Note: I wrote this a year ago, but am putting it out again for those who missed it. The great thing is that with our new AYP Club , we have the system to support what I talk about below, My offer is still good -MS

Last week we had a really smashing workshop at B&H, the mother-ship of all camera stores. If you’ve never been there, imagine a full department store dedicated just to photography and video. At 11 AM on a rainy Wednesday, the doors opened and the event space filled up fast and continued to fill until there was standing room only–every presenter’s favorite conditions. I was ready to charge out with education and inspiration, with the aim of advancing the group’s photography.  Judging by the enthusiastic response from the crowd, I’d say we made some progress.

I love the feel of interacting with a “live” group, especially after concentrating on all the video interviews we’ve been rolling out. On the other side of that equation is the synergy of bringing the wealth of experience gained from the talented and deeply knowledgeable photographers I’ve been Hovering information from– we’ve got quite a storehouse.

Our plans have always been to connect my show Advancing Your Photography with our live workshops and add to the mix the heart of a real photography school–both in a live-physical state as well as on line for those who can’t make it in person.

So what do you say we get this party started, no matter how simple at first?

Okay, if you’re game, let’s get going:  When I attended the San Francisco Art Institute, it was pretty simple. You were exposed to new ideas and information, and you got a lot of critiquing.  Ah, the weekly moment of truth when you put your photographs up on the wall with push pins. Then the instructor would walk around those four walls with the whole class trailing and critique your work. Yes it really is that bare bones: learn, shoot and get critiqued–then go out and shoot some more!  Sure there are variations on this but that’s the gist of the curriculum.

So if you’re abroad, let’s get going. What’s the first step?

1. Join our new AYP Club or log in if you are already a member. Be sure to fill out your profile.

2. Go to My Account –>Activity–>Personal and post your goals. Where do you want to advance to with your photography? This can be as simple as “learn to take portraits” or more complex, but whatever you really want to go for, write this for yourself, and tell me by leaving a post.

3.  Go to  your Album and  upload  one (yes uno as in a single) of your photographs that you’re willing to get feedback on. I’ll try to give you a simple straight-forward response.

We’ll keep this up week after week: I’ll give you new knowledge to chew on, give you an assignment and you put up your work. We’ll feature the best each month and maybe even get some prizes for the winners, but remember we’re building this school together so bear with the process as we get rolling, be patient if we get behind a bit!

For those brave souls who are aboard, the only cost for now is your own willingness to get off your butts and do it! And if you like what we’re doing, spread the word.  This is how we start our photography school right now and with your help we can keep building it—expanding our scope, curriculum and student body. No matter how crude and simple our beginning, our purpose is Advancing Your Photography.

But as of now school’s in session, who’s the first brave artist to step up and show me what you got?

Ansel Adams used the term “visualization” often–but what exactly does it mean? How does it fit into your work flow as a photographer? I looked all over for a good explanation–then last year Ansel’s grandson Matthew loaned me rare unreleased footage–and there it was! Listen well to what he has to say. You’ll hear him quote another great photographer Alfred Stieglitz who you’ll want to get to know as he was one of the pioneers who opened the way for photography being accepted as a fine art, not merely a recording device.

This is a segment you’ll want to study over and over, go out and shoot and watch it again!  It is the key as he said.

Very special thank you to the Ansel Adams Gallery for loaning this footage © 2009 Ansel Adams Illumes. All Rights Reserved.

First off, what the heck is an “environmental portrait”? Sounds like you have to go out and capture someone standing next to a Redwood tree. While this could be the case, it could also be that they’re holding a chain saw.

Ansel Adams said in his book Natural-Light Photography (sadly, out of print but still available used at Amazon), an environmental portrait “reaches farther into the personality of the individual portrayed, associating him with elements suggestive of his inner qualities.”

Above are are some  examples with jazz great Chick Corea (“Spain” is on my “perfect song”  list.)

When I’m asked to take portraits I like to find a setting that brings out the personality of the subject. This definitely doesn’t mean hiding behind their desk. I look for places where they are comfortable or that put them at ease. But you may want to turn that on its head like Annie Leibovitz often does and throw in a severe contrast to bring out their personality, or throw in the unexpected like her shot of Demi Moore (I took this at her show “A Photograher’s Life” in San Francisco.)

Here’s a strong example of an environmental portrait I took many years ago in Sinaloa, Mexico. Fausto was one of the locals working on the project I was assisting on as a high school senior, building a medical dispensary deep in the Sierra Madre mountains, days travel by foot and jeep above Mazatlan. I took this with my trusty Roliflex, given to me by my Uncle Sambo

Here’s what I suggest:

1.    Find a place that you think is a good match or even a contrast to shoot your subject.
2.    Take shots, but talk with them, engage them. Take their attention off of the camera.
3.    Don’t sit or stand in one place, move around and have them move around. You never know what magic might occur with changed light or a changed angle.
4.    Take lots of shots.
5.    Be inventive and try different spaces, angles, moods, etc.
6.    Look over your shots as you go so you can see if you’re getting what you want. Know when you have it and wrap it up. Don’t drag it out.

How’s that? Let me know how it goes.

Good shooting.

Photography can sometimes appear to be a huge complex mixture of lenses, composition, post production, printing and  even how to sell your work. But to learn any subject it’s best to break it into its part or divisions and learn one at a time, in a continuing cycle. The good news is that each new part learned helps you to advance to the next in an upward orderly path, learning how to take photographs that you love.

I’ve invited you to rate yourself in each of the 4 “stages” (or better defined as divisions) of photography. This is a handy way to take your pulse in each of the 4 main Divisions of photography and know where you need to dive in next to advance your photography.

You’re about to see a new design of our site with some cool features like easier access to blog posts & videos and our new social network addition for our AYP club. Members can easily  stay in touch, share their photos and learn from other members–and yes, it’s all free. But if you’d like, we can use your help to create our AYP Wiki to organize our wealth of knowledge that we’ve been accumulating from the scores of pros we’ve interviewed over the years.

This is our next step to creating our photography school that you’ve heard me talking about.

We’ll be helping you to advance your photography step by step through each of the 4 divisions, all in the direction of  how to take photographs that you love.

All rights reserved by strobist

Here’s a few more tips from David Hobby from our interview on the FlashBus, be sure to watch it and check out his books.

Marc: Composition: We’re all looking for that mojo, for the secret sauce, the thing that makes your image really stand out. What is it for you that gives you the mojo in a composition?

David: I’m a newspaper guy, so I’m pretty simple, compositionally speaking. I mean, I’m not like Peterson’s Photography Rule of Thirds issue, it always has to be right there, but I’m just looking for a natural composition that leads my eye to where I want it to be led. The viewer’s eye to where I want it to be led. I’m probably more meat and potatoes with my composition, and I try to be a little more edge with my light, so I’m safe in one area and a little out there in the other area.

Marc: Okay, so, David, if I had to ask you — I’m not going say your top ten or your top five, but if you were to give a list of some of the really important points that you’ve learned about photography over the years, what would those things be?

David: I think people think photography is about f-stops and shutter speed and light; for me photography is about people and experiencing things. I was photographing an opera singer, a soprano, singing in the shower the other day in a marble bathroom, and that is a life experience. That’s the coolest thing. Photography is experiential, it’s about making a connection with a person and recording that connection in a visual form, and saving that. It’s much more so about that than it is about are you Nikon or Canon, or where did you put your keylight. 20 years later, I don’t remember what lens I used when I made my pictures, I remember the experiences that were wrapped around the pictures.

One of my favorite video shoots of all time was with Bambi Canrell, a top tier, multi award winning wedding and portrait photographer. Why? She is a joy to be around, full of life and energy. Yes, she thoroughly understands lighting, cameras, lenses, and in short, is a master of her craft. But what makes her a remarkable photographer is that she understands people and how to communicate with them to reach their soul.

What follows is an excerpt from our interview, but be sure to watch it to get all of her tips. Also read books by Bambi.

Marc: What are some of your tips in terms of using light?

Bambi: Lighting is the foundation of everything photographic, in my personal opinion. That’s what you have to start with, learning how to see the world and see what light does.

You see, shadows and light, they are what create and give an image its definition, its dimensionality.

So, the first thing I do when I walk into a room is I take my hand like this [holds hand up and turns it to catch the light] and I start looking at the shadow areas on my hand as I walk around the room and see, “Is there a highlight in the room somewhere? OK, well I can see that there’s a little kicker light coming across my hand on this side from the windows over there, and then the main light is coming from this direction over here”. So, it helps me to see where I want to place my subject in relation to the light source.

Marc: So Bambi, what are sort of the one-two-three steps that you follow when you approach any kind of photograph?

Bambi: I like clean, simple lines. When you look through any of my photography, very seldom do you see a lot of background; it’s not about the location to me, it’s about the face and about the subject.

Once I have identified the location where I want my subject to appear, where I want them to be, the most important element that has to go into it is having my subject forget the camera is there, so I really want to take a personal interest in my subject at that point, look into their eyes and talk with them and get them to forget about that monster of camera that’s there, and then really be able to pull from them great expression because at the end of the day, expression beats perfection any day of the week, and if you have the most perfect photograph in the universe it’s a zero if you have no expression from your subjects.

© All rights reserved by strobist

This image blows me away, which is why I asked David Hobby how he lit it.  Be sure to watch our full interview for more of his tips, but this is what he told me about making this image:

That’s a mistake.  A lot of my best pictures are mistakes, and I’ll fully own up to it.  Not a mistake, just something that wasn’t what I planned.

He’s sitting out playing at a lakeside, this is a setup, an environmental portrait, and I’m floating an umbrella right over him.  Just some guy holding a light stand and dropping it down, and I’m filling with an Orbis ring flash, which is my– that ring flash and key light combo is really a go-to thing for me.  And I’m filling in detail, and I turned the ring flash off that was filling in all the shadow detail down at the bottom, and i just want to see what that top light looks like, so maybe we can move it a little bit before we do our finals, and as it turned out the way I was fixing my problem of legibility in the bottom of the frame was also taking away a lot of interest and drama and contrast from the picture.

So as soon as I turned of my second light, that professional second light that fills in all the shadows, I realized that my picture was really this rougher, more stark top-down umbrella right over his head, just let it fall right across him.  But you gotta be willing to say, “That’s kinda better than what i was doing,” and just go with it.

Watch the full Interview with David Hobby,  buy books by David Hobby

Watch the full Interview with David Hobby,  buy books by David Hobby

I recently had the pleasure of meeting up with David Hobby who is the master of small strobes and author of the blog Strobist.

What follows is a transcript of some of some of his tips from our video, but be sure to see the entire video for all of his tips:

David Hobby: Hey, I’m David Hobby, with strobist.com, former Baltimore Sun photographer, and we are in– Where are we at today? San Jose, California, in the midst of a 13,000 mile, 29 city, 42 day bus tour, the Flash Bus. I’m traveling with Joe McNally, who you may have heard of, and we’re gonna be hanging out with Marc in just a minute.

Marc: Well, okay, you’re leading me right up to the point. So here we are, in your tour, can you give us a few key tips?

1. Get the light off the camera

David: Well, you know, get the light off the camera. If your light’s on your camera, your basically making a photocopy of something as far as three dimensionality is concerned. The difference between your viewpoint and where your light is is going to reveal texture and it’s going to reveal shape and form, and that’s the first step. And then from there you just go right down the rabbit hole of balancing it to ambient light, and adding other lights.

Marc: I caught part of Joe McNally’s workshop  and somebody in there had more than 14 strobes.

David: You know, I don’t have 14 speed lights.

Marc: It’s an arsenal.

2. Keep it simple!

David: It’s also a little bit of… It’s something you gotta watch out for. If you have 13 speed lights, and you’re saying, “What I really need to be a good photographer is a 14th speed light…” You might be missing a concept in there somewhere. I did the vast majority of my work for the Baltimore Sun carrying around two speed lights, two cameras, a wide zoom, telephoto zoom, couple of light stands, and there’s just so much stuff you can do with just two lights that it’s ridiculous.

Marc: Okay, well, looking at that, what are some of the key things that you use every time you pick up a camera, or even before you pick one up?

3. How David uses light

David: Well, I don’t always use flashes, obviously. I shoot a lot of available light, like anybody else. If the light’s great, I’ll be happy to use it. I generally like to work with two lights, for a lot of reasons. If I’m always taking into account my ambient, I can add a single light and make a neat picture. If we don’t have good ambient, I might have to create a background of light with one light, maybe through an umbrella or bounced off the ceiling, to give me something to work against, and something on a measured level that I can add my keylight against, and I can control that contrast range. So two flashes is probably what I do 90% of the stuff that I do with.

4. How to use the “China Ball”

Marc: I caught just a little bit of a tip, you were talking about using the “China ball”, right?

David: I love that thing.

Marc: Now, that’s been a video and a film kind of tool, I haven’t seen anyone use it with strobes.

David: Well, video’s certainly stealing from us, and that small and lightweight ethic, guys are shooting video with Canon 5D Mark IIs…
Marc: Yeah.
David: I saw that when I was walking around in New York City and happened upon a video crew filming a commercial in a really nice hotel, I was there for a shareholders’ meeting. And they had these Japanese lanterns everywhere, and I thought, “Of course!” This thing is small, it’s light, it collapses, it’s cheap, it takes a point source of light and turns it into a glowing 360 orb of light, how can that not be a speed light thing?

Marc: Okay, so you put your Nikon SB 800 in there, you hang it, and it…

David: I put a dome on it, so that light goes out in all directions.

Marc: You put the dome from the flash?

David: Exactly. With flash it all comes out in one direction, the dome makes a very small light source that goes out in all directions. I drop it into the top of that ball, and that ball makes it into a big light source that goes out in all directions.

Marc: And it will trigger even through the ball?

5. The “secret setting in the Nikon SB 800/900

David: Oh, sure. I’m not using CLS, the Nikon, you know the little signals to go through, I’m typically triggering with just a main flash, and I’m using SU-4 mode, which is the secret kind of undocumented awesome slave that’s built into most Nikon speed lights. If you put it in SU-4 mode, which is generally in the CLS menu, and then you put your flash into manual mode, no lie, I’ve triggered a Nikon speed light with another Nikon speed light this way, 150 feet away in full daylight.

Marc: Okay, that’s a hell of a tip right there.

Thanks David for helping us see the light! We’ll check in with you later to pry more tips from you!

Ansel Adams Critiquing students, courtesy of the Ansel Adams Gallery

Want to know how to advance your photography?

This may not be sexy or be the magic filter that you’re looking for, but honestly it boils down to:

1. Get out and shoot, no matter with what. Chase Jarvis said it best, bang the shutter!
2. Learn from the pros. That’s why I produce my shows, I aim to give you easy to digest information right from the pros. And of course, you’ve got the whole web, libraries and tons of workshops to help you with this one.
3. Get critiqued. (Hint: Notice the man himself above giving a critique.) It is vital that you put your work out there and get feedback. You can take or leave the suggestions you get back, but it’s part of the learning process for sure.
4. Make Changes. If you have suggestions that make sense to you from the critiques, make those changes or re-shoot as needed.
5. Keep looking for how others have done it: I don’t just mean other photographers, study painters (Joey L studied the painting masters to develop his unique lighting) films (Stan Musilek watches loads of movies to hone his cinematic style.) I honestly believe any exposure you have to art, music and even cooking helps you express yourself as a photographer.
6. Read Light. Really learn to see and read light. Matthew Jordan Smith gave great tips about how to use the sun, natural reflectors like sand and artificial light.)  David Hobby gave  amazing lighting tips for using your strobe or available light.
7. Continue. Keep this cycle rolling around and around!

And finally, Be Brave. Post an image and I’ll give you feedback.

Brian Smith is a Pulitzer prize winning photographaper who has photographed one luminary after another: Bill Gates, Anne Hathaway, Samuel L. Jackson, Sir Richard Branson and the list just goes on.

In our extended version of my interview with Brian Smith, he discussed his process for getting intimate environmental portraits that truly capture the essence of his subjects. He gives us down to earth tips for portraiture that can be applied to photographing anyone, not just movie stars but every day stars who deserve to have a great photograph taken of them, for their personal 15 minutes of fame.

With a career full of accomplishments he speaks from experience which behooves any photographer to pay attention to and take notes.

Be sure to look at his work closely on his site BrianSmith.com