Hello! Welcome to my website. I’m Rick. I photograph buildings, nice places and buildings in nice places. And I write about photography on my blog.
I am a professionally qualified photographer based in Dorset. I specialise in architectural, commercial, landscape and travel photography. And that is all!
I am an all round nice chap. Please get in touch so we can create some great photos.
Sopley Mill - Architectural Photography in Dorset
This is the other photo taken at Sopley Mill, the Dorset wedding venue.
And I didn't really think this through - how do I take a long exposure in a running river? No - one for another time.
Architectural photography at this Dorset wedding venue, Sopley Mill
It's called the blue hour for a reason. And I love this time of day. Just look at that lovely natural blue light, which perfectly offsets the lights shining out from the mill.
You never know what you are going to end up doing on a shoot. On ths one I had to go round the enire mill and make sure all the lights were on, which was a challenge considering that people were setting up for a wedding the next day. Once they had finished in a room the good folks would turn the lights off - meaning I had to leg it back up there and turn them on again!
And I had to wait for people going in and out of the building with all the stuff needed for a wedding!
But these are just things that we photographers have to contend with - all part of the job.
A bit about the image capture.
The first exposure was 0.3 second, F8, ISO400. The second image, the two stop underexposed image, was captured using a shuttter speed of 1/13th second. The third, two stop overexposed image, was captured using a shutter speed of 1.3 seconds.
This is called HDR bracketing, and I do this to capture a wider dynamic range than I can in a single image capture.
Basically I get more of the lights and more of the darks.
Once you have got your head round this it is great to use, and now that Lightroom is much better merging the files together in Lightroom is really slick.
Here are the other things that you might want to know about this shot
Camera - Canon 6D
Lens - Canon 17-40mm lens
19mm focal length used
Taken at 4.55pm one November day
Chideock Catholic Church, Dorset
This is one of my favourite locations to photograph in Dorset - Chideock Catholic Church. I was commissioned by the architect, Andrew Stone, to photograph the new roof to this lovely traditional catholic church.
This is the view from the pirvate side of the church. I wanted to include the lovely grounds in the foreground, which you can see in this photo.
This was taken with my Canon 5d Mk1 - I have been going on about the validity of older cameras for a while now, and this image is a case in point.
Check out this article on Improve Photography - Full frame DSLR photography without breaking the bank – this is how I do it
No-one has looked at this image and turned away in disgust because it was taken on a 12 megapixel camera released in 2005!
http://rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/black-and-white-landscape-photography-in-dorset/
Black and white landscape photography in Dorset by Rick McEvoy
Architectural photography in Dorset by Rick McEvoy
Wednesday 24th May 2017
Picture Portland Bill Lighthouse in black and white
Black and white photography in Dorset by Rick McEvoy
Black and white landscape photography in Dorset by Rick McEvoy
This is how I made this black and white image using Perfect Photo 9 B&W
And that is all I did!
Black and white landscape photographer
Durdle Door at sunset
Another addition to my black and white landscape photography in Dorset collection is this picture of Durdle Door.
I like this version, even though a black and white picture of a sunset sounds a bit wrong!
Rick McEvoy Photography
Black and white picture of Durdle Door by Rick McEvoy
I produced this image using Perfect Photo 9 B&W, the software produced by On 1.
This is what I did
And that was pretty much that.
Hit save then the file lands in Lightroom straight in the collection I am working in which is good. And I add the image to my black and white landscape photography in Dorset collection too for later uploading.
So thoughts on Perfect B&W by On One? It produces nice black and white images, and is easy to use. I am happy to stick with the presets on offer and add the odd tweak with the filters and playing around with the vignette.
I do not want to spend forever working on images in Lightroom and Photoshop – I am through that phase now. I have spent a lot of time processing images, trying out new things, and not trying some of the obvious standard things such as layers.
No I don’t use layers. I am a Lightroom editor, having got deeply involved in digital photography just as Lightroom was being released for the first time. I was too late to be solely reliant on Photoshop, which is why I work n Lightroom then go into Photoshop to do final cleaning up of an image, plus the odd effect.
This is all part of the learning process.
Blimey – where did that little lot come from?
Better get back to the next picture of Durdle Door which is going to appear on my photography blog tomorrow.
The beach at West Bay - landscape photography in Dorset
I need to try something. I have had a quick go with the content aware crop tool. And now I have the need to have another go. I am going to do something to this image that I don’t normally do.
Hopefully.
Firstly I need to explain.
It is all down to how I took the shot, which in my defence was some years ago.
This is a case in point.
The composition Is not good, but hopefully I can fix this in Photoshop.
It is not how it is meant to be I know, but every now and then it is fine. I obviously prefer to get my composition correct in camera rather than create if afterwards, but lets give it a go and see what happens.
First thing I need to do is get rid of the vignette in Lightroom. I am working on a virtual copy of the final edit by the way.
Once the vignette is gone I send the picture over to Photoshop, where I select the crop tool, and crop outwards.
Yes I know.
I chose the top left hand corner and dragged up and left until the horizon line was in a better position.
I went left and up as I thought this would give me the best results.
Then I selected the tick to apply the effect, and went off to make a cuppa.
Boom!
Well that worked incredibly well.
There is a blotch in the sky which I got rid of using one of my new favourite tools, the patch tool. So powerful and effective.
That just left a problem over to the left, where the sea did not work quite as well as I had hoped. And there was sea in the sky.
Obviously this cant be right.
But don’t worry. I have a plan.
I have lost some of the foreground but I am fine with that.
A quick final check for blemishes in the image and I am done.
So here is my brand new picture of the beach at West Bay. I have put the before and after images below for direct comparison
Before
After
And here is that black and white and white picture of Red Post. Finally.
Sorry. Forgot the image. So here it is. Processed on my iPhone using Snapseed no less. Yes the time is coming when I need to move on from Nik Silver Efex Pro, as at some point it will fall over, as it is not being maintained or updated by Google. Which is a shame.
I am quite liking Snapseed for very quick black and white conversions on my iPad/ iPhone, but will now start looking for alternatives.
Rick McEvoy Photography
Monday 3rd April 2017
Picture of a Dorset Red Post - landscape photography in Dorset by Rick McEvoy
So what is this all about? A red post? So what?
Check out the following websites for more info.
Waymarking.com, which says this
"Its bright colour has been greatly restored and it remains a stark sight instantly recognisable as you drive along the A31. The Red Posts are said to mark the route the convicts were taken along before being transported to Australia. Another theory is that they marked the locations of gibbets; many convicts were hanged before transportation if they were struggling along the way. "
The Visitor Magazine, which says
"Among the thousands of standard white sign posts scattered throughout Dorset are just thre of these ‘red posts’; ours in the parish of Poyntington, another at Benville on the Beaminster to Evershot road and the third between Bere Regis and Wimborne Minster at the junction with the roads to Anderson and Bloxworth on the A31.
All three red posts are lovingly maintained in their bright livery by Dorset County Council. Curious travellers abound and the Dorset county surveyor has prepared a printed letter, from which:
‘There are various theories regarding the origin of the red posts, some of them rather gruesome, such a being the site of a gallows or a gibbet. However, despite many enquiries by my department over the years none of these theories has been substantiated.
For some unknown reason there appears to be a ‘white post’ near the red post in most cases … there is a theory that these posts were for the guidance of illiterate travellers who were instructed to turn at the red or white post, but again this has not been substantiated.’
Just three red posts in the whole of Dorset would be of little help to the illiterate, and our red post was in Somerset until 1896 when the county boundaries were redrawn and Poyntington was transferred. But sites of gallows and gibbets? We visited the White Post at Rimpton, not a sign post but an inn on the Sherborne to Marston Magna road, and although not one of the gentry there gathered could offer a reason for the inn’s name, barlady Bella Rouse of Sherborne knew all about red posts. ‘All red posts are hanging places. I can guarantee that.’ How did she know this, we wondered? – ‘I have it in my memory, ‘replied fair lady, ‘And I knew it before that.’
The landlady of the White Post at Stratton on Fosse, in the north of Somerset, thought the name might be connected to the toll system. Toll bars, toll posts? A few more miles up the Fosse there is an old toll house opposite the Red Post inn at Peasedown St John but, unfortunately for this theory, records quoted by Robin Atthill in his book Old Mendip show ‘a toll house was built at the Red Post in 1824 but the Red Post, whatever it may have been, was already there.’
In case we are tempted to think toll bars might have preceded toll houses (the first toll was charged in 1663), especially since the 1817 Ordnance Survey map notes a White Post but no buildings at Stratton, Athill chanced his arm by stating ‘place names such as White Post, Red Post, White Cross and so on, are fairly widespread and always precede the arrival of turnpikes.’ Always?
Perhaps red posts do mark a bloodied spot. It is said that suicides were buried at crossroads. The sign post at the Holton turn on the Castle Cary to Wincanton road once stood on the precise site of Jack White’s gibbet post of 1730, and this murderer’s end is well documented. At Otterton Cross Devon there is an elaborate ornamental sign post which commemorates the place where five martyrs were burnt at the stake; it is not red but red posts might also date from the Middle Ages. If all but a few red posts have survived in name only, it may be because they were replaced by white posts (the obvious choice as white can be seen in the dark) when sign posts were made compulsory on highways in 1773.
Possibly the inns took their names from the sign posts; it seems more likely than naming them after the colour of their doorposts, the suggestion of Bath Postal History Museum. There is a credible alternative theory, however: the Blue Boy inn at Clapton, Crewkerne, was named after the livery of its postboy who rushed out to meet approaching mailcoaches. The alternative word for mail is post.
On red posts and white posts The Visitor has consulted more books and made more enquiries than for any other subject we have researched – and still, like Dorset County Council, we are left with theories. The suggestions of readers would be welcome."
And finally, Wikipedia, which saysAlthough most fingerposts are a combination of black, white or grey, other colour variants exist. The most well-known are the small number of Red Posts which are found in some of the southern English counties, including four in Dorset, including one on the A31trunk road at Anderson, between Bere Regis and Wimborne Minster. The others are located at Benville Bridge, Hewood Corner and near Poyntington. Various theories have been put forward as to their colour, including being to mark routes used by prisoners on their way to port for transportation to Australia, or the site of a gibbet. Other places have fingerpost arms with white writing on a green background which indicates the most minor of lanes, sometimes known as 'drift roads'.
I was going to write about the theories behind the Dorset Red Post(s), but have instead extracted the information above directly from these web sites. I take no credit for the content, and have referenced the actual web pages from which I copied the text in full.
So what do you think?
Rick McEvoy Photography
Saturday 1st April. Seriously. This is not a joke,
Yes I know - a sunset landscape picture in black and white. And before you say, I know, there is no picture. Read on down and I will explain.
So why a black and white picture of a sunset?
Why not?
I love my black and white pictures, especially my landscape images. I am gathering a nice collection of work which will go onto the webpage I recently created called, not so creatively, black and a white landscape photography in Dorset.
Well at least you know what the page is all about before you get there! And I won’t lie to you, this gives me quite a few good keywords!
So what did I do to produce this black and white picture of Dorset?
5 things in the free software from Google, Nik Silver Efex Pro
And that’s it. If I wasn't writing about the processing of the black and white image whilst actually doing the processing (yes I really do write about the editing of my images while I am editing them) this would take less than a minute. You don’t have to spend an age on every image to get great results trust me.
I do have a bit of an issue with Lightroom at the moment which I need to touch on though. I create black and white images using Nik Silver Efex Pro. To do this I select this option in Lightroom, which creates a Tif file which is sent to Nik. When I save the image it Nik the general idea is that the new black and white image is saved as a Tif file back in Lightroom, next to the original file. But with this image something else happened. The black and white version is not there. The colour version is, but not the black and white one. I know its there as there are to Tif files, but they are both in colour.
All I can do is shut everything down and wait for the image to appear. Frustrating but it normally works itself out. Pop back to my blog later to see if the black and white picture has reappeared!
Rick McEvoy Photography
Tuesday 28th March 2017
The mighty Durdle Door in black and white
I like posting nice pictures on a Sunday. So check out this black and white version of the picture of Durdle Door I posted some time ago.
Black and white landscape photography in Dorset
Sunday 26th March 2017
The Dorset landscape in black and white by Rick McEvoy
I liked the colour version of this image, and I like the black and white version too. This is how I produced this image using the Lightroom plug-in, Nik Silver Efex Pro.
And that was all I did.
Quite a subtle edit and a black and white image which I like. I have added this to the Collection in Lightroom called black and white landscape photography in Dorset, which I will update with this and all the other images shortly.
Rick McEvoy Photography
Wednesday 22nd March 2017
The spectacular Jurassic Coast in Dorset
I like this black and white version of the picture of the Jurassic Coast.
This is how I created this image using Nik Silver Efex Pro, the free software from Google.
Black and white landscape photography in Dorset
Saturday 4th March 2017
The picture of Delph Woods in Poole, Dorset
All 6 images processed in Nik Silver Efex Pro the same way, which is this.
Just to see how this works. And every time I say a set of 6 crops I actually mean 7. As there are 7. Not 6.
Why did I say 6?
Rick McEvoy LBIPP, MCIOB
Black and white landscape photography in Dorset
Monday 27th February 2017
The footbridge in the woods. Delph Woods. Poole. Dorset.
And now I am back to the footbridge. This is the process I went through in Nik Silver Efex Pro to produce this black and white landscape photography image.
I wanted the footbridge to pop, which was not easy to do with the black and white version of this image I have to say – the colour one did as it was so bright and green.
So, this is the initial edit – coming up shortly is the further edit – don’t worry it will all make sense in a bit.
Trust me!
But before I go, I really like this black and white image.
Just wanted to share that with you all!
Rick McEvoy Photography
Black and white landscape photography in Dorset
Friday 17th February 2017
Creative photography in Dorset by Rick McEvoy
This is a different edit of the picture that I posted previously. I think this is one of the images in the series called "The so tired my eyes must have been blurry edit series".
Or maybe the "What happens when you edit an image in Lightroom after a night out!".
At least I was trying something different.....
RIck McEvoy LBIPP, MCIOB
Creative photography in Dorset
Friday afternoon on the 10th February 2017