2008 First Light Photo Workshop Online Newsletters
JANUARY
WORKSHOP
PARTICIPANT PHOTO CONTEST
Congratulations
to Larry DuBey for winning the 2007 Lowepro backpack workshop participant photo
contest. Larry's winning image was taken on the South Texas Birds trip. Below
is his winning image of a male and female cardinal passing food between each other.
The runner-up image was taken by Ortis Carmichael on the Colorado Wildflower trip in July of a single larkspur in a field of cornstalk leaves. He will receive $100 off a trip in 2008. With already being signed up for the Oregon Coast trip in June, this will be applied to that trip.
As always, judging was done by an outside photographer who does not know any of the participants. Judging was based on uniqueness, image quality, composition, action, and exposure.
For those who take trips in 2008, make sure you send your two best images from the trip to be eligible to win either a backpack or $100 off a trip in 2009.
Congratulations to the winners and good luck to everyone who goes on a trip this year.
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NEW
2008 TRIP - CALIFORNIA REDWOOD COUNTRY
A new trip has been added to
the 2008 schedule - California Redwood Country set for March 10 - 16. This trip
will be led by Bob Dean who has written numerous of
the Digital Corner articles you've read. Find out more about this trip on the
trip page.
POTENTIAL
NEW 2008 TRIP - WILD HORSES
I've been contacted by an outfitter in
northwestern Colorado who has access to several wild horse herds in northwestern
Colorado and southwestern Wyoming. The trip can be scheduled for late summer or
early fall. I must have at least 3 people interested in this trip to set up dates
with them. If you have any interest in this let me know and I'll get pricing and
date info as soon as possible.
PENGUINS
OF FALKLAND ISLANDS REPORT
The
tameness of the penguins, albatross and other birds in the Falkland Islands continues
to amaze everyone who goes on this special trip. Seat yourself near a colony and
within minutes you either have one almost sitting in your lap or get surrounded
by a group. Or, in my case, you can sit yourself in a batch of tussac grass and
have a black-browed albatross walk up to within three feet of my and take flight.
As another one was approaching one of the trip participants told me it was on
its way and I connected a wide angle lens on my camera and used this to get a
full frame shot of the bird taking off.
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On this year's trip we visited Gypsy Cove outside of Stanley on our first afternoon on the islands. We were able to get good shots of white crested grebes and some nice adult and baby Magellanic penguins. We could have stayed for another hour but our time with the drivers was up.
The next stop was to Carcass Island where we first went to Elephant Seal Point. Got some good interaction of these large creatures but that was only part of it. I was having people with the smallest lenses moving carefully up on a striated caracara when once we all got lined up at what I thought was a safe distance it came walking right towards us to within 15 feet or so. So much for being careful not to spook it away.
Next was a colony of kelp gulls with both very tiny chicks and eggs. We also encountered a Falklands skua with a several day old baby. The wind provided for some great flight shot opportunities of the gulls at the colony and for land and takeoff shots at a nearby pond.
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We then had a full-day adventure to West Point Island by way of a boat ride to photograph the albatross. There were others on the ride over and the boat captain was set to do a ride around the island but I insisted we get dropped off and driven to the colony right away. Good thing we did as those who took the boat ride didn't show up at the colony for another three hours. I then requested we get picked up as late as possible and the worked with us on that as once we got back to the boat everyone else was already on it and we just climbed on and took off.
The winds had the albatross doing a lot of soaring so more flight shots were available and the interaction between parents and babies and babies by themselves made for great shooting.
Our next stop was The Neck at Saunders Island. Here, we had a group of about 23 king penguins and colonies of gentoo, Magellanic and rockhopper penguins as well as a few albatross, striated caracara and several other small birds. Action with the rockhoppers going in and out of the water proved to be very popular with everyone.
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Back at Stanley we did a day trip to Volunteer Point where there are about 800 king penguins. Another great day and while there isn't a lot of action with these birds, their beautiful colors were very popular with everyone.
The 2009 trip is already in the planning stages and will be two weeks long. It will more than likely start in the Falklands on January 17th with the usual overnight in Chile on either end of the trip. Because there is only one flight a week to the Falklands from Chile, it's best to sign up for this trip as soon as possible so you can get seated on the flight on Saturday the 17th.
NEW
CF CARD PRICING FROM DELKIN
Delkin has reduced the price of their 305X
UDMA CF cards again. I have a batch of 2 GB cards that are available for $57.
Suggested retail price is $80 so you see the savings you'll get through me. If
you want other sizes, all the way up to 16 GB, please contact me and I'll let
you know the price.
MARKETING
IDEAS
I am constantly being asked on workshops, at presentations I
give and by e-mail about what to do to start getting work published. Early in
the year is a good time to put your marketing hat on if you want to try and find
magazines to submit your photos to for publication. The first thing to do is go
to the bookstore and pick up the 2008 Photographer's Market book and go through
it page by page to find buyers you have a good supply of images of the type they're
looking for. Remember,
a good supply is not a handful but rather hundreds.
If you have a website, send a nicely worded e-mail to the photo editor and direct them to your website so they can take a quick look at they type of work you can produce. If you don't have a website, put together a CD of about 20 to 25 related images to their needs and send it off. They can tell by a quick look to see if you have what it takes to be added to their photo wants list distribution.
In your letter / e-mail, introduce yourself and let them know how much material you have available for them. Ask to be placed on their photo wants list distribution if they like your work. Let them know you can provide good material to them rather than you looking for work. They need good work more than they need more suppliers. Provide an e-mail address that they can use to get back with you as this saves them a lot of time for writing a letter and sending it back to you. They get requests like this all the time and the easier you can make it for them the better.
Competition in this market is fierce and many publications know there is a lot more supply than demand, so payment from many publications is not that much. Your first credit will not be with Audubon, National Wildlife or any other big publication. Think smaller to get your foot in the door and be ready for lots of rejection.
ST.
PETERSBURG AUDUBON ANNUAL MEETING
I
have been in discussion with the president of the St. Petersburg, FL, Audubon
Society chapter about being their featured speaker at the 2009 Annual Meeting.
If you live in that area look for more details in a couple of month's about the
arrangements for attending.
PERMANENT
GALLERY EXHIBIT
If
anyone is planning a visit to the Winter Park, CO ski area the rest of the ski
season, be sure to stop in at the Trial Ridge Art Gallery in the Copper Creek
Center. I am now one of their continually showing featured artists and have a
good variety of images for viewing / purchase.
NORTHERN
LIGHTS 2009
My
northern lights trip has become my most popular, with three weeks full for 2008
and four people on the waiting list. I'm encouraging people who are really interested
to go ahead and sign up for 2009 as these will probably fill up as well. The first
trip will be scheduled for Feb. 28 - March 7 and already has four people signed
up for the first week. Once this week fills up, more weeks might be added depending
on availability of where we stay on the northern leg. For more information visit
the detailed page about this trip.
2008
TRIPS FILLING UP
In
addition to three weeks of Northern Lights being completely full at this time,
only a couple spots remain on the April Birds of Florida, two spots on the Oregon
Coast and two or three spots on the South Texas Birds trips. For those signing
up for the Oregon trip, you can add a couple of days onto the end if you want
to join me as I scout out some new areas further north from where I've been before.
This new area will be included in the 2009 trip. Most every workshop has people
already signed up so try to plan ahead as early as possible if you think you're
interested in attending a workshop this year.
SUBSCRIBER
WEBSITES
This month's subscriber website was submitted by Kathy Cochran.
It's best viewed, as she says, on a Mac but I was able to see everything fine
on my PC. The web address is http://web.mac.com/kathyvid/CochranProductions.mac/Home.html.
It take a little time for the photo pages to load but the wait is worth it as
she has some nice work on there. Take a look at her site and let her know what
you think of her work and her site. The photos from New Mexico were take on my
Historic New Mexico photo workshop.
If you have a website you want to share with others send me an e-mail with the link and I'll get it added to future newsletters. I currently don't have any others to announce at this time so please send me your info.
FEBRUARY
PICK
A PROJECT
No
matter where you live, there has to be some place that's close by to do an in-depth
photo project of. With it early in the year, pick a place or subject you can photograph
throughout the year and devote as much time to it as you possibly can. Not only
will this build up your supply of images of the place / subject, but you'll find
you learn quite a bit about what you're shooting.
One of my projects this year is doing a lot of winter photography. And with getting a 1 DS II body, it's even more fun to go out and get it broken in. For most people, getting out to a spot one time a month to document for a whole year will be a good start. If you can go more, that's even better. This forces you to get out and do what you love with photography.
Last year my main goal was to do as much bird in flight photography as possible. The more I did, the more I learned about some new techniques that I'm passing on in my workshops. Everyone has room to learn and grow, no matter how long you've been taking photos.
NEW
2008 TRIP - CALIFORNIA REDWOOD COUNTRY
A new trip has been added to
the 2008 schedule - California Redwood Country set for March 10 - 16. This trip
will be led by Bob Dean who has written numerous of
the Digital Corner articles you've read. Find out more about this trip on the
trip page.
TECHNOLOGY
HEADACHES - NEW SOFTWARE
Recently got a 1DS Mark II body and am having
fun with the 16.7 megapixels. Bought it practically new with only 1,000 shots
taken on it but didn't get the CD that came with it. You get all excited when
you get some new equipment, go out and use it and then get back and download the
images. You open up your trusty software you've been using for years to do the
initial edit and.....
No pictures to see. You know they're there because you viewed them on the LCD screen in the field to check exposures. You look for an upgrade to the software (in this case EOS Viewer Utility) and there isn't one. You think, it worked with my 1D Mark II so it should work with the 1DS Mark II. Wrong. A call to the Canon Pro Services tech rep reveals that I have to have the latest version of Digital Photo Pro to view and convert the RAW files.
Downloading complete, it's now time to look at the shots. Only to find out how much you liked the outdated program much better. While there are a lot of great functions on the new program, Viewer Utility, to me, was a much easier program for just doing initial edits on. It's now time to have to learn a new program, three if I download the other two programs the tech rep said I should also look at.
Technology. You have to love it. (Or not).
Which leads me to the notification of a very good image editing program you might want to check out - Breezebrowser. They have several elements to their programs including Downloader Pro and Breezebrowser Pro. The program is set up to read all types of cameras RAW files and is very easy and straightforward to use. Plus, it lets you see all the information you want while having an image displayed including the metadata and a histogram.
Some of the features of the program include:
- Convert, resize, sharpen
and level raw images from most every camera model
- Select images for presentation
- Generate attractive, captioned web pages with watermarking and online ordering
- Produce contact sheets and proofs (print straight to your printer or print to
file)
- Batch rename images and managing folders
- Caption and edit
comments and XMP IPTC data including IPTC subject codes and scenes
- Quickly
assess large numbers of images
COLORADO
WINTER
The
area where the Colorado Winter photo workshop was had some of the best winter
landscape opportunities in quite a few years. The area was hit with more snow
than can be remembered by people in the area. Imagine a scene where you are standing
in front of a house that has to have a tunnel dug out in order to reach the front
door. And the snow is about four to five feet high. And this was after a week
of melting with no snow and numerous sunny days. In one town, the middle of the
road had snow piled six to seven feet high and eight feet across from the snow
plows piling it there as there was no place else to put it.
The trip included both sunny and snowy days, giving great contrast. And the last morning there was five inches of new snow that produced some magical scenes. While the broader landscapes provided some great opportunities with groups of leafless aspen trees set apart from a rolling hillside with a crisp blue sky contrasting them, there were plenty of other opportunities that proved to be more popular.
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Old mining buildings seemed to bring up the interest level, but the most popular were some scenes with old farm buildings and single or small groups of trees with the snow falling and low clouds that created some great mood to the whole area.
Most everywhere we went the snow was packed down pretty good, making for fairly easy moving around. I always took the lead and whenever I sunk to my knee with a step is how I decided we had gone far enough down that trail. Luckily this only happened a couple of times and every spot we wanted to go to was packed pretty good. And no camera found its way into the snow.
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What's interesting is that part of this trip includes areas that are visited on the Colorado fall color workshop. One fence that I usually position the vehicle so people can climb onto the tailgate to get above the fence for a better perspective had snow piled high enough to just walk up the snow bank to be higher than the fence with just the top portion of the fence showing.
This was the first year I had this trip on the schedule but I plan to keep this for several years. It's one everyone should think about doing as there's a lot more to the trip than you would imagine. And with having friends who live in one of the areas we stay, I'll be doing more scouting to find more spots to stop next year.
While there's not a lot of color on this trip, the beauty of winter is a sight to behold. And the places we go will always have plenty of snow to add to the scene, especially in the February time frame the trip will be scheduled for.
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PC
OR MAC QUESTION
QUESTION - Once again I want to tell
you how much I enjoy First Light newsletters. I recently attended a class on Photoshop
Elements, purchased the program and am learning how to work with my photos. So
far I like it.
My old PC is about give it up and I have looked at new
ones and by accident came onto a sales pitch by an Apple rep at Best Buy. I know
the graphics industry has always used Mac's but was wondering if you had a preference
as to which system is best for an advanced amateur. Not that I am of course. Thanks
for any input that you may have.
ANSWER - In year's past Mac was
the only way to go when it came to any type of computer graphics work. PC is now
as good in this regard. It's all about preference now. I used Mac for years, starting
back in the 1982-83 time frame. I now have both a PC for laptop and desktop and
can do everything that a Mac does. There are a couple of photography programs
that aren't available on Mac yet and there's one or two that are only available
for Mac.
If the Photoshop version you got can load onto either format,
you can go either way. If it's only PC, then you won't want to have to buy another
copy, even though Elements isn't that expensive.
Sorry I can't provide
a definitive answer, but from my opinion, either would be fine for working with
your photos.
NEW
CF CARD PRICING FROM DELKIN
Delkin has reduced the price of their 305X
UDMA CF cards again. I have a batch of 2 GB cards that are available for $57.
Suggested retail price is $70 so you see the savings you'll get through me. If
you want other sizes, all the way up to 16GB, please contact me and I'll let you
know the price.
ICELAND
2008
Only
a couple more spots remain on the Iceland Adventure scheduled for June 26 - July
5 for this year. This trip will provide opportunities to photograph the great
variety of birds as well as landscapes, waterfalls, glacial lagoons and lava areas.
We will cover about 2/3 of the coastal area of the country as well as an inland
route on the return leg and includes a shoot at the largest bird colony in the
world.
NORTHERN
LIGHTS 2009 FILLING UP
My
northern lights trip has become by far the most popular, with three weeks full
for 2008 and four people on the waiting list. I'm encouraging people who are really
interested to go ahead and sign up for 2009 as I will probably fill up three weeks
as well. The primary trip scheduled for March 7 - 14 where people can come in
a day early to attend the ceremonial start to the Iditarod is already full and
a second trip will be scheduled for March 14 - 21. Once this week fills up, a
third week might be added for Feb. 28 - March 7 depending on availability of where
we stay on the northern leg. For more information visit the detailed
page about this trip.
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Andy Long firstlightfoto@aol.com
