Smokey Mountains Photographic Workshop

Clingmans dome - Rim Frost

On Monday,  April 23 on the first full day of the Smokey Mountain workshop there was rime ice that made the narrow winding switchbacks mountain roads to Clingmans dome too treacherous for driving and the road was closed for most of the day. Fortunately after 4pm the road to Clingmans dome was reopened and we were able to capture some fabulous images. I have traveled through the Smokey mountains for the last 20 years on my way home from the southern art fair circuited and this is the first I was able to capture Rime Ice sometimes known as hoar frost. 

Mount Le Conte

The summit of Mount Le Conte to the east of 441 was covered in rime ice. Sunlight played on the landscape like a painters brush as it dappled the trees on the mountain with light as we photographed. It is always a wonderful experience watching when nature presents us with her handiwork.   

 

Live Oak Reflections

The best time for capturing a mirror reflection is First Light. In the early morning light just as the sun is coming up, everything is still. It is as if Mother Nature is holding her breath and allowing you to see mirror images of her handy work in the lakes and ponds. This is my favorite times to capture images when earth is still and most of the world is still sleeping.

Live Oak Reflections

In Camera Raw 6.6 I adjusted the White Balance to Auto and shifted the exposure slider to + 0.15. I also adjusted the Recovery slider to +11

Camera Raw 6.6

This is the image opened directly into Photoshop directly out of Camera Raw 6.6. This is a great image without any processing but a few adjustments in Color Efex Pro 3.0 will make this image pop.

Image opened directly out of Camera Raw

In Color Efex Pro 3.0 I used Film Effects and the film I selected was Kodak Portra 160VC. When shooting film this was always one of my favorites.

Film-Effects

To bring out the Shadows and bring down the Highlights I used Tonal Contrast in Color Efex Pro 3.0

Tonal Contrast

The last tool I used in Color Efex Pro 3.0 is Remove Color Cast. This tool will adjust the color and often gives it the warming effect I want in images.

Remove Color Cast

With just a few quick adjustments in Color Efex Pro 3.0 this image Live Oak reflection was turned into a finished image.

Live Oak Reflections

Follow the Light – Charleston South Carolina

Follow the Light – Charleston Spring Photo Workshop

Follow the Light – Charleston Spring Photo Workshop

I arrived home on Saturday from the Charleston Workshop in time to enjoy the holiday weekend with family and friends.

The weather and shooting conditions were great in Charleston and everyone captured some great images. Over the course of the workshop I could see the students grasp a better understanding of how their cameras function, which will allow them to capture better images in the field.

More important than camera functions is the understanding of Composition and use of natural Light to capture an image. By the end of the workshop I was glad to see every one had a better understand of composition and how to use natural light to capture their images.     

When we were not shooting or taking time to exploring Old Charleston we were able to go over some of  the basics photographic software used in processing images.  There are many great programs to choose from to process your images. My preference has always been to open my RAW images in Camera Raw in the Photoshop CS5 or Elements 10 programs for a few basic adjustments. After the basic adjustments I use Nik software to fine tune my images.