Review of the Focus In Paradise Workshop in Monterey,CA Asilomar Conference Grounds - August-2012

On the weekend of August 18 & 19, we held our most recent photography workshop along the beautiful central coast of California.  The Asilomar Conference Grounds and State Beach at the tip of the Monterey Peninsula in Pacific Grove, California was our venue.


Many of the Asilomar buildings, on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, were designed by the renown architect Julia Morgan and provided an outstanding environment for practicing our classroom learning during the workshop.  Asilomar has a number of vintage Craftsman style structures combining Carmel stone, hand-hewed beams, and ornate redwood trim.

Outstanding Architecture of Merrill Hall at Asilomar 

Merrill Hall is an outstanding example of the 1920's & 1930's Arts & Crafts architecture the students were able to photograph. The challenge in this image on the left is the large variation in required depth-of-field between the base foundation and the half-round windows near the roof-line.  This signature structure on Asilomar is more than 80 years old but has been well maintained as seen in the detail of this image.

Multiple light sources illuminated the
Hearst Social Hall billiards table 

After mastering all of the controls on the students' cameras during the morning classroom session, we practiced depth-of-field adjustments while photographing the many leading lines and architecture of Asilomar's trails and historic buildings.  One complex capture inside the Hearst Social Hall had multiple light sources (vintage incandescent bulbs lighting from above and exterior sunlight through the craftsman windows) creating interesting shadows on the billiards table.  We were later able to manage these competing lighting colors during our session on post-processing to produce the image on the right.  Color noise originating from the low light conditions was also also optimized to produce this warmly illuminated image.

With an afternoon study of the use of the camera's histogram features, we were ready for the sunset shoot from Asilomar Beach on Saturday evening.  It looked as though we would have great color before and after the sun went down, but the fog rolled-in just as the sun set eliminating the potential for post-sunset color.  However, the workshop students were setup well before the color disappeared and captured some very brilliant images.

Golden Sunset on Asilomar Beach

Red Sunset on Asilomar Beach

The two images above were taken within a few minutes of each other.  The moving clouds created a single light source in the Golden Sunset and a dual light source in the Red Sunset for the reflections across the ocean surface.  The differences in color can be affected by the the timing of the capture as the sun's angle is changing rapidly at sunset and also by the methods of the post-processing workflow.  In these colorful images, we used two different software packages (Lightroom-4 & Capture NX-2) during our post-processing session on Sunday which illustrates that you can greatly affect the final image during your final editing.  Both the gold and red colors were latent in each image, waiting to be brought out as desired by the editing process.

After the sun was completely down, we continued to shoot as the sky still held some illumination and we held some hope for a post-sunset color-burst that occasionally occurs, but that was not to happen this evening.  However, the rocks off the edge of the beach could still be captured with longer exposure times.  When the color of the sky becomes uninteresting but the foreground is still intriguing, we sometimes resort to "creative" post-processing techniques to rescue the image.  Using a few simple features of Photoshop, a previously captured brilliant sky, also from Asilomar Beach, was added to an image captured on Saturday evening that had a dull-gray sky, resulting in a much more colorful picture.

A new sky was added to these rocks to produce a more interesting image 

You may question if adding a better sky produces a "legitimate" picture.  We suggest that photography is not just about documenting "what was there" but also about producing the artistic image you saw in your mind's eye when you triggered your camera's shutter.  Some of the most celebrated photographers in history spent significant time in the darkroom transforming the image captured on their film negatives into a different and more stunning picture when printed.  In today's digital photography, the darkroom is the computer using the skill of the photographer operating the post-processing software to create photographic art.

Wild Flower at Point Lobos framed by the bay 

On Sunday morning we traveled a few miles down the coast to Point Lobos State Reserve south of Carmel, a beautiful state park surrounded by ocean landscapes and coastal flowers.  It was brisk weather with the sun coming out for short periods of time before hiding again in the clouds.  During this image capture, on the right, the Headland Cove ocean bay was not enjoying much sun for illumination, so it was effectively used as a "picture frame" for this Dune Buckwheat wild flower.  This image is an excellent example of using depth-of-field control to bring the viewer's eye to a single subject, the wild flower, while putting the background out-of-focus, using it as a frame.

And when the sun does pop-out at Point Lobos, the colors of the ocean are beautiful!

Headland Cove - Point Lobos State Reserve

After a warm-up lunch in Asilomar's Hearst Social Hall, we completed the workshop with post-processing and printing of the students' images using Lightroom-4, Photoshop Elements, and Capture NX-2.  Post-processing is a subject that can consume entire multi-day workshops.  We intend to offer a full day class on editing and printing in our future workshops.

As instructors we were impressed with how quickly the students grasped the concepts of the color-of-light, image sensor ISO sensitivity, shutter speed, aperture, and exposure compensation, and how they all interact.  By the workshop closing, everyone of them was proficient in using their digital SLR cameras in a way that would enable their future photographic creativity.

Thanks to all of the students for helping make this a successful photography workshop!
We also thank Asilomar Conference Grounds for providing their outstanding facilities and environment.

Our next photography workshop takes us to Kauai in early November and then a return to the Monterey Peninsula in late February.  Look for details about our workshop schedules on this web site.
And as always if you have a photography question contact us at: FocusInParadise@gmail.com   we are always glad to help.

Happy shooting,

Focus In Paradise