I Think I’m Working These Guys Too Hard!

Busy couple of weeks. Went from KelbyOne in Tampa to LA to shoot for LIFE, then Vancouver to teach. Left Vancouver on a red eye to Washington DC, continued the LIFE job, and then rotated back to Van for our last days at the Vancouver Photo Workshops. Flew from Vancouver to home, did laundry, jumped on a plane to London, where I am right now.

Cali, our very capable first assistant, stayed with me through Tampa, LA, and Vancouver. I left him behind in Vancouver, on his own for three days, a stint of dangerously idle time from which that fair city has perhaps not recovered. Jon was in Tampa, went back to the studio, re-upped a new gear pack, threw it in the truck and rolled it Washington. He met me when I got off the redeye at Reagan National, and we went straightaway to shoot. Worked for three days, and then he dropped me back at Reagan, and I was off to Vancouver, and he headed north. I rejoined Cali in Van, and we finished our stint there for VPW, and then did similarly quick laundry and chores, and came here to the UK.

While in Tampa, we did a couple videos for the Kelby clan, playing the the notion of motion. One thing we showed was an in camera double exposure, during which the subject moves position. When Cali and Jon were working with me to set the lighting, they gave the camera the above expressions. Hmmm.

Now, we are blessed at McNally Photo with the fact that Lynn, our intrepid studio manager is also the accounts payable department, the production department, the client liaison officer, and, well, the list goes on. She is also the human resources department, thankfully, so if they walk into her office with disgruntled expressions such as above, she will smile sweetly at them and crack them in the back of the head and tell them to get back to work. (Think Gibbs in NCIS.)

Kidding, of course, at least most of the time. Lynn, in addition to running the studio, is also an advisor, confidante and overall font of sage wisdom about photography, and the art of life and business for these young men. We are truly blessed at our shop. In addition to Lynn and the guys, we also have Lynda, who helps keep everything glued together. Everybody works incredibly hard at keeping us bobbing along in the turbulent sea of photographic endeavor.

For the KelbyOne videos, we stayed simple a lot of the time, trying to examine how to make one speed light and one hot light work to produce a simple motion result, such as below. We examined the basics of front curtain, rear curtain, color shifts, etc. We also did some more complicated stuff like hang a camera on a bicycle and an ambulance. They will hopefully be fun to watch.

In Vancouver, I was demonstrating a tight, beauty dish attachment for a speed light, and some high speed flash techniques, and got a couple frames that were decent of Aaron, who has a wonderful face for this kind of a light.

More tk….