Fellow photographers,

I find it hard to believe that three events have taken place since I last sent out an newsletter.  Time goes so quickly… and it will go even quicker at this Friday’s event on the theme of Time lapse Photography.

The following Friday will be a Glamour Night and the a session after, “Technicolor Grey” will be on how to create different coloured backgrounds by just using grey paper and a few gels.

Also in this weeks newsletter – a Lightroom tip that I describe as the one setting you MUST change. And finally a chance for YOU to choose the theme for the forthcoming studio day on 20th August.

Read on for more details on all these topics……

Time Lapse Night

Friday, 5 August 2011 , 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Location: Ian’s Studio

For tonight’s event we will look at how to use your camera for timelapse photography.  There will be a opportunity to create a short time-lapse sequence in the studio and time to look at the editing and processing techniques required to convert the image sequences in to a short video sequence.

This event will also see the unveiling of the long-awaited time-lapse of the the studio being built! 

You can view one of my example time lapse videos on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&feature=youtube_gdata&v=G4CBgWAsB2Q

At this event there will be an opportunity to make a short timelapse video in the studio.  Please bring your camera and your tripod.  If you have a cable release or timer release for your camera please bring it with you.  You may also wish to bring a laptop if you want to have a try at editing your time lapse.

Price: £10

Glamour Night

Friday, 12 August 2011 , 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Location: Ian’s Studio

I was hoping to hire a location near the studio that will be suitable for an on-location glamour shoot.   Sadly this is now looking unlikely so the shoot will be relocated to the studio. Instead I will set up a couple of ‘glamour room sets’ at the studio for the night.  These will be the bedroom set (previously used for the boudoir night), a workshop set (workbench, tools, hardhats etc) and we might also set up a shower set too.

We will have at least two models working to topless levels at this event.  Details of the models will be revealed as soon as the the bookings are both confirmed.

Price: £26 

Technicolor Grey

Friday, 19 August 2011 , 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Location: Ian’s Studio

At this weeks Friday Night event we will only be shooting with a grey background…. BUT we will look at lots of different ways to make that grey background into almost any colour we want by the use of filters/gels. Working with a model we will create a number of different lighting effects… all based round this one background.

Our model for this event will be Sophie Winters. You can see here profile on Purestorm: http://www.purestorm.com/Miss_Winters

Price: £22

Studio Day – YOU choose the theme!

Saturday, 20 August 2011 , 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Location: Ian’s Studio

I hope to book at least two models at this studio today. A relaxed day long shoot, a chance to tryout techniques and ideas.  There’s a number of themes we could shoot on this day and I want to give YOU the chance to choose.

Here’s a few suggestions…

  • Fashion (indoors and out),
  • Trash the Dress (Indoors and outdoors)
  • Burlesque (in the studio)
  • Art Nude day (in the studio)
  • Pin-up
  • Something else?  Don’t be limited by my suggestions.

Let me know what your choice would be and I will organise the day based on the most popular theme

Price: £40

The Tip File: Lightroom: Automatically Saving Your Metadata

I often tell people that this is the one setting in Lightroom that you MUST change.

By default Lightroom only stores metadata and develop settings for you images in the Lightroom Database (Catalog). That includes any titles, captions, keywords and copyright information you supply.

Most significantly it means all the information about how to process your images are not stored with your images. This means that if anything happens to the lightroom catalog you loose all the work you have done in Lightroom. By changing one setting that information is also written out to the XMP data for each image – a sort of image by image back up!

From the edit menu on the windows version (It is on the Lightroom menu on a mac) select “Catalog Settings”

On the metadata tab ensure that “automatically write changes in to XMP” is set. If you don’t do this the develop settings for you images will ONLY exist in the lightroom catalog. If this is set those settings are output with the metadata for the image. Thus if anything does happen to your catalog file, the develop settings still exist for each image.

Let me give you a real world example. Let me state at this point that I regularly backup my catalog, I have multiple copies and backup. A couple of months ago I had spent a day working on several hundred images in Lightroom. I was rushing out to an event at my studio and exited lightroom and closed down my PC By the time I’d driven to the studio the portable drive I was using had become corrupt. LR could not open the catalog I had been working on all day. No amount of Adobe recovery could restore it, and although I had backups because I had been rushing to go out I had skipped the “backup now” prompt – so none of the backups had any of that days work.

Thankfully I had had the option “automatically write changes to XMP” set. All I needed to do was create a new catalog and re-import all the images I had been working on. All the metadata and all the develop settings were imported too!