i dont consider myself a teacher, maybe because i’m impatient and my biggest flaw is i expect people to just “get it” as quickly as I would. maybe because as a perfectionist I don’t ever give myself enough credit for what I already know. i constantly have my face in a book or  blog trying to soak up as much information as possible. I have one of those all or nothing personalities, where If I don’t think I “know it all” then I dont think my opinion matters. In the past year i’ve slowly come around to the idea that maybe i have some knowledge others would benefit from. So, as I come across opportunities i’ll share my random bits of information and hope it helps someone else just getting started.

follow the light

I often get ask by new photographers, “Whats the most important thing I should learn in photography”? My answer is always understand and study light! Yes you need to know how F-stops & Shutterspeeds work, but if you think about it, even those skills come back to understanding light.

While shooting a session last week I took the images below. The image on the left has the sun shining directly on the subject. You will see it creates harsh shadows on her face. This is not a horrible image and technically I could fix it in photoshop. But I always want to get an image correct in camera. You can see by simply moving our subject to the other side of the stairs I now have fantastic diffused light that creates a much more appealing image. When following the light look for light colored walls and buildings that can be used a built in reflectors and create a diffused even light.