Karl Shaw visit

Every other Monday I attend a photography club which is run by my family and sometimes we get guest speakers and photographers to do demos in their line of work. Last Monday we had Karl Shaw who is a fashion photographer and writer for a photography magazine. Over the two and a half hours he gave us a demos on how to use almost all of the equipment that we had available in our studio which Is similar to the things we have at college which will be great for when I start the medium format studio portraits.

To start with he went over the basics which included:

·         Setting up the lights

·         Using the light meter in the studio

·         The theory on what each light does

He then gave use detailed explanations of the uses of the light heads and showed us examples of their effects. It was great to see him working because he showed us his little tricks that he’s picked up like pointing the beauty dish slightly past the face which slightly reduces the harshness of light which he explained is important when producing photos that are supposed to have the look of natural light.

Because there’s a range of interests in our club, he showed us some light setups that he would say are your standard family portrait setups. The photo on the left shows this. He had flash without a head, but a diffuser right next to. This provides an even light throughout the whole photo. The thing that interested me the most was the beauty dish with a grid. It provided a really intense, focused light that creates nice contrasty light on the face which has potential for my square format work

After this visit I feel ready and more confident in that I can produce some good work in the coming weeks by being more studio ready and knowledgeable.