Are you ready for today’s ride into the Mind of Vanelli? I hope so cause here we go!!

Vanelli is having trouble finding his notes on Ben Willmore’s class on “Mastering the New Adjustment and Masking Panels” and Jack Davis’s class “Lightroom 2 Enhancement Effects with Presets”. Jack Davis is the preset king… he has a preset for everything! His philosphy is that anything you do in Photoshop, create a preset so that you can go back and immediately do the same effect on any other photo. During the class, Jack gave away hundreds of his own presets to conference attendees. He tells everyone to take his presets, adjust them to fit your own needs, and then save them as a new preset. Then jokingly he added that you could them sell them on eBay as your own. We all know Ben Willmore as a guru when it comes to photography. But he has really advanced his photography in recent times in his ability to capture an image and the wide range of colors in a scene.

Vanelli’s last class of the day was with Vincent Versace on sharpening a blured photo. Versace went through a very intesive action that he made that brings back that sharpness. In order to explain what all he did you would have to talk to him directly as it was that intensive. But here is the theory to give you a general idea… As usual you follow the same process as other photos… get rid of the noise first, then do all your enhancement techniques, and then run the unsharp mask at the very end before you save the file. High Pass filter and set that layer to soft light. He would do this multiple times to build up the sharpening. The amount of sharpening that he does all depends on how he is going to print or display the image.

A few quotes from Versace that Vanelli really likes… “Don’t confuse workflow for habits.” and “Think globally; global to granular.“

Vanelli apologizes to everyone for losing his notes for those two classes but said he is going to find them and provide more information on those classes soon.

I want to take a second to throw my own words in here to quickly discuss the two quotes that Vanelli picked up from Versace. If you are familiar with what a workflow is, it is basically the step-by-step process you follow when processing an image. When you constant follow the same procedure it gets habit forming and you miss out on taking advange of new techniques or processes that could benefit what you are doing. For example, I used to have one workflow. I used it for everything; photoshoots with models, HDR landscapes, etc. One day I realized that I could be saving a ton of time in Lightroom 2 by organizing my HDR bracketed images in a different way than my portrait work with models. So do not form a habit around your workflow. Be aware of what you are doing and read up on what the pro’s are doing. If you read something good, adopt it into your workflow. If you find that you are doing something better than the pro’s, write a blog on it or post it as a comment on other blogs! The key is that your workflow is YOUR workflow… do what works best for you… But be careful not to form a habit around it and not adopt better techniques.

As for the second quote, I think the idea there is to start on an image zoomed out looking at the image as a whole. Do whatever adjustments you think are needed to the image as a whole. Then start looking at smaller parts of the image and processing just those areas using layers, adjustments, and masking. Don’t get me wrong… you do need to look at the image as a whole when adjusting each area to make sure that your composition isn’t negatively affected by local changes. I would be very interested in hearing more about this from Vanelli or Versace to get a clear picture of exactly what Versache is recommending.

I should have the Day 2 dispatches sometime today and will get them posted shortly after I receive them. I know yesterday was a big day for Vanelli with Midnight Madness and all. I’ve only heard bits and peices so far but I heard it was a riot. Stay tuned!!

One of the questions that Moose was asked a lot by attendees is what his favorite lens is. He takes a lot of different lens out with him and one thing Vanelli noticed is that there are a lot of fixed lens in the bag. But he always takes a wide angel and a fish eye lens with him as well.

On the photo safari itself Vanelli said that he stood right next to Moose and used Moose’s camera with all the same settings but his photos were not anything like the ones Moose was taking. Moose just has a great eye for composition and capturing that moment. Another thing to note is that Moose does not crop his photos at all. What you see composition wise is what came out of the camera from the exposure he took. When using a zoom lens he said to move forward or back; don’t use the zoom!

Some more good information from Moose… he doesn’t use a flash on most animals, only birds. Using a flash with birds will bring out their color. Another thing to think about is that when an animal gets wet, a bear for example, there will be a lot of spectral highlights because of the light reflection off of the water.

He also picked up a few tips on composition from Moose… the minds eye goes to the whitest and brightest point. There is also a strong tendancy to start at the top of an image and go down. So those are two things to think about when composing a scene. You want to lead the viewer through your composition instead of having their eyes wandering around aimlessly. Exposure and light produces emotion, mood, and passion. Make sure that your composition tells a story so include or excluse various things to make sure you are telling the story that you want to tell. He also looks for sharpness and depth of field in his compositions.

With Joe McNally, the master of light, they were using a lot of diffusers and reflectors in his shooting. The distance of the lights from the subject depends on how much you want the light to spread. Of course using a diffuser and reflector will change this variable as well.

One killer thing to think about that Vanelli picked up from McNally is this… when you change the EV setting in your camera it is a global change. So everything is effected by it. When you change the EV on your flash, it is a local change. So if you use a light meter and exposure for the background and then change the EV in your camera, suddenly your exposure on the background is going to be off. To shoot with a model you shoot your background first and get the exposure right using the camera settings. Changing the EV on your camera will help to saturate the colors in the background scene. Then you bring your model in and use the EV on the flash units to change the power to get the proper exposure of the model.

So there you have it… Vanelli’s experience and knowledge that he picked up from the NAPP Photo Safari pre-conference work shop. And, of course, right as I finish typing this up Vanelli sends me a photo he took from his Black Berry of him and Ben Willmore hanging out. Apparently Ben’s question to me is “Where are you??” My answer… “Sitting at home typing up Vanelli’s notes!”. Photography assistants never get the glory. *Sigh*

Vanelli got an unbelivable opportunity to review Sandy Foster’s portfolio today. She is an incredible street photographer and he went through her photos from Paris and China. He loves how she is able to capture the moment with people. She likes to observe from a distance and capture that special shot from outside of the event. What he learned from her is patience… define your scene and wait and let the scene unfold before your lens. His favorite shot is of a Chinease man walking down the street with an umbrella. She said she had to run down the street to get in position. He had his head down the whole time but then lifted his head at the last second and she nailed the shot.

After that Vanelli and the gang went to Debby Krim’s Art Gallery. Her floral arrangement works are amazing and she is well known throughout Boston for her passion of photography and her use of natural light and light modifies. Many of her photos can be seen in local stores. She has built a very good reputation on her use of color in her compositions. He really enjoyed spending time walking around the gallery and seeing everything that she had on display.

Make sure you check out both of their websites to see all they have to offer.

I know that Vanelli spent the rest of the afternoon and evening doing the pre-conferance photography workshop with Joe McNally and Moose Peterson. I have not heard from him yet about what he learned with them which means he is either still out shooting or is still too excited about all the things he learned to give me a call. So I will make sure to virtually beat the information out of him tomorrow when he calls and get that posted at the beginning of tomorrows update. So make sure to check back in tomorrow for the update so we can all continue to live vicariously through Vanelli for the next few days!

Edit: This was actually day -1 and not day 0.