Lightroom 4 has been the core of my workflow for some time now, it´s such a powerful application that it is considered the industry standard by many pros. My relationship with Lightroom is a kind of love hate affair. I love what it does, it works almost exactly in the way I want. So where´s the hate?? The thing is I spend far too many hours using Lightroom than I would like, I´ve found one way to get in and out of Lightroom as fast as possible is to use keyboard shortcuts. There are over 200 shortcuts and Learning just a handful of these can speed up your Lightroom workflow no end.

I´ve put together a list of Lightroom shortcuts and made them free to download over on Facebook, whilst you´re there you might also want to check out my Lightroom presets, also free.

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This image was shot during the annual Holi festival in the Dwarva Desh temple in Matura, India. Holi is celebrated by throwing paint over everyone and everything by Hindus across India. Mathura is believed to be the birth place of the Hindu god Krishna who is said to have started all this madness back in the 4th centry BC and the festivities are still celebrated there with particular vigour.

A portfolio of my images from Holi can be found here

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Now let me first say I´m not being paid by X-Rite to say this, nor am I making money on referrals or anything like that. For me this is simply a marketing opportunity that I have been presented with and I´d be a fool to pass up on it.

I don´t talk much about the gear I use, I´m a strong believer that it´s the photographer that creates the photos rather than the gear they use. X-Rite however has been a trusted name for some time, not just for me but for almost every other serious photographer I´ve met. They´ve kind of become the industry standard in colour management.

For those who  are not familiar with X-Rite they produce many devices the 2 of real interest to photographers are the i1 Display Pro and the ColorMunki which both of which calibrate your monitor, enabling accurate colours to be displayed on your screen. Now you´d be forgiven for thinking that because you have an expensive monitor, it is already calibrated. Unfortunately this isn´t the case. Over time the display of every monitor degrades and starts to show inaccurate colours, you may not notice these if you only view your images on the one monitor.

Trust me though you will notice the difference once you have it calibrated, this is particularly true when you print your images out and notice slight colour shifts. My advice is that if you´ve never had your monitor calibrated then you really should get hold of one of these they´re not expensive but make a big difference.

I’ve also just ordered their Colorchecker Passport but more on that in another post.

The X-Rite Coloratti program includes the world’s top professional photographers, the kind of photographers I have looked up to for years, whose vision and passion  have been recognised and valued by X-Rite. Needless to say I am very honoured to be included amongst them.

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As might be obvious to many of my blog readers I’ve been struggling a little with the English winter, did I mention that before? Anyway at the moment I’m excitted to be making plans that will see me leave the English weather behind and head once agin for warmer climates. I don’t want to say too much about things at the moment, just that I’m feeling very postive about the year ahead.

One great thing about the winter is that the sun is lower in the skies which provides some beautiful light as shown in the image below, this image was shot on a crisp early morning just after sunrise in a town south of Madrid last month.

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Now I thought I was carrying a fair amount of kit with me, but Richard was not only going one step further by carrying a medium format Hasselblad but also lugging around a large format Wisner (pictured). With not a pixel in sight, as both were set up as originally intended to shoot rolls of 120 and sheets of 5×4 slide film.

Richard was returning to the UK, having worked for several years as a fashion photographer in Hong Kong, he decided to stop off along the way home via India to create stunning black and white portraits before  settling down in London.

Several years earlier Richard met an incredibly interesting young face reader, now I had heard of palm readers, sure,  but seriously face readers??? it turns out they do exist and by looking at your facial features Eric Standop can see an emotional map of who you are and where you are going. He is able to read, with immense accuracy, a persons life, their abilities & weaknesses, their passions & fears and their health just from studying their face.

Richard and Eric have been working on a project named portraits of a soul where Richard shoots a portrait and Eric reads the subjects faces and writes a poem about the individual.  Richard explained to me that Portraits of a soul was more of a passion than a project and had spawned from his fascination with the faces of the world.

I encourage you to check out portraits of a soul to discover the incredible portraits and fascinating poems that accompany them.

The post Portraits of a soul appeared first on TomBourdon.co.uk.

A visit to Toledo feels like you’ve stepped back in time to when Christianity, Judaism and Islam lived side by side without any of the religious hatred that is so common in the modern world. The medieval city will inspire you with its incredible cathedral, beautifully preserved synagogues and mosques.

Toledo is one of the must-do day trips from Madrid, but on this tour we´ll be going one step further and staying the night to make the best of the light . It´s a place where we´ll discover three fascinating cultures and a great variety of world-class sites. You will surely be won over by Spain’s richest Cathedral, Toledo’s renowned El Greco masterpieces and the beautiful former synagogues. You can also indulge in local traditions – tasting marzipan, a local speciality  watching Damascene sword presentation, or browsing a shop filled with ceramics. Toledo’s medieval buildings, cobbled alleys and rich history will enchant you.

To find out more about the tour click here

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Unfortunately my first few days here were extremely foggy, I normally like a bit of fog to add some mood to my images, but it works best in the countryside and it really didn´t show off Madrid at its best. Towards the end of my stay in Madrid the weather cleared up and the clear skies brought a smile to my face.

This image shows the Debod temple in central Madrid, it´s a location I´ve not seen many images of which is surprising considering it´s beauty. The structure itself is an ancient Egyptian temple that was donated to Spain back in the 1960´s. It was de-constructed, transported brick by brick and rebuild in it´s current location.

More images coming your way soon…

The post Madrid appeared first on TomBourdon.co.uk.

This image was shot on a frosty morning in Toledo, an hour or so out side of Madrid. Toledo is an incredibly interesting place with enough history to keep the mind occupied for years, I´m going to put together a gallery of images that I´ll be sharing here on my blog in the next few days.

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Towards the end of last week my friend Gavin Gough released his first and long awaited ebook entitled the Photographer’s Workflow. There have been rumours of Gavin writing an ebook for almost as long as I can remember, I have been waiting patiently for some time, but its here, it does exist and the wait has been more than worth while.

The reason I have been waiting for this ebook is Gavin really knows his stuff and this release only strengthens that thought. One thing I clearly remember Gavin saying is that he always aims to “under promise and over deliver” This ebook is no exception, in fact its not really an ebook at all as there´s all sorts of plugins, presets, videos and extras that accompany the 130 pages of clearly written text, diagrams and beautiful images.

The Photographer´s Workflow deals primarily with Adobe Lightroom and clearly takes you through Gavin’s well defined workflow from the field to client every process is covered and throwing up some subjects that few photographers may even consider such as risk assessment.

So is this book worth the money? If you use Lightroom or are looking to start it most certainly is. It may take you a while to work through the whole thing, it may even take you a while to download the 50mb file, but it truly is an invaluable resource that you can refer to time and time again.

SPECIAL OFFER

For the next 24 hours or so Gavin is kindly offering a 33% discount on this purchase by simply entering the promotion code photowork20 at the time of checkout. Click here for full details

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No what really gets me down is the rain, when it rains day after day after day, not the kind of rain you get in Asia or South America when it pours down. English rain is more, well more civilised  not wanting to cause a scene and kind of just hangs around in the air for as long as possible.

Anyway thats enough of that, you don´t want to listen to an Englishman complaining about the weather, do you?

Download the December 2012 wallpaper

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Download the December 2012 wallpaper

Select your screen size from below, right click and select save as.

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