Facebook was awash with “god it’s cold” comments yesterday – so a great day for some blue wintery sky shots. Parking around Granary Wharf, taking a walk up through town, down past the market and back along the canal, these images were created. Was indeed nice light. They are all HDR – that’s what I

Never posed before? Never had your photo taken before? Nervous in front of the camera? These 2 Cramlington girls answered yes to all of these – but that didn’t stop us having a great shoot with some cool results. We’d got a location in mind with a bit of graffiti and in a reasonably quiet

  After a week shooting Scotland and Northumberland, a trip into Durham was just a quick detour on the way home. The cathedral and castle are on top of a huge rocky crag, around which curves the river Wear. One of the UK’s most spectacular combinations of nature and man made beauty. The weather wasn’t great – over

Night time means long exposures, things moving through your images, high contrast scenes, a new world of creativity with you camera, a change for your imagination to run wild. To most, the M62 is a car park they traverse every morning and evening, a place of wasted time and torture. To a photographer, it’s a

Homeward Bound – Church, Coffee and Cake Beautiful landscape is one part of out workshops, but we’re partial to a bit of architecture too, and when the weather is lacking, we can always pop into something interesting like this church. It’s on the way to Munich Airport so we pulled off the Autobahn and had

Blackpool – Vegas of the north! Friday night saw me playing with the Blues Brothers band at the Empire in Blackburn, so I stopped in the area for the weekend, calling into Blackpool for a few hours on Saturday afternoon. Interesting light – sunny in one direction, overcast in the other, so decided to get

Just a few shots from the first Night Photography session. We used Leeds as a base to learn the theory behind taking long exposures at night – how things like Aperture have more unusual effects than you’d think at night! We’ll be meeting to discuss each others images in a fortnight and share ideas on

Celebrity Look Alikes in Leeds Had the great pleasure of meeting and photographing:- David Beckham Mr T Austin Powers Simon Cowell Britney Spears Will Smith Or at least I thought I did! These were a great bunch of actors who make a career from looking like the actual celebrity – and it is uncanny when

A fine collection of TVRs at the BNG You couldn’t ask for a better day for the BNG, hot and sunny and loads of multi-coloured TVRs. Here’s ALL the shots we got on the day – in a 6 minute video – see if you can spot your car! [tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP2lgugGtl4&feature=share&list=UUNt-MdklYRJZerUfAtuX10A[/tube]

Large Format Prints Transform Runcorn Office “We’ve got an office in Runcorn for you to shoot… and can you get some shots of the area and create some large format prints to put up in the main entrance area too….” Gauntlet firmly thrown down, over to Runcorn on a (rare) sunny day and nailed the

Theatre Rehearsal Photography in Leeds…. Destination Holbeck… Driving around Holbeck (Leeds) slowly caused a few long, suspicious looks…  parts used to be the red light district and it’s not improved much in the last few years. The road I was after didn’t seem to have a name on it… there were just lock ups and

Just been asked to do a piece for Ephotozine, on Landscape Photography. Thought it worth sharing on here with you all. It’s just 3 questions, with my ramblings on each. How did you get into landscape photography? I’m from the countryside originally, rural Lancashire by Pendle Hill, so was always at home there. When affordable

What is HDR…. Love it or hate it, or have no idea what it is, HDR is a great solution to difficult exposure conditions, where the bright and dark areas of the shot are so contrasting, your camera just can’t capture it all in one shot. So we take a few shots at different exposures

What this Leeds Photographer does… Medding with smart phones takes you to some strange places…. ON this occasion I found an app which did little “mind map” type diagrams, which I thought would be fun for the website… I was white flag waving after 5 minutes of meddling on a little phone screen, so hit

Thought for the day…. The people who hate their photo being taken invariably have to stand in front of the camera for far longer than others…. (because they’re tense, look scared and take ages to get a half decent shot as a result) If you’re one of these, just relax, have fun and don’t get

Castlefield – Central Manchester A more imposing set for a northern city shoot is hard to find. Castlefield has a mix of huge bridges, canals, brick, steel, pagodas, bars, locks, tow paths and bars…. Add to that the imposing Beetham Tower looming over you constantly, you’ve got an incredible array of backgrounds to play with.

20 years ago, I was a fresher at UMIST, the highly regarded science and technology uni in Manchester – so when I was invited back by Trish to shoot some photos of the new Student Council, I jumped at the chance. Proper nostalgia – I’d not actually stepped into the Union since 2005 when I

On the way back from my sight test today, I called into a park and grabbed a few floral shots – thought I’d give it a bash, they’re not really my thing to be honest but you never know who may need them…. The park’s usually full of all kinds and colours of flowers, but

Photographing Cars in the Park Prints of some of the cars can be bought here – email [email protected] if yours is missing and you want a print. http://www.photoboxgallery.com/mcfadeAuto/collection?album_id=1270798377 The rain was happily absent at Newby Hall, near Ripon, today, so the Cars In The Park show was a great success. A mix of sports cars

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

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

Enhancing Workshop Photos with Lightroom: A Step-by-Step Guide As part of our exploration into Lightroom 4, we have taken the opportunity to edit some of the photos from our students’ workshops. In this post, we’ll demonstrate how we transformed an image from a McFade Taster shoot featuring Sam and Chris from the brass section of

On Ilkley Moor Bah Tat A bright mid-morning trip up to the Cow and Calf is a lovely way to start a bank holiday Monday. Light breeze, nice patterned clouds and nice shadows were what we were greeted with. The ND Grad Problem Thing is, using ND Grad filters to keep detail in the sky would blacken

Gordale Scar…. Can you do it justice? Going around “that corner” for the first time and seeing inside Gordale Scar is breathtaking. It’s as near as we get to Yosemite Valley in Yorkshire! The pleasant, flat walk along side the burbling stream doesn’t really prepare you for cavernous geological marvel that awaits you. It’s a huge gouge

So many landscapes have these amazing sunsets, nuclear red skies with amazing orange hues…. Do you think they “really” looked like that when the photographer was there? Here’s a demo of how easy they are to fake in Lightroom 4…. Original Look Tone and Saturation changes Tidy up dust and lift the dark areas Lens

“Strobist” shot Rescue This is a shot from a test session – the aim was to try shooting wide open with the 85mm F1.8 to get blurry backgrounds and a sharp subject. Again, it’s not a prize winning photo we’re using, more one which you’d probably not bother with. Let’s see what you can do

An example of workflow in Lightroom on a coastal shot. 5 shots here Unedited Tone to add contrast, slight rotation, dust removed Clarity added to boost detail/contrast Colour boost – more blues and orange Selective edits with the brush tool and final crop. To view each step, just click on the picture below

You can’t always win 🙁 Some days were just not made for landscape photography, unfortunately my recent Northumberland trip had 3 consecutive days…. Not one to be defeated, I did clamber onto some rocks and get a few wave shots, but as you can see here there was little help from the ambient light. Also, I’d found

Sanctuary on a wet day When it rains in Newcastle, it’s time to head inside – and the Sage was perfect. A huge complex of theatres, all under a curvy roof, designed by Norman Foster. They are fine with people taking photos here, which is refreshing as most places in Leeds chase you out the second

McFade Training’s Brass Night at the Lyric April’s taster session saw delegates return to the amazing venue that is the Lyric Cinema. This month we ventured away from the main auditorium into the more abandoned looking areas around the projector rooms – the prefect backdrop. Chris Colbran and Sam Houghton were the subjects this time, both professional musicians working in many bands

Leeds Training at the Lyric! Here’s a few shots from March’s McFade Training evening in the Lyric Theatre in Armley. The subject was “an introduction to Off Camera Flash” and had people using our speedlite system to capture Rocco, Salman and Eleni in the dramatic setting of an old, disused cinema. Have a go…… The