momofoto: Steve Collins Photography

English Groomers Challenge

admin — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 20:41:15 +0000

All images from Sunday’s English Groomers Challenge Event at The White Oak Leisure Centre in Swanley have now been uploaded to Photobox. There are around 320 images in total and they can be accessed from my gallery on Photobox or you go directly to the album here; http://www.photoboxgallery.com/momofoto/collection?album_id=797171161.

Here are a few of the highlights

6 Steps to Lightroom Grunge Heaven

admin — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 15:11:10 +0000

You don’t have to look far to see gritty, grungy media – TV, movies, photography, print – everyone’s at it. So how do you get this look? Well, as usual there are dozens of ways, but I particularly like this method using Adobe Lightroom. You may prefer a one-click option, but I like to know what’s going on under the hood; These effects are rarely one-size fits all, so knowing how the effect was applied will give you the knowledge to tweak and refine. Knowledge that you won’t have with a preset effect. (This tutorial originally appeared on my old site as ’10 Steps to Lightroom Grunge Heaven’.. this is the new, improved version!)

To start, you’ll need a good image. Something with strong subject matter and properly exposed with a decent amount of contrast. As with the application of any filter or effect, you can’t turn a bad image into a good one, but you can turn something good into something great. So, do yourself a favour and pick out one of your better shots!

I’ll use this image of a leaping guitarist that was taken using a couple of off-camera strobes. There’s some interesting lighting going on and this always works well with this effect.

Step 1 - Recovery

First step, go into the Develop module and move the Recovery slider to 100%. The Recovery slider is used to recover detail in areas of the image that are over-exposed or “blown”. It works best when used on RAW files but will work to a lesser degree on JPEGs so long as the over exposure is not too great.

Step 2 - Fill

Next, move the Fill slider to 100%. The Fill slider works at the opposite end of the spectrum to the Recovery slider. It recovers detail in areas of shadow or where the image is under-exposed. If the image is severely under-exposed, this can introduce unsightly noise artefacts, but when the aim is for a gritty, grainy image you can get away with a bit more noise than normal.

Step 3 - Blacks

Now move the Blacks slider to 100% to bring some contrast back into the image.

Step 4 - Saturation

Now we’ll tweak the colours. Bring the Saturation slider down to about 20%. The saturation slider works on all the colour information in the image and the image now has that washed-out, grungy look, but we need to bring back a bit more punch using the Vibrance slider.

Step 5 - Vibrance

Now turn the Vibrance slider up to 100%. The Vibrance slider works in a similar way to the Saturation slider, but has no effect on the skin tone colours. Using the Vibrance slider, you can punch some colour back into an image, without giving people serious sun burn!

Step 6 - Vignette

Lastly, darken the corners slightly using the post-crop vignette slider.

…And that’s it! Six easy steps to Lightroom Grunge Heaven!

Spares

admin — Mon, 09 May 2011 22:58:48 +0000

John Bartlett

admin — Sun, 08 May 2011 22:25:08 +0000

John Bartlett from Maidstone – keen parkour practitioner and aspiring stuntman.

Laura

admin — Sun, 08 May 2011 18:23:32 +0000

All Wrapped Up In A Virtual World

admin — Sun, 08 May 2011 18:20:59 +0000

I’m not one for self portraits, but I can handle them at a distance

Battle Of The Balls

admin — Sun, 08 May 2011 18:09:26 +0000

As part of the festivities for Brighton Pride 2008, local drag queens (Lady James – left – and Sally Vate – right) prepare to “Zorb” down Devil’s Dyke! What’s an Orb? See here.. www.orb360.co.uk.

For those who have asked for the technicalities behind this one;

This was taken with a Nikon D200 and Nikon 10.5mm f2.8 DX Fish Eye lens, using aperture priority with manual exposure compensation of +1 1/3 stops. This did leave the sky – top right – a bit burned out, but I was able to recover the highlights .

The additional post processing in Lightroom was essentially;
- Recovery and fill boosted to around 50 (This gives the slight HDR look)
- Boosted Vibrance and Clarity to 100% while bringing the overall saturation down to around -50
- Gave the blacks a nudge upwards and added a strong tone curve.
- Finally played around with the individual saturation sliders to boost the main colours in the image. E.g. Blue / Purple / Magenta were all pushed to 100% – plus the others to varying degrees.
- Sharpened in Photoshop.

Not rocket science, but a lot of trial and error. Once you’ve found a look you like you can always save as a preset, but what works well for one image won’t always work well with another – always worth tweaking.

Monique

admin — Sun, 08 May 2011 10:36:35 +0000

This shot was taken during a group ‘Strobist’ meet at an abandoned hospital in Harold Wood, Essex.

The Fall of Yesterday

admin — Sun, 08 May 2011 10:28:57 +0000

Band shot taken in 2011 with Tunbridge Wells based ‘Fall Of Yesterday’ – who sadly split up the day after this shoot Post processed using my Lightroom ‘Grunge’ technique which will shortly be republished as a tutorial – watch this space.

Magnus the Masseur

admin — Sun, 08 May 2011 09:57:20 +0000

Magnus is a masseur and healer and I wanted to try and encapsulate the power of his hands in the most graphic way possible. This is a shot I had planned for several months and on one cold and windy Sunday evening in 2010 everything fell into place and I came up with this.

You can read more about Magnus at his website; http://www.magnusthemasseur.co.uk/and also follow him on facebook.

As Magnus would say… Bless