Snowing/ SFO Workshop!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, I had a wonder 4 days off.  As you can see from the photo above, snow has started falling in Denver, looks like winter has finally arrived.

I have a fairly large shoot later this week, I'll be shooting board of directors photos for a client.  I'll be shooting about 50 head shots and two environment portraits of the President and CEO of the company.

We still have space available for the Denver January 10th, 2009 Small Strobes, Big Results workshop if your interested.  Check out the new video on the side banner at the top to see what a workshop experience is like.  I've conducted 6 Small Strobes, Big Results workshops this year, they're fun and participants seem to enjoy themselves.  You can read some of the reviews HERE , HERE and HERE. Workshops locations and dates are listed in the banner to the right.  

SAN FRANCISCO SMALL STROBES, BIG RESULTS WORKSHOP!

You'll notice that San Francisco has been added to the list.  I'm looking forward to visiting SF for sure and this location looks like fun!

Our host for the SF workshop has secured pier side buildings in the port of San Francisco.  This should give you an idea of the type of environment we'll be shooting around.

I have a lot of readers from the San Francisco area and I think this workshop will be filled quickly.  The workshop is designed for only 12 photographers, so if you're interested in attending please contact me regarding availability.

Indy Workshop Results

What a wonderful Small Strobes, Big Results workshop we had in Indianapolis, ID. I want to extend a very special thanks to our host Polina Osherov. for opening her studio to us and for having such a fantastic location to shoot. Polina's studio is located in the Stutz building in Indy, If I lived in Indy, I'd have my studio there. For sure.  Check out Polina's post about the workshop HERE.

We had a full house at the workshop, my apologies to those that wanted to go but could not attend. Unfortunately we could not accommodate all of you that wanted to attend. I really like Indy and hope to return for another workshop sometime in the future!

The building where the workshop was held is fantastic! It use to be the manufacturing plant for the Stutz automobile. They use to have the famous saying "The Car That Made Good in a Day". Really neat space to shoot in, for sure.

It was a pleasure to meet all the fine photographers who participated in the workshop. This group really got into shooting all the the lighting demos that I did for them. Each of them had opportunity to shoot and work with the models. Janet P. had some truly beautiful variations by changing her angle of view and moving around. Way to go Janet.

I'm looking forward to seeing the other attendees work from the workshop. After the workshop we all went to dinner where I was able to answer last minute questions regarding work flow, lighting, business etc. This was a fun workshop guys, thanks for coming and I hope you learned a lot.

Here are a few images from our one day workshop in Indy. I'll be making full posts regarding the lighting of the images and such. We also shot video and will be posting that as well.

If you're interested in leaning location lighting using small strobes, looking into getting yourself to one of my workshops. Small Strobes, Big Results workshops are informative, fun and it just might shave a few years off your leaning curve. Our next workshop is being held in Denver on Jan. 10th, 2009.

What's coming up: I'll be leading my first Mentor Series Trek to Death Valley with fellow photographer Bill Durrence from February 18-22, 2009. On March 19, 2009 I'll be in Philadelphia speaking to the local chapter of the ASMP and on Friday the 20th, I'll be conducting a Small Strobes, Big Results workshop at Eastern State Penitentiary. Yes, at the Penitentiary. This is going to be really cool, more about that later. OK I'll show you what the place looks like, just a few shots.

Here are some of the photos I created for the workshop in Indy! Enjoy. DT

Corporate Portrait

Being an annual report photographer in Denver and having shot for more than 25 years of corporate assignments, I have built strong working relationships with graphic designers and various other creative people in the industry. For this assignment, I was contracted to photograph "Tensie" for an Ethics & Compliance Report by my New York agent.

My client wanted both head shots and 3/4 length shots of Tensie in an environmental setting. Erik & I arrived about 45 minute prior to the scheduled shoot time in order to scout and set up lights in the location the client had set aside for us.

The client had set aside a very small conference room to photograph Tensie in. Upon arriving at our location the first thing I do is to conduct a location assessment. This assessment consists of the following considerations. Space size, existing lighting (if any/ambient), furnishings and available props.

This particular location worked well, we had contemporary furnishings, daylight windows to camera left and diffusion glass panels of the conference room camera right. The attached video will show the entire set up of the room and lights.

I used some of the daylight coming through the window as a fill light in the room. Sunlight was striking the back wall camera left, I was able to control the amount of fill using the blinds over the windows. We placed a single SB-800 strobe outside of the conference room and directed through the frosted glass panel. The glass panel was not really frosted, instead it had small holes in the frosted material. We did a test shot of Erik to see the quality of light the glass produced. The results of the light passing through the glass panel can be seen below.

I've attached a diagram to illustrate the setting we had to deal with in terms of setting.

After looking at our first test shot, I felt the light needed to be soften a bit more. I ended up putting a diffusion panel up against the glass to further diffuse the light before it struck the subject. The results of that additional panel can be seen here in the second photo of Erik.

If you look closely at the top of the frame of the above photo, you will notice some spill of raw "flash" light striking the back wall and ceiling. By adding additional gobo's to the flash, I was able to contain or prevent the spill of that raw light in the final images. Tensie arrived with several change of clothing for the shoot, we did 3 outfit changes in order to give the client plenty of choices. Here are a few more photos from the shoot as well as the accompanying video.  I have an earlier post showing similar lighting tools using a single panel and one strobe here.

If your interested in learning more about location lighting using small strobes, please visit Small Strobes, Big Results.  You can see results from our August 2nd workshop here.