I am a huge believer in continuing education. Even though I'm at the level of teaching photography, I will never say I know everything and I greedily gobble up new nuggets of information of how I can do something better, learn completely new stuff, or be inspired with new insight into creativity. The day I feel I have nothing left to learn is the day I put my camera down - which will never happen...there's ALWAYS stuff to learn, which is why I'm so enchanted with photography. There's always food for the creative mind. I get so excited when I learn something new.
As an environmental lighting person (on-location, low-light, and mixing ambient with artificial), I saw that Joe McNally (a well-known photojournalist for publications like National Geographic and TIME) was coming to Calgary and I jumped at the chance to go. I've followed this guy for years. He is a storytelling genius. His lighting philosophy is right in-line with mine. The light that I use has to look minimal and natural as much as possible, or it is purposely being used in a creative, very deliberate way. I don't like stray light - I must control it all. (insert evil laugh here) I call my lighting, my frosting. Light can completely overpower subjects in a photograph and it's not pretty when that happens...all you see is the big light. I use the edge of light, or small amounts of it to enhance, or carve the subjects, rather than overpower. Joe went over a number of light shapers, and how they handle light. He experiemented, we laughed, and I learned and took notes. Thank you Joe for including Calgary in your tour. It was fun to further see the nuances of shaping and controlling light.
Right after his day-long class, I photographed a session at a gym. It was great to put the material into practice right away. Needless to say I got back home very late, but who doesn't need to be highway driving at 1:00 a.m. every once in a while. :-)
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