Had a great shoot with Claire Turner, who’s tax partner at WGN accountants in Leeds. As anyone will who knows her will tell you, Claire’s the polar opposite of the stereotypical tax accountant – but her current photos were not really getting this message across. So we decided to make the most of the area […]

      Hardeep @ Keyhouse Kitchen Opening The World Curry Festival’s star, Hardeep Singh Kohli, came to the opening of the new training kitchen at Bradford’s Keyhouse – a venue which helps house and train the homeless of the area. The kitchen is a new project to help train the homeless grow and cook

You don’t HAVE to have a boring profile shot these days…. Had a great time talking to fellow business people at BiY today – part of a creative “trio” with Rob and Andy of Plump Digital and Video Advert. Just thought I’d note down my main points from the talk… The world has changed –

Want some new kit? If you’re a “kit monkey” and have unlimited funds, you may as well stop reading this now. However, have financial limits, here are a few things to ask yourself when looking to buy a new gizmo for your collection. 1 – What “extra” will it enable me to do? This is

Live Well Project – Chris and Anne One of the huge bonuses of running a photography business is meeting great people, and on Sunday I met Chris Jones and Anne-Louise Savery. They are starting a social enterprise in Holbeck to encourage and help people of all abilities, ages and backgrounds to improve health and build

Trying out a new softbox with Rocco Here are a few of the results

A Great Way To Build Teams Volunteering days are the best team building events – spending time with good people doing good things for a good cause… what could be better? Having been on 2 when working in a corporate environment, I can vouch for them – getting out of the office and tooled up

Exposure is entirely dictated by the light conditions when you are shooting. There are no perfect settings – you need to use your light meter to “read” the light level, then set ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed accordingly. There are certain rules of thumb you can follow – generally landscape shots are sharp from front

Infographic A simple aide-memoire for the 3 main exposure settings. Enjoy!

Where in the Yorkshire Dales is Deepdale? Deepdale is long valley in The Yorkshire Dales which borders Whernside and drops into Dentdale, in the western Yorkshire Dales. Why’ve I not heard of it? It’s dominated by the near by Dentdale, Deepdale is an offshoot which leads steeply into Kingsdale. Deepdale could easily be confused for

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

Where in the Yorkshire Dales is Kingsdale? It’s that long valley which goes up the west side of Whernside, in the Yorkshire Dales. Why’ve I not heard of it? You’ve probably not heard of it, it’s not one of the main dales – it’s probably counted as part of the Ribblesdale region. What’s it like?

Just had to share this on the blog GREAT INFOGRAPHIC A great piece on the differences you need to be aware of with Pro/Amateur photography

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

Photographer “Directs” the Director Andy Green of “Video Advert” spends his days directing and creating promotional videos for businesses around the UK – so the “directorial boot” was certainly on the other foot for our PR shoot. Used to showing people how to present and perform, Andy now was in front of the camera and,

5 Dales – Perfect Yorkshire Photo Locations I’d been in Northumberland for a few days and had nothing major planned for the last day, so journey back to Leeds became a 10 hour epic, taking in 5 great Yorkshire Photo Locations, rather than 2 hours down the A1(M). I’m obsessed with Yorkshire Dales pass roads, the

Bah T’at Most people go Bah T’at on Ilkley Moor, subject of this Yorkshire Photo Locations post, these days – except the climbers in their helmets. The Cow and Calf is an outcrop of rock on Ilkley Moor, the Cow being a large rock, the calf being an boulder which stands a few feet away from

Wensleydale’s Easy Access Waterfall Looking for an easy to shoot Yorkshire Photo Location? You can park and look at this waterfall from the car… it’s that easy to see! A real gem of a waterfall, like another great Yorkshire Photo Location, High Force, it cascades over a large fault in the rock. It creates this

The Best of the Lot? Well A.Wainwright of Lakeland fame thought Swaldale to be the best, and I’m inclined to agree. It’s a narrow, steep sided valley with over 1000 barns, the lovely Ure flowing in the valley bottom and many amazing vista points if you get off the main road and venture higher. The

So you can do most things in Lightroom these days. I thought I’d meddle with this shot of the Royal Armouries to show a few things you can’t do in Lightroom…. yet! Start point   So to get to this point, you could probably have used Lightroom. Its been through these steps… Capture – 1

Rocket Science? Commercial Photography quotes can often be more complex than quantum mechanics, with so many variables to consider and charges for all kinds of things. We decided to make things a lot easier for clients by creating lots of new “packages” which are clearly defined and priced. Personalise… Our 2021 offering is Personal Branding

March 2013 – TRINITY LEEDS goes live in the heart of Leeds! Overview of Trinity Leeds Grand Opening Date Opened: March 2013 Event: Grand Opening of Highlight: Collection of Artworks and Impressive Glass Roof The centre made a significant impact with its collection of public artworks and an iconic glass roof that quickly became a symbol of

Get Surreal with a 10 STOP ND Filter! Can you use a 10 stop filter do to long exposures in cities? They are commonplace in landscape photography, where the shots are usually taken in low light at sunrise or sunset.  You normally get shots with lots of colours, milky water and foam-like seascapes. So I

Location, Lights & Action! Shooting with dancers is as creative as it gets – they spend hours training, perfecting moves and poses you can never get “normal” people to do. Spending the day with fellow lighting obsessive and photography trainer, Jayce Clarke, we took Shante and Daniella to an amazing derelict building to use the graffiti-rich

We captured the student exec a few weeks ago, it was now the turn of the entire staff of the union! It’s always nostalgic going to the Union – I first walked into this building in October 1991, a fresher looking around for beer (which was 85p back then) and glasses… those lecture theatres were

Telecoms expert, Phil Allum, helps people & business talk through his company TGE Solutions. An urgent need for some new PR profile shots arose, so we got together to shoot at his offices in West Yorkshire. We created a wide variety of looks for all kinds of uses – the obvious shots of Phil using the

Louise Lapish runs Gatewood Consulting, training UK-wide in all aspects business from CV writing to sales. We’d met through Yorkshire’s most exciting new business support network, BiY. She needed some great new shots for her personal PR, so we went to meet at Regus near Elland Road and used the building around there to capture

Brad Stanton…. At just 19, Brad has conquered the UK and Commonwealth – just turned 20, he’s now headlining stadiums with his amazing Thai Boxing skills. He’s based at Leeds premier gym, Edge (www.edgegyms.co.uk), and needed some great shots to help lift his profile – so we did a shoot in the actual gym. To

Don’t Look Down! When Richard Sara-Gray said that we may be able to get a decent view of Bradford, I never realised I’d be on top of the ice rink, looking down from over 150 feet onto the very heart of the city!       So up we went on a cold, windy but

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

High Rise Paradise The Marina area of Dubai is still being built, new tram systems going in and sparking new sky scrapers surround the blue water and white boats. Here are some memories of that 34 degree winters day – a day 34 degrees warmer than back home in Leeds….  

Huge structures do it for me. Visually that is… I first saw Preston’s bus station in the 70’s, and it was probably the biggest thing I’d seen at that point – Clitheroe doesn’t have many huge buildings! Huge! It’s the shape and majesty of the thing – the curved edges, the ribbed reinforcement bars, the unchanging pattern

Night Program Finale…. at Kirkstall Abbey in Leeds We spent 3 hours playing with torches, lighting the majestic ruins at the Abbey, then at the end, created these amazing sparks with wire wool. How did we do this then? There are lots of Youtube videos online, you just need a 9 volt battery, steel wool,

Automated Band Photography?   The “ALL NEW” Chicago Blues Brothers came to Dubai and rocked the Manidat Theatre for 3 nights. Flying out on a freezing March Tuesday, we landed at Abu Dhabi in the warm Arabian evening, transferring to Dubai by bus. Here are a set of performance shots taken by Ade on the last gig, saturday

Famous for it’s monumental prison and a gyratory, Armley isn’t the first Leeds suburb you’d go shooting alone in – let alone on an incredibly dull February day. I took to the canal first first, to see how the graffiti artists are doing – these walls change regularly. Then down to the river Aire and over the

Flash Bender Accessories – New Toys! Always on the look out for new “light modifiers” of “flash accessories” to advance my off camera flash photography – I’d seen these flash benders around before, so thought I’d take the plunge and get a couple. I took them up to Temple Newsham with trombonist Chris Colbran and

Why McFade Splits Beginners Workshops To total beginners, photography is a new, exciting pastime – but with a learning-curve as steep as Hardknott Pass! Where do you start? You can boil photography down to 2 things:- Finding interesting stuff to photograph Using camera settings to get an interesting shot This is the philosophy behind my

Check out the amazing voice…. https://soundcloud.com/clairecolbran Had a fun shoot with Claire Colbran, jazz singer in these 2 bands, backing singer in the Chicago Blues Brothers and rather excellent on trombone too… a Colbran family thing apparently! The Photography Bit So we had 3 lights – 2 behind at 45 degrees, one at the front at about

Michael Blades broadcasts live from Leeds every Saturday and Sunday night, jetting over to Rock FM in Preston for saturday afternoon… Having found McFade Urban Shoots on Google, he’d spotted the style of images he was after – so we met outside Leeds Town Hall and had a great couple of hours shooting and chatting

Got a fair coming to town? They’re brilliant to shoot at night – all those moving lights create amazing patterns; so much for the eye to see. Here are 5 tips for making the most of your night there 1 Long exposures – so take a Tripod! Every night photographer will use a tripod, so

Band leader, arranger and sax supremo (is that bigging you up enough Sam ?? lol) asked for some shots of his big band – so we got everyone into an empty office in Leeds and started creating some shots. Herding cats and musicians is never easy, though it didn’t stop us creating some cool shapes

Bradford has a bad press. It’s one of those places which offers so much, yet never seems to escape that image of desperation. The thing is, there is so much on offer to the Photographer that it’s well worth a look. Here are a few gems to enjoy…   Bradford City Hall – full of statues

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,

  A thick Hoar Frost looks amazing. It only happens now and then, so you really need to make the most of it when it happens. One of the downfalls of this frost is that the sky can be very dull on such days, so your usual landscapes can lack impact. So how to add

Since I wrote an 8-page article for Digital SLR User magazine in 2008, I’ve loved shooting at night. Once the unreliable ambient light has gone, you are in control. Photographers are control freaks…. Also since then, LED torches have massively improved, to the point where for as little as £50 you can buy a Cree

    Yorkshire photography – Wet, cold, miserable, overcast…. Today was all of the above, so time to head to a stream and make the most of the low light conditions. Luckily the river was abnormally high so lots of white water and unusual flow patterns. Ideal for creating a milky, surreal effect. We’ll be taking

    The Lake District is famous for walking and it’s stunning views over hill and lakes, perfect for the active person. However, it’s possible to get great shots without and enjoy a relaxing, sedate day out – all of these shots were taken within 1/4 mile of the road. 1 – Haweswater The eastern side of the

Yorkshire’s never short of water, it rarely stops raining for long, so Yorkshire’s Waterfalls are a great subject for anyone into photography. Waterfalls are abound so we thought we’d show you a few of our favourites from across the region. 1 – Scalebar Force, Settle This is the prettiest of the lot in many ways,

  Cropping a shot is a great exercise – you can find completely new images within an existing frame. Here’s a shot with lots going on, probably too much to be an effective shot on its own. We have a few rocks in the foreground and lots of lines and circles from the moving foamy water. It