My first attempt at creating a video tutorial which is hopefully a bit easier to follow then a written tutorial. This is a short video explaining how I like to brighten eyes in Photoshop.

Click here to download the Bright Eyes action.

Click here for instructions on how to install actions in Photoshop.

Click here to download templates (2.6MB)

Seeing as it’s Christmas time I thought I’d share some of my storyboard templates. I use them to make quick collages like the ones in Matt and Nikki’s wedding post and this fun one of Eve and her groovy shades back during the summer. You can do them by eye in Photoshop but it’s a bit of a pain so I find these templates make the whole process a lot easier and they really help if you want to use shapes other than straightforward squares or rectangles. Plus, once you have a template you can recreate the same look again and again.

So, if you click the image above it will prompt you to download a zip file. Once downloaded, unzip the files (they are PSD files so they will only work in Photoshop I’m afraid) and you will find 8 different templates to get you started, once you see how easy they are you can start to change the shapes around and create pretty much any shape or configuration that takes your fancy. The secret to using the templates is Clipping Masks and I’ve included instructions with each template.

If you don’t want to download mine, the basic idea of clipping masks is that you create a shape in Photoshop…you can do this with a brush, a shape tool, the marquee selector, text….whatever you use just create a shape and then in the layer directly above this shape paste in the photograph you want to use:

In the layers palette, right-click your photo and choose “Create Clipping Mask”:

Your shape will now look like a window that you can see your photograph through:

and you will be able to move and resize your photo to fit inside it. Easy!

Happy Christmas )

Canon 5D, 28mm, f10, 1/80, ISO 800

Happy Friday everyone and a round of applause for my fabulous models for the week and a big thank you to their parents for allowing me to share their photographs. If you know of anyone who’s expecting a baby in the near future who might like to have some photographs taken by me please point them my direction or get them to drop me an email and I’ll send them back my details and prices. I have a blog redesign in the works which will include this information very soon.

I thought it might be useful to pass on a few things I’ve learned from photographing these tiny ones. When Eve was born my camera was brand new and I had no idea how to make it work. As a result I have hundreds and hundreds of dark, blurry photos of her in those first few weeks. I should dig them out and post a couple for a laugh. I knew at the time that she was changing so fast and I wanted to try and capture some of those little details so I would remember them. How she used to yawn in that lob-sided way newborns do; just how small her fingernails were; how her lips would form a perfect “o” as if she was permanently surprised; how I could hold her on my shoulder and she would fit perfectly against me, so tiny her legs didn’t reach past my chest. Unfortunately my photography skills weren’t exactly up to the task. I think that’s what spurred me on to learn and improve and that’s why I keep trying to get better. All so I can bottle Eve up and keep her for me at each different stage.

So, here’s what I would have liked to have known three and a half years ago:

1. Start taking the photographs as early as possible. The first week is perfect. They sleep so much and are so bendy! Plus it’s not long after the first week that they start to unfurl out of that curled up newborn stage.

2. Newborns photograph best au natural. Cute little outfits are great but too many clothes can swamp them and date the photo.

3. Have the room nice and toasty so they’re comfortable without clothes. Dress lightly because you’ll be sweltering as a result.

4. Don’t use flash…it’s ugly

5. Recipe for a black background:
- one large window
- one soft beanbag
- large piece of non-reflective fabric (I use velvet but have plans to play around with different colours and textures in future to mix it up)
- slightly wide-angle lens (I use my 28mm but a 50mm would be good too and a macro for the close ups. If you’re using anything more than a 50mm and you don’t have macro on it, you’ll need a step-ladder)

Drape the fabric over the beanbag underneath a large window (pull it away from the window slightly so the light just starts to fall off) and put the baby in the centre. Take photos from all angles including straight above using the window light as a kind of soft box. Try and position the baby so their face is towards the window and their eyes aren’t in shadow (Use the rooting reflex to get them to look in the direction you want). Look for catchlights. Get rid of any folds or gaps in the black using Photoshop >:)

6. There will be little accidents…no nappy + black velvet = expect a visit to the dry cleaners!

7. Get the details…little toes, little fingers, little ears, little lips. Get as close as you can.

8. Go wide. Use furniture or other people or parts of other people like their hands to give a sense of scale and convey just how tiny a newborn is. This is one of the first things that you forget…they’re sooo small!

9. Be ready to take lots of breaks but when things are going well don’t dawdle, keep changing things up and moving and getting new angles.

10. Give the baby lots of smiles and happy noises. Don’t wait for them to do something specific, they may be asleep, they may be awake, they may be happy, they may not. Don’t worry…with newborns it’s all cute.

So, here’s my list of (mostly) fiction read in 2007.

The Highs:

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Excellent, I love Mr. Dickens and this is one of his best. Made me cry on the DART.

Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen
Lovely story of life in the circus during the Depression. Funny and thrilling. Also a poignant insight into what it’s like to grow old.

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
Anyone not read this yet? I think I’ve given copies to everyone I know.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
The only non-fiction on this list. The story of a boy soldier from Sierra Leone. Horrifying but wonderful, nobody is beyond redemption.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
I’m a sucker for this kind of book it reminded me a lot of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Set in a possible not-too-distant future, it’s a mystery and a love story and I read it in a couple of days.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
Ah, yes, I’m a Potter fan it’s true and this one didn’t disappoint at all. I suppose if you like him you’ll have read it and if you don’t, well, you’ll have run a mile.

Love Falls by Esther Freud
This one came from reading RedWineGums and his linking to an article in the Guardian. Esther Freud captures the feelings of being a teenage girl so well and that time when you’re desperate to be an adult yet you’re still as vulnerable as a child.

Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon
Great storyteller whose books are quite difficult to find over here. Yay for bookmooch! This book is a magical story of childhood…made me laugh and cry.

World War Z by Max Brooks
I wish there were more books like this one but then I’m a huge fan of zombies. They really scare me and so I can’t get enough of them. Max Brooks wrote the companion book to Shaun of the Dead but this one isn’t in the same funny vein. This is a collection of short interviews that tell the story of the Zombie War that almost wipes out mankind. Very clever and I flew through it. Each individual story could have been a novel in and of itself.

The Mid-List

All of the following were enjoyable, some more than others, but they weren’t my absolute favourites so they’re here in the middle listed in order of preference:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Neverwhere by Neil Gaimen
Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
The Gunslinger by Stephen King
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
The City Of Ember by Jeanne Duprau
A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian by Marin Lewycka
The House At Riverton by Kate Morton
When The Wind Blows by James Patterson
The Lake House by James Patterson

The Lows

Wicked by Gregory Maguire
Just didn’t like this one at all. I found myself having to force myself back to the page every time. The characters and the story were all a little distant and flat to me.

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
Snore! I didn’t make it past half way. It lay forgotten by my bed and I was happy to send it on its way when someone mooched it from me. I think I was hoping for something like The Historian but this wasn’t half as clever or well-written.

Midnight Cactus by Bella Pollen
Not sure what attracted me to this one in the first place. It wasn’t too bad until it would get to the romantic parts and then it morphed into some awful clichéd Mills and Boon. I can’t even remember if I bothered to finish it.

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Right now I’m reading Lisey’s Story by Stephen King and Ursula Under by Ingrid Hill (as recommended by Fiona of the Waiting Game) and I’m enjoying them both which is a good start to the year. So far, my reading list for 2008 looks something like this:

Peace Like A River by Leif Enger
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
The Beach by Alex Garland
The Ruins by Scott Smith
Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
The Kite Runner by Khaled Husseini
Skin Privilege by Karin Slaughter
The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns

So what do I do when I have a few days off? I play around with photoshop of course. They say that when you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life, but the reverse is that you’ll also never really have a day off! Anyway, I thought it might be nice to do another photoshop tutorial, this time explaining the method I used on the photographs in yesterday’s post.

Eve and I were messing around yesterday afternoon, she was jumping on the bed and I was trying to snap a few shots of her in action. It was a cloudy afternoon and the light in the spare bedroom was dull. I needed a fast shutter speed to capture her so my ISO had to go up to 800 (even then the shots came out pretty blurry as you can see in the previous post) which means grainy photos from my 10D. In the end the results straight from the camera needed a bit of help. I shoot everything in RAW format (rather than JPG) which DSLRs allow you to do, this means that I have a lot more leeway when it comes to working with dodgy conditions…and if all that just stepped too far over the techy line for you just allow your eyes to glaze over and click on to the tutorial to see how I made the above image:

1. So, here’s the image as it appeared in Adobe Bridge. This is a programme that allows you to open up your files and view them in one place, sort of like Picasa, and it comes with Photoshop. You can also do some editing in Bridge before opening up in Photoshop and getting a bit more specific with the images. As you can see, the original photo was fairly dull. I liked the composition and the angle, but the colour was way too yellow. So, in Bridge, I turned the temperature down to something a little more natural-looking:

2. OK, I was happy with that so I went ahead and opened it in Photoshop (by clicking on the Open button in the same box where I just changed the temperature…this opens Photoshop automatically). Once the image was open in Photoshop I selected Layers>New Adjustment Layers>Channel Mixer from my menus:

In the Channel Mixer Box I turned the image to a neutral black and white with the following settings:

3. Next I created two Curves Layers (Layers>New Adjstment Layers>Curves) and gave them the following settings:

An S-curve for the first one.

And a rounded shape for the second one.

4. The photo was looking pretty washed out at this stage so next I played around with adding colour and definition back into the image. At this point the Layers palette on the bottom right of the screen looked like this:

This is where using Adjustment Layers on top of the original background photo, rather than just changing the original itself, proved very useful. I started playing with the Opacity of the three different adjustment layers to get the definition, contrast and colour that I liked. It turned out that 60-65% on each layer gave me the effect I was going for.

It’s a sort of antique-y, pale effect and I think it works for these images. Once I knew the settings worked for this image I went and applied them to the others from the previous post to give it a uniform theme.

5. The final touch was to use Photoshop’s Reduce Noise filter on the background layer to take away some of the graininess that came from the low-light settings on my camera:

And here are the before and after images:

So, I hope that’s useful! Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

I posted before about joining Bookmooch. Well, two months on and I still love it but one thing it hasn’t done is clear space on my bookshelf. The pile above is a portion of the books I have to read and doesn’t include a couple more that sit on my bedside table and there are more on the way! It’s just too much fun though, I love getting these book packages from all over the world and the little notes and postcards that come with them.

These instructions should be straightforward enough for a novice photoshop user although it presumes you’ve used Photoshop before and know a few of the terms like Layers and Opacity. No filters are used, just basic settings that should be in all versions of Photoshop (although I’m not sure about Elements since I’ve never used it).

So, without anymore faff and disclaiming, fire up Photoshop and give this a go:

1. I’ve chosen this photograph of my baby brother Peter, mostly to cause him some embarrassment (hey bro!) but also because this is a portrait I think will look good in black & white…not all photographs do. Generally I like to choose images that already have some level of contrast between background and subject. Above is the image as it looks straight from my camera.

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2. Now, the easiest method, and the way I did it when I first started out, would be to strip out the colour and just change the photo to Grayscale like I’ve done above. All well and good except grayscale is not black & white…it’s gray and that makes for a pretty flat image. So, I never use grayscale anymore (or desaturate since that gives a similar result).

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3. Instead, the first thing I do is I duplicate the original layer and I set the new layer to “Soft Light” as shown above. This gives the image a bit of a pop in contrast and I often use it in my colour photography too. If it seems a bit harsh, just tweak the opacity of the duplicate layer (you can see the opacity setting at the top right of the image above). I set mine at 50%:

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4. Next, for a little more pop I create what’s called an adjustment levels layer over the top. You will find this under Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels (see above). Now you could just go to Image>Adjustments>Levels and tweak the levels that way, but with adjustment layers you can go back at any stage and tweak again or go back to the original. There are other benefits but that could be a whole different tutorial!

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5. After creating the levels layer (click OK to the little info window that pops up) I pull the slider on the right slightly to the left as shown above. Not too much or it will start to look like pop art. Here’s the result:

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6. Now we can finally move onto the black & white part. You could always skip the steps up until this if you don’t like that “High Key” effect I was talking about and you will still get a good black & white image.

7. Create another adjustment layer…this time the Channel Mixer as shown above. Click OK to get to the options box.

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8. The Channel Mixer is like applying coloured filters to your lens. Red, Green and Blue filters all give very different results. I have the settings I use for a basic black & white image pictured above but have a play with the different colours and see what you come up with. Don’t forget to tick the Monochrome option at the bottom left! Result:

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9. Once you’re finished tweaking, click OK…the result’s not bad, we could probably leave it there…but I like to push it a little bit more. So I create a final adjustment layer. This time I choose a Curves layer (see above) and click OK to get to the options.

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10. You will be given a box with a graph and a straight diagonal line going through it. You can manipulate that line by clicking on it and then dragging the points. Click once near the bottom of the line and once towards the top and then pull the line so that it becomes a loose “S” curve as shown above. This is another layer I like to add to my colour images too as it really brings out the contrast in an image giving it a real pop. Once you’re happy, click OK…

TaDaaa! And you’re done! Now the nice thing about the adjustment layers is that you are free to go back and tweak until you have an image that you are happy with. You can do this either by double clicking the icon on the left of the layer or by adjusting the opacity of the layer like I have shown in this image:

What you should have at the end is a nice clean Black & White image rather than a flat Grayscale image.

I hope I have written this in a way that wasn’t too complicated…please leave me a comment if you have any questions about what I have done or just to let me know what you think. Have fun!

I’ve always been a bookworm, I can lose hours in a bookshop and never come away from one without an armload of new books to add to my stash. As a result I have a bit of a space problem. Most of the time I solve this by making regular trips to the Exchange Bookshop in Dalkey, a shop I’ve been going to since I was about 12 and it was just a little cramped room full of Fantasy and Science Fiction novels. Now I’m down in da country I don’t get to Dalkey so often and so my bookshelves are starting to buckle again.

I decided to go online and see if I could find anything that would help me clear out my library and I found a couple of book swapping sites (PaperbackSwap and ReadItSwapIt), unfortunately none of them would allow international members. Just as I was thinking I’d have to set up my own (ha!) I found Book Mooch which not only allows international “mooches” but you even get extra credit points for them. I love the design of the site too, the homepage illustration really jumped out at me (I’m a sucker for good illustration) and there’s also a blog by founder, John Buckman.

The way it works is:
1. You sign up and list the books you own that you’re willing to give away.
2. Other users email you requesting your books.
3. You send them those books and receive points in exchange (1 point for addresses in your own country, 3 points for international ones).
4. Using those points you can request books you want from other users.

Simple! I’ve already signed up and you can see my books here.

** Illustration credit Andrice Arp, courtesy of BookMooch.com **

1. High Noon

Midday is the most boring light of the day. Mornings and evenings are much more interesting and the shadows are more flattering if you’re photographing people.

2. A Different Point Of View

Avoid shooting straight from eye level. Kneel (or lie!) down, stand on a wall or hold your camera high or low or somewhere where you can’t look through the viewfinder. This takes a bit of practice and you’ll probably have to brace your camera against the ground or a wall, but when it works it’s my favourite kind of shot.

3. What’s It All About?

Give your landscapes context. That could mean a person, or a building, an animal or even a single flower or tree. Anything that shows the scale and gives it a focal point.

4. The Devil’s In The Details

I think this motto applies to anything creative because it’s always that little extra detail that you add that makes the drawing or animation stand out, not just photography. Look for the story in the scene you’re shooting and pick out the details that give it that extra something special. Don’t settle for the first obvious few shots that you immediately see, get them out of the way and then look a little harder.

5. Shakin’ All Over

When you’re not hanging off the edge of a cliff attempting tip number 2, remember to hold your camera properly. If you can, brace yourself by leaning a shoulder against a wall or find a steady surface to rest your camera on. If you’re standing, stand with your feet slightly apart, tuck your elbows in, exhale and squeeze, don’t stab, the shutter. Relax!

6. Zoom Zoom

Don’t use the zoom to frame your shots. Know why you’re choosing a particular focal length and then either move closer or farther away from your subject to get the correct framing.

7. Composition Made Easy

Composition can be made to sound very complicated but just three simple things will improve the look of your shots. First, try putting the focal point or subject in one of the four corners of your photograph. Second, horizon lines are best in the top third or bottom third of the frame, not the middle (I admit, I break this one a lot). Third, diagonal lines are more interesting than straight ones.

8. The Sky’s The Limit

If the sky isn’t interesting then leave it out of the photograph. Avoid the white sky of death that we see so often here in Ireland, especially during the winter. Try to find a better angle, perhaps get up a bit higher and take a shot looking down or put your subject in front of a colourful wall. Anything but a huge expanse of pale grey nothing.

9. Fill The Frame

Following on from that, make every part of your picture count. Take a minute to look at what’s around the thing you’re photographing. Does the background help the photo by creating a frame and leading your eye to the subject, or does it distract? If it’s all a big jumble think about either changing your angle so the background is free of clutter or move in closer.

10. The Dirty Little Secret

While I do think that you’re better off trying to get your photos as “finished” as possible in-camera, don’t be ashamed of using Photoshop. So many photographers seem to try and play it down, mumbling that they did a tiny bit of Photoshop on their photo as if confessing to cheating. No amount of Photoshop will fix a bad photograph but it does have it’s place and is a wonderful tool. Remember that even film photographers play around with chemicals, exposures, cropping and paper types in the darkroom to get similar effects. In my opinion, I think the best way to use Photoshop is 95% enhancement (saturation, contrast, black and white conversion) and 5% fixing of mistakes (cropping, white balance, clone tool). Don’t use it to get rid of double chins or make people’s legs longer and skinnier…that kind of stuff can be seen a mile away.

So that’s my little manifesto. Feel free to disregard them all (well except for the double chin thing…that’s non-negotiable) and if you have any of your own please, please leave a comment and share them with me.

I’m feeling a little tired this morning. Four hour’s sleep just doesn’t even come close to being enough for me these days. Still it was worth it because not only did we get to see “Hot Fuzz” we also got to hear Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright talk about the making of the film. They jokingly described it as a Hot Police Romp (or HoPoRo); it’s the story of an overachieving London policeman (Simon Pegg) transferred to a seemingly sleepy village when his big city colleagues feel he is showing them up. There he is paired up with a slightly dim but lovable village police officer (Nick Frost) who thinks his new partner has just stepped out of Bad Boys or Point Break.

Inevitably the question I keep getting is “Was it as good as Shaun of the Dead?” and to be absolutely honest I would have to say that no, Shaun is still leagues ahead. Hot Fuzz seemed slower, more cumbersome at times and for me it lacked the swing of emotions, from laughter, to scary, to genuinely touching, that made Shaun of the Dead something a little bit more than just a comedy. Still, this film has it’s share of very clever humour and the film really picks up and comes into its own in the second half. The action and laughs (and gore of course) all ratchet up a few notches in the last half hour. Before then there is a sense that perhaps they had a few too many cool ideas that they just couldn’t bear to edit out or there were just so many people lining up to have a cameo part that getting all those actors introduced and worked into the storyline weighed it down.

I hate saying anything bad about it though, since I walked out of the cinema with a smile on my face and I know I’ll buy the DVD and watch it again. Especially for the extras which they told us include a new Michael Caine, Sean Connery version of one of the scenes from the movie.

The three guys didn’t stay to watch, they had to run off to the Meteor Awards after they’d introduced the film to present an award to Westlife. They got back just as the credits were rolling and sat down at the front of the screen for the Q&A. I got the impression that they are incredibly nice guys, genuinely bowled over at their popularity and appreciative of their fans. They talked about how Shaun of the Dead had come out of where they were living at the time (East London) whereas Hot Fuzz was more a film about where they grew up. Their preparation for writing the script came through watching hours and hours of police movies just like the ones Nick Frost’s character is a fan of in the film.

I only wish they could have spoken more, or at least answered more questions from the audience. Only a couple of people got to ask anything because the compere’s questions went on so long. People were mumbling that he was someone from TV3 but he didn’t introduce himself properly…I guess he just presumed everyone recognised him. His questions weren’t even proper questions, more like rambling statements that he’d finally offer to the guys to either agree or disagree with.

Annoying Irish telly interviewer aside, we had a great night. I would say definitely go and see this film, like Nick Frost’s character would say, “You just have to learn to switch off.”