Wildlife Editing for Extraordinary Results
Wildlife photography presents unique challenges in post-production. Animals often appear dark due to the way their fur, feathers, or fins absorb light, while backgrounds can become overly bright and distracting. Eyes that should be lively and brilliant may look dull, and masking presents even more challenges. This workshop will focus on how to overcome those challenges while editing wildlife photographs.
Bring Your Wildlife Images to Life in Post-Production
February 5 & 12, 2025 | Tuition: $315
Two two-hour sessions online. Each session will begin at 8 PM EST. It will be recorded and made available to registered participants for 60 days. Tuition is non-refundable.
In this intensive workshop, Rich Seiling will work exclusively with wildlife photos—using your own images to demonstrate solutions to these common challenges. You’ll learn not only the techniques of editing but also how to develop the vision to see the full potential in each shot. Rich will guide you through the process, showing how to enhance your wildlife images to make them look their absolute best.
Edit with Precision: Perfect Masking, Retouching, and More
In this workshop, you’ll learn how to enhance dark animals without overexposing the background, bringing balance and depth to your images. Rich will teach techniques to make eyes look vivid and full of life, adding emotion and realism to your wildlife photos. You’ll also master complex masking and retouching, especially for those challenging shots where fur, feathers, or fins can be tricky. Whether you’re using Lightroom, Photoshop, or any other software, you’ll gain valuable editing skills that will transform your wildlife photography.
Course Outline
Session One
We'll learn Rich’s novel approach to using Lightroom. This approach lets you "reinvent" Lightroom and get results previously unobtainable.
Session Two
Part Two will explain Lightroom's latest feature of using curves with masks. This is one of the most important additions to Lightroom ever and is a must-know tool. Learn how to use this new Lightroom feature to transform dull and murky photos into clear, crisp tones that communicate clearly. Curves are one of Rich’s most powerful tools and he will show you how he uses them.
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.