All the Help You Need.

Erin and her co-leaders make you their priority. Putting you in the right place at the right time is only the beginning. We are committed to providing you with whatever help you need to make the most of each outing or seminar.

• Your photographs and your experience come first.
• Small groups ensure plenty of personal attention.
• Your aesthetic preferences matter to us.
• We aim to help you to develop your own creative sensibilities.

Artistic Approach.

Erin is an enthusiastic supporter of photography as a creative medium. Whether you prefer methods that are very simple or very expressive, you will receive thoughtful and encouraging mentoring that aims to help you to create personally satisfying photographs. Erin and her co-leaders go beyond the craftsmanship of photography to cover a variety of issues involved in the creative process. These include:

• Creative choices that emphasize mood and suggest concepts.
• Developing personal style.
• Strategies for connecting with a location or a set of conditions.
• Finding sources of inspiration, both visual and written.

Going the extra mile. Quite Literally.

Many of Erin’s workshops are “adventure-style”, meaning that our priority is the photography, and that we will do whatever is possible within reason to let nature be our true guide. On the adventure-style workshops, we may do any or all of the following (and more) to maximize the photographic potential of any outing:

• Hike to a location.
• Sleep in a rustic mountain hut.
• Eat simple picnic meals in the field in order to be in position before sunset.
• Stay in position while a storm front moves to catch its glorious end.
• Take naps during the afternoon so that we can sleep less at night and catch good light on both ends of the day.

Cutting-Edge in-field techniques.

In addition to traditional and fundamental techniques, you will have the opportunity to learn cutting-edge in-field techniques that are necessary for certain post-processing solutions. These include:

• Strategies for dealing with very high-dynamic-range scenes, including (but not limited to) shooting for effective exposure blends.
• Strategies for creating extreme depth-of-field, such as shooting a focus stack. You will also learn how to carry out these techniques in combination with high-dynamic-range scenes and/or with quickly changing conditions.
• Options for creating panoramas, perspective blends, focal-length blends, and multi-axis stitches to extend field of view and to finesse compositions.
• Night photography techniques, including twilight blends, photographing the Milky Way, and including the moon in a scene.
• Creating sun stars and eliminating flare when shooting into the sun.

Cutting-Edge post-processing techniques.

All of Erin’s workshops include post-processing sessions that provide total workflow solutions from raw file preparation through to sharpening for web and print. Erin and her co-leaders are at the forefront of the field in post-processing techniques, bringing the latest innovations and personal tips and tricks to each session. These include:

• Exposure blends (multiple methods).
• Focus stacking (multiple methods).
• Perspective blends (multiple methods).
• Focal length blends.
• Twilight blends.
• Stitching (multiple methods).
• Advanced dodging and burning techniques.
• Light painting, light bleed, emphasizing textures, the Orton effect, and other stylizations.
• The creation and use of masks (luminosity masks and other “found masks”, hard masks, combining and editing masks) for localized editing control.
• Advanced color work: editing for color harmony, for color complexity, and for compositional benefits.

Good Times.

Having fun is essential not only to having a great trip but also to letting the creative mind out to play. This philosophy underlies everything that Erin and her co-leaders put into a workshop. We want you to come away with rewarding photographs, and we believe that having fun is an integral part of the process!

Wilderness Expertise.

Erin Babnik is certified by Wilderness Medical Associates as a Wilderness First Responder (WFR).