Steve Cole Photography

This past weekend found me in Bend, Oregon attending two workshops put on by Oregon based nature and landscape photographer Sean Bagshaw whose work has long stood out to me amongst the deep pool of talent here in the PNW. Last fall, I discovered he was offering classes in processing of digital photographs and I became curious about the classes. Sean is based out of Ashland in Southern Oregon and so the timing and distance prevented me from signing up.

More recently, Sean announced that he was going to offer the same classes at the new Cascade Center of Photography in Bend, Oregon. Being much closer, I decided to sign up. The first class was “Fine Art Digital Workflow For Nature Photographers” and focuses on the entire process from import to printing of your digital photographs. The second class, “Processing For Extended Dynamic Range” was focused on how to process scenes which are beyond the ability of digital SLR sensors to capture in a single image (such as shooting into the sun at sunset).

Class size was capped at a maximum of 18 students (my classes actually had 10 people Saturday and 14 people Sunday). The format of the classes is presentation style, where Sean works through specific examples using Lightroom and Photoshop CS5. Since people learn at different paces, Sean provides each attendee with a CD containing several hours of video tutorials covering the material he presents. The CD also includes the same sample images so you can follow along and perform the same tasks.

In the Digital Workflow class, Sean lays out a checklist style process for editing of photos. This is something that I’ve tried to look for in the past. At best, I have only managed to find random thoughts in photography forums so I found this very useful. Prior to diving into the workflow, Sean explained the benefits of using RAW photos instead of JPEGs along with strategies for organizing and prioritizing your files.

A good discussion of adjustments and options found in Lightroom/Adobe Camera RAW definitely helped me better understand all of the various possibilities and which ones to tweak (and which ones NOT to). From this introduction, we moved onto the heart of the matter- working with your images in Photoshop. The concept and use of layers is critical in Photoshop so Sean spent enough time explaining the various types of blending modes and how they affect what you create. Once again, I learned that I wasn’t doing anything “wrong” per se but that there are more efficient ways to get certain tasks done.

Layers bring with them the concept of adjustments. Before you are able to creatively apply adjustments, you need to learn how to specify where to apply them. Sean went through the various methods of making selections along with the pros and cons of using each. Now that we had a basic knowledge of moving around Photoshop and using its tools, it was time to learn how to tackle the situations we face as nature & landscape photographers.

Using the right blending modes and scene selections, Sean showed us that it can be fairly easy to balance photos with a bright sky and dark-ish foreground. I used one of these techniques to darken the sky in the first photo of this blog post and it was easy! I should note that Sean is a big advocate if non-destructive editing, which, simply put, are edits that do not permanently alter the original pixels of your photo. The advantage is that you always have the original photo to fall back on should something go wrong.

From here, we moved on to a few different ways of working along complex edges (such as trees against a sky), addressing color casts, dodging and burning, and adding “glow” effects using techniques such as the Orton Effect. The day ended with the use of vignettes to subtlly emphasize parts of a composition. Sean threw A LOT of information and techniques but it paid dividends. I could immediately think of several photos in my library which I could re-work into a better image simply by using these techniques.

The second day (Sunday) was entirely devoted to Extended Dynamic Range (coined XDR by Sean). XDR has become quite a fad throughout photographic circles thanks in large part to HDR software such as Photomatix, HDR ProStudio, and HDR Efex. While some people are able to get great looking photos out of these HDR programs, Sean feels they haven’t quite matured and still are more using a gun to kill a fly. The adjustments they make are too broad and often you end up sacrificing one part of an image for another. The total control offered by using custom masks in Photoshop produce a much better, MORE NATURAL photograph and Sean’s photo galleries are proof of that.

Once again, Sean starts small and simple by discussing methods of working single exposures such as using the adjustment layers, layer masks, and blending modes (all of which was reinforcing what we were exposed to the previous day). From here, we got deep and really spent a lot of time learning about using channel (or luminosity) masks. There are times when targeting specific color channels can help you focus your adjustments on specific features such as the sky.

There’s a lot to digest on this topic and it all leads to a greater appreciation for someone like Tony Kuyper who figured out how to automate the creation of channel masks (and makes them available for a fee through his website). It was really good to walkthrough the process manually in order to understand and appreciate the photoshop actions that Tony has developed.

From here, the class gets more elaborate with processing a single RAW twice (once for highlights and a second time for the shadows), double exposure blends, and even triple exposure blends. It got even crazier with a four image blend of a night scene. The last thing Sean showed us was a comparison of output from various HDR programs compared with Sean’s manual blend efforts. It really does show you that the total control of a manual blend produces a much superior image!

So were the two classes worth it? Without hesitation, I can say YES. From the minute you first meet him, Sean is friendly and engaging without any elitism or arrogance. He is just a guy who is passionate about nature and photography and who doesn’t love that? Before becoming a “pro” photographer 8 years ago, Sean was a middle school teacher and that really shows in his ability to teach and explain concepts. I know that from my own experience, it can be difficult explaining technical topics to an audience that may not be as technically savvy.

Sean would be the first to acknowledge that he doesn’t know everything and is still eager to learn new things and that was evident by our interactive discussions during the course of the days. Even during the two lunch breaks, Sean graciously joined us for lunch allowing us even more time to pick his professional brain. If all that isn’t enough, now throw in copies of the video tutorials he has available on his website and I think you have one heck of a value!

Is there anything I would change about the classes? Yes- but these would be relatively minor things. For this particular weekend, both classes were offered as independent classes. Now, many people decided to take both classes but the second class about processing for XDR had an additional 4 or 5 folks. There were a few instances where our overall progress was slowed due to questions from the XDR only class attendees about topics that were addresses quite thoroughly during the preceding day’s class on digital workflow. This is naturally bound to happen and my suggestion was to offer future classes as a bundle instead of ala carte. I’m convinced of this because I strongly believe that the XDR class really builds off of everything that is taught during the digital workflow class.

My only other “nit” was a desire to see an image processed all the way through from first steps to final save. I felt I understood both day’s instruction individually but would have benefited even more from the integration of both into one example. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, the tutorial videos he provides do offer an example that basically does this. In the end, there really isn’t enough time in the day to completely address everything. I believe that Sean hasn’t offered these classes for very long so I have every confidence that he will take our suggestions into consideration and further refine the future offerings.

I left Bend armed with a lot of valuable information. I’m not completely sure how I will implement much of it but I feel very strongly that I will look back a year from now and recognize that my decision to take these classes helped push my photography up to the next level. Currently Sean does not have any future dates planned for his classes but I would keep tabs on his website news and announcements for future dates. I don’t think you’ll regret it!

Links:
Sean Bagshaw Website
Sean’s Video Tutorial Info (including sample videos)

[NOTE: In the interest of full disclosure, I’d like to mention that prior to taking these classes, I had never met Sean before. I did not receive any compensation for this review and the opinions given here were mine and mine alone]