Friday, November 28, 2008

Quick Shots from Kevin Ames' Class


The Art of Photographing Women went extremely well. Talk about an education in lighting, composition, posing, interaction, etc. Great stuff. We are extremely excited to have Kevin on our list of instructors again for 2009. If you are interested in any of the above topics do not miss Kevin next year.
We will also be offering a couple of weekend workshops concentrating on basic lighting in the near future. Look for the course list updates.
The attached shots are from different shoots during the week.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Sunday Evening


We just finished a full weekend of High Dynamic Range (HDR) shooting, processing, and printing. We had a great time whether in the field or learning in the digital darkroom. It is always fun to watch people experience how shooting for HDR can take them beyond the limitations of their equipment.

We processed all images using either Photomatix Pro, Photoshop, or a combination of the two. The image above was generated from three images each shot 2 stops apart. The resultant radiance file was processed twice in Photomatix Pro, once for photorealism and once for a high texture, art effect. Both images were stacked in Photoshop and ultimately converted to black and white with Nik's Silver EFX. I printed this one BIG and it is awesome.

Cheers!

Sunday, November 9, 2008

More Examples

©Gero Heine

From the same assignment, Gero Heine shot these images, creative, fun and well lit with a single Speedlite! Great job!


© Gero Heine

The class is reviewing yesterday evening's shoot now. We will discuss some additional techniques and then shoot some more with models and flash modification techniques.

Cheers!

Couple Pictures

© Cheryl Strahl

Here are two quick shots from Cheryl Strahl. She is here this weekend taking the Flash Demystified course. Cheryl used a single, off camera flash for these shots. The assignment was not about subject but light.

© Cheryl Strahl

Flash Demystified



Rob Sheppard is back this weekend with Flash Demystified. We have learned a huge amount and are shooting like crazy, 3 shoots yesterday!



Flash can sometimes be very intimidating but Rob makes it so much easier. His exercises not only teach the technical side of flash and light but greatly stimulate the creative process.




Next post we'll put up some of the exercise shots. The attached pics today are from yesterday's second shoot. We set up many small, quirky items and experimented. Great stuff.


Duane Hall "Mighty Oak"


Here is one of my favorite student images from last week. Great light.

Nice job Duane and Seven Peaks Photography! We will try to get this printed out and hung on our student wall soon!

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Seán Duggan's Black and White Class

Last week Seán Duggan taught Creative Digital Black and White. Though we had a small class the information was in abundance and each student had a one on one experience all week! We started out shooting at Spooners Cove out at Montaña De Oro state park. The students did some wonderful long exposures and explored some great textures with rocks and water. Below is an image by Michael Cryer who used a wide angle and played around with the split toning in Lightroom 2.1.


We took the images back to lab the next day where Seán showed many examples and techniques on how to turn images into rich black and white images.

We also visited The Oaks and learned about setting up and visualizing a shot for black and white. I was able to use an IR camera with a fisheye and got some very unusual images.



We heard that a life-size replica of La Niña was docked in the Morro Bay marina so naturally we saw a great opportunity to find some great textures and some interesting silhouettes from the late afternoon light. We also learned to create starbursts using a small aperture (f/16, f/22 etc.).



Seán is a beta tester for Adobe so we were fortunate enough to see some really nice previews of the next version of Photoshop CS4.



Stay tuned to see what we are up to this weekend! And remember we have a great discount right now for the Intermediate Photoshop class next week! Call the office! 805-528-7385.