2 months ago
Follow up to the studio open weekend & pics

Thanks to everyone who came down to the studio open weekend and exhibition. It was a great success with loads of visitors through the door including people who had come down specifically to see us and the studio for the first time.

The next open studio weekend is scheduled for November when the number of studios involved in weekend should have doubled to 140 so there will be lots to see! 

Thanks also to Diego Indraccolo, Keith Clouston and Sarah Jones for sorting out their files and agreeing to being involved! Their prints looked amazing large scale… magnificent 90 inch prints that just looked stunning when you were up close to them!

open weekend 01

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2 months ago
15% off your Moo.com order

 

By clicking on the advert to the left of this page or by clicking on the image below to get through to the Moo site you can get an extra 15% off Moo’s already fantastic prices on your entire order on all products at moo simply by entering the code 2TP2XN 

We heartily recommend Moo!

They offer the best value for money business cards and mini cards on the market and are our top recommendation for all creatives!

Happy shopping!

*Orders must be placed before Monday 31st May at midnight (PDT). (Tuesday 1st June at 8am London) 

*One use per customer only.

*Shipping isn’t included.

2 months ago
How to shoot strobe/daylight mix on a bright location by Sean Armenta

 

At least once a year, I try to produce a fashion shoot at The Joshua Tree National Park. An immense and varied desert location and it is one of those places where you simply point your camera at any direction and it looks amazing.
Sean Armenta shoots in Joshua Tree National Park

I put together a small team of one model, one artist providing both makeup and hair, a fashion stylist, and a photo assistant. I wanted to produce images that were classic, not overly trendy, and would remain relevant for longer than a season. I also planned on using two lenses for the shoot - a 50mm and a 180mm. Using a 50 would allow me to get just enough environment in the shot without being overly wide, and the 180 would be great for beauty shots and full length shots which would show depth and I really wanted to make it different from the previous outing to Joshua Tree where I had shot everything with a 35. The shots you see here were taken in April 2009, a bit off season to avoid all the usual tourist traffic to the park.  

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2 months ago
Photoshop ABC’s

So over the weekend what started as an idle tweet by Mark Jobson turned into a 3 ways tweetfest with Mark, Sean Armenta and myself working our way through a Photoshop ABC and I thought it might be quite good fun to put it up here to show that we actually managed it! And I don’t think we cheated too much!

Below is an edited version of the transcript, (though it hasn’t been altered too much)

Feel free to disagree with us, this isn’t supposed to be a definitive list or even the best list, this was the list we came up with whilst bantering over twitter… if we’d been in the pub then I’m sure it would have been heated!




Mark Jobson:
Seriously considering teaching my 5yr old how to retouch…

James Lightbown:
Keith Clouston  is looking for retouchers if you get your 5 yr old up to speed quick enough! ;-)

Mark Jobson:
Scary thing is though… she seems to be genuinely interested. Right. A is for… Adjustment Layer lol

James Lightbown:
haha We’ve got to do a #photoshopabc … B is for Brushes

Mark Jobson:
C is for Curves

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2 months ago
Open studio weekend and exhibition

Clic La Mode and the Clic La Mode studio is a proud to be a part of the following Second Floor Studios & Arts Project and this weekend every artist and the entire complex is throwing it’s doors open for an exciting open studios weekend.

We are hosting an exhibition in the gallery and featuring a large selection of work by photographers from our showcase gallery.

This is an open event to anyone who would like to see both the studio and some beautiful large format photography. There are a selection of stories being displayed in wonderful 24” x 90” photographs… (that’s over seven and a half foot tall!)

The Clic La Mode team look forward to seeing you there!

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2 months ago
Huge review of Photosop CS5 on Ars Technica

Over at tech website Ars they’ve done a huge review of Photoshop CS5 Extended for Mac where they’ve gone into great detail. It’s a massive 8 page review featuring loads of comment, video and images and is well worth the read!

It’s not always the case with new versions of Photoshop but CS5 looks well worth the purchase and plenty of Clic friends that we’ve spoken to have expressed their interest in putting their hands in their pocket for this one.

The list of new features is quite impressive with the new Content Aware Fill and Camera Raw 6 causing lots of interest amongst photographers.

Adobe Photoshop CS5

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3 months ago
Photoshop Tips & Tricks: Adding Noise

Noise.

What is Noise? And why is Noise important to you?

Well it’s not as abstract a question as it may seem, for a start to clarify; I’m referring to Noise in the Adobe Photoshop sense. While I’m sure there is an Adobe approved definition of noise out there on the internets somewhere, for our target audience of beginners and novices, it may be useful to think of noise as the digital equivalent of film grain.

In a world in which pixel counts are getting bigger and bigger, producing smoother images and wider tonal ranges you may think that something like film grain is redundant, and that the ability to shoot at 400IS0 on your shiny new DSLR without getting much in the way of noise is actually a blessing.

But what about when you want that grainy feel, when everything is just a bit too smooth? That’s when you’ll be grateful for a bit of Noise.

But, before you go reaching for that handy noise filter the Adobe have so kindly provided for you (or even the film grain filter) give this handy, non-destructive way of adding noise a go first:

Step 1:

Make yourself a new layer.

Image example noise 01

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3 months ago

There’s a really interesting post today on The F Stop discussing the potential of the iPad as a portfolio tool for photographers.

Check out the article by clicking on the link above and make sure you have a good look around the site as it’s a great professional photographers blog run by photographer Zack Seckler.

3 months ago

A full-length behind-the-scenes look at Brandon Voges’ Upside Downy Face series. A brilliant portrait series!

Shows that sometimes it’s all about a simple thing done very very well!

Checkout Brandon’s Flickr feed here

3 months ago

Yet more from Nathen of the Clic La Mode team sometimes hard at work… sometimes not!