I’ve Been Working On The Railroad…with HDR

• B&W, Software Techniques

Grungy HDR is a lot of fun and once in awhile I have some free time (rare) to open images and just play. I took this shot in Nevada City Montana a few years ago after a workshop up there. It was one of many I shot in the NC area which is a gold mine (no pun intended) of historic buildings and artifacts from the mining days.

This old railroad car sat next to an old locomotive and a few other old cars. They were rusting and had peeling paint, and that makes them perfect for HDR or B&W with Sepia tone, or……? Let your imagination run wild.

The key to grungy HDR is Tone Mapping more than once and then what I have enjoyed doing is converting to B&W with Topaz B&W Effects and then using the Adjustment Brush to bring back color. What do you think?

Images From Badlands National Park

• B&W, Image Processing, Nature Photography

I was teaching workshops in South Dakota a few months back and before catching my flight I had the afternoon to kill so I zipped out to Badlands National Park and spent 4 hours shooting.

It is a great park to shoot and I had a great time, albeit brief. I am also a big fan of Topaz software and processed some of the images in B&W Effects from Topaz. The reason i did that was because early in my shooting the sun was quite high and there was haze on the horizon.

When you have the haze it desaturates the sky and is not so appealing. Convert to B&W and the sky is a shade of gray and works much better. Here are some shots:

New Website and It’s About Time

• Uncategorized

Finally, I took the time to move beyond simply a gallery website and into a full featured site with large gallery features, my blog on the home page, and places to advertise various things I may offer. I am very happy with the site!

I used a template from Gallery Web Host and it is simple yet dynamic feature rich site. The good part about WordPress is that you can do just about anything and change the site look in minutes. Here is the site:

Upcoming Seminars: Flash Photography and Studio Portraiture

• Seminars & Workshops

I am pleased to be teaching a few 3 hour seminars in Bend, Oregon and at the Cascade Center of Photography.  The first is Flash 1 which is a basic intro to mastering flash and covers all the features of your flash from understanding light, flash exposure compensation, bounce, and a lot more.

The second session is Flash II which covers wireless flash, portraits using flash, gels, working in mixed light, and again, a lot more.