Workshop Sponsor: OnOne Software

I'm pleased to announce yet another great sponsor of the Close to Home photography workshop in Port Townsend, Washington. The great folks at OnOne Software, makers of award-winning plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom & Apple Aperture, have joined us to help you take your photographic thinking in new directions.

Their Perfect Photo Suite contains seven terrific tools to help you zip through post processing and get you back out shooting in no time. It contains the most recent versions of Perfect Resize (powered by Genuine Fractals) for resizing, Mask Pro for removing unwanted backgrounds, PhotoTune for color correction, FocalPoint for selective focus and PhotoTools and PhotoFrame for amazing photographic effects. Plus, you get their newest product—Perfect Layers for Lightroom and Aperture. The Perfect Photo Suite is a great value, and it's currently on sale during OnOne Software's Summer Sale!

But hey, for a couple of workshop participants, we've got an even better price—free! Yep, OnOne Software has kindly donated not one, but two copies of the Perfect Photo Suite (a $499.95 value) for two randomly selected participants in the Close to Home workshop.

My sincere thanks to OnOne Software for joining ThinkTANK Photo and Craft & Vision as workshop sponsors. It really is gratifying to have great people like this behind us.

Want to join us in Port Townsend? Details and sign up are here.

Workshop Sponsor: ThinkTANK Photo

I'm proud to announce a second sponsor for the Close to Home workshop, your favorite camera bag manufacturer and mine, ThinkTANK Photo! Yep, the kind folks at ThinkTANK Photo have provided us with some cool workshop prizes for the Close to Home participants.

I've been using the Retrospective 5 for a few months now and it's quickly become my favorite bag to head out into the world with. It's perfect for a small kit with my camera and a 50mm prime attached, a wide angle and a short telephoto—perfect for almost any situation. Small and lightweight, it lets me worry about the shot and not about a bunch of gear weighing me down.

Since part of our workshop mission is help you concentrate on your photography and less on the gear, we've got prize packages that reflect that "grab your camera and go" philosophy. Three random workshop participants will win one of these great prizes:

• A ThinkTANK  Photo Retrospective 5 camera bag in Pinestone, along with a Pixel Pocket Rocketand a Cable Management 10 accessory organizer. (Yep, all three!)
• A ThinkTANK Photo Retrospective 5 camera bag in Pinestone
• A ThinkTANK Photo Pixel Pocket Rocket and a Cable Management 10 accessory organizer

Of course, if you really do need to carry a lot of gear, ThinkTANK Photo also makes many other bags and accessories to help you—shoulder bags, backpacks and rolling bags, to name a few. Many pros swear by ThinkTANK Photo gear.

My thanks to ThinkTANK Photo's for their sponsorship, and to Craft & Vision for theirs. It's great folks like these that make workshops like this possible. I'm grateful for their support.

Hope to see you in Port Townsend next month!

Workshop Sponsor: Craft & Vision

I'm pleased to announce that the Close to Home Workshop has its first sponsor and it's a great one. Craft & Vision, publishers of the original ebook, Close to Home: Finding Great Photographs in Your Own Back Yard has kindly agreed to give each workshop participant a free copy of the ebook or, if you already own it, one free ebook of your choice from their online store.

If you've seen the selection there, you know what terrific resources these ebooks are. If not, you're missing a great library of valuable photographic knowledge—and for only $5 each. You can choose books from respected professional photographers such as Dave Delnea, Andrew S. Gibson, Nicole S. Young, Darwin Wiggett, and, of course, David duChemin. There are books on the art, the techniques, and the business of photography, and there's usually a new one every month. They are truly a great resource for photographers of all levels.

Oh, one more thing… on the last day of the workshop, Ray and I will randomly select one workshop participant to receive a full set of all of the Craft & Vision ebooks! Yep, every single book (PDF) published by Craft & Vision to date will be yours to read at your leisure.

UPDATE: David duChemin has upped the ante for the Craft & Vision prizes by adding a signed set of all three of his currently published print books, Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision, Visionmongers: Making a Life and a Living in Photography, and Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. We'll give this terrific prize away to one lucky workshop participant!

Our sincere thanks to Craft & Vision for their support and for providing these great prizes to our workshop participants. (What? You haven't signed up yet? What are you waiting for?)