Roamin’ Reflection Seminars

Use this page to familiarize yourself with the Roamin' Reflection offerings. Classes offered from our MacMania 4.5 conference are also included.

The conference fee is $795 and includes all courses, course materials, five evenings of entertairnment, and the Bon Voyage Cocktail Party.

Attendees may freely switch, at any time, between all of our classes. I.e., attendees may choose any combination of full-day, half-day, or quarter-day seminars for a total of two-and-a-half (2.5) days' worth of sessions.

Learn often-overlooked secrets of digital photography on our Mediterranean cruise. In this full-day class you’ll quickly discover how to become a better photographer and tap the benefits of your digital camera. This workshop will give you the power to capture special moments and preserve precious memories — from snap shots to put in an album or oversized prints suitable for a gallery!

Learn how to:

• Tell compelling, visual stories by capturing beautiful digital photos

• Use natural light and flash the right way

• Use your camera’s menus and functions to optimize what your camera can do

• Tap the value of a digital camera’s features such as exposure compensation, scene modes, and when to shoot RAW

Part 1: Light, Camera, Action
Sunday the 23rd, 8:30am — Noon

Light is the primary subject of all of our photographs. In this illuminating, 3.5-hour session we’ll discuss the properties of light (and how it relates to space, depth, and focus) and how to use an understanding of light plus the various camera controls and features to produce quality photographs from the subtle to the dynamic.

• Understanding the properties of light

• Effective use of traditional camera controls

• Metering and exposure

• F stop/depth of field

• Shutter speed/motion control

• ISO

• Understanding digital camera menus

• Resolution

• File formats — RAW and JPEG demystified

• White balance

• Tone control

• Sharpening

• Putting it all together when shooting pictures

Part 2: Making Better Photographs
Sunday the 23rd, 1:30pm — 5pm

How do you put a little bit of soul into your pictures? Having control of your equipment is necessary, but only the first step. In Part 2 of this Workshop we will discuss how to move beyond technically well-executed documentation photography to exciting images that allow us to share, in an artful and memorable way, the experience of the moment we chose to record.

• Human vs. camera vision

• Perspective and point of view

• Camera position and lens choice

• Understanding the frame

• Organizing the visual elements

• Keep it simple and the use of negative space

• Design tools for “drawing” the photograph

• Clues to three-dimensionality

• Exploring the subject

• Photographing people

• Travel photography techniques

• Close-up photography techniques

Everything Jack teaches focuses on going beyond what was captured, to what was experienced — with an emphasis on quality, flexibility and speed, using often overlooked, but extremely elegant features of Photoshop that promise to make a huge difference in your ability to consistently achieve the “Wow Factor.”

The experienced user knows there are a million tools in Photoshop to adjust your images for maximum impact, but which ones work best, work fastest, and are most “photographer friendly”? This session will focus on real-world, but often hidden, methods of creating great work, on time and on budget — and enjoying every minute of it. In this class you will learn all sorts of workflow-enhancing techniques to increase your productivity as well as valuable adjustment techniques to optimize your images including: color management basics, a thousand-and-one things that you can do in the new Adobe Bridge, phenomenal new Camera Raw adjusting techniques, all about scaling, sharpening and resolution, how to create nondestructive dodge and burn layers, advanced grayscale conversions, eyedropper color and tone correcting, and more!

• Which editing tools are best to use when fixing images — and which ones to avoid

• Quick tone and color adjustments that leave your original image intact

• How to quickly fix under- and over-exposed images using Photoshop features like Shadow/ Highlight

• Creating nondestructive, fast, and flexible repair layers for fixing, dodging and burning, and color correcting

• Simplified levels, curves, and sharpening techniques

• Advanced grayscale conversions using Channel Mixer

• Sepia and other toning effects