It’s the way that you do it… “It ain’t WHAT you do, it’s the WAY that you do it” – As the Bananarama song goes. That’s probably true in most businesses but it’s certainly the case with photography. It’s not just the end product which counts, but how you get to it. I’ve been shooting business folks for almost a decade now and with the odd exception, no one really likes the idea of it. We are second only to dental root canal work to many! It’s totally different from…
Category: People
I know – sometimes it’s too dark to shoot and you don’t have any off-camera kit, so you have to use your flash “on camera” But the light you get off a direct flash is horrible – there’s an example in the video below. It serves a purpose, but it creates a passport photo look rather than that creative look we’re all after as photographers So what can you do? Well with most Speedlites, you can point the head in almost any direction, so the light doesn’t go straight to…
When you’ve done a shoot and have hundreds of shots to trawl through, you need a quick way to get the skin tone the right brighness on your subject. It’s not straightforward enough to use Auto Settings – that will take account of the background as well as the foreground and skin – so you can end up with all kinds of problems! Here’s an unedited shot of Brad – the lighting’s pretty cool, but I’m, not sure whether his skin’s right or not. In general, Caucasian skin will be…
One of the most common issues we get are people asking to cancel (or come on a different workshop for no extra cost) – it could be work related, or a sick pet or anything life throws up. We have to say no in order to stay in business – hope this explains why! We love running workshops at McFade – it’s our way of doing photography we love AND sharing our passion for all things camera related. But for our workshops to be worthwhile, we need to keep an…
Our second portrait workshop the summer was with Nicola Papperazzo, Chloe Mason and Andy Blue McLaren. We split it into a couple of locations on the west end of Leeds city centre. Starting in the flowery Park Square, where I showed people how to use flowers in the foreground to add blurry texture – like this one of Nicola The sun light was low and warm, so we also made use of that with shots like this one of Chloe, where she’s looking straight towards the sun The sun soon left the…
Facebook Hates Portrait Professional 17! The bottom of the internet, where people comment on things with impunity, is full of bile and anger whenever Portrait Professional is mentioned. Portrait Professional kept popping up on my feed, so decided to try the Demo version – it seemed to be pretty quick and effective IF you didn’t go mad with the sliders. A bit like HDR programs… So I bought the £49 version – what the hell! Here’s a video of me using Portrait Professional 17… Here’s a shot of the lovely Emily, taken…
Which of these people will get the better profile photo:- a relaxed, stress-free person, who has set time aside to enjoy a photo shoot someone with the phone going every 5 minutes, about to do a speech at an event and has a whole crowd of people waiting for them. It’s night and day – chalk and cheese – choose your own metaphor! Person 1 will look open, friendly, relaxed, warm… 2 will look pre-occupied, elsewhere, stressed and maybe a bit on edge. Even the most seasoned performer has some kind…
Business headshots have changed Evolution of Business Headshots… Stern captains of industry in their victorian offices – green lamps, brass, oak… Conservative backdrops – usually brown or blue White wall business headshots – clean and fit on Linked IN nicely, a bit boring At McFade we’ve been doing “location” portraits too – business headshots usually taken around the workplace, or for solopreneurs, in cool locations nearby – like Clarence Dock, Dark Arches, Roof tops. We love doing location business headshots, the results always get you noticed and for smaller teams, it still works brilliantly.…