NEW: now giving photography lessons in Dublin !

Hi,

One of my friend bought an SLR lately, and asked me for tips. We spent an hour going thru the features, practicing, etc. Then she took the one day gift course offered by Canon, and she told me "man, I barely learned in a day what I learned with you in 1hour, you should give lessons".

Well so be it ! I'm know giving lessons in Dublin, on Saturdays and Sundays. But I won't make it a boring lecture, no no no. At the end of the day you will have :

• shot real models
• practiced studio lightning with professional equipment
• tried different techniques that you can then apply as you wish
• and even practice on medium format film cameras ! (you won't find that often)
• learned (by practicing) the basics of good digital developing / editing. 
• this will be focused on portrait and general use of a DSLR.

This will be a 4 hours group course (up to 5 people) or 1:1 if for a premium. Including:

• 1 hour of theory
• 2 hours of shooting (natural light, studio light)
• 1 hour of editing

With breaks in the middle of course :)

The bad news: I will charge 150 / person (model's fee at my expense). You need to bring you camera !

Contact me at 08 33 17 35 19 (please not hidden number, I tend to not answer those :p)

I'll plan the first session in April (away in India in March)

RIP Pierre Herbert

I won't bother you with tearing feelings here, I never knew the guy. But I knew his photography and it sucks he's not there to make more of it.

Pierre Herbert pulled an amazing amount of great shot within the simple context of his own family intimacy. His prolific Flickr account speaks for itself.
His mastery of light on B&W at first, then of color treatment, is highly inspirational to me. Subtile and sensitive, he is the photographer who shot my personal ultimate B&W portrait ever (see samples below).

What to learn from him:

• All the subjects you need are around you, just open your eyes. The most conventional scene can become the most amazing image.
• Photoshop and strobism? what is that?
• Light and exposure are the essence of photography
• Large and medium format photography rule. Period.
• He used a mamiya 645, large format gear,  a Yashica 124 and a Blad 501, and for digital a Nikon D80 (yes yes, that reminds me of someone). NO YOU DON'T NEED THE LATEST FX 22MP CANON WITH A STABILIZED 1500$ LENS TO SHOOT GOOD. Damnit, he was a total master with 250$ used medium format gear. Oh and larger formats rule, sorry you spent on a SLR the price of all the equipment above mentioned :p

Condoleances to his family, chances that they read this are little but, well...a man shooting like that cannot have been a bad person. So I mean it.

Now the pictures :) I can hardly choose only few... First one is the portrait above mentioned.

His site.

A interview in French of Pierre Herbert explaining better than I can his photography.

Shooting against the light

Hello hello, today we'll see how to do that:

Shooting against the sun, especially with low suns (early or late in the day) can produce beautiful moody shoots, with that dreamy light that is so in fashion among amateur photographer these days.

It is technically very simple, but it does take some understanding of exposure measurement and setting on your camera.

I'll keep it simple: if you tell camera to measure light on the entire image, the direct or nearly direct sunlight entering the lens is going to force the camera into exposing very little. It will think you're facing a very very bright object. The problem is: your subject's face is not in the light, and it the darkest part of your image. 

What you want to do is telling your camera that however bright the ensemble is, it should meter (measure light) as it should be on the model, and not anywhere else. 

In order to do so, you need to set your camera on spot metering, i.e measure light on a precise point, that you will place on the model. 

It should look like that on your camera. Spot metering being the spot on the left.

Now it's pretty simple, the spot measure will be the same as your focus point (in the middle on basic camera, anywhere you focus on a more advance SLR).

Just have that spot on the model and shoot :)

FYI, it works the same on digital and film cameras.

A new born collaboration !

I started shooting for the fashion blog misslimoncello.com, we'll soon organize proper shooting outdoors with different models, I'm looking forward to it !

I used 85mm F1.8 and 35mm F2 Nikon lenses, with Elinchrom flash lightning.