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Showing posts from 2014

Put a polarizer on the front of your lens

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You've experienced the enhanced view of the world about you when you pop on your good quality sunglasses on brighter days. The extra contrast, definition, and colour resolution that keeps everything you see looking clear and three dimensional. The effect that a polarizing filter adds to your photos is one that isn't easily, if at all, achievable using post processing software. Because what your polarizer is doing for you is filtering out the effect of light reflecting back from the surfaces it hits. In turn you get more saturated colours and if required, bluer skies. I'm using a Circular Polarizing Filter (CPL) on my DSLR for these examples. In this example above, the sun is behind me and slightly to my right. Without making any colour tweaks to my files this is what I got using the same settings. The only difference is that I overexposed by 2 stops for the polarized shot to take into account the darkness of my filter. Most of the dark reflections in the water hav

Take control converting your photos to black and white

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There are a few ways to convert your colour photos to black and white in Photoshop. For some people, the simplest thing to do is to use the Convert to Grayscale drop down menu. The results are often quite flat and dull looking. I used the Convert to Grayscale function for the image above left. I have also used levels to increase the contrast and mid tones in an attempt to make the end result more appealing to look at. If you're happy with this image then no need to go further. In the image on the right, I used a Black and white adjustment layer to do the conversion. Here it's shown side by side with the colour image for reference.  Let's take another closer look at the results from the 2 methods I've mentioned for converting colour images to black and white. In this closer view you can clearly see that I have been able to control the different colour tones of the image while making the conversion resulting in more detail in the shadow areas and clear

Air BnB Campaign Shoot in Valencia

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Valencia was the first of the locations for this AirBnB campaign that I worked on and it was really nice to find myself in Europe again. In addition to the location shoots that were planned, the film director also wanted to include highlights of the Falles festivities in her piece. After spending the morning checking out the available locations, the spaces were confirmed and everyone was ready to roll. Because of the festivities, many of the streets were decorated with colourful bunting.  On the first day of shooting we worked through some sets and then contributed to the street decorations with laundry props that were used when we worked with a model for the scene that was set up to be shot from across the street. The following morning we shot the street scene with our poster boy model viewed from a balcony. It turned out to be a busy right of way but the production crew did a great job of managing to stop people appearing in shot without really annoying a

Air BnB Campaign Shoot in Iceland

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I'd never visited Iceland previous to this shoot but it was on my list of places I wanted to visit. And now that I've been there, it's definitely high up on my list of places I'd like to visit on my own itinerary. It really does have a magical undertone to it all and the mix of fire and ice is readily apparent as you travel around. Photo by Marisa Quiter A 4:30 am start got us to the location and on set ready for the first shots of the day. While the film and production teams were carrying out some final touches for their shots, I spent a little time outside capturing some general shots of the views surrounding the location. It was still before sunrise so I was glad that I was wearing lots of layers including thermals, a fleece, down jacket, Goretex over jacket, scarf, gloves and my Jamaican Bobsleigh Team beanie hat! Eventually the sunlight began to filter through the cloudy sky and we are able to execute our shot lists and anything else that we sa

Enhance washed out blue skies in your photos.

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When it's bright and sunny and you set your camera to capture a scene you sometimes end up compromising between great clarity in your images and a washed out blue sky. Here I'll quickly show you here how to digitally add a little more saturation back into your faded blue skies. At the same time you'll see that you can also add a little punch to the overall colours in your photo. You can opt for subtle or more extreme results very easily and quickly.

Air BnB Campaign Shoot in London, UK

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The London shoots began in a houseboat on the River Thames. The sun was kind enough to pop out so that we didn't have to contend with dull grey looking water. To keep the swans and ducks interested in staying within shot, one of the guys on the UK production crew was outside on deck with a yellow rubber duck that he made bob about in the water with the aid of a length of fishing line. This kept the ducks and swans curious enough to stick around and give their cameo performances. After the houseboat shots we moved along to central london for a street musician set up. This shot is in between some takes the film crew were capturing with the violinist managing to give her cold fingers a rest. It was quite chilly that day. I captured general stills from outside while the film makers were busy filming from the inside of a building. Once the film director had what she wanted, I was able to move inside and capture more still through the same window for this scene. The last s

Keeping my DSLR camera sensors clean.

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You've been busy swapping lenses to capture that perfect composition, you're outside, and it's windy. Chances are some dust will make it into your camera and attach itself to the filter in front of your dslr camera sensor. This is a little extreme but you can end up with shots that look like this! Dust on your sensor shows up in your photos. Where I'm based, you can take your camera in to a camera store who offer a sensor cleaning service. Some of them can even do this for you within half a day. The cost, approximately $60 each time. I quickly learned to clean my sensor myself!  I was using a wet cleaning method and even though I'm quite adept at it now, there's still some slight anxiety every time I'm in there cleaning the sensor. If it gets scratched or damaged, basically my camera instantly becomes a paperweight. And even though it's cheaper than going to the store, it still costs me almost $50 for a packet of 12 cleaning swabs plus the li

Air BnB Campaign Shoot in Kent, UK

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After spending the night in London, we traveled down to Kent to shoot a series of scenes. The film crew would capture footage for the film and I would get the still shots for the media campaigns. It was a fresh and beautifully sunny day as we arrived for lunch at The Bull . After a hearty pub lunch it was time to continue with work. The location was a beautifully converted windmill and we would be working with a child and with an animal. For this shoot you can disregard all the sayings about working with children and animals. This all went well and I would happily work again with the girl and the cat talent anytime. The cat was up first and with the help of the cat wrangler, we were able to get a whole range of usable poses for the kitchen window shot. As the day moved on we shot a few other sets within the windmill including bathroom scenes and other window shots.  Every room and corner in this fabulous conversion would have easily lent itself to beautiful scene