Behind The Frame 01

When I walk around with the intention of shooting, I always keep an eye out for a few key elements:

For this specific shot, I was going for a gloomy, moody look. I had walked past this church with my girlfriend earlier in the afternoon when the sun was far too harsh. I knew that if I came back at the right time of day, all I’d need was the right framing, the rest would be handled by the blue hour and the warm glow of the street lamps. This scene ticked (almost) all my boxes: the lighting, the composition, the striking color contrast between the blue tones of the sky and the warm street lamps. There was no wind, unfortunately, but the slight rain added enough subtle movement to make it interesting.

Composition-wise, I usually gravitate toward either leading lines with the subject in the center or a framed look. In this instance, I got lucky and found both: the handrail serves as a leading line guiding the eye to the church, while the two stone pillars create a beautiful frame within a frame. I’ll dive deeper into my composition approach in another write-up, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Since I rarely use gimbals, I decided to shoot this as a static frame and add a slight push-in movement during editing. This allows me to guarantee clean framing and a stable shot without sacrificing the cinematic movement.

As I mostly shoot in LOG the edit process is a little more extensive.

I always start by applying my LUT (not released yet but you will be the first to know when it does!) and then playing around with white balance and contrast. This changes from clip to clip. Since this shot was a bit darker and colder, I added a slight green tint and brought the highlights down a touch.

Once I was happy with the contrast ratio and the overall mood, I started working on the color contrast, in this case, the blue of the sky against the warm orange of the street lamp.

I added a simple mask around the light source, then pushed the highlights and warmed up the white balance. I also masked the church and slightly increased its brightness and warmth to help separate it from the cooler sky.

One small detail: I faked some warm light reflecting on the path by adding a masked area with a subtle glow (totally fake, as you’ll see in the unedited image haha).

My final step is always adding a vignette and darkening any elements that might distract from the main subject. Here, that meant reducing the brightness of the two side pillars.

Excuse my beautiful drawing haha but voilà the grading is done!

This one was a bit more intense, I kind of lost myself in the edit, but it always comes back to the same basic principles. If I want to go even deeper, I’ll sometimes add a red channel blur and a bit of halation on the highlights for a filmic look. I’ll break that down separately since it’s a little more complex.

Sound design and the right music choice are just as important as color grading!

The rain and dove sounds you hear were added in post to enhance the moody atmosphere. For the music, I chose something cinematic with a bit of weight to match the tone, and I’m really happy with how the overall vibe came together.

Most of the tracks I use are from Musicbed. Their quality and variety are unmatched, and their AI search tool honestly saves me hours of scrolling through libraries.

If you want to try it out yourself, you can sign up below for a 14-day free trial. My personal playlist should be live soon too, so you’ll be able to scroll through some of my favorite tracks!

Exact settings from my Blackmagic Camera app

Thanks so much for being here, I genuinely appreciate every single reader.
If you ever have questions or ideas for future issues, feel free to shoot me a DM on Instagram!

Until next time,

Stefan

Minimal tools. Maximum creativity.