 Our digital lab - rear view |
 Our digital lab - front view |
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This course is designed for those looking for an easier way
to deal with most of their digital images. Lightroom is built
from the ground up for digital photographers and provides an intuitive
interface to enable you to accomplish many of your routine tasks
such as organizing and editing your digital files as well as getting
them ready for output including slideshows, web usage, and printing.
Lightroom provides a powerful RAW converter through which you
can make many of the global adjustments an image might need. And
you can use the identical tools and sliders on your TIFF, JPEG,
PSD or DNG files! In this course we'll teach you how to use all
the features of Lightroom as well as when and how to turn to Photoshop
for adjustments that can't be made in Lightroom.
Of course every time a major new piece of software is released
it means a learning curve for those photographers wanting to use
it. We'll be modifying our tried and true classroom workshop techniques,
that we've been using with great success for years with our Photoshop
workshops, to make it easy for you to learn Lightroom.
This course will help you bypass those frustrating moments of
feeling lost as you try to learn a new program. We'll take you
step by step through Lightroom so that you become confident in
your ability to use it successfully. We'll help you use Lightroom
to its full advantage and expedite your workflow, so that you'll
quickly be back in the field making more photos!
If your goal is to have an easier way to manage your digital workflow,
this course is for you!
A brief bit of history first: For the past nineteen years Mary
and I have been teaching our Complete Nature Photo Course and
Advanced Nature Photo Course, creating what we believe to be the
most intensive and complete instructional course on nature photography
anywhere in the country. In the last few years, however, as Adobe
Photoshop and other imagery programs developed, and as digital
cameras became more common and more sophisticated, we came to
a realization - photography is changing to digital! To some this
is viewed as an abysmal turning point for photography while for
others it is correctly viewed as a new frontier, one which will
allow photographers to produce a whole new spectrum of images.
While there is continuing debate about 'digital enhancement' or
'digital manipulation,' one thing is clear - digital imagery allows
a photographer to truly capture all the tonal values of an image,
something that film cannot do because of its more restricted exposure
latitude. For that reason alone, digital photography has tremendous
merits. Embracing this new technology, and realizing not only
the importance of Adobe Photoshop's powerful image editing capabilities
but also its very real intimidation, we are offering several courses
DESIGNED WITH THE PHOTOGRAPHER in mind.
In addition to our hugely popular Digital Nature Photography Course
and Photoshop Courses, we are adding this new Lightroom course.
The digital evolution is ongoing and to stay on top of it photographers
must modify their workflow as new tools become available. For
many, Lightroom will be a welcome addition to their workflow making
it easier to do all the daily tasks associated with digital imagery.
All our Digital Photography/Photoshop courses here at Hoot Hollow
were designed with the photographer in mind, and are fine-tuned
to clearly present the information you need to know to master
the software and enhance your photography.
Time Frame: Learning new software can be demanding mentally, and for photographers accustomed to being out in the field shooting images, time spent behind a computer might be drudgery. Our time frame will hopefully alleviate some of this, by providing plenty of time at the computer while still giving you, the photographer, some time to shoot or relax, or if you wish, to use the computer lab to your full advantage. Our formal classroom instruction will begin at 9AM and continue until noon, where we'll break for lunch (served at Hoot Hollow), and followed by an afternoon session that will continue to 5PM or so. There will be a break for dinner (served, along with breakfast, at your farm bed and breakfast, the Mountain Dale Farm), followed by 'open computer lab time' every evening back at Hoot Hollow. Our instructors are always at the Lab, so even during our open computer time in the evening we'll be helping and assisting you, as well as reviewing.
Our Format: Our Format: The Lightroom
Course is divided into several segments that will make learning
fun and palatable and extremely productive. Our morning sessions
will be devoted to lecture and demonstration, which will also
include hands on practice by our students. Afternoon sessions
will include instruction and practice time, although the exact
format will be flexible to accommodate the needs of our students.
Some topics are simple to cover and to demonstrate, and for students
to practice. Others, we realize, are more complex and may require
several small doses before the concept is fully realized. If you
are familiar with how we run our Digital Complete Nature Photo
Course you know our dedication and commitment to your understanding
of our subjects, and we will follow the same philosophy and teaching
methods of the D-CNPC in the Lightroom course.
Breakfast is served at 8AM at the farm, which will give participants
time in the morning to photograph, if they wish, or to review
handouts and reading material before class. We will take at least
one 'break out session' to shoot a few subjects (defined below)
that you'll be able to work with, digitally, during the course
of the week. Evenings on most days will be 'free' in the sense
that students can come and go, to work in the computer lab (which
is likely) or to simply crash (which is possible) on any given
day. Since everyone attending will be photographers, we will devote
one evening, and perhaps a part of another, to slide, print, or
digital image sharing - a slide show of some of our work and THAT
OF OUR PARTICIPANTS. We'll be covered with all mediums - 35mm
slide projection and digital projection (you'll need a CD of your
work compatible with Power Point, Pro Show Gold, or your own laptop).
In short, between our class time, your practice time, the intermittent
shooting times, and our slide sessions, you will have an extremely
complete week.
One added advantage all of our Digital Photography and Photoshop
students have enjoyed and commented upon was the unity of our
groups, since all meals are shared either at the Mountain Dale
Farm or at Hoot Hollow. These informal group times provide the
opportunity for a tremendous amount of information sharing - on
other workshops, on techniques and equipment, on places to photograph,
and other diverse topics.
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Our digital lab - rear view |
Our digital lab - front view |
Our Participants: This course
is designed for photographers with limited or extensive experience
with Photoshop, who want an easier way to manage your workflow.
You will learn to use Lightroom and integrate it into your workflow.
We will build your expertise from the ground up, explaining every
step and every technique as we go along. New software can be intimidating,
but only because it seems so vast and complex. You'll discover
Lightroom is really easy to use.
It will be helpful if participants have some basic familiarity
with Photoshop - or even Elements - since we will be showing you
when to use Photoshop in addition to Lightroom. We'll show you
how to make targeted adjustments in Photoshop and we'll explain
some other circumstances where you may choose to use Photoshop
that we'll cover step by step.
Preparation Beforehand: Although
we'll have all the material you'll need to learn Lightroom, we
suspect that you'd like to work on your own images to practice
and for some of the other projects we will work on. Participants
should bring with them a CD with images that can be opened in
either Photoshop or in Lightroom on a PC platform. We hope that
you're shooting RAW images and bring along RAW files. Most CDs,
if written in one session, should have no problem being opened
on a PC if written on a MAC, or vise-versa should you write a
CD at Hoot Hollow and take home with you.
Location: All of our courses are taught on the grounds of the
Hoot Hollow Institute of Nature Photography, in either our studio
or in our computer lab. Hoot Hollow is located in central Pennsylvania,
northwest of Harrisburg, east-southeast of State College, and
near RT 522 between Lewistown and Selinsgrove, Pa. The nearest
full-service airport and car rental is in Harrisburg. Lodging
is at a farm vacation bed and breakfast located about eight miles
from Hoot Hollow. It is a 'target-rich' shooting environment in
a rural area rich with landscapes, farm scenes, farm animals,
and nature subjects. Breakfasts and dinners are served at the
farm.
Location: All of our courses
are taught on the grounds of the Hoot Hollow Institute of Nature
Photography, in either our studio or in our computer lab. Hoot
Hollow is located in central Pennsylvania, northwest of Harrisburg,
east-southeast of State College, and near RT 522 between Lewistown
and Selinsgrove, Pa. The nearest full-service airport and car
rental is in Harrisburg.
Lodging is at a farm vacation bed and breakfast located about
six miles from Hoot Hollow. It is a 'target-rich' shooting environment
in a rural area rich with landscapes, farm scenes, farm animals,
and nature subjects. Breakfasts and diners are served at the farm.
Price: The tuition for the Digital Photography Courses is $1,695 and includes all instruction, lab fees and supplies, meals (you will not go hungry!), and lodging based upon double occupancy from Sunday through Friday nights. A single rooming supplement is available ($100 for a room in the house, $175 for a cabin). The fee does not include transportation to, during, or from the course.
In the Lightroom Course you will not only be 'introduced' to
the tools and menus and palettes in Lightroom, you will become
intimately acquainted with the same! Through lecture, drill, quiz,
practice, and application in an interactive, hands on computer
environment you will learn the tools and techniques required to
integrate Lightroom into your workflow in a satisfying and productive
manner. In short, you will learn, really learn, what you need
to know to get started in Lightroom! Some of the topics we'll
cover include:
Importing Images - Learn how to have your images managed by Lightroom
in the Library or leave them elsewhere on your computer and allow
Lightroom to reference them. Learn to use Collections. See how
to quickly rate and sort through a group of images in a shoot,
zoom in for a closer look and even compare multiple images to
find the best one. Develop your favorite images by making nondestructive
changes to your RAW files to quickly improve the exposure tonality
and color. Use these same sliders to adjust other file types without
accessing a new interface. Learn to use the tools that are unique
to Lightroom such as Tone Curve, Luminance and Compressions sliders,
Split Toning and HSL Toning. Create stunning Slideshows, using
creative layouts and more. Prepare Web Pages that are ready to
upload and Prints. In addition we'll consider when to use Photoshop
in conjunction with Lightroom and learn how to make adjustments
to just part of an image.
Since the best way to consolidate learning is to practice it over
and over, we'll not only have you try the techniques all week
long, at the end of the week we'll have you spend some time photographing
and then using Lightroom just as you will when you return home.
Day 1: evening: Welcome dinner and orientation. Introduction
to Hoot Hollow and a review of the objectives for the week's course.
Day 2: Introduction to Lightroom and the tools and Menus
that will be covered. Digital workflow, if required. Setting up
for Lightroom's Preferences. Monitor calibration.
Day 3: Importing images, understanding the Library, Collections,
Ratings, Views and Quick Editing Tools.
Day 4: We'll turn to the Develop Panel and learn to Optimize
images both for tonal adjustments and color adjustments. We'll
use the Tone Curve, Split Tonal Adjustments and HSL Toning.
Day 5: We'll learn to make targeted adjustments in Photoshop
using Layer Masks and other tools we might want to use in Photoshop.
Day 6: We'll spend the morning photographing an assignment
and then practice what we've learned all week by using Lightroom
to prepare a Slideshow of our best images from the shoot.
Day 7: morning: Question and answer session followed by
the Slideshows and graduation. Conclude by 11AM.
Please note - the exact, daily itinerary is subject to some change
and modification based upon the group's progress. All of the above
topics will be covered, but we do not want to be held to a fixed
timetable - your comprehension and understanding is more important
to us than a set schedule.
On a trip to Chile in December of 2003 I used a 35mm camera
and the full potential of Adobe Photoshop. When shooting landscapes
exposure values between foregrounds and backgrounds were often
extreme, and far beyond the capability of film to record accurately,
even with graduated neutral density filters. Sometimes the distance
was too great for depth of field to cover both a foreground and
background. In traditional photography, these scenes that I could
enjoy with my eyes and senses were not recordable. Yet the scenes,
the views, the subjects all exist in reality, but film, with traditional
photographic methods, could not record the reality!
On this trip I shot for Photoshop on many occasions, taking two
exposures of the same scene to incorporate into Photoshop later
to produce an image similar, or identical, to what I really saw.
I shot multiple images with telephoto to create panoramic views
of scenes I'd normally be forced to cover with a wide-angle.
To quote from one of my friends on this Chile trip: "…I
think the landscape images will be significantly boosted by application
of the "digital blending technique" that you so kindly
put forth to us. I consider this to be a ground breaking technique
that will be as important to me as when several years ago, at
Hoot Hollow, you explained how manual exposure and middle gray
fit …"
A long time has passed since that trip, and Mary and I and
our digital instructors Rick Holt and Ellen Anon have all switched
completely to digital photography, and have loved every minute
of it. Our photographic visions have expanded, our abilities to
capture what we've really seen, and our just plain enjoyment of
photography has increased immensely. Photoshop has certainly been
a valuable tool in broadening our vision, as it will your's as
well.
Photoshop is not just image manipulation. It is a tool that will
broaden our vision as photographers and one that all of us should
learn to incorporate into our future work. We're excited about
this tool! Read our Classroom Report at
the end of this page (blue type) that describes our very first
class.
Rick Holt has been passionate about photography for over thirty years. Along with co-authors Mary Ann McDonald and Joe McDonald, Rick is the author of the book "Digital Nature Photography - From Capture to Output." He has worked as a professional instructor for the past 10 year, teaching digital nature photography and Photoshop courses at the McDonald Digital Institute and at other digital institutions and classrooms around the country. Rick also maintains a digital classroom near his home base in eastern Pennsylvania. Prior to his immersion in the world of digital, Rick founded an innovative medical business centered on applying plastic fiber optics for treating newborn jaundice. After selling his business in 1996, Rick taught courses at Lehigh University while, at the same time, dedicating his efforts to learning as much as possible about emerging digital technologies. After taking courses at the local art schools and colleges he found that many Photoshop courses were too oriented towards graphic artists as opposed to the photographer. Feeling unfulfilled, he took a workshop with George Lepp which was just the beginning. In addition to all his photo course teaching, Rick also teaches "Photoshop for Photographers" classes at local colleges in the Lehigh Valley as well as several other digital institutes across the country. Nevertheless, Rick continues to attend workshops throughout the country to "keep up" and he has attended workshops with industry leaders like Tim Grey, Sean Duggen, and Dave Cross. Rick is a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Rick will be teaching the Lightroom Course.
Joe McDonald has been a full-time professional wildlife
and nature photographer since 1983. Along with co-authors, Mary
Ann McDonald and Rick Holt, they are the authors of "Digital
Nature Photography - From Capture to Output." Joe is the
author of six books on wildlife photography and another on African
Wildlife, as well as a how-to video produced with his wife, Mary
Ann, on Photographing on Safari. His work has appeared in every
major nature and wildlife publication published in North America.
Along with operating their own stock photography business, Joe
is represented by over a dozen stock photo agencies worldwide,
including Corbis, Animals Animals, Auscape, Okapia, and others.
In addition to maintaining an active and informative website,
www.hoothollow.com, Joe is columnist for OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHER,
writing the 'Big Game' column, and Joe and his wife Mary Ann are
Field Correspondents for NATURE'S BEST Magazine, and KEYSTONE
OUTDOORS, writing a photography column, and Joe Van Os's web magazine,
www.photosafaris.com where they write a regular column on wildlife
and nature photography.
For over fifteen years Joe and Mary Ann have been teaching photography
courses and leading photography tours and workshops. Their very
popular photo tours and safaris have them afield for over twenty-five
weeks each year.
Joe has worked with Photoshop for several years, mainly for creating
sales promotional material and for web site use. Now, with the
advent of digital cameras, he is using Photoshop nearly daily.
He is a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals.
If you've read the above biographies, you'll see that all of us are dedicated photographers that are interested in sharing our knowledge and helping people. I've been involved in teaching my entire adult life, from teaching assistantships in graduate school to a six-year stint as a high school biology teacher before starting my career as a wildlife photographer and photo workshop instructor. Ellen has taught college level courses as well as individual instruction, and has been assisting Art Morris with his birding workshops for years. Rick is actively teaching Photoshop right now, and feels, as both Ellen and I do, that knowing Photoshop will take you (quoting from Rick's bio) "beyond the limits of film and recreate what you saw and felt when you recorded the image."
I intend to make our Digital Courses every bit as successful, in terms of the knowledge conveyed, the quality of the experience, the intensity, and, just as importantly, the amiability and fun, that we've done with our CNPC and ANPC courses here at Hoot Hollow.