Category: Tutorials

The business of wedding photography can be a long road to nowhere if you don’t start it off on the right track, thats why I decided to put on a wedding seminar at the Forbury Hotel in Reading with the help of Olympus UK and some of my favourite suppliers I use on a day to day basis. Read More…

Model Anna Zella Location London

My urban portraits with speedlights is one of my most popular workshops running, showing you how to create amazing shots on the busting streets of London with just 1 speedlight or even a video light and a little bit of imagination. Read More…

When it comes to lighting and camera settings its as complicated as you make it! There is always a hard way to do something but like anyone else I like the easy way, so this is my approach to simple portraits and how to get an amazing look with minimal kit. Read More…

This was our first Boudoir photography workshop at the Forbury Hotel in Reading, and what an amazing place for such an intimate shoot, with the staff always making you feel welcome, and tea and coffee always to hand. Read More…

One of the photography courses I run is the olympus OMD Streetwalk dedicated to all the photographers using or wanting to use the Pen and OMD cameras. With locations such as London and Windsor there’s never a dull moment capturing some amazing photography with all the different styles being created from each member of the group attending. Read More…

Calibration is the key

As a professional wedding and event photographer I am a big fan of the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport. I capture images all around the globe for weddings, events, and fashion where matching the color is an absolute must. Read More…

Album Design from Robert Pugh on Vimeo.

Creating your master piece wedding album

Im always asked how I build and make my wedding photography albums. The first step to the perfect wedding album is arranging the appointment with your customer to discuss the design of album their looking for. Read More…

WordPress Ping List

Being a photographer working for yourself Is not all about taking photos and doing your editing. Your website is one of your largest resources and advertising tools, but you need to dedicate time every day to keep it looking fresh and upto date. This is were indexing and submitting your site url’s is a must.

Everything you need to do is free

People often ask me what I do to get my posts indexed in Google in as short as 15 minutes…

The short answer is I just use a super accurate WordPress Ping List!

If you’re not sure of what a WordPress Ping List is, it’s basically a list of servers to which a notification will be sent when you publish new content on your site to let them know that you’ve got new content on your site, and that they should “crawl” it and index it in their Search Engine Results.

You can find a good long ping list over at social sweetie or use the short list iv supplied below, take a look at the two and figure out which one you want to use: They each have their own benefits and uses… But first, let’s explain exactly what a WordPress ping list is

How can I change my WordPress Ping List

In order to change the WordPress Ping List that your site currently has, you will need to:

• Log into your WordPress Site (you can do this by going to “http://www.Domain.com/wp-admin” replacing the “domain” portion with your website name)

• Once you’re logged in, move your mouse over the Settings menu item, and select Writing

• Once the Writing page loads up you will want to scroll all the way down to the bottom, where you see Update Services. If your blog is a self hosted one you should only have one update service listed on your WordPress Ping List, it’s most likely http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ Go ahead and Delete That.

• Next you will need to Select a Ping List to use from Below. Make sure you use only 1 of the WordPress Ping Lists! If you paste them both in at the same time into your WordPress Update Services, not only will it take FOREVER for you to post, but the servers on the Ping List will think that you’re trying to Spam them…

• When you’ve read through the two different Ping Lists and their functions, feel free to Copy-Paste one of them into your Update Services field and click the blue Save Changes button.

• You’re all done! Now when you write posts, your website blog will automatically update the people on the WordPress Ping List of the new content, and this should get your website indexed faster.

Latest Ping list for WordPress 2013

• http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
• http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

Use a manual or TTL triggering system like the pocket wizard FlexTT5 and the Mini TT1 to use any flash that has a manual or TTL capability control, this can save you thousands in expensive studio lighting and will greatly increase accuracy and control of light!

The trick is learning how to nail the right exposure with your flash within “one or two” clicks which can be learned with the right instructions.

5 Great Tips for off camera flash

• Place the flash as close as possible to your subject will greatly reduce the flash power and improve the quality of light.
• Use a shoot thru umbrella for studio quality light and a fast set up.
• when outdoors in bright light gang more than one flash together to achieve proper exposures and rich colours.
• Keep shooter speeds below 1/200 if using a Cannon of 1/250 if using a Nikon for other cameras look at your manual.
• To use lower Fstops in bright light use a ND filter to keep your shutter speed below your cameras flash sync speed.

The most accurate and most popular triggers amongst photographers are the Pocket Wizards and EL Skyport Speed

We all have those situations where we need to use content-aware fill (introduced in CS5) but the fill keeps pulling color/selection from a person, or a piece of the photo that we don’t want it to use. Well, it’s as simple as using a quick layer mask to tell content-aware fill what not to touch.

Conclusion

Watch this video for 3 minutes and you’ll save hours and hours down the road with quick fixes, whether it’s removing some garbage on the road or an overzealous church lady during a ceremony. This will help.