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Copyright © Richard Sexton
The goal of the workshop is to enable each student to fully understand the technical aspects of digital capture and
to provide the foundation for a post-production workflow that will not only be efficient and organized, but will produce
the highest quality results their digital equipment will allow.
Richard Sexton has been a working professional commercial and fine art photography for almost 30 years.
For most of those years he was committed to large format view camera photography.
Beginning in the late 1990s, he became a pioneering photographer in digital printmaking and then in early 2003
began shooting digitally on a professional basis.
Over the last decade he has developed a methodical workflow for digital capture and post-production optimization of digital
files, which has enabled his digital capture to rival the image quality of large format film.
In this 2-day, week-end workshop, Richard will demonstrate and explain how he achieves state of the art digital results efficiently
and reliably.
The technique and equipment used will be covered in detail. Demonstrations will be given with both Canon digital SLRs
and with a Phase One MF digital back, used on both Mamiya MF and view camera platforms.
Raw conversion using both Adobe Camera Raw and Capture One Pro will be covered extensively with finishing touches to the
digital files made in Photoshop CS3.
Jonathan Traviesa, the studio manager for Richard Sexton Studio and an accomplished
Photoshop instructor in his own right, will assist with all phases of the workshop demonstrations.
Copyright © Richard Sexton
| Tentative Schedule |
| Day 1 AM |
We'll meet at the New Orleans Photo Alliance space at 1111 St. Mary St., which is just around the corner from
The Darkroom. Introductions and a brief overview of the workshop will be followed by a Keynote presentation devoted
to the shooting equipment we'll be using in the workshop and the technical aspects of digital capture with particular
emphasis on histogram evaluation and RAW format.
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| Day 1 PM |
After lunch we'll make some digital captures with both a DSLR and a Phase One digital back. Each step of the
process-exposure evaluation, camera settings, etc. will be covered during the shooting demo. 8Afterwards, the RAW
capture files will be converted using both Adobe Camera Raw and Capture One Pro conversion software. The
demonstration will cover the workflow through raw conversion producing 16-bit TIFF files ready to be opened for the
first time in Photoshop.
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| Day 2 AM |
We'll meet at my studio @ 1412 Dauphine Street. for the Sunday morning session, where we'll begin with a quick studio
tour followed by an extensive Photoshop CS3 demo, working with the files captured and converted the day before. We'll
cover image optimization using Levels, Curves, and the Shadow/Highlight tool. Additionally, we'll cover sharpening,
perspective corrections, lens corrections for barreling, pin cushioning, and vignetting, noise reduction, blending
exposures to expand tonal range, masking and selection techniques for corrections to discrete image areas. Color
correcting using replace color, match color, brush tool in color mode, and hue saturation brightness tool will be
demonstrated. We will also demonstrate a few techniques with the cloning tool for digital retouching.
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| Day 2 PM |
The morning session will continue after the lunch break where we'll meet back at The Darkroom. In addition to the
files captured during the first day of the workshop, students will have the opportunity to bring in personal image files
for evaluation and to demonstrate a range of moves in Photoshop that may be relevant or desirable. For those students who
are interested, there will be time for a brief portfolio review during the Sunday afternoon session, as well. Those files
we work on during the Sunday session will, by the end of the workshop, be optimized and ready for the last phase of the
workflow-final file manipulations for output.
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| Due to the amount of material we'll be covering in a relatively short span of time, there won't be shooting
field trips, as such. However, it's advisable to have your camera with you so that you can follow along, particularly on
the shooting demos
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| Driving directions to the studio: Sunday morning we'll be meeting at my studio at 1412 Dauphine St., which is
just off Esplanade Ave. on the Marigny side. A good landmark is Port of Call restaurant, which is on the uptown riverside
corner of Dauphine and Esplanade. My studio is across the street and 3 doors down on Dauphine. Parking is unrestricted on
Sunday and parking is usually reliable on Sunday mornings.
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Richard Sexton is the author/photographer of
• Terra Incognita: Photographs of America's Third Coast
• Rosemary Beach
• Vestiges of Grandeur: The Plantation of Louisiana's River Road
• New Orleans: Elegance and Decadence
Richard has written technical articles on view camera technique for View Camera Magazine and for
Ebony Camera's web site.
Additionally, he is the author of the Ebony Camera
user manual for those camera models featuring asymmetrical movements.
His work is included in the
Historic New Orleans Collection,
The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and
New Orleans Museum of Art.
In New Orleans he is represented by
A Gallery for Fine Photography.
Richard Sexton's work and professional background can be reviewed on his web site at
richardsextonstudio.com
Level: All levels but famliarity with your own digital equipment is recommended.
Class size is limited to ten students.
What to bring: Your digital gear and work samples.
Tuition: $295.
Deposit: $50 non-refundable. Tuition balance is due one week prior to the workshop.
Copyright © Richard Sexton
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