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As I scan back over my “recent” posts, I realize that the way I opened my last post could just as easily be the opening for this one. I started my last blog post by saying:
“Sometimes things just happen and the next thing you know, two weeks have gone by without a blog post. And I find myself wondering… what was I doing the past two weeks. Well the answer is at once simple and just a little bit complicated. A series of events transpired within a very short period of time that has drawn a significant portion of my attention in the direction of creating black and white images.”
That is still the case. Oh, I haven’t given up on color at all and I continue to work on my “Tequila Sunrise” series of images. I’m beginning to think that the series has the makings of a collection and maybe even a book. But in addition to that constant quest for tequila sunrises, I continue to work on improving my black and white photography. And I am doing so with all the tools available to me ranging from my iPhone camera to my IR-converted Rebel XT to my 5D2 using Nik Silver Efex 2 to convert the images into black and white/sepia/monotone. And finally, I continue to experiment with black and white printing using various profiles and papers with my trusty Epson 3800.
Add in a full-time day job in healthcare marketing and before you know it another two weeks have slipped by without a blog post. I guess the good new is that through it all, I have been keeping my website up to date with weekly updates and revisions.
In my last post, I shared some of my black and white conversions from a visit to Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia (PA). Today, I thought I would share a variety of other monotone images in order to provide a broad overview of what I have been working on the past two weeks (when I’m not in Tequila Sunrise mode).
“Better Days Behind”
This is from my most recent adventure to the Boulton Homestead at Jacobsburg State Park (PA). This corn crib has seen better days and indeed, it’s better days are now past. I made this image with my 5D2 and 24-70 2.8L lens. It started as a 3-image HDR which I converted into a single composite image using Photomatix software. I then processed the color image with Nik Viveza 2 and Nik Color Efex Pro. After getting the color image where I wanted it, I made the conversion to black and white using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. Straight black and white didn’t quite give me the look I wanted so I started working with different variations by starting with different Silver Efex Pro presets and making adjustments from there. Ultimately, I settled in on this version as the one best fulfilling my vision for this image.
“The Lighthouse Series”
I mentioned the “Tequila Sunrise” series which is obviously a series of color images. Well I am also working on a series of images of lighthouses (for now from along the New Jersey coast) in black and white. This first image is of the Sandy Hook Lighthouse, the oldest functioning lighthouse in the United States. I have photographed these New Jersey lighthouses often and am always looking for new and different perspectives. This particular image was made from within the walls of the mortar battery across from the lighthouse with the walls framing the main subject. This lighthouse is white to begin with and the black and white conversion of the entire image just serves to further accentuate that feature.
When I think of a lighthouse, I generally think of three features – the tower, the light or more specifically the Fresnel lens at the top and the stairs to climb on your way to the top. This is my attempt to capture the curves, lines and symmetry of the stairs. Stripping the ugly yellow color of the stairs with the black and white conversion using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 creates a much more powerful image in my mind.
“The Cross on the Beach”
One of my favorite Tequila Sunrise spots these days is on the beach at Ocean Grove, NJ. Ocean Grove is a shore town with a very rich Methodist history. It is still known for its summer camp meetings. But it is a beautiful little town replete with Victorian-style houses, a boardwalk promenade and pavilions with benches where visitors can sit and look out across the dunes to the beach and the ocean. Reflecting its religious heritage, large crosses have been placed on the dunes to add to the visitors reflections while resting on the benches. I have yet to shoot the actual sunrise behind these crosses but I should. I typically stop by there a little after the sun has risen and the skies are mostly blue. I wanted to try to capture the spiritual feeling of the place and felt and “old photo” look would do it best.
“Leaving Hialeah V.2.0″
Not Hialeah, Florida but rather the Hialeah Picnic Area in the Delaware Water Gap (PA). I was really taken by this tree line along the exit drive from the picnic area and decided to shoot it several different ways. V.1.0 is a color rendering in which I used an Orton Effect (digitally sandwiching an in-focus and a blurred image) to create a softer look to the entire image. I like it a lot. But from the outset, I was thinking black and white so I ran the color image (Orton Effect and all) through Silver Efex Pro 2, made some adjustments and came up with this version (2.0) which I also really like… a lot.
Here’s hoping you enjoyed the images.
Sometimes things just happen and the next thing you know, two weeks have gone by without a blog post. And I find myself wondering… what was I doing the past two weeks. Well the answer is at once simple and just a little bit complicated. A series of events transpired within a very short period of time that has drawn a significant portion of my attention in the direction of creating black and white images.
What were those events? Maybe first and foremost was Nik Software’s release of Silver Efex Pro 2 , probably the best black and white conversion software available for the photographer. At virtually the same time that I added Silver Efex Pro 2, I spent a day shooting at Eastern State Penitentiary – a location perfect for both HDR and black & white photography. As if that wasn’t enough, I also found myself really getting into the nuts and bolts of printing (both color and black & white prints) with my Epson 3800 which in turn led me to re-reading “The Art of Printing Photos on Your Epson Printer” and reading “Fine Art Printing for Photographers” and “Creative Black & White”. Delving deeper and deeper into the printing process led me to a deeper study of photo papers which ultimately led me to Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique – possibly the finest paper for black and white prints available today. Each one of these events is worthy of blog post of its own.
Shortly after my visit to Eastern State Penitentiary, I posted several images (see two blog post below) that were processed using the bleach bypass preset in Nik HDR Efex Pro as a starting point. While I really like the look of those images, I knew that I wanted to take those images another step farther and convert them into black & white images. So I took each into Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 and starting with the “Fine Art” preset, I made adjustments until I got the image exactly the way I wanted them. I may go into more detail on Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 in a later post but suffice it to say the number of presets are staggering. You can easily get just about whatever look you can imagine from ultra-modern to vintage from straight black and white to sepia to ambrotype to cyanotype and more. You can introduce various film types and grains and add borders around your image. And as I said, I use the presets as starting points from which I make further adjustments. Not only can you make global brightness, contrast and structure adjustments but you can break them down into highlight, mid-tone and shadow levels as well as making very fine tuned adjustments. It’s all at your fingertips with Silver Efex Pro 2.
So what follows are the three images that were posted earlier in their bleach bypass versions now converted to black & white.
“Reflections on a Puddle”
“The Doors”
“Cell Block #12″
Ultimately all three images were printed on Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique paper, matted and framed and now hang on my living room wall. But that’s another story.
Ghost or what?
Let me preface this story behind this week’s “Image of the Week” appearing on my home page by clearly stating that I still do not believe in ghosts, haunted houses and such. Some do. I don’t. Some hang on every episode of “Ghost Hunters”. I don’t.
This past Friday, I had the opportunity to shoot inside Eastern State Penitentiary (Philadelphia, PA) along with six other very fine photographers. For the most part we moved around as a group, shooting in the same areas as our ESP escort stood nearby. I should add here for those unfamiliar with ESP that penitentiary is no longer in use and is purportedly haunted. “Ghost Hunters” have shot at least one episode there. So it is prime ghost territory, if you believe in such things.
Now while I don’t believe in ghosts, I must admit that the image below has me baffled. What you see is actually a 5-image HDR composite that has been processed with Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro and Color Efex Pro. You will quickly note the green ethereal apparition to the left. It certainly looks ghostly to me. Here are few facts as I know them.
1) The five images used for the composite were shot in very rapid succession (burst mode) using the auto-bracketing feature on the camera.
2) The ethereal apparition only appears in one single frame, the first of the five.
3) In that frame, the color of the apparition is a lighter green than in the processed version but it is clearly visible and clearly greenish in color.
4) I saw nothing while there at ESP and only noticed the apparition once I had uploaded the image to my computer.
5) To the best of my knowledge, none of the other six photographers captured anything like this apparition.
You be the judge. Is a ghostly apparition or just a ghostly artifact? I leave it up to you to decide.
I had the pleasure of getting together with some real HDR heavyweights this past Friday and shooting at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. All totaled there were seven of us – Tony Sweet and Jason Odell (of the Image Doctors) who have just published an e-book on Nik HDR Efex Pro; Rick Walker, the other half of the Image Doctors; Don Rosenberger and Greg Daily from Virginia; “Just Bob” Lott and me. It was a real experience shooting with and talk with these HDR experts.
Over the course of the day, I picked up some very interesting tips on HDR Efex Pro as well as the brand spanking new Silver Efex Pro 2 that I put to use in processing the images. In this post I want to focus on three images that I processed almost entirely in Nik HDR Efex Pro taking off from a preset that, truthfully, I had never used before – Bleach Bypass. I will begin by saying that I don’t think this particular preset will work for all images. As a matter of fact, it may work for only a very limited range. But as I clicked through the presets I found that I really liked the look that I was getting from the, dare I say, dilapidated structure of Eastern State Penitentiary. Paint is peeling. Walls are crumbling. There were heavy rains on Friday and the water was just pouring through the ceiling. Floors were covered with water in many areas. And so it went.
Back to processing the three images below using Nik HDR Efex Pro’s Bleach Bypass preset as a starting point. I say as a starting point because it is just that. After clicking the preset, I started moving the sliders around adding a bit more exposure, manipulating the contrast, increasing the structure, and so on until I arrived a look that I was happy with. As the folks were saying over coffee in the morning, you could pretty much take the image saved from HDR Efex Pro and run with it. But most of the time, we can’t resist the urge to tweak just a little bit more. So I took the images into Color Efex Pro for some Tonal Contrast adjustments, believe it or not I added a touch of Glamour Glow, used Lighten/Darken Center to pull your eye into the image, and finished up by sharpening just a wee bit in Nik Sharpener Pro.
What follows are the images that resulted.
“Reflections Upon a Puddle”
“Doors”
“Cell Block 12″
Hope you enjoy the images. I will share some Black & White conversions with Nik Silver Efex Pro in my next post.
This is really a continuation of my last post here. Same trip to Longwood Gardens (Kennett Square, PA). Same camera – my Canon 30D. Same Lensbaby Composer but with the Soft Focus Optic rather than the Plastic one and using the +4 Macro filter from the Lensbaby Macro kit. I might add that while I had a tripod with me, I made these images with the camera hand held because of some space constraints.
I’ve had the Soft Focus Optic for a while now and enjoy using it particularly with flowers. It just seems to add a certain feeling and glow to the image and better matches what I so often experience when photographing them. This time around, I also wanted to have an opportunity to compare the images produced with the new Plastic Optic to those produced with the Soft Focus.
One of my favorite places in the Longwood Gardens Conservatory is the long, narrow area housing roses and hibiscus. While I love roses, it is always the Hibiscus with their flowers large enough to bury your face in that stop me in my track and call me to “take their picture”. Maybe because of the fact that the flowers are so huge you can bury your face, I always seem to want to really get up close and personal and capture the essence of the bloom in a macro sort of way. Here are a few examples. The first is still with the Plastic Optic while the second and third are with the Soft Focus. Differences, if you see them at all, are very subtle. The Plastic is just a wee bit softer than the Soft Focus.
Hibiscus #1 (Plastic Optic)
Hibiscus #2 (Soft Focus Optic)
Hibiscus #3 (Soft Focus Optic)
Sitting here in the dog days of winter, I was searching for new toy to put in my bag of tricks. I didn’t want to spend much coming out of the holidays but I felt the need to buy something. I thought about about software. I considered a new point-and-shoot to fill the gap between my iPhone and my DSLRs. (I still may fill that hole. Stay tuned.) But I finally settled for the least expensive option of the lot. For $34.95, I picked up the Plastic Optic for my Lensbaby Composer. I guess the purpose of the Plastic Optic is to create more Holga-esque images. (Holga is a very cheap, $27 dollar, all plastic, medium format, film camera made in China with quite the cult following.)
I already had the Soft Focus Optic for the Lensbaby but I thought the even softer, plastic optic would be fun to play with. So after very little thought and consternation, I pulled the trigger. The lens arrived just in time for this past weekend’s trip to Longwood Gardens (Kennett Square, PA). I knew that flowers played well with the Soft Focus optic so I figured they would work just as well with the Plastic one.
So the trip to Longwood became the “bag of tricks” visit. My kit for this trip consisted of my old Canon 30D with the Lensbaby; my even older IR (infrared)-converted Rebel XT with a nifty fifty lens (the Canon 50mm f/1.8) and my iPhone 3G packed with an arsenal of photography apps. What follows is a sampling of Calla Lily images using the Lensbaby with the Plastic Optic. Hope you like Calla lilies and hope you enjoy the images.
“Crazy about Callas #1″ (Lensbaby Composer w/ Plastic Optic)
“Crazy about Callas #2″ (Lensbaby Composer w/ Plastic Optic)
“Crazy about Callas #3″ (Lensbaby Composer w/ Plastic Optic)
Back in May, 2010 I did a blog post entitled “Art & Music” in which I said “They (visual art & music) go hand-in-hand. So often I find myself looking at a composition in the field or in-camera only to have some song title or lyric or musical genre come to mind.”
So it was this past weekend but to explain I need to roll back the calendar just a bit. At the office (yes I still hold a day job) we have a white board and every week one of us is responsible for putting up some sort of “inspirational” quote. Last week was my turn and I wrote this quote from 20th century composer John Cage – “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” I don’t know how inspirational others found this quote but it really got me thinking about the box we all find ourselves in and how we try to break down the walls and fight our way out of that box.
Now I am familiar with the works of modern minimalist composers like Cage, Crumb and others but it has been a while since I have explored their works. So in my spare time, I started to dig through my old CDs as well as hunt around You Tube for works by Cage (and others). It was on You Tube that I found John Cage’s penultimate minimalist composition – 4’33″ for Piano”. I had forgotten about this composition if indeed I was ever familiar with it. But from the opening moment, something about it captured my imagination. It got me thinking. I hungered for more. Also on You Tube, I found a version of 4’33″ for orchestra and enjoyed another version by jazz legends Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea. Each version, as you would expect, different. Yet each the same. For those of you unfamiliar with this work, here is a link to the orchestral version (4’33″ (for orchestra) by John Cage).
For those of you still unfamiliar with the work and too impatient to watch the video, 4’33″ is four minutes and 33 seconds of silence in which the audience members listen and hopefully hear the ambient sounds surrounding them. As I said, something about this minimalist work captured my imagination and really got me thinking about how to translate 4’33″ from music and sound to visual arts, light and photography.
This concept is harmonious with thoughts I have had about the art of photography beyond photominimalism. Cage’s emphasis was on silence and the ambient sounds surrounding the listener. My thoughts revolve around seeing, really seeing, all that surrounds us (ambient visual stimuli) from as many different perspectives as possible before picking up that camera and and making a visual image. Not really the same thing but there is a common element of immersion in our environment running through both.
And then of course there is the minimalist component that continues to course through my veins and led me to create this minimalistic image – “The Sound of Silence Visualized”. It is my meager attempt to capture visually what John Cage felt in composing 4’22″.
Barb and I spent Sunday morning in the conservatory at Longwood Gardens (Kennett Square, PA). This was the first weekend of the annual orchid extravaganza, an event we have visited and photographed each of the past four years. While orchids are the focus, they are by no means the only show in town. As always, there are many varieties of flowers in bloom throughout the conservatory. It is without a doubt a photographer’s dream.
Every year I seem to attack the orchids a little differently. This year I found myself in an up-close and personal/in-your-face kind of mood so I relied entirely on my Canon 5D Mark II and my Sigma 150 mm macro lens mounted on my new Gitzo tripod and Really Right Stuff ball head to put me into position for the close-ups that I sought. Alas there is also one thing that never seems to change. Despite my best intentions, I always seem to get so wrapped up in image making that I forget to catalogue the names of the flowers I am shooting. Orchids become orchids, lilies just lilies and so on.
One thing I learned from prior experiences at Longwood is that backgrounds can be brutal if the frame is not filled with the flower(s). So I had to pay close attention to my aperture values and depth of field while shooting in order to get acceptable backgrounds. What follows is a sampling of images shot from f/22 (stopped down as far as that lens will go and with maximum depth of field) to f/5.6 (opened up with a more shallow depth of field). For each image, I indicate shutter speed, aperture, ISO and EV. And away we go…
Fancy Lily Species (2.5 sec @ f/22: ISO 100; 0 EV) – Note the sharp edges and greater depth of field in this image.
Calla Lily (1/4 sec @ f/16; ISO 100; 0 EV)
Bird-of-Paradise (0.8 sec @ f/16; ISO 100; 0 EV) – In this case the highly textured leaves provided the background. I wanted enough depth the pick up the detail and f/16 gave it to me.
Lady Slipper Orchid (1/5 sec @ f/11; ISO 200; 0 EV) – The Lady Slipper filled most of the frame and, in this case, the background was not too busy so f/11 seemed to be the answer providing a nice combination of detail and depth.
Orchid species unknown (1/20 sec @f/8.0; ISO 200; 0 EV) – This particular orchid created it’s own set of problems. The flowers were on very long stems that swayed constantly to the slightest whisper of any air currents. Ventilation, doors opening and closing, people walking close by all caused the flower to sway. I needed a little bit more shutter speed (1/20 sec still isn’t a lot) and got it with a combination of boosting the ISO to 200 and opening the aperture to f/8.0.
Another Orchid species unknown (1/30 sec @ f/5.5; ISO 200; 0 EV) – This cluster of orchids presented another problem. If I stopped down to f/22 and tried to get all the blooms in focus, I had a busy background and still some fuzziness in the orchids farthest back. Opening up to f/5.6 helped a lot with the background and threw all the orchids, except for the one I focused on, totally out of focus. I think it worked well.
Hope you enjoyed the flowers, a touch of spring in the midst of what has been a very cold winter here in Pennsylvania.
We’re half way through January already. I keep reading posts from friends saying what a great start to the year it has been for them and I feel jealous, envious, and somehow cheated. This year has started off very slowly for me. Knock out a week when I was laid up with a respiratory virus and ugly weather on the few remaining days and well, January was not heading where I wished it would. This weekend did not start any better leading me to post a generic winter scene on Facebook under the title “Dull, Dreary and Depressing”.
But yesterday, ah yesterday, things started to turn around. We left home before 0500 and headed to the New Jersey North Shore for sunrise. Last trip, I scouted out a new location to shoot sunrise – the Ocean Grove Fishing Pier in Ocean Grove. That was back in December. Then holidays, the week sick, and, oh yeah, the fact that that area was hit with a 20″ to 30″ snowfall put plans on hold. While snows still lay on the boardwalk and the beach, that was nothing compared to what is still piled up in the towns along this stretch of coastline.
Anyway, we made our way to Ocean Grove, found a place to park the car and climbed over the snow bank to the boardwalk where I set up to photograph what I expected to be a beautiful sunrise. There was just something about the pre-dawn sky that told me this morning could be something special. I had seen it before. And it did not disappoint.
If you have been even a casual visitor to my website and blog, you will know that I love sunrises and I often use HDR in processing my sunrise images. I just think HDR gives the images that added “pop” that I am looking for. And because it was the best HDR plug-in on the market for a long time, I always, ALWAYS turned to Photomatix.
Then several months ago, Nik Software, who makes an absolutely fabulous suite of processing products (Dfine, Viveza 2, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro) that I always use to finish off on HDR images, came out with Nik HDR Efex Pro. I added HDR Efex Pro to my arsenal of plug-ins and did a couple of side-by-side comparisions with Photomatix and came to the conclusion that both are great but HDR Efex Pro did a better job on the subjects used for the comparison.
But as I said above, I use HDR on almost all of my sunrise images. And yesterday I had an opportunity to run some sunrise images through the two plug-ins and compare the results. Now to be totally honest, I didn’t start out planning to do a comparison. I started out planning to process my sunrise images with HDR Efex Pro. I did a few images. I tried a bunch of different presets. I made adjustments. Nothing really rang my bell. I just couldn’t come up with a result that I really liked. So out of desperation, I went back to Photomatix and ran the same images through that plug-in. To my surprise and delight, they turned out better, to my eye, than anything I was able to get out of HDR Efex Pro. Again let me say, there is absolutely nothing wrong with HDR Efex Pro and I still prefer it for some types of HDR work. But to me, HDR Efex Pro is not necessarily the best choice for all HDR situations.
So what am I saying? If you can afford to buy both, buy both. You will probably find that you prefer Photomatix for some images and HDR Efex Pro for others. If you only want to buy one, download the trial offers from both and test them on the type of HDR images that you do most often. If you are like me, you will find one working better than the other for your images, your style. Go with that one.
With that said, here are a couple of HDR images processed with Photomatix (and Nik Complete) from yesterday morning along the North Shore of New Jersey.
Pre-Sunrise
Pre-Sunrise 2
Sunrise
Giving thanks for a beautiful morning
POSTSCRIPT: I continued to work with Nik HDR Efex Pro in an effort to come up with a result that I was happy with. After a bit more experimenting I came up with a solution that gave me the end result I was looking for. As it turned out, none of the presets seemed to work as a starting point. So I settled in on the “Default” setting which makes no adjustments in HDR Efex Pro. Then I took the default image into Nik Viveza and Nik Color Efex Pro and got the look I was seeking (see below).
Good Morning Everybody!
Before looking forward, let me wrap up a quick look back at the past two months or so which has been a period of change. First I changed the name of my business from “It’s My Nature: Photography by Ed Vatza” to the much simpler, much more direct and I hope more personal “Ed Vatza Photography”. I explained the reasons for this in the past. Along with the name change, I upgraded my website. The domain has changed from www.itsmynaturephotography.com to the much simpler www.edvatza.com. If you access www.itsmynaturephotography.com, you will be seamlessly redirected to www.edvatza.com. I will be keeping both domain names for at least the next year. The same goes for e-mail addresses. My new e-mail is now ed@edvatza.com and I ask that you direct all e-mails to that address. However, I will also be keeping the ed@itsmynaturephotography.com address for at least the next year. Clearly, I do not want to lose contact with any of you.
I mentioned upgrading my website. Over the past two months, I have clean up and out many of my galleries removing some images and adding others. And I still have a few galleries to go. I have approached this task with the mindset that only the strong survive. And I just added a whole new iPhoneography gallery (more about that later). I updated the “About Me” and “Artist Statement” pages to reflect where I am right now. Things change. I continue to grow, to develop as a photographer , an artist and a person and these two pages reflect that development. And maybe most important, I added a Print Store page where you will find more detailed information about purchasing original Ed Vatza prints in various sizes and I added and updated a 2011 Workshops and Tours page where I list one day and multiple day workshops/tours (more about that below).
Let me say that I am proud of my website which I have developed with the aid of my computer geek son-in-law and daughter. Making the changes above were not as easy as it might seem on the surface. But we did it and Ed Vatza Photography is poised to move forward into 2011. To that end, let me begin by talking a bit about the 2011 Workshops and Tours. I am really excited to be able to bring these opportunities to you because as well as being a photographer, I am also an educator. My undergraduate and graduate training was in Psychology. I taught Psychology at colleges in Pennsylvania and Georgia before moving on to a career in marketing which, among other things, has involved presenting to the senior management of some of the largest companies in the mid-Atlantic region. I have a genuine passion for sharing my knowledge and experiences with others and that is what I do in my workshops/tours.
Now I have been asked why I am only offering three multi-day workshops in 2011. (I am adding three one-day workshops today.) The answer is simple. While photography is my passion and I have put many hours into developing Ed Vatza Photography, I still do hold a full-time marketing position. So I am juggling the two jobs if you will. But I am rapidly approaching a point where I can consider retiring from the marketing position and devote all my time and energies to Ed Vatza Photography. At that time, the number of tours and workshops will grow dramatically. And it is possible that I will be able to add a few more workshops to the 2011 schedule as time permits. So here is how the 2011 workshop schedule is looking right now.
I said that I was adding three single day workshops and all are in the Spring.
The first one-day workshop is scheduled for Saturday, April 9 and will be at the Delaware Canal State Park in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
I have often joked that this state park is about 60 miles long and 20 feet wide as it runs along the towpath of the Delaware Canal from Easton, PA to Bristol, PA. We will be focusing our attention on an area from Upper Black Eddy to the Tinicum County Park. And over the course of the day, we will have opportunity to photograph the canal, wildflowers, bridges (covered and otherwise) and Giving Pond. The workshop will begin at 7:00 am and end at 4:00 pm with a break for lunch. Cost is $175 per person with a limit of 12 people.
The second one-day workshop is scheduled for Sunday, May 1 and will cover Sandy Hook and the North Shore (NJ).
This workshop will begin at 5:30 am with sunrise over the dunes of Sandy Hook and will run until 4:00 pm with a break for lunch. Over the course of the day we will have the opportunity to photograph World War One ruins at Fort Hancock, wildflowers of the Hook and three lighthouses beginning with Sandy Hook and continuing with Twin Lights/Navesink and Sea Girt. These are three very different kinds of lighthouses. Sandy Hook is a tower. Twin Lights is literally a fortress. And Sea Girt is a small house with a lighthouse extending from the roof. Cost is $195 per person with a limit of 12 people.
The third one-day workshop is scheduled for Sunday, May 15 and will be in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreational Area (PA).
This workshop will focus on photographing water and wildflowers. Over the course of the day in the Gap we will visit Hidden Lake where we can focus on photographing reflections on the water as well as five waterfalls – Dingman’s, Silverthread, Factory, Fulmer and Deer Leap. Spring rains should result in a strong water flow over the falls and some top notch photo opportunities. The workshop will begin at 7:00 am and end at 4:00 pm with a break for lunch. Cost is $175 per person with a limit of 12 people.
And then of course, we have our multi-day workshops in the Fall. See the 2011 Workshops & Tours page on this website for details. The following three multi-day workshops are currently scheduled:
September 22-25 Delaware Water Gap (PA)
October 11-15 Acadia National Park (ME)
October 27-30 Sandy Hook & North Shore (NJ)
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2012 “Creativity, Composition, the Camera and You!” Workshops The "2012 Workshops" page now is up and list all my scheduled 2012 workshops. I am offering everything from 1/2 day to multi-day workshops in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Maine. So hopefully there is something for everyone. Have and look and I hope to see you at one of my 2012 workshops.
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