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Greetings,
Despite the near freezing overnight temperatures we've been experiencing, spring has sprung in the Pacific Northwest. Around our neighborhood, fruit trees and azaleas are blossoming and shoots are coming up in our flower gardens.
And spring photo workshop season is about to begin.
I also have a couple of European photo tours for 2027 that are open for sign ups. And I share a handy Photoshop image processing tip.
Plus, my ever popular and award-winning* segment on home projects. Let's get started!
*This may or may not be true.
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Last chance for Olympic National Park Workshop
I’m teaming up this year with Margo Pinkerton of Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures for this hands-on learning and creativity experience.
I've been visiting Olympic National Park since I was a little kid. I really started exploring the park in my early twenties (over forty years ago) when I began backpacking. The backpacking led to taking pictures during my trips, which led to wanting to take better pictures, which led to getting pictures from the park published, and eventually where I'm at now: leading photo workshops into the park for the last twenty years or so.
During our workshop, we’ll be in the rain forest, on the coast, and next to waterfalls and lakes. With any luck, we may even see some Roosevelt elk and Banana slugs (my personal goal)!
We still have a few spots available, but our hotel cut-off date is coming up soon. There are other places to stay in Forks, but it’s always best to be in the same hotel so act fast!
Take a peak at my Olympic page to learn more.
Not a Banana slug. But still cute.
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Faroe Islands photo tour
The Faroe Islands are remote, mysterious, and seriously dramatic—but also stunningly beautiful. If you’re into landscape photography, this place is a magnet.
I’ll be teaming up with Lofoten Photo Tours (the same group that made my 2025 Lofoten tours so memorable and successful) for this October 1-8, 2027 adventure.
For more information, visit my Faroe Islands page. I’m also running an early bird special until the end of May. You can take advantage of that here. The password is FAROES-2027
Photos courtesy of Lofoten Photo Tours
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Lofoten Islands 2027
I’ve also got another trip to Lofoten planned for early in 2027: Jan. 29 – Feb. 5. Once again, we’ll be based out of Leknes and staying in cozy red fishing cabins. More information can be found here.
You can read a bit about that trip in the March 2025 edition of this newsletter as well as in this blog post.
The early-bird special for Lofoten, also running until the end of May, can be accessed here. Password is ARCTIC
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A useful tip for using curves in Photoshop
In a recent blog post, Tony Kuyper shared a video by Todd Dominey outlining a better way to use Curves in Photoshop to add contrast to an image.
Often, when adding a simple S-curve to increase contrast, some parts of the image may get too dark and others too light. This is because the pivot point of the curve is, by default, at the halfway point of the histogram and not at the halfway point of the actual tones in the image.
Todd’s video demonstrates a much better way of using curves to add contrast and Tony, of course, came up with a free plug-in that makes implementing Todd’s approach a lot simpler and easier. And it can be used in selections, which means you can selectively adjust contrast to specific parts of an image.
But both Tony and Todd explain all this much better than I have, so I’ll just let you explore Tony’s blog post and Todd’s video.
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The Palouse is calling…
The Palouse is calling you to check off that item on your photographic bucket list. And I still have a couple of spaces left in my workshop this June 16-21 to help you do just that!
We’ll take in the spectacular view from Steptoe Butte, photograph old barns, buildings, and trucks, find interesting road shots, and have fun with the landscape and the light (maybe even storm light if we’re lucky). Oh, and there’s that fence made out of old metal wheels and other round things.
The Palouse is also a great place to try your hand at black and white as well as infrared. If you’ve wanted to dabble in infrared but don’t want to convert a camera to infrared, you can try an infrared filter like one of these Maven magnetic filters (Affiliate link). I have the IR720 filter that you’d be welcome to try. I even have some adapter rings that might fit your lens.
There’s certainly a lot to find and photograph. And that’s why I keep going back.
Click here for more and to sign up.
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Home projects
And now for the FIFA Prize*-winning segment all about my home projects. (They’re giving out awards for any inane things these days.)
During the last couple of months, I’ve built two raised garden planters and a cold frame for one of the planters.
A slate stone landing for the staircase leading to my little home office. Cracks to be filled with hardy ground cover.
I also replaced the propane stove top in our RV with an inductive stove top. It was a little scary taking the jigsaw to the countertop, but it all ended well.
And just for fun, here’s Sydney saying hi to a miniature horse that lives nearby.
*Any prize mentioned is probably not real. Most likely not. Why would anyone think so?
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