A Fun Selection of Online Learning Classes From My Online "Alma Mater," Craftsy.com

A link to my Studio Portrait Lighting Class with $25 Off.

I rarely put up ads on the blog. I don't want to interrupt the flow of articles that a lot of my audience has come to enjoy. But, in fact, we worked really hard up in Denver, Colorado to produce some online programming that is fun and educational. If you are the kind of person who enjoys taking workshops or spending time on various learning channels fleshing out your technique and your knowledge of photography you might really enjoy a lot of what is on offer at Craftsy. 

Many of you comment on my portraits; the lighting and the rapport with subjects. In the class above I give a detailed presentation of how I like to light. Not the routine formulas endemic to the web but exactly the way I like to light and interact with my subjects. I have a beautiful model and I play with my favorite lighting and modifying tools in the course. The Course lasts about two and a half hours, in sections. With the link above you can get the course (forever online) for about $25. Or five Venti Latte Coffees at Starbucks. You can go to the link and sample the course for free! If you pay the $25 and don't like the course you can get your money back. 

In addition to the Studio course above I am also including, in this blog, a discount link to a course that is a bit more basic and covers a lot of beginner topics as well as some Lightroom-Lite at the end. It's a fun course because it teaches but it's narrative in nature and each section is a fun adventure. I love the stuff we shot with a family at a horse ranch up in the mountains. Go and see the intro. You might like it. It's certainly something fun to watch if you are socked in by weather and can't get out to photograph on your own!

 A Link to my Family Photography Class with $25 Off. 

In addition to my two classes above I've actually gone through the catalog of classes offered by Craftsy.com and picked out a number of my favorites in the photography section. I like them and found them valuable so I thought you might too. Here they are below, in no particular order:

Food Photography. by Andrew Scriviani

Off Camera Flash Photography. by Neil van Niekirk

One of the original Craftsy Photo Classes and 

still one of the best! 

Night Photography. by Lance Keimig

I met Lance a couple of weeks ago in Denver

and found him to be really fun and knowledgeable 

this class reflects what he teaches in hands-on

workshops in Ireland and Iceland, as well as 

cool places around the U.S.

Narrative Photography: Storytelling with Photo

Essays. by Mike Hill.

How to make what we shoot into a cohesive

train of visual thought.

Perfecting Photoshop Portraits. by Lesa Snider

So, Lesa is the author of "PhotoShop, the Missing Manual" as well as a dozen other bestselling books on Photoshop, Lightroom and all things Post Processing. She is a superstar in that area and this is one of her first Craftsy.com workshops. It was right up my alley. I have been working in Photoshop for twenty years and I still learned about a dozen really great techniques to make the portraits I've shot look incredibly better. This one is a must for anyone interested in making images of humans look amazing.

Of all the people I met in Denver her course was almost perfectly aligned with what I needed to learn.

I am seriously signing off to go watch "Perfecting PhotoShop Portraits" one more time. I'm retouching 21 portraits of architects tomorrow and I want to get comfortable with some new techniques.

Suspend disbelief and click on a few of these links. It doesn't cost a cent to go and look.

That's my commercial message for the week --- now back to our original programming.

Pursuit of beauty in photography. That's why we make portraits.

I have a small studio in Austin, Texas.

I like to make portraits there for myself.

I use all kinds of cameras and play with lights.

I'm looking for a quiet intensity.

People being actively alive.

It's more fun than working.

At the Barton Springs Spillway with an Old Sony A56.

Old School Portrait. Back from the Canon days.

Belinda. In studio. 

In all the excitement of new, smaller cameras, I love to slow down, go through the files, and see what images looked like from a more "primitive" time in digital photography. This image was taken with a Canon 1DSmk2 and a Canon 85mm f1.8 lens. The shutter speed was 1/20th of a second. The aperture was f2.5. Seems to work okay considering the "vintage" contraption with which it was taken....

Studio Dog Curates Images from the Desktop and Selects a Winter Winner.

On second street in Austin. Looking for a place to pee while freezing your ass off...

Image taken with Sony RX10 Classic. 

I let Studio Dog choose this image to show. It's one of her favorites from last winter when the temperatures actually dropped blowing freezing for a little while. Here we are in February and the forecast this week is for temps in the high 70's. Hmm. 

A Few Thoughts About the Sony RX10-2 and Why a Smart Working Photographer might want to have one around.

Sony RX10 ii. 

Continuing in the vein of our recent glorification of cameras with one inch sensors I thought I would draw your closer attention to the current king of the one inch sensor cameras, the Sony RX10 ii. It might just be the contemporary Swiss Army Knife(tm) of cameras aimed at workaday journalists and corporate public relations staffers. The camera is almost identical to its predecessor on the outside, using the same lens, the same rear screen and the same control interfaces, but the camera is much improved in some regards. The two big improvements being a higher (kinder) resolution EVF, and the inclusion of a very professionally fitted out 4K video capability.

If I were a journalist today, working for a newspaper (how quaint) or an online news channel, this would be a compelling tool. I would be able to use it to capture most subjects (with the exception of fast moving, hard news and sports) as high resolution, very high quality photographs and I would also be able to hit the video switch and record a 4K video signal that uses full sensor read out for very high quality imaging with very few artifacts. Much cleaner and sharper video than you will get out of a $3200 Nikon D810 or a similarly priced Canon 5Dmk3. All of this in a small, complete and unintimidating package that can go anywhere. In any kind of weather. 

On the video side the camera features time code, zebras, focus peaking, a microphone port and (vital) a headphone jack. It can write its 4K, 100 mbs onto any U3 SDXC memory card --- in camera. The RX10 ii is also a great tool for creating conventional 1080p video content when you need to conserve card space...

It's a very nice and very worthwhile upgrade to the Sony RX10 (original model) but, with the recent upgrade from ACVHD to XAVC S in the RX10's video codec the need for most videographer to upgrade seems less urgent. The RX10 is now a more powerful and clean 1080p machine! The reason to upgrade would be the need for 4K video or the desire to have the more detailed and enjoyable EVF.  A secondary reason might be the deeper buffer and more complex file processing enabled by the new BSI sensor, with on chip processing and buffering. You'll be able to shoot more

A keystroke into oblivion...

Dear VSL readers. I woke up early and found 8 really nice comments waiting for my moderation. I selected all and then totally screwed up (blaming the lack of life giving coffee....) and hit the delete button instead of the "publish" button in the Blogger software (they are adjacent and the trackpad on my laptop loves to leap while clicking is in progress.....)

I would love to post your comment if you have time to give it another try. Most were in response to yesterday evening's post on the "Rise of the One Inch Sensors."

Sorry about that.  KT