A Hobby with a passion

On Saturday I was lucky enough to attend a workshop by my good friend David Hobby which was organised by Alex Ray of 'The Flash Centre'

David gave a real insight into his style of lighting and his undeclared maxim that 'Less is more' and perhaps 'Even less is even more' if you get what I mean.

His ability to construct a lighting setup in no time at all which looks like it uses all the lights in the world when often it is no more than three SB800 speedlight's has to be seen to be believed

As ever in this eternal learning game we call photography I learned a lot, and particularly his use of on camera flash as fill was a very useful eye opener

During his presentation in the first half of the day two of the images which he showed just leaped off the screen at me.

One was THE most sublime portrait of his children in winter light.

It was quite beautiful, rather like an Old Masters painting don't you think?

The other was this beautiful fast portrait of his son Ben, you can read the post of how he did it here

You really can tell when a photographer is shooting with a depth and a passion

At the end of the day during the question and answer session a member of the audience asked him to repost a 'how to' on high speed photography

He used the opportunity to speak of how though technique and theory was all well and good, that the most important thing is to apply the theory to your passion, and shoot something that will make a difference.

I'm pleased he made the point, there can be a tendency by photographers to just stress about the equipment and technique and not considering WHAT we are photographing

A man who know his stuff, bloody good photographer too

If you can beg steal or borrow a spare ticket to his roadshow in the UK, do so as you will learn more from him than 'just' lighting