When I first met him, I was just starting out on the professional side of photography and Clay was Monte Zucker’s assistant.  We’d see each other at various trade shows and then a road show here and there and the friendship and respect for his work just kept growing.

Try playing the “three degrees of separation with Kevin Bacon” game with Clay’s name.   Over and over again, just about every icon in the industry is going to some how link back to Clay.  He learned an incredible amount from Monte, but then, the more he learned the more he started to develop his own style.  Today, without question, you can’t name the top 10-20 photographers in our industry and not have Clay some where on the list.

But the most important lesson Clay ever shared had nothing to do with photography, but giving.  He was teaching on a Hasselblad University program in the early 90’s and got on the topic of giving when somebody thanked him for the information he was sharing.  I’m probably going to screw up the quote, but not the sentiment, as he said, “Don’t ever worry about how much you give, because it will always come back ten times over!”

Welcome my good buddy, Clay Blackmore!

 The forecast was for snow…that meant the forecast was for fun!  Knowing the bride was getting dressed across the street from the White House gave us a perfect backdrop for a series of pictures of the bridesmaids as they were leaving for the church.  Working in snow fools your onboard meter, which sees all that white and thinks the scene is too bright; the result is the camera underexposes the photo if you don’t correct for it. 

In order to make the snow white and not gray, you need to use either manual exposure or exposure compensation.  I used a 50D and started by setting the camera on AV plus one on the exposure compensation and the ISO on 800.   We were using two 580 EXII flashes and letting the camera determine proper flash intensity using Canon’s ETTL technology.  

One flash was mounted on the camera and was set to Master.  The other was set to slave and was positioned behind the subjects at a 45 degree angle.  That is the key to the success of this image:  the back 45 degree light that shapes the entire image and illuminates the umbrellas.  In order to ensure reliable flash firing of the slave unit, we used the Pocket Wizard TT1 radio transmitter on the camera and the Flex TT5 on the slave unit to eliminate the infrared line-of-sight limitation.

The entire shoot is captured with Canon’s 5D Mark II camera, and the footage is colossal.  I’ve been recording many of my sessions for a new educational DVD series on Portraiture that will be released in March entitled How To Photograph Everyone.  Here’s a sneak preview:

The video quality of the 5D Mark II and the 7D is so amazing it will revolutionize our industry in the coming years.  The HD video features of the new Canon cameras have opened up an entire new world for portrait photographers.  Soon we will add cinema-quality video to our product lines and offer family movies, commercials, and online videos alongside our traditional photographic products!!  What we as portrait photographers share is a common passion for artistry and craft and we can utilize that enthusiasm to create fusion media videos with the same level of artistic beauty that cinematographers have in feature films.  It’s never been a more exciting time to be a portrait photographer!!