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!

As I'm at work on St. Patricks day thought I'd better go out today while the weather is ok to take some street portraits. I'm still pretty nervous when shooting folks in town (a lot easier to ask when abroad/ on hol I find) so these are more candid with them just looking right at the last second.

These were taken with the now AF fine tuned 85mm and I am happy with the results now with the lens!

85mm 1.8g D7000

New lens arrived a couple of weeks ago! These are a couple of test shots taken at Blarney Castle.

The lens is the 85mm Nikon 1.8G

I bought it for use with portraits mainly but I think it is a great lens for other shots as well. I took it around Blarney Castle on a very cold Saturday. Here are some of the results;

Above: It's funny but I tend to shoot more landscapes with anything but superwide lens'. I think it has a perspective which feels it can be walked in whereas for me superwide can seem a little distorted/trying too hard to emulate the eye rather than the view (personal opinion/taste)

Below: Katy with the D80+50mm 1.8


 

Overall I love it!

 There have been a few minor gripes with the lens however which I think was just a bit of unluck/could happen to any lens but the AF needed tweaking. I didn't realise this as these were literally the first shots taken but as I was zooming in on images to check sharpness I noticed unfortunately where my focus point was it was off by quite a bit.

Checking online I noticed it can be quite common with some lens/camera mixes and I have now got it fine tuned using the simple AF fine tune on the D7000 itself. The next blog post will explain how I did this myself and show some before/after test results.

Now I have it working as well as I can I have a few shoots to do this week then at the weekend I'll take it out and try to shoot some portraits!

Last Monday (4th March) I went to the MacSweeny Photo Trade Show here in Cork. Here's a brief overview of the evening events and my views on them.

First of all this was a charity event, all proceeds went towards Marymount Hospice. More information on this can be found >>here<<.

As I arrived at the event (it was held at Rochestown Park Hotel) I was greeted with a cool gift bag of stuff (Calendar, sweets promo stuff and the like) then straight in to the stalls.

Exhibitors

There were plenty of trade stands there, from photography training to the big named brands (Nikon, Canon, Olympus). Each had something great to look at and get hands on with. Some super tele press lens' as seen below; (these photos from the event weren't taken by me but can be found on the Macsweeny facebook page >>here<<)



It was pretty busy which was great to see. Plenty there to see the presentations on stage by Exhibitors and speakers.

Each of the sales exhibitors had something unique to offer within their areas (some showing off flash triggers, whereas others such as Fujifilm showing off their new X series models).

I was personally impressed with Olympus' presentation which was based around the OM-D EM5. After the brief chat by Olympus' representative they brought on stage well known portrait and fashion photographer Mike Bunn who's work can be found >>here<<. As a photographer talking he gave a unique view on the strengths of the camera and it's unique selling points to an audience of people who maybe already have a DSLR or primary camera.

I asked Mike Bunn about his shooting techniques as his portrait/fashion work is quite unique. Where possible Mike will only use natural light and explained the ability to work around that challenge helped him get jobs when there were restrictions on gear (he mentioned a celebrity shoot in which no camera equipment was allowed and he was the only one who could go in with just the camera alone). 



I was really impressed with the image stabilisation in the low indoor light conditions it was still producing sharp images while shaking the camera. It definitely tempts me (I'd totally get one if I had the cash!). In terms of sales pitches or the exhibitors I think Olympus was the strongest of the evening (all had something good to offer though!)

Presentations from the professionals

After the sales exhibitors finished it was on to the presentations. First was Barry Donnellan, freelance cameraman and director from Cork explaining his conversion and use of DSLRs for freelance video productions. In his examples he showed work for a local distillery as well as footage from a documentary based on a crash at cork airport. The person I went to the show with is in to using DSLRs for filming so gained a lot from the talk which showed the advantages and tips for starting to shoot film with a DSLR. Setup costs for a rig don't seem too much but can vary in price quite a bit.

The main presentation was done by Landscape photographer John Hooton, talking about the techniques used for some shots in his new book Gathering Light on the Dingle Coast. He explained the patience which is needed for landscape photography as well as the dedication needed to get up very early to get the perfect sunrise shots on the (usually very cold) beach. He was very inspirational explaining that if there is an potential shooting opportunity it is worth taking the time to shoot. He'd regularly also go back to locations still trying to get that perfect shot.


I personally prefer the mountain shots taken by John as there were some really unique angles and use of lines to draw the eye in. The photos in the book are incredibly well taken marketable photos which is something I wanted to ask about as this style of landscape photography is becoming increasingly more well known in terms of techniques so how do you keep it unique or a cut above others.

There was a photo competition with the theme of dreams, both winner's photos can be seen on the Macsweeny facebook page linked above. Both are great shots. I'd like to see more local non commercial work shown at these events, even if not for a competition.

In summary

Overall it was a good event. After going to a few UK events it seems like there is more of a community spirit over here however I think there's great room for maybe local clubs to promote there stuff there. I didn't see many younger people there and I think there needs to be more done from a non business side to get younger people in to photo groups. Being in a few myself back in the day coming from a younger view point it can sometimes seem inaccessible and maybe community/club events could be run alongside the trade shows in future.

More information on MacSweeny Photo shop and the event can be found >>here<<

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)

These were taken on Tuesday 30th Oct at Fota Wildlife Park. I've been there plenty times before as it's a great day out for all and there are some awesome animals walking in and around the park!

It was extremely cold that day so a lot of the animals were keeping warm indoors however I managed to take a few for a series of Black and White shots. Click for larger view!

D7000 - Tamron 70-300mm lens

Here are a few tips when shooting wildlife, these can be used in a park like this (I recommend if you live in or near Cork to go by the way!) or out in the wild.

• Be patient - animals are not always active, use the time to plan a shot for when they do move. Also look at the shapes of the animals if they are static. For example, the buffalo was just lying down so I just shot a part of it which I may not have been able to if the animal was moving. Another tip is to find out when feeding times are or walk along with one of the park rangers. Wildlife park animals may move/wake up when they hear the walkie talkie going as there may be a possibility of food!
• Prepare your shots - while animals are unpredictable they will still follow a certain path most of the times. Grazing animals will tend to follow the rest of the herd so wait and see where the leader of the herd goes and set up there. While a faster lens may help most the time get that quick shot it isn't impossible with a slower or cheaper lens. I use a very cheap/old 70-300 (probably under £100 now) and am still able to get some good shots in relatively overcast light (I was shooting at mostly f7.1 to f8)
• Hold your camera tight! - we all think we're doing this all the time, then daren't go below 1/160 for fear of blurring. I've recently been really paying attention to camera holding techniques and can now go down to maybe 1/40 without getting too much blur. To do this hold your camera with your left hand cupped under the lens but pushing to the right, then counter this by gripping with your right hand but pushing left. Finally press the eyepiece tightly in so there is some pressure on your eyebrow/forehead. This dramatically reduces camera shake (remember to tuck your elbow in as well!) It can take some practice though and feel uncomfortable but will reduce blur!

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

D7000 35mm 1.8