Focal Press Book: Black and White in Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Lightroom

This is now on my list of highly recommended books for digital photography educators. Leslie Alsheimer has a wonderful, comforting, sometimes lighthearted tone to her writing. Her ability to communicate shows that she is an experienced teacher. She teaches digital photography workshops in Santa Fe. And she is a very inspiring photographer as well. She obviously took great care in preparing every chapter and choosing every photo. This is a book by an artist, not just someone who has expensive equipment and likes to take photos and work in Photoshop.

I have not only improved the quality of my own photography after reading this book, but I find myself remembering many of her tips when the time comes to approach a subject with my students. If you are an intermediate to advanced user of Photoshop, you will still find new ideas here. I especially appreciate that she starts right off by discussing workflow instead of making it an afterthought.

I had trouble putting the book down. And when I was done, I realized I had learned as much about color digital photography as black and white. You don't necessarily need the CS3 version to use this information, and Lightroom is a small part of the process.

By the way, I love Lightroom. How in the world did I manage all my photos before?

Dance Photography, Movement Fashion Photography, and Boxing

We just finished action photography. Wish I had remembered this short video on Adobe's website beforehand. The photographer, Sarah Silver explains how she takes photos for Dance Spirit magazine and movement fashion shots.

Also on that page is a link to Sye Williams and his photography of boxers, show dogs and miscellaneous oddities of the south.

Baz Luhrmann, Apple, a Design Contest and Podcasts

If you get Apple email (and actually open it) you may already be aware of this: The Set to Screen Series: Be part of a new adventure in filmmaking.

The podcasts show wonderful examples of yet another way artists are important professionals. I plan on showing them to my computer graphics students on a day when they just can't focus on work.

Student contests (high school and college) accompany each podcast. The first is making a poster from photos provided from Baz's movie Australia. (due May 26) Your students must create it on a Mac.

I hope that when my son enters and wins he includes me on the trip for 2 to Australia grand prize.

Flower Photography Tips

If you teach a flower photography project, don't forget these tips:

1. Flower photography is very much like portrait photography. Be aware of the effect of lighting and shadows. You can use the spot healing tool the same way you would for a portrait, if you are looking for perfection.

2. Try holding a stiff black background (like black presentation board, or black foam core board) behind the flower, even with natural lighting.

3. Drops of rain or dew are magical on a flower, but a spray bottle of water can be used if you don't feel like getting up in time for the dew.

4. Get to know your macro...but don't always use it. Understand depth of field and use both shallow and deep.

5. The most convenient angle is also probably the most boring.

Rich Learning on the Web

http://webexhibits.org is a very art-student friendly collection of educational web galleries. (As a matter of fact, it was a student who showed me the site.) It is a collaboration with IDEA (see below) and museums worldwide, including the National Gallery of Art. Some of the chapters are: Color Vision and Art (with several interactive activities); Pigments through the Ages and Van Gogh's letters.

http://idea.org is the site from which the above site originated. Here are a few paragraphs from their intro: "The Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement (IDEA) is a nonprofit organization that takes bold ideas about facilitating and broadening the learning process and transforms them into information systems that are then shared with others who share our passion for interactive learning.

IDEA arose out of the belief that there should be no barriers between people and computers. Technology is now advanced enough to adapt to the ways people naturally think and interact with the world. The user’s experience with technology should be personalized, interactive, and intuitive, so that the tools add breadth and depth to the information presented, and stimulate creative thought. Innovative strategies built into the technology can help people from all walks of life maximize their potential."

Big goals. Although the IDEA site is designed to help people who are designing educational websites, parts of it are useful to all educators, from some theories of learning to effective evaluation of your own work, to a color blindness simulator. If you are trying to create an educational interactive website, this is a resource you shouldn't pass over.

Hopefully both these sites will continue growing.

Teens Take Over the Commercial Photography World

The commercial photography industry should just hire our students. I just brought in some low-end studio lights (all I had were two) and some black fabric for our backdrop. All I did was demonstrate the effects of aiming the lights different ways, tell them to use a tripod, suggested the occasional tissue paper filter and showed them how to use the reflector. They took to the job like pros, bossing each other around. "OK, look sad...no like your sister just died...no, like you're a drug addict whose whole family died... Great. OK, now, flirt with the camera..." Where are they learning this stuff? Must be a reality show. They even put on airs and talked with accents.

Here are just a few student examples. If you want to buy some studio lights and backdrop holder, look at websites like BHphoto, or maybe ebay. You don't need the expensive stuff, just the basic: lights with soft light filter, backdrop holder and a reflector is nice (or you can make one out of aluminum foil). Does anyone else have any studio style shots to share with us?

Essential Photography Books

When I was first given the opportunity to teach digital photography, I had to head to the bookstore. My last college photography class had been 1979. I had taken 3 levels of photography and had worked as a photojournalist in my mid-20s, but remembering how I was taught the essentials was packed away somewhere in the attic section of my brain.

My digital photography curriculum is a combination of photography essentials (composition, lighting, point-of-view, expression, topics) and Photoshop. During the warm weather months we focus on those photography topics (which would apply to film as well) and then, obviously, during the months with nasty weather, we focus on Photoshop and studio photography. And, as you probably have discovered, there are no books that I have run across that cover both topics well, which is understandable. And for that reason, I do not use a text book.

The majority of the photography part of the curriculum came from two fantastic books, John Hedgecoe: The New Manual of Photography: A Definitive Guide to Photography in Every Format, and his more basic one, John Hedgecoe's Photography Basics. I recommend both, because you can use a lot of the chapters from his Basics directly in the classroom. The Definitive Guide takes more careful thought about what is too advanced or non-essential for your students. I remembered him from college. I loved his book on filmmaking. He writes so beautifully and from the perspective of an artist, not a tech geek. And, they are visually exciting books, as well.

Here are just a partial list of sub topics in his chapter called, "The Art of Good Photography Composition" (Definitive Guide): The selective eye; placing the subject in the frame; using diagonals; circles; frames within frames; selecting a viewpoint; linear perspective; using shadows; texture, pattern, and quite a few more. He has another complete chapter devoted solely to color.

So, if, like me, it's been a long time since you took that photography class, consider these two books. There are many others that cover more specific or advanced photography topics, but these are the best essentials for the art of photography.