Check out Outdoor Photographer | | In the good old days I enjoyed reading Outdoor Photographer magazine when it showed up in my mail box every month. Like many publications, it ran into hard times and folded. Well, it's back! Right now it is quarterly, and they just came out with their fourth edition. I'm featured in their Favorite Places section. They contacted me about my photo Ducky's Pond and asked me to write about it. Not only is my story good ;-) but the whole issue is great. I subscribed and looked at the back issues, and they are very solid too. I highly recommend you check it out. https://www.outdoorphotographer.com/
| | | The total solar eclipse in Spain was fun and hot I recently returned from Spain after leading a week-long photography workshop built around the total solar eclipse. We started in Barcelona, where I once again spent time exploring the work of Antoni Gaudí. There are few people who inspire my creativity more. His work reminds me that being creative isn’t simply about making something different. It is about having a vision and finding your own way to make it work. After visiting the Sagrada Família, Parc Güell and Casa Batlló, we headed to Zaragoza, where I had made two scouting trips over the previous 18 months to find what I thought would be the perfect location for the eclipse.
The day before the eclipse, that plan went out the window. The crowds at my chosen location were already overwhelming, so I moved the group to a backup spot outside the city with a clear view toward the western horizon. On eclipse day we arrived early, double parked our two vans, hauled our equipment onto a rocky ridge and set up camp in 100-degree heat with chairs, beach umbrellas and a cooler full of ice and water. The sky was perfectly clear. When totality arrived, I made a few photographs, but for much of it I put the camera aside. This was my fourth total eclipse, and I wanted to experience those brief moments rather than spend all of them looking through a viewfinder. There is something about the changing light, the darkness and the reaction of the people around you that a photograph simply can’t capture.
After totality, I put a 700mm lens on the camera because I knew the partially eclipsed sun would be setting. As it approached a distant ridge, wind turbines appeared in silhouette, something I hadn't been able to see until the sun was behind them. I knew immediately that was the photograph I wanted. I kept shooting as the sun dropped lower until the eclipsed portion was disappearing behind the ridge. It became my favorite photograph of the day, and it was one I never could have planned. Maybe that was the lesson of the week: plan carefully, know what you want to accomplish, but always leave room for the unexpected. Sometimes the best photograph is the one you didn't know was there. | | If you need quality camera filters, I have them | | I was approached by NiSi filters to be a dealer, so I checked them out, got a few filters to work with and now I'm a reseller. They make a quality product, and they make the glass themselves rather than getting it from a supplier. My favorite thing that they have going is their magnetic line they call JetMag Pro. I've been interested in magnetic filters for a while. Rather than screwing onto the lens, they attach via a magnet. That's cool, but I've read a lot of reports the last couple of years of people bumping their lens and the filter falls off. NiSi solved that by having the filter also lock on. A short twist and the filter is secure. You can even pick up your camera and lens by the filter.
I'm selling the filters at Focus - A Vermont Gallery, my gallery in Woodstock, VT. I have a pretty good selection in stock of the most popular filters for landscape and nature photographers. I can also get any product they make and ship them to you. I sell at the minimum advertised price, the same as B&H and everybody else. Online sales are also through the gallery at https://www.focusvermont.com/product/filters/
I'm doing this mainly as a service to my workshop clients and photographers who come to the gallery. I'm working on some articles detailing what I like and don't like about different filters, so watch for those. If you want to know anything about any filters, drop me a note.
I'm also a dealer for SIRUI tripods and have a few at the gallery. You can see my suggestions for tripods at https://www.focusvermont.com/product/tripods/. Which tripod to get can be pretty confusing, and I did a video about tripods a while back you can see at https://www.lorenphotos.com/gallery/video-why-i-always-use-a-tripod/
| | | Take More Control of Your EditingThis fall I’m offering two online workshops designed to help you get more out of the photographs you’ve already worked hard to create.
Take Control of Lightroom is a three-evening series covering the Lightroom workflow from beginning to end. We’ll start with getting your photo library organized, move into the editing tools you’ll use on almost every photograph, and finish with more advanced techniques including masking, AI tools, selective adjustments, black and white, removing distractions and preparing images for printing or the web. The sessions are October 26, November 2 and November 9, from 7:00 to 9:30 p.m. You can take any session individually for $59 or all three for $149. Each session is recorded, so you can go back and watch it again whenever you like. Learn more and register for Take Control of Lightroom
Then on Sunday, November 22, I’m offering Photoshop for Photographers, a four-hour online workshop from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Photoshop is incredibly powerful, but photographers don’t need to know everything it can do. I’ll concentrate on the tools I actually find useful for photography, including layers, masks, adjustment layers, Content-Aware Fill, removing unwanted objects, focus stacking, dodging and burning, and generative AI.
I’ve been using Photoshop for more than 25 years, and my goal isn’t to turn you into a Photoshop expert in four hours. It’s to make Photoshop less intimidating and show you how to use it when Lightroom isn’t enough. Registration is $129, and the workshop will also be recorded so you can watch it again later. Learn more and register for Photoshop for Photographers
Both workshops are taught live on Zoom, and you’ll be able to ask questions as we work through the programs together. If you’ve been wanting to become more comfortable with Lightroom, Photoshop, or both, these workshops are a great opportunity to spend some time this fall improving your digital darkroom skills. | | |
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