nicklewis.net

Nfolio Exhibition starts this week

I am proud to announce that the Exhibition is about to commence this week. We have even been featured in the “Aldershot News” as a result, which is fantastic.

You may find out more at Nfolio

Meet halfway

What a brilliant idea and very Web 2.0 indeed.
http://www.meethalfway.com is a route finder with a difference. Quite
often when meeting up with distant friends, relatives, colleagues or
clients you may arrange to meet “halfway” to save travel costs and time.
This website enables you enter your address and the address of the
person you want to meet up with and it works out your rendezvous point
complete with a set of directions!! Genius!!

Thanks to Wine Pictures

I would like to say thanks to Wine Pictures for their link to our main site, the favour has been returned

Lightroom Tip: Multiple exports

One of the great things about Lightroom is the fact that you can run multiple exports at the same time and it doesn’t seem to strain the system too much either. I sell my stock images through 3 particular outlets - Alamy, Photoshelter and Fotolibra.

Lightroom tutorial site

http://www.whibalhost.com/_Tutorials/Photoshop_LR/02/index.html

Very useful site packed with tips and turtorials on how to use this great product.

Lightroom: Workflow - keep it simple

Its funny how wonderful new software that makes our workflow process so much easier seems to tempt us to over-complicate it!

I have now been using Lightroom for a month since its launch and I am still very pleased with the product and at first I was trying to work out whether I should follow a specific routine, whether I should use colours, flags and ratings on every photo? I did at first but then realised that there is no need to be so silly!

I have now settled down to a routine that involves:

• Dump the photos onto the PC - I like the way LR starts up when I put my card in the reader. I also try and apply some common keywords at this stage and a standard IPTC template that contains simply my copyright text.
• Whisk through the photos using a combination of the grid and loupe views, rating images. 5 for really good ones, 4 for not sures and the rest are not rated at all.
• Filter out all images that are rated less than 5, to view the cream of the crop.
• Filter out “similars” by using the “survey” or “X and Y” views, giving images that I want to drop out a rating of zero so that they vanish from the displayed images.
• Selection process done!
• Caption and keyword all images
• Check images over for dust etc and any other editing needs
• Export them at desired size and in the relevant format

Thats it, fairly straight forward and fast. I would like to say that I really do believe in getting it right in the camera to start with as this saves a lot of time at this stage. I am always pleased when my images need little editing done and only need keywording (which is a tedious task!).

There is really no need to make it any more complicated than this!

New Photoshop Plugin: Cut-it Out

I am eager to see this in action - www.arcsoft.com/products/cutitout/ - The new plugin is being launched by ArcSoft very soon and will allow you to create layer masks around a subject to remove it from its background.

Studio1st Photographic Courses

I would like to tell you a little bit more about my involvement with Studio1st whom I am a part of.

We are running a series of courses including the following subjects:

• Going Digital
• Product Photography and Lighting Techniques
• Night Stock Photography
• Portraiture and lighting
• Photographic lighting techniques

Classes are always kept to small sizes with about 5 people per session and are all run from the studio in Goodge Place, London.

More information at www.studio1st.com/training_rate.php

Studio1st hired for the making of a music video

I was delighted to hear from Mark today that the Studio1st studio had been hired for a music video shoot by a Swedish band, who have funnily enough come all the way from Sweden (they will like me as I drive a Volvo). Apparently their music is so loud the whole building is shaking and you can hear them in Tottenham Court Road!!!

Whoops nearly forgot to say who the band are - Go and check out www.popcorefilm.com but I am not entirely sure whether they are a band or video production unit??? Does anyone know???

Update: images.nicklewis.net

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