2011 Overview

I started the year with two studio lights and an idea that it might be nice to get some studio shots under my belt. I've ended the year with a full studio set up including four lights, assorted reflectors, various backgrounds and thirty plus sessions behind me. I've encountered floppy babies, one year olds who crawl faster than I can shoot. Crying two year olds, brilliant under tens, willing to pose and smile for as long as I asked. Difficult teenage boys and some great older teenage girls who were a joy to work with. All in all it's been one big buzz.

I decided early on that I needed some training so I booked myself in on a Damien Lovegrove lighting course. It was expensive but I had a good day there. Some of the lighting scenarios we were shown on the day have been useful but on the whole the day didn't really lend itself to the studio portraiture my subsequent clients wanted and with hindsight it wasn't the right course for me at that time. 

Ironically the course I needed then was the course I completed with Mark Cleghorn a week ago. What a great day, jammed packed with practical lighting setups and Mark constantly available for us to pick his brains. He missed every tea break throughout the day as he was always in demand but his good natured banter never failed him and he was always willing to offer advice and share his experience. In fact his phototraining4u website has been money well spent. I'm a huge fan of the site which has benefited my photography in every possible way since I joined.

Despite the odd enquiry, up until June last year I had avoided any attempts to get me involved with wedding photography. I didn't think it was something for me and just viewed it as a lot of hassle for limited reward. That was until I shot a wedding in June, albeit as second photographer to the main man. 

What a day. Non stop reportage style shooting and the buzz of being around everyone on such a special day had me hooked. I left the venue exhausted but thinking 'I want more of this'. To that end I decided to accept any subsequent wedding bookings that came my way. I haven't advertised but as a result of word of mouth I now have five confirmed bookings for 2012. I'm apprehensive but looking forward to each event all the same. I've booked a weekend 'Wedding Photography' course for early March with my first wedding at the end of that month.

I think 2012 is going to continue where this year left off. I have seven bookings to sort for January, once I've sorted studio space although I now have a charging plan from February onwards. Weddings are also going to be big on the agenda next year with a view to moving on with that into 2013 and beyond. If I have as much fun next year as I've had this year I will be more than happy. 

High Key Studio

Back in the studio this week with three separate sittings. I decided to alter my high key lighting set up again as I felt I could have done better with the shots from the previous session. Post processing those images had involved a lot of work in photoshop to make up for some not quite white floor and background areas and a bit more shade on the fill side than I liked.

For this session I decided to move my background lights, two Bowens 500′s fitted with ‘High Performance’ reflectors, closer to the background but still crossing each other with light to the edge of the background opposite the each light. I decided to stick with my large Bowens softbox as my key light, set at forty five degrees to the sitter but feathered across from the right. I had been using a second fill light straight onto the sitter in the last session but I decided to move that light and position it at more of an angle opposite the fill. I decided to change from a shoot through umbrella and use another softbox with this light set one stop below the key and set further back. In camera test shots looked ok but I find these are not always a great indicator with the high key setup.

My first session was with a young family, Mum, Dad, one cooperative five year old and a tearful eighteen month old girl. Despite my best efforts I couldn’t coax one smile from her but that’s all good experience and I did get some nice serious looking shots by getting Dad to swing her round into camera from over his shoulder. Travis was the complete opposite and more than happy to pose  in any way I asked and even had a few ideas of his own.

More than happy with some nice shots in the bag I moved onto the next session with one year old Reuben. What a nightmare. Forget posing marks on the floor, the studio was one big adventure playground as far as Reuben was concerned and he wasn’t going to hang around for me. We tried hard and eventually came away with some nice crawling shots and a couple of him stuck between Dads legs. Plonking him into a chair for a few shots also worked until he sussed out how to climb down and get away again. A good experience again although I’ve no idea what I could do different next time.

For the final session I changed the lighting as I’d asked my niece to come in with a Michael Jackson fancy dress outfit she’d worn to a family party the week before. I wanted an excuse to use my beauty dish and a hair light so we experimented with a few setups and poses. There’s more work to do on this one but I was quite pleased with a couple of the efforts. For the background I used my white colorama paper but turned off the rear lights. This worked well and gave a nice mid grey effect in the final image.

Post processed I was more happy with the new light set up for the high key stuff. Personally I like my high key work to be exactly that, very white, light and slightly bleached. I might tweak the back light setting again next time but I think I’ll stick with my key and fill light setup. Using a couple of the Kubota actions lifted the contrast and colours and my 20% Gaussian blur/light channel sharpen action finished them off nicely.

I had a really nice break from the studio last week when I went for a woodland walk with the Broomfield family. I work with mum, Marie, who wanted some natural looking, outdoor shots of her children, Isobel and Lucas.

Isobel, who is nine years old,  was no stranger to the camera. She’s been snapped countless times recently and appeared on BBC’s newsround after a drawing of herself was chosen as one of 13 to be used in a new animated film as part of the Tate/Ardman Movie Project.

Shooting this way was a first for me with anyone other than family. We agreed to meet in some local woodland that I know very well and just go for a walk and see what happened. I had a few locations I wanted to try but other than that everything was pretty much on the fly.

As it worked out it was a very productive, if tiring afternoon. Some of the locations worked really well and some didn’t. Both Lucas and Isobel were really good models although I wore Lucas out long before Isobel. Even Marie and Mike posed for a few shots and they turned out really well.

The two hour walk filled two 4GB cards but I found post processing the images a lot easier than my studio shots. Marie ended up with over eighty images in the proofing folder and I was pleased with all of them.

Having asked Marie for some feedback a few days later she seemed really pleased with the shots but felt the session went on a bit too long and I’d agree with that. The paradox is that some of my favourite images on the day came from the end of the session.

This was a learning experience though and with what I took away this time I think I could easliy compress the next session down to an hour which would be more than long enough for most children, and me!

All in all a great days photography and I’m now on the look out for some more willing stooges.

Studio Work

I've had a busy few days in the studio with three sessions in the last few days. All were different, which was good for me, ranging from professional promo shots, family shots with seventeen and five year old boys followed by a final high and low key prom shot session.

I had access to a studio room that's qite a bit larger than the room I normally hire and its suprising the difference that made. It certainly made for a more relaxing environment and gave me more room to experiment with the lights. I'm finally getting the hang of the high key lighting in order to get the look I'm after. It seems like everyone has their own way of setting the lights. I've experimented with three or four different setups now but I was really pleased with some of yesterdays results.

I've resorted to using a large softbox as my key light, used close in and at forty five degrees to my subject. That's balanced by a second light set further back, fitted with a large shoot through umberella and metered at one stop below the key. I'm using the new Bowens High Performance reflectors to light the background, set at one to one and a half stops over the key light. I've tried two stops as recommended by lots of people but I just end up with horrendous flare problems. Some of the backgrounds need a bit of whitening in post process but I'd rather that than trying to fight the flare.

All in all though it was a great weekend and I'm really pleased with specific shots from all the sessions. My posing skills are developing although I still struggle a bit with the family groups. I'm not sure if that's me or just trying to get young kids into set poses that never really work. I'm more inclined these days to set the parents and let the youngsters do their thing around them, within reason. I think the end results look a bit more spontaneous and fun. It was quite the opposite with the prom shots, I had two willing models and felt like I guided it through from start to finish, balancing what I wanted with some input from them as to what they were looking for. I think I provided a bit more than they'll get from the standard events shots on the ir prom night, which is what I was hoping for at the start of the session.

Weddings

I photographed my first wedding last weekend after being asked by friend and wedding photographer, Glenn Blakeborough of Focus14 Photography to act as second photographer on a wedding he was booked to shoot at Thornbury Golf Club just outside of Bristol.

I didn’t have to think twice when Glenn contacted me with the offer to shoot with him. This was a fantastic opportunity and It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time after following the articles of some of the countries top wedding photographers in the pro mags I subscribe to.

My remit was to capture guests arriving whilst Glenn was busy with some pre wedding shots of the bride and general scene setting. Following the ceremony he wanted me to capture candid shots of the guests, working around Glenn as he got on with the group shots the bride and groom had requested.

I thoroughly enjoyed my day although it was hard work. We were shooting for four and a half hours and I was so wrapped up in what I was doing it wasn’t until we were leaving that I realised we hadn’t even stopped for a drink during that time. The pint we had just before we left was one of the best ever.

However I was really pleased with what I came away with and I was able to supply Glenn with just over 200 shots. I’ve been left wanting more and wedding photography is something I definitely want to do again.

Photo Noir

Back to some portrait work this week. I took advantage of a visit by Reuben to grab some shots of him in the garden and have another crack at the 'photo noir' stuff using one studio light against a black velvet background. All in all I was really pleased with the results.

The black and white conversions worked really well. I used a couple of photoshop actions I downloaded for the outdoor shots, Lightroom took care of the indoor stuff. Photographing a one year old was quite an experience. They don’t stay still for long and move really quick. All good fun though.

Photoshop Actions

Having spent the last few months following the PhotoTraining4U Photoshop tutorials I've become quite wrapped up with the programme. I still use lightroom for my initial RAW processing but I'm now using Photoshop for everything else. As part of that process I've made a few of my own simple actions for speeding up my workflow but I've also just discovered the vast amount of free actions available on the internet.

I've just spent a few hours this afternoon downloading a few and running them through some pics. Some are good, some are not so good but its amazing what's out there. It's also quite good to pull them apart and see how some of the effects have been achieved. I've no doubt there must be an action for just about everything, I'll continue my search for some cool portfolio borders.

Ducklings

After spending most of this year developing my skills in the studio it was really nice to go out on Saturday and get back to what I enjoy most. That's going out with the camera with a rough idea of what I want to get and seeing what happens. With that in mind I decided to call into where I work, the Police HQ in Portishead and try to get a few shots of some ducklings which are currently being reared on a small pond we have set in amongst a group of offices.

I got lucky when we got there as mum and the ducklings were sat out of the pond and resting in the warm sunshine. Using my 2xSigma converter on my 70-200 lens I was able to get in quite close without upsetting them, they're quite used to people but still wary. I tried to sell the converter last year as at this time it was manual focus only on all my lenses. In fact the only Canon lens it will autofocus with is my new 70-200. I'm really glad I hung on to it now, especially for this sort of stuff. It makes for a heavy combination on the end of the camera but combined with a higher iso in reasonable light it works really well.

There's still quite a few ducklings in the group. Most of these will be taken by crows in the next few weeks, sad but just the way it is.

Animoto

I signed up with Animoto last week after being more than impressed with the video service they provide. It’s an excellent concept and I’d produced my first effort with fifteen minutes of joining. Here’s a short example from last Saturdays shoot with my sister and her family, make sure you switch the volume control on:

PhotoTraining4u

PhotoTraining4U is turning out to be one of my best ever investments since I decided to take my photography a bit more seriously. It’s a superb source of information and advice with easy to follow video tutorials. The photoshop/elements tutorials, in particular, have taken my finished images to a different level and improved my workflow no end. Like wise the studio lighting lessons make things a real lot easier to understand and I've seen a marked improvement in my high key shots over the past two sessions. You could pay a fortune to learn this stuff a day course. I can't recommend the site highly enough.

From using the site I noticed that Mark Cleghorn uses Loxley Colour Labs to produce his prints. I'd been impressed with their stand at the Focus on Imaging show so I decided to give them a go. I also wanted to check my monitor calibration as my home produced prints tend to come out on the dark side. The calibration is set with a color Munki and I was keen to check the on screen colours against a professional print.

Having downloaded the Loxley upload software I sent five images off to them at 3.00pm on Wed afternoon. They arrived back as A4 prints at 7.00am the next morning, what service! The print quality is superb and far superior to my home produce efforts, and I thought they were ok. The screen calibration also seems to be spot on. I'm a convert now and I'll be trying a few more of their products over the next week or so.

New Studio Room

The Neale family visited the make shift studio this week, they're friends of ours who were up for a bit of fun posing for me. I've decided the converted bedroom at home isn't going to big enough for family groups so I hired a room locally at a reasonable rate. This worked out really well and I think this is where I'll be doing the majority of my studio stuff in future. As before, I'd spent some time researching and compiling mood boards which made up for my inexperience in arranging poses. Having said that my two favourite shots on the day were more candid, snatched, shots of the kids with natural expressions as I caught them unawares.

It was the first time I'd used my white paper background with the four lights as opposed to the Lastolite Hi Lite and it worked really well. I can't see me getting much use out of the roll though as it's already marked up quite badly. I think I'll be looking to invest in a vinyl backdrop before too long as it's going to be a lot more economical.

We had just about an hour for the session and it went really well. Both kids, Antonia and Boo Boo had no inhibitions and were perfect little posers. Sam and Scott joined in the fun and all and all we had a really good t ime.

I had no problem sorting thirty or so shots I was happy with from the session and still have quite a few more I'm sure Sam would be happy with.

All in all another good learning exercise and a few hours of really good fun for everyone involved.

UCLA Book Cover

I had a bit of a buzz this week when I received an email from UCLA asking if they could use one of my pictures for the cover of an upcoming book. It's a shot I took of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The book is a history Teaching Guide which will be published later this year.

The University came to me via my Flickr account which just goes to show the value of taking time to tag your pictures. In fact over the last few years I’ve had quite a few requests via Flickr to use my pictures for various publications, blogs and web guides.

I suppose it’s a great resource, and a cheaper option, for organisations with limited funding. In most cases they’ll get their chosen picture in exchange for a credit whereas a similar picture sourced from a Stock Agency could cost a considerable amount based on the print run involved. There’s some really good quality stuff hosted on Flickr, just take a look at the 100+, 200+ (etc) favs groups for some excellent examples.

My First Paying Clients

Emma, Andy and young Archie visited the studio this week, my first paying clients. I think they were as apprehensive as me but once the introductions were over we soon settled on a plan of action.

I started by showing them some mood boards I’d compiled with some ideas for poses. I’d researched these the week before by looking through a couple of stock sites. The boards proved really beneficial and gave a bit of structure to the shoot.

I’d also had a last minute change of mind on my lighting set up for the shots of Archie on his own. Having watched a video tutorial on the phototraining4u site I decided to move my large softbox close into Archie, 45 degrees to his right and just above his head. I’d placed him on white card and used the Lastolite Hi-lite for the background. These shots worked really well and were my favourites from all I took on the afternoon. Archie was a bit overalled and wasn’t really up for to many smiles, despite everyones best efforts, but even so, I’m pleased with the shots I got here.

We moved onto to some standard family poses with Emma and Andy choosing those they particularly liked from the mood boards and after a short break took some full body shots using white paper taped o the bottom of the lastolite with white duct tape, another tip I’d picked up from the Phototraining4u site. The limitations of the small studio became apparent at this point and really, with adults standing, I’m going to need somewhere with a bit more height.

Come the end it was a really enjoyable afternoon. Little Archie had had enough but I’m pleased with some of what we came away with, Emma and Andy seemed happy after a quick review in Lightroom. Just a hundred or so pics to post process now…

Focus on Imaging

A busy week with a visit to the ‘Focus on Imaging’ show at Birmingham and my first paying clients at the small studio I’ve set up at home.

The show rolled round first. We picked on the last day for our trip to Birmingham which I think was a wise move given the numbers who’d visited the previous weekend. I was surprised how few dealers there were in the arena with most the space taken up with large printing displays, framing companies and photo book printers. This suited me as I was looking for a few options to offer my new clients, particularly with framing and book options.

Having quickly filled a bag with handouts and samples I suddenly found myself at the phototraining4u stand with Mark Cleghorn halfway through a photo critique of an apprentice working her way through a training year with him. I’d considered joining his the scheme earlier in the year after watching some of Mark’s tutorial videos on the Lastolite site. Normal price for the first year is £199 but the show price was £99 with a scratch card discount of £50. A clever piece of marketing here, me thinks, as someone else signing up with me had spookily won a £50 discount on her scratchcard.

I must say that since returning and using the site I’ve no regrets whatsoever. The video tutorials on lightroom alone have made a huge difference to the way I post process and the studio lighting demonstrations have been really useful. I’d recommend it to any keen amateur like myself.

Moving on it was time for a quick lunchtime beer (Smithie was driving) and then a trawl around the rest of the display stands. I resisted some of the studio equipment offers but did come away with some Ilford pearl paper which I’ve been really impressed with and I now wish I'd bought more. The show price was £12 for fifty A4 sheets.

All in all a really good day, outstanding value at £8 a ticket and I’ll definitely be going back next year.

Studio Gear

The studio has become a bit of a passion recently but I never seem to have enough equipment for the shots I want to replicate from other blogs and magazines. My two Bowens lights have been really good but I’ve had to supplement them with another borrowed pair and really three lights are a minimum for the sort of high or low key shots I want to take.

To that end I’ve been scouring ebay and similar sites for second hand equipment. Nothing has really come along until about two weeks ago when I spotted a post on the used equipment forum on the Bowens site. I contacted the seller who agreed to split the bundle he had for sale and to cut a long story short I picked up a Bowens Esprit Gemini 750 kit last weekend.

These supplement my 400’s really nicely, especially with the Lastolite Hi-Lite I’ve been using for my high key shots. I picked the lights up Saturday morning and had them up and running on Saturday afternoon taking shots of my work colleagues (someone’s leaving present). All seemed to go well on the day, the shots on the camera screen looked good but then despair when I checked them later on the computer, every shot had a horrible yellow cast. Eventually this was quite easily rectified, all to do with my white balance set up which I’d set to flash. Apparently flash heads have a tendency to yellow over time although taking a custom white setting sorts this. Taking the WB down to 4850 in lightroom cleared everything up.

Lesson learnt I had the lights out again Sunday afternoon for some baby shots in my small home studio. I’ve never really been that happy with my previous attempts with the high key stuff but after researching on the net and trying various settings with a stand in doll I finally came away with some shots I was really happy with.

For me the Lastolite works best one and a half stops brighter than my key light and I set the background to f13. My key light was set to F8 but I then opened the camera up to F7.1. Whether that’s a quirk of the camera or something else I don’t know but the settings worked well and gave me the skin tones I’d been looking for. Nice white card and careful placement of the key light gave me the crisp white fore grounds I’d been looking for and altogether I had very little to do in Light room as regards post processing.

I suppose that’s the advantage of having a set studio and hopefully I should be able to replicate this set up on Friday when I have my first commercial shoot.

Putting it into practice

Having attended the Lovegrove studio workshop three weeks ago I set up a photo shoot of my own last weekend to see if I could put into practice all that Damien had shown us on the course.

I pooled resources with fellow enthusiast Nick Smith and enlisted the help of a couple of work colleagues, Sally Payne and Jade Nichols, to act as models. Tracey Parkinson kindly agreed to be our makeup artist for the day.

We decided to start with Damien’s four light set up using two lights positioned behind the model to act as kickers for the shoulders and hair. Another light was used to one side to illuminate the background and separate it from the model. Our final light, fitted with a beauty dish, was positioned directly in front of the girls. We angled this light into a forward position across the models face and fitted it with a diffuser to soften the light. Our background was a charcoal grey, half size, paper roll but more about that later. The lights were set up to allow us to shoot at f11.

First up was Jade and although the shots were looking ok on the back of the camera I wasn’t entirely happy with them. We swapped the honey comb hair light for a snoot but still things weren’t really working. After further consultation we decided to introduce a reflector just under the Jades waist and suddenly everything came to life. A few more tweaks here and there and the shots were looking really good. We decided to give a very patient Jade a rest and in came Sally.

Having used Jade to get the lighting just as we wanted everything we tried with Sally went really well. The introduction of some rainbow gloves that had been living in my loft for the last few years really lifted the shots despite their fousty smell and Sally's reluctance to get them too close to her face. On the day these were my favourite shots and even on the back of the camera looked really promising.

It was during this session, when I wanted to shoot in landscape mode, the limitations of my half roll width paper became obvious. I was losing about a third of the frame off the edge of the paper for anything other than a full head shot which was disappointing. It’s certainly food for thought and I’ll be looking to use a wider background next time, whether that’s a wider paper roll, canvas or a painted wall.

Overall the exercise resulted in a really good, fun, productive day. The girls really got into it and seemed pleased with the prints I gave them later. Tracey was pleased with the make up and again went away with some nice prints for her wedding exhibitions. Nick and I both picked up some useful ideas for poses and props and both agreed we need more lights. Something to look out for at the ‘Focus on Imaging’ show next month.

Home Studio

The new home studio is coming along really well. The combined bedrooms have now been re-plastered, painted through and just waiting for new carpet. As it’s going to be a dual purpose room I decided against laminate although that probably would have been more suitable for a studio.

We tried it out over the weekend. In truth it’s going to be a bit small for anything other than children or single head portraits and I could do with a bit more height for the lights but, having said that, I was really pleased with some of the shots I came away with. I think long term I might look at setting up a studio in the garage as this will give me a bit more shooting space and not impact on the rest of the house as much. It did become apparent that I’m going to need a couple more lights for the darker background stuff and perhaps something a bit more powerful to use with the lastolite light box.

Lovegrove Studio Workshop

My day at the Damien Lovegrove Workshop. I arrived at 9.00am and spent the first hour chatting with the other two photographers on the course. Both were full time professionals specialising in general photography.

It was great for me as an amateur to pick the brains of these two guys re the photography business. Throughout the breaks during the course of the day I got almost as much from these two as I did from the studio workshop. Day to day photography for them consisted of pre school nursery groups, nurseries, family portraits and for one of them, promo shots of Colchester Utd football club. Both were really good company, very open and generally upbeat about their work and profession. It did give me food for thought though as I’m being asked more and more for portrait work from friends and family.

Whilst we were chatting Vikki, the make up artist, was busy with our model for the day, Georgina, and then, just before ten, Damien breezed in and moved us all off to his home studio for the first of the workshops.

We spent a few minutes adjusting our cameras which for me meant setting up the viewing screen on the back of my 5D (mine had been in auto mode since I took it out of the box) and getting to grips with manually setting the white balance via the Kelvin number setting (I’d always used a custom white balance using a white card pre this) and the cameras colour/monochrome settings. All totally new to me. We then moved onto the first of the lighting set ups.

We started off with a dark room illuminated with modelling lights as flash heads were added, one by one, creating various moods and effects. Throughout the process Damien was constantly talking, giving little hints and tips and explaining the fundamentals of good lighting technique. He’s a big fan of harsh lighting and our initial scenario built up to a four light set up using light reflectors and grids plus a tri reflector which proved to be my favourite on the day. To this Damien added various coloured gels to the light the background (which was dark grey). This gave some great effects with various colours used to enhance Georgina’s dress. Damien knows his set up so well there was no need for light meters. With cameras on manual mode at 100 iso he suggested an aperture of f.11 at 1/125sec. This proved spot on and we then took it in turns to take several shots of Georgina before each additional light and gel was added to the set up.

Using a professional model was a new experience and certainly made life a lot easier. Damien did ask us to direct Georgina but initially, feeling a bit self conscious, I was quite happy for her to assume poses for me and in truth, she was probably far better at giving me a look than I would have been trying to direct her given my limited experience. Having said that, as the day wore on I did find myself feeling much more at ease with this and asking her to assume poses and looks I’d seen her doing with the others and had particularly liked.

With some great shots in the camera it was break time for us but a dress change and makeover for Georgina. We returned to the studio for a new lighting set up with the lights we’d used from the first session. The back lights were turned up to their maximum setting which produced some edgy, backlit, punk like shots which, again, was really good fun.

Suddenly it was dinner time and a chance for me to quiz the other two guys and another makeover for Georgina. Damien had disappeared to Twitter away his lunch break but returned with his ever present ipad to explain and show us how he used mood boards for ideas and displaying his work. I’d never really seen an ipad close up and it’s an impressive piece of kit, pretty essential I should imagine in Damiens world.

We moved back to the studio and moved onto continuous, daylight balanced lighting using one and then two Lupo heads. I knew nothing whatsoever about these lights prior to the workshop but really enjoyed using them and came away with some terrific shots. Again we used coloured gels and a large sheet of silver backed plastic (I now know to be called a ‘scrim’ in the lighting world) to produce some really cool background effects. I never thought I’d find myself shooting through camouflage nets but that’s another little trade secret we were shown. If I hadn’t already bought my Bowens flash heads I’d be seriously considering a couple of Lupo’s as an alternative. We moved onto using ‘Barn Doors’ and ‘Venetian Blinds’ for some really cool effects with the Lupos and then before I knew it, coffee time again.

Another break for us, another costume change for Georgina and we returned for the final session of the day using a large softbox and floor to ceiling background. By now we were running out of time and although we got some shots from this session they were my least favourite on the day.

I left with a pack of gels having thoroughly enjoyed my day and with lots of ideas to try out as soon as my small home studio is ready.

Overall, as I’ve said, I did enjoy the day. I leant a lot from the sessions with Damien and from just hanging out with a couple of professional photographers. Although the course isn’t cheap at £430 inc vat I wasn’t disappointed.

As an amateur I’m hoping to use some of my new found skills for a few of the prom shots I get asked to do from time to time or some simple glamour shots, just because I can. Having spoken to one of the other photographers on the course since, he said he also enjoyed his day but was struggling to see where the set ups we were shown might fit into his more commercial work. He did tell me on the day that he was fed up with shooting on white backgrounds but feedback from his clients suggested that white backgrounds are what they want and they're his paymasters at the end of the day.