Some jobs are better than others...

Model Jenny Curran features regularly in the local press and this shot shows why. Photographed by John Harrison promoting a prize Volkswagon Fox, Jenny provided an eye catching focal point for the image.

Jenny was Photoshopped from head to toe including:
Changing the camera focus point
Eyes lightened and coloured
Eye liner added
Skin texture removed and reapplied in a matt finish
Hair sharpened in a graduation leading to eyes
Arms & legs slimmed (the angle of the pose made them look bigger than they are!)
Boots retouched to remove marks
Mouth blurred, teeth lightened
Car badge sharpened

Prepare to Throw Your Underwear...

Take That are always popular in Belfast and their latest gig in the Odyssey Arena was no exception with widespread coverage in the local press. A selection of the first night's coverage was photographed and 'pasted' together for this final scrapbook composite. An image of fireworks was used to fill in the background spaces.
The framed print was presented to the band on their final night.

Tis the Season... to be snowy

Adding snow is always fun but in this case frost was called for with a little icy breath.

This is a simple enough cut out with a colour adjusted background and the find edge filter to retain the look of detail in the trees.

The Group Shot... individually

Photographing media personalities is always fun, especially when the brief calls for six of them to line up together at the same time. Getting six such people is a coup in itself, but getting them together at the one time is nigh on impossible!
To make life easier, we opted to shoot them individually then combine them with Photoshop.

The sample image below is Melissa Patton, Miss Northern Ireland 2007. Despite her tiara, she was one of the easier cut outs.


The background was drawn in behind the tallest person, then everyone was resized to their correct height. Shadows were then added around the feet.

Final touches were added including shadows where the people overlap.

The final shot featured in the Belfast Telegraph:

The Sunday Life also ran a copy:

Take a Closer Look

Spooky Gold

The traditional Halloween Witch was out this year with a cauldron full of gold. Or in this case, with five pieces of gold. Simply replicating a few pieces of gold and adding a little motion blur filled the cauldron nicely:

Featured in The Newsletter:

The original photo was by John Harrison. The model is Christine Kinning.

Ring Ring

I love jewellery photography, both studio set and on a model. In this case we were shooting a collection of 11 diamond rings. Jewellery is a lighting challenge but diamonds particularly so as a reduction in the visible facets is a reduction in quality and value. The final images were shot with maximum detail rather than artistic perfection then each diamond was individually enhanced to bring it back to match the original beauty as closely as possible:

Manu-Stitch

Even with the latest in technology, auto-stitch camera features and Photoshop stitch assist, you still need to do a little editing to ensure the light is correct but when you finally get it completed, it can be a great image that will be used again and again:

Magic, obviously

For some jobs, the Photoshop work has to be apparent, this can be for legal reasons or in this case, simply because it's a comedy pic. The clock was photographed hanging on a wall, shrunk and dropped inside the hat. An image like this takes about five minutes. Adding the stars takes another minute or two using a custom shape, a little glow blend and some directional blur.

Northern Ireland Hospice

Produced quarterly, the Hospice magazine always likes to include their own staff rather than contract models which gives the whole thing a natural and personal touch.
For this Autumn shoot, we had decided on a falling leaves shot but with only an hour for the shoot, getting the right amount of leaves falling in the right places simply wouldn't be practical.
Shooting some leaves separately gave me the necessary props to complete the image.

Hospice nurses throwing a few leaves.

Leaves on the park pathway.

The final shot was used on the magazine cover:

RiverRock BBQ

The majority of PR Photoshop work is completing the story by adding special effects or removing elements that are not relevant or take away from the image. Unlikey advertising photography, the deadline is usual in minutes rather than hours.

This simple BBQ shot works but simply lacks colour or flames.

Adding in a shot of hot coals beneath the money and a little special effect smoke completes the image.
Photos by Harrison Photography.

Specsavers 2007

Specsavers always produces fun photos and 2007 was no exception. Simon Graham, Miss NI and celebrity photographer took the shots as usual:



For the final image the client needed two girls together without branding so two cut outs and a re-composition was required for the result below:
(note, this image is before final editing of the models simply to show cut outs and recomp).

Latest Work...

Looking back over the last year I have completed a number of technically difficult or time sensitive images for Harrisons which I hope to show here. This is the first composite image I produced for them.


Image 1 is the model striking the gong, ably held up by Simon, an accomplished photographer and gong stand.

The background shot with railings removed.

The completed image with obtrusive lamp post removed and local railings added in along with some dark cobbles for the ground. The gong was also moved so the model was striking it in the centre. The stand for the gong is a manipulated copy of a railing post.
All of these images were shot by John Harrison.

The final image was used in tourism brochures and local press.

Photoshop Made Easy Returns!

Photoshop Made Easy was a huge site of tutorials for Photoshop and Elements users with subscribers from around the world. Eventually work over took me and I couldn't keep up with the latest versions but it's due to return in 2008!

There was a rumour I had sold PhotoshopMadeEasy but in the end I held on to it despite a couple of tempting offers. Maybe one day I'll make it commercial but for the foreseeable future it will be ALL free.

I'll also be undertaking the Adobe Certified Expert exam in Photoshop and consequently hope to bring all new and exciting tutorials to the web.
In the meantime I've upgraded all the kit from motherboard to graphics tablet and cameras to lighting so I'll have a much wider range of subjects to work with.

New websites are live

Legacurry.com and HarrisonPhotography.co.uk are now live!
After quite a bit of work the first of the three new websites are now live and working well.

HarrisonPhotography.co.uk is part one of three as I continue to work on the back end integrating a completely new system but this will appear over the course of this year.

A new and exciting development is the prospect of project Blue Reef.
Blue Reef progressed last year from concept to prototype and we are now in talks with a local company on the first run of the new product. The Rescue Divers from Boyne Rescue in Ireland who previewed the prototype will be glad to see the initial batch arrive but this isn't expected until after the summer. A large part of the launch will depend on the availability of products from a number of countries around the world but this is something we are working hard on bringing together to ensure they are all ready for the first product batch.
Hopefully talks during July will get us close to a date for the first batch.

We will also be looking for wholesalers before the end of the summer to start taking orders on the first batch so if you are interested in selling this exciting and exclusive new product which has already generated a lot of interest from divers, leisure boaters and rescue professionals then contact us as soon as possible so we can start to map out the territories for wholesalers.
A website with full specifications, graphics, POS and ordering facility will be made available before the official launch.

All new websites on their way...

Since taking a 'real job' I've now more time for websites and all things fun.
My two new websites on the way are both redesigns...

Legacurry Presbyterian Church is the first with a completely new website and weekly updates. I've gone for the basic PDF file view for the two pages updated weekly to make it easy for anyone to post the new notices with virtually zero typing.
Using the printed news sheets, the PDFs are simply renamed and uploaded ensuring the site is right up to date with almost no technical know how in under five minutes.
The site is awaiting new images to replace the current stock photos but it can be seen at www.legacurry.com

The other site redesign is for Harrison Photography, arguably Northern Ireland's leading PR photographers. Responsible for the top NI Government news images and daily PR photos in press UK wide, Harrison Photography is aiming for a complete redesign with online shopping and image library management.
The current site can be found at www.harrisonphotography.co.uk with the new site appearing this month (April).

Where did BigBlueSquid.com go???

Despite growing fantastically fast and selling to hundreds of customers on every continent (yes we even had kit going to the Antarctic!) in our first year, BigBlueSquid came to an abrupt halt after SeaLife Cameras (Pioneer Research) sold us several thousand pounds worth of their new cameras and strobes which proved to be completely faulty.
Leaking housings, failing strobe switches, sticky camera buttons, faulty LCDs and uncooperative cables meant we had a huge number of returns. While this in itself was not a major issue to stop us trading, SeaLife Cameras reply to these faults was to send me an e-mail stating that these faults were nonsense and it was more than likely my customers failing to operate the cameras correctly.

After numerous e-mails back and forth I had already lost out on the cost of shipping and the faulty products which SeaLife refused to acknowledge. I refunded as many units as possible but a large number of customers understandably wanted their equipment repaired and returned.
Finally SeaLife appointed Cameras Underwater as the official repair centre (following the demise of Sangers earlier in the year) and I was able to send the equipment to them for repair or replacement.
I had now lost the cost of sending a large amount of camera equipment away for repair.
Several of the cameras sent for repair were then returned to me untouched because they were water damaged, not faulty - this was due to the failure of the housings which leaked. This is a clause nearly all underwater housing manufacturers are reluctant to mention!

While I was within my rights to return the broken cameras to the customers and pass on the blame to SeaLife I was not prepared to associate BigBlueSquid with such poor service. While it did take several months to repay some customers I was prepared to give up BigBlueSquid to ensure my customers got their money back with the aim of one day returning to selling online.

In the meantime we continued to sell the other major brands of housings despite price fixing by Sea & Sea in England and a repeated failure to uphold insurance claims by Fantasea including the loss of my own Nikon D70 camera and underwater housing.

With Christmas drawing near we had proposed to drop SeaLife products completely and concentrate on Fuji, Fantasea, Canon, Sony and a wide range of accessories such as Peli cases. We had also secured a new account with Olympus that would allow us to supply the complete range of underwater housings and accessories. (This had been delayed due to a reluctance on the part of their sales staff to convert prices to Euros. After visiting their stand at the Focus show and explaining Northern Ireland uses pound sterling they were more than happy to give us prices!)

Unfortunately this was not to be as the large number of returns being paid out from our PayPal account automatically triggered a freeze on receiving payments as part of their security policy. This effectively shut us down so we could not take online payments, thus reducing refund times further and stopping trading over the Christmas period. Despite explaining the situation to PayPal they were very slow to react and as a result we were not able to trade over Christmas.

This combination of events finally forced me to look for alternative income but I was fortunate enough to be offered a job as a Photoshop professional for one of the top PR photographers in Northern Ireland which I readily accepted. My inital pay then went toward refunding the remaining customers and I finally took BigBlueSquid down.
We still have some stock left of accessories and parts which I will sell off on Ebay as I get the time.

If you're interested in Peli cases however they will be returning shortly to BigBlueSquid.com and will be available for shipping throughout the UK and Ireland.

I am also continuing my product photography and Photoshop work for clients in the evenings and weekends.

Finally, projects Sea Urchin and Blue Reef are still under wraps. Sea Urchin is temporarily shelved but will retain it's patent while I work on Blue Reef.
Blue Reef has moved on from prototype to material sourcing and pricing. Hopefully later in the year investors might be found to co-launch it but when it's ready it will appear here first!