Training

Lencarta Beauty Dish Test Shoot

I recently bought the “MOD048 | 60cm Folding Beauty Dish Silver Mk.2” as a small, portable light modifier. These are available (or will be when stock arrives) on their website (https://www.lencarta.com/all-products/light-shapers/studio-beauty-dishes) or if you’re in West Yorkshire, you can order on line and pick it up in Bradford, which is what I did. Couple of […]

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Tilt shift lens for portraits of Andy Taylor Boocock

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Fast photo editing software – Luminar AI

Imagine a world where you could click one thing and your photo would be edited to your personal taste – fast photo editing software is the ultimate productivity booster, is Luminar AI the tool for this? Obviously 1-click editing isn’t really possible because every photograph is different and every situation as different lighting and composition,

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How to get Maximum Sharpness with Focus Stacking

Sometimes you just cannot get everything in Focus in one shot… This happens a lot when you are photographing landscapes with a very close foreground, the background becomes blurry if you focus on the foreground, and vice versa. In this tutorial I show you two photos I took of the exact same scene, all the

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Try these 3 Things RIGHT NOW to improve your phone photos

You can definitely take great phone photos these days. The technology has moved on massively since the early days, and the app software is truly amazing.   There are probably dozens of phone photos tips you could give, but realistically these three things will make the biggest difference.  1 – Where is the light This may

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Summer Night Photography Workshops – 2018 Review

Another series of Photography Workshops drew to an end in Manchester on the 26th September. It seems like ages since we started on our beginners evening in Leeds, which turned out to be the only evening where it rained! 2018 was amazingly dry and hot – it made the whole 10 workshops a joy.  So

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Instant Vintage Effects in Lightroom

Age your photos in seconds! I’ve tried using “bought” LIGHTROOM presets many times and they all seem to have one thing in common… This makes perfect sense to any seasoned Photoshopper or Lightroom expert – but I guessed that most photographers don’t know about this. So here’s a video explaining how you do it – a quick “how to” guide so you can start making your own toned presets for free!  

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How to make a soft, dreamy, black and white waterfall photograph in LIGHTROOM

Using LIGHTROOM to make a dreamy waterfall Here’s a shot from a recent workshop at Swaldale – it’s Crackpot Force, yes, that’s really a thing! The shot was underexposed, but I liked the shape – so gave it a go in Lightroom anyway. Things we explain:- black and white conversion basic controls like Highlights, Whites, Shadows 

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A Stunning Yorkshire Dales Day – Ribblesdale and Malham

A 1-2-1 Workshop on a Perfect Yorkshire Dales Day You always book workshops in the Yorkshire Dales with a sense of trepidation, and prepare yourself to explain what each location looks like “when it’s not grey, raining and grim”. No such worries for this 1-2-1 session with Jonathan – perfect weather for afternoon landscapes. Perfect

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Super-Fast Spot Colouring in LIGHTROOM

Learn Spot Colour in Seconds The Magic of Spot Colouring in Adobe Lightroom Welcome to the fascinating world of spot colouring, a technique that can transform your photographs from ordinary to extraordinary. With Adobe Lightroom, you can achieve this stunning effect in mere minutes, no faffing about! The Art of Black and White Photography with

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Castlefield Manchester – Canals and Viaducts

Water and Rail Meet at Castlefield Manchester Castlefield is incredibly central in Manchester, a stone’s throw away from the massive Beetham Tower and Deansgate Station. It’s a stunning place for every photographer to enjoy, be that shooting the architecture reflected in still waters, taking a model down there and using the industrial backdrops or shooting a

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LIGHTROOM tutorial – Landscape – Swaledale Waterfall

Is Swaledale the best Dale?  There are so many dales, all with different character, all with different features.  Swaledale is known for its steep sides, lead mines, waterfalls and 1000 barns – so lots to go at for the photographer We went up there yesterday – Richard Spurdens with his new Canon 5D mark 4

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Lightroom and Photoshop – Focus Stacking Tutorial

Front to back sharpness Here’s how it’s done! Even at F16 with a wide lens, you can struggle to get everything sharp in a photo. If you like getting a foreground object such as a boulder or stream in your shot – the background may get blurry – of the foreground may get blurry… it

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Lightroom Tutorial – Landscape – Ribblehead Viaduct

Yorkshire Dales Lightroom Tutorial – Ribblehead Viaduct A sunset shot – without a great sunset So you’re driving up a long country road with no real signs of life apart from the odd farm or bird of prey, then all of a sudden this massive viaduct pops up! That’s Ribblesdale – it’s full of stuff to

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Lightroom Tutorial – Landscape – Wilder Kaiser in Austria

Lightroom Landscape Tutorial – from Austria! The Wilder Kaiser, Tirol Here is a full editing Lightroom tutorial of an Austrian landscape – it’s the Wilder Kaiser range, which loom majestically over the farm we stop at on the McFade Austrian holiday which runs every October At the top of the ski slopes they have these little lakes

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Editing a Landscape in LIGHTROOM – Zell am See, Austria

Lightroom Edit of Zell Am See – Austria Real-time Lightroom editing tutorial Here’s a 10 stop shot – taken with a very dark ND filter which makes the exposure 1000 times longer. This one has a 30-second exposure. The filter has a blue cast, so we show how to correct this – and work through

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Explore Ribblesdale in the Heart of Yorkshire Dales National Park – Discover the Three Peaks Area and Settle in Peaceful Surroundings

Ribblesdale – a fantastic photography destination Welcome to Ribblesdale, a jewel within the Yorkshire Dales National Park, renowned for its dramatic landscapes and iconic features like the Ribblehead Viaduct and the famous Three Peaks. As a local lad, I may be a tad biased, but even though I was born a good 20 miles downstream,

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Yorkshire’s Best Kept Secret – Knaresborough

Knaresborough Workshop Night Yorkshire is full of little market towns, each with their market square lined with pubs. Most would think of places like Thirsk, Bedale, Masham or Pickering – but there is one far closer to Leeds than all of those. Knaresborough is just outside Harrogate and has all of the above. The square

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York Photography – A Beautiful City at Night

The McFade York Photography Workshop 2016 With its walls, river, minister and castle as highlights – and hundreds of other things to discover, I’ve always loved running Photography workshops in York. It was drizzling, then fine, then raining… and that only adds to the scene. The watery pavements reflecting colourful light into the camera adds

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See How Easily Focus Stacking You Gives Ultimate Sharpness In Your Landscape Photos

Focus Stacking in Landscape Photos If you like to get everything pin sharp in your landscapes, Focus Stacking is for you. If you shoot low with foregrounds which are very close to the lens, then it can be hard to get the background AND the foreground pin sharp. Focussing 1/3 of the way into a scene

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Creating Vintage Photos Made Easy in LIGHTROOM

How to Create That Vintage Look in LIGHTROOM In this short tutorial video, we look at editing a beach shot at Alnwick, Northumberland. It was a bright day with strong clouds, so lots of mid tones and some crisp shadows to play with. There are many ways to process such a shot, in this session we’ll

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