What You'll Learn

This 3-hour class is a comprehensive presentation that covers all the essential skills and tools necessary to capture incredible landscape photographs. Whether you're new to landscapes or quite experienced, when you leave this workshop you will have enough photographic factoids and philosophy to make your next venture outside a successful photographic endeavor.

This class will cover:

This is an intermediate level tour of the seven essential skills of photography, packed full of information, which will energize your enthusiasm for the ART of photography.

1. Learning to see: Photography is the Art of Seeing. Start developing a way to see the world in a fresh manner, avoiding the five demons that impede First Sight. Expanding awareness of your visual experience. Letting photography teach us how to see.

2. Master your equipment: Learn how to make your equipment work for you, and not interfere with the creative process, essential and non-essential equipment, keeping it simple.

3. Focusing carefully: Learn to focus, using aperture to create depth of field, and other tips to create sharp, intelligible images. Focus stacking, subject contrast, lens resolution, image stabilization, tripod.

4. Expose properly: using the histogram to capture the range of values from shadow details to highlight textures without clipping, using aperture, shutter speed and iso. How light metering works, spot, averaging, gray cards, zone system, contrast.

5. Compose thoughtfully: Consider the rules of composition as guideposts to create strong images that clearly communicate what you want to express, avoiding clichés. Making rather than just taking pictures. Manipulating the multitude of visual components of composition to achieve balance, beauty and impact.

6. Understanding color: Making friends with all colors, creating a color palette that is subtle and painterly, and paying attention to light. Color temperature, white balance.

7. Looking at prints: Assessing your own prints is always a challenge, which requires learning to see clearly and honestly. The fine print is considered the ultimate expression of your work.

The class will integrate the technical, aesthetic and philosophical aspects of these seven essential skills. The techniques presented are applicable to all types of natural-light photography, not just landscape, with an emphasis on personal, artistic self-expression. There will be time for questions, and some homework before the class. Because this is an intermediate class we assume that you know how to operate your camera.

What To Expect

• This is an intermediate-level workshop that is perfect for non-beginner photographers who are looking to develop more skills and techniques around landscape photography. As such, this workshop is not for total beginners. You must have a basic idea of how to operate the basic controls on your camera.
• This is not an outdoor, in the field, hands-on class but a lecture-style workshop.
• A review of student work is not a part of this workshop and this class will not cover or endorse brands of equipment.

Please arrive on time, as we will start with a full head of steam at the top of the hour.