Small flash workshop Santa Cruz

Today some images from the Small flash workshop I taught in Santa Cruz.
As you might know I use the Rogue flashbender products a lot and over the last few years we have been become close friends to the team at Expoimaging, which resulted in the invite to visit their headoffice in Santa Cruz after PhotoShopWorld and if possible teach a workshop there. Working with small flash on location is something I love to do and teaching a workshop with only small flash is without a doubt not only fun but also a challenge, especially in the bright sun as you can find in California, this is not helped by the fact that I will often limited myself to just using 2 strobes because not all attendees will be able to afford 10-20 strobes. In other words one has to be creative 🙂

 

When I teach a workshop on location I always choose for smaller groups, this way it’s easier to give attention to the questions from the attendees and it has less chance of becoming just a “shooting zoo” which I think is a waste of time, when you attend a workshop it’s about the learning process right?

 

As always I started out with a Q&A session in which the attendees can ask whatever they want, this is actually always a fun and most of all a very informative part of the workshop because there always is a mix of technical and business like questions, plus I can really go into the questions the students have at this point instead of doing something that is “standard”. After the Q&A it was time to leave for our location shoot…. the Beach.

 

For this workshop we managed to find two stunning models which really complemented each other (something that not always happens).
The first setup was a mix of natural light and strobes, meaning that I started out with natural light and later on added the strobes.

After the natural light it was time to add some light and chance the mood.

For the next setup I decided to play with color.
To get a bit more “funk” in the image I shot this with colored gels on the strobes.

 

 

And yes this was shot in full day light, in this setup there also was attention for metering this kind of setups so you can get the effect you want pretty quickly instead of just “trying”.

 

Now when you have two models you also want to do a duo shoot of course, so now it was time for a bit more information on using styling and of course posing two models, in my opinion posing one model is easy, two is a disaster, three is easy and four is again difficult… from there on out it get’s easier. This will vary per person I guess but I always find working with two models not the easiest thing to do. In this case we opted for a white dress on the dark model and a dark dress on the lighter model which I think created a cool contrast.

In these shots we actually used mostly the sun, but very quickly I started adding strobes to “fight” the sun. And as you know I just love the sun in the frame.

 After being cooked on the beach it was time to fill up with water and have something to eat, so it was back to the offices of Expoimaging where while I demonstrated some Lightroom and Photoshop tips/tricks the attendees (and models) were treated to some real good Pizza and drinks. Time flies during these days and it was already time for the “commercial” assignment. Photograph two models in a fixed time frame with LOADS of stress (one model actually had to leave at 4:00PM which made it just that more real).

 

The main focus on this setup was to create something that looked good from a location that was 100% uninspiring, because to be honest I strongly believe that with the proper ideas/techniques you can always create something out of every location.

 

At 4:30PM the workshop ended with a final Q&A.

 

Time always flies during workshop days and there is always so much more to tell/teach/do but ….that’s why we can always come back 🙂
I would like to thank all the attendees and especially the team from ExpoImaging that was really awesome during the day.