Welcome to the Lepp Institute Blog: Classes back in session!

Well colors are turning and harvest is here! We had a couple weeks off to enjoy a bit of harvest up in Paso Robles, our very own spectacular wine country! We usually hang out on 46 West which is a beautiful area for growing high quality wine grapes.

As some of you may know Hal is the assistant wine maker for Midnight Cellars and has his own wine label named Volatus. Hal has been making wine for 10 years as part of his relaxation while flying jets in the Navy.

Now that classes are back in session we will have more photos to post soon. Here are a few photos that I took up in the wine country. I practiced panoramas, infrared and macro! Techniques I took from Rob Sheppard, Frank Lavelle and George Lepp in the past few weeks inspired me to get out and look at taking photos a bit differently.

This is a winery named Booker taken in Color and in IR. Both are roughly 6-8 shots, stitched
together in Photoshop CS3.

To stitch a Panorama in Photoshop:

Go to File-> Automate->PhotoMerge

I usually choose Auto. Browse for the files you would like stitched together and press "OK". It will take a few seconds to a couple of minutes depending on how many images you have.

It will give you multiple layers on your stitched document which you can add masks to if you need to fine tune areas it missed. I would save a copy with all of the layers and then flatten to work further on it.

Infrared photographs are very interesting to play with. Our cameras are Canon D60's that were converted over to an IR sensor. It is best to take your IR photos at high noon with a lot of sunshine, and a lot of interesting clouds. The effect is amazing! You get dramatic skies and trees that look very surreal. Make sure you have it on a low ISO around 100 that way your grain won't be an issue. IR tends to have a grainy look so any help in the camera is a bonus!

Hope to see you in classes here soon!

Check our courses page often for more classes and updates