Wednesday, last week, Joe McNally came to Convention Center to present his “Location Lighting Techniques” seminar. Having read and enjoyed both of Joe’s books, I took the day off work to attend this presentation.

His books are written in a conversational style, just like this seminar. We got to see Joe and his assistants setup lights and shoot photographs. He was shooting tethered, so images we projected onto two giant screens for all to see. The seminar covered the use of off-camera strobe lighting with speedlights – “The Strobist Way” – see here. Joe covered everything from single flash to two flash setups, right up to multiple flash units.

Joe had two models, Lindsay and Solomon, who were subjects for the duration of the seminar. During the course of the seminar, one of Joe’s assistants made one image, that you will find on his Twitter site. Joe had tweeted the event and put a link to some of the images that he made on his blog. You can see images of his two models on this site.

I took the opportunity to make some images during the course of the day. Outside the Convention Center is this Blue Bear.

Blue Bear

I made these images shortly after arriving at the Convention Center. It looks like the bear was admiring the “saucers” behind the glass.

Blue Bear And Saucers

Here we can see him looking in.

Blue Bear Up Close

I had forgotten to bring a writing implement for note taking. During the lunch break, when I took the opportunity to walk over to 16th Street where I bought a pencil. Returning to the Convention Center, I passed the strata bar.

In The Stratosphere

Arriving back at the Convention Center, I noticed the reflections of a building under construction in the rectangular glass panels.

Convention Center Reflections

After the seminar ended, I meandered back to 16th Street. I noticed the spring flowers growing from these colorful pots.

Springtime Pots

On the way to the light rail station, I heard calls from the alleyway. Here I met three colorful characters, Hodge, Rico and Mad — I hope I got their names right. They insisted I make some images of them partying in the alley.

Colorful Characters

Finally, I arrived at the station to take the train back home.