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I recently had the opportunity to make some portrait and brochure photography for Marian University for St. Vincent Health. I really love this sort of work, in one morning I jump from headshots to editorial style portraits to detail images and finally an exterior landscape of the office location. Fun and challenging.

As the main ingredient in our images, understanding and controlling light is critical. Light can certainly be difficult to understand, though. In the studio, a strobe fires in a fraction of a second, often not enough time to register what your light actually looks like on a subject.

For the second Cooking Class we’ll work at taking the mystery out of light. We’ll start with a discussion on the ways to describe light and its qualities, things like color, intensity, and quality; we’ll talk about specularity and the inverse square law, a little on dealing with reflections… We’ll then move on to a few demonstrations to help fully grasp these ideas. In the studio we’ll make hard and soft light, play with specular highlights, color, reflections, and using light distance to control its “depth of field”.  Finally, we’ll put these ideas to practical use by making some portraits.

Understanding Light will be held on Monday, May 20th from 7PM to 9PM at the M10 studio downtown and cost $40. Want to attend? Send an email to paul@pdaphotography.com and I’ll put you on the list!

A little while back I spent some time in the studio with good friend Jared Bailey. Jared is looking to get more involved in modeling and asked for some new shots. I love making these sorts of portraits and Jared is fantastic to work with.

Many of us have at some time prepared a meal by following a recipe. A pinch of salt, a pinch of tarragon, crushed basil… We add the ingredients without really knowing what it is that they bring to the dish. Do this enough though, and you start to get a feel for how each of these ingredients work together. Eventually you’re preparing meals without recipes, even original dishes.

There are classes that teach recipes, so that, when done, you can replicate exactly what was shown. I’ve been planning to teach for a while now, but I want to help make chefs instead of short order cooks. I want to break down the recipes into the ingredients, so that the photographers who attend my classes can make their own work and say their own things.

My plan is to offer a two hour class on the third or fourth Monday evening of every month at M10. I’m going to limit the classes to 15 attendees and they’ll cost $40.  Subjects will include basic lighting equipment, using light modifiers for motivated lighting, basic portraits, embracing technology for creative portraits, using gels, basic composition, emotion and color theory, working in projects, finding your voice…

Through these classes I’d like to progress from the craft of equipment and technique to non-technical (and in my opinion, more exciting) subjects of vision and voice. The first class, though, will start with the basics: Lighting for beginners. I’ll mostly be covering equipment with this one: speedlights and studio strobes, triggering options, grip equipment like stands and brackets, and a little bit on modifiers. We’ll also have time at the end for a basic demonstration and some Q and A.

This first class will be April 22nd from 7 to 9 PM. Questions? Want to sign up? Send me an email at paul@pdaphotography.com!

Here it is, after a bit of deliberation and editing, the artist’s statement for Colors:

Being part of the photographic community, I strive to bring new work and ideas to our collective body of images. As I consider new projects to take on I often discard ideas that have been covered by other photographers. Just as I try to distinguish my nature work, I am striving to do studio work that is my own. Working to make my own images, or in the case of this project, collaborating with others to make unique and compelling images that bear our own thumbprints.

This project finds its birth in that struggle. Initially started as an idea to bring something original to fashion photography, I was inspired to switch after helping photographer friend Steve Brokaw with a shoot of his own that used body painting. As a collaborative project it has been a delight to work with such talented individuals. To have others take up an idea and buy in as fully as I do is deeply gratifying.

So enjoy this lighthearted work of a photographer, and friends, trying to find a new way, their way, to make work that is beautiful and compelling.

M10, the studio I run with partners Steve Brokaw and Eric Schoch is moving! Bursting at the seams, we have taken an opportunity to expand into a new space in the Circle City Industrial Complex, right around the corner from our original location. To celebrate the move, I will be presenting work from my Colors project.

Colors is a lighthearted romp in the studio. A collaborative project involving the skills of body painters, models, and photographer to create a compelling body of images loosely exploring the emotional and cultural impact of color.

Come on out to the Circle City Industrial Complex on Friday March 1st to celebrate M10′s move to a new space (and the one year anniversary of my going full time with photography). While there, take some time to visit the rest of the artists in the CCIC.

For a sneak peek at the work, check out http://pdaphotography.com/colors/