A learning experience

Back to the Strobist thing. After my roommate introduced me to the whole Strobist way of lighting a photograph, I needed to see how it's done and how it all works. After all, I am a visual learner. An opportunity arose when my boss, asked me if Scott and I would shoot her son's senior photos.

One afternoon, after work, Chase came out to meet us close to where we work for his senior photos. Scott mainly did all the shooting, and I handled most of the lighting set up so I could learn a thing or two. We traded responsibilities once so I can get a chance to shoot and get the experience and understanding. There's only so much observing until you actually have to get your feet wet.

This is me getting my feet wet into Storbist, or off-camera lighting...

This is the only scene I got to shoot at. It was late in the afternoon and we needed to get done pretty early so Scott mainly shot to speed things up. For some reason, I learn a lot more when I'm having to keep up with things. For this scene, I had a flash on the steps pointed at the back of his head to create hair lighting. This is nice when you really want the subject to pop out of the background and NOT blend in. I had another flash on a stand with an umbrella to his left.






This was such a good learning experience getting to see how lighting works, and what an advantage Strobism has over traditional forms or lighting. We could practically go ANYWHERE and we didn't have to worry about how to power up our lights. All we needed to remember is if we had fresh batteries in our flash.

Chase was a good sport. The photos I took of him look more corporate than a typical high school senior photo. Chase is now playing football for the Air Force Academy, and he's hoping to fly a REALLY big plane one day... he's 6'6. =)

GZ