The Dark and Moody look is extremely popular at the moment especially on social media; it's a great look that can add drama and impact to your pictures.
Here's how I create it and how to make it as a preset so that you can quickly and easily use it again and again in Lightroom Classic, Lightroom CC, Lightroom Mobile and Camera Raw.
Lightroom continues to get more and more powerful and yet despite what's possible, the controls and functions are incredibly easy to use once you know how to get the very best out of them.
In this video I show step by step the complete workflow taking a flat image and making it POP using Masking, Intersect and the fantastic Colour Grading Panel …
In the video I mention about my NEW Mini Course … Colour Grading: The Essential Finishing Touch
For more information, check out the link / button below …
Really excited to let you know that I have a NEW course NOW AVAILABLE …
Just as with my other courses, you can stream / download all of the included video tutorials, download work files to follow along step by step, download a PDF of Class Notes ans have Life Time Access. Plus there’s a knowledge check and certificate of completion.
For more information check out the button link below
See you in class 😃
The misty conditions last Wednesday were nothing short of perfect for some minimalist photography, so I popped out early morning and took the short drive to meet up with my friend Steve Healy down at my favourite of all places, Lyme Regis.
True to the weather apps, the conditions were as predicted; a wonderful misty morning, an incoming tide with the surface of the sea as flat as a sheet of glass, hardly a breeze in the air and looking out across the sea, at times it was almost impossible to see the distant horizon line.
Absolutely Perfect!
I should have sent a memo about dress code 🤣
Taking along minimal kit as I did when photographing the Prince of Wales Bridge a couple of weeks back, I stuck with using my iPhone 14 Pro Max, but this time made use of my new JOBY MagSafe Mount ( LINK )
This worked an absolute treat holding my iPhone rock steady and was so incredibly quick and easy to adjust and rotate from portrait orientation to landscape orientation …
Long Exposure Photography was definitely order of the day to enhance the calm, relaxing feeling of the light and the mist, and of course smooth out the water surface even more.
I’ve a few long exposure apps installed on my iPhone at the moment that I’m testing out to see which I prefer, but on this morning I opted again to use EvenLonger …
For the image above, I used a 60 second long exposure.
We then moved along to The Cobb, which looked incredible amongst the mist and surrounded by a glass flat high tide …
The tide was particularly high this morning, meaning the groin at the far end of The Cobb was much less visible.
In this image and the one above, you can really see how the mist made the horizon barely visible, which when combined with a long exposure worked, I feel, so incredibly well …
In each of these images you will have spotted that there were Gulls flying. To include these, once I had taken the long exposure, I then jumped back to the regular camera on my iPhone and waited for the moment when Gulls flew through the frame.
When they did I pressed the shutter a number of times using a Bluetooth Shutter Release which works a treat and only cost £3.99 off Amazon ( LINK )
99% of these images I edited in Lightroom Mobile and Photoshop on my iPad, but to add the Gulls I used Photoshop CC on my desktop as I needed to use a filter and (at the moment) that filter isn’t available in the mobile version of Photoshop.
That said though, the process was so incredibly easy editing on my iPad, and then because everything I do syncs automatically with every device I have Lightroom installed, I could then finish off on my desktop without having to export anything or import from memory cards.
Everything I do on any device be it my iPhone, iPad or Desktop, syncs across each other making it instantly available everywhere.
Oh and the text and graphics were added using Adobe Express …
So another incredibly relaxing morning out taking photographs with my iPhone.
Minimal kit. No swapping out lenses. No attaching filters. No cables.
All of this for me makes for such a wonderful experience, enabling me to relax and just enjoy being where I am and absorb the sights and sounds.
The experience of taking photographs just doesn’t get better!
Here's how to ADD SHARPENING in Lightroom Mobile and gewt the Black and White Preview to see where the sharpening is being applied 🖕📱
Quick & Easy …
Using Lightroom on a tablet device with a screen can be a real pain in the a$$ having to reach over the image to make adjustments.
Thankfully though this is no longer the case in Lightroom Mobile and Lightroom Classic, so here's how to turn on ... Left Handed Editing …
A few days ago I met up with my great friend Anthony Crothers at a Café in Bristol to spend some quality time together and also to try photographing the Prince of Wales Bridge that spans 3.2 miles from the South West of England, across the River Severn, to the South East of Wales …
Having seen some photographs of it in a photography book I own, I thought it would be both interesting and a challenge to see what I could capture using just my iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Conditions following a recent storm were perfect with great light and a sky full of clouds, although it was a little on the chilly side and once under the bridge, the wind blowing around caused some initial challenges keeping the phone perfectly still on the tripod.
I’d taken along my new Joby MagSafe Phone Holder which is so incredibly well made, however ended up not being suitable because of the wind causing a little bit of movement …
Instead I resorted to my trusty SmallRig Mobile Phone Cage that locked everything down and held it rock steady …
Lately I’ve been using the Lightroom Mobile App for creating Long Exposures, however that is restricted to a maximum of 5 second long exposures, so instead opted for another App I have on my phone called Even Longer.
This is an incredibly easy app to use with a clean interface and a menu system that is simple and very intuitive.
The set up couldn’t have been easier: dial in the exposure I wanted, choose the length of the long exposure and press the shutter button which then kicked into action after a 3 second delay to ensure no movement.
There’s so many composition opportunities at this location, but my favourite was when I was directly under the bridge to capture all the structure underneath and then the view as the bridge disappears across the River Severn …
To edit the image I intentionally limited myself to using my iPad and the Lightroom Mobile and Photoshop Apps which worked an absolute treat. In fact they made the editing process a joy!
I’m loving the mobile workflow where I can take photographs with my mobile phone and without having to involve memory cards, the images I take are automatically synced to my iPad so that in the comfort of the nearby café I can look through and start editing.
Final Image edited in Lightroom Mobile on my iPad
Once back home, the photographs I’ve taken, along with any images I’ve started editing (and all of the edits) automatically appear on my desktop computer so that I can then check them over on a Colour Calibrated Screen, and then confidently print them out knowing that what I see, is what I get. Such an incredibly portable and convenient workflow … that also gives peace of mind knowing that photographs you take are instantly backed up.
My video this week on my YouTube Channel, will be going Behind the Scenes from this photo shoot, as I show all of the steps involved from taking the photographs, editing in Lightroom Mobile on my iPad, and the final print …
Taking photographs and editing on a mobile device is incredibly exciting and such a fantastic workflow.
In this video I show you the whole process from capture the long exposurephotographs with my iPhone, to then editing in Lightroom Mobile and Photoshop on the iPad and ending up with a FANTASTIC print.
Headed down to Durdle Door in Dorset the other week; just over an hour away so not a long drive, but wow … what a great place.
I met up with my friend Steve Healey with the intention of photographing the sunrise but lack of local knowledge put a stop to that. Little did we know that there’s a gate preventing access that doesn’t open until 9am BUT you can take a short coastalwalk from nearby Lulworth Cove to access the beach and the famous arch … didn’t know that until later in the day though.
Still, we drove off for a while to grab a coffee and came back an hour or so later and got down to take some photographs; Steve with his Fuji and me with my iPhone and SmallRig combo.
Here’s my favourite; a 5 second long expsoure that was taken using the Lightroom Mobile App camera and a quick edit in Lightroom CC and Photoshop …
© Glyn Dewis 2025
