Why use Photoshop?

Adobe Photoshop is the tool in your camera bag you don’t bring with you.

Before taking any photographs go into your camera settings and make sure you’re shooting in RAW. RAW is a file format that captures all the image data recorded by the sensor, not like Jpeg, which is compressed. Raw gives you the best quality and with the Adobe cc, you can take a photo you thought wasn’t exposed correctly and bring back what you thought was lost.

RAW setting on a canon camera

Be organised with your photographs. Keeping your photos organised is very important, each digital photograph there will an imprint of metadata, this is the RAW information about the photograph. Depending on your camera you will have, shutter speed, aperture ISO, lens and focal length and sometimes location the image was taken. In Lightroom, you can create collections. Collections pretty much are an album, label the collection and drag and drop the photos you wish to be apart of that collection keeping your photo organised.

Before Lightroom

After Lightroom

Before Lightroom and Photoshop

After Lightroom and Photoshop

Straight from Camera

After edit

What camera should I buy

When you first start in photography it can be a little tricky to know what to buy. Well here are my tips that hopefully make it less stressful for you. Firstly the make does not matter, get that out of your head. If you like Canon you're going to get a Canon if you like Sony you're going to get a Sony. What matters is, does it have a manual mode. Thats it. If it has manual mode great. Firstly if you don't know about photography and modes best thing to do is, put your camera in Shutter priority mode or Program mode and see what the camera's light meter is telling you. Normally the flashing lines will give you the information, then switch it back to manual mode and mess around with the settings. Thats the beauty of digital photography you can change all the setting and keep snapping until you're happy. Photography is a form of art so a really under exposed photo could look great compared to the "correct" exposure. 

 There are lots of things in photography you might need to know at some point but at the start as long as you get a correctly exposed image thats all that matter. It sound be fun not stressful. 

The thing I'd buy if I was starting fresh with photography 

1. Camera with a standard zoom lens say 24-105mm or 70-300mm 
2. Tripod
3. Spare battery 
4. Memory card
5. Bag

That's about it really, you can pick up good starter kits from most camera manufactures, they will give you camera and a lens and I'm sure whatever shop you buy them from they will do you a good deal on spare battery and memory. 

Try SRS Microsystems in Watford,UK. Not only will they help you  on what camera to buy but they will help you set up your camera so you'll have no problems starting out. 

 

Music videos

Any good photographer needs to offer more than just photos luckily most DSLR's and Mirrorless cameras do video and film in 1080p. High definition or HD for short. The newer models are filming in 4k, or UHD.  The more you spend on a camera the better the results. High-end, full frame, 4k cameras can cost a lot. If you're not looking to spend a lot you can get a low budget camera that will give you good results, not the best but way better than the miniDV cameras they use to produce.  I've had the chance to film a few music videos for some musical acts. Most of my video I go for the comedy angle. Stupid and silly, with good music as the key. I've seen far too many videos of bands playing on top of cliffs or in the woods. If you want people to view your videos you have to keep them entertained. That's my opinion and yes there are many good music videos with woods and cliff but I'd mainly stay for the music. I find laughter the way forward. 

Here are some of the videos I've filmed and edited 

Diesel King covering Phil Collins classic 'Easy Lover' Recorded by Steve Sears at Titan Studios, Watford. Video by Lawrence Walters - http://www.lawrencewalters.co.uk/ All music and lyrics by Phil Collins!

Diesel King - Hold The Line Recorded by Steve Sears at Titan Studios, Watford. Video by Lawrence Walters - http://www.lawrencewalters.co.uk/ All music and lyrics by Toto!

Directed by Lawrence Walters Lawrencewalters.co.uk Story by Crystal Deth, Black Mist, Nails, Honey Badger FREE ALBUM - THEHELL.BANDCAMP.COM VIDEOS SHIT JUST GOT REAL - http://youtu.be/bnAoY_UeXSI IT'S THE MOTHERFUCKING HELL YOU DICK -http://youtu.be/Utx8-26jTF4

THEHELLYOUDICK.COM www.facebook.com/thehellthehellthehell THEHELL.BANDCAMP.COM @thehellyoudick Filmed and edited by Lawrence Walters Lawrencewalters.co.uk

official lyric Video for "it's for the motherf*****g KIDS you d**k" FREE ALBUM thehell.bandcamp.com twitter.com/thehellyoudick facebook.com/thehellthehellthehell VIDEOS http://youtu.be/bnAoY_UeXSI - shit just got real http://youtu.be/TrSaxyj_a3I - Step it up

A track we recorded for 'You're Listening To The Hell' on the day that metal hero Jeff Hanneman passed away.

If you're looking for a cheap, simple, funny and fun video for your musical group let me know.