Wolves

Quick pic from a wolf shoot Victoria and I did earlier today. A handheld three shot HDR of two living, moving subjects is always a challenge.

The three wolves we photographed are part of a wolf rescue program. They are currently in the Five Cities area but are moving north to Oregon very soon.

The shots from this morning will be used to create a calendar in hopes of raising some much needed funding.

To the Dogs

Victoria thought "Heck, if the Papillon can do it..."

Just finished up day four of the Best of Lepp Institute. We have been shooting like crazy. I think all the students are worn out since the lab is empty right now. Of course, we were out shooting horses at sunset on Pismo Beach until 8:15!

We'll give a more detailed run down of the week later. Wanted to put up a few pics of our agility dog session earlier today.

Cheers!

Vegas Baby, Vegas!

"Trust"

From a recent studio mini-course with a local client

Off this week to Las Vegas for the Photoshop World convention. The trade show is put on by the Scott Kelby and his team at NAPP (The National Association of Photoshop Professionals.) Every conference is a tremendous experience as the industry leaders, movers, and shakers are all in one spot.

Similar to last year, we will have a large booth on the tradeshow floor featuring demos, tutorials, and talks from our staff as well as our instructors. If you are heading to the show, stop by and say hello.

We will also publish our 2009 schedule at the conference and will push it online as soon as we return. Some good stuff next year from the best bird photographer in the US to masters of wedding photography.

Take care and hope to see or hear from you soon.

Canvas

Hal finished up our second Canvas Printing and Finishing Techniques course about an hour ago. Everyone did well as we printed and finished over eight canvas gallery wraps. As always the class produced some incredible work and learned a huge amount. Even Reagan got into the mix with her little 11 x 16 canvas.

From canvas selection to print optimization to coating to stretching, we did it all (by hand.) With that said, Hal did demonstrate the canvas stretching machine to show some speedy stretching.

We'll do another canvas course next weekend after we finish up with Fay Sirkis' Corel Painter class.

Cheers!

Thanks Charlie and See You Next August!

Friday saw the end of Charlie Cramer's Digital Printing for the Fine Art Photographer. We spent the first three days learning to optimize our images. The class became very familiar with every use of the Curves adjustment layer. In addition, there was a daily critique of student work led by Charlie himself.

Thursday and Friday were all about optimization of the students' images and printing, of course. We fired up the Canon 5100s and 8100 printing 8.5 x 11, 13 x 19, 16 x 20, and larger. All in all there were some tremendous images and impressive prints.

We just booked Charlie again for next year so we will do it again relatively soon.

Digital Printing Party

Just another Thursday night wine and cheese party at the Lepp Insitute. Rough living here in Los Osos, optimizing images and printing all day with a little relaxation in the evening.

Charles Cramer has shared his expertise with the class for the last four days and we are seeing some great prints as a result. Tomorrow we will fire up the Canon ipf 8100 for some larger prints. Looking forward to what we get.

As you may or may not know we tend to print quite a bit at the school. We are fortunate enough to have Canon sponsor us with equipment, ink, and media so our clients can learn to print properly here before wasting any of their time or assets at home.

We'll finish up tomorrow and kick off again Saturday morning with another Canvas Printing and Finishing Techniques course, nothing like working with canvas.

Take care and hope to see or hear from you soon.

Hal

LR Class Photo

Friday finished a great Lightroom 2.0 class. We were very fortunate to hold the class immediately after the release of the latest version. It was a long week with multiple photo shoots and plenty of time in front of the program but well worth it.

Charles Cramer is here now teaching Digital Printing for the Fine Art Photographer, always a fun class.

I'll put a new post up later detailing our huge wine in the 10th Annual Paso Robles Winemaker Cookoff!