On February 22, 2011 more than 45 LPA members brought their cameras, lenses, and tripods to the Lancaster Senior Center for a hands on portrait workshop led by four of our compatriots: Douglas Wade, Glenn Olson, Kurtiss Humphrey, and Bonnie Matthews. Each set up a portrait studio for the workshop.
Susan Cowles Portrait Workshop
January 25, 2011
Susan shared her program, “Award Winning Portraits with Computer Magic” with us. She has won numerous photography awards and this last year won the PSA (Photographic Society of America) 1st in the World for Small Color Prints, with her portraitures. She photographs models with a goal of creating great art. She has a style that presents perfection.
She begins with doing the model's makeup and hair and posses them with props, like hats and scarves. She works with .jpg files, and shared her workflow, step by step, correcting the image. After cropping, removing flaws on the skin and clothing, and removing the small light reflections in the corners of the eyes (not the catch light), she uses a plug-in called Portraiture Imagenomics. The plug-in creates a very sophisticated mask and makes the skin look youthful and near perfect. There are many presets in the plug-in that can be used for additional styles like "glamour".
November 16, 2010 - Led by Nan Carder and Helen Henry
The November workshop was presented by two our own members, Nan Carder and Helen Henry on "creative" images. Both have won big in this event class for PSA and S4C. The class, "Creative" was demonstrated starting with some images that may not be exciting (we all have those) and showed each step of the process using Photoshop or Elements; adding a mix of ingredents to make the image, "pop". The demonstration showed the use of multiple images merged into a single image. Photoshop has lots of tools and filters to enhance the image quality. Additional plugins can be purchased to add even more excitement. The ladies demo images from start to finish by turning off the display of each layer in Photoshop and one at a time showed each layer as documented step. As they clicked on show layer checkbox, you could experience the changes for example, color alternation, to filters that morphed textures to using, to tools like liquidy or twirl. Finally, adding borders to the finish image.
The Creative Workshop Power Point presentation (CD) and handout will be available for purchase at the Nov/Dec meetings at a cost of $5. See how our member’s 18 pictures progressed from start to finish and learn new techniques. Our 2009-2010 PSA Creative Interclub entry, won us 1st place! Photos by Sue Liberto
October 26th, 2010 - Presented by Helen Henry
Thanks to all of you for coming! It was a great turnout with many new faces. The survey card comments were mostly "excellent". So, you all must have enjoyed and got something out of it. We saw some great workflow time savers in Julieanne Kost’s video tutorials. How about that spot removal sync feature? I definitely need to master the use of that tool. The ways you can sort through your images are many and very easy to implement. With stars, key words, date, folders, smart folders, color highlights and many others you are able to organize all your photos and find them quickly and easily. I hate it when I have to spend an hour or so hunting for a particular picture; I know around what date I shot it but where did it go........... Now I can find it in a very short time.
Presented by Doug Wade
In Auto Mode your camera creates a pictures that is technically correct but isn’t always flattering to the subject. So play, be creative and get to know your camera and all that it can do for you. Learn what every button does and how to undo them. This is by no means the end all be all of info just a little bit so you won’t be scared to play! Happy Shooting! A note of advice – probably not a good time to play when you’re the designated photographer for an event. Hmm, wonder how we know this?
-- August 24, 2010
Douglas Wade presented a workshop “Using WordPress to Create a Photography Website” to a group of 28.
Douglas has worked at Northrop Grumman for 23 years in publications. He started as an illustrator and is now a software engineer and “head geek” for Technical Publications. He blogs from time to time at middle-aged-man.com (where he learned WordPress) and keeps a journal of his walking and cycling.
On July 27th Glenn Olson conducted a workshop on framing which he titled "Framing 101." The presentation was intended to inform the audience of the issues they would run into when then started framing their photos and the many options they had available to them.
Terri Garner took time out from her busy schedule to present a workshop on digital scrapbooking. Now, many folks think of scrapbooking as something grandma used to do but digital scrapbooking is a generation ahead of the old cut-and-glue days. Today's software can help you make those adjustments to individual photos and place them on backgrounds, give them borders, add text, and decorate them up for printing at home or at your local printer. By combining many pages together you can create an entire book. In fact, the lines between scrapbooks, coffee-table books, photo albums, and record books have become so blurred that it's hard to tell one from the other.
