Lynda.com and Kelbytraining.com

Hi All!

Well, Like I said yesterday I wanted to share two sites with you and give you the low down on both sites. Ok, here is my thoughts. When I consider that I subscribe to both of these services, I have to say I get a great amount of education for about $60 (Canadian) per month. Both sides have great experts and both sites have amazing tutorials. I appreciate the tutorials found on Lynda.com because they are practical and very timely. This resources is quick to publish new resources when new software comes out. Most they are timely with the Adobe products and Microsoft products. A great deal of effort goes in to making sure that artists feel the love on this site. However, where this site lacks a bite is in its support of fringe programs and 3D program. Of course you will find the usual suspects like Maya in their arsenal, but where are the ZBrush programs, or the open source 3D programs? The lack of support in these areas makes me wish for universal training centre that recognized the value in both 2D and 3D resources. Again, my thoughts.

The best site for budding artists that are looking for help becoming a better photographer or graphic designer should head directly over to kelbytraining.com. This site stays relatively current on adobe products and also provides instruction on photographic techniques from some of the world's best photographers. You will see David Ziser, Joe McNally, and other famous-like persons just waiting to teach you something. The ability of this site to compact information into small bite size portions that are easy to swallow (and digest) is soooooooo awesome. One major drawback to this site, however, is the slow release of new material. Some material gets out there very fast, but the typical supporting materials that you would expect close to software releases seems to trickle out at a snail's pace. Other than that, I would strongly recommend this site to budding professionals who might be falling asleep in their trade school classes. This site might be like the all night cram for an exam approach, but boy is it good.

Well, that is all I have for today. I hope you can all come back soon, and I will try to be a bit more proactive with my blog. All my best,

Lance Burns

Swimmers Portrait

LanceBurnsPhotography.com

Hi All!  This portrait is really exciting for me and scarry for me also!  On a recent trip I was reading a great book by Joe McNally called The Moment it Clicks.  This book has amazing information for any aspiring or professional photographer.  Joe is very nice to share technique as well as style with the reader.  The image you see below is based heavily on a picture on page 72 from the book.  This image was made about one hour before sunset.  I took a number of shots of the background to get the right mood.  This was faster than the normal /250 flash sync speed, but with Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS) I was able to forget about trying to compensate for that and just focus on getting the right mood.  I was using the SU-800 to remotely fire off my single SB-800 which my assistant is holding.

My technique was to have an assistant in the water on the left hand side just outside of the range of the field of view firing the flash into my subjects face.  I was also aware that the water would reflect a great deal of light back up into my subjects shadowed side of the face. My largest fear was falling in the water myself. I am knee deep in the lake and the bottom is rather slippery! I didn't take to many precautions and lucky had no issues with the camera, the flash or my model.

My camera specs are: Nikon D200, fitted with a 17-55 mm lens at 28 mm, F/2.5 @ 1/1600 second, ISO 100. Hope this provides some inspiration.