PhotoTraining4u

PhotoTraining4U is turning out to be one of my best ever investments since I decided to take my photography a bit more seriously. It’s a superb source of information and advice with easy to follow video tutorials. The photoshop/elements tutorials, in particular, have taken my finished images to a different level and improved my workflow no end. Like wise the studio lighting lessons make things a real lot easier to understand and I've seen a marked improvement in my high key shots over the past two sessions. You could pay a fortune to learn this stuff a day course. I can't recommend the site highly enough.

From using the site I noticed that Mark Cleghorn uses Loxley Colour Labs to produce his prints. I'd been impressed with their stand at the Focus on Imaging show so I decided to give them a go. I also wanted to check my monitor calibration as my home produced prints tend to come out on the dark side. The calibration is set with a color Munki and I was keen to check the on screen colours against a professional print.

Having downloaded the Loxley upload software I sent five images off to them at 3.00pm on Wed afternoon. They arrived back as A4 prints at 7.00am the next morning, what service! The print quality is superb and far superior to my home produce efforts, and I thought they were ok. The screen calibration also seems to be spot on. I'm a convert now and I'll be trying a few more of their products over the next week or so.

New Studio Room

The Neale family visited the make shift studio this week, they're friends of ours who were up for a bit of fun posing for me. I've decided the converted bedroom at home isn't going to big enough for family groups so I hired a room locally at a reasonable rate. This worked out really well and I think this is where I'll be doing the majority of my studio stuff in future. As before, I'd spent some time researching and compiling mood boards which made up for my inexperience in arranging poses. Having said that my two favourite shots on the day were more candid, snatched, shots of the kids with natural expressions as I caught them unawares.

It was the first time I'd used my white paper background with the four lights as opposed to the Lastolite Hi Lite and it worked really well. I can't see me getting much use out of the roll though as it's already marked up quite badly. I think I'll be looking to invest in a vinyl backdrop before too long as it's going to be a lot more economical.

We had just about an hour for the session and it went really well. Both kids, Antonia and Boo Boo had no inhibitions and were perfect little posers. Sam and Scott joined in the fun and all and all we had a really good t ime.

I had no problem sorting thirty or so shots I was happy with from the session and still have quite a few more I'm sure Sam would be happy with.

All in all another good learning exercise and a few hours of really good fun for everyone involved.

UCLA Book Cover

I had a bit of a buzz this week when I received an email from UCLA asking if they could use one of my pictures for the cover of an upcoming book. It's a shot I took of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The book is a history Teaching Guide which will be published later this year.

The University came to me via my Flickr account which just goes to show the value of taking time to tag your pictures. In fact over the last few years I’ve had quite a few requests via Flickr to use my pictures for various publications, blogs and web guides.

I suppose it’s a great resource, and a cheaper option, for organisations with limited funding. In most cases they’ll get their chosen picture in exchange for a credit whereas a similar picture sourced from a Stock Agency could cost a considerable amount based on the print run involved. There’s some really good quality stuff hosted on Flickr, just take a look at the 100+, 200+ (etc) favs groups for some excellent examples.