Lighting Workshop At SVA – Day 1

As many of you may know, I have been mainly self-taught with regards to photography. Having been taught the fundamentals in college back in the day has certainly helped my ability to learn at a quicker rate, but nearly everything that I’ve applied in a practical sense as a professional in the industry I’ve learned by reading, researching, and good old fashioned hands on, under the gun experience.

However, I’ve also been a big fan of getting other people to tell me how to do shit. It’s that simple. When people talk to me (assuming I’m interested) I usually am able to remember what they say. For some reason this doesn’t work in social situations, but generally works pretty well in a classroom situation. Which is one reason that I enrolled in a lighting workshop course at SVA. The other reason is that I want someone to show me how to use a Profoto pack without electrocuting myself.

After the first class, here are a few impressions. First, the instructor is a photographer named Clay Patrick McBride. He’s a working photographer (in fact he’ll be missing next week’s class because he’ll be off shooting Metallica somewhere) and seems to know his stuff. He’s approachable and enthusiastic and I dig his work, so I’m looking forward to the next few weeks. I’m hoping he has the chance to take a look at my work at some point, I’d love to get some feedback him.

Second, I’m probably the most experienced shooter in the class. I’m the only one shooting professionally, and from the quick introductions we all gave, I’m the only one with any lighting experience. This could be both bad and good. Bad because I have a natural tendency to show off, and could waste my time in the class regurgitating everything that I already know. It could also be good, though, because I’ve often found that when someone new explains something I already know how to do, they often give me one little tidbit or extra piece of information that I didn’t know, and clears the whole thing up for me. And, of course, Clay has tons of stuff to teach me that I don’t know – hopefully we’ll get to some of that stuff without going too fast for the rest of the people in the class. At one point he set up a beauty dish, handed me a tethered 5D with a 24-105 on it, and had me take a shot. It was beautiful. Not the most amazing shot I’d every taken, but beautiful in it’s own way. Here was a camera I use, with a lens I use, taking a near perfect shot using Clay’s light. That in itself is quite a lesson.

At a bear minimum, I’ll be working with other photogs for three hours once a week, and the resulting creative burst will be a big help. After the first class I wanted to run out and blow all my savings on renting a studio so I could start shooting famous people with Profotos and making great photos. All in good time I suppose, but man, I was all fired up. Makes me want to shoot every day.

Soon, I hope. I’m looking forward to the next class!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Personal, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.