When my clients attend one of my Holiday Workshops I hope that they have a number of goals they wish to achieve, and that I can help them accomplish these goals.
Firstly, the main aim of my Holiday Workshops is just as the title suggests. A Holiday first and foremost, with a specialized theme, and a Workshop where they will learn new techniques and methods which improves their personal vision, ability to see and capture striking images, and finally being in a position to interoperate the image into a fantastic print.
Amongst the many things that we cover over the two weeks are the initial image capture and the need to capture in the RAW format, understanding histograms and understanding the difference between the luminance channel, and the individual R.G.B channel histograms. Composition and subject selection, light, colour and fine tuning the exposure will also be covered as a fundamental basic of good photography. We will then progress with the aid of a digital light projector and a laptop and cover colour calibration of monitors, colour working spaces such as Adobe RGB, ProPhoto and EktaSpace 5 using 16 and 8 bit files and the benefits of each. We then move onto post processing the RAW file using a number of different RAW converters.
The next stage will cover working in Adobe Photoshop and I will show you how to build a master file using all of the techniques that I use for my prints. This involves methods such as Pixel mapping, setting the white point, painting with light, making tough selections easy using the lasso tool. We also cover using the curve adjustment layers to build the master file and many other useful ways to improve the image and finally in this section will be resizing and sharpening.
The last stage will follow the extremely powerful soft proofing tools and viewing out of gamut colours using certain paper profiles. All in all this may seem rather intimidating to many but don’t worry… by the end you will have a thorough understanding and you’ll be itching to put all this newly found knowledge into practice. It’s like having two workshops for the price of one!
But of course at the end of the day the main thing that we concentrate and put first on our list is getting the image in the first place, therefore the actual photography comes first and foremost.