Category: Photography

My Photoshop Seminar

Chad

Well, yesterday I went to the Photoshop for Photographers seminar that was held just outside of Chicago. I must say it was money well spent. I learned a ton. Just like any profession, knowing how to use your tools properly makes any job a lot easier.

The three main items I picked up on were:

1. Adobe Camera RAW – This is the built in RAW converter in CS. I currently use BreezeBrowser to convert my RAW files to TIFF, I may start using ACR now that I know some neat tricks to it.
2. Curves – I now understand curves. I know what to look for when using curves.
3. Layer Masks – I’ve seen them used before, but wasn’t sure where I would use them. Now I know and they’re very handy.

If you use Photoshop with your digital images but don’t know a lot about Photoshop, I highly recommend this seminar. And the presenter, Ben Willmore, was excellent. He talked in an easy to understand way and was a very professional speaker.

I’ve already signed up for the Photoshop Down & Dirty Tricks seminar that’s being held in Milwaukee on October 29th.

Photoshop training today

Chad

I will be in Rosenmont, IL all day today for training. The course is Photoshop for Photographers.

Hopefully I will walk away with a lot of knowledge, because right now, post processing is the hardest part of my digital workflow.

If this turns out to be a good class there is another one(different subject though), next month in Milwaukee that I’d like to go to also.

Sensor is all clean

Chad

All the suggested parts for sensor cleaning came in on Friday, so I took the time this weekend to gave it a cleaning.

Following the instructions here, it took 5 attempts to get all the specs of dust cleared away. With practice, the procedure should go a lot quicker.

Some wonderful photographs

Chad

I usually keep a pretty good eye on my site stats, and especially the referrers. I always like to know where everyone is coming from. My referrers have been the point of discovery for quite a few sites that I now visit on a regular basis.

Well, last week I discovered a new one. Everydayrenee, appears to be somewhat local geographically to me, although I’m not sure where exactly, but that’s not what would bring me back to that site. It’s the wonderful display of photography on her site. I don’t know if she is a pro, but her photos are just spectacular.

If you like outdoorsy/wildlife photography, be sure to checkout her gallery.

What is drama?

Chad

After this past weekend of rain, the skies provided some really nice cloud formations, so I loaded up the family and we headed down to the lakefront for the photo ops.

I took tons of pictures. With a lot of the pictures I used the circular polarizer I just recently picked up. It’s suppose to help the exposure when there’s a lot of bright sky in the picture and is also suppose to enhance the looks of clouds.

Of all the pictures I took, I really only got a few ‘keepers’. I still got a lot to learn. I think getting a good exposure is the toughest part.

Here are my three favorites. Click on them for bigger pictures.