Archive for the ‘Training’ 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 ...
How I did This…. 5 Photoshop Steps
So you can do most things in Lightroom these days. I thought I'd meddle with this shot of the Royal Armouries to show a few things you can't do in Lightroom.... yet! Start point So to get to this point, you could probably have used Lightroom. Its been through these steps... Capture - 1 minute exposure RAW Conversion using ACR in Photoshop Vertical correction using Lens Correction Filter Conversion to black and white using Silver EFEX 2 Selective sharpen - High Pass Filter method, using masks Selective ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
BMX Madness
BMX Star Luke Gareth Gamble jumping over Ade on a wet day in Yeadon... . We'll be putting on a workshop to show you how this is done... .look out for it in 2013, when it's a bit warmer... And now here's a gallery to enjoy [nggallery
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
5 Tips – To Pose, or not To Pose?
A few people mentioned to me that they'd like to know more about "posing" people, and in on of the McFade Training Taster workshops last year, I covered some ideas - maybe ones which surprised people. The "by the book" posing techniques will produce just that - by the book, traditional shots of people. They remind me of those Victorian family portraits, everyone looking stiff and uncomfortable. With creative photography, the McFade approach, we're after something a bit more interesting - wanting to reveal something about the person ...
5 Thoughts on Off Camera Flash
Off camera flash is a popular portrait technique at the moment, taking speedlite flashes off the camera, onto light stands and using radio transmitters to trigger them. There's quite a lot to take into account and understand to get consistent results - so here are 5 things to think about when setting your lights up... First - understand manual exposure You need to understand how your camera works and "manual exposure". A challenge in itself if you're not used to metering. To control the brightness of the background and the flash-lit ...
McFade Edits.. Phil Gledhill’s “Sam” shot
As part of the Lightroom 4 exploration, we’ve been editing our student’s shots for fun – using just Lightroom 4, no plugins or photoshop. Here’s one from the Lyric of Sam chilling on the stair with his sax... Original Shot Lift shadows with Tone sliders slight toning with duotone sliders vignette to add atmosphere selective brushwork on Sam's Face and slight darkening around him on the walls etc. [nggallery
McFade Edits Phil Gledhill’s “Chris in Window” shot
As part of the Lightroom 4 exploration, we've been editing our student's shots for fun - using just Lightroom 4, no plugins or photoshop. Here's one from the Lyric of Chris playing his trombone. The gallery feature isn't in the right order, but each shot has a number after it;s name "brass-band-119-3" - that number is sequential :- Original Bleach bypass preset Crop, rotate a bit and some vignette Selective darken with brush tool Alternative crop to 4 [nggallery
McFade Edit of Dave Goodman’s “Chris” Shot
Here's a shot by Dave Goodman, who came on our Brass Workshop in the Lyric. It's a shot of Chris playing Trombone on the stairs up to the projector room. For me, the main thing here was the shadow and brick textures, so all the emphasis was dragged in that direction, leaving chris himself very shadowy. Original Image Tone and clarity added - used a GRAD effect to alter the texture on the left side of the shot Subtle change of contrast/clarity on LHS brickwork Cooled the dark tones to give more "cold" look Crop and slight ...
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
5 Steps to better Coastal Shots
An example of workflow in Lightroom on a coastal shot. 5 shots here Unedited Tone to add contrast, slight rotation, dust removed Clarity added to boost detail/contrast Colour boost - more blues and orange Selective edits with the brush tool and final crop. To view each step, just click on the picture below [slideshow id=10 h=1000
Brass Musician – Training Shoot
McFade Training's Brass Night at the Lyric April's taster session saw delegates return to the amazing venue that is the Lyric Cinema. This month we ventured away from the main auditorium into the more abandoned looking areas around the projector rooms - the prefect backdrop. Chris Colbran and Sam Houghton were the subjects this time, both professional musicians working in many bands in Yorkshire and beyond, so as well as looking very cool for the photos, they both entertained by playing their trombone and sax. We shot with both ...
Photography in the Lyric, Leeds
Leeds Training at the Lyric! Here's a few shots from March's McFade Training evening in the Lyric Theatre in Armley. The subject was "an introduction to Off Camera Flash" and had people using our speedlite system to capture Rocco, Salman and Eleni in the dramatic setting of an old, disused cinema. Have a go...... The idea of these evenings is less about "tuition" and more about "having a go" - and those wanting to know more can book onto a seminar or full workshop. Anyway - here are a selection of Eleni, a fantastic dancer from Cyprus ...
Rocco in the Woods
Leeds Model in Leeds Woods We're always on the look out for new locations for both training and shoots with models, families and business people. So on this rekke shoot Rocco and I took to some woods in Leeds, armed with 2 flashes and a mix of lenses - and got some shots using the surroundings to create atmosphere and background interest. So this shot uses the winter trees, without their leaves, to create a veil over his head This was the last shot from the shoot, it was mainly a sky shot with Rocco peeking in, using a polariser ...
Free “Street Photography” Action
It's true, here's a FREE Street Photography Action... Here's what it does Transforms a street candid from this... To this with one click... "Street" is photography in one of the purest forms. We capture the environment as-is; people going about their business is the subject, rather than moody hills, the relentless sea, colourful birds or clever lighting and posed models. Candid or Interaction? We can interact with the people or shoot candidly. Candid is more random, and because the people are unaware of ...
Why should you shoot RAW?
Should I be Shooting RAW? RAW is a Mystery RAW is a mystery to many, resulting in them using JPG when taking photos. There's nothing wrong with JPG, but you are throwing much of the baby out with the bathwater each time you hit the shutter. RAW is your Digital Negative RAW is just the base data that your camera captures - think of it like the exposed film in your camera. Full of information, but no processing or printing done on it. RAW is the key to your Digital Dark Room If you go back to the dark room days, then this is just ...
Night Photography in the City
Don't put your camera away in the dark! Too many people put their cameras away for the winter - night photography is one of the most creative forms there is. Amaze your friends with long exposures, light trails, wierd shapes etc. Here are 5 Photography ideas to do at night which would be impossible during the day - all in a city near you. 1 - Light Trail Photography As traffic passes, they leave lines across your photos 2 - Tripod zoom burst Photography If you zoom whilst taking a photo, points of light turn into lines like these ...
McFade Training
Click here to see the McFade Training Promo After teaching, coaching and running workshops on Photography for the last few years, we've created a new branch of the McFade Photography business called "McFade Training". Our philosophy is that to become a "creative" photographer, you really need to understand how you camera works, how to get the correct "exposure" for your photos and the basics of "composition" - then from this base you can apply this knowledge to whatever you love photographing. We've got an ...
