How do you do that?

I'm occasionally asked how I achieved a certain result given the prohibitive conditions at the time, so I thought it about time I revealed a few of the techniques I use.

This image taken on Skye on a grey day in December 2008 was achieved using a method called exposure blending. The camera was set up on a tripod, in manual mode and 5 exposures taken, from well over exposed to well under exposed.

After processing in Lightroom with no adjustments, they were blended together using Photomax Pro. This gives a result which is far from finished, but a glance at the histogram tells me that I have all the detail in shadows and highlights and therefore have everything I need to make a half way decent picture.

The final image after a bit of retouching in lightroom and photoshop

New Portraits

Smith of Derby have been making clocks for hundreds of years. They also service and restore them, Big Ben included. Here are a few portraits of the people involved.

Norton Motorcycles are now being made in a purpose built factory at Donnington Park grand prix circuit. Stuart Garner bought the name from the American owner last year and the famous old marque is back on the road again.

After Dark

With the nights drawing in and darkness falling earlier each night I find the idea of going out with a camera quite appealing. Here are few shots taken over the last 4 evenings

SUN Awards

Went up to Manchester on Thursday evening for the annual SUN Awards do and was pleasantly surprised to find I had won the award for best location shot. Thanks to Nick Jones from UK Locations who sponsored my award.

This is my winning entry.

And a couple more from the same shoot

Scotland

In September Sheila and I decided to take a break and head up to Scotland. We started on the Hebridean island of Mull, then over to Skye to visit family and finally on to Durness and Cape Wrath, right up on the top left hand corner of mainland Britain. Here are a few holiday snaps.

Climber

This was a nice job. I needed a shot of a climber in a great location. This is Gary Wheeler, a very powerful climber and vertical access expert. We shot him climbing on Stanage edge in the Peak District. The only problem was that the background didn't work very well, so I patched in a shot from the northern tip of Skye taken on New years day. 

White Peak

The Peak District is split geographically into the White and Dark Peaks. The White Peak is made up of limestone dales and undulating pastures, while the Dark Peak is all gritstone edges and high heather moorland. These images are from the White Peak.