This posting is a mish-mash of news – I’ve been visiting family and then busy at a conference in Florida and haven’t had much time until arriving home Sunday.

A podcast interview I did just went live today. Visit Lensflare35.com to listen to my interview and to view the images and comments I made for his program. I’m delighted with the way it turned out and hope you’ll enjoy it, too! Warning – get a cup of tea/coffee as the slide show with comments is longish- I sent him a few extra pics and he kept them all in! I can’t complain about that though. 🙂

Fotofusion was a variety of programs – from Photoshop techniques to seeing, to multimedia. I love going because it puts me in touch with current events and trends in the photojournalism, fine art, fashion and general areas of photography and I always, always learn something that I can use in my career.

Here’s a random rundown of things I learned:

The idea of making two exposures at different ISO to manage a scene with motion, such as a moving stream, where you don’t want to push the ISO on the whole scene of trees and rocks/mosses, etc., but you can push the ISO to capture an exposure for the moving water that will still have texture. (The 100 ISO exposure would cause total blurring with no detail in many cases). I saw several examples produced by Adam Jones and they were very good! He did one at 100 ISO and one at 1000 ISO on the Mark III and it worked beautifully.

That an EXPO disc is a wonderful tool for outdoor photographers. I have used this for people/event photography in the past, where I would set the custom white balance and then capture the event without needing to change anything as long as the color of light didn’t change. But for outdoor photographers, you can quickly use this handy device to white balance your scene which means you don’t have to do it all later in the computer. Again, I saw examples that were very effective and anything that saves me time is well worth a second look, so I’ll be pulling out my Expo Disc and including it in my outdoor/nature kit.

In the multimedia sector, both that of still slide shows to voice-over or music, and video, I picked up on a great suggestion for how to learn audio control and lighting. They suggested we watch movies made in the 40s-50s with the sound off, so you could study the lighting, and then with the sound on but eyes closed, so you could really hear the sound effects. Since I am working on some video tutorials, and some other ideas for multimedia slide shows, this will be very helpful – and I get to watch old movies and justify the time! ha ha.

I saw Thinktank Photo’s Shapeshifter – a backpack that collapses down to just about 3 inches in height when empty, but expands to hold all your gear so that you can travel with it all in the backpack, but bring a shoulder or belt-pack for street use, and store your backpack in your suitcase while there. Pretty ingenious – check it out. You’d need to buy the modular waist belt for it, but I think this bag has some real potential for being ease of travel. And if you do decide that you must have this bag, don’t forget to order using my special code so you get a free gift with purchase.  While I do get a commission, I only work with companies whose products I really like and use. I currently own the original Thinktank Airport Acceleration and the Speed Racer Belt Pack, along with the waistbelts, and modular pouches and a Digital Holster.

Be Well,

Brenda