I will be leaving Sunday to go to Arlington, Texas to attend the PPA Texas School. I am very excited. I will be taking Tony Corbell’s class. I have borrowed Tony’s bio, so you can read all about him, and a blog entry he made so you can see how he uses his imagination to teach photographers to learn the light. I will come back next week and tell you all about it!!! Wish me well on my journey to understanding the light by Master Photographer Tony Corbell!
About Tony Corbell:
Tony L. Corbell
Tony has been very fortunate having photographed three U.S. presidents, 185 World Leaders, 65 Nigerian Heads of State, about 600 brides and grooms, a couple of NASA astronauts and lots of famous and not so famous faces. since 1979. He has spoken at almost 400 seminars and workshops nationally and internationally and is the recipient of the highest honor from the Wedding and Portrait Photographers International with their Lifetime Achievement Award. Tony also achieved the status of Photographic Craftsman from the Professional Photographers of America. In 2005, Tony received the “Photographer of the Year” Award from the International Photographic Council of the United Nations at a ceremony in New York at the U.N. and the PPA National Award from the Professional Photographers of California. Tony was also invited to join the prestigious Camera Craftsmen Of America in 2007, one of only 40 members worldwide. In 2007/08, Tony spoke to over 7,500 photographers in 36 cities including London, Glasgow, Dublin, Toronto, Mexico City, Sydney and many more U.S. cities.
Tony has always been active as a student and a teacher of photographic education and his Basic Studio Lighting book from publisher AmPhoto has been popular worldwide and has been the basis for numerous photographic college lighting courses. He has written articles in every major photographic magazine in the U.S., Japan, the U.K. and China. He is currently one of a select few Approved Photographic Instructors from the Professional Photographers of America…and he’s the biggest Beatles fan alive.
A script from Tony’s blog: (Very Interesting!)
It’s all About learning to THINK LIGHT!
Every so often I hear someone tell photographers to learn to see the light. Such a simple and important statement on the surface. However, the problem is the difference in the way in which or eyes visually capture a scene vs. what our camera sees and captures. The range of dynamic contrast is completely different. For this reason I often say to learn to THINK the light. A good example would be the following. Let’s say you are in a dark restaurant and you can see a woman’s black purse on the back of a dark chair. Your eye easily distinguishes between the dark chair and the dark purse. However, there is a good chance that the purse will never be seen by the camera. This is where the professional must understand that it might take a separate amount of light to skim across the purse just to make it more visible, even if just slightly.
Take a look around your office or home and visually edit the room. Look at small, subtle details and objects. Inside the fireplace, under the front edge of a chair, the spines of dark books on a bookcase. Then without any lighting added, take a picture of the same scene. Look at it closely and you’ll see how dramatically different the digital capture is vs. what you can see.
This is a great way to gain an understanding of things that need to be improved upon BEFORE you take a picture and can save you lots and lots of hours in the digital darkroom AFTER the shoot.
When I get back I will tell you all about the class, I am so excited I almost forgot I have a wedding before I leave! (Just kidding Samantha!)
~Sally
