A few weeks ago marked the completion of the first Matty Photography advanced workshop. Unlike it’s sister program, the beginner workshop, which has 3 runs under it’s belt, the advanced class just completed it’s maiden voyage. As with everything educational, going through a huge chuck of learning material for the first time with a class is like running the gauntlet. Is the material arranged in the best possible order, is it structured in a way that makes sense with easy to understand vocabulary, how much time should be allotted for each lesson and photo adventure, how many student questions will result from the material and how much time will that eat, etc. There is a lot to estimate into the timing, which will then drive the overall structure and amount of material. As all experienced photographers know, the more you stick your head down the rabbit hole of knowledge, the more you discover it goes on forever. You have to draw the curriculum line somewhere in the sand, decide what takes priority, and ensure that whatever you decide to cover will be properly addressed in class.

For those who are in the dark about my workshops and are into photography, you should definitely out the workshop page by clicking on the ‘workshops’ button at the top of the page. This advanced workshop focuses on off-camera lighting. It teaches students about lighting, how it works, how to trouble shoot it, how to shift and mold qualities of light, etc. As far as the material goes, I think it went great. The photo shoot adventures… well, we will all want more time to shoot. I could set aside a whole day of just shooting and students would want more time. But you gotta draw the line somewhere, make sure concepts are grasped and demonstrated, and then move on. That’s what the courses are for, creating a foundation of understanding, getting the gears greased, and then releasing them off into the wild so that they can begin their growth as a photographer. Sure, the courses will offer some opportunities for good photo taking, but by no means are the in-class shooting adventures designed to revamp someone’s portfolio. After running through all of the shoots, I will be making some tweaks to make them run a little better and a bit more focused/goal oriented.

The photos you see included in this post are some of the photos I snapped as examples to kick-off a lot of the photo shoots. The students get the opportunity to use of lot of my lighting gear. Getting to play with different types of gear will let them get a better idea of what they like, leading to better future gear purchases when they start taking steps into buying more gear. We played with both studio strobe and hot shoe lighting setups. I recruited a couple subjects for us to point our cameras at. Monique and Paul proved to be great models for us as we played with the light around them.

The next stop on the Matty Workshop schedule is down in Longview, WA at the end of this month. I’ll be teaching a private beginner workshop for a group of 8 creatives employed by a health department organization. This will be the first time I’ll have been schedule by an organization to come in and teach a group of their company, so I’m pretty excited about this. Usually a workshop is filled with a hodgepodge of different kinds of shooters with varying goals with their photography, however, this will be a class full of people aiming all at the same common goal with their photography. I will be custom design the shooting adventures for this class so that they will be focused on the team’s future efforts.

So, you like photography. Maybe you are a casual shooter looking for more knowledge. Perhaps you are going on a vacation and want to document every step of the adventure, or a growing amateur, or maybe you are even playing with the big boys in the pro arena. A capable compact is a camera tool every photographer should own, and becoming a game changer in the every-day-photo realm. Now here is why…

Manual shooting mode, it’s an awesome (not to mention critical) thing for photographers. It allows us to take the pictures, rather than that know-it-all camera brain trying to run the show. The basis for all of the Matty Photography workshops are to teach students photography from the ground-up, as well as advanced techniques, and none of that teaching would be possible without full control over our cameras. Taking the training wheels off and giving you a shove down the street on your photographic bicycle, as you learn to peddle and balance the camera all on your own to make images. This IS photography and understanding the very basics in light exposure.

Let’s Rewind to a Couple Years Ago…

Up until a couple years ago, point ‘n shoot cameras were just that. You point, you shoot, you get no say in what the camera does for the rest of the process. Well… I guess you can say that you pointed it at someone’s face, framed the shot, and even selected one of those fun pictures modes, like “mountain,” “running man,” or “flower.” If you were halfway lucky, it focused on a face, and it wasn’t completely blurry. The advantages of a point ‘n shoot are: small form factor (for easy packing, slips into the pocket), light, fairly cheap, versatile fixed lens, and a few other things that makes them overall very convenient. The disadvantages: camera/computer driven (no manual control, all automatic), lacking in photo quality, poor low light performance. On the other side of the spectrum, you have DSLRs, and they are all about the manual-minded, well-versed photographers. DSLR simply intimidate the uneducated person who lacks all photographic knowledge, “what in the hell are all these buttons, and why do all my photos look like crap,” as they expect a DSLR to bend to their automatic mode conveniences. Sure, DSLRs can shoot in auto modes, but that’s like owning a Ferrari and never taking it out of first gear. DSLR advantages: great image quality, good low light performance, versatile (with a lens collection), dedicated manual controls, accommodates a hot shot flash (and all the extra goodies that go along with that functionality), fast frame rates, every thing a working photographer is looking for. The disadvantages: big, heavy, not convenient, expensive, require multiple lenses to be flexible.

Let’s Beat the Dead Horse

Ok, class, what is the saying we’ve all heard a thousand times just this year alone? “The best camera is always the one you have with you.” Too true, that’s why everyone has heard this. Why do you think cell phone pictures exponentially outnumber all other camera type photographs? The top camera for images posted on the website Flickr is the iPhone 4S (at the time of this article). It’s simply that it’s the camera that was in their pocket when they desired a photograph. That’s it. It wasn’t a torturous, lengthy deliberation on which camera they should use for this photo, as the answer is already made for them. You can only take a photograph with the camera gear at your immediate disposal. So the math is pretty easy on this one. The smaller and lighter a camera is, the more likely you are to carry it on you, or at least have tucked away in your car or nearby spot. A $10,000 camera setup is no good if it is safely nestled in it’s gear bag back at your house.

No one can blame you for not carrying a basketball-sized, 6 lb., DSLR camera setup with you all over the place. I don’t even do that. If it weren’t for the concern of theft, I’d probably leave one in my car, but thanks to our fine society, that’s out of the question. The only time I will consciously have a DSLR on me are times when I know I’m going out for a photo adventure, with the rest of the time my DSLRs tucked-in and sleeping at home.

A lot of the times, we are left with the simple desire to document an event, an emotion, whatever gives you the itch to want to freeze that moment for the visual archives. Image quality is always a welcome ability (a DSLR), but sometimes… well… it just doesn’t carry the same importance of the convenience to quickly pull a device out of your pocket (a compact). For this reason alone, most photographers, even pros, pack at least one compact around with them. They are smart guys, they know damn well they are not going to pack a big, heavy rig all over as if it were their wallet. Would you like an OK quality image at the convenience of your pocket, or no image at all because it’s not worth the workout to pack a DSLR? Let’s not even get into the statistics of how much more apt you are to drop, forget/lose, or otherwise damage a DSLR if you took it everywhere with you.

Today’s Compacts

The game has changed, the camera manufacturers have got smart (or at listened the the photographic community, either one…), and they understood the “camera you have on you” principle. What do you provide a photographer who wants convenience in a fully controllable package? A versatile perspective (single, zooming lens), small and lightweight (easy on the britches), and manual controls (a photographer’s camera). Boom, the fully manual, fully controllable, compact camera. The middle of the road IS nice. It’s a good compromise. It’ll never be a replacement for serious, working photographers, but dang, it’ll do a nice job for all those casual photos I want to snap.

The beginner workshop students will be allowed to use fully manual compacts in substitution of a DSRL, because they will be capable of fully controlling the camera and how it captures light. A reminder that the class is structured around the basics of photography and how to capture light, but it will cover topics and vocabulary exclusive to DSLR equipment.

What Category of Photographer Are You?

What type of photographer are you? It’ll drive what kind of camera(s) you should look at owning. Here’s an helpful way to solve the riddle. You like photography. Well… how much, how often, where at, and in what scenarios do you find yourself wanting to take photographs? Let’s face it, price/investment is also a large factor here. Of course there are countless levels of things to evaluate, but here a couple that might be a decent gauge, and maybe you fit in or around one of these. It’ll at least get you thinking.

• If you are completely new to photography, you don’t even know quite sure if you like it, don’t invest a terrible amount of money. You can always upgrade down the road if you get a really bad shutterbug bite.
• You like to simply walk around and take photos of yourself, friends, and random objects while you are causally hanging out, stick to a compact (regardless it’s price, your lighter pants will thank you).
• Looking at getting serious in any capacity of photography – landscapes, portraits, product, etc, and quality is of very high importance, you are starting to specialize. DSLR is your answer.
• You are looking at taking-on clients. This is a no-brainer. If you are asking clients to invest in you, you better make sure you take the first step down investment alley. Provide the photo quality people are expecting when they pay you money. DSLR for you, bud.
• The more serious you are about photography, the more you are going out on a mission to take great photos, the more you’ll want to look into the DSLR market.
• The casual, once in a while, take a camera out on a whim for a quickie… you are more of a compact.

The Investment Scale

Compact doesn’t necessarily mean inexpensive, and DSLR doesn’t really mean super expensive. There are high and low ends to each market, but DSLRs have a much spendier top end.

• Fully manual compacts can run $200 – $800. Bottom of page has a list of recommend fully manual compacts (at the time of this article).
• DSLR camera bodies can run from $500 – $10,000+, with most hovering around the $1000 – $1700 range.
• DSLR lenses range from $50 – $25,000+, most landing in the $300 – $2000 range.

Notice I Keep Saying “Compact?”

In my mind, the words “point ‘n shoot” just have a bad connotation. I think, “computer driven.” In other words, you don’t have a damn thing to do with the making of the picture. The more you learn about photography, the more this makes sense. This is why I’ll continue to refer to these full manual point ‘n shoot cameras as “compacts.” It somehow puts them in their own category of camera, and doesn’t translate to “mindless picture taking.” You’ve got your hands on the wheel and you are driving that puppy, it just happens to be small, compact, and convenient. You control aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and some even have their own dedicated buttons!

Don’t Forget Accessories

At the time of writing this article, the accessory market is still heavily dominated with DSLR equipment and ways to improve, tweak, and alter your photographic methods. This makes sense, as it’s the much more serious photo market. DSLR owners are investing, heavily, so what’s one more tool, right? Capabilities are endless. This kind of leads the obvious answer to my next statements, but… if you are starting to get to a point where you want your compact to do some pretty amazing things, well… compacts were built on the principle of convenience, not the ability to shock and awe God with photographic prowess. This is a sigh that your desire for photographic ability has hit the investment/growth crossroads. Invest in better, more expensive, more capable equipment to accommodate your growing skills, or plateau-out. Either decision is totally acceptable, especially if you are not making any money with photography, it’s hard to bite the bullet and drop all kinds of money on high-end stuff if it’s just a hobby. The more you shoot, the more you’ll understand your own path, and everyone’s is different. So walk the one you that makes you happy.

Every Photographer Should Own a Compact

That’s right. Hey, guy who owns every DSLR camera and lens available, you’ll want one too. Thank me later.

Of course, if you are looking at going into the DSLR market headfirst right out of the gates, and you are on a budget… by all means, invest in priority equipment. Please don’t confuse my argument that out of sheer convenience, every photographer should own a compact. Don’t confuse convenience with financial and photography goal-oriented objectives.

Get Full Manual Functionality, Regardless

Ok, so you get the whole idea of only being able to take pictures with the camera you have on you. You might even concede, like I have (I’ve dumped more money than I’d like to disclose on high-end DSLR gear), that you will not be toting your NASA engineered marvel of photographic science with you everywhere. Yet you are a photographer, and you take pictures. You need a camera with you.

“Full manual compact cameras,” does not mean “more expensive.” There is a camera on the list below that you can score for just over $200 (which by the way are the sames price as a lot of your regular, non-manual P’nS go for). Even if you decide at the present time you don’t want to shoot manual mode, it’ll be there waiting for you when you want to give it a shot and twist the dial to ‘M’.

10 Recommended Fully manual capable compact cameras for use with the beginner workshop:

• Canon PowerShot G1 X (newer) or G12 (older)
• Nikon Coolpix P7100
• Canon PowerShot S100
• Canon PowerShot S95
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5
• Canon PowerShot SX230 HS
• Nikon Coolpix P300
• Olympus XZ-1
• Samsung TL500
• Fujifilm FinePix F550EXR

List updated Jan 2012 (this list may grow outdated, however, newer/similar models of these cameras will emerge).

If you have questions, please use the comment function below, or shoot me a message from the contact page.

Is this post a little late to the game? For those who already use applications like Aperture and Lightroom (more about these later in the post), yes, this post is about the biggest “duh!” article you’ll have read in a couple years. However… for those photographers who have not had their eyes opened to these savior-like applications, the people who make a living making piles and piles of photos yet still rely on single image editing applications, this post is for you. Why do I STILL have a sense that this post is necessary? ‘Cause I hear of people struggling with photo management on a regular basis, and I feel compelled to write it for them. Most likely, this post is going to help that group of photographers who are at the level where they are just starting to get paying gigs, they are flirting with the idea of taking on photography seriously, or maybe they’ve been doing it for a while and can’t figure out how other working photogs are staying afloat with all of the editing, ’cause they are spending an unimaginable number of hours in post production with a steady stream of clients. In today’s fast-paced world, it’s all about getting the job done better, faster, and cheaper. Streamlining your biz is key, and post production is a giant arena which can be tweaked to really get more time back to invest in other areas.

Before I get into the meat of this topic, I want to thank Alice for entertaining my “frustrated photo editor” photo concept for this blog post (pictured above). I can say it’s the first time I’ve spent an hour to make a photo just for a blog post image.

The greatest (and unfortunately worst in some cases, you know what I mean) thing to happen to photography was the transition to digital photo sensors (digital photography). A close second – photo management software. No, I’m not talking about photoshop. Photoshop is an amazing tool, people who spend enough time in it can become digital wizards and make your head spin with endless manipulation techniques. Sorry, this post isn’t about attempting to impress you with how many ways you can take a chainsaw to your images in graphic design software. I’m going to be strictly talking about software for real-world, every day working photographers with a workload which turns-out thousands of edited images a month. If you haven’t heard of Aperture or Lightroom, I’m going to guess your workload isn’t exactly hitting thousands of images every month (cause you would have sought this solution out by now). However, you’re probably starting to take a lot of photos as you work more, the momentum and number of your photos will snowball, and you need a plan of attack on quite a few levels so that you can stay on top of the game.

The role of a photographer changed the second cameras went digital. We are no longer just photographers capturing light, sending rolls of film in for development. We now need to be proficient in a dizzying number of digital-oriented skills in-order to compete in a very over-saturated field. In my opinion, every aspect of a digital photographer’s job is equally important. After all, you are only as strong as your weakest link. The education and experience in light capturing is an obvious, but it doesn’t stop there. This skill (the ability to capture your subject and light well), amazingly the one that SHOULD define you as a “photographer,” no longer… well… is the only thing that defines you as a good photographer. Many will argue that it does, and I would say that it IS 95% of what makes a photographer great, DEFINITELY the separating factor from the sea of others. That other 5%, it’s a small part (the editing process knowhow), but a critical cornerstone of the process which ensures a photographer’s job is completed professionally from end-to-end. Without a long-term plan for that last 5%, well… it’s like owning Ferrari, but not knowing how to put fuel in the thing after the tank goes dry. The car is an engineering marvel, with all the potential to wipe the rest of the competition, but without fuel, it’s not worth a darn to anyone. And when I say “long-term” I mean just that. I’m not talking about a post processing plan that will successfully get you through one or two days, or even a month of photo shoots. I’m talking about years of consistent photo shoots, terabytes of image data you’ll need to import, organize, edit, and archive. It’s SUPER easy for image management to get out of control when the foundation for your post production process is not solid. Say you have a light load, maybe 40 shoots in the year, so you have a pretty good pile of images stored away. What happens when a client from a year ago calls you up looking for a photo? Is that an all-day task or 20 minutes of your time? That’s just one situation of many that can pop up.

Now, without getting into the nitty-gritties of editing styles, I want to talk a little about the only piece of software a successful, full-time photographer will need to get the job done, from import to finished exported photo. Software that will allow a single photographer to shoot thousands of images a month, not spend the rest of their waking life on the computer, stay organized, and keep photos backed-up safely (click here for blog post on solid backup hardware). I’m talking about shooting more, editing less, and improving consistency in your photo product. Sound like a dream? Well, it doesn’t have to be a dream any more. I’m talking about software often referred to as “all-in-one” or “photo management” solutions. The big two are Aperture and Lightroom (I’ll post links below to the software pages so you can get all the details). These pieces of software have a TON of functionality, but I’m going to only spend time on the ones that I feel make this software the best digital friend a photographer could have.

A disclaimer here – I use Apple products, and I use Aperture, so I will refer to these kind of software solutions by the name Aperture for the sake of time at this point forward. It in no way should this be interpreted that Aperture is better than other similar solutions, it’s simply the one I chose to go with.

Photo Management

I’ll admit it, by default I’m not the most organized person in general. I’ll let some dishes stack up in the sink, some clothes flung about the house, and my work desk can get a bit scary at times. I can handle this at times in my personal life, but NOT in my photography business. Organization is key, especially when you start talking about big, scary numbers that go well past the thousands. I can’t try and kid myself, if 500 images get imported off my memory card and are not organized directly on-the-spot, they will never get organized. Enter my digital maid….

Before Aperture, importing photos to your computer meant dragging the images from your memory card to a folder (or set of folders) that you organized yourself on the computer. It was up to you to organize your photos, the folder structure, and naming convention. In other words… a pain in the ass. If you still “organize” this way, I don’t know how you do it if you have any kind of reasonable workload. Respect goes out to you for dedicating the rest of your life to organizing and stressing-out over file management (that would be sarcasm…). Those days are gone, if you didn’t know this already.

Aperture manages all of your photos, much like iTunes manages all of your music. With Aperture, photo management is a breeze. Plug your memory card in, Aperture will automatically ask to import your photos, and if you want them in an existing or new photo project. It can even apply preset image edits at import, saving your even more time. You organize your photos further in Aperture by making organizational units called “projects.” Think of projects like a playlist in iTunes (maybe that you’d make for a specific band you like). I create a new photo project for every shoot that I do with the date and client name. The beauty of managing my projects on this smaller scale becomes apparent after I’m all done editing and exporting a client’s images. What do I do with that photo project now that I’m all done with it? Well, Aperture can export that project in a single file form, and you can export that to an external HD you use for backups. This stuffs all of the photos from a single shoot into one file, one location that I can find, and I’m not sorting through an endless set of files. You can then call on that single project file at any time, open it back up in your Aperture application, or even transfer it to another computer with Aperture, and all your edits are intact, just like you left them. For me, photo projects only live on my main computer for a month or two before they must be exported to my backup drives, for the sake of clearing space on my computer. My average photo shoot hovers around 10 gigs of space, with some larger projects pushing 80 gigs in size. HD space on my computer is filled and cleared at dizzying rates, like the people processed through the DMV. Your photo workload and space might allow you to organize your photos by month or even by year if you only shoot rarely. That’s all up to you, it’s a trial and error path you gotta take to figure out what organization works best for you and your available HD space.

Aside from the easy way to sort, export, and import photo projects, there are a TON of ways to organize and find images that you have loaded into Aperture. You can create smart organizing for your photos by rating, keywords, dates, etc. you can sort and organize your photos as easy as it is to search your iTunes for a song. A TON of power here that I don’t think people fully appreciate. The cleverness of the photo management end of Aperture saves my butt more than I’d like to admit, and makes it a key component in streamlining my biz. The management of my files from import to exporting of the project for archiving is a gigantic time saver, and lets me sleep easy at night.

This post is going to be long enough as it is, so I’m going to try to keep my points short, and I’m acknowledging that I’m doing the photo management portion of this a giant disservice by not ranting for another 5 pages about how awesome it is. It’s something you have to experience and work with for awhile to truly appreciate and understand how great it is and exactly how many ways you can sort your innumerable amount of images. Imagine, if you can, what it was like before iTunes was created for music management. Maybe most of you didn’t give digital music a go before iTunes was created… well, there’s a reason for that (it was a pain in the ass, no surprise). Just like iTunes for music, I couldn’t imagine being a photographer without Aperture, and it’s thanks to this powerful organization.

Editing

The editing side of Aperture has a number of advantages over your standard graphic/photo design apps out there. It’s a non-destructive, present applying, batch editing/exporting machine.

First off, it’s a non-destructive editing environment. What does that mean? It means that while you edit a photo in Aperture, you never really “touch” the original file. Aperture makes an alias copy of the image which you make edits to. The edits can be changed or even undone completely at any point in time. I can go back, open a photo project from 3 years ago, and remove any and all edits from a file, the original file is still there, untouched.

The editing controls are simple, easy to understand, and can be manipulated by dragging dials or manual number inputs. It’s natively ready to handle RAW image files, and excels and leveraging RAW file editing flexibility. A pretty robust set of editing tools can be found in Aperture, most tools that any photographer will need with doing general edits.

Another feature I use ALL the time is batch edits. Talk about a huge time saver! Let me explain what I mean by batch edits. Most of my photo shoots are in a very controlled environment, meaning I’m using lighting 90% of the time, so my lighting conditions are pretty static. This means that my photos from shot to shot will be very consistent. So say I start editing a studio photo shoot. I work on the first image – getting the white balance, exposure, contrast levels, etc all where I like them, ending with a finished image I’m happy with. I then can tell Aperture to lift the edits from that image and apply them to a group of images. So if I just shot 200 photos in the studio, I only had to edit one and apply those edits to the rest! I do go through the rest and spot-check for small variations, but the brunt of my work is already done. Are the people who are reading this who are only familiar with editing in software like Photoshop feeling their jaws drop at this moment? If you are an event or purely natural light photographer, this feature may not be as powerful for you, as your lighting conditions don’t really fall under the “consistent” category, but definitely still useful.

Aperture does have a lot of editing capabilities built-in, however, for those people seeking additional functionality there are third-party plugins available to add additional editing functionality. I have a couple of these.

After getting familiar with the rating, sorting, and editing sides of Aperture, you can import, edit, and export a photo shoot of 200 images in an hour if you have a few editing miles under your belt. That’s right, I just said editing a 200 image shoot in an hour. That’s sorting out the duds, picking your favs, editing them, and exporting.

Exporting

This section shouldn’t be a shocker since the exporting functionality leverages the same kind of power you’ve read about in the earlier sections above. Back in the day, you had to painfully open, edit, and export images individually. How long would that take with 200 photos? I don’t even want to think about it. In Aperture (after you are done editing your group of images, which you probably batch edited), you can select all of the images you desire to export and then enter the export menu. Here you’ll see a bunch of default exporting file formats and size which you can pick from, or you can make your own. Select desired export present and hit ok. That’s it, 200 images ready to deliver to the client. This kind of efficiency not only allows you to work faster, but since it doesn’t take you as long to do your editing and exporting, you can now deliver more edited photos to your clients without it taking much more time.

Daunting Turned Piece-o-cake

None of the things I mention above, as far as getting the job done with single image editing, is not impressive or new to the world of photography. BUT, the ability to do all of these fairly basic processes and applying them to 200 images is. Photo management and batch processing is like hiring a couple people to work for you. This software alone is the way a photographer can work full-time, spending more time shooting clients and less time editing. More time shooting means more time making photos and billing clients, and again, less time hating your life editing all the time.

Applications like Aperture and Lightroom are legit, as in, don’t think that they can’t hold their own in the editing world. They are full-fledged photo editing applications. If you are out to create some fantasy land, where you want to photoshop your model onto a flying dragon… well, then you need something like photoshop. I’m not planning on air brushing any dragons into my photos anytime soon, so I’m happy with my one application solution for my business at this point in time. Again, this is a photographer software solution, not a graphic designer app.

Wrapping up a two-hour photo shoot doesn’t have to mean you should be getting that feeling in your gut when you realize that you will have to spend a full day editing in some clumsy application designed to handle one image at a time. Life isn’t that hard, not any more.

Disclaimer and Details

Now, I only just scratched the surface of what these amazing applications can do. I literally just touched on what I feel are the practical functions working photographers need in a software solution. I’m sure you are just as tired of reading this post as I am writing it, so I’m going to leave it at that. Please visit the site below which will fill you in on all the other countless features they have to offer.

Aperture – works only on Macs, you can download a free 30-day trial of the software.
http://www.apple.com/aperture/

Lightroom – works on both Macs and PCs, you can download a 30-day trial.
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/ 

A pop, a flash, a split second later, a photograph is made. But this photograph… it’s got some spice to it, something you can’t see with your eyes, and there is a lot more going on than you might think in order to make that photograph. Spoiler alert… it’s off-camera flash lighting. Most of us know about flash, and how it “helps” us take photos, but most don’t know what you can do with it when you know enough to control flash and manipulate your environment (photographically). I’ll spare you non-photographers the details, but this is the method I use 85% of the time I have a camera in front of my face. A literal carload of lighting equipment follows me to every shoot. It’s a giant pain in the ass, a couple hundred pounds of equipment, cords, battery packs, etc. to lug around from shoot to shoot, but in the end, all of it is worth it, well worth it. Photos with or without lighting is a night-and-day difference. To light, or not to light, it’s not really a question in my book, as I’m lighting my compositions every chance I get. After the first shoot I ever did with off-camera lighting a few years back, I was hooked, and I haven’t looked back since. These are the photos that make people stop and look, appreciate the uniqueness that otherwise couldn’t have been achieved without some kind of lighting intervention/manipulation.

Lighting lets me create the moments I want to capture, bring things to attention via lighting, hide things I don’t want attention on, freeze motion… just about anything I want. Given any environment, regardless the existing ambient lighting conditions, I can roll-in and create something completely different with my flash lighting. I’m not just dealt a hand of cards and forced to play them, I can “stack the deck” in other words to make the outcome I’d like to see. You’ll often hear photographers say that they “look at the world in photographs,” or they “look at the world through a lens.” My process, and other skillful lighting photographers, take it a few steps further. I don’t just look at the world as photographs, but photographs with the perspective after flash lighting is factored in. This is where a lot of the skill of vision and lighting knowledge really come into play. This kind of “sight” is rare and takes forever to really nail in terms of walking in and knowing your limitations and plan of action with lights. It’s learned the long, hard way, but the development of the skill rewards in abundance with every photo shoot completed, and is a bundle of knowledge and skill that will continue to grow until the last photograph you take. With this knowledge, location selection, light modifiers, times of day, and knowing how to mix in ambient light levels is much more efficient and beneficial (they are all a part of the conceptualized vision of a photograph in the mind). When I turn the camera around to show my subjects the photos, they look around the area to make sure they are not crazy, to make sure there are still lights on in the room or that the sun is still in the sky, because my images say otherwise. It’s very much a look of confusion, the usual response is something like,  ”woah, how did you do that?”

At this level, it’s not “documenting” light with a camera, it’s literally “creating” these raw moments with lighting. It allows you flood an image with light, providing crisp, clear images that ambient lighting can’t provide. It can take a well-lit room and make it dark, or take a dark room and make it filled with light. The colors are more brilliant, the contrast can’t be beat. It brings an old location new life, something you never saw before even if you’ve seen that same place a thousand times. The combinations in which you can transform just one location is practically endless with the proper gear, vision, and know-how.

This was my mission when I walked into Toledo High School. A little more than a week ago, I headed back to my old high school, a place where a ton of old memories were made. The driving force for this visit can be read about here: http://projectshowcase.org. If you are all caught up on the whole reasoning… my goal in the scheme of things was to paint a new perspective for the students, a new perspective of themselves. To show them that they should be just as active, proud, and aware of the town they live in as anyone else. The photography had to be dramatic, inspiring, eye-catching… different. The photography would turn the school and themselves into something they’ve never seen before. I can tell them they are special until I’m blue in the face, but I knew that I had to show them, not tell them.

I set out to create raw, previously unrevealed perspectives of the students. The result are the photos you see on this post. I think all of these photos have something really special to them, whether it be an action, emotion, or situation that speak for the capture. Athleticism, intelligence, passion, dedication, and many more can be found in this collection. It’s what I wanted to show the students, what they are capable of, and what they do every day without thinking about it. Freeze these things so that appreciation and pride lasts longer than just for a moment.

These photos are all taken in different parts of the school, exposing a wide spectrum of skills and talents for the students to be incredibly proud of. The goal was to capture all of these different aspects, yet give them all a similar look and feel so that in the end they were a group, a collection. All of these were photographed in one school day. The crammed schedule helped me keep consistency from concept to concept, but pushed our time for each setup to about 40 minutes from arriving to leaving a location.

Inspiration, it’s the first cog in the machine that Project Showcase is hoping forms and achieves many awesome things for the local community this coming school year. There is a gigantic resource of more than enough fuel in the town of Toledo to make things great again, and it’s in the form of the entire student body. What Project Showcase just did was light the match and tossed it in the tank. Next Fall, at the beginning of the school year, when we visit the students once more, it will be their turn to act, create, and give themselves to the town. Projects to liven up a dying community, one that shouldn’t be. We are hoping that fuel tank explodes in the form of greatness for Toledo.

Another beginner workshop has come and gone. The weekend workshops just go so fast! What is really amazing is being present to see the transformation of students who walk into the class Saturday morning and don’t even know what the buttons on their cameras do, to watching them walk out of the class Sunday afternoon as confident, capable photographers taking great photos.

As the weather slowly gets better, we are able to spend more time shooting outdoors! During this workshop we were fortunate to have sun on both days, so we got our vitamin-D dose while we took photos. This was the first workshop held at my Tacoma studio. A great location for the class, as it is located in thick of the downtown area. Lots of people and things to photograph in the swirling busyness of the city.

It’s so important to provide shooting time right after newly learned photography concepts presented. It’s one thing to “think” you understand while in a classroom, it’s another to go out and perform it with your own camera. It really drives home the content, learning by doing. One of our hot spots for shooting this weekend was the beloved graffiti garage that resides right next door to my studio building. Rarely do I walk by this space without seeing someone taking photos in it. It’s a great space, the walls change on a weekly basis as new artist flood in to spray new paint over the old.

I love doing these workshops, and remember, they are not only being held in Tacoma and Bellingham. If you have a party of 4 or more people interested in attending a workshop, I can hold them in your home town. So hit me up with my contact form if you are interested.

It’s a problem we all eventually have no matter how careful you try and be with your equipment. I’m talking about those annoying dust spots that show up in your DSLR photos. They can be a slight issue or a real problem depending on how bad the situation is. I’ve seen some very very terribly dirty sensors, like a shovel of dirt was tossed into camera. It’s really amazing at how poor some people are in their efforts in camera care and/or cleaning. A little effort goes a long way, and I’ll be showing you in the video below. The process of committing to physically touching your sensor to clean it is not a task that should be taken lightly, as you can really damage the sensor, but if you execute with care and use the right tools, it will turn out just fine. We’ll be covering how dust gets there, how to look for it, and how to clean it.

This is the first of what I hope to be many little video tips I put together. It’s nothing fancy, and I really tried to keep it simple. There are too many people trying to sound smart and/or experience when giving advice, using terms or situations that go right over newer photographer’s heads. The whole point of this video is education, so I try to make it as easy to follow as possible, and speak English in relative terms. When I think I cover material that is not exactly general knowledge, I step you through it or give you some kind of visual.

I was also extremely surprised to see how much misinformation there is floating around out there, especially from folks trying to tell you how to do it, and doing it wrong. Rest assured, the methods I discuss in this video are repeated with other legit professionals that actually know what they are doing.

Enjoy the video, and please leave your questions in the comment block below. I’m sure you are not the only one with questions, and it may help improve the video in the future. Even leave a comment about a short video tip you’d like to see. I really want to see you guys get the right knowledge in your hands and have a fun, easy learning experience. Let me know how I can help!
[video mp4="http://mattyphotography.com/video/2011/dustSpot.mp4" preload="true"]

1. If you suspect dust spots, take test photo (as described in the video).
2. Check problem areas, starting with the front element of the lens.
3. If determined that the sensor is dirty, follow these next steps in order to rid sensor of dust.
4. Remember – always hold the camera body pointing down as much as you can to keep dust from falling in.
5. Use air puffer, then take another test image. If that fails to work, move to brush.
6. Carefully use sensor brush (only brushes designed to do this, don’t go cheap), test with another image.
7. If the problem dirt can’t be brushed, you’ll have to go to the swabs (again, use products designed specifically for this).

Remember to always start with the least invasive methods first. I was able to use just an air puffer on a camera for a couple years before having to touch the sensor with a brush. Only clean the sensor when dust gets noticeable.

Sensor Brush Covered in detail in this video: Arctic Butterfly 788

Confused? I think when mathematical symbols are used in titles it usually leads to a state of confusion, especially when it’s accompanied by a photo of my ugly mug as the feature photo. Give me a sec to explain what I think is a solid analogy and I think it will all start to make sense fairly quickly. Oh, and please don’t take the picture above seriously, I’ll explain that down the road here.

The Point ‘n Shoot, ah the memories it has captured for us, right? It can take one mean facebook profile photo of yourself in the mirror! The PnS is just that in rough terms, a memory documenter. The PnS is a magical device, a convenient device, a piece of machinery that can fit easily in any pocket, and with a simple press of the shutter button, takes photos for us. Remember those words, “takes photos for us,” we’ll be talking about that again here soon…

The spell check function on all of our sleek computing devices… it’s changed the writing game, it makes us common folk seem like we actually have mastered the english language (pfff, yeah right). Ok, maybe not “mastered,” but allows us to take our best guess at a word’s spelling and we cross our fingers that the computer knows what the hell we are trying to say and corrects us, or better yet, doesn’t even underline the word cause we guessed right. It’s a luxury function that today’s kids were born with, they have no concept of life without a computer holding their hand as they attempt to string together coherent sentences. That idea in itself is pretty amazing if you stop and think about it – to grow up and from day one a function like this is there for you. To these people it’s not a luxury, it’s just the way of life. Does this sound familiar? Maybe with cameras?

Computers have made “life” a lot easier in many ways. I guess because I was around before computers took over the world to assist and/or drive for us in just about any task imaginable, I can look at it with a perspective that anyone who was born after 1990 can’t really see. Not hating on the youngins, but it’s like my grandpa telling me about the challenges about his life, things I’ll never fully understand and be able to wrap my head around because there is no way I could walk in his shoes, and simply because I don’t have to. Computers give people the ability to just accept mediocre results because it means that a machine does the work for them and they don’t have to think. Isn’t life grand? The do-it-all computer technology has even leaked into the arts. How does that work? Isn’t art supposed to be about self-expression, creative thinking, and making the word “unique” ring true? Apparently not, cause the second we created spell/grammar check and PnS cameras, the art of photography and creative writing took a nose dive (in my opinion). Now 1′s and 0′s influence art. You might be asking, “man, this guy is really taking this to the extreme.” Well, take the next few thoughts into consideration.

Spell check, is it that bad? Not for the average person, it’s a blessing. I, as just a casual writer, truly depend on it for a couple words throughout my every day. I’m not a professional writer, but if I were, not only should I be able to spell, my passion and talent in the writing community would probably also get me more involved and educated in my field. I’d read more, my exposure to various writing styles would increase, my vocabulary would skyrocket, and I’d much better be able to express my thoughts. We all have great, inspiring, unique thoughts floating around in our heads, but most of us lack the ability to gracefully translate it to paper. Why is that? Well, I believe a large reason is the device you are using to read this very post, or at least some of the functionalities it does for you. Some things computers do for us literally encourage us to be lazy, think less, and put less effort into our work. That’s kinda messed up, cause I think that this mentality can grow momentum, and before you know it, the “art” of anything can be lost. The loss of appreciation for an art is more like it. Twenty-five years ago if someone read a well-structured, well-spelled, punctuated, styled document, it was more appreciated than it would be today. The reasoning for this? Cause you knew that they knew there stuff, they were dedicated to their passion, and it bled through from knowledge and effort they put on display. In fact, that same document was probably handwritten (do you know what that means kids?) a few times before it was transferred to type (on a typewriter). Tell a kid today that they can’t “copy and paste.” They’ll look at you like you are crazy. “A world without copy and paste?!” When is the last time you cracked open a dictionary just for a manual spell check? Not to get too wrapped up into the details, a writer 25 years ago was truly schooled in the ways of the pen (both amateur and professional). It took a serious amount of education before someone could start to be noticed as a good writer. They did all the leg work, no computer “thinking” involved, it was all them. Also take note, that the fact that back in the day, people had to take the time to lookup a word in the dictionary, meant that the knowledge was more likely to stick with them for future work, unlike a spell checker holding our hand today. “Who the heck cares how you spell that word, the computer will just take care of it.” It’s sloppy (from a good writer’s perspective).

The camera, more specifically, the PnS… obviously didn’t exist 25 years ago, digital didn’t exist, and a computer sure as hell didn’t exist in a camera. “How on earth did people take pictures?! You had to…. know stuff?” Maybe a lot of you haven’t even stopped to think how cameras “make pictures.” All you have to do is push a button, right? Instant picture, booyah, and “hello Facebook profile picture.” Life is easy. True… for the casual person, just like the casual writer. It works, it’s convenient, it doesn’t require any “work.” But just like being a great writer, if you want to start taking better photos, you better know what the heck the camera is doing to make exposures. Of course, to even know what the camera is doing, you need to have a camera that allows you to take complete control over exposure functions (and that’s not a textbook PnS, fyi). Some high-end PnS’s allow some pretty good control, but it’s still nothing like the power of a DSLR. You can kind of compare a PnS’s limited functionality to that of a writer’s pen that can only manage to etch-out 20 of the 26 letters in the alphabet. How can you effectively write without the entire alphabet? Good question, but how can you take good pictures without unlocking all the control that you need? It’s an equally good question, but many don’t ever get there because they’ve never been exposed to how proper photography is done, or are too lazy to learn, or don’t care to. It just comes down to how serious you are about writing or photography. The better you want to be, the more you inherently want to investigate the art, the more you will learn.

To write with light

Did you know that’s what the word “photography” means? It’s kinda hard to write with light when you don’t even have a choice in what your camera focuses on, what the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO are set at. Oh, and buying a DSLR just to set it to an automatic function is not giving you any more credibility. You may as well save a lot of money if you are not going to learn to use that DSLR, and just stick with a PnS. That’s like deciding whether to buy a Kia or a Porsche. If you buy the Porsche just because you know it’s a superior car, yet don’t learn how to use a stick shift, you’ll never get the car out of first gear and never experience what that car was engineered to do. So, I want to make sure that you are not taking this post as a “DSLR’s are better than PnS’s.” PnS’s have their place in the world, in fact, I just bought a HD video/photo PnS device this last week. Why, why would I bother when I have 5K camera setups at my disposal? Cause I can’t ignore the fact that they are easy, small, and fit in my pocket. It’s a fabulous documentation tool, to shoot quick web blog videos, snap photos of locations I’m scouting, etc. I can toss it to someone at a photo shoot and have them capture behind the scenes footage, and they don’t need to know a lick about photography, just getting them to point it in my general direction is all I need. It’s for the casual stuff, just like a serious writer might use spell check to catch errors in a super quick email they write to a friend.

Please don’t… think that the typical PnS will advance your photography skills. It will do one thing for you, and that is building on framing your photographs. “But my PnS even has face detecting technology to focus on faces!” Control? Ha! Yesterday my new PnS camera thought the basketball on my shirt was a face, and chose to focus on it rather than my own mug (am I that ugly and deformed?!). Just one example, and the more we talk about the topic of control, the worse off PnS’s look. Computers can’t read your thoughts, they have no idea what they are taking a photo of and they just guess. They have no idea what a face is, or a dog, or a moving car, it’s just light evaluation without any context. Context can only come from you, and you need the ability to inject that into the camera to effectively capture your vision.

I hope this post has given you are different perspective on where PnS’s live in the photographic food chain. Like in the real animal kingdom, the lion can’t live without gazelle to eat, and gazelle can’t live without plants, and plants can’t grow without bugs and other microscopic species to breakdown the scraps to enrich the earth… the PnS is lives somewhere in the middle on the photo food chain. The PnS is there to feed facebook (I had a little fun making the classic example at the top of the page for this post), document casual family events, or even help out a legit photographer when it’s the only thing they happen to be carrying at the time. The best camera is the one you have on you, as the famous saying goes. A PnS is great… for a casual or new person trying out photography, but I wouldn’t call them a photographer. They are not writing with light at that point, they are just letting a computer chip doodle for them.

There is an amazing world of control that can be had with a solid foundation of photographic knowledge and the right tools. Just like a strong education is to a writer, allowing them to unlock their thoughts and translate it to paper, all of those cool visuals you have floating around in your head can also make it to a computer screen or a print if you have the right tools and know how to use them. Good luck clicking, and let me know if you have any questions!

Congrats on taking the plunge into serious photography. There are many things to consider when making the jump into the DSLR market, but you should never ask yourself, “which one is best?” Yes, there are so many people out there chomping at the bit to tell you what they think is by far the most superior brand out there. Go to any major event and look down the line of cameras the pros are using. It’s a salt and pepper of brand names. That right there should tell you that if one brand was clearly the best, the name on all pro’s cameras would be the same. Each brand claims to have superior this or that. We are talking about splitting hairs for the most part here, people. You can really make yourself dizzy reading expert reviews, as they run each piece of equipment through a gauntlet of tests. Trust me, they all take great photos. With that out of the way let’s look at some things that actually matter when it comes to start investing money in to your new-found addiction.

The Camera Body
I’m not a pusher of one brand or another, but I can tell you what I know through my own experience. I shoot Canon, and I shoot Canon because all of the cameras I had used before were Canon, and I was familiar with their buttons, menus, and nomenclature. That’s it, it’s that simple. I just was fond and familiar with Canon. Other big names are Nikon, Sony, Kodak, etc. Like I said, people will argue all day long, and for someone to take the time to try and point out their Canon is better than a Nikon or whatever clearly is spending too much time debating and not enough time shooting. Thee biggest and most popular brands are Canon and Nikon, and we’ll get to why it would be a wise choice to go with a brand with a large following because they have the most support, the most accessories, and the people around you will most likely have one of them, and that helps when you have questions. Picking a camera body will then determine which lenses you buy…

The Lens
Ok, so you gotta start somewhere, and that might be the camera body. For some it might be lenses, but why is that? It’s because lenses are camera specific. For example, only Canon lenses will fit Canon bodies, and vise versa for Nikon. So what if your friends and family members around you own Canon. Well, it might be a wise choice to go with a Canon body in case you want to borrow, trade, or buy a lens from someone you know and trust who has taken care of the gear. Lenses are the reason you have to pick a brand from the beginning and stick with it. Your lenses will continue to fit new camera bodies of the same brand for years and years to come. You can take an 20 year old lens and stick it on a new camera body. So you can say you are investing in a brand by buying lenses. The more you buy, the more you are invested in that brand, plain and simple. For example, I have… 8 high-end (what they’d call pro-class) Canon lenses. I will not go into details about how much that is, cause it kinda makes me sick to think about, but lets just say it’s a good chunk of change. That pretty much means I’ll be shooting Canon for a long while unless the Nikon fairy visits me in my sleep and sneaks a half dozen pro-class Nikon lenses under my pillow. Both Canon and Nikon offer an amazing selection of entry, medium, and pro-class lenses, so it’s an easy choice to run with one of them. There are third-party lens makers like Sigma and Tamron, who make lenses for all the major camera brands. Still, even if you buy a third-party lens, remember it’s just as brand-specific as if you were to buy a Canon lens, they both only fit Canon bodies.

Accessories
Aside from bodies and lenses, most of the other accessories out there are very flexible in terms of using it from one brand to the next. From tripods to flashes, you can mix and match brands. Flashes can fire manually from any camera, but the flash might not “talk” exactly right to the camera body for things like TTL. I don’t do a lot of swapping, and that’s why I bought Canon and all of my stuff is Canon, to ensure proper compatibility. I’d recommend doing the same if you have the option.

Final Thoughts
Like I said, I’m not a brand pusher, I think all of the camera manufacturers make solid cameras. It just comes down to personal preference or maybe your dad is passing down a bunch of old lenses to you, and that alone will influence your choice. However, if you were to walk up to me and ask me to recommend a brand, I’d have to say either Canon or Nikon (sorry other brands, but for pure availability of a vast array of support and equipment, I have to advise on those two). The next choice people inevitably run into after they pick a brand is how much to spend. All DSLRs do a pretty good job, honestly. It comes down to splitting those hairs again when you are comparing models. I have photos in my portfolio that were taken with the bottom-of-the-line entry level DSLR camera, and I love the heck out of the photos it made.

I hope this helps your decision as you make the plunge, and try to remember, the gear is not what defines the photographer. Please use the contact page to ask me any questions you might have!

More specifically, what makes a DSLR superior to a point and shoot? That’s a loaded question, but lets look at the major factors to consider buying a DSLR if you are serious about photography. A DSLR camera is requirement if you are looking at attending a Matty Photography workshop, and you’ll see why next.

Control, Quality, and Performance are the three of the many factors we are going to look at today. There are ALL KINDS of bells and whistles on today’s cameras, but we are going to specifically concern ourselves with the ones that really truly matter when it comes to making a photograph.

Control is pretty basic really, but hard to appreciate/understand if you do not know how cameras capture light in order to make a photograph. In short, the camera has a couple parts that vary their size and speed in order to capture the proper amount of light. Most of your point and shoot cameras do not allow you to control this. In turn, you lose control of your image taking. I mean… how can you control your camera and take the photo you want if you can’t control your camera’s functions in which determine all this? These mysterious functions that I speak of are aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, all which contribute to making the image. If you do not fully know what these are or how to control them, you are not taking the photograph, your camera is, you are just clicking the button. Now don’t you feel special? Learning these functions and how to control them are covered in-depth and practiced in the beginners workshop, so don’t sweat not knowing this information, just know that it’s important stuff. A lot of students will walk into the beginners class with a camera that they do not know how to use, but by the end of the class, they are all well-skilled in how to take the photos they want with a DSLR and do it great!

Quality pertains mainly to how large and clean the image file is (we are talking about the image sensor here). This is not to be confused with the quality of the “photograph” as that mainly is hindered on your knowledge of light and skill with a camera. One of the first things you’ll notice when you shoot with a DSLR for the first time is that the quality of the image files kick the crap out of your P’nS image files. This comes down to a pretty basic principle. The camera sensor in the DSLR camera is MUCH larger. Think of your sensor just like a bucket that is outside capturing rain water, the larger the bucket the more rain it can capture. So the larger the sensor, the more light it can capture at any one time, and across a larger plane, which gives your camera more information in determining what to make of all that lighting coming into the camera. Aside from sheer light gathering capability, the DSLR sensors are built with much higher quality material, and they are much better at producing better colors, contrast, and light range levels. As your ISO setting rises for low light situations, your image quality goes down, but in much smaller increments on a DSLR than on a P’nS (we’ll hit this a little more in the performance section). Don’t get too wrapped up in this category, thinking that a $3,000 camera setup will make you a pro, cause it doesn’t. A nicer camera has the ability to take a better image quality file, but it’s the driver of the camera that’s setting the bar for the overall quality of the photograph. This is where your skill set and knowledge come in.

Performance is a tangent right off of quality in a way. Performance flirts with a couple topics, and those are speed and speed. Confused? Give me a sec to explain. Speed #1 is what you are probably already thinking of, and that is the rate in which your camera can take photos. Can your point and shoot take 8 frames a second? I didn’t think so. Are you a sports/activities photographer? Good luck guessing when to take a photo with your point and shoot, or you can just hold the trigger down on a nicer DSLR and take 8 frames a second, which 1 of 8 frames are much more likely to be better than your one-shot guess with the point and shoot. You can control the speeds of your captures, from 30 seconds to 1/8000th of a second. The second, and for portrait shooters, the more important of the two “speeds,” is low light performance. Sure, the human eye can see just fine in most indoor lighting situations, and that’s because our eyes rock and are very sensitive and dynamic in accommodating light changes. Camera sensors can’t keep up with our eyes with light changes, so we have to keep that in mind. Now, indoor light is very much considered a low light environment. This is where it is really important to have a large image sensor (a large rain bucket) to capture more light. So larger sensors are better at capturing more light, but they also perform much better at higher ISO settings. The higher your ISO setting is, the more sensitive your sensor is to light, making it so you don’t need as much light to make an image, but the downfall is that the higher the ISO setting, the more grainy your image will look. Imagine our rain bucket scenario again, and say we wanted to capture as much rain as possible so that we can do a water quality test on the captured water. The more water we have, the more accurate the test results will be. It’s the same with your sensor and ISO setting. Putting your ISO on a higher setting will effectively be the same as shrinking your rain bucket, so your camera does not have as much light to determine what the image should look like. I hope that makes sense.

Now, we can’t ignore that all this sounds great. The nicer the camera, aka the more money you throw at it, the nicer these factors will be for you as the photographer. It’s really easy to go overboard and get obsessed with having the next best thing, just because. I’ll tell you right now, the jump from a P’nS to a DSLR, as far as control, quality, and performance is night and day. The jump from a $600 to a $1000 DSLR is not nearly as noticeable, in fact, it’s downright hard to tell the difference. That’s why I can’t stress enough that it’s important to own and be knowledgeable with a DSLR camera if you are serious about photography, but don’t think that the nicer gear makes you a better photographer. Inherently, as you progress through the stages as a photographer, you’ll acquire better gear, as you should (everyone starts with a P’nS, then an entry DSLR, then a nicer lens, and so on). If you get to the point where you have paying clients, that’s great. As you move up in the ranks and charge more from your clients, you should invest in better gear to give them a slightly nicer product. It’s the least you can do as they are investing in you, so invest back, and watch the momentum follow. But at first, take it easy, get a DSLR that is comfortably do-able in your finances, and build your skill set. I can’t stress that enough. People spend hours upon hours comparing specs of all the gear out there, instead they could be out taking photos, building their skills and portfolio. Got a DSLR? Check, now go take photos and learn as much as you can, the rest will fall into place.

Got questions from this post or others you see on the site? Please do not hesitate to contact me with questions about gear or the classes!

Off-camera lighting is…well, just like it sounds. It’s taking a flash lighting source from the “traditional” location, which is a flash sitting on top of your camera, and placing it off-axis. What’s the point of doing this? What’s so bad about lighting people with on-camera flash, they are getting lit, right? Sure, you are technically “lighting” your subject with on-camera flash, but the photo looks like you crammed them into copier machine and scanned their face. Simply put, it’s not flattering. No one is going to hire you as a professional to take their photos if you and Mr. Xerox are producing the same level of work.

By placing a flash at say a 45 degree angle from your subject, instead of straight-on, you’ll produce much more pleasing shadows, reveal shape to the face, and be much more interesting to the eye. Just one step, moving your light source. It’s simple in process, yet there is a lot going on, and we can all attest to admitting at one time or another that attempting to jump-in to learning this stuff was a little intimidating.

With flash lighting, you kinda flip photography and the science of exposure on it’s head, from a traditional perspective. A lot of your photography brain needs a little re-wiring, a little McGyver’n if you will. No, I am not talking about taking a paperclip, a hockey ticket stub, a piece of old chewing gum and making a bomb out of it, but all of those functions you’ve used while taking ambient light photos over the last few years are going to mean something else in the world of flash. So with a little learnin’ and some on-location practicing, you too can get your head wrapped around this skill set, and implement it into your own photography.

It’s exciting stuff! It opens up a whole new world of what, where, and how you can photograph people and things. Time of day, doesn’t matter. Current ambient light conditions, doesn’t matter. You are packin’ your own light!

This is the main topic and instruction set that we cover in the Advanced Workshop course. During the course, you’ll gain the understanding of how all this funky stuff works, become excited to use it, and eager to deploy it in your next shoot. Become a master of light! You’ll go out on shoots with me, use my lighting equipment during the course, and practice shooting subjects. We’ll work through troubleshooting different scenarios. Flat out, you’ll come out of the course a different, better photographer.