Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography.
All in Video
In my latest video, I take you along on a relaxing photo walk through one of my favourite places in Ireland—Glendalough. This stunning glacial valley in the Wicklow Mountains has long been a go-to spot for me, but this trip turned out to be extra special. From misty trails to surprising wildlife encounters, it was the perfect setting for some nature photography and a calming escape into the Irish wilderness.
This is kind of a nerdy tip, but if, for whatever reason, you need to copy the settings from the main tone curve in Lightroom to the tone curve on a mask, you may be wondering how to do this, as it’s not immediately obvious. Well, there are actually two ways, and in this post (and video) I show you how to do it.
Ever since Adobe added the new masking architecture in Lightroom a few years ago, it’s totally changed the way I work with the software. I find myself using masks way more than I used to and it’s led to me approaching my edits in a whole different way. To try and take that to the limit, I set out to see if I could edit a photo entirely by just using the masks tool, and not touching the standard editing controls.
I recently upgraded my photography and video gear with the Canon R6 Mark II. On a trip to Brighton, UK, I tested the camera for the first time. I captured both test footage and stills, creating a short film of a moody morning on Brighton Beach. Additionally, I took a series of still photos throughout the trip, including some beautiful sunset shots.
Back in April my wife and I took a road trip to the northern most region in Ireland, the Inishowen peninsula in Co. Donegal. We were there for a few days and took the opportunity to photograph the northern most point on the island of Ireland, as well as some of the incredible beaches in the area.
I was recently visiting a somewhat famous waterfall not too far from where I live and of course I took some photos while I was there. We went primarily to enjoy the fresh air and scenery, so it wasn’t a specific photo shoot, but even so I got some interesting images. One worked out particularly well, and I thought my process for editing it would make an interesting video, so here it is!
A good while ago now, I posted some photos of a dramatic seascape that I had taken of Dublin bay in the aftermath of a storm. A few people had asked me how I created the dramatic black and white look, and so I thought it would make a good video. I had used a combination of Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex for the processing and in the video I walk you through the process.
In this video, I go back to basics and set out to enjoy the creative process of taking photos in order to overcome a bad case of creator block and imposter syndrome. I went for a Photo Walk by the grand canal in Dublin with my Trusty Fujifilm X-E4 and talked about how you sometimes need to take photos just for yourself and enjoy the process as a form of meditation.
This is a little trick I stumbled across the other day - almost by accident. I was working on editing a photo in Lightroom, and I had made quite a few edits, but I just couldn’t get it where I wanted it. I said to myself: “I wish there was a way I could just dial all the adjustments back a little”. Then it occurred to me - there actually is a way to do that. It requires a few steps and a little roundabout thinking, but it essentially gives you a way to adjust the overall amount of your adjustments with a single slider.
I this video we edit a series of Landscapes in Capture One, starting with some very simple edits and working up to more complex images. I show you both the tools to use, and also share some of my philosophy on editing landscapes.
Some people prefer posting their photos to instagram using a frame, with white borders surrounding the image, n order to preserve the original aspect ratio. People are quite divided as to whether or not this is a good thing to do or not, but if you want to do it, there are lots of ways to go about it. If you use Lightroom, there’s actually a pretty easy way to get the white border effect inside of Lightroom, without having to use plug-ins or go to Photoshop.
I recently decided to close my Patreon channel after several years of running the page. had produced some exclusive videos for Patreon, that because of my failure to grow my channel there, never really got seen by an audience, so I’m going to share some of them here now.
In this video I show you how to change the direction and focus of lighting in a scene in Capture One using layers.
In a recent blog post I covered the icons on the top of each of Capture One’s tool panels, and part of that was how you can sync settings from an individual adjustment panel. Based on the responses I got, it occurred to me that the way you sync settings in Capture One is a little confusing, especially for Lightroom switchers, and so I decided to make a video to explain it.
In this video, I show you some tips on how to use the Dehaze tool creatively in Capture One. By using a negative amount on Capture One’s dehaze slider and by tweaking the colour, I created a soft light effect.
A little while ago, I decided to upgrade my Vlogging camera, and so I bought a Sony Z-V1. I had been using a Canon GX1 Mark II, but I wanted something with 4k recording, and the Sony seemed like a good option. I have been using it on and off for the past few weeks, and so here is some early first impressions of Sony’s little Vlogging camera.
In this video I show you how to deal with chromatic aberration in Capture One when the default method won’t work.
In this video, I show you how to use Silver Efex Pro (and other Nik Plug-ins) with Capture One non destructively. I actually covered this a while ago in a blog post, but I wanted to create a screencast as its a bit easier to explain.
