One of my business goals this year was to attend 2 workshops to enhance either technical photography knowledge or general business knowledge. One part of photography that I’ve never really had the opportunity to work with is off-camera lighting. Most of my sessions are outdoors and very candid in nature, so there’s not a lot of time to set up lighting and pose folks. But this year I’ve really gotten into shooting more events and weddings, and I wanted to be able to do some cool things in indoor environments where the lighting is usually very dim. After weeks of research I heard about a workshop from an amazing photographer down in Atlanta, Zack Arias. The workshop runs for about 16 hours straight, going until the wee hours of the morning, and it was a truly amazing experience. Zack has a way of breaking down lighting that makes it very hands-on and understandable. We had to cover lots of math (including the inverse square law!), equipment choices and basics, but we managed to knock that out and still have 1/2 the day to put everything into practice. It was AMAZING, and I can’t wait to try out some new things at my next shoot. Here are just a few of my favorites from the day….
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After we got a handle on some basics, it was time to head outside and chase that beautiful sunset light! Here’s Zack setting up a shot for us…
Everybody got to take a turn posing the model, adjusting the light and tweaking camera settings. This turned out to be one of my favorite shots of the day…
After we lost the sunlight the fun continued! Technically this shot was taken using 2 lights, but it was easily the most amazing setup of the day. Our models were such troopers!
Leigh must’ve stood like this squirting herself with water for about 45 minutes while the entire group took shots. SO much fun (for us, maybe not for Leigh)!
After the models left for the evening we started shooting each other and the fun continued – what an AWESOME truck we found in a nearby parking lot!
I had such a blast at this workshop and my head is still spinning from everything we learned. Unfortunately for my hubs and pups, I’m going to need lots of practice over the next few weeks.