3 Day Location Shoot & Learning Experience

About 2 weeks ago I was contacted to see if I would be interested in helping out on a 3 day photo shoot with Zack Arias. My immediate thought was "Yes, absolutely!".  I don't have any actual images from this shoot. I took a couple shots with my iPhone throughout the 3 days, but none from Zack's actual shoot because it's his personal project and his to release when he chooses. Because, this a blog about photography, I'll sprinkle a couple images from the location I got on the iPhone. We did get to shoot on our own on day 2, but it deserve it's own post.

These were 3 long days and anyone who thinks that photographers have an easy job, should spend a day assisting. There was plenty of gear to move and setup. I also got to share this experience with some fellow photographers that also came out to help out.

PocketWizard Canon TTL Radio Triggers

As promised here's the technical information on the new PocketWizard TTL Radio Triggers. I'm in no way sponsored or receiving any compensation for my comments.  There are other less expensive radio triggers that work just as well, I just happen to use these.

Let me begin that I don't shoot using Canon's E-TTL system. If you've read some of my previous posts, you'll know that I set my flashes manually. So why would I use these new radio triggers? For a couple reasons. First of all they're compact and require no additional cables.

PocketWizard Tour | davem photography

Last weekend I got the opportunity to sit in on a PocketWizard demo/lighting workshop conducted by Mark Wallace. Mark has been touring the country and demonstrating these new radio triggers. The tour stopped at Ambient Plus Studios.

The MiniTT1 & FlexTT5 have been out for about a year, but have had some issues with reliability. The tour is to address these issues and provide a solution. Most importantly, it's not a problem with the triggers.

South Atlanta Flickr Meet | davem photography

I finally made it out to a South Atlanta Flickr Meet. Got to see some familiar faces and meet some new colleagues.

This was a fairly new experience for me, since I usually work on location and not in a studio. I really like the white seamless look.

Athens Strobist Meet - January

January 9th was the first of many strobists meets for this year being held in the Athens area. If you're interested in learning about lighting or want to be part of like minded individuals that shoot for a couple hours and then socialize afterwards over dinner, you should come on out.

It was a cold weekend. Atlanta got some snow on Friday and had traffic issues with ice on some roads that had basically kept many people indoors. Luckily, most of the roads had been cleared by Saturday. Despite mid 30º temps, we were still a go for our meet.

On Assignment : Family Portrait

I always charge my batteries and test my gear out the night before a shoot. It turned out that my trigger died while testing it. I use a PocketWizard MiniTT1 on the camera and depending on what I'm trying to do, I'll either use the PocketWizard FlexTT5 or PlusIIs. I knew I needed two lights for this shoot. So I would have to use my remaining triggers and I knew the PlusII can't trigger the FlexTT5, but was unsure about the FlexTT5 triggering the PlusII. Turns out it works! Once again, another reason to test out your gear and become familiar with it. It helped me save this shoot.

Here's the lighting scenario for the family session I blogged about in the previous post. Up to this point, I've only been using one light, either a 60" umbrella or a 28" soft box. Neither would be sufficient for a family of 9.

A It was about 4:30 in the afternoon and I had about 1 hour before the sun set. We had plenty of clouds to provide soft light, I only needed enough light to raise the exposure so that I could shoot at ISO 200 and still retain sufficient depth of field.

Cody Family Portrait | davem photography

I had a family shoot over the holidays. I was contacted by Alison, a friend that I haven't seen in about 10 years. She wanted this to be a surprise gift for her mother-in-law.

This was the largest group that I've shot, and I learned a couple things that'll help the next time I shoot a family of this size or larger.