Photoshop & You in San Francisco

I'm about to present my Studio Techniques class in the Photoshop & You theater.

Our time in Alaska eventually came to an end, and after two weeks at sea, we were ready to hit the road again. We spent a day in Vegas (where the bus was parked) getting caught up on email and other things, and then we were San Francisco bound!

A giant ampersand welcomes you as you enter the Photoshop & You store in San Francisco.

Adobe is holding an event in the city called "Photoshop & You" and I'm happy to be able to take part in it. They're calling it a pop-up store (temporary location) but it's really more of an experience. There is a theater for seminars and other events, Russell Brown has his "Extreme Imaging Lab," there is of course an actual store, and multiple galleries throughout. They've got a beautiful space and the event is really unique, with educational events and one-on-one training during the day, and fun activities with a party atmosphere at night. Oh and by the way… it's all free. Kinda hard to beat.

In Russell Brown's Extreme Imaging Lab, you can print t-shirts, canvas prints, and even have images "branded" with a laser etcher.

I've already spent a few days over there lending a hand and taking part in some of the events. I presented a "Photoshop Studio Techniques" class yesterday, and have also been giving one-on-one advice to anyone who comes in with a question. I'll be at the store on Wednesday also and will be available to help anyone with Photoshop or photography questions. You can even bring in your own images to work on.

Karen competing in the Photoshop Smackdown event on Saturday night.

Saturday night was a lot of fun because I got to be the Master of Ceremonies for the Photoshop Smackdown, where competitors get on stage and are given 30 minutes to make an image based on one theme, while the audience watches, cheers and ultimately decides on the winner. They asked Karen to be a competitor and she got a whopping two hours notice before she was to be up there. In the end, she didn't mind at all because she ended up winning both rounds and scoring an iPad2! (I took NO part in the judging… the audience decided by applauding a vote for their favorite image.)

Here I am speaking in the Photoshop & You theater.

Outside of the Photoshop Store, we've been taking some time to explore the city a little and enjoy the mild weather while the rest of the country is frying. We'll be here for at least another week, as the Adobe event continues through August 6th.

More to come…

Alaska: Week 2

An eagle sits on top of Margerie Glacier in Glacier Bay.

Last week I talked about our journey north, from Vancouver to Whittier, Alaska. This week, we continued our cruise, making our way back south again. At first, we thought that two weeks would be too long of a cruise. We figured that after a week, we'd be sick of it and be ready to get off. We were wrong, though. There is just so much to see and do at the ports (and on the ship as well) that we never came close to being bored. It was actually nice to hit all the ports twice, because on the first time around, we didn't have enough time to see everything.

Here I am shooting from the White Pass Railroad, en route to Lake Bennet.

On the way north, we hit Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay, College Fjord and Whittier. The route south was the same except instead of going to College Fjord, we went to Hubbard Glacier instead. Our sea days, at Hubbard and Glacier Bay, were overcast, but all of the port days were sunny and beautiful.

 
Karen's shot of the White Pass Railroad, at Lake Bennett

On our second stop in Skagway, we went on a trip up to the Yukon Territory, via the White Pass Railway. We had lunch up at Lake Bennett, and had the most amazing scenery on the ride back down. The railroad was built during the gold rush in the late 1800s and is still considered an engineering marvel.

As a side note, here's a funny story about the Skagway trip. We first started in a bus that was to take us closer to Yukon Territory. The bus driver was a great tour guide, and very friendly. However, after stopping the bus to let us take some photos, it failed to start again. We could all feel the embarrassment in the poor guy's voice. We saw him get out, go to the back of the bus, come back, try to call on the radio, etc. It wasn't starting. So I figured, hey, I live on a bus. I might as well see if I can give him a hand. Sure enough, I realized that one simple tweak would do the trick and in a matter of minutes we were on the road again. Good thing I was on the bus, because those folks would probably still be sitting there on the side of the road!

A shot of Mendenhall Glacier. If you look close enough, you can see the kayakers in there… just look for the red speck near the base of the glacier.

Juneau was our next port on the way south. Last week, we visited Mendenhall Glacier, hiked a bit, and went on whale watch. This week, we just returned to Mendenhall so that we could shoot in a less rushed atmosphere. While we were there, we were lucky enough to see some kayakers paddling around near the glacier. This is great because it's impossible to tell the size of a glacier from a photograph unless there's something in there for scale.

Our last port of the cruise was Ketchikan, and just like last week, we had amazing sunny weather. This time around, we took the city bus to Totem Bight State Park, which was beauiful and right on the water.

Since we've been so busy shooting, we have't had a lot of time to process the images. Once I get those together, I'll post a lot more photos. If you get a chance, check out the video below. Karen started getting into time lapse photography, and shot this from our ship, the Diamond Princess.

More to come!

Alaska by Cruise Ship

*I'm sorry for the late post on this one. I like to get the blog updated every Monday, but the lack of internet kept that from happening last week*

Here I am shooting in College Fjord, where you can see up to nine glaciers at once!

It's official! I've now been to all 50 states of the U.S.A. As of the last blog post, we were en route to Alaska, via the inside passage from Vancouver. We boarded the Diamond Princess ship for a 14-day cruise that would take us to some of the most scenic and interesting places in southeast Alaska. This post will cover the northbound leg of our journey.

When we disembarked the ship in Ketchikan, I finally made it to my 50th state of the U.S.A.!

Karen and I went Kayaking in Ketchikan around the Tatoosh Islands.

Our first port was Ketchikan, and we had an excursion (fancy name for a glorified cruise ship tour) to the Tatoosh Islands, via kayak. Yes, we kayaked in Alaska. And No, it was actually not freezing. In fact, the weather was strangely warm and sunny, which was unexpected considering we were in a rainforest. We kayaked for about two hours and spotted some bald eagles along the way. The scenery was just beautiful and the water was like glass, so the paddling was really easy. We had some time after the tour to explore the town of Ketchikan, so we walked to the popular Creek Street. It was scenic, but we were a little disappointed by the number of tourist traps. Ketchikan is home to a lot of nice totem poles and we got to shoot a few here, but when we return to this port next week we may try to hit up a park that is supposedly full of them.

We spent some time shooting across the lake from Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau.

After Ketchikan, our next stop was Juneau, Alaska's capitol. Karen booked a tour for us that she went on the last time she was here because she knew it would give us some good variety and was catered more toward photographers. The Juneau tour started with a hike through the lush rainforest near Mendenhall glacier.  But when the tour guide started explaining what f-stops were, we pretty much just wandered off and did our own thing, which was fine. The next stop was a view of the glacier from across the lake (above pic) and we got to shoot from the beach there. We plan to re-visit this locale next week also.

I hope the folks on that boat had some wide angle lenses on hand to shoot these humpback whales with!

We then came to the more exciting part of the tour. There were about a dozen people and we all boarded a small boat to go whale watching. If I said that we really lucked out, that would be an understatement. We saw at least seven adult humpback whales along with one baby that was just breaching over and over again. We even got to see a triple breach! (The guides even said that they've never seen that before.) Along with the breaching, we got to see some bubble feeding where the whales form a net of bubbles to trap small fish.

When we got back to the cruise ship area in Juneau, we ate at Tracy's Crab Shack. If you're ever in the area, we highly recommend it. It is literally just a shack with some canopies outside, but the food was excellent.

Me and Syl at the local brewery in Skagway.

The following day, we were in Skagway. We didn't have a tour booked here (we will do one next week though) so we mainly just walked around the town. As far as style goes, this was my favorite town. All the building had a lot of character, as this was an old gold rush "city." There's a funny story here though. As you know, since I live on the road and have friends everywhere, I'm always running into people I know. Karen and I were joking when we boarded our 14-day cruise that we would actually go two whole weeks without running into a friend. Well, it turns out we made it about 3.5 days. In Skagway we stopped in the local brewery to have lunch and at the table right in front of us was my friend and fellow photographer Syl Arena. Not kidding. He was on another ship whose route happened to coincide with ours. What are the chances? We're in a town with a population of 500 and I STILL run into a friend! Syl and I spent some time catching up over a few beers and then he was off to return to his ship.

Above is a panorama I shot of Margerie Glacier in Glacier Bay. Click on it for a larger version.

Glacier Bay was our next destination. It's a day of scenic cruising so you don't get off the ship here. Glacier Bay is actually a national park, so before entering, a pilot boat comes and a few park rangers board the ship for the day. The highlight of the day for me was Margerie Glacier, which was gigantic. It's actually hard to portray in a photograph unless you have a boat or something in there for scale. It was also here that we got to see (and hear) a lot of calving. This is where massive chunks of ice crack and fall off the glacier into the water. And when I say massive, I mean chunks of ice the size of buildings.

College Fjord was also a day of scenic cruising, and in my opinion, this trumped Glacier Bay. When you get all the way into the fjord, you can see as many as nine glaciers at once. Throw in a few waterfalls and sunny warm weather and you have a perfect day!

 

Karen shot this of the harbor seals in Prince William Sound. It's a good thing those guys like the icy weather, because Karen wanted to take them home. Same thing with the otters.

Whittier was our last port before we were to start heading south again, and we spent our day there on a tour boat cruising through Prince William Sound. It was another lucky day for us, because we got to see more bald eagles, breaching whales, sea otters, harbor seals and glaciers. Since we were on a smaller boat, we were able to get much closer to the glacier, and when it calved, the wave it created was enough to seriously rock our 150-person boat!

So far the trip has been excellent. There's also something to be said for the weather we experienced all week. In Alaska, the weather is generally very cool, overcast and rainy. However, this entire week was full of sunshine and temperatures in the 70s and maybe even higher. Unbelievable! One of our tour guides actually called this "cloud failure." Hopefully the second half of our trip will be as nice as the first (but that's asking a lot!).

More to come from Alaska…