1. Use Solo Mode To Tame All Those Panels
2. Use Collections instead of Folders
3. Store all your photos inside one main folder
4. Do as much work in Lightroom as possible
5. Create Presets and Templates whenever possible
6. How to Save Your Image as a JPEG
7. Turn off Auto Show for panels
8. Throw away your old backups
9. It’s OK to have multiple Catalogs
10. Ask yourself whether you need lots of keywords or not

Now most of these I agree 100% with. I’m not that great and creating presets and templates but hey – there’s so many good ones available out there I tend to use them and tweak as required. Plus of course, considering my free Keyword Sets I would say that answer to number 10 is “Yes you do need keywords!”.

Scott Kelby – 10 Things I Would Tell New Lightroom Users

They were mainly interested in “how to” books however one of the things that has helped me the most over the years is mixing with other photographers. Everyone has their own interests and as a result tends to build up knowledge and skills in a specific area. Its rare that when meeting up with a group of photographers I don’t leave with some new idea or skill to try. A great resource for bringing photographers together is of course Flickr. The massive variety of groups almost guarantees that whatever your focus or interest there will be a Flickr group already set up. Location based groups are also a good resource and if you’re lucky to have an active Flickr group in your local area (as I am with the Leeds group) there are plenty of opportunities to meet up and learn new skills.

But back to the request from my colleagues – beginners books. After a bit of a think I would recommend the following three publications for anyone just starting out.

Digital Photography Masterclass – Tom Ang

Amazon (UK)
Amazon (US)

I like this book because Tom Ang has a great way of explaining complicated subjects.

The book provides clear tutorials on technical elements from exposure to colour balance and genres from fine art to sports photography. In addition,  after learning a skill he sets you an assignment – a chance to go and put what you’ve just learned to good use. This is then followed by sample images he gathered from other regular photographers which he uses to illustrate how they approached the same assignment.
 
 
 

The Digital Photography Book(s) – Scott Kelby

Amazon (UK)
Amazon (US)

Another great book for beginners although this is a little thin and you’ll easily get through it in one reading. That said, there are three books in this series so you might want to look at the others too.

The beauty of this book is that each page is a single tip. Short, sweet and to the point. As a result, whilst the tips are great and there’s something for everyone, those familiar with their camera may be slightly disappointed by the lack of additional information. Still its a great book to start with if you want to learn about your cameras features and functions.
 
 

40 Digital Photography Techniques for Beginners – John Kim

Amazon (UK)
Amazon (US)

This book gets straight to the point and provides you with easy to follow and useful tutorials on how to get the best out of your camera and how to improve your skills.

The 40 techniques cover everything from how to compose good shots, play with light and shoot close-ups, to capturing motion, experimenting with filters, and more. If you have a compact camera which doesn’t provide much control over the shutter times, aperture, etc then some of the content may not be appropriate, however there are still great sections on framing your shot and making the most of available light to make the book worthwhile.
 
 

As with previous years, Brodsworth Hall in South Yorkshire is running its Enchanted Garden event. After the sun sets the house and restored Victorian gardens are expertly illuminated to become a place of wonder and enchantment.

This year they changed the route around the gardens which I personally thought was good. The route seemed a little longer and in places where you are travelling in the opposite direction to other years you got to see something new.

If you want to go, the event runs until Sunday 1st November, but be warned – its far busier than previous years. Get there early!

Follow the link below for more info on Enchanted Garden or click the image above to view more of my photos from this year’s event.

Brodsworth Hall – Enchanted Garden

I drove up to Fountains Abbey this morning as I thought there might be some good Autumnal shots. Unfortunately it still seems a little early and the trees are only just beginning to turn. However whilst I was there I spotted this lone Stag in a field at the back of the property and it was kind enough to position itself within the range of my lens and on a suitable high point.

So in a similar theme I thought I would reference a great post over on Lightroom News which covers using plug-ins in Lightroom.

Although LR v1 was pretty limited in this respect, since v2 and following Adobe opening things up there is now a great list of plug-ins to make your life easier when using the tool. These range from utilities and metadata plug-ins to export options to help you create online galleries or upload to your favourite photo sharing site.

The article on Lightroom News is only short so I’m not going to replicate much of it here, however it does list, and link to, the majority of the main plug-ins available so its a great page to bookmark.

Lightroom News: An Introduction to Lightroom Plug-ins

The book by David DuChemin called “Within the Frame” is about finding and expressing your photographic vision, specifically where people, places, and cultures are concerned. The book on its own is great and I can highly recommend it.

However I recently discovered that after producing the book David recorded a series of podcasts for peachpit press which you can also view online. In the podcasts he picks a one or two images submitted to the “Within the Frame” Flickr-group and provides a critique. The useful thing is these reviews are not so much technical as compositional – pointing out where a certain angle or crop might have worked better, and highlighting those elements within the shot that work well.

You can view all the podcasts (there’s 17 of them to date) by following the link below.

Peachpit: Within the Frame Podcasts

Personally I once again got loads out of the sessions I attended which were excellent. Subjects covered everything from personal experiences of getting into model photography and tips on how to make money from your photography, through to more philosophical discussions on how we  approach and define photography and tutorials on panoramic photography and breathing life into photo archives. Day two was more fluid and although I only stayed until lunch I finally got to play around with off camera flash in a strobism workshop.

By the time I left on Sunday my mind was back in creative mode and there was even news that the Photocamp concept might be spreading to a city near you with the indication that the next Photocamp may be in Edinburgh (for more information keep your eye on the UK Photocamps website). So all in all a very positive and exciting weekend!

So I’ll leave you with a shot from the Sunday morning when we all met up in Cafe Nero in Bradford. The style of the image is called a panograph and although I did a few of these a while back its not something I had thought of doing of late so its nice to see how well it turned out. For more shots taken on the day just search for “photocampbradford” on Flickr.

This shot was taken inside Temple Works in Leeds. The building has been vacant for a long time and the last occupants (Kays Catalogue) all just left one day and never came back.

The building (built between 1836-1840) is it also very strange. The outside decoration makes it look like an Egyptian temple and the office building is meant to be a replica of Edfu Temple on the Nile. It was also the largest indoor space in the world when first built and had grass on the roof, kept under control by sheep who were left up there to graze! This was way before the idea of using turf as a roofing material gained popularity.

If you want to know more about Temple works, or see other shots of this Leeds oddity (including the Egyptian style exterior), check out the links below.

Flickr: Temple Works (Leeds) group photo pool
Wikipedia: Temple Works

I’ve added a new keyword list to my collection of keywords for Lightroom. This time it focuses on terms used to describe weather and associated atmospheric conditions – rain, cloud types, fog/haze, storms, etc.

I’m not 100% happy with the list at the moment but thought I’d post it anyway. So if you’ve any suggestions for things I’ve missed or better ways to sub-categorise some of the items please use the contact form to let me know.

Otherwise, head on over to the keywords page (link at top) and download the new list.