Start the Year Right!

There is this really nice lady, damn fine photographer and attorney out there trying to help us all. Her name is Carolyn Wright. She has a marvelous website / blog with information that photographers should have access to, understand and use. Her blog post today Start the Year Right! is excellent and is simply sound advice. Check ‘er out, you won’t be sorry you did!

Wishing You The Very Best!

The Peterson Herd wishes one and all a Very Merry Christmas!

One of Those Great Pay Days!

Today was our B&H day, complete 4hrs of presentations and meetings. Other the a quick, delicious lunch at Stage Door deli, we were at the store the whole time. I was here to attempt to entertain and inspire folks, give back to an industry that has given Sharon & I so much. Well after the landscape presentation, this very nice couple who had been waiting behind everyone else who was asking questions walked up to me. I had to look up into the eyes on the gentleman, he was tall, and he had broad shoulders yet his eyes were incredibly kind. He was a little shy when he approached and fiddle with a white shopping bag. As he was pulling the something out of the bag, he said that they, his wife and he had gotten so much from my blog and the like that they wanted to say thank you in return. He seemed a little chocked up and so was I when I saw what the little something was. I asked if the shirt was from his house, the wife like all good wives chimed in then to say he was the Capt there. There are many rewards that come from this biz, just the emails you send to say thanks means alot. But when someone like a fireman who really does something to give back to society presents you a company shirt, especially a NYFD, wow! It’s one of those great pay days you just never see coming. Thank you!

Thanks for the Blessings!

Being able to stress over what to blog five days a week is just one of the blessing this profession provides, but the wonders we’re so fortunate to see and chase with our cameras has to be one of the best. May you and yours have a marvelous day and all the good will of the day chase you all year long!

And now for a serious moment.

Google Just Simply Rocks!

Just finished my talk at Google and had a helluva an audience! I think when I asked my dear friend Mike Wiacek what he thought summed it up best. “The parts I listened to were great!” Friends! I totally changed up my presentation and did aviation, wildlife and landscape, all in an hour. We had a great day and thank all the folks especially those for standing in the back since there were no chairs, for sticking with me. Remember, photography is all about sharing!

Great Blog on Printing

Pocket Wizard Firmware Update

I’ve been using the Pocket Wizards a lot since I’ve been doing a bunch of shooting where the flash units were not in line of site of the camera. The Pocketwizard MiniTT1 along with FlexTT5 really extends the capabilities of Nikon’s CLS system. Other then pilot error forgetting to turn off the units when done killing batteries (I carry a stack of spares now), I’ve found the Pocket Wizards to be working perfectly for my needs. When you buy them (contact Jeff at Adorama) they come witha computer UI which permits you to not only program them, but update their firmware. If you have a set, firmware 3.03 was posted yesterday taking care of one big bug. And if you don’t own them, you might give them a gander. They can be a great tool for complex flash work.

Whata Gift!

Naomi, whata gift! And to think you made it with a chainsaw (simply amazing) just for me, I’m speechless….Thanks! It’s just another reason why we love it here.

NAPP Photo Safari – Bonnie Springs

PSW is going which means it was time for the NAPP Safari. I’m honored to be able to teach this along with one my heroes Joe McNally. We were at Bonnie Springs, a great western ghost town outside Las Vegas. I was able to get Valerie away from Joe for just a second, literally to do a quick interior fill flash demo inside the saloon. Now you might was saying, fill flash indoors? The major part of the exposure is from two windows out of frame as a little from the light over her head. There is a SB-900 out of the frame on the left. The shutter speed is 1/4 at f/4 handheld. We spent 4min on the click. Just a quick simple click making use of some natural moody light.

Jake’s Magic Hour

Jake (our son for those who don’t know) is simply knocking the pixels out of the park! Here’s his latest spread(pg45). Congrats kid, now I know what we never saw you at Osh!

What am I Teaching at PSW?

“What am I teaching?” Next week is Photoshop World and I’ve been receiving more and more emails with this question. There is so much to see, hear and learn at PSW, one simply can’t make every class so prioritizing is a must. If you’ve not grabbed the new, outstanding, free Photoshop World app for your iPhone/iPad, grab it because it permits you to create your own special schedule of classes you must attend. I will be of course teaching with my good friend, the amazing Joe McNally, the Napp Safari. We have a brand new locale for our shoot that I know will be a haunting good time. I’ll be on the show floor in the Peach Pit Theater talking wildlife photography and I have two classes I would like you to attend. Aviation Photography on the 8^th at 8:15 and ACR Landscape on the 9^th at 8:15 (ouch!). So why would you wanna get up early and come to my classes, just what might your learn?

You point your lens at a bird, rock, boat, car, baseball player or perhaps a plane every now and then? Then you’ll leave this class learning tons. What, it’s not just for aviation photographers? Aviation photographers will dig the subjects in all the photographs the most because all the photos are of planes. But the techniques from metering, panning, background, depth of field, static or moving targets are the same for birds or sports or planes. Once we cover these basics we move on to much more important topics like composition, communicating motion and the most important, romance! Yeah, you can bring romance even to a photo of a plane if you understand the basics and connect it to exposure and run that through your heart. I’m sure you’ve heard that saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” You could say that same thing about my classes. So if you’re into photography and getting the most out of every click, you might just like this class. Wanna take your photography to the next level? I know I’ll give you at least one tip to accomplish that. And if we go for the home run and you have an interest in aviation photography, I might just take you down the path I’ve gone with this exhilarating and exciting photographic pursuit! And if not, you might just find out it’s a pretty cool photographic pursuit. Oh yeah, there will be some finishing tricks as well!

Now what’s this ACR Landscape class all about? Most know how to use ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) since it’s native in Lightroom, Bridge and Photoshop. But how many of you compose your landscape photos using ACR in your mind? I have found many photographers pass by amazing photos because they have not spent enough time playing with our finishing tools to know instinctively how they can make a great photograph from what appears to be zero. Even more important I feel is knowing these tools so they can help you at the point of capture to arrange the elements in the frame so you not only entertain the viewer of your photograph, but grab their heart strings. How am I going to teach this so in an hour, so bloody early in the morning it will not only make sense but you can use it? Well, I’m going to teach it in a totally new way that I think will almost guarantee you’ll learn the concepts, techniques and be able to apply them the next time you go shooting.

I’m teaching and presenting during the entire conference but these are the only two classes where I’ve taken all the step by step notes for you which you’ll find in the massive Photoshop World Workbook. These are also the only two classes that are so bloody early! And if that’s not enough, I have bribery, give aways to get you to my classes! If you see me, say hi, introduce yourself and hopefully I’ll see you in class and have the opportunity to share with you what I’ve been so fortunate to learn behind the camera!

There’s a Seat Waiting for You!

What one of our attendees had to say about Photoshop for Shooters

WOW! What a great weekend I had. Learning, shooting and learning some more and making new friends. I think you have a hit with your new series of classes and will be talking it up to friends. You took me to new depths of Photoshop which will open up an entirely new area of editing for me. Oh, the hotel was a really nice place too!

Thanks again for the great teaching and hospitality.
Warmest Regards,
Tom Walker

Here it is plain and simple, I want to help folks with their photography and the vehicle we’re going to use in this class is Photoshop to help improve your captures! And we’re going to do that by using Photoshop to learn how to be better at the camera and the computer. We’ll talk camera settings and lenses, curves and exposure, Silver Efex Pro and lenses, HDR and composition. They go hand in hand and knowledge of both is so important I feel to get what you see and feel reaching the heartstrings you’re sharing your photography with. And that’s the end game to all of this, grabbing heartstrings.

One of the unique things we provide you is a 14pg Location Shot list. We want you to shoot while you’re here but shooting is not part of the class. So to encourage this, we provide ideas of places to shoot, when to shoot there and how to find it for shoots around the Mammoth area. One of the locations we provide info to for you to shoot at is Bodie. This class offers this and so much more!

Wanna learn more….click here…or simply call WRP @760.924.8632 or 661.204.1506. Next workshop is 8-9 Oct, 2011 (couple of seats open).

Why I’m on Google+

This has been a common question that last few days since I posted 150 Google+ invites. The answer for me is quite simple. It’s where I’m finding unique content and conversations I can’t find elsewhere on the web as easily, quickly or cleanly. I don’t use social media to find clients for my photography, I use it to find others often of like mind to discuss “things” that pop into my mind (and that’s a scary proposition!). I’ve heard the positive and negative from folks about Google+ and to be honest with you, since it is technically free (except for your time which is important), exploring a medium where you can find information like the above from Scott you’re not going to find elsewhere, what have you got to loose?

Oh yeah, the copyright thing. Those on my FB wall know that I’ve talked about this a lot. Google+ have left windows open for posting images if you’d like, but I’m still not a fan of using any social media as a showcase for my images. That’s why I have a website. You have to understand that as soon as your image leaves your hard drive, there is always the risk it will be stolen (and I know that 1st hand). On the flip side, what the hell good is taking photographs if they never leave your hard drive? They can only make an impact when they are shared. So then it adds up this way. You take photographs and intend to be true to the craft, you are always risking theft. You can minimize the theft possibility, keeping honest people honest, but that’s it. Bottomline, give Google+ a looksie, you just might like it. Here are some Google+ Invites in case you wanna try it.

Man, Did They Have to Work!

The Atlantic is running this marvelous series, World War II in Photos which historically is quite something (too bad we don’t seem to learn too well). Last week they posted The American Home Front in Color and it’s a great view! The story of how this great country came together to make a difference is visually very powerful!

After looking at the images for the history they tell about, I went back and looked at the photo photographically. Man, did those photographer work incredibly hard to make those images happen! They didn’t have TTL Flash control, they couldn’t chimp, they had to work with film, FP Shutters and flash bulbs! They had to physically move that flash or close down that aperture or both to make that flash shot. The black backgrounds are a dead give away they were working in wild conditions. As photographers we owe them a big debt of gratitude and as Americans, a big thank you for recording our history!

PDN Outdoor Expo

The PDN Outdoor Expo, the first one, is just a few days away. I’ll presenting on the 4th, here’s my class desciption

From Camera Click to Computer Click, Producing Gorgeous Landscape Prints
Moose Peterson
Sponsored by Epson

Do you long to be able to produce that amazing 24″ by 30″ print of your landscape images, consistently and spectacularly? Every time I click the shutter, it’s not only to produce an emotional response from the viewer of my landscapes, but the quality required to output a print in large format. The quality starts at the point of capture, which must be carried through in image processing to final preparation for printing. Come, spend some time with Moose Peterson, who will share all the steps in this process, cutting through the myths and getting down to the realities of producing gorgeous prints of your landscapes!

Look forward to seeing you there!

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