Category: General

Old Photo Restoration

Old Photo Restoration

I’ve been doing a lot of photo editing recently. Changing and blurring background in Portraits as well as some creative edits. I’ll post some examples soon, however I wanted to talk about old photos.

Everyone has old photos, just sitting in a box. I have, I’m sure you have somewhere. When you look at these photos, they contain great past memories, but they just sit in the box, or out on display fading. A lot of these photos are also showing their age with scratches and marks.

I can help bring these photos back to their original state.

Here is an example of a photo that I have restored.

Contact me for more information on how you can get your photos restored.

LOP CV Photo Challenge Wk 14 – Abstract

LOP CV Photo Challenge Wk 14 – Abstract

How is everyone getting on the my CV Photo Challenges during lockdown? Please do post them to Social Media using the hashtag below, I enjoy seeing them and reply to every post.

Right, week 14 is… Abstract.

Lets get creative and make some abstract photos, then show me what you’ve taken via the challenge tag #lopcvphotochallenge

Past challenges and results can be viewed here.

LOP CV Photo Challenge Week 13 – Toys

LOP CV Photo Challenge Week 13 – Toys

This week I’m ahead of the game. I chose a new topic last night. Toys. Then photographed a sample image this morning for you! (If you wanted to know, it took 3 hours to create!)

So raid the attic search your kids toy boxes, build a lego set and get ready for the toy challenge!


Then show me all your creations and toy photos you’ve taken via the challenge tag #lopcvphotochallenge

Past challenges and results can be viewed here.

LOP CV Photo Challenge Wk 9 – Light

LOP CV Photo Challenge Wk 9 – Light

Where do the weeks go?… Another week, another challenge.

This time it’s all about light. Show me what you can do with light. Get creative, get inspired, let’s see some interesting ideas on using light in your photos.

You could create some patterns.

Add some flare

Or some colour.

Have fun and remember to use the hashtag #lopcvphotochallenge in any social media platform.

Past challenges and results can be viewed here.

LOP CV Photo Challenge Wk 8 – Patterns

LOP CV Photo Challenge Wk 8 – Patterns

Week 8! Are we ready!?

This week is going to be about patterns. These can be man or womanmade patterns, or patterns in nature. Let’s see what sort of patterns we can find.

I don’t have any examples except this one, which I happened to take this week during the ‘In the Garden’ challenge. Planned? I don’t think so!

I’m really looking forward to see what patterns can be found, both indoors and outdoor (within the rules of lockdown of course!)

Happy shooting and remember to use the hashtag #lopcvphotochallenge in any social media platform.

Past challenges and results can be viewed here.

LOP CV Photo Challenge Week 5 – Macro

LOP CV Photo Challenge Week 5 – Macro

This week I’ve gone for something a little more out of my comfort zone. Macro.

Although I have shoot Macro, I have a Love Hate relationship with it. I find myself getting mixed results, so normally don’t do too much of it.

However, I know you can get great images and very creative ones too!

So, try shooting everyday items that you might use, or raid the kitchen, there are lots of interesting item there!

Hopefully the sunny weather will be back and we can get in the garden,

and start chasing insects again, and getting 100s of blurred photos! But hopefully, get the odd Wow shot too!

Let’s see your creativity and I hope to just improve some of my macro work.

Happy shooting and remember to use the hashtag #lopcvphotochallenge

Past challenges and results can be viewed here.

LOP CV Photo Challenge Week 4 – Bottles & Cans

LOP CV Photo Challenge Week 4 – Bottles & Cans

Wow, week 4 already of my Covid19 Photo Challenge. I hope it is keeping you busy and testing your photography skills.

So, this week is Bottles and Cans. How you choose to photograph them is up to you.

I’ve made a start on Bottles and even incorporated some of my Water Challenge photos into them as well.

I then tried a different way of photographing bottles. Learning something new.

And tried a similar method on a clear bottle with white background.

Now, I’ve photographed some Cans

and I couldn’t resist adding in some water!

I had great fun working on all of these, now it’s your turn.

Happy shooting and remember to use the hashtag #lopcvphotochallenge

Past challenges and results can be viewed here.

LOP CV Photo Challenge – Week 2

LOP CV Photo Challenge – Week 2

I posted about Week 2 on Social Media, but forgot a blog post, I just added it to the main post..

Week 2 was Old Things Thank you again to everyone who took part. Here were my photos.




You can find peoples entries on social media using the hashtag #lopcvphotochallenge

Coronavirus Weekly Photography Challenge

Coronavirus Weekly Photography Challenge


Challenges
Wk 1 : Games | Wk 2 : Old Things | Wk 3 : Water | Wk 4 : Bottles and Cans | Wk 5 : Macro


Original Post
This has been quite a strange year so far with the Coronavirus. Now as it continues to spread, it is affecting everybody’s daily lives. Here in the UK, we are now being told to social distance ourselves and also self isolate.

There has never been anything like this in living human history. People are used to being indoors, on computers and watching TV, but now we HAVE to do this and stay indoors to survive.

Ultimately, this will effect our mental health, we need to try and keep positive, keep fit, keep busy and find more interesting things to do indoors so we don’t have cabin fever.

To this end, I am going to start a weekly photography challenge. Something you can do on your own or with your kids and parents, then share the results online with your friends and the world using my challenge hashtag (for twitter & instagram) and I will also create a tweet & a post to my facebook page where photos can also be added using
#lopcvphotochallenge

I will try and make the challenges varied and differing skill levels. It will all be based around things in the house, but you may need to get creative and even make things.

To start things off, the first week is Games. How you interrupt this is up to you. It can a collection of games, people playing games, a single game etc…

You can now start posting to my facebook post relating to Week 1, or reply to my Twitter post & also use the hashtag, or post on your instagram feed with #lopcvphotochallenge.

Using the hashtag allows you to see anyones submission across all the weeks.

Cosplay – Clown to Harley Quinn PT.2

Cosplay – Clown to Harley Quinn PT.2

So last month I wrote about a shoot I did, that started as a Clown shoot and progressed into a Harley Quinn shoot.

The reason behind this was partially to do with the makeup that was being worn, but also because I had planned to do a shoot a couple of months earlier for which I had bought a Harley baseball bat. Sadly, that shoot didn’t happen, but this was a great opportunity to use it and get the shots I had in my head.

Now Harley had great colours in her costumes and I’ve seen some great photos that incorporate these colours and I wanted to do a similar thing, but in my style and setup. So we set about creating some Harley Quinn style poses which I then edited in Photoshop afterwards to add in different backgrounds and smoke effects.

I created a couple of smoke effect images with the ‘classic’ colours of pink and blue in the smoke.

Then I wanted to to try and added some different types of backgrounds to the portrait. Using a background I’d made for the clown shot, I changed the colours and orientation so it followed the bat line.

Too me, a Harlequin brings to mind diamond shapes, so I create a diamond background and made a grunge version, I also whitened her face a bit in this one to make it a bit different.

and finally a sitting portrait with bat and diamonds.

One of the issues I had, was I had so much fun creating these and doing different processing, I could decide which versions I liked the most. For example, I have 4 versions of the last image.

Now all I need to do it do a Batman and or Joker shoot, that would be cool!

Moon Composite

Moon Composite

The weather this year just hasn’t been conducive to doing any Astrophotography. However, the other I did get 2 nights in February where I was able to get a couple of photographs of the Moon.

This then gave me a chance to try some editing that I had wanted to do for a while. It was creating a composite moon. I first created a Crescent Moon composite.

The composite allow you to see a crescent moon, but as a whole moon, with the bright crescent and not just the crescent itself. It’s unusual as you would never see it in this way due to the contrasts of light and dark areas created by the suns light.

This then inspired me to have a go at a full moon, using images from different moon phases that bring out the details in the craters. Again, this is something you would see across the whole of the moon due to lack of shadows with the sun being directly pointing at it.

I then added the processing to bring out the mineral colours in the moon.

I have to admit, I didn’t expect the result of the processing as previous attempts have looked less colourful. So I was quite pleased with this!

You can see more of my Astrophotography in my gallery below.

The Phantom Celebrates another 100

The Phantom Celebrates another 100

This post is steeped in history.

It starts 100 years ago and comes together in 1943. My connection started unbeknown to me in 2010 and it all joins up in 2020.

Let me explain a little. I am talking about a WWII veteran born in 1920. He was part of a rookie crew that took delivery of a Lancaster Bomber, a quite famous ‘ton-up’ Lancaster. It flew 121 sorties. It was assigned to 100 Squadron.

Now in 2010 I took photo of the Lancaster with its Phantom nose art, and in 2013 I wrote a post about the Phantom of the Ruhr talking about that aircraft with an extract from BBMF’s website on it’s operational history and crew.

I’d taken many photos of the Lancaster, but loved this artwork and the processing of the photo. I thought the black and white really brought out its detail.

So, whizz on now to 2020 and I receive an email out the blue from a Flight Lieutenant Aicheler at RAF 100 Squadron enquiring about the photo.

It turns out that the daughter of the Rear Gunner, later Squadron Leader, Geoff Green, contacted RAF 100 Sqn, asking if they could request the use of the photo as a birthday card for her father’s 100th birthday.

I have to admit, it was a total surprise to get this email and after talking to Flt Lt Aicheler I was happy to help with the request.

The card was made with my image and the 100 Sqn badge and was given to him on his birthday by people from 100 Sqn

I received a letter from the Squadron with a copy of the card and squadron badges.

It’s nice when you can be involved in something like this, even in such a small way and the fact it involves one of my photos adding to a little bit is history is quite memorable.

You can read a little more here on the RAF website – Veteran Celebrates his own Century

Valentines Maternity Review

Valentines Maternity Review

It’s Valentines Day, Happy Valentines! and what better day to review a few past Maternity Photoshoots.

I’ve been doing these types of shoots now for many years and they are one of my favourite types of shoots to do. Partially because I have 3 kids, and enjoyed shooting our own maternity shoot and partially because I get to combine my 2 main styles and create lovely shots with floating materials.

My maternity shoots are a combination of black and white images and colourful materials.

As it’s Valentines Day, let’s start with a classic black and white image. This one shows both Mum and Dad to be with a classic hand Heart pose.

or another classic low key colour side lit image.

I like black and white photos, I think they create some lovely images with great lighting and I love my material wraps. So here an image combining both.

Saying that, you just can’t beat colour and my wrap really adds colour! Here is one, a lovely golden orange wrap, taken on a dark background.

Just a simple draping of the wrap creates a love image.

I have lots of wraps, so you can choose your favourite colour and have a lovely floating wrap photo, or go for a classic blue or pink.

Or some with a bit of punch!

It doesn’t have to be on black either to have an impact. If you prefer something slightly soft but still impressive, it can be shot on white with a slight colour added to the background but still in a classic pink…

…or again something a little brighter!

I have so many variations on these styles to choose from to put in this post. If this is something that interests you, please visit my Maternity pages to have a browse, oh and Happy Valentines!

Lee Orchard
North Devon Maternity Photographer