A Busy Spring Photography Teaching Schedule

In Summary, here it is

·       Lightroom Tuesdays March 3-April 7

·       Introduction to Digital Photography Thursdays April 9 – May 14 (excluding April 23^rd)

^·     Spring Waterfall Weekend Workshop May 15^th – May 17^th  

Leaning In - Ashuelot River

With the holidays out of the way, I have been organizing my spring teaching season, and this year the programs are especially compressed.  It will be a busy and exciting time to cover photography, including an introduction to digital photography, a detailed exploration of the amazing image organizing and editing capabilities of Adobe’s Lightroom Classic, and a fun spring weekend workshop shooting some of the most beautiful waterfalls in southern Vermont and the Monadnock region.

This is just a brief listing of the spring programs.  For those who are interested, I will be posting more details as the dates approach, but since I keep the classes comfortably small, it always helps to reserve your spots early.  The best way to get your name on the list is to send me an email and if you have any questions, give me a call: 603-363-8338.

Introduction to Lightroom Classic – AND the Transition to Photoshop

Six Tuesday Evenings March 3rd – April 7th
373 Route 9a Spofford (around my dining room table)

Lightroom Workflow

 Once again, beginning in early March, I will be offering my Introduction to Adobe’s Lightroom Classic. If you are interested in getting the most from your images there is no better place to start.

With each new version of Lightroom, the program’s capabilities and features have grown. Its image management tools have improved, but the major advancement has been in its sophisticated editing capabilities. Lightroom’s Develop Module now is as fully capable as Photoshop’s Camera RAW, but Lightroom organizes these tools into a simpler and more intuitive workflow. The program also facilitates the sharing of images through Slide Shows, Books and simple Web designs.

Lightroom Magic

Given its power and ease of use, for the majority of digital photography enthusiasts, Lightroom is all they will need to get started with image management and editing.

The Course

Around the Table

From 6-8 pm, on six successive Tuesday evenings beginning on March 3^rd, we will gather around my dining room table in Spofford.  The course will concentrate on Lightroom Classic, which is the full desktop version of the program intended for photographers who want to get the most from their images.  Adobe also offers a version of the program simply called Lightroom which is designed for mobile users and will not be covered in this course.  All the key functions of Lightroom Classic will be covered primarily in live demonstrations, and although everyone will be encouraged follow along on their own laptops, this will not be necessary to benefit from the course.

If you, like many, are still confused about the different Lightroom programs, just know that the Lightroom and Lightroom Classic versions are both included among the options in the Adobe Photography Subscription Plan, along with the latest version of Photoshop (if you ever want to enter the abyss) and still costs only $9.99/month.

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html 

 My course will be covering the full power of the Lightroom Classic Program but I have added a sixth class to review how to move images into Photoshop and a brief look at what this amazing program can add to your pictures. 

The expanded course will be $225.
More details will be coming soon on my blog at:

http://jeffnewcomerphotography.blogspot.com/

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Introduction to Digital Photography Thursdays April 9 – May 14 (excluding April 23^rd) Keene High School

My introductory class on digital photography has evolved over the years as I have tried to find better ways to inform and excite students about the amazing capabilities of digital cameras.  The course includes 5 two-hour classes and two photo shoots. I cover a wide range of topics from understanding the differences in camera types, to image file formats, file management and archiving. Special emphasis is placed on exposure, composition and the use of different types of light.  All these topics are applied to the results of the photo shoots.  This class always fills very quickly, so sign up early at :

https://www.keenecommunityed.org/classes/digital-photography-intro/

Spring 2018 Class

Contact Erin White, Program Assistant
(603)357-0088 ext. 103, ewhite@sau29.org
for more information

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Spring Waterfall Weekend Workshop May 15^th – May 17^th  

Garwin Falls

It may seem early to anticipate my annual Spring Waterfall Weekend Workshop, but I’m reminded that the snow on the ground is the raw material that will contribute to the vigorous spring run-off.

This year’s weekend workshop will follow my usual, time-tested format. We will first gather Friday evening around my dining room table, for a chance to meet everyone, and review our plans. I will discuss key elements of the photography of flowing water, including exposure, the importance of a sturdy tripod, a cable release and, of course, a polarizing filter. 

Porcupine Falls

Will meet on Saturday for an all-day shoot traveling to many of my favorite regional waterfalls and ending with an evening of pizza and sharing around my informal table. Sunday morning, we will gather again for more falling waters and I will let you all escape, exhausted but full of wonderful waterfall images, by noon.

Dummerston Veil

It should be an exciting weekend and I’m looking forward to sharing many of my favorite spots. 

To allow for individual attention, the workshop is limited to only 8 participants. The entire program including snacks and an informal dinner will be $195. 



Get in touch as soon as possible, by email or phone, to get on the workshop list. I look forward to seeing you.

Jeffrey Newcomer

www.partridgebrookreflections.com

jeffn49@myfairpoint.net

603-363-8338

Upcoming Courses and Workshop, The Fall and Winter Schedule

More to Learn

It’s been a lovely summer but now it’s time to settle into planning my teaching schedule for the fall and winter. Even when the topic is one that I have presented before, preparing a course requires hours of review and organization of material.   In November, I will be offering my Introduction to Digital Photography course through Keene Community Education for the fourth time, but I am constantly modifying the material to make it more understandable and hopefully at least a little entertaining.  

PowerPoint presentations have the reputation of being dry and pedantic, with a succession of mind numbing lists of information. Lazy presenters are often satisfied with merely transporting their outlines to the screen, but photography is above all a visual topic and I try to tell my stories with pictures and as little text as possible.

Fryes Mill Falls, Wilton NH

So far, I have had no trouble finding people who are enthusiastic to learn about photography and editing.  Digital photography has expanded the availability high quality imaging, and, given the immediate feedback offered on the camera’s LCD, the ease of learning has been much improved.  These days, there is a growing number of people who want to go beyond what they can achieve with their smart phones.  They are acquiring more sophisticated cameras, including Digital SLRs,  with better control of imaging, . Many are excited to learn about what all those buttons actually do.  

  Up-coming programs include a fall foliage workshop, a general introduction to digital photograph and a course covering the image management and editing capabilities in Lightroom, a miraculous program from Adobe.   In October, I'll be starting with the foliage workshop.  I think I enjoy the workshop format best since it allows me to share the beauty that I have discovered in our remarkable corner of New England.

2017 Spring Waterfall Workshop

Next year I plan to repeat my Spring Waterfall Workshop and I will be considering other possibilities including a course covering Photoshop for Photographers and perhaps other workshops.  How about winter or night photography?

There is a lot to consider, but for now, here are the plans for the next few months.   To allow for more personal attention, I like to keep my programs small, so to assure a spot, get your requests in soon .

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Fall Foliage Weekend
October 13-15

Fortuitous Cow

This autumn, I will again be offering my Fall Foliage Weekend Workshop.  Last year we had a great time, and hopefully we will have similarly wonderful weather and color.  I will be following the same format that seemed to work well last year.  Again, I picked the weekend after the Columbus Day weekend craziness.  It is an opportunity to see great color without the same crowds that typically congest our beautiful countryside.  Our base of operations

will be around my dining room table in Spofford, NH.  I will host the participants at my home on Friday evening for snacks and a discussion about photography in general, and the specific opportunities and challenges of foliage photography.  It will also be time to plan the shooting for all day Saturday and Sunday morning.   Saturday, we will head out early to explore as many different locations as possible.  My goal. Will be to place the group in beautiful locations and then help them get the most from the opportunities. Last year, on Saturday morning, we focused on Vermont, including Guilford and the magic village of Green River. 

 

Later in the day we spent time exploring a classic farm stand in Walpole New Hampshire and ended by finding a spot to watch the full moon rise above Spofford Lake.   There will be no full moon on October 14th, but for any who want to stay late, we might see a little of the Milky Way over the lake. In the evening, we will return to the dining room table for an informal diner of pizza and some gentle critiquing of the day’s shoot

Green River Bridge, Guilford, Vermont

Grazing under Mount Monadnock

We will head out again Sunday morning for more of our exploration of color, and I will finally let people go around noon. Last year everyone seemed to come away exhausted but thrilled with the experience, and I had a great time sharing my love for photography in this special time of year. 

Fall Foliage Workshop 2016

jeffn49@myfairpoint.net

603-363-8338  

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Introduction to Digital Photography

November 2, 9, 16, 30 

It has become an annual tradition to offer my Introduction to Digital Photography Course as part of Keene Community Ed’s fall program.  The course includes 4 classes and two photo shoots. I cover a wide range of topics from understanding the difference in camera types to, image file formats, file management and archiving. Special emphasis is placed on exposure, composition and the use of different types of light.  All these topics are applied to the results of the photo shoots.

 


The course size is limited and, if the past is any guide it tends to fill quickly.  Registration begins August 22nd can be done over the phone at 357-0088 or on-line at www.keenecommunityed.org.  Please feel free to get in touch with me for any questions.

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Introduction to Adobe Lightroom
I haven’t set the dates yet, but it will be in January and/or February.

I am a dedicated long-term user of Photoshop, but over the last few years I have become increasingly impressed with the power of Lightroom, in terms of both its image management tools and its sophisticated editing capabilities.  I still bring almost all my images into Photoshop for final tweaking, especially when complicated masking is required, but I now use Lightroom for 80-90% of my global editing.  Given its power and ease of use, for the majority of digital photography enthusiasts, Lightroom is likely all they will need to get started with image management and editing.

In response to frequent requests, I developed an introductory course covering all the essential capabilities of Lightroom.  I have offered the course three times and it has been warmly received.  I run the class as a live demonstration.  Students are encouraged to work along on their own laptops, but a computer is not necessary to benefit from the material.   I’ve had a great time and the classes.  Without the use of PowerPoint slides, presentations are much more dynamic, and, as is always true of teaching a course, I have learned a ton. I initially thought that that four, two-hour classes would be enough to cover the program's many features, but because of my tendency to ramble and lots of great questions, I have added a fifth class to cover the Slide Show, Book and Web Modules. I probably could have used more time, but I learned that 2 hours of software complexity at a time is definitely the limit for my mature students – and their teacher. 

I again will be limiting the class to the 8 people who can fit comfortably around my dining room table.  There will be five, two hour, evening sessions, and of course, snacks will be provided. The course is $195.  There are already people on the waiting list from last time, so please get in touch as soon as possible.

jeffn49@myfairpoint.net

603-363-8338  

That is my list for now.  I am excited how, in the last couple of years, teaching has become such an important part of my photographic activities. Of course, the classes and workshops have seemed a natural extension of the teaching I have been doing for years in my weekly Getting It Right in the Digital Camera Blog.  It has been working on the blog that has expanded my knowledge to the point that feel comfortable offering my classes. I hope to get to know many more of my readers as I continue and expand my live programs.

Please get in touch if you have any questions about the up-coming classes and work-shops, or if there other topics you would like to see me cover either in a class or on the blog.  Any interest in a Photoshop Class – or classes.

Jeffrey Newcomer
partridgebrookreflections.com
603-363-8338

Photography Highlights of 2016

Green River Bridge, Guilford Vermont : Foliage Workshop

This is the time of year for the traditional “best of” list.  I have always avoided trying to assemble a slide show of my bests of the year.  First it would difficult and more than a little self-indulgent  to attempt to select my ten,  twenty, or one hundred best images.  More importantly the process of discarding hundreds of my pixelated babies would be agony.  They are all my babies, but as I think of this, it might be fun to pick my ten worst published pictures of the year.  A great idea for a future blog, but I’ll save that for sometime during stick season.
 

As I think back over 2016, it is the special opportunities and experiences that are worth celebrating.  Happily, the experiences that have inspired and changed my photography this year, as every year, have all triggered articles in my “Getting It Right in the Digital Camera” blog. Having that material languishing in my archives makes it easier to assemble a couple of “best of” articles.  Just now, I need all the help I can get to leave time for another major project, my up-coming Lightroom course.

Figuring Out Lightroom, Again!

I’m currently working on reviving my Introduction to Adobe Lightroom course, and will be presenting it to a fresh group of victims starting this coming Tuesday (1/10).  I am a dedicated Lightroom user, but my familiarity with the program centers around my day-to-day work.   Preparing for a comprehensive course means that I must go back and explore all the features which are not part of my routine work-flow.  It takes time to relearn all those short-cuts and special preference settings, and I must remind myself of the differences between PC and MAC key strokes.  The result of all this work is that I must try to simplify my blogs for the next couple of weeks.  

This week I will mention my 2017 photographic experiences that centered around education, both my teaching of others and the vast amount that I have learned from those efforts. I will say it again, in my classes, I always learn much more than I teach.  All these teachable moments are worth a brief mention, but there are much deeper discussions in the referenced blog articles.

Education

The Getting it Right in the Digital Camera Blog

One of my most surprising accomplishments of 2016 is that I have continued to publish my weekly blog without interruption.  After almost 350 articles it has become increasingly difficult to come up with fresh topics.  I must admit that it has become an obsession, but despite all the work, I recognize that the process of researching, writing and illustrating a weekly article has been THE major path to the improvement of my understanding of the art and craft of digital photography.

 
New England Photography Guild Blog

The New England Photography Guild is a great organization of some of the most talented photographers in the region.  I am honored to be a Member and proud to offer my occasional contributions to the NEPG Blog.

Photography Courses

Abigail and Grayson

Over the last couple of years, I have finally fulfilled a long-held goal of dedicating time to offering formal courses on photography.  I have frequently presented short talks to camera clubs and other organization throughout the region, but assembling the material for more comprehensive courses always presented a daunting challenge.  How to start?  I found that the most important step was simply to set a date.  I scheduled it far enough out so that it presented no immediate cause for panic, but with a deadline established I had no choice but to produce.  

Fortunately I had an extensive collection of material already organized.  My 350+ blog articles included discussions and illustration of most of the topics that

Washington NH, Perspective Control

 I would cover in my courses, and many of the images were ready to move over into PowerPoint.  I had to learn how to keep the slide captions simple and dynamic. I was conscious of the importance of avoiding slides that were filled with boring text.  The words should only be prompts for discussion, augmenting the images.  Any slide that stayed on the screen for more than a few seconds was usually a failure, as I felt my audience drift away.  I have now run my Introduction to Digital Photography Course three times (number four coming in April), and I continue to reorganize and refine the material each time.  Hopefully it is at least keeping me fresh and interested.

Mt Wshington Hotel Pano

One of the best parts of my introductory course is the opportunity to join the class on a couple of shoots.  It is always a challenge to find a time and location that works for most of the class, but it is great fun to wander among the students as they try to apply what they have learned to the real world.  Back in class, I always spend time “gently” critiquing the students work.  Always, there are “teachable” images and many wonderful examples of fresh perspectives.  I frequently find myself saying, “Why didn’t I see that!”.

• UpcomingClasses 6/19/16
• GroupPhoto Shoot 5/9/16

 Introduction to Adobe Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom is a remarkably powerful program which has become my go-to application, not only for image management, but also for the majority of my initial global image editing.  I still bring my images into Photoshop for final touch-ups, but for most photography enthusiasts, Lightroom may be all that they need.

It made sense that my first attempt at teaching digital edit should be directed at Lightroom.  Lightroom is also much more intuitive to use and far less intimidating than the massively powerful Photoshop.  

First Lightroom Class

Last spring I gave my first Lightroom course.  I decided to keep it simple and informal, holding the classes around my dining room table.  I planned to limit the number to 8 but somehow ended up with 10.  The class went well with the only surprise being that I needed to add a fifth class to over all the aspects of this widely capable program.  Fortunately, and perhaps because of the quality of the snacks, no one seemed to mind the extra session.

My second Lightroom course starts next week and once again I was incapable of keeping the group to under ten.

• Teaching Lightroom. 4/10/16

Fall Foliage Work-Shop

I have always liked the idea of running photography workshops and the fall foliage season seemed the perfect opportunity to give it a try.  After an evening introductory session where I discussed digital photography in general and foliage photography in particular, we gathered for shoots on the Saturday and Sunday after Columbus Day.  The weather was great and the color spectacular. The route had to be flexible depending on the conditions, but my goal was to provide a range of locations and conditions that would provide opportunities to work through a range of photographic challenges.  Saturday night, we reviewed the results of shooting in southern Vermont over dinner around my dining room table.  On Sunday morning, we explored Route 124 along the west side of Mount Monadnock.  I think everyone enjoyed the weekend.  I had a great time and will back next year, but I’m also considering other opportunities for workshops.

• FallFoliage Workshop 10/39

A New Camera

I must include in a discussion of my education for this year the work I spent learning my new Camera.  I have stuck with my faithful Canon 5D Mark II for many years and even resisted to temptation to take the expensive leap to the Mark II.  It is a great camera, but it just didn’t do enough for me to make the jump.  The new Mark IV was a long time coming and by the time it was announced I had to up-grade.  I was considering dumping Canon entirely and opting for a mirror less system, but Mark IV had most of what I was looking for.  I can deal with the weight and it is nice to protect my investment in glass without resorting to adapters.  I’m still learning how to get the most from all the new features, but in the meantime, I’m loving the image quality.  Perhaps it partially because I am jumping from the Mark II, but the resolution and the dynamic range is remarkable.   And besides, the automatic GPS recording is saving from all the complex gyrations with which I used to struggle to record locations.

Gettingto Know a New Camera 9/18/16

 There is always more to learn about the art and craft of digital photography and I look forward to the discoveries of 2017.  Next week I'll list some of my favorite explorations of 2016 the Costa Rican rain forest to the wilds of my own back yard.

Jeff Newcomer
partridgebrookreflections.com
603-363-8338