Active Light Photography Travel Portfolios


	Enhancing the drool factor Tabletop Food & Product Photography You know your visual branding is very important. Your customers get hooked by your product's looks before anything else happens. You have a huge choice of professionals promising to capture the best visuals for your product. But you know your products better than third-party specialists. It may be time to learn how to photograph them yourself for blockbuster impact. In this half-day seminar, I'll lead you through professional construction of a product photograph. We'll discuss camera angles, choosing and lighting the background, light types and direction, light modifiers, the importance of shadows and highlights, tools for fill and highlights. Then I'll help you set up a shot of your own product. Bring your own camera or use mine. Use of my camera, studio and lighting tools is included. You'll leave with a CD-ROM of your shot. Email me or call (408) 866-9405 for more information.	Inviting clients in Architectural Photography For Advertising A building invites you to enter. Its rooms feel like friends, instantly setting you at ease. This is the impact you want your property to have on customers and clients, but how do you achieve it? In this full-day seminar, I'll discuss basic composition, how to realistically represent a space, time of day influences on light, supplemental lighting for exteriors and interiors, color temperature and psychological factors in architectural photographs, when to shoot exteriors for highest drama, using unrealism to attract customers, and equipment choices for photographing architecture. Photographs will be de-constructed to show you how to enhance building features with light and composition. There will be an afternoon field trip to a public building where you'll create your own architectural pictures using the knowledge from the morning session. I'll provide flash and remote triggers for your camera, or you can bring your own light. A digital SLR camera and basic zoom lens in the range of 16-35mm is required. A 24mm or wider tilt-shift lens may also be helpful. Equipment can be rented from Keeble and Schuchat Photography in Palo Alto, though I suggest bringing gear you're familiar with. Email me or call (408) 866-9405 for more information.
Lightroom - The Essential Tool For Image Management Do you have a digital shoebox full of pictures that you navigate by feel? Let me show you how to bring order to your collection. Adobe's Lightroom 2 is one of the best ways to import and organize digital images. I'll show you how to set up a file system tailored to your subjects, transfer files from your memory card into different subject folders in Lightroom, adjust shadow, dark, light and highlight levels, saturation of individual colors, sharpen and reduce noise on one image. You can clean up pesky dust spots with spotting techniques for the digital age. Then learn to apply all those tweaks to other similar images and save yourself a ton of time. Want to lighten the sky, or selectively enhance contrast on a face? I'll show you how to use Lightroom 2's new brush tool to do it. And I'll give you a quick fix for white balance problems. Organize related images into collections that you export to web pages with a few clicks. Then upload those pages to your site for customers to see. You'll also learn how to create a list of keywords you can search to find those images of spectacular chocolate desserts in your picture library, or your kids blowing out their birthday candles. You'll also discover Lightroom's other powerful image search tools. You can also manage your older scanned film images with Lightroom. All those tools will give you back your time. Email me or call (408) 866-9405 for more information.	In General... All workshops and instruction are restricted to three people or less to give you the best instruction and great chances at stunning photographs. You need basic picture-capturing skills with your dSLR, plus the ability to transfer images from the camera's memory card to a laptop computer. You'll also need your own laptop for on-site use at any workshop. It can be Mac or Windows - either one is fine. You can do simple product or architectural photography with a sophisticated point-and-shoot like a Canon G11, but I really recommend a digital SLR and interchangeable lenses. For products, you need a 24-70mm or 17-85mm on a Canon Rebel, 20D-50D, 7D, 5D, 1D series, or Nikon dSLR. You'll want the largest aperture you can get to focus-isolate parts of your product. You'll need a good tripod and head too. For architecture, an ultrawide zoom is a minmum requirement. My workhourse is a 16-35mm f/2.8. There'll be times when you'll want to correct leaning buildings but still get everything in the picture. The only way to do that on a digital SLR is a tilt-shift lens. I use Canon's 24mm f/3.5L TS-E. A full-frame dSLR gives you the entire coverage of your wide lenses, so it's almost a must. I use Canon's EOS 5D mark II. The original EOS 5D is very capable and available used at reasonable prices. All attendees receive written hints and recommended equipment lists before their seminars. Contact me at (408) 866-9405 or email for specific equipment recommendations, or with any questions.
	All images copyright © Mark Bohrer

Active Photography Tours and Photography Instruction - Active Light Photography

Pasta Parmesan

Enhancing the drool factor

Tabletop Food & Product Photography

You know your visual branding is very important. Your customers get hooked by your product's looks before anything else happens. You have a huge choice of professionals promising to capture the best visuals for your product.

But you know your products better than third-party specialists. It may be time to learn how to photograph them yourself for blockbuster impact.

In this half-day seminar, I'll lead you through professional construction of a product photograph. We'll discuss camera angles, choosing and lighting the background, light types and direction, light modifiers, the importance of shadows and highlights, tools for fill and highlights. Then I'll help you set up a shot of your own product.

Bring your own camera or use mine. Use of my camera, studio and lighting tools is included. You'll leave with a CD-ROM of your shot.

Email me or call (408) 866-9405 for more information.

Campbell Heritage Theater

Inviting clients in

Architectural Photography For Advertising

A building invites you to enter. Its rooms feel like friends, instantly setting you at ease. This is the impact you want your property to have on customers and clients, but how do you achieve it?

In this full-day seminar, I'll discuss basic composition, how to realistically represent a space, time of day influences on light, supplemental lighting for exteriors and interiors, color temperature and psychological factors in architectural photographs, when to shoot exteriors for highest drama, using unrealism to attract customers, and equipment choices for photographing architecture. Photographs will be de-constructed to show you how to enhance building features with light and composition.

There will be an afternoon field trip to a public building where you'll create your own architectural pictures using the knowledge from the morning session.

I'll provide flash and remote triggers for your camera, or you can bring your own light. A digital SLR camera and basic zoom lens in the range of 16-35mm is required. A 24mm or wider tilt-shift lens may also be helpful. Equipment can be rented from Keeble and Schuchat Photography in Palo Alto, though I suggest bringing gear you're familiar with.

Email me or call (408) 866-9405 for more information.

Lightroom - Essential Tool For Photographers | Active Light Photography

Lightroom - The Essential Tool For Image Management

Do you have a digital shoebox full of pictures that you navigate by feel? Let me show you how to bring order to your collection. Adobe's Lightroom 2 is one of the best ways to import and organize digital images.

I'll show you how to set up a file system tailored to your subjects, transfer files from your memory card into different subject folders in Lightroom, adjust shadow, dark, light and highlight levels, saturation of individual colors, sharpen and reduce noise on one image. You can clean up pesky dust spots with spotting techniques for the digital age. Then learn to apply all those tweaks to other similar images and save yourself a ton of time.

Want to lighten the sky, or selectively enhance contrast on a face? I'll show you how to use Lightroom 2's new brush tool to do it. And I'll give you a quick fix for white balance problems.

Organize related images into collections that you export to web pages with a few clicks. Then upload those pages to your site for customers to see.

You'll also learn how to create a list of keywords you can search to find those images of spectacular chocolate desserts in your picture library, or your kids blowing out their birthday candles. You'll also discover Lightroom's other powerful image search tools.

You can also manage your older scanned film images with Lightroom.

All those tools will give you back your time.

Email me or call (408) 866-9405 for more information.

In General...

All workshops and instruction are restricted to three people or less to give you the best instruction and great chances at stunning photographs.

You need basic picture-capturing skills with your dSLR, plus the ability to transfer images from the camera's memory card to a laptop computer. You'll also need your own laptop for on-site use at any workshop. It can be Mac or Windows - either one is fine.

You can do simple product or architectural photography with a sophisticated point-and-shoot like a Canon G11, but I really recommend a digital SLR and interchangeable lenses. For products, you need a 24-70mm or 17-85mm on a Canon Rebel, 20D-50D, 7D, 5D, 1D series, or Nikon dSLR. You'll want the largest aperture you can get to focus-isolate parts of your product. You'll need a good tripod and head too.

For architecture, an ultrawide zoom is a minmum requirement. My workhourse is a 16-35mm f/2.8. There'll be times when you'll want to correct leaning buildings but still get everything in the picture. The only way to do that on a digital SLR is a tilt-shift lens. I use Canon's 24mm f/3.5L TS-E. A full-frame dSLR gives you the entire coverage of your wide lenses, so it's almost a must. I use Canon's EOS 5D mark II. The original EOS 5D is very capable and available used at reasonable prices.

All attendees receive written hints and recommended equipment lists before their seminars.

Contact me at (408) 866-9405 or email for specific equipment recommendations, or with any questions.