Jim Zuckerman’s
PH OTO I N S I G HTS January 2013
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Soft light Alien landscapes Making an ebook Dead center Photo tours Student showcase
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Table of Contents 4. SOFT AND DIFFUSED LIGHT 10. MAKING AN EBOOK 14. DEAD CENTER 16. WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? 18. SHORT AND SWEET 20. ASK JIM 22. CREATING ALIEN WORLDS 26 STUDENT SHOWCASE 28. PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP
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Happy New Year 2013! I hope this is a wonderful year for you. Many of the people who travel with me on my photo tours and who participate in the photo workshops I conduct, as well as my online students, enter photo contests regularly. From what I’ve been able to discern over many years, this is usually a source of frustration, disappointment, hurt feelings, and even anger. The laments I hear are many: So and so’s winning picture isn’t as good as mine; some people win all the time; what are the judges thinking; there are too many entries and I don’t have a chance; how can you please the judges; etc, etc. I am not a fan of photo contests. I’m sorry if this is disappointing to you, but if there are dozens, hundreds, or thousands of entries, there are bound to be so many great pictures that how can anyone choose one particular shot to be the one? This is my own complaint when I’m talked into judging photo contests. Too many images should be awarded first place, but my hands are tied. I can’t recognize all of the wonderful entries with first place. That means most of the people who take winning pictures lose, and that doesn’t seem right. Honorable mention doesn’t cut it if the photo is deserving of more. Besides, why should you try to please judges? Even if they are made up of recognized masters of photography, art is completely subjective. Someone can love Rembrandt’s work and hate the surrealism of Picasso and Chagall. So, what does that prove? Nothing at all. You might submit a fantastic portrait but the judges only appreciate nature. Or, you can show a dramatic macro image of an insect and one or more judges can’t stand bugs. It’s great to share your work with friends, photo club members, and online communities, but contests, to me, are pointless. Shoot for yourself. Please yourself. Learn to honestly critique your own images and your photographic vision will mature very quickly. Jim photos@jimzuckerman.com www.jimzuckerman.com 3
Subjects That Require Soft Light
Iceberg, Antarctica
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f you have been photographing seriously for even a short time, you know that sunrise and sunset lighting are considered to be the most beautiful type of natural light. I explain this to my students all the time. And, the premium time to shoot is the first few minutes after the sun breaks the horizon in the morning and the last few minutes of sunset before the sun disappears in the late afternoon. This is the time when the sunlight is least contrasty and the golden color is most pronounced. There is one caveat to this, however. Some subjects look much better when the light is soft and diffused. There are several reasons for this. First, the contrast between the highlights and the shadows is minimal, and therefore you won’t have to deal with overexposed highlights or darker portions of the composition that go black with little or no detail. Second, low angled sunlight creates pronounced tex-
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ture, and that’s great for many types of subjects. But when subjects have ultra sublte hues and tonal values, the softer light is much more complementary. Third, contrary to what most photographers think, soft lighting brings out the depth and richness of color that direct sunlight doesn’t. This seems counterintuitive, but it’s true. Fourth, the graphic design of shadows is absent. Sometimes great shadows add to the artistry of your photos, but much of the time they are distracting and interfere with our appreciation of the subject. Fifth, the softness of the light envelopes a subject, allowing us to see and appreciate detail that is often lost with light that is more harsh. Here is a partial list of subjects that, with very few exceptions, always look better in soft light compared to
Keukenhof Gardens, Holland
any other type of natural light: • • • • • •
Flowers and gardens All macro subjects Autumn foliage Outdoor portraits Classic cars Icebergs and glaciers
Compare the photo above with the picture of a garden below left. The picture above I took in Keukenhof Gardens shows beautiful soft and diffused light. Notice the absence of harsh contrast and the remarkably intense colors. The comparison picture, taken at Cheekwood Gardens in Nashville, Tennessee, is much more contrasty because I took it at three o’clock in the afternoon with bright sunlight. Even though the colors of the flowers were rich and saturated, their intensity of color seems diminished due to the contrast. When it comes to flowers, direct sunlight is a disadvantage. In macro photography, soft light is also more attractive. There are always exceptions in art and photography, of course, but you can never go wrong if you consistently use diffused light to photograph small subjects. It’s the contrast and the harsh shadows that degrade the artistry of the images. This is something that can’t be rectified in Lightroom or Photoshop. Unfortunately, the quality and direction of light can’t be changed after-the-fact. 5
The two pairs of photographs on this page demonstrate what I’m talking about. I first shot the albino bull frog, above, with sidelighting from the morning sun. This isn’t a terrible picture at all, but the shadow on the right side prevents us from seeing the detail there. In addition, the differential in the exposure values from the sun lit side to the shadowed side presented a problem. In trying to compromise between the two, the left side of the frog is too light, bordering on overexposure, while the right side is too dark. The image of the frog at right was taken in soft light when a cloud covered the sun. In this case, there is no exposure problem at all and we can see all the detail in this unique subject.
and that’s how I softened the light. Notice the absence of dark shadows. The colors are somewhat different between the two pictures (shaded subjects tend to go bluish), but that can easily be tweaked in Photoshop with:
The alpine flowers I photographed below in Switzerland also make my point. I took the picture on the left at 11am under full sun. Again, it’s not terrible at all, but it’s not as attractive, as elegant, as the picture on the right. I used my body to make a shadow on the flowers as I leaned down to set up the camera and tripod,
Image > adjustments > hue/saturation, or
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Image > adjustments > color balance Alternatively, I could have used cloudy white balance if I wanted a warmer color tone.
Compare the two photographs of autumn foliage above, and again you’ll see my point. The picture on the left was taken in harsh, mid-day sunlight. I shot this in October, and the Vermont sun is relatively low in the sky at this time of year. Even so, the light created black shadows, and even though the foliage has bright colors, the hues of the leaves seem garish and much less attractive than the lovely colors in the comparison photo at right.
with soft light. This is true for wildlife, pets, or people. Sure, backlighting is beautiful, and often sidelighting looks great, too. But when you use the diffused light from an overcast sky, your subjects never squint from bright light (and therefore their faces are not contorted), and there are no unattractive patterns of shadows and highlights that are usually quite unflattering.
I took the upper right picture in Pennsylvania. I shot it from the highway on the way to the airport in Pittsburgh, and fortunately I had the soft light from an overcast sky. Notice how rich the colors are in spite of the thick cloud cover. Actually, it’s because of the cloud cover that the autumn colors look so good. The palette of color is not competing with a multitude of black shadows, and this is exactly what I saw. When it comes to portraits, you can never go wrong 7
UPCOMING PHOTO WORKSHOPS Winter Wildlife Workshop Hinckley, Minnesota Jan. 9 - 12, 2014
Frog & Reptile Workshop St. Louis, Missouri June 22 - 23, 2013
Two back-to-back Carnival Workshops, Venice, Italy Feb. 21 - 27 - 23, 2014 Feb. 27 - March 5, 2014
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When you are not sure about the best kind of outdoor light for portraits, choose shade and you will be happy with the results. Just make sure the background is shaded, too, like in the portrait of my wife and our great Pyrenees, right. I used a simple stone background in this case, but it is in shade. What you want to avoid is shooting a shaded subject with a sunny background. The picture of the leopard, below, is an example of what you should not do. The bright highlights are terribly distracting, and they pull our attention away from the cat. That’s not how a successful photo is supposed to work. Sometimes you just can’t avoid this contrasty and unattractive situation, and the only solution is replacing the background entirely in Photoshop. Other times, try changing your shooting angle or the focal length of the lens. For example, the photo of the baby elephant nursing from its mother was taken about 11 o’clock in the morning, and the Kenyan sun was extremely contrasty. The background was horribly bright, so I switched from a 70 - 200mm lens to a 500mm with a 1.4x teleconverter, giving me 700mm of focal length. I did this specifically to crop out the sunny background and fill the frame with the baby that was engulfed by the bulk of the mother. The female’s huge body was providing the shade I needed to make this portrait look great even in the middle of the day. Sure, I would have loved to capture the entire herd of elephants with a wider angle lens, but the lighting was so bad at this point in the morning that anything I’d take would be trashed. By isolating this endearing relationship with the long lens, I found a successful composition despite the challenge of the harsh, midday sunlight.§
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NIK SOFTWARE’S SILVER EFEX PRO 2 Blend Black and White with Color
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technique I’ve used for decades is combining color with black and white. When we all shot film, this meant tedious darkroom work or re-photographing sandwiched slides (and producing less-sharp second generation images). In the digial realm, not only is it much easier, but you have the ultimate in control. First you must convert the color original to black and white, and the best way to do that is to open the photo in Silver Efex Pro 2 by Nik Software. You are presented with numerous preset options, and this takes all the guesswork out of the equation. You can see at a glance a multitude of tonal and contrast variations, and with additional sliders each of these can be tweaked to your satisfaction. Once you select one of them, Nik places the black and
white rendition on top of the color original as a layer in Photoshop. This is a tremendous advantge because now you can blend the black and white image with the underlying color very easily. In the layers palette, there is a submenu with the word ‘normal’ on it (red arrow, below). This opens up a list of blend modes, and you can try each one to see if you like any of the results. You can scroll down the list by choosing the move tool in the tools palette and holding the Shift key down. Then use the up and down arrows on your keyboard. For the photo on the next page, I didn’t use a blend mode. Instead, I adjusted the opacity (green arrow below). At 85% opacity, I was able to introduce a subtle color tone while the character and artistry of the black and white version still comes through. To me, there is something very elegant about this look. In this particular case, I started with a grunge image -a flower photo combined with a texture (more about this in the February issue). This technique works very well with original photographs, too, and I encourage you to experiment with this very creative method of combining images. §
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How to Make an eBook 9
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have been asked by quite a few people how I make ebooks, so I thought I would share this information with all of my subscribers. This information can also be applied to producing a newsletter, a brochure, a magazine, or even announcements of weddings, baby showers, family vacations, etc. It is a way to produce professional looking documents that can be emailed to anyone you know. When I first starting making ebooks two years ago, I had no clue how to start. This is a relatively new phenomenon, and none of my friends knew how to do it. I contacted other photographers who had already put together ebooks, and that’s how I started to understand the steps necessary to begin the process. I have now written five ebooks with another one on the way (the new ebook is on home photo projects -- amazing things you can do with creating great pictures in your kitchen or on your driveway -- including water drop photography like the picture on the previous page).
Once the ebook is laid out with pictures and text, and you’ve proof read the material at least three times and spell checked it (trust me, you’ll still miss a few things), the next step is to export the document to a PDF file. Everyone can read a PDF on a desktop computer, a laptop, an Ipad, an iPhone, etc, so that’s what most photographers use. There are many settings, though, that have to be defined. When you choose File > Adobe PDF presets > define, you define the parameters so people can read the PDF file easily. The settings I use are below. Why do I use these particular settings? To be honest, I don’t know. I paid a consultate who specializes in Adobe InDesign, and this is what he gave me.
The same procedure I use to create ebooks is used to layout this magazine. Adobe InDesign The software you need to create the actual document for the ebook is Adobe InDesign, and the current version is CS6. I obtained mine from academicsuperstore.com for a much reduced price (to qualify for the discount, you can buy it in the name of a student -any student, any grade level). If you think Photoshop is challenging to learn, it’s nothing compared to InDesign. There isn’t one tiny aspect of this program that is intuitive or user friendly. When I first opened the program, I didn’t have a clue how to begin. I learned how to use InDesign by subscribing to lynda.com. For only $25 per month -- and you can stop the subscription at any time -- you can learn many programs including InDesign. I went through all the tutorial videos and after a couple of days I was putting together my first ebook. When I got stuck and didn’t know how to do something, such as link text or a photo to a website, I’d go back to lynda.com and play again the video that explained how to do it. The instruction was clear, well presented, and easy to follow.
Once you export the PDF file to your desktop, double click on it and see how it looks. Check the image quality, the readibility of the text, etc. For the images in the layout, I use 300 dpi and I size them (in Photoshop) to be a little larger than they will be used in the ebook. When the images are placed into the pages, I then reduce them in size to fit into the spaces I’ve alotted. In this way, I maintain excellent quality. After all, if the pictures don’t look sharp and rich in color, the ebook won’t make you proud of your work. All of the sizing and color correction takes place in Photoshop. I save the files as hi res jpegs before they are brought into InDesign. The type is added directly in InDesign. In order to import an ebook into an iPad, it’s a simple two step process. In your main computer, open iTunes. 13
Apple allows us to sync our iPads (and iPhones) from only one computer, so make sure you know which one that is. Plug the iPad into the USB port with the appropriate cable, and in older versions of iTunes you’ll see an icon that says ‘ipad’ in the left column under ‘Devices’. In the latest 11.0.1 version, the iPad tab is in the upper right corner. The screen captures at right shows both possibilities. Click this link and then you will be presented with the various aspects of the iPad that you can work with: music, photos, books, videos, etc. If you click on the ‘book’ tab, you can then drag the PDF file that you’ve exported out of Adobe InDesign and onto your desktop (so it’s easy to find) into the area that contains books, and the file will copy into the iPad. After that, hit the ‘apply’ button and it will be saved. The procedure I’ve described for creating and exporting ebooks is for viewing on the web and on computers and portable devices. If you wish to go to print, then the export settings will be different. You would use a CMYK color space instead of RGB. §
The incredible colors and designs in soap film -- one of the techniques explained in my soon-to be released ebook.
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Check out these great eBooks click each ebook to see what’s inside
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DEAD CENTER
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udges in photo club competitions are very quick to penalize photographers for placing a subject dead center in the middle of the frame According to the Rule of Thirds -- the foundational concept for compositional guidelines-- the subject looks better positioned on a horizontal or vertical third as the picture is divided into an imaginary tic-tac-toe grid. While it is often true that this rule, or guideline, produces beautifully composed pictures, sometimes rules can be broken to great advantage. I find that very often the subject looks good placed dead center in the frame. This establishes symmetry and balance, and to me the result is very pleasing. Sometimes a subject looks good composed both centered and off-center. For example, the white rhino that my photo tour group happened upon in Namibia looks powerful and imposing centered in the frame, above, but it also looks good composed off-center, right (however, I think the centered image is much more powerful). Compositional rules aren’t rules at all. They are merely guidelines, and very often you can do the opposite and produce a very strong image.
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On the next page, I composed the famous icon of Arches National Park, Delicate Arch, in the center because of the wonderful balance in this picture. That seems to underscore the fact that the rock arch is balanced in such a way that it doesn’t collapse. Don’t let rigid rules of composition inhibit your picture taking. Be expansive in your thinking. There are often more ways than one to compose a picture. §
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What’s wrong with this picture? This sculpture in marble is a spectacular work of art from the 1st century A.D. It is exhibited in the Ephesus Museum in Selcuk, Turkey. The photo you see here shows how the sculpture is displayed, and as such it’s not a terrrible picture. However, to me it’s boring. Why? Because the background is mundane and uninspiring. The gray color puts me to sleep. It offers no contrast to the white marble, and in addition the lighting on the famous artwork is adequate but it’s not dramatic or compelling. For such a striking piece, it should be. The picture on the next page is significantly better. The statue stands out boldly against the dark background, and it appears much more impressive. Never underestimate the power of a background to make or break a picture. To create this effect, I used Photoshop and selected the background with the magic wand tool. Then I chose the gradient tool and, after making the foreground/background color boxes at the bottom of the tools palette black and dark maroon, respectively, I dragged the cursor from the bottom of the selected area to the top. It was that simple to create a gradient color background that shows off the true beauty of this artwork from antiquity. §
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SHORT AND SWEET 1.
Shoot pets at eye level as opposed to standing at an adult height and photographing downward. This creates a much more intimate and compelling portrait. This works especially well with very small animals close to the ground.
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What defines the success of a silhouetted image is the graphic design of the subject. If the design is clean, bold, and attractive, the silhouette will be successful. If the design is messy, confusing, or uninteresting, the silhouette won’t work.
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2.
Elevated points of view are often very compelling. I photographed this costumed model from a bridge looking down on the canal during my Carnival in Venice workshop. It’s a unique way of seeing.
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When you shoot in aquariums, make the lens axis 90 degrees to the glass or Plexiglas. This will maintain optimum sharpness. When you shoot obliquely to the plane of the surface of the aquarium, the image quality suffers significantly. The images will be noticeably less sharp. §
Photography Tours 2013/2014 EASTERN TURKEY August, 2013
LONDON/PARIS August, 2013
BHUTAN October, 2013
NAMIBIA November, 2013
COSTA RICA December, 2013
TIGERS & PANDAS in CHINA January, 2014
CARNIVAL IN VENICE February, 2014
SOUTHWEST USA March, 2014
MONGOLIA September, 2014
Check out the itineraries and photo galleries from these and other tours: www.jimzuckerman.com. A photo tour to Greenland will be posted soon. 18
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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.
Q: Jim, this is a robber fly feeding on a fruit fly. I shot it because the eyes are so striking. I managed to
get the eyes, antennae, and mouthparts of the robber fly fairly sharp, but its thorax and most of the fruit fly below are out of focus. I shot it at f/16, 1/125, with a tripod and with flash. In retrospect, I could have stopped down even more (the subject was fairly immobile, although there might have been a slight breeze moving the plant it was perched on), but I doubt if I could have gotten everything sharp. Helicon Focus might have been an option, but again it would have required still air and a compliant fly. Knowing that you like things sharp front-to-back, how would you have approached this challenge? Bob Jeanne, Madison, Wisconsin
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Great question, Bob. First of all, this should have been taken at f/32 as you intimate so you’d have more of the subjects in focus. But you are right -- there still wouldn’t be enough depth of field. Many macro photographers who are critical in their work are hesitant to use very small lens apertures because images can be degraded due to diffraction. This takes place especially at the edges. However, in my opinion, slight diffraction is a small price to pay for increased depth of field. You have two options here: (1) Put the insects in the refrigerator until they are motionless, then take them out and make the shot with Helicon Focus [Helicon Focus is software that allows you to have complete depth of field at any lens aperture]. The problem, though, is that the robber fly probably would release its prey, and that isn’t what you want. (2) Using f/32, take two separate shots from your tripod -- one where you focus on the robber fly and one where you focus on the fruit fly. Then, in Photoshop, put them together so the heads of the two insects are sharp. This will require skillful work in Photoshop, but its doable. The easiest way would be to clone from one photo to the other as both images are open on your desktop. This will save you from cutting and pasting. The rear of the insects can only be sharp if you use Helicon Focus.§
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(c) Bob Jeanne 2012
Namibia Photo Tour November 8 - 21, 2013
Surreal landscapes - Tribal cultures - Wildlife - Great photography
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CREATING ALIEN WORLDS
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alactic landscapes are, unfortuntely, denied to Earth-bound photographers. Even if we could travel at the speed of light, and even if the tickets were affordable, it would take two and a half million years to travel to Andromeda, the closest spiral gallaxy to our own! What a shame. The next best thing, then, is Artmatic Voyager 2. It’s a lot less expensive than a ticket to another galaxy, and you don’t have to wait millions of years to start shooting. This is a stand-alone program that allows you to explore various ‘planets’ from any elevation and perspective, and with the sliders in the dialog box (right) you can zoom into a scene, change the angle of the lighting, experiment with different skies, add mist, and even change the elevation of the snow. Once you’ve found the composition you like, you click the icon render pict to file (when you hover the cursor over the icons, they indicate what they do). Before the rendering takes place, you choose the resolution. Obviously, this should be high, and in my own work I use 3744 x 5616 pixels in the TIFF format. Artmatic 24
Voyager then renders the image (I always choose to place the image on the desktop so I can find it easily). I sharpen the image at this point; in Photoshop I use Filter > sharpen > unsharp mask for that. The galactic landscapes are cool all by themselves, but since I’m a photographer and not a digital graphic artist, I like to use these unique environments in conjunction with my photography. The photo above is an example. I looked through my photo library searching for a subject that would work with one of the landscapes, and I came across a model I’d photographed
a few years earlier. She was six feet tall and I had her stand on a box to make her look even taller (the fabric she wore draped over the box). I then added the wings of a great egret to transform her into an angel. To place her into the landscape, I selected her with the quick selection tool (this hides beneath the magic wand tool), feathered the edge one pixel (this makes the edge transition between the subject and the background believable), and then I pasted her into the scene. I used the plug-in Flood (made by flamingpear.
com) to create the realistic reflection, and for the sky I used a shot of star trails I had taken. The composite below includes a sky from my files. I placed a star filter over my lens and shot glitter sprinkled on black velvet for the ‘stars’. For the greenish haze and the ‘galactic clouds’, I used smoke emanating from a volcanic lake in Indonesia. I then placed the moon behind the mountains and purposely made it relatively large compared to how we see it on Earth.
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These surreal planetary landscapes invite some pretty wild composites. The creature from the Black Lagoon, top, is really a Jackson’s chameleon I photographed during my semi-annual frog and reptile workshop. I captured the horse and rider, below, near my home in Tennessee. The beautiful horse is a Gypsy Vanner. It was backlit in the orginal photo so I placed it in front of the sun in the landscape. That helpsed make this look ‘real.’§ 24 26
Get professional critiques of your work Get professional critiques of 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.
White-necked Jacobin hummingbird captured on the Costa Rica photo tour. 20
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Student Showcase
Each month, Jim will feature one or more students 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.
Kayla Stevenson, Pitt Meadows, Britiish Columbia, Canada Photo Tour to Namibia; Photo Tour to New England
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Kayla Stevenson, Pitt Meadows, BC, Canada
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PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP in my home
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Sat. & Sun., January 19, 20 [one spot left] Sat. & Sun., April 20, 21
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.
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 Past issues of Photo Insights can be found here: www.issuu.com/jimzuckerman
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