170+ Shoots a Year? Paul McPherson of Shutterfreek Tells Us How It’s Done
Education
By Kyle Wilson
We collaborated with renowned photographers worldwide to create Artist Styles, a feature of Narrative Select + Edit that allows you to edit your images with professional signature styles in one click. In the Artists Styles Spotlight series, we catch up with each photographer to get the details on their exclusive Style and how it can benefit you.
Miles Witt Boyer is an international wedding and portrait photographer and founder of Miles Witt Boyer Photography and the Photographic Collective Podcast. He is a Fujifilm global ambassador, a Fujifilm X-Photographer, and a Holdfast Gear Ambassador, and he has been named “One of the world’s best wedding photographers" by Looks Like Film.
His Artist Style, “Iconic Color,” is about timeless, cinematic-inspired color.
Iconic is all about the timeless cinematic imagery hiding inside your photos. It's for narrative-based storytelling images where the light will change and the color will change, but the story is unified by the artist that creates it. It's just sitting already in that file, it's ready to go, and Iconic is intended to bring it out.
This style is all about connecting you as the artist to the art. It is about bringing life forward, bringing color and context and a film-inspired but truly modern vibe right into the work that you create so that what you see and how you feel all connect. I'd say the most important part of being an artist is the ability to come to terms with how you feel when you create art.
I've been utilizing AI in Narrative Select for a long time. I'm a big believer in allowing computers to help do the crap that I don't want to do as an artist. It frees me up creatively to be able to focus on the things that I care more about. So I've learned to play with things like some of the AI features inside of Photoshop, which saves me a little bit of time in cloning out something annoying in the background of a photo or in some generative fill to try and extend the backdrop that I don't want to have to do manually. I've used AI for quite a while in plenty of different things. I even love the AI features in some of the new social media apps, and AI and ChatGPT-powered options help me write things I don't want to write.
It's been a part of my life as a creative for a couple of years now. It's fun to see it become a more central piece of the artist's workflow in general. I can't wait to see the way that it shapes new artists being able to create new art.
Utilizing AI to assist me with editing my images has been the most time-saving piece of my business adjustment in the last five to seven years. I now can see the way that my work can look in just a few moments. Now, the reality is that it doesn't relieve me of the responsibility as an artist of going back in and fine-tuning and adjusting and making sure that I'm still an intentional part of that art. In fact, it's actually kind of the opposite.
It allows me to have an amazing starting point. I get to see my work through the lens of how I would start out the editing process. And then I get to take up from there and create and try new things and take new risks that I might not have had the courage to do if it wasn't for the way AI started the process for me.
Now, the reality is that regardless of how many risks I take and where I go with that, I do save time. The amazing part about saving time is that I can pour that back into my client experience and make sure that my clients are actually getting more value out of their investment with me. Then my work is more consistent and more conceptual.
At the end of the day, I might even have a few extra minutes for family or a long walk or an extra cup of coffee. I get to do whatever I want with this extra time. And I hope, always, that I get to split that between adding value to my clients and a legacy to my brand and just a little more time with my family.
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I received this book called Tell Better Stories from Narrative years ago. A conversation between James Broadbent and me sparked this interest in the way that this little company on the other end of the world was assisting photographers. Fast forward years, and what I've realized is that James wasn't just a visionary. He wasn't just ahead of his time. He was crafting and creating a company filled with creatives, other people that were like-minded and passionate about the same things that I was, and they wanted to see my work grow.
Over the course of several years as a Narrative ambassador and a friend to the company, I can say that every time a new product comes out, it not only aids in my business and adds value to the work I'm creating but also allows my relationship with these people to go to a brand new level. I'm definitely not going anywhere. I am flattered and honored by the opportunity just to call these people friends, let alone business partners.
When we started crafting this style, the most important thing to me was that the cinematic goodness that hides inside my work as a photographer came forward. I wanted to give people the opportunity to see that inside their own work. Rich oranges, deep yellows, a warmth to the work that feels like it was shot on some cool classic film stock they hadn't found yet.
As we started to create and shift and manipulate the way the color was coming forward, what I realized was that there was more life and more magic hiding inside my own work than I actually even knew was there. And there's something really special about me now having the opportunity to share that with you guys, being able to show what is sitting inside your file, not compressing the color, not hiding it and creating weird curved layers that make everything feel too muddy, but instead opening up and giving your work and you, as an artist, fresh air to work with.
Get Narrative Select + Edit to try “Iconic Color” - add a beautiful touch to your images or use it as the perfect starting point to find your unique look.
Try Narrative Select + Edit with 1,000 free credits today.