Spend less time on post production and more time taking photos by learning these essential Photoshop shortcuts. Download here.   Download here.    

If your inner critics and your inner support crew were in a brawl, fight club style (dibs on Brad Pitt), who would win? If you asked me 10 years ago I’d have to confess that my support crew wouldn’t even get in the ring. Nope, they’d be cowering in the corner or curled up in the fetal position. My inner critics are a team of five. Doubt who joined the crew when I was about 14. Self-consciousness came along the same time. Fear and I have been besties my whole life. That’s my core group. In my 20s I met complacency and envy and the final members were added to the team in my 30s when burnout and boredom moved in. At first my support team was tiny hope and trust. It was the times that hope managed to sneak into my mind via the side entrance (usually while the...

“If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.” – Marc Chagall

In this tutorial I’m going to show you a really quick and easy way to correct perspective distortion in photographs of buildings. Perspective distortion is caused when you point your camera at an extreme angle to a building or when using a wide angle lens very close to your subject. The wider the lens and the closer you are to the subject, the more extreme the distortion. This type of distortion can be minimised by using a tilt shift lens which enables the lens to be tilted so it is parallel to your subject. Positioning yourself farther away from the subject will also minimise distortion. For those of us who don’t own a tilt shift lens or can’t get back from far enough from the subject, Lightroom offers a fantastic and relatively easy solution.

“I need a hero, I’m holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night” – Bonnie Tyler Back in the 80s when we wore our hair BIG and our jeans acid washed, Bonnie Tyler had a hit single called Hero. I know every word off by heart because I used to sing it into my hairbrush and pretend I was an 80s pop star. The word “hero” applies to many different things. The fireman that rescues the kitty stuck in a tree is a hero. The footballer who kicks the winning goal in overtime is a hero. And late at night after a long hard day, vanilla ice cream with Nutella is my hero (the ice cream’s organic – don’t judge me). In the photography world, the word “hero” is used to describe the shot, it could be the cover image of a magazine or the opening shot...

Using Lightroom keyboard shortcuts are a great way to speed up your workflow and give you more time to spend on other important things like taking photos! Download your cheat sheet via the link and either print it out and display it near your computer or store it on your smartphone and access it anytime. Download it here.

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent van Gogh

I love binge watching cooking competitions. One of my favourites is The Great British Bake Off. I love watching contestants battle it out to create the perfect chocolate mud cake or custard tart. The best part about the show is that all the contestants are given the same ingredients to work with and their final creations are judged on technique and presentation. I’m amazed at how many different variations of custard tarts can be created using the exact same ingredients. A few extra minutes whisking or a few moments longer in the oven can be the difference between success and failure. I would love to see a photography version of Bake Off called “Snap Off”, where enthusiast photographers from around the world compete against each other to create the perfect image. The format would be similar to Bake Off, there would be timed challenges and each photographer would be given...

“You don’t have to be good to start … you just have to start to be good!” ― Joe Sabah “Once you’ve mastered starting and stopping, the rest is easy.” ― Marty Rubin “The beginning is always NOW.” ― Roy Bennett “If I must start somewhere, right here and now is the best place imaginable.” ― Richelle E. Goodrich “I had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we’re all cowards.” ― Alberto Salazar

Here’s a really quick and easy way to create a custom brush of your signature using Photoshop. This technique works with text logos and images and the uses are not just limited to watermarks. You might want to create a custom brush made from a hand drawn image of flowers or love hearts or dog paws – whatever you like. You can make the brush preset bigger or smaller using the bracket keys. [ ] You can change the colour and opacity of your custom brush to suit the image you are working with.