PHOCUS

Retouching the easy way

2010-09-15T22:40:00.001+01:00

I went to the Photovision roadshow in Dublin last week for no particular reason. Thought I might catch a couple of seminars, get my camera sensors cleaned and do a little browsing.
What I took away from the day was a new found interest in the work of Guy Gowan.
Guy gave a talk at the last photovision I attended a few years ago and after seeing him I purchased a couple of his DVDs and tried some of his retouch techniques but never really gave it a fair go.
This past week after subscribing to www.guygowan.com I truly believe I have learned more about the way Photoshop works than I have in the past 15 years since I first edited an image on a mac.
I suggest anyone who is interested in improving their retouching workflow check out his site.

Leaving Certs and CS5

2010-05-24T08:46:00.000+01:00

Recently, I was asked by a local secondary school to photograph all of their Leaving Certificate students for their yearbook.
I had never really done this before, but recently I've been using flash more and more so I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to experiment a little bit without going too fancy with the lighting setup.
I brought a lot of gear with me and probably used more than I needed to but I wanted to kind of play around with it a bit so I didn't want to be short.
It was a pretty rushed job, (17 and 18 year old's don't like to hang around too long, especially when they're being photographed).
I set up a white background and lit that with an SB900. I used a Bowen's head in a soft box left of camera and I bounced another SB900 off a reflector on the floor.

I was pretty happy with the results, but in some of the images the background was lit unevenly or just came out grey.
I probably rushed the set up a little too much.
I'm a firm believer in getting it right in the camera to reduce the amount of post production required later.
I processed the images in Adobe Lightroom 2.7 and then because the background wasn't completely white in a number of the images, I took them into a newly downloaded trial copy of Photoshop CS5.
In the past I have often masked people from backgrounds and filled the background with white but it was always a painstaking process, especially if the person had really wispy hair.
No more!

Photoshop have put a new brush into their refine edge panel which is nothing short of amazing.
Within a very short time I was able to mask a person from the background including their hair.
Even people with very blond hair wasn't a problem.
Brilliant new tool and one I believe on its own makes the upgrade worth while.
Here's the result.

Irish Independent Weekend Magazine Cover

2010-05-19T14:00:00.001+01:00

Last week I was commissioned to photograph a lovely woman named Margaret Fahy in Claremorris who had a very bad experience in the past with diet pills.
Having very little time to photograph her I chose to use the waiting room in her office.
I used a Nikon SB900 at camera left with a shoot through umbrella as the main light. Then I used another SB900 bounced off a reflector on the floor and finally I put an SB800 on a chair identical to the one Margaret is sitting on and fired it through the back to make a cool pattern on the wall behind. That was placed way over on the left.
I really like the result and so did the magazine. They used it on the cover.

Army Exercise at Moore Hall

2010-05-18T15:48:00.000+01:00

Last Wednesday morning I had a pretty early start, early for me anyway!

I was assigned by the Western People to photograph the Western Battalion of the Irish Army on a training exercise at Moore Hall, Co. Mayo.

I boarded a 10 seater Irish Air Force helicopter at Castlebar army barracks at 8am and was flown out to the site of the exercise.

For the next couple of hours I shot over 500 images of a very organized military operation which to me seemed very realistic.

It was one of the most enjoyable and exhilarating jobs I have done in a long time.

Here's a sample of the resulting images.

If you'd like to see the images bigger just click on the four arrows in the bottom right hand corner of the slide show.

12-05-2010 Army Exercise at Moore Hall - Images by Keith Heneghan

Mayo 4X4 Charity Challenge

2010-04-20T08:30:00.002+01:00

Last Sunday I was assigned to cover the first Mayo 4x4 Charity Challenge in aid of the Niall Mellon Township Trust. I hadn't even heard of this event before but rest assured if they stage it next year I'm taking part. The 4X4 teams all met up in Balla in the morning to get their maps and coordinates and had to plot the course route themselves which covered many of the very scenic mountains and valleys of the county of Mayo. Along the course were many clues which meant the teams had to be very observant for the whole day. The teams were also given a list of questions which they had to try and answer based on what they seen on the journey.

I photographed the teams at two areas in a forestry on the side of a mountain between Balla and Kiltimagh and then later in the day I went to a very scenic area outside Newport near Glenhest to photograph a river crossing. I really hope this is an event that takes off because it gives people a great opportunity to see our lovely county in a very different way.

By the way if you want to see any of these galleries fullscreen just click on the four arrows in the bottom right hand corner.

18-04-2010 Mayo 4x4 Charity Challenge - Images by Keith Heneghan

Titanic Commemoration in Lahardaun

2010-04-16T08:42:00.002+01:00

At 2.20am last Thursday morning I was in Lahardaun, Co. Mayo to photograph a unique event which commemorates the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
Descendants of eleven victims and three survivors of the tragedy carried candles and rang the Timoney Bell at in the grounds of the local church as a mark of respect.
There was music and poetry and I'd say over one hundred local people turned out.
The Addergoole Titanic Society organise this event every year but this was my first time attending. I'll definitely be back.

15/04/2010 Titanic Commemoration Lahardaun, Co. Mayo - Images by Keith Heneghan

Jedward in Concert in Castlebar

2010-04-07T10:22:00.003+01:00

X Factor stars Jedward went on stage at the Royal Theatre and Event Centre, last night.

06-04-2010 Jedward in Concert in Castlebar - Images by Keith Heneghan

Aperture v Lightroom

2010-03-30T10:17:00.000+01:00

Here's my view on this very popular debate.

For many years I used a combination of Photo Mechanic and Photoshop to organise, develop and caption my images.

It was a very easy and fast way to go through my workflow when working to deadline either locally or on the road.

However, I always liked the idea of using just one program for everything especially when I started shooting mostly raw and occasionally jpeg.

Last year I finally bought Lightroom 2 after downloading and trying out it's trial and the Aperture 2 trial.

While I really liked the Aperture Interface and the way it worked on a mac I just felt that LR2 had more to offer in the way of plugins and tools, especially the local adjustment brush.

A few weeks ago I downloaded and tried Aperture 3 and fell in love with the way it worked and rushed in to buy it.

This turned out to be a big mistake on my part.

The problem is metadata.

It seems that Aperture are using a new method of applying metadata to images and while the metadata is present in the images it cannot be seen by the current or past versions of photoshop.

There are other places where you can read about what is happening here I can't say what it is exactly.

All I know is if I import a file into aperture, add a caption and export a jpeg, then open this jpeg in Photoshop CS4 I will not be able to find my caption.

Now you might say but why do you need to use photoshop if you're using Aperture?

This is looking at the problem from the wrong angle.

I work for numerous clients and I have no idea what software they use to read the captions on my images.

What I do know is that the industry standard for many years has been Adobe Photoshop.

If my clients cannot read the captions i add to my images they are useless to them.

End of story.

For the time being I will be sticking with Lightroom and I'm really looking forward to LR3 which apparently will have some great new additions.

The Cross of Cong

2010-03-30T10:15:00.002+01:00

The Cross of Cong - Images by Keith Heneghan

I was commissioned by The Irish Times yesterday to photograph the return of the Cross of Cong to Mayo for first time in 170 years.
The following is some information about the cross from the National Museum of Ireland's website.
National Museum transfers Cross of Cong from Kildare Street to Castlebar.
The Cross of Cong will be on display at the Museum of Country Life from Wednesday 31st March 2010.
The Cross of Cong is one of Ireland’s greatest treasures. It was made in 1123 to encase a fragment of the True Cross that was brought to Ireland and displayed in different places around the country.
The medieval Annals of Tigernach record that Tairdelbach Ua Chonchobair (Turlough O'Conor), king of Connacht and high king of Ireland, asked for part of the Cross to be kept in Ireland. On his instructions, a shrine was made in Roscommon to house the fragment - long since lost. That shrine is the Cross of Cong.

St. Patrick's Day Parade Castlebar 2010

2010-03-17T10:47:00.000Z

St. Patrick's Day Parade Castlebar 2010 - Images by Keith Heneghan

Morag Prunty

2010-03-05T10:12:00.002Z

Writer Morag Prunty - Images by Keith Heneghan

I had the pleasure of photographing author Morag Prunty who also writes under the name Kate Kerrigan earlier this week. She's about to start writing a column in the Irish Daily Mail.