The Digital Photo Guy

The spring wildflower bloom at Joshua Tree NP was bleak this year after record rains and snow. It’s a mystery but, to quote Mother Nature, “Stuff happens!” On Saturday and Sunday, March 21 and 22, several intrepid photographers ventured into JTNP in search of spring wildflowers. It was a hard fought battle but, in the end, Mother Nature won and left us with few trophies for our showcase. Here are some photos from that epic battle.

       

We have a busy schedule in April. Along with the Photoshop Elements webcast class that starts on March 25 and goes through April, we’ve also added a Wild Animal Park “Hands-On” Photoshoot on Saturday, April 4 and a Butterfly Macro Workshop on Thursday, April 16.

This is probably the last WAP “Hands-On” Photoshoot until October because it gets too warm and too crowded during the summer.

The Butterfly Jungle exhibit at WAP runs from April 4 through 26 and offers some of the best opportunities to get up-close-and-personal with these colorful flying flowers.

Check out these workshops on the Workshops page.

For the Summer 2009 session, Palomar is offering 3 classes taught by The Digital Photo Guy. On June 9th and 11th, you can register for Digital SLR for New dSLR Owners. This is a webcast class that runs from 7:30PM until 9:00PM each night. In those 3 hours, I will cover all the knobs, dials, switches and menus on your dSLR, explaing what, they do, how to adjust them and why you want to adjust them. All you need is a PC or Mac connected via high-speed Internet with a standard web browser (MS IE, FireFox, Safari) and speakers. The only thing you’ll miss are the drive to campus, parking challenges, ool white industrial restrooms and chairs designed for 19 year old butts. This class is a prerequisite for the next class.

On July 25th from 8AM until 11AM, we’ll put into action what we learned in the previous class with Digital SLR “Hands-On” Photoshoot. We’ll meet at a local park where we can photograph kids’ sports, critters, landscapes, statues and macros. This is where we practice using all the different knobs, dials, switches and menus so you can capture the correct exposure everytime. This is where we begin to understand composure. And, this is where we learn how to break the rules to make better photos.

We’ll wrap up the summer with Photo Editing for Digital Photographers on August 5th and 6th using Adobe Photoshop Elements to enhance and edit our photos. Half the fun, flexibility and power of digital photography is post-processing, using an editing program to improve photos. Webcast is particularly well suited to learning Photoshop Elements because you work on your own PC or Mac at home. You’re not using a strange computer at the school’s computer lab that’s set up differently from yours. This class runs from 7:30PM until 9:00PM each night and starts with basics that you can immediately apply to your photos and ends with more advanced techniques for photo repair and restoration. Photoshop Elements is the most widely used photo editing program for amateurs. At just $99 ($69 at Costco), it has about 80% of the capability of its big brother, Adobe Photoshop CS4 which retails for $650.

Palomar College is one of the premier community colleges in California. One characteristic that makes Palomar stand out is their willingness to be creative and innovative when other schools are still stuck in the 19th century. An example of this 21st century mindset is the webcast classes offered through Venture, a department of Palomar’s Workforce and Community Development program.

Palomar was the first San Diego county community college to offer The Digital Photo Guy webcasts as an alternative to 19th century classrooms. Using webcast technology, Lee Otsubo, The Digital Photo Guy, can teach literally anyone from anywhere a high-speed Internet connection is available. These are not your grandpa’s computer-based training sessions. These are live multimedia presentations with PowerPoint slides, video, audio and real-time interaction.

You do not have to live in or near San Diego County to register for a webcast class. All you need is a PC or Mac connected via high-speed Internet. Go to the Palomar Venture registration site today and sign up for a class with The Digital Photo Guy. (Summer 2009 classes not yet posted)

On Saturday, March 21, I presented a Photoshop Elements retouching presentation to the Computer Genealogy Society of San Diego via webcast. The group was meeting at UC San Diego while I was at Joshu Tree National Park leading a spring wildflower workshop.

I showed how the following photo from the 1950s or 60s can be quickly and easily restored with a few basic tips and tricks. Click the thumbnails to see the BEFORE and AFTER photos.

I then applied virtually the same techniques to another photo and demonstrated how these steps can be used to restore ALL faded, skewed, poorly taken photos.

The next photo was more challenging because of its age and damage. I didn’t fix the entire photo because, as I explained to the audience, much of this is just tedious and time-consuming. The only reasons one would have for spending time on restoring such a photo would be 1) it’s a labor of love involving a photo of a loved one or, 2) you’re getting paid gobs of money.

Here, I demonstrated making a copy of the right eye, flipping it over to match the left eye, moving the catchlight to the correct side and “nudging” the pupil to the right to match the right eye. I also used a gaussian blur to smooth and repair the skin on her left cheek.

You can see a recording of the presentation here. If the audio and video get out of sync (narrative and cursor don’t match), click on the progress bar along the top and drag it back back a few seconds.

On my way to Bosque del Apache, NM, I stopped by JTNP to check wildflower conditions. At the southern end, most of the vegetation is nicely turning green with spots of early bloomers such as this bladderpod.

On the way home, I came across  I-8 along the southern route through Tucson. That route was already in full bloom with lots of brittle bush, sand verbena, Arizona poppy and others that I couldn’t identify at 65MPH.

Some recent reports say Anza-Borrego State Park has already started peak bloom and anyone waiting much longer may miss it. Bottom line, it looks like Joshua Tree NP around the middle of March will be perfect for that area.

If you can’t go to Anza-Borrego, consider my JTNP Spring Desert Wildflower Photoshoot on March 21 or 22.