You may remember that in class presentations I have talked about a couple of my favourite contemporary photographers - Annie Bertram and Julian M Kilsby.
I have long been an admirer of Julian's photography (both his fashion work and his travel work) and his imagery is colourful, polished and visually high impact and has the kind of quality that I aspire to.
Julian's website (http://www.jmkphoto.co.uk/) states:
"Julian M Kilsby is a UK based photographer from Birmingham in the West Midlands and specialises in fashion, editorial portraiture and travel photography.
He has a professional, yet informal approach to his photography, with a creative vision and expressive eye for colour, lighting and dynamics.
Julian is not only a freelance photographer, he also teaches photography and is Degree Leader of BA Media Photography and MA Freelance Photography at Birmingham City University."
So, after recently checking out Julian's Blog (http://jmkphoto.blogspot.com/) I noticed that he mentioned being available for tuition days and workshops and not wanting to miss such an opportunity I contacted him to check costs and his availability.
I was hoping to arrange the tuition at the start of the Semester and luckily Julian was available on Tuesday September 13th. The session was arranged and I needed to provide a list of the sort of things that I was hoping to learn from the day. Although it was a teaching session, it was also going to be a very intense practical session too and there would be a model available trhoughout the day to put the teaching into practice.
Among the topics I asked to cover were:
- Using and choosing different light modifiers.
- Balancing the lights for even results.
- Insight into different setups to get consistent results.
- Orchestrating a shoot and model posing.
- Lens choice.
The tuition day was to run from 10am-6pm and this meant that I needed to catch the 06.40 train to make sure I was there on time. Thankfully there were no delays and I arrived promptly.
Julian had secured the services of accomplished Model - Cervena Fox (http://www.cervenafox.com/) who brought items of clothing from several Designers to use throughout the day. Cervena also provided make-up and styling throughout the day and performed these tasks to a very high standard.
I have to admit that I felt a little nervous. Julian's work is light years ahead of mine and I was worried that my lack of technical knowledge would show through. However, within the first few minutes of arriving, all my worries dissipated. Julian is friendly, kwowledgable and down to earth and. He is also an excellent teacher who shared his knowledge and skills throughout a long day.
At the end of the day we had covered fifteen lighting set-ups. Some completely different, others more subtle adjustments but which still yielded different results.
I learnt many new things and some of the highlights were:
- finding out why I had always found gels a bit ‘hit and miss’.
- finding out how to use back lighting (kick lights).
- finding out that you can combine hard and soft light.
- balancing the lights and lighting ratios.
- finding out that the light doesn’t always have to point directly at the subject.
- finding out that a bigger softbox doesn’t actually mean a greater light spread.
- creating a high key lighting set without having any lights on the model.
Overall, a totally awesome day and there's so much that will improve my practice that I can't wait to start shooting this Semester! I would highly recommend Julian's Tuition Days and you are guaranteed to learn much about lighting and photography and I intend to book a follow-up day in Semester Two.
So, a big Thank-You to Julian for teaching me so much and for his patience and guidance on the day and not forgetting the impressive Cervena Fox for her patience and hard work throughout the day.
Once they're all finished, I will be posting some examples of the images I shot for each set but in the meantime here's a preview of some of my favourites from the day.
Lighting and setup - Julian M Kilsby
Model - Cervena Fox
MUA - Cervena Fox
Shutter presser - Me :)
