Of course, the main reason we traveled to Europe was to attend a portraiture workshop by famed instructors Clay Blackmore and David Ziser, author of Digital Protalk. After the laptop debacle at London's Gatwick Airport we had an uneventful flight to Florence, picked up our rental car and made the 90 minute journey to Palazzo Sarteano, a castle and farm set in several hundred acres of the Tuscany countryside. Access to the castle - and the separate farmhouse that would be our home for 6 days - were via very rough, unpaved roads that nevertheless had names and (mercifully) appreared on our GPS.
We spent the first day and a half exploring the local countryside and a couple of the very beautiful nearby towns - Cortona and Montepluciano. I will post some images from these excursions in Part 3 of this Blog. The first day of the workshop starting with a gathering in the open courtyard of the castle, an area that would be the site of several lunches, dinners and presentations over the following 4 days. Here, we got a glimpse of some of the fascinating differences between our instructors. David (left) had only his trusty rolling camera bag, while Clay (right) had quite a bit more!
Our first exercise was to go off for 15 minutes with a partner and take a portrait of each other. David and Clay moved quickly between the groups giving help and advice. After reconvening in the courtyard the class was split into two groups; we started out with David to create some outdoor portraits in the beautiful grounds of the castle.
We attended one of David's Fall Master Classes last year (sadly, he is no longer offering this 5-day workshop) so we had a good idea of what to expect and we were not disappointed. David worked methodically through how he identifies good locations and builds a series of portraits. For this session we worked with the lovely Cici, a professional model from Milan, and we were able to capture some nice images amongst the olive gardens. All three shots were taken with a Nikon D4 and 70-200 mm lens.
David spent a lot of time working with the new Canon 600RT Speedlights (instead of his usual Quantum flashes) in order to get the benefit of High Speed Synch (HSS). The latter allowed him to blur the backgound with small apertures, which of course necessitated the use of higher shutter speeds. Because HSS causes a loss of flash power, he needed to use 3 flash units to get enough light on to our model. In the example below, David was demonstrating how these flashes could be used to provide the main light and some fill light simultaneously! Here, one of the lights is being aimed at the reflector.
After dinner under the stars, we enjoyed a presentation by David on Composition; a subject emphasized by him through the entire workshop.
The next day, we started with Clay to create some portraits in one of many very cool rooms in the castle - the "pot room". Although our main light was the window, Clay augmented the light with an off-camera Quantum flash in "bare bulb" mode.
We also used window light alone to capture some lovely images of the young Violeta.
Later on, we moved to other areas of the castle with David capturing images of yet another model, Orsi. This image would later win us one of the end-of-workshop competition prizes.
After lunch, we were treated to a really amazing technique by Clay. He videoed Cici and then projected the video back over her while he captured still images. This is a technique that we definitely want to explore furher!
After this, we adjourned to the rear patio of the castle to get some more images of Cici like these three:
We used Violeta again for some more window light portraits.
At the end of the day, we were let loose by ourselves to shoot. I used our off-camera Quantum flash to capture this image of Carla in the grounds of the castle.
After dinner, and copious wine (the castle is also a winery) we were treated to a presentation by Clay.
Day 3 involved an outing to the beautiful town of Siena. We arrived mid-morning and had both lunch and dinner on the town before returning tired, but happy, around 10:30 at night. More on this in Part 3 of this Blog.
Day 4 started (for us) with some problems with our rental car (it was not made to navigate the unpaved roads leading to the castle and our farmhouse . . . ). Fortunately, a local mechanic (thanks to the castle staff for translations) got us going again in short order and we just made it in time for the first session with David. In this session, David showed us his approach to photographing families, and used one of the participant's and her family as models.
In the final session with Clay, we used the castle's lovely owner as our model and (among other things) created this portrait through an old window.
We took many more images during the course of the day but I wanted to get this post up and there are hundreds of images to review and process. Overall, we had a great time, learned some new things and made some friends along the way. We got to see a really beautiful part of the world - one that I would certainly like to revisit at some point.
There were a few disappointments also. We really wish that at least one model could have been a bride in a wedding dress. Those images could have been spectacular in this setting. We also wished that we could have had more time in small groups to photograph the models by ourselves (this was something that David Ziser accomplished very successfully in his Fall Master Class). I was also disappointed that so much emphasis was placed on the Canon 600RT flashes. Although they are fantastic units, their power could not be harnessed by the Nikon users in the group, and a more generic radio trigger system (e.g. regular PocketWizards) would have been more participant-friendly. These would not, of course, been able to produce the same effect as David was looking for (use of HSS).
Finally, we would like to thank David and Clay for being so giving of their experience and expertise - there were no secrets in this workshop - as well as Bob Ray and Ronaldo, their willing helpers throughout the workshop. Last, but certainly not least, our thanks go to Jeff Medford, owner of Monty Zucker Education (pictured below) for his tireless efforts in making this workshop a reality.
Next year, Jeff announced, the workshop will be in Budapest. Hmmmm . . . . we've never been to Hungary . . .
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