Exposure Part One
Autumn has always been one of my favorite spectacles to photograph, and if you’ll soon be in the field capturing fall color too, I’m offering a special edition of my exposure class just for you. To finish the season with images you’re satisfied with, you need techniques that will let you succeed with backlit foliage, soft cloudy days, and everything in between. Like a sporting event, you can’t go back and recreate an autumn moment when it is over; it is a one-chance opportunity.
Welcome to Exposure Part One — Fall Color Edition!
September 11, 2025 | $80
This workshop is one 2-hour session online. The sessions will begin at 8 PM EST. It will be recorded and made available to registered participants for 60 days. Tuition is non-refundable.
This Fall Color edition of my Exposure class will cover everything that is included in the normal exposure class, but will include an additional twenty minutes of discussion that explores how to apply the techniques to fall color. The goal is to equip you with effective tools and approaches that will let you work quickly, capture the best data you can, and give you options when you return from the field.
If you’re honest, you recognize that few photographers make a perfect exposure every time. Our cameras are often good enough to compensate for that, except when they aren’t, which leads to disappointing results. Avoiding disappointment and getting better results is the reason to understand exposure better.
Exposure Part One will teach you about pixel values—the numbers that define your digital photos. Understanding pixel values is the key to solving any exposure problem, but this important knowledge is hidden from us in Lightroom and other editing software. You’ll need a tool called RAWDigger to read these values, and new strategies to apply that knowledge.
In this class you will learn
- foundational knowledge of how exposure creates an image
- how to evaluate exposure with RAWDigger
- a better understanding of what defines overexposure and underexposure
- using highlight warnings (blinkies) to evaluate exposure
- how to bracket for “perfect” exposure
- how all of this applies to photographing fall color
Meet Your Instructor
Rich Seiling
Rich Seiling’s passion for capturing light and beauty with photography has led him on a series of adventures that have shaped his vision and view of the craft. From a stint at The Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite as an assistant curator, to his pioneering work in digital printmaking, founding of a leading fine art printing studio, and 22 years living in and photographing the Yosemite region of the Sierra Nevada, Rich has deeply explored the vision and craft of photography while continuing to express his own vision.
He learned photography in the darkroom, seeking to make prints with the rich tonal scale exemplified by the West Coast traditions of photography. But his frustration with color processes lead him to explore digital photography starting in the early 1990s.
Combining his darkroom knowledge with digital tools led to a process for making color prints of museum quality that pushed the process to new heights. His reputation for making vibrant yet realistic digital prints allowed him to help photographers like Michael Forsberg, Galen Rowell, Jack Dykinga, Robert Glenn Ketchum, and many others, make the transition to digital fine art printing. With his team at West Coast Imaging, he has helped produce numerous museum shows, supplied prints for leading galleries, and done prepress for art books from publishers like Taschen and Houghton Mifflin.
His simple yet powerful Photoshop workflow, tested on tens of thousands of prints at WCI, is in use by many top professionals, and has been taught to countless students across the country through workshops and lectures.
Working in both black & white and color, Rich strives to capture the profound beauty of nature and communicate it through vibrant, and sometimes large, prints. He considers himself a student of light, discovering its qualities and how it communicates the inherent realities of a subject, often seeking out fleeting moments of rare light that make the landscape sing its own voice.
Driven by the belief that each photographer has a unique story only they can tell, Rich teaches the art of photography through workshops and articles. His goal is to help students unlock their potential to tell their own stories by helping them gain control of the craft, expand their vision, and most of all, to experience the enrichment and joy that photography brings.
Rich lives just outside Nashville with his wife and creative partner Susan, and his three children.
You can see more of his photography at richseiling.com and read his blog for photographers at craftingphotographs.com.