by Ben Willmore | Jun 8, 2015
Hi everyone! Here is a little update on what has been going on here in Ben land. We’ve been working on getting caught up and back into the swing of things after our long international trip, and we’re enjoying being land-based again. On May 29, I presented my first event of the new seminar tour, the Lightroom & Photoshop Creative Integration Tour, in San Francisco. There was a little scare with delayed flights, but I got there on time and the event went really well! We’ve got several more cities lined up, and you can see those HERE. Next up is Seattle on June 19th.
Here is the seminar description:
Ben Willmore is back with a brand new tour for 2015 that shows how best to integrate Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop. He’ll show you how to take best advantage of the new features in Lightroom 6 as well as how to move beyond its limitations by taking advantage of Photoshop’s advanced image processing features. You’ll learn how to get the most out of Lightroom by utilizing many hidden features that require the intimate knowledge that only an expert can provide. He’ll share the best methods for organizing your images, show you how to push your image optimization abilities beyond what you thought was possible and then show how to best integrate Photoshop into your workflow. Ben has been using both programs since they were introduced and is known for pushing them beyond what they were originally designed for to get more out of them than what anyone else can teach you. Don’t miss your chance to learn from a digital imaging legend… you’ll be amazed at what you can learn in just one day!
The welcoming crowd at my San Francisco event on May 29.
Back in Florida, where we’ve been hanging out these days, we’ve been doing a little exploring and shooting some more images in my yoga photography series. After seeing how popular the images have become, I’m constantly keeping my eyes open for new and unique locations to shoot more photos. One of the locations we visited was the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. This place is more that just a museum, and you could easily spend an entire day there. The grounds alone are beautiful and expansive. We really enjoyed the museum and the house tour, but the architecture was where it was at, photographically. I found lots of great locations to place Karen and ended up with seven or eight strong images from here. Here are a couple (The header image for this post was also shot there.):
We also drove out to Bok Tower and Gardens in Lake Wales, FL. This is a historic landmark featuring a large and ornate tower that houses a set of carillon bells. The grounds are also very extensive and include gardens, trails, a beautiful estate, cafe and visitor center. We took a tour of the estate and spent a good amount of time wandering the grounds. It’s a nice place to visit if you’re ever in the area. We shot the following yoga image here:
Finally, we did a little shooting at the beach. The sunsets over Florida’s gulf coast are especially spectacular this time of year, and lend themselves to some nice silhouette images. Here is one I shot at Indian Rocks Beach:
I’ve been posting all the images in this yoga series in an album on my Facebook page, and you can see those HERE. More to come!
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.
by Ben Willmore | Oct 10, 2013
Hi Gang! This past week was spent in Florida, for a mix of work and fun. On Friday, I taught my Photoshop Creativity seminar, which is part of the Kelby Training tour, but we decided to spend the week in the Tampa area because Karen’s parents recently bought a house down there. Her parents flew down as well, so it was fun hanging out with them. (As fas as in-laws go, they’re pretty great.)
For the most part, it was a quiet week, but we did head to Orlando for a day to check out the Disney Food & Wine Festival in Epcot. As you probably know, the “World Showcase” makes up more than half of Epcot and it features mini-villages themed after different countries around the world. During the festival, each country has its own tasting menu, so you can basically eat your way around the world. And that’s what we did! We did go on some of the rides there, but the food fest was the main attraction for us.
After the week in Florida, we hopped on another plane and flew to San Luis Obispo, for the Annual California Photo Festival. The event is put on by the Light Workshops, which is nearby in Los Osos, CA, and they really do a great job. I am teaching several classes, most of which are focused on HDR photography and Lightpainting. But more on that in the next post!
More to come!
Karen made this panollage from Epcot
Karen at the Food & Wine Festival at Disney
Here I am with Karen’s parents, Tom and Joann, in Epcot.
My Kelby Training seminar in Tampa
by Ben Willmore | Oct 2, 2013
During the first half of 2013, the bus stayed in pretty much the same spot. This is unusual for us, because we’re used to moving around every couple days (or in some cases, weeks). Well, let’s just say that in the second half of 2013, we’re making up for it. During the last month alone, I’ve been to Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Texas and Florida. If you go back another month, I could add South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. It sounds like a lot to keep up with, but we just love it.
My travel route from this last month alone. The red line is ground travel and the blue line is air travel.
In my last post, I mentioned that we were spending some time in New Jersey, hanging out at Karen’s parents’ place. While we were there, we took a day trip down to Baltimore for the annual Trawler Fest. Trawlers are a very sturdy type of yacht, and many of them are made to cross oceans. I have always toyed with the idea of eventually living on one, so I love going to events like this. The REAL reason we made the drive down, though, was that our great friends Sean and Louise were at the event with their trawler. They used to live on a bus, just like we do, but this past year, they made the switch from living on the road to living on the water. It had been over a year since we had last seen Sean and Louise, so it was great to catch up and see their boat. We also spent time walking around the event and touring the show boats.
Me, Louise and Sean at Trawler Fest in Baltimore.
After spending a few days in NJ, Karen and I flew down to Florida. I have a seminar on Friday, and since Karen’s parents have a house near Clearwater, we decided to come and hang out for the week. If you’re in the Tampa area and want to join me for some Photoshop training, you can still sign up for my Photoshop Creativity day-long seminar.
When we leave Florida, we will be flying directly to San Luis Obispo, CA where I will be teaching at the California Photo Fest. This is an awesome event, with loads of classes, both lecture-style and in the field. If you’re in California and want to take part in the event, you can get more info and sign up HERE.
More to come!
by Ben Willmore | Sep 20, 2013
One of the great things about having a house on wheels is that, like the birds, you can head south for the winter. So as the rest of the country starts donning winter coats and salting the streets, we’re still in flip flops. After leaving Atlanta last week, I made my way south to Florida, where the bus will likely stay for the winter. My first stop was in Jacksonville, but I was able to capture two Florida service stations on the way.
The two service stations I shot in Florida
I only stopped in Jacksonville to pick Karen up from the airport there. She was arriving back from NJ where she was photographing her best friends shiny new baby. From Jacksonville, we moved on to Cedar Key, and that’s where we hung out for a few days. A lot of our fellow full-time RVer friends had spent the winter in Cedar Key last year and we heard some great things about it. We fell in love with the place pretty quick, with its beautiful sunsets, super laid-back vibe and quaint RV parks. Our park was right on the water, and since it’s on the west side, the sun sets over the gulf. Next door to our RV park was the “Low Key Hideaway,” which is another inn/RV park that happens to have a very cool tiki bar, and very cool owners. When we return to Cedar Key in January, we’re going to stay there for a week.
Some iPhone shots Karen got at our Cedar Key RV park
After spending a few days in Cedar Key, we continued south to the Clearwater area. Karen’s parents have a house there and they were flying down to spend a few days. I also needed a place to hunker down and get a lot of work done, as we’re leaving the country on Saturday and I have LOADS to do before then! But that brings me to the whole “leaving the country” thing. I will be teaching for just under a month on a cruise ship that departs from Lisbon, Portugal and sails around Portugal, Morocco and Spain before turning around again and heading across the Atlantic, where we will disembark in Miami. I’m not sure what my internet scenario will be like over the next few weeks, but I’ll do my best to keep this blog updated! More to come!
