Pictage Ask and Learn - Today, Wednesday, Jan 28th!

Once again, I've been asked to participate in the Ask and Learn Wednesday on the Pictage Forum! All you Pictage photographers out there, please join me this evening as I answer your questions and hopefully provide a little advice on not only surviving, but thriving in today's tough economy.... hope to see you there !

McWorkshop. Round 3. Day 5.

Amber again. 

The final official day of the McWorkshop arrived. Friday was contest day, and our awesome attendees had stayed up crazy late (some not even going to bed!) the night before working on their contest submissions. Our morning started off with Will from ShootQ giving us a quick ShootQ tutorial. After he finished sharing this awesome studio management software with us, Corey took the stage for his final day. One of our awesome students, Jessica, had to leave just after lunch in order to get back for a wedding, so Corey gave the whirlwind version of his Lightroom tutorial and his DAM (Digital Asset Management) workflow so that she could see both... all before lunch! 

Lunch was at Cafe on the Square, and was sponsored by ShootQ. (Thanks so much to Will for coming up, and to Rachel and Andrew and Mark for being wonderful and dear friends. Much love.) 

(um, ew!)

Good times, as always.



After lunch, we did the contest. We were so stoked to see the contest entries and winners! We're going to do a separate blog post on that later this week. [Edit: I'd have to say that all of the contest entries were really great!]

Corey wrapped up the day of teaching with a little more Lightroom instruction and his final mentoring sessions. We broke for a short naptime, and then met back for our final dinner. Photographer's Edit sponsored a delicious dinner at Fiddlin' Pigs.



We usually love Fiddlin' Pigs for its fun bluegrass and clogging, but we had never seen it this packed! We opted to sit outside... where we could hear each other talk, but still enjoy the music!



I was so excited. Corey's wonderful wife and my dearest friend, Jill, was able to join us for dinner this time. I had missed her all week....she'd not been feeling well. 



The weather outside was ominous... but the rain managed to miss us. Whew.



Fun times!





(And just for fun... Mariah with giant food, one more time.)



After dinner, we headed back to the studio for a few cocktails and RockBand! Have I mentioned how much I love RockBand?? Someone commandeered Corey's camera, so we have no idea who grabbed these images... but thankfully, someone did. Corey and I were obviously too busy playing.







One more post to come. I'll get it up as soon as I can!

McWorkshoppers... we miss you!!

-amber

McWorkshop. Round 3. Day 4.

Amber here again... Thursday was a huge day for the McWorkshoppers. The day we take the group to the Biltmore Estate has historically been my favorite part of the week, and this was no exception. We had a wonderful time! 

The day started out with Corey's intensive explorations concerning extreme shooting techniques and micro-composition. I was excited that Corey had had the opportunity to discuss some of his theories on lighting, as well as share information about specific techniques he uses when shooting, before turning the students loose with our beautiful models at the most amazing location. I was so excited to see their progress and their final images! 

I remembered to stop and grab a quick image of Corey imparting knowledge to the class before we headed out for our shoot.



At the February McWorkshop, we headed to the Bilmore Estate and it was insanely cold (see blog post here), but this time it was so wonderful to be there this week with absolutely amazing weather!



This group was so excited to be at the Biltmore Estate. (Actually, this group was pretty excited about most things.) They were awesome to be around...



Corey had one of his spectacularly beautiful brides model for us. Sadly, she isn't getting married until October, so we can't show you any of those images until after her wedding. I've had a sneak peak though, and he captured her beautifully! Maybe we'll get a chance to post those sometime after her wedding. 

We were blessed to have an awesome couple, John and Lindsey Bamber (from Chattanooga!) return to model/attend for the second time in a row. They are amazing photographers, as well as spectacular models. A huge thanks goes out to them for coming and hanging out with us! As Corey was busy shooting his bride this time, most of these shots are mine:











We also want to say thanks to the lovely Liz from The Purple Iris for providing us with gorgeous bouquets for our models. We love you, Liz!







Tara joined us because it was one of her brides who Corey was photographing. She's SO much fun to have around! She borrowed one of Corey's D3s for a few shots...





At the end of the shoot, Corey took us to this cool sunflower patch. I love these images that he captured of John and Lindsey in that location!





After our shoot, we enjoyed a tour and tasting at the winery, and then headed for dinner at Usual Suspects. Apparently, we've decided we like that place.

Corey received a fun new toy in the mail in between the shoot at Biltmore and dinner, so he had a fun time playing with that! [Edit: Corey here. It's been a long time coming, but we finally were able to send off one of my cameras for conversion to infrared! We've had it boxed up and ready to go for about a year and just couldn't seem to get around to sending it off. Well, thanks to Jeremy's, Katie's and Amber's amazing help recently, we finally sent it off... and it's cool! More later.]

I just want to note, that this first image of a self portrait is well after dark, hand-held at 1/5th of a second. Darn fun.



Our new favorite hangout. Darts and delicious food, what more could a gal want?!



Corey using his new infrared camera. (That's Will from ShootQ in the background. ShootQ is another one of our amazing sponsors for this workshop!)



Mariah may kill me for posting this image... but I had NEVER seen such a huge porkchop!



And just a few images from the darts portion of the night. We got pretty competitive, so there was more shooting darts than shooting photos....

But Corey did grab this brilliant image of Mariah, scoring some serious "style points". [Edit: Corey again.  Interesting side note- those were fully-tinted sun glasses. I'd only had the infrared about an hour at that point, but I just thought it was interesting that it removed the tint.]



And another of someone's lucky bullseye... I'll never know who, since it's someone who stole my camera when I wasn't paying attention!



Final days' posts coming up soon!

-amber



 

McWorkshop. Round 3. Day 3.

Wednesday was my day (Amber)... Lifestyle Baby Photography day. I was excited about sharing a few tips and tricks about my philosophies behind baby photography.

We broke for a delicious lunch at Urban Burrito (where I would like to go right now, because it was SO delicious!), and then we headed over to a local family home for a quick demonstrative shoot.

A huge thanks to Jill Schwarzkopf (who has now taken the McWorkshop twice!) for capturing some awesome images of me photographing this family. Corey usually has that job, but he had several unfortunate issues that kept him from being able to join us on the shoot. (Bricked iPhone anyone? He finally got it fixed though)

Additionally, thank you to our AMAZING "models". Kimberly, Pete, and Baby Jude were absolutely amazing. I can't wait to photograph them again!

Baby Jude is the first child I've ever encountered who thought that the sound of my camera was funny. I would fire off a series of images, and Baby Jude was just cackle with laughter. It was wonderful.









At 6 months old, Baby Jude is amazingly active and excited about the world. His connection with his parents was heart-warming.





Kimberly read a story... There's a lot of pressure involved in reading a book in front of a dozen or so adults! Baby Jude was done with LLama, Llama Red Pajama long before the rest of us were! Kimberly read very well :)









Sadly, we had to schedule our session at a time when Baby Jude is normally a little sleepy. Not so sadly, he's so adorable and fun, that we were able to get the images we need in a ridiculously short period of time! He loves his bath, so we distracted him from his sleepiness for a few minutes with some bathtime!





I'll leave you all with one final family moment. Kimberly was singing to Jude in order to keep him happy... and I was completely amazed at the transformation that occurred when when she started singing! What a wonderful family.



Again, thanks so much to Kimberly and Pete for letting us come and invade your home. We loved you guys!

-amber