FrancisK7 Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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So, here's what I think. The TLDR is that for a hundred bucks, I got my money's worth.
The day started at 10:00PM with an awful cheesy Kelby One video promoting their stuff. Then Joe got on the scene. Very charismatic, very funny. There were about 100 photogs in the room. I'd venture a wild guess and say less than 10% were pros. In spite of this, Joe kept his usual stream of consciousness style of explaining his thought process much like he did in his books. It was obvious from all the puzzled faces around me that many did not follow what he said all the time, but I loved it. It was plain, raw computing data at times, but it's how I like it.
First part of the day consisted of a slideshow of his previous work. He explained how he lit them and why, intertwined with funny anecdotes and stories. He didn't go very deep in his explanations, but it was enough to get a grip on his vision and how he sees things.
One shot in particular stood out. It was a boxing studio, and he showed how he built the final shot flash to flash, from the first to the sixth. With a new shot taken after each flash was added, we could see the scene build up, the effects gels had, etc. It was great for anyone who is visual.
Speaking of gels, I really need to start using them more. I will order the magmod packs and start experimenting because holy shit they're awesome.
The next section of the day involved 1 hour of building a portrait in room. He shot his D4S tethered to two giant screens, so each time he took a shot it would show. Convention center lighting is always awful of course, so he started from shit soup and ended up with what could pass for a very good CEO/corporate type of portrait.
Lunch break.
Followed by another portrait creation. He demonstrated HSS by putting three speedlites on a tripod diffused with a 5 feet shoot-through so he could kill the ambient behind the lady, then added a blue gel'd flash to replace the back light.
However, at that point, there was me and his assistant each holding a reflector, a back light, a main light and a key hair light. Velcro'd flags to control the spill on the back light (which was zoomed to 200mm and still wasn't enough... it's too bad Joe hasn't heard about mag grids. Spencer, ship him as box!), an umbrella, a 1x3 strip box for the hair light, and two giant reflectors.
I couldn't help but think how ridiculous this would look in a wedding setting. I actually laughed to myself. Two giant reflectors, the giant umbrella, the strip box, the flimsy barn doors... holy hell. By the time I am all set up, the moment I want to capture is gone.
When I told him I didn't even use fill flash anymore because the DR on my D810 was so good I could just bump the shadow slider in Lightroom he mimed bitchslapping me Seriously, why bother buying a 500$ speedlite, a 200$ pocketwizard, another tripod and modifier just so you can fill the face on a portrait when you can use the radial filter in LR and bump shadows a bit?
I also asked him if he used TTL in the field, because I had trust issues with it and felt I was trusting my work to Skynet's interpretation. He laughed and somehow it became the running gag of the day whenever TTL came up. He said he uses TTL 90% of the time (he uses IR for that, or manual PW when IR doesn't work) and that while it may crap on me at times, it's very useful and powerful and I should embrace it more. I will be ordering an AC3 to pair with my TT1 and try this at a wedding soon. If the guy who shot for National Geographics for 25y says I can trust TLL I gotta try
He made an excellent point about how he has been harassing Nikon for two decades for them to design a flash that would provide relative power usage when in TTL so that when you switch to manual you have an idea where you are at. So if your group A is dialed at -2.0 and reports 25% power, you have an idea where to start at when switching to manual. As he adequately put it, currently when going from TTL to manual it's a bit like putting your finger in the air to detect wind direction.
This was followed by another slideshow demonstration of his past work (more recent as well).
Finally he critiqued 5 photos of everyone who had emailed them in as per instructions. He said it was the most submissions they ever had in this entire tour's history, so good job Ottawa, lot's of enthusiastic photographers. We had about 20 submissions (100 photos approx). It was also then that I realized the disparity of the different talent levels was huge in the room. And Joe was very honest about the less successful shots. He was never rude about it, but direct. "This is more a snapshot than a photograph" or "this isn't very successful" but he'd try to highlight a positive each time. To be honest it must be awful to do this for him.
Had fun and met a few nice people. Overall an enjoyable experience, but there's nothing immediately useful if you already dabble in OCF. My guess is practice and 1-on-1/smaller workshops is what is required to evolve and improve here. Superficial 5h workshops cannot possibly fulfill that role and I didn't expect it to.
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