Category: General

Photo Editing

Photo Editing

One of the many Services I offer is photo editing.

This can range from a simple background replacement

To something a lot more complex.

I offer editing to Professional Photographers, who aren’t totally up on their editing skills (I offer tutoring for that) or editing for small businesses who just need their images tweaked for their websites.

Colour changes and composite work.

Other recent work has been fixing lighting issues in group portraits and replacing the background. Product cutout on to white background and many website image tidy-ups.

Whatever your photo editing need, please get in touch to discuss your requirements.

Dartmoor Tor List

Dartmoor Tor List

Over the years I’ve been visiting Dartmoor I’ve tried to always learn about the landscape and area that I’m visiting.

One of the trickiest has been identifying tors from a distance without a grid or GPS reference.

Tors photos are all well and good, but sometimes just show the tor up close.

So, I’ve decided to make my own tor list. It is not perfect and still probably won’t help everyone, but it’s still fun to create and gets me climbing tors!

Here’s a few photos from it.

This is Links Tor, shown from different angles.

This is Middle Staple Tor

The idea is some long distance and close up photos from different angles and although I can’t cover all aspects, I’ve included Grid References and What 3 Words.

It might help a few people, if not, I’ve had fun exploring them.

The list currently has 19 Tors, so a long way to go and a lot of walking too!

Sports Balls Overlays

Sports Balls Overlays

After nearly getting stranded with car problems on my way back from the Mini Dartmoor Workshop, I seem to have found myself with a lot of time stuck at home. Yes, the car didn’t make it.

Recently I seem to have sold quite a few of my Tennis Ball overlays. These seem to be quite popular and are available via Etsy, but weren’t shown on my website.

So, I’ve fixed that. I have completely revamped my Digital Section so show everything I offer. Still only available to but via my Etsy shop, but at least I now show everything.

The Tennis Balls as I mentioned sell quite regularly, but I also have Cricket Balls

and newly created Basketballs

I will also be adding some more soon.

Walking the Coast: SW Coast Path

Walking the Coast: SW Coast Path

Following on from my post in November, Walking the Coast, we have been slowly walking the South West Coast Path and trying to join the dots of the locations we visit.

Before then covered a bit of ground in October

Westward Ho!, then another time Widemouth to Millook

Lovely inland views

and dramatic Millook Haven

In November, as mentioned we walked from Sandymouth to Duckpool. The problem we have is we are limited on time and have to always do the return walk to the car.

Sandymouth to Duckpool

We tried Brownham to Hartland Point, but realised it was too far, plus is wasn’t great weather.

So popped back to the car to get a bit closer a Titchberry and walked from there.

Crackington Haven was our last trip, but didn’t connect that with any other point either, so just a walk along the path.

Mixed in with these was trips to Dartmoor, but that’s another post for later.

Long Exposure Photography (Part 2)

Long Exposure Photography (Part 2)

So, following on from Part 1, I knew that to take advantage of all these lovely places I was visiting and to improve my long exposure photography, something had to change.

I’d come to the conclusion that it was my filter, so on to eBay and purchase a new darker Cokin filter.

I’d researched some places on Dartmoor to photo and thought I’d give it all another go.

Things didn’t start too bad but definitely didn’t end well. I’ll explain why…

I was right about the place it was amazing!

So I set-up and took some photos. Sun was in the wrong place causing glare and flare! So moved around the stream finding better locations.

Secondly this was the first time I’d used my tripod and the moors and I hadn’t realised just how heavy it was to carry! 2.7kgs, that’s a lot when you have a lot of gear too. Carrying that to locations and up and down steep paths and sides of hills was tricky and it just got heavier in time.

I put all that aside and walked along the lovely river taking photos as a went. All on the view finder the images looked a lot better, not blown out, no orange tint, just a little darker, which is good.

I explored all along the stream, photographing the rapids and waterfalls. Brilliant, 150 photos of this lovely location. I’ll have some lovely photos. How wrong I was!

I had 150 photos that were destined to go no further than the bin! I was worse of than before!

They had strange lines on them, blurred edges, rainbow coloured blobs. The so called filter was definitely not photographic quality and probably nothing more than a bit of plastic. The photos went in the computer bin and the filter quickly followed to the bin aswell.

So, lesson again learnt, you get what you pay for. Time to find something decent and give it all another go.

If you want to now how this turned out, Read part 3!

Long Exposure Photography (Part 1)

Long Exposure Photography (Part 1)

Something I’ve always wanted to try long exposure photography. Visiting the beaches and moor has given me the opportunity to do this.

So at the end of last year I decided to give it a go. I had mixed results.

I found my old Cokin filters and adapter and collected my studio tripod and set off to the beach.

Firstly finding the right location and position is not as easy as it seems. The tide was either in the wrong place or there were no interesting rocks around. Plus I ended up with some very wet feet!

However I persevered.

I struggled though, I’d tried a few year ago and gave up and despite my best efforts everything still seemed to be bright and blown out. On editing the photos later I noticed a strange red/orange tint. This is why I’d stopped last time I’d tried it.

(The above took a lot of editing to get to this but you can see the tint.)

I’m not giving up this time though, so tried again on a different day. I’d found an amazing place and had to give it ago.

Once again, everything bright and orange tint. I was coming to the conclusion it must be my filter.

The final photos I took on this day were so bad that I resulted in turning them to black and white just to get something from them.

I was fed up, why was I having this problem, watching youtube videos I was doing everything right and they clicked the shutter and got great photos. Something had to changeā€¦

Read part 2 to find out what I did.

Dartmoor365 A7 – Okehampton Castle

Dartmoor365 A7 – Okehampton Castle

Recently I’ve been doing quite a few Re-enactor portraits. Sometime these require a brick or stone background. My Re-enactor portraits all have digital background from photos I have taken over the years. These gave me an idea.

I decided I could kill 2 birds with 1 stone, so to speak. I hadn’t done a Dartmoor 365 square in a little while (although visited Fingle bridge this which is one) so decided to visit Okehampton Castle and cross of the first square. A7.

It’s been a place I’ve wanted to visit since moving to Devon and it didn’t disappoint. It’s bigger than I realised and has a lot ruins to see.

After walking around the ruins and taking pictures of walls, or floors, people must think I strange, I then headed off on a not so short walk across the fields to B6. I have that square already, but i was a nice walk.

You can track my progress here.

New Composite Elements

New Composite Elements

After photographing the Warhammer figure and creating the planet, it gave me a bit more inspiration. So, I’ve been creating more composite elements. Moons and Planets that are and will be listed on my Etsy Shop for you to purchase.

These are transparent overlay which I have displayed here on black or star backgrounds.

It start creating some fictional planets

and also created a nebula

Then I went on to create some photo realistic interpretations of real planets from the solar system.

and a digital representation of the Milky Way!

When I can, I will try and create the rest of them and they will also be available on Etsy.

Digital Gallery Headers

Digital Gallery Headers

A few years ago I started creating digital backgrounds and selling them via Etsy.

Last year I expanded on that and created some digital frame galleries. These are Website or Social Media Header images that look like picture galleries.

They are supplied as transparent pngs, so look walls with frames that have holes in them. In effect, they are!

This example shows a colour fabric style wall with wood frames.

Using a photo edit package, you can scale and position your photos under the frame layer. Then crop to the required size for your header.

To ultimately create a fully header image for use on your website, or social media platform.

You can then get creative. In this example I’ve extended the sides and added text in the brick areas.

I’ve used some on my website. Here is a banner used in my maternity section.

Here is one used on my blog

Because they are not supplied in a narrow ratio, but 6 x 4 and a big 6000 x 4000 pixels, they can also be used as a computer desktop wallpaper.

And I’ve even used one in the link below. Please visit that page to see all my textures and frame and access my Etsy shop LeoPhotography.

Does my Blog Work?

Does my Blog Work?

As I mentioned in my last post, I haven’t posted in my blog since May! Now, I’ve been blogging for many years and tried to keep a steady flow of posts coming to the blog. However over the last year or so these have been dramatically reducing. Partially to being busy but partially to wondering if blogs, or at least my blog actually brings benefit to my website and business.

In the past I’ve believed it creates footfall to the site. The text gets indexed, then found in the Search engines and people arrive to read it and view my site.

More recently I have began to rethink this. The stats definitely show a lot of hits, but that doesn’t equate to anything. What it does do is create a lot of spam! So much so that I’ve actually turned off comments to the blog. If genuine people want to contact me, then I’m just a click away if needed.

So that’s a little explanation on my lack of posts. I have however been busy with quite a few things that I want to share, so will, I promise, blog about these and share them with you!

Blog Absence

Blog Absence

I realised the other day that I have ben blog absent for quite a while, in fact, since May! That my longest blog absence ever, and it not good.

However, I have done quite a few things in that time and worked on some new ideas and projects, so I’m going to make it priority to getting blogging on these in the next few days and get some new posts out!

New Camo & Spring Bird Photography

New Camo & Spring Bird Photography

In lockdown earlier this year, I spent some time taking photos in the garden. I’d set up some netting and was shooting from underneath it to capture some great photos.

As spring has now arrived, I wanted to try and get a different angle on the birds and set up some ground feeding areas beneath my blossoming apple. Now, to get close I had to rethink my camouflage and decided to start creating my own gear for my lens, camera and eventually tripod.

So having made my first couple of pieces, I started putting it to the test.

Wearing a green fleece, I blended in too. The birds were quite happy to land a few metres in front of my on the lawn.


It wasn’t long before they also started landing in the tree.


I’m not saying my new covers are magic, but they seem to work well enough for the birds to be comfortable with the camera being disguised enough to come down and feed.

I need to finish making the camera cover, then I plan to create a tripod cover.


I think I need to make a ground cushion/kneeling cushion as its quite uncomfortable sitting on the ground for hours.


It will be very similar to the bean bag support I’ve made.

I am hoping to make these to sell them. When I’ve done this I’ll give an update and how you can buy them.