Finding old photos can be a pain – if someone asks if you’ve got photos of Liverpool (or something like that) in future, how quickly could you locate them in your file system? Or if you’re looking to create a print of Ingleborough, could you find all your photos of the hill and quickly make a decision on which to use? Well if you’re ever in this situation, this video may help. If not, it’s useful anyway to see how others work – and this is my workflow from getting…
Category: Video Tutorials
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…
Our little secret! All photographers and designers know how to do this – and it is REALLY easy to do – and it really can leverage that photography investment to your advantage. We use Adobe LIGHTROOM to do it at McFade, but there is a free tool called “IfranView” which does it as well. Leverage your investment Get 30 for the price of 10 Imagine you’ve invested in a shoot and received 10 amazing edited photos. How do you make this into 20 or 30 photos without actually “editing”*** the image? This…
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…
The bright sky problem… We’ve all done it – had a great scene to shoot but not got the right filters to balance the bright sky and land! We end up with a boring bright sky and really dark foreground – it’s not ideal, but with most camera RAW files you can now fix this quickly in Lightroom. The bright sky solution In a nutshell, you can only do this with files where the sky isn’t totally blown out – there has to be some detail in there or nothing…
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!
Fed up with paying £10/month for Lightroom? Don’t get me wrong, I really like Lightroom – but I’m not a huge fan of paying a tenner each month to use it… I used to like buying something and then being able to use it as long as I liked. The new subscription model Adobe use is fine for businesses, but for many enthusiasts, it’s prohibitive to expect them to pay year on year for something they may use infrequently. What’s the alternative? There are probably many out there – I used…
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 Clarity for a soft look vignetting cropping sharpening Kit Used Canon 5D Mark 4 Canon 70-200 F2.8 L The video above shows what steps we did – and this is the before and after…
Flash of inspiration This technique came to me one night – just watching sunset on a road bridge and thought about it. It applies to Tilt Shif lenses mainly – but I’m sure you can do it with a normal lens, or telephoto. Maybe not an ultrawide 16mm though. The Problem So you invest £2000 on a 17mm TS lens and realise you can NEVER use an ND grad on it… the end of the lens is like a tennis ball, you just can’t fit the darn things on. So…
Tilt Shift Effect… Most people have heard of Tilt Shift because of the miniature filters you get on camera apps. Ones taken from high up to make the world seem like a toy town – or like this where just a bit is sharp. It’s a cool effect and very handy for creative souls – though for landscape and architecture people, getting MORE depth of field is usually the goal. What Tilt Does There are dozens of youtube on the subject if you google it, I did and ended up…