The first workshop we held was “Urban Portraits”, a one-day course on shooting people in the everyday urban environment using only natural light and minimal camera gear.

We started the day with a quick lesson in basic exposure and camera settings to get our delegates up to speed for the day ahead.  After this, I headed up the morning’s sessions by teaching how to look for backgrounds and suitable places to shoot.  Developing an eye for great places to photograph people against is crucial in getting good shots.  I showed the group that there are always plenty of opportunities wherever you look, and gave some advice on what to do when those opportunities run out.

This shot of one of our models, Alex, was just around the corner from a busy entrance to a restaurant.  This could’ve been easily overlooked, but by changing your viewpoint and using the curved walls, we created a background out of something that isn’t necessarily obvious immediately.  The changing light on the walls also helps to add interest and contrast.

I then went on to give advice on communication.  How to talk to anyone that you’re photographing, to get the best out of them, whilst making them feel at ease and relaxed.

Below is one of Phil’s shots from the day and one of my favourites.  Here, he’s used the leading lines of the ceiling lights to add some movement and dynamics to the shot without distracting from the subject.

After a full-on buffet lunch, a question and answer session, and warming up after shooting all morning in the chilled January air, we were all back outside where Phil led the afternoon’s session.  He first talked about composition; the basic rules and then how to break them.  He gave some great advice and ideas on how to change your viewpoint to get a completely different shot.  Starting off with just a brick wall and a model, we got the delegates to think about creating as many different photos with just these two things.  He also gave some practical tips and guidance on how to deal with different natural lighting, whether that be overcast, direct sunlight, shade or sunsets.

We gave everyone plenty of opportunity to shoot the models, whilst sticking around to answer questions, give advice, and help out when all else failed.  Before we knew it, all the delegates had taken over the day and were dying to shoot the models in every location they could find using all the advice we had taught them all day.  It was great to see how their confidence grew, and how their shots were improving throughout the day.

Below are a few more of my shots I managed to sneak in between the delegate’s time with the models.

This is Katy, who was our make-up artist for the day.  After getting our models ready for the afternoon’s shoot, she stepped in for a few shots herself.

At the end of the day, we headed back to our conference facilities at The Round Foundry Media Centre, in South Leeds, where Barnaby was busy on a MacBook Pro.  He had taken a dozen or so of the best shots from the day and gave the group a practical demonstration on post-processing using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.  He showed how to get the best from the RAW files out of the camera, pushing them to give them a final polish.  In preparation for the day, we had developed some of our own 3B Media Adobe Photoshop presets, which can be quickly applied to create several effects or just to push the picture in the right direction.  These we gave away in a little goody bag, along with detailed course literature from the day on everything we had covered.

Several cups of coffee and a final question and answer session to settle any last niggling queries, we wrapped up and headed to the pub for a quick pint.

All in all a fantastic day, and we got some really positive feedback from all the delegates.  We will be holding the next Urban Portraits workshop soon, and regular blog readers will be the first know.  If you’re keen on getting involved and want to find out more, either email me directly or via the 3B Media email – info@3bmedia.co.uk  We’ll also be announcing our other workshops in the near future, so stay tuned for these and if there’s any training days you’d like to see, then please get in touch.

In the meantime why not become a 3B Media fan on facebook?

The first batch were all shot using just natural light, until it started to get pretty thin and we had to whip out our flashguns.

These are some crazy strip lights that are fixed in the pavement

A quick grab shot with a flashgun zoomed in to pick out Alex from the street.

I didn’t have much time with Stef, as the all other photographers seemed to be hogging her, but of the few I managed to get, this was my favourite.

The three of us blog on a regular basis about the work we do, but we knew that with video it would be a lot easier, cooler and better to showcase how we do, what we do.  We also were keen to show potential clients that a photo shoot can and should be a fun thing to be involved with.  The majority of people we photograph are not professional models and we wanted to give them an idea of what to expect.

So after several half pints of stout we decided to put a shoot together at a mechanics garage in Leeds.  We all wanted to experiment with some new lighting techniques and put the bias of the shoot on high-end high street fashion.  I contacted a few models to come along for the day, we arranged a make-up artist and got our good friend Cris Matthews along to capture the video footage.  There’s another blog entry below to fill you in on the details of the day.

Anyway, I’m writing too much and ignoring the point of this post which is to show the video!  After some late nights in front of a MacBook Pro here’s my final edit of the video.  To watch in super spangly High Definition click on the HD logo once the video starts playing.  You can also see Cris’ edit here: http://www.vimeo.com/6010320

3B MEDIA • Fashion Photography • Lighting On-Location from Rob Booker on Vimeo.

We decided on the 3B Media name as an umbrella brand for anything the 3 of us do together.  Booker, Barber and for alliterative purposes Barnaby.  We’ll be working on a few more of these fashion and lighting days over the coming months, and as Cris did such a sterling performance of making us HD-Ready, he’ll be along for the ride too.

3B Media are planning to do some training workshops in January 2010, so if you’d like to come along to one then please get in touch.  There’ll be in a similar theme to what you see on the video here, giving all you photographers a chance to shoot some new portfolio material, learn and develop your skills behind the camera, meet some like minded people, and bug the 3 of us to death about how we do what we do!  As we shoot more videos over the rest of the year we’ll be posting them up on our blogs so you can get a feel for what the training days will be like.

More on 3B Media later, but for now here’s a few more of my pictures from the day.  There’s no geeky tech details here, but don’t be shy about posting a comment and I’ll fill you in on the f-stops and focal lengths and flash ratios.

First up we’ve got Matt who is a super cool all round good bloke, coming up with some crazy but awesome ideas.  I found this wedge shaped corridor and after clearing it out, Matt experimented with the space throwing out some acrobatics to get into these positions.

This was shot behind a couple of container crates I found in the yard of the garage.  It was raining pretty badly by this point, so we had about 2 minutes to get some pictures before my camera started giving me electric shocks.  The suit Matt’s wearing is a £3 charity shop special, and the cross of tape was his idea.  I think portraits are a lot more interesting, when you can imagine a story behind the details.

Next up we’ve got Clare who is a photographer as well as a model herself, so was keen to see what was going on both sides of the camera.  This picture was a pretty quick set-up with 3 flashes and again I let Clare experiment with the space.  The processing on the shot I pushed as much as Photoshop would let me,  I wanted it to have as much punch as possible, but ultimately it’s the red glasses that make the shot.

Stef was one of the first models who was ready on the day and most of the mechanics stopped work once we started shooting!  This set-up was shot with a ring-flash and giant softbox off to one side.  Processing again was pushed as far as I can take it.

Viv had Phil’s attention for most of the day, but I saw the potential of this yellow steel door as soon as we rocked up in the morning.  Then when Viv came down wearing a black dress and a splash of red lipstick, I was dying to put the 2 together.

Here’s a gallery with some more images on:

[svgallery name="For Blog"]

Check out Phil’s blog and Barnaby’s blog for their side of the day, and if you want to get in contact with any of the other guys involved you can do so here:

Make-Up • Katy Padam • www.ktmakeup.co.uk

Video • Cris Matthews • www.crismatthews.com

Models • Stef Jones via modelmayhem.com, Vivienne Edge via modelmayhem.com and Clareski via modelmayhem.com

The plan was basically to get a few models, make-up artists, a location, and a boot full of lighting gear and give ourselves a day of shooting fashion photography.  After finding our models Viv, Steph, Clare and Mat and our make-up artist Katy, the location we found to shoot at was a rough and ready garage in Leeds; rusty cars, oily rags, muddy puddles and old tires pretty much sets the scene.

After setting up base and finding a place for the cooler full of lunch, Katy and her assistant Pooja got to work on giving the models some incredible make-up and hair styles.  It was great fun and a pretty creative and collaborative process between all of us in terms of the finished photos, with everyone giving their input and ideas.  Rain stopped play for a lot of the exterior shots but with so much scope for shooting inside, neither of us ran out of inspiration.  The garage is also home to an electro producer and DJ who had the speakers turned to 11 for the second half of the day helping set the mood for the images.

Along also for the day was the awesome Cris Matthews, who was there to document the day video style, and we hope to have this edited and online by the end of next week, so I’ll put another post up with a few more images.

A pretty cool day all round, and we can’t wait to set the next one up.  Let me know what you think of the results below.