Jun 20, 2017 | WRP Ed Zone
11-13 August 2017 at the historic Duxford Aerodrome, UK is going to be the most amazing photographic workshop, ever! Hosted by Historic Aircraft Collection, we will explore, imagine and immerse ourselves in the photography of WWII history!
Spitfire V
actual aircraft that’s part of the workshop
It all starts Friday evening the 11th with a presentation on basics to advanced techniques in photography and photographing aircraft. We have a block of rooms right off the Duxford Aerodrome so it’s convenient and close. We then start bright and early Saturday morning the 12th (before sunrise) on the field photographing some amazing aircraft: Spitfire, Hawker & Hurricane! We’ll then move into the digital darkroom to explore ways we can finish our static images.
Hurricane
actual aircraft we’ll be photographing
After all that, you’ll be served a great traditional English lunch and eat where the pilots ate during WWII Battle of Britain. Then we’ll really get busy with more classroom instruction, reenactor portraits and then planes turning props with ground to air and backfire at dusk photography. Saturday night we will gather again to continue on with the education, enlightenment, and comradery that photography creates.
Sunday the 13th we’re up with the sun and on the Duxford Aerodrome for more photography of aircraft and reenactors. And this is not just for still photographers! Brent will be there teaching the art and craft of video, shooting and post so the visual storytelling is open to all! We’ll conclude all of this fun around noon on Sunday, but you are more than welcome to spend the rest of the afternoon enjoying and photographing all the activities. Phew if that wasn’t enough there is more, but we’ve gotta keep a couple surprises … surprises. Twenty folks will receive all this instruction and photographic opportunities, the special Challenge Coin you see above, lunch and much more during the weekend.
We have just nine spots left open of the 20 slots! The price for all that’s listed above is $1495. There is no online registration, you need to either email Sharon (to register and pay) or give her a call at 661.204.1506 (those who preregistered, we’ll be in touch with you shortly). Once you have paid your registration you will receive lodging and other details (this info will not be provided without registration). Also upon registration, you will be sent PDFs of information about gear, aviation photography concepts, and techniques. We have never offered a workshop quite like this, we are incredibly excited to start this new series of workshops and look forward to sharing it all with you!!!
Jun 6, 2017 | WRP Ed Zone
I’m often asked, “Should I use a Polarizer?” Like everything photographic, the answer lies in the light. Not the blue skies, but in the light. Now if you want to REMOVE the reflection of the skies from a subject like in this case, the side of this P-51B, then use, as you can see, the polarizer is the tool. Shot with the D5 / 105f1.4AFS at f/1.4, you can see the Kill Flags pop and not pop as the polarizer is rotated.
Jun 1, 2017 | WRP Ed Zone
American Redstart
D500 / 800mm
One of the biggest challenges in photography is measuring the success of our photographs both technically and most importantly, aesthetically! What I mean by that is, the vast majority of what we do there is no scale, a accepted public measure that we can quickly, easily and accurately measure the quality of our success. It’s all rather subjective. Those who live in the industry have such a scale but in many ways, this is a secret measure that’s summed up very simply in a check paying one for their efforts. But even in the days of film with it ridgedality that was relatively cut and dry this measure of success, helping a new photographer understanding what was sharp while looking through a loop on a light table was a helluva challenge. I by no means have any intent to suggest or force my scale of quality on anyone but rather, simply pass along just two things that my forty years of working with photobuyers has instilled in me that I personally attribute to my still making a living with my images.
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
D500 / 800mm
Back in the day of steam powered cameras, we shot on this thing called film … ground up cow hooves with this thin layer of chemicals that got really excited when light struck it just right. In my case, it was 35mm in size being finally presented to the photobuyer incased in this circle of cardboard. There was just enough room on this cardboard to stamp your copyright and address. And you’d bundled up your precious gems up 20 to a page and sent them off with your prayers to the photo buyer hoping in return to get a nice check. You would use gloves and keemacs in prepping your slides, stamping them with care so the presentation was a perfect as you could make it. The last thing you would do would put silver tape on the cardboard mounts to suggest that the image should be cropped, it was dependent on you and assumed by the photobuyer that what they say within that cardboard frame was the complete visual story as you wanted to tell it. Not that at times your photo might not have been cropped in production to fit a cover or a layout. But your delivering a product to a client, what they saw in that cardboard frame was the final photo. At the same time what was contained within that cardboard frame was exposed to have the information needed in the entire range of the story correctly. This could only happen when you did it when you went click in the camera. There was no way of recovery after that fact.
Replacing today the finality of slide film and the words of wisdom of the photobuyer is digital and the internet. Where before you HAD to now when you went click you had the picture has been replaced often with learning how you can recover it in post. Where you have the professional helping you learn if your photograph is telling a story are simply Likes. Likes from others often in a befuddlement as to a measure of success or not. There are no true words of advice here, there is no technical help or words of wisdom other then to suggest that our measure of success must be higher if we are to move photography as a whole to a higher plane. A plane were rather than tearing down ones photo, we use measures as a place to help each other improve where the technical is secondary and not a primary tool to measure with. It’s only then that photography can truly measure up to its true calling, telling the stories of this marvelous world we are all so fortunate to witness with other less fortunate. To enlighten all to a better plane. I would simply like to see us moving the quality slider moved forward!
May 24, 2017 | WRP Ed Zone
Thousands upon thousands have it on their iPad…Do You? It’s been updated twice FOR FREE and has all you need and more to make your photography, your photography! It’s FREE, you have nothing to lose and everything to learn.
Apr 27, 2017 | WRP Ed Zone
Monument Valley
In the current issue of PDN (you did get it, don’t you?), Publisher Lauren Wendle has a great piece. It starts off by mentioning the closing of the doors of industry institutions Popular Photography and American Photo. These giants of our industry going away was quite the emotional blow and to some, the harbinger of bad days to come. Then she goes on to site some darn important facts that all of us need to grasp. She starts by quoting Farhad Manjoo of The New York times who writes, “Snap (makers of the app Snapchat) is betting on a “long-term trend: the rise and eventual global dominance of the visual culture.” I quote her, “Images are now not only to document the world but to communicate. That communication has no language barriers: Photography is truly becoming the international language we use to “talk” to each other–Manjoo’s article asserts the now we “speak in pictures.” It’s estimated that 1.2 trillion pictures will be taken in 2017, a 9 percent increase over 2016, and photography revenue in 2016 hit $10.5 billion.”
Personally, I see this as only one thing … photography is more important than ever as a means of telling our stories. At the same time, the conventional means we have to tell that story are evolving and if you’re not evolving with it, you’ll go the way of the dinosaurs. Ya, many of those photos were taken with devices like the iPhone but when it comes to making a living from your camera, it doesn’t require thousands of images, just one, the good one, the best one, the one the client wants to pay for. Do you have in you that one, that right one? I see oped pieces like this as good news and call to arms to get working and get working more productively. There is lots of disappointing news bombarding us these days. But when you look on the bright side, there is lots of good news if you seek it out. That’s what the numbers reveal!
Apr 27, 2017 | WRP Ed Zone
When the rare moment presents itself where I can use a big subject small in a frame to show the sheer size of something big, I love it. The classic example is a landscape where the land is small and the clouds tower over it. In the skies, it’s harder to do because clouds mean rough air and avoiding them is the smart thing to do. At the same time, I’m often not in the skies with a big plane like the B-25 bomber, but rather a small plane which doesn’t work as well for scale. But when I had the opportunity to step back and shoot them small in the frame telling the story of the large building cumulous clouds, I was a happy camper. I realize most want the fill the frame with the subject but I’m weird, I like to make it small to show the home where it lives. In this case, in the skies!
