Colour touch

Colour touch (also known as spot colouring or colour pop) is a technique used to emphasise elements in the frame by leaving them coloured while desaturating the rest. Like all 'special-effects' I think it should be used in moderation. It is a crowd-pleaser though, so worth having in your arsenal of photographic techniques. When I design albums for clients everybody wants one of these included.

The only challenging aspect to the technique is to make an accurate selection in Photoshop. I strongly recommend you read chapter 1 of Steve Caplin's 'How to Cheat in Photoshop' entitled 'Natural Selection'. This will familiarise you with the lasso, magic wand, quick masks, quick selection tool, pen tool and refining edges - all key skills to have for image manipulation. When making a selection I generally use a combination of these tools.

If you just want to do a rough-and-ready treatment though:

1. Make a copy of your image in a new layer.

2. With this layer active go to Layer-New Adjustment Layer-Hue/Saturation and drag the saturation slider to -100.

3. Click on the layer mask icon (the white canvas icon adjacent to the adjustment icon).

4. Select the paint brush tool.

5. Painting with black will allow the coloured original layer to show through.

6. If you make a mistake, press X to paint with white and return to mono.

Enjoy!

Check out my albums page to see further examples: Kent wedding albums

Battery grips

If you've never used a battery, or vertical, grip before you could be forgiven for wondering why anyone would want to make their camera heavier and bulkier. Once you've put one on your camera and used it for a couple of days, however, you'll find it difficult to use your camera without it. It allows you to rotate your camera from the landscape to portrait orientation whilst maintaining the same grip on the camera. The battery grip also duplicates key buttons such as shutter, exposure lock, AF point selection and the main dial - giving you a more consistent 'feel' between the two orientations. The camera also feels more balanced when putting heavier L-series (Canon's professional range) lenses on the camera, with the grip acting as a counterweight. Finally, it allows you to put two batteries in your camera (reassuring on a long wedding day) and comes with a battery converter allowing you to power your camera with 4 x AA batteries. An essential piece of kit.

See my photography here: wedding photographer in Kent

A great guide to Photoshop

If I were learning to use Photoshop again, this book would be at the top of my benefit-of-hindsight reading list. It's very well written, very clearly explained (this is quite unusual for a Photoshop-related book), is broken into nice bite-sized chunks and contains lots of inspiring examples for the reader to have a go at - essential for learning how to use Photoshop. I learnt by using the video articles featured in magazines such as Digital Camera and Digital Photo - they're OK, but have such a difficult task in trying to make it accessible to newbies without making it too tedious for those with a bit more experience (and probably end up satisfying neither).

I intend to post more on Photoshop and Lightroom. For now, all I'll say is that photo-editing software is essential if you own a digital camera. Don't allow the camera to tweak for you (my Canon EOS 5D is able to sharpen, saturate colours, increase contrast etc with its Digic processor) but learn to do it yourself, and take full control of your photography. It's much more satisfying.

Check out more of my photography here: Kent photographer

Portraits of Emily

A quick post today - two photographs (off-the-cuff natural light photos, no reflectors or lights involved) of my daughter Emily who's just learnt how to crawl. The hard work begins now!

Check out more of my portraits here: Kent portrait photographer

High speed flash photography

The illumination from a flash unit lasts about 1/10,000th of a second and can be used to freeze motion. For the shot above I had a plastic pot with a small hole in (pierced with a pin) slowly dripping water into a shallow glass bowl, with some reflective wrapping paper behind. I put the camera, fitted with a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens and wireless ST-E2 flash controller, on a tripod and then set the focus manually by placing a small piece of cereal box with text on (as a focusing aid) where the drop was landing. I placed a 580EX II Speedlite on either side of the bowl (though it's possible with only one - having two gives you more control over lighting and a faster recycling time), set the camera to manual mode and, after a bit of experimentation, dialled in 1/200th sec (the X-sync on an EOS 5D), f/5.0 at ISO 400. I then dimmed down the lights in the room and used a remote switch to trigger the camera. It only took a few attempts to get my timing in and start capturing interesting shots. I urge you all to have a go - it's easier than it looks!

Check out more of my photography here: Kent photographer

Insurance for professional photographers

This post is not very exciting but very important. If you're going to charge clients for work and attend events professionally make sure you have adequate insurance for:

1. Your kit - you can't keep your eye on it all of the time.

2. Public liability - in case somebody trips over your camera bag and breaks a leg.

3. Professional indemnity - in case your clients are so unhappy with your work they decide to litigate, or you have a catastrophic technical failure.

It's expensive but it gives you considerable peace of mind. I have mine with AUA insurance.

Check out my work here: Kent photographer

Wedding at Salmestone Grange, Margate, Kent

I had the pleasure of photographing Suzanne and Kelvin's wedding at the St Thomas of Canterbury Church and Salmestone Grange, Margate yesterday - Kent wedding photography.

The light was very cool, with a fully overcast sky, so I used a lot of subtle flash to lift the shots. Also, the church was so dark that I had to set my Canon EOS 5D to ISO 3200 (I try and stay below ISO 1600 if I can), but I toned down the digital noise with Neat Image. I ran a selection of the shots through some of Jeff Ascough's Photoshop actions.

See more of my work here: Kent wedding photographer