Santa Clara Strobist Seminar

Few weeks ago I was lucky enough to book a spot in the Santa Clara Lighting Seminar taught by David Hobby, aka Strobist. I say lucky because it was sold out within five minutes of opening. I’ve been reading his blog for close to a year now, and his web-site opened a whole new world of off-the camera lighting to me that I was hesitant about entering. If anything, Maks and his mom are happy I did.

Seminar started with David teaching key concepts about lighting, and though he wrote previously that it’ll be principles he teaches throughout his Lighting 102 posts, most of the time he did not read the well-prepared Powerpoint, but simply taught based on his experience, sharing stories and examples to illustrate his points. By the way, this is exactly how Powerpoint presentations are to be used, according to Business Communication classes, but we hardly ever see it used it this way.

After lunch break we listened to the rest of the theory and we got to the shooting part. For me everything I watched was priceless. I did not get a degree in photography, I did not work as an assistant to the pro, and whatever I know about photography and lighting came through a lot of reading and through practice. However, there are certain things you can’t learn on your own and it only comes through watching long-time pros, and this is where seminar was most useful to me. How he used LCD and histogram, how he adjusted the light for the kind of pictures he visualized, how he worked with a model – all these things have contributed to my own creativity and gave me additional tools I will use next time I’m shooting with off-camera flashes.

We held our seminar in a boring conference room of a hotel, a kind of room I’ve been to many times for training and meetings related to my work. However, David showed us that you don’t have to be in a special location to create quality images. Light and your own creativity is what really matters. To see the images made by David at the seminar, begin with this one, and keep scrolling further in his photostream.

Finally, a few words about David Hobby as a teacher. We all know him as a great writer and blogger, but he was just as excellent as a live instructor. His teaching style is as natural as I’ve seen, and he had all of us captivated throughout the whole duration of the seminar. Throughout my life I have been taught by some of the greatest instructors you will find in academia, in the world of motivational speakers and in a corporate world. David is just as good as any of them. He speaks clearly, intelligently and passionately; he gets to his point quickly without leaving you any room for misunderstanding; he asks great questions, and he’s got a great sense of humor. All of these combined make you want the seminar to last the rest of the weekend. As you listen, you don’t just think that he’s a great speaker, but you get really excited about the material he’s presenting, which in my opinion is the most important quality of a great teacher. On top of that, the way he answers questions, you know you can ask anything, whether you think it’s a stupid question or not. He’s always on the same level with you.

And in fact, David was cool enough to have the seminar last until 730pm when he previously said it’d go till 5pm. I’ve learned a great deal, and if you have a chance to attend, I highly recommend this seminar.

Click here to see more pictures I took at the seminar.