Month: August 2020

September Technical Night – Special Presentation by Colleen Miniuk – Human Perception in Composition

Please join us on Friday, September 25, 2020 at 7 pm EDT for a presentation on Composition that I know you will enjoy and learn a great deal from!

Colleen’s Bio:

Colleen Miniuk is an ex-software engineer who fled Intel Corporation in 2007 to pursue a meaningful life as a full-time outdoor photographer, writer, publisher, instructor, and speaker. Her credits include National Geographic calendars, Arizona Highways, AAA Via, National Parks Traveler, On Landscape, and a broad variety of other publications. She has served three times as an Artist-in-Residence with Acadia National Park. She authored the award-winning guidebooks, Photographing Acadia National Park: The Essential Guide to When, Where, and How and Wild in Arizona: Photographing Arizona’s Wildflowers, A Guide to When, Where, & How (1^st and 2^nd editions) as well as the instructional ebook, Seeing the Light in Outdoor Photography (1^st and 2^nd editions). She also writes a weekly advice column called “Dear Bubbles.” Colleen leads photography workshops and all-women photography workshops (called “Sheography™”) through her own company, CMS Photography, as well as for numerous camera clubs, national-level organizations, conferences, and private clients.

Description of the Presentation:

Anyone who has spent even a little time dabbling in photography has likely heard about the many “rules” of composition. And the emphasis on such topic is for good reason, for how a photographer arranges the visual elements within the frame directly affects how viewers perceive his or her photograph. But oftentimes photographers spend much time forcing their scenes to fit the rules (which yields technically “perfect” but perhaps boring photographs) rather than arranging the subject matter based on emotional responses, meaning, and human perceptions.

Join outdoor photographer Colleen Miniuk for a different way to approach composition. This insightful and educational presentation goes beyond reviewing the predominant rules and shares how we can leverage the reasoning behind human perception to help elicit specific responses from our viewers. Hear how people respond to subject matter placement, visual weight, lines, light, color, and other elements of visual language to help us arrange our scenes to communicate more meaningful messages with our audiences.

Examples of her art:

In the early 1900s, Charles S. Russell and river-running legend Bert Loper set out to make a movie about their whitewater adventures on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. After the first of their two boats sank in Cataract Canyon, Loper stashed the second boat along the river, hiked out of the canyon, and built a third boat out of galvanized steel. The Ross Wheeler, he called it, named after a local. Loper and Russell had a falling out. Russell took the Ross Wheeler and started the trip over with a new crew. The second boat sank. Then a fourth did as well. That was enough for Russell to abandon the third boat, the Ross Wheeler, along the South Bass Trail. Over 100 years later, the boat still rests there, chained to the boulders above the high water mark.

Fiery sunset over the gypsum ledges near East Gypsum Bay in the Virgin Basin in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area on the Arizona-Nevada border. (Photo from Arizona)

Colleen Miniuk Photography & Writing www.colleenminiuk.com

Do not miss this presentation! It will surely change how you see! It did that for me!

Jim will send out the Zoom invitation the week of Sept 20 for the meeting on Sept 25th. I hope to see you all there!

Lynn Wiezycki

Updated – August Technical Night- Special Presentation by Charles Needle – Impressionistic Photography: How to Use Your Camera (or Smartphone) as a Paintbrush

Speaker Change:

Due to a medical issue our August speaker, Rad Drew, will be postponed until a later date , October 23rd.

BUT Rad referred us to renown photographer, Charles Needle, so he will be doing his own presentation for us.

Presentation:

Unlock your creative potential and discover how to craft painterly photographs using nothing but your digital camera (or smartphone). Charles will describe the process of using long-exposure and multiple-exposure techniques to transform everyday scenes into unimaginable visual masterpieces. His program will be a nuts-and-bolts approach to learning techniques such as, Long-Exposure Pan/Tilt, “Multiple-Exposure Monet” (a technique Charles invented), Multiple-Exposure Rotate & Zoom, Soft-Glow Montage and Composite Montage. He will also explain how to use a free script in Photoshop to accomplish this same look, if your camera does not have built-in multiple-exposure capability. You’ll learn how to see in new ways and take your photography to an entirely new, mind-blowing level!

Charles’ Bio:

Charles Needle is an award-winning, Colorado-based fine art photographer, author, speaker and workshop leader with a unique eye for design and artistic interpretation. His popular “Art of Nature” creative macro workshops have attracted students nationwide.

In 2018, Charles earned an honorable mention in the Macro category of the 8th Annual International Mobile Photography Awards Contest. He was also a semi-finalist in the 2014 Nature’s Best Photography Winland Smith Rice International Awards photo contest.

In 2011, Charles was selected as a finalist, among 15,000 entries worldwide, in the International Garden Photographer of the Year photography contest, sponsored by The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (London, England). This exhibition traveled throughout the United Kingdom.

A popular conference and camera club speaker for more than two decades, Charles has authored three cutting-edge instructional books: Tiny Worlds: Creative Macro Photography Skills (Amherst Media, January 2015), Impressionistic Photography: A Field Guide to Using Your Camera as a
Paintbrush (March 2014), and Creative Macro Photography: Professional Tips & Techniques (2011).

An accomplished speaker, photography juror and teacher with international workshops in Monet’s Garden (Giverny, France for 20 years in a row, with exclusive private access), Keukenhof Gardens (Holland) and The Butchart Gardens (Canada), Charles is a FujiFilm USA Talent Team
member and North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA) Showcase Award winner nine years in a row.

Charles’ photographs have been selected for publication in Nature’s Best, Outdoor Photographer magazine, Nature Photographer magazine, Inner Reflections Engagement Calendar, The Chicago Tribune, SELF Magazine and are in private and public collections nationwide and abroad.

To learn more about Charles’ work, including his workshop and private lesson offerings, visit www.charlesneedlephoto .com.

Examples of his work:

Jim will be sending out the Zoom invitation shortly so be watching for it in your email or here on the website.

See you all Friday night and let’s get our Impressionism hat on and eyes ready! This should be fun!

Lynn Wiezycki

October Technical Night – Special Presentation by Rad Drew – Smartphone Photography using Snapseed and Lightroom Mobile

Please join us October 23rd at 7 pm EDT as we learn how to better use that camera we always have with us, our Smartphone! Rad is an excellent instructor and I know you will really enjoy his presentation. He is proof that you can make extraordinary images with your Smartphone!

Rad Drew Bio
Teacher, photographer, and tour leader, Rad A. Drew, creates with the iPhone, mirrorless, and infrared cameras. He is a frequent contributor to PSA Journal, and was listed in PSA’s Who’s Who in Photography 2018. His creative images have been recognized internationally and exhibited in galleries around the world including SOHO Gallery and SOHO Arthaus in NYC, the L.A. Mobile Arts Festival, and Obscura Gallery, Melbourne, Australia. Rad is an associate editor for PhotoPXL.com, and the mobile art network, TheAppWhisperer . He is a contributor to The Art of iPhone Photography: Creating Great Photos and Art on Your iPhone, serves as a Topaz Labs Affiliate, and is the creator of the popular webinar series, How I Did It!™. See Rad’s work and tutorials on his website, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, and subscribe to his newsletter.

Webinar Description:

In this 90 minute presentation, photographer, Rad A. Drew, from Indianapolis, Indiana, will cover two topics:

The Magic of SnapSeed! Process your Mobile Images to Perfection!, and
Create and Process RAW on your Mobile Phone!

Part 1 Description: The Magic of SnapSeed (for iPhone and Android)
SnapSeed is one of the most powerful apps for processing images on mobile devices. It’s like having Photoshop in the palm of your hand! Photographer, Rad A. Drew, will share tips and tricks that you can use to edit and stylize your images using SnapSeed on your mobile phone.
What you’ll learn…

You’ll be introduced to the SnapSeed interface and the various tools for processing your images
Rad’s simple workflow for processing any image in SnapSeed
How to use SnapSeed’s hidden masking feature for eliminating noise in clouds and sky, and selectively sharpening parts of an image, such as the eyes in a portrait.
How to stylize your image with textures and filters for a vintage look.

Install the Free SnapSeed App
Install the free SnapSeed app on your iPhone or android phone prior to the presentation.

Part 2 Description: Create and Process RAW on your Mobile Phone! (For iPhone and Android)
Lightroom for mobile is an app that allows you to record images in high quality RAW format and to process those images with Lightroom’s powerful RAW editing tools on iPhone and Android phones.

What? You don’t subscribe to the Adobe Creative Cloud and you don’t want to? No worries!

There is a FREE VERSION of Lightroom that has everything except three tools – Selective, Healing, and Geometry – none of which are required for creating and processing RAW files.

If you already subscribe to the Adobe Creative Cloud, the complete Lightroom for your mobile phone is included with your monthly Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. If you don’t subscribe to the Adobe Creative Cloud, install the free app on your phone.

Get the Lightroom app for iPhone
Get the Lightroom app for Android.

What You’ll Learn in this Webinar:

Why photographers prefer recording and processing RAW
How to make images in RAW format with the Lightroom Pro Camera, including HDR and Long Exposures.
Six steps for processing your RAW files to perfection in about two minutes using Lightroom’s powerful RAW processing tools.
How to save the processed images to your phone’s camera roll.

RAW images and RAW processing has long been the standard for serious digital photographers, but, until recently, recording and processing RAW was not possible on mobile devices. Today, however, we can tap the power of RAW right from our mobile device.