We had a great group of people come out for the lighting workshop in Charlotte this past weekend. We kicked it on the streets of Uptown for about 9 hours before calling it a day. A big shout out to Anthony and Sarah for hanging out and modeling for us while we explored different lighting techniques and to the security guard who simply looked the other way and didn’t bother hassling us.
I'll be teaching a two-part-off-camera flash workshop at The Light Factory in Charlotte NC on April 10th and 17th. First and foremost this workshop is about taking your flash off of your camera and either holding it, putting it on a stand, taping it to a wall or setting it on top of something and sticking stuff in front of it. From there we'll just keep digging deeper. It's about how to get magazine quality photographs with a minimal amount of equipment. It's about why lighting an object isn't much different than lighting a person. It's about lighting landscapes. It's about adding light, mixing light, coloring light, choosing light, shaping light….light light light.
It's about walking into a space and lighting it from the ground up. I come from a background in editorial -assignment photography. I'm usually alone, rarely do I have an assistant and I've almost never been to the place or met the person I'm about to be photographing. I assess the environment, person and/or object and the lighting quickly becomes subject and location-driven. It's about coming up with epic ideas and executing them on the spot.