Photographer George Barr (website / blog) spoke with us yesterday evening about his photography and shared a good collection of his landscape images. This is just a quick dump of my notes for his presentation and not any sort of formal review.
George has published quite a number of articles in a number of prestigious fine art photography magazines (Black and White Magazine and LensWork Magazine, for example) and is the author “Take your Photography to the Next Level”. He currently has another book in the works. He’s also written essays on Luminous Landscape.
George recommended a number of shooting locations (and concluded that we, as a whole, need to get out more because there was not nearly the head nodding of recognition that he expected…):
- Jura Canyon
- Bad Lands (Restricted Area) near Drumheller
- Independent Machinery in Inglewood
- Pioneer Acres
- Redrock Canyon in Waterton
George uses a number of software tools above and beyond the usual Adobe wares:
- Helicon Focus – Focus blending software. For landscapes where there are very close foreground elements George stitches the in-focus bits on multiple exposures to create a single image with almost infinite depth of field.
- PTgui – Panoramic image stitching software. Many of George’s landscapes are stitched from a large number of images (usually only one strip).
George strongly recommended subscribing to LensWork Magazine for any photographer who has an interest in black and white photography. Their print quality is so good it gives a good benchmark for your own work.
Random Photoshop tip from George: Unsharp Mask (25,50,0) works great for increasing local contrast of an image.
– Jeff
