A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, one of America’s leading portrait photographers put together a pretty terrific little book called Don Blair’s Guide to Lighting and Posing Body Parts. I wrote the book, but it was exclusively Don Blair’s words and images. 
Tony Corbell, now at Nik Software and Terry Deglau, now retired, [...]

One of the fun pre-program aspects of Summer School is looking at the demographic data to understand more about who’s coming to this year’s program and why. Here’s this year’s profile.
We’ve got about 300 people coming as of this morning and to start it’s a 45/55 split between men and women. There are more women [...]

Here’s what I love most about the Internet.  It’s made the world smaller! News that a few years ago might have taken a month to get to us, and then, only if we were reading a story in one of the photographic magazines, now comes in seconds via email!
Yesterday I wrote a post about being more [...]

I’ve known Jules Bianchi and Joy Bianchi Brown for a long time, but like so many of the movers and shakers in our industry, they’re always moving too fast and we never get the time to just sit down and talk. We’re always catching each other on our way to another program and time and time again, [...]

Most of us tend to hate our own portraits and I’m certainly no exception. However, a few weeks ago I posted a portrait Elena Hernandez did of me while we were all at WPPI. It’s one of my favorites, because of Elena’s philosophy of wanting every portrait to tell a story. Just in case you [...]

I got my favorite question in an email the other day. Somebody asked me why they should go to Summer School. I guess I just take it for granted that everybody has read all the posts in the past two years and knows what the event really is. 
The short list of why you should be [...]

While it might seem off track, considering I’ve been profiling Summer School instructors for the last week, I found this wonderful old clip from Dean Collins.  Dean’s influence on so many great photographers in this country was extensive. He was the master of lighting, not just in understanding it but in teaching the concepts.
This year at [...]

It’s 5:00 a.m. on a Friday morning and I’ve got nothing in the pipeline for the blog today. There are no guest posts that I really want to run, but I do seem to have a lot of attitude.  After all it’s Friday! Now remember, I’m not a wedding photographer, so as the weekend approaches [...]

The full registration site for each of the programs should be live next week, but here’s an update on what’s happening to finally bring some great programming to the Midwest.
1) The Hilton Akron/Fairlawn is the new location for all events.  It’s much more accessible, since it’s only a mile or so off route 77, making it a [...]

I’ve written a few times about remembering the value you provide to your clients, but this is one of those topics you just can’t say enough about.  What’s prompting the idea right now are three walls of a guest room in our home.  We’re taking a whole series of family photographs, both Sheila’s and mine and [...]