Skills you will learn
Here is an exhaustive list of the instructions and techniques I usually teach in my workshops.
In the field sessions
Basic Skills
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• Essential gear for a landscape photographer: dslr camera, lenses, tripod, filters, backpack
• Seeing like cameras see
• Learning to see
• Scouting an area
• Imagination and pre-visualization
• Playing with focal lengths - many pictures inside a picture
• Portrait and landscape orientation
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Advanced Techniques
Light and dynamic range, use of GND and ND filters
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• Understanding the light
• How to deal with sceneries with a dynamic range that is beyond the range of the camera
• shooting into the sun. How to avoid flares and how to manage them if they are not avoidable.
• What Neutral Density graduated filters are for
• how to use exposure bracketing when the use of ND grad filters is not possible
• how to combine the use of ND grad filters and exposure bracketing in the same picture, in sceneries with extreme contrast (from deep shadows to blown out highlights)
• how to use ND grad filters when shooting into the sun with the sun close to the horizon line. Differences between straight grad filters and reverse grad filters
• what Neutral Density filters are for
• how to achieve very long exposures in broad daylight with strong ND filters
• how to compose and pre-visualize images with strong ND filters
• how to combine the use of strong ND filters and graduated ND filter
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Close-ups, intimate views, abstracts
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• how to see potentially great pictures in subjects that at first might look of scarce or none interest, and how to make great abstracts and/or series (i.e. triptychs) out of these subjects.
• how to isolate small, interesting subjects and make powerful images out of them.
• Looking for shapes, patterns and texture, and turn them into powerful abstracts
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Minimalism, simple and strong compositions
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• how to use lines, textures and geometries to create powerful compositions
• how to achieve order out of chaotic sceneries
• how strong ND filters can help a lot in simplify a potentially chaotic composition
• how to wisely break the basic rules of composition and get images of higher impact
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Image stitching and panoramas
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• why image stitching
• how to recognize panoramic compositions within a scenery, and how to pre-visualize them
• how to shoot a sequence of pictures to create a panorama. How to keep the shots within the sequence consistent
• how and why image stitching may be of great help in composing the image exactly as desired, increasing the field of view, correcting perspective distortions, producing as a result images of higher resolution that may print much bigger than a single shot
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Classroom sessions
Introduction to the basics
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• how to effectively compose a picture with the help of the most common composition rules
• how to expose properly with the help of the in-camera exposure meter
• how an image changes with different apertures and shutter speed
• how to ignore the reading of your exposure meter and create images of greater impact and higher artistic content
• how to get the most out of your camera with manual settings
• how light changes at every minute and how this can play in your favour
• Depth of field - how to achieve maximum sharpness
• how to avoid or minimize distortion and converging lines
• how to make good use of converging lines and make them a strong element of the composition when it is not possible to avoid them
• Basics of Raw processing with the most common software tools
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Advanced Techniques of Image Processing
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• how to process RAW files, and how to choose the correct processing procedure to achieve the desired look
• how to reduce digital noise, vignetting and chromatic aberration in RAW files
• how to process many times the same image to have a set of Tiff files to be merged into a final image
• how to process a sequence of RAW files to produce a stitched panorama
• how to keep consistent the processing within a sequence
• how to manually merge, in Photoshop, different exposures to create the final image
• how to stitch panorama's sequences in Photoshop
• different ways of stitching in Photoshop (reposition only, perspective, cylindrical, spherical, collage); how to choose the best stitching procedure depending on the focal length at which the sequence has been shot
• how to remove or minimize distortions in Photoshop with the tools Scale, Perspective, Distortion and Warp
• fine tuning of the images, how to enhance contrast, brightness and saturation on selected areas of the image, by mean of selection masks
• how to prepare the image for their final use, such as web display, publishing and printing as fine art prints
• Brief notes about colour spaces and maximum printable size according to the resolutions
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