You normally associate soft focus effects with portraits, but they can work on all kinds of images, adding a romantic, dreamy feel to an everyday scene. Landscapes, for example, are often given a dramatic, brooding look when sometimes the emotion we feel is much lighter. Here's an example. This tree-lined avenue felt bright, airy and summery, but somehow the picture … [Read more...] about Try this soft focus effect on landscapes
Soft focus
See the world in infra red
Infra red photography creates an unusual and surreal view of the world that can also be very beautiful. You can do it in black and white or colour, but the techniques used today with digital cameras are rather different to those used with film. Infra red film photography is relatively straightforward – you simply use film sensitised to the infra red part of the spectrum. … [Read more...] about See the world in infra red
Budapest parliament
It's all very well giving advice about how to achieve certain effects using this software or that software, but it always strikes me that no-one ever talks about WHY you should use a particular effect with a particular subject. Books and magazines are very tied up with the mechanics of photography but rarely stray into the stuff that really matters – what we're trying to … [Read more...] about Budapest parliament
Give your landscapes a mystic glow with the Color Efex Pro Glamour Glow effect
The Color Efex Pro Glamour Glow effect would normally be used on portraits, but I think it works rather well on other subjects too. It adds an ethereal glow to everyday subjects, gives colours a pure, rich depth and lets you shift the colour balance too. I'm going to use it on this autumn shot I took a couple of years back. I was really struck by the colours on a visit to an … [Read more...] about Give your landscapes a mystic glow with the Color Efex Pro Glamour Glow effect
