PhotoXperience workshop results
Today some of the results from the workshops I taught at the PhotoXperience in Mexico.
Many thanks to Joe McNally for lending us the gear 😀
Tag Archive for: workshop
Why you should trust the meter
After my workshops a lot of students switch to the use of a light meter.
They see how quick it is to setup the lights, meter the background, make sure there is detail in whites or blacks and much much more but that’s “only” part of the story. Let me tell you two stories that are real life stories and will show you a different side of why to use a meter….
The workshop story
A while ago I taught a workshop for a group of professional photographers (always a tough crowd), most of them (to my surprise) did not use a meter. After my story about why to use a meter and telling them that it was really a great tool to make sure you get what you want it was time for my photoshoot. Now believe it or not but the first shot I took was terrible, whites were all blown, blacks were blocked up and it was just plain terrible….. Some of the people in the crowd were a bit like “yeah, sure that’s why we don’t use a meter”, and some asked “ok, so now you’re gonna tweak the lights, right ?”
I surprised I think the whole crowd when I did not change anything on the lights but asked for the remote of the projector. In a few seconds I changed the brightness and contrast settings and the image looked the way I intended, now I hear you think “yeah sure, that’s not the way to do it”, well actually they also asked me about that (of course), so to prove my point I reset the projector and showed a grayscale 10 step bar. On the non adjusted settings there were only a few bars visible. And after setting the brightness and contrast all bars were shown, and also the image was showing up correctly.
The Glyn Dewis lens story
During the first “Frank Doorhof and Friends” workshop there was a small problem with one of the light setups.
Read more
Workshops Austria Day 3
For the final day of the workshops in Austria we moved locations, the palace was wonderful but the next location got my creative juices flowing like crazy (hope this translates the way I mean it, if not sorry :D).
After a 20 minute drive from our home base (the palace) we arrived at the castle.
Although the inside locations attracted me and I would normally start there I somehow decided to start outside, now this was a very good thing to do because we were not yet completely finished (to be precise one student still wanted to make 2-3 shots) and it started to rain and it did not stop for the rest of the day, talk about being lucky.
Workshops Austria Day 2
Today the images from the second day of workshops in Austria.
For the second day we also used the Palace.
However I used a slightly different approach for the shots.
For the first set we moved to the so called mirror room and the students were given a very simple assignment (well so they thought), “make a shot as a group within 15 minutes, and blow me away”…. I use this kind of assignments often to let the group work together and learn how important it is to work as a team, and they did great…. the group used strobes (although did not meter them…… 🙁 ) but in the end, believe it or not…. I was blow away by a natural light shot which also won the overal competition price of the whole competition…. I’m proud (well done Maria).
After the assignment I did several sample shots in the mirror room, here is one of the results.
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