OK OK OK. I’m glad that April is over. It’s been a super duper busy month. What with weddings and workshops.
So this time around the Photography Farm crew rocked up in the glorious city of Glasgow. We came. We saw. We conquered.
Well not conquered, but taught a bevy of super cool wedding photographers all about ‘the way of the flash’, kick ass marketing techniques and awesome couples shoots.
Me being the only bloke in the room, you can see from the photo above that I was having a bit of a hard time and found it very tough.
And just like at the Belfast Photography Farm, I fell in love with the City and people of Glasgow. It may have been the food & drink. I ate Haggis on more than one occasion. I had a burrito for breakfast one day. Porridge with Drambuie another. I found the best Whisky Pubs, and sampled many of the finest drams while putting the worlds to rights with the Farmers. (I even smuggled a bottle of said Whisky home with me). I even sampled a Pizza Crunch on the last day…..although i’m still regretting that one.
So thanks to all the Farmers and Glaswegians for a BRILLIANT few days.
Right, back to the workshop. So on the second day it’s all over to the Devlin for her workshops and a styled shoot. This time we had Ex Farmer and all round top gezza Neil Thomas Douglas and his lovely wife Jen.
They had just got married the weekend before and were up for being shot again in their wedding gear.
One of the great things about working with Lisa Devlin and teaching with her, is that me and her are kind of total opposites ……in a good way though. She’s Canon, i’m Nikon. I use Lightroom, she uses Apature. She finds the light, I get the background and add my own light. Now you may think that this doesn’t work and isn’t a good thing. However, I totally disagree and think that it offers a very well rounded workshop to anyone coming on it. You get to see two very different ways, neither of them right, both of them right. What we are trying to say is do it the way it works for you. So in a practical sense, having both of us teach you, means that If you’re Nikon and use Apature, we’ve got you covered. If you shoot Canon and use Lightroom, no problem.
So I always like watching Lisa shoot her couples, and teach the Fundamental Rules of Awesome Couples shoots. As she talks about finding the emotion and capturing that. And you know what, she’s very good at it and gets some wonderful images of people. It’s not the way that I work and if i’m honest, being a bloke, I find it hard to get other men to show their emotions in my photos. I’ve done it a few times, and I ended up making one groom cry. I felt really awkward and I know my couples don’t come to me for those kind of photos, where as Lisa’s couples want that from her.
It’s great seeing the people on the workshop, use Lisa’s techniques and develop their photography and shooting skills and being able to add them to their ‘photography toolbox’ though.
So the fact that Lisa and I have different ways of shooting and how Lisa finds the emotion and I don’t really do that was something that I was talking with Neil about on the shoot. Everyone had been shooting for a while and i’d seen the one photo I wanted to take of Neil and Jen and asked if I could shoot it at the end.
So here is the image below. It was the only set up that I did on the shoot. I didn’t have any lightstands and had to use a couple of the farmers to hold the flashes. I’d spotted this great motorbike earlier in the day and that amazing blue wall behind it and had taken an Instagram of Neil on it, but I really wanted to shoot both of them with the bike on my ‘proper camera’. So thats just what I did.
For the lighting (like I said, I find the background and make the lighting work for me) I’d tried having the flashes off camera infront of Neil and Jen, but I wasn’t happy with the shadows on the wall, so I asked the Farmers to move back and have the flashes hitting Neil & Jen from behind. It didn’t take long and I love how they both look in the shot. How great does Jen look in her leather jacket and red converse with her foot just kinked out like that.
Afterwards when I was talking to Neil about the emotions and stuff and how it works for Lisa and the other farmers and how I shoot in a different way, Neil summed it up like only Neil can. He said “You don’t get the emotion, you just get people looking cool as fuck!”
I like that.
So if you want to make people look cool as fuck, capture the emotion, learn how to light the first dance properly, use kick ass marketing techniques to boost your business or just become a farmer. We’re coming to a city near you!!!!
We’ll be in:
Cornwall on 5th & 6th of June
Bristol on 17th & 18th July
Manchester on 24th & 25th July
So check out the Photography Farm website for more info and give us a shout to see what we can do for your business.
