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!  

Your headshot is important – it represents your brand, your business and you. Headshots work for you every day on Linked IN and the other social media channels, your website, in print and at every touch point the world has with you. So it’s worth a little thought about what you want! To help, we’ve

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

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 

Sunset at Gross Glockner – Tirol – Austria Do you ever take a shot and never manage to settle on a final edited look? Well this happened with this shot – it’s one of 3 brackets taken at sunset with a 17mm TSe lens… so nice and sharp, oodles of data to play with…. but what

Your business photos are your first impression Get them wrong – you lose business It’s as simple as that – people’s first impression is made instantly and will influence whether they bother to read your carefully honed copy and click “play” on that professionally produced video. Business photos are more important than you think Visual

Salford Quays Architecture If anyone wants to learn about shooting architecture “up north”, I can think of not better place than Media City at Salford Quays. This trip was a 1-2-1 with a fellow professional photographer who shoots gigs for a living – he wanted to spend an evening learning about architecture and tilt-shift lenses. So

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 Very Inky Man in a very cool Leeds street I’ve always loved Dock Street as a portrait location – a classic thin street, cobbles, high mills and a wide variety of looks to be had. So when I met up with Andy for the first time, it was the first location that came to

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

You can’t always get the weather you want on a test shoot – but somehow, bradford suits this kind of sky. It’s got this old yortkshire stone architedtue going on – yellow stones stacked up to make mills and shops. Pair that with blubous grey clouds and you have an appropriate look… maybe not the

Yellow fields of Discovery Discovering just what Tilt Shift can do is great fun – and you have to be hands on. Sure, I’d seen 10 Youtube videos so had a good idea what I needed to do – but here are a few examples from my first landscape trip in summer 2017. Tilt Shift

Granary Wharf Leeds and Wellington Street: A Tilt Shift Lens Adventure Just a quick post with some shots from the train station and canal area of Leeds. These were taken during the early days of testing the Tilt Shift lens we invested in for the architecture photography business. Tilt shift lenses are a game changer

The Problem GoodSync Solves…. As a photographer, we’re dealing with huge files ALL the time, many of which we bin after we’ve finished a project – these fill hard drives, meaning you’ll waste £££££ on hard drives. We’ve found GoodSync solves this problem so quickly and easily – for $29 for the pro version! Many photographers

Which of these people will get the better profile photo:- a relaxed, stress-free person, who has set time aside to enjoy a photo shoot someone with the phone going every 5 minutes, about to do a speech at an event and has a whole crowd of people waiting for them. It’s night and day – chalk

What is Tilt Shift? If you don’t know what a Tilt Shift lens is, this chap explains it well. So take a look at this first if you’re interested. South Leeds Architecture There are some interesting new buildings in the south of Leeds these days – this first one is the Leeds College of buildings, created

New Season – New Food Photography With summer arriving, the menus at Radisson in Leeds change – so they needed new Food Photography to promote it. I was invited down to work with the new chef and Tom, the mixologist, to create a whole set. The Food The Fire Lake vibe is on the rustic

McFade in LIVERPOOL Liverpool is a fantastic city – one of the only ones with 2 cathedrals, huge river, architecture to die for and some band which disbanded in 1970 which seems to crop up everywhere. Oh – and up the coast a bit there’s a load of metal men made by Antony Gormley and placed

Landscapes and Waterscapes @ Stanley Ferry With a 17mm Tilt Shift Lens I’ve had a flurry of outings to get used to the new lenses – this trip was to the Stanley Ferry area just outside Wakefield, in West Yorkshire. I’d started out looking for decent wheat fields, but they were not lit that well with the

So you want to buy a camera? I get asked a lot about buying cameras. The main questions I ask are:- what do you want to do what is your budget The first one is almost impossible to answer for most people – they have an idea what they’d like to do, but until you

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 –

Learn Spot Colour in Seconds The Magic of Spot Colouring in Adobe Lightroom Welcome to the fascinating world of spot colouring, a technique that can transform your photographs from ordinary to extraordinary. With Adobe Lightroom, you can achieve this stunning effect in mere minutes, no faffing about! The Art of Black and White Photography with

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

A 50 year Wait – Tornado Steam Train Scheduled Service I didn’t wait 50 years – but it was 50 years ago that the last steam train service ran over the iconic viaduct in the Dales. It was only for a few days in February so I decided to brave the weather and head up

Water and Rail Meet at Castlefield Manchester Castlefield is incredibly central in Manchester, a stone’s throw away from the massive Beetham Tower and Deansgate Station. It’s a stunning place for every photographer to enjoy, be that shooting the architecture reflected in still waters, taking a model down there and using the industrial backdrops or shooting a

How do you do what you do…. Simon Sinek’s hugely popular TED TALK talk on branding talks about:- Why you do what you do How you do it What you make/do If you’ve not seen it – here it is on YOUTUBE – it’s well worth a look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPYeCltXpxw   If you look at the

Business headshots have changed Evolution of Business Headshots… Stern captains of industry in their victorian offices – green lamps, brass, oak… Conservative backdrops – usually brown or blue White wall business headshots – clean and fit on Linked IN nicely, a bit boring At McFade we’ve been doing “location” portraits too – business headshots usually taken around the workplace,

Showing my Work to my Network Every year or so, we get to present our business to the SHARE network group – it’s great to get more than 1 minute to talk about your offering, to make sure everyone knows the extent of what I do. For a photographer – it’s a rare chance to actually

New Business Photos Get You Noticed INSTANTLY! It really is that simple – investing in new business photos is like having a mini re-brand. If you and your team all got new business photos tomorrow and updated LINKED IN, your engagement would go through the roof. So what are you waiting for? Try it –

Photographing Drax and Eggborough Power Station at Sunset When it’s a windless day, I can see clouds of steam from Eggboeough and Drax power stations – which are 25-30 miles away from my desk in Morley. Last week, I’d been desk-bound all day and saw a great sunset was on its way AND these clouds, so

Wensleydale for New Year Wensleydale is one of my favourite Dales, it’s long, wide, full of waterfalls and lovely villages – and has nice cheese! This new year I was up there with friends and popped out now and then to get some shots of the area – especially one fantastic sunset on New Years

A New way of working with LIGHTROOM? Here’s a video of how I found using these LIGHTROOM Presets and Brush settings to edit a few photos The company who created them are called Sleeklens – and can be found on the following links:- Main Website https://sleeklens.com/ Products Landscape Lightroom Presets Professional Photo Editing Service Lightroom

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

Iconic Steam Train Photo Here’s a shot taken from a bridge – in this tutorial I work through a few different controls to eek out detail in the steam and the engine body. The “how to” video https://youtu.be/c0CZRn6ZYkM 

Here’s a scene from a cornwall town – it’s been uploaded anonymously so I’ve no idea who’s work it is.  Essentially it was a quick case of brightening up the photo to add a bit of punch – using the GRAD tool.  Before…   After   The Video https://youtu.be/zgQoOuix7rY 

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

Anonymous Edits Here’s a lovely street scene from what I guess is France – again, I’ve no idea who’s shot this one is, it’s uploaded to DROPBOX with no name attached so I can be totally impartial. A bit like the STIG was on Top Gear. This edit creates a couple of results – one

Is Swaledale the best Dale?  There are so many dales, all with different character, all with different features.  Swaledale is known for its steep sides, lead mines, waterfalls and 1000 barns – so lots to go at for the photographer We went up there yesterday – Richard Spurdens with his new Canon 5D mark 4

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

Yorkshire Dales Lightroom Tutorial – Ribblehead Viaduct A sunset shot – without a great sunset So you’re driving up a long country road with no real signs of life apart from the odd farm or bird of prey, then all of a sudden this massive viaduct pops up! That’s Ribblesdale – it’s full of stuff to

Lightroom Landscape Tutorial – from Austria! The Wilder Kaiser, Tirol Here is a full editing Lightroom tutorial of an Austrian landscape – it’s the Wilder Kaiser range, which loom majestically over the farm we stop at on the McFade Austrian holiday which runs every October At the top of the ski slopes they have these little lakes

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

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

Manchester Looking Fantastic Manchester, the UK’s second city, is famous for its rain, grey skies and grim climate! I should know, I lived there for 4 years in 1990’s and rarely saw the sun. You just needed some waterproof clothes and boots – it wasn’t a problem, but the buildings never really looked great. Roll

Ribblesdale – a fantastic photography destination Welcome to Ribblesdale, a jewel within the Yorkshire Dales National Park, renowned for its dramatic landscapes and iconic features like the Ribblehead Viaduct and the famous Three Peaks. As a local lad, I may be a tad biased, but even though I was born a good 20 miles downstream,

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

The Yorkshire 3 Peaks – 2 Distinctive, 1 Boring? I’ve always loved Ingleborough and Pen y Gent yet found Whernside a boring hill to look at. As kids playing on Pendle Hill we could easily see the Yorkshire 3 Peaks on a clear day – 2 very distinctive mountains and one boring lump But on a day out

Phil Jefferies and His Amazing VW Campervan Phil’s had this military grade VW Campervan from 1990 for a long time – it was red and pretty drab looking, it looked its age. Then 3 years ago he decided it was time for a change – and here are the results – a bright green monster

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