Photography Workshop in pictures

I did photography workshop in July in Orivesi College of Arts. I have great memories from the workshop and I want to share with you some of them.

First few days were foggy and grey, light didn’t  have any direction. I decided to stay inside and demonstrate the basics of light and lighting there. I found it reasonable because I could use TV-screen and everybody could just sit and listen. That didn’t last for long –end of the week we stayed totally outside in different locations.

Our first location was beautiful gorge in Juupajoki. Before workshop I demonstrate few lighting techniques. In this pic we’re getting ready for demonstration – name of this image could be “chaos” 🙂

On Monday we made a check-list for the whole week and we tried to remember that list in all the shootings and demonstrations. In a check-list were mentioned: direction of available light, nature of available light, main subject in the image area, separating main subject from backround  etc.

It makes it hard to demonsrate light and lighting in a location, because I’m the only one who can see through camera. This summer I finally found solution for that: Canon 6D and it’s wireless system (app: EOS Remote) connected to tablet. I could just take image and share it immediately with everyone. I’m happy now, but… my wish for Santa is that I could next share same image to many tablets at the same time… maybe next year?

Some lighting techniques to improve image quality.

I demonstrated first how to make image using only available light, then improved lighting with white reflector and black screen. Finally I added one additional light source (Canon Speedlite 600EX- RT) and white translucent umbrella as light modifier.

Even though we had iPad we used also camera’s screen to check results. It seems I consider “seeing the light” as very serious matter…

And we got. All the photographer’s dream weather condition – direct sunlight. Great for the workshop. I was able to demonstrate lighting techniques again in a different nature of light.

Then it was time for serious shooting. We descended to gorge. Apparently nature gave us strength and energy – we skipped dinner and just took photos.

On Thursday evening sky was clear and we were able to examine nature of light in twilight. Not that much mosquitos, luckily. And now you can see iPad in action 🙂

And happy lecturer 🙂

Name of next demonstration could be “Funny hats”. I wanted to demonstrate case of group photo. Including that I wanted to show how you should take hats into a consideration when you light this kind of set-up.

Surprise in a last night. We were invited to a sail in Näsijärvi, Tampere. Our sailboat was 99 years old boat called Munter and our skipper was Matti J. Kaleva. We got a great group photo -and missed sunset. Good lesson for all –sunset doesn’t wait for the photographer 🙂

 It seems the others consider “seeing the light” as very serious matter too…

End of the evening I had some time to just sit down and enjoy. If you think of composition of this image: for western people it means past and stagnation etc. That’s how I felt – I was able to look back the whole week and be happy about it. Let’s do it again next summer 🙂