Archive for the ‘Landscapes’ Category
Lightroom Rescue in under 10 minutes…
Grim Day... Day 1 of the summer series of workshops and we get a winter night.... in may.... It wasn't raining too much when we got to the reservoir, so I showed a couple of new people how to expose using a meter. Here's the shot I got - 4 seconds, histogram told me that the sky had not burned (I'd metered from the sky, so was expecting that!). It was also to show the effect of a polariser on the water and long exposures on the water surface. So you'd usually just throw these things away and return on a better night... but I ...
Yorkshire Photo Locations – 5 Great Dales
5 Dales - Perfect Yorkshire Photo Locations I'd been in Northumberland for a few days and had nothing major planned for the last day, so journey back to Leeds became a 10 hour epic, taking in 5 great Yorkshire Photo Locations, rather than 2 hours down the A1(M). I'm obsessed with Yorkshire Dales pass roads, the tiny roads which straddle the moors between each of the dales. So when I spotted one linking Teesdale with Arkengarthdale, I struck a path from the A1 at Durham to Barnard Castle in Teesdale. Weardale... kinda Technically I ...
Yorkshire Photo Locations – Cow and Calf
Bah T'at Most people go Bah T'at on Ilkley Moor, subject of this Yorkshire Photo Locations post, these days - except the climbers in their helmets. The Cow and Calf is an outcrop of rock on Ilkley Moor, the Cow being a large rock, the calf being an boulder which stands a few feet away from the Cow. I guess that's the reason for the name! Photographic potential? Well the main things are... Wonderful vista over Wharfdale Intricate rock carvings from upto 150 years ago People shots The rocks are pretty high up so you get a great ...
Yorkshire Photo Locations – West Burton Force
Wensleydale's Easy Access Waterfall Looking for an easy to shoot Yorkshire Photo Location? You can park and look at this waterfall from the car... it's that easy to see! A real gem of a waterfall, like another great Yorkshire Photo Location, High Force, it cascades over a large fault in the rock. It creates this lovely surrounding which is an ideal accompaniment to the cascading water. Look under the bridge There's also a very pretty waterfall under the foot bridge, this is rarely accessible unless you've got wellies on - though when ...
Yorkshire Dales Photo Locations – Swaledale
The Best of the Lot? Well A.Wainwright of Lakeland fame thought Swaldale to be the best, and I'm inclined to agree. It's a narrow, steep sided valley with over 1000 barns, the lovely Ure flowing in the valley bottom and many amazing vista points if you get off the main road and venture higher. The shots in this blog were all taken on 5th May 2013 and show you Swaledale taken with a 70-200 mm lens, far different to the more usual ultra-wide lenses. Long Lens for Sunny Days With the longer lens, you can pick out patterns in the walls, ...
Discover Wensleydale
McFade Training hits Wensleydale Our 2013 Landscape trips have been a cold affair so far - wensleydale was no exception with show and ice in just about every shot. Meeting near Skipton then traversing Wharfdale via Kilnsey Cragg and the waterfalls near Cray, we started at West Burton Force. Its setting is as beautiful as the water itself - a small cliff with jewel like icicles all over it. From here we went to the main attraction - Aysgarth, where we enjoyed the lower falls - from all angles. They are especially beautiful from below the ...
HDR Photography in Leeds… Armley
Famous for it's monumental prison and a gyratory, Armley isn't the first Leeds suburb you'd go shooting alone in - let alone on an incredibly dull February day. I took to the canal first first, to see how the graffiti artists are doing - these walls change regularly. Then down to the river Aire and over the footbridge for some more shots. All these are HDR shots - which means "High Dynamic Range", where we take a few photos at different exposures (brightnesses) the blend them into one. We run workshops on this - check out ...
Discovering Malham
The cold doesn't stop us. We wrapped up warm and forged our way to Malham in the Yorkshire Dales and created great images anyway. Our group of 5 intrepid explorers on the McFade Training "Discover Malham" workshop visited the full range of highlights the area has on offer - Scalebar Force, Highland Cattle, Janet's Foss, Gordale scar, Malham Tarn and Malham Rakes - with opportunities to shoot the colossal Cove from afar. Flexibility and variety is made possible with a people carrier - courtesy of Suki, who drove us around the slights ...
How To Shoot Ice & Snow – With Flash
A thick Hoar Frost looks amazing. It only happens now and then, so you really need to make the most of it when it happens. One of the downfalls of this frost is that the sky can be very dull on such days, so your usual landscapes can lack impact. So how to add something a little different? Get your strobes out You can create something more interesting with flash - even "on camera" flash can create something slightly different. The shots in this article are all taken with the flash "off camera", triggered with radio ...
Malham Sneak Preview….
Yorkshire photography - Wet, cold, miserable, overcast.... Today was all of the above, so time to head to a stream and make the most of the low light conditions. Luckily the river was abnormally high so lots of white water and unusual flow patterns. Ideal for creating a milky, surreal effect. We'll be taking a group to this exact spot on the 20th January 2013, there are still places left, so get your booking in - info@mcfade.co.uk or just paypal £75 us at ade_mcfade@yahoo.com, and we'll show you how it's ...
5 Amazing Lake District Locations
The Lake District is famous for walking and it's stunning views over hill and lakes, perfect for the active person. However, it's possible to get great shots without and enjoy a relaxing, sedate day out - all of these shots were taken within 1/4 mile of the road. 1 - Haweswater The eastern side of the lakes is often over looked, and this reservoir/lake (there is a dam which raised the lake 90 feet) is rarely seen. There's a long road that traverses the full length of the lake, which is, to be fair, uneventful... till ...
5 Great Yorkshire Waterfalls
Yorkshire's never short of water, it rarely stops raining for long, so Yorkshire's Waterfalls are a great subject for anyone into photography. Waterfalls are abound so we thought we'd show you a few of our favourites from across the region. 1 - Scalebar Force, Settle This is the prettiest of the lot in many ways, yet inaccessible to anyone with poor mobility or acrophobia. Cascades of water falling over many levels of rock created a plethora of compositional opportunities which are rarely found. Parking on the side of the road leaves a ...
5 Tips on Cropping Photos
Cropping a shot is a great exercise - you can find completely new images within an existing frame. Here's a shot with lots going on, probably too much to be an effective shot on its own. We have a few rocks in the foreground and lots of lines and circles from the moving foamy water. It was taken on an overcast day, so no interesting light. Crop 1 - Most of the shot... So to start with, I've gone mono and done a little work bringing out detail in a few areas, the bank at the top being the ...
Return to the Land – Yorkshire Landscapes…
Landscape Photography - Yorkshire's Perfect! Landscape is many photographers' first subject - accessible, healthy, gregarious and unpredictable. That was the attraction - a weekend diversion to new and interesting places. A whole world of dales and lakes to discover. From Teesdale in the north to the Peak district in the south, Leeds is just a couple of hours from the lot. Much of the noughties was spent in these idyllic locations - capturing them in bright sunshine, dull clouds and frozen snow. For me, the challenge of ...
Austrian Landscape Photography Workshop – Day 1 at The Gorge
Austrian Landscape Photography Holiday McFade Photography's "Austrian Photography Holiday & Workshop" took 5 photographers over to the stunning Tirol area of Austria in the middle of October 2012, an area of outstanding mountains, lakes and gorges. A long weekend, from Thursday to Monday, with 3 full photography days in stunning locations, fantastic food and accommodation with Keith and Manu Holt on their traditional Austrian farm, with Keith being the perfect location guide, and Ade teaching you photography skills ...
Night Photography Programme Starts
[singlepic id=675 float=] Just a few shots from the first Night Photography session. [nggallery id=32] We used Leeds as a base to learn the theory behind taking long exposures at night - how things like Aperture have more unusual effects than you'd think at night! We'll be meeting to discuss each others images in a fortnight and share ideas on how to process them If you'd like to be a part of the Night Programme, it's running over the whole of winter, 2nd and 4th tuesday nights of each month. Just inbox us at info@mcfade.co.uk ...
Gauntlet Challenge…. Make Runcorn Look Great!!!!
Large Format Prints Transform Runcorn Office "We've got an office in Runcorn for you to shoot... and can you get some shots of the area and create some large format prints to put up in the main entrance area too...." [singlepic id=632 float=] Gauntlet firmly thrown down, over to Runcorn on a (rare) sunny day and nailed the building shots - taken from all angles, every roof space, across the road, you name it... HDR'd the lot, those shots are busily selling the office space in brochures now. So off to Runcorn... there's not a lot ...
Landscape Interview….
Just been asked to do a piece for Ephotozine, on Landscape Photography. Thought it worth sharing on here with you all. It's just 3 questions, with my ramblings on each. How did you get into landscape photography? I'm from the countryside originally, rural Lancashire by Pendle Hill, so was always at home there. When affordable digital came along around 10 years, and petrol was cheap, I used to spend most weekends in the car pottering around the dales and north York moors, places I'd been through but never really seen. Spending time ...
Ilkley Moor – Photographed in HDR
On Ilkley Moor Bah Tat A bright mid-morning trip up to the Cow and Calf is a lovely way to start a bank holiday Monday. Light breeze, nice patterned clouds and nice shadows were what we were greeted with. The ND Grad Problem Thing is, using ND Grad filters to keep detail in the sky would blacken the top of the rocks. So to get both nice, bright rocks, and the sky, I took 3 shots of each scene (dark, normal and light) and then used Photomatix V 4.2 to blend them together to get the best from all 3 shots. Working smart Using the same ...
Yorkshire Landscape Photographers…. is Gordale Scar Impossible to Capture?
[singlepic id=259 w=700 h=700 float=center] Gordale Scar.... Can you do it justice? Going around "that corner" for the first time and seeing inside Gordale Scar is breathtaking. It's as near as we get to Yosemite Valley in Yorkshire! The pleasant, flat walk along side the burbling stream doesn't really prepare you for cavernous geological marvel that awaits you. It's a huge gouge in the landscape, some think it's a collapsed cave, though that theory has been generally abandoned in favour of the land being carved open ...
Fake that sunset in Lightroom 4
So many landscapes have these amazing sunsets, nuclear red skies with amazing orange hues.... Do you think they "really" looked like that when the photographer was there? Here's a demo of how easy they are to fake in Lightroom 4.... Original Look Tone and Saturation changes Tidy up dust and lift the dark areas Lens correction And that's it really - just click on the photo to advance through the images [nggallery
Lightroom 4 to the rescue!
You can't always win :( Some days were just not made for landscape photography, unfortunately my recent Northumberland trip had 3 consecutive days.... Not one to be defeated, I did clamber onto some rocks and get a few wave shots, but as you can see here there was little help from the ambient light. Also, I'd found an old 3-stop ND filter that fitted my 28mm F1.8 lens, so used that - it gave a pretty horribly magenta cast.... The untouched RAW File So to rescue it in Lightroom... here's a few steps to show you what it can do - ...
McFade Returns to Cumbria
I've not done that much "landscape" photography for a few years, concentrating more on developing styles with flash, architecture and cars. However, with it being Autumn, I decided to invest a few days in the wonderful Lake district and recapture my love of the place. It's certainly the highlight of England for my money, a mix of lakes and craggy mountains is hard to beat, even in the Dales. Last time I was in the lakes, I was fixed on a certain style - very wide angled lenses, low angles, dark skies, lots of colour and just about ...
Photographing Audi A7 in Bradford
McFade Photography's friends down at Audi Bradford liked the A5 shots we took in August so much, they let us loose in a brand new, £60K A7! It's one hell of a car to be fair - feels like you're in a cockpit with all the controls around you... even the boot opens automatically! Again we took it to a moorland location to create that feeling of space and freedom around the car - also you get some amazing skies at up there at this time of year We're looking forward to taking this project further in future and getting some of ...
Pleasant Surprise – The Audi R8
I'd finished creating my latest wedding book the other day so decided to get some fresh air by going for a shoot on the moors between Manchester and Huddersfield. It's really gritty up there, not beautiful like the Dales, but more imposing, like a Gothic horror novel or some 80's werewolf movie. Wandering down to Scammonden Dam, the biggest earth embankment dam there is apparently (check Wiki for that, may have changed - who knows) and found a lovely black Audi R8 parked up. Not one to miss an opportunity, I grabbed the camera ...
5 Tips on improving your portraits
The first time I ever took a portrait it was pretty awful - horrible confession there! Actually, the first time I met a piano, I made a terrible din. I've got better at both I'm glad to say, and it's all about practice. Natural Light Get Rid Of Excuses The first thing to do it get rid of your excuses, you don't "need" expensive lights, a make up artist, costume designer, expensive model and fantastic location to start learning. You just need a camera and a person to shoot. When I was first practising, it would tend to be a fellow ...
5 Tips…. Sunny Day Photography
Bright days are great for many things, walks, days on the beach, beer gardens etc. but for Photography they cause a lot of issues:- very high contrast scenes too bright for flash to work washed out colours in landscape scenes etc. Here are a few ideas for these sunny days When shooting people in bright sun, get their back to the the sun to stop them squinting, and use "flash" to light their faces, as their faces will be in shadow Look for shadows - in landscape, getting high up a hill and shooing down into fields ...
5 Landscape Photography Locations in Yorkshire
Yorkshire's huge and there's virtually nothing in it... So ideal for the landscape photographer... but where do you go? Well there are so many valleys and cliffs and waterfalls and "edges" and hills and cliffs and streams and other wonderful natural features that you can get a bit lost choosing. So here are 5 places I've enjoyed visiting on more than one occasion. 1 Flamborough Head Just north of Bridlington, this outcrop is full of things like up turned boats, white cliffs and caves, rock pools and all sorts of other delights. It's ...
The Secrets of HDR processing….
HDR's (High Dynamic Range) a very much maligned and misunderstood beast, most people associating it with eye popping colours and cartoon like portraits. Well yes, you can very easily end up with images just like Loony Tunes if you want, but there's not much use for them out there in the big wide world, so I'll take you through a few of the steps I use to create HDR images like this shot of Lendal Bridge in York. HDR requires 2 or more images to be truly "H" DR. The Dynamic range of a shot is the gap (usually measured in "stops" of ...
5 tips for photography on dull days
Photography on Dull Days.... can you do it? Its the weekend, you've been looking forward to getting the camera out for shoot, but its dull as chuff... grey skies, no shadows or interesting light. What do you do - abandon the camera? Ideas for Dull Day Photography Well here's a few ideas Practice flash photography - with a dull background, you can use this to create a moody shot, with the foreground or "model" lit by your flash. Useful when your flash synch speed is only 1/200th etc. Avoid including skies - they're ...
