Summertime, and the living is easy...

This image was taken a while back during my vacation in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 2009. I have recently come upon it again and reedited it for this post. We took a small boat from the bay in Dubrovnik to visit the nearby island Lokrum. I still feel the fresh breeze as we circled around the old town of Dubrovnik.

The orange roofs becoming smaller and smaller as we drifted further away, until they were completely absorbed by the blue.

Adelaide Fanny Louise Barber by Alexander Bassano late 1860s, early 1870s

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Yvonne Mertens by Alexander Bassano

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Yvonne Mertens by Alexander Bassano 1930

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Hedy Lamarr by Clarence Sinclair Bull (MGM, 1938)

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Hedy Lamarr (9 November 1913 – 19 January 2000) was an Austro-American actress and mathematician, celebrated for her great beauty, who was a major contract star of MGM's "Golden Age." Mathematically talented, Lamarr and composer George Antheil invented an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary for wireless communication from the pre-computer age to the present day. When she worked with Max Reinhardt in Berlin, he called her the "most beautiful woman in Europe" due to her "strikingly dark exotic looks," a sentiment widely shared by her audiences and critics. She gained fame after starring in Gustav Machatý's Ecstasy, a film which featured closeups of her character during orgasm in one scene, as well as full frontal nude shots of her in another scene, both very unusual for the socially conservative period in which the bulk of her career took place.

Clarence Bull (1896-1979), usually credited as "Clarence Sinclair Bull", was one of the great portrait photographers who worked for the movie studios during the "Golden Age of Hollywood". He was head of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stills department for nearly forty years.

Coluche & Jean Rochefort by Jeanloup Sieff 1975

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Michel Gérard Joseph Colucci (born October 28, 1944 in Paris, France; died June 19, 1986 in Opio, Alpes-Maritimes, France), better known as Coluche, was a French comedian and actor, famous for his irreverent sense of humour. Colucci adopted "Coluche" as a stage name at 26, when he began his entertainment career. He became known for his irreverent attitude towards politics and the “Establishment,” and he incorporated this into much of his material. He was one of the first major comedians to regularly use profanities as a source of humor on French television.

Jean Rochefort (born 29 April 1930) is a French actor, with a career that has spanned over five decades.

Bertha & Edwige by Jeanloup Sieff 1972

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Alfred Hitchcock for Harper's Bazaar by Jeanloup Sieff 1962

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Mini-photo day with Nicola Johnson

After attending a wedding Nicola was photographing and wishing we could chat all night, Nicola and I knew we had to book in a date ASAP to catch up properly and take pictures! That day was last Tuesday, and although we were only together for a few hours, we made sure to take pictures in the beautiful summer blooms.




Nicola had just recently acquired one of my super-dream-lenses, the Canon 50mm f/1.2, so I had to use the opportunity to shoot with it. I can now safely say it's next on my kit purchase list!



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Catherine Deneuve for Vogue by Jeanloup Sieff 1969

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Francoise Sagan by Jeanloup Sieff 1956

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Françoise Sagan (21 June 1935 – 24 September 2004) – real name Françoise Quoirez – was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Hailed as "a charming little monster" by François Mauriac on the front page of Le Figaro. Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois characters. Her best-known novel was her first – Bonjour Tristesse (1954) – which was written when she was a teenager.

5 Photoshop tricks I can't live without

One of my favourite things about Photoshop is that there is always a learning curve, with new tips and tricks around the corner to discover and incorporate into your workflow to make it just that little bit more efficient. I've been using it nearly every day for the best part of 5 years and here are a few of my favourite tips and tricks that I couldn't do without!

As I write this I keep coming up with more and more, so this post may call for a part 2!

I had no idea this tool existed for years, but when I discovered it by accident it became a huge part of my retouching process, especially when using a Wacom tablet. It enables you to free rotate your canvas to whatever angle you please, and is different from Image > Image Rotation in that it's just for the sake of viewing in Photoshop and not a permanent rotation. I love it when I am retouching skin so that the image is at a more comfortable angle for the pen strokes I'm using. So useful! You'll find it by pressing R or by right-clicking on the Hand tool.

The [ and ] keys might be one of the more obvious shortcuts, but I use them constantly and even have them programmed into the buttons on my tablet. I can't imagine how I ever worked without them! Brush size shortcuts mean much quicker workflow as you're spending a whole lot less time faffing around with the brush palette, taking a guess as to which size you need to do the job at hand.

Occasionally (usually with self portraits), I like to stitch a series of images together to create an image with a beautiful, almost unreal and exaggerated depth of field. Although it doesn't always work, 90% of the time Photomerge (File > Automate > Photomerge) takes the work off of my hands by automatically identifying where the images overlap and it blends them all together beautifully, whilst I sit back and relax! Tip: If "auto" mode doesn't work or warps your image, try experimenting with the other modes (for me, "collage" nearly always works a treat).

(I love this technique so much I might do a video tutorial covering the shooting and retouching of it in the future.. just have to build up a bit of courage to get myself talking on camera! Eek.)

I use this one so much that it took me a while to remember that I even use it - it's just like second nature! Press the F key to cycle through Photoshop's view modes: Standard Screen Mode, Full Screen with Menu, and Full Screen. Working against a neutral colour background on one of the full screen modes means your judgement is not skewed by the colours of that family photo or crazy space nebula you have as your desktop background, and you are able to pan across the image more easily with the space bar.

This one is invaluable in making sure your images look good, no matter where they are viewed. If you are viewing in any of the full screen modes, right click outside of your image on the background and you can choose what colour you want the workspace to be: Black, Dark Gray, Medium Gray, Light Gray, and Custom. I set Custom to white, and that way I can see how my images will look no matter how they are displayed.

I'm always up for learning something new so tell me.. what are your favourite Photoshop tips and tricks?

Psst.. Did you know that Google Reader is shutting down on the 1st July? If you're looking for an alternative, I highly recommend Bloglovin'. Click here to follow my blog through it!

Gloria Swanson in Zaza 1923

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Gloria Swanson 1920s

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Portrait of Marchesa Luisa Casati by Adolf de Meyer

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Luisa, Marquise Casati Stampa di Soncino (23 January 1881 – 1 June 1957) was an eccentric Italian heiress, muse, and patroness of the arts in early 20th century Europe. As the concept of dandy was expanded to include women, the marchesa Casati fitted the utmost female example by saying: "I want to be a living work of art".

Adolph de Meyer (1st September 1868 - 6 January 1946) was a photographer famed for his elegant photographic portraits in the early 20th century, many of which depicted celebrities such as Mary Pickford, Rita Lydig, Luisa Casati, Billie Burke, Irene Castle, John Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Ruth St. Denis, King George V of the United Kingdom, and Queen Mary. He was also the first official fashion photographer for the American magazine Vogue, appointed to that position in 1913.

Countess Clancarty née Bilton (stage name Belle Bilton) at coronation of Edward VII by Lafayette Photographic Studio 1902

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Belle Bilton by Alexander Bassano 1893-94

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Belle Bilton by Alexander Bassano 1889

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Belle Bilton (1867-1906), music hall entertainer; wife of 5th Earl of Clancarty; daughter of John George Bilton.

France through Instagram

As of this weekend just gone, we are back home from our honeymoon and all settled in back in the UK. We stayed in a small, remote village in the centre of France for two weeks and it was the most relaxing thing ever, so relaxing in fact that I didn't take any photos - just the instagrams below. But not to worry, I'll just have to make up with double the shooting now that I'm back home! :-)

LE MANS

We stopped in Le Mans for a day between our train journey and picking up our hire car. We visited the 24hr race museum, walked along the river, got lost in the old city, fell in love with its beautiful buildings and cathedral and made friends with a cat along the way!

EN ROUTE

The French countryside was absolutely beautiful to travel through, both by car and by train. Just down the road from us there was an amazing corridor of horse chestnut trees that looked straight out of a film, somewhere I wish I'd shot a self portrait now!

 

VICHY

We visited the spa town of Vichy for the day, did a spot of shopping, bought 4 huge cakes from a patisserie and visited the Parc des Sources and drank their famous spring water.

 

HOME

Other than the towns above, we didn't do a lot of serious travelling and spent most of our time relaxing or driving around and getting lost amongst the picture-perfect landscapes and villages that surrounded us.





So here I am, back home to the beautiful weather we have been having in the UK and working away in the sunshine. I'm ridiculously excited to get out and about and start shooting again, so keep your eyes peeled as always on this blog for new shoots, behind the scenes bits and pieces and personal work!