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The original RAW to the Core T-shirts have been around for less then a year, but they’ve proved incredibly popular. In fact we expanded the first order by adding two extra colours and sizes, many of which have now totally sold out.

So I decided it was time to revamp the RAW to the Core t-shirt and after many hours works and several failed attempts I came up with a design that keeps the original RAW to the Core message but blends it into a design that’s a little more easy on the eye of the non photographers out there.

More details are here

The new design is available right now in the Gavtrain store, but please be aware that the stock is very limited.

If you’re after the original design RAW to the Core T-Shirt you can find them here. Many sizes and colours are totally sold out, but you might get lucky

A few weeks ago I wrote Building a Photoshop Power PC – Part 1 in which I went through the rather enjoyable process of choosing components for my power PC. I used a couple of different companies to supply the parts for my PC which saved me money but cost me a bit of time as everything didn’t arrive together.

The last thing to arrive was the most vital. I ordered my CPU, Motherboard and RAM as a complete bundle. The advantage of a bundle was it’s made to order, overclocked to increase speed and tested before being dispatched. It arrived heavily wrapped in bubble wrap, which is always good to see and was ready to install and use.

Before launching myself into the unknown of my first ever build I armed myself with a little knowledge courtesy of an excellent how to build a PC video from new egg. It’s a long one, but packed full of useful build tips.

Despite my lack of experience at PC building, I completed the build without any problems in around 3 hours. The real star of the build was the Fractal R3 case which turned out to be a real boon when it came to keeping the masses of cables tidy. The R3 case has a 2 cm gap between the case and the back panel. It may not sound much, but it’s just wide enough to hide cables and keeping cables out of the case gives better airflow, which in turn means a cooler PC.

So there you have it, a shiny new PC is built. Unfortunately building the PC isn’t the end of the story. There’s the small matter of installing an operating system, adding all the software I need to do my work and moving my files from my old PC to the new.

That’s what I cover in Building a Photoshop Power PC – Part 3 (coming soon)

Tomorrow night is the 5th of November and here in the UK, that means it’s bonfire night. For those that don’t know Bonfire Night it’s also known as Guy Fawkes night which celebrates the failed attempt by a group of plotters to blow up the houses of Parliament in London 400 years ago.

Leaving aside the politics of 400 years past, bonfire night is really just our excuse to let off a load of fireworks and have a bit of a party. It’s also a great photo opportunity, so here’s my top 5 tips on capturing your best firework photos ever.

1 Be Prepared
Preparation is the key, so be ready BEFORE the display starts. Check you have a fully charged battery in your camera, a clear memory and the front of your lens is nice and clean.

2 Rock Solid Support
The most important piece of equipment you’ll need (after a camera) is a tripod and the sturdier the better. To really capture the spectacular shapes and colours of the fireworks you want the shutter to be open for a few seconds or longer and that’s far longer then you can handle without a tripod.

3 Manual Metering
Forget the auto and semi auto modes all that black sky is going to totally confuse your cameras meter. That means it’s up to you to take control and that means switching the camera to manual mode (M). Start by enter an aperture of f8 a shutter speed of 2 seconds and ISO 200. It’s not an exact science and factors like light pollution and personal taste may well dictate a change of settings (see 5)

4 Aim for the stars
You’re ready to take pictures, so point your camera to where the fireworks will be and wait.

5 Fire at will
As the fireworks start going off take a shot or two and review the results. If the sky or fireworks are too bright use a smaller aperture (f11, f16 etc.) If the firework trails are too small use a longer shutter speed (4 seconds, 8 seconds) but remember to reduce the aperture (bigger number) to stop the image getting too bright.

OK there you go. Follow the five steps above and you’ll get great firework photos every time. If you’ve mastered the basics then here’s three more useful tips…

Bonus Tips
A cable release is very handy for this work. It stops you touching and therefore moving, the camera which can cause blurred images.  If your camera is having trouble focusing switch to manual focus and set it to infinity. Don’t use flash.

To Help you remember, print off my handy Firework Photography Field Guide by clicking the image below.

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently paid a visit to Winchester to present a photo talk. Of course I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of spending a few days in this incredibly beautiful and historic city. Despite the British weather doing it’s very best to interfere with the photography, I still managed to bag some great shots.

Of late I’ve been spending a lot of time shooting HDR images and I was able to loads of HDR in Winchester. Why HDR? Because on the 1st December I’ll be running an eSeminar for Adobe UK and the subject is… You guessed it, HDR.

Here’s one of my favourite HDR’s from Winchester. Although many of my HDR’s have a subtle look, I know lots of people prefer the more processed look for their HDR’s and in this case, so do I.

I used three RAW images shot two stops apart. I then used Merge to HDR pro in Photoshop CS5 to combine and enhance the image. I then applied a few other tweaks in Photoshop, but to see those you’ll need to watch the eSeminar… details to follow.