Hope all is well? I'm just back from Las Vegas consulting and training Photographers for The Little Chapel of Flowers. What a great company, so organized and you better be when you do about 4000 Weddings a year!!! I also got to go to PMA for a day, fun to find some fun new lighting equipment, will come back to that later in another blog. What I wanted to mentioned about this shoot is mainly about the background used in the left and right image. It is material I found at a local shop, bought 1 1/2 yard for about $10 :-)  I want to have new and different backdrops all the time, doing it this way make it much more possible then always wallpapering, painting and buying expensive photographic backdrops,. I do that also, but this really work in addition for some quick reasonable renewing :-)

It seems almost wrong to write about a great event that is already sold out, and it did in such a short time. I'm sad for those of you who will miss out and excited for the 275 of you that got a seat. This event has really impressed me, I know most of the people behind it and love and admire the energy, love and passion they have for Photography. I strongly believe this is just the beginning  of a great tradition is Utah Photography. This event really go across all kinds and levels. This concept should be a great event to do in any state or country. Go to www.photocamputah.com to check it out.

It is so important to share and learn from each other, be friends sharing the same passion. If you open up instead of having "secrets" people will open up for you and you will all be better from this. I have truly experienced this being able to teach in so many places in the world. I as many of you wait to the last minute with so many things, sure glad I didn't when it comes to signing up to this one.

Last Saturday we had another Photographing People Part 2 class, it was really FUN! Such a great group of people. I did Part 2 with more demonstrations then in the past and it worked very well. These images are from the very end of the day after the sun is down, in the first image you see some of the students photographing our great model Jennifer with a Lowel 650W Fresnel Spot as main light, and a Vector 3 million candle backlight. The second image is a shot I did so you can see what they are getting. I have the camera set to 4200K to get a warm evening sun feeling (Lamp is 3200K). Among many things this class goes through a lot of light sources and modifiers most photographers normally never see. It is the advances part of the 3 part Photographing People series before the Part 3 work Shop. For more information see www.intsop.com 

Just thought this image would be a good follow up from my last blog. I used to pay a fortune for portable tungsten lights back in the 80's and 90's most of them made for video and TV production. In this image we used one $44 Vector 3 mill candle lights spot from Target. Often we use different blue foils to adjust and little home made diffusion screens, but in this shot it is as it comes and auto color setting on camera. Timing, YES. 400 ISO, 1/60 f4.6 Canon 20-35mm 2.8L at 23mm.

PS.We have added an Extra Extra Photographing People Part 1 class, here in Orem, Utah on March 28th, 2009.

One of my favorite times to photograph is shortly after the sun is down. When I lived in Europe it was nice and blue for about an hour after sunset, it's called the "Blue Hour". Here in Utah it is more like 15 min, so this will differ a lot with where you are. Here is my students from Saturday's class outside right by my studio photographing on tungsten setting to get it extra blue early after sunset. We used one tungsten spot behind for backlight and one in front. They are balanced nicely for the tungsten setting. Thank you Lindsey for freezing for us :-) To set the camera on tungsten gives you an early start on the blue, but when the sun have been down for awhile I like to shoot on daylight setting, with warmer skin tone then of course. Manual setting for 4100-4300K seem to end up as one of my favorites, gives you something good in between colors. Color temperature, and how to create more depth and dimension in your images by controlling it is one of many things we talk about in the Photographing People Part 1-3 classes. I have used portable tungsten lights now since I worked on a movie in Paris in 1982, one of my favorite tools when the time is right. What you see is what you get.