Photo Insights December '13

Jim Zuckerman’s

PH OTO I N S I G HTS December 2013

• Post-processing checklist • Actions palette • Auto white balance • Extension tubes • Student showcase • Photo tours

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T aTable b l e ooff CContents ontents

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4. Post-processing checklist 11. Using the actions palette 13. Extension tubes 17. Auto white balance 22. What’s wrong with this picture?

24. Short and sweet 26. Ask Jim 29. Student showcase 33. Back issues

Ihave been a Canon shooter since 1968. I sold my stamp collection of American mint stamps and bought my first camera and a 50mm lens for $175. Over the years, Canon has served me very well.

I am disappointed now to see so much emphasis on high definition video capability built into Canon SLR cameras. Most photographers don’t do video, and if we do, it’s so easy to do it with an iPhone or iPad. If we take pictures of our children, our pets, or our vacations, we don’t need broadcast quality video. I love the video sequences I’ve captured of my two dogs playing, and I didn’t have to set up all my expensive gear. I just took my iPhone out of my pocket and pushed the record button. It was so easy.

Building video capability into our cameras forces prices to be higher than they should be, and in addition it distracts Canon from directing all of its resources to improving our cameras. Canon has recently eliminated a number of well-known photo educators from their Explorers of Light program because they want more lecturers on video. I think this is a mistake for both Canon as well as most photographers, both amateur and professional.

Canon, give us cameras with functions that we can get excited about -- like 50,000 ISO with no noise --and you’ll sell a lot of cameras. If you only improve the video functions, most of us photographers will simply think, ‘Ho-hum’. photos@jimzuckerman.com www.jimzuckerman.com

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Post-Processing

C h e c k l i s t M

any photographers bemoan the fact that they have to spend hours at the computer, working on their images after they’ve taken them. After all, with film, once the pictures were developed, the work was over. Either you got what you wanted or you didn’t.

Film photography forced us to accept things that we weren’t necessarily thrilled about.

For example, the ugly ‘color fringing’, or chromatic aberration that is so characteristic of wide angle lenses was something we had to live with. So were power lines. Photographing a quaint European village that was crisscrossed with electrical wires and TV antennas was just something we had to accept.

Other elements that photographers had to put up with were graffiti, white skies, trash,

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too much contrast, and colors that were less saturated than we wanted. None of these things are problems now, though, because of our ability to manipulate our images in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. In Photoshop we can make more improvements. What a great time it is to be a photographer!

I don’t resent the time I spend at the computer perfecting my images because I remember so clearly how frustrated I was in the past. Sometimes I felt like I was doing photography with one hand tied behind my back. Now, the sky is the limit.

Images that come out of a digital camera need to be manipulated in most cases. You don’t have to accept what you initially see. In fact, if the colors seem to be dull, if the exposure isn’t perfect, if the lighting is too contrasty, you can work to change all of that such that you can turn what

originally appeared to be a mundane image into one that knocks your socks off.

Here is my own checklist for improving my images as I process RAW files. Not every image is adjusted the same way, of course, but these are the techniques I use over and over again when processing the RAW digital captures.

I use Adobe Camera Raw, but if you use Lightroom the exact same procedure applies.

1. Add color saturation using either vibrance or saturation, or both.

2. Add contrast with the contrast slider. I used this for the photo of the leopard, below.

3. Lighten the shadow detail. I use the shadows slider for this. This is a phenomenal too.

It’s my first line of defense in mitigating harsh,

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contrasty light.

4. Use the highlights slider to bring back lost detail in white or very bright areas, such as the white feathers in the pelican, below, and the sheen on the face of a Bushman in Namibia, right.

5. Eliminate chromatic aberration.

6. Use the graduated filter and/or the adustment brush to lighten or darken certain areas of the image. In the portrait of a young Bushman girl on the following page, for example, I darkened the periphery with the adjustment brush to direct all of the attention on her face.

For the picture of Tallinn, Estonia on page 8, I used the graduated filter to darken the sky.

7. Reduce noise. In the new Photoshop CC, there is a luminance slider in ACR (under the

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UPCOMING PHOTO WORKSHOPS Winter Wildlife Workshop Hinckley, Minnesota Jan. 31 - Feb. 2, 2014

Baby WildlifeWorkshop Hinckley, Minnesota June 13 - 15, 2014

Frog & Reptile Workshop St. Louis, Missouri Jan. 25-26, 2014

Two back-to-back Carnival Workshops, Venice, Italy Feb. 21 - 27 - 23, 2014 Feb. 27 - March 5, 2014 (sold out)

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detail tab) that does a sensational job of reducing noise such that you can use high ISO settings with more confidence than ever before because noise won’t be a significant problem.

ized you forgot a step in ACR (for example, you discover that you neglected to get rid of chromaric aberration), you’d have to start over again with the RAW image.

8. If necessary, use the sharpening tool to make the image appear sharper.

Now you can use the pull down menu command Filter > camera raw filter and your image is instantly in Adobe Camera Raw where you have the full functionality of the ACR dialog box.

9. If an image is a bit too bluish or too yellowish, change the white balance using the temperature slider. This can not be done successful if you shoot in jpeg mode. Only RAW files allow you to change the color temperature (i.e. white balance) as if you had chosen the correct setting when you took the pictures.

One of the advances in Photoshop CC is that you can return to camera raw at any time when working on an image in Photoshop. Previously, if you spent time compositing images, applying plug-ins, cloning, etc., and you real-

For those of you who are still shooting jpegs because you aren’t sure how to process RAW files, it’s easier than you think. Here is the procedure: • Make a blank folder on your desktop. Insert the flash card into a card reader and drag the images from your card into the folder.

• Go to the pull down menu command File >

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browse in Bridge. This opens up Bridge, which is the program attached to Photoshop that allows you to see, as thumbnails, the RAW files.

• Double click on a thumbnail image and you’ll get a new dialog box. This is Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). It’s there that you can do all the tweaking in color, contrast, and exposure by just moving slider bars left or right. For example, in the picture of the 4-day old ostrich chicks, below, I darkened the sky and lightened the birds. They were originally a bit underexposed because I shot them against the bright sky.

• There are additional tabs at the top left and top right of the dialog box, and these controls offer more options such as removing chromatic aberratin, adding saturation to specific colors, sharp-

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ening, etc.

• When you are happy with the image as you see it on your computer monitor, click Open Image and now the picture is opened in Photoshop. At that point, you can save it in any file format (such as PDS, TIF, or JPEG, resize it, and continue to manipulate it.

I recommend saving all your images as either PSD or TIFF files. These are your high resolution images, and then from there you can downsize them as jpeg files for the purposes of emailing, uploading, sharing, transferring to iPads and iPhones, etc.. Use the File > save as command to save them as separate files, thus retaining the hi res images as part of your permanent photo library. §

Using the Actions Palette

in Photoshop T

he actions palette is simply a way to put shortcuts at your finger tips. It is a customized list of the commands that you use frequently.

For example, instead of laboriously using the pull down menu command Select > modify > feather, you can just hit the feather tab in the ations palette, and the feather dialog box appears.

Instead of going to the top of the monitor for File > save as, which you use all the time, again it’s a simple matter to click on the Save as tab.

In addition, you can apply several actions to a photograph with the push of a button. If you size your images the same every time when you email them, or when you upload them to your website, you could make several commands take place automatially with one tab in the actions palette. You could resize the image per predefined dimensions, sharpen it, add a touch of color saturation, add some contrast, and then save the new file as a jpeg on your desktop. And this is all done with the push of one button.

Using shortcuts makes Photoshop seem less laborious. You spend more time being creative and less time moving your hand all over the place.

Here are the easy steps to creating an action in the actions palette.

Use the tiny icon or button at the upper right corner of the actions palette to pull down a submenu and to find the following commands. Use this button for each of the steps below.

First, delete all of the preset actions that come with Photoshop.

1. Clear all actions 2. Button mode 3. New action (in the dialog box, type in the name of action, such as ‘Image size’) and choose the color of the button if you want various colors as I’ve done in the screen capture, above.

4. Insert menu item (choose the command in the pulldown menus) 5 . Stop recording 11

6. Button mode If you want to do multiple actions, such as when you prepare images for your website, after you choose ‘new action’ (step 3), simply apply the various commands you want in the order you want them to occur, such as image size, saturation, contrast, saving the image as a jpeg, closing the image, etc. Then go to ‘stop recording’ (step 5), and finally button mode (step 6). Label the button so you know what it does (Step 3) such as Website Uploads.

If you are working with the new Photoshop CC, you could make one of the buttons on the action palette RAW, because now you can return to Adobe Camera Raw and tweak the image with this non-destructive form of editing.

To save hand movements as I work in Photoshop, I place the tools palette, the layers palette, and the actions palette all together in the upper right corner of my desktop, right. Most people don’t layout their palettes like this, but I find it to be quite useful to have all of my desktop controls in one place. That saves me from constantly moving my hand right and left across the monitor.

To save the positioning of the palettes in case they get moved around at some point, use the pull down menu command, Window > workspace > new workspace. Choose a name, such as Jim’s good workspace, and by selecting this again all the palettes go back to the arrangement you’ve saved.

Some photographers think it’s a good idea to set up an action to batch process a large number of images. For example, they may want to add color saturation to every landscape image they took in Monument Valley, or for a large wedding shoot, they may want to make an ex12

posure adjustment to hundreds of images.

While this can theoretically save a lot time, I advise against it. You will get much better results tweaking one picture at a time. There are too many variables in photography, and one type of adjustment won’t work for all pictures.

Therefore, for the best results, study each image and apply the necessary modifications that the individual image requires.

EXTENSION TUBES 13

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consider extension tubes to be essential gear. They are light in weight, small in volume, and inexpensive.

The tubes come in a set of three of varying sizes, and they serve two very important functions.

extension tubes attached to my 50mm macro lens. This is full frame with no cropping at all.

First, they allow a macro lens to focus closer.

For example, if you are shooting a butterfly, with a 50mm macro lens, let’s say you can include the entire wing spread of the insect in the frame. With one extension tube placed between the lens and the camera body, you can now fill the frame with just the head and abdomen plus a little color from the wings. With all three tubes mounted between the lens and body, you may be able to fill the frame with just the head of the butterfly.

Study the picture of the Namibian rock agama on the previous page. I captured this image on the photo tour I led to Namibia just recently, but I had to be very careful in approaching him.

This guy was very skittish, and I knew I couldn’t get too close or he would disappear. I wanted to fill a large part of the frame with the lizard, and my 500mm lens plus a 1.4x teleconverter (giving me 700mm of focal length) would do that.

But the problem was focus. The minimum focus distance for a 500mm f/4 Canon lens is just under 15 feet. That would have put me too far away, and the agama wouldn’t look as impressive as I wanted.

I shot the picture below of a tokay gecko’s eye during my frog and reptile workshop with two

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Second, extension tubes reduce the minimum focusing distance of a telephoto lens. This is significant when you can’t get close to a subject.

The solution? I placed one extension tube between the telephoto lens and the camera body, and now I could focus when the lens was placed only 10 feet away. That allowed me to fill the frame with most of the reptile, minus the long tail. Most photographers would shoot this from further away and the crop it for impact. I don’t like to crop my images. I prefer to get it right in the camera if possible.

Extension tubes reduce depth of field as does any macro device. It is not a function of the tubes themselves, but instead it’s one of the laws of optics: When you focus closer, you lose depth of field.

Therefore, to deal with this problem, I raise the ISO so I can use a smaller lens aperture.

With cameras like the Canon 5D Mark III and the Nikon 800, plus Photoshop CC’s ability to mitigate noise in Adobe Camera Raw, we can now get away with using higher ISO settings such as 800 to 1600 (and higher) with no appreciable degredation of our images. For pictures like the agama and the goldfinch, I like to use an aperture of f/14 or f/16.

The American goldfinch, above, is a very small bird that I shot at my feeder. I used the same technique as with the rock agama -- a 500mm lens plus the 1.4x teleconverter and an extension tube. This was actually taken right through the glass window of my office at the feeder set up about 10 feet away from my desk. It was the extension tube that allowed me to take a closeup of Canon and Nikon offer extension tubes, but the bird without the need for cropping the pho- I use the much less expensive Kenko brand.

They work just fine. § tograph in Photoshop.

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E-books to help you take better pictures Click on any ebook to see inside

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When you should use

AUTO WHITE BALANCE

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f you love the golden tones of sunrise and sunset -- and who doesn’t -- you don’t want to use auto white balance when you take pictures with low angled sunlight. Why? Auto white balance sounds like it is the answer to all kinds of lighting situations, and when you use AWB the camera automatically gives you the best colors, but this isn’t true at all. Instead, AWB is designed to transform the golden tones of sunrise and sunset into white light. That completely ruins the beautiful mood and the exceptional beauty of the golden tones photographers love to capture.

I photographed the photo above at the rim of the Tenngera Caldera in Indonesia, and what makes this shot successful, beside the low-lying clouds, is the lighting. The sun had just risen above the horizon, and the foreground was lit up with beautiul golden tones. Had I used AWB, the angle of light would have been the same, but the colors would appear dull and uninspiring. I feel you make a big mistake when you shoot outdoors with auto white balance. If you are shooting RAW, as you should be doing, the color temperature (i.e. the white balance) can be changed in ACR or 16

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Lightroom. However, who wants to change the white balance of every picture you take? Shoot with daylight white balance and you will capture the colors you see with your eyes.

When shooting the sky at sunrise and sunset, the same holds true. Your pictures will look desaturated and they will have less visual impact if you use auto white balance.

Auto white balance has its place in two scenarios. First, when you have mixed lighting, such as daylight and tungsten, or florescent and daylight. In those situations, AWB does a good job. The picture on the next page is an example. This is a famous landmark in Dublin, Ireland, and there are florescent fixtures, tungsten lights, and mercury vapor street lamps.

Auto white balance did a great job in rendering this virtually the same as I saw it.

Second, when the subject or scene is illumi18

nated primarily by florescent or mercury vapor lights, such as when shooting in modern buildings or indoors in a gymnasium during a basketball game or wrestling match (below), AWB works very well.

If you are shooting in your living room which is illuminated by tungsten (or incandescent) lamps, then use the indoors white balance setting for the best color. ยง

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New OnLine Course: LEARNING TO SEE

by Jim Zuckerman

The ability to ‘see photographically’, to really grasp how your camera and lenses capture a subject or scene (which is different than how we see with our eyes) underlies successful picture taking. It is the bottom line that you’ve been looking for to take that quantum leap forward in your photography.

When you register for this new course, you will be given download links to eight easyto-understand lessons that look like beautiful mini ebooks. At your convenience, you can study the material and then upload your photos for a professional critique by Jim. Included in the course is a phone call once a week to discuss your submissions or any other aspect of photography you want -- what new equipment to buy, advice about airline travel, problems with flash, or anything else.

This course can be purchased directly from Jim’s website by clicking RIGHT HERE. The great thing about online courses is that they can fit into any schedule. Life gets in the way at times, and Jim puts no limit on the time you can submit your work for his critiques.

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LEARNING TO SEE online course The 8 lessons that comprise this course are: Graphic design, Backgrounds, Depth of field, Patterns, Natural light, Color, Composition, and Motion. These lessons are beautifully illustrated and full of concrete steps to dramatically improve your photography.

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What’s wrong with this picture?

I

like this portrait of a cheetah very much with one caveat. The horizon line is such a strong graphic element that it draws attention away from the cat.

In addition, it is cutting right through the cheetah’s face, and that hurts the picture quite a bit. In most cases, our attention should be riveted on the subject and there shouldn’t be anything in the frame that pulls our eyes elsewhere in the frame.

Because of that, I’d call this picture a failure. My eyes keep going to the horizon line.

Otherwise, I like the pose, the intense stare, and the low angled lighting. The eyes are perfectly illuminated because the sun was low enough in the sky to light them up without the brow casting a shadow. This is one of the advantages of shooting at sunrise and sunset.

Can this picture be corrected in Photoshop? No, it can’t. I’d like to replace the out of focus grass and bushes in the background with sky, but there is no way to separate the whiskers against the original background so they look completely natural against the new sky. Plus, the hair under the chin and along the shoulder couldn’t be cut out successfully.

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The cheetah portrait above shows the same beautiful lighting, and the background is perfect. The cats were on a rise, and that enabled me to shoot from a low angle to use the sky as the entire background. In fact, I got down low specifically to eliminate the landscape in the background. You can never go wrong with a blue sky as a background as long as there are not other elements that can be distracting.

Another point I’d like to make with this picture is that I was using a 500mm f/4 telephoto, and that meant the depth of field was quite shallow. Therefore, I waited until the two heads were roughly on the same plane before shooting. I was using an aperture of f/18, but with the long lens the depth of field was still quite narrow.

If one of the cheetahs had been even 18 inches behind the other one, I could have only focused sharply on one of the cats. The second cheetah would be almost sharp, but not quite. And that just wouldn’t be acceptable. §

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SHORT AND SWEET 1. Shoot from a low angle with a wide angle lens. It’s a dramatic perspective. For this picture of women of the Bushman tribe in Namibia who were singing, I held my camera with a 14mm lens beneath them. I didn’t even look through the viewfinder.

3. Always carry with you protection for your camera

and lens in case you encounter high winds and blowing dust. Below shows a sandstorm on the dunes near Swakopmund, Namibia. A clear shower cap with an elastic band works great -- the type found in many hotel rooms. It is virtually weightless and has no volume.

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2. Try using the Photoshop plug-in Flood with macro

subjects. Flood creates the most realistic reflections, and not only are reflections beautiful, but if there are unwanted elements at the bottom of the photo, Flood eliminates them. Flood is made by flamingpear.com.

4.

In a very dark environment, it is tempting to use flash. However, if the ambient lighting is beautiful, flash eliminates the depth, dimension, and texture of the available light. Inside this hut in a Himba village in Namibia, I raised my ISO to 1600 to expose correctly for the natural side lighting entering through a doorway. §

Photography Tours 2014 - 2015 TIGERS, PANDAS, ICE FESTIVAL, CHINA. Jan. 2014

CARNIVAL IN VENICE February, 2014

BURMA (Myanmar) April, 2014

WHITE HORSES, FRANCE April, 2014

SOUTH INDIA May, 2014

GREENLAND June, 2014

KENYA August, 2014

INDONESIA August 2014

POLAR BEARS October 2014

JAPAN February, 2015

MOROCCO March, 2015

PARIS/LONDON April, 2015

Check out the itineraries and photo galleries from these and other tours: www.jimzuckerman.com.

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ASK JIM

Every month Jim will answer a question from his online students, from people who participate in his tours and workshops, or from subscribers to this magazine. If you have a question you’d like Jim to answer, please drop him a note at photos@jimzuckerman.com.

Q:

Jim ... In case I’m shooting sculptures, is there some rule regarding property releases? Are they needed or does it depend whether I’m shooting in certain places, like a museum? And what if I’m shooting in an open air free museum? Are releases required if I want to sell the photos?

Evgeniya Kaukhcheshvili, Moscow, Russia

A

: This is a very good question, Evgeniya. If the sculpture is in the public domain, such as an ancient Roman sculpture at Pompeii, or Michaelangelo’s David, no release is needed. If the sculpture is owned by a private party, a museum or the artist, a release is needed if you want to sell a picture of the sculpture.

If a city buys a sculpture for public display, and the city owns it, no release is needed.

If you want to use the photo of a sculpture in a magazine article or a how-to photo book, it is extremely unlikely the owner of the artowrk will object even if you don’t have a release. Ideally, though, you should have one as a protection against being sued. If you take a picture of a sculpture and sell that picture as a fine art print in a gallery or for an advertisement, you should definitely have a release.

As a point of interest, the Eiffel Tower was recently copyrighted by France. For more than 100 years, people photographed the Tower and sold pictures of it. Now, no stock agencies will sell it because of this stupid legal action taken by France.

© Evgeniya Kaukhcheshvili

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Indonesia Photo Tour August 17 - 30, 2014

Balinese dancers active volcanos fashion festival ancient temples

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Get professionalcritiques critiques of yourof work Get professional your work with Jim’s online courses with Jim’s online courses Betterphoto.com betterphoto.com Learn composition, exposure, Photoshop, beginning fundamentals, techniques in low light photography, flash, making money in photography, and more at your convenience and on your schedule.

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Student Showcase

Each month, Jim features one student who took beautiful and inspiring images on one of his photography tours or workshops. It’s really fascinating how photographers see and compose such different images even though we may go to the same place. Everyone gets great images on my trips.

Frank Forward, Sherborn, Massachusetts

Home photoshop seminar, frog & reptile workshop, Namibia photo tour

Š 2013 Frank Forward

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Frank Forward, Sherborn, Massachusetts

Š 2013 Frank Forward

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Frank Forward, Sherborn, Massachusetts

Š 2013 Frank Forward

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PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP in my home

Sat. & Sun., March 22-23, 2014

Photoshop is a photographer’s best friend, and the creative possibilities are absolutely endless. In a personal and ‘homey’ environment (I have a very cool classroom setup in my home), I start at the beginning -- assuming you know nothing -- but I quickly get into layers, cutting and pasting, plug-ins, using ‘grunge’ textures, modifying lighting, and a lot more. I promise to fill your head with so many great techniques that you won’t believe what you’ll be able to do. I go over each technique several times to make sure you understand it and can remember it.

creative ideas that will inspire you to produce amazing images with the pictures you’ve already taken.

Photoshop instructors approach teaching this program from different points of view. My approach is to be as expansive in my thinking as possible in creating unique, artistic, and compelling images. In addition to showing you how to use the various tools, pull down menus, layers, and so on, I spend a lot of time giving you

Contact me if you would like to participate in the workshop and I will tell you how to sign up (photos@jimzuckerman.com). All you need is a laptop and a lot of your pictures. If you don’t have a laptop, I have two Mac Book Pro laptops I can loan out for the duration of the workshop. §

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I live in the Nashville, Tennessee area, and if you fly into the airport (BNA) I will pick you up. If you drive, I’ll give you my address and you can find my home on Mapquest. For the $450 fee, I include one dinner in my home (prepared by my wife who is an amazing cook and hostess) and two lunches, plus shuttling you back and forth from my home to your nearby hotel.

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PHOTO INSIGHTS®

published by Jim Zuckerman, all rights reserved © Jim Zuckerman 2013 email: photos@jimzuckerman.com physical address: P.O. Box 7, Arrington, TN 37014 34