As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve attended some great workshops lately!  One of the first was Doug Levy’s Get Lit Workshop hosted by ASA Photographic.  The whole day was focused on learning more about off-camera flash.  I have some experience with off-camera flash, but since I prefer to shoot with natural light, I figured it would be good to invest in learning a bit more.  It’s always good to try new things and step outside your comfort zone a little bit!

The day started with some intensive teaching in the morning, and we spent some time trying out what we’d learned and playing with Doug & ASA’s gear in the afternoon :)

here’s Doug…

At one point we broke up into teams and had to recreate one of Doug’s favorite shots using a model and whatever lights we wanted.  We got pretty close to the same lighting Doug used in his original…

Later, Doug gave each person a real life challenge.  When you’re on a shoot, crazy things can happen and it’s good to be prepared for any situation.  My assignment was to shoot with one off-camera flash to get a nice portrait while balancing the ambient light using gels.  The trick to my assignment was that I had 7 minutes total, and was NOT allowed to use my LCD screen to see if I’d gotten it right.  Not even the histograms!  As someone who’s never used gels, this was a little crazy.  You’ll see that I’m showing you the image in black & white…. I think I got a good shot, but the color was totally off!  Sometimes the best learning experiences are failures ;)

Thanks Doug for a great workshop!  Here’s to playing more with lighting at my shoots this year!