Articles
Most of my blog entries are transitory in nature.. they’re about what I shot on that day, or what I thought at that time.
These articles are little different. They are meant as a free learning resource about different aspects of photography, covering anything from the basics of exposure all the way through to digital asset management and colour work flow. Please feel free to share the content or link to it, but if you do, all I ask is that the appropriate credit is applied.
In saying that, my blog itself also contains info relating to equipment reviews, editing and workflow tips and tutorials as well as discussions on technique – most of which are listed below.
Posted by ciaran on February 1, 2013 in Blog, Editing & Workflow | 5 comments
Put simply, contrast is the different between light and dark. An image with good contrast, will have detail from black (shadow) all the way through to white (highlight), where as a low contrast image will be missing true blacks and/or true whites. There are lots of tools available for increasing/improving the contrast in an image, most notably the levels and/or curves adjustment layers in Photoshop. Whilst they are both controlled in different ways, they effectively operate on an image in the same way, in that they move the darker tones...
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Posted by ciaran on January 11, 2013 in Blog, Editing & Workflow | 2 comments
There seems to be a trend amongst photographers at the moment, posting images that are “un-retouched” or “straight out of the camera” as if this some how makes the shot better? Well for me, I’m all for giving a shot a little bit of loving in Photoshop. What’s important for me is the final image, more so than the journey. So I don’t necessarily care if a shot is arrived at through hours of retouching effort or indeed uploaded straight from the camera – it’s all about the image at the end of...
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Posted by ciaran on November 23, 2012 in Blog, Technique | 1 comment
Yes, I did use the dreaded term… “Snapshot”. A lot of photographers, including myself, hate to have our work referred to as a snap, or snapshot. To me, there’s a big difference between a snapshot and a photograph. A photograph is constructed, where a snapshot is really just recorded. It’s all the various elements that go into constructing a photograph, that make it such! The composition, the lighting, the mood etc. where as a snapshot is just “grabbed” without thoughts to any photographic aspects.
But,...
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Posted by ciaran on October 26, 2012 in Blog, Technique | 8 comments
Let me say this again… your camera can not meter for flash. Cameras have what are known as ambient light meters (reflective light meters to be exact); they measure continuous light, or light that is there all the time. They don’t have the capability to meter flash, which is a strobe or pulse of light, of very short duration that is only there for a fraction of the exposure. So why is this important?
Well, most people use their flashes on camera. OK, so I know this is a cardinal sin and they should be burned at the stake for doing...
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Posted by ciaran on October 15, 2012 in Blog, Editing & Workflow | 4 comments
Depending on your point of view, I’m either incredibly lazy, or incredibly efficient. For me, in pretty much everything I do, it’s all about the maximum gain for the least effort and this ethos feeds into my photography. When shooting I’ll put a little bit of extra effort in when taking an image, in order to avoid having to put a lot of effort in later in Photoshop. So I do my best to get it as close to being “right” in camera as I can. But some times, no matter what you do, you can’t quite get a shot...
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Posted by ciaran on October 5, 2012 in Blog, Editing & Workflow | 11 comments
I’ve had my Photoshop actions online for quite some time, which are free to download and free to use (all without support of course..). In that time, my actions have grown and I just haven’t had the chance to update a post, explaining what each of them does, so figured today was the day
Revert To Original
Straight forward enough. Clicking this will cancel all your edits and revert back to the last save. You will be prompted for confirmation before it does this though… just to...
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Posted by ciaran on September 26, 2012 in | 0 comments
Most of my blog entries are transitory in nature.. they’re about what I shot on that day, or what I thought at that time.
These articles are little different. They are meant as a free learning resource about different aspects of photography, covering anything from the basics of exposure all the way through to digital asset management and colour work flow. Please feel free to share the content or link to it, but if you do, all I ask is that the appropriate credit is applied.
In saying that, my blog itself also contains info relating to...
read more
