Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Just a Couple of Spots Left in the Upcoming Digital Printing & the Zone System and Winter Light II Workshops

With recent cold storms blanketing the park with snow, Yosemite is oh so beautiful!

Winter is a great time to visit the park, and the New Year is the perfect opportunity to focus on learning new photography skills. We have a couple of spaces left in the Digital Printing and the Zone System workshop with Michael Frye and the Winter Light II field workshop with Keith Walklet.

Don't delay!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

May Your Christmas be Merry and Bright!


Happy Holidays from all of us at
The Ansel Adams Gallery.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Two New B&W Digital Printmaking Workshops for 2010















We are pleased to announce two new black-and-white digital printing workshops next year in June and September with Rich Seiling, President of West Coast Imaging. Black-and-white photography provides a deeply expressive means for personal communication. Using the vocabulary of tone, density, contrast, boldness, and subtlety to render light and physical subjects onto a print, black and white provides photographers with a language that is unique to this medium.

This workshop is designed to unlock your potential to express yourself through black-and-white prints made with digital tools. For more information, please visit our website.

Before starting his own business, Rich was a fine print curator and staff photographer for The Gallery. He founded West Coast Imaging in 1997 and turned this into one of the premier fine-art digital printing studios in the country. Rich is an outstanding photographer in his own right and an excellent teacher. You can view some video tutorials on his blog to see some examples of his teaching style.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Digital Printing Workshop with Michael Frye - Making the Complexities Easy to Understand



Digital Printing and the Zone System
January 19-23, 2010
(Yosemite National Park)














From Michael Frye's blog....

"Do you have a love-hate relationship with Photoshop? You’re not alone. One the one hand, it’s an incredibly powerful tool, capable of doing fantastic things. You know that if you mastered this program you could get the most out of your images and make beautiful prints. On the other hand, Photoshop can be cryptic, complex, and confusing. The learning curve can seem downright crooked.


"I was lucky. When I first started using Photoshop in the late ‘90s, I got to spend a weekend with Bill Atkinson, who probably knew more about digital imaging than anyone else in the world at the time (maybe he still does). He started me in the right direction and helped me avoid the confusion caused by gathering random bits of information from books and the internet. Like Charlie Cramer, Keith Walklet, and many other fine-art photographers Bill taught, I still use a variation of the simple, powerful, and flexible workflow that Bill showed me.


"I’ve since taught Photoshop (and now Lightroom) skills to dozens of people in workshops for West Coast Imaging and The Ansel Adams Gallery. I try to make the complexities of Photoshop easy to understand. The truth is that Photoshop is simple. Anyone can learn to use it. And if you’re already familiar with it, you can learn to harness its full power. The secret is that you don’t have to deal with most of the tools. If you learn to use a few powerful tools well, you can do almost anything in Photoshop.


"My next workshop with The Ansel Adams Gallery, Digital Printing and the Zone System (January 19 - 23, 2010) is designed for people who already have some Photoshop experience but want to master this powerful beast. You'll learn both simple and advanced techniques for getting the most out of your images and making beautiful, fine-art prints. I included the Zone System in the title because getting good exposures in the field is vital to getting good results in Photoshop, so we’ll be working with the entire process, from capture to print. The Zone System also gives us a framework for understanding contrast throughout the workflow—an important tool in this age of HDR. Here’s a partial list of the topics covered:


- Zone System Exposure for Digital Cameras
- Color Management
- Overall workflow
- Raw Image Processing
- Making a Master File
- Using Layers for Flexibility
- Controlling Contrast
- Mastering Curves
- Flexible Dodging and Burning
- Retouching
- Making Difficult Selections Easy
- Converting to Black and White
- Sharpening
- Combining Images for Greater Depth of Field
- Combining Images to Expand Dynamic Range, both with HDR and Photoshop"


There’s still space available in the class if you’d like to join us. Click here to register or get more information.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!


Four to five inches of snow have fallen in Yosemite Valley and more is on the way. National Weather Service predicts a total accumulation of 7-11" of new snow in Yosemite Valley by 4:00 pm this afternoon. More in the higher elevations.

Badger Pass Ski Area is scheduled to open December 18, and the skiing should be great!

Happy Winter!

Above photograph of Sentinel Rock by Charles Cramer