From Sunday, December 30, through Wednesday, January 2 you can get Luminar 3 with Libraries at a discounted price of £47!
Yes - Luminar with libraries! How very exciting!
I am going to give this a go in 2019 - keep visiting my blog for updates on how I am getting on.
Well this post is just the photos - how I created them will follow in a couple of weeks
Sunrise comtemplation on the Greek Island of Rhodes
Boats moored overnight in Lakka on the Greek Island of Paxos
Tables at sunrise in Lakka
Sunrise in Loggos on the Greek Island of Paxos
Tripitos Arch on the Greek Island of Paxos
Anemogiannis Monument Gaios Paxos
Rick McEvoy Photography - Travel Photographer
I am a photographer and love taking photos. Unfortunately, I have not taken as many photos as I would have liked in 2018. Whilst this is frustrating this is the unfortunate reality of life as an actual photographer!
Still I have taken some photos, mainly on my travels, so which are my top 10 travel photos of 2018? In these two blog posts I will publish and write about 10 travel photography images that I really like. There is no science or commercial agenda behind this – these are just 10 travel photos that I have picked having gone through my Lightroom Catalogue for the year.
They are simply 10 photos that I have taken that I like the most on my travels in 2018.
Simple. In Lightroom I use the filter bar in the Library Module, and select the metadata attribute field.
All I need to do then is select 2018, and all the images from 2018 appear.
Once this is done I have all my 2018 photos in a grid.
There are two ways I select images from a set of images like this. I either use Pick flags (by hitting the letter P) or add them to a new collection (which is the designated target collection which I select using the mouse) called 2018 Top 10.
It depends really – these are just two ways of achieving the same thing.
I scroll through the images one by one and if I like the look of something I select it. Once I have gone through this process I have my first picks.
All I do now is go back through the images and remove the ones that I like less than others, and keep on going through this process until I am down to 10 images.
The images are published in this blog post in date order, starting with the oldest first.
They are from three foreign trips in 2018, to Altea, Rhodes and Paxos.
Cap Negret Hotel, Altea, Spain at sunrise
I like photographing buildings, and love travelling, so I guess it is inevitable that I will photograph the hotel we are stopping in at sunrise!
And here it is!
Taken with my Canon 6D whilst everyone else is asleep, and processed using Aurora HDR 2019 with a bit of vertical correction done in Lightroom.
Camera settings
ISO – 100
Aperture – f8
Shutter speed – 4 seconds (first photo)
This is from a set of three bracketed images, taken with the help of my Manfrotto 190 Go tripod.
Parroquia Nuestra Senora del Cons before sunrise
I had to get the stunning church on top of the hill in the old town of Altea before sunrise.
This photo was taken with my Canon 6D and Canon 17-40mm lens using a focal length of 17mm.
Camera settings
ISO – 400
Aperture – f8
Shutter speed – 1/3rd second second (first photo)
This set of bracketed images were taken with the self timer and my Manfrotto 190 Go tripod and processed using Aurora HDR 2019.
Sunrise in Altea by travel photographer Rick McEvoy
This was one of those mornings when I was desperately searching for the right scene. I had photographed the main churh on the hill, the wonderful Parroquia De Nuestra Señora Del Consuelo - see above.
Then I went looking for shots of the streets before sunrise. The streetlights however did not come on that morning at the same time that they did the morning before which completely scuppered my plans.
So I had to find something with some interesting light. I was in the old part of the Spanish town of Altea, at the top of the hill.
I went to the east facing part of the town searching for some directional morning sunlight, and came across this scene.
This is what I was after.
I composed the shot to get all the shadow from the grille to the window in the foreground, giving the directional light prominence.
I also wanted some sea in the background which I have got.
I actually discounted this photo on my first pass, but had a rethink. I often go back through a set of images after I have made my selection of 10 images – I think the narrowing down process gets my brain working in the right way.
I like this image, which is all about that lovely golden morning sunshine and the directional shadows.
This photo was taken with my Canon 6D and 17-40mm lens.
Camera settings were
ISO – 400
Aperture – f9
Shutter speed – 1/160th second (first photo)
This was one of a series of three bracketed images taken handheld.
Processing again was done using Lightroom for framing and verticals and then everything else was done in Aurora HDR 2019.
The view at sunrise looking towards Lindos from Navarone Bay on the Greek Island of Rhodes
Navarone bay is one of my favourite photo locations on the Greek Island of Rhodes. Lovely aquamarine blue waters during the day, but a lesser know sunrise location.
In this photo you can see the view across Navarone Bay looking towards Lindos and the mighty Acropolis of Rhodes on the top of the rock formation.
A stunning scene and one that I always enjoy all by myself. Well there might be the odd goat around to be fair!
I like this photo so much I wrote an article about it on Improve Photography.
Camera settings were
ISO – 100
Aperture – f16
Shutter speed – 1/50th second (first photo)
Taken using my Canon 6D with 24-105mm lens set at 24mm, all securely placed on my Manfrotto Go 190 tripod.
This image was processed in Lightroom alone.
St Pauls Bay in Lindos at sunrise by travel photographer Rick McEvoy.jpg
When we go to Rhodes we stop in the lovely village of Lardos at our family favourite Cosmos Maris Hotel.
From Lardos it is a 10 minute drive down to the stunning town of Lindos, packed full of amazing scenes to photograph.
After photographing the sunrise there is still time to get more shots with the great morning light.
This is the view from the path down to the beach you can see in the foreground (there is another beach at the other end of St Paul’s Bay under the Acropolis).
I have never photographed this view before – I had been photographing the sunrise from the rocks way over to the right.
I knew this scene had potential, so having completed my sunrise shoot I walked over to this viewpoint.
This was a straightforward image capture, taken using my Canon 6D and Canon 24-105mm lens with a focal length of 24mm.
Camera settings were
ISO – 400
Aperture – f11
Shutter speed – 1/800th second (first photo)
Processing was done with initial corrections in Lightroom and further processing done using Aurora HDR 2019. This image processing is another image that I have processed in my trial using Aurora HDR 2019 for my travel and architectural photography.
That was the first 5 images in my Top 10 Photos of 2018 – I hope you enjoyed seeing them and reading about them.
Next Monday I will publish the last 5 images, 1 more photo taken in Rhodes and four images from the wonderful Greek Island of Paxos.
Whats new in Lightroom Classic
Whats new in Lightroom Classic? This is the welcome screen that greets you after updating the software via the Creative Cloud.
Find out more on the Adobe Website.
Product photography by Rick McEvoy
I am currently preparing my My Top 10 Photos of 2018.
I have decided that these are going to be 10 travel photography images. I am going with a theme here, and these 10 images are going to be published on my photography blog on Monday 24th and Monday 31st December.
So no room for this photo which was in my original selection of my Top 10 Photos of 2018.
This is a product photography photo which I wrote about on my blog post published 19th November 2018.
In this post I will be reviewing what has happened with my photography business in 2018. It is important to review what worked and what did not work, what I did and did not like. What went well and what went not so well.
Following the review of my 2018 photography business goals and objectives I will be in a position to set new goals and objectives for 2019, learning lessons from the year just gone.
I like setting business goals and objectives – they give me structure and focus. And more importantly they give me things that I can look back on to see how they went, and also allow me to change and adapt to the constantly evolving and changing world that we find ourselves in.
For those of you who don’t know me where have you been?
Seriously, I am a freelance photographer, writer, blogger and website creator. This nicely describes the range of photography work that I do.
I am based in Dorset on the south coast of England, and I specialise in photographing buildings and nice places.
No people, kids, animals or other things that are either alive or move, just buildings and their surrounding environments.
I also provide construction project management consultancy services as an aside.
But basically my businesses are just me. I know I shouldn’t start a sentence with the word but, but I am not writing a book here – I am just capturing what is in my head.
So it is just me.
And this is why it is so important that I review my business activities on a regular basis – with it just being me it is very easy to go down a route that is not working for me as there is no one else to point things out to me!
To the plan for 2019 of course! This is scheduled to be published on my photography blog on Monday 7th January – back at work and back in business.
Not much. I am going to publish my top 10 images of 2018 over the next two weeks – this gives me a chance to have a good old look at the photos I have taken over the year, and pick my 10 personal favourite photos of 2018 which I can edit at my leisure.
I am after all a photographer, and my photos are what define me. My photos and how I see the world. Thankfully there is only one me!
Of course we all see the world in our own unique ways, so this is not a big grand statement when I say that my photos are unique - they are unique to me.
And when you add my writing I hope that I stand out in a crowded marketplace.
I will go through these one by one, commenting on each one and seeing what happened, and what did not happen!
I first published my 2018 photography business targets on 3rd February 2018. I know – a late start!!!!
I have already written most of my photography business goals and objectives for 2019, I just need to refine these and the blog post in which I will publish them on 7th January 2019.
These are already being worked to, which is clearly already a big improvement on 2018.
This is also a clear demonstration that I am viewing things differently, and that I am working in more focussed commercial areas, continuing with the good stuff that I have been working on and ditching the things that are not of use to me.
My plan was to publish quarterly reviews of my photography business goals and objectives. All that happened was that they were published in February 2018, and I wrote one review in August 2018 on my photography blog, which you can read here.
OK – without any more waffle here are my 10 photography business goals and objectives for 2018.
Objective number 1 – “Stock photography”
“The average UK salary is £27,600, which equates to £2,300 per month. I want my stock photography to achieve 50% of this monthly level of income by the end of 2018, and 100% by the end of 2019.
Is this achievable?
I’m not sure, but there is one thing I can guarantee – I will not achieve this if I don’t try.
I made about £2 through Adobe Stock in 2017! And cannot tell you how great it was to get an email saying I had sold an image, even if it was for 53p!!
That is very ambitious aim number one.”
OK – that was target number one.
But not any more. I have binned this target completely. Earning 53p for an image was the final nail in the coffin for this target.
I have removed myself from all the stock sites I am on.
The only thing that I am going to stick with in 2019 is uploading 4K videos to Adobe Stock, which can earn decent money.
Apart from that stock photography is dead to me!
No there must be a better way to make money from photography, and I believe this is niche websites.
I will talk about this more in my post on 7th January 2019, but this is what I have done to date.
My first niche website – Photos of Santorini. This is complete and on the web and sat there hopefully getting Google’s’ attention.
This is a light version of the next website I am now working on which is titled Paxos Travel Guide.
As I said more of the future works and business targets on 7th January 2019.
Stock photography - it is with regret that you are fired – it is just me and my own websites from now on.
I know - I managed to sneak in a Lord (Alan) Sugar quote from The Apprentice there!
I do not want to sell images for a pittance. In fact I will go further than that - I will not sell images for a pittance. I am worth more than that.
Lord Sugar would agree I’m sure.
And funnily enough I am getting more enquiries via my website from people wanting to buy prints from me, that and take photos to order which is good.
Objective number 2 – “ Commercial sponsorship”
“I want to have one commercial sponsor by the end of 2018. One company, a manufacturer of a product I use and value, whom I can work with promoting their products and at the same time my use of their products.
Another challenging target!”
This is another target that has evolved over the year. I have made contact with a number of suppliers, and have formed four commercial partnerships in the last three months.
I am an affiliate with the following companies
Peak Design
I am a user of their bags, and have featured them in quite a few articles on Improve Photography and also lots of my own blog posts. I have photographed my Peak Design Everyday Backpack in numerous locations around the world, and look forward to taking my camera bag to new and exciting places in 2019.
Here it is with a bottle of Prosecco leaned against one of those wonderful white buildings of Santorini.
You can buy any Peak Design product through my affiliate link and I will get a small commission.
Skylum
I am also an affiliate with Skylum. Skylum made contact with me after reading one of my articles on Improve Photography, and then gave me one to one tuition over the Internet on not only Aurora HDR but also Luminar. I now have an affiliate link that you can use to buy any of their products and I get a small commission.
Editing Photos of Barbados with Aurora HDR by Skylum
Even better add the code MCEVOY at checkout and you get up to £10 of your purchase, depending what it is.
This was my first personalised discount code and very cool at that.
Excire Search Pro for Lightroom
Excire Search contacted me about writing and reviewing their Lightroom plugin Excire Search Pro. And this is what I did. I wrote about this software on Improve Photography, and also a few posts on my own photography blog.
Again, if you by Excire Search or Excire search Pro using my affiliate link I get a small commission.
Tailwind
Tailwind is an App that schedules posts to Pinterest. I paid for a years subscription, and have ended up making contact and am writing a review about my experiences with Tailwind which will be published on Improve Photography. I will also write about Tailwind on my photography blog.
The affiliate thing is going through whilst I write this.
Amazon Associates
I also have affiliate links on Amazon to the products that I use, which you can find on my gear page. To date I have earned 54p from Amazon! Which is still more that I got from Adobe Stock for the sale of that most excellent photo!
About these links.
If you buy products from any of these suppliers using my affiliate links I get a commission. You do not pay any more by using these links.
Summary
I am waiting on responses from a number of companies, and late in 2018 secured the four commercial partnerships that I wrote about above.
This was very exciting news for me, and has helped change my direction into a more commercial one with an emphasis on commercial partners and new products.
And also this has resulted in a change in my mindset and how I write – all good stuff I have to say.
And one final word - this work that I have done now is all work that will bear fruits in the future.
Objective number 3 – “Freelance writing”
"I already have one freelance writing contract, on the excellent Improve Photography website. I really enjoy this work, as well of course as the massive exposure. Writing for Improve Photography has made me change how I write, and what I write about.
Both in a positive way.
I want one more freelance writing commitment in 2018. Just one."
Other things have taken over.
My photography blog now consists of a weekly post, a much longer and more in-depth post that will hopefully add significant value to readers and also help me develop the traffic to my website.
I have also managed to maintain my fortnightly article production on Improve Photography throughout the year, which has been good.
And with the other things planned for 2019 there is no spare time for any more writing in 2019 other than that associated with the commercial partners mentioned above. These partnerships have already produced more writing commitments about the products which is so great.
Objective number 4 - “Website”
I have spent a lot of time and effort on my website in 2016 and 2017. In 2018 I am going to do very little to my website other than the following.
Image refresh – 2 pages per month.
Home page – an update on the text and images.
Travel photographer page – this needs to be produced in February 2018. You will find one image on there at the moment – a photo of Santorini.
And there is the outcome of all this work. By the end of 2018 I want to achieve 1000 visitors per month to my website. I was averaging just over 300 visitors per month before I started my writing on the Improve Photography website in late October 2017.”
Well my whole Internet world has changed since this target was set!
My URL
First thing that has happened is my URL has changed from
http://www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk
To
https://rickmcevoyphotography.com
Much more global, secure and shorter.
This has had a short-term negative impact on my web traffic, but I hope that the long-term benefits make this worthwhile. Photography is after all a global thing.
My photography blog
My photography blog has changed from daily posts just because I thought that I needed to do this to weekly posts, which are much longer with more specific and deliberate content.
These two things combined will not have an impact until sometime in 2019, so patience is the key. All the work done to date as investment in my photography business future.
As to web traffic, I am less bothered about that right now for the reasons stated above. I am watching my Google rankings for keywords returning to where they were some time ago.
So my Google target of 1000 visitors per month by the end of the year is put back to some time in 2019. But in 2019 I am aiming for much more than 1000 visitors per month.
Changes in my website content
I have significantly changed the content of my website, making it simpler and more logical to navigate, with less pages, and also smaller images.
My other websites
I now have three websites, with a fourth planned for 2019
Photos of Santorini is now a thing – a completed website bedding in with Google and hopefully producing positive results by May 2019.
Paxos Travel Guide is the website that I hope to complete by the end of February 2019, which will sit there until August/ September before I see any tangible growth and result.
Rhodes Travel Guide needs to be created and content produced. Completion of this website is planned for June 2019.
And that is websites for now. I am going to wait and see what comes of these websites before embarking n any more new websites.
Apart from Photos of Barbados – a very recent addition with the exact name to be decided once I have worked this out, which will have 25 images processed using automated image processing in Aurora HDR along with minimal additional content.
Like this.
Absolut Watering Hole, St Lawrence Gap, Barbados.jpg
This website will be a trial website that I can learn things on without losing lots of hours of work.
Objective number 5 “Website”
I want one source of income achieved solely from my website. This will of course be directly related to the number of visitors to my website, to the value my website has on the World Wide Web.”
See 4 above again!
Objective number 6 – “YouTube”
“I want to have achieved 10,000 views by the end of 2018. 10,000 views triggers more possibilities in YouTube, which I want to get to. And hopefully the quality of my videos will improve over the course of the year to the point where I am able to produce videos for commercial clients that they want to buy.”
Slow going. I have not been consistent enough with this, manly due to time constraints.
But this target remains, and I will try to work on this on a monthly basis in 2019.
At the time of writing this post I have managed to get 3081 views.
Objective number 7 – “Portfolio”
“I want a high quality printed portfolio of 30 prints for
Architectural photography
Landscape photography
Travel photography
Interchangeable in a lovely high quality folio holder.
Actual high quality prints that I can present at meetings.”
My last update was this
“Done. Sort of. I have a set of 40 architectural photography prints in a very expensive box. “
I did not get the landscape and travel folios done, and will not be getting them done.
This target will drop off now.
Not much more to say on this one. I can’t see what I would do with a travel photography printed portfolio – a travel photography website makes much more sense.
Objective number 8 “Qualifications”
“I want to achieve my ABIPP in 2018. I never submitted my portfolio in 2016 as I was not happy with it, even though my BIPP mentor was happy with it. There is a lesson there in just going for things that I have definitely learnt.”
Done. I will include an extract from the June 2018 press release again
“Local Photographer Gains International Qualification with BIPP
Rick McEvoy ABIPP is a specialist architectural, construction and industrial photographer based in Dorset, who has recently achieved his Associateship (ABIPP) in Commercial Photography.
Rick joined the BIPP in 2013, gaining his Licentiateship in Commercial Photography in 2014. As well as commercial work, Rick is an independent writer on the Improve Photography website, has a daily photography blog, and has been published in a variety of publications in the UK and further afield. He also produces fine art prints that are for sale on his website.
Rick is a keen travel photographer, with examples of his work featuring on his website, with lots of new plans being worked on for 2018.
His portfolio submission consisted of 40 architectural photography images, 20 interior images and 20 exterior images. All bar one of the images were from commercial commissions carried out for architects and property owners.
You can view Rick’s complete portfolio at www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/portfolio
When we asked Rick how he felt about achieving his Associateship, he said: “I feel honoured, proud and I don't mind saying relieved that I was successful in achieving my Associateship. It has taken me a couple of years to get together a portfolio that I was happy with. I am pretty much self-taught.”
To see more of Rick’s work please visit – rickmcevoyphotography.com"
##Ends##
"Notes to Editors:
Contact: Jack Goward, 01296 642020, jack@bipp.com
The British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP) is an internationally recognised qualifying organisation with over 100 years of experience in qualifying and supporting photographers. The core aims of BIPP are to qualify and support professional photographers, through a network of meetings, awards, training and benefits.
The BIPP is a not for profit body, run by photographers for photographers.
The BIPP has been fighting for and protecting photographers’ rights since 1901.
The BIPP has over 2,800 members worldwide covering all disciplines of photography.
Rick McEvoy ABIPP, sales@rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk , rickmcevoyphotography.com"
Enough said! All done. And I am still smiling about this all this time later!
Target achieved. And no plans for any more qualifications in 2019.
Rick McEvoy ABIPP
What I do need to remember to do though is update all the references to LBIPP to ABIPP everywhere, and update the BIPP logos.
Objective number 9 – “Travel photography work”
“I want to achieve one commercial photography booking overseas in 2018.”
It is interesting that the travel photography thing was growing in my mind 12 months ago and has now evolved into something I had not even thought of.
This is another target that has changed and will not be going into my 2019 photography business targets – I have other plans, which I have already mentioned.
It would of course have been nice to have been commissioned to travel somewhere abroad to take some photos, but I am finding myself working less on commissions and more on creating content for my various websites.
Objective number 10 – “One shop to sell my photos”
“Last one. I want my work in an actual shop being sold to actual people. I will get my portfolios done and get out there and see who wants to sell my work.”
Not done. And I am not going to progress this one. Another target bites the dust!
Summary
A lot has changed over the course of 2018. And changed in quite a dramatic way.
The main things to change were
Websites
I am so glad I decided to do Photos of Santorini. This is a model for future travel photography websites. Deciding to get on and do it was one of the best things I did in 2018. It is there now and in creating this website I learned lots.
Paxos Travel Guide is a bit of a bigger animal, and a model for a more in depth and more commercially viable website.
And a website that needs a lot of time and effort to create – this is why I decided to just get the Santorini website done and published.
Photography Blog
I changed to weekly posts from daily posts in October. 3 months in and I am glad that I did this. I have produced much higher quality, and much more informative blog posts. And I have escaped the clutches of that nasty perceived need for daily blog posts, which did not in the end get me anywhere.
Commercial partners
Four affiliate partnerships is great news for me, and a sign that I am heading in the right direction.
Check out my blog post on 7th January 2019 which will be titled “How to make money from photography – my goals and objectives”
I am hoping that 2019 will be my breakthrough year where things that I have been working hard on come to fruition and give me the things I am looking for. I have an ultimate end point here, which I will conclude my 7th January post with.
Any questions?
If you have any questions please get in touch and I will gladly answer them. I hope that you found this post interesting, and that you might get some inspiration for ways to make money from your photography in 2019.
Rick McEvoy ABIPP - Photographer, blogger, writer, website creator
There is an excellent Christmas offer for Photolemur which you can get here.
What is Photolemur?
Artificial intelligence in photo editing - seriously it is well worth checking out. And if you don’t like it there is a 30 day money back guarantee!
So you really have nothing to lose!
Merry Christmas and Excire Search 1.3.4
Some festive news from Excire Search
”Christmas is just around the corner and this year we are offering our customers a free update to Excire Search and Excire Search Pro Version 1.3.4. Besides some bug fixes, the new version offers optional automatic initialization and, in case of Excire Search Pro, automatic tag transfer after import”
You can read the full story here .
I am an affiliate so if you buy Excire Search or Excire Search Pro using my affiliate link I get a small commission, but you pay the same price as direct from the website..
If you have any questions about Excire Search or Excire Search Pro then give me a shout and I will gladly help you out.
Absolut Watering Hole, St Lawrence Gap, Barbados.jpg
I have a new page on my website called simply Barbados. This page features 24 of my favourite images of a recent trip to the stunning Caribbean Island of Barbados.
The images were batch processed using Aurora HDR 2019 as part of my trials with this software for Skylum.
And very inteseting trials they were too!
I am liking the look of this set of images, and the treatment that has been applied to this colourful building near St Lawrence Gap.
Rolling waves at sunset on Dover Beach Barbados
I didn’t quite get the web page for my photos of Barbados finished like I had hoped, but here is one of the images that you will find on this page on my website tomorrow.
Rick McEvoy Photography
Sunrise on Barbados by travel photographer Rick McEvoy
Yesterday I wrote about my work with Aurora HDR 2019. I have already learnt a few new things. And this is why practise is so important.
FIrstly I worked out how to install the Lightroom plugin, so now I can export direct from Lightroom to Aurora and save straight back to Lightroom.
That is annoyance number one out of the way - having to navigate Windows Explorer to find the images to edit and then save back - a lot of time saved there.
Next is the batch processing.
I created a very quick web page in the new travel section of my website called Barbados where I quickly added the 22 batch processed images. Batch processed using Aurora HDR - very little input from me.
Now I did not know that there were more settings that I could select, which I found this morning. That explains why there are issues that need sorting, which I have done and all is fine.
So tomorrow morning I will update the images and have a nice shiny set of 25 images on this page of my website.
And that is the point of part of this process - next is the really big grand planned edit which I might start running over the weekend - this is very ambitious!
But things are looking promising.
You can buy Aurora HDR using my affiliate link, and if you enter the discount code MCEVOY you get £10 off your purchase which is nice.
Sunset on the beach, Barbados, by Rick McEvoy travel photogrpaher
I have been thinking about my photography for some time now. I feel like I have been doing the same things for a long time now. This is both image capture and image processing.
I am looking to change things in 2019, starting with my image processing. My needs have changed recently, so now I am asking myself the question - Aurora HDR vs Lightroom – which is best? Can Aurora HDR replace Lightroom in my workflow?
And can I use Aurora HDR 2019 to batch produce images for an entire website?
In this post I will explore some of the features that are important to me in Aurora HDR, and show you some of the things Aurora HDR can do.
This all came out of a comment I made in an Improve Photography article, where I stated that I had bought Aurora HDR but had not got round to using it yet.
Due to the popularity and authority of Improve Photography this comment was picked up by Skylum who got in touch with me.
I’m sorry but I cannot bring myself to say “reached out” to me - is that just me being typically English do you think?
And they offered to help me learn how to use Aurora HDR. How utterly nice of them.
And teach me is exactly what they did.
One to one training with Abba from Skylum
I had an hour and a half with Abba, which was most excellent. Not only did I get to grips with Aurora HDR 2019, but he also introduced me to Luminar. And that was on a Sunday evening here in the UK.
I had bought my own version of Aurora HDR. Since Skylum made contact with me I have become an affiliate for Skylum, and you can buy any of their software using my affiliate link here. Enter my own discount code MCEVOY and you will get £10 off your purchase.
This is the first time I have ever had my own discount code which I think is pretty cool!!
Skylum also gave me a version of Luminar for me to have a play with and write about.
As I said, that is one for another time, but Luminar might give me what I am looking for as well. Lets stick with Aurora HDR 2019 for today though.
OK – that is all that stuff out of the way at the beginning.
This is the point of this post really.
I mentioned before that I am looking for something new and different. I think I am after a change having done the same or similar for years.
I have been using Lightroom since release 1.0 in 2007. That is 11 years ago. Lightroom has evolved over the years into Lightroom Classic, Lightroom CC and Lightroom Mobile.
And I have evolved with Adobe over this time.
Now I have to state categorically that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Lightroom. I use it day in day out, and all my images are stored in a single Lightroom Catalogue.
Every image I take is imported into Lightroom, processed in Lightroom and exported out of Lightroom in Jpeg format for use outside of the bubble that is my office.
I use Photoshop for final editing of images when I have to.
So Lightroom is at the very core of my digital photography workflow, and is also tasked with looking after my Lightroom catalogue.
The world has moved on rather a lot since I started using Lightroom. I am 11 years older. I have hit the ages of 40 and 50 since Lightroom 1.0.
Now I know that Lightroom has evolved, but has the methodology that Lightroom uses evolved?
Has the workflow that I use evolved along with technology? I think not – I think that things can be done in completely different ways these days.
The advances in software and technology are of course remarkable and seemingly never ending. And I want to make use of them as and when I can.
This is not using technology for the sake of it – this is about using the technology to give me better results quicker.
I want to align my workflows with the best that technology can offer. Hopefully I will be able to produce more better images quicker.
I need to word that better – I feel a catchphrase coming on.
Making the most of technology in photography – better images quicker and more of them!
Sorry where was I?
I have three distinct areas of work.
This is the work that I do for clients. Clients book me and I photograph their buildings for them. This work needs a consistent workflow, and Lightroom is just fine for this at the moment.
I have a structured workflow with which I can produce the quality of images I want to consistently.
So for now that is just fine and will stay just as it is until I have mastered architectural photography processing using Aurora HDR.
The trial with Aurora HDR produced an image that I really liked – I just need to dial it back a bit.
And to see some of these images check out my updated architectural photography portolio page.
This is a completely different business area for me. This is work done for me for publishing on travel and travel photography websites. And quickly. I have produced a travel photography portfolio page where you can see a selection of this work.
But I want a distinctive stylised look that is all mine.
This is my new thing.
The images on my Photos of Santorini website were created using Lightroom and Photoshop.
I am not sure how I am going to create the photos for Paxos Travel Guide.
But for my trial website, name to be determined, I am going to try the Aurora HDR/ Luminar approach exclusively.
I can do this as I can’t do any harm on a trial website!!
This was a website I was already intending creating to practise with Wordpress themes - the thing that I have a complete mental block with at the moment.
So I am going to create a new website, produce 25 images super quick and get them posted along with short posts. This will get that website up and on the internet quickly and will be the third experiment with websites.
This will be a test in quickly producing a travel photography website.
Tell you what – lets go with Barbados Photos, or a variant of that. Yes it will be my website with 25 photos of Barbados.
Marvellous – glad that is sorted.
I rather negligently forgot about my landscape photography work in the original post, so I will mention this quickly here. Better still go to my landscape photography portfolio page to see a selection of my work.
These are my three main areas of work, and I have just added a portfolio page for each to my website. Apologies for that digression, now back to the subject in hand.
Well first I am going to play around with one image and describe the processing of that image, and then go on to the batch processing.
Sunset in Barbados processed using Aurora HDR 2019
The image above is three photos converted into one HDR image using the following steps.
First I selected the three images in Lightroom and exported them “with Lightroom adjustments” into Aurora HDR 2019.
The only thing that I selected was daylight white balance
After this I let Aurora do its thing, and exported the image straight back to Lightroom
OK - that is the image that you can see with Aurora HDR doing all the work.
And I have to say the results are not bad at all.
OK - I have let Aurora HDR create one image from scratch pretty much - what about doing a load of images?
This is what i really wanted to explore and write about here - the batch processing capabilities of Aurora HDR
You start this process in Aurora HDR 2019.
Select the images to add. I have put these in a separate folder in Lightroom, so all I need to do is navigate to this folder and select all the images.
The next screenshots show the process
Once that was done all I needed to do was export the images back to Lightroom.
Not sure to be honest. I set it running and left it to it.
This is the process I followed. In reality it was a bit more convoluted than this as I had already played around with some of the images, but this would be the process from scratch.
Select the 25 images
Strip out all the processing done when images were imported into Lightroom
Add those images to a sub-folder within the main Barbados images folder in Lightroom for easier image selection.
Process one image to get the look I want
Bulk process the rest of the images and see what happens.
You can view the 22 images that I batch processed on a temporary page on my website titled Barbados.
Basically Aurora has taken these 22 images, analysed them individually and then processed them all using the look I assigned, which in this case was landscape realistic.
Aurora HDR 2019 has processed each image individually but automatically which I find quite remarkable.
A mixed bag to be honest, and some I am going to go back and rework. Some are great, some not so impressive.
Some of the images certainly need redoing, some look really good. I was pleased that I managed to use a selection of images with varying content.
I need to repeat this process and see if the blurry images are down to me not making the right selections before starting the editing process, but you get the idea.
I had another go at batch processing this set of 25 images. And this time I took a bit more time and care aover it.
And yes it was all my fault - once I had made all the appropriate selections the blurriness was gone. I will write more about this in a future post - check out the images on this page containing 20 photos of Barbados.
To recap, 25 images processed entirely using Aurora HDR 2019 with nothing from me other than setting up the process.
And if you were wondering why 20 images I had a quick rethink about the content and reduced it down to this number.
I said this
“22 images processed virtually all by the software with minimal intervention from me!
That was the hope.
As you can see above Aurora HDR 2019 performed better than originally reported, which is encouraging news,
But I have to say I am loving some of the images, and there is a definite future use here for me with Aurora HDR 2019.
And to conclude this post let me tell you a bit about Aurora HDR and the remarkable new software that I have been introduced to by Skylum.
Aurora HDR 2019 is a Lightroom plug-in. The software produces HDR images, either using single images or by using bracketed sets of images.
Last week on Improve Photography I wrote about the five things that I really liked from my initial play with the software.
Here they are
“One click for great images - seriously
The increased dynamic range Aurora HDR can extract from a single image
The realism of the images produced
The different looks that can be instantly added to an image
The slidey preview thing which I just love
The ease and quickness of use”
You can view the first five images that I created using Aurora HDR 2019 in my article on Improve Photography.
No. Is there such a thing? Do I want there to be such a thing?
Yes and no. I want to process my images, but I want to do less of the work myself and let the technology take over.
I was going to title this post “Is Aurora HDR 2019 the future of digital image processing”
I was wondering if this would give me what I wanted, which is bulk processing of lot of images.
And it has not. Not yet. But I think that with a but more time and the knowledge I have gained to date I might be onto something here. And in this update you can see that Aurora HDR performed better than originally reported.
I am going to repeat this exercise with a set of architectural images from a shoot, a set of images that were not picks from a commercial shoot, and see what happens. I am also going to redo the Barbados photos.
One last point - can Lightroom do this?
No - Lightroom can’t do all of this automatically - there is more human intervention required. You can batch process HDR Merges in Lightroom, but further processing is required.
And that is the key difference for me - Aurora HDR 2019 adds that finishing, styling, call it what you want, automatically to batch image processing.
Well this has all been a bit of a revelation to me.
One thing I am going to is create another new website which is just photos and the metadata. And yes this idea has just come to me writing this post.
I can see Aurora HDR 2019 becoming a part of my digital image processing workflow, but not replacing Lightroom.
I have a workflow in mind which I will work on, and envisage myself using both Lightroom and Aurora HDR to process images to produce the look I am after.
I will import images into Lightroom, organise them, crop and straighten and then send over en masse to Aurora HDR for batch processing. I will then export the new images back into Lightroom where I will add the metadata and the add these images to a new website, or a page on my website.
Check back to my photography blog every Monday for updates on all of this good stuff.
For the rest of 2018 I am going to continue to play with Aurora HDR, and I will write a further post in the New year once I am more proficient.
And I will be giving Luminar a try as well.
So to answer the original question - Aurora HDR vs Lightroom – which is best?
Neither. They both have their roles in my digital image processing. Lightroom is where everything is organised and worked on, Aurora HDR 2019 is just for the fun stuff.
And I can live with that!
Early morning sunshine in Gaios on the Greek Island of Paxos
This is an image that might make it onto my website Paxos Travel Guide. Taken using my Canon 6D and processed with one click using Aurora HDR 2019 (two if you include the crop) to give this bright vibrant early morning travel photography shot taken on the wonderful Greek Island of Paxos.
After a break of a couple of months it is back to my second travel photography website Paxos Travel Guide.
Photos of Santorini was all about taking photos on this wonderful Greek Island. Paxos Travel Guide is more of a travel website. On this website I tell you everything that you need to know before you go to Paxos. And there are lots of lovely photos of course.
In this blog post I will explain what this website is all about, what I have done, what I need to and also why I am creating another website.
I want to work in a different way, and use my unique talents to make money in the way I want to.
I am comfortable saying that I am pretty good at photography. Now granted I am not the best photographer in the world, I am not even the best photographer in my family, but I can get by making money doing my photography.
Not sure if this is a talent but my personality is certainly unique to me!
In the last couple of years my writing has progressed really well. This is in part due to the practise and intent with which I have worked on my writing day in day out.
My wife and I love to travel – that is our thing. Going to new places together.
So put all these things together and travel photography websites sound like a great idea to me.
Basically I need to get visitors to my website in large enough volumes to make my website commercially attractive to advertisers.
I also need the content on my website to be good enough to rank highly on Google, and for people to want to read all the content and then share it.
Not much pressure then!
This website is now complete – well as complete as it is going to be. This is a light version of what Paxos Travel Guide will become. I am considering this website to be a trial of a format that I can use to quickly produce other such websites – I have plenty of photos after all.
I have struggled with this. I have tried numerous themes without success. I bought one and found it completely unworkable and baffling to use – so much so that I fought hard for a refund.
I had settled on the Divi Themes, which I bought on Black Friday at a discounted price. I did plenty of research to make sure I was happy with the themes, and then waited for the Black Friday sale.
And this is how I do Black Friday – I wait to buy things I was going to buy anyway and get them on the day at a discounted price.
My plan was to use Divi for 12 months on all my websites, which would be great for me as I have three websites now and more in plan and I only want to have to learn one Wordpress Theme.
My first go did not go too well, and I had to get Bluehost to restore my Photos of Santorini website from a backup.
For now I have decided to stick with the free theme and create a brand new website which will be my Divi theme playground.
I think in the IT world they call these things sandpits.
I have not decided what this URL will be, but this is something I will think about and research between now and Christmas, when I will get some down time to play with themes.
It will be based around the Rhodes Travel Guide subject though.
That will give me the time to come up with a layout of my own that I am happy with, that I can play with as and when I have the time, without of course deleting a major part of the content live!
It turns out Photos of Santorini has become a trial site for lots of things, which has been really good as I am in a better place to progress Paxos Travel Guide, and now have some template type stuff that I can use on other websites going forwards.
I am even thinking of moving my main website to Wordpress now, which should help with SEO. I have put that on hold after the first go with Divi though.
I have a spread sheet and Evernote list where I have recorded what I did to the Photos of Santorini website which I will follow for the rest of the creation of content for the Paxos website.
Created the website with the URL https://paxostravelguide.com
Bought a logo for the website
Written three blog posts
Should I drive a hire boat to Antipaxos from Paxos?
First I need the titles of the remaining posts sorting
Then I need to produce the planned 30 posts and static pages.
Choose and edit the images for the pages and image galleries
Add all the images
Come up with an image gallery
And then do the back of house boring stuff, metadata, links etc.
Remove the dates from the blog post URLs (looking at the URLs above).
Sort Google search console
Sort www. or not www.
Add internal links
Add titles and descriptions/ snippets
Once all that is done promote the website
And then
Yes 5 months.
The single most important job is to come up with great titles, with great keywords. I need these posts all to rank at number 1 (if possible) on Google for that search term.
And the key to this is the keywords in the title and how I write about them. That is the thing I am going to spend time on. Everything follows on from this.
Well I have signed up to Project 24, which you can find on the Income School website. The idea of Project 24 is to replace your income with a passive income from niche websites within 24 months.
Now if you are thinking that this is just another online get rich quick thing then I have to tell you something.
This is the brainchild of Jim Harmer, the creator of Improve Photography. I am a writer on Improve Photography, and have now produced over 30 articles for that website.
I know Jim, and trust his opinions and advice.
It was Jim who suggested I get a .com web URL, which makes perfect sense for what I am trying to achieve.
So this is where I am getting my info and advice. Project 24 and the community of good folk there.
And this is why I am rather vague about some of the stuff I am doing with my websites – we are after all paying for the guidance and tuition.
It would be wrong for me to publish everything I have learned as we as members of Project 24 have paid for this info, and it is part of the income to the website for Jim and his business partner Ricky.
I will write about the stuff that is published on my website and available for all to see, but there is stuff that I will not be writing about.
When will it be done?
I am hoping the end of December 2018, but realistically think it will be the end of January 2019. I just don’t see myself getting that volume of work produced in December, which we are already in.
Why am I putting myself through all this pain? As I said above, to hopefully create a passive income that replaces the need to earn money from my photography and consultancy work.
That is the plan. My ultimate dream is time freedom and money freedom.
Sure I do. I am really enjoying watching the search rankings for the keywords on photosofsantorini.com developing.
I have created this website all by myself, with all my own words and photos.
And I love travel and if I could find some way of travel photography and travel websites providing my income I will be very very happy.
I have to juggle my time with the production of my weekly blog posts and fortnightly articles on Improve Photography.
This is in addition to earning a living.
So I better shut up and get back to work on Paxos Travel Guide
Rhodes Travel Guide. That is one that I am going to work on in May, when we return there.
Between the end of January and then I am going to focus on other stuff. I need to give the various websites time to bed in with Google and hopefully perform well enough to earn me some money.
And then I should really stop and see what happens with these websites.
Although I did have an idea the other day…
I need to remember that my website Paxos Travel Guide is just that – a travel guide to help people planning on going to the wonderful Greek Island of Paxos.
It is not a photography website.
It is a travel website with photographs taken by me – that is the edge that I hope will help with the success of my website. My writing combined with my photos.
Boats in the night moored at Lakka on the Greek Island of Paxos
I need to convey what it is like to experience going on a holiday to Paxos.
I want visitors to my website to be able to make an informed decision about going to Paxos or not.
Getting to Paxos and getting home again
Eating and drinking in Paxos
Places to go in Paxos
Things to do
The weather
Being in Paxos
What it is really like holidaying in Paxos
My holiday journal
On our last holiday to Paxos I wrote a daily journal. I sat on my iPad on the balcony in our room, or at a table by the pool at Hotel Bastas and wrote over 20,000 words, which are to be form, a large part of the content.
Well over a thousand videos and photos, captured using both my Canon 6D and iPhone 7 Plus.
And I have the locations of everywhere I went and photographed.
I will have to keep reminding myself that this is a travel website with photos!
Paxos is a wonderful Greek Island. It is very small, very picturesque. Paxos is very popular with British and Italian tourists, and is also frequented by Greeks from elsewhere in this vast country.
I have been to and photographed most of Paxos, and the neighbouring island of Antipaxos.
All I need to do now is do justice in my new website to the Greek Island of Paxos, and hopefully make it good enough to be of interest and help to people, and of course to the search engines at Google.
That is enough talking about this website, although it is good to revisit what I have done, what I have learned from the creation of Photos of Santorini and how I plan the production of the rest of this website to best serve me in the future.
Off to work I go.
2 months to get this website done, and the clock has started ticking.
Pop back to my blog for frequent updates, and of course please checkout the website which will be updated live as and when there is new content.
A dull question but hopefully an interesting answer will ensue.
We all have lots of images in our Lightroom Catalogues. I have other 60,000 images in mine. And I often am faced with the challenge of how to find images in Lightroom Classic – now I have a new plug-in called Excire Search Pro which helps me with this.
Excire Search is a Lightroom plug-in which searches the images in a Lightroom catalogue using the content of the images – that is the point – Excire Search uses the content of the images in the Lightroom Catalogue, and searches using an example image to find similar images with similar content.
Is Excire Search going to help you find images in your Lightroom Catalogue? Read on and you will find out.
By way of a spoiler the answer is yes, it will help. Quite a lot.
I was approached by Excire Search to trial this product, and I am an affiliate member, so if you click on my affiliate link here and buy Excire Search I get a commission.
Of course, I have an incentive to write good things about this plug-in. What you will find in this blog post though is my honest opinions on Lightroom and Excire, and their relative search capabilities.
This is not an advert for Excire Search, this is me writing about a tool that, now I have it, I will use regularly in my photography work.
OK now that is out of the way back to the subject in question.
I need to give you a bit of background to Lightroom to start with.
There are three versions of Lightroom. Lightroom CC, Lightroom Mobile and the one I use, Lightroom Classic.
Lightroom Classic
Lightroom Classic is the version of Lightroom where the photos are stored locally on a hard drive (of one sort or another). Lightroom Classic is the current evolution of what was Lightroom. This is what the standalone version starting with Lightroom 1.0 released in 2007 has evolved into, which is now obtained through the Creative Cloud and a monthly subscription.
Lightroom CC
Lightroom CC is the newer cloud-based version of Lightroom. Photos are stored on the cloud. This is not the full version of Lightroom but has features which you will not find in Lightroom Classic.
Lightroom CC was released in 2017
Lightroom Mobile
Lightroom Mobile is the version of Lightroom that is used on mobile devices. Photos are accessed from Lightroom through collections which are synced via the internet.
Lightroom Mobile is free but you need actual Lightroom Classic or CC to get the photos into collections.
For completeness there is also a web based Lightroom, which you can access at this link.
I use Lightroom Classic – the original full version now available through the Creative Cloud.
I do not use Lightroom CC as this is the cloud-based version, where your photos are stored by Adobe in the cloud.
I have no doubt that at some point in the future I will move over, as we all will.
That is why this article is about advanced searches in Lightroom Classic.
Lightroom Classic
There are various search tools and filters in Lightroom Classic that I use all the time.
I use the following
Star rating
Picks and rejects filters
Other metadata in the tool bar
Having said that my images are organised in a very logical, comprehensive but simple file structure meaning that I know where most of my images are.
Lightroom Classic has face recognition technology, but to be honest I do not use this as I do not photograph people, only buildings and nice places.
Read on for the good bit.
Lightroom CC - has Adobe Sensei technology.
I don’t have Lightroom CC, so not being at all familiar with it I decided to let Adobe explain Sensei search technology. This is what Adobe say on their website on their excellent help pages
https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/lightroom-cc/using/whats-new.html
“Start typing in the search bar, and Lightroom CC automatically offers suggestions to help you quickly find what you need. Search for cameras, locations, and other metadata with ease. Also, your enabled filters are kept neatly organized in the search box. You can even search for a filter using its name (try 'camera:').
But does Sensei analyse the content of an image?
No.
It does carry out some form of auto tagging, but it is mainly intelligent search functionality.
I should explain this. I have evolved from Lightroom 1.0 – yes, I was there at the very beginning in 2007 – to the Lightroom Classic that we have now.
I have heard that there are potential conflicts if you have Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic installed.
Now I do not know if this is true, but I am not going to risk it. I don’t want Lightroom CC at the moment as I do not want to pay for cloud storage. I don’t actually want or indeed need this as I have my own arrangements in place.
So, I, like most photographers so I believe, use Lightroom Classic.
Lightroom Mobile
I nearly forgot about Lightroom Mobile. I use this on my iPad and iPhone. All the images are organised into collections, so searching for images is not something that I do – it is done before things are added to Lightroom Mobile.
I use Lightroom mobile as my mobile working folders.
Excire Search is a plug-in for Lightroom Classic. It provides advanced search capabilities using a content-based image retrieval engine.
Or to put it another way it searches using the content of images in my Lightroom Catalogue.
Basically, Excire Search uses the content of an image. I know.
I thought this was just another clever piece of software with no practical use but just think about this for a second.
Once you have installed Excire Search you have to initialise it. This is basically the process by which the software analyses all the images in your Lightroom Catalogue.
This took two overnight sessions to analyse the more than 60,000 images in my Lightroom Catalogue.
I wondered why it took so long. But I was soon to find out.
The plug-in analyses the content of images. Yes, I know.
Let me jump straight into some examples which demonstrate the point wonderfully well.
This is one of the things I am working on at the moment – a collection of architectural travel photography images.
I want to get a set of similar images, and my starting point is one of those famous blue domed church roofs you find on the wonderful Greek Island of Santorini.
If you want to see more of my work about my photos of Santorini check out my website called, erm Photos of Santorini.
Sorry had to get that plug in.
This is the example image that I use as the basis for the search.
Blue domed church roof, Santorini, Greece
And this is the results of the first 50 images that Excire found in my Lightroom Catalogue.
50 photos of blue domed cgurch roofs
Not bad. Now the search did produce a couple of shots of the domed roof of the church in Altea, Spain, and also one house on the Greek Island of Rhodes which has part of the roof with a sort of dome, but other than that pretty good search results.
Lets try something else
Next, I am going to use the famous white buildings of Santorini – another theme that I am working with at the moment.
This is the example image
And this is the results of the first 50 images that Excire found in my Lightroom Catalogue
50 white buildings screenshot
This is the example image
The spectacular ceiling of San Sebastian Cathedral
And this is the results of the first 50 images that Excire found in my Lightroom Catalogue
50 church ceilings
This is the example image
And this is the results of the first 50 images that Excire found in my Lightroom Catalogue
50 scaffolding photos
This is the example image
And this is the results of the first 50 images that Excire found in my Lightroom Catalogue
50 sunrises with boats
That should do for now. You should get the idea. Pretty cool eh?
I know that the search results included a few oddities but that is always going to be the way. I have to say that these are typical of the searches that I will use Excire Search Pro for in my daily work.
Well I will now that I have the excellent search tool to use.
This is the one that I needed to spend some time and work out. Check back to my photography blog in a few months to see how I get on with this feature.
Me and keywords
I am not a great one at keywording images. I add keywords to images when I export them anywhere outside of my hard drive. This is always the last thing I do before exporting images out of Lightroom.
I was always going to keyword images on import, but it never happened.
And now that I have over 60,000 keywords I think that ship has sailed.
Or has it?
It adds keywords to every image during the initialisation process.
Yes – it does this based on the image content.
And that is how I keyword images prior to exporting – as well as adding some essential data I add keywords that describe the image.
This sounds to good to be true.
By the way as I am writing this, I am following a video tutorial on the Excire website and checking Lightroom to see what is going on.
In a separate place. They are not in the Lightroom Catalogue.
Excire Search Pro can assign up to 535 keywords to images in your Lightroom catalogue. The non-pro version 120.
I tried this quickly but need more time before committing to adding the keywords Excire Search Pro has assigned to my images.
I have spent a long time assembling my Lightroom Catalogue and this is not something to rush into.
During the initialisation process Excire Search also identifies the dominant colours in an image – this is another thing that I am definitely interested in.
You can get Excire Search from this link here – this is my affiliate link, so if you buy the software from this link I get a commission. You don’t pay any more that going direct to the website.
You can also get a 30-day free trial here.
99 Euros for the Search Pro version, and 49 Euros for the Search version. I have used the Euro prices for now – we have not left yet after all!!
When I write an update post I might be showing the price in £s though.
This is a one-off purchase and the software is installed on your Mac or PC hard drive.
Oh yes, you don’t need the internet to run this software.
The price includes bug fixes and minor updates and improvements, but not version upgrades and major additions.
I have not tried out all the features of Excire Search Pro. I need to look more at
Keywords
Search by dominant colour
Actually – here is a screenshot of the options available in Lightroom
I was approached by Sol at Excire Search to work with them on the promotion of their new plug-in.
At first it sounded like one of those things that was very clever but would be of little use to me, but I agreed to work with Excire, and committed to write about the plug-in on my blog and also on the Improve Photography website. I am a freelance writer for Improve Photography, producing fortnightly articles on all things photography.
Little did I know that I would find the ability to search my entire Lightroom Catalogue by an example photo so useful – this is something that I have used a lot in the two weeks since I installed Excire Search.
I am interested to see if I use Excire Search in the future once the novelty has worn off. I think I will, it has a place in my workflow for certain specific work that I do.
You can read my introduction to Excire Search on Improve Photography. I have scheduled a review article on Improve Photography for Feb/ March 2019. I will write an in-depth update on my blog in the spring where I will describe how much I am using it, what I use it for and what benefits this search tool has given me and my photography business.
Basically, if you need the things I need when searching for images in my Lightroom Catalogue then Excire Search Pro is an excellent choice. If you don’t need these search capabilities then fine – it is not for you!
Yes it’s Black Friday. Don’t worry it will soon be over.
Are you a Lightroom user?
Fed up not being able to find images in your Lightroom Catalogue?
Are you looking for advanced search capabilites in Lightroom?
Then you are in the right place. Today you can get Excire Search Pro at a discounted price of €55. Excire Search is €33 today.
Normal prices are €99 and €49.
If you want to read more about Excire Search pro check out my article on Improve Photography.
And yes I use this excellent Lightoom plug-in to find things like this in my Lightroom Catalogue!
Roll on Saturday. Black Friday will be behind us then.
I don’t have a problem with Black Friday per se, but this week I have suffered the worst deluge of unwanted emails since GDPR.
And does anyone remember that?
Come in everybody - let’s keep Black Friday to just one day please. We already have Cyber Monday to look forward to!!
Yesterday on Improve Photography I wrote an article titled Advanced searching in Lightroom Classic with Excire Search.
This article introduces a new Lightroom Classic plug-in called Excire Search, which I have juust started using.
I used this very clever plug-in to search for photos with a blue dome, by adding an example photo.
Blue domed roof in Santorini by Rick McEvoy.jpg
Next I asked Excire Search to search my Lightroom Catalogue using this image as the example image.
Excire blue domed roof example photo 20112018.PNG
And this is what Excire Search came up with.
Excire Search results
Not bad. And all in less than 10 seconds.
I know.
That is quick!!
More on this next week.
I photograph buildings and places. I specialise in architectural, landscape and travel photography. Sometime I am asked to photograph other things.
Product photography by Rick McEvoy
I have already photographed a table for a client. The other week I had to photograph some different coloured corner caps for this table. How do I take great product photos at home on a budget? With a fantastic piece of kit that I bought for £10 on Amazon (delivered courtesy of Prime two days after order).
That is how. Read on to find out all about how I got shots like this one at home spending £10.
Here is one of the photos
Want to know more? Then read on.
What was the job?
I have photographed this table previously for Mike Fabb – here is a link to his website.
This is a new enterprise that Mike is working on with a new website which has recently been created.
The job was to provide photos of the 10 different coloured corner caps which you can get with the table to suit the décor of the room intended to house this lovely piece of modern bespoke furniture.
My usual camera gear - List all with Amazon Affiliate links
2 cups of coffee (Alta Rica)
Blu Tack (don’t worry I will explain)
And this bit of kit, which was the studio and lighting
Photo Studio Tent. Or to give it it’s full title from Amazon
Photo Studio Tent, Mini Foldable Photography Studio Portable Light Box Kit with LED Light, LED Light Tent (22.6cmx23x24cm)+ Two Backgrounds (White and Black), Shoot Amazing Pictures Like a Pro
There were 10 different coloured caps, so that is 10 photos which were identical bar the colour of the actual corner cap itself – same composition, lighting, brightness, colour etc etc.
That was the brief.
So that what was I set off doing.
First thing was to assemble the Photo Studio Tent, which took me a couple of minutes. It comes with LED lights built-in which is pretty cool.
Once assembled and the lights plugged in and working nicely I put together my camera gear and placed one of the caps inside the tent.
First thing was to change from my Canon 17-40mm lens to my Canon 24-105mm lens – I needed the longer focal length as I wanted to zoom in as much as I could, but keep all of the cap in focus.
It took a lot of fiddling around to get everything set up, and then I took the first set of photos.
I imported this first set of images into Lightroom, and noticed straight away that the brightness varied considerably. I took the first set using AV Mode on my Canon 6D.
And I also needed to adjust the view to be a bit higher for the effect I was after.
I went back to do the same thing with my camera in manual mode, and metered for an average brightness cap.
One problem was getting all the caps into exactly the same place – to do this I made a sort of frame that I could push the caps back into using Blu Tac.
This was a bit hit and miss, but I persisted.
I made another set of images, and imported these into Lightroom.
They weren’t all aligned properly, so I had to do a third take.
This time I had an idea. The way the caps appeared in the viewfinder of my Canon 6D I could locate each cap using the focus points – this worked a treat.
That was the composition of the 10 images sorted, so I took those photos and then played around with stacks and combinations.
Place corner cap within the tent.
Move the cap so the four corners of the caps coincided with four of the 11 focus points of my Canon 6D.
Tilt my camera forward using the geared mechanism on my tripod so the front corner was in the main focussing point.
Focus on this point using back button focus
Tilt the camera back up to the original position
Take the photo using the self-timer.
Change caps and repeat
The exposure was already set in manual mode so I did not have to worry about that.
I took another five images, making 15 in total. Some of these additional images were taken with my camera lower down, at the same level as the products themselves.
Once I had got everything sorted these are the settings I went with.
Manual Mode.
Back button focus
F16
1/15th second
ISO400
Lighting via the tent
10-second self-timer
I used the Canon 24-105mm lens – this worked a treat and is my favourite lens.
F16 is the smallest aperture I am happy to use for this kind of photography – it gives me the largest depth of field without any of the problems F22 can bring.
Using AV Mode was a mistake. That is what I use all the time, but taking the test shots and reviewing them on my screen told me that and meant I could fix the issue.
I tried using Blu Tack to make a former to place the caps in, but the Blu Tac did not stick properly. I found a way round this – sometimes it is all about trying things and seeing what works.
This was one of those happy coincidences – the four corners lined up perfectly with four of the 11 focussing points on my Canon 6D.
I used my architectural photography tripod and head, as I get precise movements with the geared head, which I find essential for such close-up detail work.
Sounds obvious but easy to forget – one light source is all you want and indeed need for work like this.
I started off importing the photos into Lightroom, using my usual import pre-sets
I needed to get accurate colours. The colours were obviously key to this.
This could be simple or complicated – time will tell.
I used the Passport Colour Checker for this. The first photo I took was the colour checker placed exactly where I was going to take the photos.
Passport Colour Checker
Now granted I haven’t installed the software to do this properly. Instead I tried using custom white balance in Lightroom. If that worked I could park the software installation to another time.
I know - I need to do this.
So all I did was select the eyedropper tool from the white balance bit of the Basic panel in Lightroom, and clicked on one of the grey squares. The numbers were all the same, so I was good to go.
I know I need to install the software, this is a job for over the Christmas Holidays I think.
Just saying….
Having got the white balance bang on, I copied this from the colour checker photo and pasted it to all the other photos.
Next thing was to sort out the image, which was a bit flat.
These are the develop settings that I used.
Once I had one image sorted I pasted the settings to all the other photos – an excellent feature of Lightroom.
I had to tweak the brightness of some of the images, and also the whites and blacks, but that was processing done.
There was some stuff that needed to be tidied up, which was straightforward to do in Photoshop. The corners of the tent which were visible, and some large dust sensor spots. All removed using spot healing, clone stamp and patch tools.
And there were numerous marks and scratches on the caps themselves.
I tried doing colour swapping using Photoshop but this did not work too well. I could not replicate the textures of the caps by changing the colours.
That was an hour of fiddling about taking photos of the coloured caps and Photoshop.
We agreed that this did not work so it was on to plan B.
3 hours start to finish.
That includes setting up, unwrapping all the corner caps, taking the photos, importing them into Lightroom on my PC, editing and dispatch via electronic transfer.
3 hours start to finish is not too bad.
That to be fair is three constant non-stop hours working.
Which was four chargeable hours in total.
And here is a selection of the images that I took.
First the bright green cap
Next the red cap
And here is one of the shots of all the coloured caps
And I have to say that I love the finished photos – I think they look excellent. So good they look like someone else took them.
Seriously, when I looked at these photos my first thought was – did I really take them? They look like a real photographer took them!
Seriously that is what I thought.
I no longer think like this about photos of buildings or of my travel photography work, I have got over that.
But it did take a long old time.
No these photos are not something I normally photograph. And I have never taken photos in a tent like this one, with built-in LED lights.
So there was a steep learning curve.
Well sort of.
I have technical image capture sorted, so this was all about applying what I know in a different situation, photographing a different thing.
The basic principles of image capture and processing are the same for most situations, they just need tweaking to the particular thing you are photographing.
I seriously love these images – they are of coloured corner caps for a table. But I genuinely love these images.
And I enjoyed taking photographs of something different. It was good to challenge myself photographing something completely different.
I do not use flash, or any other artificial lighting. The extent of my use of lighting is to turn the lights on in a room to make it feel more homely.
So using these lights was a complete revelation for me, and has inspired me to do more with lights in 2019.
I have proved here that you do not have to spend a lot of money to be able to do work such as product photography in your home.
I have of course completely ignored the fact that I am using circa £3000 worth of gear that I already own, and focussing on the £10 bit of kit from Amazon.
This is though a fair assumption – anyone taking photos for money must have a base level of kit that can deliver professional results.
The point of this post was about that £10 tent which I bought from Amazon, which did an excellent job, and is there for the next time.
And the other point I would like to reiterate here is that it is good to try new things out. I spend my life photographing buildings and nice places, and this is the work that I market.
This does not however exclude me from other genres of photography – there are basic competencies that can be applied across most genres of photography.
Photography is all about problem solving. Some of the things we have to do just have to be worked out, and experience helps here enormously.
It is nice to take some different photos, and also nice to write abut such a positive and pleasurable experience.
Product photography is a photographic specialism. But there is one significant difference about product photography that has just come to me.
Buy a folding tent like the one I bought. And guess what - you can practice at home to your hearts content using whatever you want to photograph.
Now this makes this kind of product photography unique – the only cost is getting really good at this discipline is £10 for the tent – the rest is just time investment to provide another string to your photographic bow.
Barbados beach sunset photo by Rick McEvoy Photography
I wish I was there. And not sat on the A31 in the dark waiting.
This Barbados beach sunset photo was taken with my iPhone and processed using Lightroom Mobile would you believe.
I just thought I would share this on a dark Friday afternoon here in England to cheer us all up!