How many things in life do we buy & not use? Most kitchen gadgets I use once or twice, and then stash away neatly in the cupboard never to see the light of day again, All that money spent, all that good intent to make a change and no return. The same can be said for photography – you can spend an absolute fortune hiring a photographer to create a library of amazing images for you, but if you’re not actively using them to promote your business, your return will…
Category: People
DJ and production duo “Wh0” are a mysterious pair currently rocking the House dance floors around the UK – They’ve both been around in their regular DJ slots for years and have remixed some of the biggest acts around. So after a gig in Leeds a few weeks back, we met up at this amazing graffiti rich location to get some shots for their promo, marketing and social media. Must admit, i didn’t know about the hoods till they put them on – was a bit of a surprise! Some…
What’s it all about? About a year ago I came up with an idea, it was based on years of photographing companies and what had worked best. It offered individuals who may be just starting out (or ready for a new set of images) 5 photos of them for a bargain price… and other people to act in their shots. I called it ”profile shoots” to begin with, this soon evolved into the catchier “share the shoot“ The idea was that everybody needs a decent headshot, but there are many other Powerful images a small business…
Recommendations are King The best way to source most products and services these days is to ask for recommendations based on people’s experience. It can certainly filter out solutions, products and providers who have given a good experience. I’m pretty sure everybody who is buying a new pair of headphones will read the Amazon reviews or checkout What Hi-Fi reviews before buying them. Photography Recommendations When hiring a photographer it can be a little bit different – what is a good result for one person may be entirely wrong for another…
A second shoot with this Morley based star of the future – a model and competition diver at 12! This was at a ruin in a Morley golf club on a cold January day…. It’s an exposed bit of land, the lights were blowing around, Jaeda had a cold starting – it had all the hall marks of a disaster But we battled on and created some great images – the dark, rainy skies created drama, the wind made her scarf blow horizontally… everything negative turned into a positive –…
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…
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…