Category: Tutoring

Posts about my Tutoring & Services

Mini Workshop at Foggintor

Mini Workshop at Foggintor

As well as my studio based beginners workshops I also run on location workshop, both full day or mini.

This week I ran a mini workshop on Dartmoor. We chose the lovely location of Foggintor. Starting at the car park we headed down the path. We didn’t get far before we stopped for the view and then started the session.

These workshops are ideal for people who like the outdoors either Dartmoor or the Coast.

We cover the all the shooting modes and look at compostion and what lens to use.

Walking further down the path, the ruins start looming up in the distance giving more shooting opportunities.

This location is ideal for a mini workshop. The ground is flat and the main quarry and ruin are within a 20 minute walk.

Coupled with stopping to take photos, and the photography tutoring and discussion results and changes, make it an ideal location.

Mini workshops last approximately 2 hours and cover everything to get a better understanding of you camera.

Then, if you are just moving to shoot RAW, you come away with a batch of photos to do a follow-up Lightroom tutoring lesson.

If you want to learn more about your camera in an outdoor environment, please contact me to discuss a mini workshop.

Tutoring

Tutoring

I haven’t spoken about Tutoring on my blog for a while, so thought it might be a good time to give an update.

As a photography related tutor I offer several types of tutoring for people.

  1. Photography
  2. Lightroom
  3. Photoshop

Photography

Photography sessions are available in 2 formats and are for beginners and for people who want to understand their camera better.

Studio basics, is designed to cover camera settings like Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, focusing, etc under controlled studio environment conditions so you can easily try out all these features.

Mini Workshops are out and about on location and again can cover all the basics as above but on location. These are maybe better for people how prefer landscape over action photography.

Lightroom

Beginners to more advanced, setting up Lightroom, creating catalogs and learning to organise and keyword your photos, editing and exporting. All features covered at any levels.

Photoshop

Difference between Lightroom and Photoshop, learning about layers and masks, destructive vs non-destructive editing and more. How it links into Lightroom and when you need to use it.

All tutoring sessions are tailored to your needs and designed to help you get on with your photos editing and improve your photography.

For more details, please visit my tutoring page.

Now Offering Affinity Photo Tuition

Now Offering Affinity Photo Tuition

If you’ve ever wanted to improve your photos or learn how to do composites, but couldn’t afford the cost of Photoshop or didn’t want to do a monthly subscription, then Affinity Photo is for you.

Affinity Photo is a low cost single price photo editing software package that offers very comparable features to Photoshop and the plus side is, I now offer tutoring on it!

As with all my tutoring, it can be tailored to your needs, so you can get the most out of my tutoring sessions. Theses sessions can also be offered via Zoom or FaceTime so your location is also no longer a factor.

I of course still offer my usual Lightroom and Photoshop tutoring.

Use the link below for more information and details.

Photoshop – Blurring Background

Photoshop – Blurring Background

I offer a range of tutoring options for individuals and these are always tailored to your needs.

In this example, I covered background blurring. This lovely photo of a Jackdaw, was sitting on a perch that was one a couple of feet from the hedge. It gave a nice green background, but I wasn’t happy with the DOF in the photo. Ideally, the perch should have been further from the hedge, but thesis not always possible.

Like many photographers, I prefer to do it in camera if possible, but these days, many many photos are edited, so it’s good to know how to do some of these things.

In Photoshop, I have cutout the subject from the background and used Content-Aware Fill to fill the space, then used field blur to add extra blur to the background.

I think the result is better than the original but has kept a natural look in the photo.

I now offer remote tutoring for anyone interested in learning Lightroom & Photoshop, this is easier than having to deal with Covid issues and also doesn’t limit the distance of the learner. If you are a Mac user, no extra software is needed either!

Please use the link below to find out more.

Lightroom – Virtual Copies

Lightroom – Virtual Copies

Lightroom is an amazing tool, it not only allows you to catalog your photos and batch process them, it also allows you to create many copies of the same image, but virtually. So you don’t use up valuable disk space playing with different editing processes. Creating multiple copies, then of course allows you to view them side by side in Lightroom.

So, how is it done.
Start with the original and process that as desired.

When you are happy with the image, right mouse click in it or its thumbnail and select ‘Create Virtual Copy’ another thumbnail will appear next to it, with a “folded corner”.

As well as the virtual copies icon, you’ll see how many images are in the ‘stack of photos’, if stacking is turned on and the filename show a copy number too. Again, if that option is selected in view options.

Now just edit that photo as before. You can reset the settings to put you back to the original, or just continue with those as a starting point.

You now have the option to create as many as you like. When you’ve finished, you can select the edited thumbnails and press ‘N’ on the keyboard to give you a Survey Mode.

So, it’s that easy to create different versions and you can happily keep all of them knowing that you are not using megabytes of disk space.

Learning My Telescope, Focusing

Learning My Telescope, Focusing

If like me, you are new to Telescopes and using it for Astrophotography then you too are struggling with a tricky learning curve.

I’m writing this in the hope maybe I can help you with some of the issues I’ve had to try and overcome.

I want to mainly use my telescope for astrophotography. My 2 main issues have been polar alignment of my eg5 mount and focusing to get sharp photos.

My first problem was polar alignment, but I got away with it for shorter exposures, so I concentrated on trying to solve the focusing and getting pin point sharp stars.

I was amazed with my first ever Orion Nebula photo, but on closer inspection I notice it wasn’t fully in focus.

Now to me, when I took it, I thought it was in focus. I’d been told to use Live View on the camera and to zoom in 10x. It was tricky to see, but I thought it was in focus.

I learned a few things here.

1. Zooming in 10x on Live View still isn’t enough to get perfect focus
2. I need some extra help focusing.

Needing glasses for reading, I’d already thought to put those on for looking at the screen to know I’m focused, but I had been told that a Bahtinov Mask would really help as doing it by eye is not enough.

You can buy these, but you can also make them. So I made one from a downloadable template on the web.

Now when you look through a scope with this on at a bright star, you’ll see a 6 pointed star burst. Now you can adjust the focus to get the middle, ’12 to 6′ (top to bottom) line to be exactly in the middle of the other 2 lines. It’s easy enough to do and then you have perfect focus!

So now I had a lot sharper stars. As you can see from this image.

But now the star trails started and this was down to my polar alignment. This image was a 30s exposure, but I wanted more.

Polar alignment took me a lot longer to sort. My next post will talk about how I worked it all out.

Tutoring Vouchers for Christmas

Tutoring Vouchers for Christmas

If a friend or partner likes photography and you are struggling with a present idea for them, why not think about a tutoring session?

I offer gift vouchers for tutoring in Photography & Photo Editing using Lightroom or Photoshop.

Maybe they want to organise their photos, or have Lightroom and done understand it? Or just want to know what some of the setting on the camera are for?

My tutoring sessions are done at your location, or you can could an outdoor workshop.

Either way it is a great Christmas idea.

Tutoring & Workshops

Tutoring & Workshops

If you regularly visit my website or facebook page, you would know that I’m also a Tutor as well as Photographer.

I offer tutoring in photography and also editing or photograph management using Lightroom, Photoshop or your preferred piece of software.

My tutoring takes place at your location, and your level of ability. The sessions are 1-2 hours long and are tailored to what you want to learn.

I also run workshops on Dartmoor so you can learn more about using your camera out in a real environment. This is then followed up with an editing session to help you get the best from the photos you have taken.

Here is a photo from a recent workshop on Dartmoor.

Lightroom CC, Lightroom Classic?

Lightroom CC, Lightroom Classic?

So, this week Adobe have released the latest version of Lightroom. However it is not that straight forward.

If, like me you are a Lightroom user and have been using it for many years, you will either be using a stand alone version, like Lightroom 5 or 6, or you will have gone down the Creative Cloud route and be using Lightroom CC 2015.

Now, Adobe have released an update, but they have released 2 versions. Both are creative cloud versions. One is called Lightroom Classic and one is called Lightroom CC. Lightroom CC is the NEW version and Classic is the existing version. Well it is a classic after all!

Are you confused yet?

What Adobe have done is stopped Lightroom 6, the non subscription version and given us some great performance updates in its latest version. The update has also been renamed, now called Lightroom Classic. This is what we know and love and have used for many years as Lightroom Vx or Lightroom CC, but it is now Lightroom Classic, for local storing and editing of photos.

The NEW baby, Lightroom CC (version 1) is a new Lightroom with cloud storage and editing. So for people who like to edit and update their photos on the go from any device.

If you are running Lightroom 2015 CC, you will notice in your apps updates list it now says Lightroom CC Classic, you have to make a physical selection to install IF you wanted to try the new version.

For full details on functions of the new version and how it works, please take a look at Adobe’s website for more details.

I hope this information helps and please read Adobe’s site before making any decisions on updates or changes.

Backing up

Backing up

Most people these days have a computer and possibly more people own a phone.

We use our computers for a multiple of things, reading emails, browsing the web, Skype, FaceTime, Facebook, Twitter etc…

If you run a business, or are a student, you might write letters, create spreadsheets, or create pieces of art in a graphics package like photoshop.

If you are an iPhone or iPad user and you take photos, then these may also be transferred to your computer too or you might backup your iPhone to your computer. This goes for other phones too, like Samsung or Nokia which might be backed up to your computer.

Now this is all great, everything works, you turn your computer on and off you go… or does it.

I’ve used computers for around 30 years and over that time everything has worked pretty much as it should, however, I’ve also had problems with computers not starting and hard drives failing. 3 hard drives in total. It doesn’t sound much, but when your data is stored on them, it’s EVERYTHING! Some of these drives have been a few years old, but my one failure was on a new computer just a couple of months old.

As a photographer, I have to think about ways of storing my photos and data, so I can access them, even if the worst happens. These days cloud solutions are very popular, but a lot of people like to keep their data local or don’t know about or trust the cloud.

So, an easy solution for backing up is to create a copy of everything you do. If you take photos, create an extra copy. When you’ve updated a spreadsheet, create a backup copy. Now the important part here, is the copy must be stored in a separate location to the original. So if your data is on your computer, create these copies on an external drive. External drives are cheap enough to buy and easy to use.

You should create a process for yourself. At the end of the working day, copy your new and updated data to your external (backup) drive. Get into the habit of doing this regularly or even better daily.

It might sound like a drag (no pun intended!), but it is better then losing your files.

Another option to manually backing up, is to get some backup software that can do it for you. If you use a iMac, then even better, that has it on built in software and recognises when you have your back up drive plugged in and it does it for you.

If you are a photographer and you use lightroom, that gives you an option to create a second copy when you import. Simple!

So find a method for you that works and backup on a regular basis.

Your backup drive needs to be big enough to store all your data, so look at your disk sizes and buy bigger. Backup software sometimes does incremental backups, so creates more than one copy on the drive to protect against bad sectors or you saving a ‘wrong’ version of your file.

Once you’ve got your backup process and drive in place, remember that hard drive might also fail, so maybe backup the backup? Another problem with this in house method, is your data is still in one location, i.e. in house or your office.

Backing up is a simple thing to do to help protect your data, but you do still need to think a little further than just your local backup. It is however a good start, as a backup is better than no backup, but maybe not as good as 2 or 3 backups stored in different places

Learning Lightroom

Learning Lightroom

With my photography I use Lightroom software. I use it to manage and edit all my photos and for good reason. It is an excellent piece of software.

I shoot using the RAW setting on the camera and this gives me great editing power over my photos.

As I am a tutor by trade, I also offer tuition on Lightroom to help photographers, both pro and amateur get the most of their photography.

As you can see using the software can really help with tricky lighting when shooting landscapes. It is also great for just lighting up photos and getting details back.

As well as creating in interesting feel to a photo that might otherwise seem a little dull.

Its other major power is cataloging your photos with many features to help you sort, whittle down, compare and more importantly find your photos quickly!

I offer the training on a 1-2-1, please contact me for more details.

Photographing Bottles

Photographing Bottles

Sometimes when tutoring you get asked about a specific thing a bit more unusual than normal. This happened today.

Whilst doing a Lightroom session we were discussing past studio work that I had helped out with and the current products that were being photographed were bottles. To be precise, bottles of wine for a large supermarket chain!

I had photographed bottle products before but couldn’t quite remember my setup, so a quick bit of research and also adjusting for the fact that we weren’t in a studio, we set up the light and made some minor adjustments to how it could work and took some shots. They came out well and we wound up the session and I headed home.

I wanted to give it ago in my studio when I got home, so I setup 3 lights. 1 large octagon light as the back light and 2 rectangular soft boxes, one on each side.

I took 6 photos and selected the last couple to show. From starting to set up the lights to final photo was no longer than 20mins and this photos are straight out the camera with just a crop and minor highlight tweak in Lightroom. They are not cutout so the small block at the bottom is a toy brick and is what the bottle was perched on! If this was a ‘proper’ shoot, I would have edited out the wooden block!

The first photo is with both sidelight vertically positioned, creating 2 lines down the bottle.

The next image is with the right light rotated through 90 degrees, this makes a light instead of a strip.

My soft boxes also have a grid in them and this is shown in the highlight on the bottle.

I am not a great wine drinker, so the first bottle I found, was in fact one I had kept for photographing at some point. I was then going to find a wine bottle and try that and remove the grids, but my studio got taken over by Nat, photographing other bits so the other bottle shots will have to follow later.

I think there is some improvement to be made on this so will have another go and show the results too.