DigitalSplash 2

It’s great to go to talks given by photographers who produce work that inspires in some way. I’ve sat through a lot of them lately from both amateur and professional and always come away with something new to try, whether it’s an idea for a photo, a postprocessing technique or just a tip. There’s always a benefit to listening to people who have a lot of experience in their field, but there’s also those that are pushing boundary’s and are as equally compelling, who are relatively new.

While at DigitalSplash this is exactly what I got when attending two talks, a seasoned pro with over 30 years’ experience and a relative newcomer who turned pro 7 years ago. The two in question are Paul Gallagher and Thomas Heaton, both are outdoors/landscape photographers and both gave different talks based on their strengths.

Although I mentioned two talks, it was actually three, Paul Gallagher gave talks on the digital darkroom pertaining to colour and black and white processing, these were similar in content differing only in the conversion to mono. The idea behind Pauls talk was to process one image in an hour, giving tips and the why’s of his workflow throughout; he initially started out in Adobe Camera Raw saying he preferred it over Lightroom as he could keep the file in the RAW format during the whole process including sending it to Photoshop (Lightroom would have converted it to a Tiff file when re-importing from photoshop). After finishing the basics in Camera Raw, he sent the file over to Photoshop for localised edits using the Lasso tool and curves adjustments to fine tune the details, making the whole process look simple, and showing the areas that needed attention, most of which I would have missed.

Along with the processing Paul also gave some insight into how he came to be a photographer and learned film processing at the start of his career to a high degree, this naturally evolved into the digital darkroom with the advent of software for this purpose. He finished the talk by giving some advice on printing, the equipment and paper he uses and some settings for getting the best possible outcome using Photoshop. Overall two great talks and having taken extensive notes something I will be working on over the next few months.

Thomas Heaton gave a slightly different talk, it wasn’t about taking shots or processing or getting out of a creative rut, titled the “New Landscape Photographer” it was more about his journey from unknown photographer to popular Youtuber with over 750,000 hits a month. Having left university and getting a job as the “tech guy” with a promotions firm and then quitting that to become a freelance photographer, he related how he went from job to job trying out all aspects from wedding to product photography along the way. His break came however, when he posted a video to YouTube detailing his day taking photos in a mountain area, this first post got him 500 hits and it’s just gone on from there.

He modestly admitted he was not the best photographer out there, and seemed genuinely surprised why people watched his videos in the first place, going on to give advice on how to go about achieving what he has, stating that “Anyone can do it”. For him, it’s not about getting up in the morning thinking “how can I make money” it’s the passion for landscape photography that’s the driving force. He finished by giving some of his favourite negative quotes to his videos, “Shows to much face” and “has a voice like Eeyore” to a letter he got from a U.S soldier on the brink of suicide who found Thomas’ videos and managed to find something that gave him hope for the future.

An engaging talk, with honest reflection on his journey over the last 7 years. For those trying to share their passion for photography using social media, it gives an insight into the hard work and, probably a bit of luck, to get a following of like-minded people, and state once again “Anyone can do it, but it takes commitment”.