Portraits Unplugged is all about working with natural light, nothing technical or mechanical. In this engaging online workshop, Bobbi Lane teaches you how to find and work with natural light to make flattering and dynamic portraits of any subject. The beauty of available light is its ability to describe your subject from powerful and strong to soft and creamy. You scout locations for the light and look for options that can surprise us with its complexity as well as find the simple and clean look for smooth skin tones.
Everyone has natural light available, but not necessarily the understanding of how to find and manipulate it with reflectors and diffusers. These techniques help to create the most pleasing or effective images. We work with all kinds of light: hard, soft, bounced, window light, backlight, open shade, and garage door lighting and explore how the qualities of each contribute to the feeling of the portrait. In addition, Bobbi shows you how to create a backyard studio with a canopy and reflectors that mimics studio lighting.
The most important part of our portrait is not the subject, but how we, as visual artists, choose to define our subject. We work on capturing the essence of the people by the use of posing, expressions, tonality, composition, color, backgrounds, and props.
Bobbi’s workshop covers the “rules” of Portraits Unplugged, how to effectively and creatively use reflectors and diffusers, color and texture of light, accurate skin tones, scouting the light, times of day to shoot, high and low key, and story-telling portraits.
This is not an overly technical workshop, but is for all photographers who want to strengthen their people skills as well as their appreciation of light for creating dynamic portraits.
Working knowledge of digital workflow and manual mode on your digital SLR or mirrorless camera. Participants must be able to download and select images using image editing software for class sessions.
Class will meet 12:30 – 2:30 pm (Mountain Time) on Mondays and Thursdays starting April 1 and ending April 18 (six online group sessions). Enrollment is limited to 12 participants.
Zoom Video Conferencing software (available for no charge from Zoom.com) will be used to facilitate the class sessions. Further details will be emailed to registrants.
Santa Fe Workshops always aims to produce a high-quality experience for our online attendees. That said, variables including regional and local internet provider speeds, traffic on Zoom's servers, and your own computing hardware can contribute to a less than ideal streaming event. While we do our best to minimize the impact of these variables, they are outside the control of Santa Fe Workshops.
View Withdrawal and Transfer Policies for online programs.
For the convenience of participants, recordings of each class session are posted privately for one month after the end of each session. Santa Fe Workshops takes the recordings down after one month to protect the intellectual property of our instructors.
Bobbi Lane, a Fujifilm “X” Photographer, is an award-winning commercial photographer specializing in creative portraits on location and in the studio. Bobbi’s multi-faceted approach to photography incorporates over 40 years of technical experience with innovative artistic interpretation. Her corporate and editorial work includes corporate websites, annual reports, and hundreds of environmental portraits for a wide variety of magazines.
As a dedicated photo educator, Bobbi brings insight and enthusiasm to her students in workshops held worldwide. She is widely known as the “Mistress of Light,” teaching portrait lighting techniques with both natural and artificial light. Combining her love of travel, photography, and teaching, Bobbi also leads international photo travel workshops with her husband Lee Varis, such as Venice Carnival, Tuscany, Neighborhoods of New York, and Iceland. Her dynamic workshops are always both education and entertaining!
Website: bobbilane.com
Instagram: @bobbilanephoto
