What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Birds in Flight [Canon 5D]
July/August 2009  Auerbach, Germany
(click in the image for a larger version)

Last summer my wife, daughter and I spent about four weeks in Germany visiting with family. My wife's father has raised show and racing pigeons for most of his life and he has many birds. One of the flocks flies free for most of the day and these photos were taken over the course of several days. I took a lot of photos of these birds zooming through the air during our stay there. It became a self-assignment (not to mention a challenge) for me to try and get good shots of the birds in flight. They are amazingly fast and you have to take hundreds of exposures just to get a few good ones. Thank god for digital photography!

My father-in-law still shoots 35mm film and I could see his envy at my digital SLR's ability to shoot at high ISOs and fast shutter speeds in order to freeze the motion of the flying birds. Not to mention the "free" nature of taking hundreds of shots in an afternoon just to hopefully gt a few good ones. Of course, while taking the shots is "free", the cost comes later in editing them, in terms of time spent at the computer. But editing in Lightroom is a breeze and so much easier than dealing with so many shots in a pre-Lightroom or, (shudder) film-based situation.

This image is a composite of four separate photos. I needed to create an illustration for a column I was writing for Layers Magazine and this fit the theme of multiple-image composites based on image motion sequences. Look for that column in the May/June issue.

Upcoming Workshop in Carmel, California

I'll be teaching a weekend workshop March 20-21st at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, California. This is a laptop-based class, which means you do have to bring your own laptop with Photoshop CS3 or CS4 on it. There will be some Lightroom coverage but it is mostly Photoshop and having Lightroom on your laptop is not required for the class. This workshop is being offered at a really great price: $250 for CPA members and $275 for non-members

Lightworks & Shadowplay: Digital Darkroom Essentials
March 20 & 21, 2010
Center for Photographic Art
Carmel, California

Here's a link for more info and registration.

Upcoming Workshops in Hawaii

I will also be in Honolulu, Hawaii on April 22nd through the 25th, teaching three Photoshop classes:

April 22: Restoration & Retouching Essentials

April 23: Selections & Masking

April 24 & 25: Creative Collage with Photoshop CS4

Here's a link for more info and registration details.

Comments

[KristaYang19]

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