The Yorkshire Dales
A list of the main Yorkshire Dales – with the river which runs through them and the highest hill on their edges. Interesting how many dales each of the large mountains touch
FAQ – Commercial Team Photography
I photograph teams all the time – it’s great fun meeting and getting to know everyone, albeit usually very briefly. I understand that selecting a photographer to capture your team can be a daunting task, and you may have several questions about the process. That’s why I’ve created a video that answers some of the …
Top photography locations on the Yorkshire Coast
The Yorkshire Coast is a stunningly beautiful destination for photographers, with a rich history and a diverse range of landscapes to capture. Starting from Robinhoods Bay and travelling northwards towards Saltburn, there are plenty of opportunities to take some truly breathtaking shots. Robinhoods Bay Robinhoods Bay is a picturesque village with narrow winding streets and …
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Why constant-aperture ZOOM Lenses are the best
The main difference between a constant aperture lens like an f/2.8 zoom and a variable aperture lens like an f/3.5-5.6 zoom is how the aperture changes as you zoom in and out. A constant aperture lens maintains the same aperture throughout its zoom range, meaning that regardless of the focal length you set, the aperture …
11 Reasons Why I STILL Love the Canon 5D Mark 4
The Canon 5D Mark IV is a favourite among many professional photographers due to its high-quality build and features. Here are the top things that I love about this camera: Overall, the Canon 5D Mark IV is an absolute joy to use and is a great value for the price. If you’re in the market …
Why would I buy a PRIME lens when I have a ZOOM already?
While zoom lenses are indeed more flexible and convenient than prime lenses, there are still several reasons why photographers might prefer to use prime lenses in certain situations: Overall, while zoom lenses are more versatile and convenient, prime lenses can offer superior image quality, wider apertures, and specialized uses that make them an important part …
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Which lens should I buy?
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 …
Why Industry Needs Regular Professional Photos
In today’s digital age, all businesses need great photography more than ever before. Industrial businesses, in particular, can benefit greatly from high-quality, regularly updated photography. Here are my top 5 reasons to get fresh content – we’ll explore the reasons why and the benefits it can bring to their operations. Industrial businesses often offer complex …
Long Exposure Photography
Long exposure photography is a popular technique used by photographers to create stunning images that capture the beauty and essence of natural and urban landscapes – I love revisiting old places I’ve shot many times before to capture it through a different technique. The technique involves using strong neutral density (ND) filters to slow down …
John’s 2023 Personal Brand Shoot
Over a decade of shoots It’s over 10 years since we first did a personal brand shoot for John Thompson, from Metropolis. Back then it wasn’t called a “personal brand” of course, it didn’t really have a name – I just called it something vague, like a Profile Shoot. That first shoot was in the …
How Youtube Changed My Life
Is Miserable Telly Dragging You Down? The relentless negativity of broadcast media I don’t know if you’ve found this, but in the last few years, broadcast TV is filled with relentless negativity, pessimism, doom and gloom and general misery. Take channels like the BBC. I’ve long been a massive fan and advocate of theirs, watching …
Complete Fire Solutions – Team Shoot
Complete fire solutions are based in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, and, have probably saved lots of lives and hundreds of thousands of pounds in fire damage over the years They install and maintain fire prevention, alarm, warning and fighting equipment for businesses all over the Yorkshire area. Having a chat with director Richard, we decided to …
Estate House – For Sale in Bretton
[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”99″ display=”pro_mosaic”] The Old Estate House Here is one of our work interior photography jobs for Rutley Clark, who help sell homes and larger houses in West Yorkshire and beyond. This particular home is at Bretton, basically near the West Yorkshire Sculpture Park just off the M1 near Wakefield. It was the office …
The Sharon Stacy’s 90’s Club Hit Band
90’s House and Rave Music! I was a student in Manchester in the early nineties and a regular at Raves and house music clubs, like:- The state, The Hacienda Sankey’s soap. The boardwalk, The Limit. Home …and many, many others I can’t remember the name of around the Manchester area. So when my friend, soul …
Isaacs Accountants – Charcoal Background Shoot
A New Website We first photographed, Isaac’s around six years ago, when they were getting their brand new website built. In 2022 we returned to see the team again, for you’ve guessed it, images for a new website! We discussed different looks for their team’s photography. The last time we shot the team members at …
When should you use AUTO ISO on your camera?
Surely professionals only shoot in MANUAL? I’ve never been a big fan of using anything other than manual mode for exposing photos. Especially when you are doing professional work, where you want complete control. However, occasionally you have to shoot in a room where the light is massively different from one side to the other, and …
The York Walls and Street Photography Experience
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 …
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Selby Abbey – Long Exposure Photography
We have all the time in the world… That’s what Louis Armstrong sang at the end of a famous James Bond film or two, and if you have some time to spare then get yourself a 15-stop or 10-stop neutral density filter and have a go at long exposure photography. That’s just what I did …
The Most Flexible Workshop EVER! – Littondale
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 …
The Surreal World of Ultra Long Exposures
Tilt Shift and 15 Stops… I always thought 10 stops was more than enough to create surreal exposures, but discovered the Nisi 15 stop filter (which multiplies your exposure time by 32000) and found a whole new world of experimentation. To test the filter on front of the 24mm tilt Shift lens and went for …
Manchester Street Photography Workshop
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 …
Flamborough Head, Humber Bridge and Bridlington
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 …
Portrait Photography Workshop 2 – Leeds Uni
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 …
Portraits Beginners Workshop 2022
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 …
What difference 12 months makes?
The 12 Month Test Have you ever looked back to things you did 10 years ago? You should see some huge progress and changes, based on everything you’ve learnt, new tools or technologies and just growing as a person. But have you ever looked back just one year and revisited something? Like a “Remix” in music …
How to shoot and edit extra-long exposures with a 10-stop filter
In advance of our Manchester workshop, where I was going to show the delegates how to shoot extra long exposures, using 10 stop (or even 15 stop) neutral density filters, I popped down to the beautiful world heritage site at Saltaire. If you’ve not been, this is the site of a Victorian Mill, …
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4 FAST Retouching Tools which Won’t Break Client’s Banks!
Can you Photoshop me???? How Much £££ !!!!????? That’s our most commonly asked question and it’s only natural because everybody wants to look the very best and a little bit of tweaking goes a long way. But doing high-end retouching can take a long time, and end up costing an “absolute fortune”, which is something …
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LIGHTROOM TIPS: Making subjects jump off the screen!
Have you been a walk this winter and photographed dead plants, twigs or leaves on branches, got home and been uninspired by them – they don’t really jump off the screen? Well previously in Lightroom, to make these “pop” out of your monitor, you would have to work quite hard to make your subject really …
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CASE STUDY: CQR Cables Factory Photoshoot – Wirral
CQR Factory Photoshoot Case Study This project was commissioned to make new marketing images for CQR, a company making certified security, alarm and network cables, on the Wirral peninsula. Here is the blog as a video, if you prefer watching to reading August 2021 – Blue skies! On a beautiful summers day, I met up …
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CASE STUDY: Clearsite Solutions New Brand Photography
I don’t know how marketing people do it, but they do come up with Amazing straplines than just sum up a business instantly. Fliss Lee, from “Honest Folk” in Morley, describes Marc’s business, Clearsite Solutions, perfectly in one sentence Providing the blank canvas you need to create your unique standout spaces. Marc’s business goes into …
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Can you photoshop me?
Anybody who photographs “normal people” will hear this question – every single shoot! It’s our “question everyone asks”. People want to look their best and they put their trust in you, also a great Icebreaker. The answer is “Yes of course”, we always do “something” to the photograph, just how far and how long we …
Supercharge your Editing with new LIGHTROOM MASKS
Lightroom just changed its selective editing tools into one new mega-powerful suite, called “masking”. It’s hard to sum up how powerful this change will be for editing in future, so instead I’ve created a short video showing you to colour a specific area of a photo using two of the controls. Sounds easy? Well, it …
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Is DXO the ultimate RAW Editor?
For years I’ve read about this mythical software called DxO and its magical ability to create superbly detailed, best-in-class photos from your camera raw files. Like most people I know, I’m a happy Lightroom user and love its workflow, and have an intimate knowledge of what every slider does, so was never looking for something …
Andy at Eggborough
If you set up a camera tripod and flashes outside an operational power station, it wouldn’t be long before security along asking you to move on, I know because it’s happened to me a few times. If you ask them whether terrorists often turn up with a model, 3 tripods and flashes, they are not …
6 Ways to Bring Industrial Processes to Life with Creative Imagery
If you’re in the business of manufacturing, chances are you’re looking for new ways to show off your processes. Whether it’s for internal or external use, seeing your process in action can be an effective way to communicate what makes your company tick. There are some basic things you can do before getting started to …
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Stretch and Burn – Lifestyle Shoot
Fitness Photography in the Pennines We helped an amazing local brand who create sustainable, limited edition fitness clothing with their lifestyle photography – the owners, Clare and Rick, started Stretch and Burn in the lockdown. Sustainability is at the heart of what we do, limited edition pieces designed for real people, not mass produced and …
How to Get Started as a Model – The Test Shoot
How do you get started in this industry? I’m sure you’ve seen some of the amazing photos gracing magazine covers and advertisements. You might even have a few friends who’ve modelled for various modelling sites and agencies. But what do you really need to know about getting started? The first step to getting started is …
A tour of the Yorkshire Dales
The yorkshire dales are pretty stunning – rolling green hills with limestone edges and pavements, waterfalls and woodlands, sheep and cattle and of course, lots of lovely walls making patterns throughout the landscape. Here we have 5 360-degree pano tours linked in Klapty, they are:- Arncliffe Taking in the lovely littondale and the road which …
Saltaire, Bradford – A Virtual Drone Tour
Saltaire Bradford – A World Heritage Site A World Heritage Site in Bradford, Saltaire is is the creation of of a Victorian entrepreneur sir Titus Salt. It’s a small village built to house and serve the people who worked in his gigantic Mill on the Leeds Liverpool canal. He built facilities in Saltaire like the …
Drone Virtual Tours…
An Accidental Find So I was looking for a way to host and view 360-degree photos taken with my DJI mini 2 drone found this virtual tours software which allows you to upload many 360-degree photographs and then navigate around from photo to photo. How it’s done The way I created this was to let …
Drone Photos for Civil Engineering
Aarsleff’s Project in Chesterfield Ground engineering specialists, Aarsleff, have created this huge retaining wall for a new build in Chesterfield – it’s included lots of piling, steelwork and concrete, and we were invited along at the start and end of the project to capture some images and movie drone footage for them. 360 Degree Views …
A Simple Tip For Everyone!
I am a huge fan of experimentation when learning something and photography is the perfect subject to get out into the field and just try things to see what happens. Most of us end up taking the same photograph over and over again… This is great in the field, but very boring when you get …
Photoshopping Sunrays with Curves
Sometimes you only get a fleeting second of light and you’ll have to grab what you can with the camera you having your hands. The story behind this photo is that we were walking to a limestone pavement to capture photos of trees growing out of rocks when one of the clouds opened and let …
Modern Property Photography
Like many people I have used HDR or purely ambient light for property photography for years, when time permitted I would use a a flash or 2 to add some light to the rooms but the results were always a little bit garish, bright and weird shadows would get in the way. This relatively novel …
Your old work should be embarrassing!
How do you know whether you are progressing at photography? Well, There are many ways to look at this, it could be how successful you are with competitions in your local camera club or whether you get more likes and praise on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or Flickr or more sales and new clients But that’s …
Lencarta Beauty Dish Test Shoot
I recently bought the “MOD048 | 60cm Folding Beauty Dish Silver Mk.2” as a small, portable light modifier. These are available (or will be when stock arrives) on their website (https://www.lencarta.com/all-products/light-shapers/studio-beauty-dishes) or if you’re in West Yorkshire, you can order on line and pick it up in Bradford, which is what I did. Couple of …
Nicola Paparazzo – Greek St. Shoot
You’ll never get an opportunity to photograph on Greek Street in Leeds like we did this January. The UK was in lockdown and this end of Leeds had virtually nobody there. We had the place to ourselves. Greek Street is one of the busiest bar areas of the city centre, bustling with people eating and …
GUEST POST – David Garthwaite – Fine Art Photography
I’m a fine art photographer from Yorkshire in the North of England, I started photography in January 2017 after being disappointed by the quality of images from my compact camera, from a once in a lifetime trip to Iceland (once in a lifetime because of the unpaid motor tickets I left behind). As soon as …
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Social media content creation in Lockdown
How can you create new images and social media content, safely, whilst we are still operating under bizarre lockdown circumstances? The good news… Luckily, the government guidance states that people should work from home unless they “absolutely cannot do so” – which most photographers can’t. So this means we can still travel to create images …
Leeds Pubs in Lockdown
Leeds always had a thriving hospitality sector packed with innovative bars, traditional boozers and amazing restaurants. I’ve been part of the scene by probably drinking a little bit too much in many of these places, and also photographing quite a lot of food and drinks for bars, restaurants and hotels over the years. I even …