Thursday & Friday, Oct 23 - 24, 2008

Portraits By Commission & Mastering the Digital Portrait

Instructor: Edda Taylor and Sandra Mendez

Participants in the 2-day two-part workshop will attend sessions in both “Portraits by Commission” with Edda Taylor and “Mastering the Digital Portrait” with Sandra Mendez.

Portraits by Commission - Edda Taylor

This portion of the workshop offers innovative and creative ways to pose and photograph adults, families, seniors and children. Participants will explore a variety of techniques in styling, lighting and posing used in commercial fashion and beauty photography, which also lend themselves directly to portraiture. Edda Taylor advocates “Essential portraiture,” a highly personal and intimate approach, in which both photographer and subject are active participants in making the photograph. Also called “body and soul,” the camera (body) is used to portray the unique essence of the subject (soul). While emphasis is placed on techniques for successfully directing the subject, the workshop’s focus is equally placed on achieving artistic sensitivity and creativity through exploring fresh ways of seeing the portrait photograph. The workshop will conclude with a discussion of advertising and selling this innovative style of portraiture.

Mastering The Digital Portrait – Sandra Mendez

This portion of the workshop is designed for portrait photographers who wish to enhance their photographs and produce a perfect print. Participants will learn what to look for in creating an image that is both technically strong and aesthetically interesting. The workshop will cover the process of capturing an image in RAW format, taking it to the digital darkroom for adjustment and image manipulation with Adobe Photoshop, followed by fine-tuning for output. This includes working with global and selective adjustments, layers, channels, color adjustments, contrast, sharpening, enhancing and retouching. The valuable information gained through this workshop are skills that will benefit you and please your clients. There will be adequate lab time to work on personal images along with hands-on instruction.

Prerequisite: Understanding of basic operations in Photoshop