Your Northern Beaches Book – Special

In December 2007 I published my first book which I called “Your Northern Beaches”. After shooting this beautiful coastline of Sydney for a good four years I felt I had a broad collection to achieve one of my goals as a photographer and that was to self publish a book.

After a good six months of designing / writing / proofing and taking additional photos to fill in shots that I felt I was missing I received my two advanced copies of the book from the printer, soon followed by a truck full of my books.

This book is coming close to the completion of my first print run of 5000 books and I only have 10 cartons left and I though I would put on a special. The book retails for $27.50 plus $9 postage and I am offering the book at $20 with postage included anywhere in Australia.

The book is an 80 page pictorial journey from Manly all the way to Palm Beach with some selected shots of Sydney city in there as well. Printed on gloss paper, hard backed with a jacket. When closed the book is 27cm x 17.5cm in size and it is the only current pictorial book on the market for the area.

********* Thanks to all those who bought the book but the special is now over. Only 4 cartons left now. *************

Private Photography Workshops Central Coast

Another shot that was taken on my private photo workshop that was held on the Central Coast (26th July).

This spot at Soldiers Beach is brilliant in the right light and this time the overcast conditions, combined with a long exposure really paid off.

Again a single exposure processed once, taken with a 10 stop ND filter and a 3 stop lee ND soft grad.

Final exposure was 2 minutes at F11 which gave the lovely sky and water movement. Shot at 24mm on the 5D Mark II.

The processing of this photo is nothing new that I haven’t already covered in my latest Forresters Beach video tutorial.

Forresters Beach Boulders

This shot was taken on a private course that I ran over the weekend (26th July). Forresters Beach is full of rock formations like this and so much more. This particular shot worked perfectly under the overcast conditions and the contrast and simplicity of colours really made this shot work.

This was a single image where the RAW file was processed twice for white balance and blended. The original shot was taken with my 3 and 2 stop lee ND soft grads, which were hand held and moved up and down during the exposure to limit obvious signs a grad was used. Worked a treat.

Sunset to Sunrise, Central Coast, NSW

Last week I ran a two day private course for an underwater photographer Don (great bloke), who had himself quite a camera set up. GX617 with the 90mm and 300mm lenses, Noblex 6×12, he had a few other medium format and 35mm cameras but we would have needed a camel to cart it all around. The Noblex was impressive to look through and see in operation, might have to put that on the list for Santa.

We had some great light shooting from 9am to sunset on day one and then sunrise to the afternoon on day two. The top shot was what we got on the evening and the shot below on sunrise. In the shot below the rocks are a bit dark for me but the overall shot works as a whole I think. Very hard to get the dynamic range from dark rock detail to sky highlight in one shot. Would be a perfect shot to do two exposures on slide and blend.

Sydney Digital Photography Workshops and Courses

I finally found some time to process one of the images I showed the group on my latest Composition Sydney workshop. The idea was shooting a main panoramic image and then shooting single shots that will complement it on a creative layout like the one above.

We all took this shot with the participants attaching their own camera to my panoramic setup and using their own lenses and the techniques taught during the day. The tutorials on my course CD will then walk them through the post production and black and white toning of the image. This does look nice as a colour shot but I just love Sydney in black and white.

For those interested in my workshops they run on the first Sunday of every month. Further details can be found here.

20 rolls of film in for processing (Velvia 50 120 and Velvia 50 220)

Some how I have managed to end up with 20 rolls of film for processing. I had to sit back and think long and hard about what was on them, I guess I will find out on Friday when I get it all back. The rolls of 120 are from my new Fotoman 6×24 which will be great to see and the 220 is from the GX617.

I am working on a video post to show you all the Fotoman 6×24 as they aren’t a common sight even for the film photographers among us so stay tuned.

As you can see in the picture I use Vision Image Lab for my processing. They are the best and I have used them my whole career. If you find a good lab, stick to it, no matter where you move to.

For those who have a keen eye, in the shot I only have 16 rolls, I added another 4 from a morning shoot on Monday.

The Skillion – Shutter and Exposure Blending

While teaching a two day private course over the weekend we looked at the technique of exposure blending and also shutter blending.

Made up of 6 different images of 2 different exposure values and also shot at different shutter and iso speeds to get silky water, waves curling, water veiling off rocks, dark shots, bright shots, mid tone shots, you get the idea. Great technique and heaps of fun. All shots where taken with 10 stop ND filter to get the slow exposure during the middle of the day.

Canon 5D Mark II | shot at 24mm @ F11 | several iso speeds and shutter speeds.

Soapbox: Editing your images for the future

This post isn’t a complaint or criticism on other photographers, but just something I think all budding photographers or those who have jumped into the field and who are planning to sell their work should keep in mind regarding editing their images.

Over the past few years I have been involved in projects with companies that use my images along with other selected photographers. The images are for something like A3 Digital RGB or CMYK off set printing and the clients will ask for high res proof files at 300dpi and on more than one occasion the issue of image quality has come up from images supplied by some of these photographers.

The images look great when on the web but when supplied at high res the problems start. Some key problems of the high res images have been poor stitching alignment and blending of digital panoramic’s, pushing the image too far for shadow detail, over saturation banding and bleeding, poor film scanning etc.

When editing my own personal images film or digital all the editing is done for maximum print output. Sure something you can do with extracting more shadow detail looks great when sized down to a 900 pix wide jpeg. But print that image as a 50, 60 or 75 inch wide panoramic and your customer will be asking for a refund. Just because it looks good as a web sized jpeg doesn’t mean you do it. Especially if you are uploading this image on your web site and offering prints.

Just something to keep in mind when editing your work if you decide to dip your toe into the world of selling and printing your work to private customers and also commercial print projects.

Exposure Blending Photoshop Tutorial Forresters Beach

Just released as promised is my new tutorial on how I edited from start to finish my Forresters Beach image. (left)

The shot is a three image exposure blend and the tutorial goes through the selection of the images and the reason behind why you exposure blend and of course the images being blended and processed. There are also a lot of useful tips and tricks used during the video on how to watch and control over exposure, copying masks and more.

The tutorial has little RAW processing and is 95% Photoshop post production and is now available for immediate download. Click here.

Tutorial is $12.95 | 65MB in size | Running time is just under 25 minutes.