Free Photo Class

A new free class from Jessica Sprague has open registration starting on June 22nd. She’s awesome! I love her work and her tutorials. It’s basically how I learned Adobe Photoshop! Check out her post here!

High Key Tutorial

I recieve emails from both B&H and Adorama, two of my favorite photography supply stores. Occasionally, they also send links to great tutorials. Here’s one on High-Key Lighting.

Free Subscriptions

Based on all of the recent purchases (upgrades) I have made for the company, I’m always interested in something that is free! MCP Actions’s post today listed three magazines that offer free subscriptions (click here to read full post). I already receive Rangefinder but readily signed up for the other two she listed. Links can be found to these in the left sidebar.

• Rangefinder Magazine
• Professional Photographer
• After Capture

RAW Digital Workflow for Weddings and Portraits with Canon’s DPP

Two photography tutorials in 1 week. Wow, but I did learn some interesting things tonight. From PhotographySchoolhouse.com, I participated in the “RAW Digital Workflow for Weddings and Portraits with Canon’s DPP” free webinar. I learned a shortcut method for copying and pasting recipes (group of settings applied to RAW images) that should save me a lot of time in my workflow (rt-click, copy recipe to clipboard, close file, highlight all thumbnails to which you wish to apply the recipe, rt-click, paste recipe, and VOILA). I also learned about it’s efficient and useful renaming tool (Tools, Start Rename Tool).

Canon’s free RAW editor isn’t as good as Lightroom, but it sure is better than nothing. Lossless recovery of not-so-great photos is such a great thing!

Color Management for Digital Portrait and Wedding Photographers

I just attended a free webinar by Photography Schoolhouse entitled, “Color Management for Digital Portrait and Wedding Photographers”. It was a great discussio on ICC profiles, color spaces, and device calibration. If you’re not a member of Photography Schoolhouse, this is a great forum to join just for the informative, and free, webinars that they offer. Click here to see their current offerings.

What did I walk away with?

• It’s highly recommended to perform monthly monitor calibrations using a monitor calibrator
• Kerry Allan has used both the Spyder and the EyeOne and had some difficult with both. He recommends purchasing one in the $250 price range for good quality.
• Kerry Allan uses the Samsung 226 CW Syncmaster (22″ monitor at 1680×1050 res that sells for around $300) and has been very pleased with the color range it provides. He does note that CRT monitors still can’t be beat when it comes to color accuracy and range.
• Always install the device drivers with your monitor and printer. They contain the ICC profiles for these devices which are needed to accuracy represent that you think you are seeing on the screen.
• Kerry Allan recommends DryCreekPhoto.com for downloading various ICC profiles and for tutorials on Color Space Management.
• Make sure you properly set up your Color Settings in Photoshop (for PS7, select Edit >> Color Settings) to save in the color space that your intended printer requires (most print houses will provide recommendations for what color space to use).
• You can assign a printer profile in Photoshop to ensure that the correct ICC profile is used (for PS7, select Image >> Mode >> Assign Profile).

Dodge and Burn Tutorial

Dodge & Burn – nope, it’s not a kids playground game but rather a technique used in Photoshop to lighten and add dimension to your photos. Jodi at MCP Actions just posted a video tutorial for a “better way” to dodge and burn using Photoshop. Jodi always does a fantastic job with her blog and video tutorials. So, click here and go check it out!

How to get natural smiles in children’s portraiture

This was a great post over at MCP Actions’ blog. A guest photographer, Erin Bell, actually made this post. She specializes in children’s photography.

**Click here to view post at MCP Actions**

Metering for Ambient Tutorial

Local Events

Today has been a fun week since I’ve been to attend not one but two photography events here in Huntsville. A local photog friend tipped me off on the Huntsville Photographic Society’s meeting at the Main Library (7pm) each month. Monday night was focused on light. Local photographer Muril Robertson gave the presentation. His focus is on landscape and panorama photographs, but he did an excellent job of presenting on the broad topic of lighting. He even uploaded assignments for us to do in order to improve one’s photographic skills. Even cooler, he used to teach mathematics at Auburn – my alma mater! War Eagle! He’s won many photography award locally, nationally, and globally.

Tonight I attended another photography class at Wolf Camera off Hwy 72. It was supposed to be on ‘Lighting in the Home’, but the teacher got the presentation mixed up and ended up giving a different lighting class. It didn’t matter to me, lighting is one topic that I am still struggling to learn.

Lastly, here’s a blog ‘must read’ tip for you. Jodie Friedman over at MCP Actions has been posting an interview over the last two days she conducted with Christopher Becker, a.k.a. Becker the Photographer. Becker is an awesome photographer, and I’ve been following his blog and [b] school information. Check out both Jodie’s blog and Becker’s blog sometime.

Foundations Program – Lesson 2 (partial assignment)