The Summer of Refinement: Post-Processing
A hands-on, immersive series focused on elevating your post processing through real-time workflows, image critiques, and expert guidance from some of today’s top nature photographers.
Ah....Like a cold breeze on a hot summer day. Or the refreshment of a summer shower to break up the building humidity. It is time to focus on refining our post processing. Unlike prior talks where we have a speaker presenting on a particular topic, these will be focused from start to finish on post processing.
This is about refinement. To refine something is to have something "with impurities or unwanted elements having been removed by processing" and while our work is rarely flawless there are often times things we can refine and improve.
The educator will start the session by walking and talking you through their workflow on a new image that they have never processed for an audience before. This image and the way they approach it will dissect a particular challenge they needed to refine to make the image complete. It might be how they balanced the colors, or how they fixed a defect in their capture techniques, or how they brought back some detail that looked to have been lost.
After this short intro we will proceed to process as many of the images that you submit. You should only submit one RAW file and the completed or attempted to be completed JPG and also include a short writeup of a particular challenge with the image, something you don’t think looks right, or a problem you have not been able to solve.
Our instructor will then tackle the image and talk about the process so we can all learn. Each week we will have new images (That were not covered before) and we will also have new instructors as each person approaches the scene differently. At the end of each image you will be able to ask questions live.
But wait, who are the instructors you speak about?
While I might not say these are the most refined people you will ever meet (I mean we are Nature Photographers who sometimes go long periods of time without showering while backpacking) these are 4 of the most respected educators and amazing photographers I know:
- Starting us off and returning to the NPC stage for his 3rd time is the incredibly refined Joshua Cripps on July 2nd.
- Returning a 2nd time on July 9th, and taking his refinement game to the next level and proving his refinement and reputation for clean and realistic post processing is Nick Page.
- But not to be outclassed by these two, we will see New Zealander William Patino returning for his 2nd time on July 14th bringing his passions for the Kiwi Landscapes but also his fantastic teaching style.
- Wrapping the series up on July 25th will be the influential and equally refined, Francesco Gola.
All LIVE Sessions will be held at 4:00 pm PT / 7:00 pm ET and will be approximately 2.5 hours in length.
So to recap. You can submit 1 RAW image with the same 1 processed as a JPG (if you want) along with 1 paragraph write up on what you don't like, something that doesn't look right to you, or a particular challenge. We will get to as many as we can in the 2.5 hours we have together and whatever we do not get to that week will be rolled forward to the next week, and the next week, and the next week. There is no guarantee we will get to your image (but we will try) but there is a gurantee you will learn a ton both from the instructors image, how they approach other images, and with the interactive questions as they go through their presentation.
Priced at $27 each or $87 for the entire series you can cost effectively dive into the creation of your own stories.
Registration for the series comes with the opportunity to ask questions live, rewatch the sessions as much as you want for as long as you want, and even download for offline viewing. They are all recorded so no need to be there live! You will have permanent access to the recordings through your NPC account, YouTube or Dropbox file download.
Are you an annual or monthly member? You’ll gain access to all these sessions the day after they’re streamed live!
Nature Photography Classes offer are a unique opportunity to hear from and interact with people that rarely speak with audiences and are considered some of the best photography educators in the world.
5% of all registration fees will be donated to the environmental cause or organization of the speakers choosing. Another great opportunity to give back!
This series will be hosted by Brie Stockwell.
Joshua Cripps teaches “Become a Lightroom Surgeon"
Joshua Cripps
Few people realize just how powerful the masking panel in Lightroom has become. In this presentation I will show you simple techniques to add, subtract, and intersect different kinds of masks in order to gain surgical precision with your editing in Lightroom. You will learn how to create spotlight brushes, enhance and refine colors, make super clean sky selections, emphasize detail, and many of my other favorite ways of making your images sing.
Bio:
Joshua Cripps is a renowned landscape photographer who has garnered worldwide acclaim for his breathtaking images of our planet’s wild places. His photos have been published by the likes of National Geographic, NASA, CNN, The Sun, and Nikon Global.
Josh grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and has been exploring the “Range of Light” for most of his life. Since 2015, Josh has made his home in the Eastern Sierra, one of the most spectacular and photogenic mountain landscapes in the world.
Josh is one of today’s most sought-after photography educators. He leads photo tours and speaks at conferences around the world.
Learn more about Joshua on his website.
Joshua will be supporting Give Back to Nature with 5% from the registration fees
Nick Page teaches “Processing your images"
Nick Page
We will be processing your images, and utilizing luminosity masks to target tones, deal with dynamic range and bring out depth and dimension in your images.
Bio:
Nick hails from a small town in Southeastern Washington state. He is the host of the Landscape Photography Podcast, a workshop instructor, a professional photographer, and a history nerd. He considers his job the best in the world: traveling around the world teaching photography to other like-minded passionate photographers.
You can learn more about Nick and his work on his website.
Nick will be supporting The National Forest Foundation with 5% from the registration fees
William Patino teaches “Processing For Painterly Realism & Depth"
William Patino
In the digital age we have the capability of capturing an extreme range of light and data, but with this comes a reliance on post processing. This is where many images can be refined or ruined. In this presentation I'll share my methods for creating a realistic, painterly depth in your photographs using techniques I've refined over the years. Best of all this approach is very easy to adopt and can be utilized in most modern processing programs. Prepare to change the way you see the world and your raw files and get effective results fast.
Bio:
William Patino is a husband, father and full-time professional landscape photographer based in the South Island of New Zealand. He has a passion for wild, rugged landscapes and enjoys exploring the vast wilderness of Fiordland, the place he calls home. He's won numerous awards, had his work displayed in the Smithsonian and worked with companies such as Apple, Sony and Samsung. Will has a passion for teaching and can be often found out running workshops or filming for his active Youtube channel.
You can learn more about William on his website.
William will be supporting Kea Conservation Trust with 5% from the registration fees
Francesco Gola teaches "Seascape Editing Uncovered: A Full Post-Production Journey"
Francesco Gola
A complete journey through the post-production workflow of a long exposure seascape photograph. We will begin with the analysis and initial development of the RAW file in Adobe Lightroom, following a two-step process: first, a global post-processing phase, focusing on tonal balance, contrast, and overall color rendering; then, a second phase dedicated to local adjustments, using Lightroom’s powerful new masking tools to make precise, targeted edits to selective areas of the image—refining the sky, sea, and other key elements of the scene.
Once the Lightroom workflow is complete, we’ll take the edit further with more advanced enhancements using some of the most effective modules from the DxO Nik Collection. This will allow us to fine-tune the image even more, enhancing structure, texture, and atmosphere with creative and professional-grade tools.
This webinar is designed for photographers who want to elevate their post-processing approach, learning how to fully harness the power of modern editing software to create evocative, personal, and technically refined images.
Bio:
Francesco Gola is an engineer who’s fallen in love with photography. Born in Italy in 1981, as soon as he started taking pictures he fell in love with long exposures of seascapes. For him, a long exposure is a parallel universe in which to escape from the frenzy of modern life. His passion for the sea and for travels let him visit some of the most iconic locations on this planet, looking at them with different eyes.
Inspired by the romantic painters William Turner and Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, Francesco developed a special emotional relationship with nature that is clearly expressed through his seascape photographies.
Now Francesco lives and teaches photography in Milan where he collaborates with companies, sites and magazines for the diffusion of photographic culture in Italy and in the world.
Learn more about Francesco on his website.
Francesco will be supporting Sea Sherpherd with 5% from the registration fees
