Anything Goes Wednesday: Bambi Cantrell Posing & Lighting Workshop

This may be a new feature on the blog, or at least an excuse to blog more about random topics – not that I don’t LOVE blogging about all of our fabulous brides and grooms. I had an amazing session with H & E at Piedmont Park in Midtown Atlanta on Sunday and am almost finished editing their photos. Check back on Monday for a blog post all about them! What better way to designate a reason to blog about life in general that giving this category of posts “Anything Goes Wednesday” – where anything goes for blogging topics!

This past weekend was a busy busy weekend for us, you might have read our last entry about Tunes & Balloons at the Macon Cherry Blossom Festival from Monday, but we had a full weekend of events including shooting photos of the 2011 Georgia Marathon on Sunday morning for the US Road Sports “Spirit of the Endurance Athlete” photo contest and a weekend of creativeLIVE teaching from the fabulous Bambi Cantrell.

So what is this creativeLIVE you speak of? The concept is called a “worldwide creative classroom” that offers weekend workshops FOR FREE from some of the biggest names in the creative space of photography, videography, and design. The classes appear live online for free and then you can optionally purchase the videos as a paid download for later viewing if you miss the class. A few weeks back I watched the weekend class “HDDSLR: Moving from Still to Video with Vincent Laforet” which helped me get some new tips and tricks for filming videos using the new breed of High Definition DSLR cameras like the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Canon EOS 7D (both of which we ourselves use in our Atlanta wedding photography).

This past weekend was an even more relevant class, “Posing and Lighting with Bambi Cantrell.” For those that don’t know the name, she is a longtime veteran wedding photographer based our of San Francisco that starts in the $10,000+ range for her weddings – yes, she’s that good. For this class she spent three days teaching online as part of the creativeLIVE classroom about posing subjects – both models and regular couples – and using lighting to enhance your portraits and bring out the best in your subjects.

Between the craziness of running around to take care of our Camera Concierge customers, event photography, and an engagement session – I was literally glued to the computer screen getting tips on posing couples and getting more natural poses. I think it was a great class and helped get some awesome shots from H &E during our engagement session at Piedmont Park in Midtown Atlanta. Here is a quick sneak preview of a photo, the rest you’ll have to wait for my next blog post!

Overall the class was a ton of fun to spend the weekend watching and very helpful to invest in my own education as a photographer. Bambi is as genuine as they come (and a former Georgia girl herself!) and full of knowledge about the industry. I will have to write more in a future addition of this post regarding some of the other classes I have attended and purchased. Now I know some of this information may not be the most useful to you brides out there, but shouldn’t you know if your photographer is truly dedicated to constantly improving their craft by educating themselves?

All the best until next time!