I’m back! After what seems like a super long hiatus, I’m back in the land of the blogging.
No excuses other than life took over. I had thought that I could juggle all of my life’s commitments at once, only to be taught a very harsh and succinct lesson. Life will always dictate how you live it!
You all know that I now have two children and they currently take up a lot of my time. Not that I am complaining mind you. I love spending time with them. It’s just that I tend to not get the chance to do the other things in my life that I love doing, like photography, spending time with my other half, cinema (in that order.. the wife will kill me when she reads this!)
In terms of my “current” photography projects, the kids are being used a lot as guinea pigs and although I would love to show you their photos, I am unfortunately not allowed to due to the law. I’m not able to post pics of them due to us adopting them and they may get recognised. It’s like a self inflicted Witness Protection Program!
Other things that I have been doing is actually signing up to the Adobe Photography offer whereby you pay £9 per month and you get to use Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC. I’m really enjoying this as it gives me all the necessary updates and I don’t have to think about it. On the negative side, you never get to own the software as it’s like a years rental. Hopefully the offer keeps on going as it is beneficial for me. I would actually say, if you can afford to do this, get yourself over to the Adobe website and sign up. Their products are top notch and yes I know there are some brilliant free/cheap alternatives, but I just think that the Adobe packages rock.
So, back to my photography. I had been thinking about the photos that are hanging about my hard drive and I thought back to a trip I took to NYC way back in May of 2011. That seems like a lifetime ago and it was whilst going through these that I decided to see how my photography stacks up to my attempts way back then. I do seem to have came on leaps and bounds in the last 3 years and it is good to go and take a peek back into your past photos to see the transition. I’ve also jumped up 2 cameras since then so the gear has improved also! One thing that does strike me is that I had a lot more passion for going out and at least trying to improve my photography. I need that passion back!
Now the title of this blog harks back to a picture that I had sitting on my hard drive and I had always wanted to go back and process it once I had up skilled. To this end, I tweaked the photo in Lightroom to expose it better, then converted it to black and white in Photoshop. See what you think about the before and after.
Before – Taken hand held on a Canon 7D whilst walking down to the Brooklyn Bridge. Having never been this side of the bridge before, I was a little bit lost and not really sure of where to go. I also remember being really p*ssed off that the bridge was being worked on and had huge tarpaulins hanging all over it!
After – Exposure brightened using Lightroom and also used the import option of the SLR Lounge presets along with a Vintage Punch – Cool Cross to bring the colours out a bit and then used Photoshop CC to open the photo and used Nik Silver Efex to convert to Black and White. I also passed it through the Nik Efex Output Sharpener.
One final note. The blog title is also the name of a poem that used to hang on my Grans wall by a Scottish Poet. Can’t for the life of me remember who it was by. Cracking little poem too.
richie heaney photography 