The Seattle amateur photography scene is exploding. Here’s some video that shows what we’ve been up to recently.
My favorite picture from the event:
Maybe now David Hobby will move to Seattle…
Tag Archive for 'Seattle'
Recently I’ve been doing some photo stuff with some folks from the Seattle Flickr Meetup group, particularly a bunch of people that are interested in Strobist style off camera lighting. Being able to interact with a community of similarly interested people has been a huge help to me. David Hobby’s post yesterday was about helping connect people to others in their locales who are also interested in lighting. As a bonus, he links to some video of our latest escapade. Here are a few of my shots from that same event.
[This is my first post using MarsEdit 2.0, which has great Flickr support built in]
I spent yesterday over in Seatac at the first of David Hobby’s two Seattle Strobist seminars. I had pretty high expectations for this, because David has set such a high standard on his blog. I also was hoping that David would go at fast pace, but I was prepared for the fact that he might need to slow down enough to keep the material accessible for those just getting started. I was definitely not disappointed on either count. The format of the day is pretty simple. Introductions and a chance for David to find out if people have particular interests, some lecture on theory, and then watching David set up a shoot of a hypothetical important person, using whatever room he’s been given.
There are so many different kinds of content at a seminar like this. There’s the straight “theory content”, which in this case was a fleshing out of the 7 Light Controls that David outlined at the beginning of Lighting 102 David’s style is really interactive, so as he walked us through each of the controls, there were digressions, questions from the participants and demonstrations. \
Another type of content is watching someone put that content into practice. I’ve always found that I learn something by watching someone else shoot. With someone like David, that experience is multiplied because you see how the theory he’s been discussing gets translated in to actual practice. Of course, you can take the theory and other content from David’s site and do that (and a *lot* of people are, as the Strobist Flickr pool will attest), but there are a lot of nuances that you just have to see in order to pick up. A number of other attendees said this to me in asides as we were watching. For the shoot of the important person, David’s goal was to do 4-5 completely different looks, using the exactly same room. You can see exemplars of the various looks in David’s Flickr stream (this is the first). If you look, you’ll see that they are completely different from each other. We saw gelling walls to different colors, making a wall of any color go to white (or black), making a highly reflective surface (projector screen) into a “blowaway” white background, turning a stack of drinking glasses into an abstract background, and more. In addition to the lighting aspects, I also found it instructive to see how David directed a subject’s posing and how he interacted with a subject to build a rapport.
The last kind of content is the hallway track content, which broke down two ways. One reason that I signed up for the seminar, was that I wanted to meet other people local to Seattle who were motivated enough about lighting to put down some money, in the hopes of finding some folks to shoot/talk with. That definitely happened, and there’ll be more on that in another post. The other part of the hallway track was the chance to hang out with David (and a bunch of other people) in the hotel bar after the official time was over. David is as personable and funny in person as he is on the site, and we had a great time with everything from full vs partial RSS feeds, how Knottyy has gone from 0-100 on landscape shooting, to the history of the Seattle underground, to way over my head stuff having to do with LAB color in Photoshop. It was totally a blast.
(ironic for the Strobist to get shot with an on camera pop-up flash - but it was late)
Here are some of my personal takeaways:
- I need to expand my imagination - That’s what is limiting the kinds of shot I want to do, or am willing to try
- I need to just experiment and not be afraid to burn frames - David’s style is very organic and exploratory. You have to be willing to try things and see if they will work. The drinking glass background was a great example of this. Ironically, I seem to need to learn this lesson over and over. Even though the “freeness” of digital frames was what got me back into photography, I realized that I have not been as willing to experiment as I probably should be
- I have more backgrounds than I think I do - Another thing that has been holding me back from shooting more at home (with my abundant supply of models) is feeling like I don’t have any good clean backgrounds to work with. Yesterday’s shoot pretty much demolished that idea.
- 1/4 CTO gels are my friend - I’ve done just about nothing with gels. Well except for the gel that I somehow melted. David is gelling just about all the time.
- Set up thoroughly so you can get people in and out and not burn up your “rapport time” - I’ve actually had some recent experience with this, but hearing David talk about various shoots that he’s done really drove this point home.
- I need to build some grids and gobos. I built a set of the cereal box snoots, and I’ve used them for a few shots, but I don’t like the rectangular shape of the light, so I’ve laid off of them. But I knew after the OneLight that I really like grids, and seeing David’s grids just pushed me over the edge.
- Cross light, cross light, cross light - I have learned to think in terms of balancing lights, but I haven’t really internalized looking for cross lighting situations.
Strobist vs OneLight
At the moment, I am probably the only person in the world who has attended both Zack Aria’s OneLight workshop and David Hobby’s Strobist Seminar, so a comparison is inevitable. Heck, David was asking me about it in the bar.
The OneLight is a completely self contained workshop. Zack does not assume that you have any prior experience with off camera lighting, which makes the OneLight perfect if workshops are a good learning style for you. You can start from nothing and get the basics all in one day. One major advantage of the OneLight is that after a full day of lecture and theory, you spend another 4-5 hours doing hands on shooting. Zack gets a model, and he and the workshop participants walk the model around and shoot using the stuff that you learned. Zack is right there to look at your images, give you feedback or help, and he swears not to go home until all your questions are answered. And he means it. Zack’s background is a music photographer, so you are also get his view of the photography world. I personally found that to be refreshing and interesting. Zack also had a different take on equipment, which I found interesting. In particular, I never would have found out about the awesome Westcott Apollo series of umbrella mount softboxes if it hadn’t been for the OneLight.
The Strobist Seminar is a slightly different animal because it also has the Strobist blog, and the enormous Strobist community around it. That means that David can leverage those things to make the seminar work well, both before (he asked some of the novices to at least read through Lighting 101), and after (you know there will be massive Flickr threads) the event. You will definitely get more out of the seminar if you have at least looked through the site. The one thing that David doesn’t do is take you shooting and help you out and give you feedback. Many of my fellow attendees expressed a desire to do that. Doing two seminars back to back makes that a tough proposition for David, and it would raise the cost because of the need to hire a model.
In the end, I spent the money for both workshops, and I’m not sorry about either one. When I took the OneLight, I had done David’s lighting bootcamp, but I still found that I learned things, and the experience of watching/shooting with someone experienced was well worth it. I would say that the Strobist workshop is stronger on the theory, and that the only real lack is the shooting part. I’d jump at the chance to participate in a David mentored DINFOS type shoot. In the end, I don’t think you can really go wrong with either one. It’s probably more a question of getting to one in your area. I was super fortunate that both of these came to Seattle this year. As photo workshops go, they are both pretty inexpensive - both of these dudes could be charging more. In fact, I mentioned this to David yesterday, and he told me that he didn’t feel it was in keeping with the spirit of the site to charge more, and he assured me that eating was not going to be a problem for him any time soon. I love a man who can live by his principles.
Update: I forgot to mention that there are a few setup photos in my Flickr stream…
Here are some thought from Adobe’s AIR Bus Tour in Seattle yesterday.
First, is that Adobe is laying out some serious money to promote AIR - they got a (literally) rock star bus, complete with beds, loads of electronics, and tour paint scheme. The event yesterday was at a nice restaurant which they rented for the day, and Adobe was very generous with food and drink, which was of a higher than average quality for a conference.
On the whole, the sessions were informative, although I wished that there had been a little more detail presented. There’s already been lots written about Flex and AIR/Apollo, so I’m not going to rehash any of that. Here are some of the more interesting tidbits that I picked up.
- Kevin Lynch mentioned that when they opened the native code portion of shockwave, they only got extensions for Windows. It was pretty clear that they want to reach platforms besides Windows.
- Mike Chambers reemphasized that point when he said that the amenability of WebKit to mobile (ported to Series 60 by Nokia, and now, of course, on iPhone) was one of the big reasons for their choice.
- There’s some of sample code based on hacks that involve the GPS sensors, cameras, and other gadgets on the bus
- Aptana is supporting AIR developement in their Eclipse plugin.
I also learned a new term from Lee Brimelow of Frog Design: a “deviner”, a person who has training as both a designer and programmer. I had never heard the term before, but it’s relevant to the content of the talk that Mimi Yin and I are giving at OSCON in a few weeks.
Ryan Stewart persuaded me to do a talk for the Ignite the Web sessions in the evening. I thought it fitting to give a presentation on “Openness and the Web”, based on the content of that string of blog posts that started my dialogue with the Adobe folks. The Ignite format (5 minutes, 20 slides switched at exactly 15 second intervals) is pretty demanding of speakers. I’d consider myself an experienced public speaker, but doing the Ignite talk had me pretty nervous. The delivery went well - I only had one gap where I got out of sync with the slides. Afterwards, John Dowdell, and Ted Patrick, as well as a few others, came to talk about the content of the talk. John and I traded thoughts and clarifications sporadically during the rest of the evening, and he told me that it definitely helped to have heard more from me in person. On the whole, it seemed worthwhile. The only downside is that now Ryan is trying to get me to sign up for the next Ignite Seattle.
Tomorrow I’ll be over in Seattle attending Adobe’s AIR Bus tour. As part of that, I’ll be giving an Ignite talk on “Openness and the Web”. If you are attending, stop by and say hi…
Yesterday I took a day off from work and attended Zack Arias‘ One Light Workshop. The One Light covers how to use a single off camera light to enhance your photographs. I found out about it when some pictures from the One Light Workshop Alumni Pool showed up in the Strobist Flickr Pool. Since I had participated in David Hobby’s Strobist Boot Camp last year, I had some idea about many of the concepts that Zack taught during the One Light, but it was very valuable to me to see how someone like Zack put those techniques to work, and to be able ask questions and clarify my understanding. One big revelation was how Flash to Subject distance and the Inverse Square Law affect lighting. There are still a few pieces of that which are fuzzy, and I’m going to have to do some more reading to feel comfortable with the theory, but Zack gave some really compelling and practical applications of the theory to real world shooting situations.
One of the best parts of the workshop is that Zack gets a model and we all went on a photoshoot, and watched Zack put the theory into practice. Then we all got to try our hand at it, and get help from Zack while everything was still going on. I’m usually a learn it from a book (or blog) kind of guy, but I definitely found the hands on aspects of the workshop to be the most helpful. We did a number of things that really helped me *see* how light was behaving.
The other great benefit of the One Light was the chance to meet other photographers in the Seattle area. I got to meet Erin Vey, who has been doing wonderful work on Flickr for quite some time. The Rodriguez brothers, Gabriel and Boone worked hard to put the One Light together and were great hosts in addition to being good photographers. We had a good sized contingent of people from Vancouver B.C., and it sounded like they were going to get their own One Light sometime soon. It was interesting for me to hear the professional photographers talking about their business and to get a glimpse into life in the photography world. Zack had a lot of good information about how he’s built up his photography business
Here are a few of the images that I made during the workshop:
I need to do more with black and white, so here’s a try at that.
I’m particularly happy with this shot. The One Light was held at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, and this was taken in their main auditorium, which has a big sound booth right smack in the middle. There’s a SunPak 120j with a 10 degree grid lighting up Theresa’s face, and the ambient light (sound board, and stage in the far background) is getting picked up by a slow shutter. We did this one during our “go shoot something time”, and I came up with the concept for this, so it felt good to go from concept to actual image.
If you have the opportunity to go to a One Light, I would highly recommend it. Zack has the same low budget approach that David Hobby is taking over at Strobist, and Zack is travelling a lot more than David is (David, if you do a workshop in the Pacific Northwest, I am there). Also the One Light is pretty inexpensive compared to most photo workshops and if you have a day job, it happens all in one day (there’s a mixer the night before).
Update: More Images
Last night I finally made it over to one of the Ignite Seattle events. I’d been wanting to get over for one of them, but part of the rub is getting a ride from the ferry to the actual location. Fortunately, Ryan Stewart was kind enough to give me a lift to and fro.
Ignite has a very interesting format. There’s a MAKE event before the talks get underway. The talk section is grouped into 30 minutes of talks and 30 minutes of mixing, which is repeated for either 2 or 3 talk blocks total. The talks themselves are 5 minutes long and you get 20 slides and 15 seconds per slide — the slides advance automatically, so it really is 15 seconds. If you’re a listener, it means you get a bunch of talks in a short time, and you are guaranteed that you only have to endure a bad or uninteresting talk for 5 minutes. If you are a speaker, it means that you really need to have your act together. It’s a challenging format, and even some experience speakers have trouble making it work for them.
Highlights of the talks:
Karen Anderson’s Work Place Survival Tips - there was one really good one — I hope she blogs it. I had a camera in my hand, so my attention was divided.
Scott Berkun did what might best be described as a brief history of the decline of Attention.
Shelly Farnham of Waggle Labs talked about social tagging, which is the idea of tagging people with semantics which might be useful. She used the example of tagging people at conferences with tags that would help them connect with each other. That’s a problem that resonates with me, but you can easily imagine other domains where this idea would be helpful. Best of show. I’m looking forward to seeing what Pathable.com turns out to be.
Christopher Johnson’s talk on names was particular interesting, because we’ve been doing some branding stuff at OSAF, and I found his approach based on sounds interesting. Even more interesting was his analysis of how Apple’s name related to the attriubutes of the Apple brand.
Mark Novak from Microsoft crammed a security analysis of OpenID into 5 minutes by talking really fast. The 5 minute format means that the talks are also a kind of performance art. If you were an expert and familiar with his notation it was possible to follow the talk. If not, the performance was really good.
Eric Nevala of the US Marine Corp talked about his experiences running IT for the Marines in Iraq. Eric received sustained applause and support from the audience.
The Twitter backchannel for Ignite was projected on a wall. It was fun to watch some of that chatter go by, and you can use it to get a feel for what happened. After the whole thing was over, Ryan and I spent some time talking to Monica Guzman of the Seattle PI about the merits (or not) of Twitter.
On the whole I had a great time. I got to see some friends I hadn’t seen in a while, and the talks and format were good. I like seeing folks tinkering with meeting formats — I hope that there’ll be more of that in general. Between Mind Camp and Ignite, the technology community in Seattle might be bumping it up a notch. Kudos to Brady and Bre!
I did have a camera with me, and the pictures are up on this Flickr set.
Congratulations to Eric and Rose Soroos on the birth of their new baby boy.
Eric has been doing a wonderful series of Strobist inspired pregnancy photos (not safe for work). So if you are into Strobist stuff, you’ll probably want to check them out. I’m sad that the series has come to an end, but I am sure we’ll be seeing a new series soon.
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