Our February 2010 meeting brought a packed house and featured three main attractions:
Joe Rossbach - Feb 2010
- Pete Putman’s introduction to the Canon REALis SX80 MKIID high-definition projector
- Drew Wagner’s talk on legendary (and still living) landscape photographer Michael Kenna
- Nature photographer Joe Rossbach’s talk on
Pete Putman’s Presentation on the Canon REALis SX80 HD Projector
Pete Putman is a local expert on everything related to HDTV, color management, and digital projection. He runs the website HDTVExpert.com, on which you’ll find information and reviews on all kinds of new media delivery and playback systems, including LCD and plasma HDTVs, home theater projectors, DTV set-top boxes, DVD and Blu-ray players, indoor and outdoor TV antennas and accessories, and more.
Pete’s talk at tonight’s meeting focused on the amazing Canon REALis SX80 high-definition projector, which Canon had kindly lent to Pete to share with the group for the evening. Pete kicked off his introduction of the projector with a quick recap of the various key factors that determine the accuracy of digital image displays:
- Dynamic range
- Gamma
- Colorimetry
- Contrast
- Color temp
- Resolution
The REALis SX80 projector was developed specifically with photographers in mind (it supports Adobe sRGB) and does a fantastic job of reproducing digital images in high-definition.
Pete concluded his talk by explaining that the projector would be used throughout the evening to showcase Michael Kenna’s and Joe Rossbach’s work. He also offered to come back to give us a talk on color management.
Drew Wagner’s Presentation on Photographer Michael Kenna
Drew Wagner continued his series of eye-opening talks on great photographers by delivering a presentation on Michael Kenna, our photographer of the month. Michael Kenna is the first living photographer to be featured in the series.
Kenna is an English photographer, born in 1953. He got his start in advertising photography but became famous for his black-and-white landscape photography. The majority of Kenna’s shots are taken at night using very long exposures—in some cases as long as 10 hours! This astounding fact inspired club member Mort to ask if Kenna uses a tripod. Kenna achieves these long exposures by using a tripod indeed, along with a series of neutral density filters, as well as pinhole cameras on occasion. His aim in taking these long exposures is to make “cumulative time” visible.
Kenna is represented worldwide in many galleries (including five in the USA alone) and has published more than 25 books and presented in more than 250 solo exhibitions. He is currently exhibiting at Robert Mann gallery in NYC.
Kenna shoots 2 ¼ film (120) using a Hasselblad camera. All of his prints are 7.5” square. His artistic work has focused on various specific projects, including mills, manufacturing facilities, and nuclear power plants. He also focuses on specific geographies at time, most recently on Japan and its Hokkaido region.
In addition to his artistic work, Kenna has done plenty of commercial work for clients such as British Airways, Audi, and Mercedes.
Joseph Rossbach’s Impressions of Nature
Club president Charley Callaghan introduced Joe Rossbach as a “veteran nature photographer.” Joseph Rossbach is a full time professional nature and landscape photographer, author, guide and workshop instructor. His work has appeared in many books and calendars, as well as national magazines, including PHOTO Techniques, Outdoor Photographer (Joe recently had the cover shot), Digital Camera World and more. Joseph also wrote, “The Ultimate Guide to Digital Nature Photography.”
Joseph explained that he considers himself an artist, and calls his photos “impressions of nature.” He then took us through an extensive and dazzling tour of some of his best impressions of nature. Along the way, he generously shared with us dozens of tips and secrets to getting his best shots. Below is a compilation of some of Joseph’s tips and advice based on his typical workflow:
- Work at the “edge of light” (break of day or just after dark)
- Uses neutral density filters to allow for long exposures
- Uses only layers and masks to blend images; HDR look doesn’t work best for nature work
- Typically works with only two images for blends
- Helicon software allows for unlimited depth of field (Photoshop plug-in)
- Uses polarizing filter when shooting waterfalls; brings out color, saturation; hides glare
- Works in RAW; always does contrast and saturation work; tries to mimic look of Fuji Velvia
- Histogram: always exposes as far to the right as possible w/o clipping
- Use recover feature in Photoshop to bring back shadow detail
- For waterfall shots, use shower-cap to cover lens, but allow for framing
- When shooting people or animals, always be sure to focus on the eye
- Ian Plante – another nature photographer Joe recommends
- Reflection of sky should always look darker than the sky; otherwise doesn’t look natural
- Joe referred us to his video podcasts on his website to learn how he blends exposures, as well as various other techniques