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 | May 7, 2015
Hi gang! I know I’ve been away from the blog world for a while, and that’s because I’ve been on an extended international trip with VERY limited internet (more on that later). I did, however, want to pop in to share a bit of news.
I’m excited to announce the launch of a brand new seminar tour that will be kicking off later this month. It’s called the
Photoshop and Lightroom Creative Integration Tour, hosted by the fine folks at KelbyOne. This will be a full-day seminar that teaches you how to best integrate Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop.
Here’s the official 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!
So far, here are the cities we currently have on the schedule:
- May 29 – South San Francisco, CA
- June 19 – Seattle, WA
- August 4 – Kansas City, MO
- August 6 – St Louis, MO
- October 19 – Houston, TX
- October 21 – Colorado Springs, CO
- October 26 – Los Angeles, CA
- December 9 – Fort Lauderdale, FL
- December 14 – San Diego, CA
I’m really excited to get back on the road again with KelbyOne, and am even more excited to bring you this fun and exciting new content! I hope to see many of you at one of the upcoming shows.
Click here to learn more and find out where to register.
More to come!
by Ben Willmore | Feb 16, 2015
Hi gang! I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on some great training events that will be happening over the next month. We’ve got a mix of Photoshop and photography as well as a mix of online and in the field.
Photoshop Week
Pretty soon, I’ll be heading back to the CreativeLive studio in Seattle to teach several classes during Photoshop Week. Over the course of six days, 13 instructors will present a total of 48 classes, all related to Photoshop, and as with all CreativeLive classes, they’re free to watch while their live. Here is CreativeLive’s description of the event:
One of the biggest events in photography is coming back to CreativeLive – get ready to learn from the industry’s best during Photoshop Week 2015!
Photoshop helps you transform the average image you have into the jaw-dropping image you want! Photoshop Week is your opportunity to learn the tools, techniques, and shortcuts you need to bring your unique creative vision to life.
For six days, the world’s most inspiring photographers and retouchers will show you how they work their magic in Photoshop and Lightroom. You’ll learn exciting new ways to transform your work and create images that stand out from the masses.
This action-packed line-up has classes for photographers working at every level. You’ll learn exciting new approaches to enhancing your images from professionals working in every genre of photography.
My classes at Photoshop Week:
- Quick Selection Tips
- Complex Selections
- Getting the Most out of Smart Objects
- Understanding Layer Masks
- Texturizing Images
- Filters & Creative Effects in Photoshop
Click here for more info on my Photoshop Week classes
Click here for more info about the event and to register for free
Shooting the West
Ever want to join me both in the classroom AND in the field? On March 3-8, I will be teaching at the annual Shooting the West event, in Winnemucca, Nevada.
Shooting the West is a photography symposium with distinguished presenters in many different photographic fields. Throw in workshops, participant shows, juried contests, vendors like Manfrotto and Canon, portfolio reviews, great Basque food and lots of Winnemucca style fun… and you have a pretty good idea what it’s all about.
Im excited to be the keynote speaker at this week-long event, and to work with the Shooting the West team for the first time! It’s going to be a really immersive week, as I’ll be teaching full-day classes that include shooting in the field, processing in the classroom and final critique. Here’s what I’ve got in store for participants:
- HDR Photography: All day class that includes shooting in the field, processing in the classroom and final critique
- Panoramas: All day class that includes shooting in the field, processing in the classroom and final critique
- Post-processing for Outdoor & Travel Photographers: All day class, in the classroom
- Think Like a Photographer: 90-minute session
- Image Ambulance: 90-minute session
Those are just the workshops and seminars that I’m teaching. Click here to learn more about the event and see the full schedule.
International travels
Shortly after we wrap up Shooting the West, I’ll be flying to Hong Kong, where I will begin a 2-month, multi-country journey aboard the beautiful Crystal Symphony. Karen and I present the Digital Filmmaking course to our fellow guests and it’s always an incredible experience. We get to meet loads of interesting people, and visit interesting places. Below is our itinerary.
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 | May 5, 2014
Hi everyone! Lately, I’ve been dedicating the blog posts to our recent international travel images, but I wanted to take a little break from that to tell you what’s been going on here in the States, and what’s coming up. After being abroad for a few months, I arrived back in the U.S. and literally hit the ground running, diving head-first into lots of fun Photoshop training and photography events.
The Photoshop Creativity Tour
I basically had time to unpack and repack to fly out to my Photoshop Creativity seminar in Chicago. This is part of an ongoing tour with KelbyOne that hits cities all over the country. At this event, I teach you how to get a little more creative with Photoshop with techniques like compositing, complex masking, 2D and 3D and creating special effects with blending modes. It’s a fun full-day event and I’ve got a few more cities coming up, so if you happen to be in any of these areas, I’d love to see you there! Click HERE for more information
- Philadelphia: May 7
- San Francisco: May 9
- Sacramento: May 28
* We’ll be adding more cities soon, so stay tuned!
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Photoshop for Photographers: Beyond the Basics
I spent an awesome three days at creativeLIVE in Seattle last week presenting by 3-day course called “Photoshop for Photographers: Beyond the Basics.” Not only do I love working and hanging out with the amazing team at creativeLIVE, but the class turned out fantastic! This course is a follow-up to my earlier “Photoshop for Photographers: The Essentials” class, which was also very popular. Where as the “Essentials” class covered all of the basic, must-know techniques for photographers using Photoshop, the “Beyond the Basics” class teaches photographers how to take their work to the next level, covering more of the advanced techniques and tools. Over the three days of training, we cover things like compositing, textures, retouching, hard-to-find Photoshop features and more. If you missed the course while it was live online, you can buy the course (and get all the bonus materials that come along with it)
HERE.
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Vintage Bus Visit
As many of you probably know, I have been restoring my next home on wheels, which is a 1963 Flxible Starliner bus. For the past year or so, it has been in Eugene, Oregon getting its interior fabricated. I have been making periodic visits to collaborate with the team at Paradise Coach, and that’s where I went after Seattle. The bus has been making exciting progress, with all of the wood walls and cabinets being installed and stained, lighting and air conditioning ducts put in, etc. After working on this project for over four years, It’s great to see everything finally coming together. I post a lot of bus updates on the Creative Cruiser facebook page, and you can find that
HERE.
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The Palm Springs Photo Festival
This is an annual event that I love to attend and teach at. It’s geared toward professional and serious advanced amateur photographers and includes seminars, symposiums, workshops, portfolio reviews with key industry figures and lots of great networking events. This is the kind of event where I enjoy being an attendee just as much as I enjoy being a speaker. I love the mix of inspiring talks, lectures designed to help photographers make it in the business world and high quality feedback from industry professionals. This year, I taught two classes on advanced Photoshop ideas and attended many talks as well. It’s also a great event to reconnect with fellow teachers and photographers that I’ve become friends with over the years. Here are a few shots from this year’s event:
Philadelphia & San Francisco
As I mentioned above, I am bringing my Photoshop Creativity Tour to Philadelphia this week and I flew in a few days early to spend the time with Karen’s family in New Jersey (Karen has been in NJ for family-related things during the time I’ve been at the events mentioned here). Then, I will be presenting the same seminar in San Francisco before heading back to Florida, where we are currently based.
I hope that gives you a good idea of what I’ve been up to and what new Photoshop and photography training I’ve got going on! More to come!
Here I am shooting at the Big Buddha Temple in Ko Samui, Thailand.
