Lost Aussie on the loose

A Little Photo Magic

I'm working behind the scenes on some new Online Class material which I hope to have ready for offering in the next day or so.

I'm excited as it's a step or two above just adding a texture or two on an image and calling it pretty!

There's nothing like gaining a better understanding of your software, regardless of the tutorial and being able to take your own images to the next level with a little imagination and know how!

I'm also going to be offering some quick out of the box tutorials for bloggers and photo enthusiasts and some other good stuff which I am not yet ready to "talk" about!

So, stay tuned!

And the Winners Are....

Drum roll please...

Due to the lovely and overwhelming response to my "pay it forward" Giveaway - I decided to give TWO lucky commenters a place in the next Digital Magic Class.

Random numberly generated winners are:

Cathy Sylvester and John Dearden.

I will be sending you both an email - Congratulations and a very big thank you to everyone who participated in the draw.

As a thank you to all of you who participated in the draw I will extend the "Early Bird" pricing of the class for another couple of days so that you can sign up at the discounted rate.

There are not too many spots left in the Class - so don't delay!

An Online Jewelry Class

My dear friend and long time Art Pal, Deryn Mentock is debuting the first of her solo online jewlery class workshops and I am so excited to be able to play "student" instead of teacher for a while.

Fiddling with wire and beads has been a long time passion of mine - but well, what with travel and many other "life" moments it's hard to get to take a workshop.

Deryn has come up with my perfect solution - an online event that will offer me the opportunity to refresh some old skills and build upon some new.

I'm excited and if jewelry making is your thing, I know you will be too....

Check out Deryn's workshop here....

In This House

Surprisingly enough, this little house still serves as "home" to a family of birds all year round, including the winter.  It's one of THOSE things that has been carted around over 4 household moves and seems to have weathered all manner of climate changes and provides good shelter for those who call it home.

I wish I could offer it's inhabitants some measure of respite from the Winter.  Even with 3 furnaces, I am struggling to keep a house warm with temps outside in the low 4F department - thanks to polar winds that are whipping around the trees and undermining even the best efforts that double glazing can manage.  Brrrrrrrrrrrrr..............

As my current Online Class draws to a close I am blessed with a little more creative time on my hands.
I've fired up my "Big Bertha" (printer) and been able to implement some of my newfound "printer profile" strategies
AND
after an abortive Photography Class on Monday, managed to experiment with my camera set in full Manual mode this afternoon - who would have thought?

My best learning for the week so far though has been:
1: If tripods are required for Photo Class, don't leave the hotshoe camera attachment sitting on the workbench in the basement!!
2: If you plan on taking pictures in "said" class, please make sure to INSERT the darned CF card into the camera BEFORE you leave home.  Remote control does not work THAT well!
(and before you say Spare .... it was in another camera!)

Ah well, live and learn ...... if I was perfect, I'd be boring :-)

Catching Up

My printing workshop yesterday was fantastic.  I learned lots about color, paper and printer profiling.  Probably a big yawn to most people but it really floated my boat!

When it comes to using my big wide format printer I have always just flown by the seat of my pants and tweaked my results from experience.  Now I know how to "tweak" before hand and learned all sorts of interesting menu commands that live inside the interface and that I never knew were there.  All good!

Tomorrow I am going to fire up "Big Bertha" and give her a good work out!  A nice thing about the workshop too, was that I came home with a ton of freebie fine art and inkjet papers thanks to Innova, Hahnemuehle and Museo.

During the class there was the obligatory meet and greet bit where you told about who you were, what you did etc.  I think I flummoxed the teacher and other students when I told them about putting pieces of my old leather couch through my printer.
Needless to say the guy did not have a Profile for printing on that stuff!  He He!

I Am Going Out Tomorrow

I am going to grab a little "ME" time tomorrow and head to Calumet Photographic in NYC to attend a workshop on BIG printing.

It will be nice to get my derriere out of the computer chair for a bit.  I won't really mind if it's raining or snowing either.

Stolen Moments

When I am teaching my Online Photoshop Class there are not too many moments for creating simply just for pleasure.  I am totally focused, producing 10 - 12 videos per week in CS and PSE formats with Win and Mac instructions, monitoring the class site, viewing the student's work and answering questions for about 18hrs a day.

Why would I do that? Well because it's a standard that I have set for myself. 

Having seen how many online photoshop classes that are offered that fall short of student's expectations or where they are supposed to read "supplemental" instructions to make stuff work with their Operating System or Version of the program, I decided that I wanted to do it differently.

Admittedly it does not leave much time for "life" while I conduct a class, but DH is very good a making Stir Fry dinners and the cats have all realised that when I am "teaching" my lap is not so comfy!

Having said that, ONCE a  WEEK , after class files are posted for the upcoming week, there is about a 12 hour window where I don't have to be "en pointe" and can take a little time to make some of my own magic.

Ergo "Paper Angel".  She is the product of this week's "stolen moment"....

I must say though, to all my Students, a big Thank You!  I love seeing you blossom and grow in my Digital World!

 

A Study in White (Balance)

Despite the fact that I am the humble owner of several rather nice cameras, what I know about how to use them in anything but Auto mode could easily be written on a very small scrap of paper.

With the advent of my new Canon 5D MkII into the family I decided that it was high time I learned to do a little more than point and shoot.  To that end I signed up to take a class a the local Art League and am into week 2 of the course.

It's turning out to be an interesting adventure.  The teacher is, primarily, very good at marketing her own camera shop.  Thankfully she also knows where all the bells and buttons are on each person's camera.  She says she teaches Photoshop classes, but I have caught her out in a number of small "porkie pies" on that subject and so far have restrained myself from pointing out that what she is saying is not "quite correct" - ahem!

She also wants us to email her our weekly images so that she can check them out and has stressed that we cannot modify the images - and, according to her, she will know if we do as she can see if the metadata has been changed.  Little does she know that you CAN strip the metadata from an image (and many professional photographers do just that - especially when sending out proofs).
I think that was "porkie pie #44".

Anyway, I have successfully managed to shoot these with varying degrees of aperture setting, shutter speed and altered the ISO here and there, but still, old habits die hard and I have resorted to changing the White Balance in Camera Raw and applying the odd Levels Adjustment in Photoshop.

So, "Shoot me" - heck, I can live in BOTH worlds :-)

AWOL - Teaching

I rather feel that the poor blog is being neglected lately .... but what can I say? I am away teaching my new Journal Magic Class and busy producing videos and class material.

I'm definitely NOT made for Hollywood as I find producing and editing videos to be akin to having my teeth pulled!  Nevertheless, I am a perfectionist and for each 10 minute segment there is 2 hours of editing work that goes along with it and considering each week I am making 10 to 12 videos, one set for CS users and another complete set for PSE users - I have my work cut out for me.

It would probably be fun to share one of the "pre" videos sometime - one with all the horrendous out-takes included where you have stomping husbands, cats snoring on your lap or the telephone and doorbell tinkling in the background? Perhaps not!

Anyway, this is one of "my" journal pages which includes some digi scrap, various clipped masks of my own stuff and bits of ephemera and altered photos.

I am thrilled with all the wonderful images the students are creating.  Here are a few that you can find out and about in Google Land:
Miles Beyond The Moon
Miz Carla
Stamping Art

I daresay you can find a few more if you hunt them down on Flickr!

As for now, I am off to bed.  There is MORE snow falling and I daresay I will need the energy for shovelling when I wake up!

 

Did You Start Without Me?

What can I say? ... but Happy New Year!  Eversince arriving home in the wee small hours of Jan 1st I have been hard at work getting ready for my next online class which starts next week! - I looked up this afternoon and realised that it was January 4th already! Wow!

Well, I hope you are all off to a fine start!  I daresay I will back in the land of the living shortly.

In the meantime, you can pop over to CARLA's blog where she is having a fabulous GIVEAWAY of two seats in my Journal Magic Class - as a little New Year Treat and a bit of Pay It Forward!

Don't tarry, she will draw the winners on the 8th of January if I am not mistaken!!

ps - You can only enter the GIVEAWAY via Carla's Blog - not here.