seeing the world through new eyes…

Let me start off by saying that attending the “Shoot the Light – Loons and More” workshop was one of the highlights of my photographic endeavors. In a very short period, Charles Glatzer (Chas) helped to elevate my photography to the next level. His instruction and guidance has given me a more solid photographic foundation upon which all of my future wildlife photography work will be based. It was truly an honor to shoot beside him. To me, observing him shoot “in-the-field” was as important as the valuable classroom instruction he provided. I got to see first hand what proper technique looks like.

To top it all off, I found out that Chas is a great guy. I felt a little intimidated before I showed up for the workshop, but he immediately put me at ease. After meeting him, it was obvious that his goal was to help us improve our photography, and that he truly cared about our success. His generous and humorous teaching style helped to make the learning process fun and effortless. The way he presented the information made everything make sense. For me, he took the mystery and guess work out of many key issues I had. I’ll be a much more deliberate and proactive photographer in the future because of Chas.

He will definitely be seeing me again at his workshops. The only questions now are which ones and when.

Here is a small sample of the images I created while at the workshop:
 

Wing-flap	Green Reflection
Near the Shore	Golden Reflection
Foggy Morning Wing-flap	Foggy Morning Take-off

 
To see all of my Loon photographs from the workshop, go to http://store.clanoflaherty.com/p741676939

Some of you have been asking to see more photos of the two cats my wife and I adopted from the Humane Society. Your wish is my command. Click on a photo to see a larger version.
 

Sydney at sunrise	Sydney stalking the light
Samson trying to ignore me	Samson letting me know he’s had enough

 
Give a cat or dog a second chance. Stop by your local Humane Society and find a friend.

To get right to the point, I think the answer is “yes”. Recently I’ve been feeling like I need to get a better understanding of the properties and qualities of light. You can do this in the field, to some degree, but it takes longer because you have to wait for certain lighting situations to present themselves. I basically wanted an accelerated enlightenment. To accomplish this, I decided to spend some time doing work in the studio, in addition to my nature photography. I felt that by working in the studio, with strobes and all the light modifiers available, I would be able to experiment with how light works and how it affects objects in the scene.

 
Things I’ve learned or gained a better understanding of so far:

1. Shadows are important. It’s what defines your subject and gives it shape.
    
2. Larger light sources produce softer light.
    
3. With two light sources of the same size, the one closer to the subject will give a softer light. Even though the actual sizes are identical, the relative size is larger for the closer light source. In the field, you may think the sun is a large light source, because…well, it’s physically large. However, the sun is far away so its relative size is small, and therefore provides hard light.
    
4. Diffusion can make a light source appear to be bigger and therefore produce softer light. In the studio this can be accomplished with softboxes and umbrellas, or any number of other light modifiers. In the field, an overcast day can provide the world’s largest softbox. Another in the field diffusion is caused by the earth’s atmosphere during the “golden hours”. Because of the angle of the sun, the light during this time has to go through much more of the atmosphere than it does during the mid-day hours.
    

I’ll be adding to this list as time goes on. I only just set up my studio equipment this past weekend. I hope you stay tuned in for my “exploration of light”.

 
Here are a couple of self-portraits I’ve created so far in my experiments. Please disregard the subject matter in these two shots and focus on the light