by successfulbob | bird photography, fine art photography, graphic design, Lumix Lounge, photography, photography education
WOW! What great people in the Photographic Society of Chattanooga!
Taught an all-day class today, thanks to Panasonic Lumix being a sponsor, and prepping for tomorrow with an all day advanced Photo-Synthesis class and after coming back to my room after a wonderful dinner I received my favorite kind of email from one of the attendees…
Hi Bob,
I really enjoyed today’s seminar and am looking forward to the workshop tomorrow. I couldn’t wait to put some of the new knowledge I gained today into practice. Below you will see my before and after images. I am not happy with the birds, but as you taught today I saved my work in PS format so when I am fresh I can go back and tweak it. I put my mouse away, used my Wacom and keyboard shortcuts, I need a cheat sheet! I used 4 texture layers three with masks, an burn layer ( I learned about that today ;-) ) added a vignette and dropped in a few birds. I also increased the detail from my original image using topaz adjust.
Oh I forgot to set a timer and now need to move and stretch. Thanks again for such a great seminar!
Until tomorrow,
Rosemary
Here’s the original image © Rosemary Jardine used to start playing with ideas she learned in yesterday’s
Photo-Synthesis class at the Photographic Society of Chattanooga.
Art image using textures, blend modes and masks by © Rosemary Jardine.
Way to put the ideas to work Rosemary! Can’t wait to see where you take your images we talked about in class and what we’re going to learn about tomorrow in the advanced class! I figure you had a good basis to start… Hopefully some of my thoughts spurred you on to this, and more, creativity….
Your in Creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | photography, video
In speaking I try to give people an idea of the kind of photography I do. I want to show them a lot of images but not have them become bored by the presentation… I personally hate long shows. Being the maker sometimes it is hard to decide whether it’s too long, too short, too quick etc. I’m looking for some feedback Thanks!
I used ProShow Web It was pretty quick to select the type of show style I wanted. Uploaded images. Uploaded music. (I have permission from Eric Miller of Eric Miller World Music to use his wonderful rhythms. If you want to learn how you can use Eric’s music get in touch with him direct or give ma call) I wasn’t happy with all the transitions in the show as built. Went in and tweaked the ones I didn’t like… Please ignore that I have the same photo in two times. I’ll fix that after I get more feedback from you.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | photography, photography education, photography lighting resources, photography seminar
Dean Collins was a lighting master extraordinaire and wonderful educator. If you have the chance to study his old videos you will learn a lot. Purchase here.Yes, he was still based in film but the lighting techniques don’t change. You’ll have to watch several times because he’ll probably be talking over your head until you expand your vocabulary and put some of his ideas to work. (pause buttons work great with Dean’s videos ’cause you can take time to absorb before moving on)
Dean mentioned one thing that really sticks in my head and leads to today’s Photo/Art quote and that was to break down your lighting equipment every night. Put away your lights. If you leave them in the same positions that they were in the day before chances are you’ll be making the same images you did before…
“Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.” Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson was an historian that dealt with art so we let him in to the Photo/Art quote on Successful-Photographer. You know I don’t need a heavy connection to photography to bring up a point or two in these Sunday conversations…
Anyway, I digress. The point is I’m a firm believer in education and experimentation. I believe it was Einstein that said, and of course I’m paraphrasing here, ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same things the same way and expecting different results’. We need to attend lighting programs, sales programs, read books, magazines and scour the Internet and try new things if we are to grow as image makers. I see many photographers stop attending workshops and monthly photo meeting and I quickly see their image making skills grow stale.
Seek. Practice. Play. Become a stronger image maker. I dare you.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | fine art photography, Lumix Lounge, photography, photography education, photography seminar
At the end of the week I’ll be winging my way to Tennessee to present a couple all day programs on my techniques for creating fine art painterly images called Photo-Synthesis.
Get more info here
The first day will be in-depth starting with the basics in Photoshop and is hosted by the Photographic Society of Chattanooga and sponsored by Panasonic and the Lumix line of cameras and is $20 Contact the society to sign up and pay. Day two will be more in-depth and hands on. We’ll hit the streets to capture images to work with then go to our individual computers to create artwork with me stepping you through the process… That class will be $49. Get in touch with me to sign up and pay. bob@bcphotography.com
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | black & white, Lumix FZ 1000, Lumix Lounge, photography, photography education
Take away the color!
Let the shape, form and tones come forward… Simplify.
It’s easy to do but not necessarily simple.
Making black and white conversions of our images can give a whole new level of depth to our image making skills. With the ability to touch every single pixel we have more control than ever before. Ansel Adams would have been in Heaven to have this level of control to achieve the image he saw in his mind. That was what the Zone System and his special ways of exposing the scene and processing film not to mention choosing paper, light source and dodging and burning in the darkroom to pull the print he wanted.
Today’s subject is a green bloom from a Gopher Plant. Lots of green tones from light to dark are represented in the capture. By the way I used the Lumix FZ 1000 in Macro mode. When zooming in to 400mm you can fill a frame pretty well with it’s minimum focusing distance of 3.3 feet. If you shoot wider you can focus down to 3 centimeters but without adding supplemental light I find I have too many shadows to deal with so photographing from a distance can be helpful. In this case I was back just a bit with a 27mm equivalent setting.
Original capture.
Different settings and conversions to black and white.
You may or may not like the one I choose which is a combination of some of the settings seen above. The point is through experimentation and using different ways of stripping color from an image you can create many different feelings from the same information. One of my favorite programs for converting to black and white is Google’s NIK Silver FX Pro 2. By the way if you own a license for almost any NIK product Google will hook you up at no charge for the full NIK software suite. If you don’t have a current one you can get the suite for, I believe, $149. This is some solid software with lots of creative possibilities.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | event, Lumix GH4, Lumix Lounge, photography education
The parties move around to a different restaurant each night during the Sedona Film Fest and last night it was Sounds Bites Grill playing hot with a great spread and music by Ralf Illenberger on guitar and Troy Perkins on his handmade bass. Just seeing the work Troy did on his bass guitar shows me he’s a pretty incredible carpenter! (missed the name of the drummer… sorry about that!)
Michele asked me to stop by to create some stock advertising images for future promotion of the restaurant showing how they take care of biz for group events. Here’s a few.
Chef kicking out the Bananas Foster
Capturing the crowd from behind the stage
Looking round from the regular direction, crowd to band photo.
A little slice of the stage with the Sound Bites logo lit on the wall.
Images were captured with the Lumix GH4 and a bit of on camera fill flash. Always try to not make the flash apparent by dragging the shutter (slow shutter speed) to allow the background to register with the ambient light and then a kiss of flash to freeze and fill the foreground.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
