Visual Storytelling Workshop

A few weeks ago, in early July, I went to the Santa Fe Workshops and attended a week long session with Bob Sacha on visual storytelling. Bob is an ex-National Geographic photographer who has moved on to a multmedia company called MediaStorm. He is also a terrific teacher. During the class we produced three multimedia stories using a slideshow software and an audio software. We had to learn to record and edit audio interviews, ambient sounds and action sounds to combine them with still photography to produce a coherent story.

For my final story of the three for the week, I interview a Santa Fe firefighter, Engineer R. Leroy Lopez , who told me the story of a baby that was born just a few minutes too soon, at least for him. I can't thank him and the Fire Department enough for the time he gave me as part of this project. I also want to thank Captain Greg Clayburn, of station #4 for allowing me to interact with his firefighters. The picture posted near by is one of the photos that I took during my time together and it is shown at the end of the slide show.

The slide show was called Elevator Baby and you can watch it by clicking on the link.

Using audio with my photographs is something that I have been interested in for quite a while. The audio brings a second sense to the experience and draws in more emotionally to the stories being told. As Bob mentioned in the class, we remember 30% of what we see, 50% of what we hear and 100% of what we feel.

Rocky Point

I had a chance to go to Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point), Mexico this past week for a lighting workshop. I have taken workshops from Don Giannatti before but I think I am finally starting to comprehend some of the principles that allow me to use the technical skills that I am learning in order to produce the shot that I have visualized in my head. In essence, I'm gaining some confidence in the control of the shot and light.

Accompanying this post is a little video that I put together of a few of the shots that I took while in Mexico. Flickr has just recently started to host video and limits them to 90 seconds so I followed that rule in order to have it hosted on the site. I should have some additional post later in the week on the Mexico trip, but I thought that I would get this little video posted for now.

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.

Saturday night on Mill Avenue

I spent the weekend at a photography workshop in Tempe. The workshop was presented by SnapFactory which is the husband and wife team of Mark and Diane Wallace. This workshop was their "Digital Photography 101" and it is a great technical overview of photography explaining the functions of the camera through the elements of proper composition. We had some interesting hands on assignments, including walking around Mill Avenue on Saturday night.

Using a technique that I had practiced in an earlier assignment, I was panning everything that I could see, from the cars cruising on the Mill to people walking down the street. I also found an interesting spot where I could capture some shots of the pedestrians below. The lighting worked out to create some elongated shadows which added a particular mood to the photos.

I like attending workshop like these because not only do I learn some things, but it motivates me to go out and explore the world, particularly places close to my house. I will certainly wander down to Mill Avenue with my camera again soon to see if I can find some new subjects and explore the ideas in these shots a little further.