Sunrise in the Grand Tetons with the DII

Just back from our first trip to Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks where Helene and I were teaching this past week. We had a great group of attendees for the Digital Imaging Institute’s second annual “Imaging in Ophthalmology” workshop. Our days were long, but very rewarding as we started each day around 4 a.m. to be on the road by 5 for photographing in the best morning light. Instructors and attendees then spent the late mornings and early afternoons in digital imaging classes. Topics ranged from basic photography and Adobe Photoshop Extended, to advanced medical imaging and Raw capture processing workflow. Then it was back outside in the evenings to photograph again. Longest days of the year gave us good shooting light till almost 9 pm each night. Then we would meet back in class again to download and process images until late at night. From landscapes to wildlife, we had our hands full every day. Got lots of new material to work with for future tutorials and webinars. Thanks to Cathy and Mark Maio and all the instructors for making it a great week! Here’s just a sample of some of the images I did.

(click to enlarge images)

Lots of opportunities to photography the wildlife all week in the two parks.... Elk, deer, bear, moose, bison.... They got it all.... But there's more to it than that...

All week long, this grizzly bear and her three new cubs were hanging out up the street from the lodge we were staying at. Everybody got such good images of them except me.... When it came tho the best animal shooting situations, I never seemed to be in the right place when they were close to the road. Wasn't going into the woods after them, so I got what I got and have to work harder at it... Besides the photography skills, you need some luck mixed in with a lot of patience to be good at this. I got a whole new respect for this speciality in photography.

I am going to need a lot more practice to get good at wildlife photography. The only wildlife cooperating with me this week was this little guy.... Still never saw a moose....

Of course we had to stop and watch Old Faithful go off. It draws a big crowd.

I always find time to shoot some textures. Yellowstone was full of great color and texture. I will use these in other composite illustrations in the future. There kind of cool all by themselves as well.

On the last night of the workshop, we had a nice gathering with great food and wine, and watched the sun set from the open deck of the lodge. We all viewed samples of our week's work in a revolving slideshow as we excitedly planed for the next DII Imaging workshop.