Southern Exposure May 2012

FEATURES FEATURES Janet Boschker Marketing In Your Neighborhood

Karen Howlett-York Highlights and Shadows

Victoria Kelly

Fun with Snapseed

Cover Art Her Majesty

by Michael Potthast

GALLERY GALLERY

Each month, Southern Exposure magazine will feature images from the annual affiliated judging. All images in the “Gallery� scored 80 or higher and have earned a credit toward the SEPPA degree (SPF).

Loan collection images earn one additional credit.

Brent Kepner Down on the Farm

Rose Mary Cheek Mountain Fog

Keely Deuschle Peaceful Escape

Stan Jones Snow Day

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Chairman of the Board

Mary Alice Ross maryaliceross@gmail.com

Delaware

President

Doug Peninger ncdoug01@triadbiz.rr.com

District of Columbia

1st Vice-President

George Singleton george.singleton6@verizon.net

Florida

2nd Vice-President

Anthony Rumley anthony@anthonyrumley.com

Georgia

Secretary/Treasurer

Kevin Jiminez kevinjiminez@aol.com

Salon Exhibition Chair

Jessica Vogel jvogel@shelbywireless.net

Executive Director

Thomas McCollum seppa@comcast.net

Southern Exposure

***Paula Mignogno Peggy Parkinson

***Donna Campiz Kaye Newsome ***Sherri Noftsinger Jill Stringfellow

Maryland

***Vanessa Ard David Corry

Mississippi/Alabama

North Carolina

Ad Sales & Business Manager Thomas McCollum seppa@comcast.net 888-272-3711 Article & Ad Submission 5th of each month

South Carolina Tennessee

Virginia

On-Line Publication 1st of each month

SEPPA

2712 Marcia Drive Lawrenceville, GA 30044 888-272-3711 www.4seppa.com Acceptance of advertising does not carry with it endorsement by the publisher. Opinions expressed by Southern Exposure or any of its authors does not neccesarily reflect the positions of the Southeastern Professional Photographers Association.

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West Virginia

***Andrew Lamb Gil Brady ***Paul Wingler Janet Boschker

Southern Exposure magazine is an online publication of SEPPA and is published monthly.

Editor Doug Peninger NCDOUG01@triadbiz.rr.com 336-883-7104

***Anthony Marill Joe Tessmer

***Clark Berry Greg Martin ***Mac Brown Barbara White ***Sharon Younce Robert Holman ***Brent Kepner Christie Kepner

***state president representative

Additional information of state events within the SEPPA Affiliate can be found using the state links below. Please view their websites by clicking on the web address and you will be re-directed.

Delaware www.delawarephotographers.com

District of Columbia www.ppsgw.org

Mississippi/Alabama www.ppma.net

North Carolina www.ppofnc.com

South Carolina

Florida

www.ppofsc.com

www.fpponline.org

Georgia

www.gppa.com

Maryland

www.marylandppa.com

SEPPA is a regional affiliate of Professional Photographers of America and hosts an annual District Image Judging.

To learn more about PPA, click the PPA Logo.

Tennessee www.tnppa.com

Virginia

www.vppa.org

West Virginia www.ppwv.org

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Doug Peninger: SEPPA President ncdoug01@triadbiz.rr.com

It’s May “It’s May, it’s May, the lusty month of May.” Am I the only one who remembers those lyrics from the famed musical “Camelot.” I had the great priveledge of playing the ingenue character of Lancelot in a local prodution of this Broadway hit. Did I have to cultivate a French accent? Oui, but of course. I must admit, as the reviewer commented as well, my accent was a bit on the Pepe L’Piu side. Oh, well. At least I gave it my best effort. That’s what you can do as well.

Janet Bosckher is on a mission! When you read through her article about marketing within your neighborhood, you will be inspired. The images are colorful and truly represent the charm and feel of her part of uptown Charlotte.

Our gadget maven, Victoria Kelly shows another hip and cool camera trick using Snapseed, If you have not downloaded this app, do it, do it today. You will thank VIctoria later. As she always says “who loves ya baby?”

For all you Photoshop experts, Karen York gives a great tutorial using highlight and shadow. I know it’s a trick I use all the time, well if the mood hits.

So what does this month have to do with lust? I’m not sure. I always think of that funny song when May comes along. Of course there is always June, but it won’t “bust out all over” for another four weeks.

Doug Peninger SEPPA President Editor

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The SEPPA Board of Governors, at the 2010 meeting in Franklin, TN, approved the all new SEPPA Degree Program.

The Southeastern Photographic Fellowship is now a reality!

You can earn your new SPF Degree in two categories.

The orange ribbon is earned with a concentration in print credits, the purple ribbon with a concentration in service to the organzation.

The requirements for both options are completed with education and/or service credits.

You may also achieve both Degrees, signafied by a purple and orange ribbon.

SEPPA will post the Credit Chart and submission forms at a later date.

Be sure to check back.

All events, beginning April 1, 2010 will be eligible to submit for credit.

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SOUTHERN EXPOSURE MAY 2012

Shop 7 14 23 30

Millers Academy Productions White House Michel Company

Attend 6 10 15 22 26 27 31

Learn

Florida School 2013 SEPPA Covention PPNC Spring Seminar

Imaging USA 2013 Lamarr School TPPA Reniassance

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Janet Boschker Marketing In Your Neighborhood

Karen Howlett-York Highlights and Shadows

Victoria Kelly

Fun with Snapseed

Georgia School 5

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Janet Boschker

jbnlight@aol.com

MARKETING Yourself to Your Community

One thing that has always been difficult for me is self promotion. It always felt a little too much like bragging to me‌ and that was something I was taught not to do as a child.

Janet continues on page 12.

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Back in the good old days (the 90s) everything came easy… word of mouth was sufficient and business boomed. Today, as we all know, things are very different with the internet… if you don’t get the word out how great you are, you are dead in the water….

Word of mouth has gone online! If you don’t believe that you are kidding yourself. Just as an example, yesterday I arrived in Danville, CA to take a workshop. I got off the plane, got in my rental car, put the address of the hotel in my iPhone, and voila – I arrived. But wait, I had been traveling for 8 hours and wouldn’t it be nice to get a relaxing pedicure before I checked into my hotel? I spied one across the street that looked inviting, went in and was told there were no available appointments, but they could check at their other location that was just a few exits up the highway…. Uh, no thanks, I said, isn’t there one closeby? No was the response. I left, got in my car and entered “nail salon” into the iPhone and guess what? There were 4 within one mile! I stopped at the closest one, got my pedi and realized that a few years ago I would have had no choice but to either give up on that idea, drive around aimlessly looking for a salon (not appealing after having traveled all day and driven an hour in traffic already) or accept the recommendation of the girl at the desk. That is just how easy it is to research and find exactly what you are looking for these days.

What’s a studio owner to do? Recently I attended my neighborhood association meeting and it was mentioned that articles were needed for the upcoming newsletter. Hmmmm……. I had already decided to purchase an ad at the rediculously low price of $50.00 per issue and I thought, why not volunteer to write about local small businesses in the neighborhood? I could give them a much needed plug and include a few pictures of the location and the proprietor to generate interest in supporting local instead of big box, something that is very near and dear to my heart, and popular among young people these days. A win-win for everyone! I made the offer and it was enthusiastically accepted.

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I am including the photographs I took for the first article I wrote about a little shop called Ecolisious. I noticed it had opened last summer and had meant to stop in and check it out. As busy as I am, it’s hard for me to get to the things I want to do and this gave me a reason to stop in. The little shop was being overcome by the construction of new sidewalks and I figured they could use a boost to increase awareness of what they were about and generate some new traffic for them even with all the construction going on that most likely was a deterrent for passersby. They were thrilled that I had thought of them and excited to be featured. As we talked about their business, I thought I should go ahead and submit the same article to all the surrounding neighborhood associations that I knew of, since everyone needs content for newsletters, websites and blogs.

Guess what? I was right! By donating the article and offering to purchase an ad in their newsletter (this is a very cheap way to promote your business) I was not only being seen as someone who cared about other small businesses, I was getting to feature my own photography in a different way, making friends with business owners who could refer me to their best clients, and advertise inexpensively what I do to my target market, all while having fun!

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Coming for July....

COMING FOR JULY The 2012 SEPPA District Court of Honor & Loan Collection

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Karen Howlett-York

karenloree@embarqmail.com

Bring Out the Details with

Highlight & Shadow Have you ever had one of those sessions with dark black or navy clothing? Or, dark background, dark clothing and dark hair? Or, the sweet light is almost gone and you need one more image? Sometimes when color correcting an image it’s hard to get separation in certain areas that are flat, washed out or have dark sections and keep the detail.

Adjusting the shadows, highlights and contrast of an image will help show all that detail in the image that appears to be missing or blending together. This correction will give your image snap appeal, intensify color and a more crafted look.

The Shadow/Highlight adjustment command is great for correcting these problems. These overall adjustments will clarify your image and give you good separation in the highlights and shadows. It’s similar to the Fill Light and Recovery sliders in Adobe Lightroom, but it has additional controls so you can fine-tune the results.

Although you can’t apply the Shadow/Highlight setting as an adjustment layer, in CS5 you can use it as a Smart Filter. I recommend using the Shadow/ Highlight adjustment early in your workflow, as one of the first steps so you can use Shadow/Highlight as a Smart Filter. By doing this, you will be able to change the setting multiple times like an adjustment layer. A layer mask can also be added to target certain areas that you want to change.

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1. Open image in Photoshop 2. Duplicate Image (Control J or Command J) 3. Adjust with levels or curves for any basic adjust ments.

4. Choose Layer>Smart Objects> Convert to Smart Object (Image 1) 5. Go to Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight 6. Click Show More Options to get the full menu.

Move the slider bars to adjust the lighting on the subjects. Moving the slider to the right lightens the shadows or darkens the highlights. Be sure to check the preview box so you will see results of your corrections.

7. Shadows Section (Image 2) Amount- This image has dark and light areas. Move the amount to 20%. This lightens the whole image.

Move slider to begin seeing separation of shadow tones. Be careful when adjusting the shadows as not to create noise in the image. Remember, shadows happen naturally and images look abnormal when they are completely removed. The higher the percentage the lighter the shadows.

Tonal Width controls the tonal range for shadow correction of dark to lighter areas. For this image I will use 35%. If you see halo or artifacts reduce the setting for a smoother transition.

Radius controls the size of the area affected around each pixel of the shadow area. It’s best to adjust this per image, as it will brighten the whole image versus the subject area. I am setting it to 155 pixels.

Image 1 Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

8. Highlights Section (Image 3) Amount - Move slider to see light areas darken. Be sure to fix areas of hair or clothing if those change with your corrections. Here we want to boost our colors and darken some of the light areas. We will set this amount at 50%. The higher the percentage the darker the highlights.

Tonal Width-controls the tonal range for highlight correction from light to darker areas. Do not overdo this as it will create halos around the edge of the subjects.

Radius-this controls the size of the area affected around each pixel in the highlight area. I am setting this to 200 pixels to avoid halos around the subject.

9. Adjustments Section (Image 4) Color Correction- this control enables you to correct the colors in only the adjusted portions of your image. New colors are revealed as a result when you increase or decrease the Shadows or Highlights. The image is more saturated so we will set it to +18.

Midtone Contrast-this adjusts areas in the mid tone range. You can increase and decrease the contrast of the image by moving the slider to the left or right. Working in this range will give you more contrast in the mid tone range and will lighten the highlights and darken the shadows. I want a little more contrast so I am setting this to +20.

This area specifies how much of the shadows (black) and highlights (white) are clipped to the new shadow (level 0) and highlight (level 255) colors in the image. This causes the remaining levels to be redistributed between the brightness levels of 0 and 255. With higher percentages it will increase the tonal range and give more contrast, but if the value is too high it will cause poor detail in the shadows and highlights.

Black Clip These clips will affect how greatly the shadows and highlights are clipped to the new adjustments in the image. Do not overdo this, as it will reduce the detail in these areas. I am setting this to 5%.

White Clip For this image I do not need to change this setting for the highlights.

10. Once you have this like you want, you may choose to save these settings and use later on similar images from the session. To do so click Save and name setting. You can also change settings and Save As Default, so theses settings will come up each time.

11. Click OK to apply settings. (Image 5) I like seeing all the range of detail in the shadows and highlights of an image. This correction will give you more satisfaction with your images when printed by having more separation in these specific areas. All images are different so you will need to experiment a little to understand how much to correct. Remember a little goes a long way and with some practice this will become one of your favorite features to bring new life to your images. (Show images for other examples Image 6, 7, 8, 9, on next page)

Image 5

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Image 6

Image 7

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Image 8

Image 9

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Floor: Harrison Lime Green

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Images © Vicki Taufer

Backdrops by WHCC aims to be the premier resource for photographic backdrops and floors. Utilizing the latest printing technologies, we are able to provide Backdrops and Floors at a far lower price with a much faster turnaround time than our competitors. Our Backdrops and Floors ship within 2–3 days after purchase with free ground shipping anywhere in the United States.

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Backdrop: Wall Paint Lavender Floor: Charles

Backdrop: Reflection Watercolor Floor: Wallace Green

Backdrop: Venetian Breeze Floor: Edward

Backdrop: Venetian Breeze Floor: Thomas

Floor: Charles

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Victoria Kelly

vkelly@victoriakellyphotography.com

Fun with

Snapseed

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Do you ever make photographs just for fun? You know what I’m talking about...not for a client or a specific job, just because it made you feel good? And I’m not talking about dragging out the “big” camera...these are images you make on the fly with your iPhone or Android or even your iPad...

Victoria continues on page 28.

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July 15th ~19th 2012 Hanson Fong Jen Hillenga Ken Sklute Louis Tonsmeire Jr. Phil Scarsbrook Clark Berry

Business, pleasure, and a lot of learning!

Classes start July 15th 2012 on the campus of the University of South Carolina in the capital city of Columbia South Carolina.

Register now at:

www.thelamarrschool.com 26

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minutes or so between shoots and I had been noticing a stand of trees behind where I was shooting.

I took my iPad outside, captured a quick image and made a promise to myself that I would take my new app for a test drive with the tree image when I had a few minutes to play.

Cowabunga! I was immediately impressed with how clean the user interface is. All the tools are clearly named and run along the bottom or side of the iPad depending on which way it’s turned. And they work essentially the same as they do in their desktop counterparts. There’s Auto Correct, Selective Adjust (one of my faves, by the way), straighten and rotate...there’s even a tool for Vintage Film, Grunge and Organic Frames.

Once I get an image where I want it, I can save it AND share it via email, Flickr, Facebook or Twitter.

Or I can print it to an AirPrint printer. Wow. In the time it takes to say “i-can’t-believe-howGREAT-this is” I was totally hooked like a kid in a candy store. Let’s try textures!

Wait...try THIS! I wonder if it can do THAT!

I was looking through my iPhone recently and realized that I have over a thousand “just for fun” images that I’ve made over the last two years. There are my San Antonio images (because I didn’t want to take my studio camera to iUSA), my New Orleans images (again, I couldn’t persuade myself to take yet another bag) and the “required” pictures of flowers and trees that I see on my morning run that are pretty and I want to capture.

And...then what? Well...I discovered Snapseed. I’ve been a fan of NIK Software for quite a while...I can’t live without Silver Efex, Color Efex and Viveza is just phenomenal. But I will admit I was intrigued with the notion of so much power tucked into an app that will run on my Apple gadgets.

I was absolutely floored with the first image I took into Snapseed--I was at a client location with 10

And then I took it to the school where I teach. My 8th graders are getting ready for our annual print competition and most of them were at various places in the process.

One of my students, Kathryn, was pondering whether to enter an image of an old barn or a bicycle and the lightbulb of an idea went off in my head.

I asked Kathryn to open the image of the barn on her computer. I launched Snapseed on my iPad and snapped an image of the computer screen and we started to experiment--first with Kathryn’s barn, then with Liz’s river...we spent the remainder of the class period trying different techniques...and the best part? I know that every student in my class will end their school year a little richer for having looked at “what if” to follow their own artistic vision.

Ahh...

I love my job.

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GALLERY GALLERY

Each month, Southern Exposure magazine will feature images from the annual affiliated judging. All images in the “Gallery� scored 80 or higher and have earned a credit toward the SEPPA degree (SPF).

Loan collection images earn one additional credit.

Dorma Tabisz The Meadows Heartbeat

Robert Harris Brewing Winter Storm 32

David Huntsman Window Rock

Cheri MacCallum Storm on the Homefront 33