Saturday, September 6, 2008

In The Beginning There Was Light...

(Bodie Wheel of Wonder by Shawn Peterson)
It might be pretentious to post your own photos on a blog about night photography. But in this instance, since I am working on permissions from some local and not so locally talented photographers, to utilize their shots for blog entries, my own stuff will have to do for now.

I recently attended a night photography workshop put on by Lance Keimig and Scott Martin . Their web sites here: http://www.thenightskye.com/blog.htm here:http://www.thenightskye.com/ .
and here http://www.on-sight.com/
The focus of the workshop was of course night photography but with some very useful focus onprinting and post processing. Two of the very things yours truly lacks any skill in whatsoever. Based out of Lee Vining for 4 days, a group of 12 students, Lance, and Scott Martin (an absolute wiz with Lightroom), shot 4 locations along the central Sierra Nevada's under the August full moon.

The first night was spent shooting Mono Lake and the Southern Tufas. The second night, Olmstead Point in Yosemite National Park, the third (by special permit) the ghost town of Bodie, and the last night was spent anywhere anyone wanted to go. There were some extremely talented individuals in this workshop and while the days and nights were long and fatiguing, I enjoyed every minute of it.
(Mono Tufa Trails by Shawn Peterson)
I encourage anyone wanting to push themselves and turn the corner in their photography to take an intensive workshop like this one. I truly feel had I not taken this course, I might have burned out and threw my hands in the air in disgust at the recent plateau I couldn't overcome in my shooting. The amount of confidence I obtained in my post processing and exposure time estimations from this 4 day workshop is immeasurable.

I'd like to personally thank Lance and Scott for a fantastic experience and I have to admit, I was sad to leave. The two of them will be putting on another workshop in Big Bend National Park, West Texas October 11-14 of this year.

I'll be blogging and posting some of the students work (with their permission) in the very near future.