Alantaylorphotography's Blog

Stephanie

alantaylorphotography — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:27:07 +0000

This is my first edited image of Stephanie, shot at Queen’s Park Camera Club’s group shoot studio night this week.

Click the thumbnail to see the full size image.

Glasgow’s George Square

alantaylorphotography — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:30:41 +0000

A small selection of images shot this eveing in Glasgow’s George Square featuring long exposure shots of the floodlit observation wheel . I thought that shooting the wheel through the trees gave the illusion of a large winter moon.

Portrait of John

alantaylorphotography — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:09:28 +0000

This is my first edited image from a group studio session at Queen’s Park Camera Club, with Glasgow based model, John.

The RAW image was converted to JPG in Nikon Capture NX with all post processing being done in The Gimp.

Click the thumbnail to see the full size image.

Wedding Shoot

alantaylorphotography — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:41:39 +0000

Here are a couple of images from a wedding themed shoot I recently did with make-up artist Kirsty Jordan.

If you are interested in a shoot on a Time For Prints basis please get in touch.

Art Photography

alantaylorphotography — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 22:07:48 +0000

Photographic Artist, Dianne Owen, visited my camera club recently and presented an incredible selection of prints of her digital images. Dianne’s body of work had a distinct style but also great variety. Soft tones and delicate textures featured in many images but others had strong graphic elements with bold colour.

Dianne’s work inspired me to try to create some graphic images composed from a number of photographic elements. It is a bit of a departure from my normal photographic interests but I’m quite happy with the results.

You can see Dianne’s work here: http://dianneowen.info

Perfect Skin

alantaylorphotography — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 21:23:17 +0000

For a long time I have been perplexed by how to achieve the super smooth skin tones models have in the ads in glossy magazines. In part it is due the model having clear skin, professional make-up artists, expensive lighting set ups and expert image manipulation.

While I don’t have access to professional hair stylists or make up artists at my studio sessions, I have worked hard in “the GIMP” to develop a technique which mimics these high end studio productions.

I have developed my technique to produce extremely smooth skin colour and tone but still retain detailed natural looking texture.

The original shot below is from a studio session I did with Glasgow based model, Donna Crainie, last year. When seen side by side with the original image, I think the processed image looks a little overworked but on its own I think it stands up fairly well.

If you are a Glasgow based model with ideas for a studio shoot on a Time for CD basis, then please get in touch and we can chat about our ideas.

If you enjoy what you see here then don’t forget to subscribe to my blog.

Elizabeth portrait composite

alantaylorphotography — Mon, 30 May 2011 17:05:23 +0000

I have’t had the opportunity to take many new photographs over the past few weeks so I thought I would rework an old image.

The main element of the image was from a studio shoot with Elizabeth which I posted here previously. The wings were created from a single image of a kitchen knife, duplicated and transformed in The GIMP. The starfield was created in Bryce from DAZ Studios and the whole things was composited in The GIMP.

Spring in Culzean

alantaylorphotography — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:41:32 +0000

I spent today enjoying the sun in the country park surrounding Culzean Castle. These are a small selection of my images from the day.

Elizabeth Studio Photoshoot

alantaylorphotography — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 07:36:46 +0000

I put out a call for models for studio portrait shots here on my blog and on a couple of the popular modelling sites back in January. The response was good and first session I arranged was with with Elizabeth, a new model, and this was her first shoot.

I’d happily recommend Elizabeth to other photographers, she arrived on time, with a selection of clothes and took instruction well to get the shots we wanted.

If you are model interested in a shoot with me on a Time For Prints basis, please email me via the “contact Alan Taylor” section of my site.

Parisian Ball Spinning

alantaylorphotography — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 21:53:01 +0000

This photograph of a young man balancing a spinning football on a ID card in his mouth was shot in Paris in Sepetmber 2010.

The scene was captured just before sunset with strong raking light coming from the right of the image, causing extremely dense shadows in the original RAW image. The image, as you see it here is a composite of three separate exposures.

The first image was of the man standing on the sandstone plinth overlooking Paris. In the first shot he was spinning the ball on his left index finger, which was impressive enough.

The second image was a close up shot of the man’s upper half as you see it in the composite image shown here. He really was spinning the ball as you see it, no manipulation or trickery there.

The final image was of the Eiffel Tower which was slightly out of shot from where the man was standing, so I took some liberties by moving it into the image to reinforce that this was actually Paris.

I hope you like the final image.