Photo insights october '15

Jim Zuckerman’s

PH OTO I N S I G HTS October 2015

• Geometrics • Balancing flash outdoors • Recommended Photoshop plugins • Photographing interior rooms • Online photo courses • New ebook • Student showcase • Photo tours

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Geometrics Balancing flash outdoors What’s wrong with this picture?

Short and sweet Recommended plugins Ask Jim Photographing interiors Student showcase Back issues

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utumn is here, and if you live in a place where the trees change color, enjoy capturing the beauty of the season. Keep in mind that your best photographs of colorful leaves will be when the lighting is soft and diffused from an overcast sky. I know this seems counterintuitive, but it’s nevertheless true. Many people think that bright, direct sunlight translates into saturated colors in the subject. That’s not necessarily true. When it comes to autumn leaves, the depth of their color really shows when you have a cloudy sky. And, if the colors you get still aren’t rich enough, you can easily add some punch in Photoshop.

What you want to avoid is excessive contrast, and the bright, midday sun goes hand and hand with too much cotrast. Shadows go black and detail is lost, and at the same time the lighting looks garish. When you do have a bright sunny day, one thing you can do to make the best of it is to position yourself beneath colorful leaves and shoot the sun coming through all the color. This is called transillumination, and it can be quite beautiful. The picture I’ve attached here shows an example of what I’m talking about. The sky had some clouds, but I took this picture when the sun came out from behind theclouds and the bright backlighting was penetrating the red maple leaves. Even when the lighting conditions aren’t what you had hoped for, try to find something worth shooting. This is good practice in developing your photographic vision.

Jim Zuckerman www.jimzuckerman.com 3

GEOMETRICS T

here are many ways to create abstracts in Photoshop, and there are many different types of abstractions. Inspired by a student of mine, Endre Balogh (who is an incredible photographer and artist: www.EndresArt.com), I’ve been experimenting with geometric designs. In and of themselves, the graphic and symmetrical designs are beautiful and intriguing, and when you colorize them, distort them, and combine them with various photographic elements, the results can be quite compelling. The only limit to what you can do is your imagination and your knowledge

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of Photoshop.

There are different ways to begin the process.

1. Do a search online for ‘free geometric brushes for Photoshop’ and you’ll find many websites where you can download various types of unique, complex, and artistic shapes. The website I used for several of the images in this article is: http://www.sdwhaven.com/free-resources/sacred-geometry-symbol-photoshop-brushes/ Once the brushes are downloaded from the In-

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ternet (make sure you know where downloaded files go . . . I always put them on my desktop so they are easy to find), drag them into the brushes folder which is located in the presets folder within the Photoshop program. Here is the hierarchy of where you need to go: Applications > Photoshop > presets > brushes.

Once the brushes are loaded, you can access them by selecting the brush tool and then opening the menu for your brushes here: Window > brush presets. Choose one of the new brushes that should have loaded at the bottom of the list, select a brush size, and then click in a photo or a blank new file and you’ll see a graphic shape appear such as the one at upper right. This is a typical geomemtric design that is available online. I used this image as a component in the composite below. There are

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scores or even hundreds of designs you can find on the Internet.

2. In Photoshop, make a radial design out of an image or part of an image. This is done by selecting the image and copying it to the clipboard (Command/Ctrl C), pasting it into a solid color background (Command/Ctrl V),

and then rotating it (Edit > transform > rotate) and moving it in place with the move tool. The two photos at right illustrate what I’m talking about. I took a picture of smoke against a black background (it emanated from a single stick of incense and I used a portable flash off-camera for the light), selected it, and then created the radial design.

To create the colorful image below, I started with the radial smoke geometric design and then added color, a chrome filter, and for the edge spikes I selected the edge of the circular design including the entire black background and then applied Filter > stylize > extrude.

3. Create a fractal using various software programs such as Filter Forge and Ultra Fractal.

You can also find free fractal-generating soft-

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w

UPCOMING PHOTO WORKSHOPS Carnival in Venice, Italy Two tour dates, Feb. 2016

Outrageous costumes in a medieval environment! Venice is beautiful any time, but during carnival it’s beyond amazing.

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

Nov. 14 - 15, 2015

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

October 16-17, 2015

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ware online. Some fractals, like the one at right, are complex; others are more simple in design.

Once you have one you like, make a sketch of it.

The composites on pages 5 and 9 are examples of fractal designs turned into a sketch and then embellished with color or with the addition of another element. The inset image on page nine shows what I started with in creating the final composite-- this is a fractal that I turned into a sketch.

Here are the steps to turn any image into a sketch: 1. Open the photo in Photoshop with File > open.

2. Make a duplicate layer, Command or Ctrl J. 3. Open the hue/saturation dialog box, Image > adjustments > hue/saturation, and move the saturation slider all the way to the left. This con-

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verts the picture to black and white.

4. Make another duplicate layer, Command or Ctrl J, of the black and white image.

5. Invert the image using Image > adjustments > invert.

6. In the layers palette, go to the blend modes

(click the tab that says ‘normal’). In the submenu that unfolds, choose color dodge.

Here are some specific pathways in Photoshop to try on the geometric designs.

7. Finally, choose Filter > other > minimum.

In the dialog box that opens, select 3 or 4 or any number that makes the sketch look good to you. Now, flatten the layers with Layer > flatten image.

1. Paste the geometric design on a colorful background and use Filter > stylize > extrude on just the background.

Embellishments

2. Select the geometric design with the magic wand tool and use the gradient tool to add a color gradient to just the design itself.

Once you have a geometric design from any of the three techniques -- a geometric brush, a radial pattern, and/or a fractal sketch -- you can go in any artistic direction you want. The sky is the limit. Add gradients of color, extrude the background, go from positive to negative, distort the image with polar coordinates, add various effects such as kaleidoscopic patterns or chrome, paste other components into the design, and so on.

3. Select just the spaces in between the geometric design’s structure and add a gradient of color to them. To add a gradient to a selection, choose a color for the foreground box and another color for the background box -- both boxes being at the bottom of the tool palette -- and then click on the gradient tool. Make a duplicate layer of the photo, Command/Ctrl J, and drag the cursor across the image. Vary the length and angle of the drag and see how that

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changes the gradient.

4. Add another component such as a mannequin head, a silhouette, an eye, a floating sphere or cube, etc. To add an object, select it, choose Edit > copy, then highlight the geometric image and use Edit > paste or Edit > paste special > paste into (the latter command pastes the clipboard image into a selection).

5. Distort the image or any part of it by using one of the native Photoshop filters under the Filter > distort pulldown menu, such as spherize, polar coordinates, shear, or twirl.

6. Mirror a geometric image such as the composite on the following page.

7. Apply a kaleidoscope pattern to the geomet-

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ric design with one of the many kaleidoscope filters within Filter Forge (filterforge.com).

8. Use Filter > liquify to distort the geometric image in many different ways.

9. Use the Photoshop plugin Flood (made by flamingpear.com) to create a realistic reflection.

10. Use the rectangular marque tool to make a selection of a part of any image. Choose something with color and design. Next, go to Edit > define pattern, and then select an area of a photo into which the pattern will go.

Finally, choose Edit > fill. In the dialog box, use the dropdown menu and select pattern.

Hit OK, and a cool pattern will be placed into your selection. ยง

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NEW eBOOK One of the most important ingredients to great picture taking is lighting. Most of your pictures are taken with natural light, and that’s what this ebook addresses. You will learn to recognize the best types of lighting for the most stunning photography, which types of light to avoid, how to make the most out of bad lighting, how to expose perfectly every time even in tough situations, and how to deal with the constant problem of contrast.

If you are in any way insecure about your photography when it comes to using natural light, this easy to read ebook is a resource that you’ll feel is essential to your growth as a photographer.

Click the photo to see inside the ebook

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Balancing

Flash

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ne of the more challenging aspects of using flash photography outdoors is balancing the artificial light on the foreground subject with the ambient light in the background. If you don’t go through the process of arriving at a correct exposure on both parts of the image, the background typically becomes black as you can see in the picture of the nile crocodile I captured in Kenya.

This happens for two reasons: 1. Light falls off very quickly according to the inverse square law. This states that as the distance from the flash to the subject doubles, the

reduction in light is four times.

2. The closer the foreground subject is to the

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flash, the less light reaches the background. This happens because the light sensor in the flash detects that the foreground subject doesn’t need a lot of light because it’s so close.

Thus, the sensor shuts the flash off before the background is illuminated.

Flash output is regulated by the flash duration. This is the precise amount of time the flash tube is lit. With a foreground very close to the flash, the flash duration may be, for example, 1/1500th of a second.

With a more distant subject, the flash duration might be 1/400th. The greater amount of time the flash tube is on provides more light for the more distant subject. You can see that with a shorter flash duration, the light never reaches the background. That’s why so many flash pictures taken outdoors have black backgrounds.

ground. That might be obvious, but it requires you to make two distinct calculations.

In some instances, black backgrounds are fine.

For example, moths are typically nocturnal so a black background is appropriate. But in so many situations, a dark or black area behind the subject just doesn’t look right.

The first calculation is for the ambient light.

However, before you do that, two decisions

Two exposure calculations In order to understand how to balance the light from a flash with the ambient light on the background, you must realize that there are two different exposures to deal with: the exposure on the foreground and the exposure on the back16

Become a better photographer with

eBooks

Click on any ebook to see inside

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have to be made. You must determine how much depth of field you want, if any, and then you must decide on a shutter speed.

The speed of the shutter has to be the sync speed of the camera or slower. It can’t be faster. Most digital cameras will sync with a flash at 1/250th of a second or possibly 1/200. This means that in these brief periods of time, the shutter has to open fully, the flash fires, and the shutter closes. If you use a shutter speed faster than the sync speed, the shutter will open and close too fast, not allowing enough time for the flash to fire. If you try this -- say you shoot at 1/500th of a second with flash -- you’ll get a picture that is approximately half black and half photo. What you are seeing here is a part of the shutter intruding on the image. With a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second or more, the picture will be solid

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black because it opened and closed before the flash was fired.

So, let’s say you are shooting a costumed model in Venice during carnival, below. You would determine first what depth of field you wanted.

Since it was important to hold focus on the entire background to give a sense of place, and because the lens being used was 24-105mm set to 32mm, f/11 or f/16 was correct. I chose f/11.

The shutter speed has to be slow enough to sync with the flash but fast enough to get a sharp picture. I set the camera to aperture priorty at f/11 and took a light reading on the background using the in-camera meter. With an ISO of 400, the shutter speed turned out to be 1/60th of a second. That worked for me. Had the shutter speed been slower, I would have raised the ISO until the shutter was fast enough for a sharp pic-

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ture assuming I was hand holding the camera. are able to adjust the light on the foreground to If I were using a tripod, a much slower speed suit your taste. could be used.

To adjust the exposure on the background, in So, I determined the ambient exposure of f/11, manual exposure mode it’s a simple matter to 1/60, and 400 ISO. I now switched from aper- change the lens aperture. I don’t recommend ture priority to manual exposure mode, manu- changing the shutter speed unless you are very ally set the camera to these settings, and turned conscious about what you’re doing. It would be my attention to the flash unit. I put the flash on too easy, in the excitement of the moment with ETTL mode (iTTL for Nikon users), and took your attention riveted on the subject, to make the picture. The entire composition from front the shutter speed faster than the sync speed or to back was perfectly exposed with the depth of too slow to get a sharp picture. field of my choice.

In this way, you can make the background darkSince flash output can have flucuations, you er, like I did in the leopard shot at twilight, bemay have to tweak the exposure on the fore- low, so all of the attention stays on the subject; ground. To do this, use the flash exposure com- or you can adjust the background illumination pensation. You should become very familiar to match the foreground as I did in the photowith this feature on your flash and know how to graph of the margay in Costa Rica on the previadjust it quickly. In 1/3 f/stop increments, you ous page. §

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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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INDONESIA WILDLIFE & CULTURAL TOUR July 8 - 22, 2016

orangutans komodo dragons birds Bali ancient temples

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What’s wrong with this picture?

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ctually, there are many things wrong with this image. The background is terrible. The electrical conduits are ugly, the chimney coming from behind the model’s head is bad, the architecture isn’t especially an attractive backdrop, and the sky is too light. There are always exceptions, but generally you don’t want the background to be lighter than the subject or it vies for attention. The attention such stay focused on the subject instead of the background.

What I like about this shot is the low angled perspective. The 14mm ultra wide angle lens I used dramatized the perspective. When I took the shot, my goal was to get a strong image of the model and then in post-processing replace the background. The red fabric was very easy to cut out using the quick selection tool (this hides under the magic wand tool in the tools palette of Photoshop).

Once that was done, I used Select > modify > contract to move the selection 23

inward. I then feathered the edge of the selection with Select > modify > feather.

Contracting the selection guaranteed that nothing in the original background would be brought into the new picture, and feathering the edge by one pixel made the transition between the model and the new background perfect.

Once the selection was made, I used Edit > copy to place it in the clipboard, Photoshop’s temporary holding place for a photo or a portion of a photo. Then I selected a background -- I illustrate two of my choices above -- and chose Edit > paste. I then used the move tool to place the model according to my taste.

Note something important here. I used a 14mm lens from a low angle to photograph the costumed model, and therefore the background had to match. Both of the backgrounds you see here were taken with that same upward angle with the same 14mm lens. That helped make the composite more believable. Any other type of perspective on the background would have looked foolish and therefore not real. § 24

SHORT AND SWEET 1. When photographing young children, it can help to

have a prop -- toys, puppies or kittens, or anything for the kids to interact with. These things make the children relax and look more natural for the camera, and you can get some great poses and expressions.

3.

Macro photography requires, in most instances, complete depth of field. The reason we photograph small subjects with great detail is to reveal and appreciate that detail. The only way to capture it is with f/32. That means slow shutter speeds are necessary, and that means a tripod is crucial for sharp pictures.

2. The best and most complimentary type of

lighting for outdoor portraits is diffused light. When you photograph your subject(s) in the shade, under an overcast sky, or after the sun has gone down, the soft lighting makes everyone look more attractive.

4. Sepia is a beautiful look.

Many third party software plugins like Nik’s Silver Efex Pro allow you to do this, or you can just use Photoshop: Image > adjustments > hue/saturation, and move the saturation slider all the way to the left. Then use Image > adjustments > color balance, and add a bit of yellow and red. §

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Photography Tours 2016 - 2017 CARNIVAL IN VENICE Feb, 2016

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS Mar, 2016

WHITE HORSES, FRANCE April, 2016

CROATIA, SLOVENIA, MONT. May, 2016

ARMENIA & GEORGIA June 2016

INDONESIA July 2016

KENYA migration Aug. 2016

CHINA Sept. 2016

GREECE Oct. 2016

AMERICAN SOUTHWEST Oct. 2016

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THE PANTANAL, BRAZIL Nov. 2016

PATAGONIA Apr. 2017

For a complete list of all the photo tours/workshops Jim conducts, go to his website: www.jimzuckerman.com. 6

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Recommended Plugins

am often asked what plugin filters I use and recommend, so I thought I’d compile a list of them with some examples of what they can do. There are many, many more available than I mention here, but these are the ones I use all the time.

1. Flood: flamingpear.com. This is my favorite plugin. It makes realistic bodies of water and believable reflections as in the image, below.

2. Filter Forge: filterforge.com. This is a collection of more than 11,000 filters (really) that span the gamut from kaleidoscopic patterns to chrome, watercolor effects, perspective planes, simulated ice, and much more. If you like special effects, this is the mother-of-all-software packages.

3. Topaz Simplify: topazlabs.com. This is another type of painterly style that looks very much like watercolor paintings.

4. Color Efex Pro 4: google.com/nikcollection/. This is a suite of filters that embellish and enhance original photos. The image above

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of the Roman ruins of Volubilis in Morroco is just one example.

5. Silver Efex Pro: Nik Software. Any image can be converted into black and white or sepia with this plugin.

6. Topaz Remask 4: topazlabs.com. For separating subjects with hair like the great Pyrenees puppies, below, this is the best tool we have.

For this plugin to be successful, though, there has to be enough contrast between the hair and the background. In this shot, the background behind the puppies in the original picture was a piece of black velvet.

7. Topaz Impression: topazlabs.com. I wrote about this in last month’s issue -- it turns photos into beautiful impressionist paintings like the Eiffel Tower image, right.

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8. Portrait Professional: portraitprofessional. com. This is a wonderful tool to smooth skin, eliminate wrinkles and blemishes, and if you want to take the plugin to an extreme, you can make a person’s skin look like porcelain. I did that with the portrait of an Indian young lady on the next page. You can also change the shape of the face, the eyes, and the mouth. §

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PHOTO TOUR

to

THE PANTANAL

November 2 - 10, 2016

Jaguars in the wild • Unparalled exotic birds • Giant caiman

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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 took this shot of an unusual cloud formation, and my histogram showed spiking on the right.

My understanding is that this should never happen. Are there times when an exposure can be considered acceptable with a spike on the right?

Tess Johnson, Rye, New York

A:

A spike on the right in a histogram means complete overexposure, i.e it indicates that somewhere in the picture there is a solid white area with no texture or detail. The photographic term we use to describe this is ‘blown out’. In most cases, this is not acceptable. However, when you include the sun in the composition, the histogram will always show spiking on the right because the sun itself is blown out with no texture or detail. This is perfectly fine.

This same phenomenon occurs when you are shooting a city at night. Bright lights such as street lamps and the headlights of cars will become blown out when you expose for the darker areas of the composition. The histogram will show a right hand spike as well but the image may very well be perfectly exposed. §

© Tess Johnson 2015

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KENYA PHOTO SAFARI August 4 - 15, 2016 The greatest concentration of wildlife on the planet - The Migration

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Photographing Interiors

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here are five things you should do when photographing interiors in order to get the best results. They are:

1. Use the HDR technique. This is the only way you can capture complete detail in all of the shadows as well as the highlights. This will prevent the outdoors from appearing blown out in the windows. With HDR, if windows are included in the shot, you’ll be able to see all of the detail that you can see with your eyes.

2. Use a wide angle lens. A wide angle lens encompasses as much as possible, even in small

rooms. I suggest 16mm on a full frame sensor camera, or 10mm to 12mm on a cropped sensor camera. To minimize keystoning with a wide lens, make the back of the camera as parallel as possible with the walls.

3. Use complete depth of field. Shallow depth of field with architecture usually doesn’t work.

I recommended f/22 or f/32. This means a tripod is necessary, obviously.

4. Turn on all the lights. This creates a lovely ambience, and at the same time the lights fill in shadows and they create attractive focal

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points. This also enables you to take pictures of interior rooms that look inviting. The last thing you want to do is use on-camera flash for an interior, and with all of the indoor fixtures turned on, you won’t have to use flash at all.

If you do want to use flash, that requires several flash units placed strategically around the room. This is much more difficult than using the available incandescent light fixtures.

5. Use tungsten (or indoors) white balance so the artificial lights will be correctly color balanced. They may still have a warmth to them (i.e. a yellowish color bias) if the incandescent bulbs are old, but the colors in the room will be close to what you see with your eyes. The light coming in from the windows will be on the blusih side, but in this context that’s acceptable. As long as the main part of the picture -- the interior -- shows good color, that’s what matters. § 34

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AMERICAN SOUTHWEST photo tour October 7 - 16, 2016

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Student Showcase Each month, Jim features one student who took beautiful and inspiring images on one or more 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.

Margaret Page, Midland, Georgia South Africa/Botswana, American Southwest, Spain/Portugal,

Namibia, and Morocco

Š 2015 Margaret Page

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Student Showcase, continued

Š 2015 Margaret Page

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Student Showcase, continued

Š 2015 Margaret Page

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PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP in my home

Sat. & Sun., Oct. 17 - 18, 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, 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

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 or with a GPS. 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 2015 email: photos@jimzuckerman.com mail address: P.O. Box 7, Arrington, TN 37014