There must be a million websites devoted to photography (Google says as much), ranging from gear coverage to portfolios, photo news, opinions, business, learning, and more. Given the nature of this (yet another) photo site, I have to pay attention to more than I probably should, but most of you probably have a few that you check from time to time. If you work within the Photoshop and Lightroom post-production world, I have one that you should add: Julieanne Kost’s blog over at Adobe.com. Julieanne is an evangelist for Adobe, and her 2006 book, Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking, is a beautiful, thoughtful meditation on creativity, and one of the books I always have close to me for inspiration. It is unfortunately out of print, but you can still find used copies here and there, and, if you have an iPad (or Mac), you can purchase an ebook version for under $5. (She also recently published Passenger Seat, a tutorial-based book designed to help you develop your own photographic project.)
Rick LePage
Fall Foliage Heat Maps
Autumn is one of the best times to be a landscape photographer, with cooler weather, transitional light, and, of course, the amazing technicolor changes of the trees. The challenge is always in trying to time things so you’re in the right place at the peak of the foliage.
Luckily, the Internet is your friend: for the past few years, we’ve seen a few time-based “heat maps” that show the expected peak foliage colors across the US; the best and most reliable has been SmokyMountains.com’s Fall Foliage Map. It has a great map of the US, with a date slider that shows the anticipated foliage gradient (from minimal to past peak) across the country.
If you live in New England, the Disneyland of fall foliage, check out New England Today’s Peak Fall Foliage Map; it’s not as cool as SmokyMountains.com’s, but it does the trick.
Moab/Arches photo workshop Nov. 3-7
Our good friend Hudson Henry is hosting a five-day photo workshop in Moab this November, and there are a couple of spots left:
There’s no place like Moab, Utah. This location has something for every photographic style and taste. In this small (10 person) workshop we’ll split time between exploring this epic location and honing your photographic skills and creative vision through classroom training, shooting, editing and critiques.
Moab has it all. Epic desert vistas with deep canyons and otherworldly rock formations, incredible trails for hiking and mountain-biking, bright starry nights with low light pollution, and it’s all within easy striking distance of this great little town with good food and friendly locals.
Photoshop Automator Actions updated for CC.2017
DECEMBER 2020: The Photoshop Automator Actions do not work with recent versions of macOS, and are no longer available. [RobotPhotoshop.com has since gone offline.]
We recently updated our Mac OS X-based Photoshop Automator Actions to Version 5.0.8, to include support for Photoshop CC 2017.
Built-in to Mac OS X 10.4 and later, Automator makes it simple to create sophisticated, complex automations. Out-of-the-box, Automator can’t control Adobe Photoshop, but with the addition of this Photoshop Automator Actions collection, you get everything necessary to drive Photoshop using Automator.
Quartz Mountain Lightroom workshop, Oct. 5-8
If you’re thinking that it’s time for you to really learn Lightroom, Ben is teaching a Lightroom Deep Dive workshop in early October at the Oklahoma Arts Institute’s Quartz Mountain facility:
While “Photoshop” has become something of a generic term for image editing, these days, most digital post-production is centered around Lightroom. Offering all of the essential image editing power of Photoshop, Lightroom also provides all of the image management and cataloging features that you need to keep your ever-growing archive organized and searchable. In this intensive workshop we’ll go deep into the bowels of this product and explore how you should configure your system to get the most from Lightroom. Lightroom’s editing toolkit provides all of the essential controls you need to make sophisticated tone and color corrections and we’ll look at how to get the most from these controls. Along the way we’ll cover organization, backup and geotagging as well as how to merge Photoshop into your Lightroom workflow. Finally, we’ll go deep into Adobe’s latest addition to the Photoshop/Lightroom family and dive into Lightroom Mobile, which allows you to easily integrate your iOS and Android phone camera images into your regular workflow. Because you’ll need some imagery to work with, and because we’ll want to get out of the computer lab, we’ll be taking time to shoot in the surrounding towns and landscapes. There’s something in this class for anyone who uses Lightroom, regardless of your current skill level, and in this workshop we’ll have a lot of fun exploring those things.
Photo workshop: August 25-27 in Chicago
Join Ben Long in Chicago next month for a three-day workshop on composition and critique, sponsored by Juniper Workshops:
Through lecture, one-on-one instruction and shooting, we’ll discuss and explore many compositional ideas and examples before going out to try them on the streets. Afterwards we’ll cover some important post-production skills and practices as we select images for group analysis. Online photo sharing sites and forums can be a nice way to get feedback on your images but virtual feedback is a poor substitute for actual in-person group critique and we’ll conduct two of these during this workshop.