Digital Camera Workshop 2.0 2nd Field Trip Notes

I think this field trip was a great success to the Edith Moore Santuary. I had never been and with the weather partly cloudy, we had a great time with Mark showing us all how to take better outside portaits and children's pictures using shade, direct light and reflectors. We had a great crowd and I am sure a number of wonderful pictures resulted.

I will post a few of the photojournalistic pictures I took to capture us all having a great time.

I know that Mark and I received a great number of question from lighting to how to use a certain part of the camera.

One of the ladies attending asked me about converting to black and white. She uses Photoshop Elements and I recommended the book by Scott Kelby that I saw Mark Depew using titled Photoshop Elements for Digital Photographers. I have the book by Scott Kelby for the full Photoshop and it is wonderful how he simply tells you how to set things and get it done. You can always tweak your results, but sometimes getting 90% there is the biggest battle and he can get you there through this book if you need the help.

Regarding black and white, I plan to post a photo I took on this latest field trip, having converted it to black and white with Photoshop Elements, then tell you exactly what I did, settings and all. That way, you can duplicate this on one of your photos, then tweak to your taste. If you don't use Photoshop Elements, then use your software program of choice. They may not have some of the tools that Photoshop Elements has, but you can certainly get your photo into black and white for starters.

One thing to remember, I suggest you do not use the black and white mode in your cameras to get black and white photos. The problem is that if you ever want that photo in color, you cannot get the color information because your camera doesn't record the color information for the photo when you are in black and white mode. Therefore, I believe that you should always shoot in color (you probably do this already) and then convert to black and white in software. You can have the color and black and white version anytime. You never know when a photo may be the "one" and you cannot get color when it was never there.

Stay tuned...