ON-LINE PHOTO INSTRUCTION-- with detailed critiques of your work
My new 4-week began again on Wednesday, August 5. It's not too late to sign up. 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 8.
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?
Samburu warrior, Kenya
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.
|
PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP IN MY HOME
The December 12, 13 Photoshop workshop is now full, and the next one will be Feb. 20, 21, 2010. The price of $450 includes two lunches and one dinner in my home (my wife is an incredible cook), and the location is a suburb of Nashville, TN. The airport you'd fly into is Nashville (BNA), and I will pick you up and shuttle you back and forth from your hotel to my home.
Photoshop is a photographer's best friend. The creative potential it unlocks in each of us is unparalleled in the history of photography. I love teaching it because I love the program and what it can do for us photographers. The sky is truly the limit -- whatever image you can imagine in your mind
can be done with Photoshop.
If you are interested in this, email me and I'll send you the course outline and a list of hotels 8 - 10 minutes from my home.
|
|
THE PEN TOOL ... the best thing since sliced bread!
A couple of weeks ago I went to the Concourse d'Elegance in Lexington, Kentucky to photograph the magnificent cars that were on display. Each one was a work of art, but the problem was that photographically it was impossible to get perfect (or salable) pictures. Yes, I could take details -- but everyone does that. Spare tires, hood ornaments, closeups of the grills and headlights -- these make very nice pictures. But I wanted the entire car in front of a stunning background because that really shows off their classic lines in the best possible way. I couldn't do that, of course, because there were scores of people admiring the cars and backgrounds were less than inspiring.
The good news was that the cars were being displayed on grass. That meant that I could combine that with a natural looking background fairly easily. The beautiful 1929 Graham Paige Dual Cowl Phaeton (don't you love these names?) above was the perfect car to put in front of a foggy background that I took one morning in my subdivision.
My secret weapon to do this is the pen tool.
The pen tool in Photoshop is the most precise way to separate a subject from the background. It is not included in Elements (you have to substitute the lasso tool instead of the pen tool when working in any version of Elements). Many people are intimidated by the pen tool, but it's really quite easy to use. The red arrow in the screen capture below shows you where the tool is.
The strategy is to lay down a series of dots all along the edge of the subject to be selected. You basically make a circuit around the subject, and when you come back to the beginning and touch the first dot, the circuit is closed and you've made a path. I work at 300% to make sure the path is exactly where I want it. In the example of the silver Graham Paige automobile above, I started at the left edge of the frame at bumper level and then went around the entire top of the car. When I ended up at the right edge, I then went to the top right corner and placed a dot. This was followed by a dot in the upper left corner and then back to the beginning dot. You can see what the dots look like in the below image (click on it and it enlarges).
 If you are laying down dots and you place one or more in the wrong place, access the 'pen minus tool' that is hidden beneath the pen tool. Just touch the dots you want removed and they will be gone. Then re-select the main pen tool. You then have to touch the end of the path with the pen tool and now you can continue defining the path.
When the entire path is created, you must click on the paths palette (if it's not open, go to Window > paths) and with the tiny arrow in the upper right
corner of the palette (see the screen capture and the giant red arrow above) pull down the submenu and choose 'make selection'. Select a one pixel feather in the dialog box that opens, and you will now have a selection. Now ... the background can be inserted using the cut and paste technique.
In the example of the 1929 Graham Paige, after making the first selection, I then had to do the same thing in the window. Now I had two selections.
You will want to save the selections so you never have to cut them out again. You do that with Select > save selection.
|
The photo above -- a 1948 Chrysler Town and Country -- is a composite of an autumn foliage picture and the car. As you can see, it doesn't matter what is behind the car in the original shot. You don't want people standing too close to the fenders of the car, though, because of their reflection in the paint. Other than that, the only other thing I hope for is soft and diffused lighting. An overcast day makes the colors pop, and at the same time contrast is at a minimum so there are no black shadows or blown highlights.
Had these cars been on asphalt, I couldn't have done such a good job. Recreating a perfect shadow is extremely difficult. I think cutting and pasting a car from asphalt onto another background can be done well -- but not perfectly.
|
|
THE BENEFITS OF A LOW PERSPECTIVE
When you photograph an animal from a ground-level point of view, you give it greater stature. You would be surprised how lowering yourself just three or four feet makes such a difference. Even if you are photographing an elephant -- which obviously has a lot of stature due to its size -- the animal will seem even more impressive when you get as low as possible and shoot upward.
When photographing animals close to the ground, like the huge (and frightening) Nile crocodile above, this is especially important. That's why when I'm on safari in Africa, I rarely shoot out of the roof hatch. Instead, I choose to shoot out of a side window because there is about a five foot difference from standing up in the vehicle and shooting out the roof compared to shooting out the side window of the vehicle. I would prefer, though, to be at ground level, but in the national parks of East Africa getting out of the vehicle is prohibited (for obvious reasons), so the best I can do is to shoot from the open side window. The cheetah (above) taken at sunrise looks good from this vantage point, although as I said if I could have taken this picture from two or three feet lower the cat would have appeared to be more powerful than even this picture shows.
 The picture of the lion at
right makes this point. I was shooting from eye-level because the cat was on a small rise that put him on the same level as I was. This is a much more effective type of portrait than shooting down on him would have been.
This same idea applies not only to wild animals, but it works with pets, too. Shoot from that intimate eye-to-eye perspective and the resulting images will be a lot better.
|
INNOVATIVE WAYS OF SHOOTING IN LOW LIGHT WITHOUT A TRIPOD
There are some situations where tripods are not allowed, and I've had to come up with clever ways to get a sharp picture using other means. In the picture of a medieval Koran I photographed in Turkey, below, it was laying face up beneath a piece of glass in a showcase. Even if tripods were allowed in this museum, it would have been almost impossible to use one. Therefore, I gently placed the
camera on the glass itself with the lens face down. I used the self-timer on the camera to ensure that the picture was sharp, set the white balance to tungsten, and took the shot. The shutter speed was slow, of course, but the image is sharp because the camera was firmly situated on the glass.
When I was in the Cairo Museum, I wanted to photograph the famous golden pharoah's head from King Tut's tomb. This was also in a glass case but it was positioned upright. There was a nearby showcase of jewelry, and this time I took out my leather wallet. I nestled the camera into the wallet which was on the glass jewelry case, and again I used the self-timer. Because the leather was pliable, I could angle the camera to get a decent composition of the famous Egyptian icon.
When I photographed in the
beautiful cathedral in the
Monastery of Melk in Austria (this is one of the places my group will visit on the Heart of Eastern Europe photo tour next summer), again no tripods were permitted. Therefore, to get the detail of an angel you see below, I rested the camera on one of the pews and, with a continuous downward pressure, stabilized the camera. This gave me a tack sharp picture.
Increasing the ISO is an option, too, but I only go above 400 if absolutely necessary. I don't like the extra digital noise that results from high ISO settings. It seems to me that there's no point spending so much money on photographic equipment, software, hardware, and travel and then not get high quality images.
In the Hindu cave at Ellora east of Bombay, India, no tripods were allowed (In all of the Indian national monuments, tripods are not permitted. This includes the Taj Mahal.). To get the shots I wanted, the only thing I could do was use my camera backpack. I placed it on the floor and angled the camera upward with a wide angle to get the shot you see here. This was definitely an awkward thing to do, but it worked. I could compose the picture by nestling the camera into the fabric of the backpack, and I used the self-timer to trigger the shutter. There was nothing else I could rest the camera on, but in the end I liked the low angled perspective.
|
|
|
Photo tour to Ireland
May 20 - 31, 2010
Ireland is such a beautiful place to visit and photograph, and I'm looking forward to taking another group there next year. The trip includes a wide range of photographic subjects such as castles, quaint villages, the rocky coastline, ancient megalithic tombs, intriguing landscapes, cathedrals, beautiful cemeteries, and fascinating ruins. Even when you are not shooting, Ireland is simply a delight to enjoy. The people are incredibly friendly and they always love interacting with Americans.
On all my photo tours, I spend a lot of time teaching. I go over composition, lighting, exposure, macro photography, the advantages of RAW versus JPEG, photographing people, landscapes, and wildlife and more. I also talk a lot about Photoshop because it is such an integral part of our creative workflow now. On the trip, I work on some of my images on a laptop and then explain how I achieved the unique effects to give you a lot of food for thought when you go home and work on your own pictures.
If you have always wanted to go to Ireland, or if you've been there and you know how great it is and want to go back, drop me a note (photos@jimzuckerman.com). I'll send you the itinerary and all other pertinent information.
|
2009 PHOTO TOURS/workshops
Frog/reptile workshop August in St. Louis 15,16 (sold out)
Turkey, Oct. 9 - 21 -- two spaces available
2010 PHOTO TOURS
Carnival in Venice -- Feb. 8 - 14, 2010 (sold out)
Heart of Eastern Europe -- dates to be announced
Ireland -- May 20 - 31, 2010
Ethiopia photo tour -- December 13 to 30, 2010
Tanzania photo safari -- June 10 to 22, 2010 with Gorilla trek extension (June 6 to 11)
Budapest, Hungary
Antarctica -- January 3 - 24 (contact me for pricing and the itinerary)
Costa Rica for hummingbirds -- dates to be announced (I'm going to Costa Rica in 3 weeks to organize this trip)
I am also planning a trip to southern India and Mongolia. When those details are finalized I'll announce them.
Capadoccia, Turkey
For other photo tours, speaking engagements, and seminars that I will be giving, please click on this link: http://www.jimzuckermanworkshops.com/
Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey
|
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
For AOL users have difficulty at times seeing the pictures in my newsletters, this feature is especially helpful.
|
I now publish a blog on my website that you may find interesting and informative. On jimzuckerman.com, click the link at the top 'photo blog'. I post one or two blogs a week on various aspects of photography and Photoshop.
Maribou stork, Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya
|
Two New Photoshop DVDs announced
I'm proud of my first twoinstructional DVD on Photoshop. I have had a lot of positive feedback on both of them. Many people find my teaching style easy to understand, clear, and inspiring in terms of what they can do with their own pictures.
In the first DVD, learn how to use Photoshop's tools creatively and be a Photoshop Guru.
Whether you have been using Photoshop for years or just learning for
the first time, you will quickly discover new applications to create
stunning images. "Be a Photoshop Guru" introduces the most important
tools in Photoshop and then gives you very creative ways of applying
them for amazing results. This program doesn't just simply show what
the tools do, it shows you how to creatively use them in your photography.
(In the photo of the Korean model and the Japanese maple tree, there wasn't a beautiful tree behind the model in the original. I added that from
another image, and then I had to re-create the reflection. This is
explained in detail on the DVD in addition to many other very cool
techniques. The running time is 168 minutes).
In the second DVD, the one with the knights on the cover (they were photographed at a local Renaissance Faire and then combined with the foggy forest background -- and the sword was purchased on-line and cut and pasted into the picture), I share many of my favorite and most useful creative techniques with you. Photoshop is a photographer's best friend today. This DVD shows you that the sky is the limit in terms of what you can do with your images. Running time is 173 minutes.
You can purchase the DVD from Amazon.com or, if you would like an autographed copy from me, you can have that from purchasing it from me directly at a discounted price. Here is the sales page on my website: jimzuckermanworkshop.com.
|
|
