Idea books

Next week starts my next group of flash photography students and one of the things that I tell all my students is that they need to create an idea book.  In a nutshell, an idea book is a collection of your own images that you have put together along with information on how you photographed them. It is one of the best long term learning aides that I have ever discovered.

The concept of the idea book is to create a collection of your own images that you can use to spark your creativity and as a source of images that you can build and improve upon.  So how does this idea book work?

Building and idea book.

1. Find yourself an album that can hold 4x6 prints.  The large the album, the better.
2. Get a bunch of 4x6 index cards

When you take an image that you like, make a 4x6 print of it and put it in the album.  Write down every detail of how you photographed the image; lighting, exposure, location, time of day etc.  Even if the image isn't perfect, but you like the concept, put it in the book. As you get more and more images in the book, you will be building a source of ideas that can trigger your memory.  It will also help you become a better photographer because you can go back to an image you like and work on it and make it better.

Its awesome.  Many photographers on the lecture circuit sell there idea books.  If you want, you can pick one or two of these up as starting points, but ultimately you need to be the one taking the images or you will never understand how they were created.

Summer Light

Vancnouver is being hit with a late summer this year.  It never really warmed up over the summer months and we never really saw much blue sky.  Now that has changed and it is awesome.

During the main summer months the light is direcectly over head. And when it is clear sky's you get a lighting that wedding photographers love to hate - harsh, strong, and unflattering.  But, cloudy summers change all that.  Why? The suns harsh light is diffused by this giant soft box called cloud cover.  The light is soft and beautiful.  As photographers, all we have to do is give it some direction.

Sunny weather this time of the year also makes for great light because the light is no longer directly over head.  Now the light is coming at an angle pretty much all day.  Awesome!  Now I have directional, punchy light - outdoors. I'm looking out the window right now and seeing the sun is starting to go down. Absolutely beautiful.  Want some real fun - try shooting after the sun goes down and use the penumbra as your light source.  Light direction is from the west but the sky acts as a giant reflector now, giving you a soft but none the less punchy light.  You gotta love it.  Don't forget to do a custom white balance though.

Compositional Balance

This image was taken Sunday morning in downtown Vancouver.  I was a beautiful sunny morning, well before the crowds had started to come out.  Compositionally, I wanted to balance the green of the young mans shirt with the green of the sign in the background.  The sign was not in direct sunlight, bit was none the less significantly brighter than the subject.  Had I taken the shot with the existing light, the sigh would have been burnt out and the value of the color would of been lost. Instead, I chose to slightly underexpose my background by dialing up my shutter speed..  I lite the subject with a Canon 580 EX speedlight in a 32" umbrella.  A white reflector was used to fill in the shadow side.  The image that came out of the camera is what you see here.