TFB...No no no, not that...The Flash Bus man!

The Flash bus rolled into town today carrying two very good photographers, David Hobby (Strobist Blog) and Joe McNally (National Geographic Photographer).  Both specialize in small off camera strobe photography.  The day was very informative with each taking each half of the day to discuss their processes and problem solving.
 

 

David "Strobist" Hobby

Mr. McNally

Joe working the light set up for the bus models

Just an idea of how dark is was in the hall...and this is overexposed

Got lucky and caught all the flashes going off...let there be light!

The Final Image

At the end of the event Joe decided he'd like to try and light up the tour bus using just speed lights...8 in total on and 1 in the drivers seat of the bus and 1 each on the models for 11 total speed lights...It was pretty interesting to watch the process which only took about 20 mins to do.

Baby Shriver is here!

Baby pics are not easy!  

All you photographers out there that do baby pics on a regular basis have a special gift.  I did my first baby shoot last night for my best friend and learned that baby's don't take direction very well....who knew?!  :-)   

Anyway,  here is one that we recreated from a shot that my friends saw elsewhere.  I think it turned out alright.  More to come later.

PCU - Day 3 - Tony Corbell - Lighting and Shadows

What a great weekend!  PCU is all wrapped up and everyone is back home.  

Today we had Tony Corbell who showed us how to use studio and strobe lighting.  The lovely Briana was again our model to which I don't think many us of were too sad about :-) ...she is actually a very sweet person and easy to talk to. She ended up doing three wardrobe changes through out the day.  Sarah also joined us for a short while as well as a Mom of 4!!! who was just naturally beautiful (She's the one in red with the long blond hair)....unfortunately I can't recall her name.  Then several of us pulled in Amber who worked for PCU, who is not a model but should be, to grab a few shots of her.  She has some really amazing eyes.

In addition to shooting with strobes, we also did some shooting outdoors with Tony.  Tony demonstrated how slight changes in one's position can make dramatic changes in how the light falls.   To do this, he had Briana move around under the patio cover showing the differences placement and how moving ever so slightly can create dramatic changes in light detail.  I found this to be most informative.

I learned a tremendous amount this weekend that will come in very handy and can't wait until I have another opportunity to take additional classes...which just so happens to be next Friday when the Flash Bus Tour rolls into town with my 'mentor' David Hobby.  I have learned most of what I know about off camera flash from him and can't wait for the opportunity to meet him and Joe McNally (world famous National Geographic photographer).

I guess it's back to the real world tomorrow.

Here are some shots from today's session.

       

PCU - Day 2 - Terry White and Workflow

Another day down...unfortunately.  It's rare that I actually go to an event and actually be an attendee.  It's nice to see others doing all the work and me getting to enjoy the benefits.  I vote for more of that please and a'thank you.


Today was work flow management with Terry White our instructor.  Not only is Terry an employee of Adobe systems, but a pretty darn good photographer as well...just check out his site.  He went over everything from equipment prep to site prep, to shooting and managing the models, to what to do with your images once done shooting.  Did you know that there is now an electronic model release form that can be used on the Ipad?  That was interesting to see how it works...and it seems to work very well.  No more paper forms to keep up with and file and search for and lose and etc, etc, etc.  We spent 99 percent of the day in Lightroom 3 with Terry shooting tethered so that the images would post directly to his laptop and then be shown on the projection screen so we could all see how the lighting set ups looked.  Westcott was also there and they provided all the lighting equipment for the shoot today. 


There was so much to absorb but I think I learned a couple of things. 


Tonight was also our big dinner and 'expo' night!  I was excited and was ready to shop as Precision gave us a voucher to be used towards the vendors that were there.  It's really a sad day when you have a hard time finding things to spend 50.00! bucks on...but never fail, I did find something  and that something is called an Expodisk (funny thing,  buying something that's named expo when that's where I spend a great deal of my life) that you use for color balancing your pictures.  I hope to be able to use is during tomorrow's session with Tony.

PCU - Day 1 - Family Portraits with Michele Celentano

The first day of PCU - Precision Camera University is complete. 

The day started with Michele Celentano as my first instructor.  She was fantastic and a ball of fire (she's the tiny lady with the scarf on - down below).  She specializes in family portraits and spent the majority of the day teaching us how to work with clients, PCU brought in a family for Michele to demo techniques with and to allow us to work with. They also brought in individual models, in our case Brianna, to work with too.  This whole professional photographer thing is a lot harder that is appears.  :-) 

Today was all available light shooting with the use of additional accessories such as scrims and reflectors. 

These classes are just up my alley as they are booth instruction and hands-on, for which I am super happy about. 

Here are some shots from today's session.  Can't wait until tomorrow!

Tomorrow starts the next instructor at 9am and another full day of education and hands-on!  I'm really excited.