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 here’s a quick review of what we covered in our Photography Workshops – I’d designed them for absolute beginners to gradually learn technical and creative skills over the months. Photography Workshop 1 – Leeds “Creative…
Category: Workshop
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…
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 what we did – the fog gave us a completely different look to the previous workshops we’ve run on the coast. We got landscapes which faded to nothing in the distance. Perfect for the cliffs…
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 up to this year – this is Feb 2018. The group really enjoyed Light Graffiti – that’s drawing things with torches if you keep moving your body doesn’t appear in the photo, just the trace…
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 for me is a breezy day where sparse clouds pass in front of the sun making patches of light and dark. We got that in spades, so instead of starting at Gordale Scar, I decided…
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 we had pretty grim weather, not raining all the time, but a lot of grey skies and the occasional shower. A Slight Deviation So when it’s grey and wet, you need a Plan B destination, for…
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 torches – blue to the left, red behind, and yellow to the right. Luckily we had perfect skies – a decent wind with sparse clouds blowing past, this gives us a great sense of movement…
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 the Berchtesgaden Alps in the municipality of Schönau am Königsee, just south of Berchtesgaden and the Austrian city of Salzburg, the Königssee is Germany’s third deepest lake. Located at a Jurassic rift, it was formed…
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 depends on where you focus. How about doing 2 shots, 1 focussed on the background and the other on the foreground? That’s what we did here – the video takes you through how to automatically…
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 each step describing “why” we make each change. Before and After The Video Here’s the video with all the steps and discussion for you to learn from What else would you like to learn…