Photo insights January '15

Jim Zuckerman’s

PH OTO I N S I G HTS January 2015

• Topaz Glow • A different approach to composition • Photographing puppies • Kaleidoscopic images • Online photo course • Student showcase • Photo tours

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Topaz Glow A different approach to composition Photographing puppies Whats wrong with this picture?

Short and sweet Kaleidoscopic images Ask Jim Student showcase Back issues

Happy New Year!

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ew Years are full of resolutions, so I thought I’d suggest one to you.

Resolve to make yourself happy and fullfilled artistically by taking more pictures in 2015. If you subscribe to this publication, I have to assume that photography gives you a great deal of pleasure in life. Whether you are shooting insects in your backyard, still life studio shots in your kitchen, or the Taj Mahal, pictures give you an outlet for your self-expression and they are a source of happiness.

In addition, photography leads you down many paths, whether they be nature, wildlife, travel, fashion, photojournalism, special effects, or something else. It’s a learning experience, a creative experience, and a fun experience. And who couldn’t use more of each of these things?

I like giving myself presents. I feel I work hard and deserve them. You should take the same position. You deserve more picture taking, more travel, more life experiences, and more fun. If you are as busy as I am, then you need to block some time for yourself. Consider this medicine for the soul. Make a list of subjects you’d like to photograph close to home, and make a list of places you’d like to visit. It’s a great exercise to do. Check off the items on the list as you do them, and by the end of the year you will have kept a promise to yourself to enrich your life immeasurably.

Don’t make excuses. Just do it and you will feel great for giving these gifts to yourself. photos@jimzuckerman.com www.jimzuckerman.com 3

Topaz Glow F

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or several years, a Photoshop plug-in named Fractalius has been available to PC users only.

Photographers who use Apple computers didn’t have access to it, and personally that left me frustrated because the effects are so amazing and I really wanted to experiment with this software.

but in addition it expands the artistic possibilities in some very unique directions.

Glow works with both Mac and PC platforms (CS4+, but doesn’t work in Windows 32 bit), and it’s so easy to use that as soon as you install it and open the plugin you will be making masterpieces within seconds.

Topaz just released a new plugin in their line of creative software, and it’s called Topaz Glow. It simulates Fractalius exactly,

The procedure is to open a photo in Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) and then use the pulldown menu command

Filter > Topaz Labs > Topaz Glow. This opens than shown here. Once you choose a preset that the dialog box you see above. Along the right appeals to you, click on the center of it (green arside are the presets, and there are many more row) to reveal many sliders. These allow you to

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further embellish the image in various ways.

Some of the sliders will be familiar to you and are obvious as to what they do such as brightness, contrast, and saturation. Others require experimentation like edge color, glow spread, electrify, and line rotation. It does no good to verbally explain what each of these sliders do because you have to see the effect to know if you like it or not. As with many plugins such as those from Nik, Alien Skin, and OnOne, it’s a matter of trying all of the sliders and buttons to see what they do.

If you want to see the before and after versions as you work, simply click on the second icon from the left in the upper left portion of the dialog box (magenta arrow in the screen capture seen on page 5).

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When you are like what you see, hit the OK button and use File > save as to give the image a distinct name or number.

A technique I use often is to open an image in Topaz Glow that I’ve already manipulated using this plugin. The artistically altered image becomes the original, and the Glow filters are then compounded. The results are always a surprise, and it’s fun to experiment this way.

As you can see from these examples, all kinds of subjects can be used with this plugin. Faces are especially dramatic (animal or human), but so are flowers, macro subjects, landscapes, and architecture. I find that the images with the strongest graphic lines usually work the best.

There are always exceptions, though, when it comes to art. §

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UPCOMING PHOTO WORKSHOPS Baby WildlifeWorkshop Hinckley, Minnesota June 26 - 28, 2015

Baby wolves, skunks, coyotes, bobcats, lynx, foxes, bears, plus adult animals in natural looking environments.

Frog & Reptile Workshop Close-up encounters with poison dart frogs and exotic reptiles in St. Louis, MO.

April 11 - 12, 2015

Home Photoshop workshop Learn amazing techniques to help you be more creative in photography.

May 16-17, 2015

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COMPOSITION A Different Approach

omposition is a difficult subject to teach. Conversely, it is a difficult subject to master if it doesn’t come naturally to you. The reason is that the world is what I call a ‘compositional mess’. Everywhere you look there are trees, buildings, rocks, people, power lines, roads, and a million other elements, and it’s hard to make artistic sense out of the visual chaos. Photography instructors like myself can talk all day long about the Rule of Thirds, leading lines, and S-curves, but when you have camera in hand and you’re looking at a scene, it seems like these compositional guidelines often don’t apply to the mess

you see before you.

When it comes to simple subjects and simple backgrounds, like the great egret in flight, below, anyone can make a good composition out of it. Simply put the subject in the middle -- or off to one side -- and shoot. It’s a no brainer.

Most scenarios are not so simple, of course. I would like to offer some guidelines that you can use to help make compositional sense out of many disparate objects. This is a different way of thinking photographically, but if good composition is a challenge for you, this may help

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you focus on certain principles that, I feel, lead directly to successful photographs.

1. Look for beautiful shapes.

In my opinion, this is one of the most important ingredients to taking good pictures. Beautiful shapes make beautiful pictures. Subjects with bold, elegant, or curvaceous graphic lines are simply artistic. The tree on the previous page is an example as is the egret on page 9.

This same principle applies to almost everything: castles, tall ships, nudes, shapes of noses in a profile shot, sand dunes, roses, and dancers. The reason I took a photo tour group to the Oriente train station in Lisbon, Portugal below a couple of years ago was because of the graphic design. Ultra wide angle lenses, like the 14mm I used for this shot, exaggerate the lines and make them even more pronounced,

and more dramatic, than they really are. Nevertheless, for this kind of impact you have to start with a subject that has a visually dynamic shape.

2. Complimentary backgrounds Backgrounds are often underrated. They make or break a picture. If a background is too messy or too busy, or if it has distracting elements such as overexposed highlights or bright colors, our eyes are diverted from the subject.

Bold and graphic lines behind a subject are also distracting if they are not part of the subject itself. This is true if they are in focus or out of focus, and it doesn’t matter if they are vertical, horizontal, diagonal, or curved. Examples are twigs, a window frame behind someone’s head, and the horizon line that

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runs behind a subject. When photographers take outdoor portraits, for example, I often see the pronounced line of the horizon cutting the subject’s head in half from behind. Not good.

There are an endless number of background elements that can distract the eye from the subject. One important characteristic of a successful photograph is that the attention is directed to the subject without our eyes being drawn elsewhere in the frame. It’s fine to appreciate the entire composition, but we shouldn’t focus on a background element.

Ideally, of course, backgrounds should be considered at the time of shooting so we don’t have to rely on post-processing techniques to make a picture perfect. We are often faced with great subjects with messy or distracting backgrounds, and that’s where a knowledge of Photoshop can save a picture. Being aware of how important backgrounds are, and being able to identify problem areas in a picture, goes a long way to becoming a better photographer.

The three pictures at right exemplify lessthan-ideal backgrounds. They aren’t horrible, but they are not good, either. The photo of my niece when she was a little girl offering ice cream to her cocker spaniel has light highlights through the foliage that are very distracting. In the sky behind the heron the little bit of foliage sticking up introduces unnecessary and distracting elements (out of focus foliage behind a subject is fine, but little bits of it sticking into the frame don’t look good).

In the picture of the costumed model in Indonesia, there are several problems: the blown out sky, the red and yellow elements in the lower left, the edge of the concrete also in the lower left ( as I mentioned, graphic lines that 12

are not part of the subject are distracting), and all of the elements in the lower right corner also draw the eye away from the model.

In my opinion, the backgrounds in these three pictures are problematic and there is no debate about that. Because there are many points of view when looking at art, and because there are

an endless number of background scenarios, sometimes knowledgeable photographers will disagree about what is and is not distracting.

For example, in the picture below of the panda I photographed in China on a snowy day, one could argue that the entire background is distracting.

On the other hand, you could take the position that the background shows the natural environment in which pandas live and that’s good. Actually, both are true. The picture at right is definitely the ‘fine art’ shot -- the one you’d frame for your home -- because the background is completely non-distracting. However, in the photo below, I like this background because it looks so natural. The only element that I would clone out is the sharp twig immediately to the left (our left) of the panda. The rest I’d keep. You may have a differing opinion.

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3. Elongated perspectives.

One of the ways you can create superb compositions is by using a wide angle lens to exaggerate the depth of a scene. The picture I took in Patagonia, below, shows you what I’m talking about. The burned tree in the foreground seems to be stretched into the distance, and the dramatic peaks appear to be further away than they really area. The wide angle lens I used, a 14mm, made the mountains smaller and therefore, by assumption, more distant.

The fact that there is complete depth of field adds to the allusion of depth.

This technique entails four aspects: 1. Use a tripod 2. Choose f/22 or f/32 3. Use the widest lens in your arsenal 4. Place the camera 3 to 6 feet from the foreground.

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5. Both the foreground element and the background should be beautiful/graphic/compelling in some way. That’s really important. If either portion of the picture is less-than-interesting or even boring, no matter how good the perspective is, the image won’t be successful.

6. In focus, out of focus In critiquing students’ work submitted to me via my online courses, I see a lot of focus issues.

Sometimes backgrounds are not out of focus enough, for example, and sometimes a foreground element that should be sharp is, in fact, out of focus. Let me lay down some guidelines that will hopefully help you in producing great images: a. Landscape shots should virtually always show everything sharply focused b. Out of focus backgrounds should, ideally, be

blurred enough so nothing is distracting. The picture of a goat from Mongolia, right, is an example. If you want to show an environmental portrait where the background is as important as the subject -- i.e. where you actually have two subjects, the foreground and the background -- then you’ll want everything in focus in most instances as in the picture below of a Spanish shepherd. c. If you have two subjects, such as two roses prominent in the frame, two children, etc., they should both be in focus. If one is slightly soft, the picture won’t work. For example, the shot of mating lions in Kenya on page 17 shows both cats sharp. They weren’t exactly equidistant to the camera, though. The male lion was a little closer to me. Therefore, I used f/9 to assure sufficient depth of field. §

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Photographing Puppies E

veryone who has a pet and loves it takes pictures of it. We accummulate hundreds of snapshots at particularly cute moments, but to do something more . . . classic, you need time, patience, planning, and often props.

To me, there is nothing more adorable than a puppy. Dogs are wonderful, too, but since babies of most species pull at our heartstrings, puppies are particularly endearing. They elicit our laughter, our joy, and our love, and capturing them in a timeless photograph is one of the great pleasures I get out of photography. If I had to limit my picture taking to one thing, it

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would have to be puppies.

I feel that the most photogenic age for puppies is between 5 and 8 weeks old, with the prime time being 6 1/2 to 7 weeks. They no longer look like drowned rats (as they do at one or two weeks), and their eyes are open. In addition, their hair has grown full and their faces are ultra cute. After 7 weeks, they are enthusiastic about exploring their environment and they become more difficult to control, especially for a group shot.

I break down puppy photography into four components: Assistants, control, backgrounds & props, and lighting.

Assistants You need at least one other person to help you when doing serious photography with puppies. If you are shooting a group, you’ll need more help. As the photographer, you have to deal with exposure, focus, composition, and catching the right moment. Let your friends or family members manage the puppies. When you plan a shoot, enlist the help of these people and you will be rewarded with much better pictures.

Control Puppies must have a switch hidden somewhere on their bodies. It toggles back and forth between squirming and sleeping. The sleeping mode is cute, but their eyes are closed and

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pictures taken in this mode are usually good but not as good as when the puppies are alert.

Having said that, you can take some very cute sleeping pictures.

The squirming mode is what you have to deal with to get the best pictures. To get the picture of the great Pyrenees puppies, below, I had my wife and the breeder positioned on either side of the dogs. I placed them on black velvet, and both women kept pushing them together from either end. That worked. Four hands and four puppies is a good ratio.

Sound effects like whistles, bells, and squeeks are good to have at your disposal because they draw the attention of the puppies for a second or two, just enough time to get the shot of attentive expressions. Small treats can also be used to elicit alert poses.

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For the portrait of the Yorkie puppies on page 18, I used a different technique. They are actually sitting on my wife’s lap, and she is cradling them in a scarf. The pups were small enough so she could keep them close together with her hands which are hidden by the knit scarf.

spaniels, below, had fallen asleep on a sofa. I carefully picked each one up, trying not to awaken them, and placed them on black velvet.

Neither one cared what I was doing. I arranged their heads and their ears and took a beautiful shot that has sold many times.

When puppies get very tired, just before they fall sleep they become whoosy, almost like they are drunk. At that time, you can do pretty much anything you want with them. That’s how I got the shot of the chow puppy on the previous page. My wife gently sat him in the mini bicycle (which is really a holder for toilet paper rolls) and put the jester’s hat on him.

Because the puppy was so tired, he didn’t care how silly he looked and just let her do it.

Backgrounds and props

In the same way, the Cavalier King Charles

Props and backgrounds add to the pictures a lot. The picture of West Highland Terriers on page 19 gives one example. I used a simple old suitcase into which I put a blanket and then the puppies. The background of the interior of a bed and breakfast establishment in France was added in Photoshop. Sometimes I will create a background with elements in a studio setting, and sometimes I’ll draw from my photo library and add a background digitally. And some-

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times I’ll do both.

For example, the Siberian husky puppy, below, fell asleep during the photo session. I had placed him on the bench with his head resting on the arm rest, and while he was sleeping my assistant put the hat on him. Then, in post-proccessing, I added the architecture in the background and the Christmas presents beneath the bench.

With the photo at right -- one of my all time favorites -- I had photographed the standard poodle puppy on the small bench a year before I met the little girl and her family. I thought the two redheads would make a great picture, so I photographed her on the same bench with her head on a pillow at an angle as if she were resting

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her head on the dog. I then put the images together in Photoshop. The bench, which I purchased just to photograph puppies, is a prop I’ve used often.

Lighting

I don’t recommend on-camera flash for shooting puppies. That kind of lighting makes the pictures look like amateurish snapshots. Instead, use diffused window light, such as the portrait of the great Pyrenees on page 19, flash with studio umbrellas or soft boxes, or outdoor shade as in the picture of my cocker spaniel at 8 weeks and my great Pyrenees in play, below.

In most cases, diffused light -- natural or artificial -- will produce the most attractive images.

Alternatively, you can use sunrise or sunset lighting for outdoor shots as I did in the photo at right. This kind of light, though, causes an increase in contrast even when the sun is very close to the horizon. Therefore, you will have to open the shadows and tone down the highlights in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom, and of course it’s important to shoot in RAW mode.

Shooting perspectives Puppies are very small. They are close to the ground, and for the most intimate types of portraits, you need to shoot from an eye-level point of view. Don’t stand at an adult height and shoot downward. Instead, get low. It makes a huge difference. §

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LEARNING TO SEE

online course

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.

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. CLICK THIS PAGE to read more about this course.

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BOTSWANA/SOUTH AFRICA p h o t o t o u r June 6 - 20, 2015

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What’s wrong with this picture?

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t is difficult for most photographers to put aside emotions while taking pictures of great subjects. You get so caught up in what’s happening in front of you that technical and artistic considerations are sometimes eclipsed by the excitement.

I tell my students when they are photographing exciting things to emote later. Get the pictures first. Granted, it’s hard to be disciplined to do this, but it’s certainly doable.

A case in point is the photo above. This was taken on my White Horses of the Camargue photo tour in Provence, southern France (the next one is April, 2016). We take two or three white horses into the water and release them and they run to shore. It’s a beautiful shot, and it’s very exciting to see. At one side of the beach is a jetty that juts out into the sea, and this introduces a distracting element. At first, I, too, focused only on the horses and didn’t pay attention to the rocks cutting across the horses in the background. However, once I looked at the LCD monitor on the back of my camera, I realized the problem and changed the angle from which I was shooting. The better image is on the next page.

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A technique that I have learned to use over many years is to run my eyes around the viewfinder every time I take a picture. This takes mental discipline, but it will allow you to notice things that you might have missed if you only focus your attention on the subject. By focusing your attention only on the subject, background elements that could be problematic are overlooked. That’s what happened with me the first time I photographed these horses in the sea.

So many times you’ll see pictures of a person with a tree or telephone pole ‘growing’ out of their head. This kind of faux pas has to do withthe same issue. Make yourself notice the background, the corners, the overexposed highlights behind the subject, etc. This will go a long way to improving your photography.

My settings for this picture were 1/8000th of a second (I wanted every drop of water tack sharp), f/4.5, ISO 500, and the lens I used was a 70-200mm set to 200mm.

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SHORT AND SWEET 1. All floral photography, virtually without exception,

looks best when taken in soft and diffused lighting.

You might think the colors in the flowers look richer when the sun is shining, but that’s not true. They actually look richer in soft light.

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White out conditions offer great photo opportunities. Even though a blizzard is cold and miserable, visually it can be stunning as in this rare picture of Monument Valley. I checked the weather reports every two days, and when a snow storm was predicted I drove 15 hours to shoot the incredible scene.

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2. Look for reflections in mirrored skyscrapers. The

images are particularly effective when the reflected subjects are illuminated beautifully while the mirrored building is shaded. Old versus new, like this gothic church in Los Angeles, makes great images.

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When you travel to another city, do research and find elevated locations for dramatic pictures. I often choose a hotel specifically for its photographic advantage, and then I’ll request a ‘room with a view’. This has enabled me to take many wonderful pictures of cities in the U.S. and abroad. §

Photography Tours 2015 - 2016 HOLLAND/BELGIUM April, 2015

NAMIBIA June, 2015

MADAGASCAR August, 2015

VIETNAM, CAMBODIA, LAOS Sept, 2015

BURMA (MYANMAR) Sept, 2015

CUBA October, 2015

ETHIOPIA November, 2015

CARNIVAL IN VENICE Feb, 2016

WHITE HORSES, FRANCE April, 2016

MOROCCO March, 2015

BOTSWANA/SOUTH AFRICA June, 2015

CROATIA, SLOVENIA April, 2016

For a complete list of all the photo tours/workshops Jim is conducting, go to his website: www.jimzuckerman.com.

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KALEIDOSCOPIC IMAGES

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aleidoscopes have intrigued me since childhood, and when I got into photography I wanted to capture the amazing colors and patterns. But the tiny hole through which you look precludes getting good images. It was not until I used the Kaleidoscope filters available in the program Filter Forge that I able to produce the kinds of pictures I envisioned.

The kaleidoscopic image below is a shot of bushes at the base of the Eastern Sierras in California. The picture on the next page is a forest in the Western Sierras taken in deep shade which accounts for the blue color. To produce these remarkable abstracts, I simply searched for a kaleidoscope filter that suited my vision

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within Filter Forge, and applied the effect to these images..

Within the Filter Forge program, there are literally 10,000 filters, including several kaleidoscope filters. Instead of seeing abstracts of colored glass or plastic that you’d see in a real kaleidoscope, you can produce kaleidoscopic designs based on any picture in your photo library. This could keep you busy for years!

For more information on this software, click the link below. Filter Forge goes way beyond kaleidoscopes, though. Any kind of effect you can possible imagine is at your fingertips. www.filterforge.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 . . . I want to replace the sky behind this red cow, and when I use the magic wand tool in Photo-

shop, the selection encroaches onto the statue where the shiny portions are. Even when I lower the tolerance, it’s still a problem. How would you handle this selection, and what tool would you use?

Cecile Bryant, Springfield, Missouri

A: I know the magic wand tool is easy to use and it’s quick. But it is often less-than-accurate because of

problematic areas at the edge of the subject like the ones you mentioned. In this situation, the most accurate tool to use that would give you a perfect demarcation line between the cow and the sky is the pen tool. This will take you the longest to cut around the statue, but it’s the most accurate. You could also try the quick selection tool (which hides beneath the magic wand tool), and this creates a selection that clings to the edge of the subject. However, I believe that upon close examination (like enlarging this to 100%) you will see that the selection isn’t perfect because the sheen on the cow’s back and on the top of the cow’s head blends too closely to the sky.

© 2014 Cecile Bryant

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Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos photo tour

September 13 - 28, 2015 Culture • Ancient ruins • Great people photography • Temples

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

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Get professional of your work NAMIBIA critiques PHOTO TOUR withJune Jim’s 22 online to July 3, courses 2015 Betterphoto.com wildlife Bushmen dunes Epupa Falls

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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.

Stan Greenberg, North Augusta, South Carolina, Photoshop workshop

Š 2014 Stan Greenberg

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Student Showcase, continued

Š 2014 Stan Greenberg

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Student Showcase, continued

Š 2014 Stan Greenberg

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PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP in my home

Sat. & Sun., May 16 - 17, 2015

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, replacing backgrounds (like in the photo above), using layer masks, blend modes, adding a moon, 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.

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

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

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.

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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PHOTO INSIGHTS®

published by Jim Zuckerman, all rights reserved © Jim Zuckerman 2014 email: photos@jimzuckerman.com snail mail address: P.O. Box 7, Arrington, TN 37014

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