My good friend George Jardine has been making exceptional instructional videos for quite a while.  Now George has launched a new one called The Image Correction Master Class-For Lightroom 4&5.  OK, so he used one of my stock photography production images (above) for the series, and yes he is a friend.  But if you are looking for extremely detailed yet highly understandable information, George's videos are simply the best.  Heck, I even learned a few subtleties in watching.

Highly recommended, as are the rest of his DVD's!

With Athentech Perfectly Clear

Without Athentech Perfectly Clear

I recently discovered a wonderful plugin at PhotoPlus Expo for Lightroom and Photoshop called Athentech Perfectly Clear.  It is also available as an app for mobile phones.

The software corrects each individual pixel of an image, and the results are impressive.  It can adjust for color balance, exposure, contrast vibrancy and noise.  The best way I can describe it is that it removes the grey quality of digital files, and does it quickly.  What I like is that the default settings give a great result so it really can speed up your workflow.  And if you want to get under the hood, you can tweak it even more.  It's great for the photo-enthusiast and working professional as well.

With Athentech Perfectly ClearWithout Athentech Perfectly Clear

 My only complaint about the plugin is that it works directly on the file.  I wish it would create a duplicate layer like some of the Nik plugins so you could blend the original with the plugin version. 

 The overall takeaway, though, is that this can be a great timesaver and enhance most every image you shoot.  Highly recommended.

Canon has posted a great article on camera settings and how to quickly access them.  Though they relate specifically to their EOS cameras, the concepts are similar for Nikon, Sony, Olympus and Panasonic.  It's well worth looking over this information and understanding how to use it.  It will serve you well when you are in a situation where you have to make quick decisions in order to capture that decisive moment.

Here's the link to the photo tip on camera settings.

I'm delighted that The Anderson Ranch has invited me back for the fourth year to teach a class on lighting.  The focus of this digital photography workshop will be the use of dedicated portable flash units in conjunction with Nikon and Canon DSLR's.  

Our goal for the week is to master lighting with small dedicated flash units in every kind of situation.  We'll start by observing the way light works in the natural world, then learn how to use our portable flashes to emulate that look and feel in studio, or create our vision from scratch.  From there, we'll head outside to create dramatic images by augmenting existing light with our portable flash.  

By the end of the week, you will know how to use flash on and off-camera, how to modify the light with a wide variety of tools, and how to use the camera's onboard ability to control the lights remotely. We'll even spend one afternoon working with portable power packs for situations where speedlights can't provide enough light.  You'll leave with confidence that you can master any lighting situation you encounter or create.

To register for the class, go to Lighting the World: flash photography with speedlights.

A few weeks ago, a mutual friend introduced me to George Jardine.  George was part of the team at Adobe when Lightroom was first being developed, so his knowledge is incredibly deep.  More than that, though, he has an uncanny ability to explain things in easy to understand bite-sized bits.  Starting with the basics, he builds on that it give you a rich understanding of how to get the most of the program.  This overview of the Lightroom tutorials is succinct in explaining his approach.

If you are lucky enough to be able to make it, George is teaching a series of Lightroom classes at Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver.  If not, you can purchase his individual series on the Library Module, Develop Module and Location Workflow and Catalog Management on DVD  from Amazon.

I don't get anything for making this recommendation other than knowing I am passing along a great resource!

We've just completed the third Mastering Light workshop at The Anderson Ranch in Aspen.  It was a great week.  We started with studio sessions focused on understanding the basics of lighting, then take that knowledge on location for three days.  Students learned how to work with studio strobes, portable power packs and dedicated flash units for Canon and Nikon.  By the end, participants were able to go into any environment confident of their abilities to make an image that was well executed from the technical, aesthetic and communications standpoints.

I'm delighted that based on these three years at the Anderson Ranch, I've already been invited back to teach again next summer.  The focus will specifically be on working with dedicated flash for 35mm DSLR's, and based on the locations we shot at this year, I know it is going to be a great experience.  June 17th-21th, The Anderson Ranch, Snowmass, Colorado. 

For six years now, The Black and White Spider Awards has celebrated the photography of professional and amateur photographers in such diverse categories as abstract, advertising, nature, nude, photojournalism and still life.  It's a wonderful source of inspiration, and certainly worth a look.

In making photographs, our normal inclination is to make the horizon level.  And in fact, many cameras now a menu item that allows the display of a built-in level to assist with that.

But sometimes, skewing the horizon line in the photograph can add impact to an image. In cinematography, Dutch angle means tilting the camera to create a sense of exoticness or unease.  It's a technique that has been used often in film, and photographers use the technique as well.  Beyond the pyschological effects it can engender, I like to use it to add more of a graphic quality to the composition, or make an image seem more candid.  Just look at the image at the top compared to this image.

And here are a couple of other examples of using the Dutch angle.

So the next time you do a shoot, play a little bit with the horizon line.  You may find doing so adds a new and interesting angle to your work.

Making a great portrait can be challenging and fun.  Challenging because you want to capture the personality of the person you are photographing. And fun because it gives you an opportunity to think creatively.

 Diane Arbus, the well-known photographer would confront a person with her camera and intentionally not take a picture for a few minutes.  Her belief was that people would drop their guard and revel more of themselves as time wore on.  The picture above is a good example of that.

Almost the polar opposite of that would be to photograph someone in a captured moment that shows personality.  In this case, the way the blanket is wrapped around her and looseness of the hair adds to the sense that this is an adventurous playful soul.

There are infinite options in between.  Just get out there and play.

It's been almost three weeks since I've had my Canon 5D Mark III camera, and I'm very pleased with it.

As I mentioned in my last article, the key concern I had with its predecessor, the Canon 5D Mark II was the number of focus points.  With the new system of 61 points, 41 of which are cross-type, there is rarely a time that I cannot place a focus point right on my subject.  Especially since they cover a larger area of the viewfinder than ever before.  Here's an example where the new system worked well where the old one did not. I used spot AF on the Alexandra's eye using one of the focus points at the far left of the viewfinder.

The other area of concern with the Canon 5D Mark II and even the Canon 1D Mark IV was the tracking mechanism for subjects that are moving.  The new Canon 5D Mark III has a separate tab in the menu just for Auto Focus (AF), and in the submenus there are lots of options to tailor the AF to the exact scenario you are in.  What's nice is that the first submenus give you case studies of likely situations you might find when trying to track a subject.  You then can pick which seems the most appropriate and go with that.  I found this to be very successful.  But if you really want to fine tune, you can go into the submenu and tweak the system even more.  Rather than get into the details, I'll list several resources from the Canon website later so you can look at these materials yourself.  That said, here are a few examples where I found the tracking to be superior to past cameras.  

Someone entering the frame.  The camera tracked from the instant Zach entered and followed him every step of the way.

A planned movement where speed and direction where predictable.  Zach started at the waterline, and I tracked him as he walked toward camera.

An unplanned movement where someone moved in a erratic way.  Cassie was running along the shore, dodging waves as they crashed on the shore.

What else to say about the camera?  

The camera is beefier.  I have big hands, but I was surprised that the Mark III actually feels large in my hands.  It's not a problem, just something to be aware of.

I like the new Menu arrangement with submenus within each tab.  It feels better organized to me, though it can sometimes take more time than I would like to get from the first Setup tab, through all the submenus in AF tab to get to the Playback tab.

I like the fact that there is a lock on the mode dial now.  When I am shooting on location and moving from place to place, I generally sling the camera over a shoulder for the walk.  With the Canon 5D Mark II, it was pretty much guaranteed  that the mode dial would move away from the setting I wanted.  And in the middle of a shoot, with lots on my mind, I'd sometimes forget to check before starting on the next setup.  No longer something to have to remember.  Thank you, Canon.

I like the fact that I can use the same batteries that I have for my Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 7D in the new camera as well. There are so many little parts and pieces to pack, it's nice not to have separate batteries to add to the clutter.

Overall, I'm extremely happy with this new camera.  So much so, that the older Canon 5D Mark II will probably go up for sale this week.

Description of the Canon 5D Mark III on the Canon website.

Canon has some great information about the Auto Focus system in their Canon 5D Mark III AF guide.