Lightroom Configuration Backup

The other day I hadn't noticed that the power lead had dropped out of my laptop when the battery was already virtually empty.  It had so little power left so that instead of hibernating, it just died on me.  In the middle of a Lightroom session.

The problem came that when I restarted Lightroom was not in a happy state.  It had returned to default and had forgotten all my presets, plugins and export settings.  Luckily I could drag them back from a backup but it was a bit of a pain.  So I was interested to find this Lightroom configuration backup plug-in, which creates a zip file of all your settings and can be setup to do it automatically.

Another feature of it is the ability to zip up your catalogue backups,  which if you combined it with my tip on how to automatically delete old backups could really save some disk space.

Outdoor Photographer of the Year 2011

Since knowing I was shortlisted in the Outdoor Photographer of the Year Competition a few people have enquired how I got on.  Well it appears that I will have to settle for shortlisting only this year.

The strange thing about the system is they tell you that "one or more" of the images you entered has been shortlisted which means that between 4 and 12 of my shots were shortlisted.  Here they are in all their glory - I'll let you decide which ones were shortlisted as your guess is as good as mine:

Category - At The Waters Edge

Isle in the Storm

Leigh Creek

Snaking Ashore

Category - British Landscapes

Curbar Gap

Start Point Light

Ashness Landing

Category - Dawn To Dusk

Gull Rock Blues

Coniston Sunset

Morning Mist

Category - On the Streets

Lunchtime

Looking at Legs

River Pheonix

Peter Simonides is photographer of the month for January

I have been recently really enjoying the abstract photographic work of Peter Simonides. Really unusual and interesting wor that is well worth a visit to his website.

 Paper

by Peter Simonides

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Previous  Photographers of the Month

Lighten the land, don't darken the sky

A while back I was teaching someone how to use ND grads and I was explaining how putting the dark area of the grad over the sky has the effect of making the land lighter. They looked at me as though I had gone mad!

Eventually they began to understand that you are not really darkening the sky, you are in staid lightening the land/  The key is to think that you are using the graduated filter to reduce the exposure range into  something the camera can cope with so that you don't end up with blocked shadows or blown out highlights.

I said I would create an example for them to show the effect of using a graduated filter.  The below images show the rather subtle effect of a 0.6nd grad in use.  Moving your mouse over the below should show the effect of inserting the filter:

Mouse over to see before and after

Hopefully you can see that we have slightly darkened the top left corner of the image and brightened the right horizon area by using the graduated filter at a jaunty angle like this.

ND Grad Position

The angle of the grad filter was to match up with the way the early sunrise was lighting the land from one side. Although it is usual to use grads in a more upright position it is important to pay attention to balancing the position as well as the intensity of the light.

Here are the before and after images in case the mouse over doesn't work for you.  Try opening them in seperate tabs of your web browser & switching between them.

Before - No ND Grad

After - With ND Grad

Can I call you a cab sir ?

The lovely people at http://www.heathrowairportcarsuk.com/ are now using my image of Tower Bridge as the header image of their website:

The Original image of tower bridge can be found here.

Tower Bridge

Gary Horner is photographer of the month for December

Our photographer for December is Gary Horner and his EastCoastImages.co.uk website. Gary's work overs a wide range of subjects and shows a great eye for the landscape of his native East Anglia and is well worth a visit.

  Herringfleet Mill

by Gary Horner

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Previous  Photographers of the Month

Black and White Photographer of the Year 2011 Comp

Quite a few people who knew that I had 3 pictures that were shortlisted for "Black and White Photographer of the Year" have asked how I got on in the competition.

Well I didn't win,  you can see the winners here.  Congratulations to Binh Trinh and the other winners.

I was pleased however to get one shot recognized in the "Shots we liked but didn't quite make it" section featured in this months magazine and was chosen to go on the welcome page of the magazine.

I'm taking that as pretty much a second place in one of the categories - which is nice. I am also really proud that the shot in question is of my beloved Smudge,  a dog with more personality than a little dog should have, who unfortunately passed away exactly a year ago.

Below are the three shots that were shortlisted:

Gormley Towers

Smudge

Lunchtime