Working with Strobe Lighting

Day 2 of Introduction to Lighting. Today we learned about flash/strobe lighting and things to modify the lights like soft boxes, umbrellas and grates. The strobe lights that we use have power packs which we can use to adjust the power and control the amount of light emitted by the strobe. The power packs we have can fire up to 3 strobes. We attached PocketWizards to the hotshoe of our cameras to trigger the strobe lights.

Dave and Erik explaining how to use the power pack and strobe lights.

On to modifiers! Umbrellas, softboxes and grates oh my!

James and Mikela taken with a softbox.

I took this with the umbrella above Mikhaela, James and Alejandra.

James and his future wife just using a strobe and reflector.

Learning to control light is essential to becoming a great photographer. Tomorrow we have to shoot a group assignment called the "Dropped Bag." We can only use one light to shoot an image where a bag is dropped and the contents have spilled out on the floor. From the contents and the surface of the floor we should be able to tell a story of who's bag it is and why it was dropped. It'll be interesting to see what the groups come up with.

Basic Editing in Lightroom

After reviewing some basic functions in Lightroom this morning, we imported our shadows and reflections pictures that we took yesterday. We shared our 2 best shots with the class. These are what I consider my best 2 shots.


After lunch we went out to shoot some color pictures. With the color pictures that we shot, we imported them into Lightroom and learned how "tweak" them. Here is an example of a picture that I shot and then "tweaked".

Before

After

Basics of Photography

Today was a very busy day. Michael started out our day with the quote "In the absence of light there can be no photograph"... As photographers we need a strong foundation of light and how to control it. We talked about elements that affect our photography; exposure, aperture, shutter speed and white balance.

We learned how to use the meters in our cameras to measure light exposure and how to make adjustments get the correct exposure. We talked about Depth of Field (DOF), ISO settings, aperture priority, shutter speed priority and program modes. Then came the fun part, taking our cameras out and shooting various objects at different settings. We were given the freedom to roam outside the classroom to capitalize on our creativity.

Below are my shots in the equipment room at different white balance settings.

Towards the end of class we were given a list of ten tasks to accomplish by the end of the week. I really have my work cut out for me.

Day 1, The Introduction

January 25, 2010

Today is my first day at CDIA. Finally! Our classroom was full of all types of people from all walks of life. We had recent high school graduates, people from the world of finance, people who are passionate about photography and wanted to explore it on a deeper level. People from as far as Thailand came just to attend this class in Washington, DC. It's interesting to note that last year only 3 students were in the full time photography program. This year there are 2 classes of about 18 students in each class. What an increase!

We were introduced to our instructor for Camera Workflow 1, noted photographer, Michael Cunningham (www.mcphotog.com) and our TA's Erik and Dave. Throughout the morning we talked about class procedures, equipment, photography today. In the afternoon we were introduced to the Mac computers and did a few basic procedures like formatting our portable drives and setting them up for our workflow. We also played around with Adobe Lightroom and setup a few preferences.

Throughout the day the Michael, Erik and Dave were quite adamant about being open and encouraged us to ask questions, to take advantage of all the people at CDIA. This open, creative, nurturing environment is one of the things I love about being here at CDIA. Can't wait till tomorrow.