Archive for the ‘Photography’ 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 ...
PR Shoot – Andy Green
Photographer "Directs" the Director Andy Green of "Video Advert" spends his days directing and creating promotional videos for businesses around the UK - so the "directorial boot" was certainly on the other foot for our PR shoot. Used to showing people how to present and perform, Andy now was in front of the camera and, like me, obviously was far more at home behind it! BiY Associates Working Together A fellow BiY Associate, we met at their HQ, Carwood Park and used the atrium and grounds as our backdrop. Starting off with a white ...
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, ...
Commercial Photography – Made Easy
Rocket Science? Commercial Photography quotes can often be more complex than quantum mechanics, with so many variables to consider and charges for all kinds of things. We decided to make things a lot easier for clients by creating lots of new "packages" which are clearly defined and priced. Personalise... Our 2013 offering is Personalising Business - transforming your online and print presence from "generic" i-Stock type images, to stunning shots of you, your colleagues, your location, your local area, Yorkshire.... Many of our ...
Trinity Leeds
It's been a few years in the creation - at last the Trinity Leeds centre is open, so here are a few shots of the place for those who've not been yet. It's full of well known brands, so no huge surprises to shoppers, and the architecture of the huge glass roof is remarkable and well worth a look if you're into impressive structures. The name comes from the adjacent Trinity Church, an impressive building around which the shopping centre was built. The tall tower can be seen through the impressive glass roof, creating a huge monolithic ...
McFade Blog in top 100 Photography Blogs
McFade's Photography Blog has been included in the top 100 photography blogs to read in 2013 Here's the list - fantastic to be recognised amongst such great company! An infographic by the team at
5 Tips on “Daytime City” Long Exposures
Get Surreal! Long exposures are common place in landscape photography, where the shots are usually taken in low light at sunrise or sunset. You normally get shots with lots of colour, milky water and foam like seascapes. So I thought I'd try this technique in Leeds - just after mid day on a bright, sunny day... with clouds blowing past. Here are some tips on how to do it... Get an ND Filter It's sunny, to get a long exposure you need to stop the light flooding in so fast. There are lots of "ND" filters around these days, right up ...
CREATIVE Shoot – Dancer Shante Liburd
Location, Lights & Action! Shooting with dancers is as creative as it gets - they spend hours training, perfecting moves and poses you can never get "normal" people to do. Spending the day with fellow lighting obsessive and photography trainer, Jayce Clarke, we took Shante and Daniella to an amazing derelict building to use the graffiti-rich walls as a backdrop. A little like being a kind in a sweet shop really - the perfect backdrop and the perfect models. KIT... Most of it was the basic strobist kit I use daily - 3 manual ...
Manchester Uni Union
We captured the student exec a few weeks ago, it was now the turn of the entire staff of the union! It's always nostalgic going to the Union - I first walked into this building in October 1991, a fresher looking around for beer (which was 85p back then) and glasses... those lecture theatres were huge and I couldn't read anything on the blackboard. So my first "round john lennon style" glasses came from this exact building Anyway - when shooting the exec, we liked the colourful Union logo as a backdrop, so we set up 3 lights, put on "X" ...
PR Shoot – Phil Allum
Telecoms expert, Phil Allum, helps people & business talk through his company TGE Solutions. An urgent need for some new PR profile shots arose, so we got together to shoot at his offices in West Yorkshire. We created a wide variety of looks for all kinds of uses - the obvious shots of Phil using the phones he supplies, and some more generic out door shots along with a few "working at the PC" type images. The opening to the shoot was "I hate having my photo taken!" It's always a challenge to take this attitude and "flip" ...
PR Shoot – Louise Lapish
Louise Lapish runs Gatewood Consulting, training UK-wide in all aspects business from CV writing to sales. We'd met through Yorkshire's most exciting new business support network, BiY. She needed some great new shots for her personal PR, so we went to meet at Regus near Elland Road and used the building around there to capture some new shots. Using small flashes means you can quickly and easily move around the building to get a large variety of looks with minimum of fuss. Louise needed some colour and black and white, so we ...
Muay Thai Boxing Champion
Brad Stanton.... At just 19, Brad has conquered the UK and Commonwealth - just turned 20, he's now headlining stadiums with his amazing Thai Boxing skills. He's based at Leeds premier gym, Edge (www.edgegyms.co.uk), and needed some great shots to help lift his profile - so we did a shoot in the actual gym. To say he's quick is like saying the sun's warm... I asked him to do some jumps and round house kicks - up he went, nearly hitting the cieling, then round he went - so fast I couldn't always hit the shutter in time! So these ...
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 ...
10 Photos of Dubai Marina
High Rise Paradise The Marina area of Dubai is still being built, new tram systems going in and sparking new sky scrapers surround the blue water and white boats. Here are some memories of that 34 degree winters day - a day 34 degrees warmer than back home in
Save Preston Bus Station!
Huge structures do it for me. Visually that is... I first saw Preston's bus station in the 70's, and it was probably the biggest thing I'd seen at that point - Clitheroe doesn't have many huge buildings! Huge! It's the shape and majesty of the thing - the curved edges, the ribbed reinforcement bars, the unchanging pattern along the length of the car park... On seeing the Culture Show's report about proposed the closing and demolition of the building, I decided to pop over and capture some images, just in case I never saw it ...
Sparks @ Kirkstall
Night Program Finale.... at Kirkstall Abbey in Leeds [singlepic id=864 w=600 ] We spent 3 hours playing with torches, lighting the majestic ruins at the Abbey, then at the end, created these amazing sparks with wire wool. How did we do this then? There are lots of Youtube videos online, you just need a 9 volt battery, steel wool, whisk and a dog lead.... it's very easy in theory, though the creativity comes in what you do... where you do it... how fast you spin... and the best way to learn is to do it! [nggallery id=48] Sad to ...
Band Photography – Chicago Blues Brothers – Dubai
Automated Band Photography? The "ALL NEW" Chicago Blues Brothers came to Dubai and rocked the Manidat Theatre for 3 nights. Flying out on a freezing March Tuesday, we landed at Abu Dhabi in the warm Arabian evening, transferring to Dubai by bus. Here are a set of performance shots taken by Ade on the last gig, saturday night. Ade is there on the right playing keyboards..... doing 2 things at once? How we did it..... Here we have a set of shots taken by Ade... but how do you play keyboards, and get ...
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 ...
Flash Accessory Test
Flash Bender Accessories - New Toys! Always on the look out for new "light modifiers" of "flash accessories" to advance my off camera flash photography - I'd seen these flash benders around before, so thought I'd take the plunge and get a couple. I took them up to Temple Newsham with trombonist Chris Colbran and had a look at what they can do. What are they? First off, here's Chris altering one - you can see that they strap on to the front of the flash with velcro and have a pretty large white area off which to bend your light. Inside ...
The 2 Poles of Photography
Why McFade Splits Beginners Workshops To total beginners, photography is a new, exciting pastime – but with a learning-curve as steep as Hardknott Pass! Where do you start? You can boil photography down to 2 things:- Finding interesting stuff to photograph Using camera settings to get an interesting shot This is the philosophy behind my Discover Leeds and Take Control workshops. Discover Leeds helps people think about “interesting stuff” Take Control teaches people about camera control To become a competent ...
Claire’s Band Shoot…
Check out the amazing voice.... https://soundcloud.com/clairecolbran Had a fun shoot with Claire Colbran, jazz singer in these 2 bands, backing singer in the Chicago Blues Brothers and rather excellent on trombone too... a Colbran family thing apparently! The Photography Bit So we had 3 lights - 2 behind at 45 degrees, one at the front at about 20 degrees. Rears were un-gelled with shoot through brollies, front was 1/2 CTO on a softbox. Most shots were taken with the Canon 17-40 F4 L & 5D Mark 2 -with the occasional 70-200mm ...
Radio Aire DJ Shoot
Michael Blades broadcasts live from Leeds every Saturday and Sunday night, jetting over to Rock FM in Preston for saturday afternoon... Having found McFade Urban Shoots on Google, he'd spotted the style of images he was after - so we met outside Leeds Town Hall and had a great couple of hours shooting and chatting about life on the radio. He's a keen photographer so showed him a few tips too. Here are a few of the shots we created - using city centre locations, lighting (mainly 2 lights - different coloured gels to add vibrance) and a ...
5 Fairground Photography Tips
Got a fair coming to town? They're brilliant to shoot at night - all those moving lights create amazing patterns; so much for the eye to see. Here are 5 tips for making the most of your night there 1 Long exposures - so take a Tripod! Every night photographer will use a tripod, so best to take it. You can capture so much more with a tripod - this ride was just 2 long stick spinning around - with a long exposure they traced out this circle. 2 Get in Close to Stationary Stuff Kiddies rides get really quiet later on, so you ...
Bradford Cathedral Photographs
Bradford has a bad press. It's one of those places which offers so much, yet never seems to escape that image of desperation. The thing is, there is so much on offer to the Photographer that it's well worth a look. Here are a few gems to enjoy... Bradford City Hall - full of statues of british monarchs City Park - the UK's best urban fountain and light show Little Germany - just off the centre, a collection of beautiful buildings in a confined space. Look up and you'll see them Undercliffe Cemetery - for the ...
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 ...
5 Light Painting Shots
Since I wrote an 8-page article for Digital SLR User magazine in 2008, I've loved shooting at night. Once the unreliable ambient light has gone, you are in control. Photographers are control freaks.... Also since then, LED torches have massively improved, to the point where for as little as £50 you can buy a Cree torch which can light an abbey - which is how all the images here were created. I bought a CREE with 3 LED "bulbs" and a claimed power of 3800 lumens. Always take this number with a pinch of salt - it's probably never going ...
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 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 ...
The Photography “Kit Obsessive”
Photographers fall into many camps, but one that really stands out is the “kit obsessive”. These tend to:- Talk incessantly about kit – above anything else Buy novelty items they rarely use Are never happy with their current kit Motivated by numbers and specifications Can compare and quote reviews of competing kit items More interested in the tools than the photographic results Are first to hear “new kit speculation” blogs and forums Always think "if only I had a...." rather than "what can I do with ...
5D Mark 2 – First impressions
Love the Classic 5D... I’ve been shooting with the classic Canon 5D from 2006 to present, been perfectly happy and only once been short of pixels for a job (it was a colossal print… did a stitch of 9 images in the end). But my main body has now done way over its allotted 150,000 photos and so the time for a new, reliable body came along. I got a canon 5D Mark 2 (note, not 3…. a mark 2) as they are more than fit for my needs, and are more cost effective than the Mark 3. So the first task was to check out the new features – ...
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 ...
Wintery Leeds
Facebook was awash with "god it's cold" comments yesterday - so a great day for some blue wintery sky shots. Parking around Granary Wharf, taking a walk up through town, down past the market and back along the canal, these images were created. Was indeed nice light. They are all HDR - that's what I do! The idea is to get great looking buildings with great looking skies and HDR is the best way I've found of doing this. The alternative maybe to sit around wairing for the light levels to balance so the sky and ground are the same ...
5 Post Shoot Tips
After a shoot:- Get your photos off your card straight away - do not leave over many shoots! Cards corrupt... you may loose ALL YOUR WORK! Create a folder structure which is easily searchable - maybe with keywords and dates in the folder name Make a backup on a second hard drive Import the photos into Lightroom - apply appropriate keywords to them at this stage (including meta data about you, your copyright etc) Go through each shot quickly and rate them out of 5 - easy in Lightoom (caps lock on - library mode - hit numbers to go ...
Sports Photography at Leeds Varsity
The biggest Varsity showdown after Oxbridge is held annually in Leeds. I was commissioned by Leeds University to capture 10 hours of action at many different venue throughout the Uni and Met campuses. The breif was to capture as many events as possible - so took the huge list of sports, planned the day and set off to capture the events. First off was Badminton at Edge - a lot faster than you think and the lighting was pretty low, so we're talking serioulsy high ISO settings and wide apertures to capture the action - here's one where ...
Urban Photoshoot – Gateshead
Never posed before? Never had your photo taken before? Nervous in front of the camera? These 2 Cramlington girls answered yes to all of these - but that didn't stop us having a great shoot with some cool results. We'd got a location in mind with a bit of graffiti and in a reasonably quiet area, so all met up there and started to shoot. Alex and Kerry were both completely stuck for what to do, where to look, what expression to make... we're used to this, unless you've got a model or someone with PR experience, it's always the ...
View from the M62 – Light Trails
Night time means long exposures, things moving through your images, high contrast scenes, a new world of creativity with you camera, a change for your imagination to run wild. To most, the M62 is a car park they traverse every morning and evening, a place of wasted time and torture. To a photographer, it's a scene packed with potential - from this vantage point there are around 10 lanes of traffic. Add in the occasional blue light from an emergency vehicle, or the flashing yellow lights of the constructions vehicles on the hard ...
Austria Workshop 2012 – Bavarian Church
Homeward Bound - Church, Coffee and Cake Beautiful landscape is one part of out workshops, but we're partial to a bit of architecture too, and when the weather is lacking, we can always pop into something interesting like this church. It's on the way to Munich Airport so we pulled off the Autobahn and had a pleasant 45 minutes getting creative away from the rain. I was shooting for HDR mainly, interiors benefit from the extra data you capture from bracketted images. The one above has detail throughout, something you can't always get ...
McFade Photography in Blackpool
Blackpool - Vegas of the north! [singlepic id=683 float=] Friday night saw me playing with the Blues Brothers band at the Empire in Blackburn, so I stopped in the area for the weekend, calling into Blackpool for a few hours on Saturday afternoon. Interesting light - sunny in one direction, overcast in the other, so decided to get lots of HDR shots of the iconic, and less well known structures around the north pier area. I also got loads of silly "kiss me quick" hat shots and stuff like that, but the building shots have been edited ...
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 ...
Photographer Meets Celebrity Look Alikes in Leeds
Celebrity Look Alikes in Leeds [singlepic id=661 float=] Had the great pleasure of meeting and photographing:- David Beckham Mr T Austin Powers Simon Cowell Britney Spears Will Smith Or at least I thought I did! These were a great bunch of actors who make a career from looking like the actual celebrity - and it is uncanny when you meet them and they adopt the "celebrity pose". The day was a pop music video shoot in Leeds which I was documenting - I'd taken the lights with me and set them up in the back garden to get ...
Night Photography Workshops in Leeds
The most complete night photography workshop series in Leeds today? Does your camera go into hibernation over winter? Join our Night Photography Workshops in Leeds. Embrace the dark to create amazing images! We've listened to your feedback from the recent survey. People wanted.... a "collaborative" approach, one where we learn from each other to know more about "processing". an end-to-end process - from capturing the RAW file to final edit What you'll learn in our Night Photography Workshops in Leeds We've developed a ...
Light Trail Photography
Light Trails [singlepic id=640 float=] I was looking for a few example light trail shots to promote the Night Photography Programme's first session, which is on Tuesday 9th October. I ended up looking in my 2006 folders and got these shots from a bridge over the M621 between Morley and Gildersome. [nggallery id=30] So for the first session, we'll be showing you how to do this in leeds - using the A58(M) as the road form a good few vantage points around the city. Once you have understood how to do light trails, you have the ...
The 10 Similarities between Chefs and Photographers
10 Similarities between Chefs and Photographers I'm shooting a restaurant later today and it got me thinking about the similarities between Professional Chefs and Professional Photographers... here's a few Everyone can use the tools I'm not a professional chef, but I can use a hob, oven, knife and many other things you see in a professional kitchen.... I can cook a decent curry most days, lots of different thing with mince beef taste lovely.... Most people will have cooked - just as most people will have taken a photograph with ...
Twisted Theatre Photography in Leeds…
Theatre Rehearsal Photography in Leeds.... [singlepic id=608 ] Destination Holbeck... Driving around Holbeck (Leeds) slowly caused a few long, suspicious looks... parts used to be the red light district and it's not improved much in the last few years. The road I was after didn't seem to have a name on it... there were just lock ups and arches with mechanics tinkering away. Eventually caving in and asking directions, I find myself outside the venue after all, it just doesn't look like I expected - HUB it's called, Holbeck Urban ...
Cyclic Photography
Round and Round Surely even steak gets a bit dull if you have it every day for a year? I certainly found that with Photography, looking back over the last few years you see the gradual transition from a landcape to a people bias. Though on the way, there have been regular patterns which stand out. Locations which demand re-visits. Though each cycle, things have changed. You have changed. Your tools may have changed and certainly the software you use will have changed. Humble Beginnings I found myself touring around Yorkshire with ...
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 ...
HDR Batch Battle – Photomatix V Oloneo
What is HDR.... Love it or hate it, or have no idea what it is, HDR is a great solution to difficult exposure conditions, where the bright and dark areas of the shot are so contrasting, your camera just can't capture it all in one shot. So we take a few shots at different exposures (brightness), often 3 shots, then "blend" them using software. Batch? Blending one set by one is time consuming - so many programs have now embraced "batch processing". You tell the program process your "sets" of photos, producing blended photos whilst you have ...
