Day three began with my alarm… not ringing again :-) I was so tired last night that… I forgot to switch my phone from vibrate to ring :) Luckily, again, for some really weird reason I woke up at 6am on my own. Quick shower, breakfast at McDonalds and headed straight for the first class:

Jim Garner’s “The Art of Story Shooting” - very impressive concept which I’ve been thinking about lately myself. Struggling with posing people to where they would look natural (not even talking about fashion/glamour, just natural for starters), I’ve been thinking that there has to be a way to prompt people to do things (move) which would result in them going through the motions that are natural to human bodies. Therefore, by shooting them while in those motions I’d be achieving natural looking captures :) One of the interesting points Jim has made in that aspect was the fact that not only did he try to prompt those motions, but also he made those moves to be meaningful instead of pretended/fake. In other words, instead of telling the bride - pretend you’re checking your dress he would say “fix your dress please on the back” and while she was adjusting it - snap! :) Or instead of telling bride and groom to cross the road while taking pictures of them doing it, he’d send their limo three-four blocks ahead and make them walk to get there, while taking shots of everything they’d encounter on such little (yet realistic) journey :)

After Jims class I hit the trade show floors. Once again I continued exploring album vendors and also was lucky to catch Jerry Ghionis speaking at the Microsoft booth. He showed one of his recent albums and talked about how some of the images featured in it were captured. I liked his night shots of the bride where he dragged the shutter to 1 second and user rear curtain sync to flash. By doing that, he transformed what could have been 100% black background into an artsy brownish looking fill… I’ll try to replicate that one day and show you what I mean :) Of course everything else in his photography is simply stunning… Composition, use of video light, reflections (he would pour water on a table just to shoot the bride in the reflections :)

Anyways, two and half hours of the trade show, quick lunch and I’m running to the next class to be there at least 40-45 mins in advance :)

First afternoon class that day was JB & Deette Sallee. I wasn’t taking notes in any of the classes during this convention, so I might not remember everything about every speaker, however what I remembered from Sallee’s class was their creative use of lighting. The concept that I will try to explore more and possibly adopt in my personal shooting is to use different degrees of lighting for your main subject vs the background. Slight underexposure of the background for example and yet compensating your main subject with enough artificial light creates amazing images with truly 3D feel to them. Check out their blog, they have lots of samples. They also talked about how important it is to use creative filters (in Photoshop, such as Nik effects) yet try not to over-do them.

Joe Buissink was the last speaker I attended that day. Interestingly enough, I happened to catch him speaking at the trade show and was very impressed by everything he said. He’s saying “you shoot things the way you are”… “there is a reason you shoot things this way… you do it because this is the way you are…. go home, pick some of your best images, look at them and try to understand why you shot them that way… there is something in you that made you do them exactly that way”. Very strong. Unfortunately, his class for some reason was all about tricks and inspiration of shooting film and wizardry of a dark room. This was the only class which I walked out of after about an hour or so. His work, nevertheless, is very impressive.

Because I left a bit earlier, I rushed to my hotel room, dropped off all the junk (booklets) I picked up at the trade show, changed and headed right back to MGM for the BIG Nikon night - the concert of the “Blues Traveler”. Those guys are incredibly talented, but I was struggling to stay awake after first couple of beers and by 11:30pm walked back to the hotel and crashed……

No, before I did that - I checked my alarm to make sure it’s set on AM, made sure I switched from vibrate to ring and *then* crashed… :)

Nikon D700 @24mm ISO 3200(!) 1/120, f/2.8

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