It is now the end of March and the Solo Photo Book Month officially starts tomorrow. You can read about the SoFoBoMo project here. From my reading of the “rules” it’s not too late to still get involved.
Mar 26
I am a big fan of the Lightroom Preset model. It was one of the reasons I switched over from Apple’s Aperture. In one click you can apply a series of develop settings to one or multiple images, making your workflow extremely efficient.
There is also the artistic side of Lightroom presets. A number of vendors and fellow enthusiasts have found some “secret sauce” settings to save as presets which give some really nice effects.
But what do you do if you purchase or download a free preset that doesn’t quite give you the effect you require?
For instance, I am a user of Gavin Seim’s Power Workflow Presets for Lightroom. I really like one particular effect but would like to reduce the Black level that is applied. Perhaps in your case you find a preset adds too much saturation, too little vibrancy, or it does an auto white balance which you don’t like. Well surely it’s easy to fix? - you simply fine tune the develop settings and save it as a new preset. Well you could but how do you know what actual settings are contained within that preset?
Mar 25
As hinted at in my previous post, one of my favourite photoblogs can be found at Chromasia.com.
This multi-award winning site features the work of David and Libby Nightingale who are based in Blackpool, the well-known seaside town in the North West of England. David and Libby commonly feature various Blackpool landmarks in their daily photoblog and being in their area at the weekend
I was inspired to try and emulate one of my favourite images, and also to make an attempt at a “Chromasia-look” preset in Lightroom.
I was camping down in Chromasia country (Blackpool and Fleetwood) this weekend and took an early morning trip out to see the Riverdance ferry/cargo ship which had ran aground on Cleveleys beach recently. It has been there since the 31st of January after being hit by a freak wave on its way back from Northern Ireland to Heysham near Morecambe.
There had been hopes that this ship could be refloated but just this weekend they announced that it would never sail again - primarily due to recent bad weather which has hampered salvage attempts and continued to damage the ship.
Being just a mile or so from the tourist mecca that is Blackpool, the ship has became quite a popular tourist attraction itself. I was out there at around 7:30 in the morning and there was just the usual dog-walkers and a couple of fellow photographers on the beach. However I passed by the wreck the following day at around 3pm and there was a very large crowd of onlookers perched on the seafront try to get a good view.
I took a series of photographs, but the wind was almost gale force and bitingly cold. Needless to say even on a solid tripod, it was a struggle to get a sharp picture. It was also difficult to get close to the wreck as Coastguard security were keeping onlookers quite a distance from the ship.
This of course is The Chrysler Building in New York City. I took this image whilst on holiday there in November 2006.
Of all the New York skyscrapers (what an old fashioned word that is nowadays), this is my favourite. It’s the ‘57 Chevy of skyscrapers. A stunning piece of architecture.
My all-time favourite shot of this building was taken by Vincent Laforet - it was used in the early magazine adverts for Apple’s Aperture. He shot a welder repairing one of the “eagles” which jut out of the building. The ones near the top - not the lower ones more prominent in this picture. If you missed those adverts and have never seen that vertigo-inducing image - you must check it out. Stunning work.
Meanwhile, I’ll happily continue to shoot from much lower and much safer levels.