This week I’m going to talk about what I do to create and maintain a good work, Life, Balance.
The main thing you need to do if your self employed/ freelance is work out how long you can focus for before you take a break.
I find that reading for a bit, going for a walk or going to the gym are good ways for me to take a break as I spend a lot of time staring at a screen while I’m working.
It can be difficult to achieve a work life balance, but it’s important to try. By taking breaks, taking time off, and finding a career we love, we can make strides towards a more balance life.
Of course, achieving a good work-life balance is easier said than done. But with a bit of effort and planning, it is possible to strike a balance that works for you.
Here are a few tips to get you started:
Set clear boundaries between work and home.
Make time for yourself and your loved ones.
Don’t let work consume your life.
Plan and prioritize your time.
Learn to say NO.
So what are some ways you achieve a work life balance? Let us know in the comments!
Every season at Preston Photographic Society we have themed competitions. So, in the summer I take my special Lucy and the Lens notebook with the seven competitions written down so I can think about what I want to take and whether I can take a couple on holiday.
Sometimes this is easy because the themes fit perfectly with my holiday however other times, I can only manage one during my trip.
Sometimes I’ve been working so much I find it hard to find time to take images for a competition at that moment. So, to prepare I look through photos I’ve collected over several years and see if anything fits if I know I won’t have time to take new ones or as a backup plan in case I don’t have chance to get out.
I will do the same for any external competitions. I also have to prepare for print competitions which I send off to be printed so I have to give myself enough time to send them and get them back in time to enter.
But whatever the theme I make sure I take the photos for me and not just for the competition. What I mean by that is that I make sure my personality is reflected in the photos as well as the theme as I won’t take a photo if it doesn’t stay true to me as a photographer.
When you are looking for a theme or any competition entry you need to evaluate your portfolio or back catalogue and choose your best image. Try to pick original images and there you have it your first entry.
Don’t expect your first entry to win the competition right off the bat it will take many attempts to achieve that. Also remember that photography is subjective one judge could love your image and the next could hate it. I wouldn’t worry as long as you are happy with it that’s what matters.
Once you have decided on your image if you haven’t previously edited it go into lightroom and photoshop and make adjustments until you are happy that its competition ready. I’m predominantly a portrait photographer and I like to adjust highlights, exposure, contrast and shadows slightly. But in editing remember to always make the image reflect your own style.
Finally, always make sure your images are resized to the correct competition standards and that you have read the competition rules beforehand. There’s nothing worse than entering it to be bounced back having not been judged.
Here are three images that have done well for me in competitions:
This Image Scored 20/20 in the Novice Competition at Preston Photographic Society in 2016 This Image Scored 20/20 In The Mono Print Catergory at Preston Photographic Society Earlier This YearThis Image Scored 19/20 in a Movement Themed Competition in 2018
And three that have done badly:
This One Scored 12/20Another 12/20A 12/20
There should be a distinct difference between my top scoring sets of images and the low scoring set of images and hopefully this will help give you some ideas what to expect.
I hope you enjoyed this post. Stay tuned for more.
I think that every day or at least every other day as a photographer you should try to spend one full hour On Instagram.
In this hour you scroll on the news feed and make a note about which images grab your attention and then make a comment and maybe even share them in your story.
If you don’t have time to spend a full hour you can always spend less time and save the images to go back and looked at later which I usually do when something catches my eye.
This is a really useful process because it allows you to spend time seeing what other photographers are doing and asking yourself if any of their ideas fit in with your brand. Could you implement something someone else is doing that you haven’t yet tried?
If you like something why not ask if the photographer is willing to share tips and tricks, especially when it comes to lighting because you can learn a lot from how someone else lights their subject.
At the moment I think that looking at hash tag social isolation and hash tag COVID-19 may also help you spark ideas for new posts too. Also, the hash tag FaceTime photo shoot is another one as now a lot of people are looking for new ways to take photographs with models when no one can meet up in person.
Something you need to always be doing outside of this hour is checking when someone follows you or leaves your comments. It is always good practice to reply to their comment and then engage with them on their own account. Any time someone followers you provided it its spam you should go and take a look at their profile, comment and then follow back.
For me I tend to spend time trying to post something every day. On a typical week I’d normally post 2 images per day on weekends and one image per day for the whole rest of the week. I also share all my posts On Facebook and Twitter.
As this post is all about Instagram why not follow me on there @lucyandthelens. If you liked this post stay tuned for more.
I have my own studio lights and also access to a studio at
UCLAN (University of Central Lancashire) as I do my freelance work from there. So,
I’ve been reading books, blogs and googling techniques on how to light a
subject.
Here are some tips I have acquired about studio lighting from
the book lighting for portrait photography by Steve Bavister:
Persuading you’re subject to face the window
adds detail to the face and creates a strong profile. (Shoot this at a shutter
speed of 1/250 and an aperture of f5.6).
Placing your subject facing out of a doorway
gives strong illumination.
A reflector beneath a subject and a tilted
camera angle adds impact to a simply lit but powerful portrait. (Shot at 1/125
shutter speed)
The clam shell set-up: this is where a subject
is seated, and you place the light above her and maybe a reflector below her.
The typical studio set-up is when you place one
light to one side of the subject and one light behind her.
Using a light and a jumbo umbrella gives lots of
lighting control (Shoot at a shutter speed of 1/400 and an aperture of f11.)
The further you take a light to one side the
more moody and dramatic it becomes.
Photographing people wearing glasses requires a
high lighting position.
Below are a few more tips from DIY Photography:
Beauty Dishes add a natural catch light to your
images.
For a two light set-up use an octobox and fill
light with a colour gel: an orange or yellow gel will add a warmer tone to your
portrait. Try this on f1.8.
Old guys with beards photograph better with no soft
boxes.
Below is a video tutorial from DIY Photography: Lighting By Elaine Torres
Typically when taking photos on my mobile I use the mobile
version of photoshop (photoshop express) when editing.
The first thing I do when editing quickly is a quick 35%
sharpen of my image as this amount is what I find pushes the image just enough.
Then I auto expose my image but usually change the auto exposure to fit the
mood I want the image to have. As sometimes I find auto exposure to be too
bright or to dark for what I was going for when I took the image. For me these
mobile quick fixes are easier for IPhone photography.
Normally I shoot from a camera so when I first started I’d upload my images to my computer and import them into photoshop to do a more complex edit, without ever using lightroom, now that’s my go to. My processing started in a similar way to my IPhone photography as I started by sharpening the image. My sharpen is slightly different to on the phone as I start by duplicating the original layer and using an unsharp mask filter to sharpen my image to 35%, with a radius of 5.0 pixels and a threshold of 3 levels.
Next I would duplicate my sharpen layer and then I adjust
the levels so the light to dark ratio of my image is perfectly balanced. Then I’d
use auto curves on my image to further improve the light to dark ratio.
Finally, not all images lend themselves to colour and thanks to the Google Nik collection as there are now better ways to make an image black and white without using the standard photoshop desaturation or black and white filter. So, before Lightroom Pre-sets and still on occasion if I think an image shouldn’t be in colour, I use the silver efex pro filter from the Nik Collection as the tool which contains pre-sets. My favourite pre-set is high structure harsh because it makes the original boring background stand out against a subject and I typically used this for street photography and any portrait where I think the original background was dull.
If you enjoyed this look out for more tips and tricks in
further reading on my blog.
As you may know from my previous posts or my FAQ page, I have seven lenses. Today I am going to write about the wide-angle lens and after this post throughout a long period of time, I am hoping to do a series of these for each of my lenses.
There is no right or wrong answer as to what to use a lens
for its all about your own self-expression but here I am going to tell you what
I use it for.
When I thought about buying the Sigma 10-20mm I wanted to
have a better landscape lens as before this I only had the 18-55mm kit lens and
the 55-200mm telephoto zoom lens which didn’t provide me with the depth of
field I wanted for my landscapes.
So, what is a wide-angle lens? A wide-angle lens is any lens that can view more than the human eye sees. Wide-angle lenses distort the subject and enhance perspective. This means whatever is in front of the frame will appear larger than anything that is further away.
I soon realised that you can also create creative portraits with a wide-angle lens. In my opinion, by positioning yourself at a lower angle than your subject you open up your surroundings to a whole new point of view.
In architectural shots, you want to use this lens to capture the entirety of a building so you can see all the detail and not just glimpses of it.
In one of my university projects during my master’s I used
the wide-angle lens to take images I wanted to create a perspective where I had
the full person and aspects of a building behind to convey the way in which we
use public spaces to this day.
A great use I’d say is these lenses are great for events as
they allow you to photograph much larger groups of people.
The final thing I have used this lens for is when I photograph fencing charity events. The reason is that I want to get every one of the participants in the frame which I can’t do with a zoom lens maybe I’d need a zoom lens in a larger venue where I need to be further away from the action.
I feel the wide-angle lens provides you with new perspectives that you didn’t even consider before. You can see a lot more with a wide-angle lens than a fixed perspective. Below is a gallery of some of my work using this lens:
If you liked this post and want to read more please go through my previous posts, subscribe or check out my best of page here: Best Of .
