Wensleydale, located in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, is a picturesque valley filled with stunning landscapes and natural wonders. One of the most captivating features of this region is the numerous waterfalls that cascade down its rocky terrain. For photographers looking to capture the beauty and power of these waterfalls, Wensleydale provides …
When it comes to choosing the right lens for a specific type of photography, there are several factors to consider, such as the type of camera you have, your budget, and the specific subject you’ll be photographing. I get asked it all the time on workshops – which next? There isn’t a correct answer of …
Street Photography Experience It’s great to take people with strong landscape photography skills around the city and challenge of them and to capture people and architecture as it happens. That’s Street photography for you. Some of the most memorable photos you will have seen are street photography. Often you sit around waiting for things to …
The York Walls and Street Photography Experience Read More »
Littondale… then the weather changed! I don’t have a crystal ball so you never quite know what the weather is going to be like in 6-months when you are scheduling workshops in the Dales. This was to be a day in the beautiful littondale, a steep-sided Valley that branches off upper Wharfedale. The sides of …
Manchester – Street and Architecture Having cancelled the first Manchester workshop due to Hurricane winds and monsoon rains, we were all delighted to finally meet and spend the day capturing both the people and architecture in this amazing city. We started with a coffee on Portland Street, headed into Chinatown, Peter’s Square, are down to …
Humber Bridge, Bridlington and Flamborough Head We had a great day for our 2022 trip over to the east coast, with bright sunshine for pretty much the whole day. Humber Bridge As usual, we met at the bridge that goes from Hessle to Barton over the River Humber. It’s a massive suspension bridge with a …
Part 2 – Composition The portrait class of 2022 met at Leeds university this time to learn about composition and portraits. We had some exercises in finding:- Lines textures shapes colours angles These are all things to look out for when composing any photograph, can you use a line in the road or a colour …
Absolute Beginners Workshop After a 3-year break it was fantastic to get back to to be showing people her to do location portrait photography. We had our friends Andi, Andy and Michele, and a new model called Rachel, to play with around the exchange area of Leeds. The main focus of the workshop was settings …
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 …
Summer Night Photography Workshops – 2018 Review Read More »
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 …
A foggy day on the coast Driving up to the workshop I feared the worst – a day of rain and misery, with a group of photographers huddled together keeping dry It was grim… But as Americans would say, when life gives you lemons, make a G&T…. or something like that! And that is just …
Night Photography at Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds Ok, we’re really lucky to have a ruined abbey right on the edge of our city – and it’s got lots of free parking! So each year I take a new group of photographers down there to light it up with powerful torches and sparks. Here’s what we got …
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 …
A Stunning Yorkshire Dales Day – Ribblesdale and Malham Read More »
January’s Malham Workshop 2017 We always run a landscape workshop at Malham in January fo those who’ve got a new camera for Xmas and want to learn how to take great countryside shots in the best area of the dales. It’s also pretty close to Leeds and Bradford, so not far to travel. This year …
Lightroom edit of our Night Photography Workshop – Roundhay Park, Leeds Here’s a shot from our light painting workshop in Leeds – a small but perfectly formed group of intrepid photographers gathered to paint the park red, blue, green and any other colour we had in the bag. This photo had 3 of us with …
How to edit a light painting photo FAST using LIGHTOOM Read More »
A Bavarian Lake Scene Here’s a photo of the stunning Konigsee, part of our 2016 trip to Austria. It’s taken by our friend Julie Pfeiffer, who came all the way from Milwaukee to join us in Tirol. The shot is from the banks of the lake next to a beautiful church. Wiki Says…. Situated within …
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 …
Lightroom and Photoshop – Focus Stacking Tutorial Read More »
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 …
Editing a Landscape in LIGHTROOM – Zell am See, Austria Read More »
McFade’s Yorkshire Coast Workshop – 2016 We returned to the Yorkshire Coast for the 5th time this year – armed with cameras and tripods, out trip took us from Robin Hood’s bay to Saltburn via several stops, coffees and a bag of fish and chips. Here is what we got up to on the Yorkshire Coast …
Ribblesdale – a fantastic photography destination Coming from Ribblesdale, I’m obviously biased – though I’m a good 20 miles downstream from most of these destinations The Ribble is 70 miles long, starting at Ribblehead and entering the Irish sea at Preston. It’s a stunning journey down the valley, past Settle, Clitheroe and Ribchester – though …
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 …
McFade Summer Nights Workshops 2016 A look back over 12 fantastic evenings – but first some background Where did the idea of Summer Nights Workshops come from? Ever since I took Photography seriously I’ve regularly gone out for smaller outings – usually with 1 or 2 friends. We’d find places to go, new things to try …
Salford Quays Workshop Media City is right on the canal network – so where better to teach night photography skills, a location where you get amazing architecture as well as stunning reflections in each shot. The workshop started at sunset and went on well past the 10PM finish time… when you’re in the zone, may …
Empowering the Lightroom Grad Tool Did you know you could have as many Lightroom Grad Tools as you like on a photo – and they can operate in any direction? Well in this video we see a beautiful TVR Tuscan transformed with 2 easy steps….
Grand Finale Car Photography Workshop for 2015 We’ve done 3 great Car Photography workshops this summer, the final one was at Temple Newsham in Leeds – where we have a huge car park full of puddles and a gritty feel. Something to contrast to the other workshops. The cars were TVR T350 TVR Wedge – …
Photography Kit Which Doesn’t Cost The Earth 1 – Angle Finder – £20 – £200 If you shoot low down, maybe for landscapes or createive atchitecture shots, so see through your camera, you’ll either have to lie fly on the floor or guess your compoisition. This is where your “angle finder” comes into play. It allows …
9 Affordable Gadgets To Transform Your Photography Read More »
Europe’s Biggest Waterfall! Europe’s biggest waterfall was the highlight of day 2 of our Austria trip, a trip through the usual “breathtaking” landscape (not hyperbole, it really is!) found us at the foot of this monster 1200 foot tall fall. It’s not all in one giant cascade – but over several smaller cascades, many of …
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.
Here’s a selection of photos from Leeds’ Roundhay Park firework display on 5th December 2013, and a few tips on how we did them. Get a good place to watch them A good clear view is best, you get to watch the entire journey of all the fireworks. Too close and you may end up …
Coming from Ribblesdale, this is one I’d been looking forward to leading. The Ribble is around 70 miles long – we were at the source, I’m from about 35 miles downstream… so it wasn’t really “my hood” – but I’ve been around Horton, Settle and Ribblehead many times so knew a few gems to show …
Where in the Yorkshire Dales is Ribblesdale? It’s one of the major ones, with a west watershed, that starts at Ribblehead then goes via Settle into East Lancashire – ending up at Preston where it enters the Irish Sea. Most people think of Ribblesdale as a limestone heavy location, with the 3 Peaks all around …
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 …
McFade Training hits Wensleydale Our 2013 Landscape trips have been a cold affair so far – wensleydale was no exception with show and ice in just about every shot. Meeting near Skipton then traversing Wharfdale via Kilnsey Cragg and the waterfalls near Cray, we started at West Burton Force. Its setting is as beautiful as …
The cold doesn’t stop us. We wrapped up warm and forged our way to Malham in the Yorkshire Dales and created great images anyway. Our group of 5 intrepid explorers on the McFade Training “Discover Malham” workshop visited the full range of highlights the area has on offer – Scalebar Force, Highland Cattle, Janet’s Foss, …
Off Camera Flash Essentials Off camera flash is a popular technique at the moment, taking speedlite flashes off the camera, onto light stands and using radio transmitters to trigger them. It’s getting easier and cheaper – with budget brands bringing flash to the masses Technically, there and awful lot to understand to get fantastic results …
5 ESSENTIALS every photographer MUST know before using Off Camera Flash 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 Sam chilling on the stair with his sax… Original Shot Lift shadows with Tone sliders slight toning with duotone sliders vignette to add atmosphere selective …
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 …
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 …
As part of the Lightroom 4 exploration, we offered to edit some of our students workshop photos to show what can be done just in light room. So this shot is from a McFade Taster shoot where we had Sam and Chris, the brass section from Sweet Soul Blues Brothers and many other bands. Here …
Photography Workshops Work – Here’s Why Check out our Workshops Here http://www.photographycourses.eu/leeds-photography-workshops-coming-soon/
F stops, shutter speeds and ISO can be confusing. I like to think in terms of things I understand when trying to explain difficult concepts, and it happens that beer can be roughly equated to exposure… F-Stops So the F stop relates to how fast a beer flows from the pump:- Guinness takes ages, that’s …
hi Folks, Salford Quays, Media City and the Lowry are an amazing place to spend time with the camera, if you’ve never been it’s well worth a trip down. I was there last Friday, meeting with Lee, Eif and Paul from the Welshot team, and we managed to get some great shots to promote the …
