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...

Shocking right? It gets better. Of the red-headed, left-handed photographers, those that were breastfed for the first six months of their lives and have never tasted Nutella make up 80% of the world’s greatest snappers. By now you’ve probably started to see the holes in my story right? There’s no such thing as a photographer that’s never tasted Nutella. Pffttt, everybody knows that! But seriously, arguing that the colour of someone’s hair, or whether they are left or right-handed will influence the quality of their work is just like insisting that a certain lens or brand of camera is going to make someone a better photographer. If you’re not convinced, try doing a Google image search of “world’s greatest photographs”. You won’t get the answer “did you mean images taken on the 1DX11, Sony A77 II, Leica, Nikon or Hasselblad?” Instead your search will bring up thousands of incredible images...

Did you hear the one about greatness being born, not made? What a load of caca! The difference between average and great – the thing that sets the Nutellas apart from the regular chocolate spreads – is hard work. Ask any champion athlete, billionaire businessman or brilliant artist what they do every day to reach that elite level and you will never hear “Errr dunno, I woke up one morning after spending most of my waking moments on the couch watching re-runs of One Tree Hill and eating Cheetos.” The only exception to this rule is the supermodel. They are formed by a rare genetic mutation where all the cells miraculously line up to create physical beauty. They literally wake up one day and are drop dead gorgeous. So even if you missed out on the supermodel genes when they were handed out at birth, there is still hope for...

“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”– Robert Frank

How to improve an image in 10 seconds using the shadow and highlight sliders in Lightroom. If I was ever going to nominate a Lightroom adjustment employee of the week, it would definitely be a tie between the highlights and shadow sliders in the develop module. In this tutorial I show you how to radically improve your images using these sliders and why you should step away from the exposure slider.

  “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” – Leonardo da Vinci   I can still remember exactly where I was when I first experienced the amazing raw file processing software called Lightroom. Like most groovy new trends, I wasn’t an early adopter. I’d heard many of my colleagues rave about Lightroom like it was the greatest thing since Nutella on bread, but I still had some reservations… I didn’t have time to learn a whole new system. Lightroom looked complicated and Photoshop did everything I needed just fine. Then I tried it and life as I knew it changed forever *cue epic movie soundtrack*. That was a defining moment in my life that will be played in my highlights reel, in between first kiss and first jar of Nutella. I was hooked within minutes of using it. Using Lightroom felt like home. Lightroom understood me. Lightroom had me at “hello.”...

“The one thing you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. The moment that you feel that just possibly you are walking down the street naked… that’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.” ― Neil Gaiman, Make Good Art

I once knew a photographer, Richard Barrett (not his real name) whose work was absolutely perfect. Every single image was perfectly composed and sharp as a tack. Every pixel was exposed precisely and the post production was flawless. Technically, I could not fault his work. He was also a nice guy and yet his photography struggled to get noticed. Why? I believe it had to do with the way he ordered his wine… An Artist and a Scientist walk into a bar. The Scientist carefully studies the wine list and chooses a wine based on all the data he is given, including the region the grapes are grown in, the history of the wineries and the reviews of each bottle. The Artist orders the same bottle the people on a nearby table are drinking because that’s exactly what he feels like. I believe the way a photographer orders wine, or...

“Your smile is your logo, your personality is your business card, how you leave others feeling after having an experience with you becomes your trademark.” ― Jay Danzie

Do you find you get easily distracted by shiny things? I’m always looking for productivity hacks to keep me focused especially when I’m retouching images or writing. When I first saw this app, I was skeptical. I just didn’t get how a few nature sounds could possibly keep me focused and alert. I was so wrong! This app is brilliant. I use it when I’m retouching images and I’ve also used it to help me relax after a big day of shooting and it’s even great for power naps. Check it out here Give it a go and let me know what you think.