And the winner is …

One of the things I like about leading workshops is proof of results. It’s truly gratifying to have “students” who are anxious to learn, get home and beam with pride over the images they captured during the workshop.

I’ll frequently conduct a friendly competition among participants and the recent flower and garden workshop at Sonnenberg Gardens is a great example of a competition that attested to the success of the workshop.

The Crawl Space Gift Shop and Art Gallery in Little York, NY sponsored the Sonnenberg Gardens Workshop and offered a $25 gift certificate for the winning image in the workshop competition.

I hope that Sylvia Nye, the Crawl Space proprietor, didn’t expect the selection of a winning image would be easy.  In fact I tried to make it a little easier by doing the first cut myself before sending her a selection of four images to choose from.

Chris Fisher's double-exposure is a winner.

The image Sylvia chose as the winner is the one shown above, captured by Chris Fisher, from nearby Homer, NY. One of the techniques we spent time on during this workshop was a little more creative than the usual straight composition. It involved making multiple exposures on a single frame. I demonstrated how to capture from two to nine images on a single frame and discussed such things as depth of field, changing focus between clicks, and decreasing exposure depending on the number of exposures.

Chris’ image is a well composed double-exposure of a red rose centered on an out-of-focus yellow rose in the background. The resulting halo affect really makes the sharply focused red rose pop. Congratulations Chris. Your gift certificate is on the way.

This Darcy Wright image in the Japanese Gardens has to be considered a runner-up. She has carefully positioned the pond lilies at the bottom of her image and framed the background to maximize the depth in this composition. Very pretty.

As I said, it’s always nice to see the results of a workshop, so I’m going to share a few other images that caught my eye. I think it’s important to note that these images were all captured by photographers with a passion for photography, but not necessarily as well equipped as they are passionate.

There were no high-end digital SLRs that a skilled professional might use and one photographer even worked with a basic compact camera. All were encouraged to keep their camera manuals close at hand, so they could take advantage of camera capabilities they were not familiar with or seldom use – like the multiple exposure technique and control of their depth-of-field.

Lori Schmidt used a shallow depth-of-field, combined with the angle of her composition to draw our eye to the pink rose in the background. The shallow depth of field softened a background that could have been very distracting and allowed a couple splashes of color in the foreground.

I always think it is important to recognize that the camera is simply a tool and even the most basic equipment can bring home outstanding images. If the photographer is willing to think a little, and be creative a lot, the images that come home will be rewarding, as these images demonstrate.

Elaine Fisher's composition with a single pond lily was captured under extremely contrasty conditions. She managed the glare by having someone shade the lily while she created this composition.

The success of these images makes me all the more anxious for the Central New York Waterfalls Workshop scheduled for September 17. If we get really bad weather our “rain date” will be Sept. 18.

For more information on the waterfalls workshop please visit my website. We already have several participants signed-up and can only accept eight registrations, so if you would like to join us, be sure to get your registration in soon. You may register on line or by giving me a call at 315-420-3513.

An obvious question at this point is, “What waterfalls will we be photographing?” I’ll beg-off answering that right now because I want to wait until we are closer to the workshop date so that I can select waterfalls that are most appealing when we expect to be there. Photographing waterfalls without water isn’t my idea of a good time.

Thanks everyone.