Professional Photographer Dublin | Kyle Tunney

Have you a Facebook fan OR business page? Are you always wondering how people have those nice URL’s or addresses on their pages? Well look no further, in this tutorial I show you how easy it is to create your very own facebook vanity URL. Even if you only have your own personal account it can come in handy to have something like www.facebook.com/JoeBloggs

I’d like to think of myself as somebody who knows their way around the Internet, especially after doing five years of computer courses. I’d almost go as far as to call myself computer savvy! Yet, last night when trying to create another vanity URL for my Pet Photography website, I found it quite hard to figure out an easy way to create my Facebook Vanity URL for my Fan page on Facebook. Here is the snazzy looking Vanity URL for Pet Photography Ireland.

Less talk, here’s how we go about it!

How to create your Facebook Vanity URL!!

ONE – Simply log into your facebook account.

TWO – Go to www.facebook.com/username – You should have something similar to below:

THREE – Just check the availability of your desired username and hit create.

Simple!!
PS: From what I’ve been reading so far, you need at least 25 fans before you can create a vanity url for a fanpage.

I took this shot at sunrise yesterday and thought I’d go a bit crazy with the processing of the shot. I quite like the abstract photo in the end!

Abstractly processed plane

What processing in photoshop did I do?

In camera raw I only changed the temperature/white balance by 400 as I shot in camera WB of ‘cloudy’. Now in photoshop:
– dublicated the background layer
- Dodged the two planes/lines in the sky
- Added a ‘Color Negative’ curves adjustment layer
— Changed this layer to screen @ 20%
- Made a levels adjustment layer just for this layer
- Added a ‘Cross Process’ curve ajustment layer
—Change this layer to ‘Linear burn’ and you’re all done!!

Photoshop Video tutorial

Here’s everything I’ve done in a short video tutorial It’s pretty fast but afraid I don’t have the time at the moment to redo the video)

Any questions, Just ask!

This is a bit of fun I had in photoshop after last weeks photoshoot in the forest. Two textures and lots of masking we have this lovely image.

It’s the first time I’ve tried doing anything like this and I’m happy with the results. A few people have said the eyes/lips are too prominent but this is how I wanted it. I was looking for a powerful stare from this ‘creature’. Below are the stages of processing:

Download the full photoshop file

If you’re wondering how I actually did all of this, you can download the file with all the layers intact and see how to do one of your very own. (the bottom group + ‘original’ layer are only there to show what I did in the early stages – this is why they’re turned off)
Download the amazing creature photoshop file here – 14.2mb

Hey guys,
I hope everybody’s keeping well. I’ve been playing with channels, calculations and layers a lot the past while. So I thought I’d write up a quick photoshop tutorial that you can use on your photos & photography. It’s well overdue as it has been a long time since my last tutorial. This tutorial works best when there is a fairly solid colour in the background!

OK, so below is the before and after of this quick tutorial. This can be used on many different types of photographs with brilliant results. Without further ado, we’ll get cracking on the tutorial. If you’re already pretty handy with photoshop you can skip through to the conclusion for a fast tutorial! You can also download the source/.psd file here or have a quick look at the results.

Choose one of your own photo’s or you can download my photo. Once you have a photo, bring it into photoshop and we can get started

Step 1

Open the Channels palette by choosing Window>Channels from the main menu
(by default it’s the tab right beside the Layers palette).

If you click on each channel, you can see the detail on each. For this particular photo, the green channel is best for what we want. Click on the top channel(RGB) to return to the original view and see all layers.

Step 2

Choose Image/Calculations from the main menu. Here we shall choose the green channel, blending mode of overlay and make sure that result is set to New Channel.


You will notice the photo has changed to black & white and there’s a new channel selected.

Step 3

While your new channel ‘Alpha 1′ is still selected we shall copy this layer. Press ‘Ctrl + a‘ to select all, now press ‘Ctrl + c‘ to copy. Click on the top channel RGB to restore the original shot. Now click the Layers tab and paste your layer ‘Ctrl + v‘. You should have something that looks like this:

Step 4

All that is left is to change the blending mode of this layer to overlay.

That’s it, job done.

Conclusion

Open your image in photoshop
Go to your channels palette
Choose which channel is best for this image (R/G/B)
Choose Image/Calculations from the main menu
Pick your channel, change blending to overlay and change result to new channel
Copy that channel over to your layers palette
Change the blending mode to overlay

Finishito – Job well done!!

Once you’re happy with that you can start adding little adjustment layers with curves/levels and they will make a big difference to the end result as you can see with some of the following shots.
Let me know what you thought of the tutorial. Also feel free to pop a link to one of your photos you tried this out on below!!

Some Results

Thanks for stopping by!

Good evening folks,
I haven’t posted up in a while, as I’ve been busy coding the backend of the blog and making it look nice on the eyes. This being a photography blog I wouldn’t usually post this up (as it’s more web design/web dev inclined) but I’ve spend the last two days trying to fix a problem and nothing online has been of help.

The Plan

I wanted to have nice permalinks on my blog. The plan was to have them like this – blog.kyletunneyphotography.com/day/month/year/name-of-the-post/. So the last post I had up would have looked like this – http://blog.kyletunneyphotography.com/03/02/2009/first-dublin-strobist-meet/. To do this I used the code /%day%/%monthnum%/%year%/%postname%/ within my wordpress admin control panel (Settings >> Permalinks >> Custom).

The Problem

All links worked perfectly EXCEPT the archive links. So what worked?
blog.kyletunneyphotography.com/
blog.kyletunneyphotography.com/day/month/year/name-of-the-post/
blog.kyletunneyphotography.com/category/name-of-category/
What didn’t work where the archive links, like March 2008 or January 2009. They would purely bring up an error #404.

You could change your permalinks to /archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ and everything would work find. Personally, I felt that the links were starting to get too long. After lots of searching and testing a bunch of easy and difficult solutions I decided to give in and change my Permalinks. I am now only using /%postname%/

Search Engines?

What about the big G and everybody linking back to your old links that you previously had in place? Simple, just add the following line

RedirectMatch 301 /([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$4

to your .htaccess file in your wordpress directory and it will redirect all your traffic for you. So if somebody clicks a link or types in http://blog.kyletunneyphotography.com/30/01/2009/inspirational-photography-tips/ they will be automatically redirected to http://blog.kyletunneyphotography.com/inspirational-photography-tips/.

Nobody gets lost, no broken links and the big G doesn’t spank you!!

I hope that helps somebody from spending two days searching online for a fix.
Let me know if it helps,
Kyle

I’ve been noticing in the past few weeks more and more friends and people online mentioning they’re going through a photography rut or can’t think of anything to shoot. Hopefully some of these ideas will help and get your photography groove on again.

Save photos you like

Save save save! Start cutting pictures out of magazines & newspapers. Head to some of your favourite websites, Google images and type in random words or places, photographer’s websites, stock image sites, flickr, jpgmag and many many more. This is something I started to do in March of last year. I usually file everything by month but would have a few other folders purely for the likes of ‘modelling’, ‘strobist’, ‘photography ideas’ and so on. Organising the files is purely up to you; this is just a suggestion and an insight to how I’ve been doing it. I have close to 500 files, all of which I have yet to look back upon for inspiration. Luckily I’ve had many of my own mini-projects to keep my photography lively.

Remember a good spot.

I’m sure it’s happened to everybody. Your out for the day without the camera and come across an amazing field/landscape on your walk or a hidden street, deep in Dublin city that you’ve never seen before. Instead of just going ‘ I wish I had my camera with me’, whip your phone out and take a picture or get out the trusty pen and paper to write down the location/shot. These will all come in handy a few days/weeks/months down the line when you draw a blank and can’t think of something/somewhere to go shooting.

Buy a disposable camera

You don’t always need a big camera! Buy a disposable camera and shoot to your hearts content. You may be pleasantly surprised with the results.

Use everyday things

Go about your house picking up normal objects like TV remotes, speakers, candles, your fridge (if your strong enough), cups, chairs etc. Then try to take photos you usually wouldn’t see of these bits and pieces. Or go one step further and bring the items to places you’d never see them. Ever seen a goldfish bowl at the side of a swimming pool? A bowl of weetabix and a spoon on a swing in a playground? A person pointing a TV remote at a lamb in the middle of a field? The possibilities are endless!

Play with your camera

Most people get acustomed to certain dials on their camera and don’t bother to use the rest. I do it myself, I don’t think I’ve taken my camera off manual in four or five months. Wack up the ISO, use your timer and get in your own photos, slow that shutter right down; the posibilities are endless!

Let there be light

Lock yourself in a room closing the curtains to get the room as dark as possible; or even better, do it at night. Pop your camera on your tripod and set a long exposure. Grab your torch and try to spell your name or make a smiley face. If you’re feeling sporty, head outside and run around like a lunatic, throwing your hand everywhere with the torch. I’ve only tried this once myself but it was great craic and I’m really happy with the results. I’m looking forward to trying it again.

Mixing it up

Change how you hold your camera. Shoot with your camera upside down, shoot from the hip, use your bad hand to hold the camera.

Set yourself challenges

Shoot all day with the tripod attached. With the tripod only having one leg on the ground and the other two leaning on different objects (trees, walls, your leg etc)

Find inspiration in the little

Macro is what I’m talking about of course! Beg, borrow or steal (don’t steal!) a macro lens if you have to. There are so many new things to see and find around us when a macro lens is introduced. Give macro a go!

Post Processing

Find a spot, something you’d usually shoot and then when you get home start process the shot into something else.

Old photos

Cold rainy day out? Not pushed about heading out to take new photos? How about going over some of your old photos and reprocessing them. I often see some old files that I didn’t think were much but now I see them in a different light and proceed to process them.

Two good to be true

Nope, it’s not a typo. Find a suitable image and double it. Not sure what I’m talking about. Look at the photo below. *Poof* Magic!

One last tip

Don’t forget your own photography. Often times when I’ve dropped the camera for a few weeks I start to look back at some of my shots and think “that’s a really nice shot, I wish I could take something like that now”. The only thing stopping you from taking great shots is yourself. Push yourself, your boundaries and your comforts. All your efforts will come back ten fold and it will show in your images.

A few links

JPGmag
Flickr River
My Own Portfolio
Behance
Erica Leighton
Muratsuyur
Chase Jarvis
Flickr
Cool Hunting(the odd photography thing crops up here)
Boards Photography Forum
Don’t forget to keep an eye on this blog too!

Remember, save, save, save!

Make sure to check out all the past Random Photo threads on boards. Some brilliant work and they’re already up to their eight album. Some amazing photographers and I’ve saved many of their photos in my own Inspiration folder!

If you have any other ideas I’d love to hear them, I’m always looking for inspiration. I hope this has helped you get out of your photography rut!

Kyle

Have you ever wanted to know how many layers are currently in your .pdf/.psd file? Simple, the answer is 3, or 8 or even 17. I’m not talking about simple files like this one.

Ok, so clearly you can work that one out for yourself…. theirs three layers in that file. How about this file?

(more…)

Hello and welcome to my first tutorial! I’m going to work you through one of my latest kayaking shots. This was my first attempt at this type of shot/Photoshopped image. I’ve gotten some good feedback about the image, which is always great. The shot is quite dark but in saying that, the location of the shoot is very tough for a photographer. Light is quite scarce and there are only so many places one would want to stand with a camera. I actually did a rescue course here three weeks back and was swimming through the play hole plenty of times over the weekend. It’s all very safe but I don’t think my poor camera would think the same.

One thing that I was unsure about in my photo is that, personally, (more…)