Editors' Choice 500px by Tin Man Lee
I just came back from Chas’s Winter Yellowstone Workshop which brought so many good memories, new techniques, and new ideas that I will remember a life time.
Ever since I first saw Chas’s wildlife photos, I have been hooked.
Not only is each of his photos technically perfect, be it exposure, f-stop, shutter speed, sharpness, colors, and compositions, but his photo has extremely strong visual impact and always tells a story. I wish my photos were like that. And after reading many of his online educational articles, I found that I really like his philosophy. So I took his workshop, knowing that the best way to learn is to be in the field side by side with him. I am glad I did. He is really tech savvy, so much fun to talk to, and has never ending interesting photography stories to tell thru his career. Chas is the very rare bred of pro photographer who had formal master education in photography so his theories are superb, he also had learned under and worked with great masters in photography and had a hugely successful career in portrait, studio, wedding, commercial, sports, before wildlife photography. He had many high profile clients before, so he had no room to mess up in each project. What that means is that he really mastered the use of light, understands how light illuminates and shadow defines, and bring all the best stuff from these experience in different photography fields into wildlife, creating image after image of creativity and stunning impact.
Some of the numerous things I learned from him in this trip:
Try to get the best photo in camera, before post processing. Many people nowadays rely on digital, always thinking about cropping afterwards for composition, darken or brighten an image if metered incorrectly, etc. His mantra is “if I buy a camera which has 21 mega pixels, i want to make use of all these 21 mega pixels”. Chas strive to catch the moment with the right exposure, composition, etc in camera, which maximize the capability of the digital camera, be it noise control and pixel counts. I think its a perfect way to train myself to pay attention instead of take it and fix it later if possible.
Though Chas pushes for the best photo in-camera before post processing, he is a master of photo editing. His emphasis is to bring out something in the scene that’s not possible from the image (e.g. dynamic range) while those data were “hidden” in the raw file, e.g. as long as the whites are not blown out, one can always extract those details afterwards. Basically Chas thinks very differently when he takes a picture. He already knew what the limit of the camera is, so try to get the best in-camera first and then knowing what data can be recorded, he brings those hidden data out from post-processing.
Chas makes the best use of any nature condition be it good or bad. For example, it was snowing really bad in Yellowstone, shooting condition was bad, yet when he saw the bison walking along the river, he immediately sees that the dark river which can add as a backdrop to show the white snowfall, which wouldn’t be possible with a white snow background.
He is very good with animal behaviors. He would tell us when the pronghorn are going to jump, bison are going to dash down the hill, crossing the river, and would give us suggestions how to capture that moment. I made sure to try to stay not too far from him in the field so I can learn what he’s thinking in certain condition and why, which helped a lot. He is always paying attention to avoid distracting lines that cut off the subjects, the placement, and how one should leave some space for the legs even if the legs of the animals were blocked by foreground objects.
And did I say Chas is a lot of fun, he kept feeding us good info on photography whenever he can and he seems to have unlimited energy.What I am glad to know is that when I look closer to his photos, every time I learn some new things, which I didn’t pay attention to before because he intentionally avoided those distractions with careful placement in order to let readers focus on the story itself. He really pays a lot of attention to the details to create each image.
The service in his workshop is first class, he takes care of all the luggage transfer, always put us in the best vehicle and best lodging and never cuts corner.
The only thing bad from the workshop is that after learning all these new things from Chas, when I look back on my old photos, I want to throw most of them away and start all over.
I had a great time in the workshop and really enjoys the company of all attendees. Most of the time we were laughing and enjoying so much of our time!
I highly recommend Chas’s workshop.
See you in July for the Brown Bears, Tin Man Lee
T, Congrats! You should be very proud of your accomplishment. Chas
by Chas
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