Aperture Nature Workshop (Tetons) Day Two

The ANPW contest winners, Pros, and I were up bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning at 5am, hoping to catch a beautiful dawn in Grand Teton Ntl. Park. The actual workshop *learning Aperture* was to begin later, but at first light, the students split up into two groups to take some pictures.

I trucked it to Oxbow Bend with Pros: Scott Stulberg & Steve Simon; and contest winners, Richard and Bryan. Everyone came prepared for the cold, except Steve, who was a bit whiny and runny nosed, kinda like a baby who’s had their lollipop ripped outta their tiny little hands by a mean photographer trying to capture pure misery and tears. I guess Steve is like me, you know, “they mostly come out at night… mostly” aka morning is for sleeping, afternoons are for eating breakfast.

Scott was determined to get a great shot, so we headed down this step muddy hill to the bank of Snake River. And then we set up our tripods, then everyone laughed at mind and pushed me in the mud… well they didn’t exactly push me in the mud, but I bet they wanted too,. Jerks. *huff* Then we pointed our lenses at the iconic view and waited. And waited.

No interesting light seemed to be happening on Mt. Moran, but suddenly a slight miss of fog started floating just above the water line behind us. No one else was worried about the immediate appearance of Death Eaters, but I methodically started chanting the Patronus Charm in my head and heart. As the fog began to roll, As the fog began to roll, Scott jumped and “yahooed”, changing his camera direction to started shooting the rolling fog and silhouetted trees against the wispy, pink sky.

It was a great lesson in always looking for shots, even when you are waiting for a sunrise to happen, look around, there maybe a great shot just waiting to be found like, a silhouetted bird in the distance, or a line of photographers tripods all in a row, or even interesting shots of reflected trees in the water.

Everyone was carefully switching lenses near the water, and Scotty reminded us to always keep one hand on your tripod near water. He has tragically lost two cameras in the water, so let him be the lesson for all of us.

Scott Bourne lead Catherine and Rob to Schwabacher Landing, but immediately left when no clouds were present because without clouds, landscape shots fall a bit flat. So, they headed up the road past the landing at Teton Overlook and grabbed some amazing panoramic shots of the Southern Tetons. Rob disappeared from the group with Martin aka the “Aperture Guru” for a while and ran into a crazy one horned elk.

After breakfast, the workshop got in full gear at the beautiful Jackson Arts center where Martin blew our minds with the dynamic power of Aperture. We imported our images, learned how to compare and select our favorites, and generally found out that Aperture can do most of the things we used to do in Photoshop, but it’s waaaay less complicated. I’ll do a dedicated post on Aperture in the next few days so you guys can see how cool it is.

What photo management & editing application do you use?