Web – Stuart P Photography
Here is a website I helped setup a few months ago for a photographer in Yorkshire to showcase his portfolio of work.
The photographer wanted a website where he could also upload new photos for his blog and have a contact page.
He already had a design concept drawn out which I followed closely, he also wanted a website that was mobile/tablet friendly as well.
I used WordPress as the platform for his website as it’s user friendly and allows the photographer to manage his own photos and content afterwards.
Various plug-ins were incorporated such as a slide show banner to display his photos interactively.
I’ve added a lazy image loading plug-in which lowers the amount of bandwidth data used when showing large amount of photos on a web page, this is done by only loading the photos when it’s visible on the screen. This was particularly important for people viewing his website on a limited mobile data on their phones.
When changing HTML and CSS codes, I tested the site using various browsers as I went a long and also used the built in web developing tool in Chrome and Opera to test the site virtually on mobile devices.
After the website was done, I created a simple user guide to help him get familiar with how to upload his photos in WordPress and how to update the information on his website.
The photographer was very pleased with his website overall and it has allowed him to showcase his photos to clients and also be able to update the site by himself.
Photography – Derbyshire
Winnats Pass, Derbyshire
Derwent Reservoir, Derbyshire
Here are some landscape photos of Derbyshire taken on a weekend in May. I went with my friend Kam and we set out on a mission to capture some nice landscape images for our own personal photography collection.
I took the 6D with me and a 24-70mm zoom lens as I knew I would be using a wider angle focal length for most of the day. We were fortunate to have a sunny day with some clouds which I liked as it added some dramatic interest in the skies.
We spent a few hours on top of Winnats Pass after climbing up (and me falling down) on the hilly areas. I focused on taking photos whereas my friend did some interesting time lapse videos of the clouds and the landscape on his mirrorless camera. I waited for the moment when the sun appeared off the clouds to add shadows in the rocks and grass which gave depth to the photos.
It was a good day out (even after the fall) and the photos turned out better than I had expected.
Photo Restoration – Slide to Digital
Here is a project that I did a few months ago for a family friend who wanted to be able to see his slides on his television screen.
There were over 1000 slides in total that he had taken in his travels around Europe with the earliest set taken from 1959.
All slides have been converted, cleaned and edited to its restored glory.
Click here to view a small selection of the restored photos.
The first task was to convert the slides to digital format, The simplest way would be to use a slide scanner but I had found some of them had low resolution and produces average results and the higher resolution scanners were more costly, I went with what was available and used a dSLR camera and a macro lens to capture the slides in all its details.
I created a makeshift lightbox by putting a video led light inside a box and placed a clear plastic sheet above.
After getting the camera equipment all setup, the first thing was to remove the plastic case and the 2 protective glass of each slide, this was a painstaking process but was required as the glass pieces had minute scratches and also when the 2 glass are pressed together it caused air bubbles.
The slide was then given a quick clean with an air blower and cloth and then placed onto the lightbox. Since the slide was so close to the macro lens; the camera found it difficult to focus and so it had to be manually (and meticulously) focused.
Once captured, it was put in to Adobe Lightroom where each slide was cropped and edited. Some of the slide had a slight red tint which caused purple skies in the image, this was easily fix by adjusting the temperature and tint in the white balance setting.
There were some vignetting that were visible from the original image, I used the Lens Correction setting to remove some of the dark corners.
I created a preset in Lightroom which helped speed up the editing process and then tweaked each slide individually.
After exporting the slides in Lightroom, the final processs was using the Spot Healing Brush Tool in Photoshop to remove the dust and dirt in the slides.
Dennis Cooper Photography – www.flickr.com/photos/denniscooper
Branding Design – Animal Buddies
Here is a branding design that I did last year for Animal Buddies, a small family run business based in Buckinghamshire specialising in pet services.
Since the client had just set up their business, they needed some branding designs. I helped come up the designs for their logo, business card and leaflet ad.
I wanted to design the logo to represent the family run pet business so I chose a bold round font in a light neutral colour to give a friendly and inviting look.
I kept the design of the business card simple to make the contact information clear and easy to see.
The leaflet would be in A5 size format, I carefully arranged the text and graphics by spacing evenly to make it easy to read in a small sheet.
Due to the amount of text required I had to make the font as small as possible but still readable at 8 pt. I used Object>Text Wrap in Illustrator to make the text flow around the images. I placed the contact details at the bottom of the sheet where it can easily be seen.
The final designs were exported to PDF with bleeding around the edges, ready for print.
Animal Buddies – www.animalbuddies.co.uk
Graphics – BCN Community Event Banners
Here are some banner designs made last year for the British Chinese Network who are a volunteer group in Manchester. These banners are used for their social networking page.
The client wanted individual banners for their various events and in different banner sizes. I designed the long rectangular banners first and then re-adjusted the graphics to fit in the tighter square dimension.
In illustrator, I used Clipping Mask Tool to make an image photo appear inside a shape, this was done by selecting the 2 objects, right clicking and choose ‘Make Clipping Mask’, also making sure the shape object is arranged above the image for the mask to work.
British Chinese Network | BCN – www.e-voice.org.uk/bcn