Composition Tricks

Here’s a little trick with composing photos. As you know, it’s usually bad form to put major things (like the sun) in the middle of the photograph. But, if you turn the camera sideways (said in a Raising Arizona voice) into portrait mode, you can suddenly center anything and it looks good! You can imagine the photo below in landscape orientation — it would not be as compelling

Tip: Shooting at a low f-stop in the middle of the day

I shot this photo below with the Sony A7r and the Leica 35mm all the way at f/1.4. Whenever you shoot wide-open in the daytime, often there is too much light that gets let in. I usually go into manual mode and make the shutter speed uber-fast, like 1/8000. I let the ISO float with Auto-ISO. This way, the light level is always right and the quick shutter speed ensures a sharp photo!

UPDATE: Winners Chosen, but Good News, 20% off for everyone else!

Thanks again for participating in the Trey’s Lightroom Presets giveaway yesterday! We put together a special discount code of 20% off ANY of the Presets on that page that will be good for just a few days. Just use the code “SPECIAL20” at checkout and you’ll be in good shape!

List o’ Winners!

Be sure to sign up for our free Newsletter to be informed of future contests! 🙂 Anyway, here are the winners for the giveaway! Congrates to: Sandeep Singh Thukral, Gary Waddell, Nadja K. Rutkowski, Krishna Gandikota, Michael Ng, Grace Reutzel, David Sheehan, Shae Baxter, Natasha Khalil, James McGowan, GlenGO, Jason Morton, Skyler Ratcliff, Beth Lindley Mears, Kyle Wilson, Steven Clyde, John Scherer, Barbara Penko, Tim Drummond, and Jay Dadlani

Thanks to everyone!

When I first released these Lightroom Presets over a year ago, I had no idea how popular they would be! I had this conversation with Curtis, who runs the business side, and I told him that I really didn’t think a) that many people had Lightroom or b) would even want my presets. He literally had to force me to release them… And then they really blew up and people loved them! They’re pretty extreme and a lot of different things, for sure, but people really seem to like the presets.

So anyway, I wanted to do a new giveaway!

Giveaway Details – How to Win [Update: Giveaway has ended]

10 Free Giveaways of Volumes 1 and Volumes 2 of Trey’s Lightroom Presets! Just leave a comment below and I’ll pick 10 random winners in 24 hours!

More Presets in the future?

Also let me know in the comments if you’d like to release more new packages in the future. I actually have a ton — just need to take the time to organize and package them up! 🙂

My Favorite Lightroom Preset Photos

Here’s a collection of some examples of what happens with my Lightroom Presets… these are all literally one-click examples! Enjoy 🙂

50mm fun

On this day in Akihabara, I decided to mostly use my 50mm to see if I could capture this area in a different way. I tried many different things, but the shot below is one of my favorites. I usually don’t do set-up shots like this, but I just saw that awesome background and told May to stand right there, with her feet planted on those two spots. I got far enough away so that the bokeh was not so blurry as to not make sense. Does that make sense? hehe…

Reflective Path Trick

The path was already nice and shiny, but here’s a good way to get it to be extra-reflective and goody-shiny in the final photo:

1) Duplicate the layer
2) Blur the new layer on top (Gaussuan around 30)
3) Set the blend mode to Overlay (you’ll see the path get all shiny-shiny!)
4) Duplicate the bottom (original) layer again and move it to the top
5) Mask through to the reflective path!