Quiet Light Photography Workshops 2013

 

Quiet Light Workshops offer Photography Workshops focused on nature & landscapes, cityscapes and travel and trips to some of the best places in the world. Geared to the amateur and advanced amateur photographer looking for the chance to learn from experts in the field in our Photo Workshops are designed to take you to some of the best landscapes in the world. During each workshop you will have ample time both in the field and in the classroom to hone your skills with your camera and in the digital world of photography today. Learn tips on Photoshop and converting your images into great looking prints, workflow management, color balances and color calibration to get consistent results in your work.

Quiet Light Photography Workshops

Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Spring Wildflowers
April 18-21, 2013

Wildflowers in the Smokies! April is when the wildflowers hit their peak and you can join us as we return out the finest locations and beautiful scenery. Dogwood, trillium, squaw root, Jack-in-the-pulpit, bishop’s cap and Solomon seal are just a few of the many wildflowers to be found in fields in the park. Join us as we explore this jewel of a National Park. Our Workshop will focus on getting you the very best images of the park’s wildflowers. Our schedule, while setup initially, will change day to day based on weather and light. We will spend enough time in the classroom to give you a better understanding of Photoshop techniques and workflows to enable you to make the best fine art prints. We will also cover basic ways of “seeing” images before you click the shutter and how to take that pre-visualized view and turn it into reality in your photograph.

 Quiet Light Photography Workshops

Chicago Architecture & Travel Photography
May 10-12, 2013

A Workshop on Architectural and Travel Photography. A great city like Chicago has so many things to offer. Great architecture, festivals, dinning and other entertainment. How do you capture it for a magazine article on travel? It involves architectural images, people and places imagery and many other types of photography. This workshop will cover what it takes to capture a city over a small amount of time. Ways to capture the architectural images and the grand vistas along the lakefront of the skyline and must see places and events. We will discuss pre-planning a shoot, ways of seeing and perspective.

Quiet Light Photography Workshops

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
Michigan
September 5-8, 2013

Fall on the shores of Lake Superior at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

The shores of Lake Superior will be the backdrop of this exciting fall colors workshop. Explore the rocky shores near Castle Beach, the great dunes of Grand Sable Dunes and the many unnamed waterfalls which drop into the lake from the shores and cliffs of this great National Lakeshore. Join us as we explore this jewel of the National Park System. Our Workshop will focus on getting you the very best images of the park’s fall colors. Our schedule, while setup initially, will change day to day based on weather and light.

Quiet Light Photography Workshops

Italy
Tuscany & Venice
September 21-29, 2013

A photographic tour around Tuscany and Venice. Italy has so many beautiful vista’s how do you capture them all in the best light, in the best way? In this photographic tour you will work side by side with Richard as he shows you what he does when traveling in order to capture as much as possible while still enjoying the place. The Tuscany workshop will be centered from San Donato, a small artists gathering town and include trips to wineries and towns nearby including Certaldo, San Gimignano and other towns. We will stop along the roads where the scenery moves us and shoot those eternal images of the Tuscany countryside. In Venice we will walk the canals in the mornings and evenings and take in the city mid-day and share each other’s images in small sessions before heading out for evening photographs of the city. The details and timelines for each place are currently very fluid and if you are interested in these two workshops please contact us. We want to make sure these workshops are personal for each of you!

Quiet Light Photography Workshops

Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Fall Colors
October 24-27, 2013

Fall in the Smokies! October is when the fall colors usually hit their peak and you can join us as we return out the finest locations and most beautiful scenery. We will tackle some of the most interesting and off beat places to capture the fall colors of the Sugar Maples, Oaks, Birch, and Red Maple as they show their colors against the backdrop of Firs and landscapes of the park. Fall is a spectacular time of year to be in the park. Join us as we spend 4 1/2 days in the park among its majestic mountains, cool streams, wide valleys and variety of forests in the glory of fall colors. Great Smoky Mountains National Park comes alive in the vast vistas and in the subtle details found everywhere.

For more information you can contact us at any time!

Cheers,

Richard Mack

Quiet Light Publishing – A Busy Start to the Year Already!

The Water by Jill Buckner TWO PHOTOGRAPHERS | ONE VISION

SPEX Art+Vision Show, GSMNP Book Reprinted, Updated Websites, New Prints & Folio’s, Workshop Dates

The Water by Jill Buckner TWO PHOTOGRAPHERS | ONE VISION

It has been a busy year so far in 2013 with the opening of the SPEX Arts+Vision show with Jill Buckner as part of the TWO PHOTOGRAPHERS | ONE VISONproject (www.twophotographers-onevision.com) encompassing our images from Italy and Morocco. When you have roughly 30 images framed for a gallery show it takes a lot of work to edit and print each one before framing and hanging the show. The show will be at the SPEX on Central Street in Evanston through February. If you are in the area you should stop by and check it out. Quiet Light also released several new Folio’s from the work of Steve Azatto, Jill Buckner and Richard Mack. each one has 10-12 small prints and 3-4 signature pages from their work. Each is signed and numbered and are a great choice for those who like collecting photography!

Photographer Richard Mack has brought the vistas and majesty of the Lewis & Clark Trail to life in a magnificent set of 248 color photographs. Richard spent two years visiting key locations along the Lewis & Clark Trail  –  by plane, auto, and on foot  –

In addition, my book Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes is now being reprinted as we will soon be out of stock if we don’t! Part of this process is deciding if there should be any changes before you roll the presses. In this case we had to update the signature page with the updated info, change a Photoshop error on one of the images, and update the current Quiet Light Publishing book list to the final page in the book. We also added four of the best book awards, out of the dozen the book won, to the back of the dust jacket. The book went on press yesterday.

We also released the Quiet Light Workshop schedule for 2013 and updated some of those trips. More on all of that later. Check our websites for the updates. And speaking of websites both the Quiet Light Publishing ( www.quietlightpublishing.com ) and Richard Mack Photography (www.mackphoto.com) websites have been updated with new images and projects!

Award winning photographer Richard Mack is photographing all five of the Great Lakes which hold 20% of the worlds fressh water and 95% of North America's fresh water. This project is an ongoing one which will lead to a book published by Quiet Light Publis

So the year starts off with a bang and next month will be the same as I get back to working on my next book Twenty/Ninety-Five part of the Great Lakes Project (www.quietlightpublishing.com/GLP.php) with a trip to Lake Superior to capture images of the ice and snow. This is a shortened trip from the one I was supposed to make the first three weeks of March. Will feel great to get back to this project! Stay tuned for updates!

Peace,

Richard

 

High ISO and Perspective – Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

Elk, Great Smoky Mountains NP
Elk, Great Smoky Mountains, NP

I recently read an article by George Lepp in Outdoor Photographer which reminded me of a few things I talk about in the Quiet Light Workshops. With the advent of the digital world and especially today’s cameras with high ISO settings photographers – and especially landscape photographers – need to remember to think outside of their usual comfort zone. Today’s camera ISO’s, or as film folks think, ASA, can now go to an incredible 25,600! Remember when ASA 800 seemed on the edge? As landscape photographers we are used to working at the best possible ISO of 50-100 for the finest in detail. Yet in digital the loss with higher ISO’s is minimal. Yes, there will be some additional noise but nothing which can’t be overcome with noise reduction software.

When shooting my last book Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes I had the need to extend the ISO of my camera’s (Canon 1Ds Mark III) highest setting to 3200 when I was shooting the elk in Cataloochee. It was nearly dark when the elk began to actually begin their rut and clash their heads together. Since this is what I had come for I had no choice. I confess, as I was shooting them I was fairly sure I would need to come back, so imagine my surprise when later that night the images looked great in Photoshop!

Bluebonnets, Rookwood Ranch
Bluebonnets, Rookwood Ranch

Last week I was in Texas and once again wanted to play with expanded ISO’s. This time not because I was forced to but to see how it would help you be more creative. I was visiting my aunt and uncle’s ranch Rookwood near Brenham. Aunt Char is a great photographer herself and was excited to show me around. The wildflowers were just beginning to come out. I found that by using the higher ISO’s I could handhold when necessary to get a better angle. I also played with the depth of field so I could show workshop participants directly the differences in looks when you step out of the landscape photographer mode and use a shallow depth of field to highlight an area of an image. The Indian Paint Brush and Bluebonnets in their fields became my subjects for this study. The fact is by changing the way we work we open up endless possibilities to how we see.

Sometimes we find ourselves doing things the way we have always done them – low ISO and stop down all the way to make sure that image is sharp all the way through. And sometimes it is best to break that “rule” of landscape photography. This may seem a very simple idea, but sometimes we need to be reminded to step outside our comfort zone and see the world in a different way.

Indian Paint Brush, Rookwood Ranch
Indian Paint Brush, Rookwood Ranch

If you would like to see more images from Texas you can use this link: www.mackphoto.com/blog/Texas/    

To see the Great Smoky Mountains National Park book go to www.quietlightpublishing.com

If you would like more information on my workshops please visit www.quietlightworkshops.com

Go on and get out of your zone! Experiment!

Peace,

Richard

Nature & Landscape Photography Workshops Announced!

Stream, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Today we announced the Quiet Light Nature Photography Workshops in the Quiet Light eNewsletter! Here’s the announcement. (To see the entire eNewsletter go to www.quietlightpublishing.com/newsletters/Aug2008.html)

Quiet Light Publishing and Richard Mack Photography have teamed up to form the Quiet Light Workshops. These are nature photography workshops for photographers of all levels. Quiet Light Photography Workshops offer people interested in nature and landscape photography the ability to hone their skills in the digital world of photography today. Each workshop will enable you to expand your skills with your camera, teaching or enhancing your knowledge of composition, color balances, and color calibration to get consistent work results, as well as downloading your images into the computer and optimizing them in Photoshop. Not only do we focus on improving the images you create, but we aim to engage your imagination and expand your appreciation of the natural world. Our workshops are designed to take you to some of the best landscapes the lens can see!

Join professional photographer Richard Mack as he leads you through some of his favorite places in nature – teaching and sharing with you many of the important techniques that have made him a leading nature photographer. Richard has shot on assignments in all 50 states and many countries. His portfolio includes works in both color and black & white from many National Parks, National Forests, and wilderness areas. His work has been exhibited widely in galleries throughout the United States. He has won numerous awards including twice being honored by the International Photography Awards for his nature images. His book The Lewis & Clark Trail American Landscapes has won over a dozen major photography, book and design awards.

 

These are hands-on, in the field workshops with Richard. You will be in surroundings that get your creative juices flowing and will serve as a wonderful photographic classroom. At the end of the day, images will be reviewed and discussed as a group. Techniques will be shared and Richard will work with each of you to improve upon what you’ve shot. The take-away from this workshop will be a better knowledge of how to make your equipment work to the best of its ability, a new understanding of composition, lighting, filters, etc. and a plethora of tips to make your images get the “wow” response.

Not only do you receive the expertise of Richard, but you will find him fun, easy to work with and truly passionate about photography. His goal is to give every participant the most rewarding photographic and learning experience possible. So, why not come along and set your own goal – take home some stunning photographs!

Workshop Schedule

Starved Rock State Park, Illinois
September 28-29, 2008

Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Tennessee & North Carolina
October 19-23, 2008

Zion National Park, Utah
January 25-30, 2009

Bryce National Park, Utah
February 1-5, 2009

Saguaro National Park, Arizona
February 23-27, 2009

Yosemite National Park, California
March 22-27, 2009

Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Spring Wildflowers
April 19-23, 2009

More Coming Soon – including Alaska trips!

Email us to be put on the list to receive updates!

info@quietlightworkshops.com

For more information use the link to go to the Workshops home page!

www.quietlightworkshops.com

Hope to see you at one of our Workshops!

New Posters and Note Cards!

Sparks Lane Note Card

We are pleased to add more images from landscape photographer Richard Mack. We have added four sets of note card boxed sets to our products line along with 14 Posters from his Great Smoky Mountains collection! You can purchase all of these online at Quiet Light Publishing www.quietlightpublishing.com. Just follow the Current Offering links www.quietlightpublishing.com/shop/enter.htm. The note cards have 12 cards – two each of six different cards along with envelopes. Sets include, Cades Cove, Rivers & Streams, Wildflowers, and a Set of Black & White images. They are priced at $18.95 per set. The posters include images from all over the park and are 24”x36”. Each is a fine art poster in and of itself. They sell for $24.95.

Little River Poster

It’s been a busy few weeks here, well actually months. After returning from Patagonia we made a trip down to the Smokies to shoot more for the book project on the park – more on that in a later post – and have also been helping a friend get her new book to market, as well as getting images to our stock photo sales sites. It seems you never have enough time to work on images after you return! That is the reason you haven’t seen much from even the Utah shoots in Zion, Bryce and Capital Reef National Parks from back in January or from the Patagonia shoots. I just haven’t had time to work on them!

 

We will also be announcing soon our new schedule for our Photo Workshops and trips! Stay tuned as we finalize the locations and dates for this summer’s, falls, and winter’s workshops! And if you have any thoughts on where you would like to travel to with us let us know! These workshops will include time in the field shooting and time in the class room looking at what you’ve shot and learning some tips on Photoshop and digital imaging. Stay tuned!

 

Peace,

Richard