Today, I decide to do a little change to my blog, instead of showcasing my new work, I would like to add in additional content. I am a strong advocate of continuous learning and experience sharing. I believe I have shared a lot in some of my previous posts and I will continue to do that. I’ve learned from many amazing artists who willing to teach and share, and I would definitely like to pay it forward and share my personal experience and my creative process to other interested photographers, artists and my dear readers.
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I get a lot of questions from some of my new friends and clients – When and how did I start photographing figurative art?
Well, I started photographing figurative art in 2013. At that time, I was doing some personal photography projects, mainly to push myself out from my comfort zone, forcing myself into doing something that I am technically not capable to do. Getting into it was actually by chance when I accidentally encountered a studio lighting photography workshop offered by Kevin Stenhouse; the interesting thing was it’s a nude subject. Considering the genre, it was quite … interesting … yet quite a dilemma. There were a few self doubt, such as questioning if this will benefit me in my wedding and portrait work, will what I learn be useful considering I shoot mostly in natural light, I do not own a studio to further pursue studio photography and … I am going to be shooting a nude body!
Let’s be honest, all these questions actually defeat the whole purpose of doing a personal project. It was then that I shut my mind from overthinking and went ahead, signed up for the workshop.
To all interested artists and photographers, regardless what your skill level is but as long as you photograph in a manual mode (DSLR or film), I would highly endorse Quality of Light from Kevin Stenhouse. Kevin Stenhouse is a highly reputable professional photographer in Calgary, Canada specialize in boudoir and personal art photography; he also photograph weddings and commercial portrait.
Having been photographing figurative art for a couple of years now and from what have seen, Kevin has constantly wow me with his personal art creation. Through my experience in his workshop, Kevin is very passionate in teaching, including the very basic of using different lighting equipment, the technical settings and how to see lights. From using one light source in various different variations, further adding additional lights, or using different reflections, light angles to create different look, Kevin would patiently explain and help you see how different lights work together, how the light fall off on the body, with plenty of hands on shooting opportunity.
Not only that he is technically sound, what interest me the most is how he instruct and pose model, the precision and clarity in the instruction, this is something that is the most valuable to me. In figurative art photography, touching the model is highly prohibited and requires the utmost respect to the models, therefore clear communication is very important. Kevin will cover all the ethics require in and out of the photoshoot, how to work with the model and how to instruct and guide model in a photoshoot.
If you have no experience but would like to attempt and get into figurative art photography, or you just simply want to learn or refresh your studio lighting skills, I would highly recommend workshop from Kevin Stenhouse. The amount of content that fit into the workshop is a lot that it worth every bucks you spend. And bare in mind, no single workshop that Kevin offers is the same as previous because there is always a new element added into the creative process.
The knowledge that I have gained after the workshop has helped immensely in the way I see light, and the same principle can be implemented in a natural lighting scenario. Once you grasp the principle, the creativity is all yours and that’s when all the fun part begins.
Below are some of the behind the scene photos and previous work created from the workshops. Other series that created during the workshop include Michael Ward and the 10 Day Series.
