In my consulting days at a big four accounting firm I had a manager that would always say “you’re not loving it if you’re not learning it.” His rationale was that when you love what you do, you will always want to learn more about it and learn everything about it. He was also the type of person who would stay up at night reading his own personal subscription to Gartner Research and Harvard Business Review with a bag of popcorn and a soda on a Friday night.
In the business world this is called falling asleep reading case studies or industry best practices (and yes there is an industry best practice for falling asleep reading an industry best practice…seriously). And although I didn’t find reading case studies exhilarating I absolutely understand now what my manager meant when he said, “you’re not loving it if you’re not learning it.”
Fortunately in the wonderful world of photography, there aren’t too many case studies and industry best practices to read. Learning comes in all shapes and sizes for the artistically inclined from seminars to books to videos. Topics range all across the board with wedding photograph from two strobe lighting, posing techniques, lightroom post processing, Color saturation and density, light metering and other technical jargon that may put most of those business folks to sleep but keeps me excited and entertained at all hours of the night.
With a little over two months before the wedding season kicks back into full swing we are learning everything we can and really excited about it. A few of the seminars we are going to are going to be taught by industry icons including:
- Jerry Ghionis – The Power of Passion
- Sandy Puc – The Power of Passion
- Joe McNally – The Flash Bus
- David Hobby– The Flash Bus
We have also bought a plethora of DVD seminars from
- David Hobby – Lighting In Layers
- Joe McNally – The Language of Light
- Joe McNally – Shooting with the Elinchrom Quadra System
- Mike Colon – On Location with Mike Colon
- the Photovisions Series
- Jerry Ghionis – The ICE Society
Also Books a few great books!
- John Siskin- Understanding and Controlling Strobe Lighting: A Guide for Digital Photographers
- Neil van Niekerk – Off-Camera Flash Techniques for Digital Wedding and Portrait Photographers: Techniques for Digital Photographers
- Joe McNally – The Moment It Clicks: Photography secrets from one of the world’s top shooters
- Barbara Wallace – Wedding Vendor Handbook: Get to the Top and Stay There
- Joe McNally – Sketching Light (Voices That Matter)
- Rod Deutschmann and Robin Deutschmann – Multiple Flash Photography: Off-Camera Flash Techniques for Digital Photographers
- Zeke Kamm – Strobist Photo Trade Secrets Volume 1: Expert Lighting Techniques (One-Off)
It’s a lot to cram into two months, but needless to say it is soooo worth it and entertaining (although Neeva doesn’t think it is suitable for date night)! We love learning and the great thing is we can see the instant impact right in our work. Our work and style is going to get infinitely better and blow the socks off our clients! We are so excited that our little learning bend will enhance our future photography and the priceless images our clients will cherish for the rest of their lives. 2011 will be an amazing year and we can’t wait till it begins! 🙂
