The Workshops and Classes page on this blog and the IAATLT Home Page have been updated with new offerings for this winter and spring.
This winter update your postposing skills with Mastering Lightroom or Essential Photoshop for Photographers.
Early this spring I’m offering an exceptional value on a week long photo tour to the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry.
In early May I am again offering a weekend workshop that I call Beachscapes and Wildflowers. The focus of this workshop is landscapes at the beach or bay at sunrise and sunset. But is timed to coincide with the blooming of the pink lady slippers. So a portion of late morning is devoted to spring wildflowers.
I am again offering several spring half day compositional workshops.
And this winter the Chester County Night School has asked me to teach my DSLR Essentials class. This class will help you get off “Auto” by providing an in depth understanding of f-stops, shutter speed, depth of field, and composition. Students also participate in supportive group reviews of their images.
Before getting to Isla Guadalupe and the Great White Sharks we spend a few days diving around Islas San Benitos. This was all kelp diving. The highlight of this part of the trip was spending an afternoon at a sea lion rookery. The pups, like any young mammals, are full of energy and are very inquisitive. The can make for some interesting photo ops.
I’ve been told that the literal translation of the German for sea lion is sea dog. I think the next two images illustrate just how much these young sea lions do look like little puppy dogs.
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One last set of bird pix from the marina before moving on to some underwater images. These are brown pelicans shot with a little fill flash (note the catch light in the eye) as the light levels were dropping fast.
And one more fun shot.
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Here are a couple more shots form the marina across the street from the hotel where we stayed the night before getting on the boat.
These are simple gull shots—but the light was very nice for these.
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At the end of the month I’m starting a four week workshop on Lightroom. This is a relatively easy and inexpensive way to get up to speed using Lightroom as your primary workflow tool. Lightroom is used to both manage and edit/enhance your images.
The first two session of the workshop will focus on using the Library Module to manage you images. The last two sessions dives into the Develop Module to easily and quickly bring dull raw captures to life.
If you are new to Lightroom and are still struggling to use this tool efficiently then the course will help you get over the hump and allow you to work more efficiently.
Here is link for more information on the IAATLT web site.
Prior to getting on the boat before our shark expedition we stayed in the Point Loma section of San Diego. Our hotel was across the street from one of the many marinas and I took the opportunity to do some shooting.
Just after the sun went over the hill to the west the full moon rose to the east. (You do know that when the moon is full that it rises when the sun set and set when the sun rises don’t you?) And with the moon low on the horizon it was not as bright as when it gets higher. This permitted capturing the moon, with detail, against a sky with some color. And that color in the sky was being reflected in the water.
A little bit before this shot the sun was shining on the city while the marina was still in the shade. The warm light of sunset illuminated the downtown area, making for an interesting background for these boats.
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Part 1
Part 2
One last post with pix from Hagley Museum. This first one was shot as an HDR but I couldn’t get the software to give me a realistic tone mapping that I liked.
So resorted to the old fashion way. I blended the normal exposure with the –3EV exposure to get detail/color in the bright areas of the bass hand wheels. I used a luminosity mask with just the highlights selected to bring in those areas from the dark exposure.
Compare this to what I got out of Photomaticx.
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Part 2
One of the fascinating aspect of shooting in Hagley’s Machine shop is the light. There are two available light sources. The window light provides most of the light and acts a strong directional side light. The kerosene lamps provide a warm accent light. Bill Westerhoff had warned me to expect to see a lot of blue in the floors that is not apparent to the naked eye. And was he right! I did some work in Photoshop to remove the blue in the wide angle shots posted yesterday in Part 1.
But in these detail shots I like the color contrast of the warm and cool so I decide to leave the blue. I’m not sure what causes the wooden surfaces to become blue but one guess is it has something to do with the oil that has soaked into the wood over the years. (The blue does not visible to the naked eye.)
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