"Outlet for My Creative Self": Helene Glassman @ Lepp Institute

Another amazing weekend spent up in Los Osos, California, at the Lepp Institute! This time with Helene Glassman, of Santa Barbara, California, and Atlanta, Georgia. Helene is a photographer (as is her husband, Jim Divitale.) She has done PJ. She has done weddings. She has done lots of things and sometimes just needs to "to do her own thing" to let the creative juices flow. And apparently this flow has been into specialized greeting cards and bookmarks. And over this weekend, Helene walked us through both the business and the workflow aspects of this process.


Before I forget, I need to mention that I am always amazed at the quality of people who turn out to be my fellow students. Often doctors and lawyers although no indian chiefs, yet! Susan is just a hobbyist with no intention of selling anything ... turns out she has been a math teacher and computer programmer (and knows several languages that I know, too.) Greg does dogs! Cynde, who has been in two or three other classes with me is a professor and hospital administrator. And Alice has already been doing this for a while. Fascinating high quality people with wonderful personalities and amazing life stories. We all sat around in the break room chatting several times until Victoria herded us up like kittens to get back into the digital lab.

So, Helene showed us her products, both physically and "on the big screen". Then she looked through our stuff making suggestions and offering direction. While most everyone else had animals, landscapes and flowers, I as usual had well known entertainers, sigh ... same old boring stuff!

Next she reviewed many ways to put images onto cards and many types of cards: triptychs, Thank You note, vertical, horizontal, in series with lots of variations. She talked prices. She talked supply vendors. She talked software.

Then she had us shoot a bunch of flowers she had assembled in vases ... plus an old chair that she had found dumpster diving behind the Institute! Out came the cameras. I have just purchased a G10 and that was what I brought! I normally lug a big Pelican Case up with $20K worth of stuff but I needed to expand my horizons! I did discover almost immediately that I needed a tripod (I'm big into tripods!) I borrowed a RRS plate and tripod. I have since ordered (and received) a RRS L-plate for my G10. I also have a cable shutter release coming.

We then took our images and started working our way through her techniques. I, as usual, didn't use my new images but pulled up entertainers and worked with them. Victoria really likes this so I normally use Tom Jones as that's her Mom's favorite ... and when I come back home I leave all my Sir Tom Jones stuff for her to send to her Mom.

As we neared the end, we were printing off cards left and right. Some of the other students were amazingly artistic. Then Helene and Victoria ran down to the pizza place, grabbed an employee, brought her back and made her judge our output and pick a winner! I didn't win which I am sure was a mistake!

And now the usual disclaimer: I am not compensated for reviewing the Lepp classes I take in any way by the Institute, the instructors or the sponsors!

Travel Safe!

Dwight

PhotoArt: Fay Sirkis at The Institute

I spent an amazing week at the Lepp Insitute in Los Osos, California, at Fay Sirkis' "Impressions of Art" workshop/seminar. It was total immersion in Photoshop and Painter X in a workflow to convert your photographs into paintings. It was glorious. I have not a single artistic brain cell, but this gorgeous lady from New York seems to have given me a stem cell transplant (now that it's OK to do that again) and I was amazed at what we produced.

So, what happened? Fay walked us through her vision, sharing examples of her work along with their backstories to get our brains atuned. Then we started through the workflow for producing photorealistic images which first entails taking the image into Photoshop, retouching blemishes, treating the skin, a whole special section on working with the eyes (as Fay keeps reminding us, they are the "Gateway to the Soul".) We learned her "sandwich technique" for making adjustments. And once that was all done and we were swimming in layers, we flattened and caught our breath.

While I am familiar with Photoshop and did install Painter X on my workstation along with a Wacom Cintiq 21ux, I had no clue how to use Painter. Not a problem. Fay pulled up Painter and gave us a guided tour through the places we would need to go. But I have made this sound too trivial ... it is not! Fay spent many hours explaining and demonstrating where the various tools hide, what they do, their differences and similarities, how to customize them, arrange workspaces, palettes, panels and save them. And then she pulled her example images in and acquainted us with her workflow for photorealistic painting, step by step, with prepared student notes. And then she set us out to work on our own images all the while moving slowly from student to student giving intense personalized attention to everyone.

It is the way at The Institute to have open lab from 8:00 to 9:00 am each morning, class from 9:00 to 5:00 with breaks and lunch, and open lab again from 7:00 to 9:00 pm with assistants available to untangle our misunderstandings, find the tools we have hidden from ourselves, demonstrate the techniques that we missed because we were overwhelmed with information, and generally make sure that we are in control of the programs at our individual digital workstations which drastically reduces the class time needed to help less adept classmates the following day. It is a marvelous system.

The next major topic revealed a workflow that allows Painter to assist in jump starting our painting exploration. This is a fairly well developed set of ordered tools for enhancing target images, using the painterly tools such as brush styles and adjustments, creating an underpainting and then augmenting our hand painting enhancements.


So, what did I do that so overjoyed me? I took the picture of Anna, my daughter, from my previous blog entry, and turned it into a photorealistic painting which has been printed and my wife will have matted and framed for Anna's Grandmother. It is the image above. I also created a painting of Tom Jones from a concert capture of mine. I'm not sharing that image for now but I have included a detail in which you can see the brush strokes and style below. I have some project plans that I may reveal as I move forward.



Finally, we learned some additional critical printing preparation steps for enhancing the painterliness of our work and made a few prints. And then Fay explained many, many marketing tips and processes from handling the work in the presence of clients to titling, signing and numbering limited editions: the Ka-Ching portion of the program. It was surreal and filled with Fay's personal experiences and emotions.

Now, you may not be able to venture out to the West Coast to attend a Lepp Class with Fay, but there are other options. She has two tutorial DVDs available including the one I bought: produced in conjunction with Kelby Training. She has two more coming, one of which will be of particular interest to animal/pet aficionados. She is also touring with a number of other teaching Pros this year so you might want to check the Kelby Training website for that.

As always, I want to be clear that I am not affiliated with Lepp Institute as other than a normal student. I am also not affiliated in any way with Fay Sirkis or Kelby Training and receive no compensation or gratuity for sharing experiences. I should also disclaim that I have purchased wine made by Hal Schmitt (one half owner of Lepp) for my wife for Christmas but I am not reviewing it here or elsewhere.

Travel safe!

Dwight

Anna & Marna in the Studio

If you've followed this blog you know that back in November I took a seminar with Kevin Ames at the Lepp Institute in Los Osos, California, entitled "The Art of Photographing Women." I had a particular setup from that workshop that I wanted to emulate and it has taken me a couple of months to get the equipment I wanted into the studio, grab my most used models and shoot it. I've still got a lot to learn but that will come with experience. In the meantime I want to share some of the images.

My most willing and very talented model is Anna Martina, 7 going on 14. She does her own hair and makeup, requires virtually no retouching, takes direction very well and is a prize. (I assure you I have parental approval to use her pictures.)

The setup includes a beauty dish high on the left of camera and white paper on the posing table to act as a reflector. I noticed the I sometimes get the paper in the images but I thought it looked quite good. If you don't think so, please comment and offer suggestions. There is also a hair light directly overhead to help pop her off the black background. This is all pretty standard stuff. What makes it Kevin Ames is having the camera on a tripod, tethered to my laptop and using an X-Rite Gray Scale and Balance card. After metering the exposure I shot an image with the model holding the gray scale and used EOS Utility to upload to the laptop. In the utility I opened the image in Bridge, did white balance on the gray bar of the card and then put droppers on the white and black, mainly to ensure that the white end of the exposure wasn't over about 245. I backed down about 1/2 stop from the meter. This gives a superb exposure and as long as you are using the same lighting and outfits and are using good studio lights, the exposure should be about perfect for a series.


With my second most willing but utterly most difficult and demanding model, Marna, I added a rim light behind her ... it has a reflector with barn doors limiting the light spill. I also tried adding a red gel to a background light but it didn't work and I decided it wasn't the right thing anyway. Marna, like Anna, can pretty much go through a series of poses without much direction. She does, however, insist on a lot of control and has her own thoughts on what she wants. In this shoot she specifically wanted her bangs in her eyes and wanted a tough/powerful look more than soft glamor or sexy.

Did I mention that Marna is very firm about having her own way at the photoshoot?


Finally, here's a BTS (Behind The Scenes) image of the setup. The beauty dish on the upper left is a Bowens QUADX head with a Supersoft 600 Kit which is a deep white reflector with two diffusion panels. The overhead light is a reflector with barn doors as is the rim light which you can't see as it is behind the model. The camera is on a tripod just to the left of Marna and is tethered with a 10' USB cable to the laptop which is on top of a wire drawer stand to the right.


Have any questions? Please ask.

In the meantime, Travel Safely!

Dwight

Lepp Institute: Available Light with Andy Katz

Falling ever farther behind elsewhere I thought I would catch up once again on my blog. Actually I'm still working on getting migrated to my new computer ... today I swapped out the old computer for my backup computer and immediately ran into trouble with getting the POST/BIOS screens to write through the KVM to my ACD ... I'll just have to work on it, but once again unexpected hardware issues are sucking away my time.
Last weekend I spent at yet another Lepp Institute weekend class: Available Light Photography: Vineyards and Wineries, with Andy Katz (See above.) Since I have a winery client, Casa Cassara, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to learn some tips and tricks among the grapevines and barrels. I'm going to jump right in here and say the class didn't meet my expectations: I had hoped for some one-on-one and group focus on shooting grape clusters, barrels, vineyards, etc., with Andy first showing just what he would shoot, including actually shooting it with his new Sony Alpha DSLR and then discussing his results and work with each in turn to achieve our vision. But several things worked against this: it isn't Andy's style and the weather, both the weekend overcast and the early frosts this season, didn't lend itself to what I was after. To make up for the lack of spectacular vineyards, Andy spent about half the field time working on available light portraiture, both indoors and out, which wasn't all that interesting to me as I have shot portraits for forty years.

Andy showing how to use light working with a model:


So, while I was a bit disappointed in very specific ways, there are always many unexpected benefits popping up at Lepp and I actually felt as though I got my money's worth before we ever left the Digital Darkroom on our first outing. In his "Warm Up" image presentation and discussion, Andy walked us through about thirty of his images, all stunning, and talked about his vision and particulars for many of them. If Andy has anything, it is vision, the very thing I miss the most in my own work. And then, Andy proceeded to thump one of my own big emphases, using a tripod! I am always amazed how few people use a tripod! But to top it off, Andy even espouses the use of "Mirror Lockup" ... a tremendously overlooked feature of most high end DSLRs that can make or break telephoto images. So with Andy's pep talk still ringing in my ears, off we went for some field work.

Off we went to Jada Vineyard and Winery where we walked the vineyards shooting, then tasted their current vintages with matching cheeses. A glorious experience. Then off to Booker Vineyard & Winery for more vineyard and winery shooting and another tasting ... and here I've got to mention Booker Alchemist ... knock your socks off wine! I am buying it for my wife's Christmas present ... seriously! From there to lunch at Midnight Winery, some more shooting, and then off to review at the Digital Darkroom at Lepp.


And this is where Andy Katz really shines! He had each student select 10 to 12 images from the field work, post process them as desired in Lightroom and/or Photoshop, and then we critiqued. Andy's critiques are eye opening. He can find images within images, extraneous material that detracts from the gestalt, power, strength, romance and really sees the light. And he is merciless ... which is a good thing. This was the first time I'd even been exposed to world class image review in person and it is enlightening. It will change the way you see. You will be a better shooter just for being in the room. Geez, I'm a romantic!

So, without flogging you about our dinner Saturday night or the activities on Sunday, rest assured the trip to the Edna Valley was also treat. And while I am hoping that next year we into the fields before the harvest and frost, I expect the wine tasting in San Luis Obispo will always be a superb experience. Here's Hal listening intently to Andy:


Be Safe!

Dwight

LightRoom 2.0 with Hal Schmitt at The Institute

I spent the weekend with Hal Schmitt learning about LightRoom 2.0 at The [Lepp] Institute in Los Osos and running off to shoot the Santa Barbara County Vintners' Association Harvest Festival at Rancho Sisquoc, California. Both were superb.

But I need to back up just a second to report that I have had two major computer failures that have been taking up my time which is why I haven't been blogging as frequently as intended. I won't dwell on them ... I am a compulsive backer upper and would have lost no data even if I had not been able to recover both machines which I have been able to do. One up side is that I have built and am migrating onto a new machine that I will describe completely with pictures when I'm done and one down side is that the two failures really have complicated the hell out of the process of migrating! But I will fill you all in later when I have a nostril above the waterline.

LightRoom 2.0 is here. Hal says LightRoom 2.1 is close and that it will fix lots of the little bugs that have been revealed, making a much more solid release by Adobe. I have been a LightRoom user since the first public release of 1.0 due to a most fortuitous coincidence of taking a class at The Institute that I thought was going to be Photoshop but which turned out to be LightRoom. It is now an integral part of my workflow where I mainly use it for RAW conversion. I rarely Photoshop any images after the conversion. This is mainly because the things you do with Photoshop are not things that interest my current clientele. But this is changing and as I move into more areas of photography such as fashion, glamor, family and maybe weddings, I will need these skills. To this end, LightRoom 2 looks like another significant increment in the toolkit. I have LR2 installed on my new machine and 1.4.1 on my old machine ... I'm trying to tease myself along!

So, in his usual inimitable instructor fashion, Hal has created a really super LightRoom weekend that combines material for LR newbies and for those of us migrating from 1 to 2. I think our class of about a dozen was a mixed bag of new and continuing users. No one was bored! And there are a lot of little tricks and treats that I can't imagine stumbling upon or even reading about that are part of Hal's show. In fact, I was chatting with Hal and a couple of other students when I heard myself say, "It's not that I get everything that I expect in taking a Hal Schmitt class, it's that I get so much that I didn't expect that makes Hal's classes so exciting!" Hal and Victoria bring a lot of top flight instructors through The Institute, but I don't think any of those I've attended or read do quite the job that Hal does. He's not as cute as Tim Gray. He's not as verbose and chatty as Scott Kelby. He's only been into photography for a short time. But he understands teaching and students so thoroughly that he is seamless and getting better with experience.

Hmmm, I guess I'm impressed ... yet again. Anyway, Hal covered all the significant new stuff, particularly in the develop module, as well as its interface with PS CS3, since that's where the meat of the new release lives. But be clear, you would understand the entire workflow through all modules after attending this weekend seminar.

Enough of that! My next Institute class will be with Andy Katz the first weekend in November doing vineyard and winery photography and I'll give you another report.

I have a lot of topics lined up (my wife is getting tired of all the boxes, lenses, bags, Pelican cases and the like that are cluttering the hallway to and inside my office and studio) to write about. I really want to show the rest of my gear so I can finally talk more about using it and the workflow involved. So stay tuned and we'll get to everything from grapes to girls and concerts, too!

Be Safe!

Dwight

The Institute: Photoshop 2 with Hal Schmitt

Just got back from my second introductory Photoshop weekend with Hal Schmitt at Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging ... to be known simply as the The Institute at this time ... and I am stoked! It was beyond my greatest expectations. Not only did Hal march us through all the major layer operations but he made them part of a solid digital photography workflow that can be the foundation of whatever additional post processing one might do. After showing us Levels, Hal worked our butts over and over on Curves! Anyone who thought that Curves was just too complicated for the average guy (or gal) just never sat through Hal's workshop. And I don't just mean seeing it in action, but taking advantage of all the more subtle uses including use of the clipping display, white balance, selective curves, the appropriate blending modes and combining with the automatically available mask and on and on. A little overload for some folks but this isn't supposed to be the introductory class ... that was last weekend!

So, I drove up to Los Osos yesterday and today, about 75 miles each way and arrived to excellent coffee and super donuts ... I'm partial to those glazed cake donuts and cinnamon rolls, sigh. The group this week was also much bigger with a wider range of experience and focus. Unfortunately no other concert shooters but mostly landscape and bird shooters, plus Greg who wants to do his own product shooting for his furniture business ... a really nice group augmented by Miss Leah in her "Little Black Dress" who is auditing as a member of The Institute staff.

So, as with each of the previous classes I have taken with The Institute I am overjoyed and feel that I got a lot more than my money's worth and more than I expected ... and I have pretty high expectations of this place. Hal ended the day after I left but the last thing he did while I was there was to run us through one of the new powerful tools in CS3 the Photomerge ... mind numbing but a feature I wouldn't have thought to investigate. The great thing about Hal is he gets his hands dirty ... really dirty actually ... and has personal experience and lots of opinions (but not those ugly religious level ones) that he will debate.

But here's the really impressive thing about Hal from this weekend ... he made a statement based on what he had been taught about a feature that didn't jibe with my experience, so I asked about it ... data saved in jpeg files. Well, we hit a break and Hal went out and tested it and when it turned out to be as I had suggested, he immediately corrected himself. It is very impressive to work with instructors who don't let ego constrict their openness to student knowledge.

Again, my disclaimer from last week: while I am very pleased with my experiences at The Institute and am sharing that with you, I am not in any way associated with them other than as a full paying student and I receive no consideration (other than being the target of extra abuse) for telling you about them. I strongly urge you to consider them if you are in the market for any digital photography education ... sign up for their newsletter as they are adding new classes and other opportunities as they move forward ... I hear they are partnering with some well known field photographers for photo-safaris to amazing locations!

And finally, if you are a NAPP or NANPA member they give a steep discount!

Be Safe!

Dwight

NAPP: A Tip from Hal at Lepp Institute

In my last post I meant to mention that Hal had suggested that joining NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) was a good idea. I have always ignored it as I'm not a Photoshop Professional and said so to Hal. Well, much to my surprise, you don't have to be a full time Photoshop professional to join. Just slap down your money ... $99/year for one year with deals on multiple years! You can also sign up for Layers magazine for $19/year which Hal calls the best photoshop magazine around. But, the kicker is, you get a 15% discount on Lepp Institute classes if you are a NAPP member ... so you actually turn a profit on almost any one-week class at Lepp. Personally I plan to buy a new lens with the money I save in 2009 by having joined NAPP!

Photoshop 1 at Lepp Institute

Once again I spent an amazing weekend at Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging in Los Osos, California. Many of my peers are aware that I am not currently a Photoshop user. While I do use Photo Mechanic to cull, rename and inject IPTC data into my images and LightRoom to do RAW conversion and catalog, I am a fan and user of Ulead's PhotoImpact product. But this must change as I really need to be "Industry Standard" and that is Photoshop. I've known this for a long time and have had installed versions of Adobe Creative Studio since their first version. I just haven't used it, sigh.

So, in my quest forward, I have read several Photoshop CS3 books. I really like Martin Evening's book. I didn't care for Scott Kelby's book. I am currently reading Blatner, Chavez and Fraser and like it so far. And I really like the ever prolific Tim Grey's "Photoshop CS3 Workflow" book. But I was very surprised to discover that Hal Schmitt's Photoshop 1 course really smacks down the books! :-) Really, no kidding. From making great sense about the organization of menus and panels and their flow in your workflow, navigating about the images, how to approach each tool and where to look for options, to the ever popular 'learn those damn keyboard shortcuts' drumbeat [although I must take off one point for Hal's failure to include the shortcuts in his handout!] Hal has good image material on which to demonstrate and practice what is taught. The whole weekend had a super flow and Hal used the inevitable student errors in navigation and option selection to bring home his experiences on these same paths and reinforce his teachings.

A word about Hal: besides photographer/Photoshopper, he is a winemaker. Oh, wait, while that's true it is not where I want to go. Hal is an Instructor. He knows how to instruct people. I am sure he would be great teaching enology. He spent quite a while instructing aircraft fighting for the Navy at Top Gun and while his vast experience in this area goes almost unmentioned (although there are several pertinent photographs that keep popping up), it is clear why the brass would have selected him for such a job ... he really is a "Natural" at instructing. In my 30 plus years as a computer person I have taken many classes. And I have given many seminars, lectures and presentations to both handfuls and auditoriums of people on fairly esoteric computer topics ... my specialty was Operating System modifications in machine language for one of IBM's two mainframe Operating Systems, VM. I understand about teaching arcane and unintuitive topics. So does Hal. Plus he is much more personable than I am. :-)

So, I finished Photoshop 1, a weekend course, this past weekend. I will take Hal's Photoshop 2 next weekend. I won't bore you with how he divides topics or what specific tools/techniques are in each segment. I will mention that I am signed up for Hal's LightRoom 2.0 weekend next month even though I will have to miss a significant portion of it to go shoot at the Santa Barbara County Harvest Festival at Rancho Sisquoc for my both of my corporate clients ... but Hal, the winemaker, will understand. And so you know that it's not just Hal that I like at Lepp, I'm also signed up for Andy Katz's winery and vineyard photography workshop the first weekend in November and Kevin Ames photographing women week long seminar also in November. Lepp really has something for everyone! I am already reviewing their 2009 courses and have found two for which I am budgeting ... but that's another story!

I need to include a couple of other things. First, my wife and I have a truck camper and she likes to come up to Los Osos, well actually Morro Bay, with my daughter and camp out while I go to Lepp. There are numerous RV parks, public and private in the area that make attending classes into a vacation with extensive photo-ops. Second, I am not affiliated with Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging, it's employees or owners or sponsors in any way and am not compensated for sharing my thoughts about them. I have just found that every experience with Hal and Victoria (his much more of an artist wife) has been much more rewarding than I expected and plunged me forward into areas that I have resisted. This is a place you need to check out if you want to be one of those "Advanced Amateurs" who all seem to have the best of all possible worlds in photography. In fact, I think there are still slots open in all the courses for which I am signed up ... although there are some 2008 courses that are full. So, check out the courses as well as this lovely little coastal town.

Be safe!

Dwight

Equipment Review: 1i Quantum SC Battery & CZ Cord

Phew! I just finished my busiest photographic month ever! No time for anything much. But now I'm back and am ready to continue with the equipment review. And as previously promised I will tell about my "replacement" for the Canon CP-E4 reviewed below. Actually, this is a little misleading as I am not getting rid of the CP-E4. It will act as a backup for the Quantum SC battery with CZ cord that is now my default. It is a bit more convenient than the Quantum ... slips into a front pocket.

But, the new boy on the block is the Quantum SC battery: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/467222-REG/Quantum_Instruments_TSC_Turbo_SC_Battery_Pack.html which runs about $430, a few bucks cheaper than when I bought it a couple of months ago. I had a Quantum Turbo battery long ago that I loved. I used it to power both my digital camera and my flash. These batteries have a lot of power, great power level indicators and the battery technology has no "memory" so you can recharge to full without having to drain the battery down for optimum performance.

I also like the clip to the belt gizmo on the back better than slipping it into my pocket ... looks a bit more professional, too! :-)

So, that's it for today. I will be continuing with my equipment review intermixed with other notable items.

BTW, I have now signed up for the Winery/Vineyard workshop at Lepp Institute in November as well as two Photoshop weekends at Lepp Institute in September as noted in an earlier post.

Lepp Institute: Printing & Mounting on Canvas Weekend Seminar

No equipment review this time as I spent the weekend at Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging in Los Osos, California, which is right next to Morro Bay. Lepp Institute at http://www.leppphoto.com/ was created by George Lepp and is now owned and run by Victoria and Hal Schmitt (yup, two 't's) in concert with George. And this weekend, at my personal request, Hal & Victoria had their first canvas printing & stretching class. They have had several previous canvas classes taught by other instructors but they have done so much canvas work at the Institute for themselves and clients that they have become quite adept ... and for this first class in this new area they have simply outdone themselves. This is an image of the Digital Classroom taken from the instructors podium.

If you are interested in becoming familiar with the mysteries of printing on canvas and subsequent preparation and mounting on stretcher bars, this is a course for you, and they have several of these weekend wonders already on their schedule due to high demand. Hal & Victoria start with image optimization (in Photoshop) and work with you all the way out through gallery wrap expansion of your images including test prints on real canvas. The techniques and insights and experiences they share will save you days and weeks of heartache and problems ... they have had this experience for you! Below is the studio/canvas mounting area.

After test prints, you will make one or more "real" print images on canvas and then learn how to prep your images for stretching ... these images, prepared as "PremeirArt Nouveau Fine Art Prints" are true Giclee (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gicl%C3%A9e) prints and are simply stunning. We did both hand and machine stretching.

Now I've got to put in a word for Victoria ... several of the prints had some serious defects due to scanning ... one was covered in dust and hairs ... others picked up detritus during preparation ... Victoria stepped in with Photoshop and her fine paint brush and showed how to correct errors and problems. She is a real artist but is ever so modest (everyone who deals with Hal is modest, of course!)

So, after hands on learning about PremierArt Eco Print Shield application we all proceeded to prepare an image (or two), hand stretch and complete the process. I did my famous KISS performance collage (see below) and will be giving it to Wayne Hurte, my boss at the Chumash Casino Resort for his Condo renovation. In addition there were beautiful images of stored boats on a lake, a raptor, a gnarly old tree, a mother's portrait, a beach and others printed at this seminar, both color and Black-and-White (you would not believe how amazing B&W canvas prints are.)

If you either want to knock the socks off your photography friends or sell your work as fine art Giclee, you really need to make the time and effort to attend this class. It is under $500 (at this time) and you walk out with at least one canvas image that would retail for $450. There has never been such a bang-for-the-buck class in digital photography! You can read the Lepp Institute blog entry: Welcome to the Lepp Institute Blog: Canvas Printing and Finishing Workshop

I'm going to end this by saying that I am about to register for their weekend November 1-2, 2008, class which will be about shooting wineries and vineyards. And I have promised to attend a set of the weekend seminars for Photoshop so that I will finally get converted from my beloved PhotoImpact, sigh! :-)

Be Safe!

Dwight