ON-LINE PHOTO INSTRUCTION-- with critiques of your work
My new 4-week on-line courses begin again on Wednesday, February 4. I have a new 4 week course in Stock Photography that might interest you. As a professional photographer, the best thing I ever did was join a stock photo agency.
Betterphoto.com, the company for whom I teach these on-line courses, is going back to a quarterly schedule. Starting this year, the 8-week courses will repeat every quarter, not every month. The next series of 8-week courses therefore will start on Wednesday, April 1st.
Do you want to make money in photography? Want to feel more confident in exposure? Interested in learning more about Photoshop (like putting fireworks in the sky or removing lens flare). Are you insecure about your compositional skills?
I teach several 8-week and 4-week courses on-line. The way the courses work is this. Every Wednesday, you receive a lesson that consists of text and photos, explaining various principles in photography, marketing your work, digital manipulation, or whatever subject you are studying. 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. It is a unique and wonderful learning experience.
One of the great 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 stimulating environment, and it will help you become the photographer or digital artist that you would like to be.
On the Betterphoto.com website, you can read the lesson outline of each course and see sample photos. In addition, you can also access the courses I teach drectly by going to my website, jimzuckerman.com, and clicking on the link 'On-line Photo Courses'. at the top of the home page.
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WINTER BLUES
Photographers go to great pains to eliminate the blue cast from their landscapes. Blue is associated with photographing in deep shade, twilight, and under an overcast sky. Warmer tones are often preferred, and in the past photographers used warming filters to neutralize the blue. Now it's a simple matter of adjusting the white balance on the camera or you can make the adjustment in Bridge or Lightroom if you shoot RAW files. The blue can be eliminated and warmer colors can be chosen.
However, I have never understood why so many people want to get rid of a deep blue color cast in their landscapes. I always thought it was beautiful. The photo above was taken along the Rogue River in Oregon at twilight. I was still shooting film at the time, and it was almost dark. I remember taking a 20 second exposure just to see what would happen, but I wasn't expecting much because it was so dark. When I got the film back I was astonished at the richness of color on the transparency and how the image looked like it was taken during the day. There is no way I would want to warm this up or even make it neutral in tone. I think the blue makes the shot.
 Similarly, the ice structure seen
here was the result of a hose running in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in January. I captured the sun coming right through the ice and the colors turned out to be amazing.
If there isn't enough blue in the original picture, sometimes I'll enhance the image digitally to add what I feel gives impact to the shot. For example, the photo below of Yosemite was altered this way. Blue connotes cold, and for winter landscapes in particular I think it is not only artistic but it seems appropriate on a viseral level.
 You can set your white balance to a lower Kelvin temperature setting (like 3200K) or use the 'tungsten' option to get blue pictures outdoors, but I prefer to do it in Photoshop because of the control I have. Sometimes, though, even when using a daylight white balance setting I'll record winter subjects in blue or cyan, such as the ice fall in Michigan's Upper Peninsula seen below. I did nothing to get this effect. It was simply how deep shade is recorded either on film or on a digital chip.
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Great News: Buzz has been resurrected!
In a newsletter last summer, I mentioned that one of the best Photoshop plug-in filters, Buzz, was no longer available. The company that made it just disappeared without selling it to anyone. Because computer systems are updated all the time, Buzz was no longer able to be used on the newer operating systems for both PCs and Mac.
Now, Topaz Labs has figured out how to create the same effect using their own algorithms. It is called Topaz Simplify, and you can experiment with it using a free demo download. Here is the direct link:
http://www.topazlabs.com/topazlabs/03products/topaz_simplify/
This is an inexpensive filter for what it does. The effects are breathtaking, and the images look very much like paintings. Here are a few examples. If you like turning your photos into paintings, this is one of the easiest plug-ins to use, and it's one of the most exciting.
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Photo tip of the Month
If you like the look of a telephoto macro lens, such as a 100mm macro or a 180mm macro, and you don't want to buy another lens, I have a solution for you.
Telephoto macros have the advantage of enabling you to fill the frame with a small subject while you are shooting from a greater distance away than you'd use when shooting with a 50mm macro. This is crucial for subjects like butterflies, for example, because usually they don't allow a close approach. With a telephoto macro lens, you can be perhaps five feet away and fill the frame with them. Also, telephoto macros blur the background more due to their shallow depth of field, and they also create a feeling of compression that many photographers like.
If you have a medium telephoto or even a zoom, like a 70-200mm, you can place one or more extension tubes between the body and the lens and instantly you will have all of the characteristics of a telephoto macro lens. There is no degradation of image quality because tubes don't introduce any additional glass. There is, though, some light loss but the same thing happens when using any device that magnifies the subject this much. It's just one of those laws of physics that we can't get away from.
In the recent poison dart frog and reptile workshop I gave in St. Louis last month (the next one will be on August 15, 16, also in St. Louis), I experimented with a Canon 65mm 5x macro lens. As I zoomed in extremely close to the tiny frogs (you can see how tiny some of them are in the photo above of the pencil and the frog), I lost light just as if I had been using an extension tube.
With an extension tube placed on a 70-200mm f/2.8 IS Canon lens, I could fill much of the frame with a frog's foot while standing 4 or 5 feet away. You can use one, two, three or more tubes between the camera body and lens, and as the lens gets pushed further from the body with the use of more tubes the magnification increases ... and so does the light loss. That's why you need to use flash for this kind of work because it provides so much light. It allows you to use a small aperture even with all the light loss.
 During the workshop,
I encouraged people to use either a ring
flash or a two flash
system, one on either side of the camera. When working very close to the small subjects, this provided the best light. When I used the 70-200mm telephoto and an extension tube, though, the camera was further from the subject. That meant that I could use a normal on-camera flash. In this case, I used the Canon 580EX.
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MAY 2,3 PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP IN MY HOME
Both the February 7, 8 and March 28,29 Photoshop workshops in my home have been sold out, so I am offering it again on Saturday and Sunday, May 2, 3. Photographers have never had such a remarkably creative tool to manipulate imagery, and knowing how to use Photoshop is one of the most exciting things you could ever learn in photography. I love working in Photoshop, and it's exciting for me to teach it. I know that learning this program can be intimidating, but it's not hard. Really. There is a lot to remember, but going over each action two or three times is what you need to imprint the information in your brain. I will walk you through many of the most important parts of Photoshop, and you won't believe what you'll be able to do with your pictures.
The fee of $450 will include instruction from 9 to 5 on both days, two lunches and one wonderful dinner provided by my wife (who is an amazing cook). I will provide a list of nearby hotels where you can stay. I will also shuttle you back and forth to my home as well as pick you up from the airport if you fly in.
This workshop is for beginners who know nothing (or very little) about Photoshop, but it very quickly gets into intermediate and even advanced techniques. Photoshop can't be taught in a linear fashion, like math. It doesn't work like that. For example, you don't have to know how to use the clone tool -- a basic function of Photoshop -- to do layer masks. Similarly, you can learn how to add what looks like a studio background light using the gradient tool, but not understand how to set up short cuts in the Actions palette.
In the workshop, I will begin with the tools palette and explain how the most important tools can be used to make incredibly creative images. Even if you know what these tools do, you will learn ways of applying them to various photographic situations that will amaze you. I will then go into layers and layer masks, selections, replacing the sky, adding lighting effects, adding reflections, making silhouettes, an impressive list of awesome plug-ins (you can download many demo versions of plug-ins using your wireless capability because I have Wi Fi), the relationship between the cloning tool and the healing brush, cloning from one photo to another, and much more. By doing each of the techniques I discuss as I explain them, you will be able to remember the steps and then this wonderful knowledge will be incorporated into your work flow.
 You will need to bring your own laptop computer, and this will make it easier for you to concentrate on the techniques rather than fiddling with someone else's computer. I will demonstrate more creative ideas in these two days than you can imagine.
If you are interested, contact me at photos@jimzuckerman.com. The airport that you will fly into is Nashville, Tennessee (BNA).
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2009 PHOTO TOURS
Carnival in Venice -- Sold out
Poland in July -- spaces available
Namibia in Sept. -- one space available
Turkey in Oct. -- a few spaces available
2010 PHOTO TOURS
Carnival in Venice
Others to be announced
Blue Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey
For other photo tours, speaking engagements, and seminars that I will be giving, please visit my website: jimzuckerman.com and click on the frog photo you see on the home page of the website.
Head of Medusa, ancient cistern, Istanbul, Turkey
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Missed a newsletter? You can see all of my past newsletters (starting with the February, 2008 issue) if you paste this link into your browser:
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs031/1101654139463/archive/1102299763866.html
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