Digital Camera Workshop (4 days)
Speaker(s): Kevin Gilbert and Rob Galbraith

The conference fee is $695 and includes all courses, course materials, and the Bon Voyage Cocktail Party.

What better way to become a better photographer and learn the ins and outs of digital photography than on a Caribbean cruise? Digital photography is an exciting new way to capture special moments and preserve precious memories, but it also presents its own set of new techniques and terminology. Let us help demystify digital for you in a course designed for those both relatively new to digital photography as well as those that have been using a digital camera for over a year.

Bring your curiosity, your interest, and your desire to get great results -- we'll do the rest. We'll explain the terms and the key concepts, and quickly get to the heart of the matter: how you can capture great pictures with your digital camera.

Our digital photography Workshop will also take you to the computer side of digital to show you how to streamline the process of getting your images from the camera to the computer and how to make them even better once they're there. You'll learn how to prepare the pictures for printing, for sending via e-mail, or posting to a website.

But this isn't just for the technically minded. A cruise is the perfect opportunity to marry classroom teaching with hands-on use, as you'll have a chance every day to make new pictures in beautiful locations and learn new techniques. We'll help you take your photography to the next level.

This course will show you how to:

• make the digital experience fun and easy.

• capture great digital photos.

• use your camera's menus and functions to determine what your camera's options are.

• get the most out of a digital camera's features such as exposure compensation, scene modes, and white balance.

• get the images from the memory card to the computer -- advantages and disadvantages of each method will be discussed.

• safely organize and save your images.

• work through the "ins and outs" of image browsers; what they should do, how to make them work for you and add value to your images.

• edit your images, improving your photos afterward, through use of different editing software. Crop, resize, edit/manipulate, sharpen and share your digital pictures, repairing photo issues such as such as red-eye, skin problems, and cleaning up old photos.

• adjust resolution and how to prepare images for email, web, or printing.

• email your images to friends and family.

• create online albums and e-cards.

• make great prints of your favorite photos, choosing the right printers, inks, and paper.

• make those choices work for you to create beautiful prints.

• make your life easier with a variety of hardware and software solutions.

Our classroom sessions range from short meetings to review everyone's photos to day-long seminars covering all aspects of digital photography. All week we'll take breaks to shoot in and around the ship (and on deck); we'll then reconvene in our meeting room for group reviews of images shot so ways to improve them both through photographic technique and the computer can be explored. Not only is it a great way to share and learn from others, but it's a chance to explore (i.e., borrow) some of the good ideas others have discovered!

The week of classes and sessions
will break out as follows:

Day One, Sunday, January 23
Class all day, no port of call:

The first full class day is devoted to learning the various features and options the digital camera offers to let you be more creative and capable with your photography. We'll cover topics like white balance, exposure compensation, metering modes, proper use of flash, composition, lighting and other subjects. We'll keep the day active by breaking up the classroom material with hands-on shooting activities to put into practice what we're teaching. This is a great way to learn not only how to get the most from your camera, but to learn new creative techniques as well.

Throughout the day, we'll convene on deck to take scenic pictures and vistas.

Day Two, Wednesday, January 26
Class from 6pm to 8pm;
(Depart from St. Maarten at 6pm):

For those who want to really dive into digital output, we'll save color management for this optional advanced session. If you've ever wondered why you can't get consistent output from your computer to a printer, or even from computer to computer (images look different on the web?), this is the class for you. Not for the faint of heart!

Day Three, Thursday, January 27
Class all day, no port of call:

The day begins with a General Session including a group discussion, Q&A, and looking at images, on the big screen from the trip so far. This session will put the finishing touches on the first day's class, to make sure you're ready to hit the shore and make better photos. This "give and take" portion will also let us go further into ideas and techniques we explored the first day.

The second portion of our day is where we totally geek-out with our laptops, showing you how to make the digital workflow all flow and less work. We'll demonstrate various ways to get your photos into your computer, take advantage of automation features to make that easier, and add features like batch captioning and re-naming of files. Next step is to use a browser program to view the photos, and there are versions and features that are key to an easy experience. From there we'll move into editing images with popular programs like Adobe Elements and Photoshop, learning the right way to correct for exposure, change color, fix red-eye and other fixes for our images. Have you ever created a panorama? It's easy and fun, and we'll show you how. The last section will deal with all aspects of output, whether sending via email, online ordering, printing yourself, or prepping images for web use. We'll even tackle the thorny issue of sharpening, both the why and how-to. And in the printing section we'll go over the various choices in ink-jet printers, ink and paper, to make sense out of the many choices. The day ends with a discussion of various smart options for long-term storage and indexing/archiving of your photos.

Throughout the day, we'll convene in public meeting places and on deck to take pictures of the splendid Queen Mary 2.

Day Four, Friday, January 28
Class all day, no port of call:

Putting it all together ... By now, you're taking great shots, with an eye towards composition and color. You're making the most of the features your digital cameras have. You're even taking artistic photos of people, places, and things. Throughout this last day we'll review everyone's best shots from the week and discuss ways they might have been even better. Then we'll bring some of them into editing software to show how to use what we've learned to make good images great photos.

By the end you should be comfortable taking your photography to the next level through a combination of the digital camera's features, new creative skills, and enhancement through the computer. Should any of the attendees, by consensus vote, produce near-professional results, prizes will be handed out in a variety of categories.