by Ben Willmore | Jun 17, 2015
Hi gang! I wanted to give you all a heads up on a new class we just announced. I’ll be teaching a 2-day course called “Travel Photography: The Complete Guide” on July 6-7 at CreativeLive. This is an online class that will go live from 9 am to 4 pm PST and it’s completely free to watch while it’s live! If you want to watch and re-watch the class videos at your leisure, you can purchase the course to stream or download the files.
This class will cover a subject that is near and dear to my heart: travel photography! After all, my lifestyle is such that I travel full time, whether on the road in my motor coach or at sea on a ship that I teach on. I chose this lifestyle so that I could photograph all over the country and all over the world. My photo library contains images from all 50 states and dozens of countries and I would love to teach you everything I’ve learned along the way!
Here I am shooting at the Big Buddha Temple in Ko Samui, Thailand.
Here is the class description at CreativeLive:
It takes the perfect combination of gear, exposure, and creative thinking to produce travel images that stand out from the rest. Learn the how to bring the critical ingredients together in Travel Photography: The Complete Guide with Ben Willmore.
Fresh off a seven-country, two-month international trip, Ben will share everything it takes to create exciting and memorable travel images. You’ll learn how to:
- Deal with everyday tourists in your shots
- Select the best lens for each situation
- Organize the chaos of a scene into a compelling image
Ben will cover everything you want to know about selecting, packing, and protecting gear. You’ll also develop an efficient digital workflow that fits the fast-paced lifestyle of travel shooting.
Don’t go on your next travel adventure without the insights and skills you need to capture high-quality images, fast processing – join Ben Willmore for Travel Photography: The Complete Guide.
I hope you’ll join me online (or in the studio audience in Seattle) on July 6th and 7th! You can learn more about the class and register for free HERE.
by Ben Willmore | Sep 15, 2014
Hi everyone! I am currently in Seattle to teach at Photo Week at creativeLIVE. Photo Week is 6-days of non-stop training that includes everything from gear demos to master classes, and it STARTS TODAY! They will be featuring over 35 world-class instructors on three different broadcast channels and of course, as always with creativeLIVE, when you watch it live, it’s free.
I will be teaching a class on Lightpainting today, Monday, at 1:30 PST. Lightpainting is where you use a flashlight (or other light source) to paint the light onto your subject in a dark room over a long exposure. The results are always incredibly unique which makes it a great way to portray an ordinary subject and make it look extraordinary. Here’s the official class description:
Discover the unique art of light painting, and add a new dimension of light painting into your photography. Experienced light painter Ben Willmore will introduce you to the basics of light painting in this fun and informative class. You’ll learn which tools and settings to use to get your desired effect and how different light sources can be used to produce dramatically different looks.
Learn how to combine an interesting subject, inexpensive gear, and a little light painting knowledge to produce dramatic and interesting results.
Check it out or learn more HERE, and I hope to see you there!
by Ben Willmore | Aug 4, 2014
Hi gang! It’s time for another update, and this time it’s a gear update! As you may know, I have been a Canon shooter for years and I’ve really enjoyed using Canon gear. However, I’ve been giving my setup a lot of thought, and have been doing a ton of research, and I finally came to the conclusion that it was time to make a switch. *Insert gasp sound effect here*
The other day, I placed the order for my next camera… the Sony A7R!
Why would I want this one over my current Canon 5D Mark III?… Here are the main things that compelled me to change to the A7R:
• Worlds Smallest and lightest full-frame interchangeable lens camera
• 36.4 megapixels with no low-pass filter (same as Nikon D800E and D810)
• Built-in Wifi so I can shoot “untethered” to my computer and also transfer images to my iPhone in the field so I can post them here right away
• Can use my Canon glass via an adaptor (17mm tilt shift mainly)
• Captures much more highlight detail than 5D Mark III
• Articulated screen for shooting from high or low angles
• Can see exposure changes in viewfinder
• Focus peaking for easier manual focusing
A few comparisons Sony vs Canon:
Weight in grams 408 vs 910
Dynamic range 14.1EV vs 11.7 (read more highlight detail)
7392×4920 pixels vs 5920×3950
DxOMark score 95 vs 81
The bad part compared to my current camera:
• Bracketing options limited to 3 frames with 2 stops between… can’t do 5, 7, etc at 2 stops
• 4 frames per second versus 6 on my Canon
• Shutter is somewhat loud
• Batteries don’t last as long due to constant use of electronic screens
• Nowhere near as many lenses available
• No GPS accessory available to automatically location tag my images
The camera should be arriving this week, and I look forward to putting it through the paces myself. The next blog post will probably include my first impressions, so stay tuned for that!
Post Processing for Outdoor & Travel Photographers
In other news, my recent class on creativeLIVE, “Post-Processing for Outdoor & Travel Photographers,” was a great success, and as usual, I had a great time working with the creativeLIVE team up in Seattle. If you missed the class, you can learn more or GET IT HERE. If you buy the class, you get the bonus material, which includes the practice files as well as the course handbook pdf (this one is a whopping 80 pages!).
by Ben Willmore | Jul 20, 2014
Hi everyone! I wanted to give you all a heads up that tomorrow morning kicks off my 3-day online class, “Post-Processing for Outdoor & Travel Photographers” at creativeLIVE. I’ve spent the past week hunkered down in preparation and am on my way to Seattle today. As with all creativeLIVE classes, they’re absolutely free to watch while they’re live. If you want to watch at your own pace and get all the bonus material (including the course handbook), you can purchase the class for a discounted price while it’s live.
The classes run 9 am-4pm PST on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (July 21-23), and they will be rebroadcast in the evenings as well. In these sessions, I’ll be teaching both Photoshop and Lightroom. Here’s the course description:
Spend more time actually taking photos
It’s time to make the images you capture as you travel or explore the great outdoors even more jaw-dropping. Join photographer and image editing expert Ben Willmore to explore the Lightroom and Photoshop tools that will optimize your images to really make them shine while keeping them easy to find and organized.
In this course, you’ll master the post-production process every travel and outdoor photographer needs to know. From panorama stitching to HDR to fixing distortion in architectural images, you’ll dive deep into the editing tasks best performed in Photoshop. You’ll adjust and optimize your images – even if they’re overexposed, underexposed, or have color or contrast issues.You’ll also learn how to organize your images with Lightroom make them easy to find by location taken, subject, or date. Ben will cover specific tips on uploading and organizing while you are still on the road that will save you time and make things easy when it is time to edit. You’ll also develop an editing workflow that helps you retouch quickly and efficiently.
If you’re ready to spend more time outdoors taking stunning photos and less time stuck indoors processing (or finding!) them, this is the course for you.
And finally, I’ll leave you with some fun before & afters to give you an idea of some of kinds of processing we’ll be doing. Hope you’re able to tune in!
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by Ben Willmore | Jul 7, 2014
Hi all! I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend! Things have been pretty low key here over the past few weeks, but I wanted to give a mini update anyway. First of all, if you read this blog often, you know that I’ve been based in the greater Tampa area for a while. That might seem a little unusual considering the fact that my mobile lifestyle usually takes me to between 12 and 30 states a year, so I just wanted to recap my RV/motor coach situation. My wife and I generally live on the road full-time in a 40-foot motor coach, traveling around to photograph and explore. We are also getting ready to switch motorhomes. We’ll be moving from the current bus I’ve been living in for 8 years to the vintage bus I have spent the past 4 years restoring and customizing to suit our needs. In anticipation of the vintage bus being completed, I’ve put the current bus up for sale and it has been cleared out to look like a “show home.” With the current bus for sale, and the future bus incomplete, we have been left without wheels. It’s been a interesting change for us, but we’re ok with it for now. We’re using the time to get projects done and do some things that require being in the same place for a while.
Just because I’m not living on the road at the moment, it does’t mean that I’m not traveling! I am still flying around to give training events, and I’m really looking forward to my next one. I’ll be heading back to creativeLIVE in Seattle later this month to teach my “Post Processing for Outdoor & Travel Photographers” class. It’s a 3-day online class that will be broadcast live on July 21-23, 9am-4pm PST. In this class, I’ll be using both Lightroom and Photoshop. You can read more about it or enroll for free RIGHT HERE.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been spending a lot of time hunkered down working these past few weeks. I’m getting ready for upcoming events and working on some future products as well. More to come next week, but for now, I’ll leave you with a photo from the pirate cruise Karen and I took with her parents on the 4th of July.
Here I am shooting at the Big Buddha Temple in Ko Samui, Thailand.