Next Step Alumni Exhibit in Indiana Now Open

May 21, 2011 by Robert | Comments Off

I am happy to report that the Next Step exhibit in Indi­ana is now open. Installed at the Renais­sance Fine Art & Design Gallery, One South Range Line Road, Carmel, IN, the show presents the diverse work of 25 pho­tog­ra­phers, all mem­bers of John Paul Caponigro’s Next Step Alumni group. This invitation-only group has met col­lec­tively and pri­vately for more than 10 years in goup work­shops and online forums. The name for the group is based on the ques­tion John Paul fre­quently asks his stu­dents: “What’s your next step?”

The work on view includes land­scapes, edi­to­r­ial, abstracts, com­pos­ites, por­traits, seascapes, cityscapes, nude and fig­ure, street pho­tog­ra­phy, archi­tec­ture, nature, and wildlife. I have two images in the show; they are described in the pre­vi­ous two posts (here and here) on the blog. Each exhibitor pro­duced of book show­cas­ing their port­fo­lio; my book, Motion|Pictures, can be viewed (or pur­chased) here. Click on this link to view (or pur­chase) the Next Step Exhibit book. Click here for a list of all Next Step mem­bers with links to their indi­vid­ual books.

Click on this link for more infor­ma­tion about the Next Step exhibit.

Click on this link for more infor­ma­tion about the Renais­sance Fine Art & Design Gallery.

Posted in Motion|Pictures

Runoff Streams, Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone

May 19, 2011 by Robert | Comments Off

Runoff Streams, Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park

In the pre­vi­ous post, I showed one of my Yel­low­stone images that will appear in a group pho­tog­ra­phy exhibit enti­tled The Next Step that opens this com­ing week­end. This is the other image that will be in the show. Like the pre­vi­ous image, this one is part of my Motion|Pictures series. But where the pre­vi­ous image shows the kind of intense col­ors you can find in hot springs when the sun is high in the sky, this image illus­trates how hot springs are all about reflec­tions early and late in the day.

This image was taken near the start of the Foun­tain Paint Pot Trail in Yellowstone’s Lower Geyser Basin. Runoff streams and pools cover a vast area below the trail’s board­walks; when the sun is low or (as in this image) below the hori­zon, the min­eral and algal col­ors beneath the thin layer of water dis­ap­pear and are replaced by reflec­tions. In this case, reflec­tions of the intense, post-sunset sky vis­i­ble in the back­ground. Steam rises from areas where the water is still hot; tan­gled roots of trees killed by the mineral-laden water dom­i­nate the shad­owy fore­ground. In a future post, I’ll talk about the prob­lem of cap­tur­ing high-contrast scenes like this one when using cam­era motion techniques.

Tech­ni­cal Data:
Body: Canon EOS Dig­i­tal Rebel XTi
Lens: Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM at 50mm
Expo­sure: ISO 100, f/22, 1/4 second

Posted in Motion|Pictures Tagged , , , |

Group Show in Carmel, Indiana

May 3, 2011 by Robert | Comments Off

Two of my Yel­low­stone images will appear in an upcom­ing exhibit at the Renais­sance Gallery in Carmel, Indi­ana. The group pho­tog­ra­phy show is titled The Next Step, is curated by John Paul Capon­i­gro, and will be open May 20 to June 24, 2011.

One of the images in the show is this one: Cis­tern Spring, Yel­low­stone #1. It’s part of a series I’m work­ing on that focuses on water and cam­era motion (which is a sub­set of my Motion|Pictures series). There’s much to be said about pho­tograph­ing water (at slow shut­ter speeds, while mov­ing the cam­era) — but I’ll save that for later posts. What I’d like to point out here is that the best way to pho­to­graph hot springs like this one is often not under the photographer’s stan­dard work­ing con­di­tions: early or late in the day with some nicely pho­to­genic clouds. To see the beau­ti­ful blue of a spring like this one, the sun needs to pen­e­trate into the pool’s depths, and you usu­ally need a bright blue sky above. So mid-day, then, is often the best time to see (and pho­to­graph) the star­tlingly bril­liant col­ors of Yellowstone’s hot springs. And on a clear day, Yellowstone’s gen­er­ally high ele­va­tions help things along by cre­at­ing intense blue skies. So if you’re in Yel­low­stone and it’s get­ting near noon, don’t set­tle down for a long leisurely lunch in the shade. Grab your cam­era and look for some great hot springs color.

Tech­ni­cal Data:
Body: Canon EOS Dig­i­tal Rebel XTi
Lens: Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM at 40mm
Expo­sure: ISO 100, f/22, 0.3 seconds

Posted in Commentary, Motion|Pictures Tagged , , , , , |

Oak tree, El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite

April 23, 2011 by Robert | Comments Off

Pho­tog­ra­phers refer to the hour or so after sun­rise and before sun­set as the golden hour, but some­times you can cap­ture a “golden hour moment” at other times of day — per­haps espe­cially in autumn. This is often true in Yosemite, where the high gran­ite walls in the nar­rower parts of the Val­ley block the sun from the val­ley floor until long after sun­rise (and, in cor­re­spond­ing fash­ion, long before sun­set). This image, for exam­ple, was taken on Octo­ber 30 at about 9AM, as the first rays of light hit El Cap­i­tan meadow. The meadow’s oaks and aza­leas were at their peak yel­low and orange at the time, and back-lighting made the col­ors even more intense. Not exactly golden hour, but cer­tainly a golden image.

This par­tic­u­lar morn­ing was an unusu­ally mem­o­rable con­flu­ence of light and color. For some­one who is lucky to get one keeper per day (or per week), I had quite a few suc­cesses on this out­ing. I remem­ber being pretty over­whelmed by the whole spec­ta­cle once the light hit the val­ley floor, and fever­ishly try­ing to cap­ture as much as I could before it was too late. Alas, when I down­loaded every­thing onto my com­puter, I dis­cov­ered that my best frames for this image (in terms of com­po­si­tion and blur effect) were my seri­ously over­ex­posed ini­tial trial expo­sures. My first thought was to hit the delete key and regret­fully move on, but for some rea­son I decided to exper­i­ment with Lightroom’s Recov­ery slider instead. And con­trary to all my expec­ta­tions, it worked beau­ti­fully! I have since learned that the Recov­ery slider often doesn’t work very well (or at all) when an image con­tains areas that are sig­nif­i­cantly over­ex­posed. But some­times it does. So the moral of the story of this image is that it’s always worth a try. See my Motion|Pictures gal­leries for more motion blur images like this one.

Tech­ni­cal Data:
Body: Canon EOS Dig­i­tal Rebel XSi
Lens: Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM at 90mm
Expo­sure: ISO 100, f/8, 1/2 second

Posted in Motion|Pictures Tagged , , , |

Digging into Black & White

April 12, 2011 by Robert | Comments Off

Ah, the romance of black and white. Who among us hasn’t been seduced by its allure? But black and white isn’t just color with­out the, um, color. Good black and white, pow­er­ful and mem­o­rable black and white, requires more than just a heavy hand on the sat­u­ra­tion slider. For­tu­nately, sev­eral new resources help take the mys­tery out of the cre­ation of black and white images.

First up are sev­eral new videos from George Jar­dine. One is a very help­ful overview, from the the­o­ret­i­cal to a prac­ti­cal how-to, con­cern­ing the whole con­cept of how a world com­posed (for the most part) of color objects trans­lates into a black and white image. This 37-minute video is free for the ask­ing; just enter your e-mail address in the box on his web post, A Few Thoughts on Black & White Con­ver­sion, and George will send you the link. This video is, in fact, a spin-off from George’s new video tuto­r­ial series on Adobe Cam­era Raw (ACR), and it con­tains a lot of the detail on the the­o­ret­i­cal side of things that he was unable to include in the ACR tuto­ri­als. So, for more on the prac­tice of black and white con­ver­sion using ACR, head over to George’s Adobe Pho­to­shop ACR Video Work­shop page and click on the buy now but­ton. For $34.95, you get over 6 hours of instruc­tion divided into 15 videos, one of which is devoted to the prac­tice of black and white con­ver­sion and split toning.

If you use Light­room rather than ACR, George has two tuto­r­ial series for Light­room, one on the Light­room Library mod­ule and one on the Light­room Develop mod­ule. The Light­room Develop series is 5 hours long (and, as with the ACR series, divided into 15 videos) and costs $24.95. The Light­room Black-and-White/Split-Toning seg­ment is about half the length of the one in the ACR series; per­haps at some point George will update the Light­room tuto­ri­als with the addi­tional infor­ma­tion found in the ACR series. Nonethe­less, I know there are a lot of video tuto­ri­als avail­able these days, but quite frankly, George Jardine’s ACR and Light­room tuto­ri­als are among the very best, and a steal at the prices he’s ask­ing. For the video-inclined — highly recommended.

For the read­ers among us, Craft & Vision has just released a new ebook, The Power of Black & White in Adobe Light­room & Beyond, the first in their new Mas­ter­class series. While many of their pre­vi­ous offer­ings were more like appe­tiz­ers, this one, at 100 double-page spreads, is clearly a main dish. The author is Piet Van den Eynde, a Bel­gian free­lance pho­tog­ra­pher, author, and teacher. And Piet does a great job help­ing the reader get his/her hands dirty with black and white Light­room work­flow. I par­tic­u­larly like the case stud­ies that show how indi­vid­ual images were processed, from start to fin­ish and in great detail.

Piet also has very help­ful things to say about when and where Pho­to­shop works bet­ter than Light­room, the pros and cons of pre­sets, how to lever­age plug-ins like Sil­ver Efex Pro 2, com­bin­ing HDR (high dynamic range) and black and white, and print­ing. I do have a few quib­bles: A book this long could use a table of con­tents (at least) to help those who want to visit/revisit a par­tic­u­lar topic. A bet­ter edit­ing job could have saved Piet from a few awk­ward mala­propisms. And, on an iPad, I could never find a dis­play size that pro­vided both a suf­fi­ciently com­fort­able font size (for my eyes) and easy page-turning. These are, how­ever, quib­bles. This book is a great addi­tion to the Craft & Vision library and, at $5, a highly cost-efficient learn­ing tool. Inter­est­ingly, the over­lap with George Jardine’s videos is rel­a­tively small — in fact, the ebook and the videos work very well together. Click on the link to pur­chase the PDF ver­sion of The Power of Black & White in Adobe Light­room & Beyond from Craft & Vision.

Posted in Commentary Tagged , , |