joela photography

New home ready to be unveiled!

2009-02-11T14:23:00.001Z

The new blog location is up and running!

Click the title link to find it.

We are moving!

2009-02-09T18:14:00.001Z

I am in the process of relocating the joela photography blog to another provider, stay tuned for links and special offers when the move takes place!

Daddy and baby pics

2009-02-02T22:54:00.002Z

Aren't cuddles from daddy just the best? More coming to the web gallery soon!

Supply and demand!

2009-01-05T16:11:00.002Z

As we are getting used to being a family of 5 I am offering only a limited number of sessions this month, and the youngest member of our clan is likely to be tucked in the sling helping me make you smile!

Dates which I have left available are Friday 9th January 10.00-12.00, Tuesday 13th January 10-12 and Saturday 31st January 10-12. The week beginning 2nd February is open for negotiation!

If you would like to enquire about an available slot follow the title link to the main website where you can use the contact form. I will be in touch to follow up your e-mail.

Shadowing the city.

2009-01-03T14:13:00.005Z

Living near 2 cities with fantastic photo opportunities virtually guarantees I will not get out + use them, especially with 3 young children in tow.

However, despite freezing temperatures a newborn and everything else I was determined to use the time while the 2 older children are out to get out there and visit some tourist type places.

Being blessed with a settled baby AND clear blue skies when I saw the Tyne bridge casting its formidable shadow over the quayside I had to climb a very steep hillside risking designer pram damage and section stitch damage to get an unobstructed view but it was SO worth it.

3 is a magic number

2008-12-18T16:32:00.002Z

Having a newborn in the house means I have an endless supply of cute photographic ideas to try out, sadly it also means I have a million reasons to end up being unable to carry them out!

Having taken almost 2 weeks to get around to shooting our Christmas card with 3 children I was glad to get another couple of shots, no matter whether they are technically good or not!

I'm very lucky in that I have 3 children who's features suit black + white processing as it cover a multitude of newborn blotchy-ness!

Location scouting with point & shoot

2008-11-18T15:49:00.002Z

Today's midwife appointment gave a fantastic opportunity to scope out some lovely autumn locations near by.

This is valley view park (or at least thats how I know it, google maps can't identify it from that name!).

JD loved running around in the leaves and we will certainly be back there at the weekend with the D300 to capture some more lovely colours to add into em & jd's project 365.

View Larger Map

Outtakes and alternates continue...

2008-11-07T16:40:00.004Z

Some more outtakes from this evening's combined Christmas portrait and project 365 sessions.

Crinkly throw from ikea, man I love that place for fabrics.

Christmas portrait outtakes

2008-10-28T18:52:00.004Z

Well, the season is nearly upon us with halloween this week and bonfire night next week its basically a whistle stop tour to Christmas from here.

Having a new baby on the way before Christmas we're eager to minimise shopping effort all round so set about doing some new portraits of our own 2 today to frame and give as gifts.

These are some of the outtakes, I think I like them better than the ones I've selected for framing!

Inspire me!

2008-10-27T13:20:00.004Z

Having made a definite effort over the last week to blow the dust off my poor neglected D300 it seemed pretty much like everything then conspired against me to prevent me taking any photographs. After my Grandad was rushed into hospital I was admitted to hospital myself then when I came home he sadly passed away. Then there's the daily chores of family life combined with preparing for a new baby, which in our case means decorating the entire house.

So it was in a very unlikely place this weekend that I found finger-itching inspiration that made me regret leaving my camera at home when I went out. I was out at the florists with my mother choosing funeral flowers for my grandad we outside next to the door I spotted a basket full of the what I thought was the most bizarre sad looking pumpkins in the world. I was inappropriately consumed with the urge to waddle home and bring back my camera and beg the florist's owners to let me photograph them. I resisted and picked out flowers helped by the fantastic store owners who offer tea and handled the whole thing with a lovely approach.

When I returned home my husband could tell I was twitching to go back, especially when I told him the basket they were sitting in was perfect newborn photo shoot size....

So we went back and bought the basket of gourds, I was totally enthralled by the colours and spent ages arranging them and getting the lighting right to show off their fantastic contrast. Then excitedly processed them in lightroom 2 ready to post.

Inside the store incidentally I discovered a wealth of fantastic seasonal 'props', lovely willow, berrys, crispy autumn-like leaves and peacock feathers so expect lots of up-coming shoots to be using such seasonal items!

Anyone who is local I can't recommend this florist enough, its the second time we've used them for a sensitive occasion when I friend suffered a miscarriage a year ago we sent a plant to offer our condolences and they met our needs perfectly.

There is more from the lovely gourd family on the 'everything else' web gallery through clicking the title link.

Abandon all technique ye who enter here....

2008-10-22T13:00:00.004+01:00

Well, having a had a break from my camera for everyone in the family to be ill I was determined to get out & about and refresh my skills this week. Of course mostly it has been on the way to or from nursery pick ups or hospital appointments but at least my poor neglected D300 got a bit of fresh air.

As for my technique, well it got abandoned. Being 33 weeks pregnant I can no longer bend down to get my son's face in the shot and if I kneel down I'd better be sure he will stay in that position because I'm basically going to be there until a crane comes to pick me up! The shots I was most pleased with today came from abandoning all hope of 'proper' photographic technique, these came as a combination from peeping over brightly painted playground toys and allowing the camera to hang at navel level and shooting on continuous.

Wave of light

2008-10-15T20:24:00.005+01:00

Last year we took part in the wave of light for babyloss awareness and lit a candle for our angel and friends and those angels who lost their fight on the unit I worked on.

This year I have realised virtually everyone I speak to has been affected by miscarriage, still birth or the loss of a child in some way so that's why I couldn't light just one or two candles this year because I realise now I would need an awful lot for all the angels who have touched my heart in the last year.

Using a mirror in this shot really is just to illustrate that we often feel like we are the only ones who have suffered loss but if we look up and look around we will find there are lots of people around us who have suffered as well and they can help us through, or at least cry with us and share precious memories.

Little Miss E

2008-09-21T15:38:00.004+01:00

I did a shoot for this little lady when she was a newborn, now she's over a year old! How time flies.

She's still as photogenic as ever, there will be more on my website when I workout what's preventing it updating!

Little Miss C

2008-09-11T16:32:00.002+01:00

I was lucky enought to re-visit a client from a newborn shoot this week, here is Little Miss C, still as gorgeous as ever!

The joela photography website has also undergone on update to the galleries and information to make it easier to use.

Birthday present

2008-08-28T19:17:00.004+01:00

Original
Tink present

A quick free lightroom preset to download, add some fairy sparkles in photoshop and your little one will be tinkerbell! Click the title link to be taken to the free download.

New website up and running

2008-08-14T13:13:00.003+01:00

Finally after a week of grappling with FTP uploading, flash templates etc the new joela photography website is up and running. The trail logo will be disappearing sometime in the next 24 hours and I might even remember to add key terms for web searches at some point as well.

Why not click on the title link to check it out & leave a bit of C&C?!

Quick tutorial - rounded corners in photoshop

2008-08-01T20:54:00.003+01:00

Rounded corners can give a lovely vintage feel and be a good compliment to this type of processing, and there's an easy way achieve them...

Select the rounded rectangle tool, check that the 'paths' option is selected on the top bar and select the area of your image you want to apply the corners to.

Now open the paths palette and click on the dotted circle icon at the bottom, this will turn the shape you have drawn into a selection.

Copy the selection and paste into a new document with a transparent background colour.

You're done!

Obviously this image has been further processed, I will be posting further tutorials on adding borders and vintage processing in upcoming posts.

A break from lightrooom

2008-07-16T20:20:00.003+01:00

As most (if not all) of the free downloads I have offered have been related to lightroom I thought it was about time I included one for our friend photoshop.

A friend asked for a Christmas card template but didn't really think anyone would appreciate that quite yet so went on to develop this thank you card. The text is customisable, as is the image and colours used. As this was put together in CS3 I can't guarantee it will work will earlier versions, enjoy! For the free download click the title link.

And sometimes its not...

2008-07-14T11:32:00.003+01:00

After a horrible shock when I picked up my D300 yesterday and the AF had stopped working I had renewed motivation to go out & shoot, of course I have 2 children so what I did (after changing lenses in dis-belief a few times and fiddling enough to get it working) is stay in & shoot of course...

This was one of the resulting shots, the others were of flowers that I got for my birthday this week. This was shot with my 50mm f1.8 lens, my favorite lens of all time but doesn't quite do its capabilities justice. As I was infact shooting the real-life 5 year old daughter and not a stuffed version she moved all the time so rather than shoot at f1.8 like I'd like to I shot at f4 to give me a slightly deeper DoF and some error room for the endless 5 year old shuffle.

To edit this shot was all about layers. I liked the original so to preserve it exported from lightroom as a TIFF to PS and used adjustment layers to make sure I didn't do anything I couldn't get rid of.

First layer: sharpening. Duplicate the background layer + run high pass filter at 2 pixels. Then add an inverted layer mask and paint in the sharpening to the areas of the image you want it (white a soft white brush). In this case I painted in over the feather. Then switch the blending mode to hard light or soft light, whatever your preference.

Second layer: black + white conversion. In this image to enhance the contrast I lightened the yellows and darkened the reds, but only very slightly.

When I was happy with these the image was flattened and the background duplicated again. The duplicate layer I set to a blending mode of colour dodge which vastly enhances the highlight areas of the image, too much in fact. I added an inverted layer mask and using a soft white brush set to 35% opacity and 40% flow painted in the highlights I wanted to emphasise.

So all in all for a fairly simple black and white image it took much longer to edit than a standard portrait!

Sometimes its best to leave alone...

2008-07-08T12:09:00.004+01:00

Editing is all about flattering your subject, sometimes you can spend hours adjusting colour balance, removing blemishes making eye sparkle, converting to black & white, using textures, frames and adding fantasy effect. And sometimes the best editing is none at all.

This little one had such a perfect pose that the best way to flatter her is to leave portrait exactly as it is. No editing required.

Challenging

2008-06-25T19:32:00.005+01:00

As part of a course I have to present some landscape and still life shots. This is so far outside my comfort zone I may need a street map!

So set off today to shoot around Newcastle city centre, yes in the midday sun, harsh light poor shadows, no midtones but what else can you do with a 3 year old in tow and a 5 year to pick up shortly afterward?

May head back down if the opportunity becomes available to get some child free time nearer sunset, unlikely as thats pretty late here at the moment. So for now a hot chocolate tinged black & white conversion will have to suffice! So instead of a processing preset to download today's title link will click through to a much better and mroe experienced regional landscape photographer.

What words are we made of?

2008-06-16T17:27:00.002+01:00

These are the words that most often arise on my shots it seems...they actually are not what I expected though obviously I tag every shot with my camera's make i expected to see more child related and less work related words..... pic is on the title link.

New portrait preset

2008-06-14T14:44:00.004+01:00

I had the pleasure of shooting this gorgeous little man this week and although we only purposefully shot her about 20 minutes got some really lovely poses.

This one just needed a little punch and I wasn't so happy with lightroom's punch preset as it darkened it down too much.

So click the title link and you can try my punchy portrait preset for free, C&C welcome.

An appeal for a friend in need.

2008-06-08T12:56:00.003+01:00

Isn't the internet a wonderful thing? A fantastic source of information, entertainment, and most importantly contact and friendship. Over the last 2 years I've been very active on flickr and have made some fantastic friends who mean as much to me as some that I see on a daily basis. We have laughed and cried together and been angry and amused together.

A few days ago I found out that an online friend is not only sick, pregnant, in financial dire straits but also now at risk of losing her precious baby to a complicated very premature delivery. To try to prevent this is hospitalised away from her husband and 2 young girls, undergoing invasive and stressful medical procedures daily and facing a huge amount of general uncertainty. You can read her blog by clicking the title link, I don't feel its my place to share all the particulars of anyone's medical condition and I don't have the words to adequately pass on the situation this family is in, nothing can do better than their own words.

So I would ask anyone to remember this family in your prayers and anyone who feels they can click the link to make a small donation. It will go toward ensuring they can secure childcare, pay some basic bills and have some comfort while separated. As they are in the USA there's little more direct I can do right now so hope this goes some small way to providing help and comfort for this family in need.

Going all girly

2008-05-28T14:58:00.003+01:00

There's something to be said for a touch of pink, I think anyway! So today's free lightroom preset is a quick & simple click for a gorgeous pink tinged split toning effect. If you like your pink hotter simply dial up the saturation! Click the title link for the free download as always.

Slight change to advertised program..

2008-05-26T17:29:00.003+01:00

In that today's free download is not a texture from my industrial trip out on location but from today's more mundane walk to feed the ducks. Click the title and follow the link to download the full quality JPEG file.

More from the tracks

2008-05-25T14:21:00.002+01:00

As its time to start another course later this week I'll be posting some landscape shots (EEKK not comfortable territory for me..) but before then here's another from our trip out to the abandoned train tracks..... keep an eye open for some free downloadable textures from the same location over the next couple of days.

Summer's here? Location location location!

2008-05-10T20:28:00.002+01:00

THE best thing about the weather turning good is the ability to get out and about. After 7 or so months of shooting inside it is so liberating to be let off the leash and find somewhere nice to take some portraits.

Today we visited some abandoned train tracks which has some great opportunities or both fake rural and more industrial shots. It is my new season's ambition to go shooting in once place I have never been before every week for the rest of the summer.

This was shot with my new 'back up buddy' a second hand D80 with my favorite lens ever (nikkor 50mm 1.8) though not fully open this is shot at f2.8 which gives just a pleasing level of depth of field at a distance, it also allows me a bigger margin than f1.8 if I'm slightly off with the auto focus points!

New free preset - an apology for a long absence

2008-03-13T11:42:00.003Z

A quick new free preset available for download from clicking the title link as usual, based on a cross-processing effect which I've found difficult to achieve in lightroom, don't know about anyone else!

Will be posting a red based cross process preset in the near future also.

Have fun!

Cards for Lois

2008-02-26T22:28:00.003Z

A contact of mine brought the situation of one her friends to my attention, she is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she has a family and she is carrying on as best she can for them. Faced with this she would like to do something to uplift her and show her that there is so much love and support in the world as she continues to put her faith in God as author of her life. Please click the title link to read her original post and send Lois a card.

A proper look

2008-01-29T20:59:00.000Z

They're finished!

2008-01-28T10:12:00.000Z

After a few weeks working on the best methods I have finally finished my first set of photoshop actions for CS3. These are not ground breaking new processing techniques but simply convenient actions for the most commonly used processing techniques. The example shown is my vintage action, examples of the rest can be found at my flickr account and they can be purchased through QXL for a very small price, the listing can be found through the title link :)

New vintage lightroom preset

2008-01-20T14:57:00.000Z

This is my new vintage look preset. Its based upon the lightroom aged photo preset but made it more to my liking! Unfortunately this one will not be available for free download via the blog but can be purchase in a pack on ebay, the listing is on the title link.

Up and coming soon will be some free photoshop actions as a sample for part of a pack I am putting together for sale, still working on some of them now, but the results look great so far!

A quick texture tutorial for photoshop.

2008-01-13T10:35:00.001Z

Part of my daily posting diet on flickr yesterday included project365 shots for myself and my kids. As it was the weekend and we've all been ill this week I opted for a lazy home based-shoot and some photoshop editing applying textures. I used Michelle Black's new freebie texture which you can find by clicking the title link. After posting a few people posted comments asking how I'd done it so decided it might be a good idea to post a tutorial here to help and PS new comers out.

Firstly, the original photo was shot against a white background, that makes editing later easier. You don't nee a back drop I often use a white wall in my house with good lighting. Today I used a projection screen but thats not particularly necessary as long as you've got a good contrast between your subject and background.

Firstly I should make it clear this tutorial is to use the texture as a background and not to apply over the entire shot. I will probably cover that later. I opened both the files in photoshop firstly. Then I selected all of the texture file and copied and pasted it into a new layer over the photograph. You can do it the other way around but will loose your EXIF data is you do.

Once the texture is pasted over the photograph you will alarmingly be unable to see your image. At this point reduce the opacity of the texture layer to around 50%. This will allow you to see what's underneath. Now with the eraser tool set to 100% opacity and 100% flow begin erasing the texture from your subject, I always start with the face and work out. Erase just almost to the edges then refine your eraser brush. Set to a smaller diamter, around 19 pixels, with opacity at 37% and flow around 74% and erase the edges in smooth strokes. Once this is done increase the opacity of the texture layer back to around 95% so you can see and spots you've missed. Once this is tidied up run the blur tool around the edges to give a smooth finish.

Don't worry if you make a mistake, you can use the undo tool if you are not using very long strokes, if there is a white area left when you increase opacity you may also be able to use the clone tool to even it out.

Have fun!

Glorius in the garden - new free preset.

2008-01-12T10:24:00.000Z

Winter may seem like an odd time for me to be advocating getting outside to shoot, but winter sun (as any driver will tell you) can be more intense than spring and summer. It gives fantastic contrasts on frosty days particularly. This image has been processed with my new garden glory lightroom preset. It will enhance shadows and emphasise the natural greens and reds in your shot to make the most of the winter sunshine.

This is my garden I did not have to wander too far to get what I wanted, I'd love to see what anyone else comes up with & how the preset looks, please feel free to post links to your pictures in the comments section.

New year new preset

2008-01-05T14:42:00.000Z

Not a fantastic photo but this is a shot from New Years day, I started the flickr 365 days project on boxing day and this is my SP. The violet doze preset is perfect for those lazy days shots and works on black & white conversions to add a little splash of colour. You can download the preset by clicking the title link, C+C welcome as always especially as this preset was exported on my mac and not the windows machine I had had to use for the others so please let me know if there are any compatibility issues.

Classic looks.

2007-12-28T14:52:00.000Z

I am a real fan of the classic look photo, so thats what today's shot and preset is all about. This shot is lit with natural sunlight and (my new toy -thank you santa) a softbox. Its the first time I have used any artificial lighting that was not onboard my camera and am quite pleased with results. Straight black and white conversion with lightroom's own high contrast B+W setting is stunning but I prefer the slightly softer look. The preset (which can be downloaded by clicking the title link) will give a sepia conversion and some background lightening to emphasise the subject.

Loads of photos to process?

2007-12-26T16:45:00.000Z

Yes me too. Christmas shots are so difficult to process I think, by the very nature of the holiday the are very busy shots and difficult to isolate your subject in. I don't claim this preset will help you do that but it will add some interest to those that are a bit flat. You can download my 'rocket man' preset by clicking the title link.

Merry Christmas everyone!

2007-12-25T19:57:00.000Z

Hope everyone had fantastic day.

XGX

More Christmas goodies..

2007-12-21T09:27:00.000Z

'Tis the season to do some standard shots, Christmas bokeh (check, covered), family shot under the Christmas tree (check, covered) and candy cane hearts. As all my contacts have moved on from bokeh light shots onto the candy canes I have made another lightroom preset to make your canes pop out of the shot. This preset is available for free download through clicking the title link. Have fun, and C+C welcome!

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-17T13:55:00.001Z

As its Christmas and I'm feeling particularly festive after carol singing last night I have my first free gift ready to download. This is a preset for lightroom design to enhance your Christmas bokeh shots. All my contacts on flickr are going bokeh mad so I though why not add some extra sparkle to those Christmas shots?

While adding some extra depth to bokeh its subtle enough in most cases not to destroy the foreground focus so will not black out your subject and need not be reserved for pure bokeh shots. Enjoy, I know I will!

Preset download at: http://www.4shared.com/file/32280030/1e7f2db6/Christmas_bokeh.html or click the title link.

Back to basics

2007-12-14T11:29:00.001Z

Have you ever done something disasterous to your computer? Well, yesterday I managed to drop a cup of juice onto my macbook. I consider this fairly disasterous. Generally I do back up every month (only once a month though) everything important, I learned this the hard way from having to formatt the hard drive on my last, 8 month old, windows PC. Its something I continued on my ultra-reliable mac, what I did not account for was my own stupidity of course! How many times have I stressed at the kids for moving drinks close to my shiny white macbook while I am working, thousands probably. So it's the ultimate irony that I should be the one the ultimately kill it off. Currently its drying out and I'm hoping the sticky sugar in the juice hasn't done too much damage. I could not bring myself to follow the (very sensible but gut wrenching) suggestion of a fellow mac-addict to pour more water on it to rinse the sugar out off components.

So I find myself without any PS actions, and actually without lightroom at all so am having to shoot in JPEG again. That said sometimes its good to be unable to rely on LR to correct your mistakes, it's good practice to think better about what's through the lens before pushing the shutter release like I used to with a film camera. So here's my back to basics shot, anyone with a spare windows copy of LR is my new best friend.....

Photoshop brushes - the essential companion to any long running challenge!

2007-12-09T15:09:00.000Z

As a said in my last post I am conducting an advent challenge, to photograph whatever my children find behind the doors of their advent calenders each day during advent.

I have to admit that I have modified my brief a little since then. I will now make an image of that object from a photograph and I have also decided that I will link it with a relevant bible verse. This will support my own daily reading and it helps me ensure that my challenge does not become a preoccupation for its own sake and that God will remain at its centre.

I found these fabulous brushes on brusheezy.com (link through the title) without which my challenge would have faltered on only day 8! My photoshops skills are not as fabulous as they should be so this will be an excellent opportunity to develop them.

Why not check out our new 'who's online' map? See who else is having a look!

What inspires you?

2007-12-07T13:03:00.001Z

What makes you want to grab your camera? What do you see and know it will make a fabulous photograph? Why do you take photographs? This advent I am challenging myself to photograph whatever turns up in my kids advent calendars everyday. I'm doing this because I have taken December to concentrate on my own family, but I still want to be challenged artistically and technically during this time and, so far, I have found few other opportunities to draw my faith into my photography.

This shot, in all honesty, was mediocre SOOC. I had envisioned beautiful light, a dramatic sky... what I found was blankets of cloud, low light levels and an uninspiring flat colour. To process this shot I used several adjustment layers in PS, one to render the sepia, another for dodging and burning and another to add the vignette.

So in those times between jobs, when you're driving to the supermarket, keep that camera close because you never know what will make you want to grab it.

Emphasising in images.

2007-12-02T14:25:00.000Z

Planning composition in photography cannot be underestimated, however there are times when further adjustment is necessary after shooting I made the adjustments to this image using PS on the mac. In the original the poor dragon fly is a bit rusted and a bit drab, plus I an only so tall so am limited as to how much distance I can get when I used a zoom lens to increase the bokeh on the shot which is fairly close range.

The first, most obviously, adjustment to make here was the saturation of the coloured aspects of the ornament. This is fairly simple using the sponge tool on PS. I also emphasised its outline with the dodge to to brighten the edges. After this I wanted to increase the saturation in the background as it looked a little washed out, but without detracting from the ornament which is the focus of the shot. To do this I used the orton effect applied to the whole image, a tutorial on achieving this effect can be found through the title link. Before using this though I selected the dragon fly with an elliptical selection tool set to feather 20 pixels and copied it, after applying the effect I re-pasted the unaltered selection back in and flattened the image.

Composite images - advantages of shooting in RAW

2007-11-30T20:22:00.001Z

Shooting in RAW & using a program like adobe lightroom has some fantastic advantages when you are shooting in difficult lighting situations in particular. This shot for example was taken with the intention of showing the dramatic sky & gathering clouds, however because of the low light level but high proportion of white in the shot the SOOC shot is drab and uninspiring. Using a program like lightroom several versions of this shot were created, some using presets and some just by adjusting the exposure, these were exported in JPEG format and opened in photoshop. This allows all the most dramatic elements of each treatment to be combined into one image and produces a vastly different shot showing off the colours and textures off all the elements in it. Although the end image I created in this case has an unnatural feel this does not have to be the case and much more subtle treatment and blending can be used.

Some movie magic in lightroom presets

2007-11-28T19:40:00.000Z

Another free lightroom preset tested today. This one brings a little movie magic, it's inspired by the visual effects from the movie 'The 300' and is available through clicking the title link.

This image came about through my involved with the flickr project365kids groups. This is day 256 for my daughter and inspiration is running low! When I asked her for inspiration she asked me to take her photo with the light off, hmm that doesn't exactly make for an inspiring shot as the flash on my nikon d40x is in fact as bright as the sun! So having asked her to at least jump in the air I used a quick crop in lightroom to focus attention more closely on her then tried out this action. This product image has no further adjustments made other than the watermark and I think it looks much more like the photo my daughter probably intended! It looks much more like the flash has stopped time and not the bleached out version that was SOOC.

Negative space.

2007-11-27T13:38:00.000Z

Negative space & atypical framing are some of my favorite composition techniques when working with children and babies. It give a fantastic hint of their small-ness and vulnerability but also requires a good eye and technical skill to execute properly.

There are some points to note when using negative space, particularly when shooting with children. Colour is an important factor. In this I converted to black + white because there were two other colours in the shot that did not compliment each other. I also chose a high contrast conversion as the last the the interest focus of the shot should be is greyscale. It should provide a stark image against the space around it. If you're staying in colour be careful to choose colours which are light and do not darken the shot too much and do not detract from your main subject.

There is more information on negative space and other aspects of composition through the title link.

In a dream

2007-11-24T18:05:00.001Z

This is another of Kelsey Smith's lightroom presets (accessible through the title link) which I just love. Its absolutely perfect for portrait shots giving fantastic colour depth and drawing the focus of interest centrally.

Thanks Kelsey is all I can say!

Inner beauty - some great lightroom presets

2007-11-23T09:31:00.000Z

These are some fantastic & free presets for lightroom. This one, called lean on me, is one of my favourites. It enhances contrast fabulously, while cutting down distractions on the edge of the frame and evening skin tone. Together with the saturation increase gives her a cute porcelain doll look. You can find this preset and others free on Kelsey Smith's site through clicking on the title, have a look around its a great site.

Nostalgia smells like ice cream and cigarettes

2007-11-21T15:27:00.000Z

I was so sad to read that this place might be closing, I spent many, happy, greedy hours in here as a child with my grandmother. It was a treat when relatives came to visit that we have a 'minchi's' in the cafe on the way back from the beach. Or any other day out actually. It was always full inside & out, I always spilled syrup on the table and there was always a full ashtray on most of the tables. Smoking seemed synonymous with ice cream.

When I heard the reason this place was likely to close was due to custom dropping since the smoking ban came into force I laughed, it seemed ridiculous that smoking was ever aloud in a place I assumed aimed to attract children as customers.

However when I think back to my time spent there it seems virtually everyone my minds eye can see had a cigarette in their mouth, even now when I taste raspberry syrup I smell cigarettes. This might seem like a case for supporting the smoking ban, but what I realize as a parent myself now is that it was actually a place for the adults to connect and the children be safe and occupied. These places are few and few between these days that are not covered in bright yellow plastic and branding. Perhaps we should allow adult to take responsibility for their own behavior and not treat them like children, even in ice cream parlors.

Rain rain go away, water my wooden flowers another day...

2007-11-20T11:26:00.000Z

Outdoor and well lit photography opportunities are extremely limited and all the real flowers have drown so these are my wooden roses. Rather than showing off my manual focusing skills I believe it has actually become a dust bunny showcase, oh well! Find your own through the title link :)

Homeward bound.

2007-11-19T14:28:00.000Z

Well, I have now given up my job to spend more time on the things I love, my children and photography. So with that in mind my first post combines to two. This is my beautiful daughter, she's full of cold at the moment and bright red & blotchy. I used one of michelle black's pro preset for lightroom to even out her skin & emphasize her eyes. You can find this action free by clicking on the title of this post.