To kick things off, Friday evening we met professional beauty photographer Joe Edelman. He shared with us what goes into making a great image and emphasized the importance psychology and model/photographer interaction plays in getting great shots. It was very informative, relevant and I really like his pictures because they are so simple yet emotionally charged when you stare at them. I love it.
We also attended numerous photography workshops all day Saturday and Sunday at the Lynnwood Convention Center. They were all free so we took advantage. Btw, thanks again Oliver for the heads up. There we met several professional photographers, one of which was Dean Zulich a Seattle based commercial and fashion photographer creating great work and representing Sea-town to the fullest! The timing of it was cool because I had just learned about him reading the latest edition of DPP magazine the day before, then just by coincidence I ended up meeting him the next day where he gave a presentation about fashion photography on the go and the importance of color calibration. He was showing the versatile Elinchrom Quadra lighting gear. Very nice and compact looking gear but like Dean when he was a broke ass student during art school, I consider myself to be in self-study photography school at the moment so anything Elinchrom is definitely out of my price range for now. =) Anyways, Dean seemed like a cool down to earth dude and meeting him was definitely inspiring. I hope someday I can be at a level where he'd be down to work on a collaborative project together. Haha, it's good to dream right? Actually you know what...I'm going to write that down as one of my goals just for the heck of it. =)
With Dean...
Couple more exciting things worth mentioning. Linda and I got a new lens...woot! Our second prime and this one's not made mostly out of plastic like our 50mm, ha! Since we've been shooting a lot of portraits, we picked up the Canon 85mm 1.8 USM. It was kind of a no brainier next lens to add to our gear. It's a beautiful portraits favored lens that doesn't require eating top-ramen for the next couple of months to pay for it. We also picked up a much needed 3rd light stand and reflector holder arm. The light stand is the Manfrotto nano light stand which is great for on the go/on location shoots since it's very compact and light. I learned about this product a while back following Mr. Hobby's blog. The reflector holder is made by Avenger and unfortunately it doesn't hold our Westcott 5.1 reflector very well so I'll have to mess with it to get it to hold properly. We now have enough lights and stands to have the option to fire off a key light, back light and side or fill light if we want to....sweet-tah!
We also educated ourselves a bit on the history of photography and how the camera medium was invented and evolved to what it is today. It was a fun history lesson. Makes me appreciate even more how spoiled we are in creating our images. One of the fun things I learned from this class is how the key principles for image capture hasn't change much since the beginning. Also speaking of not having changed, during the civil war the battlefield photographers who captured the aftermath of the bloody battlefields at times moved the dead soldiers bodies around to get a better composition...are you serious?!
Here's a few quick shots we took with the 85mm from the convention center. Being a medium telephoto lens, it does a better job compressing the picture together than the 50mm we've been exclusively been using. We've barely had any time with it but I'm sure we will use it a lot and get to know it's strengths and quirks soon enough. Linda was so cute like a kid in a candy store. She was so excited, she couldn't even wait and was already opening and mounting the new lens to the camera before we even finished checking out at the register.
This one Linda took of me at f2.8 | ISO 400. The 50mm is usually a bit softer at this same aperture.
Here, photographer and educator John Williamson was demonstrating basic on location lighting using a Nikon SB900 speedlight flash with a Apollo Wescott Softbox modifier.We've had this modifier for a while and it's really slick how it collapses like an umbrella. Very compact and works like a charm.
This one was wide open at f1.8 | ISO 200. Again not bad on the sharpness. I back button focused on her left eye and then recomposed a slight amount. I took this test shot simply to see how much the cars behind her would blur at wide open and the quality of the blur. Not bad, better than the 50mm and I didn't have to be as close but of course it would be really good if I shot this with the new 70-200L IS USM II lens extended fully at 200mm. I'm sure you wouldn't even notice there were cars behind her at the 200mm focal length. Speaking of the new 70-200, we got to mount that bad boy up on our camera body and take some test shots. This lens is big and heavy and ain't playing around. It compresses a scene like the way you wish your mama would iron your shirts. And then there's the creamy bokeh and the new image stabilization which is impressive. I was getting sharp shots at around 135mm at 1/50s at f2.8. How cool is that! Me want one so bad....drool.
The new sharper, more glare proof, IS capable, heavier, and expensive 70-200...
And here's the other tools we got. Their sale prices were pretty much in line with online prices or slightly better so it was a great opportunity to pick them up locally which helps support our local economy and all. Also there's nothing better than instant gratification of not having to wait for shipping which Linda clearly demonstrated.
Coming up, Linda and I are volunteering for a charity photo shoot next weekend for Starlight Children's Foundation. This will be an in studio shoot and I've been given the fun opportunity to lead the group shoot. This should be a lot fun and I'm really excited for the challenge. Stay tuned...
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