Every year Gulf Photo Plus – the premier photography training company in Dubai and the Middle East – runs two major international events: one in March, the other in November. I've been lucky enough to be an instructor at every one since 2007 and have run workshops on various aspects of post-production (e.g. Creating Dramatic Images, Understanding the Curves tool, and Enhancing Portraits), a Landscape Photography workshop on the shooting and post-production of desert and urban landscapes, how to shoot the architecture of Dubai, a crash course in HDR photography, and a whole range of other workshops and seminars.
The November 'FotoWeekend' events are relatively small scale – around four of five instructors – but the March event brings together a much bigger group. This year there were 13 of us – me, Zack Arias, David Burnett, Greg Heisler, David Hobby, Chris Hurtt, Bobbi Lane, Joe McNally, Louis Pang, Martin Prihoda, Claire Rosen, Steve Simon and David Tejada – and, as always, it was a delight to meet up with those I know well and a pleasure to meet those who were attending GPP for the first time.
I could spend a long time writing nice things about GPP, including how well it's run by Mohamed and Hala and the rest of the GPP team, and could spend an equal amount of time writing about how much I enjoy taking part, how great it is to work with capable and enthusiastic students, and how much I enjoy taking photographs in and around Dubai ... but I won't, at least not now, because what I want to talk about in this post is one specific aspect of the March event: the shoot-out.
Read on to find out why ...
If you're a subscriber to our photography and post-production tutorials you'll be familiar with our Critique Slot Screencasts. These are critiques of our subscribers' images, normally about an hour long, and split into two sections. In the first part I work through and critique the edit supplied by one of our subscribers – explaining the changes that were made, offering alternative solutions, and so on – while in the second I re-edit the image from the original RAW file.
For this image, supplied by Doug Stroud, the processing centred around Doug's creative aims. Specifically, whether it was possible to create an increased tension between the foreground and background: the happy/innocent children at play, offset against a moody and ominous background.
If you'd be interested in taking a look at a low-res version (730px wide rather than 1280px), and finding out how I would process this image, read on …
Does the world need another photography blog? Probably not, but I'm going to create one anyway. Read on to find out why …
Based in the US, Bobbi Lane is a commercial photographer who shares her many years of professional experience in her hands-on portrait lighting workshops. Bobbi's workshops are truly inspirational.
If you want to learn how to master your flash, check out Zack's OneLight workshop & DVD. If Zack can't teach you how to use your flash, nobody can.
Strobist, run by David Hobby (lighting guru extraordinaire), is all about learning how to use off-camera flash with your DSLR.
