Welcome!

Welcome to the learn section of the club website. This area is dedicated to photographic and digital darkroom techniques. Please note that many of the tutorials below are links to other sites. The club is not responsible for the content of external sites


Photographic Techniques

Camera and Photography Basics

David Phillips has produced a PDF to which goes over some photography basics, including

  • Sensor sizes

  • Exposure Triangle ISO/Shutter speed/Aperture

  • Histograms

  • Camera Controls

  • Depth of field

  • Camera metering

Photographic composition tips

A three minute blast of 9 photo composition tips with the help of Steve McCurry's images showing how effective each of them can be. 

Runtime : 3m 9s

Long Exposure photography

Professional photographer Jonathan Chritchley demonstrates how to get the most from LEE Filters' Big Stopper and Little Stopper filters. Practical tips and creative inspiration for anyone exploring long exposure photography.

Runtime : 12m 19s
Gear used : Lee foundation kit, Big Stopper, Little Stopper, Grad Filter, Tripod, Cable Release

A wealth of information, all in one place!

The club was contacted by Danielle Stein, a librarian of the Fountain View Library, expressing how useful this area is to them and to their students. In return, they have sent us a link to an article of useful sites containing tutorials, tips and tricks, that inspired one of their youngest, Olivia to take up travel photography. The link is "New York City and Beyond: Photography Guide for Sightseeing" . Many many thanks to Danielle and to you Olivia, we hope you continue to enjoy photography and inspire others to take up this wonderful and fulfilling hobby. We’d love to see some of your images in the future!


Digital Darkroom Techniques

Basic Tutorials

David Philips has kindly put a list of tutorials together for all of the major post production software tools available at the moment. Please see the PDF links below for the software of your choosing!

LEARNING ADOBE LIGHTROOM WITH THE OU

Club member Dave Phillips has created, for the Open University, a playlist of 19 videos on the basics of Adobe Lightroom 4. These videos were originally created for Module T189 Digital Photography at the OU and we've been given permission to link to them here. 

Although for an older version of Lightroom, the interface, tools, techniques and principles are all the same for new versions. 

This is a great resource to bookmark and visit again and again. Get to the full 19 video playlist here.

Runtime : 2h 00m 54s
Software used : Lightroom 4

Resizing images for competition entry.

Tony Crabtree has put together step by step tutorials and actions on how to resize your images for competition entry, including how to add a keyline border.

Resizing images for competition entry using free application IrfanView (Windows only)
Resizing images for competition entry using Photoshop
Photoshop resize actions (created using Photoshop CS5, but may work on other versions)

Photoshop : The Orton Effect

Make use of a sharpened image and a blurred image layered on top of each other to produce a dreamy sliky quality, first devised in film photography

Runtime : 1m 32s
Software used : Photoshop

Lightroom : 10 things every beginner needs to know

Terry White goes over the basics of Lightroom catalogs, importing images from your camera, reviewing images and rejecting those you don't want. He then shows how to create a collection, how to adjust multiple images at the same time. He talks briefly about editing techniques, cropping, exposure adjustments and moving between Lightroom and Photoshop

He then looks at the other end of your workflow, watermarking, exporting, printing and backing up your images to an external hard drive.

Runtime : 47m 21s
Software used : Lightroom 5, Photoshop, Apple Mac

Photoshop : Frequency Separation

Glyn Dewis explains about how FS works. Splitting the detail of an image from its colour/shade so more effective cloning can be achieved. In the video, he demonstrates how to clone away a shadow from a detailed area of an image. He removes just the shadow leaving the detail behind. This is quite useful for skin retouching too.

Runtime : 11m 48s
Software used : Photoshop

Photoshop - Rotate and Repair using Content Aware

Tony Crabtree explains step-by-step how to rotate your images to straighten a horizon, without losing pixels or cropping your image.  


Mount Cutter

The club has now purchased the 'Signature' system mount cutter from Longridge. We have a left-handed cutter as well as a right handed cutter so we can cater for left and right handed users. Instructions for use can be found below. Training will also be provided at our next Saturday training session too

Video http://www.longridge.co.uk/information.aspx
PDF http://www.longridge.co.uk/guides.aspx