Sandy Ashley — Alabama

Course: Creative Compositing: The Impressionistic Photograph

Spend a week in the hip, high-energy city of Boulder, Colorado. Better yet, spend it in the field and classroom with Adobe Photoshop^® luminary Mark S. Johnson. In Mark's RMSP workshop, Creative Composting: The Impressionistic Photograph, shooting locations range from private gardens and a train museum, to the architecture at the University of Colorado and the lively atmosphere of Boulder's open-air pedestrian mall at Pearl Street, and, of course the Flatirons and the great outdoors. Opportunities abound, and Mark facilitates each photographer's development during field shoots, instructing on how to capture based on what is visualized for creative, dramatic post-production of images and composites.

What could outshine a week of shooting in Boulder? Having large segments of that time in the classroom! Lectures cover numerous techniques related to photographic impressionism and compositing, and Mark shares many of the techniques seen in his own work. The tools are provided for each student to apply these according to their own style. Students are invited to experiment with multi-image montageing, multiple exposure impressionistic techniques, deliberate camera movement, creative filtering, a variety of HDR effects, and more. A good dose of Photoshop instruction including use of Photoshop's newest features is woven in, and introductions to some of Mark's favorite software and resources are also covered.

For me, the most beneficial part of the workshop may have been the Photoshop evaluations - pressure-free image submissions accompanied by any and all questions, from the complex and/or technical to the artistic and creative. In these workbench-like sessions, Mark offered suggestions, directions, support, and demonstrations of how he might consider processing the image(s). I found the direct interaction and feedback on my own images invaluable.

Thanks to Mark and RMSP for the Creative Compositing workshop. In my 10 years of taking classes in photography, digital imaging and design, Mark is the most effective and personable Photoshop instructor I've encountered. This was not my first workshop with Mark, and I hope to continue learning from him in the future.