4 Bowens Lighting Demos, 2 Photoshop Masterclasses and a Lighting Superclass

These are all things I will be presenting while at the Societies Convention in London starting this Wednesday. I will begin my week on the judging panel for the 20x16 print competition which I am very much looking forward to. I get to see some incredible images which always serve as great inspiration for the year ahead.

Following that I have a 4 hour Superclass scheduled for Friday January 13th from 9-1pm. This class must be booked prior to attending and is limited to just 15 people. In this class I will be using the new Bowens lights which I have been using this weekend for the first time. I love them and created these beautiful portraits of my daughter (above and 2 below). She rarely lets me photograph her so its something special for me to have these wonderful portraits of her which were made even better in the fact that she helped with the posing on the first one. So it was very much a joint effort.

My Superclass will be covering many lighting techniques, including all the setups used in the photos in this blog post. This will be a great opportunity for those lacking confidence in their lighting, those wishing to expand on their techniques or even those who've little to no experience. I will be explaining the fundamentals in lighting to ensure attendees have a strong understanding in portrait lighting they can then apply to their own work. Its not just a matter of following a recipe, but instead its about knowing the ingredients to be able to create beautiful portraits from scratch for themselves.

Saturday January 14th from 9-11am I will be presenting my Masterclass on Photoshop for beginners. This class is really for those very new to Photoshop as we will be starting at the beginning. We will look first at navigation around the software and carry on into explaining how Photoshop works with the use of layers, masks and a great deal of very useful tools. We will edit several images so that attendees leave equipped to edit their own images, doing such things as extending backgrounds, retouching skin, dodging and burning to bring out details, and adding textures for an artistic look.

Sunday January 15th from 2-4pm I will be presenting my Masterclass on Photoshop: The Next Step, which is intended for those already using Photoshop but who need a greater understanding. We will be covering as much as we can in the time we have from the items listed in the image below, hopefully providing many time saving and useful techniques.

And then finally I have 4 slots on the Bowens stand during which time I will be demonstrating their new lighting system in a child portrait scenario. You'll get a chance to see their lights in use with large softboxes which tend to be my favourite and most used light modifiers. I plan on showing 3 or 4 different looks.

Demo Schedule on the Bowens Stand:

Saturday January 14: 12:15-12:45pm and 3:15-3:45pm

Sunday January 15: 10-10:30am and 12:15-12:45pm

Its looking like quite a busy week but I'm really looking forward to it. It happens to be one of my favourite weeks of the year and this will be my 11th year in attendance and my 7th year as a speaker. As always its incredible to catch up with so many old friends from these 11 years and really quite lovely to meet so many new ones. See you all very soon!!!

Comments

My Work Experience Week by Hester Sharpe

A week in the life of a Photographers assistant, is not all about saying cheese! I’m Hester Sharpe, currently at JCC but took a week out of normal school life on work experience to be a photographer’s assistant and learn the bits behind the camera, photograph and the process to get to the end result. During my week of work experience in photography I have learnt that there is a lot more than just taking the pictures and printing them. The steps in between are the key to getting the perfect photo. For example the photos have to be cropped, tweaked, edited, colour corrected. That is just a taste I have had in the processing of the photos and there is a lot more than just those things. Those processes are the most time consuming part of the photograph and a tremendous amount of detail is put in to the picture but all the hours spent are paid off with the end result; a perfect picture. It isn’t just how the picture looks; presentation is a key to photography too. Selecting the best ...

Wedding Workshop in Nottingham

On Wednesday of this week I made the trek up to Nottingham (which wasn't actually much of a trek compared to most of the other delegates who travelled from as far as Glasgow, Portsmouth and South Wales) for a workshop held at Crash Taylor's home. Crash, a very talented photographer, specialising in weddings is someone I can highly recommend to anyone. Apart from spending the morning getting to know the other photographers we then spent the afternoon photographing a hired model, in her own wedding dress, as we wandered through Nottingham Castle. It provided me a chance to see how other photographers handled their weddings as well as a chance to experiment with equipment I haven't had a chance to play around with. Like in this image to the right. Here I used my flash, mounted on a tripod off to the side. This allowed me to achieve studio quality lighting out of the studio, a technique I will be using in my environmental portraiture. I can't seem to make up my mind on whi...

I Shot My First Wedding

I finally did it, my first wedding. After years of saying I would never do a wedding I finally decided to have a go. I don't know what convinced me. Maybe it was the thought that if I did one I could say with authority that I don't do weddings. My husband had been on my back for ages trying to get me to give one a go. For me I would have to say that the most difficult aspect of wedding photography is the pressure and stress caused by the importance of the day. I worried about this since the day Dawn emailed me to say they had decided they wanted to book me. I hadn't expected to get this wedding given that I had no samples to show them. And I certainly didn't give them a hard sell as I still wasn't convinced that this was something I wanted to do. I kind of figured that if I got this wedding, with no samples and no experience then it was meant to be. Well I have samples now. In the weeks prior to the wedding I read and I read and I read. I read books, magazines and ...

More Newborn Baby Portraits

This time we worked with a more alert baby, even though she was within the 2 weeks we recommend for newborn sessions. But to be honest, I do like getting a selection of both. Its nice to get the chance to see their eyes as well as those beautifully peaceful sleeping portraits. Making eye contact is just difficult and smiles are nearly impossible, which are only wind related if we managed them at all anyway. I always try to get a few detail shots in order to capture their tiny little fingers and toes. These can be quite difficult with an awake baby as they move so much and I need to rely on autofocus to make sure these details are in focus and with such a narrow depth of field this can be difficult. And rather than just a hand or a foot I like to get some of baby's face in the shot as well which poses another problem with an awake baby, they just don't stay still for very long so their hands and feet aren't always in the right place....

Portraits of a Newborn Baby Girl and Her Family

Its always so nice when a family return to have their latest addition photographed in the same way as their first child. Its a great feeling knowing they cherished my work so much the first time that they want to come back to continue the tradition. I also love it when I'm given permission to share the portraits I've created. Its not often that I'm asked not to share but I never take this opportunity for granted because I know how sensitive people can be about sharing personal moments. And I'm especially grateful here for being allowed to share some of the more intimate ones. Although I always ask permission to share the standard stuff I create, I always make it known that I am fine with and fully understand if there are any private portraits that should remain so. In this case I was given full permission to share everything and I'm so pleased to get the chance to show some of the other work we can do for families. I really love how skin tones turn out ...

Christina Lauder Portraits

Search This Blog