Featured Professional: Craig Blacklock

This week's featured professional photographer is Craig Blacklock.


















Blacklock's photography is a bit of a departure for me, as he focuses most of his work on Lake Superior and the area, not the west or desert southwest. His images can be divided into at least three categories: Lake Superior shots, horizons, and intimate nature scenes. His intimate nature scenes are what I enjoy the most about his work, though many of his Lake Superior shots do an amazing job of communicating the power of the lake.

I enjoy his intimate scenes, or wilderness portraits as I think of them, quite a bit. They give us a glimpse into the inner nature of the natural world, just as a good human portrait gives us a glimpse into their nature. They show us more about the character of the natural world.

As mentioned above, Blacklock also has a series, and even a book, of photographs devoted solely to horizons. It is an interesting subject and surprising how many unique photos you can get of the horizon.














































Website: www.blacklockgallery.com

All images ©Craig Blacklock; used with permission.

Ansel Adams in Color

I ran across this book at Barnes and Noble the other day and spent some time looking at it. I am very impressed. I own a couple of Ansel Adams books and am a huge fan of his images. I would expect that there isn't a nature photographer out there who can't trace his interest in nature photography back to Adams in some way. He did amazing things for photography and conservation. It is especially nice to see color images that he made, as most of us have never seen them and think of him only as a b&w photographer. I will be adding this book to my collection soon.

I am surprised at the controversy over the book being ginned up by some about whether the book should have been published or not (see the comments on the Amazon page to get an idea). Who are these self appointed gatekeepers of Adams' legacy anyway? Apparently it was Adams' wishes to have none of his color photographs published, as he didn't feel they best represented his vision. The problem is, is that we are getting that information secondhand; maybe he said it, maybe he didn't. Either way, the photos give us a look at another facet of Adams. It can only be for our good to see these images. Certainly, as one comment I read noted, these aren't his finest photos. Who cares? They are still great shots, better than I take. And they help me to learn a little more about Adams' and his creative vision, if only to tell me what his vision wasn't. I have a hard time believing that the art world would be in an outrage if a new Van Gogh painting were discovered, one that was supposedly to remain private.

Good Article

I just ran across this article at Outdoor Photographer's website. This guy has some neat images. Check it out.

Lynda.com

I know that I posted about this a few weeks back, but I want to give another plug to Lynda.com for their PS tutorials. I just finished a 12 video series on sharpening in CS4 and was amazed how much information was contained in the tutorials. I started another series on color management a week ago and have only been able to get through about half of the 40+ videos in the series. That's how these courses and video series are--very thorough. The information is incredibly in depth and dives into the mechanics of how each tool and feature works, which is important to understand, I think, if you want to become a capable PS user. It covers all editions of PS back to 6. And, despite the stern vibes the sideburned librarian is shooting off, the instructors are all entertaining to listen to. This site is the go to site for PS info.

If you don't have access to it through school, work, or whatever, I think it is worth the $25 a month if you are serious about getting better at PS.

Featured Professional: David Whitten

The latest addition to the Featured Professional series is Oregon based photographer David Whitten. I just recently discovered Whitten's photography and know very little about him. I do know that we share the same passion for the western US, a passion that is evident in his photos. I found his site while searching the internet for photos of one of my favorite places: Utah's Uinta Mountains. Whitten has an entire series dedicated to the range, which was enough to get me interested in his work. I have posted a few of his photos below. You can find a link to the site and more photos below.










Sunrise, Wonder Lake and Mt. McKinley, Denali National Park, Alaska














Huckleberry Creek, Willamette National Forest, near Oakridge, Oregon














Beargrass, near Blair Lake, Willamette National Forest, Oregon

Website: www.davidwhittenphoto.com

All images ©David Whitten; used with permission.

Photoshop Tutorials

Things are busy in school, so I haven't been able to blog for awhile. Despite taking all of my free time, I do enjoy school and occasionally I find something neat that I can use for photograhy. For instance, I was perusing the school website where you can download various free software programs and found a link to a PS tutorial website that I had never seen before. It is called Lynda.com and has over 42,000 instructional videos, 670 courses, and over 200 full time expert instructors. Just to be clear, the site has tutorials for all sorts of applications, not just PS. So, some of those 42,000 tutorials are for Illustrator, Aperture, MS Office, etc.

The downside: it isn't free. It costs around $25 per month to use the tutorials, which is a bummer. But, if you are serious about getting better and want to learn at your own pace, then this might not be a bad idea. The tutorials are serious stuff, not just showing you how to do one thing, but actually getting you inside the feature and teaching you the mechanics of it. It is a bit expensive, but is something to consider.