Pacific Rim Workshop gallery
Here are some more images form the Pacific Rim Workshop that Brenda Berry and I just finished. Looking back I think that this location may be the best workshop location that I have ever had a chance to enjoy and share with people. [nggallery id=23] It was a great workshop, I love going to Tofino and exploring the Pacific Rim Park. I love the long beaches, the giant old forests, the magnificent tide pools, the chocolate chip cookies at Breakers, the bear cruise through the back inlets, the chicken and bean burritos at Sobo, the skate park, the surfers at sunset, prayer flags on driftwood, winter wrens behind 1500 year old red cedars, bald eagles as common as crows, the working harbors, boat reflections and…did I mention the chocolate chip cookies at Breakers?
Fall Lightroom Class in Vermont
Lightroom Crash Course. This class is taught by my good friend and digital guru, Scott Rouse. I highly recommend this class. Plus it is in the fall in Vermont! How can you go wrong? Capturing your images is just the first step. Learning how to store, edit, develop, share, and protect our valuable image libraries is an integral part of the digital photography process. In this Lightroom Crash Course, you’ll learn from experienced photographer and digital professional Scott Rouse everything you need to get started with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. Lightroom, as it’s commonly called, is the most popular application for managing image libraries and producing final projects from those images for both amateurs and professionals alike. Whether your images’ final destinations are the Web, a print, a slideshow, or some combination of those, Lightroom can help. This two and half day intensive course will cover all five Lightroom Modules: Library Develop Print Slideshow Web We’ll place particular emphasis on the importance of organization: Keywords, Collections, Labels and Ratings, and the like. Cost and Registration This intensive workshop is a bargain at $249. I’m offering an Early Bird registration rate of $199 for those registering before June 30 (or until the workshop is full). My beloved Lightroom Lab readers can get even more of a discount! Save $10 off of your registration by using discount code lrlabcrash. Just enter that code when purchasing your tickets, and you’ll automatically get $10 off either the Early Bird or Regular Price ticket. Click here to register for this workshop. When and Where: The workshop will start the evening of Friday, October 7, 2011 at 5:00pm for introductions and orientation. Plan for a very full day on Saturday. We’ll officially end at about 2:00pm on Sunday so those who need to can try to catch a late flight home. I’ll stick around until about 4:00 for an optional open lab session where I’ll be available to help with any questions that may arise. We’ll be meeting at the Inn at Willow Pond in beautiful Manchester, VT. You can book a room there to be right where the action is…well, as much action as there can be in this historic, sleepy New England town. More information on the Inn at Willow Pond is available at http://www.innatwillowpond.com. There are a number of other motels and inns in the area which are fine, as well. The Albany International Airport (ALB) in Albany, NY is the closest major airport at about an hour and half away from the Inn. Rental cars are available in Albany. The Rutland Southern Vermont Regional Airport (RUT) is a tiny airfield located less than an hour from the Inn. They do offer rental cars but require advance registration. Cape Air offers daily flights from Boston to Rutland. Don’t want to fly? Take this opportunity for a gorgeous New England Fall drive. Your whole family will love it. The Inn is about 160 miles from Boston and around 200 miles from Manhattan or Syracuse. What to Bring: Laptop computer — Computers will not be provided, and you’ll definitely want your computer so you can follow along. If you’re interested in purchasing a laptop, and you’re not sure what to get, feel free to email me for some advice. All necessary cables for your computer — No matter how good your laptop’s battery is, I assure you it won’t make it through the weekend. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 — You’ll want to have the latest version of Lightroom installed on your computer ready to go (if you haven’t already done so). If you don’t have Lightroom yet, you can find more information on where to get it here. Some of your images — I’ll provide sample images to work with in class, but it’s nice to have some of your own. Bring them on your computer’s hard drive or an external drive. External Drive(s) (optional) — We’ll talk about backup routines and best practices for storage. If you have one or more external drives you regularly work with, feel free to bring them to the class. Just make sure you keep a backup of all of your images at home or in another safe location. This article talks about using external hard drives with Lightroom. This is a practical lab-based class meaning that we won’t be outside shooting. If you want a chance to capture some of the great Vermont Fall color, check out the next section: Make it a Week: If you’re ready for a full week of photography, you should consider combining this workshop with David Middleton’sFall Colors in Vermont photo workshop. That workshop will be held October 12-16 in the exact same location. Click here for info on David’s Fall Colors in Vermont workshop. Questions: If you have questions about the class, please contact Scott at [email protected]. Registration Remember to use the discount code lrlabcrash to save an additional $10.
Pacific Rim Workshop review
Not quite home yet from the Pacific Rim Workshop that Brenda Berry and I led but I already miss the place. The combination of great subjects and a fun, funky town give this workshop a wonderful sense of place and makes for a terrific workshop experience. Everyone on the workshop got some really nice images. I know this because Brenda and I saw them in the critiques we did everyday and we talked about them longingly afterward. I know things are going well when I pine for the images my students are producing and I did a lot of pining last week! Even the weather, which is supposed to be cloudy and generally grumpy this time of the year (all the better for old-growth forests and tide pools) was amenable with sunsets the first three nights and clouds on the days we went into the forests. All the photos posted here were taken during the workshop. I’ll post more when I return to my office and relocate my head. And just in case you might be interested, Brenda and I will be doing this workshop again next year in May.
Homework Assignment
I know, you didn’t ask for homework this summer but then again who does? I remember getting homework for the summer, I think. I am sure that not only did I never do it I never had any intention of doing it. Summer is for hiking and swimming and reading the sports page. It is certainly not for homework. I mean really, who would do homework in the summer? You, for one! Here is your assignment. Next time you are out taking pictures and you are setting up a nice landscape stop, step away from your camera and examine the foreground. I bet that it is either not very compelling or not very close. Your homework is to spend some time finding the best possible foreground and then emphasizing it in your composition. The foreground is that part of your composition that is closest to your camera. For compelling landscape photos your foreground needs to be 3 to 4 feet (or even closer!) away from your camera. That’s right 3 to 4 feet. For foregrounds that have small things in them, say tiny flowers, you need to be even closer. If your foreground is dominated by a large object, say a stump or a clump of wildflowers then you may have to move back a bit, but not too far. The secret is to fill your composition with a great foreground. Look at the photo above. When you take a close look at it you will notice that half of the composition is within 5 feet of the camera. In fact, three quarters of the composition is within about 8 feet of the camera! I am emphasizing the pretty lupine and big driftwood logs. That is what I think is compelling about this scene so I made it a big part of my composition. The last one quarter of the composition places the lupine and logs on a beach. Remember, a nice landscape becomes a great landscape when the foreground is close, compelling and really cool. Take your time, great foregrounds are out there to be found.
A Question of Extension
I was asked a question about extension tubes a couple of days ago- What are they? Do they work? Are they any good? He then asked if there was a formula for figuring out the effect an extension tube will have for a given lens. Now we are talking! First, let me explain what an extension tube is. An extension tube is nothing more than a spacer between your camera body and your lens- it is a hollow tube. There is no glass, no anything in an extension tube- just space. The purpose of the extension tube is to push the lens farther from the camera- the farther the lens is from the camera the closer it will focus. This is why most lenses get longer (grow) when the focusing ring is turned to close focus. In lens-speak, when a lens grows it is called extension. Only lenses that have internal focusing don’t physically grow longer with close focus. On these lenses the glass inside the lens travels farther away from the camera when the focusing ring is turned. Either way, in order for a lens to focus more closely when the focusing ring is turned the lens glass must move away from the camera. Extension tubes are a bit old school these days. Back when I was a starting pro 30 years ago, extension tubes were popular because there were no macro lenses that focused all the way down to life size and the long telephoto lenses had minimum focusing distances that were too far to get close to small critters. In other words, there were no lenses that had enough built-in extension to allow them to focus as closely as photographers wanted. An extension tube solved this problem. Unfortunately, an extension tube also created problems. For every inch of length of an extension tube a stop of light was lost. For macro work, I often used an extension tube that was 2.5 inches long so when I looked through my lens (2.5 stops darker!) it was really dark! Also, back in the day using an extension tube negated any autofocus or the sophisticated metering modes. Together, this made using extension tubes a pain in the neck. These days most macro lenses and long telephotos have plenty of extension built-in to make extension tubes pretty much unnecessary. For any lens you might have that doesn’t focus quite close enough for you the far better alternative is to use a close-up diopter. A diopter looks like a thick filter and screws into the front of your lens like a filter would. When on, the diopter changes the optics of your lens to allow it to focus much closer than it otherwise would. You lose your infinity focus when the diopter is on but you gain close focus. The magic of diopters is that you don’t lose any light and your autofocus and metering systems are not comprised in any fashion. I find that diopters work great on 70-200mm or 70-300mm zoom lenses. When I travel internationally I often will take my 70-300mm lens and pop a diopter into my pocket when I go out shooting. It’s much easier than carrying around a separate macro lens. So what about the formula to figure out what effect an extension tube might have on one of your lenses? Okay, here goes, now pay attention. To figure out the magnification ability of a lens take a picture with it when it is at its closest focus. Then measure the dimensions of the area of the photograph. If the area you just photographed is 1” by 1.5” your lens focuses down to life size or 1/1 (one to one). If the area is 2” by 3” then your lens focuses down to one half life size or 1/2 (one to two). Many general lenses focus down to 4” by 6” or 1/4 life size. Many telephoto lenses focus down to 8’ by 12” or 1/8 life size. Now that we have that straight, the formula for extension is length of the extension over length of the lens. A lens that goes to life size has an equal amount of extension as lens length. So a 105mm macro lens that has 105 mm of extension built-in will focus down to life size. 105/105 = 1/1 = life size. A 105mm lens that has only 52mm of extension will only focus down to 1/2 life size- 52/105 = 1/2 life size. If you have a 200mm lens that can photograph an area 4’’x 6” (1/4 life size) than you have 50mm of extension in that lens. My 200mm lens is a 1/1 life size macro so it has 200mm of extension built-in. The actual question I was asked is about using a 12mm extension tube on a 200mm non-macro lens. We now know, using the above mathematics, that this extension tube won’t have much positive effect. Better to get a diopter that fits than use an extension tube that will be little help. So there you have it, everything you wanted to know and many things you probably didn’t want to know about extension tubes. I’m glad you asked!
Ephemerals
Those rascally spring ephemeral wildflowers! You wait all winter, your pulse quickening as March dissolves into April, eyes on the ground ever scanning for green hints of blossoms to come. And then when the time comes and the flowers are blooming, Poof! They are gone! Botanists call them ephemerals because they have a very short period of time to grow, blossom, get pollinated and set their seeds before the tree leaves overhead come out and diminish the early spring sunlight on the forest floor. Photographers call them ephemerals because they last in prime condition for what seems like seconds. Okay, they last for a few days but that is usually it. Once the flowers are out all it takes is an unusually cold night, or a stiff wind or a hard rain to ruin what was once, briefly, perfect. Arrrggggghhhh! Now for professional photographers who really don’t have anything better to do than hang around and watch a flower bloom this is not a really big deal. We can adjust our toothbrushing schedule to fit in a wildflower in prime condition. But to you, my kind readers of this drivel who are actually contributing members of society, a wildflower noticed on a Wednesday may not be around or in good condition on Saturday when you finally have a chance to grab your camera. So what do you do? There are a few tricks that might help you. If your patch of flowers is past try looking for more of them at a slightly higher elevation. In Vermont wildflowers in bloom now where I live will be in bloom a week later 1000 feet higher in the mountains. Also, wildflowers growing on north-facing slopes bloom later because north-facing slopes are cooler. This causes the season to be delayed a bit, perhaps not a week but certainly a few days. If you can find a north facing slope at higher elevation you will get an even longer delay. All of this speaks to the value of local knowledge. I’m sorry, I meant to write the incredibly essential value of local knowledge. If you go on a trip to a wonderful exotic photo locale and things just aren’t working out photographically for you, you are probably out of luck- you don’t know anything, or at least not enough, about the area to remedy the situation. But if you are in your home region you will know and you’ll be able to get the shot. Sounds like I am advocating doing most of your photography in your home region, doesn’t it? Glad you picked up on that. If you go on a trip just be prepared for some disappointment when (not if) things aren’t perfect. Of course, you can pay someone like me who has no life and is intimately familiar with lots of photo regions to show you around. But then you have to hang out with someone like me and feed someone like me and, well it just uglier and uglier. Get to know where you live. You’ll be rewarded many times over.
So I was Thinking…
I was prowling around some old teaching handouts of mine preparing for my upcoming workshops and found this excerpt from an article I wrote 20 years ago entitled “On Becoming a Pro.” the message is as relavent now as is was then. The premise of the article was a series of questions an amateur photographer might ask some old, crusty pros. Just for the record, I wasn’t crusty, then. I did updated some of the quotes of my friends John Shaw and Wayne Lynch. “How would you define an accomplished photographer?” John Shaw is the first to respond: “Learning when not to photograph is just as important as learning when to shoot. This process involves learning to see your subject as your camera will see it. The human eye can accommodate roughly 10 to 12 stops of contrast; that is, we can look at a very contrasty scene and see detail in both the shadow and highlight area. Not so with film or digital. An accomplished photographer has to learn how to apply this limited vision when determining exposures even if when doing HDR. And, by the way, what is the quality of the light when you are thinking of shooting a HDR shot ? Awful- wait for better light and you’ll get a better shot. a photographer has to be able to analyze a scene and determine if indeed it is possible to record his vision. He must know what the results will look like, even before the shutter is tripped. This knowledge lets the pro decide where to place tonal values and what details to sacrifice if necessary.” David Middleton pipes up next: “ I would answer by saying a pro is one who spends more time looking for something to photograph then actually photographing it. I am always amazed when I am out in the field and see a group of photographers pull up, jump out of their cars, walk to the nearest whatever and begin photographing! Now, how do they know that there isn’t something better to shoot just over there or around the corner? And what are the chances that they happened to park next to the best thing there is to photograph? The answer is: nil. An accomplished photographer gets out of his vehicle and wanders first, looking over the entire area. In any one spot there are only a few things best to photograph. Better to spend the time looking for those shots then waste it photographing something that could be better.” Practically bursting, Wayne Lynch, who has spent a lifetime studying and photographing animal behavior, knows that photographing any wild creature begins long before he steps into the field. ” I think every nature photographer should also strive to be a good naturalist. Too often I have met wildlife photographers who didn’t know the difference between a northern moose and a chocolate mousse. The more you know about an animal the less likely you are to endanger it or compromise its survival. Understanding the biology of your subject will also alert you to subtle aspects of its behavior that you may otherwise overlook and you’ll be able to anticipate behavior and capture it rather than be surprised by it and miss it. Finally, knowledge of an animal is also the best insurance against injury. Many wild animals are unforgiving and will reprimand your clumsy ignorance with a bruising, or worse. This applies to anything you happen to be photographing- the more you know about your subject the better your images will be. You’ll be able to find them when you want to, you’ll be able to recognize exceptional individuals (the ones to photograph!), you’ll understand what is significant about subject and be sure to include it in your composition and you’ll be able to talk about them knowledgeably when an admirer asks you about your picture. If you don’t know what you are photographing and you don’t figure it out afterward you are more of a snap shooter than a true photographer.”