Today, I spent a fantastic day with several photog friends attending David Jay’s workshop in Irvine, hosted by the fine folks from Fotografos de Corazon and Bay Photo. I had never been to one of these before, so I really had no idea what to expect. Should I bring my camera? Should I bring a notepad? Is there food? You know, the normal questions and concerns…To say it was good would be an understatement. In addition to being a super talented photographer, David is a wonderfully compassionate person. Much of the focus of his talk was on community and how as members of a community, one of your jobs is to serve. Bringing this attitude of service is key to the health and growth of any community, not just artists and photographers. He went on to outline several tools and techniques that you can implement in your own workflow, today, to help you start expanding your own network and become a more vital and valuable member of your community.

This workshop is part of an ongoing series of workshops featuring some of the top shooters out there and is generously hosted by Fotografos de Corazon, a grass roots group of photographers trying to build on this idea of community and sharing. David Jay, for example, speaks all over the country and FdC was able to offer this all day workshop for only $45.00. Absolutely a bargain for the amount of information that David so generously shared. They will be doing more workshops in the future and I’ll be sure to put up the info here as it becomes available.

More about David Jay:
http://www.davidjay.com
http://showitfast.com/

A friend of mine just started a new restoration project, now that he’s nearing completion on a his vintage Airstream trailer. His next project is this 1953 Hudson Wasp. I had a chance to shoot a few photos of it this afternoon. The car is pretty rough at the moment, but even in it’s current state, there’s a sort of grace and elegance about it. Lots of clean lines and great chrome detailing.

I’ve posted my two favorite shots to our city page for the Worldwide Photo Walk. Hmmm…that’s not really accurate. Well, the posting part is accurate, but I’m really not sure they are my two favorite shots. I was able to narrow the 300+ shots I took down to my six favorites, but choosing only two was really a challenge. But, they’re up and nothing more to be done about it, right? So now, we wait…we wait until August 17th when I wake up to a very nice email from Scott Kelby telling me that one of my photos has been selected to with the Super Duper Uber Deluxe Grand Prize Extravaganza! Oh yes, that D700 will be mine…MUWHAAAHAHAHAHHAHAH!!!! Hey, a fella can dream, right?

Week 5 of Photoshop for Photographers was all about laying the groundwork for establishing an effective retouching workflow. Entitled “Face, The Final Frontier”, this week’s session focused on techniques to help even out skin color, tonality and texture. We looked at a simple, yet very effective way to remove color cast using a targeted Adjustment Layer. Keep in mind that this technique works in all sorts of situations, not just skin. Next I showed how to use Surface Blur, Noise and the Emboss filters to smooth out blemishes and rebuild subtle texture back into the skin. Be sure to practice these techniques, since it takes some finessing to get them just right. A couple people asked “Can’t you just use a plugin?”. Sure, you could…and if you’d like to try them, there are a couple good ones out there. I’m thinking primarily of Portraiture from Imagenomic (the Noiseware people). I don’t have anything against plugins. In fact, I use a few myself. I would just caution you about relying on plugins as a replacement for getting your hands dirty inside of Photoshop itself. There’s a ton of power under the hood, but sometimes you have to dig a little to get to it.

Week 5 was also another week of giveaways, this time courtesy of Scott Kelby. Big thanks to Scott for providing books and DVD’s for me to give out in my classes. That’s it for this week’s recap. Join me next week as we’ll be continuing on with retouching, this time focusing (HA!) on the eyes. They say they’re the window to the soul, ya know. Now, get off the computer and get out and shoot. Go on, just do the work!

Just a reminder…If you have ideas for a video tutorial you’d like to see, email me and I’ll see what I can do. You can also email me images you’ve done using the techniques we cover in class…Ya never know, they could end up here!