Learning in Las Vegas

Last month I attended WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) Conference for the second time… which I LOVE!  This year I decided to take a PLUS Class with Roberto Valenzuela, a world class wedding photographer out of Beverly Hill, CA.  This guy is amazing!  He continues to win International Print competitions

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, teaches all over the world and photographs weddings all over the world.  We learned lighting and posing techniques.  Which if you are one of my clients, you know I shoot natural light and I do not pose.  I give a bit of direction so you aren’t standing there looking at each other funny, but I definitely do not pose you.  So this class was WAY outside my comfort zone. Perfect!

Here is Roberto talking about different lighting situations.  In his words… he purposefully took us to the WORST spots around the hotel.  As I said before, he shoots all over the world, and doesn’t necessarily get to see the location prior to shooting.  He is an absolute master at making any location look amazing.

Here we are in the corner of the MGM Conference Center.  Not that interesting in real life.  However, finding shadows and shapes is one of the things Roberto looks for in his compositions.

This image was taken just outside the conference center along some hedges covering up mechanical equipment. We were working on posing, notice their hands… nice and soft. No claw finders or monkey arms. Very important!

Here our models were sitting on a bench, and we went on the other side of the median to get a few palm trees in the shot.  I wish I brought my 70-200 to class that day! Roberto’s images is much better than mine.  This is with an 85mm 1.4 prime lens, which I usually love, until I saw Roberto’s shot from right next to me. The lens compression was beautiful.  Note to self for next time.

The image below is from Day 2 where we combine lighting and posing.  This particular image is back light by the sun, but we also experimented with using flash to back light the same concept.  I would NEVER have back light using flash before, but I sure will now!

The amount of information I learned in two days was overwhelming and challenging.  But I can honestly say that in the shoots following this workshop I can already see improvements in where I look to position my clients, and the way I compose an image. I even used off camera flash to light the shadow side of a model’s face the other day…which I’ve done before, but this time was effortless! How fun!

Roberto’s book just came out as well: Picture Perfect Practice.  A must have for all wedding photographers.  And a great reminder for all of us that have taken his workshops.