Howarth 1940's Weekend

This weekend just gone we all set off to Howarth to visit, for the first time, their 1940's themed weekend. David had wanted to go ever since seeing a photo taken there that was publiched in Practical Photography and as it only happend one weekend in May each year it's been quite a wait. Of course as David has been ill with tonsillitis it was touch and go weather we would go or not, but in the end we made it.

Workflow and me

Some people might question why a photographer might give away secrets like workflow but my response to that would be that I am someone who likes to pass knowledge on rather than keep it to myself.  Kind of like the film "Pay It Forward" I believe that ultmiately I will benefit by passing knoweldge on and make the photography world a better place.

First of all I have to point out that this is my workflow and this is what works for me.  It might not work for you but it might give you some pointers on developing your own workflow.

I am a Canon shooter but I don't use the Canon software; I useAdobe Lightroom for importing, cataloging and most of my aediting and adjustments.  Occassionaly I will use Adobe Photoshop for further editing that is beyond Lightroom.

So here's my general workflow:

1. I import the photographs


2. I mass keyword groups of photos that were from a particular shoot, occassion or outing.


3. I will now run though all the photos from the set and either flag a photo as a "pick" ([P] key in Lightroom)or "reject" ([X] key).  As a general rule I will flag any photo that is out of focas or badly composed as reject and mark any acceptable image as a pick.


4. I now apply a filter in lightroom to only show me the "pick" flagged photos.  I then move carefully through the filtered set and rate any image that I deem to be worthy of further work as a 1.


5. I then apply a further filter to show me all my 1 star images.  This is where I will now spend time on each image in the Develop module making small adjustmentsto each image and then making further larger adjustments (be it a crop or changng to black and white).


6. If I feel the need to take an dimage to Photoshop I will give the image a colour flag (i.e. Red).  After making the minor adjustments in Lightroom I will visit each Red image and export it to Photoshop.

This is a general outline of my workflow and rom time to time I may alter this for a specific project or photo set.

Good morning...

Good morning everyone!


This is just a quick post to show off a photo taken by my 4 and half year old daughter.  In my last post I showed off a photo of her in action and here's the reverse of that photo.

I am planning to take her out with me the next time I got shooting wildlife.  She's follow me round with her little compact camera and hopefully she get some great shots because she is a natural.

Young Photographer

Whilst I was working on my water droplet mini project yesterday ,y litle 4 years old was anxious to have a go with the cameras. As she can be a little clumsy I relented and instead of the SLRs my wife handed her a small compact camera.  She LOVED IT! It made me realise just how much digital photography is open to everyone and how young children can especially enjoy the magic of taking photos.  With an innocent eye and a passion to photograph everything (eveything my little girl included the inside of the ktichen bin!). Here she is in action.

Creativity Born Out of Bordom

Whilst I have been ill with tonsillitis this week and something else that the blood test will hopefully reveal I have been a wee bit lacking in the creativity department photographically.  Well today I put an end to that and here I will show off a could of my water droplet photos that I am really pleased with.  It's a technique I haven't used before and I am really chuffed with the results.  Let me know what you think.

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I am signing off now to enjoy a rleaxing evening with my fantastic wife!

Bye for now...

Feeling Ill But Learnin

This past few days I've been laid up with tonsillitis, an I never knew it could do that. It's been awful but I've spent my time in bed watching some great programs about the second world war. Although I thought I knew a fair bit about the conflict I have been amazed by what I have learnt and I'm looking forward finding out even more.

Just before I got I'll we all went as a family to a Noddy day out at Harewood House in Leeds. It was a great day, the Noddy part was OK but the house and gardens are simply stunning. We took some great photos that I will share very soon so keep checking back.

We have now started taking confirmed bookings for weddings and we are looking forward to the first date in our diary just next month!

That's all for now folks, take care.