It’s a Holiday Weekend here in the US (our offices are closed today in observance of Independence Day), so I’m going to keep it short and sweet. Let’s do it:

Photo Walk Update
By Monday we’ll have nearly 25,000 photographers registered for Photo Walks in 911 cities around the world. My buddy (and Photo Walk leader for Dunedin, Florida) RC Concepcion did a video on how to get prepared now for uploading your photos after the event. Here’s the link to watch his short, but very helpful, tutorial video.

Free Extreme Sports Photography Webinar on July 17th
You’re invited to attend a free online Webinar on Extreme Sports Photography with Michael Clark (the event is hosted by Bogen Imaging). Here’s the link to sign up.

Making Departures magazine’s list
American Express publishes a great travel and leisure-style magazine for card holders called “Departures” and in their current issue they have a feature story on which digital camera is right for you. They cover everything from cameras and lenses to accessories. In a sidebar the writer lists where to go to learn about photography online, and states, “there are no better resources.” I was quite excited when I read they included KelbyTraining.com in their list. Thanks Departures—it’s an honor.

Our “Lens Series” continues on D-Town TV
Yesterday, part 4 of our 5-part series on lenses went live on D-Town TV. If you’ve missed any of the episodes, they’re all still available right on the Web site.

Brad’s on Vacation Next Week
What is the world coming to when Brad is allowed to take time off? Frankly, I’m at a loss. How could this have happened?

Bill Fortney on our recent Savannah workshop
Bill did a few posts this week reflecting on our workshop in Savannah last week, and on life in general. If you’ve got a quick second, stop by and catch some of Bill’s thoughts and images from the week (definitely worth a visit). Here’s the link.

A New Photography Term?
When I was in Savannah and we were shooting that classic red Cadillac convertible, Bill asked one of the students to remove a feather on the ground right in front of where Bill was shooting. Somebody mentioned that he could remove it later during “post  production” in Photoshop, and that’s when I came up with a  phrase for the act of actually picking up and moving a distracting piece of something from the scene. I laughingly said “That’s called Pre-Production.” Hey, ya never know—it could stick.

My 1,000 Post happened this week
I just happened to look up yesterday and saw that I had released my 1,000th post on this blog. Right then I realized, “Rats! I could’ve written a book.”

What ‘Independence Day’ Really Means to Us
Tomorrow is a national holiday celebrating our country’s independence from traditional film. No longer will we press the shutter button thinking, “Well, that just cost me 22¢” or “Well, that’s 36—time to pop in another roll.” or that phrase heard so often on vacation, “I need to stop and buy some film.” Should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice: No longer will we wait hours, or days, to see our prints only to find out that someone was blinking or the flash didn’t fire. No longer will we go quitely into the night, to drop off our film in an overnight drop box. We’re going to live on to shoot for free another day—free from the tyranny of film chemicals and safe lights; changing bags and temperature regulators; cotton gloves and Print tongs. No today as we gather together to fill our 8 and 16-gig cards with wild abandon we celebrate our real Independence Day! (–insert wild cheers here).

That’s it for today folks. I hope you all have a wonderful July 4th weekend, surrounded by friends and family, and all the joys that it brings.

With the 4th of July coming up tomorrow (The 4th is Independance Day in the US, and we celebrate with Fireworks), I thought I’d run a quick blurb from Vol. 1 of my book, The Digital Photography Book on how to shoot Fireworks (like I did last year around this time). Here ya go:

You’ll need to shoot fireworks with your camera on a tripod, because you’re going to need a slow enough shutter speed to capture the falling light trails, which is what you’re really after.

Also, this is where using a cable release really pays off, because you’ll need to see the rocket’s trajectory to know when to push the shutter button—if you’re looking in the viewfinder instead, it will be more of a hit or miss proposition.

Next, use a zoom lens (ideally a 200mm or more) so you can get in tight and capture just the fireworks themselves. If you want fireworks and the background (like fireworks over Cinderella’s Castle at Disney World), then use a wider lens.

Now, I recommend shooting in full Manual mode, because you just set two settings and you’re good to go:

1. Set the Shutter Speed to 4 seconds
2. Set the Aperture to f/11. Fire a test shot and look at the LCD monitor on the back of your camera to see if you like the results. If it overexposes, lower the shutter speed to 3 seconds, then take another shot and check the results again.

TIP: If your camera has “Bulb” mode (where the shutter stays open as long as you hold down the shutter release button down), this works great–hold the shutter button down when the rocket bursts, then release when the light trails start to fade. (By the way; most Canon and Nikon digital SLRs have bulb mode). The rest is timing—because now you’ve got the exposure and sharpness covered.

—

Here’s wishing you all a safe and happy fourth, and I hope you capture some great images this year!

Friend of the blog Richard Rabinowitz (former Publisher of Popular Photography and American Photo) turned me onto this very cool time lapse video from photographer Jill Enfield that is really going to strike a chord with anyone who has ever developed their own film. But beyond that, this two minute video is just darn cool, and seeing the process unfold in front of your eyes is almost as fascinating as the portrait she creates.

I’ve embedded the video below, but also make sure you visit Jill’s Website to see some very engaging, thoughtful fine art work.

Hi Gang: Rather than write a thousand words, I did a quick video about what’s in the soon-to-be-released Volume 3 of my book “The Digital Photography Book” and you can check it out below. (NOTE: The book is on press right now, and should be in bookstores in just a few weeks. You can preorder yours now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or KelbyTraining.com).

My buddy and Lightroom guru Matt Kloskowski is taking our “Lightroom 2 Live!” one-day seminar tour to:

1. Chicago on Monday, July 20th
2. New York City on Wed., July 22nd.

Matt absolutely kicks butt on this tour, and if you get a chance to catch him live—don’t miss it!!!!

Here’s the link with more details (By the NAPP: If you’re a NAPP member, you can attend for only $79. If you’re not a member, it’s still just $99).

Also, you can download the tour brochure (in PDF format) right here.

…..I was surprised how much, in person, it looks like a calendar. I thought the sprial binding would be cool, especially because the photo book would sit nice and flat, but I have to tell you, most everyone that saw it made the mention that it kind of looks like a calendar.

On screen it really didn’t have that feel, but it really did in person. That being said; the print job was just great, and the paper was very nice and thick and really reproduced the photos well, but at the end of the day, I think I’ll reorder it as a standard softcover book (by the way; I much prefer the soft-cover books to the hard cover ones. They have a much less “consumery feel” to them).

So, that’s my first take on the spiral bound Apple iPhoto books. They have their advantages, but I just can’t get past that “it looks like a calendar rather than a photo book” thing.

Hi Gang:
I wasn’t able to get the completed post for this week’s guest blogger in time for posting, so unfortunately today will be “Unexpected No-Guest-Blog” Wednesday.

I realized this might be the case yesterday on “The Day Before What Could Well Be Unexpected No-Guest-Blog” Wednesday, so that’s why I didn’t announce the guest blogger in advance, like usual.

Hope you have a great July 1st nonetheless, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for “The Day After Unexpected No Guest Blog” Thursday.

-Scott

My buddy Terry White turned me on to this technique that he picked up from Lloyd L. Chamber’s Macintosh Performance Guide (which is published online “for Digital Photographers & Performance Addicts”).

Anyway, Lloyd did a really great article on Optimizing Lightroom, and within it he specifically tackled the problem of slow JPEG exporting from Lightroom (if you decide to export a couple of hundred Raw photos as JPEGs, I can tell you from experience; it takes a while).

Anyway, after many hours of research (aided by his background as a longtime software engineer) he learned a way where you can just about cut the export time in half, by manually having Lightroom do multiple exports at the same time. So, if you have 210 Raw photos you want to export as JPEGs, rather than selecting all of them and hitting Export, instead you’d select 105 of them, set them to Export, then select the remaining 105 and then export those.

Since Lightroom can do more than one process at a time, it chunks away at both batches of images simultaneously, speeding things up pretty dramatically. In fact, he found that you could actually split the group of 210 raw photos into three groups, and it will chunk all three (but beyond three groups of JPEG conversions, it doesn’t work as well).

He also found that this works differently on different types of machines (for example, if you have just a dual-core machine, two JPEG exports at once is really about the max it will do without slowing things down).

Anyway, you can read his full article here online, but I want to take my hat off to Lloyd for sharing this information, and I’m hoping Adobe is reading it, too, and that Adobe takes more advantage of Lightroom’s ability to simultaniously process multiple tasks in the next version.

Now that I’m back from my workshop, I’m catching up on reading my favorite blogs, and I saw over at Moose Peterson’s “Moose New Blog” (link), that he attended the practice sessions for the Reno Air Races (along with a group of 25 aviation photographers).

Nikon Professional Services (NPS) was there to support the event, and besides getting to hang with these guys, Moose came back with some just awesome shots. Moose posted a link to a gallery of 37 of his images from the event, but you’re not out-of-luck for getting your own, because the actual race itself is coming up this September (seeing Moose’s images really makes me want to go now. I’m going to have to check my calendar!!!).

Anyway, check out Moose’s post about the shoot, and check out his images while you’re there. Congrats Moose on capturing some amazing shots!!!! (It really torks you when a guy who is famous for his wildlife photography can turn on a dime and get incredible aviation shots. Moose can shoot anything and make it look great! That guy is sick!).

I’m back from my Great American Photo Workshop with renowned landscape and aerial photographer Bill Fortney and I have to say, it was one of the most enjoyable workshops I’ve ever been a part of. We had such a great group of talented, fun, easy-going, and passionate photographers that it really made for the ideal creative atmosphere to learn, make photographs, and laugh and awful lot.

Guest Instructors
This was my first time in Savannah Georgia, and it’s a perfect place for a photo workshop, with loads of stuff to shoot around every corner (photo above taken with my iPhone 3Gs; much improved camera). We started on Wednesday with slideshows and presentations from the instructors, including two guest instructors; Joanne Wells (a wonderful Savannah-based fine art photographer with great knowledge of local shooting locales), along with first-class bird photographer Wayne Bennett (we had a total of four instructors for 30 students). By the way; that’s Wayne at the far right of the photo above).

Shooting a Classic Caddie
We did dawn location shoots each day, and a few optional dusk shoots as well (it was in the high 90s all week, with lots of humidity, so we made the dusk shoot optional). We went to some great locales (I’ll post a shot or two tomorrow), and then on the last morning we rented a Classic 1962 red Cadillac Convertible for the class to shoot among the old brick buildings and alleyways of Savannah’s Riverfront (the iPhone shot above, and at one at the top of the post, show a few of our students during our shoots).

Here’s our group shooting in a back alley of Savannah’s Riverfront.

Here’s one of my shots from that angle (above—click on it for a larger view). Taken with a Nikon D3, and a 70-300mm f/4.5-f/5.6 VR lens on a tripod. I shot at ISO 400 at 1/13 of a second at f/4.8.

While the class was still shooting, I climbed up to a crosswalk above and behind the car where I got this shot. I leaned out as far as I could and then held the camera out away from my body. I had to shoot it at 2000 ISO because of the low light, but the noise is so unnoticeable (from the D3 with a 14-24mm f/2.8 lens), I didn’t even need to run a noise reduction filter. In fact, there are no effects filters or HDR used on any of these shots—-just Lightroom (though I did sharpen one in Photoshop).

Above is another iPhone shot of the group shooting the Caddie.

…and here’s the shot I got from that spot (above).

This is me above, lying down on the job; ball head in hand, trying to get a low angle on the car. The photo was taken by one of my workshop students; Bruce Thayer (who’s quite a good photographer himself) who came all the way from Australia for the workshop.

Above is one of the shots I got lying on the ground (and as I expected; it’s not nearly as good as the one Bill Fortney got lying down there).

Same spot—different angle of view. By the way; if you look on the stairs to the right of the car, you’ll see the legs of one of the students in the workshop. I could have cloned them out, but for some reason, I kinda like ‘em there. Go figure.

A Celebrity in our group
We were lucky enough to have 14-time Grammy winning country and bluegrass artist Ricky Skaggs as one of our students, and he was just as humble, entertaining, and fun as you’d hope he would be. He’s a great photographer, but just learning Lightroom and Photoshop, and he’s totally loving it! (He pulled some strings and got us a table at Paula Dean’s famous restaurant for dinner, which saved us from waiting in the 80 to 100 person-long line each morning for reservations which snakes around the block starting at around 7:30 am. The dinner was fantastic!).

Learning Lightroom
In the classroom, we focused on Lightroom all week, and I have to tell you; I’m amazed at the transformation in the students between day one and Sunday morning when the workshop wrapped up.

In-Class Student Critiques
Each day we did live, in-class critiques of the students’ best shots from each shoot, and it was a wonderful learning experience. (A number of students told me it was the single most valuable learning part of the week for them, because when we would talk about what a problem was with a particular photo, I could open that photo right there on spot, and make the Lightroom/Photoshop changes that were necessary, or to recrop and recompose the photo, and they saw live exactly what to do to improve the shot next time around.)

Deconstructing My Edits in Lightroom
We did kind of our own mini one-hour “Photo Walk” on Saturday morning along the Savannah Riverfront area, and then I put together a slideshow of around 20 of my best shots from the shoot (I processed them all in Lightroom before I presented my slideshow—shown above).  Then after my slideshow presentation, I went back to each image, and using the History panel in Lightroom, I showed each individual step of how I got from the original raw image out of my camera to the final image that made it into my slideshow. This worked amazingly well, and it really turned the light bulb on for a lot of the students.

Great images + Great people
All in all, it was a stellar workshop; I met some really great people (two of which will be with me down in St. Lucia with Joe McNally in a few days for another week-long workshop), and I saw some old friends (Steve and Larry) and made some new ones. Thanks to all my students, and especially to Bill Fortney, (whose brilliant photography continues to just blow me and everybody in the room away), for the honor of teaching alongside him.