November 2010

I got asked today what the difference is between Saturation, Vibrance and Clarity in Lightroom.Saturation:Increasing the saturation slider in Lightroom will boost the all of the colours in the image equally i.e. all of the colours will look richer and more intense (note that I am avoiding using the word "brighter"). Reducing the value will remove the colour, eventually leaving a monochrome black & white image at -100.Vibrance:The vibrance slider allows you to avoid an issue with the saturation slider. When using the saturation slider, as all of the pixels are altered equally. However, it is common...


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I was looking up the link for Adobe Lightroom 3 (my favourite application for cataloguing and performing basic editting) for a colleague and saw that it is now available from Amazon for US$149. That's a 50% discount off of list price. Click here for more information.


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I was surfing the internet today, just catching up with what's out there being developed and I came across this excellent set of Lightroom presets created by Sean McCormack for generating timelapse movies directly from Lightroom. How nifty. I've yet to try it out, but that would have saved me the days of heart-ache when I tried to create one previously (as a "Behind the Scenes" for a fashion shoot with the very talented Ella Manor) using Windows Movie Maker. The resulting 12MB .wmm file unfortunately crashed my PC every time I went to render it so I never managed to finish it. When I got my new iMac,...


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I stumbled across Filterstorm today, which offers a great range of editing capabilities on the iPad. It looks impressive - now all I need is an iPad! Take a look at the silent video demo.


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The Taj Mahal has to be the most beautiful building I have ever seen. For me, it trumps the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, the Colosseum and San Pedro without a shadow of a doubt.Yet how do you take a good photograph of it? The two things I found out during my visit to the Taj were (1) the gates open at 6.15am (which is early enough to get there before the crowds) and (2) the best light is not until about 8.00am (by which time the place is swarming with ants... I mean tourists).So, my solution: take a shot somewhere between the two times and turn to Photoshop. The image below was taken...


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This weekend was a chance to explore one of the national parks in the Hong Kong New Territories: Sai Kung Country Park. Setting out with 15 other photographers from the HK Photography Club, we took the subway, a bus, a taxi, a boat and then hiked for two hours over the crest into the depths of the park. There, we camped the night on the Tai Long Wan beach, cooking dinner over the bonfire (and for a few of us, gas stoves) and took the opportunity to relax in the blissfully tranquil surroundings - all while taking the occasional photograph.


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Wondering what to get your photographer-geek friend for Christmas? Scott Kelby mentioned this on his gift guide today and I thought it looked pretty fun. You can imagine someone's shock on opening it - thinking that you'd bought them a new lens for Christmas - and then to realise it's a mug!Buy the The Camera Lens Mug at the Photojojo Store!


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  The Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island is possibly most famous for the Tian Tan Buddha. You can read more about the huge statue on Wikipedia.  


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My 62-page photo book titled "India - Portraits from the Streets" is now available for order from Blurb. Preview the whole book online below.India - Portraits from the Streets by Sam Chadwick


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Tian Tan Buddha, also known as the Big Buddha, is a 34-metre-tall bronze statue of a Buddha Amoghasiddhi located on Lantau Island. The 240 steps up to the Buddha can be tough on a hot summer's day but at the summit you will be greeted by six smaller bronze statues known as "The Offering of the Six Devas" offering flowers, incense, lamp, ointment, fruit, and music to the Buddha. These offerings symbolize charity, morality, patience, zeal, meditation, and wisdom, all of which are necessary to enter into nirvana.


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Here are a selection of images from my 21-day adventure through India. In the coming weeks I will be publishing a book and making posters available for order. So consider this a little preview.Click here to view the slideshow (120 images)


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End of an adventure So the three weeks have flown by. I write this as I wait for the check-in counter to open in Mumbai. With the final image count still to be determined, I would guess that I will have over 5,000 once all of the memory cards have been downloaded. That's one very long slideshow! Without even looking closely at them yet, I know I'm excited to see how a few have turned out (its always hard to tell on the small screen) but overall simply the number of environmental portait shots I have taken this trip has far exceeded any previous journey and it was simply impossible...


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