Lighting Class

So I just got back from a creative lighting workshop at Pictureline, and it was a blast. The workshop was led by Paul Van Allen, a Nikon rep who travels the country, teaching people how to use their Nikon gear. I was never a fan of flash photography, simply because I always felt that it was too harsh, washing out details and looking unnatural--well after tonight, I have completely changed my mind. Paul taught us how to set our cameras to trigger wireless flashes, and then we actually got hands on experience going to different stations. Each of the pictures below were ones that I took, but they are all based on lighting set-ups and compositions that Paul has displayed on his flickr account. The only exception was the water drop--that was taken with a camera that was already set up on a tripod (I believe that camera was a D300s), and I just had to put my memory card in. I still had to time the picture just right though. Anyway, here are the pictures--

The paint brush was clamped to a wooden dowel, with a bucket of lime green paint underneath. Right before taking the picture, you simply lift the bucket up to the brush to get the angle, and then time the shot to get a nice drip. I missed getting a drop of paint suspended in the air, but I still thought it was pretty cool.

Gumballs

Everyone was trying to get a perfectly suspended drop of water, but the line at this station was starting to get backed up. So I settled for this shot instead--I kind of like how the water is glassy smooth instead of rippling the way you normally see with shots of water droplets.

We all loved this station. And once you know how to do it, all sorts of possibilities just start to open up--I'm going to have a lot of fun with this stuff...