Forests: The Art of Photographing Trees and Woods
In celebration of the majesty of trees and woodlands, this project examines in-depth the fine art of seeing and photographing these magnificent life forms. It is commonly thought that to photograph forests well, one has to make order out of the chaos. That’s true, but there’s so much more to artfully portraying trees. I’ll delve deep into seeing creative possibilities, composing for visual separation and to accentuate lines, forms, patterns and textures. I’ll offer strategies for photographing deep inside forests, along their edges and from on high, and illustrate the artistic opportunities presented by different weather and lighting conditions, most notably, fog. Good tree and forest imagery is also elevated through artistic processing. I’ll cover effective contrast and color adjustments, image softening techniques, abstract expressionism and amazing black and white conversion — all with the goal of creating moody, atmospheric woodland images that convey the beauty, grace and power of trees.
Innovative Night Image Processing
Techniques for photographing and processing images of the night sky have evolved significantly in recent years, allowing us to present more detail, with less noise, than ever before. In this inspiring new presentation, I’ll cover the latest and greatest techniques for photographing the Milky Way, stars, planets, meteors and more in relation to the earthbound landscape, supplemented with live processing demonstrations in Lightroom and Photoshop, Starry Landscape Stacker, StarStax and more. I’ll explain my workflow and succinctly illustrate:
- processing Milky Way images with incredible detail and color
- blending separate exposures for detail in the landscape and sky, using layer and luminosity masking, and Photoshop’s Replace Sky feature
- blending light-painted foreground images with images of the night sky
- blending multiple exposures to dramatically reduce noise
- presenting landscape and sky in sharp focus, through exposure blending and focus stacking
- star minimization, for less cluttered skies
- stacking multiple exposures for star trails and circles
- compositing panoramas of the star-filled heavens and the Milky Way
- blending separate images of lightning, for a dramatic look at the storm through Time
- merging separate images of lighthouse beams to show them radiating out in different directions
I’ll also discuss creating incredible time-lapse movies generated in LRTimelapse, of the stars and planets arcing across the heavens.
Use these innovative processing techniques to optimize your night images to their fullest potential, and elevate them to extraordinary.
