The Digital Photo Guy

The Good – San Luis Rey Pow Wow

The Mission San Luis Rey Inter-Tribal Pow Wow was a small event but I managed to get some good photos. Having attend a number of pow wows, I had a good sense of when, where and how things would unfold. That allowed me to pick out the best sight lines and backgrounds. Here are some photos:

I used my fallback lens, the Canon 28-135 with a Canon 550EX in manual mode at 1/16.

Also in the Good column, I met Dave Plunkett, the Arena Director who will also be the Arena Director at the Pechanga Pow Wow on July 3-4. Pechange is a huge event with nearly 1000 dancers so knowing Dave will help me get the inside scoop. I also met Al Footracer, the Head Gourd Dancer who allowed me to enter the arena and photograph the Gourd Dance. This is the first time I’ve seen a non-Native American allowed inside the arena so I was thrilled.
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FREE Lens Webinar

Saturday, May 15 at 11AM CDT (noon EDT, 10A, MDT, 9AM PDT), Roger Cicala, the man who owns ~3000 lenses from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Tamron, Sigma, Tokina, Panasonic, etc will explain what makes some lenses better than others. If you’re wondering which to buy and how best to use it, Roger has the answer, backed up with years of experience. What other company have you ever seen with a Lifetime Rating of 9.98/10 on ResellerRatings.com? Click here to register for the webinar.

Macro, Wide Angle & Ultra Wide Lenses

Here are some more student photos from the Spring Desert Wildflower Workshop in March. The workshop concentrated on macro, wide angle and ultra wide angle lenses and these four photos demonstrate the concepts we learned and practiced.

The first two photo use a wide angle 28mm lens to incorporate flowers as foreground anchors in a lndscape. By getting low, the first photo makes the small patch of desert daisys appear to be much larger than it really was. In the second photo (also 28mm), careful composition hides the fact that this was taken at the visitors’ center amid a clutter of lights, sidewalks, cars and people.

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Topaz Labs FREE Webinar

Eric Yang of Topaz Labs will demonstrate tips, tricks and techniques for their most popular plug-ins. If you have registered, please check your e-mail for log-in instructions and log in early because we open the doors to everyone once the webinar starts. To register, please click here and follow the links.

It Makes Me Happy…

I love it when readers send me samples of their work using tips & techniques they’ve learned here. Below are Before and After photos fixed by Al from New York using techniques in this MMT.

  
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Student Photos from Anza-Borrego

Here are the first 3 student photos from the Spring Desert Wildflower workshop in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. The first day covered wildflowers as elements in landscape photography. Notice how we shot from a low angle to make the flowers appear more numerous and dense than they really were. Click to read more

Yes Virginia, There Really Are Burrowing Owls

After 3 fruitless years of searching, I finally found and photographed burrowing owls in the wild. In fact, within one hour, I saw 4 of the cute critters and managed to get a photo with two in one frame.

The originals of two are shown below. If you can’t efficiently and effectively create the above photos in a few minutes with Photoshop Elements, you’re not getting full value out of PSE. Notice how I removed twigs in front of the owls for a better photo. The third was just cropped and had curves adjusted.

Desert Spring Wildflowers

The temperatures started warming up in the desert on Friday, 3/12 so we should be in peak bloom this coming Saturday and Sunday. There’s still space in the workshop. Remember, past students receive a 10% discount on all classes.

Here are some photos from last week. We used wide angle lenses to make small flower patches appear huge as well as telephoto lenses to “stack” the scene so everything seems closer together. The students were most amazed at the world as seen through a macro lens and learning to control depth of field in macros.

For a great place to stay, I recommend a cute trailer at Leapin’ Lizard RV Ranch in Ocotillo Wells, just 15 miles from Borrego Springs. I discovered it this past week and am totally amazed at what Deborah and Siegfried Kunkler have built there. They even erected two 40′ WiFi antennas so the whole park has free WiFi. Best of all, the trailers are as little as $60/night.

Topaz Labs FREE Webinar, April 7

Eric Yang of Topaz Labs will present a FREE webinar on Wednesday, April 7 at noon Central Daylight Savings Time (CDT). That’s 1PM EDT, 11AM MDT and 10AM PDT. To register, click here. If there’s still room, you’ll receive an e-mail confirmation in a few days.

If you belong to a camera club or other group, you’re welcome to project the webinar on a screen for the whole group to view.