Sean Duggan Photographics: Digital Photography & Photoshop Workshops

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Essentials of Digital Photography
and Lightroom Workflow

June 20 – 24, 2011 • $500
Madeline Island School of the Arts • Madeline Island, Wisconsin

Register for this class

Join the co-author of Real World Digital Photography, The Creative Digital Darkroom and Photoshop Artistry for an inspiring week of creative digital photography and exploration in the digital darkroom. In this workshop, which is designed for photographers using digital SLRs that can shoot in Raw, we will focus on fundamental photographic and camera technique, including topics such as composition, framing and the quality of light, controlling exposure, and understanding all your camera’s settings so you can make the photos you want to make instead of settling for what the camera gives you. The class will be a combination of photography in the field and learning essential post-capture workflow and processing techniques in Adobe Lightroom..

Seán will lead field sessions each day that will teach participants how to improve their photographs by understanding the camera’s light meter and different exposure modes, exposing to create the best histogram possible, shooting for multi-image panoramas, night photography, and other camera-based practices for technical and creative control. Back in the classroom Seán will introduce participants to an essential digital workflow in Lightroom, covering techniques for organizing your files and managing your image catalog, using Collections for arranging your best shots into logical groups, applying keywords to ensure that you can easily find any photo, processing Raw files and creatively transforming an image with the powerful features in Lightroom’s Develop module, and sharing your images as slide shows and web photo galleries.

Camera/Photography topics include:

• Camera resolution & image size

• File format and JPEG compression issues

• Raw: What it is and why it's so important

• White balance & other critical camera settings

• Seeing the light: Know your light meter!

• Exposure compensation

• Using the histogram in the field

• Camera techniques for great panoramas

• Learn the difference in how you see and how your camera sees

Digital Darkroom topics include:

•Download & Archive: Protecting your images

• A basic workflow with Photoshop Lightroom

• Taking advantage of metadata and keywords

• Creating & Managing Image Catalogs in Lightroom

• Mastering Raw image processing with Lightroom

• Local Editing (dodge & burn) in Lightroom

• Color Correction, Color to Black & White, & Toning

• Combining two exposures for increased dynamic range

• Creating slides shows in Lightroom

• Photomerge panoramas in Photoshop

• Preparing files for outlab printing

Minimum Requirements: This class requires that participants bring a digital SLR camera as well as a laptop computer with Lightroom 3.0 installed. If you do not have Lightroom and are not sure if it is software you want to invest in, you can always download and install a free 30-day trial version just before the workshop. Some techniques will be shown using Adobe Photoshop, but that is not required for this course. If you do want to have Photoshop-like capabilities, then you can always use Photoshop Elements (trial versions of both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements are available). Participants should also bring a USB card reader for downloading photos to their laptops. A small external hard drive (USB or Firewire connections) for photo storage is also a good idea if there is not much free space on your laptop.