Can a single body, a single lens and a single film simulation drive your creativity? In this video I picked my FUJIFILM X-T20, a single FUJINON 27mm f2.8 lens and the MONOCHROME+R film simulation to tell the story of a day out in London at the end of June 2021 as the city began to come out of lockdown and personal restrictions were beginning to be lifted. The choice to restrict my gear meant that only choices I had to make were those of subject, composition, and aperture (I was shooting in aperture priority with ISO set at 400).
Here are the end of year show pictures. There are 250 pictures taken in the studio. Given that this year there are no shots at the PAC, I am not sure how much interest in these shots. Let me know and I’ll try and work out a suitable package. Thanks to Michael and the Stageworks family for once again welcoming into the studio to see the excellent performances of these talented actors, singers, dancers.
The Seven Best Editing Features in Lightroom – In this video I discuss what I consider the most useful editing features in the digital darkroom that I use the most; Lightroom. I also offer three bonus tips on how to smooth skin (to erase those crow’s feet that you don’t like), enhance eye details, and deal overly contrast-y sun-stars in landscape photography.
If you like enhancing your photos using Lightroom, this video is designed to give you a leg-up to the next level in editing your photos. The biggest compliment I have received about editing is that for most of my finished photos, you can’t see the edit. This is always my desire – to enhance but not to make the edits obvious to most people. Therefore, I hope this video might help those on their photography editing journey and give them a few more arrows in their quiver.
Last week I had a holiday in South Wales and Cornwall with my lovely wife, and new puppy. Most of the time was spent chasing the puppy around, visiting friends and relations, and strolling on the beach and there was not much time for photography. However, on the advice of a taxi driver that the evening was going to be exceptionally clear, that there would be no moonlight (which stymies astrophotography), I went out for a sunset shoot at Cape Cornwall (I’ll post separately), and then moved onto the Crown Mines at Botallack. Now, given that I went out on this shoot on a whim, I didn’t have a torch and my phone was nearly dead, so when I got to the base of the cliffs to set up a shot of the mines on the cliff face, I realised that the 300 ft drop I had struggled to make my way down would be in total darkness on the way back up. I was not confident that I could make the climb in the dark and felt I might fall, so I packed up and climbed back up the cliff in last light. Walking back towards the car, fairly disgruntled, I saw the pump house and mine chimney silhouetted against the darkening night sky filled with stars. Confident that I could now get back to the car safely, I set up and took this shot. I hope you think it was worth it. Best, Keith
I got up ridiculously early to head down to Porthcurno to capture sunrise. I got there early enough that I caught some stars before the sun rose. Below is some of the images I captured on a beautiful morning of photography, peace and tranquility.
At the beginning of April 2021, as UK lockdown#3 began to lift, I headed for the nearest coastline from my home for a grey, pre-dawn photoshoot, with my FujiFilm X-T3, and shooting b-roll with my brand new DJI Pocket 2. I made some long exposures of Cobbold’s Point at high tide, some ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) studies of the beach, and some beach hut “street” photography.
I made a fairly long video (25mins!!) – In it I discuss the four main physical photography filters, and whether you need them all. I also show how to blend bracketed images in Lightroom and Photoshop and demonstrate graduated and radial filters in Lightroom and show how you can use make the filter more targeted with luminosity mask.
Following news that the current lockdown was going to last beyond early March, I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to celebrate my birthday down to Cornwall, like I usually do. Frankly, it put me in a bit of tailspin, so after a few days, I tried to look for some positives, and came up with a list of 20 ideas to spark some creativity for photographers like me, fed up with being locked down. I hope you find the video useful and that some of the ideas might help you creatively or give you some inspiration. Let me know. Thanks!
We had quite a heavy fall of snow at the weekend. I loved the juxtaposition of the daffodils breaking through heralding the break of spring with the wintery conditions in our local park.
When I was down in Cornwall in early December, my camera took a tumble and it couldn’t be fixed. Thankfully, my insurance company (Direct Line! Many thanks) provided a like-for-like replacement. In this video I show how I set the camera up ready for landscape photography (which due to the latest lockdown may not be for sometime!). Instead I stand in my garden talking between the cars and trains going by on the road outside and showing how I’ve set it up.
Sphericity by KeithMasonPhotography 