Speaker: Julian Elliott

https://www.julianelliottphotography.com

I am an award winning professional freelance landscape and travel photographer as well as an occasional writer based both in the Loire Valley, France and also in Wiltshire, England. I travel across Europe as well as into Asia capturing landscapes and cityscapes along with the various cultures that inhabit them.

In October 2015, one of my images was chosen as the winner of the Countryside is GREAT section of the Landscape Photographer of the Year in conjunction with Visit Britain. In October 2017 my image of Big Ben and the Shard entitled “A Shard of Ben” was commended in the Urban View category of the Landscape Photographer of the Year. I have also had commended and highly commended images in the International Garden Photographer of the Year.

My photography and stock footage has been sold across the world in nearly 40 countries through agencies such as Getty Images. They have been used as magazine spreads right through to commercial and product sales. The footage has been used in things such as corporate websites or part of a TV broadcast.

Back in April 2005 when I purchased my first camera I decided that being in the office was not something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I would rather spend my time on the side of a freezing cold hill getting superb light at dawn or seeing the setting sun produce an endless display of colour over a beautiful seascape, mirrored on a beach full of shimmering sands than in the comfort of a cosy office. But it would take until November 2010 before I could fully realize the dream of breaking the daily grind of the office and finally going solo as a full-time professional landscape and travel photographer.

My approach to photography is simple, get it right in camera first and don’t spend needless time in front of a PC. The vast majority of my work is edited in Lightroom where images are lightly edited as the patience I’ve had in waiting for the light has usually added a lot of the colour. I use Photoshop to blend images where necessary as well as to adjust the curves correcting the colour balance and finally adding sharpness to the final image.  Digital cameras have a different tonal range than that of film emulsion. The curves adjustment will put more depth into the image in the form of blacks or, occasionally, some highlight information. Used correctly, the curves adjustment can help balance the colours and remove colour casts.

In order to get some of the colourful images that you see on my portfolio, I use, at times, filtration in the form of Lee Filters neutral density graduates, a Heliopan polarizer and/ or a Lee Filters neutral density filter. The graduate filters add no colour to the image but instead help to balance the light between the sky and foreground. I am often asked if what you see is real and not a product of Photoshop. The answer, simply, is yes it is real. The colours that you see are real and are a reaction of the colour temperature of light to the particular time of day or the weather conditions accompanying them.

Currently, I use a Canon 5D Mark IV and Canon 6D with several Canon L Series lenses including three tilt/ shift to capture the images you see on the galleries. The time lapse footage that I produce is facilitated by a Promote Control with post production ramping occurring in LR Timelapse.

My stock photography and footage work can be found with the following image libraries: Getty; Robert Harding; AGE Fotostock and Alamy. I also have my own stock image library where you can purchase some exclusive images directly from me.

Outside of the world of stock, I have done various commissions for some of the UK’s leading photography magazines such as Digital SLR User magazine, Digital Camera Mag and Photo Plus. Visit Britain – The British Tourist Authority commissioned me in 2016 to ensure that some of the major cities in the UK looked beautiful in a series of time lapse sequences. The Mairie de Tours in France have also commissioned my work for use in their publicity material as well as a number of other tourism boards in Europe who trust that the work they are going to receive is of a high standard.