Charleston Center for Photography

So my PAO shop recently attended a photo training course at the Charleston Center for photography
The whole experience was absolutely incredible and reenergized my photographic drive. We only spent two days in Charleston, but it was one of those experiences that you always keep with you and draw back on for motivation. First of all the city of Charleston is absolutely awesome. It makes Savannah look like a third world country. If you walk down the historic King street and stop by any restaurant you literally cannot have a bad meal. And I'm not talking chains, almost every restaurant is a local unique spot and the variety is astounding (Thai, Pizza, Italian, hell even a macaroon parlor). Aside from the awesome food the city is drenched in history and a very beautiful locale to boot. I could go on about the city forever but alas the reason you came here is for photo related topics. The Charleston center for photography is an informal photography training school that offers a wide variety of courses, workshops, and free seminars. The staff is mostly former military photographers and they are all extremely experienced.
Our instructors for our mini workshop were Stacy Pearsall and Andy Dunaway, two former Air Force photographers who have won multiple awards for their amazing work.
The first day of the workshop centered around lighting for portraits. We learned about different lighting set ups (rembrandt, broad side, short side, butterfly, clam shell), learned how to use lots of lighting enhancers (beauty dishes, reflectors, soft boxes) and then played around with all of them. If you ever find yourself in the beautiful city of Charleston and have an interest in photography I highly reccomend CCforP.

Here are a couple of the lighting tools and techniques we fooled around with. the top one used a softbox as the main light a reflector to bounce some light onto the face and a single srobe as a hair light positioned behind the subject. The second one we used a tri grip to soften a strobe on one side of the face and then a softbox on the other side and although  you can't see it there is also another strobe behind her for a hair light.
After playing around with these toys we took everything outside to practice some on location lighting, these are all unedited images.

As you can see the first step is to expose for your background, we applied this technique and then started adding lights one by one to expose for the subject. Finally we got even trickier by adding more lights to create seperation.

 

On the second day we took to the streets and tryed to apply some of the new techniques we learned. Stacy and Andy were very helpful with any questions or comments we had. One of the things I have always struggled with as a photographer is the creeper factor. (When you are taking pictures in public and people always seem to shy away and generally be freaked out by the fact that you are holding a camera.) Stacy offered me this nugget on the subject. If your camera is always up to your face you never give anyone the chance to give you the stink face and start the awkwardness. It's still a work in progress but it is definitely something I'm getting better at. Anyways here is a nice moment I was able to capture during our time in a park downtown. Til next time CliQers :)