Lighten Up and Shoot's Canadian Stop - Day 0

I have been reading the Strobists blog on and off for a while now but I have been too lazy to do all the assignments or I have rented studio space and used the more powerful mono-lights or the pack and head systems. I have gotten some great results with that stuff but it’s hard to do location shoots with that equipment without a team of assistants to help carry it around.

I have never really gotten consistent results with the little SB lights for the darker and higher contrast images that I like. They work great for those high key images where you blast all the shadows out of the picture but I was getting bored with doing those kinds of images.

So, I decided to spend some money on my upgrading my skills instead of upgrading my gear. Here is my experience at the Lighten Up and Shoot workshop - Toronto stop.

Last month, 2 American photographers currently living in Colombia, South America made their way to Toronto as part of their road show tour. Lightenupandshoot specialize in street photography where they will approach strangers on the street and shoot their picture usually using small SB lights. Their shots remind me a lot of Dustin Diaz shots and style – which I admire a lot.

Mikey and Andy arrived on Friday and had a free meet and greet drink-up at Sneaky Dees on College Street.

That’s Mikey showing Ana some stuff about her camera.
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After drinks – it was off to the street for some shooting.

Here is Hanna, my first volunteer; Mikey got her with his opening – I was just observing. You have got to see Mikey do his opening – I have never seen someone get out so much information is so little time. Here I was just using my strobe on a stick technique – looks like my usually shoots – I was not really happy with the way I lit her. Too hard of a light.
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Walking west along College, we run across Louie and his friend. This shot was lit by a SB-900 in a Lastolite 24" softbox. Much softer light and more controlled than bare bulb.
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It turns out that Louie owns Southside Louie’s at 583 College Street. Here he is with one of his regulars and one of his staff.
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The party continued on but I had to get my batteries charged for the Sat morning class, so it was off to bed for me.

Great way to start the class off and it hadn’t even really started yet!

For day 1's adventures, click here

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