Join me at an upcoming event!

by | Jul 10, 2012

Hi gang! After a great workshop in Iceland, we returned to the bus in Colorado and headed to Rocky Mountain National Park. Unfortunately, the weather was extremely stormy/rainy while we were there, but it gave me some time to regroup a little after the trip, get some work done and focus on future events. I wanted to use this post to talk about what’s coming up. I hope you’ll be able to join me at one of these great events/workshops in the future!

Namibia: Sept. 19- Oct. 1, 2013

Join me and Journeys Unforgettable on the photographic adventure of a lifetime. In this two-week journey to Namibia, you’ll be staying at the best camps, working with the best guides and photographing the most amazing sights your lenses have ever focused on! From wildlife, to the iconic sand dunes, to the breathtaking Skeleton Coast, you’ll be seeing it all on this adventure. If you’re looking for THE trip, the one you’ve been waiting your whole life for … this is it. Learn more HERE.

 

The Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

Oct. 4-7, 2012

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is a world-renowned attraction and destination for balloon pilots and photographers. For more than three decades, the first week in October brings the smell of roasting chiles and the beautiful, magical moving picture show of hot air balloons sailing silently through the crisp fall air. This will be my third time photographing the Fiesta, and I can promise you that it’s a true feast for the eyes… and the lens!

The colors and textures will boggle your senses and you will come away with some of the most incredible images you have ever taken. We’ll throw in enough HDR training if you want to get a bit crazy with your creativity. Learn more HERE

The California Photo Festival • Oct. 10-14, 2012

The California Photo Festival is five days of digital photography immersion. Intensive workshops, seminars, lectures, shooting, parties, and more with over 15 industry leading photographers and digital industry gurus designed to boost your creativity, spark your passion, and take your photography, art, or business to the next level. Click here for more info

 

Zion National Park

Thurs., Oct 18 thru Sun., Oct. 21, 2012

Massive canyon walls ascend toward a brilliant blue sky. To experience Zion, you need to walk among the towering cliffs, or challenge your courage in a small narrow canyon. These unique sandstone cliffs range in color from cream, to pink, to red. They could be described as sand castles crowning desert canyons. We will be experiencing the beauty of this tranquil place when the trees are the most colorful. Click here for more info

Mastering High Dynamic Range Photography

Nov. 29-Dec. 2, 2012

At the Light Workshops, in Los Osos, CA

Learn to capture the full brightness range of a scene and present it to your viewer as either a photorealistic image or as an image that more closely resembles a hyper-detailed drawing.

With over two dozen choices of HDR processing software, you’ll learn which software is worth using and which should be ignored. You’ll also see why you should avoid Photoshop’s standard HDR processing and how to use alternative methods in Photoshop and Lightroom to produce far superior results. Click here for more info

 

New Iceland Event in the works! Special sneak peak!

If you’ve been following this blog in the recent weeks, you’ve read all about my amazing workshop in Iceland. We just wrapped up last week, and I’m still processing all the incredible images I captured there. Iceland is one of my favorite places to visit and photograph… and that’s why we’re already planning two workshops in 2013! We’re still arranging the details, so consider this a special insiders’ heads up to my blog readers. Here’s what we know so far.

Workshop #1: Our plans for the next Discover Iceland event is in the works for the summer of 2013. It should be a week-long workshop where we are out in the field shooting 80% of the time. When we’re not out on location, we’ll be in a classroom setting doing some training and photo-editing sessions. Iceland is a true paradise in the summer… from breathtaking waterfalls, to iceberg-filled lagoons, to vast green mountains, to storybook horses… Iceland has got it all. Stay tuned on the blog for exact dates and more details. We should have those solidified in the next few weeks!

Workshop #2: I’ve been to Iceland several times, but never in the winter. This is something I’ve been eager to experience and we’re finally making it happen. We have room for up to 12 eager photographers on this adventure. Now, you might be asking what there is to photograph in Iceland during the winter, given it’s dark out most of the time. Well, for a night photographer, this is a dream come true! And night photography will be our focus during this trip. We’ll be capturing some long exposure landscapes, we will light paint, explore the eerie and serene ice caves (that you can only enter in winter) and maybe, just maybe, be fortunate enough to photograph the northern lights. Our target time range will be the second half of February 2013. Again, stay tuned as we finalize the arrangements.

A mini update from Santa Fe

by | May 28, 2012

Hi everyone! This is going to be a shorter post than usual because I spent most of the week traveling for some in-house Photoshop training sessions near Atlanta. While I was over there, I got to see my great friends Eddie Tapp and Judy Host, and also pay a visit to my vintage bus, which is currently located in Chattanooga. The current bus stayed in Albuquerque and I returned to New Mexico on Thursday. We hung out in Albuquerque for one more day and then moved on.

While in Albuquerque, I got to spend some time with my friend Charlie Mosher, of Graphic Authority. Here we are after having lunch the other day.

Our next stop was Santa Fe, which is only an hour’s drive from Albuquerque. I have been to Santa Fe several times before and just love the style and artsy vibe of the city. Karen had never been, and she was really excited to check it out. So far, we’ve spent two days exploring the historic part of the city. There were some artisan fairs going on, and the place was alive with activity over the holiday weekend. We had dinner at a tapas place called La Boca, which was excellent. We highly recommend the tapas trio appetizer, but really, everything we had was delicious. One word of advice though… either make a reservation or plan on waiting a while for a table. When we arrived, there was over an hour wait. Luckily, we weren’t starving and and just spent time walking around the area and grabbing a pre-dinner drink at a less crowded place.

Karen got this shot of me while we were shooting in the historic area of Santa Fe.

Tomorrow, we plan on exploring some of the historical sites in the Santa Fe area where we should be able to photograph some ruins, kivas, etc. More to come!

New Mexico Update

by | May 21, 2012

Travels

After spending an excellent week in Page, Arizona, it was time to head east into New Mexico. We made travel plans for the next few months and the next stop on our map put us in Albuquerque. (See map below) We spent two days getting there, staying a night in Gallup on the way.

Here’s our [tentative] travel plans for the next month or so.

While in Albuquerque, we’ve been spending a lot of time working and a bit of exploring.We also got to meet up with my friend Charlie Mosher, who owns Graphic Authority, a leading provider of Photoshop templates and design resources. I would see Charlie at my seminars all the time, as he’d be manning a trade show booth, but it was nice to go out to dinner and spend some one on one time catching up.

Shooting the Ring of Fire

When we rolled in to Albuquerque, we knew that the solar eclipse was approaching, but we DIDN’T know that we’d be positioned perfectly to see it. Literally, we could see a perfect eclipse right from where the bus was parked. There was a whole crowd hanging out with lawn chairs, cameras and even telescopes. I took a stab at shooting it as well. You need an extremely dark filter for your camera in order to capture it. To view it with your eyes, you need to be wearing a pair of solar glasses. Considering this is one of those things that only happens a couple times a lifetime, and the chances of it happening where you can actually see it are slim, we were extremely excited and blown away by it.

Here I am shooting the eclipse. You can see the really dark filter on my lens.

My image of the eclipse.

Mastering Curves now available on Kelby Training

I also wanted to announce that my online training title, Mastering Curves, is now available on Kelby Training. I believe that Curves is the single most powerful adjustment in all of Photoshop, yet it can be intimidating if you don’t understand it. In this title, I cover Curves in a series of easy-to-understand videos.You can check it out HERE. The two-DVD set, which includes all the same videos, is also available for purchase HERE.

A screenshot of my Mastering Curves title on Kelby Training.