Free Lightroom Tips and Photo Critique – Week 10 This weeks Lightroom tips…. This week we’ve got Lindesfarne, a fountain, some cool shallow depth of field effects with a toy car and much more. If you want to join in – just send me your email address via any means you can, email to [email protected] […]
Free Lightroom Tips and Photo Critique – Week 10 Read More »
Free Lightroom Tips and Photo Critique – Week 7 This weeks Lightroom tips…. Welcome to the 7th instalment of video critique – this week we have a set of 7, from a TVR to portraits, beach huts to classic architecture. As ever, these are uploaded to DROPBOX anonymously and imported into Lightroom so we can
Free Lightroom Tips and Photo Critique – Week 7 Read More »
Free Lightroom Tips and Photo Critique – Week 6 This weeks Lightroom tips…. This week we had 5 photos uploaded, a nice mix of subjects including a lancaster bomber, river and York scene. Main tips are on image editing and losing quality through excessive noise reduction, cropping and vignetting. Free, anonymous Lightroom Tips – Submit now
Free Lightroom Tips and Photo Critique – Week 6 Read More »
Free Lightroom Tips and Photo Critique – Week 5 This weeks Lightroom tips…. Week 5 – Elephant, Dogs, church and a huge fountain This week we have a great mix where we see some ideas on:- burning to reduce background distractions alternative crops ideas on processing/sharpness/noise reduction discussion on composition And much more, 19 minutes in
Free Lightroom Tips and Photo Critique – Week 5 Read More »
NIK EFEX VIVEZA – it’s just curves, right? NIK EFEX Viveza is, on the surface, a very simple NIK EFEX plugin, and when compared to Silver EFEX, it looks trivial! But with its 4 sliders and curves control, it is extremely powerful! Add to that the ability to create as many “control points” as you like,
GOOGLE NIK EFEX Guide – 3 Viveza Read More »
NIK EFEX Define – the Best Noise Reduction Software Available? Direct answer: NIK EFEX Define stands out because it gives you more control over what the software treats as noise, rather than just applying a blanket fix. In this workflow, you can sample a noisy area by hand, help the filter learn the difference between
NIK Dfine Explained: Smarter Noise Reduction for Landscape Photos Read More »
Sharpening with GOOGLE NIK EFEX Google Nik has to be one of the best suites of plugins for Lightroom and Photoshop available. Many of our McFade Training customers use it, so in this mini series, we’ll introduce the workflow NIK recommend, showing you how we’d use it on a Landscape photo of the lake district.
GOOGLE NIK EFEX Guide – 1 RAW Pre Sharpen Read More »
Just having a look for some shots and came upon a sunset at Semerwater – which I photographed in January 2008…. 6.5 years ago. 2008 Workflow Back then my workflow was a little different :- Shoot RAW files Copy files onto hard drive after a shoot Import RAW files into Capture One – Version 3
Does your “editing” change over the years? Read More »
Saddleworth Moor to Scammonden Bridge May seems to be throwing up some amazing sunsets Missing quite a few of them, I decided it was time to hit the road an get a few shots from the moors between Huddersfield and Oldham – loads of variety and drama there. So here are a selection from the
13 Yorkshire Sunset Shots Read More »
End to end screen recording, with strange northern narration, of a dull day photo in Stainforth, North Yorkshire.
LIGHTROOM – Creating a Black and White Landscape Read More »
Leeds Shopping – Knightsbridge of the North? Leeds does seem to have its fair share of shops. Posh shops. Harvey Nichols. Designer stuff. I like the shop in the Victoria Quarter with Panerai watches best – often found lusting after the PAM 372, a huge watch which looks just about perfect on my wrist… shame
Leeds Shopping – 9 Photos from Briggate and Beyond Read More »
Reality Sucks Transforming reality into an uber-detailed, fantastical coloured fantasy world… No highlights or shadows are allowed – they shoot loads of different exposures to make sure not one pixel will be clipped black or white. Even on flat light days, when you don’t need HDR, they still bracket away – it’s all part of
Photographer Type 6 – Fantasy HDR Creators Read More »
December’s night workshop was at Brimham Rocks so I decided to head up there early to get some shots of the valley… little did I realise the clouds would be inverted, with the valley full of mist and the sky clear… here are some shots from one of the best days of 2013.
Amazed in Nidderdale… Read More »
Visiting Yorkshire? The coast is well worth a visit for anyone, especially photographers. Here are 5 places to call into with your camera. All these photos were taken on one day – Sunday 1st December 2013 – during a McFade Photography workshop, proving you can get a huge variety of subject in 20 miles of
5 Yorkshire Coast Photography Locations Read More »
Casvegas…. Pontecarlo…. West Yorkshire’s casino district? Well maybe not, but between the 2 or them, they have a couple of real photographic gems. The boating lake at Pontefract’s racecourse is fantastic for sunsets, and this bridge in Castleford is pretty spectacular after dark. So what brought me here… Well 2 things really – I’m starting
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
Lightroom Rescue in under 10 minutes… Read More »
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
Yorkshire Photo Locations – West Burton Force Read More »
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
5 Tips on Cropping Photos Read More »
The Photographer’s Post-Shoot Ritual: 5 Steps to Safeguard Your Precious Shots You’ve just wrapped up an amazing photoshoot. The excitement is palpable as you rush back to your computer, eager to see your masterpieces on the big screen. But wait! Before you dive into editing, there’s a crucial ritual every photographer should follow. Let’s walk
5 Post Shoot Tips to Safeguard Your Precious Shots Read More »
Blackpool – Vegas of the north! 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
McFade Photography in Blackpool Read More »
On the way back from my sight test today, I called into a park and grabbed a few floral shots – thought I’d give it a bash, they’re not really my thing to be honest but you never know who may need them…. The park’s usually full of all kinds and colours of flowers, but
Photographing Cars in the Park Prints of some of the cars can be bought here – email [email protected] if yours is missing and you want a print. http://www.photoboxgallery.com/mcfadeAuto/collection?album_id=1270798377 The rain was happily absent at Newby Hall, near Ripon, today, so the Cars In The Park show was a great success. A mix of sports cars
Cars in The Park – Newby Hall May 13th Read More »
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 with his trombone on the stairs. Original Shot This shot seemed to suit mono, so started off with a black and white pre-set – went through
McFade Edits Phil Gledhill’s “Chris” playing Read More »
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
McFade Edits Phil Gledhill’s “Chris in Window” shot Read More »
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
McFade Edit of Dave Goodman’s “Chris” Shot Read More »
Enhancing Workshop Photos with Lightroom: A Step-by-Step Guide As part of our exploration into Lightroom 4, we have taken the opportunity to edit some of the photos from our students’ workshops. In this post, we’ll demonstrate how we transformed an image from a McFade Taster shoot featuring Sam and Chris from the brass section of
McFade Edit of Dave Goodman’s “Sam” shot Read More »
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
Ilkley Moor – Photographed in HDR Read More »
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
Fake that sunset in Lightroom 4 Read More »
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
5 Steps to better Coastal Shots Read More »
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
Lightroom 4 to the rescue! Read More »
