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Using Smart Collections in Lightroom speeds up the process of gathering and revisiting these images. I use Smart Collections―1 Star, 2 Stars, 3 Stars, 4 Stars, 5 Stars, and 3+ Stars. These Smart Collections are critical for focusing and accelerating my visual thought process, helping me to make the most of a location in a short amount of time. I can see what’s working and what’s not, correct mistakes, figure out what it’s going to take to up my game, identify missing shots, and seek out the ones that will bring a set of images together. Smart Collections serve as a chronology of all the ranked images I’ve made. They create a unique kind of journal. Most importantly, they start the process of assembling bodies of work.

I use Collections for assembling like images to develop projects, typically grouping selected images by location or theme. Unlike Smart Collections, I find Collections’ support for a manual sort order essential. Manual sort orders enable me to create image pairs and sequences, continuities that bind groups of images together into bodies of work. (For more on Continuity, Bodies of Work, and Developing Personal Projects, download my free PDFs at Creativity / Storytelling resources here.

Unlike when I used film, where I had to make physical contact sheets to select images, I rarely print my virtual contact sheets. It’s curious to call them by the traditional name “contact sheets,” because they’re not made by contacting film to paper. But, they’re no less essential to my creative process; if anything, they’re more important. Virtual Contact Sheets allow me to edit images at higher levels of thinking. I even use them to select and sequence images for slideshows, exhibits, and books.

I save virtual contact sheets, and sometimes I even save different states of a single contact sheet. I take screenshots of Lightroom’s display of my curated Collections. So many people requested to see them that I started sharing them on my blog. Having to make remarks about my virtual contact sheets helped me obtain an even better understanding of my creative process and my results.

See more Contact Sheets here.

Read more about my Contact Sheets on B&H.

Read about Seth Resnick’s Contact Sheets on B&H.

Category: Images - Contact Sheets
Tags: collections, contact sheets, sketches

Our 2016 Antarctica voyage was stunning!

After several delays our flight to Antarctica finally found a window through the low lying fog. Moody mists continued in the early mornings, lifting by mid-morning, revealing clear skies during the day, creating a marvelous daily transformation. Temperatures were unusually warm. Winds were unusually low. The still waters yielded fabulous reflections. I focussed on symmetry and minimalism punctuated by the imaginatively sculptural forms of ice.

Stay tuned to my social networks for more images.

View images from seven previous voyages here.

Preview my ebook Antarctica here.

View more Contact Sheets here.

View Seth Resnick’s images from the same voyage here.

Find out about our next Antarctica digital photography workshop here.

Category: Images - Contact Sheets
Tags: 2016, cae2016, contact sheet, Destination - Antarctica, photographs, workshop

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There were many surprises on our recent DPD workshop in Iceland. Anticipating auroras we encountered heavy weather, which we expertly dodged with resourcefulness of our hosts at Focus On Nature.

In the images I made during this week I found something old and something new. I revisited a few old themes – reflections and ripples. I connected new themes – contrails and tire tracks. But the bird’s eye views we saw during one hour of aerials both over frozen highlands and along flowing rivers were the most captivating. Related to aerial images I’ve produced in Namibia, I’m sure now that this kind of photography is something I’ll do much more of in the future.

That said, it’s really the relationship between a new image of a wave and an earlier one of a waterfall that excites me most. I thought that I hadn’t found what I was looking for, great images of auroras. But when I saw this wave repeatedly crashing into the air, I realized I actually found what I’d been looking for for quite some time. Expect the unexpected?

 View more Contact Sheets here.

View Seth Resnick’s images from the same voyage here.

Learn more about my digital printing and digital photography workshops.

Category: Images - Contact Sheets
Tags: contact sheet, Destination - Iceland

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I anticipated being out of my comfort zone for the majority of my recent DPD adventure to Morocco. As a surreal landscape photographer I’ve had very little experience with street photography and portraiture. It was great practice. I did better than I expected. Practice makes better. While I don’t plan to release any of these images, my vision and skills are stronger for having made them. The questions that were asked and clarified were the most important. “What kind of chemistry is necessary for an authentic event to happen?” “How many ways can you start chemical reactions?” “How long does it take?” “In which peak moment is this most intensely felt?” “How do the images you make reflect your personal relationship to the subject?” Ironically, it might be easier to answer these questions when photographing people than landscapes, but they’re equally valid for both.

I anticipated the days in the deep deserts to be the most personally productive – and I’ve got some good raw material to work with. It’s unfinished. This raises, another good question. “When is work complete enough?” But I made one rough composite, which gave me proof of concept. Though I’m sure there will be surprises along the way, I know where the work is going and what it will take to complete it.

View more Contact Sheets here. 

View Seth Resnick’s images from the same adventure here.

Learn more about my digital printing and digital photography workshops.

Category: Destination - Morocco, Images - Contact Sheets
Tags: contact sheet, morocco

Click here to enlarge.

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It took me some time to get a clearer sense for the images I made during my sixth voyage to Antarctica with Seth Resnick during our Digital Photo Destinations workshop. Lacking the big moments that immediately stood out on previous voyages (Curiously only a few of these selects were taken during our most dramatic moment when we spent four continuous hours in Pleneau Bay or The Iceberg Graveyard, where we found not one but three ice arches.), this voyage was a quiet sustained build of repeatedly chasing several ideas (minimal spaces, sheltering skies, glacial abstractions, ice details). The quieter more sensitive nature of this work became clearer as I reflected upon the way the files were processed, with a softer touch. Even as I left Antarctica, I wasn’t sure of exactly what I had, but the more time I spend with the work the more I begin to understand it. Antarctica’s many moods and its elusive mysteries are what keep me longing to return.

View more Contact Sheets here.

View Seth Resnick’s images from the same voyage here.

Learn more about my digital printing and digital photography workshops.

Category: Images - Contact Sheets
Tags: contact sheet, Destination - Antarctica, ice

While visiting friends at their new house in Carmelo, Uruguay I enjoyed making photographs to help me savor the experience more. Muchas gracias Marinuccis!

Visit larger images on Google+.

View more Contact Sheets here.

Category: Images - Contact Sheets, Images - iPhone
Tags: contact sheet, iPhone, uruguay

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