Here are the two images that we started with:

When combined using Photoshop and adding this texture:

The final image resulted looking like this:

After shooting the two images needed I then showed a simple 2 light set up to create a beauty head shot, using a large softbox as the background metered at F/16 and a shoot through brolley at the front set at F/8. A reflector was then used to complete the Clam Shell set up ligting the shadows under the models chin and eyes. Below is the final result:

RESOURCES:

Step by step guide: Download Here
X-Rite Colour Checker: 

Colour Passport for RAW
This is a great tool for getting your colours correct and fixing your white balance. Comes with software that generates a profile specific to your camera. If you are colour blind this is a must!

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What is Chromatic Aberration?

“Chromatic Aberration is the effect produced by the refraction of different wavelengths of light through slightly different angles, resulting in a failure to focus.”

So in layman’s terms what this results to is a separation of the colours in white light due to a defect in the lens glass, this looks like a rainbow effect on the edge of features in an image. See example below:

There are several ways that you can reduce this:

a) If you are using a filter on the front of your lens try removing it. Take a picture with and without it on of the same subject and compare the results. Cheaper filters made of glass or plastic can increase the amount of CA (from now on I will just write CA for Chromatic Aberration).
b) Invest in better optics (lenses) the top range of lenses tend to be made from higher quality glass or crystal, this will have a major affect on the amount of CA in an image. Although it will be noticeably less there may still be some signs of CA.
c) Remove it in post production either in Lightroom or with Photoshop. Lightroom has a feature where you can use an eyedropper to sample the chromatic colour cast and it will try its best to remove it, the problem is it will remove that colour from the whole image and not just the select areas you want it removed from. I would recommend that you remove it selectively in Photoshop using the following method.

Step 1
Open your image in Photoshop.

Step 2
Duplicate your layer by pressing Ctrl/Cmd+J on your keyboard.

Step 3
Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur…

The amount of blur you chose will depend on the image you are working on, you should blur it just enough so the edge detail is lost like the image below, once you are happy press OK:

Step 4
Go to the layers palette and change the blending mode of the blurred layer to “Color”.

You should now see that a lot of the CA has been removed, if not all of it. At the moment though it is applying this affect to the whole of the image, but we only want to apply it to the areas where there is CA.

Step 5
You must now add an inverted Layer Mask. This can be done by holding “Alt” on the keyboard as you press the “Add Layer Mask” icon as shown below:

You should then see a black layer mask appear next to your blur layer, the CA will reappear as you have now hidden this layer. We must paint back in the areas we want the CA to be removed from in white.

Step 6
Select the brush tool by pressing “B” on your keyboard.
Press “D” on your keyboard to select your foreground/background colours back to their default values.
Press “X” on your keyboard to switch the foreground colour to white.
Use the “[ and ]” buttons on your keyboard to quickly resize your brush and start to paint over where you want the CA to be removed.

Below you can see the areas I painted in on the mask for where I wanted to remove the CA, the second picture is before and the third is after.

As you can see most of the CA has gone, it doesn’t always clear it completely but if you wanted you could flatten the image by pressing Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+E on your keyboard and repeat the process from Step 2.

Alternatively you can merge it all up to a new layer by pressing “Ctrl/Cmd+Alt+Shift+E”. Repeat steps 2-4 and instead of re-painting a new mask you can grab hold of the last one you created, whilst holding “Alt” on the keyboard, drag it onto the new blurred layer and it will duplicate the mask for you.

I hope this tutorial helps you, if it does please remember to comment below and share the tutorial!

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1) You have been practising photography a while as a hobby, would like to earn some money from your photography and have thought about furthering your skills by taking a degree.

2) You are a student at GCSE/A-Level wondering if you should choose to do a degree in photography.

3) You have applied for professional photography jobs but not been shortlisted despite having an amazing portfolio.

4) You are looking for a career change.

Do I need a degree in photography? If you intend to work as a freelance photographer the short answer to this question is probably “No, you do not need a degree” as long as your portfolio is good and you have a good business head you should be able to find yourself some work.

We all know someone who doesn’t have a degree in photography and produces some amazing work, and we all know someone who has a degree in photography and produces a load of rubbish. The problem occurs when you plan to work for someone else as part of a photographic team.

As a case study I would like to share with you my story so you can understand my choice for returning to university to gain a degree in photography and the benefits that it has given me.

In 2008 I worked aboard Royal Caribbean’s The Liberty of the Seas as a cruise ship photographer, for this I needed no previous experience just an ability to work with people. I was part of a team of 25 photographers on this one ship, photography involved studio portraits, events, weddings and outings so there were plenty of opportunity to learn the skills I needed. Previous to this I had been working as a landscaper but due to the recession I lost my job, which is why I decided to turn my hobby into a full time career.

Returning from the ships I worked as an IT Engineer whilst continuing with photography part time covering weddings, portraits and events. About 3.5 years ago now I started teaching photography privately, with over 1600 students sitting my Basic Course to date I fell in love with teaching. My IT work was taken over by a new firm who wanted to half the amount of staff, which got me to thinking I would like to become a full time photographer again.

Having sent CV’s out to various places including Ikea and River Island who have their own photographic teams I kept receiving rejection letters, not one was I shortlisted for. Curious to why this was I called them, the first question they asked was “Do you have a degree in photography on your CV?” having told them no they then told me “Without a degree on your CV we will not even look at your portfolio, you will be rejected straight away”. The reason for this is that like many things photography has become very popular and fashionable, especially now it is much more affordable. This has led to a massive increase in applicants, so the quickest way to get through the applicants is to discard the CV’s without a degree on them.

This was a major problem for me as only running the photography business part time meant that I did not have enough clients to leave my job and support myself straight away. Without a degree it did not give me the option to take my teaching skills to be able to teach photography in a school, college or university. Returning to university at 27 years of age was a big decision for me and one not to be taken lightly.

The benefits of taking a degree in photography and the advantages for an employer

• You have 3 years of financial support whilst you train.
• If you are a mature student the loans and grants are based on your income, and as you won’t be earning any money you will be entitled to full loans, grants, access to learning, low income and even if you are lucky a scholarship from the university itself.
• The briefs given to you by your lecturers will be of mixed subjects, some which you may have thought would never be your cup of tea. Fashion, photojournalism, portraiture, editorial and advertising. By trying each of these subjects you can make an informed decision of whether you like/dislike a certain genre. You never know you may find you enjoy something you never thought of. I personally went in thinking I was a portrait guy and come out shooting cars instead.
• Opportunity to network is phenomenal, you are put in front of industry professionals every day. This is a great way to build a network and meet the clients you want to work for. Make the most of all the extracurricular events and additional guest speakers, go and chat with them and you never know, you may find yourself on stage with a famous pop artist like I did.
• Theory and Context – I know it sounds boring but this is vitally important, before my degree I knew nothing about theory and context, all those art movements are really important when it comes to networking as you will be able to add to a conversation you would otherwise be alienated from.
• Professional Standards – Your workflow process and the way in which you present your product to your client are vitally important, there are certain standards that need to be met and make you look professional and not amateur.
• For an employer if they see you have dedicated 3 years of your life to one subject you will be taken more seriously, it shows you have made an effort to become the best that you can and that if they employ you, you will be there for the long haul.
• Research and Development – You are taught the skills that you need to be able to successfully research and develop an idea, whether this be for a fine art project or for a pitch that you will give to a client. Before my degree this was an area that I hated and wasn’t very good at, I still hate it but now understand how useful the skills are. Being able to present ideas as moodboards and a tumblog meant I was able to get the ideas out of my head and onto virtual paper, so that other creative’s could understand what I was trying to create.
• You will be able to take part in degree exhibitions such as Free Range in London, all the agents you want to meet visit events like this looking for new talent and as a graduate you will be able to exhibit there.

There are many other benefits but I would make sure that you use the time to your full advantage, use this time to experiment with different things and make mistakes because when you are out there in the real world mistakes are less tolerated. Meet as many people as you can, visit as many exhibitions and events as possible, get your face known and seen. Do not leave it until the third year to start freelancing, freelance from day one. Use the resources to help set you up in business, some universities are better than others at getting you ready for business. Go to those website lectures, talks on accountancy, speakers on social media such as LinkedIn and Twitter.

For me it has been worth getting a degree and I think it shows in my current work.

Things to bear in mind when choosing a university

• What is the course content? Do not assume all degrees cover the same content, some are based on Fine Art or Fashion, whilst others concentrate on Commercial and may not cover the darkroom. If like me you aren’t into Fine Art or Darkroom do not choose a course that includes it. Make sure you read the course content before applying! It is no good getting half way through the second year and realise that the course isn’t suited to what you want to do.
• Check out the facilities! Some universities equipment and facilities are pretty poor, there are some fantastic universities out there. I am in my third year at Ravensbourne College, it is a young course so when I started there wasn’t much equipment but now there is a lot of equipment including around 8 Phase One Medium Format cameras.
• Where is it? If you are young this doesn’t matter too much but if you have a family you should consider how far away from home you want to be. Look at accommodation, the university halls are usually the most expensive option, are very noisy but are closer to campus.
• Who are the staff? What is there experience? What contacts do they have? Remember that university is your link into the industry, those teaching you need to be leaders in their field so they can introduce and organise contacts and events that will be beneficial to you.
• University will not teach you photography! That is correct, you will not be taught how to photograph. You will be expected to already know how to use your camera, especially be competent in Manual Mode. If you are not you best book onto my basic course. The most you will be taught is “this is a light, this is how you turn it on, turn it up and turn it down”. You will not be given explanation of “if you move the light source closer it gets softer, move it further away it gets harder”. Why is this? Unlike school university is based around self taught learning, you will not be spoon fed. You are expected to research different artists to see how they light a subject, then research the specific methods on how to do that. If techniques to this level were taught to you it would result in a lot of photographers producing similar work, which would result in a non diverse market, thus making it harder for you to gain work by being different to the next person.

So you are still here reading this and haven’t been put off taking a degree yet? Well done, it is time you started to research the different courses available. Below is a list of useful links to get you started. Please feel free to add comments to this blog post with your experiences through this process or any questions that you may have.

If you are coming straight out of school or college your UCAS points will be important to get you into university, or if you are a mature student and do not have UCAS points do not worry. As this is an art based degree usually all you need is some good portfolio images and a passion for the subject, if you can get this across in your interview or an open day to the course leaders they will remember you and hopefully offer you a place.

Search and Apply for a Course through UCAS

UCAS Website

Statistics on Employment rate and comparison of courses can be done here

What Uni Website

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The talk this evening will start with “Progression” where we will take a look at distinction panels which both failed and passed. By combining this with Darren’s photographic history it aims to inspire members to make the most of their membership both to their club and The RPS. Following this Darren will be showing a range of his current work, mainly automotive, taking questions and explaining what his thinking was behind each image.

If you are interested in coming along turn up at 7.45pm, finish time will be around 10pm. 
Parkwood Camera Club, Parkwood Community Centre, Parkwood, Rainham, Kent ME8 9PN

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Came across this video by the SlowMo Guys of the operation of a DSLR shutter, I thought that you might find it interesting.

Not loading? Click Here

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Fixing Perspective in Photoshop and in Camera

Ian Clarke has kindly let us borrow this image for a quick Tutorial, it is a photograph that he took on our Introduction to Landscape Photography course in Greenwich. Ian has done a fantastic job stitching together this Panoramic and getting the buildings nice and vertical, however the horizon still isn’t quite straight.

To make this a bit easier for you when taking the photo you need to make sure that your camera and tripod is level throughout the whole x-axis movement. If your tripod and camera does not have an inbuilt level you can purchase one cheaply off of Amazon, see link below. If you are not sure if you have an inbuilt level inside your camera try pressing the Info or DISP button a few times on a Canon or Up and Down on the thumb-pad on a Nikon.

Hot Shoe Level
Fantastic for making your tripod and camera nice and steady

Initially looking at the image below it looks pretty good, lovely exposure, nothing too distracting, nice verticals and well stitched together. There is not an obvious horizon line to follow which makes it hard to see if the horizon is level, and to me it looks slightly off.

To identify the problem areas we are going to pull out some guides so that we can see what is straight and what is not.

The blue lines are the guides, to pull them out you will need the rulers visible. Press CTRL/CMD+R to make them appear, or go to View>Rulers. They look like this:

To pull out a guide simply click on one of the rulers and then drag onto your image and a guide will appear. If you drop the guide in the wrong place by accident don’t panic, select the Move Tool (V on your Keyboard) hover over the guide until you get some double arrows and then you can move it to where you want.

As you can see I have pulled out some vertical guides and aligned them with the buildings at Canary Wharf, they look pretty straight to me, therefore I am happy that they are vertical. Below you will see I have pulled out a horizontal line, as there is not a vanishing point I have aligned it with the most obvious horizontal line to our eye. You can see that the roof of the columns is not straight.

There are various methods we could use to make this part straight, one way would be to use the ruler tool and then crop the image, but as you will see after I show you how to do this it will make the buildings start to tilt. Therefore this is a perspective issue.

1) Select the ruler tool, either by pressing the small arrow on the Eye Dropper icon and then selecting Ruler Tool or each time you press SHIFT+I it will scroll through the available tools until the Ruler Tool is selected.

2) Click and drag a line along the line you wish to be used as your horizon.

3) Click the Straighten Layer button at the top.

4) As you can see the image is now straight along the columns but the buildings have a slight slant to them:

So now we know it is not to do with the image being straight let’s adjust the perspective.

1) Press CTRL/CMD+T on your keyboard to set the image to transform mode.

2) Right click the image and select “Perspective”.

3) For this image we want to adjust the horizontal perspective. Move the cursor over to the right of the image near the bounding box and you will see a set of double arrows. When you have this click and drag up and down and it will change the horizontal slant whilst keeping the verticals still vertical.

4) Once the roof of the columns is aligned with your ruler guide just press Enter or Return on your keyboard to finalise the changes. You should now have vertical verticals and horizontal horizons.

Unfortunately straightening our images up will inevitably result in some cropping being needed, it is unfortunate that we will loose the trunk of the tree although we have managed to retain the 3 main London icons, The Shard, Canary Wharf and The O2.

To Crop:

1) Select the Crop Tool by pressing “C” on the Keyboard.

2) Set the selection to “Unconstrained”.

3) Click and drag over the area you wish to crop and then press “Enter” or “Return” on your keyboard to make the crop.

4) Go to File> Save As> then give it a new name or add the version number after its name e.g. GreenwichPan_V2.jpg.

Here is the final straightened image:

Once again thanks to Ian for lending us this image, be sure to check out his work on Flickr.

If you enjoyed this tutorial and found it useful please comment below and use the social share buttons below to share with your friends.

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Ghost Photography Tutorial – Learn to make people float

Want to learn how to create ghostly images like those below with only your Camera, a Tripod and Photoshop Elements? Then this Ghost Photography Tutorial is for you.

      
Download our free Guide to Levitation now!

A Camera Club talk is available for this Ghost Photography Tutorial, which includes Live Light, Shoot and Retouch. This is priced at £60.00 within a 25 mile radius of Northfleet, Kent, additional miles at 45p per mile return, you may supply your own model or for an additional cost we can supply one for you. The notes available here is what is covered on the evening. Please call Darren on 07849 385 331 for more information or visit out new Club Talks page.

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DSLR Camera
Tripod
Adobe Photoshop/Elements

Shoot at as low an ISO as you can, 100 is good. Your aperture should be around F/11 for a landscape like this. Your shutter-speed can then be adjusted to expose for the sky or the ground, take two to three photos at different exposures so you have images with detail in the sky and ground. Use a timer so that when you take the picture your hand does not jolt the camera and move the alignment. Use a tripod so your composition does not change.

In Photoshop lay one image onto the other and use Layer Masks to select the areas from each image you want. Flatten the image. Add sharpening, dodging and burning where necessary.

To learn more about the methods used here get yourself onto our Basic Course to learn Manual Mode and then the Landscape Courses to learn some more advanced work, following this take a look at the Lightroom and Photoshop courses.

To take awesome portraits during sunset you need to Manually expose for the sky, this will force everything else into darkness including your model. To light up your subject you can use a manner of different outdoor lighting equipment, however this one was not done this way. If you are only shooting headshots or 3/4 length you can get away by using your pop-up flash or a hotshoe flashgun. Leave it on ETTL if attached to your camera as it does a pretty good job.

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Darren has just been signed with Getty Images to run workshops to encourage more amateurs to enter the Stock Photography market, look out for notice of these in 2015.

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In summer 2015 David and Darren will be starting a new class on mixed lighting. David works predominantly with natural light and flashguns whereas Darren works with mixed light using power pack strobes.

The day will be split into two halves and 2 groups, half the day you will be taught natural light using diffusers and reflectors with David and in the second half you will use the outdoor lighting for mixed lighting with Darren.

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