by Ben Willmore | Jun 23, 2014
Hi everyone! we’re currently in the greater Tampa area and I just wrapped up a fun week, which started all the way across the country in Seattle! Last week was Creative Cloud Fundamentals Week at creativeLIVE, and I was teaching the Photoshop segment of it. This was just a one-day class, and if you missed it, you can get it HERE, or get it as part of the whole CC Fundamentals bundle.
While we’re still on the topic of creativeLIVE, I’m excited to announce a new class I’ll be teaching next month, July 21-23. It’s called Post-Processing for Outdoor & Travel Photographers. This topic is extra special to me because these are two of the main types of photography I do. We’ll be using both Lightroom and Photoshop in this class, and you can learn more about it or enroll for free HERE.
I arrived back to the Tampa area after a redeye flight and landed the morning of my birthday! Aside from a much-needed nap, Karen had some fun things in store for the day including breakfast at one of our favorite places in the area, a cake she made completely of fruit (because that’s my favorite!) and a visit to a local brewery. (I’m a huge fan of craft beer and love to visit different breweries as we travel about.) Near the end of the day, we embarked on a sunset cruise that left from Clearwater Beach. While the actual sunset wasn’t overly spectacular, the sky put on quite a show for us afterwards. It was a great mix of storm clouds lit by what was left of the golden light. We even got to see a waterspout (a water tornado) nearby. Pretty cool! At the end of the night, we had dinner at a tapas place we like in Clearwater Beach.
An iPhone pano I shot of the post-sunset clouds in Clearwater
Karen and I on the sunset cruise
As implied from the title of this post, I also got to do some shooting this week. If you read this blog often, you know about my service station project. I have researched and located over 250 vintage service stations around the country and my plan is to photograph each one. I had been conversing with the owner of this Polly Station in the greater Tampa area and we finally set up a time this week for me to head over and shoot it. The shot below is just an iPhone shot that I also processed on the iPhone. The actually shots will take much longer to process.
Well, that’s it for now folks. The upcoming week will be more on the mellow side, where I’ll be catching up with work and some image processing. More to come!
by Ben Willmore | Nov 12, 2013
Hi all! I just spent most of the past week in Seattle, WA and Eugene, OR. However, unlike last winter where we kept the bus in the Pacific Northwest, I flew in from Atlanta this time around.
I started off the week in Seattle teaching my “Think Like a Photographer” class at creativeLIVE. This class is geared toward folks who have been shooting for a bit and would like to get more serious about their photography. We covered composition, shooting strategies, gear, post-processing, etc. It was a lot of fun and everyone learned a ton. If you missed the class, you can still snag it HERE.
Here I am on the set of my “Think Like a Photographer” class. Thanks to my awesome host, Jim Catechi, for getting this shot!
After wrapping up my class, I went south to Eugene, Oregon. That’s where my vintage bus is being worked on and getting its new interior installed. If you’re not already aware, I live in a 40′ tour bus and I travel around the country taking photos. The vintage bus is my next home on wheels and it will feature a completely custom interior when it’s finished. It’s been a long-term project, but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! Karen and I spent last winter in Oregon so that I could oversee the project, but eventually the guys at the shop were on autopilot and we were able to explore and travel more. Now that lots of progress has been made, I wanted to pay the bus a visit and work with the shop on design details and such. I spent three days in Eugene and I’m thrilled with how the bus is looking! If you want to learn more about the project, or follow the progress, check out the Creative Cruiser Facebook page (yes, my bus has its own Facebook page).
Larry, the owner of Paradise Coach, standing in my bus.
As I mentioned earlier, the bus (the one I currently live on) stayed in Atlanta, so that’s where I returned to after my trip to the Pacific Northwest. My great friend and photographer Eddie Tapp is an Atlanta local, so we got to spend some more time together when I arrived. We paid a visit to the SE Railroad Museum and did a little shooting there. It seems that I’ve had a train theme going on the past few weeks. This is at least the third railroad-themed museum I’ve been to lately!
An iPhone shot I took at the SE Raillroad Museum
From Atlanta, we will continue south to Florida because, well, that’s what we do in the winter time! Karen is actually in NJ to photograph her best friend’s newborn and she will fly directly to Jacksonville later this week. We will then continue to the Tampa area and maybe even make it further south. At the end of the month, we fly to Lisbon, Portugal, where we will board a cruise ship that will be our home for a month. I’ll be teaching a class for the cruise passengers, and then we’ll arrive stateside again just in time for xmas/new years. More to come!
by Ben Willmore | Aug 27, 2013
Hi gang! This past week, we flew from Minneapolis to Seattle for some fun creativeLIVE training events. We just wrapped up Creative Cloud Design Week, which was five days of classes on Adobe’s Creative Suite. There were classes on InDesign, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Premiere and of course, Photoshop. One of the really great things about this week was that most of the other instructors were friends of ours, so it was like a mini reunion! I taught classes on panorama stitching, Photoshop Variables, retouching and plug-ins. If you missed them, you can get them HERE.
Some of the awesome instructors at Design Week! From left, Trish Witkowski, Erica Gamet, Jack Davis, me, Janine Warner, Lesa Snider and Jay Nelson. I couldn’t have asked for better company in Seattle!
During my time off, I went to see a pretty fun documentary called “Sign Painters,” about that seemingly lost art. It was only showing in select theaters for a few days, and I was lucky to find one in Seattle. It was really interesting to learn about the craft and to see how it’s changed, and shrunk, over the years. I’m a sucker for great lettering so I REALLY enjoyed this film. I’d highly recommend it if you’re either interested in the art of sign painting or if you’re one of those people that likes learning about unique topics.
This week, I’ll be teaching the last segment of my Photoshop Mastery series at creativeLIVE. I’ve been teaching one two-day class about once a month for the last several months, all covering different Photoshop subjects. There was fundamentals, retouching & collage, color & tone, creative explorations and masking. For this last class, I’ll be teaching “Ultimate Mastery,” which includes some of the more advanced (but not difficult!) features of Photoshop.
If you’re not familiar with creativeLIVE, you should be! They offer multiple online classes every single day and while they’re live, they’re free to watch. If you end up liking the class, you can purchase it so that you’ll have access to the videos at any time and the bonus/supplemental material as well. For example, when you buy my courses, you get the pdf handbook and practice files that go along with them. My Photoshop Ultimate Mastery class is Aug. 28-29, 9-4 PST. I hope you’ll be able to tune in! Enroll for free HERE.
Another gas station!
Before flying out to Seattle, I photographed yet another vintage service station. I’ve been checking off a lot of these lately! This one was just 2o minutes north of my home town, Minneapolis, and was so tiny!
An iPhone shot of the tiny service station I photographed north of Minneapolis.
by Ben Willmore | Jul 15, 2013
Hi gang! Here’s the weekly recap. We started the week off in Seattle, where I was teaching my “Photoshop Mastery: Creative Explorations” 2-day online class. We covered everything from filters, to brushes, to panollages, and all kinds of fun creative techniques. If you missed it, you can still get the class HERE. Immediately following my Creative Explorations class, I did a one-day “Image Ambulance” class, which covered all kinds of retouching and restoration techniques. This one was really interesting because all of the images were submitted by viewers and I only started working on them during the live class. No pressure! It actually turned out to be great, and we had a nice array of “problem images” to deal with. If you’d like to grab the Image Ambulance class, you can do so HERE.
Me and my in-studio students at creativeLIVE.
Karen and I always love hanging out in Seattle. Not only is the creativeLIVE team amazing to work with, but the city is pretty awesome itself… especially in the summer months when it’s actually sunny! We always find great places to eat, and this time, we checked out the Collections Cafe, which is located inside the Chihuly Garden of Glass Museum. The cafe is pretty interesting in that it’s full of interesting… you guessed it… collections. Each table is a shadowbox full of unique vintage things. Cameras, wind-up toys, you name it. Hanging on the ceiling are dozens of old accordions. All in all, it makes for a pretty funky atmosphere. We also stopped at Pike Place Market before we left, and that’s always an adventure in itself!
Karen got this shot of my at the Collections Cafe in Seattle. There are dozens of old accordions hanging from the ceiling.
After we left Seattle, we spent a night in the Spokane area before heading east towards Glacier National Park. We did stop for a night in Sand Point, Idaho on the way and spent the evening hanging out with Karen’s friends Wendy and Sean, who live in town. What’s funny is that the RV park we stayed at was directly across from Laughing Dog Brewery. Anyone that knows me knows that I’m a bit of a beer snob, and love stopping at breweries along my travels. This place had at least five different IPAs (India Pale Ales) and that’s my favorite kind of beer. Karen also loved the place because to say it was dog friendly would be an understatement. There were at least five to six dogs running around the place at any given time.
Karen and I striking one of our signature poses out front of Laughing Dog.
The next day, we made it to our Glacier rv park, which is only a few miles from the entrance to the national park. So far, we’ve only gotten to explore one day so we were really just getting the lay of the land, driving from one side to the other to see what it was like. I haven’t been to this park since I was in college and Karen has never been before. In fact, this is her first time in Montana! From what we’ve seen so far, the park is beautiful, and we’re bound to have a great week of exploring and shooting here. More to come!
The mandatory tourist shot.
Here I am with a fleet of vintage busses used by the national park for public transport. I would LOVE to get to lightpaint one of these!
by Ben Willmore | Mar 4, 2013
Hey gang! I just returned back to the bus after an excellent week up in Seattle for Photoshop Week with creativeLIVE. Photoshop Week was an online, live Photoshop conference with 13 instructors and over 40 classes. I taught five sessions, three on Actions & Automation, one on Blending Modes and one on What’s New in Photoshop CS6.1. All of my classes went really well, and we’ve been getting excellent feedback. My personal favorite was a comment that came from the creativeLIVE chat rooms and said, “When Chuck Norris needs a [Photoshop] demo, he calls Ben Willmore.” Whoever said that, thank you! That was awesome!
Lesa Snider, myself and Dave Cross are on set at creativeLIVE during a panel discussion. Thanks to the creativeLIVE team for posting this photo.
Photoshop Week was much different from all my previous experiences with creativeLIVE, in that there were other instructors (many of them friends of mine) to interact with and learn from. In case you missed the line-up, here’s who was instructing, besides myself:
- Dave Cross
- Lesa Snider
- Lindsay Adler
- Colin Smith
- Joel Grimes
- Khara Plicanic
- Aaron Nace
- Jack Davis
- Jared Platt
- Kevin Kubota
- Jason Hoppe
- Jed Taufer
Here’s another one courtesy of creativeLIVE…. fun with the staff and instructors.
Now that the week has come to a close, all of the Photoshop Week classes are now available for purchase over on the creativeLIVE site. You can read about the individual classes, buy them separately, or get them as a set HERE.
Since the Photoshop Week sessions are done by 4:00 every day, I got to spend a lot of time hanging out with old friends as well as making new ones. We had some nice dinners and explored the city a lot. Instead of blabbing on about the week, here are some photos. Photos are more fun anyway 🙂
Me and Karen at the Chihuly, Garden and Glass Museum. If you’ve never been to this place, I highly recommend it. Dale Chihuly is an incredible glass artist and the museum has a colorful, whimsical, yet organic feel to it.
Yup… this is me with life-size bacon. Throughout the week, I had been making some random bacon references during my classes – enough so that folks were starting to think it was pretty funny. Then I come across this awesome bacon in Pike Place Market! What a coincidence! She happened to be walking around with life-size ketchup and mustard bottles as well.
A bunch of iPhone shots that Karen took while exploring the city. She used an app called Diptic to put them all together like this.
Here I am with Karen and Aaron Nace, of Phlearn.com, at the Seattle Space Needle. (Karen and Aaron are actually not related. It’s the first time either of them had met another non-family member with their same last name before!) We actually lucked out this day in that it was sunny, so our view from the top of the needle was pretty nice.
Me, Colin Smith and Aaron Nace in front of Kangaroo & Kiwi, an Aussie/Kiwi pub in Seattle. Colin is from New Zealand and was anxious to check the place out and get some of their Kiwi Cuisine. Both Colin and I had meat pies, a classic dish in Australia/New Zealand. The food was really good and the place had a fun vibe. At some point, we’d like to return in the evening to see what the night scene is like there.
As I mentioned above, we’re back at the bus, which is in the Eugene area. We’ll spend the next week here getting work done and overseeing the vintage bus project. If you’ve been following the vintage bus story, it has been seeing daily progress and when we returned just a little while ago, we found that the mock-up of the interior is being installed pretty quickly. To get more info on my vintage bus project, you can check out the Creative Cruiser facebook page HERE.
More to come…
