29th September 2011 is our 20th wedding anniversary! Can't quite believe Paul & I have been together that long plus I don't feel old enough to have been married so long. In fact, it makes us sound ancient and we're definitely not! Paul very romantically informs me that you can get less in prison for murder!! And that pretty much sums up how romantic we both are but I guess we must be doing something right. LOL! 

As it's our 20th anniversary, we're providing you with a very special discount on our educational PS I Love You tutorials. For the first 20 lucky people purchasing our tutorials during September there will be a huge discount on the set of three PS I Love You training tutorials. A whopping Eur100 off the already special intro offer taking the tutorials down to only Eur99. To take advantage of this very special offer, please add the discount code '20' to your cart on checkout.

If you want to learn how we create artistic & beautifully enhanced images like the ones below, purchase PS I Love You tutorials where you'll receive over 5 hours of practical and easy to understand information to enhance your post-processing techniques. And remember, only the first 20 people will be able to use the discount code!

For more information on PS I Love You tutorials please visit the website!

 

If you're getting married in Cyprus and looking for a out of the ordinary & peaceful location, check out Ayii Anargyri Spa Resort in Miliou. It's one of the most beautiful locations we've photographed a wedding in Cyprus and definitely worth visiting if you're looking for a venue.

Samy & Kerry's wedding was before Cyprus gets too hot and dry and the area surrounding the venue was lush and green. Their ceremony & reception was held outside and we were afforded the time by Samy & Kerry before the reception to photograph them on the resort's grounds. Both sides of the family were wonderful to work with and we were pleasantly surprised when we got a mention in Samy's speech - the first time that's ever happened! Thanks guys!

Their album arrived yesterday and it's stunning! 

 

For those of you wondering, we're still in the land of the living! After our workshop in Santorini, I've been playing catch up with work and the blog has taken a backseat. The workshop was a great success and we had some fantastic people in the class. More about Santorini soon. In between everything we have shot a few weddings and I also squeezed in two Bon Jovi shows! More to come soon but here's a sneak preview of what I need to get blogging about!

Santorini

 

Mario & Tatiana

 

Samy & Kerry

Vangelis & Maria

Jon & Richie! :)

 

 

On Monday 6th June @ 18:00 GMT, I'll be doing a free Photoshop webinar hosted by Uzair Kharawala. I'll be demonstrating some of the fundamentals of Photoshop which we use in our post-processing and showing you how to avoid common mistakes made in Photoshop. You'll also be able to follow along as I process a recent image from start to finish. 

For more information and to register, please click here.

A few photos I never got around to blogging taken earlier this year taken in Thailand & Cyprus....

 

 

If you've been anywhere near a tv, a radio or the internet you'll know it's been a fairytale weekend.... once upon a time boy meets girl, they fall in love, girl marries her prince charming, girl looks like a beautiful princess on her wedding day, they have a party fit for a king and live happily ever after ... some place in Anglesey!

With the royal wedding being the topic of conversation at the moment, we decided to put together a special offer to mark the occasion! We are offering two very lucky couples a fantastic opportunity to have their wedding photographed by Paul & myself with a discounted rate & exceptional bonuses.

We are offering two couples a 10% discount on either Collection 1 or 2 in our current Collections, one additional hour of coverage on the 'day after' photo session, plus 10 complimentary 7x5in prints and a further Eur200 to put towards either extra pages in the album, extra coverage time on the wedding day or a cd of images. And that's not all ... these two special couples will receive a complimentary engagement photo session (to include four complimentary A4 prints)!

Only two couples getting married in 2012 will be able to take advantage of this special offer and booking must take place before the end of June 2011. The above offer is as stated and cannot be changed or transferred for cash. 

I can breathe a sigh of relief and get back to the land of the living ... I've finished (for now)! I don't think I bargained on what a huge undertaking it would be to cover so much information and put together all the Photoshop tutorials as well as my non-techy brain figuring out the whole shopping cart thing! We're a little late launching but you know what they say, better late than never!

So, www.psiloveyou.co is officially launched! 

More info can be found on the website but primarily our aim was to provide informative and useful tutorials that were easy to understand and follow along and I'm certain that we achieved that! We clearly explain a variety of techniques and lay the foundation for image enhancing skills before progressing to more in depth Photoshop. You also have the opportunity to follow along as I process some of our signature images from the 'straight out of camera' photograph to the end result. The tutorial preview page on the website provides a short (and smaller!) example of how the videos will look.

The tutorials made their debut in our classes in Athens last month and we've already had one photographer contact us saying: 

I'm very impressed! Your lesson on masks and adjustment layers was the simplest to understand that I've seen. You are a great teacher!

The content listing for the tutorials is as follows:

Set One

1. introducing layers, layer masks, adjustment layers & blending modes
2. curves basics - how and why curves are used
3. practical uses of blending modes
4. dodging and burning non-destructively
5. changing the color of an object
6. adding textures
7. creating your own warm & cool tone actions
8. stretching an image
9. enhancing images: creating artistic, signature images
10. enhancing images: creating artistic, signature images
11. enhancing images: creating artistic, signature images

 

Set Two

1. HDR (multiple images) using Photoshop
2. HDR (single image) using Photoshop
3. HDR (multiple images) using Nik HDR Efex Pro
4. HDR (single image) using Nik HDR Efex Pro
5. introduction to shadows & highlights adjustments
6. shadows & highlights & Nik tonal contrast filter
7. creating punchy black & white images
8. easily straightening a horizon
9. enhancing images: creating artistic, signature images
10. enhancing images: creating artistic, signature images
11. creating actions to easily place your logo on an image in three different ways

 

Set Three

1. skin retouching, including skin softening & evening up skin tones
2. enhancing eyes & makeup and changing makeup color
3. using the liquify filter
4. reducing dark areas under eyes
5. creating a shine on skin & enhancing highlights
6. whitening teeth
7. accurately cleaning a white background

 

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or feedback of if there's anything else you might be interested in that we didn't cover in these tutorials that you'd like us to put together in the future.

 

IMPORTANT: For those who contacted me via email expressing an interest in the tutorials, I sent out emails earlier this week but it seems that many have gone straight to junk/spam inboxes. Please check your junk/spam inboxes!

 

 

.....book your early bird rate for our workshop in Santorini!

The Santorini workshop will be held from 13-17 June 2011 by myself & Paul (finalists & semi-finalists in this year's prestigious Hasselblad awards although if you're reading the blog, I think you know who we are by now!) and Nik Pekridis (who has been asked by Yervant to speak with him in Corfu later this year) and Adam Alex (who recently won Fashion Photographer of the Year at WPPI and runs XSight UK). There will be a range of informative classes including practical photo sessions demonstrating various forms of lighting techniques and posing.

And for those that have asked us if we will be showing some of our Photoshop techniques, the answer is 'definitely, yes'!

To take advantage of our early bird rate which is a fantastic investment of only Eur500, you must book your place before the end of March. Please contact Nik at info@pws.gr

We look forward to seeing you in Santorini soon!

 

Below is a video of Paul using Photoshop to enhance a wedding image of one of our great clients & now a good friend, Christine. The video has been speeded up in this instance to give you a quick view of how we'd work in Photoshop.

To see videos of us using Photoshop with step by step instructions and in real-time, please check back again very soon when we announce the launch of PS I LOVE YOU our Photoshop tutorial website. For those that have already contacted us expressing your interest, thank you and I will be sure to email you as soon as we're up & running!

We have prepared a series of tutorials which range from explaining the fundamentals of masking & blending modes, HDR, skin retouching to more in depth tutorials to create artistic, signature images and much, much more. Someone suggested we make a tutorial about adding logos onto images so we added that in too with easy, follow along instructions to create an action to do this for you.

There will be three different sets and in total the tutorials are over 5 hours long!

If you've been to one of our recent classes either in the UK or Greece, you'll know already, Paul & I are overly generous with the information we provide and these tutorials are definitely no different! :)

 

The before & after image featured in the above video:

I remember tentatively asking other dog owners, how do you know when it’s time? If you’re not a dog owner you probably won’t know what that question means. The replies that you’d just know when it was the right time didn’t make sense to me back then. How on earth could you know for certain? How could you make such a decision? About one year later, it was a completely different story, I just knew.

Paul wanted to hold on for another week. That would have meant another whole week for us to enjoy time with our 45-kilo boxer, Tyson, which we’d already spent 13 precious years with. It was selfish and it was cruel. My feelings no longer mattered and I knew what was best for Tyson. We made the decision, it was time.

Friday 3 December 2010 … I remember every priceless and every unbearable moment of that day. I will always remember it. The day passed by so quickly whilst I tried to hold onto as many final moments as possible but there was nothing I could do to slow the day down. I can still remember whispering into Tyson’s ear as he let out one final sigh. In that moment, my heart broke.

The first couple of days were just pure nothingness. The tears were like someone flicked a switch and they would come and go for no reason at all and at the same time for every reason I could think of. The first time I smiled again was when I saw photos of Tyson … a whole pile of physical photos that brought back a thousand happy memories. Forget the digital images sitting on my computer, for some reason these prints I held in my hand were different. They felt more special, more real. Probably because they reminded me of times I’d forgotten about. The six-month old pup with huge outsized paws, the awkward looking dog splashing around in the sea, our black & white test subject, the droopy red eyes that always made him look so sleepy, the funny little dark spots of fur on the top of his head that reminded us of President Gorbachov, the face so dark when he was young turning so grey as he aged, so many reminders of Tyson and so many frozen moments in time.

Those photos are so valuable to us that we've put them in our fireproof safe.

Loosing Tyson was agonizing; I can’t imagine the heartbreak of loosing a close family member or friend. You’d want to hold onto every moment, every memory and cherish it with your entire being. Memories fade but photos go on and on for hundreds of years and I find myself scratching my head when photography is underrated, especially on a wedding day.

Flowers on a wedding day wither, the food is eaten and gone within minutes, invitations are binned and the wedding dress, which you took forever to choose, gets packed away in moth balls.

The wedding photographs get laughed at 20 years later for the fashions that people were wearing, they get cried onto for the beloved recollections of family and friends passed away, children relive their parents’ wedding day and an old couple remember their youth. Priceless….

 

Here are a few of our memories of Tyson who we still miss every single day. I still cry but the photos always, always make me smile.

The first few below are photos of glossy photos so the quality is quite bad but you'll figure out where the quality looks better and turns to digital!

It didn't matter how much Tyson slept, his eyes were almost always red! 

He went nuts when Paul got on a skateboard or bike! Who'd' have thought Paul would go gooey over a dog?! Making the most of an empty bed... Tyson's grandmother came to visit for a couple of days. We owe Tyson all to Chris who gave him to us at the age of 6 months. Chris had Tyson's grandmother & mother. Living up to his name and biting Paul's ear! One of the few photos I have with Tyson whilst he was still young :( Our black & white film test subject! The boys go surfing! This one's here because Paul's clothes are hideous & hilarious! Nothing like going to the beach on a sweltering hot day. Hawaiian style! Love is in the air! Tyson got sick when we left him the first time to go on holiday :( Apparently the vet reckons he got depressed! We moved to the UK when Tyson was around 6 years old and we obviously took Tyson with us. These studio pics are from my Venture days... Sleepy .... again! Back in Cyprus...it's hot and he's panting away! I think he agreed ... the UK was much better! As much as I loved Tyson, he could be one hell of an ugly dog when he ran! Tyson, Chinese style! This was the last time we took Tyson to walk at Ladies Mile.

A few of our last photos with Tyson. Tyson's last day... and some of the only photos of we have of Paul, me & Tyson together ...

Further to our announcement at our January classes in the UK, I'm pleased to confirm that we have been working on a comprehensive & very practical DVD of Photoshop tutorials. We get asked time & again how we process our images & soon you'll be able to see first hand!

The DVD will include fundamentals such as curves, levels & adjustment layers, masks, blending modes, quick tips & useful shortcuts & will progress into more in depth Photoshop methods to enhance your images.

We will show you how to create flawless black and white images, color effects, toning images and adding textures to create vintage effects, skin retouching, liquifying, how to work with the Shadows/Highlights option in PS, HDR & importantly how YOU can create artistic signature images.

Stay tuned for more info soon!

 

Hover over the images below to see before and after examples and to view more examples of our post-processing, please click here. 

if you would like to be informed when our dvd is released and would like to receive a link to a sneak preview of one of the tutorials, please send us an email.

 

 

Paul has been shortlisted in the final ten of the wedding category of the Hasselblad Masters Awards!!

It's a great achievement as this award is one of the most prestigious in the industry and some of the past masters are some of the finest photographers, for example, August Bradley.

All the shortlisted photographers in the various categories can be found on the Hasselblad website where you are able to view the finalist's images and vote on your favourites in each category. The public vote goes towards the final judging as one vote which is held by a selection of industry peers. With that in mind, please take two minutes to register and vote for Paul's images! Thanks!

You can view & vote on Paul's images here:  http://www.hasselblad.com/Masters/2010/Finalists/paul-karaolides.aspx

I've lost count just how many years I've been using Photoshop but it's definitely well over 10 years now and I'm still learning so many more new techniques the longer I use the program. Recently I've also begun using some further products alongside Photoshop from Nik Software. I'm a huge fan of their software because it's so simple to use and, very importantly for me, easily tweaked to my own liking and style. 

The entire collection from Nik Software is incredible and their newest addition HDR Efex has to be the best HDR software on the market. The control the program gives you over your images is outstanding and the standard of the final image is beyond any offerings from other programs we've tried.

I'm very pleased to announce that Colour Confidence, who is a distributor for Nik Software in the UK, has given us a fantastic discount to offer to anyone attending either of our seminars at the SWPP convention in January (further details in the previous post). If you want to learn more about Nik Software's programs and take advantage of Colour Confidence's discount, come along to our classes in January.