Small-Strobe Lighting Seminar
Well I’m no David Hobby, but a couple of weekends ago I conducted a small-strobe off-camera lighting seminar for a professional organization I belong to, Channel Islands Professional Photographers Association (CIPPA). I had originally planned to conduct it in a city park, so that I could demonstrate the use of ambient sunlight and balancing flash. But it rained that weekend, so at the last minute we moved it to the Mystique Studio. Thanks Leanne and Brenda for letting us use your space! I don’t remember the exact number, but we had roughly 10–12 attendees.
We also had two models help us out for the seminar. Cassie and Laura were very gracious and professional, even though there was a fair amount of sitting around while I talked. Much thanks to them as well!
All of the shooting was done with one or two lights. I started out with a single hard light (below). Hard light like this gives a very 40’s movie-star portrait look.
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Tutorial: ‘Degrunge’ Skin Retouching
While I’m sure all of you would prefer to look at a beautiful model for this tutorial, you’re going to have to put up with my ugly mug again. After all, none of my clients need skin retouching. 
But I certainly could use a little.
This is a skin retouching technique called “degrunge”. I think I first read about it on retouchpro.com, and am elaborating on that technique. I did not invent this, but this is how I use it.
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Tutorial: “The Highpass/Hard Light Look”
Here’s a more in-depth tutorial on the “Highpass/Hard Light” look. By the way, this probably has a better name, but no one’s ever told me it if there is.
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DIY Light Panel Diffuser
Nerd warning: technical photographic stuff.
I like to build my own photographic devices, whether it’s homemade lenses or lighting equipment. I recently built a large light diffuser panel based on the old ‘Tinker Tubes’ plans. It’s made out of PVC pipe, and cloth I bought from the fabric store. My first test shows that it works nicely! The diffuser drops the light about 2 stops from ‘hard light’, which is pretty good. My umbrellas have about the same performance. I don’t anticipate taking this to the beach, but it’ll be useful for studio or in-home work.
Oh and it cost me about $40 (as opposed to $300) and about three hours of work.
First the results. My youngest son, who is always up for a quick portrait shoot.
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