Silicon Beach Training Blog » photoshop training

Lifestyle Photography Competition Winner!

Aaron Charlie — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 08:46:43 +0000

Our new ‘Street Photography Competition‘ is now open!

A big thank you goes out to everyone that entered our Lifestyle Photography Competition and to Anne Herbert for supplying the fantastic prize of 2 classic prints on aluminium mounts.

As with previous competitions, the standard of entries was very high and our wonderful judge Nicole Young very kindly spent her weekend judging them all for us.

And now – the moment you’ve all been waiting for, drum-roll please! The winner and honorable mentions are revealed in the video below:

Thanks to Pete Davies (AKA @petedaviesmusic) for providing the music

Winning Photo -

Live Show by Dreuam_top

Here’s the reason Nicole chose this as her winner -

“The symmetry in this is what drew me to this photograph. It has so many people doing so many different things. It was fun to zoom in and see all of the people on the balcony up-close.”

Honourable Mentions -

The Blue Bathroom by Taylor Mathews

Nicole said -

“The colors in this are gorgeous. Such a simple concept, yet beautifully executed”

—————

Llangollen Motors by Howard ‘H’ Pimborough

Nicole said -

“I love the ruggedness in this image. The crop is perfect, it shows the main subject to the left, with some ‘empty’ space that you can look at on the right and see all the little details, like the jacket hanging on the wall or the jugs sitting on the shelf.”

—————

untitled by Claire Griffiths

Nicole said -

“This image made me laugh. The expression is priceless, and the fact that the horse still has hay in its mouth added a lot to the photograph.”

Congratulations to the winner and honourable mentions!

Watch this space for our next photography competition, it will be announced VERY soon!

How to Customise Your Google+ Profile Page

Andy Trainer — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 10:02:19 +0000

How to Customise Your Google+ Profile Page: Tiled Images

Check out our gallery of the most creative Google+ Profile designs – and vote for your favourite!

Download Template

Step 1:

Download and unzip our Photoshop Template

Step 2:

Open up the template in Photoshop. We’ve left the images of my face in the template so you can see how it all works – but if you don’t want to see my face (and I can sympathise with your position if you don’t) then either hide or delete the “Colin” Layers!

Next you’ll want to import the image (or images) that you want to use in your own profile.

To do this, select File > Place and select your image file.

Drag and resize it so its in the correct position, and hit enter to place it:

Click on the image for full size version

The image you’ve placed should be in its own layer beneath the “Layer 1″ layer – if it’s not, just drag it there in the layers panel so that it looks like this:

Now you can move your image around under the template to see how it will look on your live profile. If you need to move or re-size your image again – select the layer and use Edit > Transform > Scale to get it in the right place.

Repeat the process for any other images you want to place to get the desired effect – if you want a design that spills over on to your main profile image in the top left – add another image that lines up here too.

Step 3:

Once you’ve got your Google+ profile design looking like you want it, you’ll need to export the images so you can upload them to your profile.

To do that, hit File > Save for Web and Devices and a new dialog box will open – select the file type (jpeg is usually best) and the image quality you want and hit save:

Click on the image for full size version

Now a new dialog box will open – navigate to the location that you want to save the images in (best to make a new folder somewhere for them so they don’t get lost). Importantly – make sure you select All User Slices in the Slices drop-down at the bottom.

Now hit save, and Photoshop will save all of the images ready to be uploaded to your Google+ Profile

Step 4:

OK – Now you’re ready to upload your images to your profile – so:

1. Log in to your Google+ account

2. Navigate to your Profile

3. Hit Edit Profile

4. Now click on the “Add Some Photos Here” box at the top (if you already have photos there, click on them to edit and delete them) – this should look like this:

5. Navigate to the folder where you saved your images, and select the image that appears furthest LEFT in the row first:

Repeat the process, selecting the images one by one from right to left until you have them all in a row and hit OK when you’re done.

Hey presto! your tiles images looking super-cool on your profile page.

If your design also included a main profile image (top left), click on Change Photo under your profile image and upload this too.

When all is well – hit Finished Editing and your new profile is good to go:

Now you can go ahead and tell everyone about your amazing new Google+ Profile design!

Don’t forget – these images appear in the About page of your profile, so if you’re sending people the link, make sure it’s like this: https://plus.google.com/101501043395657937355/about

Happy Pimping! We look forward to seeing your designs!

If you need to know how to use Photoshop to create web graphics all of this is covered in our Photoshop for the Web training course.

How to Pimp Your Google+ Profile Design – Download Template

Andy Trainer — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:44:43 +0000

The web is alight with Google+ fever at the moment, and it seems that Google might have come up with a Social Networking concept that will truly challenge Facebook.

Like everyone else we’ve been getting to grips with how to get the best out of our profiles. Check out our Google+ Hints and Tips to benefit from what we know so far.

We’ve also devised a natty method for customising your Google+ profile design using tiled images.

pimp your-google+ profile

And what’s more we’ve put together a Photoshop Template to make it easy to implement for anyone who knows a bit of Photoshop (for those that don’t – we run a great 2-day Photoshop course here in Brighton!)

We’re sure you can all come up with some brilliant and creative ways of using the method to customize Google+ profiles that really stand out – we’d love to see the results – so if you use our template please post a link to your profile in the comments section so we can check out your work.

If you’re on Google Plus – follow us in the following places for all our goodies: Andy Trainer | Heather Buckley

Here’s our step by step guide to customize your Google+ Profile using our PSD Template.

NEW – Check out our selection of the most creative Google+ profile designs - you can vote for your favourite too!

Photography Competition – Lifestyle NOW CLOSED!!!

Aaron Charlie — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 09:06:44 +0000

The Lifestyle Photography Competition is NOW CLOSED!!! Thank you to all that have entered, watch this space for the winner! We have however now launched our NEW Street Photography Competition.

Grandad's Wall by Heather Buckley

Enter our Lifestyle Photography Competition for a chance to win Two beautiful Classic Aluminium Mounted prints of images of your choice, courtesy of Anne Herbert Photo Artistry, The Aluminium mounted prints are finished with a pair of wooden battens giving the effect of floating panels when hung on the wall.

Of course we at Silicon Beach Training being social media heavyweights will make sure you will gain great exposure for your images when the winner is announced.

The theme for our competition this time is ‘Lifestyle‘.

“Lifestyle” is open to wide interpretation. We are looking for images that describe the way that people live. If you want to see the winners of our last competition to judge the standard of entries click here.

To enter post your entry on Flickr by adding your image to the competition group or email them to us at – photocomp@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk to be in with a chance of winning our fantastic prize!

To keep up-to-date the competition head over to Flickr, our Facebook page, and also follow our RSS Feed. The winner will also be announced on this blog and also on Twitter so don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @SBTtraining.

Silicon Beach Training offer a wide range of creative courses including SEO Training, Google Analytics Training and IOSH Health and Safety Training here in Brighton, Sussex.

Competition Prize – Win two classic prints on aluminium mounts that look like floating panels when hung

Many thanks to Anne Herbert www.anneherbert.com for sponsoring the prize. The prize on offer is two Classic Aluminium Mounts, image and size of your choice. The lightweight aluminium panels provide a modern and contemporary display giving the effect of floating panels when hung on the wall..

Images are printed onto high grade inkjet paper as a giclee print, sealed with a ‘metallic’ texture-effect laminate for an authentic look and feel, and then mounted onto a 3mm rigid aluminium panel.

The mount is finished at the back with a pair of 2″x1″ wooden battens giving the illusion of a floating panel when hung.

See more details of the prize here.

‘Lifestyle‘ Photography Competition Judge

Nicole Young is a full-time photographer and author currently living in the Salt Lake Valley, Utah. She specialises in food and lifestyle photography and licenses her images through iStockphoto and Getty Images.

Nicole is an accredited Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) in Photoshop CS5 and is a “Help Desk Specialist” with the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. She is author of the books Canon 7D: From Snapshots to Great Shots, Canon EOS 60D: From Snapshots to Great Shots
and Food Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots published by Peachpit Press.

How to Enter the ‘Lifestyle‘ Photography Competition

If you have a Flickr account you can add your photo directly to the competition’s Flickr group.
You can email your entry to photocomp@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk with “Lifestyle” as the subject of the email. Attachments should be no larger than 3MB.
For email entries: the file name must state the title of the image and the photographer, e.g. Heather Buckley’s image above could be named as “Grandads Wall by Heather Buckley“, and the email message should also state the photographer’s full name.
A maximum of ONE photograph entry per entrant will be accepted.

If you don’t already have a Flickr account it’s easy and free to set one up, then you need to join the group and add your image (you can only enter 1 image) to the Silicon Beach Training Flickr Page.

When is the Photography Competition Closing Date?

The deadline was Friday 2nd September at 5pm.

Photography Competition Terms and Conditions

Please read the competition terms and conditions before entering.

We run quarterly photography competitions so keep in touch, let us know if you have any suggestions for the next competition theme or if you want to sponsor future competitions.

Environment Photography Competition Winner!

Aaron Charlie — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 08:41:48 +0000

Our next competition is now live – follow it on twitter and facebook. The theme is “Street Photography” – click for more information on how to enter and what you can win.

Thank you to everyone that entered our Environment Photography Competition – as ever the standard of entries was exceptional and our judge Martin Bailey spent an agonising weekend judging them all for us.

So – the moment you’ve all been waiting for! The winner and honorable mentions are revealed in the video below:

Thanks to Pete Davies (AKA @petedaviesmusic) for providing the music

WINNER – Where is my house? by Charles Tu

Well done to Charles Tu who has won his choice of any 1 or 2 day public training course here at Silicon Beach Training in Brighton, Sussex – our 2-day Photoshop Training course is a great addition to any photographer’s toolkit!

Martin – in his own words – chose this as the winner because: – “I was immediately struck by the vivid colours and patterns in this scene. I really like the way the photographers has cropped this scene from the larger view. The image shows how man encroaches into the Environment, and actually becomes part of it, sometimes in a most beautiful way. This image really stood out from the crowd.”

Charles was delighted to win first place, and said about his image – “The picture was taken at Twin Peaks, San Francisco on a sunny but windy afternoon last fall. I have visited Twin Peaks a few times before, the breathtaking view of the city and surrounding bay area always remind me how lucky I am to live in this area.”

Honorable Mentions

Salt by Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Martin Bailey said -

“This is a beautiful image, but a reminder of the hardships that the environment can enforce on mankind. The look on the foreground child’s face as they peer at the photographer is classic, though a little sad too. A very poignant photograph.”

One Way by Johnathan Garcia

Martin Bailey said -

“Very symbolic, of how the way we are treating our Environment is in many ways, a one way street. Once we go down some roads, there’s often no going back, yet we go all the same. I really like the way there’s a second One Way sign on the other side of the street too, almost doubling the message.”

Bald Eagle by Rubaker

Martin Bailey said -

“This is not a pretty picture, literally. But it so sums up man’s impact on the Environment, with the ugly landfill site, the truck, contributing to the problem, and yet the majestic eagle just sitting there. You can kind of sense that the eagle is mindful of the photographer, giving an extra connection, but it’s also sad that this proud bird is reduced to visiting landfill sites, probably to look for scraps of food, or the rodents that will also be attracted. The two crows in flight are poignant too, as these are basically rodents of the sky, much more at home here than the eagle. It’s a sad but true story of man’s affect on the Environment, and the animals that we share it with.”

Morning Shift in The Valley by Richard Radford

Martin Bailey said -

“At first glance, it’s not obvious that the factory is emitting smoke or steam into the Environment. Of course, no matter what we do, the sun just keeps coming up to warm us each day, and the Earth plods on with her morning mists and the cycle continues regardless, for now at least.”

untitled by LeifErik2011

Martin Bailey said -

“I almost ruled this one out when I found that the photographer couldn’t even be bothered to give the image a title, but it was just too good. It’s a beautiful depiction of the power of nature, with the rocks shaped by eons of waves crashing against them, just like this.”

Online Marketing

Circus of Horrors on Britain’s got Talent – Marketing Inspiration

Heather Buckley — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:31:11 +0000

circus of horrors

Some of you may have seen The Circus of Horrors on Britain’s Got Talent recently. Amanda Holden described them as “gruesomely good” after seeing a woman being swung around by her hair.

I was lucky enough to see them live performing for the Brighton Fringe Festival. I asked permission to take photos as performance photography is a passion of mine, and as usual tagged the images and geolocated them so that they appear in Google Search. Sure enough when you type in “circus of horrors Brighton fringe” I will come up number one.

For marketing my photography this is a great tool. If you take a look at my flickr account, you will notice that I link the rest of my photography sites Brighton Photographer, Heather Buckley Photography (my Facebook page) and my twitter account, in the image description. Its a good example of cross marketing.

To learn more about SEO and Social Media, you could come to Brighton and enrol on one of our Social Media Training. If you would like to learn how to improve your image editing skills for your business blog than you might like to try our Photoshop Training courses or WordPress Training.

In doing this exercise however I noticed that the Circus of Horrors was in the news today, of all the acts on Saturdays show this is the act that the papers are talking about. I got me thinking about how marketeers can learn from Dok Daze and his freak show. Bear with me and enjoy the images and I’ll give you some inspiration for your marketing endeavours.

circus of horrors

In the mirror today

“Kilt-wearing Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf, for example, uses a delicate part of his anatomy to swing a bowling pin between his legs. Then there’s Hannibal Helmurto, who can pull a four-ton truck with ropes attached to meat hooks in his back”

I only saw Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf stick a henry hoover on his todger! Apparently Captain Dan made headlines in 2007 when he was hospitalised after accidentally gluing his penis to a vacuum cleaner as he prepared for a performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

circus of horrors - Captain Dan The Demon Dwarf

Ex accountant Hannibal Helmurto was hanging stuff from his nose, apparently he was stuck in front of a mirror for five hours once when practicing his new self hypnosis techniques in order to swallow three swords at the same time (I witnessed this one!) His wife had to call his hypnosis instructor because she couldn’t snap him out of his trance.

circus of horrors - Hannibal Helmurto

The Mirror also published an article on the fact that The Circus of Horrors have already appeared with Ant and Dec (shock horror!)

Loving this one just in from “Metro”

BGT’s Circus of Horrors were banned for lewd penis display and smoking

What can we learn from the Circus of Horrors?

If you want to be noticed do something:

Extreme
Extraordinary
Controversial
Gruesome
Shocking
Different

Now I’m not suggesting that you reveal your privates to get the attention of your customers, but do some thing extraordinary, or shocking and you will capture their attention, get you lots of lovely link juice for Search Engine Optimisation, and get the press interested.

Ideas

Run a freaky or wacky competition

This could involve customers to do something extraordinary or different and get them to upload photographs to a Flickr account or get them to video themselves and upload to YouTube.
Get them to video their weirdest party tricks, or send in images of their most gruesome Halloween costumes etc etc.
Inform the press and don’t forget to tell your customers that their images can be used to publicise the competition in your rules.
Plaster it all over Facebook and twitter
Write press releases and Blog posts about it
Register it with all the competition listings you can find on the Internet.
Try and get a Judge who is heavily involved with Social Media
Try and get a prize sponsor who is heavily involved with Social Media

Find the Popular and Bizarre on the internet and write about it in relation to your product or service.

Just like I have done here! Other examples of where this technique has worked well for us in terms of generating traffic and links are:

What Marketing Tips can we learn from X Factor Wagner?

What Business Skills can we learn from The Apprentice’s Melissa Cohen?

BrightonSEO Video – Using News Search Tools for SEO (& Karen Gillan’s Underwear) – this is a video about the power of writing about trending topics.

So think about the extreme, the wacky and the different. Maybe you could have an internal competition for the best idea and have a vote on it.

Dare to be different, and vote for the Circus of Horrors on Britain’s got talent so that I can see the Queens face when she sees Gary Stretch.

circus of horrors - Gary Stretch

Photography Competition – Environment

Aaron Charlie — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 09:48:31 +0000

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED!!

Winners to be announced by 3rd June – watch this space!

Our next photography competition has been announced follow it on twitter and facebook. The theme is be “Lifestyle” you can win prints on aluminium that look like floating panels.

Photography Competition – ‘Environment’

northern lights by www.heatherbuckley.co.uk

The theme for our competition this time is ‘Environment’ so no matter where you live, or what you do, you can get out there and get snapping. You can photograph your own environment or others, just post your entries on Flickr to be in with a chance of winning our fantastic prize! If you don’t already have a Flickr account it’s easy and free to set one up, then you need to join the group, then just add your image/s (you can enter up to 2 images) to the Silicon Beach Training Flickr group.

To follow this competition head to Flickr, our Facebook page, and also follow our RSS Feed. The winner will also be announced on this blog and also on Twitter so don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @SBTtraining. We run regular photography competitions so keep in touch and let us know if you have any suggestions for the next competition theme.

Silicon Beach Training offer a full range of creative software courses including Photoshop Training, Illustrator Training and InDesign Training in Brighton, Sussex. We also run other useful business courses including Management Training, Leadership Training, Software Testing Training and MSP Training

‘Environment’ Photography Competition Prize

The prize for the winning photographer is your choice of any public one or two day training course here at Silicon Beach Training in Brighton. You could try something creative like Illustrator Training, something practical like a Management Training Course, brush up on something more technical like HTML5 Training or expand on your social media expertise with a WordPress, Blogging or Social Media course. A full list of public courses can be found on our training dates page (only public courses in Brighton with a maximum duration of two days can be claimed as your prize).

The prize is for the training course only and winners will be responsible for any travel or accommodation costs incurred.

Winning will also result in exposure across our website and various social networking sites (namely Twitter, Facebook and our blog) – excellent free promotion if you want to build your profile online.

‘Environment’ Photography Competition Judge

Martin Bailey is a Professional Nature, Wildlife and Portrait photographer, born in England though now a Japanese citizen, based in Tokyo.

His work has been published by Popular Photography Magazine, Pomegranate, Korean Air, Creation Durable (Paris) and Light of Consciousness Magazine, among others. He had five pieces in a joint exhibit Viaggiando Immaginando, in Italy in 2005, and his first solo exhibition “The Nature of Japan” was held in Aoyama, Tokyo, in December 2010.

Martin releases a weekly photography Podcast, available in iTunes, as well as running a photography forum and this blog. He also runs popular wildlife and landscape photography workshops.

He is a proud member of the X-Rite Coloratti, a group of the world’s top professional photographers who understand the importance of implementing color management in their digital workflow, and he incorporates color management instruction into his workshops and seminars.

Martin is active in Social Networking too. To keep up with Martin on Twitter or Facebook etc. use the icons at the bottom of his portal page here: http://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/

How to Enter the Photography Competition.

If you have a Flickr account you can add your photo directly to the competition’s Flickr group. It is easy and free to set up an account.
A maximum of two photograph entries per entrant will be accepted.

When is the Photography Competition Closing Date?

The deadline is Friday 27th May 5pm.

Photography Competition Terms and Conditions

Please read the competition terms and conditions before entering.

Thanks to – ThePrizeFinder – UK Competitions, We are listed with PhotographyCompetitions.Net, Photo Competitions, Photo Contest, Free UK Competitions, UK Competitions at CrazyCompers.co.uk, - The 100% FREE Competition Site, Proof Positive Open photo contests and competitions Competitions Time – UK Online Competitions Compaholics UK Competitions and Prize Draws at UKwins

“Black & White” Photography Competition Winners

Aaron Charlie — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 09:44:00 +0000

Silicon Beach Training offer a full range of creative software courses including Photoshop Training, InDesign Training and Illustrator Training. New courses recently added include JavaScript Training, jQuery Training and Ajax Training.

Watch out for our next competition – we will announce it soon on twitter and facebook.

Thanks to everyone who entered

To enter our current photo competition – click here

Thanks to all who entered the Black & White photo competition – we had a staggering 1,203 entries this time and the standard was as high as ever.

Our judge Leigh Caraccioli got her judging done for us over the weekend, so we can reveal the winners…

Watch the video below to see the winning photographs, and all honourable mentions…

WINNER – The Last Tango by Kenneth Mucke

Well done to our winner Kenneth Mucke (www.photoartcreation.com) who has won Photo Bundle Software courtesy of Alien Skin – Worth £385!

Here’s what Leigh said about Kenneth’s image: Kenneth’s image kept popping up in my mind time and time again. It was causing an inner battle. Part of me labored over the blur, the bits of overexposure; the other part of me embraced the blur and was enraptured by wanting to know the rest of the story. Either way, I realized that what I love about this image is how it represents a passing moment and history in shutter click. It’s intriguing.

UPDATE - Kenneth has dropped us a line with a bit more background about the image:

The photo was taken in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the fall of 2009…The couple dancing are a very famous tango dance couple in Buenos Aires..When they are not performing in Tango Dinner clubs there …they are performing on Florida Street..They are an amazing dance couple…..I have gotten to know them very well over the past several years and they always draw a huge crowd.

Runner-Up – Catwoman by Annemieke Goldswain-Hein

Second prize goes to Annemieke Goldswain-Hein (www.goldswain-hein.com) and she has won £50 Park Cameras Gift Voucher.

Here’s what Leigh said about Annemieke’s image – While there were many images of people, nature, architecture and photojournalism that struck me in this contest. Again, I couldn’t shake the curiosity of this one by Annemieke. Being a photographer gives us the privilege of capturing beautiful in people, places, things. Life’s simplicity. This photo has such authenticity, clarity and beauty. I love the use of directional light evoking moody, tender and pure. I want to know this story too. It’s clever.

With such a high standard of entries, Leigh found it very difficult to choose a winner and so she wanted us to include 10 of her favourite images.

Here are her honourable mentions -

Three brothers by zapmole756

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zapmole/

Far by Ben Ryan

http://www.redbubble.com/people/bensound

River beam by Brenda Roussel Morin

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brenphotographie/

Winter Winds by Christopher Bowman

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=50604485

http://www.twitter.com/cbowman25

Grace by David Anthony

http://www.facebook.com/david.a.geary

http://www.twitter.com/davidanthonyart

http://www.facebook.com/davidanthonyart

http://www.davidanthonyart.blogspot.com

Thrilled by Joan Guy

www.joanguyphotography.com

Children of The Sea by Joel Reyes

Twitter – @owenreyesphotog

Bubble Bath by Katie Swift

http://www.flickr.com/photos/katieswift/

Before Sun rise by Thiha Soul

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thiha-Soul-Photography/

www.thihasoul.com

Untitled by Vic Perkins

twitter – @picverkins

www.ihardlyknowher.com/vicperkins

Silicon Beach Training offer a full range of creative software courses including Photoshop Training, InDesign Training as well as Social Media, Blogging Training, and WordPress Training in Brighton, Sussex.