Julieanne Kost's Blog

Here are a few snaps from my recent trip. I’m looking forward to summer when the flights aren’t so bumpy.  : )

We all need something to “Look Forward To”, and right now, my LFT is Iceland!

I’m thrilled to be returning to Iceland July 8th – 14th 2012, to spend a week with some of the most delightful people on the planet – and I’d love for you to join me and our wonderful hosts from Focus on Nature. This workshop is an incredible opportunity to give yourself permission to unplug from your daily life and reenergize your photography, your mind, and your soul.

The time we spend together: Pursuing Your Personal Project in Iceland, will be a graceful balance between creating stunning imagery in the field and learning the tools necessary to finish the images in Lightroom and Photoshop adding your personal style. The first day will be spent at the Grand Hotel in Reykjavik where we will cover the Lightroom workflow in depth to provide you with the workflow you’ll need for the rest of the week.

Then, the class will shift gears: participants will be challenged to communicate their own personal photographic project as they explore and expand upon their photography skills while traveling through the Icelandic landscape. During the field work, we will have technical and creative discussions regarding photographic conditions we encounter. The last day will be spent at the Grand Hotel processing selected images (using both Lightroom and Photoshop) before sharing work with the group.

This really is a unique opportunity to experience Iceland and all that it has to offer – glacier lagoons, Icelandic horses, waterfalls, and mud flats  are just a few of the things we may see on our excursions.  We will follow the weather and the light, photographing Iceland’s ever changing landscape with long hours of exquisite sunrise and sunset while the Focus on Nature team takes care of every little logistical detail  so that we can photograph in a relaxed, low pressure, and unhurried environment. We will come home not only with improved technique, but reenergized and inspired as a result of making the images that fulfill us as creative and passionate photographers and artists.

If you are looking for a location that will ignite your passion for photography, there is no better place than Iceland to photograph and no better workshop to participate in than Focus On Nature. Join the Focus On Nature family  as photographers, collaborate together as artists and depart with friendships that will last a lifetime.

Creative people need to exercise their creative muscles, and this is the perfect opportunity to do so! I hope you will join us!

-julieanne

Last Saturday we had a quick change of plans for our photo walk in New York due to the rain/slush/snow. Thankfully, Cari (who always has a back up plan) knew that Eataly was right around the corner from Foto Care (who hosted the event). Here are a few shots I grabed that morning with my iPhone:

Have a great weekend.

A big thank you to everyone that joined us in New York on Friday (for some beautiful weather), and on Saturday (and braved the weather) for our photo walk! On Friday I gave myself an assignment to shoot circles for the hour  and promised to post them so here are some of my favorites. Next I’ll take them into Photoshop Touch and see what I can do…  : )

Well I spent my first week on sabbatical in bed with the flu – as you can imagine it was not exactly what I had in mind!

However, I thought, why not make use of my “down” time, to organize the  images that I shot and processed using my camera phone and Instagram in past 6 months. After selecting my favorites and printing them (yes, I printed them!) in order to decide how to sequence them, I knew that they had to be shown as diptychs. (Perhaps if you attended Photoshop World in the spring, you might remember some of the early images that I showed on the Art of Digital Photography panel.)

What I should have known, was that Kush (being the phenomenally efficient man that he is), posted the slideshow for me on Adobe TV on Monday but remember, I am on sabbatical, with the flu, and I have to admit that I wasn’t really paying attention. So you can imagine what a surprise it was to me when I clicked the link tonight and saw that there were already people viewing it! Shame on me for not paying attention because, this is not a tutorial –  “The Red Thread – Moments Alone” is simply a slideshow of my work. Sorry that I didn’t warn you earlier, but I hope that you will enjoy it for what it is.

In this episode of the Complete Picture (Using Leading Lines in Photography) Julieanne demonstrates several ways to use leading lines in order  to guide a viewer’s eye through an image including leading towards the primary subject, keeping movement within the frame, and adding tension to a composition.

I wanted to share some photographs that I took with my iphone on my recent travels. I hope you enjoy!

I’m sure that many of you are aware of the free application called Instagram. I’ve been having fun with it lately in order to document and share things that I see throughout my day.

I figured out how to automatically send the photos to Twitter and to Facebook but does anyone know how to automate Instagram so that I can post them to my blog? I was able to find my Instagram RSS feed through posting to Twitter.

For those of you asking – Julieanne, why do you want to do this?  The answer is simple, I would really like to continue to post from one and only one source (my blog) and from there make use of the many automation applications available in order  to send my posts to my 1) personal Facebook page, 2) Facebook “Like” page and 3) Twitter account. Otherwise, it  gets too confusing for me (I’m very simple minded) and different friends end up seeing different information (or duplicate information) depending on where they look.

Thanks in advance for any assistance you are able to provide!

Take a few minutes to check out the World Without Photoshop – a unique interactive iPad book by Marcolina Design. It features the work of a dozen Photoshop masters including Maggie Taylor, John Paul Caponigro, Bert Monroy, Adhemas Batista, Olli-Pekka Jauhiainen, Olivia Parker, and Adobe’s own Russell Brown and Julieanne Kost. World Without Photoshop provides several examples of their work, short video’s as well as insights. Go straight to the World Without Photoshop download page or read what Maria Yap, Director of Product Management, Digital Imaging, at Adobe Systems has to say about it on photoshop.com and add your own comments!

Even if you’re not celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday as we do in the United States, this is the perfect time of year to reflect upon the goals that we set for 2010 – evaluating if we have been successful in accomplishing what we set out to do and if not, taking inventory on what we still can complete before the clock rolls into 2011.

Thankfully, I am satisfied with all of the career goals that I set for myself this year. And I made it through all of the practical, pragmatic, “you really need to take care of this” type of goals that one runs across in life. However, I realize now that my creative/photographic/artistic goals suffered this year.

I have not made nearly enough time for my own personal work. I traveled for Adobe, as I knew that I would, and made thousands of photographs, but haven’t spent the time I need to to turn them into the  digital composites that I am holding in my imagination. Luckily, I still have time and I’m going to take the next month to really focus on making images that matter to me (my own personal projects) while learning a few new things at the same time as I try some new techniques and tools.

It feels to good (and a little bit unnerving) make that commitment to the universe. But we all know that a promise made to another person has a much greater chance of being kept.

Here is an example of an image that I have in mind to make.

This image was composited after returning from Iceland with Focus on Nature (click here to find out how you can join me next year in Iceland). The components were all shot at Jokulsarlon or the Glacial Lagoon on the south coast of Iceland - the waves at the estuary of the lagoon, the birds flying over at the shore and the ice in the lagoon itself.

Click here to watch a video on how the image was composited.

Wish me luck, it’s going to take some self discipline to focus during the holidays!

In this Episode of the Complete Picture I demonstrate some basic compositing techniques in Photoshop CS5, used to illustrate the feeling and mood of Iceland. In this tutorial, you’ll discover how easy it is to combine multiple images together using Layers, masking, blend modes, and transparency in Photoshop CS5. Watch the video here…

In this Episode of the Complete Picture I demonstrate how to use Lightroom 3’s Develop module to use color, tone, placement of content, and stylistic effects to give a series of images a unified look and feel. You’ll learn how to use leading lines to tie images together as well as repeating shape, detail and balance to form a cohesive story. Watch the video here…

Fortunately for me, the last day of the recent CS5 tour in the Nordics wrapped up in the absolutely magnificent city of Copenhagen. I bundled up in a coat and scarf and headed out to explore the city as many of the locals do – on a bicycle! Here are a few images from the journey, including the colorfully painted buildings along Nyhavn and the Halloween decorations in Tivoli gardens.

Some details as I set out on the hotel's bicycle.

More details as I get lost around Nyhavn.

I am looking for shadows, lines and how they intersect - wishing that I could fly in order to change my perspective.

Beautifully painted houses and their reflections along Nyhavn.

More buildings from around the city.

Wonderful decorations at Tivoli that look innocent during the day...

...but come alive with light in the evenings!

In this episode of The Complete Picture we’re going to discuss how to select multiple images to work together as diptychs and triptychs. You will learn how similar attributes such as color and shape, mood and lighting, line and form will help to unify two (or more) photographs, perhaps even creating new meaning though the relationship of the imagery. View the video here…

As sad as I was to leave my new friends from my Focus on Nature experience, knowing that I will be returning next year made it a little bit easier. Our class spent 5 days in the field making an incredibly  diverse collection of images. We made time stand still, and gave it motion, we looked at light, composition, and color, experimented with different cameras, lenses, software, and we played with light, shadow, reflection and texture. Most of all, we worked together and shared openly, enabling us to see things that we would never have seen on our own. It was truly a unique experience, and one that I will never forget. I look forward to keeping in touch with everyone that participated –  and can’t wait to see the images that you composite as well.

Save the date! – if you’re interested in joining us next year, I’ll be returning to teach with Focus on Nature August 21-27, 2011.

Small flora found along the road.

We were also fortunate enough to be able to walk on a glacier - one of the more unnerving experiences that I've had. There is nothing like hearing the sound of the ice crack beneath your feet while knowing that if you fall in the water you have less than 2 minutes to get out.

The boat ride into the glacial lagoon was one of the highlights of the week. I was trying not think out the temperature of the water even though they have zodiac boats zipping around at all times - just in case you fall overboard. Iceland doesn't have a lot of "danger" and "warning" signs. They leave it up to you. Most if the time, common sense will keep you alive.

So put away your hesitations, and loose yourself in Iceland - the landscape is surreal.

We photographed from the moving vehicle as well. Panning with the landscape hoping to capture a feeling that we couldn't see.

There was a constant click, click, click as we drove along from one location to another. Sometimes a reluctant admission of disappointment, but more often, a delighted laugh and exclamation - "nailed it!".

From here forward, we will all look at the world differently. It may be the side of a building, the natural landscape or a reflection in a window that catches our eye. It's our challenge to capture how it makes us feel, and share that with the world. Thank you everyone who made this trip so wonderful!