My new 4- week and 8-week on-Line courses begin tomorrow, February 6. It's still not too late to sign up.
I teach several 8-week and 4-week courses on-line for Betterphoto.com
The way the courses work is this. Every Wednesday, you receive a lesson that consists of text and photos, explaining various principles in either photography or digitral manipulation. At the end of each lesson there is an assignment, and you have plenty of time to take pictures and upload them for my critique. You can use photos you did specifically for the assignment or images that you have taken previously.
On-line photo courses are like virtual classrooms but not in real time. Other students can see your pictures, read my critiques, and comment on your work. Similarly, you can comment on the pictures of other students.
One of the wonderful things about these on-line courses is that students participate from all over the world. In a single lesson's uploads, you may see pictures from Bryce Canyon or Brazil, or from Singapore or South Carolina. It's a very simulating environment as well as a learning experience, and it will help you become the photographer or digital artist that you want to be.
On the Betterphoto.com website, you can read the lesson outline of each course and see sample photos. In addition to going to Betterphoto.com, you can also access the courses I teach drectly by going to my website, jimzuckerman.com, and clicking on the link 'Courses'. at the top of the home page.
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Message
The company that made one of the best Photoshop plug-ins, Buzz,
has gone out of business. Instead of selling the technology, they have just disappeared. If you want to get this plug-in now, you have to know someone who has it. If you don't already know about this filter, on my website (jimzuckerman.com) all the images in the 'Fine Art Color' category were done with Buzz.
If you don't know anyone who has Buzz and you want it, drop me a note and let me know if you have a PC or a Macintosh computer and I'll email it to you along with the password.
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White Balance: is AWB the best choice?
Many photographers use AWB (auto white balance) as the main setting for all their picture taking. Theoretically this is supposed to give you the correct colors for all situations -- or at least the colors that you saw with your eyes.
The truth is that AWB is not the best solution in all cases. For daylight shooting from, say, 9 am to 4pm, AWB is fine. White light will be interpreted correctly and you will be happy with the results. However, when you shoot at sunrise or sunset, the AWB setting will 'correct' the beautiful golden illumination that we are so accustomed to seeing, and that we like so much, and it will make the yellowish light look white. A sunset devoid of the rich, warm colors seems dead, and I think you may realize that something is wrong but perhaps you may not put your finger on the problem. The best choice for shooting at this time of day is the 'daylight' white balance setting. The will give you the golden light when the sun is low in the sky, and it will also produce correct colors throughout the rest of the day.
It's true that if you shoot in RAW format, you can tweak the color temperature. In other words, if your sunsets are not golden, you can make them just as they would have been had you used 'daylight' white balance. However, if you take pictures in jpeg mode, you can't bring the image back to what we normally think of as golden lighting with any degree of accuracy.
When shooting indoors with tungsten lights, an AWB setting usually won't give you a good color balance either. The pictures are often too yellow/red. I find that the 'tungsten' white balance is much more accurate.
The only time that I use AWB is when I shoot fluorescent or mercury vapor lights. In traditional film photography, these types of artificial lights always produced a strange green/blue coloration (see the photo in the shopping mall below) over the entire picture. With digittal technology, we can reproduce fluorescent and mercury vapor lights as a white light. I feel it is here that AWB really does well.
If you use a daylight white balance setting and shoot subjects in shade, the results will have a bluish color bias. The deeper the shade, the deeper will be the color blue in the picture. The reason this happens is because the color temperature of shade is high -- anywhere from 6000 to 8000 degrees Kelvin -- and the white balance setting for daylight is 5500 degrees Kelvin (Kelvin is a temperature scale like Celsius and Fahrenheit where absolute zero, i.e. no molecular movment, is zero degrees Kelvin). You can eliminate the blue cast by using the 'cloudy' white balance setting or, if your camera can be set for a specific Kelvin temperature, a good choice would be 6500 K.
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Self-Critique
I took the photos below on the Swiss photo workshop last summer. During the summer months in the Alps, the wildflowes are truly incredible. On the Heart of Europe photo tour that I'll be leading this July, we will spend some quality time in the spectacular mountains photographing dozens of species of flowers.
The top photo that you see below was taken in direct sunlight. We had taken a cable car up into the Jungfrau region, but because the sky was clear direct sunlight illuminated the flowers. I like the first photo -- the one taken in direct sunlight -- because of the frame-filling composition, the color and the depth of field. However, the harsh sunlight isn't ideal. The dark shadows draw attention away from the blossoms and they interefere graphically with the subjects.
The second photo was taken is soft, diffused light I simply leaned over the flowers and let my body block the sunlight. This reduced the amount of light, of course, and it made the use of a tripod necessary if I wanted a lot of depth of field, which I did. Notice the lighting, though. The soft light is very flattering and yet the colors are still rich and beautiful. I maintain that diffused light, whether it be the shade of a building or in the open under a cloudy sky, is the best way to shoot flowers.
If I wanted to make a fine art print of one of these flowers, I'd never chose the one lit by direct sunlight. It would definitely be the photo taken in the shaded light.
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Kenya Photo Safari
I will be again leading a photo tour to Kenya next year, from Sept. 21 - Oct. 7, 2008. The tour last month was incredible, and everyone got awesome pictures on a daily basis. We stay in wonderful lodges with excellent food, and every day we have such amazing experiences being up close
 and personal with lions, cheetahs, leopards, elephants, giraffes, and so much more. My co-leader, Paul Renner, is a wonderful guy and speaks fluent Swahili because he grew up in Tanzania. He helps make sure the tour runs smoothly, and his relationship with the tribal people helps us get great shots of both the Maasai and Samburu people.
This is a great season to go to East Africa because there are lots of animals, and they are very easy to find. This isn't always the case. The climate is very pleasant, even though we are on the Equator, since the elevation averages about 5000 to 6000 feet.
Each day brings new adventure. On the last trip, we saw about 9 or 10 lion matings in the Maasai Mara, and we saw leopards every day in
 Samburu National Reserve. On one special day in Sweetwater, we had a close encounter with a tame black rhino and were able to get wide angle head shots! And the bird life is amazing. At Lake Nakuru, there were literally millions of flamingos, and at a distance the lake looked pink!
For futher information, here is a link that gives you the itinerary and pricing:
http://www.rennerimages.com/safaris/KenyaSept4-202008.htm
Please note that the price includes airfare from Los Angeles. If you live closer to Africa, for example on the East Coast of the U.S. the airfare will be adjusted accordingly. Also note that we have only 3 people per vehicle, and this makes a huge difference in mobility within the vehicle to shoot from any angle.
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On a photo safari or any trip abroad, I highly recommend that you never check your photo gear. One lady on this last Kenya trip had all her camera gear stolen (fortunately) on the return flight home. She checked her camera bag and she retrieved it at her final destination minus all the gear. Airline travel is challenging now because in many cases we are limited to a reduced weight and sometimes just one carry-on. The solution is use a photo jacket and stuff the pockets with a couple of lenses, re-chargers, etc. Jackets are not considered carry-ons and I've never seen one weighed.
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Heart of Europe Photo Tour
There are two spaces left.
Next summer, I will be leading a 10 day photography trip to five different countries in Europe -- Switzerland, Germany, France, Lichtenstein, and Luxembourg. The dates are July 26 to August 3, 2008.
In a relatively small geographic area, we will see and photograph breathtaking mountain landscapes, classically beautiful medieval castles, dramatic waterfalls (one of which is inside a rocky gorge), villages at twilight, and awesome cathedrals.
The trip is limited to 10 people, and we will stay in beautiful properties as well as a magnificent castle along the Rhine for two nights. You will return home with stunning pictures for sure.
For a detailed itinerary, pricing and more photos, please click on this link:
http://www.lpworkshops.com/
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