A Trio of City Workshops

Winter can sometimes get a little dreary here in the Northwest, but there are endless things to photograph. Three workshops were scheduled over a one month period to explore various ways of capture and post production here locally.

1. Japanese Garden Workshop, Portland, Oregon,  March 18th and 19th

The Japanese Garden is going through some construction right now, but the main garden area is unaffected. It was a somewhat chilly morning, but the weather was very agreeable, with clearing skies. We concentrated on intimate captures with Spring just emerging.

Andew Kaplan ©2016

The following day we reviewed our images and suggestions were made for composition and development in Lightroom.

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2. Cityscape Workshop, Downtown Portland, Oregon, March 17th and 18th

This workshop concentrated on using some new processing that were recently added to Lightroom; Stitching and HDR. A handout was sent to participants to review with suggestions for capture. Tripods are important here, especially in the evening light.

Kira Bartlett, ©2016

Katrina Gustafson, ©2016

The following morning we reviewed our work and applied these new tools. Some participants brought prints, which is always a welcome addition to our discussions.

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3. Japanese Garden  Monochrome Workshop, Portland, Oregon,  April 2nd and 3rd, 2016

The main emphasis of this workshop was thinking in terms of shapes and forms and translating our color images to monochrome. We always shoot in RAW, but some participants set their cameras so the JPEG preview was converted to monochrome. Overcast weather was welcome in the first half of our visit, but once again the sun broke through, changing and challenging what worked well in the viewfinder.

Jan Hand, ©2016

Suzanne Michalik, ©2016

The next morning we had an intensive overview of possible workflow options of monochrome conversions using Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex Pro. The results were quite lovely. Working in monochrome can also help to sharpen perceptions of elements and space when photographing in color.