending, light stacking for car trails, "statistics" blending to create a long exposure, and perspective blending to compress the scene and reveal more of Mt. Fuji in the background. 

The Most Iconic Locations in Japan

To offer the most comprehensive photography tutorial possible, Elia wanted to travel to a mix of locations, including a few of his must-not-miss locations in Japan, as well as a few photographic attractions located off the beaten path. Elia visits many of his favorite spots throughout this series, including the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest, Kitano Tenmangu Bridge, and the Osaka Castle. Still, he also explores many locations for the first time, including the Wedded Rocks of Meoto-Iwa, the epic Hashiqui-Iwa Rocks, the giant pagoda at Nachi Falls, and the Daikakuji Temple in Kyoto. As beautiful as these locations are, however, no visit to Japan would be complete without visiting a few modern cityscape locations such as the Shibuya Scramble Overlook, the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo Skyline as seen from the Fuji TV Building, and the previously mentioned Sata Pass Overlook with Mount Fuji in the background.

Each of these locations have unique challenges and together offer the perfect backdrop for learning Elia's most used techniques and recommendations. Regardless if you are planning your own photographic trip to the Land of the Rising Sun or if you've made this journey before, these iconic Japanese landscapes are unlike anywhere in the world!

Behind the Scenes of PTW Japan

We are excited to announce that the entire production of Photographing the World Japan was documented, and a new behind the scenes series is included with this download! If you enjoy seeing what goes into producing one of these long form tutorials, or perhaps you just like seeing Lee and Elia argue about the local cuisine, you are definitely going to enjoy watching this hilarious daily vlog.