Wedding Photographer, Wakefield, West Yorkshire
tips

Inspiration
Jan 13th
No photos to post today so I feel a bit stingy but the weather has been pretty shocking of late, we were a bit spoilt with all the snow and clear blue skies last week! So I thought I’d write a little bit about some of the sources I use for inspiration when I can’t get out to take photos for whatever reason.
Talk Photography – This is a forum I’ve used quite a lot in the past not only for inspiration but it’s also great learning resource. It really helps develop a critical eye for both others photos and your own, this becomes very important when you are out composing photos. There is always a little voice saying “what would that lot on TP make of this?” There is an issue of some people being overly critical and believe me, photographers are the most critical when it comes to, well, photographs. You sometimes question their validity to criticise but everyone has an opinion, if you can learn without taking too much to heart you will develop as a photographer.
Stumbleupon – I’ve only got into this recently but it’s great, you basically register and put in your interests (photography) and start stumbling. I’ve got a toolbar on firefox now where I just click and it’ll take me to some obscure site showing great photos, you can even say if you like it or not to get it noticed by others. I’ve found some great photos and resources just by stumbling.
Flickriver – This shows some of the best photos out there on flickr for a particular day, and there are hundreds, daily! It’s across a whole range of subjects so there is plenty of inspiration. Definitely worth a look.
Twitter – Again I’m kind of new to twitter but it’s a great way to meet others with the same interests, there are loads of big photographers who twitter a lot and the info is really good stuff. Other photographers are great for inspiration, just to look at the sort of images they are putting out, how they light and compose images. I always think looking at photos is a great way of learning, you absorb them somehow and they come back to you when you are out with the camera.
Flickr Maps – Flickr is great for photos but there are quite a lot to wade through and some of them have, ahem, limited appeal. The maps tool though is great, especially if you want to get out and don’t have any place in particular to go to. I put the map on an area I’m interested in (usually about a 10 mile radius of my house) then just search for landscapes, if an interesting shot comes up I see where it is on the map and get down there. It’s important not to go and try and replicate a shot but it helps open your eyes to landscapes that could just be on your door step.
It’s not always easy to keep inspired and more often than not you can go out and come back with nothing, but hopefully some of these links will inspire you to go out and get some shots. To quote Ansel Adam:
“Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment.”
I’ve posted one of his shots below, he knew his way around a camera!
Smiling Bride
Apr 14th
It’s wedding season again! We got this one a couple of weeks ago at a great wedding in North Yorkshire. I’m currently experimenting with textured overlays as they can give quite interesting effects. You can build up a library of photos of interesting texture, be it brick walls, wooden tables etc. and try overlaying them in photoshop. All you have to do is paste the texture onto a new layer and set the blending mode to overlay (I start with overlay but some of the other ones give different results) Reducing the opacity and masking areas also helps. These can be a bit hit and miss but it’s just a bit different from the selective colouring we see quite a lot of. The image itself was taken at ISO200, 200mm, f/2.8 at 1/1250.
The black and white I’ve posted was a follow on from the technique I was working on a while back taking a slightly out of focus image and adding a little film grain to get a retro reportage style shot that would otherwise have been binned. This would also work with a lomo or cross processed style of processing. This was taken at ISO200, 78mm, f/2.8, 1/200. For the grain I use silver efex or alien skin’s exposure, which also has coloured film effects.2 Minutes of Sky
Apr 9th
Last post 24th March! If I knew what the date was I’d be shocked, I know we’re close to some religous shebang that has something to do with chocolate and bank holidays. Anyway I went out the other night as the light was looking pretty good so I arrived and set up and the light went straight to hell so I thought I’d do a few more long exposures. I did a few at 10 minutes but didn’t like the results, this one was exposed for 120 seconds, f/16, ISO100 16mm, and if these setting seem familiar it’s because I was taking photos of a tree and they are the only settings I allow for tree photos Another Long Exposure Landscape
Mar 11th
This is another one from the same shoot as my last post, the weather hasn’t been the best lately but I think it’s brightening up now so I will hopefully get out this week. Not vastly different from the shot I previously posted, this one is in portrait as I wanted to include a little more sky.It was taken at ISO100, 21mm, f/8 30 seconds. I zoomed in a touch as I tend to get a little vignetting at 16mm when using a lot of filters. The flat water again comes from the 10 stop filter allowing for a 30 second exposure. I always try to shoot at ISO100 and had to use f/8 as that was the longest speed without going into bulb mode, I could have done 1 minute at f11 or 2 minutes at f16 plus, if I’d have gone to ISO50, this would have taken me to 4 minutes. Unfortunately I was getting hungry and the car park was closing!
Long Exposure Sunset
Mar 5th
This was taken at ISO100 19mm, f/14 for 30 seconds. There is a little lens flare to illustrate my last point, ALWAYS clean your lens and any filters between the camera and subject, be it UV filters, ND filters or Grads, any dust when shooting into the sun will refract it and make the shot only good for blog tutorials or healing brush practice!Trees and Masts
Mar 1st
I had a feeling we’d get a decent sunset this evening but I couldn’t have been more wrong, a mite disappointing to say the least!It was pretty windy up near Emley Moor Mast so I took the opportunity to get my 10 stop filter out and see if I could get a bit of cloud movement, notice the complete lack of interesting sunset in the background, that’s breaking the rules for ya! The mast one was taken at f/5.6 ISO100 19mm 30 seconds.
The tree was taken about an hour earlier, I was using the fence as a leading line and side lighting from the low sun. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you but when I was approaching there was a big mean looking cloud behind the tree that would have made a decent shot but alas it vanished and left me with a fairly plain blue sky.
The important lesson is not every outing is successful and this is why it’s so rewarding to eventually ‘get’ a shot, I’m told golf is similar but I don’t believe it for a second.

The Glass Floor
Feb 18th
I was doing some studio portrait shots yesterday and thought I’d have a go at this technique I saw a while ago. It’s easy enough to do and gives a decent effect. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out how it’s done, probably not a great idea if are photographing subjects with skirts on, or Scots in kilts for that matter. This was taken at 45mm 1/125, (studio flash) f/8 ISO125, I increased the ISO by 1/3 because they were a little underexposed and I couldn’t be bothered getting up to increase the flash power by a 1/3. A quick Q&A for you, I could have also opened up the aperture to 7.1 instead of the ISO increase. Remember when lighting with just flash the shutter speed is irrelevant as long as it’s under the cameras x-sync (usually around 1/200th).You guessed it, a tree…at sunrise!
Dec 22nd
- Set off with no plan of what you intend to shoot.
- Take the bare minimum in terms of equipment, filters and polarisers just take up space and you won’t need them.
- Leave yourself no time to get to where you wish to take photos.
- Walk the least distance possible but through bogs that only 50,000 horse power tractors can get through, if possible wear brand new Italian motorcycle boots, oh and clean jeans!
- Don’t worry about checking what ISO you were using last time, it’ll probably be a nice noise free 100 anyway.
- Take a haphazard, almost child like approach to crossing muddy puddles, with equipment depreciation these days you can always just get a brand new camera should it come off the tripod as you skip over the half lit puddles.
- Spend no time thinking about composition, you’ll just over complicate things, is a straight horizon really that important?
1 Strobe, Choose your background
Sep 25th

I did a very minor tweak in lightroom to ensure the blacks were black and the whites were white but nothing else.Aged, distressed look
Jun 29th
I have been working on aging or distressing some photos recently and thought I would post this example. There are some good presets in lightroom for an antique look but these rely on usually lowering the saturation of a photo, adding a brownish tone and a vignette. It is a reasonable effect but to take it a step further you need texture. This image has 3 textures layered in various blend modes to give a decent aged effect. I also reduced the saturation with a Hue/Sat adjustment layer. The textures can be anything from old brickwork, woods or metals. The texture used in this one was from an old wall with decaying plaster.


