We just had another amazing event up at the Cambrian Photography in North Wales. This is the second event I have attended with Sarah and the team and really look forward to attending again next year.
It all started a few years ago when Ray Fitchett invited me up and introduced to Sarah and the team in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. That year I spoke about the concept of ‘The Best’ and how you don’t need to worry so much about your kit. Getting out and taking photos and getting the most out of your current kit is more important.
BTS image of me shooting portriaits with a single light by Matthew Maddock
Thank you to Matthew Maddock for his amazing support and assistance on the day. Ray Fitchett and Sigma for also supporting me for not only this event but for the last few years.
As part of the trip up, Sarah from Cambrian had arranged a very special ‘subject’ for me to shoot from the Motorcycle Club. I really love how these images turned out and really hope that Dink loves them too. We shot a few at the club house the headed to the studio to do some portraits as part of my lighting set up sessions.
As promised here is the online breakdown of the seminars online. They are kind of joint together a little bit as they do sort of follow on from one to the other.
Lighting set up:
Location shoot –
Profoto B1
Profoto Strip Light + Grid
Studio Demo Shots:
Bowens 500
Small Softbox
Lee Filters:
0.9 ND Filters Soft & Hard Grads
Camera set up:
Nikon D800
Sigma 35mm f1.8
Sigma 105mm f2.8
Sigma 50mm f2.8
USB3 Superspeed Tethertools Cable
Adobe Lightroom 5
Photoshop CC 2014
Me shooting in the Club House: Photo by Matthew Maddock
Shooting in the Studio: Photo by Matthew Maddock
Shooting to the into Lightroom
Desktop set up we had in the studio set up : Photo by Matthew Maddock
Workflow Element ————-
In the evening, we went though a Live edit – We used an image shot on the day then looked at how the retouch of the image below was made.
Step One: The Capture.
I am a fan of getting things right in camera, I am very much a fan of being prepared for the images and knowing what I am going to be doing with them. I like tripods and simple lighting. Regardless if your shooting Fuji or Nikon ( I shot with Nikon here for the demo as I can tether direct into Lightroom (Fuji have a program in beta testing and released very soon)
For this demo we used a single light playing about with the very edge of the light to control the Fill & Spill of the light on to the background. Think about where all the light is going and where your shadows are going to be.
Don’t be worried about trying things out and playing, this is pretty much 90% of what photographers do.
Try to not worry about the camera to much your subject is FAR more important than the camera.
This is a single light image of Luke Grimley
Step Two: Import.
Shooting direct into a computer for me is super helpful, either Capture Pro or Lightroom. The biggest gain is that my client, customer or subject can see the images on a big large screen with the presets added to the images. They and I can see the images pop up as close to an edited form as I can get. For me this speeds up my selection process too as I know when I have got ‘the’ shot. It also works as a safe back up as my shots are on the cards and the SSD drive. They from camera direct to computer, and get developed ready for editing in an instant.
*tip – Dropbox is a great place to store presets for Lightroom and Actions for Photoshop as you then have access to them all the time.
When you are importing and shooting this way, your images just fill up into your library direct meaning you don’t have import them. You can select which folder you want them to go into. Keywording can be added also as well as the file names changed to suit your needs.
Step 3: Develop in Lightroom
This stage happens automatically when tethered.
The key thing is here to be prepared and ready to shoot. When your lighting is great, your connected up and ready to go, you can fire a couple of images into the computer and set the import settings to what you want the images to look like. In this blog I am using the images I shot with Luke Grimley. I had pre-made a blue tones as per the pre-determined look we wanted for the shoot. ( Knowing what you want to shoot is always going to be good and helpful at every stage.
Step 4: Load into Photoshop
It comes as no surprise that I am a big fan of Lightroom and a big fan of Photoshop. When you use the tools together you can have a very slick streamlined workflow.
Once I have marked the 8 or so images to be edited or finished in photo shop where I can add layers and a few things I can not do or find easier in Photoshop it is time to slide them over and get to work.
R Click > Edit in > Photoshop CC > Edit Lightroom adjusted Copy >
Here are the settings I use when pushing the files from LR to PS. From here the file should launch PS unless it is already open and open up the image ready to edit.
Edit in Photoshop
So for this stage, I will be super honest – I want to keep this blog really simple and only go over some of the many things you can do and things just related to this image.
To start with – as you saw at the live show – I used a preset to do the first section and here I used an Action (download both here (click for download) there is a video at the bottom to help you download and install the PS plug in.
If you didn’t come along to the live show – here is a video showing the process that I went though at the show. In short I used a four layers with different effects going on such as grad maps, colour lookup tables and curves. We set up the file by splitting it into the colour and tones using the High Pass method (video at the bottom)
Download the Photoshop action here (click for download)
Watch this video to help you install the Photoshop action
This video shows using the High Freq Separation layer in a little more detail. At some point I will make a quick video with voice over doing a step by step for setting this up.
