A while back Graham and I did a photo shoot with Hannah down at the Lead Mines at Clywedog Dam in Powys, Wales. My goals for the shoot was to create something special with a bit of class about it. An evening gown in the middle of an ancient ruin seemed a good contrast to me…
Archive for the ‘Lightroom’ Category
The Lead Mines
Posted in Flash, Lightroom, Outdoors on June 13, 2011| 6 Comments »
Maunsel House
Posted in Flash, Lightroom, Outdoors on July 19, 2010| 9 Comments »
Back in June I travelled to Somerset to attend a Damien Lovegrove and Chris Hanley photography workshop. Simply put, what an amazing event in an awesome location, Maunsel House. Picking which images to post for this blog was quite a challenge! So many great images to choose from…
Location Scouting – Newtown
Posted in Flash, Lightroom, Outdoors on February 23, 2010| 2 Comments »
Over the last few weeks me and my shooting buddy Graham Law have been location scouting in and around Newtown, Powys, Wales. We’ve found quite a few locations but needed a suitable model to pose for us to really make most of them work. We’ll hopefully be able to try these out soon… This last weekend, Graham and I tried to find as many different shots as we could in the same location. A very successful shoot, even though Graham and I were acting as the models.
Day 4 – Catching up
Posted in General Ramblings, iPhone, Lightroom on October 2, 2009| 1 Comment »
Today has been about catching up with Barry and of course “cameras” was a topical subject! 🙂 First we had breakfast at a lovely little place called “volumes”. They had a backdrop that would work great using a pair of flashes and a suitable model!! 😉 Then we popped over to the Apple store in a shopping center close by. Very nice!
After the shopping center… we went off had coffee at a lovely location not far from Barry’s home. Definitely have to go back with my gear for a portrait session! So many photographic opportunities there!
The ‘look’ in some of my photographs
Posted in Flash, Lightroom, Outdoors on September 26, 2009| 2 Comments »
One of the problems I’ve encountered in post-production with my images is imagining how they can look unique? I want some of them to be different, but give a familiarity and look that provides an alternative to the actual scene in real life. My earlier attempts in post-production were pretty basic and it remained so for a long time. Slight adjustments to exposure, brightness, contrast, colour, etc… My main problem was that I couldn’t imagine how the photograph could even look different? I guess I was conditioned by the scene when taking the photo, then further conditioned when chimping on the image on the back of the camera, and again conditioned when I saw the image on the computer. I had seen the scene and image so many times, I couldn’t possibly imagine how else the image could look?
So as a tool to help me imagine things differently, I used Lightroom presets. Lightroom comes with a few presets, but I needed much more serious help in looking at these images differently. Initially I used a whole bunch of presets by Matt Kloskowski (link). This helped a lot until I found the Wonderland Presets (link).
I have been using the Wonderland presets as a tool to help me gain a new perspective. I don’t always use these presets in the final image, but from time to time, I stick with a look that I think works. If I do use a preset, I use the preset as a basis to build on and I make further adjustments to get to the image I want.
However, after being on Damien Lovegrove’s session with his picture editor, Marko (link), I’ve gained a whole new perspective on post-production and I’ll be using the Wonderland presets less and less. Amongst the many things I gained from Marko, colour accuracy (or at least believable colour) in skin tones is highly important. This may seem obvious… but seeing the way that Marko works was a technique I’d not come across before. Using presets like the Wonderland series does mess with the colours of skin tones which is why I will be adopting Marko’s approach more and more…
Okay… lets go through the images…
Home no more
Posted in Lightroom on September 12, 2009| Leave a Comment »
In the town that I live, Newtown in Powys (Wales), we are having a new Tesco store being built. The town already has a Morissons, a Lidle and local grocery stores. I’m not sure if we really need something as large as Tesco’s, but time will tell…
On the land that the new Tesco’s will reside on was the home of one of my good friends. In fact, for a couple of years, I lived in on the property (between 1988 – 1990). So seeing the property getting knocked down was a very sad moment. This happened over the last few days… so many fond memories…
Back in May, I had hired an ultra wide angle lens (Canon EF-S 10-22mm) for a wedding and took the opportunity to photograph the building.
In Adobe Lightroom, I decided to base the look of the image on Matt Kloskowski’s Surreal Edgy Preset (video, preset). I changed a couple of things and eventually got the image I was happy with. Below is the before and after…