When Life Gives You Lemons... Use Adobe Photoshop with Karen Schneider

Sometimes all you need is a rainy day and a lot of lemons! Ok, so what does one have to do with the other? I'm not sure about you, but rainy days always make me hunker down (especially if you live in Southern California and you never get rain) and look at things around you. Those everyday objects you tend to ignore.

For me it was the happy Meyer Lemons, which I had recently picked, whose yellow color gave me a bright spot in an otherwise gray day. For my unlucky lemons this meant becoming the subject of my "Life in Motion" series. My intention is to record the motions that we do almost every day but that we wouldn't necessarily see or capture in one frame. Different frames are layered over each other, sharing different angles and moments of contact.

Oh thank goodness for rainy days….

Learn more about manipulating images from Karen in her workshop
Adobe Photoshop: The Art of the Digital Medium
April 5-10, 2010

Visit her web site at www.krop.com/ktsphoto/ to see what she's up to.

Break the Convention and Capture True Family Moments with Genevieve Russell

The typical family portrait, where everyone is coordinated in white or black shirts, powdered and primped, and told repeatedly to smile at the camera, don’t interest me. But, ask me to come and have blueberry pancakes, hang out and color, take a walk and photograph the nuances of a family Sunday—that is a complete joy! The resulting images act as a little time capsule, a way to preserve flashes of everyday life that don’t linger long.

A Hobbs Family StoryPortrait © StoryPortrait Media

The visual imagery can be so much more enhanced with snippets of audio. I turn the microphone on a child playing the piano, reading about Mrs. Wishy Washy, singing "Chicken Fingers," or a dad reflecting on parenthood. Editing out a few select moments and thoughts using multimedia software, I create a StoryPortrait, a vignette, a short chapter of a day in the life...

Try this approach next time you pull out the camera around family members. You'll capture moments that everyone will cherish.

Learn more from Genevieve in her workshop
Photographing People
March 7-13, 2010

Visit her blog at storyportraitmedia.blogspot.com to see what she's up to.

Techniques to Bring Out the Detail in Your Digital Landscapes with George Schaub

A consistent problem for landscape photographers is that sky and ground have different brightness levels and digital enforces highlight-biased exposures, thus the ground tends to become underexposed. Given that you must maintain highlights during exposure, there are numerous ways to process an image that can bring back full detail in the ground areas.

1. Bracket exposures and combine using Layers and Layer Masks (given no wind is blowing!)
2. Use bracket exposures for HDR
3. Take an exposure biased for the highlights, select ground/sky, and then use a screen blending mode approach with paint back on the sky.
4. Select the sky/ground and use a New Adjustment Layer.

Using any of the above techniques you can maintain highlight control and regain excellent detail in the ground area.

You can learn more about exposure and processing from George in his workshop
Crafting the Black-and-White Print
April 12-16, 2010

Visit his web site at www.georgeschaub.com to see what he's up to.

Instructor Insight: The XXX-Factor with Jennifer Spelman

We all know that to make a sharp, well-exposed photograph you need to pay attention to focus, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. But even after you master these elements, your picture still might not have that WOW! effect. To take your photographs to the next level you need to key into something I like to call the "X-Factor" —three of them, actually.

Welcome to the realm of XXX Photography - bet you never thought you'd go there! Here are three considerations that elevate ordinary photos to the extraordinary: 

X1 - Images need a message. 
It may be an emotion, a mood, or a concept. Your photograph needs to speak to the viewer and express a feeling inherent within the subject.

X2 - Images need fitting light. 
Light can be exciting. It can be somber. It has a mood of its own. The light falling on your subject needs to advance and reinforce whatever your message is.

X3 - Images need a sense of design. 
Your viewer needs a road plan for how you want them to move through the frame. Ideally, that design supports the message you are conveying.

Next time, before you push the button, think about these concepts. Don't be intimidated... just like with aperture and shutter speed, over time these too will become second-nature. Incorporating the XXX-Factor into your process will give you the ability to add some WOW to your images!

You can learn more from Jennifer in her workshop
Basics of Digital Photography
March 21-27, 2010

Visit her blog at spelmanphotographic.wordpress.com to see what she's up to.