Going The Distance At The Short Course

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If you missed the Northern Short Course this year, I urge you to go next year. For some of you outside the New England area, it may not much sense to make the trip, but several workshops and panels made the two day drive from Hartford to Warwick, Rhode Island really worthwhile.

Topping the charts was Karl Kuntz‘ beginning and intermediate workshops using Adobe PhotoShop CS. Kuntz, the Managing Editor for visuals and graphics at The Columbus Dispatch, is also known in photo circles as a PhotoShop guru. I took copious notes and learned to color correct and knock down digital noise from my images. The upgrade to PhotoShop CS is a steep one in price, but after Kuntz showed us a few tricks, it just makes sense to make the leap. Kuntz is a wonderful teacher and his own notes are available for download here. [it's a 3.1 mb PDF file]

John Harrington‘s professional seminar was useful and we all received a binder filled with case-studies and sample forms that we can quickly apply to make our business run smoothly. Want to know how to incorporate business practices in photography? Check out Harrington's other website LIFES WORK.

Stock photographer Seth Resnick‘s no-nonsense approach to digital workflow was an eye-opener. If you are still using film (as I am), the pace with which the photo world is spinning around the digital format should make you giddy. I certainly felt like I needed to sit down. Digital has approached the quality level of film. Sure, you need a $8,000 camera, a slew of lenses, a high-end post-production computer studio to make it all happen. The cost of doing business has simply sky-rocketed.

I was sorely disappointed by the lighting workshops that I signed up for. They seemed utterly remedial. Despite the gusty winds or the cold weather, I had had hoped we could have gone out into the sunlight and used our strobes for that classic Annie Liebovitz effect. God, I would love to shoot editorial portraits like her.