This course is designed for those who wish to advance to a
higher level of skill in Adobe Photoshop CS2 in order to make
images of higher quality, and to utilize Photoshop to maximize
the potential of their photography to convey both what they really
saw and truly felt. Participants should have an interest in furthering
their knowledge and understanding of image and color enhancement
via some of the controls found in the Adjustment Menu (Curves,
Color Balance, etc.) as well as learning more about the power
of Levels, Channels, Masks, and Layers.
This course will have particular relevance if you wish to apply
your Photoshop skills to your photography. Not only will we
be showing you better ways to improve your images, and to save
time doing so, but we'll be showing you ways to make your photographs
reflect what you saw or envisioned -- images that may have been
beyond the capabilities of the camera to capture in a single shot.
Limitations of depth of field or exposure latitude or angle of
view can restrict a traditional image, constraining reality. You'll
learn the techniques to convey reality, while increasing file
size for even more detailed prints.
The course will involve actual shooting, where you'll be asked to photograph particular subjects or themes which we'll work on in Photoshop back in the lab. This aspect of your learning is extremely important for two reasons: One, you'll have the benefit of immediate feedback and retention as you apply the skills you've learned, and Two, and perhaps even more importantly, by doing so you'll begin to think and see digitally, so that you'll recognize the potential of a shot and not, as one may have had to do back in the days of film, dismiss the shot as impossible. You'll see what you can do, and your creative vision will expand accordingly.
For this Refresher course you'll need to have a basic understanding
of Photoshop and feel thay you know your way around the program
well enough to do some image adjustments -- color corrections,
sharpening, sizeing, etc., and you're ready to increase your personal
data base on Photoshop's more sophisticated imagery controls.We
don't expect you to be experts -- we'll review all of the important
concepts that we'll be covering as we 'refresh' your Photoshop
skills and use that information in real-time photography.
If you realize the creative limitations traditional photography
imposes - in terms of exposure latitude, angles of coverage, depths
of field dilemmas, and you're ready to expand your photographic
horizons, you're ready for this course.
A brief bit of history first: For the past fifteen years
Mary and I have been teaching our Complete Nature Photo Course
and Advanced Nature Photo Course, creating what we believe to
be the most intensive and complete instructional course on nature
photography anywhere in the country.
In the last few years, however, as Adobe Photoshop and other imagery
programs developed, and as digital cameras became more common
and more sophisticated, we came to a realization - photography
is changing to digital.
To some this is viewed as an abysmal turning point for photography
while for others it is correctly viewed as a new frontier: one
which will allow photographers to produce a whole new spectrum
of images. While there is continuing debate about 'digital enhancement'
or 'digital manipulation,' one thing is clear - digital imagery
allows a photographer to truly capture all the tonal values of
an image, something that film cannot do because of its more restricted
exposure latitude. For that reason alone, digital photography
has tremendous merits.
Embracing this new technology, and realizing not only the importance
of Adobe Photoshop's powerful image editing capabilities but also
its very real intimidation, we are offering several courses DESIGNED WITH THE PHOTOGRAPHER in
mind. Although Adobe Photoshop CS2 is an extremely powerful and
complex piece of software, and can seem frighteningly complex
and intimidating to beginners, the fact is there are a rather
limited number of tools and procedures a photographer must or
should know to produce great prints, images for a web site, note
cards, or even composites where two or more images are combined.
Our Digital Photography/Photoshop courses here at Hoot Hollow
are designed with the photographer in mind, and are fine-tuned
to provide the information you'll need to know and to master Adobe
Photoshop at several skill levels - introductory or basic, intermediate,
and advanced techniques.
Time Frame: Photoshop can be demanding mentally, and
for photographers accustomed to being afield shooting images,
time spent behind a computer might initially seem to be drudgery.
Our schedule will hopefully alleviate some of this, by providing
plenty of time at the computer while still giving you, the photographer,
some time to shoot or relax, or if you wish, to use the computer
lab to your full advantage.
Our formal classroom instruction will vary, depending upon whether
or not we're doing a shooting assignment. Some days we may begin
at 9AM and continue until noon, where we'll break for lunch (served
at Hoot Hollow), and followed by an afternoon session that will
continue to 5PM. On other days we may spend a portion of the morning
photographing, or break in the afternoon to do so, but we'll be
timing our shooting based upon the goals we set, and also upon
the classes' needs as we introduce, demonstrate, and review topics.
There will always be a break for dinner (served, along with breakfast,
at your farm bed and breakfast, the Mountain Dale Farm), followed
by 'open computer lab time' most evenings back at Hoot Hollow.
Our Format: The Refresher Course is divided into several
segments that will make learning fun and palatable and extremely
productive. Most morning sessions will be devoted to lecture and
demonstration, which will also include hand's on practice by our
students. Afternoon sessions will include instruction and practice
time, although the exact schedule will be flexible to accommodate
the needs of our students. If more time is needed to demonstrate
the powers of Curves, or to illustrate Blending, or whatever,
we'll take the required time and not be held to a strict timetable.
Some topics are simple to cover and to demonstrate, and for students
to practice. Others, we realize, are more complex and may require
several small doses before the concept is fully realized. Repetition
and practice are the keys to fully understanding a complex topic
and we'll be giving you plenty of both. Some of the practice will
initially be on examples we provide, but you will have plenty
of opportunities to practice on your own images as well.
If you are familiar with how we run our Complete Nature Photo
Course you know our dedication and commitment to your understanding
of our subjects, and we'll be following the same philosophy and
teaching methods of the CNPC in all of our courses on Photoshop.
Breakfast is served at 8AM at the farm, which will give participants
time in the morning to photograph, if they wish, or to review
handouts and reading material before class. We will have at least
one 'break out session' to shoot that you'll be able to work with,
digitally, during the course of the week.
Student Digital Portfolio Reviews: Evenings, most days,
will be 'free' in the sense that students can come and go, to
work in the computer lab (which is likely) or to simply crash
(which is possible) on any given day. Since everyone attending
will be photographers, we will devote one evening, and perhaps
a part of another, to slide, print, or digital image sharing -
a slide show of some of our work and THAT OF OUR PARTICIPANTS.
We'll be covered with all mediums - 35mm slide projection and
digital projection (you'll need a CD of your work compatible with
Power Point or your own laptop).
In short, between our class time, your practice time, the intermittent
shooting times, and our slide sessions, you will have an extremely
complete week. One added advantage our CNPC and ANPC students
have enjoyed and commented upon was the unity of our groups, since
all meals are shared either at the Mountain Dale Farm or at Hoot
Hollow. These informal group times provide the opportunity for
a tremendous amount of information sharing - on other workshops,
on techniques and equipment, on places to photograph, and other
diverse topics.
Our Participants: This course is designed for photographers
who are seriously interested in furthering their knowledge of
Adobe Photoshop CS2 and to begin applying their knowledge and
skills in meaningful ways. Photographers who use Photoshop Elements
or an earlier version of Photoshop will benefit, of course, but
we'll be teaching the latest, state-of-the-art developments which
we suspect all digital-oriented photographers will eventually
incorporate. For that reason, our teaching will be centered around
Photoshop CS2 or the latest upgrade of that program.
This is a course for those with experience and a basic understanding
of Photoshop and who are now ready to further their skills to
produce better images. Further, we see the need to teach ways
that your Photoshop skills can be put to use, either through the
making of better prints, the production of promotional images
for editorial use, and for digital presentations with programs
like Power Point We will build your expertise by explaining every
step and every technique as we go along, and often showing the
cross-referencing Photoshop has for doing any procedure in more
than one way.
Photoshop is an extremely powerful program. Users often feel as
if they've mastered the program when they have learned the basics,
sometimes feeling that the rest of Photoshop is unnecessary or
too complicated to be worth knowing. While there is much in Photoshop
that is devoted to the graphic artist, there are a huge number
of tricks and secrets that the photographer can apply.
Preparation Beforehand: Although we'll have all the material
you'll need to learn Photoshop, we suspect that you'd like to
work on your own images to make prints or to do some of the other
projects we will work on. Participants should bring with them
e a Photo CD prepared by Kodak or others, or a personal CD with
images that can be opened in Photoshop on a PC platform, or a
'thumb drive' or external HD that images can be copied from that
we can then review. Most CDs, if written in one session in ISO
9660 format, should have no problem being opened on a PC even
if written on a MAC, or vise-versa should you write a CD at Hoot
Hollow and take the CD home with you.
We'll also have a few photography homework assignments that we'd
love to have you do beforehand, although these shoots can also
be done during the course to be imported into the computer for
some of the teaching exercises.
Location: All of our courses are taught on the grounds
of the Hoot Hollow Institute of Nature Photography, in either
our studio or in our computer lab. Hoot Hollow is located in central
Pennsylvania, northwest of Harrisburg, east-southeast of State
College, and near RT 522 between Lewistown and Selinsgrove, Pa.
The nearest full-service airport and car rental is in Harrisburg.
Lodging is at a farm vacation bed and breakfast located about
six miles from Hoot Hollow. It is a 'target-rich' shooting environment
in a rural area rich with landscapes, farm scenes, farm animals,
and nature subjects. Breakfasts and diners are served at the farm.
Price: The tuition for the Digital Photography Courses
are $1,595 and includes all instruction, lab fees and supplies,
meals (you will not go hungry!), and lodging based upon double
occupancy from Sunday through Friday nights. The fee does not
include transportation to, during, or from the course.
In the Refresher Course we will be covering the tools, menus,
and palettes that will enhance your images and you will become
intimately acquainted with same. Much, but not all, of our work
will be working with various color and exposure adjustments, via
Levels, Curves, Hue/Saturation, and Color Balance. We will also
be working with various Selection methods, Blending Modes, Masks,
both Quick Mask and most importantly, Layer Masks, and
Channels. The Text tool is important for some print applications
- like sales promos, and may be useful in PowerPoint, too, and
we'll cover the nuisances of this tool. Through lecture, drill,
quiz, practice, and application in an interactive, hands on computer
environment you will learn the tools and techniques required to
master these skills in Photoshop in a satisfying and productive
manner. In short, you will learn what you need to know to advance
your skills in Photoshop CS2 to cover the objectives stated above
as well as to apply your skills in other mediums. Some of the
topics we'll cover include:
Basic Image Editing - We'll review the basics everyone
needs to know, assuring ourselves that we're all 'on the same
page.' We'll cover image sizing and cropping. We'll be reviewing
cropping and sizing, switching modes, and basic color enhancement
and selection features.
Color Enhancement - Regardless of the method a digital
image is imported into a computer, there are usually some adverse
effects. Color is one of these, and we'll cover a variety of methods
that your images can be improved and your color perfected. We'll
be exploring the power of Curves and color channels, Levels, Color
Balance, and Hue/Saturation. There are multiple ways to improve
color, and we'll be showing, and you'll be practicing, with several.
With Photoshop, there are often several, and sometimes many, ways
to approach and to solve a problem. Some methods are more practical
or intuitive for some students, while others find another technique
more useful. We'll expose you to a number of different methods
so you can choose what's best for you.
Layers and Masks - Image enhancement is often best done
in small measures, or in ways that can be corrected easily. We'll
thoroughly cover the Layer menu and the Layer Palette and Adjustment
Layers, as well as covering selection methods for using Layer
Masks and Channels. We'll cover blending modes and the use of
brushes to fine-tune selections for masking and adjustment.
Text with Images - For personal greeting cards, business
cards, or sales promotional sheets text is an obvious necessity.
Photoshop 7 makes using text easy, and we'll cover both text and
using layer effects to enhance and jazz up your text effects.
Expanding your Photographic Horizons - Film has limitations
that restrict our abilities to capture the world as we see it.
Photoshop's tools allow us to capture reality as it exists - using
the digital darkroom to create images that are otherwise difficult
or impossible to obtain. You'll be working on combining two or
more images of varying exposure value to make the perfectly exposed
image and you may be combining multiple images to create panoramic
images not possible with conventional photography. You'll do several
projects using either our images, or your own, to combine images
with a wide range of exposure values and also for a panoramic
perspective.
Sunday: Welcome dinner and orientation. Introduction
to Hoot Hollow and a presentation of the objectives for the week's
course.
Monday: Review of our basic workflow for the week. Review
of Layers and Layers Adjustments in detail -- going beyond the
basic adjustments in Levels.
Tuesday thru Friday: We will demonstrate a variety
of ways to make your photographs more expressive and creative.
Throughout the week we'll be taking time off to shoot, or to do
short field trips for photography. Most of our time, however,
will be devoted to working in Photoshop on the images you produced.
One evening will be devoted to a PORTFOLIO REVIEW of our participants'
work.We ask you to limit your portfolio to no more than 40 images.
Saturday: We will have a show of your finished images that
you made during the week and, particularly, made on Friday.Graduation
follows! Conclude by 11AM.
Please note - the exact, daily itinerary is subject to some change and modification based upon the group's progress. All of the above topics will be covered, but we do not want to be held to a fixed timetable - your comprehension and understanding is more important to us than a set schedule. If some topics require our teaching during the evening, we'll do so.
On a trip to Chile in December of 2003 I used a 35mm camera
and the full potential of Adobe Photoshop. When shooting landscapes
exposure values between foregrounds and backgrounds were often
extreme, and far beyond the capability of film to record accurately,
even with graduated neutral density filters. Sometimes the distance
was too great for depth of field to cover both a foreground and
background. In traditional photography, these scenes that I could
enjoy with my eyes and senses were not recordable. Yet the scenes,
the views, the subjects all exist in reality, but film, with traditional
photographic methods, could not record the reality!
On this trip I shot for Photoshop on many occasions, taking two
exposures of the same scene to incorporate into Photoshop later
to produce an image similar, or identical, to what I really saw.
I shot multiple images with telephoto to create panoramic views
of scenes I'd normally be forced to cover with a wide-angle.
To quote from one of my friends on this Chile trip: "…I
think the landscape images will be significantly boosted by application
of the "digital blending technique" that you so kindly
put forth to us. I consider this to be a ground breaking technique
that will be as important to me as when several years ago, at
Hoot Hollow, you explained how manual exposure and middle gray
fit …"
A long time has passed since that trip, and Mary and I and
our digital instructors Rick Holt and Ellen Anon have all switched
completely to digital photography, and have loved every minute
of it. Our photographic visions have expanded, our abilities to
capture what we've really seen, and our just plain enjoyment of
photography has increased immensely. Photoshop has certainly been
a valuable tool in broadening our vision, as it will your's as
well.
Photoshop is not just image manipulation. It is a tool that will
broaden our vision as photographers and one that all of us should
learn to incorporate into our future work. We're excited about
this tool!
Joe McDonald has been a full-time professional wildlife
and nature photographer since 1983. He is the author of six books
on wildlife photography and another on African Wildlife, as well
as a how-to video produced with his wife, Mary Ann, on Photographing
on Safari. His work has appeared in every major nature and wildlife
publication published in North America. Along with operating their
own stock photography business, Joe is represented by over a dozen
stock photo agencies worldwide, including Corbis, Animals Animals,
Auscape, Okapia, and others.
In addition to maintaining an active and informative website,
www.hoothollow.com, Joe is columnist for OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHER,
writing the 'Big Game' column, and Joe and his wife Mary Ann are
Field Correspondents for NATURE'S BEST Magazine, and KEYSTONE
OUTDOORS, writing a photography column, and Joe Van Os's web magazine,
www.photosafaris.com where they write a regular column on wildlife
and nature photography.
For over fifteen years Joe and Mary Ann have been teaching photography
courses and leading photography tours and workshops. Their very
popular photo tours and safaris have them afield for over twenty-five
weeks each year.
Joe has worked with Photoshop for several years, mainly for creating
sales promotional material and for web site use. Now, with the
advent of digital cameras, he is using Photoshop nearly daily.
He is a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals.
Ellen Anon is a freelance photographer who specializes
in all types of outdoor photography. Her images are poetic statements,
vivid in color and intent, imaginative in their portrayal are
included in collections in several countries. Ellen earned a Ph.D.
in psychology and is a clinical psychologist who evolved into
a professional photographer in the mid 1990's. She is represented
by a stock agency in Japan and her photos have been used in numerous
books (including Sierra Club's "Mother Earth"), articles,
calendars, posters, promotional items and billboards. In addition
she has been Art Morris's teaching assistant for several years
on his larger bird photography workshops.
In recent years she has become increasingly involved with the
various aspects of digital photography from scanning film images
to using digital SLR cameras to using Photoshop to enable her
to make her gallery prints at home. She has attended courses at
the Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging. She has begun sharing the
knowledge she has acquired via individualized instruction, group
presentations, and now these workshops, so that other photographers
can make the transition into the digital world with ease and fun.
Ellen is a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals.
If you've read the above biographies, you'll see that all of
us are dedicated photographers that are interested in sharing
our knowledge and helping people. I've been involved in teaching
my entire adult life, from teaching assistantships in graduate
school to a six-year stint as a high school biology teacher before
starting my career as a wildlife photographer and photo workshop
instructor. Ellen has taught college courses as well as individual
instruction, and has been assisting Art Morris with his birding
workshops for years. Rick is actively teaching Photoshop right
now, and feels, as both Ellen and I do, that knowing Photoshop
will take you (quoting from Rick's bio) "beyond the limits
of film and recreate what you saw and felt when you recorded the
image."
I intend to make our Digital Courses every bit as successful,
in terms of the knowledge conveyed, the quality of the experience,
the intensity, and, just as importantly, the amiability and fun,
that we've done with our CNPC and ANPC courses here at Hoot Hollow.