About a week or so ago I attended a short half day seminar that was part of the “I Photoshop People” tour done by a photographer named JB Sallee. I wasn’t really quite sure what to expect as the little blurb they send out ahead of time was sufficiently vague to entice people of all skill levels. But it was cheap, especially with my PPA discount, and so I figured what the heck – if I walk away with one new idea in my head then it’s worth the admission charge, right?
Actually, suprisingly it was. First, it’s always nice to go to one of these things where the speaker at least has some sense of humor. It’s also nice to see the thought processes that other people go through when they are composing an image and then bringing it through their back-end processing to come up with the final image. JB is big into the grunge style, and has really made that into his “look”. I have to say that I’m not huge on the look but he does manage to pull it off well, especially when he puts everything together for an album. I might need to give it a try sometime this year just to see how things turn out.
As for the actual content of the seminar, it was pretty basic, but I found it really interesting to watch him go through his workflow. His flow is similar to mine, in that he doesn’t use a lot of the advanced masking layers that other people swear by, instead favoring simplicity. On the other hand, he does a lot of flattening to the images, which I try to avoid as much as possible just because you never know when you might want to go back and tweak something. But I guess if you do it once and forget about it, flattening the layers sure does reduce file size a LOT.
Perhaps the most interesting thing I got out of the seminar was that he’s shooting with Q-flashes instead of the Nikon or Canon speedlights. This is something I’ve wanted to try, but the price of the flash+battery is somewhat prohibitive. But he’s shooting primarily in places like Texas and Mexico, where overpowering the sun is perhaps a lot more dificult also. On the other hand, the more powerful flashes certainly give you an extra level of flexibility in the middle of the day when the sun is bright and harsh.
Another interesting idea was the way he structures his coverage. His coverage includes the bride getting ready, and the ceremony but doesn’t spend a lot of time at the reception. I can see the appeal to doing it this way, especially if the Bride and Groom are willing to do their formals before the cermony and spend a few hours with you. This avoids a lot of the rush and really can be the difference between amazing wall portraits and acceptable album images.
On the whole, if you see this seminar go through your town spend the couple of bucks to go check it out. You might pick up a few interesting things.
by John Bartholomew
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