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Objective & Subjective Lighting – What it is and how to do it

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Like many things in life, there’s no right or wrong way to learn photographic lighting… but I do believe there are easy ways and hard ways to not only understand it, but more importantly get better at it.

I think every creative discipline evolves, but photography sees more significant jumps in its evolution due to it being so uniquely tied to technology. Every frame we capture is taken with a camera and that camera technology is evolving on a daily basis. Every frame we then have to develop is primarily produced through software and that too evolves on a daily basis. The tools that we use to create our work are constantly changing but I feel that the way we learn some of the techniques associated with these tools do not.

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National Geographic used a “stock” image and it’s amazing

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As a kid who grew up with a shelf filled with yellow spines, I can attest to the rhythm and general predictability of a National Geographic cover. With few exceptions (most notably those holographic covers from the 1980s), cover photography from the 1970s, 80s and 90s followed a familiar pattern of a far away place, strange creature, or “exotic” face in saturated color. We were armchair explorers living vicariously through the eyes of those famous photographers – Indiana Joneses with a camera.

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Photoshop Tip – How to fix a glitchy Liquify brush on windows

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When I first started on my journey of learning my way around Photoshop I was a full-on Apple product fanboy, it just seemed like every creative was using an Apple machine and that I should do the same. Once I went full time I realised that I would build myself a PC that would be much more powerful for the price.

After my build was complete the first thing I did was install the Wacom drivers and Photoshop only to find that some things didn’t work quite as I had expected them to. There were major brush lag issues and the annoyance of Window Ink that would be a shock to anyone having just moved over to Windows from OSX.

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You’re beautiful! And 4 other things to never say to a portrait subject

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Do you want to create effective portraits? Then you’ve got to learn what to say to your subjects… and more importantly, what not to say. Remember the 10th Commandment of Portrait Photography: Do no harm. It’s the photographer’s job to make the subject comfortable. If your subject is comfortable, you’ll get better expressions. Better expressions mean better pictures.

That’s why I put together this handy-dandy list of 7 things you should never say to your portrait subjects… and what you should stay instead. Plus, I even put my secret “don’t smile” tip down at the bottom of this article. Now, what’s the worst thing you can say to a portrait subject? Simple! It’s…

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Photographing barn owls in infrared

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The BBC recently set me a challenge: to recreate my African Wildlife at Night photos here in the UK. This was daunting because British wildlife does not lend itself to the same approach that I used to photograph animals such as lions and hyenas in Africa. I was going to need to come up with something different!

You can watch the resulting film I made with Mike Dilger from The One Show below and then read on to learn more about the project…

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Stars of Night – Recreating Van Gogh’s masterpiece with collaborative light painting

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When the project started I wondered if this mosaic was too ambitious.

I had made a few tiled light painting mosaics and I was recently inspired by the work of Chris Bauer.  I also hadn’t been feeling like actually shooting any new pictures but I wanted to stay connect to my light painting friends so I created PieceOut.com.  This is a site that helps coordinate the creation of photo mosaics for groups of people around the world.  After I invited a few people to add tiles to a test shot (we did about a third of the Wolverine piece) I decided the site was good enough to use.

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Cross-processing AGFA Precisa slide film in negative film chemicals

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I’ve been wanting to try this experience for a long time now and finally got the opportunity to shoot a roll of expired Agfa Precisa CT 100 then got it crossed-processed in C-41 chemistry by my lab Nation Photo.

Precisa is probably one of the least known slide films that exists (at least it was to me) and I honestly had no idea how it would perform, knowing that it expired somewhere in 2005. After investigating a little, it appears that Precisa is actually a repacked Fuji Provia 100F but it costs half the price!

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I shot motorcycles as a hobby, now I am a pro, here are my best 7 tips

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My photography started as a hobby, which became and passion and led to me becoming a professional. Mainly being self-taught, I was one of the first in my field to use portable lighting, and I now light all my subjects; from nature, portraits to architecture and of course motorbikes!

I cover Motocross race meets throughout the UK and provide track days for amateur photographers to learn how to light and shoot fast moving motorbikes. I also make tutorial videos on lighting.

I undertake projects for one of the largest lighting companies in the UK and have published a book called ‘Light, Shoot, Capture’ which gives full details on lighting setups and what you can expect to gain from lighting your subjects.

Here are my best seven tips for action sports photography…

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This is how to “photograph” with the sunlight by scorching wood

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I have been interested in building a device that would record the intensity of the light from our sun for a while. This past month, a colleague of mine brought to my attention a simple way to do this. Professor Michael Peres was working at his desk on a Sunny day in January with the sun low in the sky; He started to smell something burning. After hunting around his office, he discovered the sun was imaged by one of the large decorative lenses on his window. The sun had been focused onto the wooden side of his wooden desk. When he showed the burn marks to me it was obvious the desk had been smoldering for several months.  The pattern burnt into the side of the desk was a record of the intensity and path of the sun.

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