Understanding Digital Photography comes to Colorado Springs, September 15-16. The two-day seminar is being put on by the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, a non-profit visual arts organization based in Florida. The seminar this year will be taught by Fatima NeJame, executive director of the Centre for the past 21 years. She's taught digital camera technology and Photoshop since 1992 and lectures nationwide.
Last weekend, we spent a few days touring/camping around the Islands and Needles Districts of Canyonlands N.P. This shot was taken at sunset a couple miles form Grand View Point. The photographers add a sense of scale to the landscape.
My photo, "Tulip Interior", is currently featured on the opening page of the NANPA Web site today. To prove it doesn't necessarily take expensive equipment to capture a neat picture, this was taken with a Nikon CoolPix 995 with fisheye adapter during the Ottawa Tulip Festival last May. I simply stuck the fisheye lens down just inside the tulip cup and fired the shutter. The extreme depth of field of the lens threw everything into sharp focus. This was earlier selected as part of the NANPA Showcase 2006 - best 200 images from the NANPA membership. Copies of this compilation are available at the NANPA Bookstore. http://www.nanpa.org.
Garden of the Gods Park is located just at the western edge of Colorado Springs and is a favorite shooting location among local and visiting photographers. Here's a good reason why shooting in rainy weather can pan out with unexpected results. I left home very early and it was sprinkling pretty hard. As I drove down Ute Pass towards the Springs, it turned torrential. I was hoping to catch a nice sunrise, but I really started to wonder as I drove along. By the time I arrived at the visitor center parking lot, it had stopped raining, so I waited (patience is a virtue for nature photographers, they say!). Soon, the rocks started to glow faintly. Then the sun peaked through a narrow opening in the clouds and just lit up the rocks! Everything else was left in shadow.
Here's a shot of Balanced Rock in Arches N.P. taken last Feb. where I seriously tried my hand at light painting for the first time. I used a $20 battery-operated spot light and set the camera for a 30 second exposure in manual mode with an aperture of f4. The white balance was set to incandescent. Notice the constellation Orion just above the rock. I swept the base of the rock to give a sense of "base".
Here's a sunrise I shot out the window of my hotel in Palau Penang, an island just off the coast of Malaysia and a popular location for a lot of U.S. electronics manufacturers. I didn't fool with the color adjustments at all. These are accurate representations of what I saw. I believe the highly pastel coloring was due to the high humidity level. Both images were taken with the new Canon 5D with (believe it or not) a Tamron 28-300mm at around 200mm. JPEG Fine and manual exposure. There was so much water vapor in the air, you could literally stare at the sun without any problem. It was like shooting through a very dense "tobacco" filter. And yes, near the equator, the sun really does rise straight up and sets straight down! Enjoy, Ken
It's been a while since the last time I checked the Adorama Academy Web site and if you haven't been there, it's probably time for a visit.
If you'd like to learn more about Photoshop printing techniques, you need to subscribe to Tim Grey's free (almost) daily Digital Darkroom Questions (DDQ) email newsletter. Tim used to work for George Lepp's Digital Photography Institute, but recently found employment at Microsoft as their digital photography expert. He currently manages Microsoft's "Pro Photo" part of their Web (link below).
The Nikon School is again holding two day-long workshops in Denver this year. I took this course a few years ago and was quite impressed with the level of instruction. I felt the cost was well worth it. Best of all, you don't need a Nikon camera to participate! :-)For further info, check out: http://www.nikonschool.com/. I'd advise registering quickly, as these sessions sell out fast.
As an avid traveler all my life, I've subscribed to the National Geographic Traveler Magazine for many years now and like it better than any other. They really do a first-class job!
When I heard they were going to hold a series of workshops all around the U.S. in partnership with Santa Fe Workshops, I jumped at the chance to learn from the masters. As I'm getting closer to retirement from my "day job", I expect to be writing more travel articles. We "baby boomers" are all about to enter retirement over the next few years and I believe there will be an insatiable demand for good quality travel information.
For more info check out: http://santafeworkshops.com/traveler/index.cfm. I'll be participating in the photo workshop in Houston (March) and writing workshop in Santa Fe (June).
Looking forward to having you younger folks help support my passion! :-)
I've been a member of the Naturephotographers.net (www.naturephotographers.net) for some years now - and recently joining the regional Colorado Nature photographers group. This is a group of serious amateur and professional nature photographers - most living along the Front Range area. They get together for improptue photo outings all year long. If you'd like to join a group of friendly like-minded folks, I'd encourage you to check out their forum section. If you join, you are also given an area to post your portfolio. They may be found at http://colorado.naturephotographers.net/index.shtml.
Were you aware there was a company that will take your image and print a set of real postage stamps? Obviously, there's an extra charge for this, but for those "special" people in your life, cost is no object - right?WhereonEarthaNovember.jpg)
I recently won the monthly (November) Delorme Professional "Where on Eartha" challange where they display some geographic feature in the world and have you try to identify it. Last November, they displayed the adjacent satellite photo (www.topobird.com) along with a flag. The challange was first to identify the location - then estimate the latitude and longitude of the flag; the closest estimate winning their professional mapping software.
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