The FlashBus Tour 2011 - Seattle

Last Friday in Seattle was the first stop on the 29 city tour of The Flash Bus. If you're a photographer that shoots with small strobes and haven't heard of Joe McNally or David Hobby then you have seriously been missing out and need to check out the work of these two guys. I have been following Joe and David for the last few years and watched many of their instructional videos online. I've also seen Joe in Vancouver before but this was my first time seeing David. This all day seminar kicked off with David explaining his methodology for setting up lighting. I think by accident or fluke I have taken a pretty similar approach to my lighting as David does his. He first thinks about the ambient light and refers to this as one of the principle players in setting up the scene. Next he thinks about the fill light and I found this rather interesting that he quite often uses an Orbis ring flash as a fill rather than a main light. I will definitely need to try this out on my next shoot. The next light he brings in is the main light or key light and then finishes up with a hair or accent lights. When he broke it down like this it really made so much sense and made me think of all the times when things didn't quite work for me what I was doing wrong. Next up was Joe and for him he is really big on using the Nikon flashes with TTL. I have to be honest and say that I never really use TTL all that much when I shoot with off camera strobes. I am a Canon shooter and though they have similar technology I have always preferred to do it manually. However watching Joe do the controlling of all his strobes and playing with the flash compensation and ratio of multiple flashes all from one location made me think maybe I should give this a try. I just got a Canon 7D with wireless flash capability on camera so I am dying to try it out. The day ended off with a round of Q&A and both of them offered some incredible advice. Here are some photos from the show.

Joe doesn't just have gear. He's got A LOT of gear! This is only a small portion of it.

Natural Light

During the Location Lighting Workshop class I also took some shots with just natural light and for these I had to really work the ISO to get the shot. I had to also use a tip I learned from Joe McNally in a You Tube video about how to properly grip your camera body to minimize camera shake for slow shutter speed shots.

Book - The Moment it Clicks by Joe McNally

Last November Joe McNally was in Vancouver and I had the opportunity to listen to one of his lectures and see some of his amazing images that he has shot over the years. At the time he mentioned a book he was working on that was coming out soon and I knew I had to get it when it came out. Well today I finally got my copy of that book entitled "The Moment it Clicks" and I have to say that from just the quick flip through it I already feel inspired. I encourage anyone who is interested in photography and wants to learn from a real pro to get this book.