Scotland Photography

Ok so today I thought I would show you what is possible with Photoshop when it comes to making someone who is already gorgeous, even more gorgeous. Even though we all know what I have dome here, I will show you how to take a perfect picture and add wrinkles etc to make it look worse. (Well that's what we'll tell Donna, I really did it the other way round.)

Only joking, Donna gave me her full blessing to do this and put it up on here. The first picture is straight out of camera (SOOC). Bad lighting, no make up and a bad hair day. Of course this was deliberate...no really.

I hate to say this but there really was a lot of work that went into this. Wrinkle and spot removal, skin smoothing, lighting, eye colour enhancement and moving the lips a little to give a hint of a sultry smile.

This is an extreme example of what cam be done. In fact magazine cover models have a power of re-touching done. Sometimes it can take a week of adjustments before the editor is happy. Just head to Youtube and do a search for Photoshop re-touch and you will see what I mean. So, why did I blog this technique? I just wanted to put potential brides, grooms and clients looking for portraits that if you have a spot or a zit on the day, don't worry. I can leave it alone or you you prefer.......ZAP!

Wedding and landscape photography has been my thing. I never really thought that one day I would branch out and look at portrait photography and enjoy it so much.

Well, that is just what happened recently when Zoe, who's wedding I am doing in 2012, asked me to do some nice portraits for her kids, Kayden & Baylie.

At the moment I do not have a studio but next year I will be planning to address that situation. Until then a little improv was required. So off to Asda to but some big king size bed sheets...2 white and 2 black. These make great backdrops for portraits and I would recommend anyone taking shot of their kids for themselves to give it a try. It really is a simple but effective way to get that nice uncluttered look. I already have a huge reflector to bounce light onto the subject. this along with some carefully set up flash settings and job was a good 'un as they say.

Luckily I had two very handsome models which makes the cuteness factor really easy to capture. Most of the work to lift the images into something special happens at home at my workstation. Using a combination of Lightroom and Photoshop CS2 I can achieve results that really would make you believe that the shots were taken in a studio with a big white infinity curve. I am really pleased with the results and Mum was delighted too.

After speaking with several family members about my work I thought I would post some behind the scenes info. I constantly get comments like, "I love your photos, they are amazing. You must have a great camera." Oh dear, Oh deary me. Yes I do have a great camera, two in fact but this is only a fraction of the story.

Composition is key. Can't have heads cut off, elbows sticking into the shot from Uncle Bob. Rule of thirds is a vital tool too. Just Google it, you'll see what I mean. As for what happens when i get home from a shoot and after I have done all the back ups and uploaded all the 1000+ photos on to my workstation which usually takes a couple of hours..deep breath. Here is what happens next.

Usually over 1000 shots. I have one extra task, converting the files using DNG convertor. I refuse to pay over £100 for a new version of Lightroom so my Nikons will export images in directly. They should add an update for this.

Ok.. First in Lightroom. I go into library mode and just hit either the "P" key for pick or the "X" key for reject. This will whittle it down to around 400. Not that I took 600 bad shots. Some are very similar as I may have used continuous shutter to get the exact expression I could see was about to happen. This process takes a few minutes.

600 down 250 to go. Next I hide both side toolbars in Lightroom so I have a larger image area. The I use the star ratings... 5 for, ,love that shot 3 for, it;'s ok. Anything less is another "X"

Once that is done I filter out anything but 3 stars and upwards by clicking on the 3rd star. If there are over 200 I click the 4th star. That might give me 100 or so. Sometimes 150. If that is the case then I am happy with that and start editing. If less than that I will review just the 3 star shots and bump the best to 4. Only had to do this once. I usually have enough 4 or 5 star shots.

I shoot in manual mode most of the time but sometimes aperture mode if things are going indoor and outdoor quickly. Shooting manual makes it easier to apply presets to images as the exposures are the same for each one.

I have 10 presets that I have done myself, which I like the look off. When I do one with a preset, it might need a little tweak to get it right but then I apply the tweak to all the subsequent images in that batch of photos on the day by selecting, edit with previous. Maybe 10-20 or so.

Then repeat for the next lot etc. This is vital for formals as they should all look the same.

Some of the 5 star shots are then exported to CS2 for a little more detailed editing, cleanup and special effects.

Export as tiff's, then jpegs, then smaller for web.

Sorted.

All this takes upwards of a day of work if there are over 1000 photos to start with. Even once all that is done, I still find myself going over them again and again just to make sure I haven't missed anything. If the client requires a wedding book then another few hours work on the design and uploading all the photographs to the publishers site is required.

So to all the people who think that a great camera and a snazzy suit a wonderful, creative photographer makes...think again. There is much more work involved than people realise. To be fair, the above is true of every good photographer in this business, whether they have a huge studio in London or are the good photographers in the Edinburgh area. The sites you may check out that don't have the wow factor photographs on their site have missed out most of the steps above. thankfully, in my experience of the guys and girls in our area there aren't really that many.

Thanks for looking in....

Derek Christie

Wow! What a windy evening. It had been perfect all day long....nice and sunny, calm soft breeze. Then at around 2pm I saw the clouds gathering in and the wind really started to get up.

I was thinking.... as we were doing the shoot down by the beach, the windswept look might be really interesting. As I got nearer our arranged meeting time, however, I was a little worried. The wind had really gotten up....bad. I thought to myself, "Am I even going to be able to hold the camera steady?".

Gullane can be windswept and interesting at the best of times and is a gorgeous location for a wedding or engagement session. In fact it's a photographers dream to take shots in such a beautiful part of the world.

In the end it really was great fun. I think we all enjoyed ourselves. Great fun photos, relaxed and informal. Always the best way to go. You do need a few formal shots in there too but everyone one remembers the special un-planned moments.

I love taking photographs. I love processing them on my workstation in my home office. I am not, however, exactly an expert when it comes to unraveling the mysteries of the world wide web. In fact it's a bit of a mystery how some of my clients even found me at all.

I have a listing on the Edinburgh Gumtree site and I also signed up for Google Maps. These services are great because the user just types in the information asked for and away you go. They now know the name of your business and where you are.

Google shows it's map results at the top of the page when a search is carried out. It kinda works geographically from the point of enquiry.

For example: If I search for "Wedding Photographer Midlothian" I will show up on Google maps, as I am located in this area and there are only a few of us "togs" out here. If I type in "Wedding Photographer Edinburgh", I will be listed much, much further down the search results as that's how many photographers are in that catchment area before the circle expands out to me.

Not a big deal, as I don't live in Edinburgh after all. The problem is....Google can't find me on it's "organic" search. You know the main search results. The reasons are many but all down to my lack of web knowledge. My domain host wasn't pointing to my site provider properly so Google couldn't index my site and in turn, show it in search results. I also had too many generic terms in my copy on the main page. I needed t make it much more locale specific.

The good news is, now that I have learned all this stuff, hopefully I will be a little more visable to prospective clients. Word of mouth is great but actually having a virtual shop window really gets Scotland Photography out there.

So far I have five weddings booked next year. This is pretty good considering the technical problems I have self inflicted on the site this year. More about that in the next post. Dates and venues as follows:

10/04/2010: St Mary's Kirk in Haddington, East Lothian.
29/05/2010: Craigmiller Castle in Edinburgh.
09/07/2010: Loch Lomond near Glasgow.
21/08/2010: Newbattle Abbey College near Dalkeith, Midlothian.
15/10/2010 Lothian Chambers in Edinburgh.

Also I met a great couple last week that have booked my services for their wedding in 2012! Very organised. A big thank you to everyone who has booked so far. It really means a lot to me and I really appreciate it.

Pauline & Kevin's wedding at Shrubhill, Edinburgh.

Pauline & Kevin. They are both very good friends of mine and for their wedding present I offered to cover their big day. Of course I am giving them the deluxe wedding book, I'm not a cheapskate! The book is now ordered and I hope they like it.

Weather wise it was a mixed bag on the day and unusually chilly. This ruled out heading to a nearby park for some romantic pictures but as, they wedding didn't start until almost 7pm, light was going fast. Everyone had a great time at the Shrubhill Masonic club in Edinburgh where the whole event took place. All Pauline & Kevin's friends and family were in attendance but Kevin almost got his "ahem" in a sling. Not like him mind you, he forgot the marriage certificate. panic ensued with Kevin about to jump in a car to drive the half hour journey to retrieve it. I suggested maybe one of the guests should go for it as we don't need it until the end of the ceremony.

Long story short... the traffic at that time had died down a little, surprising as we were in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival.

Finally, I just wanted to say one word on their behalf. The 3rd song they chose at the reception was the "Black Eyed Peas- Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night". Fantastic choice as the whole place was jumping from the get-go.

Pauline & Kevin's photogallery