Lee Greatorex Photo/3D blog

I think it's important to work with colours and tones when working within forests/parks as sometimes due to taking photos under shade it can flatten or desaturate the images slightly. There is also sometimes a very fine line between over green/ a bluer green and then going the other way with a yellowy green when editing. I made my own preset in Lightroom which I use as a base for all shots based around trees/parks/forests. I tend to create a preset with basics added then tweak that to save some time and provide some consistency within the group of shots I want to work on.

Here's the link to the preset I made if you're interested where I tend to start from for these kind of shots: Here

Some basic tips for shooting/editing a lot of greenery:

• Black and white are great but all colours of green will provide roughly the same tone of grey which could flatten out your image. Don't shy away from colour if you can help it!
• Adding warmth via temperature will quickly start giving your greens a golden/yellow look. This can look great if that is the desired effect. If you want to counter this I'd recommend keeping the tint away from the green side in Lightroom, and instead tweaking the HSL parameters to tweak the green hues then drop the saturation just a touch in yellows.
• Drop highlights down to avoid glare through the trees, as well as balancing leaves hit by the light. Don't forget to remove Chromatic Aberration if you do have light shining through in your shot as leaves in the background will be causing a lot of unwanted purples and reds to show up.

The below shots were taken last month in and around Killarney National Park. Plenty of greenery there!

These were taken last week when in Skibbereen. A puppy! Just 6 weeks old!

All shots with the 35mm.

None of these were using flash so the ISO was pretty high in some shots but most I managed to keep around 320-500. Most around 1/60sec.

Other news:

I've recently added/changed this to google+ so my profile has been updated. Click my profile on the side of the page and you should see it there!! (still getting used to it mind!)

These were taken this weekend after I spent the weekend in Skibbereen and Enniskean. Although pretty cold it was a great weekend away. It's always good down there meeting the mrs' family. Loads of nice stuff to take photos of as well!

D7000 35mm

Click for larger view:

The shot below was stitched together from multiple shots just to get the full tree in! Some really nice trees around where we stayed.






Don't forget to check my new website here!

I've seen a lot of portrait editing techniques and how-to's in various magazines and websites all with varying degrees of difficulty, software required and success.

So far my favourite is probably the simplest if you are looking for a sharp, HDR esque photo. You can also paint a mask on it to blend it a little more for a 'Dragan' style portrait. The tutorial for this can be found below and requires lightroom and photoshop (ideally cs5 or 6). This particular tutorial video is by ThatNikonGuy and you can check his other stuff out here.

 These are at the extremes of the scale just to show what can be pulled out of an image. Note it will still cause some haloing but this can be either reduced with masking (or just tone down the luminosity layer, not every photo needs to look like this!).

Below I tried it with some posers from Fota Wildlife Park. The original images can probably be found in previous posts. I just wanted to see how non studio based shots would work with it.


Again these are both at extremes but they do work. They will start to show up messy backgrounds if you have them though (like in these shots). If I were to use this technique more I'd probably just highlight small parts of the subject with the technique as the full image definitely doesn't need it unless filling the frame or you have a black background.

I took my camera out over the Jazz weekend in a hope to take some photos of the various musicians over the famous weekend. However, I've never seen the place so busy! We couldn't even see the acts we were listening to most of the time, sometimes being relegated to the smoking/beer garden.

Still it was a great weekend as always and it didn't stop me taking photos!

D7000 - 35mm 1.8

Some short tips of low light/evening photography:

• Don't be afraid of higher ISOs - modern cameras handle high ISO pretty well, most cameras now will do at least ISO1600 perfectly fine (even 3200 and above are acceptable). When you zoom in with lightroom or another package you're of course going to see noise, don't let this put you off shooting. The noise does add a warmth to some images, and in black and white it works well.
• Use the light available to you - I personally don't tend to carry my flashgun around with me if just going out with a few friends, let the lights in the area you're shooting direct where you take your shots. 
• Steady your shots with the environment - For the cityscape shot it was still relatively low light to get 3 exposures (I was at ISO250 f4) so shutter speeds were slow. For these I just wedged the camera in to the bridge I was stood on to ensure it was steadied. For pub/indoor shots, leaning against a wall or leaning on tables/ bars will help you steady the shot if you hold your camera tightly (see the previous post for steady /low shutter speed camera handling)

Ok couldn't resist! Here are a few more shots from brief stops on the roads in the valleys.

D7000 35mm 1.8

These were taken on some of the famous Levadas walks on the Island.

Taken with D7000, 35mm 1.8 lens

The Levadas are the aqueducts created to send water from the mountains down to the drier areas. There are loads of different walk trips available, most walks are about 6-8km but there are ones shorter and longer depending on your own tastes.

If you don't have a car to get around most tours cost about 20-30 euros which will take you to the location for your days activities. A lot of these are so different it is worth doing a few (we did a couple of different ones along with a jeep tour).


The below photos were taken along the way to the walks, just out of the jeep for a little break. These were higher up towards the highest peaks on the Island. There is something very Jurassic Park about the Island which is awesome! (I think a lot of people think it's just a place for old people but there's plenty to do there! Lots of mountains and cliffs! There are even activity holidays there for climbing, abseiling and such )




 More Madeira photos to come! Around Funchal (the main city)

Nikkor 35mm 1.8 D7000, Madeira

The shots below are from one of the original and still running rum distilleries on the island. It is a white rum made from the sugar cane also grown on Madeira. The rum is typically mixed with honey and lemon juice to make the local drink Poncha (which is very tasty!)

Here are some panoramas from my recent trip to Madeira, a really nice island off the Moroccan coast.

These were stitched in PS and taken with a 35mm 1.8 on a D7000 (lens distortion removed before stitching in Lightroom).

Click the images for a larger view!

These are quite narrow due to taking them Landscape at the time (they needed to be taken pretty quickly as it was windy up the peaks so not too much time to think. Hope you like them anyway!

I bought Lightroom 4 on the way back from the trip, just waiting for the postal delivery (got it retail, cheap on amazon at the moment). I'll give it a full test and review as soon as I get it. I've been using lightroom since 1.4 and have enjoyed using it since, I'll be testing the other shots taken in Madeira with it.