or what we did on the weekend.

On this weekend just passed, Tegan and I went down to Melbourne to do a couple of introductory studio photography workshops at a place called Shoot That!. They ran an intermediate workshop on the Saturday and an advanced workshop on the Sunday – we did both.We loved it – we had a great time. It was a great introduction to doing studio photography. We’re really keen to do more of this kind of photography – I’ve had ideas for studio shots running through my head ever since.

The intermediate workshop focused on lighting basics and one light setups with fairly simple backdrops. The advanced one used 2-4 light setups and more complicated backdrops with a focus on shooting the clothes the model was wearing as if it was a fashion shoot. This was a lot more challenging.

The workshops was definitely an introduction: I feel now that I could go into a studio and get some decent results, but the advanced course showed me how seriously complicated the whole thing gets when you’re working with complex effects and trying to get certain types of shots (in other words, with a good model, portrait shots are so, so much easier than interesting clothing shots).

It also made me realise that basic studio work is pretty straight forward. The courses assumed that you knew how to use your own gear and had basic technical competence in photography. In that sense, it gave me some confidence because there wasn’t much difference between my basic skills and what it took to get decent shots in there. What it really taught was how to light a shot and interact with the model.

You can see our photos fom the shoot at the following links:
Tim’s studio photos
Tegan’s Shoot That! photos