Canada is beautiful. I was able to spend a few days in Algonquin Provincial Park, the first park established in Canada and a sizable (7,000+ square kilometers, which is 1.7 million acres) wildlife sanctuary. The early spring is the best time to get up there because the moose come out of the woods and let me tell you, they are everywhere. My trip happened to coincide with Michael Reichmann’s Moose Workshop 2008, but I swear it was a coincidence.

I’ll have photos of that excursion posted soon.

Chicago is also beautiful, though perhaps in a different way. My Chicago Loop Workshop is coming up next month, it’s just a three-day affair, very informal, and should be a lot of fun. At this very moment, I still have three seats open, so now is a good time to register if you want to join us! The cost is just $449.

I’ll be running this workshop along with Chris Blake from The Curious Lens, though his website is undergoing a complete overhaul right now so there isn’t too much to see. We are going to visit all of the main architectural attractions in Chicago as well as Navy Pier, the “bean” and Millennium Park, and so forth. There will also be time for critique and review, maybe even some Lightroom/Photoshop tutorials if anyone is interested.

Santa Cruz is even more beautiful, especially in the summer! In July, Chris and I will be at Calypso Imaging in gorgeous downtown Santa Cruz, a city of artists and free-thinkers directly on the coast of central California, teaching a three-day digital workflow course, focusing on organizing and processing images using Lightroom and Photoshop CS3. If you keep taking more and more photos every day and want to tighten up your cataloging and processing, register and join us! This course is only $400.

I’ll also be doing a workshop with the inimitable Dan Heller in October in gorgeous Woodstock, Vermont, right about the time when the fall foliage should be strongest. Read about the workshop and register on Dan’s site. This workshop is all-inclusive, which means you only need to make your way to Woodstock somehow and the rest is taken care of. Dan, Chris, and myself will all be giving instruction, so there should be no difficulty in getting your questions answered.

If you have questions or suggestions about my workshops, leave a comment here!

The weather wasn’t exactly perfect, but when it stopped raining the overcast skies provided a very soft and round light that made everything glow.

Here is one that I think sums up the place and the experience, but please do view the rest of the gallery for more!

Prints Available—Click to Visit the Gallery

Leave questions or thoughts in the comments!

In his latest blog post, Chase Jarvis mentions Wired editor Chris Anderson’s new book, FREE, which is more or less about the effects that digital media has had on the cost of distribution of creative works.

I haven’t read the book so I don’t claim to know what Anderson’s conclusions might be, though I have spent a lot of time ruminating on this whole free content movement that is slowly developing and I think it deserves some discussion. More of my ramblings after the jump. (more…)

Prints Available—Click to Visit the Gallery

I caught Chris wrapping up our sunset shoot at Point Lobos State Reserve.

These are Chris’ feet standing on a very small beach as we prepared to photograph sunset.

Prints Available—Click to Visit the Gallery

During the first two days it was very gloomy and rainy, but the fog created some awesome scenes.

Prints Available—Click to Visit the Gallery

I also spent a couple of hours at the Monterey Aquarium (as I mentioned earlier). I won’t have any “serious” photos ready until after I return and get a chance to really edit them, but for the time being, here are some quick edits of some of the things I saw:

This tank has mirrors on both side walls so it looks like the jellies go on forever.

Prints Available—Click to Visit the Gallery

The aquarium is literally at the seaside and although it was raining, the view was spectacular.

Prints Available—Click to Visit the Gallery

Another view of the back of the aquarium and the stairway granting water access.

Prints Available—Click to Visit the Gallery

Here is the somewhat famous kelp forest at the Monterey Aquarium. This is one of the most photographed and publicized features of the place.

Prints Available—Click to Visit the Gallery

This is more of a stock/photojournalism style of image that I don’t think fits in with the other images in my gallery, so Single-Serving Photo is the perfect place for it!

Prints Available—Click to Visit the Gallery

A family enjoys one of the largest tanks at the aquarium, which is home to five hundred-pound tuna.

There will be many, many more images to come as my California adventure continues. I’ve taken approximately 950 photographs so far, picked out at least 15 solid “keepers,” and I still have three full days in San Francisco ahead of me!

Keep an eye on the blog for further updates!

The title of this post is a quote from the film “Sneakers;” one of my favorite movies of all time (I’m a huge nerd). I am actually in Monterey, though. Monterey, California to be precise.

We’ve only been out photographing a couple of times so far. The weather here is inclement and probably won’t clear up until later this afternoon. We’re going to head over to the Monterey Aquarium to see what we can see there since it’s really rainy and gloomy outside, then hopefully catch sunset out in Big Sur just as the storm passes us by.

Feel free to click the photo on the right or follow this link right here to check out my ever-growing Flickr stream of snapshots from this journey.

Sometimes when you’re shooting in broad daylight you may have a reason to use a longer exposure than you can achieve from your smallest aperture and lowest ISO setting. That’s where neutral density (or ND) filters come in.

ND filters have been widely written about, so I don’t intend to flog a dead horse here. Still, while shopping for ND filters today, I realized that this whole numerical rating system they use is kind of confusing, and I always wondered why some manufacturers will say ND.3, while others simply write 0.3, and yet others come out and plainly state “one stop.”

I personally prefer that everything be expressed in stops, but since that isn’t often the case, here’s my explanation… After the jump. (more…)

Now I know I’m not exactly Chase Jarvis when it comes to packing and transporting gear, but I’d like to think I’ve thought of all the important things.

If you have Flash, you should be able to see the list in all of its glory right after the jump! (more…)

Anyway, I finally broke down and purchased a brand new (okay, refurbished… But brand new to me!) Mac Pro, which uses the Intel chips. Only CS3 runs natively on Intel chips, and the thought of my software not running as quickly as it could on my brand new (…to me) machine bothered me. So I found a really good deal on Creative Suite Design Premium CS3 and bit the bullet. Hard.

After the jump, a list of my first impressions, tips, and a selection of articles from other places that may be helpful for anyone making the transition to CS3… Which I highly recommend. (more…)