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October 2009 Blog Entries
31 October 2009
New payment option on Project Course
If you want to enrol onto the Project Tuition Course, you now have the option of paying by convenient monthly payments. Spread the cost of the course and pay over 10 months, so that you pay as you learn. This new payment plan helps break down the cost of the course and allows you to take advantage of this great way of learning the techniques of landscape photography, in a more affordable way.
22 October 2009
Print Sale
If you are looking for that ideal Christmas present for someone special or even just yourself, then take advantage of this limited time sale of selected prints.Reduced by a massive 40% on the regular price, these A3+ size prints are available for just £45 including P&P
Click here to see available prints
21st October 2009
Filter Dilemas
A course student of mine recently asked me whether traditional slot-in filters were really needed these days when you can easily recreate the effects in Photoshop? Well, its true that Photoshop can manipulate an image and is very clever at adding the effects of a filter after the picture has been taken. But take into account your basic landscape filters and I think Photoshop struggles to be a good alternative. For a start, it cannot recreate the effects of a polariser, either in its use of boosting colours or removing reflections and glare. ND grads are vital in controlling contrast and this cannot be recovered after the image has been taken. The case for blending exposures is one way of making grad filters obsolete, but isn’t it simpler to plonk one of these over the lens before the exposure, rather than taking three exposures and then spending time and effort blending these images into the perfectly exposed image? I still think that blended images still have a digital look to them that shows they were taken using this technique, usually because the contrast balance is just too unnatural to appear real. And can Photoshop replicate the effect of a seascape with a 3-stop standard neutral density filter over the lens, giving an exposure of 15 seconds? If you need a filter to do this, why not use other filters to do their individual effects.
By shooting RAW and adjusting the White Balance of the image during processing to replicate the use of a warm up 81 series or cool down 80 series filter, is a good argument. It still doesn’t hurt to own such filters however, especially when starting out, as they teach you how the colour temperature changes with these filters over the lens and how your image will look and the way it will affect the overall mood.
Photography is gradually getting more and more computer based as technology progresses. Apart from actually getting out and taking the image, digital seems to want to make the computer the camera. I’m not against digital photography myself and I now fully embrace it and its advances, but I think its best to control the image in the field and tweak it on the computer, not the other way round.
20 October 2009
Facebook
You can now follow me and read regular updates on Facebook. Click the link below to go to my page.
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