Go Shoot With Digital

Today I got to have a little adventure. I had signed up for a half day seminar put on by wedding photographer Doug Gordon. It was a seminar on Fashionable Wedding Photography. Now you may be wondering why I was attending a seminar on wedding photography, when I am not a photographer of weddings. Well, my thought process was that it was a seminar on photographing people. And that is something that I might find useful. Of course I never rule out anything, so wedding photography is always a possibility.

Doug is a very entertaining presenter, and very knowledgeable about the subject of posing people, tho his specialty is weddings. Looking at the information from the perspective of fashion or even portrait photography, the information translates quite well. After all wedding photography, outside of the ceremony itself, is just a different type of portraiture or fashion photography. It all comes down to lighting and putting the subject in the best possible position.

The seminar was held at the Hilton Hotel in Lake Buena Vista. The seminar was billed as a small class size, so there was to be opportunities for us to take photos as well. Well, that was not exactly true in this case. I didn’t do an actual head count, but there were probably about 70 people there. That meant that instead of us getting the opportunity to pose and photograph the “happy couple” we got to watch and listen to Doug pose the couple and see him take the pictures. And we were allowed to take pictures the process. He stated before we went to the live shoot, that if we tried to take the same pictures as him, ours would not be as good because we would be out of position to take advantage of the light. And the live shoot portion was done outside, in Florida, in nearly summer. It was probably 90+ degrees out there. Granted, that would not have been a problem for me if I knew about it, after all I like landscape and wildlife photography.

But this really shows a flaw in the workshop. Communication. I did not know what to expect. Even when I emailed a week before the event I wasn’t given any additional information. We were only told to bring a camera and an open mind. Of course I did bring both. I did find a few things interesting, besides the process of posing, including the fact that Doug shoots jpegs, not raw. The philosophy being that if you know what you are doing, you don’t have to “fix” it later in post. I feel similarly, but add that we are paying for the digital processing of our cameras, so why not let them do the heavy lifting. But others have always said to shoot in raw, and I was buying into it, but always hated the post processing chore. So I definitely give Doug props for that. It’s sort of like doing a crossword puzzle in pen.

At the end Doug did get a little preachy about joining local guilds/groups and finding other photographers to hang out with. I’ve met some of the members of a local photography club, and the ones that I met were not really friendly or open to sharing their knowledge. But I will continue to keep an open mind and see if there are any other organizations that might be better suited to my opportunities to share and receive experiences.

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