Business of Outdoor and Nature Photography Seminar

I am pleased to announce that I will be teaching a business and marketing seminar for outdoor and nature photographers in November in Bryce Canyon National Park. I will be joining Gary Crabbe, former stock business manager for Galen Rowell and Marv Johnson, CEO of online photo agent Fogstock. This seminar will cover subjects ranging from what sells and why to adventure sports, marketing and self promotion, pricing images, and sealing the deal. We will be staying at Ruby's Inn where they are giving us a killer deal on room rates. There is also an early bird price special running through August 15th. To read more click here. Keep Reading: Full Post and Comments!

Learn Commercial Photography on the Internet

There are many, many photographers wishing to go pro and I hear from a few and fairly often as they wish to assist me. There are more assistants wishing to assist than I could ever use. I wish I could help them all. I have been teaching on the internet for the last five years and a few location workshops each year as well, but I decided to create a professional photography training program as an option to these photographers wishing to learn on the job.

I started on it two years ago, writing, photographing, and video taping for this program and the result is a one year professional photography training program that is offered on the workshop website. This is the answer for those who cannot attend Brooks Institute or Art Center College of Design or RIT.

It is internet based and includes downloadable lessons each week. You can learn what you need to go pro without having to move or even quit your current job. It starts with the basics of the business, basic portraiture, product, location, architecture and more. Then progresses into advanced portraits, products, adventure sports, architecture, industrial, and a whole lot more. Lessons also include marketing and self promotion, bidding on jobs, selling stock photography, and more business themes. Those who finish the program have the option of having their portfolio reviewed by an art director as part of the program.

The program starts September 9th and you can check it out here. And here is the rest of it. Keep Reading: Full Post and Comments!

Industrial Photography: Shooting the Wind Turbines

Last week I had a great assignment at the wind turbine farms in Eastern Oregon. I sure love shooting this type of stuff with the blue collar workers out in the field. We shot a ton of imagery with this guy positioned around the wind turbines and from high angles and low angles, telephoto and wide angle. The image will be used for a trade ad. For lighting I used a Norman 400B on a stand with sandbag and Pocket Wizard.

There is nothing scientific here as far as lighting, rather its the look that I wanted to achieve. I could have used the flash as a flash fill letting the sun be the main light, but I really like the look of underexposing the ambient light and using the flash as the key light. I set the strobe at 1/2 power and chose the fstop that provided a normal flash exposure and then set the shutter speed at a -1 stop below normal exposure. This really makes the guy pop out against the background. Read on for a few more examples. This first image I like a lot as well because the sun is behind and does not splash across his face. The strobe is the main light on him.

This next one I like the stacked look of a telephoto lens but not so much the sunlight splashing across his face. Another thing I had to fix was his filthy pants. I did that by opening Photoshop and adding an empty layer and then using the color picker and sampling from a clean part of his pants. Using a soft brush I painted on the layer where the dirt was then switched the blending mode to color and it changed the brown dirt to blue dirt and makes the pants look cleaner. The stains are still there but the color looks much better.
What was interesting is the project manager said these towers are much taller than the Statue of LIberty and on the large end of each blade, you could drive a car into. I was offered the chance to go up inside one to the top but he warned me that it is climbing a ladder for 45 minutes. No thanks! Keep Reading: Full Post and Comments!

Portrait Professional Software: Nice!

I have been shooting quite a few staff photography assignments this year. In fact it seems that is one area that corporate clients are not cutting back. I have always used Photoshop to do my retouching, adding some diffusion and skin softening techniques along with an occasional Eddie Tapp Dream Glow effect to get them all to look smoother and younger-the most common request I get. I have worked some of these steps into some actions to speed up the process but you still have to manually paint on your masks as each head is in a different position. It began to get tedious. I have seen the ads for Portrait Professional and decided to read a few reviews which I found to be all positive so I decided to buy it and give it a try. WOW! What a great program and here are some examples.



First, this program is so easy to use in an easy to follow step by step process.It asks you whether you have a male or female, smiling or not, and you then position lines and mark some points around the face. It creates some sort of invisible mask around eyes and allows you t reshape the head, the eyes, nose, and mouth, neck and more. You can resize and sharpen eyes, eyebrows, mouth, and so much more. You can apply the skin softening in varied levels and paint in where you want more or less.

There is to much here to explain as it is easy to find it on the companies website. Check it out. Very cool, effective, and fast. For lighting Chelsea here, I used a 7' Photoflex Octa Dome about 5' above the floor and a silver reflector below to bounce light up into the shadows. Two umbrellas on the rear wall as well. Keep Reading: Full Post and Comments!

The Lomography Effect

If you Google Grunge Photography or Lomography or HDR you will get millions of hits and each of them will provide a different explanation of what each of these techniques look like. Over time I have done that to see what 'looks' I like from the various sources and recently it was the Lomography look I want to play with.

What is Lomography? Who is Lomogra(pher) or Lomo or....who? A search on Wikipedia will provide you an answer and basically there is no person which this technique is named for, rather it's Lomo LLC a Russian made camera that resembles the Holga (at least to me). It also states that Lomography was created in Austria. So who knows. But it is the look that interests me.

Wikipedia also states that Lomography is a colorful, saturated, sometimes blurry technique and that is what I wanted to play with. So I searched Lomography and found plenty of Lightroom presets that mimic the technique and the 'looks' were as varied as the entries. The preset that I chose was from Matt Kloskowski and his website Lightroom Killer Tips.

So I visited his site and sure enough he had his version of the Lomography preset and without a doubt it was coolest look out of about 20 presets I downloaded and tried. You can see here in the shot of one of my favorite guys to work with and do lots of experimenting. His name is Fletcher and he does photography himself.

So I ran the preset over the image in Lightroom and and then adjusted the color to taste ( a little less green and yellow) and then opened in Photoshop to fine a little more. I like the final look and it now is the opening page for my new website Charlie Borland.
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More thoughts from Seth Resnicks D65 Workshop

In a previous post I mentioned that I had just taken Seth Resnicks ‘workflow, not workslow’ seminar through D65 and I am still riding high with what I learned. Efficient workflow is not just about knowing Lightroom, but understanding efficient workflow that makes the tedious aspects of managing digital assets easier. We all know someone with the latest and greatest DSLR who cant take a picture if their life depended on it. There are plenty of Lightroom experts out there as well. But how many have a very systematic and efficient workflow? Like the camera, the software is only the tool that makes your system work.

Here are a few thoughts from the seminar, things that really made me think:

• In the film days, we shot assignments and delivered film to the client and were done. These days we are asked or expected to do a lot more. That may include Photoshop touchup, color correction, clipping masks, and maybe even CMYK files. You should consider adding more billable services in this new digital era. This is part of workflow.

• More megapixels are not always better! It’s how the files are processed. Apparently the CIA’s spy satellite that can read your licenses plate from space is….1 megapixel. It’s their software that makes is the magnification possible.

• We have already been hearing this, but if cd’s and DVD’s are your storage method of choice, you may wish to reconsider. According to this study they only have a 2-5 years lifespan.

• Think about other storage devices that were state-of-the-art in their time and that many
of us probably spent a bunch of money on. Syquest, Zip, Jazz, and tape. Most are gone now but the old hard drive is still here and appears to be the safest storage device still. Fortunately they are dropping in price as the storage size increases. I am daisy chaining several of them together, one for raw files and one for backup. Finished files on another drive and the LR catalog on another so that I can take it with me.

• Naming conventions are critical to maintaining an easy to use and efficient workflow. It needs to be consistent and for every single shoot and file. I am still brainstorming this as to what will work best for me. Here are some ideas:

• date_client_job 20093015_xerox_job
• client or location_job Xerox_job
• for stock: ca_yosemite_stk I am thinking I like this better than the date at the front.

• I tend to search for images by location when seeking files so the date does not help much. Fortunately Lightroom allows lots of custom options.

• Keywording is a powerful and useful tool in Lightroom. The best strategy is to think ‘global to
local’. Start with then add keywords down to the local subject. Europe> England> London> Big
Ben> Beefeater.


There is so much more I need to chew on and will post more as I recall them. And check out Seths book. It is excellent! Keep Reading: Full Post and Comments!

Making a pit stop in Anza Borrego, California

I just finished Seth Resnicks D65 workshop in San Diego and am making a quick stop in Californias Anza Borrego Desert State Park. The wildflowers are still out and the cactus will not bloom for probably another week. I am bummed because it will be gorgeous when they do bloom. Here is a shot from Fonts Point taken at sunset when there really was no sunset due to overcast. Read on if you want to know the processing. I first shot this is as a 5 stop bracketed series for HDR generation. Now if you are wondering why HDR when the light is flat, it's because it works in a whole new way. You can bracket and there is often no need to, but the results when tone mapping are cool. You can really push the blacks and microcontrast for a very edgy or grungy look.

So my settings are:

Strength 100
Color sat 65
Light Smoothing- right smack in the middle
Luminosity -3
Set the B&W points to be as close to the walls as possible
Microcontrast 10
Light Smoothing 0
Temperature -3

Then I opened it in PS and added a curves adjustment, a vignette, and the a high pass sharpen.

That's it!
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In San Diego with Seth Resnick

So how is your digital photography workflow? Efficient, productive, and easy to use? Well I will be the first to admit that mine sucks. So I decided to take Seth Resnicks: workflow- not workslow, seminar through D65. It was long, intense, and absolutely fabulous. I am a better man for doing so. I have had Lightroom since it came out but never really had time to think about just how efficient workflow is laid out. I needed a crash course and found it in Seths seminar. Four long and productive days with Seth and Jamie will have you mastering Lightroom and the concepts that are behind efficient workflow. You get his excellent book and lots of extras ideas and concepts. Its well worth the money and time.
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Must see: Zack Arias video

I usually dont blog about other photographers blog entries, but just in case you have not seen this it is a must watch: http://www.zarias.com/?p=284 Keep Reading: Full Post and Comments!

Digging through the archives: The Mountain Man Rendevous

Twenty some year ago I photographed a modern mountain man rendezvous for a magazine story. I cant even remember the magazine but it may have been the AAA magazine or Farmers Insurance or something like that. I have been having fun occasionally going through my old stock and assignment files and looking for images that could be considered timeless, meaning that they might still have a current appeal in the market.

I have been scanning some of these and then applying more current looks or effects in Photoshop. This image is of Crow Killer, a modern day mountain man at a rendezvous in Oregon. I photographed him and a bunch of others during multiple events I shot for the assignment. I scanned the image on my Nikon Coolscan and then opened it in Photoshop. I have a plugin called Redynamix that creates a HDR like look to the images. It is fun to play and cheap, like $16 and you get it at Mediachance. The problem is that it works only in 8 bit and that has definite drawbacks. Noise comes in very quickly if you are pushing hard on the sliders.

I worked this over a fair amount with the sliders, then rendered it and added a High Pass to it, tweaked the levels and bent a curve a little to add contrast. I then posted it on my new website www.charlieborland.com among other people and portrait images.
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