|
|
|
|
Hi Folks,
An occasional newsletter from Sean McCormack, or as you may know me, Lightroom Blog. Of course Lightroom isn't the only thing I do, it's just an extension of being a photographer. So there's a little Lightroom, a little photography and a note on a very short lived special photo education event that's on right now. I've also given a list of upcoming talks if you want to see and hear me. Feel free to pass the newsletter along if you know others that will find it useful.
Enjoy,
Sean
|
|
|
Recently I had the pleasure of the company of Ulorin Vex for a day's shooting. The weather was miserable, but come lunchtime we decided to skip the studio for a few hours. The wind was up, but the sun was sweet. I've been to Silver Strand many times, but never really noticed the rich texture of the wall that forms part of the stairway to the beach. Needless to say, I had to shoot right there. I also made a point of shooting the wall just to use for composites and textures in the future.
For this I had Ulorin face into the Sun, which also happened to be the direction the windy was blowing. Handy that. One thing to remember outdoors is to make use of the wind direction to keep the hair off the face. While I do have a 6' X 3' scrim to soften sunlight, I wanted to use the hard light of the sun to create more edge in the image. Having a model with good physique and sculpted cheekbones is a plus here. The Sun catches the latex swimwear, made by Cathouse Clothing, beautifully.
|
|
Talks
I've some talks coming up in the next few months.
Spa Hotel Lucan, Dublin Nov 26th
Lights Camera Enhance
SWPP Convention London 14th-18th Jan
Thursday 15th Jan 2015
Friday 16th Jan 2015
16.00 to 17.30 - Lightroom Digital Techniques (Masterclass) 
Lightroom Up to Speed with Sean McCormack in room: Thames Suite
Saturday 17th Jan 2015
14.00 to 18.00 - Lightroom Hands On Digital (Superclass)
Deeper into Lightroom with Sean McCormack in room: Tower Wing Boardrooms 2
This class must be pre booked to ensure your place.
|
|
5 Day Deal
Sometimes things come along that are too good not to talk about. 5 Day Deal is one of them. Imagine someone collecting together over $2000 worth of photography videos, ebooks, presets and actions, and then selling them for only $89. That's 70+ hours of video, nearly 40GB of downloads for a measly $89. Straight out, I bought this. I couldn't miss it.
Lindsay Adler's 'Designing an Image Concept' is usually $225, Zack Arias OneLight 2.0 is $75-I actually own this already, but I still bought the bundle.
For Lightroom, there's Books from Andrew S Gibon, Presets from David DuChemin, Lindsay Adler and many others. Parisian extraordinaire Serge Ramelli has a full workflow series. Landscapers will love Nicole S. Young's collection.
That's only the tip of the iceberg. Go to 5 Day Deal to see the full contents of it. Right now there's just 36 hours left. The bundle is also for charity and has raised over $100,000 so far. All in all it's unmissable.
|
|
|
Lightroom Help: I've lost my Basic Panel!
I see this a lot on forums, so if you ever find one of your panels missing in Lightroom, there's an easy way to get it back. Simply right click on any panel header and reselect the missing panel in the contexual menu. This applies to any panel in any module. It's easy to accidentally right click and deselect a panel name in a hurry without noticing. Now you'll have no fear should it happen to you.
|
|
|
|
The 60th Galway Oyster Festival was on last month. As part of the festivities, a large Marquee was built at Spanish Parade. On the Saturday night, I took a shot of the area on a Fuji X-Pro1. I didn't have a tripod with me, so I made use of the metal railings that surround the entrance to the central island that forms part of the Cladagh Basin. I used the 2 second self timer to ensure minimal motion from the camera after pressing the shutter. I did buy a release cable for the camera. If you find it, let me know!
Camera settings: 18mm ISO250 F7.1 2s. IS0 200 is the base ISO on the Fuji. The camera was set to ISO250, so I simply didn't bothering going into the menus because it was close enough to 200. F7.1 gave plenty of Depth of Field for 18mm at this distance, as I wasn't including foreground. Finally I set the camera to the T setting and selected 2 seconds to get enough light in.
I processed in Lightroom. Typically I'll apply -100 Highlights and 100 Shadows on my Landscape and Cityscape photos. In this case I backed off to -86 Highlights. To tame the lights in the photo, I pulled the Whites back. The image darkened overall, so I increased the Exposure to +0.60. To add depth to the darkest parts of the photo, I reduced Blacks to -11. Finally I added +18 Clarity to boost the midtone contrast.
You may find the image looking a little tone mapped (aka HDR), this is due to the -100 Highlights/100 Shadows trick. Reducing these will reduce that look.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
