Red Rock National Conservatory Nevada

I'm in Las Vegas for a Photoshop convention and had an opportunity to go out on a pre-conference field trip to Red Rock National Conservatory which is about twenty minutes outside of Las Vegas. The area strongly reminded me of Sedona with the red clay rock surrounded by blue skies.

As part of the trip, three of the professional photographers for the convention acted as guides Moose Peterson, Joe McNally and Vincent Versace. I always find it interesting to watch how differently the personalities and styles are amongst the professional photographers that I meet. They all seem to take a different route to work every morning but somehow arrive at the same place; and that place is always understanding light and using it in the way that you want to produce the image you want to convey. These three couldn't have bee more different, Moose is the hard core outdoor photographer who likes to photograph "critters", while Vincent seems to take a very abstract approach to his work. Joe is the blue collar photograph who is very capable of taking quality pictures, which reflects his year shooting for Life, Sports Illustrated and National Geographic.

Anyway, the light was very harsh yesterday afternoon, so the photographer's suggested that we look for pattern, texture, shape and form. Not sure I quite understood what they wanted us to do but I am posting a few of the pictures because I wanted to be able to record my trip to this cool (near urban) park. It would certainly be a place to go and explore again if I had some extra time in Nevada in the future.

Saturday Workshop

I attended another one of Don Giannatti's workshops this past weekend. I enjoy taking classes with Don because he is an experience photographer who is well versed in the traditional background of photography but with a great understanding of the new digital tools that are available. He also has really helped me understand the different types and ways to use light - which is really all photography is about. And the most important thing is he keeps the workshops fun.

For this workshop we traveled up through Superior, Miami and then finally to Globe, Arizona. The shots shown here were taken in Globe and we used off camera Speedlite strobes to create the effect of late day lighting even though it was early afternoon. Don goes through a complete review of the day at his site (I even star in a few of the short instructional videos that he shot). I won't try to repeat it the review here, just suffice to say that no matter what you have as a hobby going to a workshop now and again can really help the learning curve and accelerate your enjoyment of the activity. I'll try to post a few more of the photos over at my Flickr account sometime later.

Blogged Down

Well, I looked at the side panel and discovered that my blog production has been suffering these last two months. I started with a bang in June when I had 15 post, but I have lost momentum since then. My goal is to post at least once every other day, so that it gives me a reason to pick up my camera and go explore the world.

The self portrait above emulates a photo that I saw on the Strobist website. His photo, which is much cooler is used as his signature photo on Flickr.