I am happy to announce our schedule of photography classes in Fremont for Fall 2010 at the Fremont Art Association Gallery in Niles.

We will continue our program of Photographic and Photoshop classes with the popular Intro to Digital Photo Editing with Jacline and Intro to Digital Photography with Cooksey. We are continuing with the Intro to Photoshop and the very popular 12 week Photoshop for Photographers class. Our new classes are Outdoor Environmental Portraiture and Composition and Vision.

If you take snapshots "just for fun" and great memories the Intro to Digital classes are for you!!!

Our award winning FAA Artist of the Year Jacline Deridder will teach intro to Digital Photograph Editing and Cooksey will teach Intro to Digital Photography, Portraiture and Composition.

The Photoshop Primer course is for folks who don't know Photoshop but want to learn it in depth. This class is intended for photographers and artists that want a good basis for continued learning and entry level students who are interested in getting the most out of the intermediate to advanced 12 week Photoshop for Photographers course. We will cover basic Photoshop operations in detail in the 3 hour class.

If you are interested in these classes you can sign up online by clicking on the links below, going to the FAA gallery or by sending me a check payable to Cooksey-Talbott. If you mail a check make sure I get your complete contact information and class preferences.

Link to 2010 - Fall Class Descriptions Booklet PDF

Mailing Address:
Cooksey-Talbott
34670 Calcutta Dr.
Fremont, CA 94555

Intro to Digital Photography will be held 3 times. Although it is the same class it will be structured so that you will learn more if you take it again.

This class is for those who have gotten a digital camera and know little about photography or their camera and want to learn, in simple terms, how to operate their camera and make better pictures. We will de-mystify the menus and settings of your camera and teach some basic photographic principles. Learn to stop motion, blur the background, get brilliant colors and make well composed photos.

Basic digital photo is a hands on class where you will use your camera to perform some simple assignments. By doing these assignments you will learn the basic concepts of photography. We will meet at the gallery and go down the street to the Niles Park to do our assignments.

We will have an online review after the class in our group at:

http://faadpg.ning.com/

DP100A - Intro to Digital Photography
Instructor: Cooksey-Talbott
1 - 3 hour session
Sunday - Nov 14 - 1pm to 4pm
30.00 for 3 hours.

DP100B - Intro to Digital Photography
Instructor: Cooksey-Talbott
1 - 3 hour session
Sunday - Dec 12 - 1pm to 4pm
30.00 for 3 hours.

DP100C - Intro to Digital Photography
Instructor: Cooksey-Talbott
1 - 3 hour session
Sunday - Jan 9 - 1pm to 4pm
30.00 for 3 hours.

DP101 - Composition and Vision
Instructor: Cooksey-Talbott
1 - 3 hour session
Sunday - Oct 31 - 1pm to 4pm
30.00 for 3 hours.

This course will explore how you can create pictures that capture the viewers attention using a variety of methods. Learn to improve the composition and blocking of your pictures. Discover how to make you photograph have depth and to control the viewing experience with contrast and focus. We have a 1 hour lecture then we will go out, have a shared photographic experience and work with some basic concepts that will improve your photography.

DP200 - Environmental Portraiture
Instructor: Cooksey-Talbott
1 - 4 hour session
Sunday - Sept 26 - 12pm to 4pm
50.00 for 4 hours.

This is a half-day workshop for those interested in improving their outdoor portrait photographs. This class is based around using simple equipment to produce a professional looking result.

The skill level is beginner friendly but with enough depth to interest more advanced photographers. We will use standard professional reflectors and stands coupled with an assortment of camera speedlights for flash fill.

A beginning photographer with a point and shoot camera and a 35.00 reflector can make professional looking portraits if they know a few simple tricks!

• Learn to Use 5 in 1 Reflectors (handheld and on stands)
• Subtractive Lighting
• Reflector Fill Lighting
• Trans-Illuminated Silk Lighting
• Cosmetic Lighting
• Flash Fill
• Flash Key
• Posing
• Picking Locations
• Digital Camera Settings for Portraiture

Learn some basic ways to use available light your speedlight and inexpensive “5 in 1” reflectors to obtain professional lighting effects outdoors.

We will also cover the appropriate focal length lenses for different types of poses. shutter speeds and appropriate f stops for portrait photography. Learn the pros and cons of using camera supports and some basic makeup survival tactics.

We will meet at the gallery and use a local park for the location. Wear walkable shoes.

Required equipment: Digital camera (Pocket or DSLR)
Optional Equipment: Speedlight type flash(s)

PS-101 Photoshop Primer
Instructor: Cooksey-Talbott
1 - 3 hour session
Sunday - Sept 12 - 1pm to 4pm
40.00 for 3 hours

This is a primer course for the 12 week Photoshop for Photographers class. It is designed for photographers and artists who want to start learning Photoshop.

If you are not really familiar with Photoshop this class will prepare you with the basic concepts of digital imaging and use of the Photoshop CS program. We will cover basic Photoshop techniques, selection, layers, cropping, sizing, sharpening, retouching and more…

If you want to learn Photoshop for use with photography this is an excellent place to start.  We will go into greater depth in this class then in the entry level Intro to Digital Photography classes.

• Understand digital imaging and file types
• Make Selections
• Understand Layers and Channels
• Use Adjustment Layers
• Understand Resolution
• Understand Color Balance
• Use Filters
• More…

PSP Photoshop for Photographers
Instructor: Cooksey-Talbott
12 - 2 hour Thursday night sessions
Starts Thursday Sept 16 - 7 pm - 9 pm

Photoshop for photography is a three-month series of weekly workshops that will cover in detail the operation of Photoshop CS for intermediate through advanced photographers. If you are a beginner and want to take the series you might consider taking the Photoshop Primer class to get you up to speed on basic digital image editing concepts. The basic operations will be covered in depth from simple through more complex uses. In each class we will divide the time between the introduction of the new concepts and working up images using the techniques we have learned.

1 - Photoshop – RAW file development

The first step in creating a spectacular image is the “development” of the RAW file. The RAW converter is very powerful and gives you a robust amount of image control. Learn to use Bridge as an interface to the RAW converter. Learn and use RAW smart objects for non-destructive tonal editing. Find out how to eliminate fringing, the red lines that form around highlights. Use the curves to produce film like tonal scales and eliminate that “digital” look. Control your cameras color and tonal response by using camera profiles. Learn how to recover slightly overexposed  highlights.

2 - Photoshop - Selection Strategies

The basis of all Photoshop manipulation is selecting areas of your image. We will examine the often-bewildering array of techniques for selecting regions. Learn to create complex selections with just a few clicks. Selection modes - add, subtract and intersect. Making trash layers to build selections, interactive edge adjustment, shrinking and spreading, and luminance masking are just a few of the strategies that will be demonstrated.

3 - Photoshop - Adjustment Layers

We will examine each of the photographically useful adjustment layer types and review the controls and secret commands. The use of non-destructive adjustments is the key to making great pictures without getting “photo editors remorse”. With adjustment layers you can control all aspects of your image. Using the selection techniques from the previous class you can confine the adjustments to specific regions or tonal ranges of the print. You will be further introduced to the powerful advanced method of Luminance Masking in this lesson.

4 - Photoshop - Color Balancing

The nature of digital color will be revealed to create a deeper understanding of how color is reproduced in RGB color space. Learn the color printing colorwheel and complimentary and analogous colors. We will learn to use the eyedropper and color sampler tools to aid in color balancing. Remove pesky color casts from the neutral areas of your pictures to create the feeling of balanced color. Use creative color grading as a tool to manipulate your viewer.

5 - Photoshop - Digital B&W

We will examine the creation of our own B&W panchromatic renditions from RGB color images. Learn to use the Channel Mixer, LAB mode, Photo Filter and Selective Color layers to create highly adjustable B&W images. Using the zone system in digital post processing with luminance masking with B&W images is very powerful. We will examine the use of reproduction curves to simulate different classic panchromatic film developers.

6 - Photoshop - Retouching

Learn to not only alter reality but how to use selective retouching to make your photos more powerful compositions. We will examine the use of a variety of tools to perform standard retouching tasks. We will examine the goals and methods of the professional retoucher in a number of instances. Just knowing what they do to an image is more then half the battle as the actual retouch is usually fairly simple. Examples will include portrait, nature and still life subjects.

7 - Photoshop – Sharpening and Sizing

Once an image master has been finished it must be sharpened and sized for printing. Selective sharpening using masks of different types will be demonstrated to allow for the maximum rendition of detail in the image. Different methods of sizing will be demonstrated to show the effects of each. Flattening and truncation of the 16 bit data will be covered and we will prepare a sized ready to print file from several image masters.

8 - Photoshop – Workstation and File Management

As a digital photographer you find that you have an industrial strength data-warehousing problem often on a shoestring budget. Regular CD’s and DVD’s are not permanent! We will learn how to safely archive our images using Archival DVD media and incremental backup systems. You can manage a large tome of randomly changing data safely with these methods. Learn how to optimize your disk space to create non-fragmented scratch disks for peak performance. A poor workflow can rapidly create a data management nightmare. Learn good workflow practices to prevent the dreaded workstation bloat and overloaded drives. Proper file naming practices will be given to enable you to find all variants of any file in your backups instantly. Use text files of your backup DVD’s directory structures to allow location of files in offline volumes.

9 - HDR Photography

32 bit High Dynamic Range photography is an earthshaking development in the digital world. Bracketed sequences of frames shot from a tripod are combined, taking a clearly rendered tone range from each frame, resulting in an image with awesome highlight and shadow detail. HDR images allow you to make photographs that were simply impossible due to the limited range of brightness that could be captured on film. We will learn how and when to use this technique as well as some alternate tools available for the creation of the 32 bit HDR master files. While the 32 bit tools are great in concept you can often produce superior results just using the photoshop chops that you have developed so far in the class. We will have a shoot out between HDR compositing with Photomatix 32 bit and Luminance Masked 16 bit HDR’s with some surprising results!

10 - Photoshop - Scanning Film

Learn how to successfully scan your film negatives to create ultra high-resolution originals. Fine grain 35mm film has much more resolution then a 10mp camera and is a good place to start if you want a bigger print size. 120 and 4x5 film is incredible when scanned. Learn what to look for when scanning and how to read and improve the RGB histograms of your scans. Producing good color negative scans is easy once you know a few simple tricks. We will use an Epson scanner for the demonstrations but the concepts are fairly universal to all film scanners.

11 - Photoshop - Making Stitched Digital Images

By pasting several frames from your digital camera together it is possible to create a higher resolution image.  CS4 has made great strides towards the automation of the stitching and works on most images. We will discuss both image processing and camera techniques to create beautiful hi-res Panoramic, Vertoramic and rectangular images. The detail in a 50-100 megapixel image is breathtaking and best of all you can get there with the camera you currently own!

12 - Photoshop – Automation Using Actions

Learn to make Photoshop perform repetitive tasks through the use of Actions, Droplets, Batching and Image Processing. The use of actions can save a great deal of work with tasks that you often perform and Droplets make it so you can simply drop your files onto an icon on your desktop and have then processed up to your specifications. Examples will include water-copyright marking, adding EXIF data, making desktops, resize and sharpen for web, convert color profile and more.

Classes are held at the FAA Gallery 37659 Niles Blvd. Fremont, CA. with the exception of classes 4, 5 and 6 which are held at Cooksey's studio.

15.00 per class for individual sessions

The S3 Photo Group

The Third Saturday (S3) photography group is a free street level art outreach program sponsored by the Fremont Art Association and Cooksey-Talbott Gallery. The group leader is award winning local photographer Cooksey-Talbott assisted by the FAA Artist of the Year Jacline Deridder.

S3 activities are on the third Saturday of each month. Activities are free and open to all who are interested in making photographs and having a good time. You will find programs ranging in complexity from beginner to advanced. We go out on field trips so please check the calendar so that you are adequately prepared. We do ask participants to sign a liability release for field trips.

The S3 photo group is trying to have something for everybody so please feel welcome to come and participate. You can get more information on the S3 program and photography classes through our free online forum at http://faadpg.ning.com.

If you are interested in photography please join our free photo group at Ning. We use this Facebook-like group to share photographs and articles of interest in the discussion forums.

All of these activities are FREE, on the longer trips folks will throw in some money for gas but if you are short of funds that is strictly not a problem. We welcome you to come on out and join us for a good time!!!

• Basic Digital Camera Operations
  • Free Photo Workshop – Beginners – Limited Mobility
  • January 16th – 10:00 to Noon – FAA Gallery

Point and shoot your way to photo enjoyment!

Learn some basic facts about photography and digital that will help you to get the most out of your digital camera.

If you like to take pictures casually of your family and travels this free basic workshop will help to demystify the settings of your digital camera and lead you to get better results.

Learn how to send your work to have it printed and where you can share your pictures with family and friends online for free. Bring your camera with a charged battery and it’s manual.

The class will take place at the FAA gallery from 10:00AM to Noon. This event is excellent for folks with limited mobility.

• Shoot Garin/Dry Creek
  • Hiking
  • February 20th - 3:00pm – Meet at FAA Gallery

Enjoy the wonders of spring in the East Bay hills!

Have a nice walk along the east bay hills in the Dry Creek end of Garin park in Union City. We will walk along the base of the hills and go up the slope a little bit. We will select a route based on who shows up. If everyone can go up the hill we will go further up into the hills.

We will meet at the FAA gallery, 37659 Niles Blvd Fremont CA, at 3:00pm and proceed as a group to the trailhead. Bring your walking shoes, hat, water bottle, light snack, camera, lens hood, polarizer, tripod (optional) and lens kit. We ask participants to sign a liability release for field trips.

• Shoot Sunol
  • Hiking
  • March 20th – 10:00 – Meet at FAA Gallery

Walk in the Sunol Hills and enjoy the Spring Flowers

Spring is in full bloom at this point so we will go to Sunol Regional Park and walk out across the McCorkle plateau towards Little Yosemite. The poppies will be all out and the creek will be running.

We will meet at the FAA gallery, 37659 Niles Blvd Fremont CA, at 10:00am and leave for the park at 10:30am. Bring your walking shoes, hat, water bottle, light snack, camera, lens hood, polarizer, tripod (optional) and lens kit. We will car pool and use East Bay Parks passes to save on gate fees. We ask participants to sign a liability release for field trips.

• Shoot the Coast – Pt Reyes
  • Hiking – HDR Sunset
  • April 17th – 12:30 pm – Meet at FAA Gallery

Enjoy a Pt. Reyes Sunset and HDR photo workshop!

Come with us for a nice day walking on Pt. Reyes. The flowers will be at their peak so we should have some good wildflower coverage. We will leave from the gallery, drive to Pt Reyes and have a moderate (< 5 miles) hike on the point. We will capture the 7:45 pm sunset on the coast and return home. During the afternoon we will discuss capturing images for use in HDR, High Dynamic Range, photographs. This is a technique that allows you to photograph scenes with extreme contrast.

We will meet at the FAA gallery, 37659 Niles Blvd Fremont CA, at 12:30pm and proceed as a group to Pt. Reyes National Seashore at 1:00pm.  This is a 2 hour drive of 83 miles each way. We encourage those with good cars to volunteer to ride pool a full car to minimize our environmental impact and to increase the group unity.

Bring your walking shoes, hat, warm coat, light gloves, sunglasses, water bottle, camera, lens hood, polarizer, tripod (optional), lens kit and sack lunch. We will eat dinner at a restaurant on the way back. We ask participants to sign a liability release for field trips.

• Photographing People – Shoot your kids!
  • Beginners – Limited Mobility - Families
  • May 15th – 12:00pm – Meet at FAA Gallery

Shoot your Kids! With a camera that is…

Come with us to Lake Elizabeth to learn how to make outdoor pictures of your kids and friends that come out better through the use of simple reflectors. We will supply some fomecor and 5 in One reflectors for you to use to make professional looking portraits of your family and friends.

This is a good event for limited mobility folks! Very little walking mostly on concrete sidewalks. It is wheelchair accessible.

This is not limited to parents so come on down with someone you want to photograph and we will teach you how to make it turn out better then ever before.

All that you need is your kids or your friend and a point and shoot or DSLR camera. This is a good trip for limited mobility folks as there are sidewalks throughout the park.

We will have a brief introductory lecture at the FAA Gallery starting at 12:00 Noon to introduce some basic photographic concepts used in making portraits.

Meet at the FAA gallery, 37659 Niles Blvd Fremont CA, at 12:00pm and then proceed as a group to the park. Bring your hat, water bottle, light snack, camera, lens hood, polarizer, tripod (optional) and lens kit. We ask participants to sign a liability release for field trips.

• Shoot Flowers at Regan’s Nursery – Limited Mobility
  • June 26th and 27th – 12:00 noon
  • NOTE! This is not on a Third Saturday

Earth laughs in flowers…

For the past several years we have wandered in the gardens at Regan’s and made macro photographs of their flowers. They welcome us back this year for more floral goodness. There will be a lecture on making macro photographs of flowers where a number of professional photographic tricks will be revealed. After the lecture we will get to practice what we have learned on Regan’s ample supply of flowers.

This event is in conjunction with the FAA “Art in the Garden” art festival at Regans so you will have the opportunity of enjoy and purchase art from a number of wonderful local artists.

The floral shoot is a great event for our limited mobility folks as it is a short walk from the parking lot and a little bit of wandering over flat walkways. This location is wheelchair accessible.

We will meet at Regan’s Nursery, 4268 Decoto Rd. Fremont CA, at noon. Parking is limited there so we encourage ride pooling if possible.

Bring your hat, water bottle, camera, lens hood, polarizer, any macro things you have, tripod (optional) and lens kit. Most contemporary zoom lenses will focus close enough to do macro photography of flowers.

• The BIG Overnight Camp Out!
  • NOTE CORRECTED DATE!!!!
  • Hike and Camp in the Sierra
  • July 17th – 9:30am - Meet at FAA Gallery
  • Leave Saturday return on Sunday evening

Are you ready to leave the sidewalk behind and take a walk on the wild side?

Come camp with us and share a campfire in the wilderness for a weekend of Sierra photography. We will camp near Burst Rock on Dodge Ridge on  Saturday night and spend part of Saturday and all of Sunday exploring the Burst Rock/Powell Lakes/Chickenfoot Lake area at around 6000’. The hike in to the campsite is less the 2 miles over a soft trail under the cover of a pine forest. I would rate this walk as an “easy” hike.

This trip is for able-bodied wilderness friendly people who have packs, tents and sleeping bags. There will be no stores or services there so we will carry what we use and share the expense of dinner and breakfast on the trail.

I will supply the gluten free meal, stoves and cook pots. I also have some extra gear that I can share. Please contact me if you need gear.

Meet at the FAA gallery, 37659 Niles Blvd Fremont CA, at 9:30am and leave at 10:00am. We will proceed as a group to the Pinecrest Range Station in Pinecrest CA. We are asking for volunteer drivers to ridepool folks for this 150 mile 3.5 hour drive. The drive includes a stretch of light duty washboard dirt road. I did the road in my Honda Civic and survived but if we had some SUV type vehicles it would be a good thing.

Bring your pack, sleeping bag, pad, tent, plate/fork/spoon. cup, coat, gloves, sunglasses, insect repellant, hat, water bottle, light snacks, camera, lens hood, polarizer, tripod (optional) and lens kit. We ask participants to sign a liability release for field trips.

Driving Map

Trailhead Map

• Magical Mystery Tour
  • August 21st
  • TBD – FAA Gallery – 10:00am – Noon

Step right up, step right this way!!!!

This is a surprise event that will be defined as the year progresses. It will be led by Jacline Deridder as Cooksey will be somewhere up in the mountains.

• Concrete Canyons – Financial District SF
  • Photo Walk
  • September 18th – Meet at FAA Gallery – 11:00 am

Explore a Concrete Canyon in San Francisco’s Financial District!

We will take BART over to the city and wander in the financial district and photograph the buildings and the repetitive patterns of the window walls in the “Concrete Canyons”. There is wealth of pattern and architectural detail to be photographed in the Manhattan-ized areas of San Francisco. We will walk from the Embarcadero BART to Sidney Walton Park on the far side of the Embarcadero center and back again.

We will meet at the FAA gallery, 37659 Niles Blvd Fremont CA, at 10:00am and proceed as a group to Union City BART.

Bring your walking shoes, hat, water bottle, camera, lens hood, polarizer, tripod (optional) and lens kit. We ask participants to sign a liability release for field trips.

• Haunted House #37
  • Good for Limited Mobility Folks
  • October 16th – Meet at FAA Gallery – 6:30 pm

Have a spooky night photo session this Halloween!!!

Follow our annual tradition of “haunting” a landmark house on our yearly night photography shoot. Learn about time exposures, open flash photography and painting with light. We will make some photos of a landmark Victorian house (TBA) and then turn it into a haunted building through the use of some Photoshop magic.

You will need a camera that can have its shutter locked open in the bulb (B) setting and a tripod or other support to hold the camera steady.

We will follow up with a comprehensive discussion in our online group at faadpg.ning.com.

• Shoot the Coast – Pt Lobos
  • Light Walking
  • November 20th – Meet at FAA Gallery – 8:30am

Photograph mystical coastline immortalized by Ansel Adams and the Westons!

Point Lobos and the Big Sur area has been called the greatest meeting of land and water in the world. The craggy cliffs of the Ventana Wilderness plunge into the Pacific ocean and support a vast community of terrestrial and aquatic plants and animals. We will try to shoot both the Pt Lobos area and the waterfall at Julia Pfeiffer Burns Park on this all day field trip.

We will meet at the FAA gallery, 37659 Niles Blvd Fremont CA, at 8:30am and proceed as a group to the Big Sur area. This is a 2 hour, 100 mile, drive to Pt Lobos and Julia Pfeiffer Burns is a half hour further south so we are asking for volunteer drivers who can help with our ride pool.

Bring your walking shoes, hat, water bottles, coat, bag lunch, snacks, camera, lens hood, polarizer, tripod (optional) and lens kit. We ask participants to sign a liability release for field trips.

• Review Pictures
  • December 18th – FAA Gallery – 11:00-1:00

We will meet at the FAA gallery, 37659 Niles Blvd Fremont CA, at 11:00am
to review and discuss some of our photographs from this years assignments.

Bring prints or files for us all to see and enjoy. I will bring a computer with Photoshop and a number of monitors so we can view digital files.

Hopefully all of the folks who accompanied us on our adventures will come to see the wonderful photographs that we have made at the various locations we have visited.

• Yosemite Fire Falls, a bonus adventure!
  • Light Hiking
  • February 14-28

For 2 weeks in February the sun is at just the right angle to highlight the ephemeral Horsetail Falls to produce a stunning fire falls effect. Horsetail falls is on the face of the El Cap cliff where at sunset the sun hits the water while the face of the cliff is in dark shadow. This year is lining up to be a good year for water in the high sierra and that is a crucial component of this shot. This effect depends on there being enough water to push the falls out away from the cliff face and a clear sky to allow the sun to come through at sunset.

We went last year and got some beautiful shots but the clouds closed in at the last minute. If you are brave and willing to take a long drive we will try to spend a half-day in the valley and capture this stunning effect.

Please contact Cooksey in advance if you are interested in this field trip. We need a driver who has chains and preferably a SUV to drive.