Isle of Skye and Lake District

It all started from one of my participants idea. He said, why don’t you open a course and show people how to properly process their images? The truth is that I have seen people taking some great photos but have no idea how to properly process them.

Great idea, I thought and opened a Lightroom/Photoshop course on the isle of Skye in November 2010, just to test the waters.. What better place for it eh? Combination of making images on the isle of Skye and then, work on them for the best results.

The course came up to be a popular one and soon was fully booked.

With no further hesitation, I have now opened one more in March 2011 and one in the Lake District in January 2011.

For more details www.earthsbeautytours.com

Finally, I managed to open the photography tour to Mykonos, Greece yesterday. I must admit that I didn’t expect it to be almost full in 24 hours, there are only 2 places left as I am writing this. It seems that it will be a very popular tour and…we are the only one from the UK with a photography tour there.

www.earthsbeautytours.com

Hello everyone.

Just back from a 2 week trip to the Greek island of Mykonos. What a superb place with good weather, brilliant food and most of all, an endless potential for photography. The light is excellent and photography can be had even in the middle of the day, as long as you know what to photograph under such light.

I have managed to process most of the images and also made a wee photovideo with (as one would) some Greek music.

The gallery with all images can be found here and the video right here.

If problems with the video, the alternative is Youtube right here.

Before I start this, let me make one thing clear. This is not another HDR program.
If there are times that you really need higher range in light (inside a church with bright windows for instance) and you use Lightroom, this program will come in very handy. Yes, I have tried it and it really helps.
It will provide you with a blending of exposures and the final product will be very natural looking. It is simple to use (once you have done the initial set up) and it does what it says on the tin, natural looking blend.
Nothing to do with the algorithms of other HDR products including photoshop HDR blending. You do nothing to the final image. Just select the number of images for blending and the software does everything for you.
You need to donate some money in order to get the full version and that can be anything.

http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/lrenfuse.php

There is a video tutorial there on how to install and use it.

A good friend and fellow photographer Ian Meek, is exhibiting some of his work in Red Bus Gallery.

For more information follow this link.

Canon has released firmware updates for its EOS-1D Mark IV and EOS Rebel 550D digital SLRs.

For the 550D firmware download, click here.

For the 1D mk IV firmware download, click here.

A bit of entertainment.

Pictures from my participants in Santorini previous tours, combined with some “classic” Greek music now on…

Youtube

Last saturday, I run a photo workshop in Bamburgh, for 8 readers of Photoplus magazine. Everyone left the course with some great tips and techniques and by the smile on their face, it looks like they enjoyed it very much.

If I didn’t have that nasty cold that caused my voice to sound like a rumbling elephant, I would have enjoyed it myself even more than I did.

Adam Waring (operations editor for the magazine), wrote a few things about the day on the magazine’s blog here.

At last, some good news. I knew that at some point they would have to stop the mp war and look for delivering quality, lets hope it will arrive soon.
If you wish to bore yourself to death with technical stuff, then download the pdf file here.

A couple of weeks ago, I was running a photography course on the isle of Lewis in the outer Hebrides of Scotland.

During the composition of the picture below, one of the participants asked me if I was going to use any nd grad filters, I said no.

Why not? was the next question. The top of the log is much brighter than the part of the log in the shade (it was obvious in the viewfinder I must admit). The shade will be far too dark unless you balance the exposure with a grad filter. I did a quick spot metering and the difference was almost 5 stops (4.6 if I remember correctly).

Of course, I understand where he was coming from and if I was using my 5D mkII, I would definitely use a soft grad. However, I was trying to explain the vast dynamic range you get with negative film, in comparison with digital (and even with transparency film) but sadly, I could not convince him.

Eventually, we had to agree that we will wait until we see the results of the scanned image.

Well, Mike, here it is. The only thing I did was to underexpose the whole image by 1/3 of a stop, add some contrast and some vibrancy. The film was the Kodac ektar 100 and the camera the Mamiya RZ67 proII.

In general, the DR of 35mm digital and transparency film is around 4-5 stops where the neg film can deliver from 8-12 stops. Now, this is a huge difference. You never know, one day, maybe?