LANDSCAPE MASTER CLASS

A brief video extract from the introduction of this workshop’s The Art of Peter Dombrovskis session.

MASTER CLASS BOOKINGS

TUTORIALS

DETAILED MASTER CLASS OVERVIEW

Landscape Photography is explored from three perspectives:

• Pre and post capture equipment and technique
• Field work, workflow, and style
• History, critique, and review

Various contemporary approaches to landscape photography are engaged, from the representational to the picturesque, including mythical landscapes, poetic landscapes, politicised landscapes, commercial landscapes, and manufactured or altered landscapes. Our methodology incorporates critical analysis, demonstrations, case studies, practical applications, experimental field work, and individual questions and answers. In our Live Streamed Tutorials you work with your own equipment and on our own workstation as we help you clarify your artistic aspirations and perfect your creative outcomes.

This Master Class was first presented in conjunction with the National Library of Australia’s Peter Dombrovskis exhibition and accompanying publication ‘The Photography of Peter Dombrovskis: Journeys into the Wild’. In 2016 Les spent ten months in the preparation and restoration of over 200 of Peter’s images for the NLA publication and exhibition, and his preparation, editing and printing of Peter’s work along with an analysis of Peter’s camera craft and technique are a unique highlight of this workshop. The exhibition was subsequently re-imagined at the Australian Museum of Photography (previously Monash Gallery of Art) in Melbourne whose collection now also contains the most extensive set of my contemporary exhibition prints of Peter’s work.

The workshop is presented in six recorded sessions plus tutorials, and is supported through weekly Zoom Tutorials and extensive resources – Notes, Essays, Videos, Test Files – covering the following topics in a fully searchable database and accessed without restriction via the Workshop’s Resource Website.

Working in the Field
•  The experience of Landscape
•  Where to Stand – Perspective & Iconography
•  Measuring and evaluating light and dynamic range
•  Stacking – focus, exposure & panoramic techniques
•  Weight, portability, and stability
•  Backing up, cataloguing and processing in the field

Drawing with Lenses and Light
•  Lens selection and perspective control
•  Sensor size and aspect ratio
•  Tripods – testing stability, ball heads vs. geared heads
•  Filters – pre production vs. post production
•  Drones – an aerial perspective
•  Panoramas – sliding backs vs. nodal point calibration

The Art of Peter Dombrovskis
•  Seeing the light – feeling the moment
•  Photographing beliefs and commitments
•  Equipment and technique
•  Editing and Printing
•  Context and content
•  Publishing and exhibition design

Processing and Editing
•  Focus Stacking – controlling depth of field
•  Exposure Stacking – controlling dynamic range
•  Panoramic Stacking – controlling perspective
•  Compositing landscapes and combining skies
•  Luminosity selections, highlight bump masks, shadow luminosity masks
•  Increasing presence, depth and dimensionality

Landscape into Art
•  A brief history of Land into Landscape
•  Maps of territories vs. Portraits of things
•  Photographing Things vs. Feelings
•  Pictorial design – how pictures function
•  Cultural design – how pictures think
•  Artist statements and contextual essays

Exhibition Printing and Presentation
•  Fine art paper selection – matte/lustre, warm/cool, smooth/textured
•  Printer and monitor colour management – the essentials
•  Soft proofing vs hard proofing
•  Emotional theories of print scale and aspect ratios
•  Adapting images for matte surfaced papers
•  Print lighting, viewing and evaluation