Woodhenge - low level dramatic shot into the sun - more great Wiltshire Photography

Woodhenge is the fantastic little brother of Stonehenge. Not far from the much more famous ancient site, it is located on the edge of a residential area, and is a place I really enjoy visiting.

I managed to be there just before sunset in January of this year, and got this great picture of Woodhenge.

www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/blog

You can visit my Wiltshire photographer page at

www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/wiltshire-photographer

 

Rick McEvoy Photography Portfolio - where do I go from here?

Well I have learnt a lot. Having your worked critiqued by someone who really knows what they are talking about is so useful.

I was particularly pleased as some of the comments I sort of knew were coming, and I have a great direction to go in now.

So what next?

I have to remove some of the images from my portfolio. When I say portfolio, I have decided that I am going to have two portfolios.

I am going to have a commercial photography portfolio and a landscape photography portfolio. My commercial portfolio will be my building related work. My landscape photography portfolio will be called, Landscape Photography Portfolio. Snappy eh?

The point being that my website is focused on my commercial photography work, which in my case is;

1. Architectural photography
2. Building Photography
3. Construction Photography
4. Commercial Photography
5. Industrial Photography
6. Interior Photography
7. Property Photography

I am also going to review the keywords above at the same time, to make sure I am making the most effective use of my work going forward. No point targeting areas of photography work that no one is looking for! And as this will be the basis of everything going forward a very worthwhile exercise. This exercise will identify if I need to change the structure of my website, and how I post to my blog and other social platforms. So yes time spent now will hopefully reap rewards in the future.

This is after all not an overnight thing – I am trying to build very solid business foundations for the future.

Back to the images. I need 30 images for my portfolio. (My Landscape Photography Portfolio will be done once this is completed).

And I have a few ideas for images that fit better in my portfolio, and I know for sure which ones are to be removed.

And as part of this selection process I will look afresh at each image for content and how the image was edited. There will be an amount of further work on each image, which I am going to do one image at a time.

That is something else I have learnt.

Do one thing at a time. Don’t try to do everything all the time, as you don’t get anywhere.

And each polished image I produce will provide fresh, quality content for my blog. And some of these images will go to my picture stock libraries and be available for commercial sale.

It takes a long time – well it too me a long time – to put everything together, but I now feel content that I have a plan going forward which gives me work to focus on in a structured way which provides benefits in various different directions.

Of course this development is as well as a full time days’ work but if it was easy everyone would do it!

There is some interesting stuff that I have to do, and some tedious stuff, but this time next year I hope to be writing from a completely different place with my photography business.

Thank you for reading this post, and I hope you enjoy reading about the creation of my new photography portfolio, which will culminate with a standalone portfolio page, and maybe even a separate portfolio website!

Pop back to my blog tomorrow at

www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/blog

for the next update, and hopefully a new image. That should kick start the next stage of the process nicely for me.

That lovely Dorset field shot - rich deep vibrant colours under a moving sky

This is image number 11 for my page dedicated to Dorset Photography. A picture of a field near Winterbourne Abbas, outside Dorchester on the A35 to Exeter.

Now believe it or not I have photographed this field a lot. It is not one of your classic Dorset pictures - it could be anywhere, but no I like it as it represents part of Dorset to me. Dorset landscape photography is not just landmarks, for me it is also the details within the overall landscape as well.

I like the textures and shapes in this field.

I have delibarately added a heavy vignette to this shot, as i wanted something sytlised to go amongst the othe pictures of Dorset. Something a little bit different.

The common theme running through all my pictures of Dorset I have just realised is the richness and depth of the colours within each image which I like a lot.

Thats all from me for today - I must go and get another lovely rich Dorset image to make up the set of twelve pictures of Dorset, which I will post tomorrow, then it is back to my portfolio via a number of Nik software related diversions!

Call back tomorrow at www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/blog for Doset image number 12

Nik Software - now free???? A gift from Google!

Really, the Nik software collection is being given away by Google.

Why?

No idea.

But go to this page and download it yourself

https://www.google.com/nikcollection/

I use Lightroom as the starting point in my digital workflow. Photos are imported into Lightroom and organised there.

I do 90% of my processing in Lightroom.The other 10% is in Photoshop.

I also have the following software

Topaz Labs

On One

Photomatix

I honestly have never used any of these much, and do not have the patience to learn them properly, so no fault on the software providers for my lack of their use.

I just did not get on with them.

As for the Nik Collection? Well I have downloaded, and will give it a go, and make a further post with some work produced using this software.

​

Am I excited?

Yes. Very . I am disappointingly surprisingly so excited!

The collection consists of the following

Analog Efex Pro

Color Efex Pro

Silver Efex Pro

Viveza

HDR Efex Pro

Sharpener Pro

Dfine

What do they all do? Don’t know, but Scott Kelby was quick off the mark as he has a class called, subtly

“Rockin’ The Free Nick Collection of Plug-ins”. I guess he knew this giveaway was coming.

Having listened to the class I know what I want to try, basically the black and white conversion in Silver Efex Pro that I knew about, and a couple of finishing tricks - not much really. I guess that is why I did not get on with the other plug-ins - i did not know what to do with them.

Check out his blog post which I will read to rather than try to come up with stuff my self at

http://scottkelby.com/thursday-releasing-online-class-using-nik-collection/

Go to www.kelbyone.com for the class (subscribers only but you get a free trial I think).

Still I am pleased that I am at the cutting edge of photography news, bang up to date with all that is new!

So thanks for reading this post, and I look forward to writing about my Nik software experience so pop back to my blog tomorrow at www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/blog for another post maybe about this software, maybe not.....

 

Rick McEvoy Photography Blog

My blog has moved to

http://www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/blog

From blogger at it is integrated now into my #squarespace website so please head over there for news on my

#architecturalphotography

#commercialphotography

#constructionphotography

#industrialphotography

And of course my

#landscapephotography

New Dorset Photography Image set - how I came up with the set of 12 images

I have been writing on my blog about my recent portfolio review.

As part of my portfolio review I came up with sets of 10 Dorset photography images as well as my main body of commercial photography work.

These are mainly recent shots, and some re-edits of older shots.

I already have pages specifically for Bournemouth, Poole and Sandbanks, so my Dorset photography page is a collection of pictures of Dorset - images not in one of those three areas. Hope this makes sense?

You can access these other pages at 

Bournemouth photography

www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/bournemouth-photographer

Poole photography

www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/Poole-photographer

Sandbanks photography

 www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/sandbanks-photographer

But back to my new set of Dorset images.

Well firstly there are 12. Not 10. Why I hear you ask?

Well 10 does not work on my website. I have gone with a grid layout for the first time, so four rows of three is the order of the day here.

So I start with 10 images.

I ditched one shot of Corfe Castle that I no longer like. Thinking about it, what was it doing there anyway?

So down to 9 now. First replacement is the shop shot. I will write separately about these images over the next couple of weeks.

So two more images to find to make my set of 12 Dorset photos. Pop back to my blog tomorrow at

www.rickmcevoyphotogaphy.co.uk/blog

to find out which are the two additional images for my Dorset Photography web page.

Oh yes - before I go - sorry I forgot. 

Lightroom Collections. 

I will say it again. Collections in Lightroom are just the best thing to work with, and unlock Lightroom Mobile and all that goes with it. I did not get collections for a long time, but once you get into them and the mobile part of it you will learn to love them just like I have. So now my Lightroom Catalogue (I need to merge two catalogues back together so I have one complete catalogue again – a legacy from my hard drive problem) filing needs some attention. Another subject for a separate post – I currently have my filing in folders with some catalogues.

Also remember that storage in Collections is unlimited, and combine that with Smart Previews and you have a very powerful mobile package which syncs back and forth. 

Collections and Lightroom Mobile have literally transformed my mobile workflow. 

Construction photography post in my blog today

I http://rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/blog/2016/4/3/construction-photography-the-problem-of-timing

Today on my #constructionphotographer blog I write about the trials and tribulations of #constructionphotography.

I am photographing a fantastic new private housing development in Poole next week.  I am taking the photographs for the architect.

I drove over to the site yesterday to see how things are going.  it is a construction site in Poole, Dorset.

The problem with building construction photography is one of timing. The works need to be completed, just completed that is, but the shoot normally needs to be done before occupation. Quite often a further shoot after occupation is preferable. 

So this is the site yesterday, Saturday.

Head over to my blog for the end of this story at the link above