Tag: training

Interesting First Quarter to the Year

Interesting First Quarter to the Year

It’s been an interesting start to the year.

On the tutoring front, I’ve continued Lightroon tuition, done some Mac basics sessions, more Lightroom & helped the same person with studio lighting setups & product shots and lastly fixed an email problem for a lady who’d been having problems for months.

With photography, I’ve done 2 maternity shoots, plus our own. A promotional shoot for an osteopath, lingerie shoots, bodyscapes, a couple ‘statues’ shoot and a fashion shoot!

What a great first quarter of the year! Looking forward to the next quarter.

January

January

January has been an interesting month.

Just before the New Year I did a maternity shoot, so had some nice maternity images to work up at the beginning of the month. I then had another maternity shoot as well as Nat maternity shoot too! So its been a good first half of the month for shoots.

On the training front, the first 2 weeks were relatively quiet, but since then, its been quite busy on the training front, with 2 new people booking session. 1 for Lightroom and another for iMac basics!

I have also updated my top level website. It was a website with lots of photos and information on what I do but with updates to the iPad and then later the iPhone the whole site stop working correctly. Something must have changed on the browser that for some reason stopped it. I’d spent a lot of time trying to sort it, but couldn’t, even spoke to Apple in store and they didn’t know. So I redesigned it and made it my training site.

It outlines the training I offer, costs and reference. I relatively simple site but give the information needed. It still also has links to my photography sites!

So, I’ve been busy, which is good. It stops me writing regular blog entries though, which is a shame, as I like to try and regularly put in updates for my readers!

More Photos Shoots

More Photos Shoots

In my last post, I spoke about doing a lot of portraits shoots recently.

Well, I have been busy. I’ve been doing a lot of Lightroom training and also Photography tuition on a 1-2-1 basis. Its kept me very busy.

In between all of that, I have also been doing more photo shoots!

I did a test business portrait session with a person and they were so pleased with the result, they said the photos were going straight on their website.

In another session, I photographed a boxer, it was one of his pastime activities and we did a range of photos in his boxing gear.

I took some great black and whites too, this one was with a base jumping pack

Other photo shoots this month include a Leather shoot with lots of leather jackets and some cosplay gear. I did some photos for a lady wanting to increase her modelling portfolio with some head hair and makeup photos, in a light gothic style and an unusual shoot with chains and handcuffs!

My last shoot of the year will be a Christmas Maternity shoot.

Oops, September

Oops, September

Oh dear, where did September go? Although not as busy as I could be, September just seems to have gone.

So what happened in September? Well there was more web development on going, but this is nearly finished now. I did a great materials photo shoot on a Friday at the beginning of the month followed by another on the Monday! Also photographed another stage in a stages maternity shoot.

I’ve also done more Lightroom training. A busy month for that, helping one person with an emergency and a new customer too as well a some photo shop training.

Nat and I also did a mini lighting session to learn some new lighting techniques and expand our knowledge.

So all of that and all the usual things means that September has passed with only this blog entry. Not really what I wanted, but its been busy.

October, must do better!

A Mixed Week

A Mixed Week

Hmm, what a mixed week.

It started on Sunday, I had a maternity photo viewing session, I turn my computer on, and it hung. Not good, viewing was in half an hour.

Luckily they were a bit late, and I got the machine going again. It was starting to hang everyday ever since I’d installed Yosemite.

Monday, I had the first shoot of a maternity stage multiple shoot. This was good fun. It’s the second stages shoot I’ve done, they don’t come around very often. It’s also relative short as you don’t do all the shots that you’d do in a standard maternity shoot.

After the shoot, I started up the machine to upload the photos, it hung! I rebooted and got a flashing folder icon. Apparently this means Hard Disk failure! Great!!

Luckily I had Apple Care, so they will fix it.

Tuesday, feeling a bit lost with no machine and wondering what I might have lost. Important stuff is not on there, but there is always something that you end up losing!

I was browsing a website that evening and noticed they had adult learning sessions going on all week at a local community centre. They had a photography session. I drop them a quick mail to ask if there was anything I could do for them in the future. I got a reply, saying ‘you could be the answer to my prays!’ Apparently their photographer had dropped out, so we desperately needed a replacement.

Wednesday, a Photo Shop training session followed by a trip to the Apple Store to get the Mac sorted.

They plugged it in and ran a test, a big red FAILED appeared on the screen. Yep, hard disk failure.

Thursday, I had the photography session to do at the community centre. There was only 2 people in it unfortunately, but it meant they got 1-2-1! It was good to do some classroom training again. Maybe there will be the opportunity to do some more in future.

Friday, a free day, trying to work of other bits without of course my machine. I’ll be kids sitting later so no doubt we’ll probably end up on the play station at some point. Of course there is also F1 practice and Queens Club tennis!

Rescue photos with basic editing in Lightroom

Rescue photos with basic editing in Lightroom

How many times when you are out and about with your camera, do you see a scene and think how lovely, so you take a photo, only to be disappointed with the results.

If you look at the photos below you will see that these have suffered with the above scenario.

This is why you should never just delete a photo, because with a few simple adjustments in a photo editor, in this case Lightroom, you can rescue your photos*. I have only made a few simple adjustments to the basics section in the develop module to correct these photos.
This is just using a single RAW file and no HDR processing.




In this first example, the camera has exposed for the sky, and you can see the rocks in the before side are virtually black. The after image gives a more balanced natural look. Using the shadows slider, along with the others in the basics tab, helps retrieve those details.




The second example shows a more balanced foreground but overexposed on the sky. Again, without HDR process, some simple adjustments in the Lightroom basics tab fixes this. Dragging the highlights slider will bring out the details in the sky with some adjusts of just the basics sliders.




This final example, the camera seems to have got it wrong all over the place and more manual intervention should have been used, never the less, using the same techniques as above, this photo has been saved.

This process is just one of the things I teach in my 1-to-1 sessions. I cover importing, cataloging, editing and exporting.

*there are limits to what can be recovered, and less can be recovered with JPEG files over RAWs.

New Service – Tutoring

New Service – Tutoring

I am now putting my years of photography & software knowledge together with my Teaching expericence to offer training session for people who just want to learn more about photography basic and related software.
So, if you just bought a digital camera and not sure how to manage the photos, or do you have lots of photos on or PC and don’t know how to catalogue them.
We can help. We offer short training session on a 1 to 1 basis to help you with you photography woes.

Just contact us with your requirements and we’ll see if we can help.

Quick February

Quick February

February is whizzing by! I’ve just realised that after a good start on blogging this year, it has again fallen flat on its face!

It might be due to the fact we seem to be very busy at the moment. With only a couple more weeks at my job, we are trying to build up business for when it finally finishes.

At the moment, we seem to be doing a lot with teddy bears, and getting them assembled and out the door. There is also a couple of websites on the go and I’m trying to get training courses designed for when I start on my own in April.

So busy, busy!